Tempest Rising (3 page)

He sat there breathing deliberately, waiting until he could detect the scent of pepper through the orange, his cue to turn the cutlets. But instead a whiff of something like fresh grass rushed into the kitchen, and he looked up, and there Clarise stood, still in her robe and slippers, her hair straight and brushed back, giving a show to that face that had melted him all those years ago.

“I hope you’re garnishing with parsley,” she said as she slid inside the door, shook the daylight from the other chair, and sat down at the table. “You know green goes with orange; please, no purple cabbage this time like you used for the Wellingtons’ party. Green, when you marinate in orange, your garnish must be green.”

“I was going to use green, I’ll have you know,” Finch said, agitated, wanting to spend the beginning of this day with himself and his cutlets. “And please don’t start in with me about colors so early. First the daybreak comes rushing in, and now you.” He went to the refrigerator, pushed the colander of cut purple cabbage to the back, pulled out a brown paper bag with parsley leaves hanging out.

“Well, my flat-footed man, you’d have a better chance of keeping the daylight from coming in here than me. And what’s got your dander up anyhow?”
She ran her finger along the inside of the bowl where the marinade had been and licked the orange drippings from her finger.

“Tired, couldn’t sleep; all night I was up.” He arranged the parsley on his cook’s table, spreading it wide so that it would take up more space on the table.

“Couldn’t sleep? Why not?” she asked into the bowl as she sopped up another good fingerful of marinade from the inside of the bowl.

“If you must know, it was you grinding your teeth in your sleep. I was up all night listening to you grind your teeth. Have you ever heard yourself? Ghastly sound, so very irritating.”

“Well, silly man, why didn’t you wake me and tell me to stop?” she retorted, licking her lips and making a smacking sound.

“You know you die when you fall asleep.” He reached for his vegetable knife from the knife block. “A bull chasing a matador could crash through the front window and there wouldn’t be a peep from you, except of course for your teeth thrashing about, going at it with each other.”

“Well, what are you doing up all night, listening to my teeth anyhow? Something on your mind, Finch?”

“Always something on my mind. I’m a grown Negro man with a business and a family to care for and keep in style; don’t you think I should have things on my mind?” He cut the leafy heads from
the parsley and looked on the wall for his smaller colander. He remembered it was in the refrigerator filled with purple cabbage.

“Money’s on your mind, right, Finch? Worried that we don’t have enough to make it, right?”

“We have enough to make it.”

“For today, Finch, when it’s bright and sunny, like this room is now. What about tomorrow, when it rains?”

They’d had this conversation many times over the years. And usually Finch would hit Clarise with a saying, something about the perils of worrying about tomorrow. This time it was “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die.” He shouted to be heard above the water gushing over the colander of parsley. “And I do have substantial life insurance for when that day comes.”

Clarise raised her voice now too. Took the stance the aunts would take when they were teaching her how to hold her own: hands on her hips, legs slightly parted, head pushed way forward of her neck. “You sound like a got-damned fool,” she said. “Don’t you realize that the dodo bird went extinct because it didn’t concern itself with tomorrow?”

He let the parsley fall back in the sink, shook the water from his hands, went to the drawer on the side of his cook’s studio where he kept his contracts, pulled out the passbook savings account from PSFS and turned it to the balance page and flashed it in her face. He thought about something
else he could quote, noticed the hand-painted lilies on her silk robe. Paraphrased Matthew then. “Consider the lilies of the field; they neither toil nor spin.”

“You are not some flower, Finch, nor am I,” she said as she snatched the bankbook from his hand.

“But even Solomon in all his splendor was not so richly clothed.” Finch talked right over her.

Clarise studied the balance page. She was half satisfied that they could make it in the short term anyhow.

Finch held his breath while she peered at the bankbook. He could almost smell the lilies on her robe they looked so real. He lived for Clarise. Even though he’d gladly lay his life down for his darling daughters, it was for Clarise that his lungs took in air. He saw her dusty grey eyes soften. He wiped his hands against his apron, took her head against his expansive shoulder. “Clarise, you are so wrong,” he said. “You are in fact a flower, my pretty baby flower, more precious to me than a whole field of lilies.” He mashed his chin against her hair, which had gone from straight to fluffy while they argued, meant it was going to rain later. “So what if you kept me up all night grinding your teeth?”

“Awl, Finch,” she gushed, “you are my dodo bird, the only one who was smart enough to stay alive.”

They swayed against each other, telling love jokes and laughing softly, the daylight trying to get between them, trying to separate them so they’d have to talk real talk some more. Finch pushed the day
light away, told it to go sit its ass back down at the table. Told himself not to worry.

Finch was worried, though. A deep-down belly kind of worry that cut his appetite so that he hardly tasted his cooking anymore by dunking his finger in his gravies, and glazes, and juices from his meats. Clarise could taste his worry too: His pot pies were salty; the texture on the skin of his lambs was tough; the brown, crunchy head on his baked macaroni and cheese was thinner now; even the glaze on his yams, which used to shine like liquid crystal, was duller, grayer.

It was the lure of the catering chains. Lyndon Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act, the last bastions of Jim Crow had buckled everywhere, and black people were flocking to J&A’s, McCloskey’s, Bain’s, to get their catering needs met. They still enlisted Finch for the teenage birthday parties, the Saturday afternoon club meetings, the private tea at somebody’s home. But they answered freedom’s call for the volume events where Finch used to turn a regular and substantial profit: the 200-guest wedding reception, the railroad retirement party to feed 150, the golden anniversary that was covered in the
Tribune
and would have given some ink to Heavenly Caterers. Those major accounts abandoned Finch, went instead with the display advertisers in the yellow pages that promised, “We’ll cater to all your needs, your place or ours.”

When someone mentioned the elegant affair
they’d attended downtown, Finch would grunt, “Don’t dare talk to me about some established caterer who’s doing nothing but robbing people with god-awful potato salad and inattentive service.”

“But, Finch,” they’d say, “this is progress for our people.”

Finch would grunt again and rock back and forth on his heels. “You want to know progress for our people,” he’d boom. “Progress for our people won’t be had until that giant white man that all you silly Negroes run to spend your money with like he’s God on earth starts coming to the likes of me to spend his. Or,” he’d snort, “when that Mayor Tate hires Heavenly Caterers to do his inaugural ball.”

F
inch got increasingly more despondent as he started chipping away at the exterior of their charmed lives. There would be no pony rides at Bliss’s eleventh birthday party, and summer for the girls would be spent at a day camp in the city. Last year’s Easter garb would have to do, and his plan to install one more six-jet stove in his cook’s studio would go on ice for now. It wouldn’t be enough; had to admit it to himself and the daybreak every morning when he started his food preparations and the daylight rushed in and hit him over the head, forced him to see that his passbook savings account was flattening out like a tire with a slow leak.

He thought about redirecting his business, maybe
apply for a small business loan; that was certainly more appealing than accepting money from the aunts and uncles. How much like a speck of dust he’d felt the night before, right after one of his lavish Sunday dinners, an eye roast, pecan string beans, potato salad, and a side of chitterlings because the aunts and Clarise loved them so, and the aunts and uncles cornered him in his kitchen, all four of them, under the guise of checking out his new paring knives. Til told him that they had money; their daddy, who’d been born a free man even though it was before the Emancipation, had left them land. And Clarise had mentioned he wasn’t doing that big fraternity ball that he’d done every year that attracted thousands; they didn’t mean to insult his manhood by implying that he couldn’t carry his family in style, but the Negro has it hard, they’d said. Let them help, they’d insisted, please let them help.

But of course Finch was insulted, told them as politely as he could that there was no need to accept their offer, even accidentally nicked his thumb as he turned his paring knife over when he said it. Because he did need help, a quick infusion of funds just until he could concoct a plan for redirecting his business.

And now it hit him as he sat in his cook’s studio sipping coffee and making small talk with the daybreak about his years at sea and how he’d envy the lone fishermen as they’d cast their nets, working for no one but themselves. Crabbing. He could rent his
second cousin’s boat and go crabbing. He’d secure a hall for himself this time, call it a crab feast. He’d steam them, mash them, and fry them in batter and oil, bake them, barbecue them, toss them in salads. He’d take out an ad in the
Tribune;
he’d leave flyers at churches; he’d make it a monthly thing, maybe weekly if it really took off. He got excited the more he imagined the potential for success. He wouldn’t say anything to anybody right now, not even Clarise, especially with the seesaw her moods seemed to be riding on lately. He’d surprise her with the prospect when he was certain of its success; his lungs expanded at the thought of her face going wild with excitement, looking even more exotic when he presented her with his idea, wrapped up in good thorough planning like a diamond in a velvet pouch. Crabbing. He’d go out at least once and see the potential for the catch. Maybe even Tuesday he’d go. He’d watch Clarise’s hair for signs of the weather; then he’d pack his hip boots and head for the Maryland shore.

Clarise had her own plans. She’d mentioned to her doctor at her yearly physical that her nerves had been affected by the financial fluctuations in Finch’s business. He’d prescribed Elavil, small doses, and advised Clarise to take up knitting, or crocheting, or some similarly calming hobby. She did. Would even hum while she knitted. Used the finest wools and an inventive knit and purl cross-stitch to weave together all kinds of hats and scarves for the girls. She was quickly approaching the point where she
was ready to start showing her work to department stores, maybe bring in enough to buy shetland and angoras in bulk, turn enough of a profit to put some black ink onto the pages of Finch’s savings account passbook. Her heart tore a little whenever she’d hear the weight of Finch’s flat feet lumbering into the bedroom, trying not to wake her, whistling, she knew, just in case she was awake. But even his whistling was a lower pitch, the notes sagging in the bedroom air, trying to stay afloat. She was more determined now that she’d buy the wool, work her fingers in fast weaving motions, mix colors, like she’d been taught by the uncles; stay strong, straight-backed, like she’d learned from the aunts. But that Tuesday night happened first.

T
he girls were at their seats at the oversized Formica table in the breakfast room. They had just finished watching
Petticoat Junction,
and Shern, the oldest, thirteen-year-old gorgeous child with the dark, liquid eyes, argued with Bliss, the eleven-year-old baby with the golden hair. Their dispute this time, these two always disagreed, was over who the prettiest daughter on that TV show was. Victoria disinvolved herself in their argument. Victoria, who was twelve, was in the middle not only in order of birth but in all things it seemed: her opinions, her appearance, her height, but not her ability to modulate disagreements between her older and younger sisters; in that, she knew, she excelled. But this
Tuesday night she let them go at it. One had just told the other she was a blind bat and looked like a bat too, with beady eyes and leathery skin. Victoria didn’t even know who said it to whom; she was too plugged into her mother right now, feeling Clarise’s extreme edginess as if she were connected to her mother through an electric cord.

Clarise walked into the breakfast room with the comb and brush and grease and a half dozen sponge rollers nestled in her pink mesh hair care caddie. And Victoria could no longer stand the jolts shooting through her stomach every time she focused on her mother. “Is something the matter, Mommie?” she asked finally as Clarise tilted Victoria’s chin so that she could wind her bang around a hair roller.

Clarise dipped her finger into the jar of Dixie Peach hair pomade and smoothed it over Victoria’s bang. “Sniff,” Clarise said.

“Sniff?” Victoria asked, and then breathed in deeply through her nose. “Sniff what?”

“Exactly my point,” Clarise said. “There’s nothing. Nothing to smell but the sweetness of this Dixie Peach hair grease.” Clarise moved across the table to do Bliss’s bang. Both Bliss and Shern had stopped arguing, and all three were starkly silent, the perplexity of their mother’s words hanging over the breakfast room.

“Nothing, just nothing,” Clarise continued to mutter.

“Huh?” Bliss asked.

“Don’t say ‘Huh,’” Clarise snapped. She yanked
on Bliss’s hair when she said it. “Say, ‘Excuse me, please, I didn’t understand you.’”

“Excuse me, please, I didn’t understand you.” Bliss rubbed her scalp where her mother had just yanked her head and started to cry. “I’m sorry, Mommie.”

“Okay, okay, don’t cry, my darling.” Clarise rubbed Bliss’s scalp and kissed her forehead. “Mommie didn’t mean to hurt you, but you must speak correct English, and you must learn to read the signs.”