I can’t sleep that
night; think about Pa, Z, everyone I’ve ever known, see all of this space in front of me with no clear path. I wonder when it’ll be shown.
When I step out of my room to leave in the morning, Ma is on her corner of the sofa. When she looks up at me, a little more of her gone, her eyes look gray and absent.
“Did you eat, Ma?”
She takes a sip of coffee and holds her breath a minute before replying.
“I had a piece of toast with jam. Didn’t sleep a wink. It’s like my mind was searching this house for him, you know what I mean?” She crosses one leg over the other and smiles at me weakly, turns away.
“I know, Ma. It’s gonna take some time, maybe a lot of time, to get used to the idea.” I take her coffee cup from her hand and take it to the kitchen to refill it.
“I’m heading out for a while, okay?” I tell her as I hand her cup back to her. “But I’ll be back soon.”
She smiles and waves her hand at me as she lights up a cigarette.
* * *
I am walking up to the steps of the church when I see her there. The sun is high and bright, and I have to squint hard to see her completely, but there she is, sitting on the stairs, her legs folded beneath her, in a white strappy shirt with the same red sweater on her shoulders.
“Good morning,” I say, and I sit down beside her and look into her eyes for a long time. She smiles slightly, understands me, I think, and then looks away. The building is silent behind us, and we sit still for a long time. It’s the longest I’ve ever sat still, I think, in the presence of another human, and it is slightly uncomfortable.
“This is for you.” I hand her a long-stemmed sunflower.
She takes me in, one piece at a time, and says thank you.
She runs her hands up and down her jeans. I can hear the soft sound of the material, her long brown fingers kneading the muscles in her thighs; I smell honeysuckle nearby.
She stands up and looks down at me.
“So, what do you want to do today?” She is so tall, a steeple, a woman; my insides relax, fold, but my palms begin to sweat. I stand up and look her in the eyes.
“Let’s go to the park,” she says, pushing her bag over her shoulder. When she starts walking toward a white Honda, I follow.
“Get in. I’ll drive us.” She’s behind the wheel as I climb into the car beside her, see my shadow cast across the dash. I feel like I float above my body, the real me watching this new version of myself trying to figure out what he’s doing.
She puts the windows down and the car in drive, and I smell the honeysuckle again, the leather of my jacket, count the bumps of her knuckles on the steering wheel.
“I’m just curious… why did you decide to come out with me anyway? You left so abruptly the other night.”
She’s looking straight ahead at the road, and I can see her smile as she seems to count the cars on the road. She takes a deep breath before answering me.
“Carmine, the truth is, I really don’t know. I just… I just thought I’d take a chance on this.” She taps the wheel and smiles again and fidgets in her seat. I remember a girl in first grade that I loved, soft and sweet and amiable like this.
I tell her, “I don’t really understand anything right now, only that maybe that’s okay for once. I’m trying to figure out how I can start over, if it’s even possible, or if you have to keep what you have to make it something new. I am not making any sense, am I?”
“No, I get it, I do, I know what you mean.” She pulls into a parking space near a green slope of hill at the park and then looks at me. Her eyes seem afraid but wide-open.
We get out and she pulls a picnic basket out of the trunk of her car. The wicker is old and swollen, and inside she has tucked a few things: wine and a tray of cheeses and a wedge of French bread. At the bottom of the basket is a book of poetry by Rumi.
“I put a few things together for us,” she tells me as she walks toward the hill.
In the distance, we can hear children playing, their joy echoing through the fall air. There are trees all around us, and on a field to the left, a group of men play soccer.
We sit down on the green grass and fold our legs beneath us. She takes a few things from the basket and hands me a glass of wine, puts some crackers and cheese on a paper plate, rests on her back and elbows in the grass. The sky is a tender blue above us.
I pick up the book of poetry and flip through the pages. The wind blows between us, soft. I can feel our differences, our pasts circling around us.
“‘Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.’” I run my pale finger over the black font of the letters… pause on some of the words… out… wrongdoing… you and there. I don’t ever remember reading a poem in my life.
“Do you think there is such a space?” I ask her.
She pops a grape in her mouth and starts to talk.
“I’d like to think there is, but I don’t know.”
A small girl runs past us with a kite; it’s purple and pink colors trailing after her. We both smile.
I move closer to her and smell her skin, laundry detergent, the faint smell of plastic strawberry on her lips. I reach out and touch her hand, feel her tense, then relax, myself tremble. I want to be close to her so bad.
I start thinking about Dallas and remember the power, the glory, and I worry that the old Carmine is trying to slip back. It would be easier to be that than this.
“So, what do you do in Atlanta, Z? I mean, besides working at the club.” I adjust my feet, cross my legs in the grass, breathe deeply, and listen closely for my old words, watch carefully so they don’t slip from my mouth.
She rubs her hand over her jeans again. Squints in the sunlight. Her mouth is rich.
“I love Atlanta, exploring it, checking out little shops. I love the way the city vibrates and moves so fast. I like that energy. I sing, too, but not the way you heard me in the club that night.” She takes a sip of wine and looks around, stretches out, and continues talking.
“When I was a girl, my daddy used to ask me to sing, and it made me feel so special, so important. I drive to Eton sometimes just so my Aunt Tina can tell me stories about my father, her younger brother, and sometimes when we sit in her old foyer, I’m hoping that she’ll ask me to sing the way that he did so I can remember what it was like.” She gets lost for a minute, smiles as she remembers, then straightens up as she remembers the present.
We relax, and for the next couple of hours, we talk about our fathers, and she tells me how hers was mostly absent but so loving and I tell her about Pa’s anger, and as we do, the wind picks up and blows at us. Sometimes as she’s speaking, her hands make big circles in the air and she forgets that she can’t trust me, and I tell her about how the numbness has been wearing off, how my whole life was an escape plan, and I feel like what a waste. I tell her how Pa’s death has affected me, how it has made me question the things I held onto for so many years, the things I coveted, the things I hid from. “What is the truth?” I ask her.
“I think a family is a circle, a ring, and when there’s a death, the circle has to change, things ‘have’ to shift. For me, when my father left us, I suddenly felt as though I didn’t know who I was anymore, as if I existed in his eyes only, how he saw me. I’m still trying to figure it out, who I really am, if I’m at all like he thought I was. I still want to know why it was so easy for him to pop in and out of our lives as though it didn’t matter.”
We go back and forth like that. Why did he do this, you think, and how could she do that?
As the sun starts to set over the trees, we begin to fade and realize how much we have in common, how much we’ve shared. Sometimes the thought gives me a sense of panic, where is the control? Other times, I can see myself sinking into it, swimming in it.
When the streetlights pop on, we get up and start to pack everything up. I escape back into my mind, but notice her every move, how her shoulders curve in and her toes are painted red.
“When will you drive back to Atlanta?” I ask her as we walk back to the car. She seems far away again, with the sun gone, the contents of her mind different now.
“I think I’ll drive back to Atlanta tonight just to be in my own space.” She taps the steering wheel and then starts the engine. I zip up my coat, watch people packing up, kids heading home through the hills, taking shortcuts through the woods. She backs the car out of the parking lot and turns the radio on.
“Can I call you?” I ask, reach my hand out to touch her arm. The air in the car is warm. She doesn’t pull away this time.
“How about I call you?” The shapes of her eyes are more oval now as they look directly at me. She smiles and then looks back at the road.
I agree, say sure, keep quiet for the rest of the way home.
“Bye, Carmine,” she says as she pulls in front of the church to let me out.
I stand by the stairs for a very long time and look up at the Eton sky, full of clouds and stars and mystery.
* * *
For the next few days, Ma and I don’t know what to do with ourselves. We walk from room to room, wandering listlessly, sometimes passing each other by with a short glance. Sometimes Ma makes heavy comments that I don’t know what to do with.
“Carmine, son, it feels as though I’ve lost not one limb, but two, an arm and a leg. What am I supposed to do, son?” Her pale dresses hang off her bony shoulders even more lately. I want her to live.
Sometimes I feel moments of terror, as though the floor will disappear beneath me. Other times a feeling of euphoria comes over me, and I want to jump and laugh and punch circles in the air because I am finally rid of him. Then a certain melancholy comes over me, as though nothing really holds me to the ground anymore.
I pull out my old resumes and consider my options again. Dallas has become but a phantom in my mind, but I know it still exists. The lights, the action, it wouldn’t take much to slip back into the man I was.
There is the East Coast, there are Europe and South America and anyplace on the globe, really. My career, my reputation precedes me, but then what? I don’t know if I can stand for those things anymore, I’ve seen the puppet strings; but I don’t know if I can be the man that cares for his old mother, chops wood, and counts the blinking stoplights.
I drive into Atlanta
in that old truck. The day is overshadowed by clouds and voices in the city, and it reminds me of Dallas, the energy flowing in and out of tunnels within the city, the people, the ants foraging and gathering; it’s all the same wherever you go, that kind of energy, the color purple, the heat of red, all that getting. On the seat beside me I’ve brought a few things for us: a bag of oranges, a bottle of Martin Ray wine, a box of old wooden dominoes I found in Pa’s shed. I’m wearing a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and I’m so aware of everything around me, the possibility of the future, the old boundaries of myself smudged out by a big old eraser, grief maybe, or age; maybe the grit is finally something good. I park the old truck in front of her building.
She lives in an eclectic part of the city on a hill with color everywhere, but the buildings are plain and the trees short and the noise here somehow different, a mumble beneath it all, a whisper, a rustle under the covers, then the sound of a car. A block away I see some children playing with water guns, and to the right there is an old woman in front of her apartment clipping plants, and below a puddle drains into the nearby gutter. I step out of the truck and look up. Z is leaning out of the window on the third floor watching me. She smiles wide, and I can see all of her teeth and feel the breadth of her, open here, and free. I am surprised and intimidated and ready to try again. She points to the big main door of her building. I walk in. I put the sack of oranges under my arm and the wine and dominoes in the other.
She opens the door to greet me, and I tell her that I’m glad she called. She moves things around in the kitchen and around the apartment. I watch her move in the light of her space, so different from the club, and when I stop talking, she forgets I’m there for a few moments and begins to hum.
An hour later we are sitting on the living room floor with boxes lined up around us. She’s just moved in. We eat homemade tortellini and drink the wine. Outside, the kids still play, cars pass, time becomes easier.
“Listen, it means a lot that you invited me here tonight. It feels so good to have some company other than Ma’s. Things have been tough lately; I’m just doing my best to take it day by day, you know?”
“Yes, it’s special when two people can meet each other in the present somehow, some way, and let that be enough. I mean, when they can share what’s real.” She looks away and then back, squints her eyes at me, and fills up her water glass. She wants to believe, I can feel it. Outside I think I can hear the ants foraging and searching up and down her block. I feel like one of them. I want to carry something home.
I see a box of photos, some with Z’s face in them, some with old men on fishing boats, others black-and-white square images with a family’s history to them.
“Now that’s what I call a fish.” I smile. Remembering our family photos at home, I’m surprised at the symmetry here.
“Yeah, Little River, my family; there’s lots to share. We were sent to live with my grandparents in Little River, South Carolina. Granddaddy was a fisherman. Little River is an old fishing village—the best seafood, the greatest blue crab festival, and live oak trees that are at least a hundred years old. It’s a peaceful slow-paced town filled with fishermen and shrimpers and a quieter, simpler way of life, not that much different than Eton, I guess.”
She sighs, rubs the back of her neck. Outside, the sun goes down and the streetlights come on. Her windows are open, and a breeze fills the room.
“It looks special. I’d love to visit one day—go shark fishing.”
“Shark fishing… I’m not sure that’s the place.” She laughs, tilts her head to one side.
“Just so you know, Little River has both onshore as well as deep fishing in the Gulf Stream. Surprised?” I sit up straighter and look at her.
“You? I thought you were all looks and charm. You got smarts, too?” She smiles broadly, relaxes a little.
“There’s a little more to me than that—I think, anyway. Are you close to your family?” I ask her. I think for a second about what family means to me.
“I guess you can say that. Do you have any siblings?” She sits Indian style, rubs her hands over her ankles.
“Nope. I’m an only child. What about you?”
“Ha.” She pauses, counting the tips of her fingers. “Well, that’s a complicated question. There are twelve of us… so far.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I laugh.
“Well, there are four of us, three sisters and my brother, and then a bunch of brothers and sisters from my dad’s side. I grew up with just four of us though.”
I smile at her seductively. “What was your family like? Your parents?”
“We used to be… we had nothing growing up, and my mom never worked but she somehow always fed us. What about you? I bet it was fun growing up in a small town.”
“Something happened when we left Port Arthur.”
“Port Arthur?”
“Texas. Nothing ever seemed to work, you know?”
“Why’d you leave Port Arthur?”
“My grandfather owned an old boat in Port Arthur—it’s a seaport; he made money from his fishing boat for years. Worked the waters and weathered with the boat and lived a life he loved, you know. When he passed, my pa somehow managed to gamble everything away. You wouldn’t believe it, but he did it so fast, without thinking, without remembering, like none of it even mattered… . After that, he wanted to leave all that behind to start afresh, here in Eton. The rest is history pretty much.”
“So why Dallas? I mean, how did you get from here to there?”
“I wanted to leave Eton from as far back as I can remember—Eton is country, just country, nothing like Dallas. There is nowhere to hide.”
“What’s the difference?” She looks at me coyly.
I grab her by the shoulders, shake her, smile; it feels good to talk about something lighter. “Blasphemous!”
“Dallas is where folks go to hide from the rest of the world, huh?” She takes a drink of wine and gets up and changes the music, something by Nina Simone.
“It is a good place to hide, but really you can hide anywhere, if that’s what you want to do.” I say it with confidence, like I’ve always known it.
“So, when are you leaving purgatory for paradise?”
“Not for quite a while, I imagine. Call it a hunch. This place has got a hold on me.”
“But Eton? Not Atlanta? Not California? Can you really imagine yourself settling in Eton?”
“I don’t know; I just have a feeling that this is where I need to be, at least for now. I don’t know about forever. Do we ever really know anyway?”
“There’s comfort in keeping things simple. I know that much is true.” She smiles at me so softly, and I get a glimpse of how her face must have looked as a girl.
“Yes, I’m learning that, but I miss Dallas big-time. Daddy Jack’s Wood Grill—the best Jim Beam steak, I oughta make you some. Austin Hill country, good ol’ Texas blues, songs of obscure wisdom, the rodeo, Texas rain showers, jubilee, and the best damn dancing in the whole world.”
“Jubilee? You mean a hoedown? I don’t think so.”
“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. I think you’d like it. You’ve got it all in your bones: Janis, Billie, Aretha. They’ve all done the jubilee.”
“I’d be lynched.” She laughs.
“It’s just a big country concert. Seriously!”
I reach in to kiss her. She pulls away.
“How come the conversation always come back to me? I am an open book. I turned every page for you, but you don’t give me much.”
I reach out and put my hand on her arm. Want to touch her face. Wait for her to talk.
“You’re not the only broken one, Carmine. I’ve got history, it’s no secret. I want to meet you in this space, but it’s hard to trust you.” She gets up and takes the dishes to the kitchen. She comes back, lights a red candle, and starts talking again. “I’ve always loved men. I knew their presence meant Mom would leave me alone, it meant money, it meant Dad coming home, it always means something good or bad… and I kinda feel the same about you.”
We hear a loud siren on the street below, listen as it passes in front of the building and then turns a few streets down and fades away.
“We had nothing growing up… my mom hustled to feed us. She made us hustle too. Everything came day by day. I stayed in school in spite of it all, did my best, then moved to Atlanta to go to college. I couldn’t get either one of my parents to show up and sign anything, not even to get me free money for school, so I tried to pay for it myself. I started school, took a job, began to hustle where I could. I made an agreement with myself always to have money to pay for everything, and I’ve been on my own for years now.”
“I love these things about you,” I tell her. She’s in a new zone, so free; the candle flickers on and off her face, and her eyes look off somewhere in the distance.
“It’s funny how time flies… I wanted to learn to play the piano, speak and sing in French like Billie or Josephine, the old blues singers… so many ways to be me.”
“I just remember always being hungry as a child. We’d go to the grocery store, and my mom would open up a loaf of bread and hand the slices out to us, no kidding. She’d open up turkey, cheese—American Kraft singles—and we’d make our sandwiches and drink soda right there in the store and then leave.” She laughs nervously, walks to the kitchen and washes her hands, sits back down.
“My mother was always on something—Topamax, Ativan—she was fun at times, but often she’d get upset, yell and scream at the slightest mistake. We could never really relax, you know?
“Sometimes she’d break down and cry, wishing she had done things differently, call us mistakes. In those moments I felt a feeling that I wasn’t used to; she was the child and I the mother trying to calm her, trying to let her know everything was going to be okay. I wanted it to be so different; I wanted so much more.”
I lean in to her, reach for her hand, rest my palm on her knee instead. A plane passes overhead, and we both look up and listen to it for a few moments. It is after midnight now, but a new energy is in her.
“I didn’t really know my dad… he’d come by the house every six months or so, seems like he came around a handful of times my whole life, cause a lot of trouble and leave. I don’t know if he loved us; I know he sometimes felt responsible for us, but not enough to stay.”
She is breathless, but keeps going, tells me about Little River, spending summers with her grandparents, the light and airy days with nothing to do, the fragrant memories of Granmama’s old trunk, eating as much chocolate as any one child could, the sound of the piano’s melody throughout the house. Then she stops. Takes a deep breath in and gets up from the floor.
She goes into the bedroom and starts unpacking boxes, the music of Nina Simone plays; I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
I walk up behind her, lean my head on her shoulders, watch her hands go in and out of the cardboard box, feel the chill of the room.
She pushes the box away and stands still. The music clicks off, and the only thing we hear are summer bugs slapping against the window.
“You know, I haven’t always been what I could be, but I’m trying, want to see what I really am. It’s begun with you,” I tell her. “Don’t you want to know what’s possible, too? To see if life can be good?”
She pulls away from me and goes back to the living room. She pulls a big floor pillow from the corner of the room and sits on it. I sit down beside her, grab her hand; the pillow feels like velvet, a magic carpet. I pull her close to me, and she lets me.
I sigh into her hair, nod my head, take in her musk, and feel her heart beating fast.
“I can give you one day at a time, one day at a time. Okay?” She leans into me.