Everyday People (24 page)

“He invented the automatic oiler for train engines. People tried to copy his design but theirs always broke, so to make sure they got his, the mechanics would ask for the Real McCoy. That's where that comes from. You learn about him in Black History Month, in school.”

“Not when I went to school.”

“What did you learn?” Chris asked, and Harold had to think. It was so long ago.

“Not much,” he said. He'd wanted to say it like a joke, but it didn't come out that way. “So,” he said, “are you and Vanessa doing anything special this weekend?”

“I don't think so.”

“She's coming over though.”

“We'll probably go to the park.”

“Good,” Harold said, trying not to be too much of a cheerleader.

“I'm done,” Chris said, and set his napkin on the table.

“I'll get your plate.”

“That's all right,” Chris said, and Harold knew he shouldn't have offered. He ate while Chris maneuvered around the table, the chair whirring, his plate in his lap. “I'm going to go work a little.”

“Okay,” Harold said. He watched him fit the chair through the door, then turn sideways so he could close it. In a minute his music came on, thumping the walls. Harold
looked at the mound of chicken pie left in front of him. The Real McCoy, huh? He gently laid down his fork, stood up and scraped the plate into the garbage. He even did the dishes slowly, brooding over them though there was no point. Being here was his choice, Dre always said; now he believed it, at times even saw it as honorable, yet when Harold dropped his guard, he pictured the days marching on like this, his life an endless series of tiny self-denials chipping away at his heart, sadness and rainy days his one comfort. Pitiful. He remembered wrestling with Dre in his sunny sheets, drinking naked at his table, laughing at Sister Payne's dog yapping at them. When was the last time he'd been happy like that?

Life was not about happiness, he thought on the couch. A man had obligations. A father had responsibilities. He had the TV on, a bad reflex. He never really watched it, it just flowed past, eating and tracking time like some loud, expensive clock. Someone passed in the hall, and he looked toward the door, panicked for a second that it would open and he'd be caught.

But he'd done nothing wrong. It was a habit now, feeling guilty. Even the night he came home late from the Liberty—okay, he'd had way too much, but it wasn't like he was with anyone except Earl, telling him he needed to close up, to go home while he could still walk. Even that night he wasn't completely surprised to find her waiting up for him. He didn't see her at first, so drunk his eyes only focused on what was right in front of him (the key, the wandering doorknob and keyhole), but then he heard her long-drawn snoring—like a wet undershirt slowly being torn to shreds—and
found her on the couch. In the deep cup of his lush, sentimental buzz, he thought it was nice of her, waiting up, sweet like she could be (it had been years, so his own hope now surprised him, seemed equally sweet), and he sat down beside her, careful not to crush her arm. For some reason she had a knife in her hand, and he removed it. “Dangerous,” he said, carrying it to the sink, puzzled but not yet questioning its presence, just accepting it and acting, following logic as in a dream. He understood only when she woke up and began hitting him—no, really after that, when he could decode what she was screaming at him. Lying motherfucker. No-good two-timing dog just like her father. Worthless piece of shit.

“Wait,” he said, “hold up,” trying to stop her flashing arms, but it was dark and a fist caught his nose, crushing it down, hot, bone and cartilage twisting, a feeling he knew from so long ago, so far within his body's memory that he could not stop his own fists from instantly finding its source. Thank God he'd only hit her in the chest, had caught himself immediately. She cried, wailed like she'd been shot, and he was saying he was sorry, baby, please baby you know I didn't mean it, breathless, and then Eugene had him by the neck, slammed back against the wall as if he'd witnessed everything.

“Let me go, son,” he said.

“You come to
me
next time,” Eugene said, and pushed him away.

Chris's light was on; he was calling, asking what was happening.

“Nothing,” Eugene said. “Daddy's drunk.”

Son of a bitch, if he could have that one night back.

He couldn't. He could never apologize enough for it to anyone, least of all his sons. Every morning when she got dressed after her shower, he saw the bruise he'd left, just above her left breast, just below her shoulder, wide as a pie plate, a bull's-eye still changing colors. His nose was fine, not a thing wrong with it. What would his father have said, him striking a woman. There was no man lower.

What would he say about Dre? At times, months ago, in the haze of love's first dreamy intensity and surrender, he imagined his father might be like himself—that, away from the daily punishment of his mother's high hopes and disappointment in him, he found some comfort in the arms of another. All right, yes, he could admit it: another man. Wasn't his reserve, his fastidiousness and personal privacy, the sign of something? He was certainly not common (for that very reason would be disappointed in him). Now though, he could not see any chain of reasoning that led him to that conclusion, only high spirits and wishful thinking, the hope that his father's life was more than his own, not just a war with his mother he was bound to lose. It wasn't realistic, this hope: He wanted his father to be freer than he was. Now he thought of him closing the door to his study as a way of barricading himself in, and wished he'd been able to help. He imagined some collector still owned the records, picked up cheap at the rummage sale, kept his special treasures cataloged, the sleeves wrapped in plastic, probably never played them.

The TV slogged along, a swamp of commercials.
ER
was on in a few minutes, so he got up and paced around the
kitchen like a security guard, making sure everything was neat for her. On the top shelf of the right-hand cabinet his bottle of Johnny Walker waited patiently, strictly forbidden, the pencil line on the side proof of his selflessness. Crumbs huddled under the toaster oven, and he wiped them away with a wet paper towel.

He tucked his shirt in, looking around the living room. The arms of the couch were going shiny, the TV ugly, at least ten years old. Next to the end table the rug was stained where Chris had spilled a glass of grape juice a few years ago, and Harold thought of his mother's formal living room (never used) with its intricate Persian rugs, the almost sterile cleanliness she insisted on. His father's study was a mess, and every spring he had to defend it, his mother standing at the open door in her apron, threatening to take care of it if he didn't. Out back she hung the rugs from the line and gave Harold the wire beater; an hour later, after his arms had turned to clay, she came out and made clouds jump from the Tabriz. Trumpet vines twined around the garage's downspout, flowering in the heat of summer, and his father would take them driving along the river in the Mercury, cool air rushing through the windows, his mother holding her hat on her lap, the ribbon flapping, trying to fly out. What had happened that those people seemed so foreign to him, their existence strange, barely to be believed? Something had slipped, he thought, missed somewhere. There had to be a mistake.

He could not be thinking this when Jackie came home, so he banished it, turned his attention to
ER,
one of the few shows he actually watched with interest. He sat up straight,
his posture another sign he wasn't thinking of the other woman, that his confession had washed him clean. She'd been greedy for details (later that same night), and so he'd chosen a woman from work, absolutely imaginary, and when he saw how intently she was listening, he knew Sister Payne hadn't suspected anything. He fabricated their affair, yet in a way he was telling the truth; he never strayed far from what had actually happened between him and Dre. And they had broken it off, they hadn't talked in weeks—the important things were true, or had been then.

ER
was just going into its opening credits when they came in, her first, Eugene right behind her like a bodyguard. He sat up straighter, ready for whatever test she had for him.

“How was practice?” he asked.

“Good,” she said, handing her overcoat to Eugene, who looked at him with no emotion, like he was waiting for him to make a mistake. “Sister Payne says hello.”

“You gave her my best, I hope.”

“Of course.” Behind him now, she peered into the kitchen. He waited for her to appreciate it—indicated by her silence, the time it took to look over the shining counters. She came back in and leaned a hand on the back of the couch. “I'm tired so I'm going to bed.”

ER
was back on, and he actually did want to watch it, but he clicked it off. Everything was a measure of his guilt, his willingness to pay, take his punishment. In his heart he knew it was the right thing to do, despite what he sometimes felt. Hadn't his father taught him that?

He went in to say good night to Chris (no dope smell), and motioned for him to put his headphones on. Eugene was in the kitchen, pouring himself some milk.

“'night,” Harold said, and Eugene said it back, polite. It was hard being around him now, but as he closed the door of their room Harold wasn't relieved that it was just between him and Jackie, that the rest of the world didn't exist.

“You can stay up,” Jackie said from the bathroom.

“That's all right.”

“Isn't
ER
on?”

“It's a repeat.” Hell, maybe it was; he couldn't tell. Every show they ran around with the crashcarts, someone died, people fell out of love.

She came out in her nightgown, her arms heavy, eyes tired. He went in to brush his teeth, still dressed. It was too bright in the mirror, and he looked old. Yet Dre had called
him,
not the other way around. After the barren weeks, the madness of not seeing him, he could have left any message. His name looked funny in the department secretary's girlish script. Just a box was checked:
Wants you to call.
It was wrong, it was harmful. He had to try three times before he got through, and then, with one word, everything returned and he could breathe, no longer hopeless and alone.

The lights were off when he slid in beside her, the sheets chilly. She seemed to be on his side, her legs rubbery against his butt.

“How was rehab?” she asked when he'd gotten settled.

“It's tough. You know.”

“But he's trying hard.”

“Yeah,” he said, positive, but thought that that might not be enough. Chris knew it too, Willa Mae's toughlove didn't fool him for one minute.

She reached a hand over, and he almost flinched. He was tense whenever she touched him but wasn't allowed to show it, and her fingers on his skin were torture, the scent of her strong and rotten under the covers. She expected him to reach for her, so he did, feeling the slackness, the fat, not Dre's hard body. She was kissing him, and he pushed Dre from his mind, thought of nothing (his father driving, looking in the mirror to see how he was doing in the backseat). Her hands worked him up clumsily; after so many years, he thought, she should know how to touch him. His hands strayed across her back, trying to find neutral ground. How selfish he was, what a terrible man.

Her hand left him and the light clicked on.

“Open your eyes,” she said. “Look at me.”

She wanted him above her, she said, where she could see him, and Harold could not say no. There was too much at stake—Chris, and Eugene, the life he needed to provide his family. The bruise accused him, livid. He had no defense in its presence, least of all his feelings. She took him into her, pulled his face down to her mouth. “Tell me you love me,” she said, and he did, thinking Dre would forgive him. “I don't believe you. Show me.” She wanted him to be with her completely, to stop thinking of the other woman, and trying to put some heat in his kisses, to fool his own body (not his heart, no, it knew the truth), he wondered how much of his life he had to sacrifice. All, he thought. She wanted it all.

HE KNEW WHAT
they'd do to him, and how it felt. The boiled food, the cold floors, the stiff jeans and blue uniform shirts starched so hard they scratched the back of your neck open. Fights in the dormitories with hidden pencils, the sharpened butts of toothbrushes, a soap-in-a-sock bolo. Eugene had been in Schuman three times, so he knew what it was like coming back after you thought you were done with it. They all thought you were stupid, a loser. Either that or hard-core, and with one look Eugene could see Little Nene didn't have that. He wasn't straight insane like his brother—he just wasn't thinking at all, Darrin would say.

His Granmoms called Eugene first thing, and he said he'd go down and help out at the scheduling, though he was sure there was nothing he could do. The hearing was immediately, that night. He shaved and put on his good suit, and Smooth came and picked him up in the Regal.

“z'at a Bible?” Smooth asked.

“Yeah.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“I don't know,” he said. “Represent, I guess.”

“You're not gonna preach now.”

It was supposed to be a joke, and though both of them laughed, Eugene couldn't explain why he'd brought it along.

Even at the Public Safety Building he wasn't sure what he was doing. He was surprised when the defender pointed to him and the judge asked him to stand up. With her glasses on a chain and her hair pulled back, she reminded him of Mrs. Roby, his old social studies teacher at Reizenstein.

“Mr. Tolbert, what is your role here?”

“I'm here to represent Leonard's family. His grandmother couldn't be here. His older brother was killed a few weeks ago in a murder.”