Authors: Sandra Kitt
She explored the creaky and settled old house that she, Gail, and Kenny had spent their summers in with their grandparents until they were almost teenagers. She’d loved the high-ceilinged bedroom she’d shared with Gail, remembering the fights they’d had over who would get the bed nearest the window. Leah peeked into the room her brother had used, but all reminders of him had long ago been removed.
And after Leah had spent time unbending her taut nerves and becoming reacquainted with the familiar, the evening came when her father did what she’d expected him to do.
They’d settled in the living room after Sunday dinner with a plate of Leah’s lemon cookies and cups of black coffee. Melvin Downey reached for one and looked at his daughter over the top of his reading glasses.
“You’re going to ruin my schoolboy figure with all this good cookin’.”
“Your schoolboy figure is retired. Enjoy yourself.” Leah smiled.
Mr. Downey chuckled and took a large bite of his cookie. “Ummm-uph! Just like your mama used to make.”
Leah sampled one. “They’re not bad. But Mama’s were better. That’s ’cause—”
“I know. They were your mama’s.” He looked carefully at the slowly disappearing cookie. “What did you think of the sermon this morning?”
Leah curled up on the ancient overstuffed sofa. “It was vintage Reverend Mackie. I’m sure I heard that same sermon the last time I visited. And the time before that.”
“Yeah, but it’s comfortable. Most of us don’t expect any surprises from the Bible. Besides, if he changed a word he’d lose half the congregation.”
“A little challenge might be good for him. Keep him on his toes.”
Mr. Downey finished his second cookie and settled back in his high-back chair. “He’s too old for that. Might confuse him.” When Leah did not respond, in fact seemed to be distracted, her father studied her closely and said, “So, what brings you here? It sure ain’t Reverend Mackie’s sermons. It’s not a holiday or my birthday and no one’s died. …”
Guiltily Leah glanced briefly at her father. She shrugged. “Gail and I have been fighting a lot recently.”
Mr. Downey stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles. He rested his clasped hands on his stomach. “Well, she always was the tomcat of you two.”
“Her nine lives are about to run out,” Leah said forcefully.
Her father laughed and nodded. “Good …”
“I don’t think it’s good. We haven’t said a kind word to each other in weeks.”
“I remember when you wouldn’t have said anything at all. You’d get all mad and pout and everything, but Gail would still get her way. What’s changed?”
Leah thought. “Maybe I have. I don’t appreciate her meddling.”
“Yeah, Gail always did think she knew better than anyone else.”
“Well, I’m tired of it.”
“Then tell her to mind her own business.”
She looked in surprise at her father. “You don’t seem particularly concerned. How come you understand?”
“For one thing, I’m not the one who’s mad at her. And for the other, since I’m not mad at her I get to see the whole picture. I know how difficult Gail can be sometimes. Don’t forget I used to live with her, too.” Leah smiled. “She’s full of lip and sass and won’t back down from anything or anyone. Remember the scrapes she used to get into? That kind of brass can be a good thing. She’ll always be able to take care of herself. But it’s a bad thing, too. Gail wants to run everyone’s life like she does her own.
Her
way.”
“Her way is not the only way. It’s not my way—”
“Then just tell her so. She can be stubborn, but Gail’s not stupid. You just make it clear you want her to back off. She’ll get the picture.”
“But what if she doesn’t?”
“Then you don’t believe strongly enough that she should. You’re not willing to really fight her for what you want. Maybe”—Mr. Downey eyed his daughter with speculation—“maybe you’re not really sure what it is you want.”
Leah looked at him and met the questioning glare of his eyes. One thing at a time. … “Allen and I aren’t dating anymore,” she whispered.
“I wasn’t going to ask …” he murmured.
“We broke up in December. Actually, we didn’t just break up. He and Gail decided …”
“I see.”
She was embarrassed and averted her gaze. “I didn’t see it coming. Suddenly they were all over each other.”
“And you were left standing with egg on your face,” Mr. Downey concluded angrily.
Leah stared at him, surprised at his vehemence and wondering who he was annoyed with.
“Did you fight back?”
Leah’s eyes widened. “No. How was I going to do that?”
“And why not?”
She blinked because of course he’d misunderstood. “Daddy, I didn’t want Allen. I wasn’t really in love with him, I guess. I got hurt, but not because of what they did. It was the way they did it. Behind my back, and not telling me until I saw—” she stopped. “It was no loss to me. They deserve each other,” Leah said simply, and suddenly her father broke out into laughter.
“Well, don’t tell Gail that. She might think she didn’t get such a bargain after all.” He continued to shake his head in amusement. And then the grin slowly faded. “But you didn’t fly out here in a tear without Gail just to talk about her. Something else is bothering you.”
The peaceful days had not been enough to keep the feelings at bay, and with apprehension gnawing at her, Leah curled tighter into the corner of the sofa.
“Come on,” Mr. Downey coaxed gently. “Tell Daddy what it is.”
Those were the magic five words, the very ones that had always succeeded in prying free the details of her troubles. Well, she was older now, and inclined to keep some of the details private, but the words worked.
“I met someone. Actually, I met him before Allen and I broke up. He’s a cop. A Vietnam vet. And he’s divorced.”
Mr. Downey raised his brows. “A cop? How in the world did you meet a cop?”
“Over a cup of coffee.” At her father’s puzzled expression Leah shook her head and went on, “Don’t ask. The whole story isn’t important. The thing is he’d just heard about the death of his son …”
“And you were there to console him?” Mr. Downey supplied.
“Sort of.”
“Do you love him?”
The question brought Leah’s head up with a jerk. She knew that somewhere along the way she’d stopped being casual about the relationship with Jason. She’d come to care, even to hope for more between them, but to be afraid of that hope.
“I could love him,” Leah admitted slowly.
“How about him? Does he feel the same way? Does he love you?”
Leah sighed, closing her eyes and recalling the last vitriolic encounter between her and Jason. “I don’t know. Sometimes … I feel like he needs me. At other times it seems like an impossible relationship and we’re both just using each other. It’s convenient. We have fun together,” Leah confessed in some wonder, as if that had just occurred to her. “But up till now it hasn’t been a very deep relationship.”
Her father shifted in his chair impatiently. “Okay, okay. So he hasn’t declared undying love. What’s the problem? It is because he’s a cop, or because he’s divorced—”
“Daddy,” Leah whispered urgently, “he’s white.”
There was a long silence while Mr. Downey stared at his daughter. Then he grunted and sort of sank into his comfortable chair with the burden of so many years of racism weighing heavily on his shoulders. Slowly he shook his head.
“Umph, umph, umph. Lord have mercy,” he said warily.
Mr. Downey suddenly was indignant. And confused. As a parent he’d never told his children whom they could date or be friends with. As a black parent he’d only hoped that in their integrated environment his children would associate with people who treated them at least as equals. He remembered Leah’s passing attachment to some white boy named Philip when she was still in college, but Mr. Downey had always been sure that it would never come to anything and therefore had not been concerned.
His children had gone to integrated schools, moved comfortably between two worlds because he and their mother had believed that it was healthier to see the world as it was becoming: neither black nor white but some, hopefully, cooperative mixture. He didn’t want his children to be angry and black, but black and well prepared.
Also as a parent Melvin Downey had assumed that some day each of his kids would marry and supply him with grandchildren to joyfully indulge in his old age. He had assumed further that they would marry one of their own kind because it made sense. But nothing made sense anymore: Kenny dying in the war and all his potential lost. Gail might marry someday, but she didn’t have the patience for children. Then there was Leah, who’d never spoken about either marriage or children. Allen had been so steady in her life, however, that Mr. Downey had thought that it was just a matter of time before they settled in together as man and wife.
He thought briefly of his own wife and wished suddenly, as he hadn’t for a number of years, that she was here to advise them both. He wished that Ann were here to assure him that he had done a good job of raising their children and now that they were adults, their lives were their own.
History had done this, Mr. Downey thought angrily, and people repeating history with their foolish prejudices and senseless hatred, perpetrating it forever, sending his daughter home in confusion because she might choose to care for someone not of her own race.
He felt powerless to help her.
He didn’t think Leah needed to be reminded who and what she was. The world at large would never let her forget. But her feelings had already been placed whether or not she realized it.
“Does it matter that he’s white?” he asked.
Leah looked carefully at her father. “Does it matter to you?”
Mr. Downey chuckled and slowly shook his head. “Baby, I’m not the one in love with the guy.”
“I never said it was love.”
“Then it’s something pretty close or you wouldn’t have come running to me. You’re scared, aren’t you?”
“I’m confused. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. We’re fine together. But when there’s other people everything gets so crazy. You know, the remarks and the looks, and I keep thinking it’s somehow all my fault. I hate that.”
“And this guy …”
“His name is Jason Horn.”
“What does Jason do?”
“Mostly he seems to ignore what’s going on. It’s so awful when people get up into your face and tell you what they think. But we haven’t really talked about it much. I can’t decide if it’s because he doesn’t care, or he doesn’t know how to handle it. Maybe that’s part of the problem, like Gail said. Jason and I haven’t talked about being an interracial couple and what that means.”
“Do you have confrontations all the time?” Mr. Downey asked in some surprise.
Leah let out a deep breath. “No. Not really. Sometimes nothing happens at all. But … it’s the anticipation.”
“There’s no guarantee you’ll be safe from all the crap that gets thrown at you, Leah. I don’t think you can make him responsible for that. Maybe there’s less to deal with than you think.”
“Not to hear Gail talk. She’s really down on Jason and thinks I’m being a fool. Do you think I am?”
Mr. Downey frowned. “No. No, I don’t. You’re never a fool for wanting to believe the best of someone. But I want you to be careful. I don’t want to see you get hurt, either.”
“Jason is a good man. I know that.”
“Then that’s good enough for me. I trust your judgment.”
Leah sighed, fingering her hair nervously. “I sure hope I don’t disappoint you.”
“You’ll never do that, baby. Stop being so concerned about what I think or what your sister thinks. Just don’t disappoint yourself. You have to live with your conscience. We don’t. I only ask that you be sure about what you want.”
Leah stared into the distance, far beyond the walls of the living room. “What I want I don’t think is possible. I’ve been thinking maybe the best thing is to break off now before things go any further.”
“What you feel won’t go away if you run,” Mr. Downey said sagely.
It almost annoyed Leah that her father and sister could come up with pretty much the same sentiment. In other words, she could expect no easy answers.
“Look, you probably don’t have a whole lot of information on how to handle this relationship. But neither does Jason. He doesn’t know any more than you do what should be done. Therefore you both have to go on what you feel for each other. You both have to know if it’s worth the risks.
“I bet he doesn’t know how you feel. I bet you don’t know what’s going through his mind. Talk first. Things could be very easy for you two or very hard and miserable. But it all begins with you.”
Leah sat silently for moment and then hazarded a probing look at her father. He had given her calm, sensible reasoning. He’d been fair. “But what do you think, Daddy? How do you feel about this? Honestly.”
Her father thought carefully, and his expression became soft and sad. “What choice do I have? Maybe things have changed, and you and Jason Horn can work out what you feel for each other. But my experience over the years tells me otherwise.” He reached over to pat her knee. “Be careful, baby. Just be real careful.”
Leah sighed. Well, none of this mattered anyway. It was all too late. She and Jason had last parted in anger with a chasm of misunderstanding between them. There didn’t seem to be any possibility for reconciliation, and perhaps things were better left as they were. She could deal with the undeveloped feelings eventually, and there would be no more need for second guesses.
Leah returned to New York, calm and rested, thinking this was true.
Jason sat staring at the loose change on the counter. He looked up at the pay phone to his right, lifted the receiver, and put it down again.
It was all Leah Downey’s fault.
That’s what Joe had said, and Jason was sick of hearing Joe say it. He was tired of hearing that he and Leah were out of their minds. But Jason had decided that maybe only he was. Joe kept telling him how he didn’t understand why anyone would deliberately set about making life more difficult than it already was. But then Joe saw things coldly for what they were. Either black or white with no gray areas. Jason also knew that Joe’s primary concern was to make him, as Joe said, “pull his shit together.”