Authors: Tiffanie DeBartolo
“Give me the keys,” Jacob said when we got to my car. “I’m driving.”
“Please tell me where we’re going.”
“You’ll see.”
We headed south down Robertson, turned onto the 10 freeway going east, and drove. After passing the La Cienega, Fairfax, and La Brea exits, Jacob finally signaled and got off at Crenshaw Boulevard. There was a guy in heavy trousers and no shirt standing on the corner selling roses. Jacob seemed to contemplate stopping for a flower, but the light turned green and we kept moving.
“We’re going to the Hood?” I said.
“South Central, baby.”
I was sure the senile grin on his face meant he was taking me to the home of some gold-toothed gang lord where he was going to watch with glee as man named Booger chopped me up into little pieces then stuffed me in a dumpster.
“So, how’s it going?” he said blithely. “How have you been?”
I didn’t answer his question and that made him laugh. He kept glancing over at me as he drove. I focused my gaze out the window. I didn’t want to make eye contact with him—I was too weak for that.
We passed pawn shops, dilapidated buildings, and tons of gas stations. It seemed like there was a gas station on every block.
“Do a lot of people get shot around here?” I said.
“Yeah, so you better behave yourself.” Jacob made a quick left and parked the car.
“Are you sure this is safe?” I said.
“It’s fine. Don’t be such a baby.”
We walked across the street to a tiny restaurant that said “Chef Lulu’s” above the entrance. There were bars on the doors and windows.
“It looks closed,” I said.
“It’s not closed.” Jacob opened the door and we went in.
The restaurant was the size of a small living room, the metal tables and chairs bordered on decrepit, and the dark purple carpet on the floor was stained with grease, but I hadn’t eaten for hours, and the smells coming from the kitchen made my stomach growl. Still, I couldn’t figure out why Jacob had brought me there.
A sign at the back of the restaurant boasted, “Best Oxtail west of the Mississippi.” I wondered what the hell we were going to eat. I certainly wasn’t going to feast on some ox’s ass.
Jacob sat me down at a table and went to the pick-up window. The woman standing there happened to be Chef Lulu herself, at least that’s what her apron said.
“What can I get for you?” Lulu said to Jacob.
He ordered fried catfish with cornbread, collard greens, and a side of macaroni and cheese.
“And give us a slice of sweet potato pie for dessert,” he said. “For my girlfriend. Because she’s being so sweet to me today.”
Lulu poked her head out the window and examined me. She was a strong woman with big, dangling beads on her ears and a white scarf tied around her head. Her skin was the color of creamy milk chocolate.
“I’m not his girlfriend,” I told her.
“She will be by the time we’re done eating,” Jacob said.
At that, I rolled my eyes. Jacob said, “Trixie, stop being such a brat.”
There was an ancient TV on in the corner of the restaurant. It had a pair of rabbit ears on top that you had to play around with to get a clear picture. The only other patron in the place, a hunchback man in a velour jogging suit, sat in front of it, fiddling with the antenna and watching a fat Texan explain the proper way to catch a fish. Lulu gave the man a bag of hot food and he wandered out. The Texan on TV said the most important decision to make when casting your line was depth. Don’t be afraid to ask the fisherman in the boat next to you how far down he caught his fish, he said. Sometimes he’ll actually tell you.
Lulu informed Jacob that they’d bring our food out when it was ready. Before he took his seat, Jacob helped himself to the self-serve refrigerator of soft drinks. He brought us each a can of orange soda.
An older African-American woman came in right after Jacob sat down. She was tiny and she held her head up high. Lulu greeted the woman with respect and asked her if she wanted her usual, red beans and rice. The woman nodded, then she made herself comfortable at the table across from us. I said hi to her and tried to start up a conversation, mainly because she looked interesting, but also because I was afraid to face Jacob. I knew he wanted to
talk
.
“I’m Mrs. Morris,” the woman said. “But you can just call me Morris. Everybody does.” She told us she used to have a soul food restaurant, too. “It was famous for awhile. We even got written up in
Gourmet
magazine.”
Mrs. Morris claimed she was eighty-four years old. Her face didn’t betray her age as a day over sixty, but her hands were history books. If I’d had a camera, I would have taken a picture of her hands and hung them on my wall to remind me that you can’t put life on pause and then catch up with it later when you have more energy to give. You have to play it all the way through to the end.
Morris said, “I’m the only woman in town besides Lulu who knows how to cook beans. My grandmother taught me how to make them back in Arkansas more years ago than I care to remember.”
I knew it. I knew she wasn’t a native. They didn’t grow very many people like her in the cement soil of Los Angeles.
When her beans and rice were ready, Morris carefully lifted her bag and said good-bye. My heart hurt to see her go. She was exactly the kind of person I dreamed we would have had as a neighbor if we’d ever moved South—a surrogate grandmother who would invite us over for dinner once a week, complain that we were too skinny, and keep feeding us until we were ready to burst. We’d go to the market for her when she needed groceries, and she’d apologize for being a burden, but she’d love us and know we’d do anything for her.
“Isn’t she great?” Jacob said after the door closed behind her. “I ate in her restaurant once a long time ago. I tried to order mac and cheese but she yelled at me and said only a white boy would order that in the middle of the week. She said I had to eat something else. It was a Wednesday afternoon. Mrs. Morris thinks mac and cheese is a completely inappropriate side dish anytime except Sunday.”
Jacob had never told me that story before, but it sounded incredibly familiar. It took me a few blinks to figure out why—there was a bent version of it in
Hallelujah
.
“You just don’t meet people like that west of La Brea,” I said, quoting Jackson Grayson.
Jacob didn’t even try to hide how charmed he was that I’d remembered a line he’d written verbatim. He sat at the table with his chin in his hand, the way he always did, and watched me. I wanted to tell him not a second had gone by since we’d broken up that I didn’t wish things were back the way they were before Thomas Doorley bit the dust. I didn’t say it though. Not that I needed to.
“Trixie, I have a lot of things to say. Can I start?”
I nodded.
“First of all…,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Should I say it again? I’m sorry. For acting like such a dick after my father died, for pushing you away, for leaving town, for thinking you wouldn’t understand, for anything and everything I may have done wrong. I did exactly what I said I’d never do. I became like him. But I’m done with that.”
A teenager who looked like he might be Lulu’s son brought us our food. In the meantime, the Texan on TV spoke in baby talk to the fish he’d just reeled in. He called the fish “Boy.” I didn’t like the Texan. He struck me as the kind of guy who drove around with a shotgun in the back of his pick-up.
“The second thing I want to say is this,” Jacob continued. “I know I made some mistakes, for which I’ve just apologized, but I want to point out—free of malice—that you weren’t exactly winning any Good Samaritan of the Year contests. You just gave up on me. On us. What’s up with that?”
My first impulse was to get defensive at Jacob’s insinuation that I had anything to do with the collapse of our relationship. I curbed it. I knew better. Jacob was right, I’d been a horrible friend to him. I didn’t even know how he could stand to be around me after the way I’d acted.
“I didn’t give up,” I said. “I copped out.” I was disappointed in myself. More disappointed than Jacob was in me, I could tell. “Why do you even want me back?”
“Because I’m in love with you, that’s why. And you had your reasons. You were motivated by fear, not by how you felt about me. At least that’s what I think. Anyway, I’ve got it all figured out.”
“Oh, you do, huh?”
“Yeah. I went through all these emotions. I was mad at you, I was mad at me, I was mad at
him
. Basically, I was just mad at the world. Bottom line: we both screwed up. But it’s
okay
to screw up as long as you keep trying. The key is to keep trying.” He stopped to take a swig of his soda.
“Are you done?” I said.
“No. I need to ask you some questions. And you have to be honest. You have to tell me the truth.
Okay
?”
“Okay,” I said. I had to squeeze my legs together to stop the tingling between them.
“And give me simple answers,
okay
?”
“Do me a favor, don’t say
okay
so much. It’s very distracting.”
“
Okay
.” He laughed. “Did you mean what you said that day—the day you threw me out on my ass—or do you still love me?”
I began dreaming up a long dissertation until he reminded me, “The
simple
answer, Trixie.”
That put me in a predicament. There was only one simple way to answer the question.
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes, what? Yes you meant what you said, or yes you still love me?”
I stared at the tablecloth and mumbled, “I still love you.”
“Can you speak up?”
“You heard me.”
“Do you love me a little, or more than a little?”
I sighed.
“Come on, just answer. Without thinking so hard,” Jacob said.
“More than a little.”
He smiled mischievously. “As I suspected,” he said. “
Why
?”
“
Why?
I don’t know, I just do.” I felt like I was blushing.
“I
need
to know
why
.”
“Jacob, there are a lot of reasons.”
“Then give me a few.”
I tried to do a quick survey of my emotions. “Well,” I said, “I guess the biggest one is because you’re not like anyone I know.”
Jacob looked at me as if my words held the cure for cancer. “Can you explain that?”
“I thought you wanted the simple answer.”
“I changed my mind. Complicate.” He raised his brow like he was waiting for something deep and meaningful to come dancing out of my mouth.
“I think it has something to do with the way you feel things,” I said. “Everything matters to you. And you aren’t afraid to show it.”
“What do you mean?”
What, when, why. Sometimes talking to Jacob was like talking to a four-year-old.
“Remember the night your father died?” I said. “When I found you on the beach and for an hour you cried in my arms? It might sound totally sick and twisted, but that was one of the most beautiful hours of my life. I loved you so much for being able to do that. I wish I could be that honest.”
He shook his head. “You underestimate yourself. I know you think you hide so much, but I can see right through you.”
He could. He was the only one.
“That’s why
I
love
you
,” he said. “You try and act so tough, you think you’re so damn hopeless and godless and faithless, but you don’t fool me. People without hope aren’t tormented by the world the way you are. People without hope don’t give a shit. But I see it in you, in the way you look at things, even in the way you look at me sometimes, like I’m the coolest fucking guy in the universe, and I know it’s in there. Reverence. Belief.
Something
. You have a lot more faith than you own up to. You just don’t want to be let down. But I’m not going to let you down again. Not if I can help it.”
Jacob extended his left hand out across the table. He wanted me to take hold of it, but there were too many things I needed to say first, things I’d been thinking about and writing in my journal for weeks; things that were finally becoming clear to me.
I slammed my soda can down and rolled my eyes. “Goddamn it,” I said. “That’s it.”
“What?”
“
That’s
why I love you. Because you say ridiculous fucking things like that. Normal people don’t
say
things like that, Jacob. All my life I waited for someone who would say things like that to me. And for someone I didn’t feel alone in the presence of. Someone who
understood
. Someone who would make me feel like it wasn’t just me against the world. Even when we’re not together. Even when I think you’re having rough, dirty sex with Rosalita the barmaid in Needles, California, I’m still comforted by the fact that you’re out there. Just knowing you exist changed the world for me. No one has ever made me feel like that, except maybe Howard Roark from
The Fountainhead
, but he doesn’t count because he’s fictional.”
Jacob looked like he was going to say something profound, then he froze. “Wait a second,” he said with a crooked face. “Who the hell is Rosalita?”
“No one. Forget it.”
He picked up a piece of fried fish, squirted it with lemon, and shoved it in his mouth just as the Texan began to show the camera how to de-bone the catch of the day. Before Jacob swallowed, he said, “We belong together. You know we do. Taste this.”
He held a spoonful of macaroni and cheese in front of my face and I took it.
The young waiter came back out to check on us. Instead of asking if everything was all right, he said, “Everything
cool
?”
These are good people, I thought. Not like the west side losers who say things like, “Is there anything else we can get for you today, Ma’am?” as if they’re auditioning for a role on a sitcom.
Jacob said, “Listen, I love you. You love me. I am not, nor will I ever be, the heartbreaking scoundrel you think your father was. You have to get that through your thick skull. You have to let go. Don’t be so afraid. That’s all I can say. The rest is up to you.”