The Trinity (43 page)

“It is.” He draws a deep breath. He tells her everything, slowly at first. The speed of his words increases. He tells her everything, from the beginning, the first meeting with Crowley at the chapel, concluding with a breathless account of Crowley’s plan to ignite the Jews. He deliberately leaves no fact out; he even relays the embarrassing tale of the Aberdeen prostitutes.

Slowly, she digests the information, information that takes nearly half an hour to relate, and longer to understand.

And she does understand. She understands the loneliness that Chris feels. She understands the desperation that led him to the unholy alliance with the priest and Brad. It is no fun wandering through life without having someone to share it with, male or female.

Everyone needs friends. Everyone needs lovers… Even though friends and lovers come with a price.

Chris has had to pay a price that is steep, a price that is climbing still.

There are some things that she needs to explain to him. She is a woman of the world, so to speak, her life a myriad of experiences more varied and tragic than Chris has previously imagined. Her existence has been wrought with pitfalls, several minor and one very major, and these tragedies give her that mysterious air. These tragedies explain the melancholy that perpetually shrouds her countenance, leading to her enigmatic presence that has long confounded Chris.

This enigma, this melancholy, she feels compelled to explain.

“So, you think you hate blacks and Jews, do you?” she asks Chris upon the conclusion of his confession.

“Well, I don’t know. I thought at first I did, because of what Father Crowley said, but deep down, if I take away what he’s told me, then no, I have no reason to hate blacks or Jewish people or anyone else.”

“That’s right. You have absolutely no reason to hate anyone based on race or religion.” She sighs, takes a deep breath, as she readies her body, her mind, to tell Chris the tragedy of her life. Not for a number of years has she revealed herself to anyone.

“You know how I said I was married once?”

Chris nods slowly. “Yes, you did mention that. I figured you got divorced.”

She shakes her head. “No. I’m not divorced. We were very much in love. We met in college, and got married right after I got my teaching certificate. He was in law school, and I was the breadwinner, teaching while he went to school. We also had twin babies, a boy and a girl. They would be eight now. Marc and Michele.

“We were married for just about three years when it happened. My husband and I, along with the twins, who were just over a year old, went out to dinner at a fairly nice restaurant in Silver Spring, near where we lived. We were celebrating. My husband had just finished law school, and our possibilities were endless. He had finished near the top of his class, and we knew it was just a matter of time before we left our apartment and would be able to afford a house and a new car.

“It was hard on us, me the only one working, paying for law school and babies. We did without a lot of things, but we didn’t care. We were happy, very, very happy. We were happy being poor, and our potential for a wonderful life was boundless. So when he finished school, we went out to eat, something we never did. We lived on macaroni and cheese and hot dogs for weeks at a time, trying to feed the twins as best as we could.

“Dinner was wonderful. The kids sat in highchairs and ate, smiling all the while, and my husband and I had a couple of drinks. He had more than I did. We were so happy.
We talked and laughed and I remember thinking that it was the most wonderful night of my life.

“Until we went home.”

She now removes her glasses and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. She pulls out a tissue, wipes her nose and blows and rubs it so hard that Chris notices the normally pale tip of her nose is now a temporary shade of scarlet.

“We both had a few drinks. We weren’t accustomed to drinking. Not since our college days had we really drunk more than a glass of wine. I think maybe that night we split almost a whole bottle. Henry drank most of it.

“That’s why I drove home, because he drank more. Every day, every moment since then, I wish we’d taken a cab.

“I felt a little tipsy when we left, you know, relaxed and sort of giddy. I wasn’t drunk, but maybe a little too relaxed, too relaxed and happy, very, very happy.”

She stands up and removes her utility jacket, something Chris has never seen her do, exposing her blue dungaree shirt, obviously one or two sizes too big. Chris guesses correctly that she has lost weight since she first purchased the shirt. He can barely make out her arms in the sleeves, and her neck appears lost in the vast collar.

“It was still daylight when we left the restaurant, but it was fading fast. The sun was setting and the clouds were almost bright red. It’s funny, I never notice the sky, but I remember it that evening. It was beautiful in a surreal sort of way. The red clouds made the blue of the sky a pale shade of pink, as if God put a piece of cellophane over the sun.

“We had only a few miles to drive. Henry loaded the babies into the back of our old ’71 Mercury, which he had in and out of the shop since we bought it a few years before. We couldn’t afford a newer car, though I would have liked one. It was white and rusty and huge, and I felt so small behind the wheel, but I also felt safe, being inside such a big car.

“We laughed all the way home, and Henry talked about the Maryland bar exam, how hard it was going to be, and what sort of work he was going to do. He wanted to be a civil rights lawyer. That was his dream. He didn’t want to be a lawyer to be rich. He wanted to provide well for his family, but he wasn’t greedy. He wanted to make a difference in other people’s lives. He made a difference in mine.

“I can remember the number of traffic lights between our house and the restaurant. Five. I remember hitting every single one red, having to stop but not minding at all, as we were in no hurry. Except for the last light. I thought it was green.

“But it was red.”

Now there are tears streaming from her eyes, and she is breathing hard, almost in cadence with the scrolling printer, which continually feeds paper to the floor.

“There wasn’t another car stopped there, so I guess, I don’t know, I must have assumed the light was green. I could see our apartment building just a block away, on the left hand side, and I was already checking the oncoming traffic, to see how quickly I could turn into our parking lot. I went through the light and almost made it through the intersection, except a gravel truck demolished the car and the only three people in the world that I cared about, Henry and my two babies.

“The truck hit the car so hard that it spun like a crushed top in the middle of the intersection, and somehow I fell through the door, which popped open, and I landed on the asphalt. I passed out. I didn’t wake up until later that night, in a hospital bed in the emergency room of the same hospital in Silver Spring where Marc and Michele were born.

“I knew, when I woke up, that the world was blacker than I last remembered, and I also knew, as I still know today, that it was all my fault. It is a heavy burden, though it gets lighter every day. The years pass and memories fade and I get to where in my mind I forget what Henry looked like, and how sweet my babies were, but I have pictures, trapped in an album under my bed, and I drag it out now and then and sit down and cry as I remember them. I just don’t remember how they looked, but how they smelled, how the babies felt as I held them in my arms, how I felt when Henry held me in his arms.

“I suppose you’re wondering why I’m telling you all this, how it’s relevant to your situation. It is and it isn’t. Henry was black. I guess our society would say my babies were black, even though they were half-white, and I never realized how ugly our American way of life is until Henry and I first started dating, and I brought him home to meet my parents.

“It was Thanksgiving. We were in our junior year at the University of Maryland. I grew up in Rockville, and Henry was from Washington, D.C., not even half an hour away. We were both going to meet our respective families then. Dinner at my house, pumpkin pie at his.

“I never thought Henry’s color would be a concern with my family. I heard my father make snide comments about blacks before, you know, the same things your father probably said, how black neighborhoods aren’t safe, how they commit crimes more than white people do, and how they shouldn’t be trusted. I didn’t think he meant anything by it, and it obviously didn’t plant any kind of racist seed in me.

“So I thought when I brought Henry to my family’s house, there would be no problem. I thought since he was with me and was important to me, he would be welcome, no matter what. That’s how strong I thought my family’s love was. I wasn’t even nervous. I didn’t think it would be an issue.

“Henry didn’t even get his coat off. My father made a scene. He said no niggers were allowed in his house, and he’d be damned if his daughter was going to date one. I had never heard him use the word ‘nigger’ before. It shocked me, but it embarrassed me more than anything. As Henry walked out of the house, my father tried to pull me in, grabbing my coat as I stood in the doorway. I wanted nothing to do with him, and I still don’t. That was the last time I spoke with my father. A year later, we were married, and then the babies and then the funeral, and I never saw hide nor hair of my father. My mother called when they died, but she wouldn’t come over. She said my father was too upset, still, and she didn’t want to upset him more. She took my father’s side, and ignored the needs of her daughter. Having been a mother, it is unfathomable to me how a mother could ignore her children. I think it is instinctive to care for and protect your children first, and then worry about spouses and the rest of your family.”

Chris can relate. He feels a chill as Karen speaks of her disappointment with her mother.

“I had tried to call my mother, right after that Thanksgiving so many years ago. She asked me if I was still seeing my Negro friend. I said, yes, of course. Well, you really shouldn’t come around then, your father is very upset, she said.

“So I didn’t come around. I invited them to the wedding, which of course was very simple, as I had grown up expecting my family to pay for it, and they didn’t.”

“How did Henry’s family treat you?” Chris interrupts.

“They were nice to me. They weren’t thrilled with the idea of their son marrying a white girl, but they loved their son more than they hated my race, and they were there for everything, reaffirming my conviction at the arrogance of my own race. For a while, I was ashamed to be white.

“Whenever we went anywhere together, it would be white people, especially white men, who would point at us and shake their heads, as if we were committing some sort of terrible sin. Their disapproval just strengthened my resolve.

“Henry’s family disappeared from my life after the funeral. My family remained missing. I felt all alone surrounded by the people I had loved growing up; they lived just minutes away. That’s why I joined the Navy, to get away from all that.

“I think Henry’s family disappeared because they blamed me for the accident, as I blame myself. I tried reaching out to them, and they took my phone calls from the hospital, but they never came to see me, never reached out to me in the days and weeks afterward as I sat and cried and screamed in our apartment, surrounded by Henry’s and the babies’ things.

“I left the apartment the way it was. I up and left and joined the Navy, leaving everything behind. I went to boot camp like you, only the clothes on my back and maybe fifty dollars in my wallet.

“So, as you can imagine, I have no love for racists. Racism is ignorance. Racism is a reflection of the inadequacy one has in one’s own identity. Racism keeps our society polarized, never moving forward. One race is always worried about what the other race is doing while other aspects of our culture and society are ignored. The schools deteriorate; I should know. Our country would be so much better off, economically and socially, if racism were a part of the past and not the present. Blacks in America have been denied so much for so long, and most of them have to go to poorer schools, which means no college, which means a low paying job, which in turn leads to their own children growing up in the same circumstances. It’s a type of society unique to America. Race, for the most part, doesn’t have stigmas attached to it in the rest of the world. It’s the devil’s work, I’m sure, and it all is born in ignorance and hate, and nothing good has ever come from it. Nothing. All because of racism there was a civil war that left nearly a million men dead in gruesome battle, causing wounds in our country that never really healed, and an assassination that left a most brilliant and peaceful man dead—Dr. King—who was starting to lead our country out if its hateful slumber. Then he got murdered in cold blood by a coward. And now, right in front of me, I have some idiot following an insane priest, killing Jewish people and god knows who else in a country that doesn’t even belong to us.”