Thirty-Four
IT’S BEEN A YEAR SINCE Lionel left for Oakland. I can see the toll it’s taken on Al when I unlock the gate for him. He called me earlier, asked to come by to see the pigeons. Clément’s out flying them. I fix Al and me old-fashioneds and join them outside.
“Nothing for me?” Clément asks, teasing, and I reach up to rumple his hair. My grown son, his voice deep. Al and I sit at the garden table, watching the birds’ final flight of the evening. A dark-gray one with white feathers spins and drops.
“Who is that?” I ask.
“Chickadee,” Clément says. “I bred one of KR’s sons with Lady Jane to get her.”
“She’s a good flyer,” I say.
“She’s really taken off lately. Can’t wait for Lionel to see her.”
After Clément finishes in the coop and goes inside, I touch Al’s knee. “A year,” I say. “Isn’t there something we can do? Some authority we can talk to?”
“Well,” he says, “not while the LAPD is making murdering Negroes their company pastime.”
“I hate it that he had to run again. From New Orleans first. And then LA. It scares me,” I say. “To think that he might be running forever.”
Al sighs. “There’s something in him that tempts trouble, but then he doesn’t know how to handle it when trouble catches up to him. He’s sensitive. You know that.”
“Was he always that way?”
“Sensitive? Yeah. Did he ever tell you about the pigeons in our attic when we were young?”
“No.”
“It’s not a nice story. Or maybe it is. I don’t know.
Depends on how you tell it.” I wait, and he says, “Christmastime. I was thirteen, Lionel was nine. The depths of the Depression. You remember how it was. All through that year we had a family of pigeons taking roost in the attic. At first we tried to get rid of them, but they kept coming back and they didn’t do any harm.
Lionel and I grew to like them. Lionel especially.
They made their nests up there, we watched the eggs hatch.
His first little squeakers. We must have gone to the attic almost every day just to see what they were up to.
They got to know us, didn’t mind it if we held them.
Dada had been working for the same man for years, doing odd jobs, anything he needed.
And this year the man kept promising payment and delaying it.
Mommee needed to buy the Christmas chicken, but we didn’t have any money.
Finally, the man gave his word that he’d pay on Christmas Eve morning, so Mommee was to convince the butcher to place the chicken on hold under our name, and on Christmas Eve, Dada would collect his pay, and pick up the chicken on the way home.
It had been a long time since we’d had meat for a meal; the chicken was all we could talk about.
On Christmas Eve, we stood out front and waited, and then Dada appeared from around the corner. He wasn’t carrying anything.”
“The man didn’t pay him,” I say.
“Nope. And the butcher wouldn’t give him the chicken on credit, not when he could sell it to someone else and get the money right away.
Dada was completely silent, passing us on the porch and going inside.
He went straight in to talk to Mommee, and Lionel and I, we looked at each other, and we knew without saying anything what we had to do.
That’s how I remember it, at least. We exchanged a look and then we climbed the stairs to the attic where our birds were just minding their own business, and we wrung the necks of four of them.
One for each of us. Mommee and Dada took care of the plucking and the preparing, and Mommee stuffed them with greens and peppers, cooked them perfectly.
Did the poor creatures justice, that’s for certain.
We had a feast that night. But Lionel never ate another bite of meat after that. ”
I’ve been watching Al in profile. Playing out the scene in my mind as he speaks. “How have I never heard this before?” I ask.
“We didn’t like to think about it, I guess.
So many things we don’t like to think about.
The war. Those hard years after, when we couldn’t get jobs.
You and Adele and your mother. And your father.
Delphine—God bless her, wherever she is.
Bernard, helping the company screw me over, and Lionel in hiding out there in the Bay Area. Should I go on?”
“That’s plenty.”
We sit in the quiet. Mary Wells comes on inside the house, a dulcet melody seeping into the night.
I put my hand on his back, give it a rub.
He’s as much my brother as anyone could be.
I don’t want any secrets between us. A strange calm when I say, “Hey, Al. What’s Ginny’s family’s restaurant called? ”
“Vito and Alma’s.” He gives me a half smile. “You know, my feelings are starting to get a little hurt.”
I’m about to tell him. I search for where to start. But I surprise myself and say, “Years ago, I saw Felix try to kiss you.” His face changes, startled. “Will you tell me about it?” I ask. “And then I’ll tell you about Ginny.”
“I’m devoted to your sister,” Al says.
“I know. Don’t worry. I swear, it will stay between us.”
“All right then.” But he sits here for a long time before continuing. Finally, he says, “Felix and I, we had a little something between us when we were young. Before Adele and me. A foolish, childhood thing. I put a stop to it.”
“I don’t know if childhood things are so foolish.”
“What I’m trying to say is, he isn’t some long-lost love of mine. We were friends, and for a time we did some messing around. And then we were friends again. That night of the Christmas party, he tried to rekindle some feelings and I stopped him.”
“Were there other men?”
“No. Don’t get me wrong, I notice when a man’s attractive, but I notice when a woman’s attractive, too. I don’t do anything with any of them. I take it seriously, being a married man.”
“Have you ever felt like you had to hide?”
“May have crossed my mind as a kid, but no. Not in any significant way.” He sets his hand on my knee. “Have you?”
“I’ve spent my entire life hiding.”
“Tell me whatever you’re willing to.”
“It started with Hattie Laurent.”
“When you were living in her house?”
“No, before. It stopped when I was married.”
“And Cyril … did you have feelings for him?”
“I didn’t want to marry him. I did it because Hattie asked me to. It was unfair to Cyril. I know that now.”
“Who knows? Maybe it could have turned into something if he’d made it back from the war. Most people aren’t all one thing or another. What was it with Felix?”
“An arrangement. I thought we’d live our lives together and I found some comfort in that.”
“I thought as much. Even before Felix, I told Adele that you might not be attracted to many men. One night when she was going on and on about you not joining Les Dames Amis. She was so perplexed and there was an obvious answer staring us in the face.”
“What did she say?”
“She said you chose to marry Cyril, that it couldn’t be anything like that.”
“I see. Al, I’m in love with Ginny. I’ve been in love with her for years.”
He nods. “Yeah.” He pats my knee again. “I put that together.”
I feel like I’ve just run a very long distance, and now it’s over and I’m catching my breath.
It’s a warm night, the record’s ended, just Al and me.
He has Lionel’s nose, a bit of Lionel’s looseness in the way he’s sitting, his legs straight out, crossed at the ankles.
“What do you think of country music?” I ask him.
“I’ve never liked it much,” he says, and I laugh.
And then it’s May, the eve of Nathalie’s eighteenth birthday, and I dream of her opening a card from Delphine, ashes pouring out of the envelope.
I check the mail in the afternoon with my heart in my throat.
Two cards for her, both from New Orleans: one from Mama and Papa Laurent, the other from Hattie.
We celebrate her birthday at the roller rink.
I’m to pay for the party but stay in the background while she and Clément skate with their friends.
I catch my sisters in the parking lot, Claire dropping off Sebastian, Adele dropping off Elizabeth and Paul.
Rudy’s out of the house now, too grown for teenage birthday parties.
He works the door at the Dooto Center during concerts, greets me with a mellow smile and hint of marijuana smoke most times I see him.
I convince my sisters to stay with me awhile.
We sit outside at a table, Claire with a blue scarf tied at her throat, Adele in a bright-yellow miniskirt.
Adele crosses her legs, tells us about preparations for the Saint Albert’s fashion show Dooto’s is hosting.
About the banquet for Rev. Dollarhide in celebration of his city council win.
“Well, you sure are busy,” Claire says. “No idea how you have time for it. I’m barely staying afloat, what with Bernard in Santa Maria for weeks at a time.”
“Santa Maria?” Adele asks, narrowing her eyes.
I feel the conversation turning. Search for some way to catch it, but Claire says, “He’s doing recruitment for the plant.”
“Recruiting people to replace his friends? To replace Odette?”
“We wouldn’t even be here if Al and his friends hadn’t messed with a good thing. You should see the response to the want ads. Not sure what we’re going to do when the plant is all up and running.”
“Bernard will have no trouble,” Adele says. “Company man like him. Eager to do as he’s told.”
“Stop,” I say. “Please. You two talk like Al and Bernard somehow control the decisions of a huge company. Not even Columbia makes its own decisions. CBS does. Everything’s already in motion.
It’s happening regardless of whether Bernard’s helping with the transition.
Let’s not let this come between us more than it already has. ”
Claire adjusts her scarf. Adele fishes a pack of cigarettes from her purse.
“Want one?” she asks me. I shake my head. I’ve been cutting down. “Want one?” she asks Claire, and Claire plucks one from the pack. She puts the cigarette in her mouth, leans close to Adele, who lights it.