Home In The Morning (18 page)

Once he was in residence in New Haven, he avoided coming home. He took extra-credit courses and jobs on campus during vacation periods to make his absence look reasonable. Mama and Daddy applauded his industry and ventured up north to visit him during the winter holiday. He did not go home until he had to that summer of 1961, a scant stretch between the summer session and the fall. The night he could hold up to Katherine Marie as proof that she’d been wrong, that there were worse things than anyone finding out, that life was going to change no matter what any of them kept quiet about or exposed under the noonday sun, occurred during that fortnight, the one when all hell broke loose and nothing was the same for Jackson or Katherine Marie or Bokay or Bubba Ray or Daddy, especially poor Daddy, ever again.

Spring, 1964

A
T SPRING BREAK,
J
ACKSON AND
Stella drove south for her premiere encounter with the Sassaport family. It was uncertain whether Jackson’s car could make the trip. Stella itched to take the most favorable seat in a Southern bus or railroad car then give it to the first old black woman she saw and plant her own ass in the back. This was a desire her fiancé determined to thwart at any cost. We’ll take the Renault, he told her. There’s federal law and then there’s custom, and I’d like to see us arrive in Guilford without unanticipated detours. Besides, he continued in what he considered a cajoling tone, freedom rides are old hat. Mama tells me people are startin’ in to set wherever they feel they should, and you know all the white Freedom Riders anyway were released from custody before you and I ever met. The very second they were let go, they mostly scurried back north to hold forth in coffee shops and lecture halls. Freedom schools are the thing this year. If you want, we can stop by some of the churches around Guilford where you
can sign up to spend time this summer improving the reading skills of those who need it to register to vote. Why, I’ll bet you could become a canvasser and register folks door to door. When her eyes developed a kind of misty shine at the thought, he added: Of course, I’ll be staying up north to finish school during the summer session. We’d have to be separated. That dulled her gaze right quick, an event that pleased Jackson enormously. He chuckled inside for days and days over it.

He’d figured out something about Stella. He’d figured out that he could manipulate her iron will if he tried hard enough, which he did without guilt if the occasion at hand was truly important. Not that there were many of those. He loved his Stella just the way she was. He had no plan to tame or subvert her in any substantial manner. He honored her remarkable spirit, her intelligence, her goodness. When it came to introducing her to his family and getting her in and out of Guilford unharmed, expediency ruled supreme over adoration or respect. The part that tickled him was that her Achilles’ heel appeared to be her devotion to him, which struck him as a most felicitous miracle. If he’d been wiser, he’d have realized that this heel would begin to grow calloused directly after the wedding, at which time the process would advance with such alarming speed that Stella could jig over cut glass without injury before their fifth anniversary. But that spring, Jackson Sassaport was nowhere near as wise as he should have been, neither about Stella nor his family nor the township of Guilford, Mississippi.

He did not, for example, imagine that once they got beyond Washington, DC. Stella would spend the trip plastered to the passenger window, hands up against the glass, marking it with round puffs of breath. When the climate changed from cool to sultry, she opened the window and dangled her head out the car. Despite the guard of large black sunglasses, her eyes squinted against the wind, and her red hair blew in all directions where it was not confined by her Italian silk scarf. Undeterred, she studied the passing countryside as if she’d never been
beyond the confines of New England, when he knew for a fact that she’d been to Europe—Paris and London, to be exact—and several times to Chicago, where her mother had family. Everything she witnessed she pronounced unexpected or beautiful or charming or mysterious. She laughed when a pickup full of good old boys and several dogs, too, nearly ran themselves off the road trying to pass Jackson’s Renault on the right-hand side in order to get a good look at her. When the car indeed broke down just outside of Knoxville, Tennessee, she expressed awe at the kindness and superlative manners of the grease monkeys who happened by, gave them a tow and, amidst a great deal of head-scratching and hoo-ee’s, straightened the engine out despite the fact that it was “furrin.” Lordy, Jackson thought, pleased no end as the men doffed their various hats to bid a grateful Stella good-bye, you’d think I’d planned this trip after animal sacrifice to the gods of good fortune and amity.

Whenever she drifted off to sleep while he drove, a sense of foreboding rose up from his gut to threaten him with closure of the throat and suffocation. He had no confidence at all that Stella would keep the promises he’d extracted from her that she not confront Bubba Ray, especially in front of Mama and Daddy, and that she try her hardest this first trip to stand back and observe the way things were back home before she did something rash and made a damn Yankee fool of herself. Things are different there, he’d say. Things aren’t always what they might appear. At the same time, first impressions mean everything. Oh, she shook her head and made her vows alright, telling him she just wanted his family to like her, that her love for him was stronger than her politics, stronger than her lust for social justice, it was the strongest entity in the world to her. The way he’d stoically borne the insults of her family inspired her, she would perform no less honorably with his. When she listened to him wax sentimental about Guilford, it was with such concentrated attention that he felt the sharpened tendrils of her
critical capacities curl through his brain cells like tiny beasts of the night trolling for sustenance. That unnerved him, no matter what her oaths.

After they crossed the state line into Mississippi, Jackson’s disquiet grew. It was not only his anxiety about Stella but also his own attitudes that unsettled him. He hadn’t been home in three years. Twice Mama and Daddy had visited him up north, but since that disastrous trip home the summer after his first year at Yale, he’d not returned. Instead, he took such a heavy load of courses each term, including the summer one, he was already halfway through law school. He’d graduate and study for the bar in a year. Mama was too proud of her son the genius to question his motivations. Since Daddy’s business had understandably fallen off since that terrible night during Jackson’s one and only previous trip home, there were economic rationales for his ambition as well. The real reason he’d driven himself to achieve what few in the entire history of the Ivy League had managed was that he couldn’t bear the idea of coming home and living under the same roof as Bubba Ray. He couldn’t tolerate sharing a meal, a holiday—damn, a sidewalk—with him. He hated him. It was as plain and simple as that. He hated his brother. He hated him for everything he’d done, and then he further hated him for keeping him from home, which to tell the truth, he dearly missed up there in the frozen, rude, careless North. He wished his brother would die.

We’ll be home in about ten minutes, darlin’, Jackson told Stella once they’d crossed the Guilford town line. She came alert immediately, pulled down the visor on her side of the front seat, and reapplied her lipstick, brushed her hair, popped a stick of Dentyne in her mouth to sweeten her breath. She didn’t speak but reached over to squeeze his arm with edgy anticipation. Nothing they passed, no detail however small, escaped the silent, studied gaze she cast over the landscape. They’d entered from the north end of town, where the farms
were and the river and then the vistas of suburban variety sprang into view: postwar, redbrick ranch-style homes proudly perched atop manicured lawns, then Main Street with its shops and the site of Daddy’s old medical office, which Jackson duly pointed out, and at last on the southern end, sprawling wood structures sinking by the sheer weight of their years into half-acre lots dotted with flower and vegetable gardens backed up by a forest of ancient, venerable trees. He pulled into the driveway of one of the oldest homes. He waited a moment while she took it in: the long portico with its vine-covered columns and rocking chairs, the flowerbeds at the foot of the wrought-iron staircase leading up to Mama’s potted rhododendrons in early bloom, the balcony off the master bedroom. Well, darlin’, he said. We’re here. She took his hand and held it firmly, gently. It’s like a picture book, she said. Oh, my darling man grew up in a picture book, fancy that. She gave him one of her piercing, steady looks. You know, everything’s going to be alright, she said. Really, it’s going to be ok.

Mama appeared on the verandah just then, leaning on her cane, a big smile planted on her face. Apart from the cane, she looked vital to Jackson—young, even. Her hair was arranged in large, loose curls, plastered with hairspray and dyed a sparkling auburn. She had makeup on. Thick brown pencil gave a vigorous arch to her eyebrows, waxen coral a glisten to her lips. Given her weight, her face was smooth, free of wrinkles, the eyes bright as new coins. She had her good watch on and her ruby cocktail ring, a crisp flowered dress. It touched him that she’d gone to such a troublesome toilette to meet Stella. He got out of the car, opened the opposite door, helped her out. Hand in hand they approached his beaming mother who opened her arms and jiggled her fingers, urging them into her embrace. Once she had them in her grasp, she squeezed them good, then let her son go, held Stella out at arm’s length, cupped her face in her hands to study her. Oh, you’re a pretty one, aren’t you, dear? I can see what has besotted my son so. Well,
welcome. Come on in, you must be tired and hungry. Sweetheart, your daddy and Bubba Ray are out. They had to go into the city for a medical appointment. They extend their apologies. They’ll be home later on this afternoon, I do hope before dark.

Jackson, much relieved, inquired: Is Daddy doin’ ok, Mama?

Well, he’s better than the last time you saw him anyway. But, Lord, that was a while ago wasn’t it? Well, you’re busy, busy, busy outshining all your classmates day and night, I suppose. How on earth have you found time to land yourself a redheaded beauty? I don’t know, Stella, dear, what made this boy of mine so industrious. He wasn’t much of a student as a child, you know, but he sure has made up for it.

Mama continued to ramble on while they entered the house, deposited their bags in the foyer, and were hustled into the dining room, where the table was set for a formal lunch. It was half-past one in the afternoon, a good hour beyond Mama’s traditional midday meal. Jackson thanked her for waiting for them and admired her service, the flowers. We’d like to freshen up a bit, though, he added, then showed Stella to the half-bath downstairs while he rushed upstairs to pee and wash his hands, splash cold water on his face, hurrying back down as fast as he could so Mama would have less time alone with his fiancée.

Too late. Stella and Mama were head-to-head practically, whispering about God knew what. They didn’t hear him enter at first, and Jackson watched Mama take her arm and put it around Stella’s shoulder then squeeze in a gesture he could only interpret as one of comfort or encouragement, a fact that mystified him completely. Then they noticed him. In tandem, both heads shot apart from each other as cheek to jowl they were ‘til that moment, cheek to jowl, he registered, imagine that. Their two sets of eyes bored into him with an intensity that left him no choice but to wonder what it was exactly he’d done wrong. Stella broke the ensuing silence—a brief one, so very brief, but also tremendously heavy—first.

Sweetheart, she said brightly, your mother’s been explaining to me her theory about Mombasa and what happened to your father.

Oh, Lord, Jackson thought. After the physical presence of Bubba Ray, this was precisely to the letter what he did not want to face before he had a chance to recover from the drive. He’d hoped it would take at least a day or two ‘til Mama got around to pointing fingers.

Mama. Don’t. Not a soul on earth knows what really happened except me and Bokay, and no one believes either one of us. Besides that, I’m hungry.

The accused’s words are always suspect, dear, and you were concussed. What you think you know is all in your head.

Like I said, no one believes me, and I’m hungry. Why don’t we just eat a calm and pleasurable meal as we’re right off the road and maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow in the afternoon we can have us a good old-fashioned Sherlock Holmes hour of fact finding and conjecture. Really, Mama. I’ve bragged to Stella about Southern hospitality until I’m sure she’s disappointed there wasn’t a red carpet laid out on the front steps for her. So couldn’t we indulge in a little of it first?

All sweet submission, Mama bowed her head then peeped upward at her son in angelic apology. Her upper lip pursed itself while the lower jutted out in a plump, pleading pout. It was, to be sure, a somewhat grotesque image she provided, like something twisted out of Tennessee Williams. Stella’s eyes went wide watching her. A tiny guttural sound issued from her throat, representing the heroic containment of gargantuan amusement. Jackson widened his own eyes, cautioning her. At the same time, his chest felt a stabbing pain that was, he knew, embarrassment for Mama and anger, too, at his darling Stella for finding her ridiculous. Mama couldn’t help what she was, and what she was was something deserving of respect. What could Stella possibly know about Mama’s upbringing in the backroom of a warehouse, the bargains she made to achieve her status as a Jewish doctor’s wife, the
double-barreled burden of Bubba Ray and Daddy’s reversal of fortune, the graceful way she bore it? Yes, she was a provincial with mannerisms as quaint, as antique, as they were comical to Yankee eyes. After three years up north, he could admit that. Hell, they were all provincial down here, but where was it written provincial was such a terrible thing? And Stella, he wanted to say out loud, what makes you think your self-righteous sophistication is any holier? These thoughts occurred in virgin territory of Jackson’s mind. He was unaccustomed to criticizing either his mother or his lover, and the novelty of it confused him, made him breathe dangerously fast. His face turned a vibrant red, so he mumbled something about the heat and his blood sugar and sat down opposite Stella, touching his foot to hers under the table with more underscored warning than affection. Stella turned her head away from Mrs. Sassaport, offering him a clandestine expression: one eye half shut, the opposing eyebrow raised. Later, he muttered through clenched teeth, later. He fanned his napkin noisily in the air then placed it over his lap.