Only the Wicked (5 page)

Odessa was pouring Harris' beer for him in a short, stout glass. He rubbed her neck affectionately.

“What was there to say?” Nona Monk replied. “I was born in Clarksdale, but my folks came up here when I was eight. That was before the war. I didn't see Kennesaw again, except for two summer vacations, until I was a teenager. There was a funeral for one of my aunts, and I saw him then. 'Course, when Jackie broke the color barrier in 'forty-seven, I remember my father getting a call from Kennesaw. We were living on Wadsworth, just west of Central. And you could hear whooping and hollering up and down the Avenue. You'd of thought Jesus had returned, and brought Moses with him. Men and women took part of that day off to celebrate Jack Roosevelt Robinson's victory. Our victory.”

“Jackie played in Montreal the year before,” Monk said.

“That's right. We all knew it was going to happen, it was just a matter as to when. April fifteenth, opening day the following year after he returned from Canada. That was the day. White fellas in the stands hollered ‘Hey Snowflake,' and ‘nigger go back to the cotton field.”' His mother set her jaw in a determined fashion. “It didn't matter. It was like when my father and his friends would huddle around the radio and listen to one of Joe Louis' fights.”

“Or Ali predicting what round he was going to win.” Monk clasped his hands together and leaned forward on the table.

His mother ran a finger over the gold leaf of her plate. “Some of the black players had pools going, you know, would it be Satchel or Josh White … but history and circumstance decided, and gave us Jackie Robinson.” His mother's eyes glistened. “You can't imagine what it was like then. Jackie maybe wasn't the best, but he was damn good enough.”

“Satchel Paige went to Cleveland the following year, I believe,” Kodama added.

“That's right,” Nona Monk concurred. “Anyway, around nineteen-fifty or so, I was fourteen … yeah, and Kennesaw was still playing ball, though he was getting up there for an athlete. By then you had forty or so black players in the white leagues. They paid the money and could attract the young up-and-coming talent.”

“Killing the Negro National League,” Monk lamented.

“The Negro American League kept going, but things had changed,” Nona Monk remembered. “Kennesaw's time had passed, too. Then I don't see or hear from him again until back here in LA, and he's coaching the Towne Avenue All-Stars in 'sixty or 'sixty-one, I guess.” She started to salt her beans, but stopped at a stern glare from her son. “Really, we weren't all that close. Like I said, it was your father who was a bigger fan of baseball than me. It was like with Tiger Woods now. People who never had a thought about golf in a hundred years starting to watch the game. Kids taking it up. That's what Jackie was then.”

“So you didn't talk to him again after he went back down south?” Odessa rose, gathering her own and Harris' plates. He leisurely drank his Weinhard's.

“No,” she sighed. “There was no reason to.” Impatiently, she snapped, “Can we talk about something else?”

Monk looked at Kodama, who stared back. He put his attention elsewhere. “You got it real good there, Frank,” Monk said between tight lips. “I've never seen Odessa pay that much attention to one of her beaus before, not even her ex-husband.” He ignored the implication of Kodama's raised eyebrow.

“We do for each other, Ivan,” Harris said evenly.

“Why are you so nosey?” Odessa challenged, having stopped at the kitchen door.

“Observant.” Monk tapped the side of his eye socket.

Their mother and Kodama exchanged head nods and kept on eating. Odessa went into the kitchen, mumbling a reply she chose not to make too audible.

Monk got up and leaned over the table, slicing off a second helping of steak. “Anything for you, my love?” he asked, turning to Kodama.

“I'm fine.” She smiled sweetly at him.

Monk sat and ate and contemplated.

“Excuse me a minute,” Harris said, leaving the room and going through the kitchen door.

“You're hilarious,” Kodama hissed at Monk.

His mother laughed softly into the napkin she held to her mouth.

Monk looked up at her quizzically, gnawing on his food like a bumpkin.

Kodama shook a finger at him like a school marm as the two returned from the kitchen. Odessa carried the pineapple upside down cake she'd baked and brought with her. Harris held a tray with coffee, cups and saucers.

“Let me clear a space for you there, Frank.” Monk jumped up and bussed plates out of the way.

Harris put the tray down, a bemused twist to his mouth.

“So, Mom, did you tell Ivan?” Odessa deposited the cake on its plate in the center of the table and began cutting slices.

Monk sopped up gravy with a piece of bread. “Yes …?” he drawled.

“I want to get my finances in order so I can retire this year.” Nona Monk poured herself a cup of coffee. “I'll be sixty-five, that's enough work for one person.”

“That ain't the point, Mom.” Monk poured coffee for him and Kodama. In his, he added a healthy amount of milk and a little sugar. “You got your good looks and the house is paid for. You got the union pension and those whopping social security checks George W. Bush and Arianna Huffington want you to have.”

“Shut up,” his sister teased him.

“But the reality is, what would you do? You've been working for a long time. And I know from Dexter, if you don't find something to keep you busy, you'll go nuts with boredom.”

“You want me to do something,” she put a hand on her still-slim hip. “Give me a couple of grandchildren, and I'll have plenty to do.” She waved a hand at her daughter. “Coleman's pretty much grown, and at your lousy pace, he'll be having my great-grandchildren before you step up to the plate.”

“How clever of you, Mom. Using a baseball metaphor to tie in with our previous conversation.”

“Jill's right, you think you're too doggone smart” She reached over and playfully slapped him with the linen napkin.

“We're getting there,” he said evasively.

“Your son's not kidding you,” Kodama said, stirring her coffee for a long time. “We did talk about children last weekend.” She lifted the cup, pausing halfway. “We even fooled around with some names.”

Nona Monk was on her feet, gathering up what was left of the meat and the empty casserole dish. “Now we're talking.” She drifted off.

Monk got up and went into the living room. He searched through the rack of CDs on a black tubular shelf from Ikea. He found what he wanted to hear, and inserted the disk in the CD player.

As Etta James sang “Rather Go Blind,” he passed by a sitting Kodama. He leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. She grabbed his shirt front and kissed him on the cheek. “Nona,” Kodama said, watching Monk take his seat again. “I've got a guy I use who helps me with my investments.”

“I don't have your kind of money, Jill.” Nona Monk devoured a piece of pineapple cake.

“No, no,” she said. “He's not some Century Park East stock-broker. He's got an office not too far from Ivan's in Culver City. He works with middle-class folks to put something away and get better returns than a bank.”

“You mentioned him to me before,” the older woman admitted.

“And now's the time you should see him,” Kodama said. She retrieved her purse from the sideboard, and dug in the stylish Gucci clutch bag. “Here,” she wrote a number and name on a scrap of paper, and handed it to Monk's mother. “I'll tell him you're going to call.”

“Sweetheart,” his mother began to protest.

“Even with my Siberian camp wages, I've been able to save something with Mel's help.” Monk wrestled with having another piece of cake. He silently voted yes, and pledged to himself to do extra sit-ups at the Tiger's Den, the gym owned and run by exmiddle-weight Tiger Flowers on West 48th Street.

“Listen to Jill, Mom. Mel's a good guy. He won't put you in anything that will send you to the poor house.” He eagerly shoveled another piece of cake onto his cake plate.

“I can always live with one of you if I'm broke.” She drained her cup.

Monk tried to catch Odessa's attention, but she was brushing crumbs off Harris' shirt. He let a small smile pull back one side of his goatee. He hoped his sister's boyfriend saw the action. “Maybe Coleman would rent you space in his room.”

His mother slurped her coffee noisily, not amused by the idea.

***

Later, in the Ford on the way home, Monk complained to Kodama. “What in the living hell was all that about?”

Kodama, sitting close to him on the bench seat, fell over toward the passenger door laughing. “Shee-it, you're just mad ‘cause I don't dote on you like that.” She giggled some more.

Monk patted her thigh. “Listen here, Your Honor. I been knowin' that girl all my life. I'm the one talked her into marrying Nelson Gardner when my mother said to hold off.”

Kodama straightened up, slapping Monk in the shoulder with an open hand. “That proves you don't know what's good for your sister.”

“If I could make my case without being interrupted,” Monk implored. The Ford went past a tangle of vines crawling up two sides of a red brick house; he turned right, heading east on 3rd Street. A man in kilts and a space helmet did a dance in the glassed-in bus stop in front of the vine-covered wall. Kodama and Monk barely noticed him.

“The thing was, she was crazy for Nelson. He drove mail trucks, the eighteen-wheelers, from the old downtown annex to the airport. He was a man, you know what I'm saying.”

Kodama tapped her sternum with her fist several times. “Kong, son of Kong.”

“She couldn't go to bed at night ‘less she knew his socks didn't have holes in them, and he had a good bowel movement. See? She was that concerned about his well-being. But I never once, not once, saw her fuss over Nelson the way I've seen her act around Harris.” He came to a stop at Western. “You remember last month, when the four of us went to see Jimmy Smith at the House of Blues?” Monk rambled, jerking the car forward on the green light. “A couple of drinks in her, and every five minutes she was getting up to wipe pretzel crumbs off his mouth.”

Kodama made a face, watching the cars pass alongside her window. “This is the first time she's been with a younger man. Maybe Odessa feels she has to do more to keep him.”

“She ain't got an aluminum leg.”

“She ain't no kid.”

“Meaning you think it's all right for her to act like some lovesick debutante with that dude?”

A blue-and-silver garbage truck barreled south on Westmorland in front of the pair. The Ford was waiting in the left turn lane to turn north on the same street. Plastered on the side of the truck was a cartoon logo of a buck-toothed possum in high hat and tails. Beneath that image, the words SHINDAR L.P. could be discerned by the truck's running lights.

“You're not trying to talk me into doing that with you, are you, Ivan?”

The veins on the back of Monk's hands stood out like thick speaker wire as he gripped the steering wheel. “No.”

She slid close to him, rubbing his inner thigh with her hand. “Sure about that, baby?”

They kissed quickly, and Monk took the Ford toward Beverly Boulevard. Once there, he swung east on Beverly and took that street until it branched off onto Silverlake Boulevard. “I don't want to see my sister getting in so deep she can't see which way she's going. She hasn't exactly had a great record with men and relationships.”

Kodama touched the back of Monk's neck. “I don't think Frank is using her. He seems to have genuine feelings for her.”

“This from a modern woman.”

“People express their love in all kind of ways, Ivan.”

“Huh,” he rumbled.

They rode along for a few minutes. Eventually Kodama broke the silence. “And what's up with your mom avoiding talking about your cousin?”

“Another goddamn mystery,” Monk groused.

Soon he parked in the driveway to their Richard Neutra-style split-level two-story house on a hill overlooking the Silverlake Reservoir. At the door, Monk nuzzled Kodama from behind. “Love is something, isn't it?”

Inside, Monk began to unbutton his shirt, Kodama tugging on the tail. “What about kids, Mr. Monk?”

Monk continued removing his shirt. He then bobbed his head like a fighter warming up, or ducking an opponent. “How many you thinking about?”

“Two,” she said adroitly. “I'm an only child, which was cool, but I think a kid should have a brother or sister. When the old folks are gone, they should have each other.”

Monk scratched his exposed belly. “Assuming they still talk to each other when they're grown. I know some siblings who just as soon not make the effort.”

“But we do agree on having children?” Kodama took a few steps up the stairs.

“Well, yeah, at some point.”

“Some point is now, sport.”

Monk also started up. “Like right now?”

“I'm pushing the time clock, baby. If children are to be in our lives, I've got to get crackin' pretty darn quick.”

Monk leaned against the wall, next to a Noah Purifoy found-objects sculpture in a Plexiglas frame. “I kinda figured we'd plot this out, Jill.”

She started walking upstairs again. “I'm not going to have to draw you diagrams, am I?”

“You know what I mean.” He followed her.

“We've talked about it for several months. We both want children. If your mother retires, and what with my folks having extra time, it does seem like this is the best opportunity to get the show on the road.”

“My dad used to say that.” Monk caught up to her on the landing.

“Scared, huh?” Her gaze dissected him.

“I'd be lying if I said I wasn't,” Monk admitted. “It's a serious move, Jill.”