The Color of Family (40 page)

“That is unbelievable,” Larson said quietly.

“What, about Junior and how I could have lost him, too?”

“What's that?” Larson asked. “You almost lost Junior too. That's unbelievable,” Larson said haltingly as if he didn't completely know to what he was responding. Then he turned to engage Agnes in idle chat, asked how she'd been, and how the trip was. He listened to those responses until there was quiet air between them. That's when he wanted to know if she was excited about Clayton's concert that night. But when that was talked into a natural death, he turned to Clayton, smiled anxiously, then said softly, almost in a whisper, “Listen, I'd like all of us to go into my study over there. You'll all understand why when we get there,” and he began to cross the room headed for his study.

When he reached the door, he looked behind him to find his train of four following, with Clayton seeming to have to shove his
mother forward. As soon as the last one, Clayton, crossed the threshold, Larson closed the door behind him, then joined them all where they stood in a loose circle. “Listen, I have something to say and I have a feeling it won't get said by any of you, especially not tonight, but maybe not any night, or even day.”

They all looked with the same tension at Larson, and with questioning eyes of equal roundness. Larson looked at each of them with the same round eyes, but they asked a different question. So he said, “I'm wondering if I should bring Susan over from her conversation to include her.”

And almost as soon as the last word was said, Agnes fretfully replied, “Somehow, not knowing what you're about to say, I feel safe in saying no, leave her be.”

“Okay, then,” Larson said, shifting a little from foot to foot. “I'm not sure if many of you know the relationship between a pianist and his teacher. If you don't, you should know that since Clayton came to me here at the Peabody twenty-seven years ago as an unsure eighteen-year-old haunted by so many bayou memories, he has given me the privilege of a good part of his conscious and subconscious mind. I was his therapist, I was his mother, I was his father, I was even his whipping boy on his most frustrated day when all I was ever supposed to be was his teacher.

“Now, in this circle of us, right here in the present, which is attached so completely to Clayton's past, there's a name that I think all of us know, and that name is Emeril. Emeril is Antonia's dead twin brother from New Orleans. Emeril is also the name in a dream Clayton had when he was twelve, he told me, coming from the funeral of his so-called father, and he has never been sure if it was a dream or what he actually heard with an awakened mind, but it's a name that cast some doubt on the identity of his father.”

Larson stopped and put his hand on Antonia's shoulder while looking into the faces of each one of them as if to make certain they were all still following him. When he seemed assured, he continued, “Now, who wants to go first to explain this lyrical name Emeril. I may be wrong about this, but if I am wrong and have no doubt made a room full of enemies, or at the least people who think I'm nuts, so be it. But I'm doing this for the clarity of Clayton's mind that has been unclear for far too long.”

Larson looked first at Agnes with expectation, but Agnes said
nothing. She only stared intensely at Larson with eyes that seemed cold enough to cut.

But Antonia knew that it was now Agnes's time, and so she bore a hole into Agnes. But when Agnes remained silent, Antonia finally admitted what that bane of her life refused to say. “Emeril was my twin brother who carried on with Agnes when they were teenagers. Only Emeril died on the very day Clayton was conceived. And I know it was the day he was conceived. I believe in every bone in my body that she married Douglas Cannon, had my brother's baby, and passed him off as Douglas's because Clayton looked so white. With everything in me, I know it happened.”

Clayton turned as slowly as a man trying to hold back some errant emotion could to face his mother so that it was only the two of them in that space. He stared into eyes that wouldn't look at his. And he stayed there, staring, with a stance that had dug in its heels, but when her eyes never met his, he said, “Mother, you have a very small window of opportunity to hold on to my respect for you by telling me the truth right here, right now. This sounds too real to be untrue. So you have to tell me, is this what happened? What Miss Antonia says, is it true?”

Agnes, still without looking at her son, but only at Antonia, said in a voice far smaller than she, “Yes, cher. That's exactly what happened. Emeril Racine is your father.”

Antonia stood in her place, but staked her claim nonetheless, because he had to know for sure. “So you realize that this makes you my nephew. It makes you my brother's son. It makes you the finest black man my brother could have ever hoped to father.”

Clayton swung around to face Antonia in what seemed to be a searing rage. Despite an anger that seemed intense, his voice was not slathered in deep red, but rather more of a cool crimson when he said, “Miss Antonia, or Antonia, or Aunt Antonia, whichever, I am just as white as I am black, unless there's something my mother wants to tell me about
her
self. What difference would it make if I continue to live as a white man as long as I know my true father? Why is there a need to go and shout it from the rooftops? I don't go around shouting from the rooftops that I'm a white man. And what is race, anyway? Is it a perception we have of ourselves, or is it a perception we have of ourselves that we've allowed other people to inflict on us?”

Antonia clenched her jaw with equal fervor to the arms she folded stiffly in front of her. This had fallen so short of her dreams, yet now the words, which she wasn't sure were hers even as they formed, flowed. “Oh that was some very fancy philosophical thinking you just threw out there. But the truth is, you don't have to go out shouting from the rooftops that you're a white man, because that's what people see until you tell them differently. Anyway, I guess I see how it works. It's okay for you to know, as long as it's kept a secret and no one ever gets to know what kind of man my brother—my black brother—created because now that you know who you are, you believe that you're Canaan, the son of Ham. Canaan, the son of Noah's son, Ham, cursed as slave from whom slaves would forever descend. What is it the Bible says? ‘Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers.' And you, Clayton, believe and bear the shame that all of us with black skin deserve as the fate of the children of Canaan. Cast out and marginalized. Isn't that what racism is, Clayton—scornful vengeance against falsely placed pride?”

Clayton found his way to a dimly lit corner of the room. Agnes followed him, and Antonia, following both of them, stopped just as Clayton said, “Momma, the last thing I need is you here with me now. I need to be alone with everything I've just learned.”

“Cher, please let me explain. Please let me tell you everything.”

“Why should I let you, Momma? I'd be giving you way more respect than you've given me since the day I was born.”

“That is just not true, Clayton. Since you've been born I've done nothing but loved you. And I've loved your father through you,” Agnes said as she hung her head.

“You know, Momma, I have had moments in my life when I sensed, somehow, that you were lying about something. But I thought to myself, ‘No, that can't be true, because what kind of mother would she be to lie to you.' Well, now I know what kind of mother you actually were. The kind of mother who would set her child's life up as one of deceit. A disgraceful mother who could only think of her life and what she wanted.”

Agnes moved closer to him, shaking her finger at him in anger. “Now, you listen to me. That is just not true. I thought of nothing but you. No, I didn't want to admit that I was the mother of a bas
tard baby; the mother of a black, bastard baby because I knew how difficult that would make
your
life. But there was no way I was going to sneak off and get rid of the only part of Emeril that would still be living.”

Just then, Susan opened the door enough to peek inside the room. When she saw Clayton over in the corner, she stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. “I thought I saw you all come in here. What's going on?”

But no one answered her, as Agnes continued, “And your life didn't turn out so bad, after all, did it? If you had known the truth about whose blood really flowed through you, you wouldn't have had the confidence or the opportunity to rise to the heights you've reached in an America that would have constantly put roadblocks in your way. At that time, I would have been raising you up in an America that would have told you that because you're a black man, you aren't qualified to reach your dreams.”

Susan, blinking her eyes rapidly as if it reflected the rhythm of her heart, said again, “What's going on? Would someone please answer me and tell me what the hell has happened.”

Clayton turned to her and said harshly, “I've just found out that my father, my real father, was a black man, Emeril Racine. And over there is his twin sister, my Aunt Antonia.”

Susan looked puzzlingly at Antonia, then gave the same gaze to her mother-in-law, as she said, “Momma, that's the woman I saw you having lunch with, isn't it?”

“It sure is,” Clayton said, straightening his jacket. “Yeah, that's just one of Momma's many secrets, apparently. Why don't you ask her what else she might be hiding?” And he moved brusquely past his mother, then past Susan and, opening the door, he said, “I have to be at the Meyerhoff for a live television interview before my concert. I'll see you all later.” And with that the door was closed and he was gone.

Antonia only stared behind him at the closed door before she shot an angry bolt of a glare at Larson and said, “It wasn't such a grand idea to drop the bomb that his mother is a lying, sneaky snake in the grass right before his concert.” Then she went to where Agnes stood, set her jaw firmly, and pulled herself in tightly, otherwise she would have been in her first fistfight since she was eleven years old. She unclenched her jaw long enough to
tell Agnes, “I hope you're happy. I hope your lying and scheming and low-down, bug-level baseness has paid off in some way for you. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Junior asked Larson for his and Antonia's coats. And as Larson went for them, Junior went to Antonia and said softly, “Come on, honey. It's time we get going.”

“I need to get away from her, because there's no telling what I'd do if I was around her two seconds longer.” And she turned from Agnes and moved with haste toward the door. Once she'd gone through, she slammed the door with all the anger she'd meant for Agnes.

A
s Aaron went past a store inside the mall, he was struck by its name—5-7-9—and couldn't fathom what it could possibly mean. Then an ensemble of low-riding high-cropped skinny pants and a top that was more a band of fabric that showed mostly midriff caught his eyes. It made him think of Tawna and what she might have worn ten years before, and he wondered what that would have been like, to have known her back then. She would have been that tiny, he imagined, because she wasn't much larger than that now. And she would have had the same confident walk but minus the life experience that gave her such elegance now.

Before Aaron knew it, he had made his way to the food court. He looked for a spot where they could sit, far enough for privacy from all those who would definitely want to know what he'd have to say to a woman who was not Maggie Poole. When he found a place and sat, he looked around to see if Tawna was nearby, perhaps already sitting or just getting there. Across the tables a man smiled and nodded at him just as he was about to dig into the mound of food. Aaron couldn't identify him but the man looked familiar. It wasn't until a woman passing by the food court saw the man and yelled his name, “Tom!” with such enthusiasm that Aaron got it. Each time he had been in this place, he'd seen this man. As Tom, who was short in stature, but colossal with charisma, spoke to the woman, he had her, in no time whatsoever, giggling like a schoolgirl and doubling over with laughter that didn't seem to let her catch her breath. It made Aaron smile,
because Tom was just the kind of man Aaron wanted to be. And even though he didn't know the man, he knew for sure by just watching him that Tom was the kind of man who could put a total stranger at ease just as he had this passing friend.

Just then Tawna snuck up behind Aaron, who was smiling like a teenage lover, and whispered in his ear, “Lost in thought?”

She startled him, but he recovered immediately as he said, “About you.” Then he kissed her cheek that was right there until she turned her face to kiss him full on the mouth.

As she sat, Tawna asked, her eyes narrowed with worry, “So what's up? What is so important that you wanted to meet here, out of your way and mine?”

Aaron chuckled with boyish embarrassment and said, “I know this isn't the classiest place I could possibly pick to say what I need to say. I actually meant the food court at Owings Mills mall—not that that would be any classier than any other food court—but by the time I called you back you had already left, so here we are.” Aaron looked up at her with earnest eyes that were also afraid of rejection, but he continued. “In a way, this is perfect, you know, because the simplicity of this place is like the simplicity of the way I want my future life to be with someone.”

“Okay, so the beginning of our relationship is making you hope for the comforts of a mall food court. Go on,” she said drolly, and in such a goofy way that she couldn't help but giggle.

Aaron laughed nervously for a second, then said, “Okay, I'll get to the point. Would you like to come with me to my sister's baby-naming ceremony? She hasn't named him yet because she wants the whole family to do it.”

“That's really lovely, and it lets the baby know that he was brought into a world with a family that will cherish him and support him. That's great. I would love to go with you.” Then she turned questioning eyes at him. “That's why you wanted to meet me? That's what you wanted to ask me? I love seeing you and being, even here, with you, but honestly you could have asked me that over the phone.”

“Well, it's only part of what I wanted to ask you,” he said, catching a glimpse of Tom standing at the Cinnabon counter as dapper as if he'd just stopped by the mall on his way from a fashion show. Tom would just say it, Aaron thought. So Aaron held
Tawna firmly in his eyes and said, “If I were to ask you right here in the food court to marry me, just because when I look at you, and talk to you, and listen to you, and hear your laugh, I know that I want everything that's you walking beside me, and sleeping beside me, and sometimes just doing nothing but sitting deep in thought beside me, what would you say?”

Tawna looked at him as if she had just shifted, right there on the spot, into another woman's life—as if she had no idea what she'd done or when she'd done this to him. And then she giggled with uncertainty, a seriousness that made the air seem ripe for her to flatly say no. Then she said, “I would say to you to ask me again in six months after we've crammed both of our attitudes up in a car and taken a five-hour road trip. That'll tell us something.”

Aaron relaxed into himself enough to laugh easily, then said, “You're probably right about that.” And so now he was loose enough. He could unclench all the muscles in his back, and that knot in his stomach could just go on its way. So he went to get up as he said to Tawna, “I guess we should get some lunch since we're here. What would you like to eat?”

Tawna gazed at him with widened eyes and said, “Are you kidding? After what you've just said to me you think I can eat something? I'm way too excited for that.” She leaned across the table for a kiss, and once she got it she continued, “I have to get back anyway. I'll talk to you later.”

As he watched her leave—and it brought with it the same sadness and beauty of watching a once-brilliant sun fade—he wondered just how ridiculous it might be to a sober mind that he would feel and say such things after this woman had been in his life for such a brief time. But he watched her until he couldn't see her, and then got up to head, not for the fried chicken, but for a coral hat and matching purse and maybe even a sheer scarf flung carelessly across them both in the store with numbers for a name.

 

Later that afternoon, Aaron walked through the newsroom from makeup and it seemed to him to be pitched at a calm that was immediately disturbing. Yet he knew there was nothing specifically different in the place at all since the room was still filled with the drone of coursing news. There was just an evenness to the whirr, and it put him in mind of one particular day during a child
hood summertime visit down to Plaquemine, in Louisiana. That day, life stayed in constant momentum, taking the form of a marble game in the dirt with cousins—some blood, some not—and string beans Ellen and Grammy snapped on the porch. And as Aaron remembered that day, he recalled the stillness of the leaves, the birds that seemed as if their songs were forgotten, and the air that would no longer move. Still, there came a gust of wind that blew straight up out of hell with Satan riding on its back that turned Aaron's world upside down only to bring it back to earth to lie wounded on its backside. That's when he became cautious about the unnatural calm of things, whether in plain sight or obscured by the unchanging flow of life.

It was this other awareness that was speaking to him now, telling him that there was an unnatural calm around him, as news buzzed true to its own form. He looked across the room into Mark's office, and there was nothing different. Mark was on the phone using hands and arms to tell as much of his story as words, which is how he seemed to go through most of his day. The writers were hacking away at their keyboards. None of the monitors on the other stations were reporting anything outside of the mundane misdeeds of varying shades and sizes. Everything was the same, yet something peculiar had sidled up next to him and wouldn't go away.

When he knew he didn't have the time on his side to ponder it a second longer, Aaron turned to head into the studio. That's when he found Maggie coming toward him, and something wasn't right. And suddenly it struck him that it may have had something to do with the natural death their relationship had died, and the funeral she reluctantly and he willingly gave it. Still, with all that had taken him from her and into the arms of his tawny Tawna, there were moments, he knew, just as now, when it seemed as if he couldn't take another breath without Maggie's smile, and it wasn't there. So this was it, whatever it was; and what was he to do? He listened to the pumping of his heart, and held on to the last breath he took as he waited and watched her come closer with a questioning countenance. So when she got right to him, his mouth opened by the force of his instinct, though no words came out.

But Maggie only looked sideways at him with narrowed eyes
and said with an edginess in her tone, “Are you coming? They want to light you.”

“Oh yeah,” Aaron said with a relieved half-laugh. As she moved past him, he reached out and touched her hand propelled by a guilt he wished would go away, but actually had no idea when it would take its leave. “I'm on my way in right now.”

As he stepped into the studio, the peace of mind Aaron had found from Maggie in that fleeting respite from his disquiet—a relief that made him believe that his extra sense was off kilter—was trumped by the wonder of why her face was so dragged down with some sort of concern that seemed larger than their breakup. That, he knew, was something he didn't imagine. And he knew Maggie in all the colors of her moods, and this look was something more than the mere disconsolate temperament of a jilted lover. Whatever it was involved him personally, intimately. So as he fit the IFB onto his ear and clipped the microphone onto his lapel, he willed Maggie back into the studio, because he wasn't going to wait until the first break of the show to find out what he could have said, could have done, didn't say, should have said, should have done, or didn't do to put that look on her face. Aaron had gotten himself settled behind the news desk when she finally came back to the studio. He didn't even let her get halfway to him before he said, “Maggie, is everything cool?”

Her jaws were set tightly until she reached Aaron and sat down next to him. Then as she slowly turned to face him, she said in a whisper, “No, Aaron, everything is not cool. Quite honestly, I'm worried about the third segment into the newscast. The one where we go live to that interview with Clayton Cannon. I just have a bad feeling about you doing the lead-in to that interview.”

Aaron reared back his head, swollen with the arrogance of his pride and said, “Maggie, how can you say something like that to me? I'm a professional, and I've never behaved in any other way on the air. Off the air, that man is the bane of my life. On the air when I'm doing the intro to his interview, he is a piece of news.”

She regarded him skeptically, then looked away to her news copy. And when she looked up, it wasn't into his eyes. Still, she said, “I just don't know, Aaron. I'm not so sure, for some reason. You've got a real tender spot when it comes to that man, and when it comes down to him or your professionalism, I don't give
your professionalism a fighting chance of surviving against Clayton Cannon.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Aaron said tersely as he turned from her with a definite edginess in his comportment. As he studied his news copy, he could feel the heat of her stare deep into the side of his face, but he had not one other word for her. In his ear he heard the Channel Eleven theme music that he often heard in his mind, like a psychotic moment, at times outside of this place. Then the stage manager cued to Aaron in five, four, three…

So he read the headlines of the lead stories. “A triple murder in Pikesville leaves the quiet community gripped in fear as police try to solve the crime that has left behind very few clues as to who the killer might be.” Then he paused for two seconds waiting for the video to change from Pikesville to the blazing row house in West Baltimore. “Two people are in critical condition after being overcome by smoke inhalation when fire breaks out in their West Baltimore home.” He paused again to make certain the video was caught up, but also to shore up his foundation as he said, “And with just hours to go before his sold-out concert, the first since moving back here to Baltimore, Clayton Cannon talks to Keith Pettiford live from the Meyerhoff.”

Then it was Aaron and Maggie, sitting together, smiling only halfway in their greeting because you just can't smile when you're about to talk about a triple murder. And a house fire. And Clayton Cannon, which was no smiling matter, hovering right up there at the same level of misery for Aaron. So Aaron said, “Good evening, I'm Aaron Jackson.”

“And I'm Maggie Poole. Tonight we're going directly to Pikesville where we have Derek Dodson on the scene of a gruesome triple murder. Derek, what can you tell us?”

So Aaron watched the monitor intently as he listened to the details of three lives taken in an Upper Park Heights home, only three blocks down and around a corner from his house. And he wondered about those people's last moments. But there was one thing he knew without a doubt—even though the police now knew that there had to have been two killers, most likely men, Aaron knew they would not be looking for two black men. On Upper Park Heights, two black strangers would have to do a lot of huffing and puffing to blow down the door of any one of those
homes where Jews lived quietly, guardedly in their wealth, he thought as he remembered his days of jogging past those impressive homes as the focus of nervous stares and barren smiles. But it was still such a shame, those murders.

Then Maggie said, “You say the police found no sign of forced entry, yet there's no indication that the victims knew their killers. Do they have any idea who they might be looking for?”

And just as Aaron knew the truth to be, he listened as Derek said, “Now the police say neighbors reported seeing two neatly dressed white men in the neighborhood, walking aimlessly up and down the street an hour before the murders. While the police are not labeling them as suspects, they are looking for them for questioning.”

There are some crimes, Aaron thought with a wry smile meant only for himself, particularly since he was off camera, that are simply sociological impossibilities.

When Maggie finished with the triple murder, Aaron paid only narrow attention to the West Baltimore fire. But what did capture his thought was that one of the people overcome by smoke was blind, which made him think of Maggie's opinion of the most awful way to die. He recalled how, ever since he'd known her, she'd told him that her worst fear was to go blind and burn up in a fire. So now she's sitting right there talking about what would be the most horrible course she could possibly take to leave the planet. He let that thought go when he had to prepare for his cue. And when the camera was on him and he heard the break music in his ear, he said, “When we come back, we're going downtown to the Meyerhoff where Keith Pettiford will talk with Clayton Cannon just hours before his first concert in Baltimore since he moved here.” And they were out.