I Wish I Had a Red Dress (16 page)

I’M CONFUSED. I JUST
finished watching
The Best Man,
and I enjoyed parts of it a lot. I loved how pretty they all looked and how they all had jobs and ambitions and futures to discuss as well as sex lives. I love Nia Long’s character, and I am in awe of her amazing ability to walk around on those impossibly high heels and never once wince. I loved the way she took charge in the control booth at work
and
at home when her wounded ex-almost-lover Taye Diggs comes crawling in for some comforting when he had promised a night of passion. I also loved that he was a writer and his partner had her own business and that how to tell the truth to people you love was a big concern for almost all of them.

On the other hand, I couldn’t figure out how I felt about the groom at all. Is he a violent, spoiled, sexist, potentially abusive
asshole,
or is he a big, fine, passionate
thang,
capable of great love, real spirituality, fidelity, fatherhood and a productive life beyond the gridiron? Is “her pussy curves to my dick” really a compliment? And how can he tell, since it’s a known fact that a vagina can snugly accommodate everything from a junior tampon to a baby’s head (not to mention all manner of things in between), and never curve to anything other than its own sweet self?

I also need to know whether the light-skinned guy is a seeker of/speaker of truth or a sneering snob who betrays his friends, disrespects women and resents his father’s legacy even as it finances his very comfortable lifestyle. And is there no redeeming quality in the light-skinned woman? No moment of self-doubt or compassion or humanity? Is she always a mean, controlling, materialistic bitch? And just because they deserve each other should we really cheer when they wake up together?

And how about the benign depiction of stag party strippers, including an Audre Lorde-quoting college student whose wide-eyed innocence is at odds with her part-time profession, but comes through so clearly to our dreadlocked young idealist that he invites her to the white wedding, therefore washing her clean of the sins of her past and preparing a place for her in the middle-class realm to which she seems to rightly belong?

Whew!
Good thing Sister will be here soon. Once I start thinking like this, I can’t stop until I’ve picked the bones clean and driven myself and everybody within earshot crazy. Sister helps me focus on the big picture.

“Thank goodness,” I said when she arrived a few minutes later. “I was working myself into a frenzy over
The Best Man.
”

“A good frenzy or a bad frenzy?” Sister said, trying to get the facts before being required to offer an opinion.

I thought for a minute. “A little bit of both.”

“A mixed frenzy?” She hung up her coat on its usual hook. “Sounds serious.”

“You’ve seen it, right?”

Sister nodded. “Of course. I saw it at the theater the first weekend, like we were supposed to.”

“Sue me,” I said, having already apologized profusely for this crime against the race generally and
The Tom Joyner Morning Show
specifically. I know a solid black audience can give a black movie a chance for a decent opening weekend up against even the likes of Bruce and Jim and Julia and the Toms—Cruise and Hanks. I applaud Sister and Bill for regularly driving a half hour to the closest cineplex to support whichever young African American filmmaker is competing at the box office on any Friday night, but the truth is, no matter how much they badger me, I’m probably not going to see
Belly
on its opening night. If it scared Magic Johnson, that’s good enough for me.

But
The Best Man
didn’t seem to scare anybody except me, Sister included. “Did you like it?”

“I did,” she said. “I had some problems with the groom being so violent, though.”

“Exactly!” How can I not love this woman? “None of the reviews I saw even mentioned it!”

“Maybe they didn’t notice it,” Sister said, sitting down at the kitchen table.

I poured us each a glass of wine. “How could they not notice?”

Sister took a sip of her wine and nodded her approval. “Is this Ava’s good Chianti we’re drinking?”

I nodded. “Don’t worry. I have permission.”

“Good.” Sister enjoyed red wine. She sipped it slowly while she considered her response to my question. “I believe,” she said
slowly, “that in many instances where people, usually men, have been assumed to be taking a less than enlightened position on one issue or another, that’s not the case at all. They are either uninformed or misinformed and not conscious at all of the other questions that might be raised in regard to the same scenario.”

Sister believes that the beginning of wisdom is to call all things by their proper names, so she’s a fiend for the conscious use of language. It’ll make you nuts until you realize how useful and necessary it is. When she first got here, she went down to the Lake County newspaper and asked to talk to the editor. When he reluctantly came out to see what she wanted, she told him she thought it would be helpful in news stories about a rash of assaults on young women walking alone to say “a man raped a woman on Baldwin Road,” rather than the more generic “a woman was raped.”

“By
whom?
” Sister told him. “That’s the real question. If we don’t identify the danger for them as specifically as we can, how are we going to protect our daughters from it?”

The editor, whose own daughter had just turned fifteen, said he’d think about it, and the very next day, he made the change.

“You see,” Sister said, reminding me of this small but significant victory for clarity. “He just hadn’t asked the right question.”

“Which means?”

“Which means the key to your festival being more than just a bunch of screenings is making sure you ask the right questions.”

“That’s just what Tee said.”

Sister reached into her purse and pulled out a small, handwritten but neatly numbered list. “I know. When you told me Tee had given you this assignment, I thought you might be open
to some assistance, especially since I know you’ve been a little preoccupied.”

I had told her I wasn’t expecting to hear from Nate until this weekend, but she couldn’t help signifying. I raised my eyebrows. It’s hard to pull off self-righteous with a woman who’s been advising you on masturbation, but I gave it my best shot.

“Preoccupied with what?”

She went for innocence, equally hard to pull off for the same reason. “Concern for Nettie Smitherman, for one thing.”

“Have you seen her?”

Sister nodded. “She’s really embarrassed that you and Nate were at the house when she was breaking the unicorns.”

“That’s what she was breaking? Why?”

Nettie had the most beautiful collection of crystal unicorns. When I admired them, she just said she had a friend who liked to send them as gifts.

“Her lover sent them,” Sister said.

“No!” I felt like I was reading my mother’s diary. “I didn’t even know she had a lover until Gen told me.”

“Do you know why he sent the unicorns?”

I shook my head, fascinated. “Why?”

“Because she met him at a play. He had gotten tickets, but his wife didn’t like the theater and wanted to go shopping instead. They had a big fight, which was a regular thing for them, and suddenly he realized they were totally and completely wrong for each other and would never make each other happy for even one day. Fortunately, they were still childless, so he decided to ask her for a divorce.”

Sister took a sip of her wine. “Feeling better for having reached a difficult decision, he went to the theater alone and was seated next to Nettie, who had also come alone because Geneva
didn’t care for Tennessee Williams. The play was
The Glass Menagerie.
”

Sister and I shared a fondness for the plays of Tennessee Williams, who we claimed as a black writer due to our having read somewhere that he was probably an octoroon, and with family ties in New Orleans, probably a quadroon. We loved the women he wrote about in all their fevered-white-girl glory, and Laura, the fragile, damaged daughter in
Glass Menagerie
was no exception. Her loving care of her fragile unicorns while she awaits the nonexistent gentleman callers her once beautiful mother thinks are every young girl’s birthright, is an unforgettable image that carries throughout the play.

“Nettie reminded him of Laura?”

Sister shook her head. “I didn’t get the feeling that she reminded him of anybody. I think the point was the shared moment, the meeting of two souls with a shared destiny.”

I laughed. “Now you sound like a romance novel.”

“Those are
her
words,” Sister protested. “She said they talked all through intermission, whispered nonstop during Act Two and, by the end of the play, acknowledged that they intended to spend their lives together, left the theater, rented a room and spent the afternoon making mad, passionate love.”

“When did she tell you all this?”

“Yesterday when I went by to see her. She wanted me to tell you the story so you would understand her behavior the other night. She also said she hopes you’ll tell Nate that she doesn’t usually act that way.”

“Of course I will,” I said. “Go on!”

“Well, this is when it turns tragic.”

“So fast? What happened?”

Sister took another sip of wine. “Her lover’s wife fainted in
Bloomingdale’s. When they took her to the hospital, the doctors discovered she was three months pregnant with their first child.”

“So he couldn’t leave her?”

“Never did, but every year, on the anniversary of the day they met, a package would arrive from wherever he was, and it would be another unicorn.”

“For fifty years?”

Sister nodded. “Amazing, isn’t it? She said he was the only man she ever loved and she always thought they’d live long enough to find a way to honorably be together, but they didn’t; and the idea that she had wasted her life waiting for him was more than she could bear.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her she needed a project to give her something else to focus on instead of her regrets and suggested that she talk to you about helping Tee with the film festival.”

That was such a bold idea that I just sat there for a minute contemplating the possible outcomes of a project that combined the energies of two of the most formidable women I know. The mind boggled at the perfection of it.

“That’s a great idea,” I said.

“I thought it was pretty inspired,” Sister said.

“Did Nettie agree?”

“She likes the idea, but she’s not sure she’d be much help.”

“I’ll call and convince her.”

“Let Tee convince her,” Sister said gently.

That hadn’t occurred to me. “How can she do that?”

Sister grinned. “By being Tee, of course. Now do you want to hear these questions or not?”

“You know I do,” I said. I love working with Sister because there’s no clear line of demarcation between our work and the
lives we’re living. It’s all one cloth, which is the whole trick—to sync up who you are with what you do.

“Okay,” said Sister, smoothing out her list, her eyes scanning it quickly. “These are mostly why and why-not questions. That usually helps get things going.”

“Absolutely,” I said, happy to have something tangible to hand Tee in the morning along with the name of her first senior volunteer.

Sister adjusted her glasses and cleared her throat. “’Do I believe this character exists in the real world? Do I like her? Does she have a partner?’” Sister looked up. “I’m assuming for this first round, we’ll be talking mostly about heterosexuals, but I didn’t say, ‘Does she have a man?’ because I think we should be inclusive.”

“I agree.”

“Okay. ‘How does she treat her kids? What does she want? When do things go wrong? What could she have done differently? What lesson does she learn and what lesson can she teach me?’ And, last but not least, ‘Is she happy?’” She put the paper down on the table and looked at me. “That’s it.”

“I like them all,” I said. “In fact, when I give them to Tee, I’m going to claim I made them up all by myself.”

Sister laughed. “That was Bill’s contribution about her being happy.”

“That’s because he’s a poet,” I said.

“No,” she said, still grinning. “That’s because he’s happy.”

ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON, THE
official beginning of the weekend, Nate called and invited me to dinner at Dot’s, our local soul food place. As a vegetarian, I know it’s cheating, since Dot thinks cooking vegetables without fatback is sacrilege, but all the herbs in the world can’t match one small sliver of ham for flavoring collard greens correctly—and every now and then, I gotta have it.

“Sounds good,” I said.

“Great. I’ll pick you up around six-thirty.”

Pick me up? “At home?”

“I can pick you up at The Circus if you’re working late.”

“I can meet you there,” I said. That kiss was floating in my mind like a red balloon and I wasn’t quite ready to return to the scene of the crime.

“I told you about my father already, right?”

“Your father?”

“About how he wouldn’t understand if I pulled up at your house and blew the horn?”

That father was why I was required to take Nate’s arm going down the same back steps I’ve been navigating without assistance since I was fifteen. So his father wouldn’t think he didn’t know how to treat a lady.

“He doesn’t want me to meet you at the restaurant either?” I said.

“He figures since I invited you, I’m supposed to pick you up.”

“What if I had invited you?”

“Then you can pick me up,” he said. “Under one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You get a bigger car.”

I laughed. How could I resist? A man who can make you laugh is worth his weight in gold. And this was a very big man.

“All right,” I said, glad he hadn’t said anything about the other night. I didn’t particularly want to explain throwing myself into his arms like he was the last lifeboat on the
Titanic
. “Six-thirty is fine.”

“Listen, Joyce,” he said. “Do you have a second?”

“Sure,” I said. “What’s up?”

“About the other night . . .”

Busted!
I tried to head him off at the pass; keep it light.

“It was pretty wild, wasn’t it?” I interrupted him with an unconvincing laugh. “Probably all that passion Nettie was flinging into the atmosphere.”

To his credit, he ignored that. “That night brought up a lot of memories for me,” he said, “most of them bad.”

What did that mean?

“When my wife left me, I didn’t break any glass, but I pretty well trashed my record collection. Every other song had been
our song
for at least a minute, so I just made a clean sweep.”

I tried to imagine Nate stomping around, flinging his records against the wall, but I couldn’t imagine it. I was still trying to picture Nettie and her unicorns.

“I tried everything I knew how to do with that woman, and it was never enough, no matter what I did. I just couldn’t figure her out.”

His voice still held the pain and confusion he must have gone through then, and I felt sorry for him. I don’t have any memories of bad love. Being left alone because somebody dies on you is a completely different matter than being abandoned or rejected or ignored.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured.

“Yeah, I was too. Sorry and mad and scared and lonely.” His deep voice stopped abruptly and I heard him take a deep breath. “It took me a long time to stop blaming her for what went wrong between us and even longer to stop blaming myself, but I finally got it together and then I woke up one day and didn’t miss her. I still thought about her sometimes, but she wasn’t like a constant ache in my gut anymore. She was just a part of my life that was over.”

I waited. I wasn’t sure what all this had to do with the other night, but it didn’t seem to be leading back to any analysis of my behavior, so I was prepared to listen until he tied up the loose ends for me.

“So when you kissed me like that . . .”

Like what?

“It brought up some feelings in me I haven’t had in a long time and didn’t think I’d ever have again.”

Tell me about it!

He laughed a little then like he had gone too far to turn back now. “Cards on the table?”

“Of course.” I wonder if anybody ever answers that question by saying, “Sure, all except the one I’m hiding in my boot.”

“The truth is, I don’t know any more about women than I did when my wife left me. I keep trying, but you all are some mysterious creatures.”

“Thank you,” I said, since I believe in acknowledging our magic rather than denying it.

He chuckled again. “I like you, Joyce. I know we haven’t known each other long, but I feel something good happening between us, and I think you feel it too. But I know it can go a couple of different ways and I don’t want to be pushing one way if you’re pulling in another.”

That made me smile. “I think I’d lose that one.”

“I don’t know about that, but I just want things to be clear between us, you know? Don’t make me guess, all right?”

It was kind of funny in a way. I thought I had made everything pretty clear when I hung myself around his neck like a string of Christmas tree lights, but his history obviously made him wary of unspoken contracts with women who kissed him in the moonlight.
Truth,
I reminded myself.
Just tell him the truth.

“I’ve been thinking about the other night too,” I said.

“You have?” He sounded so relieved I wished I could kiss him again through the phone.

“The thing is,” I said. “I’ve been by myself since my hus-band died, but I like you too, and I’d very much like to have . . .” What? Late-night conversation? Lightweight flirting? Unexpected laughter? Cuddling? Kissing? All of the above?

“. . . a gentleman caller,” I said finally, hoping that even if he
had never read Tennessee Williams, the words were big enough to include all the possibilities he might be considering, but not so vague as to demand further definition. Not yet anyway.

“A gentleman caller?” He sounded hopeful but a little confused.

“You know,” I said. “Somebody who likes to pick you up for dinner and take you to the movies and every now and then, you might even get carried away and kiss him good night.”

I could hear him chuckling again. “I’d like that too,” he said. “I’d like that a lot.”

“Good,” I said. “Then I’ll see you at six-thirty.”

“I won’t be late.”

Of course he wouldn’t. No gentleman caller worthy of the name ever came late.