The Color of Family (12 page)

“So, Maggie, I didn't get a chance to say welcome back from vacation. How was your New Year's Eve?” Josh said.

And without looking up from the pages she studied, Maggie Poole said, “Oh, Josh, you know how it is. New Year's Eve is like bad sex. It's nothing but weeks and days and hours and then seemingly unending minutes of basically uninteresting foreplay leading up to one anticlimactic second you'd rather forget anyway.”

And at Maggie's analogy, Antonia let out the bashful twitter that seemed to have been channeled from a virginal youngster. She wasn't quite sure which embarrassed her more—hearing her son's lover say such things, or knowing that none of it would ever have been said for her to hear had Maggie been aware of her presence.
The worst part, though, was that Antonia felt like an accidental voyeur, particularly since it was possible that she was being given a glimpse into her son's sex life, which was somehow dysfunctional by the sound of Maggie's lackluster account. So the only thing Antonia could think to say that would possibly make an itchy nightmare of a situation less so was “That was very funny.”

“Mrs. Jackson!” Maggie said, her voice crumbling with the same fear it just might have had if she'd unintentionally said what she'd said into an open microphone for all of Baltimore to hear.

“Maggie, how are you sweetie?” Antonia said as she stepped gingerly over wires and maneuvered around things to get to where Maggie sat on the set.

“I'm fine, Mrs. Jackson. It's just so good to see you.” Then Maggie hung her head and looked past Antonia's eyes to say, “About what I was saying to Josh. You know, we…Well, I was just—”

Antonia stopped Maggie's fumbling and stumbling for words by grabbing her up. She hugged her close, and when she was through, she took one step back and said, “Why haven't you two been around lately? You are still seeing one another, aren't you? You know Aaron wouldn't tell me if you weren't because he knows I'd give him the devil for it.”

Maggie laughed, smiling broadly before saying, “Oh yes, Mrs. Jackson. We're stuck in love with each other and not going anywhere. It's just that I've moved my aunt in with me and she's nearly blind, so I've had to make a lot of adjustments to my schedule to accommodate her and all.”

Antonia didn't speak right away, being under the momentary spell of Maggie's smile, which always made her think of the sweetness of children. Then she said, slapping her flattened palm to her thigh, remembering, “Oh, that's right. Aaron did tell me that you'd taken in your widowed aunt. And he did say that that's why you're not doing the eleven o'clock news anymore. You are such a good woman. I guess that's why I love you so much,” and Antonia took Maggie into a hug once more.

“Well, I guess it's like they say, I'll get my rewards in heaven,” she said as she patted Antonia's back in a way that seemed instinctive.

“You'll get them there, and you'll get them right here on earth too. You'd better believe it, because I know it's true.” Antonia
slackened her hold on Maggie and whispered, “And part of your reward will be my son. I can't wait until the day you're my daughter-in-law, although I don't know what my son could have done to deserve a peach like you, but you didn't hear that from me,” and she laughed heartily, giving Maggie one last squeeze before she stepped back, having heard footsteps that she assumed were Aaron's.

Maggie let out a nervous burst of laughter, then said, “Oh my, well that's some praise you sing of me, Mrs. Jackson.”

“Okay, okay,” Aaron said good-naturedly. “Let's knock this off. We've got a show to do.” He sat in his chair, just to the right of Maggie's and looked at his mother impatiently, then let his eyes drift down to study the news copy in his hands.

“All right, I'm going. Josh, where do I sit?”

“Right over here, ma'am.”

“I'm not going to be on camera, am I?” she said as again she navigated her way over cables and around things.

“Oh no ma'am. You're way out of shot of any of these cameras.”

“Where are the cameras, anyway?” she asked as she settled herself into the chair in which Josh directed her to sit, which sat among two other chairs and a small table that looked good for absolutely nothing. The whole little area, which was hidden in darkness, looked to her like an abandoned living room corner.

“See those three big structures right there? Well, they're the cameras.”

Antonia looked skeptically at them, studying them with her head turned first this way and then that, and said, “Well, now, I didn't expect them to look like that. To be that big. I always thought they'd look like regular movie cameras. You know, like the ones you see those guys out on the street carrying for those reporters.”

“Well, these are the studio cameras” was all that Josh said distractedly. His tone and actions made it clear that something was about to happen and he was about to turn his attention from her. He looked over to Aaron and Maggie, who had already slipped into their five o'clock news personas, ready for the camera. He said, “Cue to Aaron. We're ready to go in five, four, three…”

And that's when Aaron said, “Good afternoon. We're interrupting regular programming to take you to Randallstown where
a hostage situation is underway. Six people are being held hostage in a home on Allenswood Road, including a three-year-old girl. The shooting between the hostage taker and the police has prompted the police to block off Brenbrook Road from Liberty Heights to McDonough, and all the side streets surrounding Allenswood. People in this area are being warned to stay in their homes. Right now, we're going live to Keith Pettiford who's at the scene. Keith, what's the latest?”

Antonia could hear the reporter's voice coming from somewhere to the right of where she sat, and judging from Aaron's and Maggie's gazes, the screen Maggie watched must have been smack between cameras two and three, and the one Aaron watched must have been smack between cameras one and two. As badly as she also wanted to be taken live to the scene of the crime in progress, she couldn't go. No matter how hard she strained and craned her neck, her just-barely side view of the monitor was blocked by the bulk of camera three. Camera three. She suddenly thought about camera three, and then two, and then one. There wasn't a soul behind even one of the cameras, yet these things moved back and forth, from Aaron to Maggie as if someone were pushing and pulling them. They had to be computerized, she thought, and operated by someone up there in that dimly lit room with the board full of buttons and knobs and sliding doo-dads, whatever that place was called. She'd only been in there once, and then only briefly. Still, that couldn't help her to reason why the age of computers had come to this place to take three good jobs from three men who just may not be competent to do anything else but push and pull a camera around.

While she'd sat pondering the fate of the displaced cameramen, the news had gone into its regular hour and Maggie was talking about something completely unrelated to the shooting out in Randallstown. Whatever it was that was hot enough to be news had eluded Antonia in that moment, because all she could wonder about now was why Aaron was burning a stare into her. She couldn't imagine what she could have done while simply sitting there quietly that would warrant such a look from him. So she stared back at him, with questioning eyes and an unsure smile. They locked onto one another in this way until the commercial break, and even though there was no possible way her voice could
have been heard throughout Baltimore, Antonia still whispered to Aaron, “What?”

And Aaron answered, “I'm trying to figure out why you have that look on your face.”

“I'm not the one with the look on my face,” Antonia said, not in a whisper, but still not in her full voice. “You're the one who's looking at me as if I've just done something wrong.”

“I was looking at you because of the way you were looking,” Aaron said defensively.

“Oh my goodness,” Maggie said, turning to Aaron. “This is ridiculous. What's wrong with you? Your mother's here watching the show, watching what we do for the first time and you're picking on her over the look on her face. Maybe she was thinking about something.”

Aaron looked at Maggie, then at his mother, then lowered his head and said, so deeply beneath his breath it was as if he'd swallowed the words, “That's what I'm afraid of.”

“What?” Maggie asked.

“Nothing.” And Aaron went on studying his copy.

So Maggie looked over at Antonia and said, “Are you enjoying the show, Mrs. Jackson?”

“Oh, it's just fine. So exciting. But what happened to the men who're supposed to be running these cameras?”

But there was no time for her to learn of the cameramen's fate. The floor director was bringing them back, and this time it was Aaron's chance to tell Baltimore the newest news. And Antonia watched as her son did his best to beat back the disquiet that she was certain only she could see through the affected evenness. It was in his eyes, which wanted to do something else, look someplace else but had to stay trained. It was then, only then, that Antonia asked herself:
Am I really vexing him so?
She watched him from home every evening, and sitting there now only feet away from him, she couldn't recall Aaron ever being this agitated. But within the context of the news colliding with his personal life, it all made painful sense to her. Still, the unnerving sound of Aaron stumbling through the news about a man that his mind, lacking hard evidence, could not accept as his cousin crept up her backbone like a thief headed for the place where it would steal her repose.

“…and Baltimore's newest resident, barely in the city for three weeks, is off to do his first consent—excuse me,
concert,
not here in Baltimore, the town that loves to claim him, but in his true hometown of New Orleans tomorrow night where he's expected to, uh,” and Aaron stopped after the blunder, as if uncertain of what he should say next, as if it weren't all written out for him. Then he looked squarely into the camera and continued, “…where he is
expected
to, uh, play to a sold-out house for both nights of the engagement. He's explect—I'm sorry,
expected
to add some jazz standards to the end of his program of Brahms, Chopin, and Bartok. We'll go now to Clint Hargrove who's live downtown with the president of the Meyerhoff Hall with more on Mr. Cannon's concert to be played there next month.”

By now, Antonia was sitting on the edge of the chair, ready to get out of that studio once the getting was good. She looked into the lap of her skirt, where she found the truth—she shouldn't have been there, shouldn't have even come. And when she looked up to catch Aaron in the eye, she wanted to disappear, because she knew his angst. What kind of mother would cause a son so much vexation? She had to get out of there, and there was nothing that could stir up a tempest in her heart more than being stuck like a fly in molasses in a place she needed to leave. So when Maggie was through with what she had to say, and the place could relax for the next two minutes or so while they were out for another commercial, Antonia gathered her bag to her side and stood.

But before she could tell Aaron what she was about to do, he said, “Ma, I think it would be best if you waited up in the newsroom for me. Is that okay? I mean, you can see all the stuff that goes on up there that helps us put the show together.” Then he looked as if he were holding his breath in anticipation for some sort of explosion. And he bore guilt in his eyes.

“Yeah, that's just fine,” Antonia said, stepping across the wires and cables to make her hasty exit. She wasn't exactly sure what she was feeling, but it came somewhere close to shame. Whatever it was, it kept her from looking at her son when she said, “That's exactly what I was thinking. In fact, I just may go on home.”

“No, Ma, don't go home. I'd like you to wait for me until the show is over. Just go on up to the newsroom. You can go back to the room where we were sitting, or you can go to my office. It'll be
in the opposite corner from where you'll be once you enter the newsroom. Don't leave, though.” And he sounded as if he meant it from his depths.

That's when she turned to see him and said, “Okay, if you really don't want me to leave, I won't. I'll just wait for you,” and she faded from the studio.

When she reached the newsroom she stopped to get her bearings, then spotted Aaron's office, exactly where he said it would be. If she could have walked in a straight path, it was across the newsroom in the corner diagonal from where she stood. So she started off through a narrow opening between cubicles and found herself in a larger space and just to her right was a stool that sat in front of what looked to her to be a smaller version of those robot cameras in the studio. She jumped a step back, at first, thinking she was on camera until common sense prevailed and she realized that there'd be no cause to have that camera filming the empty space of the stool. Then she turned to see the wall the camera faced, then looked back to stare at that camera with pride because she, all on her own, figured out that this was where Aaron and sometimes Maggie sat when they had to give the highlights of the news before
Oprah
was over. And that wall, she thought with a faint, sideways smile, as she looked again to the wall in the back of the newsroom, is what's behind them. Her attention was snatched away from the wall when she heard someone addressing her.

“Don't worry, Mrs. Jackson,” Mark said. “That camera's not on.”

“Oh yes, I figured as much.” She went over to where Mark stood in front of a large glass-enclosed room. “Why is it that not one camera around here is being run by anybody? I mean, when did cameras start thinking for themselves?”

Mark gestured with his head toward the camera and stool and said, “That stationary camera over there is called our flash cam, and because it's stationary we don't need a man behind it to run it. It's actually operated, you know, turned on and off, by the people up in the control room. But I suppose what you're talking about are the cameras in the studio. Well, they're called robotic cameras. And actually, they are operated by someone. Do you recall seeing a fellow sitting by the door when you first went into the studio?”