All the Finest Girls (18 page)

“There’s coffee and fruit, if you’re hungry,” Floria said, unblinking, then disappeared back inside.

I walked out to the edge of the hillside, wanting to catch my breath. Halfway out in the harbor, two trawlers, one cherry red and the other gunmetal gray, chugged away from shore. Far up in the rusty rigging of the gray boat I could see a man tying knots in a shredded net, oblivious to the altitude. A bloated white ocean liner cruised east along the horizon, and for a moment my perspective made it look as though the big ship and the gray boat might collide. I shut my eyes. When I opened them again, the fishermen were leagues from danger.

Farther ahead, northward still, lay my tiny life in New York. It came to me suddenly, cramped and defeated, its white flag hoisted and fluttering. The thought made me a little woozy, but I held my ground. I hadn’t traveled anywhere in years, I realized. By closing my circle of movements, I felt I’d somehow mastered the chaos that had once ruled my life and built a little citadel against its possible return. No one came in, nothing went out.

So what did I have inside that marvelous fortress? A cruddy apartment for which I paid half my salary, a few friends, none of whom knew me well, and my job. My job. Which was? A corner, on the top floor of the museum, under a dome of filtered skylights. And in that corner I succumbed each day, in the exacting ritual of my craft, to a kind of self-hypnosis. I swabbed and dusted and scraped, looking for secrets, trying most of all not to leave my mark. When I’d done my finest work, I was invisible. I could stand back and say,
This is good because I am not here.

Once upon a time I’d wanted to be a painter. I’d studied and dreamed and strived toward some imaginary goal of artistic perfection, my shoulder bent to the task with grim determination. But my work was always too careful, too exacting. Ultimately, it fell flat. I had no access to the currency that connects a good artist to her audience, didn’t, I guess, speak the language of the heart. My last year in college, I began to recognize my deficiency and retreated from the whole endeavor. I couldn’t, however, give up art altogether, and when I discovered restoration work, I rejoiced. It seemed that I’d found an arena perfectly suited for turning my shortcomings to advantage. There was reward for my obsessiveness, my precision, and on very good days I felt I had a real calling. But since my recent debacle, even that faith had flown without tether into a void as white and deep as the hole I’d made in the painting’s sky. I was a glorified janitor, really, spent my days cleaning pictures made by a bunch of dead white men. And I wasn’t even very good at that.

What would Lou make of me now? Would she be proud of what I’d become? Might she draw me to her bosom and, with a suck of the tooth, dismiss my flaws and praise my virtues?

Addy, yah a fine girl; don’t yah listen to dem old pissy chilren, because yah gonna grow and be de best, yah hearing me? Numbah one at whatever yah choose, and dem be jes’ scratching around —

Not likely. I thought again of Errol, of the boys. Of Lou’s broken family and the disturbing truth of my complete ignorance.

For the longest time, Lou had been the standard by which I measured and defined love. I’d maintained a childish but convenient philosophy of absolutes: Some people got love right; others did not and never would. The Abrahams were most decidedly of the latter sort, love handicapped. Lou, however, without seeming too corny,
was
love. The very embodiment of that emotion. My conviction about my own otherness allowed me a sort of safety, a certainty about what I was not and could not have. Now, after a day on St. Clair, nothing held its center. That I hadn’t ever considered the possible reality of Lou’s life,
why
she was apart from her children and so far from home, stunned and shamed me.

The dogs in the neighbor’s yard began to bark, and I heard the Alfreds’ front door open and close. I slipped quietly through the kitchen door and searched out a tin pot of coffee warming on the stove. Hearing voices, I peered into the living room.

Mr. Alfred, in a pistachio-colored short-sleeved shirt, was seated in his chair. Beside him, Marva held a Bible and turned her squat, sturdy frame in the direction of the front door. She was watching, patiently, a small man who shifted from one foot to the other, fiddling nervously with the brim of his hat. His brown suit, which overwhelmed his narrow shoulders, had about its lapel the shine of years, and he wore his fraying collared shirt without a tie.

“Well, well, well,” the man said, his voice quivering as he tried to smile. He reached up and touched his hair, which grew in two thick wedges from his head like wings. His neck was bent, eyes cast down.

“Minerva. Mr. Alfred, sir. Me here wit a heavy heart today. De Lord has surely recalled an angel. Took her right from us. From you specially.”

He cleared his throat, squeezing and torturing his hat, but didn’t look up from the worn floorboards. He seemed to be choosing his words with exquisite care, and I could see Marva, a bemused expression on her face, waiting.

“Nevah thought me see dis day.” His speech faltered. “Me jes’ suspected …”

Marva put her father’s Bible in his lap and began to walk toward the visitor, but he waved her off. I took a seat at the kitchen table as soundlessly as I could, sliding my chair back where I couldn’t be seen but still had a partial view. Backlit by the window, the man’s features were in shadow.

“No, no,” he said, without looking up. “Don’t expense yahself. Me come to set by, to comfort
you.”

The man drew a deep breath and moved into the room, resting his hat on the arm of the couch and walking toward Mr. Alfred with renewed purpose. As he got closer I was able to see his face more clearly. He was dark and delicate, with a full graying mustache that grew like a carpet down and out over his sunken cheeks. The sorrow woven on his face gave him the most pitiful aspect I’d ever seen. His big eyes were red and wet.

“Mr. Alfred, it’s yah old friend here, Mackie Goodson, from nearby. Remembah me?”

Mr. Alfred moved his jaw about, either searching his memory or rooting out the breakfast he’d just finished. If he recognized Mackie Goodson, he wasn’t letting on.

“Me jes’ as sorry as me cyan be about yah daughta. She was a great lady. Her and me were friends for so many years, me cyaant even figure. How you doin’ today?”

“Pretty good for an old man, tank you.”

Mr. Alfred smiled slyly, oblivious to the weight of Mackie’s question.

“Well, tank de Lawd for dat,” said Mackie, his voice whittled down to a whisper. “And you, Marva …”

Unable to finish his question, Mackie backed up onto the couch and buried his head in his hands, his courage spent. His grief wound toward the kitchen and pulled at my heart. I held onto my chair, feeling like a lonely moviegoer in the back row.

“Dere, dere, Mackie,” said Marva while she propped her father with a pillow. “S’arright. Have yahself a cry.”

She sucked a tooth and shook her head. Mr. Alfred appeared blissfully unconcerned.

“De Lord does his work in mysterious ways, don’t he now?” Mackie said, sobbing, feeling for a handkerchief. Marva sat down next to Mackie and put a big arm around his shoulder.

“Yes. Yes, he does.”

“Me miss her so already,” Mackie said. Though he could not have been under sixty, Mackie looked like a lost little boy crumpled against Marva’s breast.

“Well, she loved yah, Mackie.” Marva gave him a squeeze, her face still and calm. “Surely as day follows night she did.”

“Do you tink?”

“Mmhmm. Mmhmm.”

His face brightening ever so slightly, Mackie sat up and looked Marva in the eye.

“Yah know, Marva, me wanting to tell you someting. Dere was a time when I asked yah sister to marry me. Yes, I did.”

Marva nodded with an unconvincing display of surprise. Mackie sniffled, then fiddled with the edges of his handkerchief as he spoke.

“When she came home to Pville, and her having dose boys to care for, after dat man treated her … Oh, I don’t even like tinking on it. Cyaant speak his name. Me cyaant, Marva. It jes’ about dead me.”

“It was hard times den.”

“And dis before she sick, Marva. Well, me knowing she didn’t love me dat way, de way for marrying, but I did love her. Truly, since we was lickle tings. And me wanting to care for her. By de time I reach fifteen —
fifteen,
Marv — me making my own way.”

“I know, Mackie. I know.”

“And my business was doing very fine. So one day, after her and me were working out some numbers for me buying de store dat usually be next to mine? Remember she was always helping me wit my books? On dis one day, me jes’ in a mood, brave, and I ask her flat out. ‘Would you do me de honor to marry me, Louise?’ Dat’s how me ask. And you know, Marva, what she done? She put her hand to my face and her say, ‘Yah de finest man, Mackie Goodson,’ and den she begun to cry. Me knowed den she was saying no. But I needed a proper answer, and so me gwan go ask again. She say, ‘No, Mackie, no, I cyaant put dat on you.’ I figured she meant about Derek, and how he was back den, de devil’s own instrument. Jes’ as hard and mean on his mumma as de devil hisself. But I say please, me wanting to be a father to de boy, learn him well. But she wouldn’t have it. Oh, I know all dat ruction is what made her sick, Marva. After dat time, we never spoke of it again. But she was ever only de one for me. For tru she was.”

Mackie was weeping again, and Marva drew him close. In the kitchen, I felt stuck, bayoneted by the man’s despair. At last, Mackie managed to pull himself together and, after one tremendous honk into his kerchief, he gave a trembling laugh and looked about the room.

“Where is everyone?”

“Derek’s gone to work. Philip come up yesterday and he’s down doing some business.” Marva leaned back and sighed. “Him and Derek been scrapping about Errol.”

At the mention of Errol’s name, Mackie set his mouth and looked down at his hands, threading and unthreading his fingers.

“Is he coming?”

“Is who coming?” Mr. Alfred shouted suddenly. Startled, I tipped my cup, splattering hot coffee on my sundress. I pulled the dress off my lap, flapping it in the still air.

“Nevah mind, Papa,” said Marva with a wave of the hand. “He was. ‘Cept yesterday Philip, him a crack up his car drugging his papa’s old boat down to de harbor. Me not knowing what to do ’bout it now.”

“I do,” Mackie said.

Marva batted him with the dishcloth she had slung over her shoulder.

“Come now, don’t be an old frupse.”

“Sorry. Sorry,” he said, frowning, his voice now laced with anger. “Me jes cyaant abide him. He a face-man.”

Marva stood up and moved to her father’s side, fussing needlessly with his collar. The sun had shifted its angle and cast a harsh glare across Mackie’s tearstained face.

“Don’t yah talk like dat about Errol now, Mackie,” Marva said. “I’m not having it.” Just as she’d done with Derek the night before, she brought the discussion to an end with stunning speed. She looked at her watch. “Hear me, Mackie,” she said abruptly, all traces of displeasure immediately gone. “Me needing to go down to Eldertown, to market fi making my callaloo. Dat lickle girl from de States, de one Lulu usually cared for, is here, but Papa fears her. Cyan yah watch him fah me?”

“De girl’s here? For tru?”

Marva laughed and began clearing the cups next to Mr. Alfred’s chair. I sat frozen, knowing I was too far from either door to slip out unheard.

“Yah,” Marva continued, stepping into the kitchen with her hands full. I was too surprised to move or make any sound of warning. “She a real fenky-fenky. Always’s tremblin’ about.”

Just as Marva finished her sentence, getting a big chuckle out of Mackie, she caught sight of me in the darkness and stopped in her tracks. Issuing a holler, she drew her hands to her heart, which upset her load and sent an empty cup bouncing to the floor. I leaped to my feet, following the cup as it rolled along the sloping boards and across the room. Mackie appeared behind Marva, halting by her side.

“All hands on deck. All hands on deck,” shouted Mr. Alfred from the living room.

On my knees, I reached for the errant cup, which had lodged itself in a greasy spot between the ancient refrigerator and the edge of a cabinet, all the while apologizing prodigiously and claiming that I had just at that moment walked in. By the time I’d recovered the cup, Marva had calmed slightly and Mackie was softly patting her back. As he did so, he stared at me in disbelief.

“Jesus jumpin’ Judas,” Marva said, a faint smile coming to her lips. “Like to dead a person fi fear.”

“Are you de girl? Adelaide, right?” Mackie said, looking at me as if I were an apparition.

“Course she is,” said Marva. “Like me telling yah. Fenky-fenky.”

Mackie came toward me tentatively, watching me and straightening himself to his full height, which was no higher than my shoulder.

I put out my hand and he looked at it for a moment or two, then at last took it in his and made a deep bow.

“A pleasure to be making yah acquaintance.”

Marva sucked a tooth.

“Mackie de king of England now.”

Mackie stood back a pace and looked me up and down.

“She’s not what me visioning, Minerva. I cyaant believe a girl so frail woulda done de tings yah say.”

“Hush, Mackie,” said Marva.

Mackie leaned in close, as though trying to peer directly inside me.

“Yah really bit a lady once?” he whispered. “So she bleed?”

“Yup,” I answered plainly. Mackie whistled and laughed. He didn’t seem to be judging me as much as taking me in with wonder. He made me feel interesting. I let him look me over until Marva began to move toward the back of the house.

“Marva!” I called after her, surprised by my own boldness. “Can I come to town with you, come to market?”

Marva kept moving, and for a minute I thought she was ignoring me.

“If yah don’t stand dere like a poor-me-one, yah can. Eldertown bus is twice a day.”

Mackie was still laughing when Marva and I walked out the front door into the blaze of morning.

17