Seen It All and Done the Rest (17 page)

TWENTY-EIGHT

F
our hours later, we had figured out where the major pieces of our budget were coming from so we decided to save the rest for tomorrow and reward ourselves with a swim. It’s funny how a new decision can give you the impetus you need to get moving. Once we decided we were going to sell, we had an organizing principle. We shared a goal that we had said out loud and we were in this together.

We slipped into our suits and padded out to the pool, slid into the water, and closed our eyes. We both sighed at the same time. That’s the thing about being in warm water. It’s hard to keep worrying. Which isn’t to say my brain wasn’t still sorting through strategies and solutions. I opened my eyes.

“Can we really list the house on the computer?” I said to Zora, who was doing a lazy breaststroke nearby.

She laughed. “I love the way you say it. ‘On the computer,’ like the Internet is this vast, mysterious thing that requires special attention and animal sacrifices in order to do your bidding.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” I said, glad I was floating on my back so I could see the moon. “My whole generation is illiterate when it comes to computers. Even the ones with the BlackBerries. They’re faking it.”

“You all are just lazy,” she said. “But the answer is yes, of course we can list it. All the real estate companies do it. That’s the easy part. The hard part is there are thousands of houses listed. Probably millions. We need something to make ours stand out. Something to catch your eye that makes it special.”

“Too bad we don’t have a mermaid.”

“That would definitely help.”

“You never did tell me the story of how it got here,” I said.

“You need to ask Amelia when she gets back,” Zora said, kicking her feet gently so that we floated along side by side, talking easily. “All I know is that some of the rich guys who built these houses had a little competition going with giving extravagant gifts to their wives. The guy next door built a life-size playhouse. The one across the street put in a terraced garden with a waterfall. There’s a house around the corner with beautiful stained-glass windows all around. But this guy drove them all crazy when he built this pool. It was one of the first ones in Atlanta and it got written up in the paper and everything.”

“How come the beautiful mermaid is so brown?” I said, knowing there were no black folks living in West End way back then.

“The tiles were made at some special place in Morocco and they cost a fortune. The guy didn’t specify color when he ordered it. He just said he wanted a mermaid, so when the tiles got here, he couldn’t send them back.”

“What did his wife say?”

“The story is that she refused to swim in it,” Zora said.

“Just because the mermaid was brown?”

“I guess,” Zora said, floating on ahead. “You should ask Amelia.”

That must have been one angry white woman to give up the pleasures of swimming in her own private pool just because of a brown mermaid, or there was more to the story than met the eye.

“Do you think it was his mistress?” I called to Zora at the other end of the pool now.

“The mermaid?” She sounded shocked.

“Not a real mermaid,” I said. “Whoever posed for the picture.”

“I never thought about it,” she said, laughing as she floated back alongside me. “You’re always looking for a story.”

“That’s my job,” I said. “You ready to get out?”

“Sure,” she said.

We climbed out into the cool night air and wrapped ourselves in two big beach towels.

“That would kind of finish off the story right, wouldn’t it?” I said. “The wife had looked the other way for years, and then, suddenly, in full view of her neighbors, she’s confronted with the face of her rival, right in her own backyard.”

“Right in her own backyard,” Zora echoed, wrapping another towel around her head.

“Now that would be enough to make you concede use of this wonderful pool, but just a generic racial response? I don’t think so.”

“That’s because you’re not a racist,” Zora said. “Remember they had to drain that whole pool in Las Vegas because Dorothy Dandridge put her toe in it.”

“Dorothy Dandridge was a real live woman, not a bunch of Moroccan tiles and they didn’t
have
to,” I said, slipping on my flip-flops and leaning over to touch my toes just because I could. “They
chose
to. All those people who sat there and let that hotel manager act a fool are the ones who made it such an ugly story.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think how differently that whole crowd could have gone down in history if they had all jumped in the pool when he insulted Dorothy to show their support for another human being. Then Dorothy would have jumped in, too, and they would have had the great pleasure of seeing one of the most beautiful women in the world laughing and playing in the water with all her new friends.”

“I like your story better than the real one, Mafeenie,” Zora said, slipping her arm through mine as we headed up the path to the house.

“Of course you do,” I said. “Everybody likes a happy ending.”

TWENTY-NINE

T
he next morning when Zora went to work, I called Greer Woodruff’s office. The pretty little receptionist told me nobody was available so I left a message on the boss lady’s voice mail.

“Ms. Woodruff? This is Josephine Evans. Thank you for your offer to buy my mother’s house, but it’s not for sale at this time. I think she’d want it that way.”

THIRTY

A
bbie was more confident of my decision than I was. She was making a pot of tea and telling me why.

“The first thing is, it’s your mother’s place, so you
know
you have to fix it up. Second, how can you pass it along to Miss Zora unless you do?”

She was pouring boiling water over the silver tea ball she had dropped into the round dark blue pot. “Plus, Dr. King deserves better.”

She put the teakettle back on the stove and dropped a big dollop of Tupelo honey into the hot water.

“Dr. Martin Luther King?”

“That’s the one,” she said. “May he rest in peace.”

“Rest in peace,” I said, “but what does that have to do with this?”

“Only everything,” Abbie said, taking down two round mugs in the same shape as the teapot. “Your house happens to be on his street.”

That much was true, but so was Jake’s Soul Food Shack and Miss Diana’s Wig Parlor and Hakim’s Bookstore and the building where the old Paschal’s used to be down the street from the Busy Bee Café.

“The corner lot, too. It should be a showpiece.”

“What are you talking about?” I said, following her down the hall to the living room where she had made what would probably be the last fire of the season. It was almost spring. Moving in a fragrant cloud of jasmine tea and patchouli, she put the tray down and we claimed opposite ends of the couch.

“I’m talking about showing some respect. I’m talking about how we’ve let a street that is supposed to honor a great American hero become a punch line for black comedians,” she said, pouring two steaming cups of sweet tea and handing me one. “I just think he deserves better.”

“Of course he does,” I said, “but it’s just one house.”

“Peachy’s friend Zeke always says all we can do is one house, one street at a time.”

She looked so small and certain, sitting there cross-legged and serene. Abbie was always the idealist in the group, arguing for the goodness in people when the Marxists made her start feeling pessimistic. She was still trusting in the transformative powers of community.

“You haven’t changed a bit.”

“Neither have you,” she said. “Riding in like the Amazon Queen to rescue everybody.”

“Don’t get carried away,” I said. “I’m not rescuing anybody. I’m just cleaning up my yard like any good citizen would do.”

I was teasing her about her recent breakthrough on the citizenship front, but she didn’t take low.

“Then as one good citizen to another, I will volunteer my services for your crew.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I said, immediately picturing those mounds of trash, those grossly graffitied walls. The smell in that place would render Abbie’s patchouli null and void.

“Of course I do,” she said calmly. “You said you needed five and with me, you, Aretha, and Zora, that’s four. One more is easy. Besides, you don’t think I’m going to let you have this adventure without me, do you?”

“Is that what this is?” I laughed. “An adventure?”

“Of course,” she said. “What did you think it was?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A wedding?”

She smiled and sipped her tea. “The jury is still out on that one.”

“Well, until it comes in, will the gentleman in question let you stay away from Tybee Island long enough to get any work done?” I teased her.

“He’ll survive,” she said, and had the nerve to blush.

“You love him, don’t you?”

“I do,” she said. “I really do. It’s crazy, but he makes me laugh, he’s got a lot of sense, and the sex is amazing.”

Five years of self-imposed celibacy had gotten me out of the habit of conversations where current sexual partners were routinely revealed and rated. I didn’t know if I was more surprised that she spoke so frankly or that she was still having sex she described as amazing.

“Excuse me?”

“There is an art to making love to a postmenopausal woman, as I’m sure you know,” she said. “And Peachy Nolan is an artist.”

“You ought to quit,” I said. “I’m talking about home repairs and you’re talking about multiple orgasms. You’re making me jealous.”

“Yeah, right,” she said. “How many sad-eyed leading men did you leave throwing roses on the tarmac as your plane lifted off?”

“Those were the days, but they are long gone.”

“Nobody special?”

I shook my head. “Not for a while.”

“No sex at all?”

“Not unless you count a little self-pleasuring now and then.”

She laughed. “Why’d you stop?”

It was a question we could ask each other. Our long-ago lives had paved the way for an intimacy that came back immediately, like riding a bike. Or having sex.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It just got harder and harder to meet men I wanted to invest that kind of energy in. Then things started drooping down and drying up and I just got tired of all the prep work.”

Abbie laughed, but not unsympathetically. She knew she was the exception, not the rule. The truth was, I missed having sex. It wasn’t always great, but it was always something.

“You talk about it like major surgery!”

“Don’t get me started,” I said, rolling my eyes.

She laughed again, but I had a serious question. “Are you really going to marry him?”

“I think so. I just want to be sure. Half the reason I’m spending so much time off the island for a couple of months is to see how it feels to be away from him. We’ve been joined at the hip for the last year or so and I want to give myself a chance to look at what we are a little more objectively.”

“Without all that great sex to cloud the issue?”

“Something like that. So you see, helping you with the house would be a perfect way to distract myself while I make up my mind.”

“All right,” I said. “You may consider yourself an official part of the crew.”

“Thank you. I didn’t know I was going to have to beg to help you take out the trash!”

“I’m glad for you,” I said. “About Peachy.”

“But a little surprised, huh?”

“A little. I can’t imagine getting married at this age. I’m too set in my ways.”

“Well, that’s the trick, I think,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “Love always removes an element of freedom. All the give and take, the compromises you make. That’s just part of it.”

“Which is probably why I’d be an awful wife. I’m not even a very good friend.”

Abbie refilled our cups. “You’re a great friend. I’ve been missing you for the last twenty years.”

“I’m too selfish to be a good friend,” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s an occupational hazard. If you’re going to be in theater, nothing can be more important than the show. Not friends. Not family. Not lovers. Nothing.”

She was looking at me strangely. I knew it sounded harsh, but it was true.

“Well, I’ll consider myself forewarned, but don’t let the fact that I’m serving tea and cookies mislead you. I have my moments.”

“You are the sweetest person I know!”

“That’s because I usually get my way.”

The way she said it made me laugh. “What happens when you don’t?”

“Then I go someplace where I do!”

“Does Peachy know this side of you?”

“Of course,” she said. “He’s usually the place I go.”