Boundaries (8 page)

An apology. Anna is not convinced it is sincere. Even if she suppresses her emotions, the fact remains that twice Tanya has bypassed her and made decisions that should have been hers to make.

“You are still in charge, Anna,” Tanya says as if reading Anna’s mind. “I’ve made that clear to Tim. You have to approve the final edits. No manuscript from Equiano goes to the printer without your approval.” Her hand remains resting on Anna’s shoulder; she squeezes it playfully. “This will be good for you, Anna. You’ll have more time to concentrate on what you enjoy. You’ll like Tim, you’ll see. He’ll expand your list. Equiano is going to get even bigger.”

Back in her office, Anna e-mails Paula who responds right away. She’ll come over to her apartment after work. They’ll sort this thing out.

What Paula notices first is Anna’s tan. “God, I miss the sun,” she says, flopping down on the couch. “Look at you. You’re golden brown.”

Anna has taken off her workday suit and changed into blue jeans and a white T-shirt. The bright whiteness of the T-shirt is a strong contrast to her sunburnt skin. “And you are warm chocolate,” Anna says.

Paula grins. She is already dressed for fall in an olivegreen cardigan and matching full skirt which she pulls tightly around her large though shapely thighs. Anna wishes Paula would go on the diet that worked for her, but Paula dismisses the idea. She has one life to live, she says, and she won’t deny herself the pleasure of good food. She has been denied other pleasures. She means sex, she means a meaningful relationship with a man, but Anna thinks Paula has given up too soon. Thirty-nine is not old, she tells her. Thirty-nine is ancient in the dating game, Paula responds, and quotes a Harvard study. “A woman my age has less than a 3 percent chance of finding a husband,” she says.

Anna does not give up. Paula is a curvy woman. There are men who like curvy women.

“In Africa,” Paula says. They both burst out laughing.

“Back home too,” Anna says.

Home.
They are no longer laughing.

Now Paula surveys the living room. “Everything here is virtually sparkling. The parents?”

“I’m getting ready,” Anna says.

“Looks like your mother’s house.”

“And ten times smaller.”

“You have her taste. There’s nothing in here she won’t love.”

It is true; her taste in decorating has not strayed far from her mother’s. Her style is conservative and muted, the colors in her living room a palate of earth tones: taupes, deep browns, beiges, off-whites. Even the prints on the wall are understated: watercolors by Jackie Hinkson, her favorite artist, of the sea and the mountains at dawn, fishermen pulling in seines on the beach at the end of the day. There is one exception. It is a painting of La Diablesse by Boscoe Holder, the colors intense, smoldering. But her mother would approve of this one too. She has the original in her living room.

While Anna puts on the kettle for tea, fills a bowl with brown sugar and the creamer with evaporated milk, they talk about her plans to take her mother to the hospital. Paula recommends a car service that she swears by, but Anna says that won’t be necessary, since Paul has offered to arrange for a car to bring her mother to the hospital.

“Paul?”

“Dr. Bishop,” Anna says, and brings cups, saucers, and cutlery to the cocktail table.

“So he’s Paul?”

“The son of a family friend. My father worked closely with his father years ago.”

“I like him already. Paul, the male counterpart to my name. You have chosen well, Anna.”

“Don’t.” Anna wags her finger at her friend and returns to the kitchen.

“So I take it this Paul is not simply the doctor who will do your mother’s surgery.”

“I told you who he is,” Anna says. She drops two tea bags in a teapot and fills it with boiling water from the kettle.

“But you didn’t tell me he’s Paul.”

“Black cake.” Anna returns with a tray bearing the teapot, a cake, two plates, and two forks.

“Black cake!” Paula is immediately distracted.

“My mother’s helper made it. Here, try it.” Anna puts a forkful in Paula’s mouth.

“My God, it’s practically dripping with alcohol.”

Lydia, her mother’s helper, promised it would be. She had soaked the fruit in rum and cherry brandy for weeks before she folded it into the cake mixture.

For the second time Paula says, “I miss the sun. I miss all this.” She takes the fork from Anna’s hand and pulls apart another piece of cake. The sounds that come out of her mouth when it reaches her taste buds are sounds of pure, unadulterated pleasure. She sighs. “Why are we here, Anna? Why?”

“Because we are here,” Anna responds.

Few immigrants will open the Pandora’s box of the whys—why they left behind familiar lands, familiar faces. They ride the waves of nostalgia, hoping they will not last. There is the road ahead; America promises rich rewards if they are patient, if they work hard. It’s futile, a waste of precious time, to look back.

“Come, sit next to me,” Paula says, and she makes space for Anna on the couch. “Let’s hear what happened today at work. Tell me everything.”

But Anna takes the armchair. She does not want to be coddled; she does not want Paula to agree with her just because they are friends. She wants her to be objective, to support her because she is right: Tanya Foster will damage Bess Milford’s novel with the sexually explicit cover she has approved.

“The guys in the art department think I’m an old fuddyduddy,” she says. “They think I don’t know anything about what people want to read. They think their youth gives them special access to the times. But the times are constantly changing, constantly evolving. If you are a slave to the times, you’ll always be playing catch up. Styles come and go. What’s trendy today is already on its way out, another trend pushing behind it to take its place. But human nature is human nature. That has not changed. All of us are flawed; all of us have the same basic desires, needs, fears. Between birth and death our lives are a constant struggle to stay alive. A novel about our human condition, regardless of the color or ethnicity of the characters, is one that will last.”

Paula concentrates on the cake she is eating and listens without interruption. Anna tells her about Rita, whose only desire seems to be to figure out what Tanya wants and give it to her. She says Tanya tried to apologize. “As if she could pacify me. This morning she told me that I’ll see. That it will be a win-win situation for both of us.” Anna leaves Tim Greene for last, saying simply that he’s a new assistant editor assigned to her. He won’t take the chance of disagreeing with the publisher of the company who hired him.

“What exactly did he say?” Paula sits forward on the couch.

“He said a book cover is a postcard.”

“Did Tanya agree?”

“She informed me that Tim Greene is African American.”

“Oh?”

“As if I couldn’t see that. More tea?”

Paula nods.

Anna rises and walks toward the kitchen, taking the teapot with her. Almost there, she turns back abruptly. “I haven’t told you everything. Tanya has given Raine and Benton’s books to Tim Greene. She says I’ll have the final approval, but I know she says that just to keep me quiet. Tim Greene will make all the decisions on those books, I’m sure of it.”

“That should be okay by you, right?” Paula knows Anna’s views on the books Raine and Benton write.

Anna hugs the teapot to her chest. “They are our best sellers,” she says.

“But not the books you want to publish.”

“Tanya says Tim Greene knows what African American readers want. She says he’ll make money for the company.”

Paula puts down her plate with the cake. “You understand what she’s really saying, don’t you, Anna?” she asks gently.

Anna does not turn around from the stove. “I brought back some tamarind balls too. Would you like some?”

“But you must, Anna,” Paula insists. “You have to understand that while we may have passports, politicians are not talking about us when they talk about real Americans.

We are not on their radar screen. Never forget that, Anna.”

The week passes uneventfully, or at least without the major upheavals or confrontations that Anna certainly thought possible when she informs Bess Milford that the final decision on the cover for her novel has been made. Bess says simply, “The more things change …”

She does not finish the sentence but Anna knows the ending well:
the more they stay the same
.

The despair in Bess’s voice cuts a wound in Anna’s heart. Months ago, when Anna called with the good news that Equiano would make an offer for her novel, Bess Milford was beside herself with joy. “This is the best day of my life thanks to you.” Anna felt like a fairy godmother then. “Things are different now for writers like me,” Bess had said, “because there are black editors in charge like you.” And what difference had that made? It’s all business, according to Tanya Foster. Race has nothing to do with business; the bottom line alone is what counts.

For the most part, Tim Greene stays out of her way. Anna continues to hear noises drifting out of his cubicle: papers shuffling back and forth, the thud of something larger hitting the floor, the computer keyboard tapping furiously, sometimes low murmurings when he speaks on the phone, sometimes outright laughter. Once or twice he pops his head into her office to apologize. “Sorry, boss,” he says. “Old friend with a joke not fit for ladies’ ears.”

He continues to address her as boss: Boss, I’m going out for lunch. Can I get you anything? Boss, let me take that for you, as he reaches for a stack of manuscript papers she is carrying. Boss, nice morning! Never does he ask her a question about work, not a word about the books assigned to him. He never mentions Raine, he never mentions Benton. Magically, overnight—for Anna is sure it was at night, when she had left the office—their manuscripts disappeared from her shelves. She had almost finished editing Raine’s manuscript and is sure Tim Greene has seen her blue pencil markings. Either he disagrees with the changes she recommends, or he means to ignore her opinion completely. But he is always polite to her; always greets her with a smile. When she says, “You don’t have to call me boss,” he smiles coyly and replies, “But you are my boss, boss.”

He continues to wear suits to work. Sometimes he wears a sports jacket, but whatever he wears is always in style, from the fashion pages of
GQ
magazine. He changes the color of his shirts from one day to the next—white, then pale yellow, blue, and pink. Always they are carefully matched with designer ties.

Anna spots him one day having lunch in a café with a man equally decked out in sartorial splendor. They are sitting next to the window. She is walking down the street to a nearby deli. He is looking in her direction. She waves, but he does not wave back.

“Gay,” Paula speculates, but Anna saw when he touched his friend’s arm that he was not looking in her direction at all. He was looking at a young woman, half her age, strutting across the street. She was wearing a tightfitting sweater and a miniskirt. Her four-inch spike-heeled black boots reached up to her thighs.

A couple of days later Anna sees him again with the same man, and again Tim Greene does not notice her when she passes by. This time he and the man are huddled over a stack of papers, what seems to her like a manuscript.

The receptionist on the ground floor of the building tells Anna that Tim Greene is the last to leave the office. He says twice that week Tim Greene left the building as late as ten o’clock.

“Watch out for that one,” Paula says to Anna.

SIX

A
nna has more pressing matters on her mind. Her parents will arrive on Sunday. On Monday, she must take her mother to the hospital for her pre-op tests. Paul Bishop has arranged with Dr. Ramdoolal to have most of the tests done on the island and the results faxed to him, but the hospital in New Jersey wants additional blood work and cardiology exams. For insurance purposes, Paul explains to Anna. He has full confidence in the accuracy of the tests Dr. Ramdoolal has sent to him—but patients sue, occasionally without cause. He has some influence in the hospital, he says modestly. He is the head of the surgery unit. He can get the results of the pre-op tests almost immediately, and, if all goes well, her mother can have surgery as early as Tuesday morning.

Tanya is sympathetic, more than sympathetic, when Anna asks for two days leave while her mother is in the hospital. “This is the age of the Internet,” she says to Anna. “You don’t need to take time off. You can work from home. E-mail me, use the fax. I can reach you on your cell when you’re not at home.”

Anna has stocked her kitchen with the food she thinks her parents will like. For breakfast she has bought salted codfish, smoked herring, and sardines, food her stomach can no longer tolerate in the morning. On Friday she goes to the West Indian market in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. There she buys ground provisions, the vegetables grown under the earth that her father likes,
blue food
he calls them: dasheen, edoes, yams, sweet potatoes—not the yellow American kind of sweet potatoes, but the whitish ones with bluish streaks running through them. She buys calalloo leaves, fresh pigeon peas, pumpkin imported from Puerto Rico, and grated coconut for the pelau Paula will remind her how to cook. She buys tropical fruits: mangoes, sapodillas, pomme cythères, pommeracs. For dessert she gets tamarind balls, sugar cakes, coconut fudge, coconut ice cream.

It surprises her how so many of the foods and sweets they eat on the island are readily available in Brooklyn. She would not have known if Paula had not directed her to the West Indian shops. There are parts of Brooklyn, Paula says, where except for winter and those gloomy brownstones you would not know you’ve left the islands.

“People live the same way they lived back home,” she explains to Anna. “They eat the same foods, play the same music, dance to the same beats. They raise their children the same way and send them home for the summer vacation so customs and traditions will get passed to the next generation.”

“What’s the point?” Anna asks. “They are not going back and this is their children’s country.”