The Boy in the Black Suit (4 page)

I didn't stay for the repast, which would pretty much become tradition. Funerals only. Nothing else. I gave Mr. Ray back his funky coat, and told him that I needed to head home.

“Homework?” he asked, like an old man.

“Yeah, unfortunately,” I lied. I didn't have any homework. I just didn't want to be around when people started introducing themselves and talking about how they knew Mr. Jameson. It would've been pretty awkward if his loved ones found out that I actually never met the guy. That we never shared a joke or advice
or nothing like that. That I was just kind of hanging out watching the funeral like it was a pickup game at the park, or some kind of reality
TV
show.
Crashing Caskets
.

“Yeah, you a different one, a'ight. Nothing like how me and Robbie was,” Mr. Ray said again, slipping his arm back into his suit jacket. “You go 'head on. We'll meet back here tomorrow after school is through.”

I nodded. “I'll be here.”

Chapter 2

HEAD TO FOOT

I
T
'
S SO WEIRD HOW A PERSON
can be a normal part of your everyday life, and then just disappear. And when they do, you realize that some of those everyday things go with them. Like the smell of food cooking. Or the sound of Rick James, Frankie Beverly, or the Isley Brothers playing as background music in our house. The kettle, whistling. Water running in the kitchen sink. She was always at the kitchen sink, my mom, doing a two-step or something. Her voice, and her voices.

My mother had a thing for accents. She learned a bunch when she was in acting school way before I was born, which is how she met my father. Well, sort of. She moved to Harlem from South Carolina to be an actress, and he moved up here from Baltimore to do the same thing. Only difference is, she went to acting school, and he “went with his gut,” as he puts it. While they both waited
for their big breaks, they worked in a soul food restaurant. Dad was a dishwasher, and Mom was a waitress, where she tried out her crazy accents on random customers. She said it was always funny when people would get confused, hearing a little country mixed in with Russian (especially coming from a black girl). The French one was my favorite—it was the one she did the most.
Oui, oui
, never again. Only
au revoir
.

Now the house was totally silent. And it had no smell. It was empty, and for the first time it actually felt that way. Stale. Old, but I guess new at the same time. My first thought as I walked in was to call out for her like I normally did when I got home. But I caught myself. Instead I just sat at the kitchen table and looked around at all the things that I was used to, that now suddenly seemed so strange.

The sink. There were no dishes in it. No pots, no pans. The clock radio flashed 4:04 p.m. in green digital numbers. A photo was taped to the wall just above the faucet of my mother and father when they were much younger, holding my hand on the boardwalk at Coney Island. They looked happy. I looked miserable. I don't even remember taking that picture. It was my first trip to the beach. My mother always teased me about how I didn't understand what sand was, and how I was afraid to let it touch my feet. So I cried most of the trip. The photo had started to change colors, especially at the corners, which were fading into a weird brown, probably because of all the steam coming from the sink over the years. I never really cared too much about that picture, but all of a sudden it seemed special. Us as a family.

I glanced at the old cooking notebook my mom made for me sandwiched between the can of sugar and the can of flour on the counter. It was where my mother wrote easy recipes for me to make. It was like her way of passing the cooking torch so that I could do my thing in the kitchen without having to open up one of those lame, thick, usually way too girly cookbooks. I grabbed it and sat back at the kitchen table. Written on the blue, nasty-stained cover was
THE SECRET TO GETTING GIRLS, FOR MATTY
, in my mother's loopy cursive. That was our joke, that cooking is what girls really like. Her telling me that definitely made me feel better about being a dude and knowing what a whisk and a colander are. That's for damn sure.

I had tried to open it a few days before, but couldn't do it. Figured I'd give it another shot. I cracked it open, smack dab in the middle.

THE OMG OMELETTE FOR MATTY (THANKS FOR TEACHING ME “OMG”)

Closed it. Immediately. Even though I was starving and that omelette—the
OMG
Omelette—would've hit the spot, I couldn't do it. Her writing, I could hear her voice . . .
NO!

I slid the notebook to the other side of the table like it was possessed, leaned back in my chair, and yanked the refrigerator door open. Bread. Butter. Half carton of eggs. Milk. Half an onion turning brown. Two Chinese food cartons, one with bits of fried rice stuck to the sides, a white plastic fork sprouting from the top, and the other with some sort of sauce caked around the rim. That's pretty much what me and Dad had been eating. Takeout.
Obviously. Seeing as though I couldn't even keep the notebook open for ten damn seconds.

I grabbed the Styrofoam container with the sauce. Shrimp and Broccoli. I sniffed it.
Ugh!
Chinese leftovers were
not
on the menu for tonight's dinner. Not unless I wanted the next funeral I went to to be my own.

Still, instead of just whipping up something quick (we always at least had pasta in the house, and I didn't need to check the notebook to boil water), off to the bodega I went with two dollars crumpled in my pocket. I figured I could talk Jimmy into letting me walk with a sandwich, and getting the extra dollar to him later. Jimmy was the guy who owned the bodega. He was probably in his forties and was from Pakistan, even though everyone in the hood thought it was funny to just say he was from Iraq. The only reason I knew he was from Pakistan is because I asked. My mother made me. “Don't be ignorant,” she used to say. I also know his real name is not Jimmy, but Ahmed, which he also told me. He's a good guy, but he's crazy. One time some dude came in there and tried to steal. Jimmy pulled the biggest knife I ever seen—I mean, like a machete—from behind the regi­ster and started banging the blade on the counter. He started screaming something about this being his neighborhood too. Everybody in there was scared. The guy who was trying to steal just put the chips back and apologized. Jimmy told everybody in the store that day to never, ever try to steal from him and that if you're short, just say you're short, and he'll try to work with you. He then said that if he catches anyone stealing, he'll leave their
fingers on the bodega floor for the cat to nibble on. Gross. But nobody tries to take anything anymore so I guess he proved his point.

I stepped into the store and was greeted by the rank smell of cat litter and cooked cold-cut meat.

“A little bit of mayo. Just a little bit,” a young guy said to Mike the sandwich maker, whose name also wasn't Mike, but Tahir. “Y'all be gettin' mad heavy-handed on the mayo. And put sweet peppers on there for me, my dude.”

Jimmy sat behind the counter, divvying out loosie cigarettes, matchbooks, blunt cigars, lotto tickets, and dime candy.

“Matty, what's good, baby?” he said in his weird, mixed-up, Arabic–New York accent.

“I'm good,” I said, walking up to the counter.

Jimmy leaned over a little. “Yo, I heard about Mrs. Miller. Sorry 'bout that, fam. How y'all holdin' up?” he whispered, trying to be respectful.

“We good,” I said, short, and looked away. I just didn't really want to go into all that standing in the middle of the bodega. I didn't even know how he knew. I take that back; yes I did. People come in the bodega running their mouths all the time. It was the only place outside of church you could find out anything and everything about the hood, even though most of it was made up. I kind of wanted to know what he had heard. Like, what were people saying she died from? Knowing this neighborhood, people were probably saying it was a drug overdose, because that's always what people say. “Yeah, she used to get high. That's why she was
always so funny,” they were probably saying. So I didn't even bother to ask. Didn't matter what they thought.

I slid my wrinkled dollars up on the counter almost as if it were a secret note I was passing in class.

“What you need, man?” Jimmy asked, adjusting his Nets cap.

“I need a sandwich. I'm short a single, but I'll get it to you tomorrow,” I said softly.

Without even thinking about it, Jimmy took the two bucks and threw them in the register. And then he yelled something in Arabic to Mike, who stood behind the meat cutter holding a turkey breast in his arms like a football. Mike said something back. It all sounded like a whole bunch of throat clearing, but I was used to it.

“Matty, you know you family, and I know you or your pops is good for it. Matter fact, take two. One for Mr. Miller.” Jimmy smiled and held out his fist for a pound.

I walked over to Mike. He just nodded, which was his way of saying,
Can I take your order?

“Let me get honey-glazed on a roll. Lettuce, tomato, mayo, provolone, sweet peppers, oil and vinegar, black pepper, meat and cheese, hot,” I rattled off like naming brothers and sisters I don't have. I've been ordering the same sandwich since I was a kid. It's the way my dad orders. “Two of those, please.”

“Three,” a voice came from behind me. “Make that three of those, Mike. Cheddar though, not provolone. Don't nobody want all that fancy cheese.”

Mike shook his head and smirked.

I turned around, already knowing who I'd see.

“Wassup, Chris.”

“What's good, Matt.” We slapped hands. “What's goin' on?”

I've known Chris pretty much my whole life. He lived in the apartment building at the end of the block, and let me tell you, living in a brownstone and living in an apartment building are very different. In a brownstone you either own the whole house like us, or the floors are split between two other families—three, max. But in an apartment building, it's like twenty families. Sometimes more. So it's always a bunch of mess going on. That's how it was in Chris's building. A bunch of mess. Everybody around here called it the crazy building. There's always a gang of dudes posted up outside all night, talking trash, and pushing packs of whatever to whoever. Nobody even parks their car in front of that building, scared that when they come to get in it in the morning, it'll be sitting on blocks. And that was probably the truth.

“Chillin',” I said. “Just grabbing dinner.”

Mike gave Jimmy my sandwiches, and Jimmy, like always, licked his finger and pulled a paper bag from underneath the counter. He took the bag and flung it in the air, almost as if he was swatting at a fly, just to open the bag up. Of course he could've just slipped his finger in the bag and opened it that way, but Jimmy likes to be cool. The popping sound the bag made made Chris jump a little.

“Yo, Matt, wait for me,” Chris said, putting a soda on the counter and slapping a five-dollar bill down. “I'll walk with you.”

My house came way before his, so we stopped and sat on the stoop for a little while. I won't lie, it was cool to have someone
around. It had been a minute since I had hung out with anyone—since when my mother transferred to the hospice wing of the hospital. Me and Dad spent most of our time with her, opening the get-well-soon cards and propping them up on the side table by her bed. Dad would always ask if she wanted him to read them to her, but she always said no. Of course he read them out loud anyway. I think he just wanted to believe she would actually get well. Besides the cards, there was a ton of flowers and balloons that came in everyday, from neighbors and friends. Mom hated the balloons. She said they freaked her out at night.

“Sometimes I wake up with one of these stupid balloons bopping me in the face, and be ready to crap myself in here,” she said, snorting a little from her own joke.

I, on the other hand, hated the flowers. I mean, they're just stupid. What's the point of getting somebody you care for something they can't do anything with but look at for a few days until it dies. Just seems cruel. But my mom, she loved them. The day she passed, she gave away all the flowers to the nurses, except one bouquet. She said something about them taking up too much space, and that she wanted to give them all a gift for putting up with her anyway, which I'm sure they all deserved, because Daisy Miller was definitely a trip. She told me and Dad to take the last bunch, as well as all the cards. I tried to tell her that we didn't need them and that she should keep them for herself, but Dad gave me that look that means,
Just shut up and listen.
So I gathered all the cards and notes, and Dad took the flowers. We both thought it was strange. Not her wanting to get rid of the cards—she couldn't
care less about them—but definitely her giving away the flowers, or as she called them, her “lovelies.” But we didn't question it. We just did what she asked us to do, and ultimately found out the reason why later that night.

My father got the call around four in the morning. I wasn't asleep, and neither was he. He'd been down in the kitchen, pouring shot after shot of cognac since around midnight. He'd pulled the bottle out of the cabinet and set it on the table when we first got home, but he didn't drink any. Even though my mother would have a drink every now and then, I had never seen my pops take even a sip. But I could tell he was thinking about it. And I couldn't blame him. He just flipped from card to card, reading the get-well messages out loud to me like bedtime stories. At one point I thought he was going to offer me a drink, y'know, as some kind of father-son bonding thing, but he didn't. He just let the bottle sit there like it was a third person in the room. I stared at the flowers and thought about just trashing them since they'd be dead by the morning anyway. Pointless.

I knew Dad would be upset about it, but I just couldn't keep my mouth shut. “We really keeping these?” I asked, snatching a petal off. Dad kept reading through the cards. “Dad? We might as well just get rid of them. It's not like Mom's gonna care. Shoot, they're gonna die anyway.”

He paused for a second. Then, like I hadn't said a word, he continued with the corny poems with lines like “back on your feet” and “love is the best medicine.”

I left the flowers alone.

Eventually, I dozed off at the table and woke up again and he was
still
reading. I got up and headed to bed, kissing him on his head. When I got halfway up the steps, I finally heard the liquor pouring. Then my father hissing as he swallowed the first shot. Then, pouring again.

Hours later, when the phone rang, I didn't hear anything my dad said. But as soon as I'd heard it ring, I knew. A few minutes after the call I heard him slowly coming up the steps. Then, there was a knock at my door.