The Color of Family (27 page)

But then Luke sobered up and asked his father earnestly, “But, Daddy, they wanted to know why they carried on like that for somebody who's died, like they're happy the person died, or something? Why do they do that?”

“Well, we're not happy when people die,” Agnes told her grandsons. “What we're doing is giving the people a good send-off to heaven. That's what it's all about. We want to make sure they go off to heaven with their spirits high.”

“That's real nice,” Noah said, seeming to grasp wholly its profundity. “Did you all do that for Grandpa Cannon's funeral, Grandma?”

“Well, no. Grandpa wanted a traditional funeral with limousines and regular church music. He was a very Catholic man, and
way too conservative to be a child of New Orleans,” Agnes said with a hearty laugh that seemed to come directly from her memories. She smiled at Clayton, then at the boys and continued, “Anyway, he didn't go for all that—as he called it—‘hoopin' and hollerin' and carryin' on.'”

“Grandpa sounds funny,” Luke said with a little boy's giggle.

“He was funny in his own way,” Agnes said fondly.

Clayton said nothing as he ate determinedly while his mind, in spite of his efforts to halt it, harked back to his father, and with everything in him that he could remember, he couldn't recall one time in which he would have considered his father possessed of any kind of humor—not even
in his own way.
He remembered a man, quiet and retiring and quite innocuous, but a man who nonetheless had a very strong marriage to his beliefs, and issues in which he did not believe, as Clayton had come to think of it, were simply wrong in Douglas Cannon's eyes. That was the thing that always made the man's condemnations so confusing for Clayton as a boy living in Douglas's presence and as a man living with him as memory. His father was never very fired-up in the telling of where he stood regarding anything, but it was oh so clear that what he said came from some simmering heat at his core.

For some reason he could never seem to understand this one moment out of all the others, and that Clayton couldn't forget. It contrasted the strength of his father's convictions with the meekness of his spirit. During the family news-watching hour, his father stared with plain, impenetrably cold eyes at the bleak faces of Mexican migrant workers, some of them as young as new money, some as old as the legacy of bigotry, who were a ragtag clan dressed in tatters of clothes that only had a vague resemblance of their former lives. Clayton watched his father as nothing—not the old, not even the young—seemed to stir any emotion regarding the sentimentality of humanism. And all of it was made to look even more abysmal rendered in grainy black-and-white sixties' television news.
“America is for Americans.”
Clayton could still hear his father's determined, yet impassive judgment about the Mexicans as it floated softly amidst the thin light of the television in the darkened living room, while father
and son reclined in the contented stupor of their well-fed bellies. Could he see the disparity of fortune? Clayton now wondered about things he, himself, only understood clearly from the turret of his manhood. Still, he heard his father's voice, judging and pitiless, but always docile in its tone:
“If things are so bad here, they should go on back where they came from.”
Yes, Clayton thought with a weakened smile as he pondered the humorless man, Douglas Cannon was one of those—the kind who might not be impassioned enough to actually lynch a man, yet he would never do anything to stop it.

So Clayton finished his meal without saying a word against what his mother most likely
had
to believe about his father. And he supposed, as he cleaned the last morsel of food from his plate with his fork and ate the last piece of his dinner roll, that the only thing left once a man is dead, the only thing that matters after the fact, are the pictures in the hearts and minds of those who loved him. If his mother's perception was of a man who had even an ounce of funny in him, then who was he, as the son, to negate that opinion?

And with the swiftness of a shifting wind, Clayton went back to what was important. “So tell me about this Antonia woman, Momma. What's her last name?”

“It's Jackson, if that's important at all.”

As hard as Clayton tried, all he could remember about the woman's name was Antonia. But that was enough. These two women had to be the same. So he continued, “Well, it's important because I met a woman named Antonia. Maybe it's the same one.”

Agnes turned slowly to see Clayton, then stared at him as if she were looking at him from another realm. “Where did you meet a woman named Antonia?”

“Over at Harbor Place. We had lunch together. She told me that she had followed my career since the beginning. She's from New Orleans too. It must be the same woman. She's about five-foot-five, she's a black woman with sort of a light brown complexion and she's got a short haircut. Is that her?”

“That sounds like what she looked like,” Noah said.

“Well so, Momma. Was that her? I mean, if it was, then why didn't she tell me that she knew you?”

Agnes answered nervously. “Well, Clayton, what are the
chances that it was the same woman? I mean, for goodness sakes, there must be a million Antonias running around the world as we speak.”

“I don't know,” Clayton said skeptically. “It just seems like too much of a coincidence to me for it to really be one.”

“Well, that's all it can be,” Agnes said sternly as she studied her plate while she ate. “It's not the same woman.”

And so Clayton understood that this would be the last word on the matter. To press it would make it all become futilely frustrating, and there was not much point he could see to going through that much angst with his mother only for it to end up being exactly what she said—a coincidence. So Clayton pushed away from the table, and just as he stood, said, “Well, I'm going to excuse myself now, if you all don't mind. I want to take a drive around the city to get to know it again.”

“You want more to eat?” Susan asked.

Clayton smiled at the southern womanliness that compelled her to ask him the same thing after every meal, as if he didn't have the sense God gave a goose to know when he wanted more to eat, much less how to ask for it. But he nonetheless responded as he went over and kissed the boys on the tops of their heads. “No, thank you, honey. I'm all set. I expect to be back before you turn in, but if I'm not, don't wait up for me.” When he reached Susan, he bent and gave her a kiss that lasted just long enough to be decent viewing for other eyes. Then he stood straight and blew a kiss to his mother. “I'll see you in the morning, Momma.”

Clayton went to the living room and called down to the garage for his car. He left, giving one last good-bye to them all. He closed the door softly behind him and stepped across the hall to ring for the elevator. When the doors slid open there was only one man in it, and Clayton stepped to the back wall. From where he stood, he had a peripheral view of the man. It didn't take Clayton long to realize that the man was who he thought he was, except he couldn't remember his name. All he knew was that he was a Baltimore Oriole and quite a player. This he knew from the times the birds would fly into town—or at least his former town, New York—to take on the Yankees and this was the only other player, aside from Ripken the golden boy, who always had a New York press microphone stuck in his face. And isn't it a shame, Clayton
reflected, that even all the way in New York, that Ripken name was trapped in his consciousness for no other reason than the legacy. He looked up at the floor indicator and saw that they were closing in on the lobby, so Clayton quickly said, “Say, aren't you one of the Orioles?”

The man turned awkwardly to see Clayton over one thick broad shoulder and said in the simplest, most monotonous tone of the disinterested, “Yeah, I am.”

“Clayton Cannon,” Clayton said, sticking out his hand for a shake with the overexcitement of a little leaguer, hoping for the majors one day. “I've seen you play in New York. I just moved from there,” Clayton noted as the elevator doors opened to the lobby.

The man stepped out, and turned halfway to face Clayton and said with only a modicum of sincerity, “Good to see you.”

“You too,” Clayton said as he stepped into the lobby. “Take it easy,” and he watched as the man, more the height of a basketball player than a baseball slugger, went on his way without thanking Clayton for the good wishes. Then he remembered that he had one more level down to go to get to the garage and his car, so he turned swiftly, certain the elevator had taken another trip to collect others. But it was there, the door wide open. He got back on with one fleet step and rode it down.

When he stepped off the elevator, he ran headlong into the garage attendant, all pink acne, crooked teeth and bubble gum, who was just standing there with the biggest Cheshire grin on his face that put a start of fear for the briefest second into Clayton. It was as if this young man had just seen whatever object of his fascination that someone his age, just barely sprung from high school, might worship. But Clayton knew it couldn't be him that this young man held in adulation, so he decided the young man was touched in the same divine way as simpletons and only smiled thinly, saying, “Good evening, young fellow. Thank you so much,” and Clayton slipped a five-dollar bill into the attendant's hand, then went to step around him to get to his car that sat idling off to the side.

“Yes sir. Thank you, sir. But I also wanted to tell ya that I'm from Louisiana, too. I've been a fan of yours since forever.”

“Really?” Clayton said, scarcely able to stop looking at the
young man's overgrown teeth that went this way and that, but mostly stunned by this unlikely fan.

“I sure have been. My ma and daddy, too.”

“Well, how do you like that?” Clayton said through a stupefied laugh.

“Oh, yes sir. Matter of fact, I've been up here for two years tryin' to get into the Peabody. I audition every year, and every year I get turned away. But I ain't gonna give up. I want to do just what you did. I only got two heroes—you and Harry Connick, Jr. What y'all do to the piano, I'll tell you, that's what I wanna do,” the young man said as he stood there shaking his head in his own private reflection. Then he perked up. “Say, do you know him? Harry Connick, Jr.?”

“Sorry, never met him,” Clayton said, trying not to let his utter sadness for this young man's life be heard in his voice. But then again, he thought, who's to say? Who's to say that rejections from a conservatory of music has necessarily written the epitaph on this young man's dreams? Far stranger things have happened in the world of music.

“I guess you two travel in different circles, huh?”

“Something like that” was all Clayton said with a thin smile.

“Well, I ain't gonna be crazy about this, you know. I'm gonna audition two more times, and if I still don't make it, I'm goin' back to New Orleans 'cause I ain't tryin' to make Baltimore my home, you know what I mean. I mean, it's nice here and all, but I ain't gonna give up my citizenship down in Louisiana. I just needed to give it a shot.”

“Well, you should go for it, that's what I say. And it's good that you've got a job.”

“Oh yeah! That's the first thing I did when I got here. It don't pay much, you know, but in this building I sure as heck do get to meet a lot of good and important people. Like you! And you know, some Orioles and Ravens live here too?”

Clayton only smiled at the sheer irony that he could be celebrated in the same light as an Oriole and a Raven in the mind of this pimply-faced car-parker who, at first glance, looked to Clayton as if his only other talent just might be picking beans in a ripe field. So he chuckled, partly from the thought, but mostly with the young man's characterization of Louisiana as an entirely different
country to which one had to claim or denounce citizenship. “By the way, son,” he said, “though I'm sure sometimes it doesn't seem that way down there, Louisiana is still a part of the United States, so you don't have to worry about giving up your citizenship just by moving up here.”

“Ah, yes sir. I know that,” the young man said through shy laughter. “By the way, my name is DeWitt. DeWitt Dilly. Anything you ever need, sir, you just come right on down here and ask DeWitt Dilly. I'm at your service.”

“Well, that's good to know, DeWitt,” Clayton said, extending his hand to shake DeWitt's. “And I want you to call me Clayton. It's kind of good to know that I have such a big fan working right downstairs. I'll see you later, DeWitt.” Clayton went to his car and opened the door, and just before getting in, he turned to take DeWitt in one more time, smiling at how simple life can truly be with young dreams.

“Bye now, Clayton,” DeWitt said with a proud smile.

Clayton slid behind the steering wheel of his car and closed himself in, then pulled out of the garage wondering if, in the spaces between words, DeWitt could hear the speciousness that contradicted his encouragement. And it got him thinking about just what he might have done if he had camped out in a town auditioning for only one school of music, only to be turned down time after time. He believed, with everything in him, that he'd go back to New Orleans and play honky-tonk in saloons. It was respectable enough and came with its own adulation, he supposed, in its way. Yet whatever it was he said, it made DeWitt Dilly feel that he was right on with fighting his good fight; and what's the matter with that? he thought. So whether it was sincere or fraught with doubt, it didn't come from an altogether bad place.

So he drove along Light Street until he reached the light at Pratt. It was amazing to him how much he remembered and how much he'd forgotten in the twenty-three years he'd been away. But what crept up on him from some abandoned corner of his memory was the thought of the
News American
newspaper that had been gone from Baltimore for at least twenty years, but he remembered it; and remembered that the building had been right over there where Stouffers and the Galleria now stood.