I Wish I Had a Red Dress (4 page)

“How did you get so smart?” I said, hugging her at the door as she headed for home before Mavis was too sleepy for another few pages of
The Cat in the Hat.

“I’ve been hanging around with you.” She laughed. “How ya think?”

Which was, of course, the nicest thing anybody had said to me all day.

I TRY NOT TO
spend too much time being mad when things don’t go according to plan. My personal experience is that things almost never go according to plan. Even a good plan. Accepting that as a fact of life instead of as evidence of the universe’s personal grudge against me for unknown crimes saves me from having to waste a lot of time being angry, time which can then be spent solving the problems at hand.

Friday went by in a blur. I spent most of the day going over the books to see where I could cut corners instead of services and wondering how I could raise money for The Circus without pretending we are something we’re not. Even though it was going to be tight for a while, I hadn’t had any second thoughts about what happened at the committee. If you have any interest in
maintaining your self-respect, there sometimes comes a moment where you just have to say
no
. This was one of those moments and, to tell the truth, I was sort of exhilarated by it.

Tee was busy calling everybody about the anti-Super Bowl party and it was clear this was an idea whose time had come. The response was overwhelming. I had never considered the use of football as an organizing tool for female empowerment, but maybe it was time to take a second look. Defiance is always one of the best emotions to tap into when you’re asking powerless people to stand up for themselves. Turning our backs on football seemed made to order. Next year we ought to consciously program Monday nights during the regular season.

By six o’clock, we had confirmations from all of our regular members except Sheila Lattimore, whose mother had answered the phone when Tee called, said her daughter was busy on Sunday and hung up. I thought about stopping by there on my way to Sister’s for dinner, but what’s the point? Talking to Anita Lattimore is an exercise in futility. At forty, she’s the mother of six and the grandmother of at least seven, maybe more. Ten years ago, when he was fifteen, Junior, her oldest, ended her years of violent abuse at the hands of his father by shooting him to death. The murder occurred in full view of the other Lattimore kids, who ranged in age from thirteen to five.

The court ruled it self-defense and allowed the family to stay together in the vain hope that, freed from the father’s reign of terror, it could repair and rebuild itself. Unfortunately, Anita wasn’t strong enough to do much besides get a job as a maid at the Motel 6 to keep a roof over their heads and minimal food on the table. She supplemented her income by turning tricks when the manager wasn’t looking and becoming a willing partner
in the many illegal get-rich-quick schemes that Junior dreamed up during his hours spent smoking dope, drinking beer and watching television on his mother’s tattered living-room sofa.

Anita believed Junior had saved her life and for that she was his constant defender against any and all comers, including his siblings, his
babymamas
and whatever law enforcement and other agency officials found their way to her door. My appearing to ask that Sheila be allowed to join us for an anti-Super Bowl party would have been a fool’s errand anyway. My relationship with Anita had deteriorated rapidly after I encouraged Patrice and Tiffany to file for child support from Sonny and T. J. Their mother’s position was that since “those fast-ass girls” had “tricked” her boys into getting them pregnant in the first place, they had no business to expect money to start flowing now. When the family court did not agree, I earned a place on what she told me was her “permanent shit list.” I didn’t have
just dropped by to say hello
license at the Lattimore house anymore.

The truth is, at this moment, that’s fine with me. I’m in no mood for a run-in with an angry matriarch. I’m in the mood for mango margaritas.

I HEARD THE MUSIC
as soon as I stepped out of the car. Something Latin. Bill and Sister were going to Havana with a group of ministers in August and their house had become a repository for all things Cuban. They were seasoned travelers who’ve spent at least two weeks out of the country every year since they met in graduate school. Bill says it’s important to regularly remind yourself that the center of the world is not necessarily the piece of land where you happen to be standing.

Sister opened the door before I had a chance to knock, kissed my cold cheek and drew me quickly inside before the wind came in too. Bill, in baggy jeans and a big red sweater, was at the stereo programming a full evening of music in advance. I admire people who can use new technology effectively, but I still miss those
old turntables with the plastic covers and the tone arm that could be set to repeat a single scratchy 45 forever. The day before we moved here from Detroit, I remember kissing Steven Robinson for three hours straight while the O’Jays sang “You are my sunshine” over and over until I thought I would surely die of desire right there in his parents’ rec room.

“Buenas noches,”
Sister said, smiling and taking my coat.

“
Buenas noches
to you.” Never let it be said that I am not an international woman.

Sister was wearing a pair of billowy orange pants, a purple silk tunic and a pair of embroidered Chinese slippers. Her braids were tied at the nape of her neck with a bright strip of kente cloth, and delicate filigree hoops sparkled in her ears. She looked—there is no better word for it—
festive.
I felt like a strange black moth dropped into the middle of a butterfly’s nest.

“Listen to these guys,” Bill said, already shouting to be heard across the room and then turning up the volume another notch so we could fully appreciate the sublime harmonies of the Buena Vista Social Club, a group of legendary Cuban musicians, average age seventy-five.

My Spanish pretty much begins and ends with
buenas noches
but I recognize a broken heart when I hear one.

“He’s been playing these guys nonstop,” Sister said. “Turn it down a little, sweetie, would you?”

“They give me hope for old guys,” Bill said, reluctantly returning the sound to a more conversational pitch.

“What’s he saying?”

Bill closed his eyes, placed his hand over his heart dramatically and did the simultaneous translation.

“A broken shadow/without you, Only the twilight accompanies
me now. Now your love is gone/there is no happiness for me.”

The music ended on a note of perfect longing and Bill sighed with satisfaction and glided across the room to give me a welcome squeeze. Among his many talents, Bill is a world-class
hugger.

“Where you been, girl? Are you brightening up some other parlors besides our own?”

“No chance,” I said. “This is by far my favorite parlor for at least a couple of hundred miles.”

Bill laughed. “Perfect answer, and deserving of a perfect margarita.”

“Sit,” Sister said, poking the logs in the fireplace as he disappeared into the kitchen and I sank into a cozy corner of her pillow-strewn sofa. Her earrings glowed in the firelight against the copper-colored smoothness of her cheek. Sister and Bill were about the same height and built sort of round. Not
fat.
Just
cozy.
Hugging either one of them always felt like home. “We’ve got a fourth coming.”

She said it real casual, like we were entering a bridge tournament, but I was immediately on the alert. She denies it, but Sister is one of those people who is so happy with her partner, she wants to see the rest of the world, including me, paired off as quickly as possible.

She’s tried to set me up a couple of times with people she thought might be good potential mates, each time with disastrous results.

“You never learn, do you?” I said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“Who is he?”

“His name is Nate Anderson,” she said. “He’s the new vice principal up at the high school. He’s only been here two weeks.”

“He missed the whole first semester? Sounds like a dedicated educator, all right.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Sister said. “They didn’t even offer him the job until after Thanksgiving.”

That was typical. The schools around here seem to fling open their doors in the fall and hope for the best. Half the time they don’t have enough teachers and the administrative turnover is ridiculous. I can’t blame the ones who leave, though. There’s never enough money and always too much work. Throw in some unmotivated students and uninvolved parents and what’s not to love?

“He’s living in a motel until he can find a house to rent.”

“A house?”

She nodded. “That’s what he told Bill.”

“Think he’d be interested in the Smitherman place?”

“I’m sure he would,” Sister said immediately. “That’s a great idea.”

The Smitherman twins, ancient, alabaster aristocrats, lived in a beautiful two-story house across the lake from my place, but they had a smaller house, on a smaller lake, that they rented out. I knew it was empty because the last tenant had been instructed to leave the key with me a couple of months ago when the end of his lease coincided with the twins’ annual theater and museum trip to New York and Chicago. I still had it hanging on a hook in my kitchen. If he seemed personable, they’d probably be happy to have him move in right away.

“So what’s he like?” I said.

“Seems like a nice guy. I met him the other day when I went to pick up Bill. He was in the gym lifting weights.”

“Lifting weights?” When I was in high school, the vice principal was a white-haired old guy who specialized in calling your parents for the slightest infraction, a disciplinary method that earned him the nickname “the Tattler.” The heaviest lifting he did was to take the Texas fifth of vodka out of the freezer to make himself a good, stiff drink at day’s end.

“When’s his wife coming?”

Sister looked startled by the question. “His wife?”

“He’s married, right?”

Sister busied herself at the fireplace again. “He’s divorced, I think.”

“You
think?
” This evening was looking more and more like another ill-fated attempt to play Cupid.

“How old is he?”

Sister shrugged. “I don’t know. Ask Bill.”

Her husband reappeared as if on cue with a small tray of perfectly frosted margaritas. “Ask Bill what?”

“How old is your friend?”

“Nate?” Bill handed me a cold glass and frowned slightly like the question had never occured to him. “I don’t know.”

“What’s your best guess?” I said. Bill is great on the big, cosmic questions, but the more mundane details like names, dates, ages and marital status tend to escape him.

“Somewhere between twenty-five and fifty.”

Sister laughed and shook her head. “You’re a big help!”

“You can ask him yourself as soon as he gets here,” Bill said. “But for now—
cheers!”

We clinked our glasses lightly and I took a long, cold swallow and sighed. Whatever the ingredients of Bill’s special margaritas, he had done nothing to overpower the delicate flavor of the fruit.

“Well?” Bill was grinning at me like he knew exactly how wonderful this frozen concoction really was.

“As long as you can make something that tastes this good, you don’t have to keep up with the details!” I said.

“Thank you!” Bill beamed. He responded to praise like that cartoon
Precious Pup
—glad all over.

“I’m going to do the salad before Nate gets here,” Sister said, heading for the kitchen. “Tell Joyce about your new poem.”

A week ago, Bill had told me he had decided to compose a cycle of love poems dedicated to Sister. It must be going well. When he was blocked, asking Bill about his writing was unwise.

The music had changed. More drums. More horns. Faster guitars. If I was a dancing woman, I’d have been tempted to make this one a ladies’ choice, but I’ve always been too self-conscious to enjoy anything in public but the kind of slow grind that’s only allowed after midnight in the darkest corners of a blue-light basement party where nobody sees and nobody cares. Bill wasn’t that kind of friend and this definitely wasn’t that kind of music. This music needed a hot night, a crowded dance floor and a lack of inhibition that only happens in my dreams.

“Bamboleo,” Bill said, reading my mind and naming the group for me.

“They’re great,” I said. “Tell me about the poem.”

“I thought you’d never ask.” He sat down and took a slow breath, suddenly serious. “It’s the epic saga of an ancient African warrior king who journeys through time and space to find himself marooned in twenty-first-century America until he can fight his way home.”

I was confused. “I thought you were writing love poems.”

“It is a love poem,” he said brightly.

“Oh.” None of what he had said sounded remotely like love to me.

“A love of destiny and history and a man’s place in it. A love of the monumental battles between good and evil, right and wrong, through which every generation of males must test itself and put forward their own definition of manhood.”

Oh, Lord!
Even a perfect margarita doesn’t require me to let this kind of stuff slide. “Where are the women?”

Bill smiled confidently like he had already considered this question. “The women are engaged elsewhere in battles of their own to which I, as a mere man, could not be expected to be privy.”

I started sputtering immediately, not realizing he was teasing me until a timer dinged in the distance and he stood up, laughing.

“See there!” he said, heading for kitchen before Sister could start stirring things that were supposed to be left alone. “Just like a black woman! Always prepared to believe a brother is afraid to confront the real questions!”

“You wouldn’t know a love poem if it hit you in the head,” I called after him, laughing in spite of myself. Bill liked to tease me about almost everything, especially the mysterious dance that always ensues when men and women find themselves in the same house/same room/same bed. I was the perfect foil, passionate and gullible; a con man’s dream.

The fire shifted and rearranged itself, dislodging one small, glowing log. I stood up to replace it among the others and caught sight of my sister’s wedding picture on the mantel. That was a night when
everybody
danced. Bill was in charge of the music then too and he had something for everybody, including a late-night
segment that sounded very close to what I was hearing right now. By that time, most of the kids were asleep and the oldsters had drifted away home. The rest of us were involved in a collective perfect moment and had sense enough to surrender and enjoy it.

I turned up the music a little, remembering, swaying in spite of myself. This is my night off, after all. These are my good friends and this music is
cookin’!
I swayed a little more. Was Ava’s wedding really the last time I danced?
That was three years ago!
What’s that Emma Goldman quote that makes such a great button: “If your revolution doesn’t include dancing, I’m not interested”? She had a point there.

The vocalists on Bill’s CD had kicked the beat up another notch. Their mission seemed to be to make you throw caution to the winds and
shake it
. Knowing Bill would take it as a compliment and not a sign of insanity, I cranked the music up another few notches and started dancing around all by myself. I shimmied around the couch. I grabbed my skirt and sashayed between the wingback chairs. I shook my shoulders in front of the poinsettia sitting on the coffee table, and the more I danced, the better I felt.

I positioned myself directly between Bill’s giant floor speakers, closed my eyes and let that Cuban music take me where it wanted me to go. Suddenly, this
was
Havana. The air was soft and warm. The night was young and I was wearing the most amazing red dress. . . .

The tap on my shoulder almost scared me out of my wits. I jumped a foot in the air and turned to face a
gigantic
stranger. He had to be six seven or eight, deep mahogany brown, and thick around the chest and shoulders like somebody who keeps in shape and then some. His deep brown eyes were clear and curious
and rimmed with eyelashes that were so long they would have been feminine without the strength of his nose and his big square chin. His great big head was completely bald and there was one small gold hoop in his left ear.

He was smiling a
don’t worry, I’m not dangerous
smile, so I reached over to turn down the volume.

“I knocked,” he rumbled pleasantly from somewhere way down in that great big chest. “I don’t guess anybody heard it.”

“You startled me,” I said, wondering what it felt like to be that tall. I extended my hand and made a mental note to ask Sister if there was any particular reason why she had neglected to mention that, in addition to being huge, he was undeniably
fine.
Being religious does not make you blind, just like being a widow does not make you oblivious, especially when you’ve been drinking mango margaritas.

“I’m Joyce.”

“Nate Anderson,” he rumbled.

We shook hands, mine disappearing completely inside his giant paw, and he grinned at me like we already shared a secret. “Nice music.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling suddenly sixteen for no good reason, except maybe the fact that I can’t remember the last time I spent an evening with an attractive man who wasn’t twice my age, or half of it, or married to my best friend. I wondered how long he’d been standing there.

“Are you a dancer?”

Among the five most flattering questions I can imagine being asked, “Are you a dancer?” is definitely at the top of the list.

I laughed. “No. I guess I was just feeling
festive.
”

“Great,” he said. “Festive is one of my favorites.”

“What happened to the music?” Bill came out of the kitchen
and spotted Nate. “Hey, brother! Didn’t hear you come in! Good thing I wasn’t talking bad about you.”