Black Lace (22 page)

She then greeted her granddaughters Sarita and Narice, who both gave her strong, affectionate hugs. Eleanor checked out Sarita’s growing stomach. The ultrasound Sarita had last week showed a boy. “How’s my great-grandson doing?”

“Lively, but only at night. Keeps me awake big-time. Doctor says it’s because when I’m working, all
the movement keeps him sleeping, but the minute I get home and put my feet up he’s off.”

Eleanor smiled. “I remember those days. Remember I didn’t like it.”

She held out her arms to Narice. “How are you darling? How’s the school?”

“Fine, just fine.”

“What about that Hatfield and McCoy auntie of yours down in Georgia?”

Lacy had no idea what they were talking about, but Narice replied, “She at least let me repair the roof, but she still won’t let me visit her but once a year.”

Eleanor shook her head and smiled wistfully. “We old women are a pretty set-in-our-ways bunch. You stay as close as she’ll let you. That old bat’s going to need her family one day. We all will, if we live long enough.”

Her eyes then met Lacy’s and she smiled again. “You must be Lacy?”

Lacy nodded.

Eleanor seemed pleased. “Drake described you perfectly to me. It’s a pleasure to meet you and welcome to the family, my dear.”

Lacy then introduced her parents. Eleanor studied Val, then asked, “
The
Valerie Garner Green?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh my goodness. Lacy, Drake didn’t say anything to me about this.”

“I’m sure it was just something he forgot.”

“No. He didn’t tell me on purpose.” Her voice was filled with wonder as she held onto Val’s hand and
asked, “Do you know how many of your pieces I have?”

Lacy and Val grinned.

Eleanor looked to Lacy and said, “And you are by far your mother’s and your father’s greatest work.”

She put her hand to her breast. “I am so glad to meet you all.”

Lacy looked to her tall thin daddy and met his grin. There were no other men here his age, but he seemed content as always to bask in the background of the constellation he called his wife.

Charles turned out to be Eleanor’s chauffeur. He was a fine chocolate-skinned hunk who couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. Lacy thought the Vachon grandsons might be wishing they were twenty-five again, the way they were huffing and puffing while bringing in Eleanor’s fourteen pieces of luggage.

At one point during the back and forth trips, Saint put down a particularly heavy bag and asked, “What do you have in here, Gran, your gold?”

“No darling. It’s filled with soap to wash that coat of yours.”

Narice laughed the loudest and the longest.

Saint drawled, “Good one, Gran.” Then went back outside.

That evening after Mavis went home and Lacy’s parents were driven back to their hotel by Charles to rest up for tomorrow’s full day with Drake’s family, the Vachon grandsons and their ladies listened to Gran tell the story Myk had finally decided he wanted to hear.

“My son, your father, Roland, left for Vietnam in
’63. He didn’t want to go but he was already in the army and that’s where he was sent. They kicked him out in late ’64 because while in ’Nam, he’d become a heroin addict.”

The brothers stared. Lacy saw Sarita give Myk a questioning look, but his face was made of stone.

“He explained to me one day that getting high was the only way he could deal with where he was and what he was doing. The death, the napalm, the killing of entire villages. It wore him down, I suppose, so he turned to the comfort of the White Horse.”

You could hear a pin drop in the room.

Eleanor looked over to her grandsons. “He also came back burning with rage over his situation as a Black man. We Vachons have always been about the race, but he came back talking about genocide and secret government tests and the need for Black men to have as many sons as they could to aid the coming Revolution, as the young people called it back then.”

Lacy understood that. Her mother had explained the Revolution concept when she was a teenager. Val said, in the late sixties and early seventies she and everybody else her age were convinced that one day in the near future there would be a seismic revolution in America fueled by the people, which would redistribute the wealth, eliminate pollution and poverty, and wipe the world free of the great isms: imperialism, racism, and nepotism. In looking back, Val said it was nothing more than a crazy pipe dream, but at the time she and her generation believed in the Revolution with all their hearts.

In response to Eleanor’s last words, Saint asked bluntly, “So is that why he was running around playing Johnny Appleseed all over the country? He was breeding Black sons for the Revolution?”

Eleanor said, “Maybe. I don’t know, Anthony.”

It was impossible to see Saint’s reaction because of the dark glasses, but his mouth was set in a grim line.

Myk asked, “Since we’re playing twenty questions: Who was my mother and what happened to her?”

It was Eleanor’s turn to look grim. “She was an addict, and when you were born, you were addicted as well.”

Lacy’s gasp mingled with Drake’s. Sarita looked stricken. Myk’s hard face didn’t change.

Eleanor said, “I would come and see you every day. You were so tiny, but you were a fighter. Watching you go through withdrawal broke my heart, but you made it, and when the doctors said it was okay, I took you home.”

“So who was she?”

“She was your father’s high school sweetheart. Pamela Duvais. A good girl back then, just like Roland had been a good boy. They were supposed to marry when he came home from the army, but he came home on that stuff and then she was on it too.” She paused for a few moments, as if thinking back, then said softly, “I think that bit of darkness you still have inside of you today Mykal is from all that pain you went through after your birth.”

“Why did she leave me at the hospital, and where was Roland?”

“I can’t answer either of those questions. My son disappeared about two weeks before she was due. After Pam delivered you, she was discharged, and for the first two or three days after you were born she was right there at the hospital with me. Then she stopped coming. I never saw her again, nor did her family. Her mother’s theory was that Pam got hooked again and suffered some tragedy that took her life, but we’ll never really know.”

Lacy’s heart ached in sympathy to the sad story.

Drake raised his hand. “My turn, Gran.”

“You know most of your story, though, Drake. Two years after Mykal was born I received a letter from Roland saying you had been born to him and your mother. He sent me Mavis’s address here in Detroit, but his letter to me was postmarked from San Francisco.”

“So he’d already cut out again.”

“Yes.”

Drake shook his head.

“I wrote your mother to see if she wanted to give you up, but in words very unbecoming a lady of those days, she told me quite plainly, no.”

Drake had never heard that part of the story. “She cussed you?”

“Oh yes. Told me if I wanted to visit, fine, but she was keeping her son.”

Drake smiled. Sounded just like his mother.

Eleanor said with a smile, “I knew then that my second grandson was in good hands.”

Saint said, “Then I came along.”

A deeper sadness crept into Eleanor’s eyes. “Yes, darling, then you came along.”

Saint saved her the pain of telling the story. “I was born in one of the state’s women’s prisons to an inmate named Carla St. Martin. Evidently, Roland came back to Michigan long enough to father me, then split again for parts unknown.”

It was impossible not to hear the cold bitterness in his voice. “After my birth the state severed Carla’s parental rights and placed me in foster care. Carla was doing one-to-five for car theft. Her second offense. I spent the first nine or ten years in one bad place after another until I was placed with Sarita’s grandmother and uncles. Then I was happy. Carla overdosed two years after my birth. The end.”

No one laughed.

To Lacy it seemed that Drake was the only one of the brothers holding no bitterness, and she wondered if it was because of all the love he’d received from his mother and sisters.

Eleanor said then, “You all have lived without your father, but I’ve had to live without my son. Good night,” she whispered in a soft tear-choked voice. She stood, and Sarita stood too. Sarita put a consoling arm around Eleanor’s waist and walked with her out of the room.

Everyone else watched the departure silently.

Later, as Drake drove Lacy home, they were both in
a somber mood. Drake looked her way and asked, “Some story, huh?’

“Yeah. Pretty sad too.”

“It is, but in both my brothers’ cases, their wives have brought a lot of sunlight into their lives.”

“What about you? You don’t seem to be as affected.”

“Oh, I’ve go my issues too, but my mother and sisters helped, and so did my uncles. Growing up with no one to call Daddy hurts a lot, especially when you’re young and all your friends have fathers.”

Lacy understood.

“But I have you now. My own personal sunshine. Just like my brothers have theirs.”

She smiled. “And I’ll shine as long as you need it.”

“Good. Because I’m holding you to that.”

Lacy scooted close and wrapped her hands around his arm. “I love you, Drake.”

“I love you too, baby. Want to go and neck with the mayor on Belle Isle?”

Lacy sat up with a giggle. “Sure!”

“You’re so easy.”

She laughed. “Blame it on your romance gene.”

Drake looked her way, and the love he had for her made him so full, he couldn’t stand it. “How long will you love me?”

She whispered, “Until the stars fall from the sky. Now, let’s go to Belle Isle.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “You are a mess.”

“Say my name!” she whispered, laughing too.

And he headed the car for Belle Isle so he could do just that.

Drake Anthony Chandler came into the world fussing and yelling on Sunday September 18, at 7:35
P.M
. The day being a Sunday, Myk had to practically get on his knees and beg Sarita to let him take her to the hospital because Sarita was so engrossed in the day’s football games. But much to Myk’s and everyone else’s relief, the baby was born in the hospital and not in front of the TV during the halftime scores. Both uncles were ecstatic at the news, and Saint and Narice flew in from their farm in Ohio to check young Drake out.

Lacy and Uncle Drake were married a month later, on October 22. The service was held at St Matthew’s and St. Joseph’s, and Lacy didn’t know half the dignitaries and other official people filling the pews. She did know, however, her parents, her sisters- and brothers-in-law; her new nieces and nephews, and Baby Drake. She also knew the man standing beside her at the altar. He was kind, funny, dedicated, and most importantly, the man she intended to have at her side for the rest of her life.

When the priest said to Drake, “You may now kiss the bride,” Drake looked down into her eyes and said, softly, “Thank you for marrying me….” Then he kissed her.

And as Lacy kissed him back with all the love in her heart, she just knew she had to be the happiest woman in the world.

After the publication of
The Edge of Midnight
and
The Edge of Dawn
, many readers wanted Drake to have his own book. Because his half brothers, Mykal and Saint, had such over-the-top personalities, it took a while for Drake to open up and let me see the real him. The result was
Black Lace
, and I do hope you enjoyed his and Lacy’s story. The issue of urban dumping touches not only big cities like Detroit, but small town America as well. The Blight Court that Lacy was so passionate about is modeled after a recently established initiative in Detroit known as the Department of Administrative Hearings. For more information on the DAH, please visit the city of Detroit website at
www.detroitmis.gov/dah/
.

A thank-you goes out to Lillian Southern, historian for St. Matthew’s and St Joseph’s Episcopal Church, for the wonderful information she provided on her parish. Because
Black Lace
is a contemporary novel, I
was unable to use most of the church’s wonderful history, but I know it will come in handy for a future historical project.

Lacy’s Crossfire Coupe can be seen at a Chrysler dealership near you or on the Chrysler website.

I’ve been asked by readers if Roland Vachon Chandler fathered any more sons. Well, I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see.

In the meantime, thanks to all the new readers who have come to the party via Drake and his brothers. Thanks also to the many fans who have been with me since my first Avon title,
Night Song
, in 1994. This is my tenth year in the business. My, how time flies when you’re having fun!

See you next time,
B