Grace (22 page)

“You didn’t want the responsibility, is that it, Helen?” He does not camouflage his scorn. “You didn’t want the commitment, right?”

“She wanted to move in with me. She told that to Mark. But she told him too soon. I wasn’t ready.” Her voice has a whining quality to it. “I mean, I couldn’t jeopardize my career. All my work. If people found out …”

“You didn’t want her to move in with you because you wanted to protect your career?” Justin looks at her in amazement.

“You don’t know how difficult it is for women to get to the top.”

“The feminists wouldn’t care if you’re gay. I would think they’d like you more.”

“They wouldn’t like the scandal about Mark and Sandra. That Sandra was my student.”

“That Mark
was
your student when you were sleeping with Sandra,” Justin says.

“I didn’t think Sandra was ready. She got so upset when I told her. She began to cry. I thought she was having a breakdown.”

“And what about Mark? Did you care about Mark?”

“You have to believe me, Justin. I didn’t intend for any of this to happen.”

“But you caused it all the same. You see, Helen, men don’t have the monopoly on selfishness and abuse.”

“Are you going to report it?” A vein pops out of her forehead. It is thick and blue.

“I think there are things you need to do. You need to find a way to help Sandra.”

And you? Do you have to find a way to help Sally?
Light as a wisp of cotton the thought rises and then floats out of his head. He gets up.

“I think you need to do some real soul-searching about who you are, Helen,” he says. “I think you need to rethink your theories about the abuse of power. Even if Sandra was no longer your student, Mark was. You need to figure out if you weren’t still in a position of having power over her. I am sure Sandra wanted Mark to succeed. You had the power to pass or fail him, the power over his grade. I can’t understand why you were not able to see that. I can’t understand why you were so ready to transfer your guilt to me. But there is a lot I can’t understand.”

“If it means anything to you, I was ashamed. When I left your office that day, I was ashamed of myself.”

Justin has his hands on the doorknob.

“So will you report it?” she asks again.

He does not answer her.

Seconds later he is halfway down the corridor when he hears the brisk patter of feet behind him. He turns. It is Helen.

“You know,” she says, pausing to catch her breath, “it was within Sandra’s rights to leave Mark.”

He stands back against the wall to let two professors pass by. Helen does not seem to notice them. She does not seem to care that they are in a public space, in the faculty corridor.

“She is her own person. She has a right to choose her own life,” she says.

“Ideology before people. That’s the way it is with people like you, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter who is sacrificed. Well, people come first, Helen.” He lowers his voice. He does so for her sake. “Sandra knew she was attracted to you. She should have told Mark before you began your affair.”

“And you think that would have made a difference?”

“He would have felt hurt, rejected, but not betrayed. It’s the traitors who are on the ninth circle of hell,” he says.

“That is a truly nasty thing for you to say.”

He has gone too far and he is apologetic, but he has last words for her. “A person can’t just think of his own happiness,” he says. “Not if there are others to consider. I bet if you scratch the surface of any middle-class kid on drugs, you’re likely to find a self-absorbed parent, a mother, a father at the top of their careers. Some celebrity.”

It is not merely a hunch. Justin believes this. Which is why, though Sally may not be fully convinced to stay in their marriage, to raise their daughter with him, under the same roof, he has no doubt about the correctness of what he has asked her to do.

He repeats his conviction to Helen. “A person can’t just think of his own happiness,” he says.

BUT IS HE THINKING ONLY OF HIS? HAS HE PUT HIS HAPPINESS BEFORE
sally’s?

SALLY IS ON the phone to Anna when he gets home. “She said
that.
Oh, Anna!”

“I don’t believe you.”

“What a fool!” She bursts out laughing.

He comes into the kitchen. Sally sees him. “I have to go,” she says and puts down the phone. Traces of laughter still linger on her face.

“You seem to be in a good mood,” he says.

“That Anna! She can always make me laugh.”

He will not say the thought that comes to his mind:
And I cannot make you laugh? I make you sad?

“I’m making chicken for dinner.”

“Where’s Giselle?” he asks.

“Upstairs.”

“You seem to be really feeling better.”

“I told my therapist what you said. He thought a week in Bermuda was a great idea.”

“Good. Then that’s settled.”

She smiles. “Chicken okay?”

“You don’t have to cook. Aren’t you going to the movies with Anna?”

“Anna is out. She had somewhere to go.”

“But didn’t you say that was Anna on the phone?”

“Yes. She called from Manhattan.”

“She called you while she’s on a date?”

“It isn’t a date. She is with a friend. She called to give me a joke. Nothing you’d appreciate.” She opens the refrigerator and takes out a head of lettuce. “Do you want salad?”

“Not really,” he says.

She puts it back in the refrigerator.

“Is it a girlfriend?”

“What?”

“Is Anna’s date a girlfriend?”

“Why do you insist on calling it a date?”

“Well, is it a girlfriend?”

“I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

I ask because I won’t be fooled this time. I won’t be naïve.

But Justin manages to control himself through dinner. They talk about Sally’s trip to Bermuda.

Will Daddy go with you? Giselle wants to know. Sally says no. Mommy’s going by herself. Mommy wants to remember the good time she had with Daddy on their honeymoon.

Even to a four-year-old child this does not make sense. Then why doesn’t Daddy go with you? she asks. Sally has no answer, so Justin volunteers. Because Mommy is tired, he says.

Oh, says Giselle. She remembers yesterday when Mommy went to bed early and didn’t even get up to say good night.

Mommy needs the rest, she declares in her imitation of a grown-up voice.

“Yes,” Justin assures her. “Mommy needs the rest.”

He telephones Anna the next day. He wants to meet for lunch. She does not seem surprised. Is it about Sally? she asks. Yes, it’s about Sally, Justin tells her.

They decide to meet in a restaurant near the college. It is a sunny morning, one of those days that seem to mock the grimi-ness of the streets in the inner city. The sky is clear, a luminous blue. The few clouds that hover beneath it are bright white and transparent, thin and light like fresh-washed gauze. They float by like gossamer. A golden sun has warmed up everything: the snow, so it has turned to filthy slush, the garbage so it stinks, the air so it is leaden with the smells of people shuttered up in stuffy apartments, body odor insulated against the cold under layers of clothes worn all winter.

Everywhere people are dressed in black or almost black: young male students in black hooded parkas and black pants, female
students in tight black jeans and black leather jackets. They walk by briskly to the sounds of island laughter, for most of them are new immigrants from the Islands, their lilting speech bouncing against the Southern drawl and Northern as-sertiveness of the African Americans. In between them, shuffling for space on the narrow pavement, are men who have lost hope: the unemployed, the ones battling drugs, the infirm. Their clothes are a collage of dark colors, torn and stained.

None of the women one usually sees early in the morning rushing to work with a string of school children behind them, their faces set in stony defiance of statistics that would denigrate them, are here at this late hour. Only the old, pushing their walkers, their knit hats askew, socks rolled down over thick, worn out stockings.

The sun misses nothing. It illuminates everything: the longing for home in tired eyes. The bewilderment. The disappointment. Regret for the loss of turquoise waters, the sun and the green, chasing after the American Dream.

There are no restaurants nearby where one can sit to eat a meal, only carryout, the vendors behind barred gates like prisoners, so Justin has chosen a church restaurant six blocks away for his meeting with Anna. He frog-leaps over puddles and melting snow. More than twice he narrowly escapes sliding on the patches of ice that have formed on the pavements where the snow melted from the constant stream of pedestrians and froze again.

Anna is there already, waiting for him in her coat. “For
heaven’s sake, why doesn’t someone complain to the Sanitation Department or to the mayor?” she asks when Justin apologizes for being late, explaining that the icy pavements slowed him down.

“Do you think the mayor cares? No one here voted for him. He cleans the places where people voted for him.”

“Well, the past presidential election should tell future mayors a thing or two. Bush may be president, but he almost wasn’t. The number of black people who came out to vote this time has to be a wake-up call for him, for any politician. Wasn’t it something like ninety percent of black people voted in the last election?” She unbuttons her coat.

“Something like that,” Justin says.

“The landlords of these buildings should be made to clear the sidewalks. A person could easily break a hip on the ice. I don’t know how those old ladies manage. What about your college, Justin? Don’t they have clout there? Can’t they get the Sanitation Department to get off their don’t-care-a-damn duffs and clean the streets and pick up the garbage?”

For the first time Justin notices that Anna is not unattractive. She is wearing a brown wool dress. When she takes off her coat, the static in the air makes it cling to her body. Before she shakes it out, Justin observes that her stomach is quite flat, her waist defined, and her breasts larger than he thought.

She is wearing lipstick. He can’t remember ever seeing her in makeup. Whatever she has done to her eyes, they seem alluring. This is the word that comes to his mind.
Alluring. Alluring Asian eyes.
The thought sends a shiver of fear down his spine.

“I haven’t ever seen you so dressed up,” he says.

“I had an important meeting this morning.”

Justin knows it cannot be anything to do with her work at the college.

“With the president of the Botanic Garden,” she adds, responding to the question that has formed on his forehead.

“I hope I didn’t force you to have to leave before you wanted to.”

“No, we were done. This is convenient. I had only a few blocks to walk.”

The restaurant is run by three large women in their fifties. They are no-nonsense businesswomen who know their clientele. They offer three choices on their menu: fried fish, fried chicken, pork chops smothered in gravy. The sides are the same: candied yams, collard greens, potato salad, corn on the cob. Peach cobbler is the only dessert. As soon as he and Anna sit down, one of them comes over. They have taken a table near the corner. Justin has led Anna there on purpose. He will need privacy for the questions he has for her.

“So what are you having?” Anna asks. The woman has just recited the menu. Justin orders the fish.

“I’ll have the chicken,” Anna says. They agree to share sides. They will have everything except the corn. “It’ll get caught in my teeth,” Anna says.

All the tables in the restaurant are covered with clear plastic on top of a checkered red-and-white cotton tablecloth. On the wall, next to the table where Anna and Justin are sitting, is a framed photograph of Billie Holiday. The church ladies have
hung a picture of the Sacred Heart and a large plaster-cast crucifix on the wall facing the street, but on the other walls they have put their favorite singers: Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone.

“Sally called me this morning to tell me that Giselle is all excited about the seeds we’re growing. She said that before she left for the sitter’s, Giselle noticed that they are sprouting something green. That’s what she said. ‘Something green, Mommy.’ Like it was something from outer space.” Anna laughs.

“Sally called you this morning?”

“Yes. From work.”

“She didn’t tell me that Giselle said that.” Justin struggles to suppress his resentment.

“I guess you’d already left for the college.”

“No. I was home when they left.”

“Then you weren’t in the room. It’s
our
project, you know.”

“Our?”

“Sally’s, Giselle’s, and mine.”

“Sally is my wife and Giselle is my daughter, Anna.”

“Yes,” she says dryly. “You said as much to me already. And?”

“And any project they have is also my project.”

“Nobody excluded you.”

Justin clears his throat. He wants to put the conversation back on an even keel. This is not the fight he wants to have with her. “So what was your important meeting with the president of the Botanic Garden?” he asks, and yet he finds himself egging her on. “Not thinking of switching jobs, are you, Anna?”