CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
B elinda lay stretched out beside Phillip, her thin cotton gown taut in sleep against her thighs. She never touched him as they slept, as if that were an unacceptable act of possession. She gave generously of herself, but she demanded nothing in return.
Phillip had never thought to offer anything, either, at least nothing of lasting value. He brought her gifts, bought all the groceries when he came to stay, took her out as often as she’d go. But he had viewed their relationship as he viewed the others in his life. They were together until they decided not to be. He would understand if another, more devoted, man claimed his place in her life. And she would understand if his work kept him away so long that by the time he returned they were strangers.
Now he lay with his hands folded behind his head and stared at her bedroom ceiling. The room was painted the dark red of garnets, and the ceiling was a deep brown. Morning sunshine filtered through sheer curtains, but the windows were narrow, and the light barely pierced the darkness.
Belinda’s home was her sanctuary, a place where she could retreat from a world that had never cared much about her. She had grown up in poverty, in a house where children slept three to a mattress and the oldest learned early how to cook and clean and mind the others. Her mother had died after the birth of the sixth baby, given up and died, Belinda had told Phillip once, because she couldn’t stand to open her eyes every morning and see the world she’d brought her kids into.
There had been four more brothers and sisters by her daddy’s second wife, and then her daddy had died, too, and the kids had been parceled out to family members who already had too many kids of their own. Belinda had been luckier than most of them. As one of the oldest, she had gone to live with her father’s aunt, an old woman, childless and nearly blind, who needed her help.
The remainder of her childhood and adolescence had been lean, with one dress for school, one dress for church and nothing different on the Sunday dinner table than on any other day. But the aunt had been kind, and after her death it had become clear why she had been so careful with her tiny pension. She had died with her life savings intact, and she had left it all to Belinda to use for college.
Nowadays, Belinda’s brothers and sisters were scattered all over. One brother hoed corn on an Arkansas prison farm. Another made a good living repairing television sets. Two of her sisters were married, with children of their own, and another had been found dead last year beside a Mississippi railroad track. The rest were gone, blown by the four winds to the far corners of the country. Every so often Belinda got a lead on one of them. Every so often it proved to be false.
Her past explained why she expected so little of Phillip. She had been given one gift in her entire life, and she had used it well. She did not expect another. She did not expect Phillip to love her or to stay with her, or even to care about her in any significant way. People had come and people had gone, and eventually she expected him to be one of the latter.
“What are you thinking so hard about?”
The question was a welcome interruption. He turned so that he could see her face. Belinda came awake as she did everything else. She didn’t move. She didn’t make a sound. She lay perfectly still, as if she didn’t expect the world to adjust itself in any way just because she was back in it.
“You,” he said.
“Really?” She gave a sleepy morning smile. “Now there’s a way to start a morning.”
“What do you want from me, Belinda?”
She didn’t look surprised. Very little surprised her. “A cup of coffee would be nice. You know where the percolator is.”
“And after that?”
“Seems to me you’re leading up to something here.”
“Not sex, if that’s what you mean.”
“Could be a lot worse.”
“What do you think I’m leading up to?” he asked.
“Not a bacon-and-egg breakfast, that’s for sure.”
“You don’t expect anything from me, do you?”
She looked up at him through her lashes, not coyly, but as if she wanted to screen her thoughts. “No, I don’t. If you’re trying to tell me you’re leaving again, I expected it. Your suitcase is still packed, just like it always is. Did you get a call this morning?”
She was right about the suitcase. When Phillip lived with her, he never unpacked. He wore his clothes, washed them and put them back inside, neatly folded. He bought clothes with an eye to how well they suited that routine.
“You’ve never made room in your closet for me,” he said.
“This about closet space, Phillip? You want space, there’s space.”
He didn’t know what the conversation was about. He just felt dissatisfied, like a child who has always gotten what he asks for and doesn’t know what to ask for next. “I’m not leaving. Unless you want me to go.”
“Did I say so?”
“You like your privacy.”
“You’re an easy man to be private with.”
“What about being personal with? Am I an easy man for that, too?”
She thought about it. For once, he could almost see her thoughts. “No,” she said at last. “Because it scares you.”
“And how about you? Does it scare you, too?”
“I don’t know.”
He knew she wasn’t hedging. She didn’t know, because intimacy had happened rarely, if at all, in her life. He was slapped by such a wave of tenderness for her that for a moment he couldn’t speak. He rested his palm against her cheek and burrowed his fingertips in her hair. “I never spent any time thinking about who I was or what I wanted. Now, I don’t think about much else.”
“It’s that woman.”
“Aurore Gerritsen?”
“You can’t sit there day after day listening to her and not think about your own life. You get to be that old, all you can do is wish you’d done things different. But you’re not that old. You’re young enough to know you still can.”
“What if I like what I see when I look at my life?”
“Then you keep on doing what you always do.”
“What about you? What do you see when you look at where you are? Where you’re going?”
“Maybe I’m a lot like this Mrs. Gerritsen. Maybe I just do what I have to and figure that’s good enough. I don’t know.”
He wanted to ask her where they were going. But he was afraid she would turn the question around, and then what would he say?
She scooted a little closer and threw her arm over his shoulders. He could feel her long fingers against the back of his neck. He didn’t even know he’d been tense until he began to relax.
Aurore hadn’t slept most of the night. When she was a young woman, a sleepless night hadn’t completely depleted her. She’d spent many sleepless nights lying beside her husband, and she’d gotten up the next morning anyway and done what needed to be done.
This morning she could barely dress herself, but she struggled through it. She supposed the time would come soon when she would have to ask for help. Her fingers would stiffen, or tremble too hard; her legs would give way when she tried to stand. But until that definitive moment, she would not give in.
She was waiting in the library for Phillip when he arrived. There was no fire today, since the weather had taken a warm turn, as it so often did in February. Sunlight poured in through the French doors and caressed the leather-bound volumes that her oldest son, Hugh, had so loved.
She was leafing through one when Phillip walked in. She held it up. “You’ve heard that you can’t judge a book by its cover?”
“I’ve heard it.”
She closed the book. “Well, that’s what my husband did. He went to a book dealer on Royal Street and bought everything you see on these shelves, without ever reading a page. He bought the entire contents of a philosophy professor’s library, just because he liked the color of the leather.”
“A man who lived for appearances?”
“Henry Gerritsen was many things.” She replaced that volume and removed another. “As it turned out, this was one of the better things he did. Henry was not an intellectual, but our son Hugh devoured these books, along with every other piece of reading material he could get his hands on.”
“Was your other son a voracious reader, too?”
She didn’t look at him. “Ferris hadn’t the patience, still doesn’t, although he’s every bit as intelligent as his brother was.”
“I’ve thought from the beginning that the difference between your two sons might be the reason you invited me here. That perhaps you were trying to side with Hugh, somehow, by asking a black man to write your story.”
She was surprised that he hadn’t figured out the real truth yet. But the fact that he hadn’t said everything about secrets in his own life. “Taking sides was never my intention.”
“But you don’t seem surprised I might think so.”
“There is very little someone of my age finds surprising.”
“Until I met you, I thought I was particularly good at turning questions and comments to suit my purposes. Now I think I’m a novice.”
“A story unfolds as it’s meant to, and in no other way.” She put the second volume back, as well, and moved to the sofa. While she seated herself, Phillip set up the recorder. Then he settled himself on the love seat and took out his notebook.
“I wasn’t at all certain you’d come back today,” she said, when he was ready.
“I said I would.”
“What I told you yesterday must be very distasteful to you.”
“Because I’m a Negro and so was your daughter?”
“Because you’re a human being and what I did goes against everything we believe about ourselves. We believe that we’ll fight to the death for our children, protect them at all costs. Then we discover that it’s not always true.”
“Did you ever see your daughter again?”
She settled back against the cushions. “Yes, I did. It took me some time to find her. étienne changed her name, as I knew he would. But he changed his own, as well. From the moment that he came and took my daughter, I looked for her. But she was nearly six before I found her again.”
“Will you tell me what he named her?”
She nodded. She wondered what the name would tell him and how much he would understand immediately. She was certain that by the end of their time together today he would understand most of it.
“Nicolette,” she said. “He called her Nicolette. And, as you might expect, he took back his own name. He called himself Rafe. Rafe Cantrelle.”