Harlem Redux (29 page)

“Of course you may see them,” Sweet said with glacial politeness. “But I’m not sure where they are. I’m not even sure she kept them.”

Annie spoke up. “I b’lieve she did. Miss Lilian used to always read them at the desk in the library. She had a special drawer she liked to put them in. I can fetch them if you like.”

Sweet smiled thinly. “That’s all right. I’m sure I can find them.”

David accompanied Sweet to the library. Sweet went to the desk, pulled out one shallow side drawer. “Ah, here they are.” He removed a small stack of postcards held together by a pink ribbon, handed them to David, then walked a little distance away. David sorted through the cards, then slapped the little packet against his palm. He ran a speculative eye over Sweet.

“Gem didn’t write these cards. She has a lovely script. She’s very vain about it. Whoever wrote these cards is barely literate.”

“Lilian said these cards came from Gem. If Gem didn’t write them, I don’t know who did.”

David looked down at the packet of cards. “When did they start coming?”

“About a month after Gem left. Look, David, Lilian had many secrets. Now she’s gone and she took them with her. And I, for one, am glad to let them be.”

“Are you?”

“I said I am.”

“Well, I’m not.”

A tic leapt near Sweet’s right eye.

“Speaking of secrets,” David said, “I’ve come across Lilian’s diary.”

“Her diary?” Sweet repeated tonelessly.

“It adds a whole new perspective to things.”

“How interesting. Perhaps you’ll let me look at it.”

“Put it like this: When the time is right, I’ll be sure to tell you what I’ve gotten from it.”

David went upstairs to his room and gathered several handkerchiefs. Then he went to Lilian’s room and headed for her private bathroom. There were shelves and a small medicine chest. The shelves carried only bath soaps and beauty ointments. He turned to the wooden medicine chest and opened it. Nothing. It was bare.

He’s cleaned it out,
thought David.
There was something in there he didn’t want anyone to see.

A hand touched his shoulder and he jumped. Then he saw that it was just Annie.

“Good grief,” he said. “What’re you doing here?”

“‘Scuse me, Mr. David. Didn’t mean to scare you.” She nodded toward the medicine chest. “He emptied everything outta there soon as the police left, the day she died.”

David sighed. She put a hand on his wrist. He looked up and she crooked a finger, as if to say,
Follow me.

Fifteen minutes later, he had thrown on his coat and set out for Seventh Avenue. His long muscular legs covered the distance quickly. Soon, he was standing before the Renaissance Pharmacy on the corner of 138th and Seventh. He shoved open the swinging glass doors and headed for the prescription counter. He had to wait until the pharmacist finished with a couple of elderly customers. Then he told the druggist what he wanted. The pharmacist did not comment. He simply extended his hand. David turned over a small bottle. He was told to come back on Thursday. The information he had requested would be waiting for him.

As David headed home, he thought about the other discovery he’d made that day, the one in his father’s office.

18. Lyrics of a Blackbird

Lilian had started writing when she was ten. She’d kept a diary even then. The contents of her journal she’d kept secret, of course. But her poetry and short stories she’d shared. Sometimes with Rachel; mostly with David. While Gem and Rachel and Trudy Maxwell from up the street and Sally Mabel Stevens from down the street were all outside playing hopscotch, Lilian was indoors, busy with her “scribbling,” as Augustus called it. He wasn’t too thrilled about Lilian’s fascination with the written word, but he tolerated it. Lila defended it. She was very proud of her daughter and encouraged her, but Lilian didn’t particularly like to show her mother her writings. It was David she sought out. It was his opinion that made a difference.

“What d’you think?” she’d ask.

“You’ve got talent,” he told her one day when he was twenty and she fifteen. He’d just finished reading a story she’d given him entitled, “The Man with One Green Eye.” It was about a colored man who had one brown eye and one green one. He couldn’t see out of both eyes at the same time, so he had to walk around with a patch on one eye all the time. He’d switch back and forth between eyes every day, “to give each eye an equal chance to see the world its way.”

David could see the pride in her eyes, but she kept her expression serious. “That’s very nice of you to say I have talent. But I
know
that. I need constructive criticism, David.” She held up a small warning finger.
“Constructive.”

And so he tried, as best he could, to give her some. “But I’m not like a teacher. I don’t know the rules.”

“You’re better than a teacher. You’re my brother.”

He laughed and said, “Okay, your brother says this story’s good enough for you to try to get it published.”

Her eyes did shine then and her mouth sagged open. “You mean it?”

“Wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t.”

“But, David, what magazine’s gonna publish something from a colored girl?”

“Don’t have to be a magazine. We’ll try a newspaper. How about the
New York Age?”

“They print short stories?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. If they don’t, they’ll change their mind when they see yours.” He smiled. “There’s always a first time.”

She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. “I’ve got the best brother in the whole wide world.”

The newspaper did indeed publish “The Man with One Green Eye” and over the years it printed a couple of Lilian’s poems, too, each of them after they’d undergone David’s constructive criticism. And so he took personal pride in her literary accomplishments.

He now eased down in the chair before his desk. He pulled open the bottom drawer on the right and took out a package. He had found it in Sweet’s office—Augustus’s office. The package, wrapped in plain brown paper, was addressed to Lilian McKay. When he’d hefted it in his hand, he’d sensed the consistency and weight of a manuscript.
Lilian’s last manuscript.

The return address was Knopf Publishers. Her manuscript, sent back either because it was rejected or accepted but needed corrections, had arrived the day before.

How had Sweet managed to get his hands on it? Usually Annie was on hand to accept all the mail, but the package could’ve arrived while she was out shopping. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he, David, had now gotten
his
hands on it. Sweet probably would’ve burned it. He would make sure Sweet never would.

David laid the manuscript on his desk. His heart beat a resounding staccato.
Her last words—last creative endeavor.
Quickly, he cut the twine holding the package together and ripped open the paper. Sheaves of typed pages were revealed. The tide page read: “Lyrics of a Blackbird, by Lilian McKay Sweet.”

Lilian had written him that
Lyrics
concerned secrecy and betrayal in a family on Strivers’ Row. Beyond that, he knew nothing. Would it tell him more about Lilian’s frame of mind before her death?

He began to read and once he started, he couldn’t stop. On the surface, the plot was simple, but it held an underlying complexity that reverberated to his core.

It was the story of Georgia and Frank Johnson; their daughter, Helen; their sons, Mark and Joel; and their housekeeper, Alice. Alice and Georgia had started out as best friends, sharing a room in the Tenderloin with five others. Alice worked hard, but she could never keep two cents together. Georgia wasn’t rich, but she had a little inheritance from her father, a white man who had never publicly acknowledged her. Despite her white blood, Georgia was as blue-black as the midnight sky. And Alice, who had no white ancestors she knew of, was as yellow as a sunbeam. It was Alice who met Frank Johnson, but it was Georgia who married him. An ambitious, self-righteous man with a touch for making money, Frank knew a good deal when he saw one. He may have loved Alice, but he needed Georgia’s cash. Her little dowry gave a nice boost to his first real estate investment. But all did not flow smoothly.

Soon after Frank married Georgia, Alice learned that she was pregnant. Georgia offered to take the baby, a little girl with pale skin and silken curls, and raise her as her own. Alice could stay near the child—if she was willing to work as the servant. Under no conditions was she ever to tell Helen that she was her mother. Five years later, Georgia gave birth to twin sons. They too were cream-colored. But unlike Helen, they weren’t so light as to pass for white.

As the years went by, Georgia realized that her husband’s love, such as he was capable of, had stayed with Alice. And she suspected, though she could not prove, that their affair had never ended. She hated Alice—and she knew that Alice hated her. She saw that Alice was desperate to claim Frank and Helen as her own, but she didn’t realize just how desperate. Not until it was too late.

Alice poisoned Georgia in the hopes that Frank would finally marry her. But Frank refused. He would never marry her now, he said. What would people say? A man of his stature, marrying the maid? Furthermore, he’d loved Georgia. Didn’t she know that he’d grown to love Georgia?

The afternoon light slanting through David’s bedroom window grew gray, then darkened with the sunset. He paused twice to adjust his lamp, but otherwise he read the manuscript straight through. After turning the last page, he went and stretched out on his bed. He closed his eyes, feeling drained.

Things ain’t always the way they seem,
Annie liked to say.
She should know,
he thought,
she should most certainly know.

19.
 
The Lies of Kindness

There was a knock on David’s door—“Yes?”—and Annie stuck her head in. “Miss Rachel’s here to see you.”

David got up and followed her downstairs, his thoughts running in parallel tracks, one leading to Annie, the other to Rachel. He wondered about what he’d just read and he wondered
 
what Rachel wanted.

The latter was standing in the parlor, before the fireplace, nervously staring up at Augustus McKay’s portrait and wringing her hands. She started and turned at the sound of David’s entrance. Her face broke into a bright, edgy smile.

“I’m glad I caught you. I won’t stay long. I just had to come by and say something after I ...” She paused and looked away. “I wanted to apologize. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. I—”

He raised a hand to still her. “It’s okay. I guess we both said things ... things we didn’t mean.” He gestured for her to sit down on the sofa and sat down beside her. “I still don’t understand, though. Why didn’t you tell me the truth about Sweet when I first asked you? Did you just want to get back at me?”

She lowered her gaze. “Maybe I did. But mostly .. .” She raised her eyes to meet his. “Mostly it was because I didn’t want to cause you pain.”

“Cause
me
pain?”

“We can’t bring Lilian back. It doesn’t help to run around with extra heartache. I thought it’d be better for you to believe that Lilian was happy in her marriage.” She was apologetic. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to help.”

He heard her weariness and his anger toward her faded. He tried to follow her logic. Yes, it would’ve been nice to think that Lilian had a good husband, to believe that she’d received support from at least one of the people she loved, trusted, and depended upon. It would’ve been nice to believe that not everyone who mattered—her husband, her brother, and her sister—had failed her.
It would’ve been nice,
he mused,
but it wouldn’t have been true.