Unfinished Business (5 page)

“The men who founded our country made a mistake. A serious one, but they were—as all of us are—shaped by their experiences and the beliefs of their time,” he said in a voice loud enough for the rest of the class to hear. “At that time—and at many other times in the history of the world—slavery was a reality. And with very few exceptions, in the history of the world, slaves did not have the right to vote. I'm not saying three fifths is right, but in many cultures, slaves would have been counted as zero persons. Nonexistent.” He paused. “But the mistake was corrected by
the Civil War. A lot of men—white and black—died to fix that great wrong. But it was necessary. Sometimes fighting is the only way.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I'm sure Erica—Ms. Johnson—will teach you about that later.”

“She did,” another voice, slightly familiar, added. Mark turned to find the kid who'd brought him the water, Anthony, on his feet beside his desk. “But the war wasn't enough. It took the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which abolished slavery and gave African Americans the right to vote. And those amendments didn't take. We still needed Dr. King.”

Mark blinked, impressed. These kids were clearly carefully and thoroughly taught.

“We still need the Voting Rights Act of 1964. And we're still three-fifths persons in lots of ways.” The kid was running through American history like he was talking about the latest video game. “Look at what happened after that hurricane in New Orleans.”

“I agree. That was a national disgrace,” Mark said. “And there's plenty of blame to go around. But let's stick to the Constitution and the laws that support it for now. In our government and our laws, the language of racism is gone. True, in the days after slavery in the South, there were some issues. Some abuses. But all of that—slavery, and Jim Crow and segregation—that was a long time ago.” He smiled, trying to turn the tide in a new direction. “You kids live in a much better, much different world, where any of us can accomplish anything, if we're willing to work hard enough for it. Ms. Johnson and I disagree on a million things, but that's one thing we can agree on, right?”

Their eyes locked and he read conflict on her face. There was a part of her that wanted to disagree, he was sure of it, he could read it in the tightness in
her face. He could almost hear the words—“legacy of slavery,” “reparations,” “lingering discrimination”—hovering on her lips. But there was another part, one that couldn't bring itself to tell a room full of ten-year-olds to put limits on their dreams.

She sighed a tiny little sigh before allowing a slow smile to spread across her face. “Yes. If you're willing to work hard enough, if you refuse to take ‘no' for an answer, if you're willing to fight for it, then yes,” she said. “You can do anything.”

Mark grinned at her, patted Damon on the back and stumped back up to the chair at the front of the room.

“Even if you're poor?” Anthony launched the words at him like a missile.

Mark nodded. “I come from one of the poorest states in the Union,” he told the boy. “My family was very poor. We didn't have running water in the house until I was twelve. You know what that means?”'

A murmur of curious no's went up around him.

“It means nothing happens when you turn on the faucet. It means there aren't any faucets, or sinks or bathtubs. You take a bath in a metal tin filled with water from the rain barrel or the nearby lake. And when you have to go to the bathroom, you go outside. In a hole in the ground.”

A chorus of “ews” and “ughs” filled the room.

“My cousin's water got cut off 'cause they couldn't pay the bill,” a little girl explained loudly, waving her hand as though trying to get called on. “They had to buy water from the grocery store to make the toilets flush.”

“That happened to my godmother—”

“Once we had to take baths at my grandmother's house because there weren't no water—”

Erica threw her hand in the air, her fingers splayed
into what looked like a peace sign. “Settle down, young people. Settle down! Senator Newman was just trying to make a point—”

“No, I was just telling them about my life,” Mark corrected. “I've been as poor as anybody in this room. Poor in a way people don't believe still happens in this country. But I always liked school, and I was always willing to work hard, and the military taught me self-discipline. Those three things, more than anything, are the reasons I was able to escape from that poverty.” He turned toward the doorway, half wishing he could have convinced Erica Johnson to allow at least one reporter in the room. The press would have loved this exchange, would have eaten it up with a spoon. He could almost hear the violins as the movie of his life came to its rushing crescendo, and made a quick mental note to ask Bitsi if there might be a way to schedule some kind of “kids' town meeting” when he went back to Billingham next week. Then he refocused his attention on these children and the words he was saying. “And if I can do it, you can, too.”

“Yeah, but you're white,” Anthony announced.

“So?”

“My brother say white people can do things black people can't.” Anthony offered as though this changed the equation considerably.

Mark hesitated, the feeling of ambush creeping along the tender skin at the back of his neck again. The kid's brother was right: Racism was alive and well. But he couldn't very well tell this little boy not to try, just because he was black, could he?

Mark sighed. “There are still obstacles, Anthony, but in the end, I gotta say your brother is more wrong than right. Maybe once upon a time in America, that was true…but it's not anymore. Maybe I'm just optimistic, but I gotta believe that, white, black, brown,
yellow, you can do anything you want in this great country of ours if you're willing to work hard for it. There are still problems, there's still discrimination, but you and your brother have a better chance of success here in America than in any other nation in the world. I believe that,” he concluded firmly. “Now, you're right about the House of Representatives being composed by population, but the Senate is different. Two from every state—”

“Thank you, Senator Newman.”

He turned to find Erica Johnson's brows furrowed and that tight line around her mouth again. Clearly, the woman was pissed. Again.

“Look, before you give me all the lingering effects of slavery stuff, just let me point out—”

“No, it's not that,” She frowned and shook her head. “It's the other part. We don't lecture the kids here at Bramble Heights.”

“I wasn't lecturing,” Mark asserted. “I was just telling them—”

“I mean,” Erica Johnson smiled a little half smile that wasn't a smile at all. “That we don't
tell
the children things. They may be young, and some of them may be disadvantaged, but every kid in this room has a good brain, and I intend for them to become good at using them. I don't want them to become adults who are content with being ‘told' things by others. I want them to become adults who are adept at finding out the truth for themselves.”

Mark frowned. “This is history, Ms. Johnson. Not some touchy-feely—”

“There's nothing touchy-feely about critical thinking, Senator Newman,” she said firmly. “It requires a high degree of intelligence, resourcefulness and analytical thinking to discover the answers for oneself.”

“And just how will they make these discoveries?”

No sooner than the words left his lips than the woman's smile changed, blossoming from that strained crimp of tolerance to something warm and full and alive. As Mark watched the love in that smile stretch over her face, something inside him stretched as well, filling him with fire from his neck to his toes. When she locked her glimmering eyes on his, pinned him with that smile—that glorious smile!—he forgot his irritation, forgot she was on the wrong side, forgot all the reasons that had brought him to this place.

Katharine. That was the last time he'd had this feeling. This crazy out-of-his-mind, head-over-heels, burning-with-desire feeling.

“They're going to get into their Discovery Groups and answer these questions,” she was saying. She brandished a stack of papers and the same two little girls jumped from their seats to distribute them right on cue. “They can use any sources they like. Their textbooks, of course.” She pointed to the computer station and the bookshelves. “The Internet. Our collection of resource books.”

Mark swallowed hard, forcing down the feelings consuming him. “Why make it so complicated?” he heard himself saying in a voice that registered on the border of obnoxious, even to his own ears. “I can explain it in two minutes and—”

I've forgotten how to talk to a woman
, he realized when the smile drained from her face.
I've forgotten
. And suddenly it mattered to him, mattered enough for him to send up a prayer:
Help me remember, Katharine. Help me.

“If you just explain it, they will have learned nothing,” she finished, her dark eyes flashing. “I don't understand you, Senator. Why are you on the Education Committee? Is it just a springboard to better things? If your expectations for the nation's children
are so low, just what kind of electorate are you going to have when it's time for your presidential bid?”

He blinked at her, realizing just how angry his arrogance had made her.

“I didn't mean—”

She waved a slender brown hand at him, dismissing his denial. “I know, I know. I've heard. You're not a candidate. Yet. But you'll have your eye on it in—what—six more years, right?”

Mark opened his mouth, but at the moment, he wasn't entirely sure what his answer should be. He found himself on the fence between wanting to hash through the details of his political career with her—if only to hear what kind of outlandish, ultra-liberal, Left Wing debate she'd launch—and suddenly needing to apologize.

She didn't give him the opportunity to do either.

“Here's hoping you don't get the chance,” she muttered under her breath, and then turned to the class. “Young people,” she began, silencing them with only her attention. Mark watched her profile as the tense little half smile he'd been getting melted into the softer smile of absolute approval. “Get to work. Show the senator how glorious you are. Show him what money spent on minds can do.”

Two dozen heads bent to the task without question or complaint. Mark watched as children eagerly flipped through textbooks or rose to take a seat at the computer. The room seemed charged with a new energy. She was right to call it “discovery”: that's exactly what it felt like.

“You can quiz them in a few minutes,” she told him and he didn't have to look at her to see her pride. “Education isn't just about school lunches or buildings, Senator. It's about believing in someone. Believing in them more than they believe in themselves,
and watching them blossom. I believe in these kids. All of us at Bramble Heights do. We're here because we want to be, and no other reason. There's nothing I wouldn't do for these kids, including fight with you and the whole damn Congress if necessary.”

And she smiled again, a ray of something pure and good and wonderful. She stood there, beaming her pride and love for her students at him with a brightness that pierced some long-dormant corner of his heart. Unexpected emotions caught him by surprise, once again: The same strange feeling that had swept over him when their eyes met in the Senate hearing room coursed through him. The same thing he'd felt during the TV interview when her big brown eyes had locked on his and he'd held those slender fingers in his own. The same thing that had struck him dumb here in her classroom only moments ago.

He hadn't felt anything close to this since Katharine died. Mark swallowed, his mind racing, his heart thumping too hard and too fast in his chest.

There was definitely unfinished business between them, and for the first time Mark realized it was deeper and more serious than getting the last word in a political debate. Because here he was, in front of God and two dozen fourth graders, gripping his cane tightly to keep from leaning over right there and capturing the woman's smile with his lips and holding it for his very own.

“No.” Erica turned on her heel and walked away from him, even though she knew it would be useless. Mark Newman was certainly one of the most arrogant, self-aggrandizing men she'd ever met, but he was also one of the most tenacious. And Angelique had had the nerve to back out on her. Stood in the doorway of her classroom, with that stupid little grin on her face and insisted she had other plans for the evening. Which Erica knew fully well was a bald-faced lie. Angelique never had any plans, any evening.

“Come on…” his voice had shifted from a commanding to a wheedling tone. “Why not?”

“Don't you have somewhere else to be?” she asked him in exasperation. “Isn't there a vote on the Hill or a cocktail party with a bunch of lobbyists or something that desperately needs your attention?”

That quirky little grin covered the lower half of his face. “Nope. Turns out my schedule is clear.”

“It's been clear all day,” Erica muttered. “I'm beginning to wonder just what the taxpayers pay you for.” She turned away from him again, trudging quickly toward her car, her head down.

“I cleared the day for you and your class,” he said and she heard the cane crunching the gravel of the parking lot as he followed her. “Most women would be flattered.”

Erica whirled on him. “In case you hadn't noticed, Senator. I'm
not
most women. I really wish you'd just—just—”

“Was I that bad at teaching?” he asked.

No, you're actually rather it good at it
, she almost admitted, but she swallowed the words knowing full well they'd swell his head to unmanageable proportions if she spoke them aloud. The kids had actually seemed to enjoy having him around after she'd allowed him to become a “resource” for their assignments. And, if she wanted to be honest about it, once he'd stripped off that suit jacket that looked like it had cost a couple of million dollars at some custom men's store, loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves and started bending over desks, helping her students with the nuances of civics and language arts, math and science, he'd been maddeningly sexy.

“You were…okay,” she said grudgingly.

“Okay?” His voice rose in mock insult as he smirked down at her. “I was better than okay. I was
good
.” He sighed a little and rubbed his forehead. “But I gotta admit, I don't know how you do it every day. Those kids are exhausting.” His eyes swept over her body, taking in more than muscle and bone, but he confined his remarks on it to, “You must be tougher than you look.”

Erica rolled her eyes. “Gee, thanks. I think.”

“Seriously,” he asked in a tone to match the word. “It's hard work, but you do it well. Those kids adore you.”

There was something more than the compliment in his eyes and in his tone. Something, suddenly inti
mate, suddenly real. It made that warm, fluttery feeling kick up again in the pit of Erica's stomach—and she wasn't about to have it.

“Go home, Senator,” she said, turning her back on him again.

“Can't,” he said. “No car.'”

Erica rolled her eyes. “Fine. Call your driver. One of the perks of office, I'm guessing.”

“Can't,” he said in the same easy way and still just a step behind her. For a tired man with a cane, he moved surprisingly fast when he wanted to be annoying. “No driver.”

“Then get a cab!” Erica shouted over her shoulder.

“Ms. Johnson—Erica—may I call you Erica?”

“No.”

“Erica,” he continued as though she had given him permission, “I don't understand why this is such a big deal. It's been a long day for both of us. You've got to eat, I've got to eat—”

“But we don't have to eat together,” Erica reminded him. “And to be honest, Mark Newman, I've had just about enough of you for one day, so—”

His face changed so abruptly Erica let the rest of the sentence die unspoken. The characteristic smirk that usually graced the man's features slid into an expression Erica had rarely seen on any person's face. An extreme tenderness and an extreme pain mingled in his eyes as his lips froze in a strained smile.

“What is it?” Erica asked urgently, registering his expression in confusion. “Are you all right?”

He shook his head, focusing his attention fully on her face again, and in that very instant that smug little smile reappeared on his face. “Of course,” he said, gathering himself to his full height and beaming down at her as though nothing unusual had happened in that half second. “My wife used to say that
to me, that's all,” he said in the most casual of tones, like he was talking about the weather. “‘I've had just about enough of you, Mark.' Katharine said that a million times if she said it once. In that exact tone of voice you just used. Said I was enough to try the patience of a saint.” He limped past her, indicating her little import. “Let me guess. Yours?” he gestured toward the bumper stickers on the rear fender: make love, not war, and It takes a village to raise a child. And Erica's favorite: Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy.

Erica ignored him. “I can see why your wife would say that. What happened? She finally had enough and left?”

He shook his head.

“No. She died. Shot in a holdup at a grocery store.” He tapped on the passenger side door with his cane, and to Erica's surprise the lock popped open as though it had been jimmied. A moment later, the senator had folded his long, lean length into her car.

“I—I'm sorry,” Erica stammered. “I didn't—”

“Wednesday. Pizza,” he told her in that confident, Mr. Untouchable voice, and then slammed the car door and sat there, staring at her like she was his hired driver. “I usually have pizza on Wednesday.”

Nerve. That's what the man had. Pure, unadulterated nerve. It was almost funny.

Almost.

“Well, bully for you,” Erica muttered.

He reached across to the driver's side and rolled down the old car's old-fashioned hand crank window. “What?” he demanded, like he was the King of the Parking Lot.

“Nothing,” Erica said calmly. “Except this ‘take charge' bullshit you're running on me is not going to work. Good night, Senator.”

“Come to dinner with me, Erica,” he said, dropping drawl and drama for an earnest tone. “I need to know a few things to set up your visit to Billingham, and”—he hesitated a moment—“I'd like to tell you about my Katharine…if you feel like listening.”

My Katharine
. He spoke the name with such gentleness it was clear he'd cherished the woman as much when she was alive as he did her memory. Erica felt a lump of jealousy rise in her throat. It must be wonderful to feel cherished. If her own experiences and the experiences of her girlfriends were any measure, it was as rare as plutonium to find a man who knew the meaning of the word.

Erica stared at him harder. He was smiling that little smirk-smile again, but this time she tried to see beyond that unfortunate habitual quirk of his lips to the man within. There had to be something beneath it, something deeper…

But if there was any depth to him it all, it certainly wasn't readily apparent. Erica hesitated. The last thing she wanted to do was spend another minute in the company of a man who irritated her as much as Mark Newman could, just by breathing.

“Oh, come on,” he urged. “I won't bite, if you won't.”

Erica sighed, tossed her books into the backseat and slid into the driver's seat, firing up the tiny engine with a quick turn of her key. “You're buying,” she grumbled without looking at him, but she knew that smile had widened to cover his whole face.

“A gentleman always does,” he purred at her, and Erica had to grip the steering wheel hard to keep from calling him everything but a gentleman, and to remind herself that she was, indeed, a lady.

He was quiet in the car, except for when he barked out directions like a general on the battlefield. Erica
expected they were headed to some upscale Italian eatery, with a charming brick oven and booth seats, where they made pizzas with exotic ingredients most normal folk wouldn't eat. But instead, he directed her into a neighborhood she knew well, where little mom-and-pop takeouts dotted a busy street in the shadow of Union Station.

“Here,” he said, pointing to a small storefront in the middle of the block on the other side of the street. “Mama Tia's.”

Erica flipped a quick U-turn and whipped the little car into a curbside parking space without a word. As she set the parking brake, she felt the man's eyes on her.

“That was some pretty good driving, for a woman.”

“What kind of chauvinistic B.S. is that?” Erica rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Newman, what planet are you from?”

“I meant it as a compliment!” he said, smiling slyly, like he knew he'd pressed every one of her buttons and had done so deliberately. “Of course, it helps when you drive one of these itty-bitty clown cars. Back home I got a dual-cab pickup that's probably three times the size of this thing.”

“And drinks six times more gas,” Erica retorted angrily. “Increasing the demand for limited resources and depleting our environment.”

The smirk widened on his face. “Exactly,” he said joyfully. “But it's a helluva a lot more comfortable, I guarantee it.”

Erica slung her purse over her shoulder and opened the car door. “Let's get this straight, Senator. I agreed to go home with you to East Bumfuck, or wherever it is that you're from. But if you think I'm participating in some big primary-election publicity stunt, you can forget about it. I'm not going to let you humiliate me,
or belittle my point of view. And most of all, I can absolutely assure you that I am not riding around in any gas-guzzling, dual-cab, pickup truck with a gun rack and the Confederate flag on the rear windshield!”

“So the answer is no?”

“Absolutely no,” Erica asserted, shaking her head until the loose curls brushed her cheeks. “Unequivocally no. No. No. NO.”

He grinned, looking deliciously boyishly handsome in a buzz-cut John Travolta-ish sort of way.

“That's what you said about dinner,” he said and limped his way ahead of her into the restaurant.

 

Mama Tia was behind the bulletproof glass at the order window—a precaution Erica hated but knew the area required. But when the older woman saw them, she hopped off her stool and opened the steel door separating them from herself and the cash drawer. A moment later, her plump form, squeezed into too-tight blue jeans and a large cook's apron, appeared in the restaurant's lobby.

“Well, aren't you both a sight for sore eyes!” she cried, in a voice without the slightest hint of Italian heritage in it. That was no surprise: The woman was just as clearly African American as Erica herself. She opened her arms and just as Erica was about to move forward to receive her hug, Mark Newman stepped into them. “Mark!” Mama Tia was saying, joy carved into the smile on her face. “It's been a long time.”

“Too long, Mama,” Newman was saying his voice muffled by the woman's plump shoulder. “Way too long.”

“I been seein' you on the news, tho',” the woman continued as she released him. “You been lookin' kinda tired to me. Working too hard.”

Erica glanced up at the man, searching for signs of
fatigue. For the first time she noticed the puffy smudges of gray beneath his eyes and fine, tight wrinkles crimping the corners of those clear blue eyes.

“Tryin' to do the right thing by the people who sent me here,” he replied, and for the first time since she'd met him, he put aside the “aw shucks” routine long enough to sound almost sincere. “They sent me here to work for the common good, not goof off.”

Mama Tia patted his arm. “Killing yourself won't do no one no good, Mark. You know that, same as I do.”

The woman's laser-sharp black eyes swung in Erica's direction.

“Erica Marie Johnson!” She cried, and enveloped Erica in a bone-crushing hug. “Girl, I'm so proud of
you
! Saw you on the news this morning. You were so quick and smart and right dead on the money. I couldn't help but think to myself, ‘Now
there's
a combination that might just be able to do some good in this world. Mark Newman and Erica Johnson.' And now here you two are in my restaurant.”

“Mama.” Newman sounded puzzled. “You know Erica?”

Mama chuckled. “Know her? I changed this child's diapers.”

Erica felt a flush of embarrassment rise to her cheeks. “Well, not quite,” she said quickly.

“Yes, I'm sure I did,” Mama Tia insisted. “At least once. Back when your Grandma owned a dress shop down the block.”

“I grew up in this neighborhood,” Erica explained. “Two streets over. I used to work here after school in high school.”

“Best worker we ever had, bar none,” Mama Tia asserted, shaking her head.

Mark Newman's face seemed to crumple. “Then, I
guess,” he said lamely, “You've had the pizza.”

“Had it!” Mama Tia's hands went to her hips. “If you weren't with her, I bet she'd go back there with me and make her pizza her own damn self.”

“Oh,” Mark murmured. “I see.”

Erica grinned. It was obvious he'd selected the place to impress her with his knowledge of delicious but little-known D.C. eateries and was now completely discomfited that his plans had been foiled. Erica felt suddenly glad she'd allowed herself to be manipulated into coming; the look on his face right now was worth all the garbage he'd been spouting all day.

“I'm sorry I haven't been around to visit you in a while,” she said to the older woman.

“It's all right. I know you don't live right around the corner anymore. Sometimes I think about picking up and moving myself.”

“How's business, Mama?” Mark asked, and again, he sounded genuine, like he was truly concerned.