The Color of Family (24 page)

It seemed to him that his mind was taking hold of information several seconds behind real time, which would turn him into quite the fool on the air so he reread the script that one of the writers had put into the system for him, because it didn't completely register the first time. It read well enough, close enough, he thought to his own speaking style. He went on to the next one. This time around, though, he read it aloud, but plainly—without his newsman's voice. “Today, as Clayton Cannon comes to the last leg of his European tour, back here at home he got a rather special delivery. Cannon will return to Baltimore to a new concert grand piano that was delivered to his condominium at Harbor Court. But the piano was too large for normal delivery, so it had to be lifted by crane way up to the twentieth floor. The piano is reported to be a Bursendorfer, a German-made piano that is said to be the best made today, better, even than the renowned Steinway. Nothing but the best for the best. He will store the Steinway concert grand he's now touring with at the Meyerhoff, making it easier to take on the road with him.” He paused to read
cut away to interview of president of Meyerhoff,
then
cue back to Aaron.
Then he continued to read aloud, “Apparently, his new residence high up on the twentieth floor makes taking the Steinway piano in and out for tours a bigger production than a staging of
Aida.
He will not tour with the Bursendorfer because many concert halls are not willing to pay the costs of insuring it.”

Aaron stared blankly at the screen while he felt his ire rise—rise higher and hotter until he could no longer sit there and abide it another second. He leapt from where he sat as he brought his fist lightly down on the edge of his desk. Before he knew it, he found himself in the newsroom, not really in a rage, but furious despite his natural evenness. “I need to see the writer who wrote the script on Clayton Cannon.”

“I think it was Bobby,” someone said.

“Where's Bobby?” Clayton demanded. “I want to see him right now.”

A young face turned from across the room with surprised eyes. “Yeah, Aaron, here I am. Is something wrong?”

“Yeah, something's wrong. The script you wrote for me on Clayton Cannon. What kind of crap was that?” Aaron said walk
ing over to Bobby with his hands on his hips in a challenging manner.

“What do you mean?” Bobby said.

“What I mean is that I wouldn't say anything so absolutely cornball as ‘Apparently, his new residence high up on the twentieth floor makes taking the piano in and out for tours a bigger production than a staging of
Aida
.' Who in the hell is going to get that, man? Not everybody in this city is an opera fan and most don't know
Aida
from their Aunt Ada. It's just a stupid reference, that's all.”

Bobby opened his mouth to defend his script when Mark sauntered from his office to stand in the middle of the newsroom, directly between the two. “What's this about?”

“It's about this script, man,” Aaron said, throwing up his hands in frustration. “He wrote this script about Clayton Cannon having a new piano delivered to him, then he writes this corny-ass reference to a staging of
Aida
. I mean, Mark, do I need to point out to you what's wrong with that? How many people are going to get that, man? How many people are going to, first of all, know that
Aida
is a reference to an opera, and then understand that it's a damned difficult opera to stage? I'll tell you how many—about two.” He was visibly disturbed, but on his face, in his posture, in the way he paced in a circle, he revealed emotions he wished he weren't putting on exhibition. Aaron simply couldn't help himself.

Mark stared at Aaron for several seconds, then turned to Bobby and chuckled when he said, “Well, Bobby, I'm going to have to agree with Aaron on this one. It's too obscure a reference.” And then he turned back to Aaron, regarding him with sternness, and continued, “But, Aaron, where's all this anger coming from, man? I mean, you don't like it, fine, then change it. That's all that needed to happen here. You didn't need to get in Bobby's face like that.”

“I'm not in his face. Does it look like I'm in his face? I'm all the way over here. If I was in his face, I'd be all the way over there.” He turned to walk back into his office, when he thought of another thing. “And I'll tell you where the anger's coming from, if you need to know. I don't know how this is news, anyway. Who the hell gives two good damns whether Clayton Cannon gets a new piano.”

Mark reared back his head, then lowered it to peer at Aaron over the top of his reading glasses and said, “Well, first of all, it's
news because I say it's news. But second of all, it's news because everybody in this town, whether they can tell Bach from Beethoven, is proud to have him choose their humble town to make his home. Concert pianists of his stature are generally not living in places like Baltimore. They're living in New York or London or Paris. So do you know what it does to the psyche of the people in this town to have him living here? In their small way, it's just as impressive as having Madonna move in down there at Harbor Court. Celebrity is celebrity, no matter how esoteric the field, Aaron. When a guy like this moves to New York, it's no big deal. Just another celebrity in the crowd. But when he moves to Baltimore, they claim him. And when the people of this city feel that he's a celebrity that they can embrace and claim, that's what makes this story news. You got it now?”

“I've got it,” Aaron mumbled as he walked into his office, slamming the door behind him. He sat in his chair and leaned back. Suddenly, with only an hour before he had to go on the air as a steady, unflappable newsman, he couldn't have cared less about reading scripts, or writing them, or even correcting them. All that mattered to him now was wondering what part of his life Clayton Cannon would invade next.

Before he could become too ensconced in his thoughts of all the ways and whys for which he detested Clayton, he was distracted by Tilly, his producer, who had come in and settled herself in the chair in front of his desk. It was clear she was there for some undetermined duration, so Aaron simply stared at her questionably without saying one word.

“Well, I guess I'm approaching you at my own risk after what just happened in there a few minutes ago, but I'll take my chances,” Tilly said superciliously, with a grin of equal scope. It was just her way.

Aaron stayed steady in his glare for several seconds, then replied, “Okay, I guess I'll bite. So what is it you're taking your chances with, Tilly?”

“It's a special I'm thinking about and I want you to be the host of it.”

“What kind of special?” Aaron asked with a curiosity that had nothing to do with actual interest.

“Okay, well, what I'm thinking about is doing a one-hour show
with four of Baltimore's famous children. I'm thinking of Barry Levinson, and Jada Pinkett-Smith, and Cal Ripken, and Clayton Cannon.” Tilly stopped as if to give Aaron his moment of eruption. But when none came in five or so seconds, she continued, “I figured, two who live here, and two who don't.”

Although Aaron still held Tilly in his gaze, she wasn't in his focus. He stared through her to see Clayton sitting before him, no longer the phantom of his boyhood and manhood imaginings, but a man in full. Flesh and feeling. And would that feeling tell that man's flesh of the bad blood boiling in Aaron for him? The interview. Aaron wondered what he would possibly ask him, because his most reasonable question, the only one in which he had interest was somewhere in the neighborhood of outright impudence—
“Why in hell did you drag your sorry ass back here to Baltimore, anyway?”
Of course he'd have to word it a little better. Mostly, though, the one question Aaron would have is the one that had hovered beside him for as long as he'd had memory, and it was one to which Clayton would never have the answer—
“Why did you steal my mother from me?”

Finally, Tilly broke through the silence when she said, “Well, don't just sit there and stare at me. Tell me what you think.”

When Aaron brought Tilly back into focus, he said, “First of all, Cal Ripken doesn't live in Baltimore. He lives in Timonium.”

And Tilly snapped, “Oh please, Aaron. Do not pick that nit with me. If you take somebody who lives in Timonium across the country and ask them where they're from, they're not going to say
I'm from Timonium.
They're going to say
I'm from Baltimore.
Pikesville, Randallstown, Towson, Timonium, who cares. It's all Baltimore. He's from Baltimore.”

“All I'm saying is that, technically, it's not. Furthermore, technically Clayton Cannon is not a child of Baltimore, since he wasn't born and raised here.”

It started in her eyes, then Tilly's sarcasm became fully known when she said, “Okay, well let's just say for now that Timonium is Baltimore and Clayton Cannon has been given honorary child of Baltimore status by me, and leave it at that. Now, what do you think you see for a show like this in terms of the interviews?”

“So I wouldn't just be the host doing an intro and closing. I'd have to do the interviews too?”

“Yes, of course. It would be your show. You'd have them take you to their favorite places around the city, tell you what they love about the city, what makes it special to them. That kind of thing. Any ideas?”

“Why me? Why not Maggie? Nobody loves Baltimore more than Maggie. She even knows the Banfield sisters—the mother and the aunts—pretty well, so she'd be the best one to interview Jada. Anyway, Maggie would love this kind of stuff.”

“Are you telling me you don't want to do it?”

“I'm telling you I don't want to do it,” Aaron said flatly. And he was flat in every way.

Aaron watched Tilly rise up and leave without closing his door, and he wondered about her thoughts of him. And in those moments as he watched her back decrease and then disappear into Maggie's office, he had to wonder what he thought of himself. But only mere seconds later, Tilly was out of Maggie's office, with Maggie following. And here they come, he thought. So he braced himself for what came next.

When his door opened, he looked at the two of them and said, “Tilly, what is it, now?”

“What this is, Aaron, is that you should be the one doing this story,” Maggie said.

“I don't want to do it.”

Maggie turned to Tilly and, with her hand on the door asked, “Tilly, can you give us a moment alone, please?”

Tilly left without a word, pulling the door closed behind her.

Then Maggie turned to Aaron and said, “Is this about Clayton Cannon? Because you know a piece like this can't be done without including him. It would be like doing a documentary about the Chesapeake Bay without talking about crabbing. But you need to do more pieces like this. Maybe it's time you confront your demon.”

Aaron lowered his head and then looked off to the side of his desk where he'd hoped to find calm, but didn't. He looked back up at Maggie and said, “Maggie, you're about to make me mad. I have said that I don't want to do it, that I'm not going to do it, and I don't need you coming in here telling me about the bay, or my demon, or what I need for my career, because you're my co-anchor and the woman I date. You're not my agent or my psychiatrist.”

Maggie took him in with a stunned gawking and said, “I'm the woman you date?”

But Aaron didn't understand the question, because if she wasn't that, if he had misspoken or insulted her in some way, he didn't know how he'd managed to do it with what he'd said. So with the previous second's anger forgotten, he replied earnestly, “You're the woman I date. Is there something wrong with saying that?”

“It sounds meaningless,” she said flatly. “After four years together, it never occurred to me that it was still that meaningless to you.”

“Maggie, I think you're blowing this all out of proportion. We're not married, we're not engaged. I'm too old to be the boyfriend to a girlfriend. What else am I supposed to say?”

“You could say something that makes me feel like I'm more than somebody you occasionally go out and have a burger and a beer with, Aaron,” Maggie said in a whisper.

Aaron set his jaw, then rubbed his head with the frustration of too much, too many on his back in one moment. “Maggie, I'm not going to discuss this right now.”

“You mean you're not going to discuss it ever,” she said scornfully.

“Look Maggie, when we first started this relationship, the major ground rule was that we were never going to drag any part of our personal affair into this office, and now what are you doing? You're dragging our personal stuff right in here for us to discuss, and I'm telling you I'm not going to do it.”

Maggie looked to the floor with widened eyes that seemed to have nothing else to do, nothing else to see in their angst. So she said nervously, “Okay, Aaron, you're right. I'll stop.” Then she looked to him imploringly, as if something quite critical depended solely on him in that moment. “It's just that you've been so different lately, and I don't know if it's Clayton Cannon, or if it's about me.”

Aaron smiled benignly at her and said, “Everything's cool, Maggie.” And that was all he could say, because to tell her that it was actually both would have taken far more words than he knew just then.

 

Antonia settled herself on the sofa next to where Junior sat. She had waited the whole way home in the car from Ellen's and
Rick's, she waited as they took the long walk down the path from the street to their house, she even waited as they peeled off their coats and hung them in the closet, while Junior talked about everything under the sun but never asked about her lunch with Agnes. Then again, she talked about everything under the sun with him and never mentioned Cora's locket that she carried with her everywhere and swore she'd throw in his face when the time was right; and there was no way Cora Calliup was going to eclipse the news that Antonia was one step closer to Clayton. After all, he was there with her now, and not with Cora. And right now, they had something truly pressing before them that could change the face of their family.