The Color of Family (36 page)

“Yeah, I guess it would be like that,” James said. “Except that I think people assume that a concert pianist wouldn't find value in anything outside of that classical world. I mean, sometimes I wonder just how many true musicians there are out there, and not just dilettantes like rappers who call themselves musicians or Kenny G and whatever it is he's supposed to be playing.”

“There is a lot of junk out here, that's for sure, but there are some really true, talented musicians playing some good stuff, too. And believe it or not, there are a lot of musicians out here who aren't giving way to the crap that becomes part of pop culture and those guys are really suffering, let me tell you.”

“That's right,” James said, nodding his head in agreement.

A lull fell over the table's conversation. More people had packed into the place since the last time Clayton had paid attention. He looked around the room, smiling at all who smiled, and
waving at those who waved—mostly old classmates who were more numerous than he ever thought he'd run into in one place again. This was a virtual reunion, he thought. The only thing missing were the name tags, which he desperately needed. Graham sure kept in touch with everybody, he thought. Then he made eye contact with one woman who smiled, and it was so clear that she was on her way over as soon as she could get herself out of the conversation. A name, Nancy, crawled into his mind from somewhere and attached itself to her image, but just that quickly, doubt slid up beside it with the name Marcy. So, as she finally approached, he just decided to let things happen.

“Clayton!” the woman said as her lips were starting their descent for a landing smack on his cheek.

“How are you?” Clayton said as the woman got her peck over with. He glanced only briefly at Susan, realizing that if he didn't remember the woman, certainly she wouldn't.

Then Susan said, as her arm slid past Clayton to take the woman's hand, “Nancy, how are you, honey? God it's been so long.”

“I'm just great, Susan. It's so good to see you.”

Clayton looked as perplexed as any man would look who didn't, in the most perfect of worlds, expect his wife to know what he didn't in this particular situation. “You two remember each other?”

“Of course,” Susan said. “Don't you remember the summer you and I, and Nancy and her boyfriend Don, who was in one of your classes, worked up on Block Island? Nancy and I were waitresses and you and Don were bus boys at that restaurant.”

Clayton threw up his hands, remembering that summer, then said, “Of course I remember that now. How could I have forgotten? We had a great time up there that summer.”

“We sure did,” Nancy said. Then she looked at Susan and replied, “That boyfriend Don became my husband Don.”

And before Susan would let her get anything else out, she exclaimed, “Oh, my! Isn't that nice?”

“Well yeah, except now he's my ex-husband Don.”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” Susan said, with just a little more pink in her cheeks than usual.

“It was for the best,” Nancy said. “Anyway, I just wanted to
come over and say hello, and to say welcome back to Baltimore. And Clayton, it's so good to see you after all this time. You're still the same unassuming guy I remember from Peabody.” She dug into her pocketbook and pulled out a card and handed it to Susan, then said, “Y'all give me a call sometime. We could meet for lunch or something.”

“That would be great,” Susan said. “You take care, now, honey.”

“Yeah, I'll see you” was all Clayton said.

When Clayton turned his attention back to the table, Sharon and James were talking, and rather intimately, it seemed. So he looked away as if he didn't at all notice their private moment.

So Sharon said, “You know, I was just telling James to look at the backs of all the chairs. They're shaped like eighth notes.”

Like the others, Clayton turned his attention to the backs of the chairs and said, “What do you know? They sure are. I didn't even notice that.”

Then, turning to Sharon, Susan replied, “Oh, how clever of you! How do you know what eighth notes look like? I mean, the chair backs have such a subtle resemblance, how on earth did you make the connection?”

Whatever semblance of frivolity that had been in Sharon's demeanor in the mere seconds before seemed to be wiped off immediately with the rough rag of Susan's implication. Sharon drew in a breath so deep it seemed like something to be feared, then said, “Well, it seems like the backs of the chairs aren't all that's subtle here tonight. But just so you know how I know what eighth notes look like—and this may come as quite a shock to you—but I took cello lessons for five years. Do you want to know what made a little black girl, from some slum in your imagination, ever find her way to the cello?” And when there was nothing but a gape-mouthed gaze coming from Susan, Sharon quietly said, “I guess not.”

And when Sharon gathered up her purse and motioned to James that she wanted to leave, Clayton spoke up, “No, please don't. You two stay and enjoy your evening. We're leaving.” When he stood and stepped back to give Susan enough room to get up, he encountered the same slack-jawed amazement that Sharon had just seen. So, not necessarily in the warmest of tones, he said, “Come on, let's go.”

A
determined rain tapped at the window as if it would beat its way through the glass. Ellen lay in her hospital bed watching her merely hours-old boy sleep in the bassinette in a way only babies know how—peacefully and completely oblivious to the messy world into which they're born. But for better or worse, she thought, here he is, shielded by the very nature of being a baby from everything that plagues his mother's mind. Or could babies feel tension through the same sixth sense that makes adults know when stress or even danger is all around them? she wondered. There was no amount of sleep for her, she knew, that could take away everything that sat with all its heft in the middle of her mind.

She heard the click of heels out in the hall, and somehow she knew—maybe through that same sixth sense—that those heels were clicking their way to her door and into her room.

Antonia rounded the corner, saying to Ellen, “Hello, my baby.” And as she bent to give Ellen a mother's hug and kiss, Antonia pulled a chair over next to the bassinette and stared at her grandchild with wonder. “My baby's first baby. This is a miracle. It's something every woman prays she'll get to see one day.”

Ellen looked at the yellow suit, then into her mother's face with squinty eyes that had never seen her mother wear the same thing two days in a row. So she questioned, “Ma, did you spend the night here at the hospital?”

“Of course I did. This is my first grandchild. I wasn't about to leave you or this baby. One of the nurses let me sleep in the room
right next door because they had plenty of rooms available. I guess this is a slow time for having babies.”

“So where's Poppa?” Ellen asked, even though there was something in the air that told her that her father was nowhere nearby.

“Oh, I sent him on his way home. It was two o'clock this morning before this baby decided he wanted to come out. Aaron left around eleven last night. In fact, I need to call him to tell him about his nephew.”

“So have you talked to Poppa about yesterday at the doctor's office?” Ellen knew she had staggered into icy, itchy territory when her mother simply didn't answer. Ellen thought of asking again, but then she figured that it didn't make much sense to single-handedly guide the conversation down a road that would bring her mother's anger and hurt into the room where innocence slept.

Antonia picked up the baby, gazed into his sleeping face and said, “Look at this family this child has come into. Everything's a mess.”

“Which mess are you talking about?” Ellen said in a flat and low tone.

“All of it. You all thinking I'm crazy and all.” She stood rocking from side to side, cradling the baby in her arms, then looked guardedly at Ellen and continued, “But mostly this whole thing with your father and that Cora is what has thrown this family into such a mess.”

So Ellen sat up in her bed and asked her mother to sit, and when she did, Ellen said, “Ma, I know it was a shock for you to find this out after all these years, especially knowing that the woman he had the affair with was your friend. But, Ma, I really think it's just like Poppa said. I think it was a situation where she was simply meant to be a temporary distraction and then things took a turn for the worst, in terms of you and Poppa, when she got pregnant.” She slouched and put her back against the bed before saying, “I do think what he did was an abomination against the entire family, but I think it's forgivable.”

“You think cheating is forgivable?” Antonia asked in outrage.

“I think that in most circumstances cheating—that is when you're not talking about a serial cheater—happens because that person needs something from the relationship and either goes
looking for it, or waits for fate to drop the temptation into his lap. This Cora woman was a temptation of fate. Poppa wouldn't have gone looking for a woman who had three children, each with a different father. He has more class than that. I think this woman was just in the right place at a time when a weakened man was in that place too.”

Antonia put the baby back in the bassinette and sat. She stared off at nothingness, as if she were actually seeing Ellen's words. Then, with an acerbic tone that seemed to be meant for Junior and not for Ellen, she glared at her daughter and replied, “Well, what I'm telling you is that he should have resisted the temptation. He just should have been a strong enough man to say that he had a wife at home who could take care of him. That he had a family he loved. That should have taken precedence over temptation.”

Ellen watched her son as he moved his mouth into a tiny pucker and back, she said, “
Could
have taken care of him, Ma, or
would
have. There's a difference, a world of difference between the two.”

“I'm certain, Ellen, that I don't know what you mean,” Antonia said defensively.

“What I mean, Ma, is of course you
could
take care of him. What I'm saying is that you
wouldn't
because there was something possessing your every thought, almost, over which it seemed no one, not even Poppa and his needs as your husband, could ever take precedence.”

Antonia clenched her pocketbook to her chest and slid to the edge of her seat, drawing herself in so that it looked as if she would get up and leave right then and there rather than listen to another word of Ellen's. Then, as her head fell to one shoulder and her face wore a puzzled look, she said, “So you're taking your father's side? I can't believe that as a woman, as my daughter, you would take his side.”

“Ma, that's just the thing. I'm taking both of your sides. Yes, what Poppa did was wrong. But does it make it worth throwing away more than forty-five years of a relationship, first as friends, then as husband and wife?” Ellen paused for the scarcest moment, as if she wanted her mother to answer, but instead continued, “I don't think Cora, or this son of hers and Daddy's, is worth throwing all these years away. You can forgive Poppa. You can.”

“And so how do you know so much?” Antonia asked in a tone
that said the question was mostly rhetorical, but with eyes that said she needed to know. “Forgiveness is not that simple. You don't just wake up one morning and say, ‘Okay, I forgive you.' I don't know when I'll be able to forgive him.”

Ellen looked at her mother studiously, thinking she saw the beginning of tears welling and about to fall, and she would not continue until she was certain that they wouldn't, then she said, “Ma, the way I know forgiveness to work in situations like this is that forgiving Poppa won't come from anything he can do. Forgiveness happens when you trust yourself enough to know that if he disappoints you again, it will not be the end of your world.” Then she looked down, unsure if she could, or even should trust her mother with the knowledge of the deepest pain she'd ever known. But then she lifted her head and said, more to the wall behind Antonia than into her eyes, “And I know this, Ma, because I had to find my way to forgiveness when Rick had an affair a few years ago.”

Antonia was stunned to near silence. But in more than a few passing seconds still managed to ask, “Was she a white woman or a black woman?”

Ellen only looked at her mother then blew out a long sigh and said, “It's just not important, Ma. What I'm saying is that he cheated, just like Poppa. It hurts, it takes you outside of yourself, but it's forgivable.”

Antonia gazed at the baby and pressed her lips together until they formed to say something, but no words came forth. And so when the words were ready they sprung from her lips, asking, “So how did you find out? And what happened that made you forgive him?”

“Well, I found out in the way most women never find out. Rick told me. He confessed,” she said plainly. “He wanted out of their relationship that he said had sucked him so far in that he didn't see a way out.”

“Why not?”

Ellen narrowed her eyes that were trained squarely on her mother. With a confounded shake of her head she said, “I have to say that I'm not completely sure because it wasn't really important to me to know why he didn't see a way out. I think the reason I didn't want to know was because his telling me was his way out.
So I think that most likely the affair, just as nearly all of them do, backed him into one of those blackmail corners—either he leaves me or she tells me. Something like that.”

“Which is so stupid,” Antonia continued, as if speaking for Ellen. “It's stupid because if she had told you, then nobody wins, especially her.” Antonia sat stark still as if in deep contemplation. She got up and went to the rain-splattered window and looked out onto the street with its wet cars and wet people under soaked umbrellas. Slowly, she turned to face Ellen and asked in a sorrow-laden voice, “I guess what I want to know the most from you right now is why is it that I'm just now hearing about this? That had to have been the hardest thing to do—sit there and listen to your husband confess about an affair. You know this pain I'm going through, yet you didn't tell me.”

“I didn't tell you, Ma, because I knew that at the end of the day, Rick and I would make it through, and you'd still be harboring the hatred I know you must feel for him now.” She thought about what she would say for several long and difficult seconds, because it could certainly make things worse. But she said, anyway, “I did confide in Aaron. He knows all about it and was incredibly supportive. I could tell that he secretly wanted me to ditch Rick and the marriage, but he never suggested such a thing. That's all I'm saying to you, Ma. That boy of theirs is good and grown now, and your marriage to Poppa went happily through all those years. And so to find out something like this that happened so long ago hurts, yes, but after all these years is forgivable.”

“So now, all is forgiven? Rick had an affair and you've put it behind you?”

Ellen bucked out her eyes so that her mother would be sure to get it, and said, “So you want to know something, after three years, Ma, I'm still in the process of forgiving him because I'm still in the process of trusting myself enough to open my heart again, and open it wide despite the risk of being hurt again. I'm still in the process of that kind of trust, Ma. I think it takes time, but not as much time as it would take you, after all these years.”

The baby began to make its waking-up sounds—a squeak here, then another one there. Ellen got to her feet in one move and picked up her baby boy. Feeding time, she thought. So gingerly, she got back to bed, opened her nightgown and began to nurse
him. As her mother stood at the window watching the two with the kind of mother's eyes that could weep uncontrollably at any second, Ellen said, “You know, Ma, I discovered something this morning when Rick and I were trying to come up with a name for the baby.”

“What did you discover, honey?” Antonia asked softly and with a proud sweetness.

“Well, I realized that since uncle Emeril died you have been so consumed with him that you had given me and Aaron the same initials as you and Emeril—A and E.”

Antonia put her gaze on the street below, then turned to Ellen again, saying, “I don't want to talk about Emeril or Clayton or any of it while I'm looking into the face of my first grandchild.”

“All I'm saying, Ma, is that it's more than a coincidence. It's subliminal.”

Antonia went back to the chair and sat with firmness. She leaned forward toward Ellen and said, “Okay, if you insist then just let me say this: Look at this baby right here, Ellen. If you weren't holding him in your arms, cuddling him and loving him and staking your place as his mother, not a soul would know he's got any black in him at all. Can't you look at this baby of yours, Ellen, and see why things were the way they were for me regarding Clayton, and especially Agnes?”

Ellen turned her attention from her mother in that moment that she knew had never been truer and watched her son suckle her breast. Clayton and her baby had no similarities, none whatsoever, her mind told her. Not a soul, she told herself, could look at her baby boy and think he was white. No one, because she knew that they would have to see him as she saw him—as her sweet child whose sweetness superceded any attachment of color. But as she stared at her baby, really saw him as he was lying in her arms, she had to admit, but only to herself in that moment, that her mother was right. And so with what served as a pathetic segue, she said to her mother, “I think I'll have a naming ceremony for the baby so that the family that will nurture him can help name him. Now that's a tradition, isn't it?”