Pacific Avenue (4 page)

“Magnolia Woods isn’t too convenient. It’s better for
us to meet near campus.” I pulled out the next stake without help.

“Are you sure he feels welcome?” Dad sounded anxious.

“Sure,” I said. “That’s not the problem. He just
doesn’t have transportation.”
Or is that an excuse? Guess who’s not coming
to dinner.

“Why don’t you pick him up one evening and bring him
over?” Dad asked. “He seems like a nice young man. We’d like to get to know him
better.”

I noticed some crabgrass had sneaked in where the
tomato vines had been particularly lush. I pulled at one of the clumps, but it
came off in my hand the way crabgrass always does, leaving its roots behind to
spread.

“One evening or a particular evening?” I asked. As soon
as the words were out of my mouth, I wished I hadn’t asked.

“Next Saturday,” Dad said. “Ask him over for dinner
next Saturday.”

So, Richard came to dinner. Over roast lamb and Potatoes
Anna, he and Dad debated the war. Dad was a pacifist. Richard agreed the war
was wrong, but he thought most of the soldiers were only trying to stay alive.

“I didn’t meet any monsters in the army,” he said. “Everyone
I knew did what they had to and that’s all.”

“What about Lieutenant Calley?” asked my father. The
scandal had been going on for years—the My Lai massacre and then William
Calley’s court martial.

“It wasn’t all like that. The war is no good. We
shouldn’t be there. But not one man in a thousand is like Calley.”

“‘An isolated incident’?”

“Not isolated enough. But most of us weren’t anything
like that. And things like My Lai will go on happening as long as there’s war.
It’s no good to blame each and every soldier.”

At first I was happy at how well Richard and Dad were
getting along. After a while, that wore thin. Neither of them seemed to know
how to bring the bull session to an end and talk about something else. Mom
would ordinarily have diverted a runaway conversation at a dinner party, but
this time she didn’t. She sat stiff and wordless, with a vacant look in her
eyes. Except for her fixed hostess smile, she might as well have been at the
dentist’s.

The next day at school, I ran into Richard in the
library. First words out of my mouth, I tried to pick a fight with him.

“You seem to have more in common with my dad than I
do.”

Richard laughed. “Well, at least we don’t have the opposite
problem—your parents refusing to let me in the door.”

“What about the other way around? Maybe the two of you
won’t let
me
in the door.”

He shrugged.

“Don’t take it personally, Kathy. Your dad is way to
the left, for Baton Rouge. He probably can’t say stuff like that to his
friends. He likes to talk politics, and I happen to be someone he can talk to.”

“Well, I happen to be someone he has nothing to say to
anymore.”

“Join the club. I don’t talk to my father at all.”

That made me feel less alone. “Why? Because of the
army?”

“It’s a long story. The army was the last straw.”

“I have time for a long story.”

A librarian frowned at us and put a finger to her lips.
Richard gestured toward the door. “Let’s go somewhere else, and I’ll tell you.”

We went out onto the long main quadrangle. The prettiest
buildings on campus were here—tan, tile-roofed, connected with arched breezeways.
Small oak trees spotted the inner court with patches of shade.

We sat on an out-of-the-way bench. Richard stared at an
azalea bush like he’d never seen such a thing before. He didn’t look my way at
all.

“My father has a real thing about the army. He enlisted
one week after I was born. My mother hated that—a new baby, and her husband
decides to go fight in Korea.”

“Wouldn’t he have been drafted anyway?”

“Probably. He made it a crusade, though. Most of the officers
were white, and some of them said right out that black soldiers were cowards.”

“Why?” I pushed my books off my lap and stacked them on
the bench, fingering the edges carefully, lining them up. Anything to keep from
looking right at Richard.
I’ve never talked with a black person about prejudice.
I didn’t know you could.

“Partly racism. There was also a scandal about a mostly
black regiment that ran. He set out to prove single-handed the racists were
wrong. Sometimes when Dad talked about it, I wondered who the enemy was—the
Communists, the white officers, or the black soldiers who fell short of his
ideals.”

“Why did he stay in the army after the war?”

“It was a good place for an ambitious black man in the
fifties. The army cared more about rank than race. He ended up a master
sergeant in a transportation company.” Richard kept staring into the azalea
bush, like he was reporting a story shown there on a little TV screen.

“What’s a master sergeant?”
Dumb question, just to
keep him talking. The way girls are supposed to do. All the magazines say that—though,
most likely this kind of conversation isn’t what they have in mind.

“It’s an NCO, non-commissioned officer. Dad should have
been a general—he’s perfect for the military—neat, pressed, polished, the whole
nine yards. I used to be proud to be his kid. All the same, it was hard on me.”

“What do you mean?” I reached out to touch his arm, but
as my fingers brushed his shirt, he glanced at me, startled. I jerked my hand
back. At least I’d gotten his attention away from the azalea.

“He expected me to be perfect too. Even when I was
knee-high. Anything I did reflected on his career, and on all blacks in the
army—on all blacks, period. Like I was an ambassador to another planet. Some
ambassador.” His voice was hoarse, like he was about to cry.

“Were you that bad, or just a kid?”

“I was just a kid. I made good grades, but they were
never good enough. Sometimes I wished I could quit trying, wished I could cut
loose and give him a taste of ‘bad son.’ I never did. Over the years, I quit
talking to him instead.”

“Is it still like that?”

He frowned, hesitated. He seemed less open when he went
on, almost dismissive. “I’ve only seen him once since I got back from ’Nam. I
still wasn’t an officer and he was still mad about it.” He laughed, but he
didn’t sound amused. “And if I had been, I doubt he would have liked that
either. He didn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat. He said he didn’t like my
Afro, and that was about it.”

“Maybe that was all he could say.”

“I guess so.” Richard stood up, balanced his books in
the crook of one elbow, and held out his other hand. Before I could take it, he
pulled it back.
He’s pretending he didn’t offer.
I gathered my books, holding them close with my hands locked together.
Now I’m pretending I didn’t notice.

“Want to get a cup of coffee?” I asked.

“I guess so.”

We headed toward the Union. Once again, I thought everyone
was looking.
Do people always pay attention to people walking the other way?
I never thought about it. Everyone has eyes. What do they usually look at?

For once, the cafeteria was nearly empty. We sat down
with our trays.
He thinks I didn’t want to touch his hand. Maybe he saw the
way people were staring too. Talk about something else.

Nothing came to mind. I looked around, waiting for
something to occur to me. At the far end of the room, a middle-aged man in a
suit gathered his briefcase and tray to leave. As he walked toward the counter,
he stumbled over a chair and dropped the tray onto the terrazzo floor. The
dishes smashed, coffee and food slopped all over. He grabbed some napkins from
a table to clean his clothes. A light-brown woman in a green uniform hurried to
pick up the shards of his dishes. The man scrubbed at his shirt and walked off
without looking back. The maid fetched a mop and bucket and cleaned the floor.

Richard watched them. After a moment, I said, “Could I
see your apartment?”

He turned to me, his face surprised and open. “It’s not
much, Kathy. Even the landlord calls the place ‘the Ghetto.’”

“I want to see it.”

We didn’t talk as we walked past the campanile and the
drama building, past the edge of the campus to East Chimes Street. Next door to
a greasy-smelling diner was a long gray apartment building. This was where the
hippies had lived, such hippies as were left in Baton Rouge after the serious ones
hitchhiked to San Francisco.

Richard had the first-floor place at the back. It was a
one-room apartment, clean but dingy just the same. Stains on the ceiling showed
where the plumbing upstairs had overflowed. He didn’t have much furniture—a
flimsy table with scratched paint, a couple of straight chairs that didn’t
match, and a mattress on the floor, made up taut and perfect with a paisley
bedspread. And a board-and-cement-block shelf stuffed with books.

His windows looked out onto a huge fig tree. As I glanced
out, I saw a rat eating a fig. Richard must have seen it too. I heard a sharp
intake of breath.

I hadn’t felt so ashamed since the time Sharon caught
me stealing a pack of gum in the A&P when I was nine.
I’m pushing myself
on him, and he probably thinks I want him for a boyfriend until the next white
guy comes along. Or even that I want to get involved with him in some sick way.

“I’m sorry.”
Oh, great, now I’m going to cry in
front of him.
But I couldn’t help it.

He offered his upturned white palms to me for comfort.
Does
he think he can only touch me in the places where his skin matches mine? I
don’t want it to be that way anymore.

I pulled him close and laid my face against his. I had
never gone to bed with a man before, never even wanted to. I almost laughed,
there in his arms.
How could anyone think we’re different in any way that
matters?

* * *

On Thanksgiving Day, I woke to a splash of rain blown
against my window. The banked-in sky told me that it wasn’t going to let up,
but I didn’t mind. Rain was the best we could do in the South to mimic the
crisp-weather holiday coziness that we’d learned from children’s books. Years
when it was hot and sunny, it didn’t seem like Thanksgiving at all.

In the kitchen, Mom was already fussing. She had the
classical radio station on, playing Charles Ives. Cranberries seethed in a
copper pot, exploding one at a time with soft pops. A bowl of chopped onions
filled the air with tears. I got a cup of coffee and made room for it on the
table between a bunch of celery and a stack of old
Gourmet
magazines.

It looked like Thanksgiving dinner was going to be an
even bigger production than usual. I sat at the kitchen table for a few
minutes, but Mom worked around me, first on one side and then the other. She
didn’t make conversation or even ask for help with the preparations, so I took
my coffee back to my room, planning to study. But I couldn’t concentrate. I
kept imagining the dinner that evening.

Sharon would be bringing her boyfriend Sam Quinn, who
none of us had met. All we knew about him was that he was a doctor at the
hospital where she worked. Uncle Joseph and Aunt Ruth were coming—they had
Thanksgiving dinner with us every year. And I’d invited Richard.

Impressions of his face came between me and the books.
I smiled as I pictured him, gentle and serious. I thought of him trying to
please his father and never making it, like me with Mom. Now that we were grown
up, didn’t that mean we got to start over with someone else, start over and
please each other? I was sure I’d never hold back from Richard—I could give him
what he needed.

I hummed a little of a favorite tune, “Song for the Asking.”
That was what I felt, that I’d been waiting all my life for someone like
Richard. I’d always offered people love, but he was the only one who would put
out his hand and take it. So simple, but he was the only one.

Mom’s voice broke into my thoughts.

“Kathy,” she called.

I got up and went to the kitchen. “Yes?”

“Get the centerpiece, would you?”

The china turkey, our Thanksgiving centerpiece for as
long as I could remember, was kept on a high shelf. I pulled out the step stool
and climbed up to get it. Mom hovered, fretting that I’d break it, so I handed
it down to her.

“Okay?” I asked, before I let go.

“Yes.” She smiled at my carefulness. “Could you wash it
for me, please? It’s pretty dusty.”

I climbed down and took the turkey back. Mom handed me
a plastic dishpan so it wouldn’t get chipped in the sink. I ran hot water into
the pan and squeezed in dishwashing liquid, watching dust dissolve from the
bird’s colorful plumage. A few bubbles drifted up, reminding me how I’d loved
blowing rainbow soap bubbles when I was little. I realized Mom must have bought
me the bubble stuff. I imagined her in the market, stopping her cart, tucking
the toy in with the groceries. Did she smile, anticipating my fun?