Chapter Four
Eunice
New York, New York
“Eunice!”
It’s barely a whisper, yet it steals into my sleep. My eyes flutter open. I blink to get my bearings in the darkness. A shadow looms beside me, shifting in the darkness, and my breath catches. But then I realize it’s only Lisle.
Pushing myself upright, I click on the lamp. The light spills over my husband perched on the edge of the bed, still in his suit. His jacket is a bit rumpled, the creases in his pants no longer crisp, and his tie askew.
“I want to talk to you,” he says.
I take a quick glance at the clock on the bedside table—a quarter till five.
I cross my arms. “Are you just getting home?”
“I was at the Forum,” he says, referring to the private club for colored professionals. “Tonight was my night.”
Lisle is the president of the Harlem Forum, and each night, one of the officers of the club is assigned to stay until the last member leaves. Still, I notice he didn’t answer my question. “Well, what in the world do you want to discuss this early in the morning?” I ask.
“Did you hear that Vincent Coll was murdered?”
I draw back. This is what my husband wants to talk over now?
He continues. “Reverend Powell told us the moment he arrived at the Forum last night. And we raised our glasses in a toast.”
I can imagine that Adam Clayton Powell Sr., the reformist pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church, marked the moment this way. Acknowledging that no man will escape justice and judgment.
“Yes, the chief told us about Coll yesterday morning. But this is certainly not anything I want to discuss now,” I say, scooting deeper beneath the blanket.
“Well, when do you want to discuss it, Eunice?” His tone hardens, and he springs from the bed. “In the mornings, you’re busy with Junior, and then most nights, you don’t drag yourself home until well after dinner.”
Sitting up once again, I sigh, making no effort to hide my frustration. At least I’m home before midnight, which is more than I can say for my husband.
There are times when I wonder what happened to the Barbadian who set my heart ablaze back in ’23, with his Bajan lilt, a smile that could warm every street from Lenox Avenue to the Hudson River, and charm as smooth as the finest bourbon poured neat.
As he eases back down onto the bed, I allow my mind to drift to that day when Lisle Carleton Carter strolled into my office. I was a social worker just two years out of college, organizing a free dental clinic for Harlem residents.
“Have you ever worked in a clinic like this?” I asked after he announced that he was there to volunteer his services.
“Not quite. Most don’t run as tightly and gracefully as yours,” he said, his accent rich with the rhythm of the Caribbean.
It had taken the better part of my self-control not to swoon. “Flattery, Mr. Carter?”
He shook his head. “Observation, Miss Hunton. I reserve flattery for lesser minds.”
For a moment, I was disarmed. To cover my reaction, I asked, “May I ask why you chose dentistry?”
“Because good teeth lead to dignity, and our people deserve to walk with their heads high.” I was touched by that sentiment, and then, with a quick smile, he added, “And I never could learn how to play the piano, so I had to find something to do.”
I laughed, and within weeks we were courting. I came to love so much about Lisle: his intellect and the gentleness beneath his commanding confidence. And he was a sight to behold, with bronze skin kissed by the West Indian sun.
That was the man I married, but not the one perched on the bed now. “All right, Lisle. Let’s talk.”
His voice is low and tight. “Hearing Coll’s name brought back all of those memories.
Last night, every man in the Forum agreed that goon deserved worse than being shot down in a phone booth.
The police should have turned him over to the father of that little boy he killed,” he says. “Just for five minutes.”
My heart softens. “Or, better yet, he should have been given to Michael’s mother. Coll wouldn’t have survived two minutes with me if he’d taken Junior away from us.”
The strain between us eases, and Lisle reaches for my hand.
In the silence, I know we’re both thinking about Michael Vengalli, who, because of Coll’s violence that day in July four years ago, will forever be five years old.
Men with tommy guns and without conscience had opened fire, spraying bullets at a crowd.
Michael, his seven-year-old brother, and three others were struck.
Michael didn’t make it through the night.
I’ve tried to imagine how a mother survived burying her five-year-old son, a boy who was then the same age as mine.
Relations between Negroes and Italians in Harlem had always been fraught, but on that day—and for the weeks and months that followed—every stoop, every corner, every street mourned as one.
Colored mothers cried openly, colored pastors offered prayers from the pulpit, neighbors passed the plate in barbershops and beauty parlors to raise money for Michael’s family.
Together, we demanded justice for that little Italian boy.
After a moment, Lisle says, “I’m concerned that Coll’s murder may yield a new rash of violence.”
I draw in a breath, already bracing, already dreading where Lisle will drag this conversation as he has so many times before.
When he says, “Sweetheart, you have to see that it’s time to bow out,” I pull my hand away from his, but he continues as if he doesn’t notice. “You have to consider stepping away.”
“I’m not doing that,” I say, as I have every other time he’s told me to leave the special prosecutor’s office. “And there’s not a single reason why I should.”
“From the day you stepped into that office, there’s been a reason,” Lisle shoots back. “You’re gunning for the most dangerous men in this city. Can’t you see you’re not safe because of that? No one is.”
Even as I remember Dewey’s words yesterday morning for us to be cautious, I say, “Lisle, how many times must I say this? We’re the safest people in New York. Those men know that if they so much as lay a hand on anyone on Dewey’s team, the law will flatten them.”
“And what about our son, your mother, and me?” he asks.
“I’m talking about all of you. We’re all under the protection of the special prosecutor.”
He rises once again and paces. “I don’t understand you, Eunice.
You’re staking your life on the reasonable judgment of gangsters, and that’s utter madness.
Why are you so set against leaving that office?
” His tone is clipped with the same exasperation I hear from him every time.
“It’s not as if you’ll be home twiddling your thumbs.
Between caring for Junior, your work with the Harlem Commission,” he says, referring to the commission established by Mayor La Guardia after the recent riots, “and keeping our household in order, you’ll have more than enough to occupy your time.
” He stops moving and stares straight at me.
“You could even lend a hand in my practice.”
I tamp down my rising fury. I have three hard-earned degrees, and Lisle wants me to clean his dental tools?
“I love our family and my work on the commission to help Harlem thrive, but the work I’m doing with Dewey is in conjunction with that.
When we take down the Mob, we’ll be reclaiming our city, making our streets safer, especially here in Harlem.
I can’t walk away and leave the hard work to someone else. ”
Lisle shakes his head and stomps toward our bedroom door. His tone is as cold as steel when he says, “I hope this grand crusade of yours doesn’t get you…and everyone in your family shot down in the middle of one of these safer Harlem streets.” He slams the door behind him.
I sit in my bed, eyes fixed on the door. Surely, I think, Lisle will come back, offer an apology, and speak to me like a reasonable man. But in the dozens of quarrels we’ve had over my hard-won position with Dewey, reason has seldom been Lisle’s way.
Exhaustion settles deep into my bones as I close my eyes and sink back against the mattress.
As I drift into sleep, I can no longer ignore the truth—after eleven years, it is apparent that my marriage is coming undone.
All because I have finally found my calling.
I spent the first decade of our life together wandering, searching for my place beyond being the wife of Harlem’s most successful dentist and part of the glittering Uptown social scene.
From social work to dabbling as a writer, and then finally deciding to accept the challenge of law school, it was a winding, restless road.
Then came the news: Thomas Dewey had been appointed the special prosecutor by Governor Lehman to wage war against organized crime, and he was assembling a group of the best prosecutors in New York.
I told no one when I applied for one of the positions. Told no one when I was granted an interview. I guarded the secret until the night I hurried home with the letter naming me as one of Dewey’s select corps of prosecutors. My mother bubbled over with excitement.
But that was the first time I’d ever seen my husband’s face go still.
The aroma of the percolated coffee rouses me, and I breathe a long sigh of relief.
I wrap myself in my housecoat, then pad across the parquet floor through the hallway and into the parlor.
The rising sun glows through the opened drapes of the massive windows, and I cross the room to the kitchen.
It isn’t Lisle there, though; it’s my mother.
“Mama, what are you doing up so early?”
“It’s not that early,” she says, handing me a cup of coffee.
“This is early for you,” I say. “When I smelled the coffee, I thought it was Lisle.” I take a sip, hoping to hide my disappointment.