The Color of Family (35 page)

“And Aaron, what about you?” the doctor asked.

Aaron didn't answer right away, because at first there didn't seem to be anything to say that would change things. All of this—his mother's distractedness, his father's affair, his father's bastard son—was set into motion long before he had been born and could have a say, on the day Clayton Cannon came into the world. Knowing he should say something, he simply offered, “I guess the way I see it is that if my mother had just listened to the first person who told her that Clayton Cannon was in no way Emeril's son—who was most likely my father—we wouldn't be here today. I wouldn't think you were an ineffective quack, Dr. Lillywhite, no different than a con artist who got his degree from a storefront printer in Guadalajara for declaring that my mother's a rational woman. And I wouldn't be sitting here wishing my childhood away for a different kind of mother who would have made me the center of her world. But mostly, I know I wouldn't be sitting here right now torn between anger and compassion for my father
because of his indiscretion. That's what I'm feeling.” And just when it seemed that he was done, he added one more thing that he knew some part of him should regret but didn't. “Oh, and I wouldn't be thinking from the coldest, blackest part of my heart that my father's bastard son is just who he is—my father's bastard son, and not a part of this family. He's got a mother, and brothers, and sisters from that mother so he's got his family. Not this one. My father's a part of his family. That's his choice. But I'm not his brother, not in any real way, and Ellen's not his sister. So he's nothing to me.”

That was all he said as he sat back in his chair. And as he waited for someone to say something, it immediately occurred to him that there was really nothing his mother or father could say in defense of the life they'd given him as a result of their choices. So he wondered what next. He wondered what would happen to him and his family on the other side of the door where their real life would be waiting to absorb all that had just happened. And just as he was about to question them on the very matter, he saw Ellen. It was the same Ellen from his kitchen just a few weeks ago, only this time her face was far more intensely gripped by something. Pain. This time agonizing. He went to get up and go to her when he heard her speak for herself.

“Okay, my water just broke,” was all she said.

T
he restaurant seemed to be a living thing, Clayton thought, as he listened to the music's voice that said more to him than the cacophony of human voices. He exercised the fingers of his right hand to the rhythm of the music, lifting each one only to bring it down on the table. And as if every finger had little minds and wills of their own, and as if he had a grand keyboard stretched out before him, he added the fingers of his left hand to the exercise. They moved across the table as if they were playing along with the music swirling around the room. He looked at his fingers and thought of the many years his fingers had been doing this as they went about their business of an evening workout, plucking out an inaudible tune. And yet here he is, he thought and lightly smiled to himself, as famous as a concert pianist can be and still working out those fingers whenever there was a chance to do so.

“This is quite a nice place,” Susan said.

Clayton looked at her with a kind yet apologetic smile, his lips only stretching sideways, showing no teeth, an expression, perhaps, trying to expunge the guilt of how long it had been since they had last been out as a man and woman—not as a mom and dad. So he put his hand on hers and gave it a loving squeeze. “It's very nice,” he said. Then taking his hand slowly from hers, he continued, “I'm sorry, babe. We should do this more often. I should take you out more.”

Susan regarded him with curious eyes and spoke in a puzzled voice, “Clayton, you don't hear me complaining. I love being at
home in the evenings, helping the boys with their homework and spending quiet time with them as I read with them and tuck them in to sleep.” Susan stared off with a glint that nearly resembled wanderlust in her eyes and continued, “It's the best in the world. Nothing would be better.” Then she looked at her husband and took back his hand whose fingers had already returned to their workout and said, “Nothing at all. I have no complaints about my life because I'm doing exactly what I dreamed of doing since the day I married you.”

Just then a couple ambled toward the booth and asked if anyone was sitting in the empty space. When Clayton invited them to sit, Susan merely nodded with a tense smile and slid smack up against Clayton—closer than she needed to be. Every move she made—from the awkward, jerky slide toward her husband to the strain in her countenance—spread her voluminous discomfort plainly enough for Clayton to see. He just prayed the couple couldn't see, or even catch in the air, any part of her uneasiness.

So he said, “I'm Clayton Cannon and this is my wife Susan.” Clayton slid from the booth and stood, extending his hand first to the woman, then to the man. “Have a seat. Please.”

“Hello,” they said in perfect unison. “What a pleasure to meet you,” the woman said, taking Clayton's hand and shaking it soundly.

“I'm James Woolsey,” the man said, “and this is my wife Sharon.”

As James and Sharon settled in, a man in a blue suit—the kind of blue with just enough green in it to make it a questionable blue, depending on the light—swaggered up to the stage, which brought the jazz band to a fading silence. He took a microphone from a stand in the middle of the stage with the confidence of a man who ruled some sort of roost. He commanded the crowd's attention without so much as asking. “For those of you who don't know me, I'm Graham Stevens, and I want to thank you all for coming tonight,” he said. Once a thin round of applause died down, he continued, “And I'd like to acknowledge a very special guest of mine, a good friend who supported my dream of opening this place. Clayton Cannon.” Graham looked over at Clayton who only smiled modestly. Then Graham continued, “Clayton has been a great friend since our days at Peabody. I don't need to
tell you what he studied.” He gave way to a wave of laughter, then said, “I was studying the violin, and I guess I also don't have to tell you whose music career took off.”

The room, again, filled with laughter, but Clayton yelled loudly over the guffawing crowd, “Your career just took a different turn, Graham.”

“Now, that's a true friend for you,” Graham said. “This man has just found a way to justify my parents' paying out four years of tuition at a conservatory of music for a concert violinist's career that never happened,” he said, bringing the crowd to a scattering chuckle. He smoothed his deep black hair that somehow made quite a striking contrast against his skin that seemed far too pale in its whiteness to have ever seen the sun. Then he continued, “Seriously, though, folks, I want to thank you all for coming here tonight and I want you to savor our food, drink our wine, enjoy our music, and think of this place as your place.” And with that, he swaggered coolly from the stage, surrounded by a healthy applause.

Clayton, with a lingering smile left over from his tribute, sipped the wine that had just been set in front of him, Susan, James and Sharon without anyone at the table having to ask. It was without any doubt his favorite merlot because, as he fondly remembered, Graham always paid special attention to and never forgot, the likes and dislikes of his friends. As he set his wine on the table, he noticed several friendly smiles and waves from various parts of the room. Maybe there was someone in those grinning faces he knew, but right then, it was all he could do simply to smile and wave back. It made him feel like disingenuous royalty. And much like he assumed disingenuous royalty must feel each time they set foot into the world, he simply wanted the smiling and waving to end.

“This is very good wine,” Sharon said. “And I can't believe he gave James and me a complimentary glass, too.”

“Yeah, well this wine is my favorite,” Clayton told her. “That's just the way Graham is, always looking out for friends—and the friends of his friends. He's true blue that way.”

James set his glass of wine down and looked at Clayton and said, “So how serendipitous is it that we'd end up sitting at the same table as Baltimore's most recent claim to fame. You're like the rock star of the classical music world down here.”

Clayton lowered his head with a chuckle of humility, then looked at James. “Yeah, I suppose you're right. But it feels a little surreal, if you want to know the truth. All these people smiling and waving at me. As far as this city goes, I'm completely claimed by the people of Baltimore, and I'm not altogether certain I know why.” He took another sip of his wine before continuing, “I appreciate it, though. I appreciate it very much.”

After that, the table fell silent, focusing on the jazz band that had struck up again. The saxophone in this languorous piece of music wailed in a shade of blue that Clayton immediately understood. He felt comforted in a way he wished would never end; and it showed in his far-off gaze and wistful smile that only slightly tweaked the corners of his mouth. It seemed as if he would never come back from the place this instrument took him.

But James brought him back when he said, “So you lived here before, when you were studying at the Peabody?”

Clayton, who willed himself to be present at the table again, answered, “Yeah. Four years I spent here.”

“Do you like it here?” James asked.

Clayton thought for a few seconds about the question as his narrowed eyes folded into an ironic smile, then replied, “Baltimore makes me wonder half the time why I live here and then at other times makes me glad I do.” Then he shook his finger in midair like a sage, pointing at no one in particular and said, “All I can really say is that there's something in this town that keeps pulling me back here. But on top of that, it's a nice town. Colorful in its own way, but hardly able to compete with, say, all of New Orleans's colors.”

Then James said, with just a hint of embarrassment in his chuckle, “You know, I grew up here in Baltimore and I'm ashamed to admit that until all this buzz over you moving here, I didn't know that Peabody gave out a college degree. I thought it was just a place where rich parents sent their kids to take lessons.”

“Actually, at these conservatories of music, they have auditions that sort out the ones who have the talent from the ones who don't. I mean, you can't just skate into a conservatory on marginal talent only to end up getting a degree that means you can teach music lessons from your parlor or at any elementary school in the country. And to me, if you don't have what it takes to be a concert
musician, then I say, What's the point?” Clayton ran his finger around the rim of his glass, picking apart in his mind every sentiment behind what he'd just said. Then he looked apologetically at James, and then Sharon and said, “I guess what I just said makes me sound like an overblown snob, huh?”

Susan shook her head firmly from side to side in a definite
no
. It was as if she was about to say something, then she just settled herself back in for the rest of the discussion.

That's when Sharon said, “No, not at all. I agree that there are certain God-given talents and no one is ever going to teach someone into a talent.”

“I think that is, for the most part, true,” Clayton said, after which he swallowed the last bit of wine in his glass. “I guess what I'm trying to say is that, number one, in my field, I don't see the point in learning how to
play
the music if you're not going to share it. Interpret it for the world. And number two, I'm saying that I could no more be a brain surgeon than a brain surgeon could do what I do, because I don't have the passion to be one and I would think a brain surgeon wouldn't have the passion to be a concert anything.”

Sharon then replied, jocularly, “Well, maybe he could do what you do, but he just wouldn't do it as well.”

And from that, they all shared a hearty laugh until Clayton added, “So, James, what kind of work do you do?”

“Well, I work not far from here. I'm a metallurgist at Bethlehem Steel,” James said before he swallowed the last of his wine.

“Now, you see there!” Clayton said in a tone that was about to wrap his point up in a package that would not need reopening. “I know all of the metals, but if you sat me down behind his desk they'd fire me in ten minutes.”

“Well, I listen to music, but they wouldn't let me on the stage at the Meyerhoff.” Once again, the table erupted in the bit of hilarity James had just given them.

But Susan, who barely laughed, and just gave up the stingiest of smiles said, “It really is all about passion, you know.” Then she sat back and waited for a reaction, as if to dare them to continue to leave her out of the conversation.

Clayton put his hand on her shoulder and slid it gently to the back of her neck to apologize for what he knew he, James, and
Sharon had obviously done. It was situations like this, he knew, where she felt small as a mother and wife with all the other careers at the table. Really, he couldn't know for sure, but Sharon certainly seemed to have the savvy and curiosity of a woman with a career. Clayton didn't even have to hear Susan say it to know that she felt that those careers, his, James's, and Sharon's (whatever hers was), mocked in no other way aside from the fact that they took place away from home. So Clayton said to Susan, even though he'd said it himself just moments before, “You're absolutely right about that. It is all about passion. Everyone should have a passion for what they do.”

At that point, James seemed to be pulled from the conversation with the distraction of whatever it was that had gripped him and spread clean across his face. James pulled out a key chain from his pocket that couldn't possibly take another key. Then he complained to Clayton, “These things always dig into my leg.”

Sharon looked at the keys, raised one eyebrow, and twisted her mouth to one side, then said, “I hope you're not waiting for me to feel sorry for you. Every time this happens I offer to put the keys in my purse, and you say, ‘No, I'll just keep them here on the table.'”

Clayton and Sharon, and even James, got a good tickle at the imitation Sharon did of James. Then, when Clayton looked closely at the key chain and saw M.I.T. emblazoned across the round disk, he asked, “M.I.T, is that your alma mater?”

“Yep, it is, as a matter of fact,” James answered.

“Did you and Sharon meet there?” Clayton wanted to know.

“Well, in a way we did,” James said.

And Sharon picked up the story from there. “James was doing a semester down at Georgia Tech and I was in college down there in Georgia.”

“Really!” Susan said with an astonishment that was, at the least, odd. “You went to Georgia Tech?”

“Oh no,” Sharon said, somewhat contritely. “I'm sorry, I should have made that clearer. I was at Spelman College down in Atlanta.” Then she asked Susan, “And what about you? Where did you go to school?”

Susan sat up a little taller and smoothed a piece of hair behind her right ear, then answered in a high-born tone that came straight
from the South, “Well, I attended a liberal arts catholic university over in D.C. called Georgetown University.”

Sharon reared her head back, as if to take Susan from a distance, as if to see if she were at all real. Then she looked at Clayton, who seemed to be apologizing with his eyes while holding his breath for something to come. All she could say with just enough sarcasm was, “Well yes. I've heard of Georgetown. I'm a journalist. We kind of have to know little things like that.”

Clayton desperately tried to think of what to throw over the situation to alleviate it, so he said, “So you're a journalist. You guys are the darker side of what I do. I hope you're not going to whip out a microphone and notepad on me tonight.”

Sharon laughed tightly, as if most of her encounter with Susan had not even begun to fade, then said, “No, of course not. But I did get this invitation to come here tonight because I'm a reporter at the
Sun.
”

“Well, I just did an interview earlier today with some guy over at
Baltimore
magazine,” Clayton said as he nodded to the waiter who had just brought the table another round of wine. “He found it odd, or at least surprising—I don't know which—to hear me say that I do listen to other kinds of music other than the music of the serious dead guys I play. That would be like someone being surprised at you, James, for building a house out of brick instead of steel, or some other sort of metal.”