Wherever There Is Light (24 page)

“Very magnanimous of them.”

“Of Maxine. She's a magnanimous girl.”

“I could tell from her dress.”

Simon treated her to one of his dimpled smiles. “Julian's nice. So's his buddy, Longy Zwillman. Who would've guessed in college? Kenni-Ann Wakefield—gun moll.”

Kendall was indignant. “I love Julian. And if you've got a hankering to smart-mouth him or Abe, go eat with Maxine. And no more horning in where you're not invited.” Simon held an undeniable appeal for her: his humor, intellect, his interest in art and literature and, although she hated admitting it to herself, the fact that he was a Negro from a similar patrician background. Yet, hearing his snide comments, Kendall was unsure if Simon would be a suitable replacement for Julian, and her thinking about lovers in such pragmatic terms bothered her, because she detected Garland's stonyhearted logic in her calculations.

Simon's smile went away. “I apologized for the gallery, and I meant it. It's that—”

“That?”

“I'd like to be higher up on your dance card and—and I wish I could write a paragraph as beautifully crafted as one of your photographs.”

“If I can help you, I will. I've been incredibly lucky. And I've met Ada and Aaron Robbins.”

“The Robbins Press. That's top-shelf.”

“I can introduce you. They're known for publishing young Negro writers.”

Mama B took their orders without a glance at Simon.

“Am I in the doghouse here?” Simon asked, after she'd gone to the kitchen.

Kendall laughed. “We won't know till after lunch.”

December stole her daylight, and Kendall hoarded every second of it for her photographs and didn't go past Christina's again until she came back from Harlem. And today, as Kendall shouldered her way out of the subway station, she was tempted to head home. Julian had been working late at his office in South Orange since Sunday, going over the architect's renderings and cost projections for the garden-apartment complexes he wanted to put up, and Kendall missed him. He was coming tonight; she could use a shower; and she planned to cook him his favorite meal—spicy fried chicken, grilled tomatoes, and corn bread.

In the end, Kendall chose to go by Christina's. She loved the silvery dance of snowflakes in the late-afternoon blue, the shops on Bleecker with strands of bulbs as colorful as Gumballs in the windows, and the horse-drawn wagon stacked with freshly cut firs going by with bells jingling on the roan's harness. Rounding the corner onto Commerce, she smelled burning apple wood and knew Christina was home and couldn't wait to tell her about the exhibit.

“Christina?” Kendall called through the padlocked gate. “It's me.”

Christina was sitting in her settee and staring at the ashcan fire.

“Please,” Kendall said. “Unlock the gate.”

Christina shambled toward the gate, and Kendall, watching Christina through the gauzy curtain of snowflakes, felt as if she were looking at a painting by Seurat. Only fragments of Christina were in motion, and she was no longer whole. Kendall appreciated the virtuosity of Seurat and his paint-dabbing brotherhood of pointillists, but for her, reality as an ever-shifting pattern of dots was an assault against her wish to define herself, to stand on her own two feet, on her own solid ground.

“What do you want?” Christina asked, the coldness of her tone molding the question into an expression of pique.

“You weren't at my exhibit. I—”

“Brig bought a farm. Upstate. In Copake Lake.”

“I—”

“We didn't get out of bed at the farm.” Christina glared through the bars with eyes like smoldering ash. “Your attempt to seduce Brig worked him up.”

Kendall felt a spurt of anger, like the sudden twist of an ankle, but overriding her anger was the hurt that the closest girlfriend she'd ever had was unfairly accusing her of seducing her husband. Still, as wounded as Kendall was, she tried to avoid insulting Christina, swallowing the response on the tip of her tongue—
Seduce that disgusting letch!
—and saying, “I'd never do that. You know me.”

“I do? I know I helped you because you have everything I want: youth, beauty, and talent. I know your rich Jew isn't the man for you, but I didn't know when I suggested you find an artist, you'd sniff around my husband.”

“I didn't—”

“You didn't take off your bra for him? You didn't give him a rub below the belt?”

“I had to get his hands off me.”

“Maybe you should've given him a gander at your feathers.”

“I chased him out of my apartment with a gun. Did Brig tell you that? Did he?”

“I knew Brig loved me. But not how much until he resisted you.”

Kendall's anger was back. “Resisted? If I didn't threaten to shoot him, he'd have raped me.”

Christina's laughter sounded like the cackling of a drunken witch. “All you colored girls get raped. Every mulatto's a rape baby. No colored girl ever wanted a pumping from a white man. You have a baby with your Jew, will you accuse him of rape?”

Kendall saw her hand thrust through the bars to strike Christina, who stepped out of range and went back to her settee, chanting, “Tramp, tramp, tramp . . .”

All that Kendall was able to remember from her walk to Minetta Street was that whenever she saw Christmas-tree lights through the brownstone windows, she recalled her childhood in Philadelphia and became so sad she had to avert her eyes.

“Careful, don't slip.”

Kendall was outside her apartment, where a young man in a peacoat and watch cap was sprinkling rock salt on the sidewalk.

“I'm Dominick, Miss Wakefield. Mr. Ciccolini's grandson.”

His smile was as friendly as his grandfather's, only Dominick had his upper teeth. Kendall remembered seeing him on a bench with her landlord in Washington Square.

“Of course, the law student in Albany.”

“I'm here for a couple days. If I don't see you again, have a merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas to you, Dominick.” Kendall was at the door when it hit her, and she turned. “Dominick, what's today's date?”

“The fourth.”

“Gosh, I'm so embarrassed. I've been busy, and I forgot to pay my rent. Can I give you a check to give your grandfather?”

“You could, but you're Mr. Rose's friend, aren't you?”

“I am. Why do you ask?”

“Because you can give him the check. He owns the building.”

Suddenly, Kendall was dizzy and gripped the railing.

“You okay?” Dominick asked.

“Julian owns the building?”

“My grandfather sold it to his cousin over in Jersey, Siano Abruzzi. Mr. Rose bought it from him.”

Kendall opened the door and climbed the stairway, steadying herself by holding on to the banister, wanting to scream and wishing she could cry.

T
hat should do it,” Julian said, reclining in his high-back office chair.

Abe, lighting a cigar, said, “Nothing else?”

“No. My parents get the stocks and bonds; Eddie, the apartment building, the land in West Orange, Orchard Hill, Union, and Millburn; and Kendall, the place in New York and the cash in Howard Savings and National Newark and Essex. The rest is yours.”

“Nobody's dying.” Abe blew a smoke ring and chuckled. “I'll take care of your stuff and won't steal every dime.”

They went out into the flurrying snow. Julian's car was in the lot across from the library; Abe had parked a block away on South Orange Avenue—safer for him, leaving his car in the middle of a well-lit shopping district.

Julian said, “Donovan's gonna be at the football game Sunday. You coming?”

“Gave my ticket to Eddie O. Got no interest in freezing my keister off at the Polo Grounds. What's with you and Kendall?”

“Best thing that ever happened to me, but she's not as—as happy as I am.”

Abe took the cigar out of his mouth. “Because we get a better deal than the gals.”

“How's that?”

“They're everything for us. We're not the same for them. They need more, and we're not it. And I bet it ain't no picnic for Kendall being with a white lug who wants to marry her.”

“I doubt she knows that.”

“Big mistake—thinking a woman don't know that.” Abe tossed away his cigar. “Kendall's special. You can tell when you meet her. And I ain't never seen you so happy with a girl. If you two get hitched, the way things are, it'll be rough. She worth the trouble?”

Julian removed a Tiffany ring box from his coat pocket and opened it. Abe looked at the oval-shaped diamond. “Nice, now don't be in no hurry to get in a war.”

Abe kissed him on the cheek. Julian watched him walk away, a tall man with his fedora tilted just so and his charcoal topcoat tailored to perfection.

The father he never had.

No one approaching the Holland Tunnel considers a caravan of tractor trailers with flat tires blocking the toll booths a lucky break, though the delay did provide Julian with the opportunity to look in the rearview mirror and rehearse his marriage proposal:
I love you, Kendall. Love you more than anyone I've ever known.
That's how he'd start. He had to be careful. Tell her the truth but not scare her off.
And I want to marry you.
He'd take the ring out of his pocket.
I'm not looking to plan your future. I'll go wherever you want. All I know is whatever's waiting for me, I want to find it with you.

Should he kiss her? No. Put the ring on finger? No again. Too pushy. More talk? Hell no. He'd shut his mouth and wait. Wait for Kendall. That would be his best shot for a yes.

After finally driving out of the tunnel and up Sixth Avenue, Julian saw a parking space on Minetta Street, a rare find he interpreted as a good omen. Ordinarily, he didn't believe in good omens, but he brushed aside his skepticism until he let himself into the apartment, saw Kendall standing beside his two toffee leather Mark Cross suitcases, and heard her say, “Get out.”

The iciness of her voice, as much as her ordering him to go, shocked him.

“Why?” he asked, taking off his hat and flipping it onto the sofa.

She grabbed his fedora and flung it at him. “Are you deaf?”

His hat sailed past him. “No.”

“Take your bags and get out.”

“Why? Is it Simon?”

“Simon?”

“How dumb do you think I am? Simon magically appears at your exhibit?”

As defensively as a witness tripped up in court, Kendall replied, “I didn't invite him.”

“You hadn't seen him before Friday?”

Kendall glanced out the window. The snow was tapering off.

Julian bored in like a prosecutor. “You forgot to mention it?”

“What're you accusing me of?”

“Running around with an old boyfriend.”

“Running— You're the only man I ever—” Her face seemed to harden into a ceramic mask of outrage. “Is that your opinion of Negro girls? Our legs are open like all-night diners?”

“Negro's got nothing to do with this. And you know it.”

With a mocking, southern accent, she said, “You cain't be askin' yoah lil colored bitch to be actin' like a white girl—no suh.”

“Stop it.”

Julian didn't say it loudly, and his face was blank, yet Kendall was terrified. She wasn't frightened that he'd hit her: his violence had been reserved for men. But this was the first time Kendall had seen the rage beneath his calm exterior. It was a sinister emptiness, like outer space without moons, planets, or stars. And Kendall wondered if other people, those who were not blinded by love, had seen it. Perhaps Christina. Or her mother.

“You wanna take up with Simon, have the guts to tell me.”

“Guts to tell
you
? You lousy hypocrite—”

“Hypocrite?”

Her scream, sharp as a gunshot, startled both of them: “You bought this place!”