After (23 page)
He won’t go. He can’t. The phone rings, but he refuses to allow an interruption of this bout of self-pity. When the answering machine comes on, Carson hears Bunny’s voice. “Carson, I don’t know if you’re still there. I’ve dropped off the kids, heading into Safeway, and I’m on my cell. I just wanted to tell you you’re the bravest man I know. I love you.”
A bell rings
when Carson opens the door to the antiques shop. A pale woman, her red hair streaked with a startling patch of white at the top, lifts her glasses from her chest and inspects Carson when he enters. A friendly, organized clutter surrounds him—bookcases, armoires, end tables, lamps, a table full of china tea sets, stacks of old magazines.
“Can I help you?” she asks, her voice winsome, chirping.
“I’m meeting someone in the coffeehouse?”
“She’s already here. I’ll take you back to her.”
Carson follows the woman through several other rooms, where every item, no matter how large or small, is polished, positioned to catch the eye—an old-fashioned washboard, a music box, a 1950s Formica table with matching linoleum-covered chairs, stacks of jazz albums. He’s going back and forward in time with each step.
The walls of the coffeehouse are plastered with posters from movies of the thirties and forties: Bogart, Cagney, Stewart, Bette Davis, Lana Turner, it’s their faces he sees first, and then he sees Natalie Houston, the only person in the small coffee shop, sitting at a table in the corner beneath a poster advertising Paul Robeson in
The Emperor Jones
.
“I’ll be right back to take your order,” the owner tells him when she points to the corner table.
Unsure of the etiquette for a meeting like this, Carson doesn’t extend his hand when he stands before the table but merely sits down and says, “Mrs. Houston, I’m Carson Blake.”
Up close, face-to-face, he sees her beauty. The short haircut that emphasizes and endorses her face, her skin taut and soft, her visage possessed of a regal repose. Watching her, haunting her every move on the outdoor track, stealing a glimpse as she drove past in her car, revealed none of this. Natalie Houston watches Carson sink into the wide-backed wicker armchair across from her, saying nothing at first, only nodding a greeting.
She stirs her cup of coffee, Carson is sure, as a way to not look at him.
“I don’t know what’s going to come of this, Mr. Blake,” she says, addressing not him but the coffee. “If this meeting will ensure a place for you and for me in heaven. Why don’t we just talk and see where we land? You led me here. Let’s pretend we’re strangers and that we can’t imagine what we’ve been through—maybe that’s the best way to begin.”
“Sure, sure.” Carson expels the agreement, allowing himself to take a breath.
Natalie Houston takes a sip from her coffee and looks at Carson over her mug’s rim as she asks, “Are you married?”
“Yes. I am,” he says hesitantly.
“Do you have children?”
“Two girls, who’re twins, and a boy.”
“How old is your son?” She asks this with a wistful smile. Should he answer the question? he wonders.
“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, Mr. Blake.”
“He…he just turned fifteen.”
“Would you mind telling me about him? What does he like? Who do you want him to be? Who does he want to be? What’s his name?”
ALSO BY MARITA GOLDEN
Migrations of the Heart
A Woman’s Place
Long Distance Life
Wild Women Don’t Wear No Blues: Black
Women Writers on Love, Men and Sex
And Do Remember Me
Saving Our Sons: Raising Black
Children in a Turbulent World
Skin Deep: Black Women and White
Women Write About Race
(
edited with Susan Richards Shreve)
A Miracle Every Day:
Triumph and Transformation in the Lives of Single Mothers
The Edge of Heaven
Gumbo: A Celebration of African American Writing
(edited with E. Lynn Harris)
Don’t Play in the Sun:
One Woman’s Journey
Through the Color Complex
MARITA GOLDEN
is the author of twelve works of fiction and nonfiction. Her books are read widely and have been used in college courses throughout the country. For Golden, the primary purposes of her writing are self-expression and deepening and correcting the often one-dimensional and stereotyped images of African American life. As a memoirist, Golden is best known for her debut book,
Migrations of the Heart
, which detailed her coming-of-age during the political change of the 1960s and her subsequent marriage to a Nigerian. The book is an intimate look at both a cross-cultural marriage and a woman’s journey to find a larger sense of identity, an artistic voice, and a place in the world. The migration of Blacks from the South to the North (
Long Distance Life
), the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement (
And Do Remember Me
), and the meaning and role of friendship in the lives of Black women (
A Woman’s Place
) are among the topics Golden has explored in her fiction. In her recent memoirs, (
Saving Our Sons
and
A Miracle Every Day
) Golden has used her life as a metaphor to explore topics as varied as the challenges of raising a Black male child, single parenthood, and the color complex (
Don’t Play in the Sun
). In these narratives, Golden creates a kind of “communal biography,” a text that creates a vibrant dialogue between her life and the life of the Black community. As a literary institution builder, Marita Golden founded the Washington, D.C.–based African American Writers Guild and is President and CEO of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation, which presents a variety of programs in support of Black writers. Marita Golden is a respected teacher of literature and writing and is a popular speaker. The Authors Guild, Poets & Writers, and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association are among the many organizations that have recognized Marita Golden for her writing and cultural work. For more information on Marita Golden, visit
www.maritagolden.com
. For information on the Hurston/Wright Foundation, visit
www.hurstonwright.org
.
PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY
Copyright © 2006 by Marita Golden
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States by Doubleday, an imprint of The Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York
DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Book design by Jennifer Ann Daddio
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.
eISBN: 978-0-385-51702-7
v3.0