Grace (23 page)

“Things here are pretty perfect, too.”

“Got it. I'll call you with the next one. Tell me, who do you think I should assign this one to?”

“How about that kid who wrote that piece about the death penalty?”

“He's too green for this one, dear.”

“Only because he hasn't been seasoned by the fire yet, Bea. Give him the assignment and, when he comes back there won't be a part of him still green. He'll be baptized by fire, by darkness, by the hellacious heat that consumes the darkness. He'll go and he'll come back just glowing where the green was burned off, because he's been so near the fire and not goddamn in it. Ask him then if he's sure he wants to pour his life out in it.”

“Just make sure you don't let it consume too much of you,” Bea cautioned. “The space in your heart for deep living. People kill, and they are the demons, and others do what they can to stop it, and those are the angels, unless they fall. But everyone, angel or demon, suffers, and a demon is only an angel turned upside down who refuses to be righted. Look at any revolution for proof.

“If the angel does not first understand the demon in herself, she will never understand evil, and so it will happen again and again because we do not see the suffering in others, all others, even still not fully our own. That is what dooms us. Be an angel for me, dear, and trust in that. Even when you doubt the rest. And, yes, the angels too suffer. They suffer more than anyone because they suffer
for
everyone, which is why they fear, and why they fall sometimes, and why they are angels to begin.”

“I just want to enjoy myself now and live my life, like any other human being.”

“Have fun on your holiday, dear,” Bea sighed, giving up when she saw it was hopeless with me. “Enjoy being in love, which is the gateway to the spirit, and enjoy the end of your first youth, and all the fine rooms, and the fine things in the fine rooms, and all the fine people there are. Call me when you reach the last room, and you are feeling beautiful again on the inside, and you want to know what's next, because you are sick to the gills with beautiful wine and what all. Call me when you can laugh at yourself and the rest of it, too. I will take you to lunch, and we'll talk about what matters, and have the most beautiful time. Promise me?”

“You're the angel, Bea, and a real friend.”

“Off you go. Enjoy Candy Mountain. I hope you eat the whole rotten thing, if that's what you want, and no bellyache.”

“Ciao bella.”

“Ciao bello.”

As I hung up, Sylvie asked who I had been talking to.

“An old friend.”

“It sounded like work.”

“My old editor.”

“You love her. What does she want?”

“Nothing. She dialed by mistake, trying to reach someone else.”

“I don't buy it.”

“She offered me an assignment.”

“Where?”

“Gabindi.”

“I've never been anywhere in Africa. If you took the assignment we could make a trip of it.”

“I have friends in Nairobi I'd like to see, and a safari might be nice.”

“Safaris aren't in Africa. They're in parks.”

“All the same it would still be grand to go to one of them. You don't have to do it for me, though. But if you decide on the assignment, because it has a meaning for you, I would love to see the elephants. I mean, wouldn't it be absolute bliss to see them so magnificent in the wild, before there are none left.”

“I will think about it.”

“Don't do it for me, as I said. But if there is part of you that wants to do it for your own reasons, I could meet you and we could visit friends and make a special time of it.”

“Why do you make everything sound so pleasant?”

“Only if you want to. I can also go by myself, before I have to take my next job.”

“No,” I said. “It's me who doesn't want to keep traveling alone.”

We were late to meet the others for dinner, and rushed to join them in town for a meal of buffalo burgers and old-school California wine from Mount Eden. Dinner was perfect, and our lovemaking too that night.

Before bed we soaked in the hot tub, luxuriating in our last hours before going back east. We were surrounded by the ancient forest behind the cabin, simple and unspoiled. I felt like a perfect Philistine.

We dropped off the rental car in the predawn light and boarded a regional flight to Salt Lake, where our landing was delayed. When we finally reached the next gate, the agent told us our connection had been canceled, due to a storm back east that had closed down most of the coast.

The terminal was filling up with stranded passengers, and fearing we might be stuck there the rest of the day, I asked whether they could fly us into Philadelphia instead. The flights were all full. We put our names on the standby list, then went for breakfast, before going to the next gate to see if we were called. Our hopes were dashed when we saw they were asking for volunteers to skip the flight. By then the airport was jam-packed, the agents beaten down, and people were setting up camp for the long haul. We went back to the information desk, where there was an infinite line and only two agents on duty, one of whom told us there was nothing else east that day.

“What about ATL?” I asked, dreading the prospect of being stranded.

“Traffic is backed up there for hours, and if you get in, you will not make it back out.”

“What do you think?” I asked Sylvie.

“I think we should stay here another night.”

“There are no hotels. We'll have to sleep in the airport.”

Sylvie scanned the desk to see where business was done, and approached another agent. “We need your help,” she said, the gentle certainty of her charm cutting through the chaos with quiet command. “I know you have all these other people to deal with, but we need to get home.”

“Detroit is open, but there is only one eastward flight from there.”

“Do you have room?”

“No, but you would be first on the list. If you land before the storm moves in.”

She booked it, and printed out the tickets. “Can I have your ID?”

I handed her my passport.

“No, your crew ID.”

“We are not crew.”

“I thought you were.”

“No, I just always like to have a way home.”

We went to the gate for the flight, and, as the plane began boarding, exhaled with relief when our names flashed green.

We landed in Detroit half an hour late, and the onward flight was already boarding, but when we reached the gate there was an old couple there in wheelchairs, the husband breathing from a respirator. Sylvie and I looked at each other, her face twisted in a wry smile and her eyes brimmed with I-told-you-so as we gave up our seats.

“Let's find a hotel,” she said, sitting down at the empty gate, despairing of what to do. When we called around, they were all booked, so we were forced to camp out in the airport after all.

The only places open, other than the lounges, were a record shop, with old Motown drifting into the corridors, and a soul food restaurant called Brother Leon's, where a line of people out the door waited to be fed. The sign in the window announced worldwide delivery, with a cartoon picture of the couple behind the counter leaning out of an airplane, riding in a speedboat, sitting in the jump seat of an old Ford.

Life taking you places? Don't even know where you are? This is Motown. We understand people move. We deliver. Coming from nowhere? Don't know how long you'll be staying? We will feed you. Feeling out of sorts? Headache? Heartbreak? Midlife crisis? Menopause? Double-consciousness? Plain ole vanilla angst? Let me put it to you this way, who's going to bury you where?
Here, have some pie.

Ready to order?
You do know what you want, right? Maybe something to take along for the kids? Their kids? Come on now, what are you going to feed them? Big, corn-fed American babies? Or smug little brats, in need of being separated from their sushi money? A man has to know what's worth holding on to, or else it will surely slip away, my daddy used to say. Don't take it the wrong way. I'm only asking because time is passing.
What do you want with the world?

Cornbread with that? 'Course you do.
Why you at it, might as well figure out how are you going to bridge your past, which you barely understand, and your future, which you have no way of knowing. Don't mean to burden you. Just fiddling time in a snowstorm. But do you hear me? Define yourself on your own terms. What happens when you are only the content of your own character in the dark heart of the great American story?
Sweet potatoes or plantains?
What's the secret to the oxtail stew? I'll tell you the secret, youngblood. It all hangs on what you feed your ox.

What binds you to the spirit that flowed through your ancestors? To the others who are not connected to the same ancestors, and sometimes maybe ain't connected to nothing at all? How do you carry on, and keep yourself open to the spirit that sustained them as your life melts into the wide-open world? Leon's Soul Food. We deliver, baby.
Soda?
Just another current in the river, feeding the open sea, a tributary to draw on when times require. Maybe not even in your own lifetime but your children's and their children's. What place for them in the corny American song? To the spirit? Do you still hear it? Or have you gone over? Don't tell me. Ain't really none of my business. This is a question for deep in the darkness when you are in that place where the world does not matter, and even the one you love does not matter, but when you focus your prayer, and all that matters is who you are in eternity.

“Stay or to go?”

How long does it take you standing there, recalling your grandfather, before you understand what the old folks, all old folks, really meant every time they asked you anything—why don't you come here and let me get a good look at you? Do they take you to church? What grade are you in now? What are you running so fast for? What did you just say?—is: How is your soul fixed?
Are you strong enough to keep it right no matter what happens to you out in the world? Strong enough yet to tend it yourself long after we are gone?

We wrangled a flight home late the next afternoon, and cabbed back to my apartment over the treacherous snowpacked roads from the airport. The driver caromed down the highway faster than was advisable, sending us skidding, slip-sliding the entire way. I hectored him to slow down, but the roads were unsafe at any speed and there was nothing we could do but clench our teeth, lock hands, and try not to think about it.

When we finally pulled over the bridge onto Canal Street it was one in the morning. The eerie white streets were completely snowed in, and the only thing moving were the traffic lights, flashing red against the banked whiteness as the blizzard continued to lash the city. My apartment was not far away, but the snowdrifts were as high as the roof of the car and the taxi could go no further. We exited near Broadway, and were immediately whipped by the arctic air catching the oversized gear bags like sails, pushing us back with each violent gust of wind.

“Look,” Sylvie said, turning to face Broadway. “Have you ever seen the city so empty?” All that was visible were our tracks in the snow behind us, the flashing red streetlights, and nothing else astir.

“Only once,” I said.

All day we had tried to make the best of it, but as the buildings on lower Broadway focused the wind into a tunnel, and the snow pelted our faces, I told her how sorry I was for my lack of patience in insisting we return.

“I forgive you,” she said. “But we could have done it my way too, you know, and stayed put.”

My building was in sight by then, and we pressed into the warm sanctum of the lobby, and were home.

We left our luggage in the living room, found food in the refrigerator, and drank hot tea, before falling into a bone-deep sleep.

That night I dreamed I was climbing a great set of stone stairs carved from a cliff. At the summit was a lake, which I dove down until I nearly drowned, before emerging on the outskirts of a majestic, red-golden city. When I emerged in its castle I ascended into a vaulted room, and walked around until I came to a kitchen, where I saw my mother cooking. She was young in my dream and happy. I approached and she told me sit down and tell her what I had learned, as though I had just come home from school. The dream dissolved, and I awoke in the middle of the blue night as the tempest continued to rage outside.

I could not go back to sleep, and went to the kitchen for water. When I returned to bed Sylvie was awake. “You were right,” she said, the tempest outside beating against the glass. “It's good we made it home.”

“No, you were right. We should have stayed where we were. The risk was not worth it.”

“But now we are safe and snug.” She nestled against me in the predawn and fell back asleep. I remained awake the rest of the night, but stayed in bed watching her sleep. When she woke we rose to make breakfast, then returned to bed where we spent the rest of the morning. By late afternoon the snow began easing up, and we went out to explore. The plows were out on the avenues, but the smaller streets were pristine with snow, and we made our way over to the Battery, and we followed the bike path along the Hudson before taking the subway up to Hell's Kitchen, and then made our way across to Central Park. The edges of the park were full of people sledding, and making snow angels, but the interior was silent, and the tops of the buildings scarcely visible, so it felt like an otherworldly forest, as we crossed east and headed back downtown.

We walked down the middle of Fifth, quiet and still as a blanket of new wool. The lions outside the Met were frozen over in a clear sheet of ice, and the doormen guarded their posts in the cold, draped in greatcoats.

By the time we reached the southern edge of the park, we were shivering with cold, and decided to have drinks before heading home. There was life out front of one of the hotels, and we made our way toward it.