On Beauty (10 page)

Levi suggested they swap cell numbers, and they did so by an oak tree.

‘Just, you know . . . next time you hear about a show in Roxbury . . . You can call me or whatever,' said Levi, rather too keenly.

‘You live in Roxbury?' asked Carl doubtfully.

‘Not really . . . but I'm there a lot – Saturdays, especially.'

‘What are you, fourteen?' asked Carl.

‘No, man. I'm sixteen! How old are you?'

‘Twenty.'

This answer immediately inhibited Levi.

‘You at college or . . . ?'

‘Nah . . . I'm not an
educated
brother, although . . .' He had a theatrical, old-fashioned way of speaking, which involved his long, pretty fingers turning circles in the air. His whole manner reminded Levi of his grandfather on his mother's side and his tendency to
speechify
, as Kiki called it. ‘I guess you could say I hit my own books in my own way.'

‘Scene.'

‘I get my culture where I can, you know – going to free shit like tonight, for example. Anything happening that's free in this city and might teach me something, I'm
there
.'

Levi's family were waving at him. He was hoping that Carl would go in another direction before they reached the gate, but of course there was only one way out of the park.

‘
Finally
,' said Howard, as they approached.

Now it was Carl's turn to grow inhibited. He pulled his baseball cap down low. He put his hands in his pockets.

‘Oh, hey,' said Zora, acutely embarrassed.

Carl acknowledged her with a nod.

‘So I'll call you,' said Levi, trying to bypass the introduction he feared was moments away. He was not quick enough.

‘Hi!' said Kiki. ‘Are you a friend of Levi?'

Carl looked distraught.

‘Er . . . this is Carl. Zora stole his Discman.'

‘I didn't
steal
any –'

‘Are you at Wellington? Familiar face,' said Howard distractedly. He was looking out for a taxi. Carl laughed, a strange artificial laugh that had more anger in it than good humour.

‘Do I
look
like I'm at Wellington?'

‘Not everybody goes to your stupid college,' countered Levi, blushing. ‘People do other shit than go to college. He's a street poet.'

‘Really?' asked Jerome with interest.

‘That ain't really accurate, man . . . I do some stuff, Spoken Word – that's all. I don't know if I be calling myself a street poet, exactly.'

‘Spoken Word?' repeated Howard.

Zora, who considered herself the essential bridge between Wellington's popular culture and her parents' academic culture, stepped in here. ‘It's like oral poetry . . . it's in the African-American tradition – Claire Malcolm's all into it. She thinks it's
vital
and
earthy
, etcetera, etcetera. She goes to the Bus Stop to check it out with her little Cult of Claire groupies.'

This last was sour grapes on Zora's part; she had applied for, but not been accepted into, Claire's poetry workshop the previous semester.

‘I've done the Bus Stop, several times,' said Carl quietly. ‘It's a good place. It's about the only cool place for that stuff in Wellington. I did some stuff there just Tuesday night past.' Now he put a thumb to the brim of his cap and lifted it a little so that he might get a good look at these people. Was the white guy the father?

‘Claire Malcolm goes to a bus stop to hear poetry . . .' began Howard, bewildered, busy looking up and down the street.

‘Shut up, Dad,' said Zora. ‘Do you know Claire Malcolm?'

‘Nope . . . can't say I do,' replied Carl, releasing another one of his winning smiles, just nerves probably, but each time he did, you warmed to him further.

‘She's like a
poet
poet,' explained Zora.

‘Oh . . . A
poet
poet.' Carl's smile disappeared.

‘Shut up, Zoor,' said Jerome.

‘Rubens,' said Howard suddenly. ‘Your face. From the four African heads. Nice to meet you, anyway.'

Howard's family stared at him. Howard stepped off the sidewalk to wave down a cab that passed him by.

Carl pulled his hoodie over his cap and began to look around himself.

‘You should meet Claire,' said Kiki enthusiastically, trying to patch the thing up. It's remarkable what a face like Carl's makes
you want to do in order to see it smile again. ‘She's very respected – everybody says she's very good.'

‘Cab!' yelled Howard. ‘It's going to pull up on the other side. Come on.'

‘Why do you say it like Claire's a country you've never been to?' demanded Zora. ‘You've
read
her – so you can have an opinion, Mom, it won't kill you.'

Kiki ignored this. ‘I'm sure she'd love to meet a young poet, she's very encouraging – you know actually we're having a party –'

‘Come on, come on,' droned Howard. He was in the middle of the traffic island.

‘Why would he even want to go to your party?' asked Levi, mortified. ‘It's an
anniversary
party.'

‘Well, baby, I can
ask
, can't I? Besides, it's not
just
an anniversary party. And between me and you,' she added faux confidentially to Carl, ‘we could do with a few more brothers at this party.'

It had not escaped anybody's attention that Kiki was flirting.
Brothers?
thought Zora crossly, since when does Kiki say
brothers
?

‘I got to be going,' said Carl. He passed a flat hand over his forehead, smearing the droplets of sweat. ‘I got your man Levi's number – we might hang out some time, so –'

‘Oh, OK . . .'

They all waved vaguely at his back and said
bye
quietly, but there was no denying he was walking away from them as fast as he could.

Zora turned to her mother and opened her eyes wide. ‘What the hell?
Rubens?
'

‘Nice boy,' said Kiki sadly.

‘Let's get in the car,' said Levi.

‘Not bad-looking either, huh?' said Kiki and watched Carl's retreating figure turn a corner. Howard stood on the other side of the road, one hand on the open mini-van door, the other sweeping from the ground to the sky, ushering his family inside.

The Saturday of the Belseys' party arrived. The twelve hours before a Belsey party were a time of domestic anxiety and activity; a watertight excuse was required to escape the house for the duration. Luckily for Levi, his parents had provided him with one. Hadn't they gone on and on about his getting a Saturday job? And so he had got one, and so he was going to it. End of discussion. With joy in his heart he left Zora and Jerome polishing doorknobs and set off for his sales associate position in a Boston music mega-store. The job itself was no occasion for joy: he hated the corny baseball cap he had to wear and the bad pop music he was compelled to sell; the tragic loser of a floor manager who imagined he was the king of Levi; the moms who couldn't remember the name of the artist or the single, and so leaned over the counter to tunelessly hum a little bit of the verse. All it was good for was giving him a reason to get out of the toy-town that was Wellington and a bit of money to spend in Boston once he got there. Every Saturday morning he caught a bus to the nearest T-stop and then the subway into the only city he had ever really known. It was not New York, sure, but it was the only city he had, and Levi treasured the urban the same way previous generations worshipped the pastoral; if he could have written an ode he would have. But he had no ability in that area (he used to try – notebook after notebook filled with false, cringing rhymes). He had learned to leave it to the fast-talking guys in his earphones, the present-day American poets, the rappers.

Levi's shift finished at four. He left the city reluctantly, as always. He got back on the subway and then the bus. He looked out with dread at Wellington as it began to manifest itself outside the grimy windows. The pristine white spires of the college seemed to him like the watchtowers of a prison to which he was returning. He sloped towards home, walking up the final hill, listening to his music. The fate of the young man in his earphones, who faced a
jail cell that very night, did not seem such a world away from his own predicament: an anniversary party full of academics.

Walking up Redwood Avenue with its tunnel of cernuous willows, Levi found he had lost the will even to nod his head, usually an involuntary habit with him when music was playing. Halfway down the avenue he noticed with irritation that he was being watched. A very old black lady sitting on her porch was eyeing him like there was no other news in town. He tried to shame her by staring her out in turn. She just kept right on staring. Framed by two yellow-leaved trees on each side of her house, she sat on her porch in this bright red dress and stared like she was being paid to do it. Man oh man, but didn't she look old and papery. Her hair was really not tied back properly. Like she wasn't being taken care of. Hair every which way. Levi hated to see that right there, old people not taken care of. Her clothes were crazy too. This red dress she had on didn't have a waist; it just went straight down like a queen's gown in a children's book and was held together at the throat by one big brooch in the shape of a golden palm leaf. Boxes all around her on that porch filled with clothes and cups and plates . . . like a bag lady, only with a house. She sure could eyeball, though . . . Jesus. Isn't there anything on TV, lady? Maybe he should buy a T-shirt that just had on it YO – I'M NOT GOING TO RAPE YOU. He could use a T-shirt like that. Maybe like three times each day while on his travels that T-shirt would come in handy. There was always some old lady who needed to be reassured on that point. And check it out . . . now she's struggling to get out of the chair – her legs like toothpicks in sandals. She's gonna say something. Aw,
shit
.

‘Excuse me – young man, excuse me for a minute –
wait a bit
there.'

Levi pushed his headphones to one side on his head. ‘Say
what
?'

You'd have thought that after all that effort of standing and calling out, the lady might have something important to say. My house is burning down. My cat is up a tree. But no.

‘Now, how
are
you?' she said. ‘You don't look so well.'

Levi replaced his headphones and began to walk away. But the
lady was still waving her arms at him. He stopped again, took the headphones off and sighed. ‘Sister, I've had kind of a long day, a'right, so . . . unless there's something I can do for you . . . You need help or something? Carrying something?'

The lady had managed to move forward now. She took two steps and then supported herself with both hands, gripping the porch fence. Her knuckles were grey and dusty. You could pluck bass notes on those veins.

‘I
knew
it. You live near here, don't you?'

‘Excuse me?'

‘I feel
sure
I know your brother. I can't be mistaken, at least I don't think so,' she said.

Her head wobbled slightly as she spoke. ‘No, I'm not mistaken. Your faces are the same underneath. You have exactly the same cheekbones.'

Her accent, to Levi's ears, was a shameful, comic thing. To Levi, black folk were city folk. People from the islands, people from the country, these were all peculiar to him, obstinately historical – he couldn't quite believe in them. Like when Howard took the family to Venice and Levi could not shift the idea that the whole place and everybody in it were having him on. No roads?
Water
taxis? He felt the same way about farmers, anybody who wove anything and his Latin teacher.

‘Right . . . OK, well, I gotta go, man . . . got stuff to do . . . So . . . Don't you stand up any more, sister, you'll fall – I'm out now.'

‘Wait!'

‘Aw, man . . .'

Levi approached her and she did the weirdest thing: she clasped his hands.

‘I am interested to know what your mother is like.'

‘My moms?
What?
Look, sister –' said Levi, releasing his hands from hers, ‘I think you got the wrong guy.'

‘I will call on her, I think,' she said. ‘I feel that she must be nice, from what I have seen of her family. Is she very glamorous? I don't know why it is that I always imagine her to be very busy and glamorous.'

The thought of a busy and glamorous Kiki made Levi smile. ‘You must be thinking of someone else. My mom's big like this' – he stretched his hands wide across the length of the fence – ‘and
bored
out of her
mind
.'

‘Bored . . .' she repeated, as if this were the most interesting thing anyone had ever told her.

‘Yeah, kinda like you – going a little insane in the membrane,' he muttered, low enough so as not to be heard.

‘Well, I must confess I am a little bored myself. They are all unpacking inside – but I'm not allowed to help! Of course, I'm not terribly well,' she confided, ‘and the pills I take . . . they make me feel strange. It's boring for me – I'm used to being
involved
.'

‘Uh-huh . . . well, my mom's having a party later – maybe you should check it out, man, shake your money-maker . . . Look, OK, sister, nice talking to you, but I gotta go now – you stay cool for me now. Stay out the sun.'

As sometimes happens, the song playing in Levi's headphones ended the moment he put his hand to the gate of 83 Langham. This afternoon his home appeared more surreal a place to him than ever, as far from his idea of where he lived as seemed possible. It looked glorious. The sun had the Belsey house in her hands. She warmed the wood and made the windows opaque and splendid with reflected light. She offered herself to the brazen purple flowers that grew along the front wall, and they opened their mouths wide to receive her. It was twenty past five. The night was going to be sexy: close and warm but with enough of a breeze so that you didn't have to sweat through it. Levi sensed women getting ready all over New England: undressing, washing, dressing again, in cleaner, sexier things; black girls in Boston oiling their legs and ironing their hair, club floors being swept, barmen turning up for work, DJs kneeling in their bedrooms, picking out records to be
placed in their heavy silver boxes – all of which imaginings, usually so exciting to him, were made sour and sad by the knowledge that the only party he was going to tonight would be full of white people three times his own age. He sighed and worked his head round in a slow circle. Reluctant to go indoors, he stayed where he was, halfway up the garden path, with his head tipped forward and the departing sun on his back. Somebody had laced petunias around the triangular base of his grandmother's statuary, a three-foot piece of pyramidal stone that sat midway between a pair of sugar maples in the front yard. Strands of lights – not yet lit – had been wound around the trunks of both these trees and laid among their branches.

Levi was thinking how grateful he was that he'd missed having to help with these tasks when he felt his pocket vibrate. He took out his pager. From Carl. It took him a minute to remember who the hell Carl was. The message said: ‘That party still on? Might swing by. Peace. C.' Levi was both flattered and concerned. Had Carl forgotten what type of party it was? He was about to phone back when he was surprised out of his solitude by the noise of Zora climbing down from a ladder at the front of the house. Evidently she had just hung four upside-down bunches of dried tea-roses, pinks and whites, above the doorframe. Levi could not explain why he hadn't noticed her a moment before, but he had not. On the third rung down she seemed to notice him too; her head slowly turned towards her brother, but her eyes went beyond him, intent on something across the street.

‘Wow,' she whispered, bringing one hand up to her forehead as a visor, ‘this one really can't believe her eyes. Check it out – she's having some kind of cognitive failure. She's going to malfunction.'

‘Huh?'

‘Thank you! Yes, move along now – he
lives
here – yes, that's right – no crime is taking place – thank you for your interest!'

Levi turned round and saw the blushing woman Zora was yelling at, now scurrying by on the other side of the street.

‘What's
wrong
with these people exactly?' Zora put both feet on the ground and pulled off her gardening gloves.

‘She watching me? Same one from before?'

‘No, different woman. And don't you talk to
me
– you were meant to be here two hours ago.'

‘Party don't even start till eight!'

‘Starts at six, asshole – and you have once again failed to be of any help
whatsoever
.'

‘Zoor, man,' sighed Levi, and walked past her, ‘you know when you're just not in the mood?' He pulled off his Raiders vest as he went, winding it into a ball in his hand. His naked back, so broad at the top and so narrow at the bottom, blocked Zora's path.

‘You know, I wasn't really in the mood to stuff three hundred tiny little vol-au-vent cases with crab paste,' she said, following her brother through the open front door. ‘But I guess I just had to put aside my little existential crisis and get on with it.'

The hallway smelled amazing. Soul food has a scent that fills you up even before your mouth gets near any of it. The sweet dough of the pastries, the alcoholic waft of a rum punch. In the kitchen, many dishes, covered for the moment with Saran Wrap, were laid out along the main table, and, on two small card tables brought up from the basement, a great pile of plates and concentric circles of glasses. Howard stood amidst all this, holding a brandy glass filled with red wine and smoking a baggy roll-up. He had several stray pieces of tobacco stuck to his bottom lip. He was dressed in his traditional ‘cooking' costume. This outfit – a kind of protest against the very concept of cooking – Howard constructed by donning all the discarded cook-wear clothes Kiki had purchased over the years and never used. Today Howard wore a chef's coat, an apron, an oven mitt, several dishcloths tucked into his waistband and one tied in a jaunty fashion around his neck. An improbable quantity of flour covered all this.

‘Welcome! We're
cooking
,' said Howard. He put his mitted fingers to his lips and then tapped his nose twice.

‘And
drinking
,' said Zora, removing the glass of red from his hand and taking it to the sink.

Howard appreciated the rhythm and comedy of this move and pushed on in the same vein. ‘And how was your day, John Boy?'

‘Well, someone thought I was
robbin
' you again.'

‘Surely not,' said Howard cautiously. He disliked and feared conversations with his children that concerned race, as he suspected this one would.

‘And don't be telling me I'm paranoid,' snapped Levi, slinging his damp vest on the table. ‘I just don't want to
live
here any more, man . . . all everybody does is stare.'

‘Has anyone seen the cream?' said Kiki, appearing from behind the door of the fridge. ‘
Not
the canned, not the single, not the half and half – the double English. It was on the table.' She spotted Levi's vest. ‘
Not
there, young man. In your room –
which
, by the way, is an absolute
disgrace
. If you want to move out of that basement any day soon, you're going to have to make some changes. I'd be
ashamed
to have your room where anybody could see it!'

Levi frowned and continued speaking to his father. ‘And then some crazy old lady on Redwood started asking about my mom.'

‘Levi,' said Kiki, walking over to him, ‘are you here to help or what?'

‘How do you mean? About Kiki?' asked Howard with interest, taking a seat at the table.

‘This old lady on Redwood – I was minding my business – and she's looking at me, looking at me, all the way down the street, like everybody in this town – she stops me, speaking to me – she looked like she was trying to work out if I was gonna kill her.'

This of course was not true. But Levi had a point to make, and he would have to bend the truth to make it.

‘And then she started talking about my mom this, my mom that. Black lady.'

Howard made a noise of objection, but was overruled.

‘No, no, but that don't make no difference. Any black lady who be white enough to live on Redwood thinks '
zackly
the same way as any old white lady.'

‘Who
is
white enough,' corrected Zora. ‘It's the worst kind of pretension, you know, to fake the way you speak – to steal somebody else's grammar. People less fortunate than you. It's grotesque.
You can decline a Latin noun, but apparently you can't even –'

‘The cream – anybody? It was
right here
.'

‘I think you might be overreacting just a tad,' said Howard, exploring the fruit bowl with his fingers. ‘Where was this?'

‘On
Redwood
. How many times, yo? This crazy old black lady.'

‘I don't know how come it is that I put down something and five minutes later it . . .
Redwood?
' asked Kiki sharply. ‘How far down Redwood?'

‘Just on the top corner, before the nursery.'

‘A
black
old lady? No one like that lives on Redwood. Who was she?'

‘I don't
know
 . . . There was boxes everywhere – look like she was just moving in – anyway, that ain't even the point – point is, I'm
sick
of people watching me every damn step I –'

‘Oh, Jesus –
Jesus
 . . . were you rude to her?' demanded Kiki, putting down the bag of sugar she had in her hand.

‘
What?
'

‘You know who that is?' asked Kiki rhetorically. ‘I'll
bet
you that's the Kippses moving in – I heard their place was right by here. I'll bet you a hundred dollars that was the wife.'

‘Don't be
absurd
,' said Howard.

‘Levi – what did the woman look like – what did she
look like
?'

Levi, bemused and depressed that his anecdote had met with such a heavy reception, struggled to remember details. ‘Old . . . real tall, wearing, like, very bright colours for an old lady –'

Kiki looked hard at Howard.

‘Ah . . .' said Howard. Kiki turned back to Levi.

‘What did you say to her? You better not have been rude to her, Levi, or I swear to God, I'll tire your
ass
out this evening –'

‘
What?
It was just some crazy . . . I don't know – she was asking me all these weird questions . . . I don't remember what I said – I wasn't rude, though – I
wasn't
. I barely said anything, man, and she was crazy! She was ahksing me all these questions about my
mom
and I was just like, I'm late – my mom's having a party, I gotta go, I can't talk now – and that was it.'

‘You said we were having a party.'

‘Oh, my
gosh
– Mom, it ain't whoever you think it is. It's just some crazy old woman who thought I'm gonna kill her 'cos I'm wearing a doo-rag.'

Kiki put a hand over her eyes. ‘It's the Kippses – oh, God – I have to invite them now. I should have told Jack to invite them anyway. I have to invite them.'

‘You don't
have
to invite them,' stated Howard slowly.

‘Of
course
I have to invite them. I'll go round there when I'm done with the key lime – Jerome's out buying more alcohol – God knows what he's doing, he ought to be back by now. Or Levi can go, drop a note off or something –'

‘What are you mad at
me
now? Man, I am
not
going back there. I was just trying to explain to you how I feel when I walk round this neighbourhood –'

‘Levi, please, I'm trying to think. Go downstairs and deal with your room.'

‘Aw,
fuck
you, man.'

The swearing policy in the Belsey house was not self-evident. They had nothing as twee or pointless as a swear jar (a popular household item among Wellington families), and swearing was, as we have seen, generally accepted in most situations. And yet there were several strange subclauses to this libertarian procedure, rules of practice neither written in stone nor particularly transparent. It was a question of tone and feeling, and, in this case, Levi had misjudged. Now his mother's hand came down hard upon the side of his head, a blow that sent him stumbling back three steps into the kitchen table. He knocked a gravy boat of chocolate sauce over himself. In normal circumstances, faced with the smallest slight to himself or his character, and, in particular, his clothes, Levi would argue for justice for as long as he had breath in his body, even when – especially when – he was in the wrong. But on this occasion he left the room at once without a word. A minute later they heard his door downstairs slamming.

‘Good. Nice party,' said Zora.

‘You wait till the guests arrive,' murmured Howard.

‘I just want to teach him to . . .' began Kiki. She felt exhausted.
She sat down at the kitchen table and rested her head on its Scandinavian pine.

‘I'll go out and cut you a switch, shall I? Bit of parenting, Florida style,' said Howard, making a show of taking off his hat and his apron. In the family context, whenever Howard saw an opportunity to take the moral high ground he pretty much catapulted himself towards it. These opportunities had been rare recently. When Kiki lifted her head, he had already left the room.
That's right
, thought Kiki,
quit while you're ahead
. Just then Jerome came through the door and paused in the kitchen for a moment to mumble that the wine was in the hallway, before proceeding straight through the sliding doors to the back garden.

‘I don't know why everybody in this house has to behave like a goddamn animal,' said Kiki with sudden ferocity. She stood up and went to the sink to wet a cloth, returning to go to work on the spilled chocolate. She could not do distress. Anger was so much easier. And quicker and harder and better.
If I start crying, I'll never stop
– you hear people say that; Kiki heard people say it all the time in the hospital. A backlog of sadness for which there would never be sufficient time.

‘I'm done with this,' said Zora, swirling a spoon listlessly through the fruit punch she had helped to make. ‘I'm going to get changed or something.'

‘Zoor,' said Kiki, ‘do you know where I could find a pen and paper?'

‘Eyeano. Drawer?'

Zora too wandered away. Kiki heard a great splash from outside, and then glimpsed the dark, curled dome of Jerome's head before it went under the water again. She opened the drawer at her end of the long kitchen table and, among many batteries and fake fingernails, found a pen. She went in search of paper. She recalled a pad that had been squeezed between two paperbacks on a bookshelf in the hallway.

‘Chess?' Kiki heard Zora ask Howard. When she came back into the kitchen, she could see them setting up play in the lounge as if nothing at all had happened, as if they didn't have a party to
host, Murdoch happily ensconced in Howard's lap.
Chess?
Is that what it's like, wondered Kiki, to be an intellectual? Can the tuned mind tune everything else out? Kiki sat alone in the kitchen. She wrote a short note welcoming the Kippses to town and expressing the hope they might attend a little gathering, any time after six thirty.