Home In The Morning (19 page)

Mama was oblivious to everything, although Jackson suspected her apparent ignorance was a pose, a valiant nicety to spare her future daughter-in-law the pain of acknowledging her rudeness. Holding her hands aloft close to her left ear, she clapped them twice rapidly like a flamenco dancer. In a matter of seconds, an elderly black woman, as thin as Mama was portly, stuck her head through the dining room door. Eula, Mama said, bring on the dinner, please. Alright, Miss Missy, Eula said, then reappeared with a tureen and ladle from which she dispensed a cold cucumber soup into the china bowl set in front of each diner. Mama introduced her. Eula this is my son Jackson, of whom you have heard so much, and this is his fiancée, Miss Stella Godwin of Boston, Massachusetts. Children, this is our latest and greatest major doma, Eula Rawlins, who has taken the place of Nora Jean, who replaced Ethel the Red, as Daddy called her, who replaced Sister
Cynthia, who replaced Katherine Marie, who remains affianced I do believe to the infamous Mombasa Cooper, whom my entire family and this entire town knows as L’il Bokay. Mama flung herself back in her chair enormously satisfied with her recitation. Jackson smiled weakly, then turned in his chair to look about the breakfront for a bottle of just about any kind of drink, as he was beginning to feel a distinct need.

How do you do, Miss Rawlins, or is it Mrs.? Stella asked. This appears very excellent soup.

Eula glanced at Mama sideways, and the two of them shared a heavenly host of thoughts before Eula answered: Thank you, Miss Stella. As a matter of fact, I do have a husband of thirty-five years but please call me Eula, or I’ll think my mother-in-law’s come to call. If you’ll excuse me now, I’ve got your next course to attend to. Mr. Jackson, you lookin’ for somethin’?

A little white wine would go well, Eula, if there’s some about. Or a beer.

Yessir. I’ll locate you somethin’ like.

Why, whenever did you become a drinking man, Jackson? Mama’s voice had an edge of concern beneath its playfulness.

Stella laughed. Jackson? A drinking man? Hardly, Mrs. Sassaport. Every once in a while when he’s tired or overworked or celebrates the unusual, I’ve seen him take more than a drink or two. But compared to the boys at the university, he’s the soul of sobriety.

Well, it is the middle of the afternoon, dear, and there’s plenty of ice tea on the table. You cannot blame me for jumping to conclusions. And I think you should get used to calling me Mama, don’t you?

Eula reappeared with a dusty bottle of Passover wine left over from holidays past, which she wiped with her apron and set before Jackson along with a juice glass. Jackson twisted the top open, quickly poured, then quaffed four or five inches of the stuff. It was sweet, it was musty, full of silt. It tasted terrible, but he was feeling punky, damn punky,
and he didn’t care. He would’ve tried rubbing alcohol if that were all there was in the house. As he drank, the conversation between Mama and Stella experienced lulls in the course of which each glanced at him with a certain longing, the hope that he’d fill in the gaps. The wine tied his tongue. Or maybe it was exhaustion from driving all the way from Connecticut to Mississippi, their longest stop at the garage in Tennessee. Or maybe he was just annoyed with the two of them and in a punishing mood. In any event, he did not accommodate.

After clearing the soup bowls, Eula served the cheese grits and fried catfish, accompanied by a side of greens atop of which she’d crumpled up crisps of bacon. Mama watched Stella push the bacon aside with her fork. Oh my Lord, she said. It never occurred. Are your people kosher, dear? Stella blushed. Well, yes, they are. I’m not particularly, but still I’ve never eaten pig. Mama shot a look of reprimand in Jackson’s direction. You could have told me, son, it said, rather than subject me to this highly uncomfortable moment. Jackson poured himself another few fingers of wine. Mama smiled bravely and launched into her safest topic: family.

Tell me about your people, she said to Stella, I hear they are quite established in Boston, going back how long exactly? I only ask because I do believe one of the Sassaportas of Virginia ventured up north around the same time the Mississippi Sassaports settled here. I recall hearing it was Boston to which he repaired and I believe it was a Goodman family he married into. That wouldn’t be a variant of your own name, now would it?

Jackson nodded off in his chair.

A door slammed somewhere, and he came alert to a carousel of rotating roses from Mama’s tablecloth. His head hurt, his mouth was jammed up with dust. When his vision steadied, he watched Mama’s torso twist backward and Stella’s face turn similarly toward the dining-room entrance. Stella’s gaze was especially bright, radiant with the
light of her hard, clear intelligence. It was that intense look she had when she analyzed something foreign to her, something that excited her curiosity. Oh, Lord, he thought. Lord, it’s Daddy and him, isn’t it. I am not ready. But he slapped a smile on his face anyway and, stoic as a Christian martyr, rose to his feet, reeling his aching head in the direction of the table’s attention.

Daddy went directly to a spot between Mama’s and Stella’s seats at table, bent over to kiss Mama’s cheek, then bowed a little and took Stella’s hand. The eye patch he wore together with his seersucker suit and thick head of gray hair gave him a rakish look. For half a second, Jackson was sure Daddy was going to go Prussian, click his heels, and kiss her hand. But he did not. Instead, he took his gloved hand, the one that stuck out from the edge of his silken sling, and cupped her chin. So this is my new daughter, he said. Ain’t she pretty, Mama? Here, stand up for me, girl. Turn around so I can get a good look at the whole of you. Oh my, Mama, she’s a bit thin, don’t you think? We’re going to have to fatten you up, child, if we’re ever gettin’ grandbabies out of you.

Daddy had his first sight of Jackson in more than a year, nearly two. You look well, son. Glad to see they haven’t worn you down to a nub. The two maneuvered around the table to hug each other briefly, after which Jackson returned to his chair and Daddy sat down at the head of the table opposite Mama, calling out: Eula! Eula! The man of the house would like sustenance! Then he took to banging his good hand against the table, which he apparently intended to keep up until the woman appeared. Mama looked at Jackson and said: Ever since the accident, you know, he’s become downright effusive. She turned toward Stella to further explain her husband’s boisterous manner: I believe he sincerely thought he bounced off of death’s door, and this gave him a renewed, no, a redoubled zest for life. We can hardly contain his spirit.

No, Mama, Jackson wanted to interrupt. He does not have a renewed nor a redoubled zest for life, he’s just gone stone-cold crazy
is all. And it was not an accident in the sense you describe it. Not at all. But he could not say this in front of the damaged man that was his father. He and Stella exchanged a look of understanding. She knew what was what. He’d told her enough. So she smiled at Daddy and put her hand on his good wrist to keep the racket down and asked: I hear you had an appointment today. How did it go?

Bubba Ray’s voice, a low, slurred rasp, a caricature of a gentleman’s drawl, came from the hallway. A steel claw took hold of Jackson’s nerves and rattled every inch of him.

He’s comin’ along, Bubba Ray said. Well as anyone can expect.

The great hulk of his brother stood in the doorway, filling it up, each arm spread out to grasp the frame, supporting his heft there, so that he looked to Jackson like nothing so much as a gorilla about ready to swing. Mama made introductions, and Stella got up again to give his brother a kiss on his cheek, an incomprehensible act that flummoxed Jackson into mute awareness of the changes in Bubba Ray, the changes that three years had wrought.

Bubba Ray, the detested, the dark, the devil, was bigger than ever, adult-sized yet soft-looking, with a full beard of stubble. It struck Jackson that there was no member of his family the boy resembled, neither immediate nor distant. As far as he could tell, there were no such heavy eyelids anywhere on the Mississippi Sassaport family tree or on the Fine, no such curlicue hair or long baby jowls sloping over a stubbled jaw. Surely, thought Jackson, and not for the first time, there was a clever, lively teenage boy handsome and fine-boned who was living somewhere in Hinds County with a tribe of dull giants, that unfortunate child who’d got mixed up somehow in the hospital with this alien, Bubba Ray. Hanging on to the lintel by one overlong arm, the creature in question then gestured to him with a wide sweep of the other.

I would say it’s good to see you, brother, he said, but we both know that’s not true.

Jackson would have agreed, but Mama erupted into a chain of giggles as if Bubba Ray’s rare effort at honesty was an example of great wit. Those boys of mine, she said to Stella, who had returned to her chair, always joking each other. Always.

Eula appeared with a plate full of fish and grits for Daddy, asked Bubba Ray what he wanted, and soon the whole family was seated together while Mama chatted about the Cousins Club meeting she’d organized over the weekend to introduce Stella to the extended clan. Daddy busied himself eating, Bubba Ray slurped his soup, and Jackson poured himself more wine.

When the meal was over, Stella required a lie-down, and it was time for Mama’s daily nap as well. Mama took Stella upstairs to Jackson’s childhood bedroom and instructed him that he would be spending his stay downstairs on the couch in Daddy’s study, which Eula had taken great pains to set up. Something told him he didn’t want Stella up there at close quarters to Bubba Ray without himself positioned as buffer, but he was too groggy to express an objection. After he was ensconced in the doctor’s study, Jackson found Daddy’s store of bourbon quick enough and hit that bottle as well, feeling a wild sense of incaution so uncommon to him it amounted to rebellion. He found this satisfying without in the least comprehending why.

A soft voice in his ear woke him, but when his eyes fluttered wide apart, there was no one there. He was unsure what time it was, but it was dark, and the house was still. His head pounded, his throat was raw. He headed toward the kitchen for water and saw the lights were on. According to the living-room clock, it was just after eleven. Now, he distinctly recalled Mama telling them that Eula slept at her own home, that it was impossible to get a good girl to live in anymore, failing to mention the equally relevant fact that the family could no longer afford a live-in. He remembered that conversation for the bristle in Stella’s spine at the word “girl” and how he’d nudged her under the table to
silence any wisdom she’d try to dispense to Mama on the subject of the proper way to speak about women of color. He arrived at the kitchen, wondering why it was alight, when to his utter shock and dismay he saw Bubba Ray and Stella there at the breakfast table chatting over tea in their bathrobes. Much perturbed, he said: What are you doing? and the two of them looked up startled, uncomprehending so he repeated: What are you doing? And Stella said: Why, getting to know each other.

Bubba Ray rose and made a great display of yawning, then slapped his flabby arms against his sides. I am very tired after taking care of Daddy all day. You’ve been gone so long you cannot know what I mean by that. So I leave you to your lady. He nodded his head to Stella then quit them with a sharp turn, flourishing the hem of his bathrobe, as if he were a knight errant soaked in manners and nobility and Jackson was a no-account peasant, lending emphasis to his crack about Jackson’s prolonged absence, making him out the bad son and Bubba Ray the good. The insult caused Jackson’s fists to clench, his jaw to stiffen. He was about to shout at his brother’s back when Stella put her hands on him. She pushed him into a seat, the effect of which was to cause him to swallow his words and silence him. She took his tortured face in her hands and spoke in a voice of command: Do not get so excited. It’s ok, I have experience in dealing with these characters. Remember, I’m a social worker. I know these troubled young men, and I’ve been trained in how to talk to them. He doesn’t frighten me. Oh, Lord! Jackson said loudly, only out of luck not waking the entire household. Oh, Lord! you do not know of what you speak!

Horrified with himself, he started to weep and then he started to blubber in a way that humiliated both of them. To blubber was unmanly. To blubber took every dictum of Southern chivalry and tossed them into the landfill. But he could not help himself. There was so much he hadn’t told her. That first night they spent together in New Haven, the night he’d put a chink in the stone wall that was his vow to Katherine
Marie, he’d only told her that someone had threatened Katherine Marie, that he rescued her, without mentioning exactly who the villain was and how he’d hurt her. Over time, he convinced himself that was alright. He hadn’t named names nor given gory details. When he told her about that event’s repercussions the next year, he left more out than he told, so that seemed alright, too. Only on that warm night under his family’s roof did he tell her everything. Every last bloody detail. He felt terrible about betraying Katherine Marie in this way, but while he was talking he convinced himself that she had been wrong to exact a vow of silence from him in the first place. Who was he telling, after all? He was telling his beloved, his future wife. Wasn’t a man entitled to have no secrets from his wife? And he told her about the vow part, it wasn’t as if he forgot that in the telling. In fact, that was the part most difficult to get out of his mouth but also the most exhilarating to reveal. Stella petted him and kissed him, telling him she understood, that there are secrets so hard to bear they cannot be kept, reminding him he could trust her, she would not talk, who could she tell? Her voice, her touch was like a balm spread over a wound that had never really closed, a sore wound he’d got used to bearing until that balm was spread cool and soothing over it and the healing of it stood in contrast against the soreness like day does against night.

Oh, I need this, he thought. I need to tell someone. This secret is killing me.