Harlem Redux (36 page)

“She offered me money, in your name. To finance a new start, she said.
Elsewhere.”

Of all Lilian’s secrets, this was the worst. That she had known where he was, known that Rachel and his child needed him, but failed to tell him.

“She only wrote me that you’d left town.”

“I didn’t take Lilian’s money. Mama bought me a bus ticket—a one-way ticket—to Chicago. She thought it’d be better for me if I went away. She was afraid the gossip would hurt me. But nothing could cut deeper than knowing you were gone. After that, nothing mattered. But I couldn’t stay. I had to think of Mama, too. She gave me all her savings. I went to the station by myself. But I didn’t go to Chicago. I went to D.C. Somehow, I had a notion you were there. But you weren’t. At least, I couldn’t find you. I bought a cheap ring. Found a rooming house. And said I was a widow.”

“And the baby?”

The expression in Rachel’s eyes softened. “A little girl. I named her Isabella.”

Pain blossomed inside David like a blood-red flower. “And did you put ... Isabella ... in a home?”

Rachel smiled dreamily. “She was so pretty. Sometimes I can still feel her soft little cheek against mine.”

He had a sinking feeling. “Rachel, where’s the baby?”

Rachel’s smile abruptly faded. “Dead. Caught pneumonia. Died right before Christmas.” Rachel’s eyes became wet. She blinked and swallowed hard. “Maybe it’s better she’s gone. She wouldn’t have had much of a life. But I loved her. God, I ache for her. Mama said Isabella suffered for my sins, but I wonder what kind of God would punish an innocent baby. Sweet Jesus, she was five months old.”

Rachel clenched her teeth and shut her eyes. Her small fists flexed and curled in her lap.

“I was afraid to ... I didn’t have the money to ... bring her back here. I had to bury her there. To leave her down there with nobody to visit her. Sometimes I dream about getting the money together to go back. Just once. Just to put some flowers …” She bit her lip. “I left the same day as the funeral. Came back here. Mama fell ill three months later. She was gone within a week.”

“My God, Rachel ...”

He moved to put his arms around her, but she drew back. She was stiff with renewed anger. Her pretty face was bitter.

“Lilian came to see me. My mama was dead. My baby was dead. And now, she wanted to know if there was anything she could do. I told her, no. No, thank you.”

Rachel swallowed. She drew a deep breath, raised her head a notch and forced a smile. “But you know something?” She swiped away a tear. “I am not bitter. I’m not gonna
let
myself be bitter. I’m gonna stay glad, so glad that I had Isabella. Given my life, I just have to be grateful that I had her at all.”

And then she did let him hold her. She let him rock her gently back and forth, but she refused to shed any more tears.

He convinced Rachel to lend him her sole picture of Isabella. She relinquished it only after he promised to return it. Later, ensconced in his armchair before the parlor fireplace, David fingered the small rectangle, studying it. His fingers trembled. His little girl had had his eyes, almond-shaped, dark and liquid. Her small lips were pert and soft like the leaves of cherry blossoms. She was a beautiful child who stared into the camera with a sense of expectation and curiosity about what life would bring. The magnitude of his loss hit him. He felt gutted. So much had happened while he was away. How could he have ever thought his disappearance wouldn’t matter?

“You want another cup of coffee, Mr. David?”

Annie’s gentle voice brought him back. She stood next to him, pointing at his still half-full cup on the nearby side table. “It’s sat a long time. Probably done gotten cold. You want a fresh cup?”

Yes. He needed warmth, to drink it and hold it, to stave off the cold that was creeping around inside him.

“Thank you,” he said, then asked: “Why didn’t Lilian tell me that Rachel needed me?”

“The first of the Seven Sins,” she said promptly.

Pride,
he thought.
Puritan pride. They were friends. Like sisters, for years. But when it came down to it, Lilian didn’t think Rachel was good enough. And it didn’t matter that Rachel was carrying my child. She didn’t just turn her back on her friend—but on her own flesh and blood ... because of pride.

He fingered the small photograph, still thinking of Lilian.

Just one more sign that I didn’t really know her. No more than I know Gem.

His thoughts slowed.

Gem .. .

Who was he to judge her? After what he’d done? After what Lilian had done? Gem was his one remaining blood relative. They’d never made much effort to get along, but now—he wanted to. Suddenly, he was determined to.

But first, he had something else to do. A plan fully formed had presented itself to him. And to his tired mind, the plan made sense. He’d failed his father, his sister, and his child. What was done was done and they were gone. He hadn’t done right by them, but he could still do right by Rachel, do what he should have done to begin with.

Marry her.

Yes ... that’s what he had to do. A sense of relief, as well as of inevitability, swept over him. He saw with startling clarity that he was not in love with Rachel. He felt at most a deep affection for her. She could certainly make him desire to touch her more than any other woman he had ever known, but lust had nothing to do with love. He saw that while part of his decision to marry her grew from a sense of guilt, another part stemmed from his awareness that she was a tie to his roots. They were bonded by a common history, one of shared pain as well as pleasure. After living for four years as a stranger in a strange land, he was desperately lonely and needed someone with whom he could be himself.

His plan required him to give up his life in Philadelphia, but he knew with sudden, brilliant clarity that he would not miss it. What he desired most was a new start. He could do that with Rachel. When he left town this time, he would take her with him.

The idea of marrying someone he was not in love with seemed familiar. Why? Then he thought of his mother and Lilian. Inaccessible husbands, neglected wives. One-sided marriages were the McKay way.

He’d long ago stopped trying to understand his parents’ relationship. Or rather, he thought he
had
understood it and because that understanding brought him no comfort, he’d finally left the matter alone.

Lila had suffered under Augustus. She was lithe, pretty, and accomplished. But her skin likened to chocolate, not honey; her hair to wool, not silk—and those were the deciding factors. She adored her tall, light-skinned husband. There was no sign, however, that he loved her. Quite the contrary: His eyes filled with resentment when she entered the room. He dismissed her love but demanded her loyalty. Any respect he showed her was due to her station as his wife, not her worth as an individual. And any need on his part to love or be loved was satisfied in the arms of the high-toned mistresses he took on with a vengeance.

“Why do you have to humiliate me?” David had once overheard his mother cry. He’d been walking past his father’s office door. It was shut, and normally, you couldn’t hear a thing through it. But his parents must’ve been standing just on the other side. Augustus was trying to get Lila to leave. She’d broken into his inner sanctum and he wanted her out. She had no intention of going, not without saying her peace. David listened with a sense of shame.

“I can’t take it much longer—”

“You’ll take whatever I give you. You wanted me. You got me. Now, leave.”

“Augustus, please—”

“Leave!”

David hurried away, ducking into the parlor just in time. He peeked out. His mother stepped outside his father’s office. She turned to look at Augustus and he shut the door in her face. As David watched, she bent her head and wept. She muffled her cries with a handkerchief.

His blood pounded in his head. He was filled with hate and shame—hate for his father and shame that he couldn’t protect his mother.

Why did Daddy marry her? If that’s the way he’s going to treat her?

She straightened up and held her small head erect.

That’s right, Mama. Don’t let him get you down.

Was there ever a time when it had been good between them? When his father had treated her with love and respect? David searched his memory for instances and found precious few.

His mother went toward the kitchen, then paused on the threshold and turned back. Her face had a peculiar look when she did that. He’d noticed that she never entered the kitchen when Annie was in there. She and Annie rarely spoke to one another, exchanging words only when it was necessary.

She started back toward the front of the house. David withdrew into the parlor and went behind the door. He didn’t want her to see him standing there,
spying on her.
Through the crack between the door and its frame, he watched as she passed and went up the steps.

He’d once heard his father mutter that marriage to a “high yella” would’ve helped him businesswise, would’ve brought him good social contacts. No doubt Augustus believed that and the wisdom of the times backed him, for it dictated that everyone in the race “marry up.” But if that was the case, then one had to wonder, why
had
he married Lila?

David had heard rumors and he’d done simple arithmetic. It took a woman nine months after marriage to bear a child. Why had she needed only six with him?

So what if he married you because he had to,
he wanted to say, as he watched her climb the stairs.
That doesn’t give him the right to treat you this way.

That was the message he wanted to give—and one day would. But he had to find the right words. The wrong words would hurt her, would make her feel cheap, and God knows that’s not what he wanted to do. He wanted, if anything, to relieve her of the burden of keeping a secret. A secret he already knew.
Mama, it’s okay. I understand,
he wanted to say.
Someday, Daddy’s going to know what he had in you. Someday, he’ll be sorry.

He’d stood there with clenched fists, thinking that yes, in time he’d find the right words … the words and the courage. But time ran out before he found either one.

Lila died under the wheels of a trolley car on Thanksgiving Day in November 1920, eight months after they’d moved to Strivers’ Row, one week after he’d overheard the scene in his father’s office.

On the eve of her funeral, David watched as his father approached Lila’s casket in the parlor. Augustus broke down. His tears ran freely. In his remaining months, he wandered through the house, a tired, insignificant-looking old man. Without Lila’s love and adoration to inflate him, he seemed to shrink. He withdrew, disapproving of any “outsider” who stepped through the door, and filled the house with his mournful spirit. He held his children to him with a dark magnetism that silenced all thoughts of resistance. By June, he was gone, too.

David now resolved that his marriage would be different. He would give his wife attention and affection. He would do his best to be a good husband. His past neglect of Rachel would ensure his future care of her.

His mind made up, he decided that the marriage would take place as soon as possible, but his plan for a fresh beginning would have to wait. Even if he did manage to accept the idea of Lilian’s death as a suicide, he still wanted Sweet out of the house. Once Sweet was gone, a decision would have to be made about the place. Glancing around the room, David knew he would never sell the house, but he couldn’t live there either. He hadn’t lived in it long before going south, but in that short time, it had accumulated too many memories. And goodness only knows how long he could stave off questions about his past if he remained in town. He would retire Annie—she would hate that, but he had no choice—rent the house (with Annie in it, if necessary), and he and Rachel would start anew.