Authors: William Bell
A
s soon as the clock on our mantel chimed nine o’clock I picked up the phone. On the eighth ring a grumpy voice came on.
“Piffard’s Jewellery.”
I had awakened in the middle of the night to the sigh of a gentle rain, and as I slipped through the dark rooms closing windows an idea had formed in my groggy head: maybe Mr. Piffard hadn’t sold Pawpine’s gold. Maybe I could buy it back.
In the morning I fretted and paced from the time I got up until the main-street stores opened.
“Um, Mr. Piffard,” I began.
“This is he.”
“It’s Zack Lane calling.”
“Oh, yes.”
He said it the way people do when they don’t have a clue who you are but don’t want to admit it.
“I sold … You bought a gold nugget from me a while ago.”
“Oh, that. Yes, I remember,” he said warily.
“Well, I was just wondering if you still have it.”
“Why?”
I hated it when people answered a question with
another question. Why was Piffard being cagey? You’d have thought I was accusing him of peddling Rolex knock-offs.
“Because I want to know,” I answered, as politely as I could.
“Well, I don’t have it.”
“I see,” I said. “Can you tell me where it is?”
“That’s really not possible.”
“No, I mean, did you melt it down, make something out of it? Or is it still in its original condition?”
I paused, desperate to hear him tell me that the nugget was whole and sound, waiting for me somewhere. I hurried on. “Because if it is, maybe I could buy it back from whoever has it now.”
“It’s gone. I’m afraid that’s all I can say.”
“But—”
“Good morning.” And he hung up.
“You scum,” I muttered, slamming down the phone.
I was worse off than I had been before I called. If Piffard had told me he had made a brooch out of the gold, I could have handled that. But to think the nugget might still exist, that if I only knew whoever had bought it I could make them an offer, drove me batty.
Vowing never again to follow half-baked ideas that came to me in the middle of the night, I pushed through the kitchen door, pulled the lawn mower and trimmer out of the garage, and spent the morning
vengefully attacking the grass, seeing Piffard’s squinty eyes and smelly cigar stub in every blade.
After a shower and a lunch of “the yellow death,” I brought in the mail. Among the envelopes I found one from my school. It was addressed to Mr. and Mrs., but I told myself it was my report card inside and opened it anyway, a little surprised at how calm I was as I unfolded the computer-generated document whose lines and squares, course codes, averages and medians and, in bold print down the right side, final grades would tell me my future.
“Hooray!” I bellowed, throwing the mail into the air.
I had passed everything. Three Cs and one B—in history. The Book must have liked my research essay. I was free!
Maybe.
Noting a C average in my graduating courses, universities wouldn’t exactly be sending recruiting teams to sign me up, but—maybe.
Feeling pleased and a little like I had escaped the hangman, I bounced outside to wash the truck and remove the cap. I had to pick my parents up at the airport at nine-fifteen. When I laid eyes on the dented hood and crumpled quarter panel all my good thoughts flew away. It was time to face the hangman after all.
I positioned the truck carefully in the airport parking
garage, snugged tight against a wall so only the undamaged side was visible, and climbed out the passenger door. Stomach churning, I took the elevator to the departure level, wandered around until I realized I was in the wrong place, and rode the escalator to the arrivals level just in time to see Mom and Dad emerge from their gate.
We hugged hellos and after a few minutes’ runaround—Mom’s guitars had to be retrieved from the oversize baggage counter—we headed for the garage. I made all kinds of welcome-home noises, yapped away about Mom’s flowers and even the weather as I dodged parent-questions about what I had done for the last ten days to fill up my time. I caught Mom and Dad exchanging Who-is-this-babbling-idiot? looks. I walked ahead, pushing the luggage cart like a dutiful son.
“Why did you park here, like this?” Dad asked.
“It was really crowded when I came in,” I said. “And by the way, I’ll drive home. You look exhausted.”
“No, I—”
“Here, I almost forgot,” I cut in, and casually slipped my folded report card from my shirt pocket and handed it to my mother.
While they exclaimed their shared relief—did I hear a note of surprise in my father’s words?—I stowed the luggage in the truck, pushed the cart to the side and slid into the driver’s seat.
“All aboard!” I called out enthusiastically. “Let’s go!”
Mom got in first. As soon as Dad slammed the door I started the engine and drove down the ramp, chanting,
“Please
don’t look at the hood,” under my breath as I pulled to a stop under a blaze of amber light and paid the attendant.
The drive home was torture. My stomach pumped out the acid. Every time Mom or Dad began to speak I expected a shriek of anger and despair. But nobody said a word about the bent metal in front of the windshield. Instead, my parents talked about my marks. Not exactly congratulatory, they seemed pleased in the reserved sort of way I was used to. You’ve done okay, Zack, but you could have done better—the kind of tone that robbed pleasure and replaced it with guilt. But the unexciting document had diverted their attention.
“Why don’t you guys go on in,” I said when I had parked in our driveway. “I’ll take care of the luggage.”
“My, my,” Mom said. “You take a course in etiquette while we were gone?”
“Yup. Got an A, too.”
“Hmm. I didn’t see an A on that report card.”
Mom walked towards the front door. Dad hauled the biggest suitcase from the truck.
“I guess tomorrow will be soon enough,” he said. “I’m bushed.”
I held a guitar case in each hand. “Huh?”
“To tell me about the truck.”
“L
ook let’s get this straight. I admit I misled you. I confess I’m responsible for the truck. I’ll pay for it. But I’m
not
sorry I went to Mississippi, so you may as well lay off the criticism.”
The three Lanes sat around the kitchen table, an uneaten hamburger long since cold in front of each of us. Mom had performed her post-gig rituals, visiting each of her plants inside the house and out to check on their health. She had done the laundry, pegged the clothes on the line in the yard. Her guitars had been unpacked and polished.
Dad’s routine was to read and answer e-mail, open the paper mail and pay the bills, run the vacuum cleaner around the house. The morning inched by for me as I waited for the guillotine to drop.
Dad barbecued hamburgers as Mom complained about the smoke smelling up her laundry and, because the sun was high and hot he set up lunch in the kitchen. As soon as I said, “Pass the mustard,” he nailed me.
So I told them.
“You
what?”
My mother had blown up as soon as she heard the word Natchez, and the further I waded
into the story the more she fumed and raged, thumping her thighs with her fists.
I left out my tussle with the cops, the bigoted woman at the motel, the rednecks at the gas station. But I recounted the thunderstorm and fallen oak. I said I had met my grandfather, fished with him, gone to a funeral and a picnic. I explained why I had pretended to be someone else at first and how I discovered the reason my mother had nothing to do with him. I made clear the circumstances of my leaving Natchez. By the time I reached the end she was crying, hard and deep.
Relief was the main feeling that flowed in me by the time I was finished, but it wasn’t the only one.
Dad had sat silently through it all, his face pale, and his eyes never left my mother’s face.
“I’ve never felt so betrayed in my whole life,” she whispered, wiping her eyes with a napkin. “And by my own son.”
Her hands shook as she blew her nose. She gulped, choked back her crying and cleared her throat.
It sounds strange, but the sight of her attempting to hold on to her grief made my heart ache for her, but I couldn’t get hold of my thoughts, as usual. It’s one thing to feel something and another to put the right words together so that the feelings come out under control, unmixed and unconfused. And so my response showed neither sympathy nor love, only anger.
“Mom, I didn’t betray anybody. You made up your mind a long time ago that you never wanted to see your father again. Okay. But you didn’t share the reason with me, did you? I’m not you. You don’t have the right to decide for me any more. I’m not a kid.”
“Zack,” Dad spoke for the first time. “You’ve got to understand how your mother feels.”
“Dammit!” I exploded, pounding the table. The cutlery jumped and clinked; my mother flinched. “Why doesn’t somebody try to understand how
I
feel for once?”
And I launched into a long rant, pulled out a lot of old tunes and played them one more time. How they had dragged me from my friends and neighbourhood to a hick town. How they treated me like a five-year-old, forcing me to practically beg to use the truck, making me ask them for money because they wouldn’t let me have a job—I was supposed to spend all my time studying. Nothing was decided by me. Nothing I did mattered. Unless I wrecked. Then it mattered.
My mind was a rage of contrary winds. I hated the weight of my father’s disapproval. I hated the weight of my mother’s pain. I hated myself for my inability to earn their pride.
But at the same time, I didn’t want to be a dependent son any more, a kid yearning for a pat on the head, a teenager who screwed up, again, and waited for judgement. I wanted to be a person to them. Knowing
I could never achieve what each of them had, never be their equal, I needed to be treated equally.
All this boiled and churned inside, and all that came out was anger. When I finally lost momentum and wound down, my mother said something peculiar.
“You always were contrary.”
That threw me. “I was what?”
“You never took music at school. You refused.”
She sat there, head down, twisting the damp napkin to shreds. I looked at my father. Slowly, his eyebrows rose as if he expected me to say something, as if he thought I too knew what my mother meant.
“All that talent you have,” she went on, her voice quavering, barely audible. “But you never took music in school. Just to be contrary.”
Then I knew, and the realization was like a blow to the back of my head. She had concluded that I had avoided studying music to spite her. And now she thought my journey to find my grandfather was more of the same.
“Aw, Jesus,” I moaned. “Mom—”
“Now don’t you curse in this house, young man. You—”
“Etta,” Dad said gently. “Let him talk.”
“Mom, when I was a little kid,” I said past the ache in my throat, “I wanted more than anything to be a musician like you. But I knew I could never be good enough. I couldn’t even come close. I’d always be in your shadow. I’d let you down. I didn’t stay
away from music lessons to spite you. I stayed away because I was afraid I’d fail.”
She looked up at me then. Amazement passed over her flushed features.
“But you
do
have the tal—”
“And my trip to Natchez? I didn’t go to get back at you, Mom. It was something I had to do, for
me
. I never knew or understood why you kept me from your—our—family.”
In my mind, it was as if a cloud parted and the ideas I wanted to express became clearer.
“See, Mom, I’ve always felt like your part of me wasn’t as important as Dad’s part. I’ve always been proud to be a Jew, to be part of all our history and tradition. But I never felt that way about being African. I was never ashamed or anything—you and Dad made sure of that. It’s just that I never had anything to build on, I wasn’t connected to anything. Having black skin wasn’t enough. I wanted to see where I came from, that was all.
“Now I know why you and your father are apart,” I said bitterly. “He’s no better than a redneck or a skinhead.”
“I’m sorry you had to learn that, Zack,” my mother said.
“But that’s just it, Mom.” I was calm now. But I wanted to make sure she knew. “I had to learn it for myself. But I also saw where our ancestors came from and I met some of our family. I like
them. They’re nice people. I liked Lucas, too—”
Mom’s eyes shot up when I called my grandfather by his first name, but that was what I had called him down there, and it seemed right.
“At first.”
And then the doorbell rang.
“I
’ll get it,” Dad said, clearly exasperated by the interruption.
My mother rose slowly from her chair, turned on the tap and splashed water on her face, then used the dish towel to dry herself. She gathered the pile of shredded paper from the table and rolled it into a ball and put it in the garbage catcher under the sink. Then she sat down again.
I filled a glass with water and gulped it down like a marathon runner at the end of a race. Behind me I heard my father’s voice.
“Someone to see you, Zack.”
The Book looked wilted and hot in the kitchen doorway, wearing a shapeless dress plastered with big yellow sunflowers, and red plastic slip-ons, fanning herself with a large manila envelope. A few strands of hair stuck to the perspiration on her forehead.
“Er, hi,” I blurted.
Dad introduced Song to my mother, who offered her a glass of lemonade, and we all gathered around the kitchen table, the Lanes fresh from an intense family skirmish and the Wicked Son’s teacher—ex-teacher, I corrected myself, since I was then
officially a graduate. A visit from a teacher never meant anything good.
The three of them made small talk about the weather—they all agreed it certainly was hot and that the humidity sure made it seem hotter—and Song told Mom she had all three of her CDs and loved them, and I waited impatiently for Song to get to the point. My paranoia grew with each inane sentence they added to their conversation. Has Song come by to tell us that my history mark was an error, that I hadn’t graduated after all?