Wherever There Is Light (43 page)

It was a mile-and-a-half walk uphill to Newstead. They stopped at Julian's first; Bobby wrote him a note and changed out of his school clothes into a hooded gray sweatshirt, blue jeans, and Converse high-tops. Stevie lived a few blocks away, next to a grammar school, in a ranch house with triangular glass walls. Mayella, a pear-shaped Negro woman in a white uniform, told them to sit in the kitchen, then stirred Nestlé Quik into glasses of milk and removed a tin sheet of oatmeal cookies from the oven.

As the boys ate and drank, Mayella squinted at Bobby. “Where you from?”

Stevie answered, “He's from Newstead.”

Mayella said, “You is?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Bobby said.

“Most the colored 'round heah, they be from Newark. Your people from Newark?”

“No, ma'am.” On weekends, Bobby sometimes went to the Weequahic Diner in Newark with Julian and Uncle Eddie. On the ride down Lyons Avenue he'd noticed that the city had crowds of Negroes on the streets, and he wished that he could walk around there because it would be fun to visit someplace where people didn't gawk at him as if he were one of those weirdos on
The Munsters
.

Stevie and Bobby had been on the blacktop behind the grammar school for over an hour. Stevie was standing forty feet away pitching tennis balls toward a box chalked onto a brick wall. Bobby had been swinging away without success until Stevie said, “Move your hands up higher on the bat,” and after choking up another two inches, Bobby smacked the ball over Stevie's head. Mighty pleased with himself, Bobby ran to Stevie, who held out his right hand, palm up. “Gimme five.”

Bobby contemplated Stevie's palm, and Stevie lifted Bobby's right hand and brought it down on his. As they left the schoolyard, Stevie said, “Somebody in homeroom told me you're like one of the smartest kids in school.”

“I don't know if I am.”

“Wish I was. Or at least my parents do. You're lucky.”

Bobby shrugged. He'd felt a lot luckier when his mother was alive.

Mrs. Lerner had reddish-blond hair done up like dandelion fluff. She was thin and drank a can of Fresca at the dining room table while everyone else ate. Mayella brought in the mashed potatoes, lima beans, and roast beef, and Mrs. Lerner urged Bobby to take more, as if he'd never sampled such exotic dishes. Mr. Lerner, who bore a striking resemblance to Fred Flintsone, said, “Bobby, you're in my son's class?”

Stevie said, “Dad, he's with the smart kids.”

“You could be with the smart kids. If you put your nose in the grindstone.”

Stevie stared at his plate. Mr. Lerner said, “Mayella tells me you're not from Newark?”

“Dad, he's from Paris.”

Wistfully, Mrs. Lerner said, “I've always wanted to see Paris.”

Mr. Lerner frowned at his wife and asked Bobby, “How'd you get to Newstead?”

Bobby answered that his parents had died, which produced a merciful gap of silence. Then he added, “My guardian's here. Julian Rose.”

Bobby didn't understand why, but this information brought the interrogation to a close.

Dessert was apple pie and vanilla ice cream, and Stevie and Bobby were permitted to take their bowls to the den, where they watched
The Wild, Wild West
. When the show ended, Bobby thanked Mr. and Mrs. Lerner for dinner and walked home. He was on Glenview Road when a blue-and-white police car stopped alongside him with the driver's-side window down. The policeman behind the wheel said, “You lost, son?”

Bobby began to tremble. “No, sir.”

The policeman, ordering Bobby to step back, got out of the car. “What's your name?”

“Bobby Wakefield.”

“Where you going?”

Bobby recited his address. The policeman, broad-shouldered, his belly hanging over his belt buckle, peered at him. Bobby could hardly see his face under the bill of his cap, just that he was white. He remembered the Lovewood policeman, the mean one with the sunglasses, and Bobby felt like he was going to piss his pants.

“Why you shaking?” the policeman asked.

“Cold,” Bobby replied. Then, recalling how Julian's name had stopped Mr. Lerner from grilling him, Bobby said, “Julian Rose is my guardian.”

“No foolin', Julian Rose? You tell Mr. Rose, Officer Nelligan says hi.”

Bobby sprinted home. Julian was reading a book in the great room. After telling him about the Lerners and Officer Nelligan, Bobby asked, “How come they act different when they hear your name?”

“I've been in town for thirty years.”

Bobby sensed that Julian wasn't telling him the whole truth and that asking him another question wouldn't help.

In the morning, Julian told Bobby that he had business in Orchard Hill and asked him if he wanted to come along. “I can't,” Bobby said. “I'm learning to play stickball.”

“That's swell. But be home by six. We'll go out to dinner.”

Bobby waited until Julian was gone before putting on his jacket and walking to South Orange Village, where he caught a bus to the terminal in Irvington and read the schedule on the window of the information booth.

Nine minutes later, Bobby was on a bus to Newark.

E
ddie, paying the toll at the George Washington Bridge, said, “I shouldn'ta told ya.”

On Saturday night, Eddie and Fiona had gone to the Five Spot to hear Chet Baker. After his set, Eddie had asked Chet about Otis, who used to play piano for him. Chet said that in August he'd tried to visit Otis in a house on 137th Street, between Lenox and Seventh, where some nuns nursed people who didn't have families to take them in. Otis wouldn't see Chet. Julian didn't care. He wanted to talk to Otis. Eddie had tried to talk him out of it.

“You say you don't give a damn if you're Bobby's father,” Eddie said, “so what is it? If he's yours, you can get mad at Kendall again for not getting in touch when he was born?”

“I hadn't thought of that.”

“Then think of this. Even if Otis can give you an answer about Bobby's birth certificate, all you'll get is more questions.”

Two summers ago, after a Negro teenager was shot and killed by a white cop, a riot broke out in Harlem, but this street, with its run-down houses and river of trash in the gutters, couldn't have gotten any worse. On the positive side, parking wasn't a problem. At the end of the block, Julian saw a plaque above a door:

HE HEALS THE BROKENHEARTED AND BINDS UP THEIR WOUNDS.

A nun with a pasty oval face answered the bell.

Julian said, “We're here to visit Otis Larkin.”

“Mr. Larkin isn't accepting—”

Julian stepped past her. Eddie followed.

“Please, Sister. If Otis asks us to leave, we will.” That was true. So was the fact that Julian was prepared to look for Otis without her permission.

The nun, after peering at Julian, led him to the rear of the first floor. The house smelled of disinfectant and urine. Otis was sleeping under a sheet in a hot, windowless room. A wooden crucifix was above the metal-frame bed. The nun departed. Eddie stood on one side of Otis, Julian on the other.

Eddie whispered, “We got no right to disturb him.”

Seeing Otis's jaundiced face slick with sweat, Julian was disgusted with himself for coming, and as he turned to leave, Otis opened one eye. “You boys got older than dirt.”

Eddie said, “What's shaking, Jitterbug?”

Otis opened the other eye. “Got every improvement, my man. Pneumonia, hepatitis, cirrhosis, and some other stuff they think's too scary to tell me.” Otis gulped for air and winced. “How'd ya find me?”

Julian said, “Eddie bumped into Chet.”

“Chet came by, but I want to remember the what-was, not the what-is.”

Eddie said, “Chet knows that.”

Otis sighed, and phlegm crackled in his lungs. “How's Kenni-Ann?”

Julian thought Otis was about to lose enough: he didn't need to lose Kendall as well. “She's fine.”

“That boy of hers must be big.”

“Bobby, he is.”

The pain was clear on Otis's face. “Bobby, he's . . . I told Kenni-Ann, she got to tell you.”

“Water under the bridge,” said Julian.

Otis's breathing was shallow. “Kenni-Ann was in New York when Bobby was born. I'd just gotten in from L.A.—from recording
Witch Doctor
with Chet. My mama was after me to get married.” Otis blinked back tears. “I don't know what you knew about me.”

Eddie said, “That you're one of the sweetest piano players I ever heard.”

“Kenni-Ann put me on his birth certificate. Said I should show Mama, so she'd leave me alone. But Mama knew about me. Most of Harlem did. And Mama says, ‘Don't you come here. I won't have that sin under my roof.' I went and got good and fucked up. Kenni-Ann jetted off to Paris with Bobby, and I didn't—”

Eddie said, “It wasn't on you to tell. Let it go.”

“I wrote Mama a letter when I got here, but she hasn't . . .”

Tears began rolling from Otis's eyes. Julian dabbed at them with his hankie.

“Mama never forgave me for getting my brother lynched. And Daddy, he died from it.”

Eddie said, “Derrick was murdered. And not by you.”

Otis gazed at Julian, the air whistling in and out of his lungs. “If I hadn't gone swimmin'— Jesus . . . it hurts to breathe.”

“You rest now,” Julian said, and sat on the bed and held Otis's hand until he fell asleep. He didn't feel any better knowing that he was Bobby's father because he still didn't understand why Kendall hadn't contacted him. And he wasn't able to forgive her.

Eddie's eyes were red. He said, “See ya, Jitterbug,” and left the room as the nun returned. Julian gave her his card and asked her to mail the bill for Otis's casket and cemetery plot to his office. That didn't make him feel better either, but it was all he could do.

O
n the Garden State, Eddie stopped to gas up, and Julian used the pay phone to check in with his office. He felt rotten about Otis, but when he got back into the Cadillac, he couldn't tamp down his panic about what his secretary had just told him:
God
,
You can't do this to me again
.
I paid already
—
I paid enough
.

Julian said, “Bobby took off from school after lunch. I called the house and his pal Stevie, but I can't find him. There was a fight, and Stevie's father had to go pick his boy up at the principal's office. The maid told me they're not home yet. Let's go there.”

After Eddie pulled his Cadillac into the Lerners' driveway, he heard yelling on the other side of the high cedar fence.

Julian said, “That's Martin, Stevie's father. He gets kind of nervous around me. I'm guessing he was a fan of
The Untouchables
.”

Stevie was on a bamboo chair by the amoeba-shaped pool, pressing a Baggie of ice to his left eye. Martin Lerner, in a sap-green cardigan and madras slacks, was standing over him. “Mr. Rose,” Martin said, glancing at Eddie as if he might have a tommy gun under his mocha silk sport coat. “Stevie's being a little closemouthed.”