Chapter Five
Lucas sat with Willis in his mother's living room after having consumed one of his favorite meals. He knew his mother pampered him, and he knew she did it not just because he'd built a beautiful, modern home for her and contributed to her support, although she worked at the post office as she had for years. Love overflowed from Noreen Hamilton, and apart from himself and Willis, who she had embraced when Lucas brought him home from college the Thanksgiving weekend of their freshman year, she had no one on which to lavish it. He had stopped hinting that she should find someone who loved her and who she loved and marry or affect another suitable arrangement, for he had come to realize that his mother still loved Calvin Jackson, and would never commit to another man.
Willis went into the kitchen, returned with two mugs of coffee and placed one in front of Noreen. “The coffeepot's on the counter,” he said to Lucas. “I don't have but two hands.”
Lucas got the coffee and returned as Willis flipped on the television and tuned in the evening news. “Stay tuned for today's financial tips,” droned the blonde female with pale pink lips, flawless makeup and hair in stiff strands framing her face with its ends meeting under her chin. “Good evening, Mr. Jackson,” she said minutes later. “Welcome to
Piedmont News
.” She turned to face the camera. “We're delighted to have with us this evening Forsyth County's own success story. As a black American who made it big, what advice would you give to young blacks who want to follow in your footsteps?”
Lucas sat forward, as alert as a bulldog who'd caught a stranger's scent. He'd seen the man on television and his picture in newspapers and magazines a number of times, and always that tenor of resentment surfaced in him. Yet, he had an unexplainable sense of pride in the quality of his origins, in knowing that he had probably inherited from Calvin Jackson the skills and the mother wit that propelled him to success as an architect at the young age of thirty-five.
The condescending smile on Calvin Jackson's face and what he was sure it portended reminded Lucas of himself when he was about to put someone in his place. He watched, transfixed, as Jackson leaned back in his chair and appeared to get comfortable. It was a trait he recognized in himself. “As a plain old American who fought his way to the top in spite of the social obstacles in my way,” Jackson said, “I advise any young person to get an education, adopt high moral values, especially integrity, and work hard. If society, or any of its members, puts a stone in your path, move it, and keep going. Avoid alcohol, except for modest amounts on social occasions, and don't use drugs. They'll eventually kill you.”
Lucas laughed aloud. The red-faced woman obviously didn't want to hear that. When he would have commented to his mother, he became aware that she had left the room.
“Something wrong with her, Lucas?” Willis asked him. “I mean, does your father still get to her, or is she mad at him?”
“Both.”
“That's too bad. You'd think that after all these years, they could at least be friends,” Willis said.
“Not a chance, man. She loves him, and she hates him.”
Willis went to the bar and helped himself to a snifter of cognac. “That's tough. You look so much like him, that she must have been miserable whenever she looked at you.”
“That's what I thought, but she said holding me was like holding him.”
“Damn! I don't want any part of that love business.”
Lucas flipped off the television and prepared to leave. “I wouldn't say that. It's hell when it goes sour, but when it swings right, there's nothing like it.”
Willis put an arm on Lucas's shoulder. “Would it hurt you to give your old man a call and have a drink with him? He must be at least seventy years old by now.”
“Would it hurt him to do the same? He's seventy-one, and that day will come as soon as we complete Hamilton Village. I want to meet him as an equal.”
“You may be his equal now.”
Lucas kicked at the carpet. “Not yet. I keep tabs on every step he takes, and I've done it for years. I'd better find Mama and tell her good-bye so we can go.”
“Willis and I are leaving, Mom,” he said to Noreen when he found her in her bedroom, sitting on the edge of her bed with her back to the door. “Say, what's going on here? Seeing him on the air didn't upset you, did it?”
“You're so much like him. You stand, sit and walk like him. I don't want you to ruin some girl's life like . . .”
She didn't finish it and she needn't have. He sat beside her. “I'm as much a part of this and as much a victim of it as you are. I see the results maybe more clearly than either you or he, and I have no intention of fathering a child that I don't raise. Unless death intervened, it would never happen. Period. So don't let that enter your head. Now, cheer up. I'll call you.” He kissed her cheek and loped down the stairs where Willis waited.
“Is she upset?”
“A little, but she'll snap out of it.”
“Do you think it's a good time for us to leave?” Willis asked Lucas. “Right now, when she's upset?”
“She's not that distraught. Go tell her good-bye.”
Later, sitting in the comfort of his own home, Lucas couldn't help focusing upon Susan and their strange relationship. When the weather warmed up and she didn't wear a coat or a suit, would he see her belly protruding? And what if he did?
“Hell! I don't even want to think about that possibility. I'd hate to take her to court, but that's where we'd go.”
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It occurred to Lucas that he could ask Susan if pregnancy was a possibility, since the passing of three months following their sexual romp was sufficient to verify the presence or absence of conception. His opportunity to do so came sooner than he expected.
One Sunday morning in late January, believing that pools would be empty or nearly so at that time, Susan decided to swim at one of the local hotels. She prided herself on being an excellent swimmer and enjoyed the water, but she had low tolerance for crowded pools. She adjusted the straps of her red bikini swim suit, threw the white terry cloth robe on the white-slatted chaise longue and prepared to dive when she glimpsed Lucas, who was about to do the same.
Like a stalking Adonis, he walked over to her, cataloguing her assets, his gaze ablaze with unmistakable desire. She struggled to shake off the effect of his unexpected presence. Surely the fact that he'd made mind-boggling love to her just once shouldn't send shivers throughout her body every time he came near her. She swung around, grabbed her robe and started for the exit, but he placed a heavy hand on her arm.
“Don't let my presence deprive you of an enjoyable swim. What do you say we dive in together? I'll race you one length.”
Susan loved a challenge as much as she loved to swim. She threw the robe back on the chaise longue. “Let's go.”
She didn't beat him to the end of the pool, but she arrived there only a few strokes behind him. “You're first class,” she said.
“So are you. Coffee's pretty good in that coffee shop over there. Want to?”
She was out of breath and didn't pretend not to be. “All right. I guess I have enough air to walk fifty feet.”
“You'd better. Otherwise, I'll carry you.”
It occurred to her that they hadn't previously bantered with each other. Maybe less seriousness would make them less sexually aware. But Lord, looking at him almost bulging out of those bathing trunks wasn't doing a thing to cool off her libido. At the coffee shop, she sat down quickly, knowing that he would sit and take temptation away from her eyes. Instead, he strolled over to the counter and alerted the waiter.
“I'm glad I ran into you,” Lucas said. “I've got something I want to ask you, and I should have asked you some time ago.”
Her antenna shot up. He had already asked her at least twice why she went to bed with him.
What could he have in mind?
“What's the question?” she asked him.
He shifted in his chair a little, as if he were preparing himself for a long session. And maybe he was. She realized that, in spite of their intimacies, she knew almost nothing about him, and when his gaze penetrated her with dagger-like sharpness, she began to feel uncomfortable, sliding deeper into his orbit than was good for her.
“What's the question?” she asked again.
“Is there a likelihood that you could be pregnant?”
Her gasp must have shocked him, for his eyes widened. The likelihood was so remote that his concern about that possibility had not occurred to her. She hastened to put him at ease. “None at all, but thank you for asking. I'm sure it's a relief to you.”
His slow, barely perceptible shrug did not confirm relief. “I don't know. It would have meant a substantial readjustment in my life, but I certainly would have made it.”
She didn't try to disguise her reaction, and a deep frown altered the contours of her face. Yes, she thought. He would have proposed that they marry and raise his child together. He'd do the gentlemanly thing even if it destroyed his chance for happiness with someone else. And she had to meet such a man when he could never be more to her than an acquaintance or, at best, an occasional bed mate.
“Well,” she said. “That won't be necessary. How do I get to Winston-Salem?” she asked, hoping to change the subject lest he ask her if she wanted children.
“Highway 52 West. If you've never been there, allow yourself time to visit Old Salem. It's an authentic living-history town and has an interesting and important African American story very much unlike that elsewhere in the state or in all of the Antebellum South.”
“I take it you've visited Old Salem.”
“I have,” he said, “and if you can go on a Saturday, I'll be glad to show you around there. The place has always fascinated me.”
“I'd like that very much. Tell me, Lucas,” she said, for the thought plagued her. “Would you really marry a woman you hardly knew just because you discovered that she carried your child?”
“Damn right I would. That's more than my father did for my mother after a four-year affair.”
“I know. You told me. But should you feel bitter toward him? Was it entirely his fault?”
“No, and I never said it was. But he was years older than my mother and far more experienced, a married man, and she was no match for him. She loved him. Still does, for that matter, although she hasn't seen him in person since before I was born.”
“Good Lord! That's . . . that's frightening. Have you ever had the urge to find him andâ”
“Flatten him?” He socked his left palm with his right fist. “Plenty of times. Funny thing is that I resent her more than him. She wouldn't allow him any parental rights, not even to see me, and she moved from Danville, Virginia, to Woodmore before I was born, to prevent either of us from having any contact with him.”
“Don't judge her too harshly. Can you imagine going through that alone, without the support of the man you loved? Even the thought gives me chills.
“Is Willis related to you and your mother?”
He laughed. “Sometimes I think he wishes that he was. I brought him home from school with me when we were college freshmen, and they've been tight ever since. She mothers him, and he tries to be a son to her. Why didn't your mother come home for Christmas? Doesn't she get leave?”
“At one point, she said she'd be home for the holidays, but someone needed her. I think she can't face being here without my father. She's escaping reality. I miss her, but I've been alone so long that I . . .” She'd said more than she planned to say. “Oh, well. It's getting late.”
“Is that why you spend time with Jay Weeks? I'd be surprised if you had a lot in common with him.”
“I don't, and he annoyed me when he wouldn't wait while I said hello to you and Mr. Carter at Sam's Gourmet Burger Castle.” She made the mistake then of looking him in the eye, and at that moment, their real and personal contact shook her. She had a feeling that her limbs would sever themselves from her body, and her once warm flesh shivered as if caught in a draft of north-winter wind. She took a deep breath and composed herself. Making love with a man who knew what he was doing created a bond whether or not a tie with him was wanted. She'd been foolish not to have realized that.
“Hmm. I wondered about that,” he said. “What do you say we visit Old Salem next Saturday? If it's a nice day, we'll see it as it was in the eighteenth century with townspeople dressed as they did in those days, going about their daily lives, with transportation by horse and buggy. Back then, most people were Moravians. African Americans who converted to that faith worshipped with the Europeans and were buried in the same cem-etaries as they. After several outbreaks among African Americans, they established their own church in 1822, and the Moravians mandated racial segregation in 1823. The place is steeped in history.”
“I shall definitely look forward to it. I haven't seen any of the places surrounding Woodmore.”
“Winston-Salem is about forty-minutes from here.”
Susan stood. “Coffee's on me.”
When Lucas seemed startled, she laughed. “Next time you'll pay, and it will be much more expensive.”
“I imagine it will,” he said dryly, as if she'd just said “checkmate” in a hard-fought game of chess.
At nine o'clock the following Saturday morning, when Susan opened the door of her house to Lucas, she wore her coat and boots, her scarf wound around her neck, and her pocketbook hung from her shoulder.