Almost Crimson (9 page)

“So, now that she's saved me from hell,” CeCe said, deliberately upbeat, “will she let us go to the movies by ourselves?”

Pam laughed. “She said she'll think about it, which sounded like a ‘no' to me.”

“Keep the faith, sister, keep the faith.”

FIFTEEN

HAZY

 

 

CECE COULDN'T ACCOUNT FOR THE hours between locking Doris' old house and stepping into her apartment. She had returned to work and sat through a meeting and picked up dish detergent on the way home, but her attention had been anchored to the thick envelope of signed documents in her car.

It was
7
p.m. and her mother had showered already for bed. In spite of her own evolution over the years, CeCe's mother still went to bed incredibly early. CeCe didn't mind her mother's twelve and fourteen hours of sleep now that her waking hours were spent out of bed.

CeCe rinsed suds from the pot and laid it down in the dish rack. She hung the dishrag over the edge of the sink to keep it from smelling sour, the way Aunt Rosie had shown her their first summer together. CeCe turned to lean against the sink. She still had on pantyhose and her work clothes, and her feet wanted to slide across the tile. CeCe remembered playing that game in her socks as a child. She'd slipped and banged her head against the cabinet once, frightened when she woke up minutes later on the kitchen floor. She hadn't known how long she'd been there, sprawled like a rag doll against their sink, but CeCe had been sure her mother hadn't noticed.

Today, CeCe wasn't even annoyed with her mother's worried calls. She'd planned to stay late at the office to offset her time with Doris, until her mother started calling, asking if CeCe was on her way home and asking her to please be careful. Her mother didn't have much conversation for CeCe once she arrived home, but was visibly at ease. CeCe once seethed at this latent care and concern but, in recent years, she accepted her mother's development for what it was: too late and not about her.

When Dr. Harper recommended the social programs at the Stringer Center, CeCe had been skeptical. How could a woman afraid of talking and breathing become social, she had asked. Dr. Harper had taken great care to explain the concepts of parallel play, initially observed in toddlers, but also useful in helping his adult patients re-enter their lives.

“They don't have to interact,” Dr. Harper had explained, “but pursuing a shared activity goal together lends a critical social context. Baby steps, if you will.”

Her mother's first
shared activity goal
had been beads. Then collages. Then herb plants. Now it was crochet. With each project, CeCe would nod in appeasement as if her mother were a preschooler with fragile self-confidence.

“You've been the parent in this relationship since forever,” Pam reminded her when CeCe used to complain about her mother's art classes at the Center. “Now you and your little one have entered the arts-and-crafts stage.”

For all Pam knew about little ones, CeCe would tease. Pam had been adamant since she and CeCe been children themselves about never having kids, and she managed to marry a man who didn't want children, either. Pam lived in Seattle now, where she and her husband had moved after grad school four years ago. CeCe had only seen her friend on Christmases since. She'd been invited again and again to visit them in Seattle, but CeCe couldn't imagine boarding a plane without being consumed with worry about her mother and grease fires. Confused bus routes. Finger picking. Backsliding.

“Look, you know I get it, but you're being fucking ridiculous now,” Pam snapped into the phone when CeCe called to say she couldn't travel for her friend's twenty-fifth birthday bash. “Caring for your mother does not have to mean forfeiting your own life, CeCe. You need to call that Dr. Hampton dude and figure out a new game plan.”

“Harper,” CeCe had said, trying to redirect the pulsing in her head. “Dr. Harper.”

“What the fuck ever.”

CeCe missed the party and she and Pam had gone a few weeks—a record—without calling. CeCe knew her friend was right, but didn't want to admit she was afraid. Scaffolding a thin existence around the care of her mother was all CeCe had ever known. The eighteen months she had spent living on her own had been traumatic for them both. CeCe's social handicaps were glaring and frightening and, on her own for the first time in two decades, her mother had not recognized the multitude of ways she had begun to waste away through the years.

Leaning against the kitchen sink, not letting her stocking feet slide along the tile squares, CeCe jumped when her cell phone rang. She had only been able to give Pam a bulleted account before Pam's work meeting. CeCe greeted her friend while slipping on her shoes to step outside. Leaning against the Lincoln, CeCe recounted the morning.

“Why are you whispering?” Pam interrupted.

“I don't want my voice to carry,” CeCe said.

“Are you telling me you actually have company?” Pam asked.

“Company?”

Pam's laugh throttled through the phone. “Yes, company,” Pam said. “That's what it's called when people who don't live in your house come visit you at your house.”

“Forget you, Te'Pamela,” CeCe said, grinding out the syllables. Pam hated her full name.

Pam halted their banter with a gasp. “You didn't tell Ms. Carla about the house, did you?”

CeCe swallowed. “Not yet. I wanted to—”

“You're thinking about moving without her, aren't you?”

“Don't say it like that.”

“Like what?” Pam asked.

“Like I'm abandoning her,” CeCe said.

Pam was quiet. CeCe could hear her friend's tone shift and settle.

“Don't do that, CeCe,” she said. “‘Abandon' is a word I wouldn't dare use with you. You better not either.”

“I should be excited, but all I feel is this knot in my stomach,” CeCe said, looking down at her feet, bare and ashen inside her commuter flats. Pam had taught her that trick, too, wearing flat shoes when she drove to prevent floor mat scuffs on the backs of her leather pumps. Although CeCe's height actually had her working the car pedals with her toes, she liked the ritual. The simple act of changing her shoes reminded her every day that she was a full-fledged, professional, grown woman. Right now, with her eyes rimming with tears, CeCe felt less than grown up. Right now, she felt the weight of the universe on her five-year-old shoulders all over again.

“My own house, Pam,” CeCe continued, rolling a jagged rock beneath one foot. A hot tear streamed her cheek. “A house. For me! But I know how selfish that sounds. I'm angry for feeling ashamed that I want it all to myself. I can't trust if I'm choosing with my brain or my emotions. I don't know what to do.”

“Pack your shit. That's what you do,” Pam said. “Your mama has taken the bus by herself for a while now, and she's memorizing the evening news report, painting stained glass, making out with lesbians and shit. She is going to be fine.”

“They did not make out,” CeCe said, shaking her head at the phone. CeCe's mother had walked into the apartment across the hall once, disoriented from using the rear entrance and confusing left side and right side. She'd interrupted the lesbian couple who lived there by standing by as they had sex in their kitchen.

“Hey,” Pam said, “if you watch, you're involved.”

“She was in shock, Pam. Stop it,” CeCe said, kicking away the rock. “You're supposed to be giving me advice right now.”

The dusky summer sky turned dark. CeCe leaned back against the car and looked up to the changing heavens. No matter how intently she watched a sunset, CeCe could never detect their surrender, the moment when hazy hues of orange and violet would give way to the resolute darkness of nighttime.

“My best advice is to breathe,” Pam said. “You don't have to figure anything out tomorrow. That place can stay vacant forever, if you want. It's yours.”

CeCe looked back toward the apartment and the square of light glaring through the window of her mother's bedroom. She let out a weighted breath.

“OK,” Pam said. “Tell me about the back yard again.”

SIXTEEN

YELLOW

 

 

HE WAS WAITING FOR HER again, next to the mailbox, hands jammed in his pockets like always. He wasn't there every day, not at first. His appearances were random, seemingly governed by unseen forces rather than time. CeCe first noticed him two weeks ago when she'd been peering out of the library windows at the darkening stretch of sky. The early summer had begun to unwind itself in spasms of rain showers and CeCe found herself waiting out a downpour. Her bus stop was directly across the street, but had no shelter or awning. It was just wide open to the rain.

CeCe watched from the library window as people hunched and scattered, but the dark-skinned man didn't budge. When the first drops fell, fat and heavy, the dark-skinned man never even looked up to the swelling clouds. The man didn't look to CeCe like one of the “crazies” Mr. Curtis had warned her about at the newsstand. CeCe had imagined the crazies would stumble like drunks or have ghoulish skin and tattered clothes. The dark-skinned man looked like he was waiting for someone, for something to happen.

CeCe pressed her cheek to the glass. At the far end of the boulevard, she could see the westbound Kennedy bus lumbering around the corner at Market Street. CeCe bounded from the window, past the librarian's desk, through the front lobby, down the concrete steps and across the street to meet the bus before it sighed to a stop.

CeCe gloated from moving so fast. So fast, she hardly got wet. So fast, even the wind had whispered her name. CeCe dropped into an open seat and the bus lurched forward. She smiled at her reflection in the window. As the bus pulled away, the dark-skinned man smiled, too.

He was there again the next day. The municipal plaza, a smooth concrete streetscape connecting the library, post office, and city hall, stood brilliant in the summer sun. Businessmen strolled in twos, women whisked by on bicycles, children danced on the long and palatial library steps. Like a black bird, the dark-skinned man perched beside the mailbox, facing the library steps. CeCe turned from the window and tried to concentrate on her magazines. The more pages she flipped and the longer he stood at his post, still and resolute, the more curious CeCe grew.

Abandoning magazines, CeCe inched toward the window to watch the Bird Man. He wore another long-sleeved shirt, in spite of the humid weather. CeCe could tell he was short, like her, and his body was squat and strong, like crates stacked atop one another. CeCe wondered what he waited for all these days. The part of her mind that knew things for no reason, the part Mrs. Anderson called
intuition
, knew she should say something to the Bird Man, knew he wasn't one of the crazies.

CeCe moved to the couches but still couldn't sink into her book. She helped the librarian scoop and shelve stray books, but the Bird Man pulled her to the window. CeCe decided to collect her things and make her way outside. When she reached the top of the library steps, the Bird Man faced the street. Clutching her denim tote bag, CeCe descended the long stone steps. She kept her eyes on her sneakers until she reached the bottom and didn't stop moving her feet until she stood several feet behind him. Bird Man concentrated on concentrating, turning his head slowly to scan the boulevard. CeCe could see the muscles of his jaws grinding and churning.

“What are you looking for?” CeCe asked, holding her tote now with both hands. A bus pulled away from the corner, its passengers emptied into the summer heat. The man continued to face the street and CeCe was unsure of her fresh bravery.

“My name is CeCe,” she tried again.

“Nice to meet you, CeCe,” Bird Man said, turning only his head to speak to her in profile. His hands stayed jammed in his pockets. His face stayed pointed to the sidewalk.

CeCe waited. Her
intuition
told her to wait.

“What does CeCe stand for?” the Bird Man asked, angling his dark eyes to look up at her.

“Crimson,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Crimson
Celeste
.”

The man laughed. He turned to face her, hands still in his pocket.

“You don't like your name?” he asked.

“It's a little weird,” she said, shrugging. “I don't have to explain so much with CeCe.”

The Bird Man jutted his chin in agreement. “That makes sense,” he said.

The Bird Man and CeCe faced one another on the plaza. Midmorning traffic and pedestrians buzzed around them, oblivious to the wavelengths stretching between them.

“You're not going to tell me your name?” CeCe asked.

“Please, forgive my manners,” he said, placing a hand on his chest. “My name is Q.”

Q did not extend his hand or entreat her any further. CeCe liked that.

“That's OK,” she said, dropping the tote bag to hang between her feet. She swung the denim bag like a pendulum, waiting for him to speak.

“You're not afraid to talk to me?” he finally asked.

CeCe shook her head, watching him search the sidewalk for words.

“Well, I've been afraid to talk to you, Bluebell,” Q said, making CeCe and her tote bag freeze.

Her memory skipped through scraps and torn corners to locate this name. Bluebell. It was familiar, like watery images in a dream. CeCe's feet wound slowly backwards, away from Q and onto the library staircase. Maybe it was her intuition again.

“Please don't be scared,” Q said, hands flying from his pockets now. He kept them low at his sides, but his fingers were still fanned wide and pleading. “Please don't be scared.”

“Who told you to call me that?” CeCe asked. She was six steps away from him now. Passersby began to look twice.

“Crimson,” he started, seemingly unsure of how to string together his words. “I used to know your family. Your Uncle John called your mother Bluebell when she was little. Did you know that?”

CeCe stopped moving backwards. Q relaxed his hands.

Bluebell. Before her mother's Sad became impenetrable, CeCe remembered her mother washing her hair, dragging a fingertip heavy with thick grease along her scalp, and twisting her coarse locks into braids with a rattle of blue baubles and barrettes. Ever since she'd been doing her own hair, CeCe only managed to wrestle her hair into two angry knots or braids. Bluebell was one of the few details CeCe's mother had shared about her youth. She knew her mother came from a place called Decatur and before her Aunt Margaret and Uncle John had died, they called her Bluebell. CeCe looked at Q and crossed her narrow arms.

“How do you know my mother?” she asked. “Does she know you?”

“Yes,” Q said, slipping his hands back into his pockets. “She knows me.”

CeCe squinted an eye at him. Her intuition asked, “What's the Q for?”

The Bird Man hesitated. “Quentin.”

CeCe felt her feet and hands turn to lead.

“Quentin what?”

“Weathers.”

CeCe's mind couldn't work fast enough. Grown-ups, she knew, had a tough time saying what they meant. She looked at the Bird Man and waited for the weight of Quentin Weathers to crush her shoulders. She moved toward him again, step six, five, four, three. CeCe peered at him, tried to add up his angles. Step two.

“Mama said my daddy's name was Quentin Weathers,” she said

Q kept his hands in his pockets but his eyes on her face. “Yes, Crimson,” he said, his voice a whisper. “That's me.”

CeCe felt her arms pump and her feet slapping against the concrete, propelling her small body off of the last step, past Quentin and threads of passersby, across the thickening current of taxis, mopeds, and sedans, and onto the curb across the street where a bus was approaching. It wasn't the Kennedy line, but CeCe climbed aboard anyway.

Her chest heaved as she watched the divided wake of onlookers examining their bumped elbows, adjusting handbags, looking around for more. Quentin was gone, and her tote bag. CeCe turned to watch the city approach her through the bus window. Four blocks away, still engorged with adrenaline, her hands trembled. CeCe pulled the cord and got off for a transfer at Marshall Avenue. By the time she reached their apartment, CeCe had compiled a list of questions in her head for her mother.

CeCe found her mother at this time of the afternoon sitting on the couch staring out the window instead of the kitchen table. CeCe walked in without speaking, waiting for her mother's voice to arrest her as she made her way down the hall.

Where have you been, young lady?

Do you know what time it is?

Where is your book bag?

How was your day?

Nothing.

CeCe walked the short hallway to the bathroom. She closed the door and leaned against it, still listening for some reprimand to call out to her from the living room. She faced the full-length mirror behind the door. It had been discarded in the courtyard last fall, its frame cracked and unsightly. The apartment manager allowed CeCe to keep it and watched through his office window as she tussled the awkward plank into her house.

She examined herself. The way her short legs were beginning to lengthen, the musculature of her arms, the inactivity behind her tank top. CeCe touched the slim scar on her collarbone where she'd fallen on a wedge of broken glass during a first-grade field trip. She'd been a terrifying mess of blood that day. She felt like a terrifying mess again today. Just no blood.

CeCe peered at her face, at her dark, onyx eyes. Everything else on her face came from her mother—the small and heavy lips, the dark, plush lashes, and the peanut butter color of her skin. Her eyes were of something else.

Someone else.

CeCe leaned in closer, thinking of Quentin. His eyes had been sad, but kind. They were also dark as oil. Like hers. She had asked about him many times before, but her mother hadn't offered much. Quentin Weathers had been her boyfriend a long time ago. Quentin Weathers died in Vietnam. Quentin Weathers was her father
.

CeCe opened the bathroom door and walked into the kitchen. Her mother was rinsing her coffeepot and mug. CeCe sat at their small table and watched her mother's movements. Fill pot with water. Two drops of detergent. Wash and rinse. Place on the rack. Pick up mug. Wash. Rinse. Stack. Wipe hands. The same movements. Every day.

CeCe watched her mother's slow gestures, holding her breath. For the second time in this past hour and for only the hundredth time this week, CeCe hoped for a skip in this groove. She'd once read a story about a geneticist racing to thwart a renegade band of test subjects and the book had left CeCe thinking often about mutations, hoping an aberration would bring her mother back to her.

Her mother's eyes floated to CeCe's as she retreated to their bedroom. CeCe forced a faint grin and her mother nodded back at her. CeCe watched the afternoon soon follow her mother out of the kitchen and into the hall. Twenty-six steps. The groan of the bureau drawer. Surrender of mattress springs. Settling of sheets. Every day.

CeCe ignored the tears as they plummeted to the table. Nothing was different today from yesterday, or last week, or when she was seven, or since she could remember. CeCe was angry with her foolishness, but couldn't help hoping for a link in their chain to snap.

 

CeCe waited for four days. She began to worry that Quentin would never return to his mailbox perch. She was at a table leaning over a
Mad
magazine. Her attention had long abandoned the pages in
Right On!
and
Ebony
and now Stephen King, her favorite author. CeCe would skim a few pages and crane her neck toward the window. When she saw him, CeCe scrambled to her feet and, for the first time ever, bolted from the library without clearing the table and returning all of her items to the librarian's desk.

She bounded down the stairs, her high tops skipping the long cement steps. CeCe stopped at the third step. He wore another button-down shirt, tucked neatly into blue jeans this time. CeCe could tell he'd been holding his breath while she galloped down the long staircase. He released and relaxed his shoulders when she spoke.

“Hi,” she said.

He swallowed. “Hi.”

“I looked for you,” she said.

His back straightened, “You did?” he asked. “I wanted to come right back, but . . . I didn't feel so good.”

“You were scared, a little?” CeCe asked.

Quentin lowered his head and chuckled. “Yeah, Crimson,” he said, “I was.”

CeCe noticed her book bag leaning against the mailbox next to his feet. He picked it up and held it out between them. CeCe accepted it.

“Mama said you died,” CeCe said, pulling her book bag onto her shoulder. Quentin flinched, as if the blunt statement slapped at his face.

“I did, kind of,” he said.

CeCe squinted at him quizzically. “They brought you back to life, like Frankenstein?”

“Not exactly,” Quentin said, “but I did spend a lot of time with a lot of doctors.”

“Mad scientist doctors?”

Another quiet laugh. “It felt that way sometimes.”

CeCe gripped her book bag.
Quentin
slipped his hands back into his pockets.