On Beauty (28 page)

And were they still like that, she wondered – these new girls, this new generation? Did they still feel one thing and do another? Did they still only want to be wanted? Were they still objects of desire instead of – as Howard might put it – desiring subjects? Thinking of the girls sat cross-legged with her in this basement, of Zora in front of her, of the angry girls who shouted their poetry from the stage – no, she could see no serious change. Still starving themselves, still reading women's magazines that explicitly hate women, still cutting themselves with little knives in places they think can't be seen, still faking their orgasms with men they dislike, still lying to
everybody about everything. Strangely, Kiki Belsey had always struck Claire as a wonderful anomaly in exactly this sense. Claire remembered when Howard first met his wife, back when Kiki was a nursing student in New York. At that time her beauty was awesome, almost unspeakable, but more than this she radiated an essential female nature Claire had already imagined in her poetry – natural, honest, powerful, unmediated, full of something like genuine desire. A goddess of the everyday. She was not one of Howard's intellectual set, but she was actively political, and her beliefs were genuine and well expressed.
Womanish
, as they said back then, not
feminine
. For Claire, Kiki was not only evidence of Howard's humanity but proof that a new kind of woman had come into the world as promised, as advertised. Without ever becoming intimates, she felt she could honestly say that she and Kiki had always been fond of each other. Never had she resented Kiki or wished her ill. And here Claire emerged out of herself; refocused on Zora's features so that hers was again a sovereign face and not a blur of colour and personal thoughts. It was not possible to make the last leap – to consider what it was Kiki now thought of Claire. To do that was to become subhuman before yourself, the person cast out beyond pity, a Caliban. Nobody can cast themselves out.

A commotion was going on by the stage. The next act was waiting for Doc Brown to finish his introduction. The group was huge. Nine, ten boys? They were the kind of boys who make three times as much noise as their actual number. They jostled each other, shoulder to shoulder, on the way up the steps, and struggled to reach a collection of five or so microphones on stands in front of them – there would not be enough for all. One of them was Levi Belsey.

‘Looks like your brother's up,' said Claire, poking Zora lightly in the back.

‘Oh, God,' said Zora, peeking through a gap in her fingers. ‘Maybe we'll get lucky – maybe he's just the hype man.'

‘Hype man?'

‘Like a cheerleader. But for rap,' explained Daisy helpfully.

Finally all the boys were on the stage. The band was dismissed.
This group had their own tape: a heavy Caribbean beat and jangly keyboards over the top. They all began to speak at once in a loud Creole. That wasn't working. Further jostling decided that one guy should begin. A skinny guy in a hoodie came forward and gave it his all. The language barrier had an interesting effect. The ten boys were clearly eager that their audience understand what was being said; they jumped and whooped and leaned into the crowd, and the crowd could not help but respond, although most understood nothing bar the beat. Levi was indeed the hype man, picking up his microphone every few bars and shouting ‘YO!' into it. Some of the younger black kids in the audience rushed the stage in response to the sheer energy of this performance, and here Levi came into his own, encouraging them in English.

‘Levi doesn't even
speak
French,' said Zora frowning at the performance. ‘I don't think he has any idea what he's hyping.'

But then came the chorus – sung by everyone together, including Levi, in English: ‘AH-RIS-TEED, CORRUPTION AND GREED, AND SO WE ALL SEE, WE STILL AIN'T FREE!'

‘Nice rhymes,' said Chantelle, laughing. ‘Nice and basic.'

‘Is this
political
?' asked Daisy with distaste. After two outings, the chorus thankfully dropped back into the manic Creole of the verse. Claire struggled to simultaneously translate for her class. She soon gave it up under the weight of too many unfamiliar terms. Instead, she paraphrased: ‘They seem to be angry about America's involvement in Haiti. The rhymes are very . . . crude, is the best way to put it.'

‘We have something to do with Haiti?' asked Hannah.

‘We have something to do with everywhere,' said Claire.

‘And how does your brother know those guys?' asked Daisy.

Zora widened her eyes. ‘I have absolutely no idea.'

‘I can't hear myself think,' said Ron, and got up to go to the bar.

The fattest boy on the stage now took his turn with a solo. He was also the angriest, and the other boys dropped back in order to give him the space he needed for whatever it was he was angry about.

‘It's a very worthy effort,' shouted Claire to her class above the
unbearable noise of another chorus. ‘They have the power of the troubadour voice . . . But I'd say they have a little to learn about integration of idea and form – you break a form in two if you have all this undigested political fury in it. I think I'm going to go up for a cigarette.' Deftly she rose without the need of putting her hands to the floor.

‘I'll come up too,' said Zora, and made heavier work of the same movement.

They made their way through the crowds in the basement and restaurant without conversation. Claire wondered what was coming. Outside, the temperature had dropped another few degrees.

‘You want to share? Be quicker.'

‘Thank you,' said Claire and accepted the cigarette she was passed. Her fingers trembled a little.

‘Those guys are wild,' said Zora. ‘It's like, you
so
want them to be good, but –'

‘Right.'

‘Something to do with trying too hard, I guess. That's Levi all over.'

They were silent for a minute. ‘Zora,' said Claire, letting the wine take her along, ‘are we OK?'

‘Oh,
absolutely
,' said Zora with a certainty and speed that suggested she'd been waiting for the question all night.

Claire looked at her doubtfully and passed back the cigarette. ‘You sure?'

‘
Seriously
. We're all adults. And I have no intention of not being an adult.'

Claire smiled stiffly. ‘I'm glad.'

‘Don't mention it. It's all about compartmentalization.'

‘That's very mature of you.'

Zora smiled contentedly. Not for the first time when talking to Howard's daughter Claire felt estranged from her own being, as if she were indeed just another of the six billion extras playing in that fabulous stage show, the worldwide hit called Zora's Life.

‘What's important,' said Zora, her voice turning excessively
diffident, ‘is finding out, you know . . . whether I can actually do this thing, writing.'

‘That's a daily discovery,' said Claire evasively. She felt Zora's avid stare; she sensed something important was about to be said. But now the door of the restaurant was thrown open. It was Ron. The diners behind him complained of the draught.

‘Oh my
God
– you've got to see this guy. He's
amazing
. Downstairs. He's blowing everybody
away
.'

‘This better be good – we're smoking.'

‘Zoor – I'm telling you. He's like Keats with a knapsack.'

The three made their way back downstairs. Once in the basement, they could get only a foot further than the double doors and had to stand. They could hear but not see. The whole audience was on its feet swaying together, the music passing through the crowd like wind through a cornfield. The voice that was so exciting this room expressed itself with precision (it was the first time all night that nobody missed a word) and threw out complicated multisyllabic lines with apparent ease. The chorus was a simple repeated line, sung flat, yet sweetly:
But it ain't like that
. The verses, by contrast, spun a witty, articulate tale about the various obstacles in the spiritual and material progress of a young black man. In the first verse, he was trying to prove he had Native American blood in order to get into the top colleges in the country. This – close to the bone in a college town – drew broad laughter. The following verse, concerning a girlfriend who had gone ahead with an abortion without informing him, included the following rhymes, completed without obvious pause for breath, and at incredible speed:

My life to you seems wrong /Here's me trynta to do these songs / When you paged me / To say ‘Carl, baby, I'm two weeks gone' / Dropped the pager / In my teacup / start to feel I could redeem this / Now I know I need to treat ya / Neat and sweet and never cheat ya / in a week I went to see ya / No need to drag my ass on ‘Leeza' / Was gonna get my Dr Spock on / Dat's the medic, not the Klingon / But you already spoke with yo' girls at work / And done decided I'm a jerk / Now, since
when does workin' Macca D's / Make this bitch the new authority / On my goddamn paternity? / Say what, Boo? Excuse me? / And yeah, I know you figured I'd be pleased / Depopulated by decree – But it ain't like that.

It elicited a spontaneous basement-wide gasp, followed by more laughter. People whistled and clapped.

‘Oh, that's quite brilliant,' said Claire to Ron, who in response held his head with both hands and pretended to swoon.

Zora found a Moroccan footstool and climbed on to it. From this vantage point, she gasped and wrung Ron's hand by the wrist. ‘Oh my
God
 . . . I totally know him.'

For it was Carl, dressed in an old fifties-style football sweater and wearing a neat little multicoloured knapsack. He was pacing the stage in the same relaxed, homely manner with which he'd accompanied Zora to the gates of Wellington College, and he smiled prettily as he spoke, the complex rhymes tripping off his luminous teeth as if he were crooning in a barbershop troupe. The only sign of exertion was the river of sweat that came down his face. Doc Brown, in his enthusiasm, had joined Carl on the stage, and now found himself reduced to hype man, Yo-ing like Levi in the tiny syllabic gaps Carl left in his wake.

‘
What?
' said Ron, unable to hear anything, not even Carl any more, over the roars and whistles of the audience.

‘I KNOW THAT GUY.'

‘
THAT GUY
?'

‘YES.'

‘OH MY
GOD
. IS HE STRAIGHT?'

Zora laughed. The alcohol had done its work on all of them now. She smiled in a knowing way about things she did not know, and swayed with the beat as much as her footstool would allow.

‘Let's try to get closer to the stage,' suggested Claire, and in the last minute, following Ron's unabashed elbowed course through the audience, they reached their original seats.

‘OH – MY –
WORD
!' yelled Doc Brown, as Carl's tape finished. He held up Carl's right hand like a prizefighter's. ‘I think we have
a winner – correction: I
know
we have a
champion
–' But Carl released himself from Doc's grip and jumped lightly off the stage on to the floor. Somewhere, underneath the cheering, you could hear the discontented boos of rival factions, but the cheers won out. The Creole boys and Levi were nowhere in sight. From all sides people clapped their hands to Carl's back and rubbed his head fondly.

‘Hey – you don't want your jeroboam? Brother's shy – don't want his prize!'

‘No, no, no – hold my champagne,' shouted Carl. ‘Brother got to wash his face, though. Too much sweat is too much.'

Doc Brown nodded sagely. ‘Well said, well said – gotta be fresh and clean. Ain't no doubt. DJ, spin it for us in the interim.'

Music started up and the audience ceased being an audience and softened into a crowd.

‘Bring him
over
here,' insisted Ron, and then to the class: ‘Zora knows that boy. We need him over here.'

‘You know him? He's very talented,' said Claire.

‘I know him this much,' said Zora, signifying an inch between her forefinger and thumb. Just as she said this, she turned and found Carl in front of her. He had in his face the elated buzz of the performer, just landed back in the plebeian world of his public. He registered her; he grabbed her face; he delivered an enormous sweaty kiss full on her mouth. His lips were the softest, most luscious part of a human being she had ever felt against her own skin.

‘See that?' he said. ‘
That
was poetry. I got to go to the john.'

He was about to pass on to the next back slap, the next head rub, when tiny Claire moved into his path. Her class, wary of the potential shame here, cringed behind her.

‘Hi!' she said.

Carl looked down and found the obstruction.

‘Yeah, thank you, man – thanks,' he said, presuming her message was the same as everybody else's. He tried to get by her, but she caught him by the elbow.

‘Are you interested in refining what you have?'

Carl stopped and stared at her. ‘Excuse me?'

Claire repeated her question.

Carl frowned. ‘How d'you mean
refining?
'

‘Look, when you get back from the bathroom,' said Claire, ‘come and talk to me and my kids. We're a class, a poetry class, in Wellington. We'd like to talk to you. We have an idea for you.' Her class wondered at her absolute confidence – this must be what comes with age and power.

Carl shrugged and then broke into his smile. He'd won at the Bus Stop. He'd
killed
at the Bus Stop. All was good with the world. He had time for everybody.

‘A'ight,' he said.

Just before Thanksgiving, a lovely thing happened.

Zora was in Boston, leaving a second-hand bookstore she had never visited before. It was a Thursday, her free day, and, despite a prediction of gale-force winds, she'd gone into town on a whim. She bought a thin volume of Irish verse, and was holding on to her hat and stepping out to the sidewalk, when a cross-country bus pulled up in front of her. Jerome stepped off. Home a day early for the Thanksgiving weekend. He hadn't told anyone how he was coming back or when. The two held each other, as much for stability as for delight while a huge gust tore through them, sending dry leaves into the air and tipping over a garbage can. Before they had a chance to speak, a loud cry of ‘Yo!' came from behind them. It was Levi, delivered to their feet by the wind.

‘No
way
,' said Jerome, and for a while the three simply repeated this phrase, hugging each other, blocking the sidewalk. It was freezing; the wind was enough to upend a small child. They should all have gone inside somewhere and had coffee, but to leave the spot would have been somehow to abandon the miracle of it, and they weren't quite ready to do that yet. They each felt a powerful
need to stop people on the street and explain what had happened. But who would believe it?

‘This is
insane
. I don't even ever come this way. I usually get the train!'

‘Man, that's freaky. That's just not right,' said Levi, whose mind naturally lent itself to conspiratorial and mystical phenomena. They shook their heads and laughed, and to relieve the sense of freakiness recounted their journeys to each other, taking care to assert common-sense arguments like ‘Well, we're often in Boston towards the end of the week' and ‘This is nearest to the T-stop we usually use', but nobody was especially convinced by this and the wonder continued. The urge to tell someone became acute. Jerome called Kiki on his cell. She was sitting in her cubicle (decorated with photographs of these three children), typing doctor's notes into the Beecham Urology Ward's patient records.

‘Jay? But when d'you get back, baby? You didn't say anything.'

‘Just now – but isn't that amazing?'

Kiki stopped typing and concentrated properly on what she was being told. It was so blustery outside. The window by her cubicle was lashed every few minutes by slick leaves plastering themselves across the glass. Every word of Jerome's came to her like a cry from a ship in a storm.

‘You bumped into Zoor?'

‘
And
Levi. We're all standing here – right now – we're freaking out!'

In the background Kiki could hear both Zora and Levi asking for the phone.

‘Well, I can't believe that – that's crazy. I guess there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio – right?' This was Kiki's sole literary quotation, and she used it for all uncanny incidents and also those that were, in truth, only slightly uncanny. ‘It's like what they say about twins. Vibrations. You must feel each other's presence somehow.'

‘But isn't that
insane
?'

Kiki grinned into the mouthpiece, but real enthusiasm failed her. There was a residual melancholy connected to the thought of these
three newly coined adults walking freely about the world without her assistance, open to its magic and beauty, available for unusual experiences and not, explicitly not, typing doctor's notes into the Beecham Urology Ward's patient records.

‘Isn't Levi meant to be in school? It's two thirty.'

Jerome relayed this query to Levi and offered him the cellphone but now Levi stepped back from it as if it were primed to explode. Placing his legs wide apart and trying to keep his balance in a fierce crosswind, he began energetically mouthing two silent words.

‘
What?
' said Jerome.

‘Levi,' repeated Kiki, ‘School. Why isn't he in school?'

‘Free period,' said Jerome, correctly translating Levi's mime. ‘He's got a free period.'

‘Is that so. Jerome, can I talk to your brother, please?'

‘Mom? Mom – you're breaking up, I can't hear you. It's like a tornado out here. I'll call you back when I'm out of the city,' said Jerome, which was childish, but for the moment he and his siblings formed an inviolable gang of three, and he would not be the one to break the delicate bond into which a little coincidence had delivered them. The Belsey children repaired to a nearby café. They sat on stools lined up against the windowpane, looking out over the blasted heath of Boston Common. They caught up with each other's news casually, leaving long, cosy gaps of silence in which to go to work on their muffins and coffees. Jerome – after two months of having to be witty and brilliant in a strange town among strangers – appreciated the gift of it. People talk about the happy quiet that can exist between two lovers, but this too was great; sitting between his sister and his brother, saying nothing, eating. Before the world existed, before it was populated, and before there were wars and jobs and colleges and movies and clothes and opinions and foreign travel – before all of these things there had been only one person, Zora, and only one place: a tent in the living room made from chairs and bed-sheets. After a few years, Levi arrived; space was made for him; it was as if he had always been. Looking at them both now, Jerome found himself in their finger joints and neat conch ears, in their long legs and wild curls. He
heard himself in their partial lisps caused by puffy tongues vibrating against slightly noticeable buckteeth. He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.

‘Remember that?' Jerome asked Zora, nodding at the Common across the way. ‘My big reconciliation idea. Dumb idea. How are they anyway?'

The scene of that family outing was presently stripped of all its leaves and colour in such a radical fashion it was difficult to imagine any of it growing green again.

‘They're doing OK. They're married, so. They're as good as can be expected,' said Zora, and slid off her stool to get some more half and half and a slice of cheesecake. Somehow if you ordered the cheesecake as an afterthought it had fewer calories in it.

‘It's hardest on you,' said Jerome, not looking at Levi but referring to him. ‘You have to
be
there all the time. It's like you're in the belly of the beast.'

Levi glossed over this accusation of stoicism: ‘Eyeano. It's all right, man. I'm out a lot. You know.'

‘The stupid thing is,' continued Jerome, fiddling with a ring on his pinkie finger, ‘Kiki still loves him. It's so obvious. I just don't
get
that – how you can love someone who says
no
to the world like that – I mean, so
consistently?
It's only when I'm away from home and I'm talking to non-family people that I can see how psychotic he is. The only music in the house now is, like,
Japanese electro
. Soon we'll just have to tap on pieces of wood. This is a guy who wooed his wife by singing half of The Magic Flute
outside her apartment
. Now he won't even let her have a painting she likes in the house. Because of some deranged theory in his head, everybody else has to suffer. It's such a denial of
joy
– I don't even know how you can stand living there.'

Through a straw, Levi blew bubbles in his Americano. He swivelled on his stool and, for the third time in fifteen minutes, checked the clock on the back wall.

‘Like I say, I'm out a lot. I don't see how it goes down.'

‘What I've really realized is Howard has a problem with gratitude,' pressed Jerome, more to himself than to his brother. ‘It's like he
knows
he's blessed, but he doesn't know where to put his gratitude because that makes him uncomfortable, because that would be dealing in transcendence – and we all know how he hates to do
that
. So by denying there are any gifts in the world, any essentially valuable things – that's how he shortcircuits the gratitude question. If there are no gifts, then he doesn't have to think about a God who might have given them. But that's where joy
is
. I'm on my knees to God every day. And it's amazing, Lee,' he asserted, turning on his stool to look at Levi's impassive profile, ‘it really is.'

‘Cool,' said Levi, with total equanimity, God being as welcome within the borders of Levi's conversation as any other subject. ‘Everybody got they own way of getting through the day,' he added truthfully and commenced picking the blueberries out of his second blueberry muffin.

‘Why do you
do
that?' asked Zora, reclaiming her seat between her brothers.

‘I like blueberry
flavour
,' explained Levi, betraying a slight impatience; ‘I'm just not that into blue
berries
.'

Now Zora swivelled in her seat so that her back was to her younger brother and she might speak more privately with the elder. ‘S'funny you mention that concert . . . So you remember that guy?' said Zora, tapping her fingers on the glass in a vague way meant to suggest that what she was about to say had only just occurred to her. ‘The concert guy – who thought I stole his thing – remember?'

‘Sure,' said Jerome.

‘So he's in my class now. Claire's class.'

‘
Claire's
class? The guy from the park?'

‘He's an amazing lyricist – as it turns out. We heard him at the Bus Stop – all of the class, we went to see him, and then Claire invited him to sit in. He's been to two sessions.'

Jerome looked into his coffee mug. ‘Claire's waifs and strays . . . she should try taking care of her own life.'

‘And so, yeah, so it turns out that he's pretty amazing,' said Zora, talking over Jerome, ‘and I think you'd be really interested in his
stuff, you know . . . narrative poetry . . . I was saying to him, you should probably . . . because he's so talented, you know, you could, like, invite him round or –'

‘He ain't all that,' interjected Levi.

Zora spun round. ‘You need to deal with your envy?' She turned back to Jerome and filled him in: ‘Levi and – who
were
those guys? – like, some guys he just met in the harbour, right off the boat – anyway, they got
destroyed
by Carl at the Bus Stop. De-
stroyed
. Poor baby. He's smarting.'

‘That ain't got nothing to do with it,' said Levi very calmly, without raising his voice. ‘I'm just saying he's all right, 'cos that's all he is.'

‘
Right
. Whatever.'

‘He's just the kind of rapper white folk get excited about.'

‘Oh, shut
up
. That's so
pathetic
.'

Levi shrugged. ‘It's true. He don't do no wilding out, he got no crunk, no hyphy, no East Coast vibe to test what be happening on the West Coast,' he said, thus happily rendering himself incomprehensible both to his siblings and 99.9 per cent of the world's population. ‘That's
my
boys, they got the
suffering people
behind them – that dude just got a dictionary, man.'

‘Sorry –' began Jerome, shaking his head to clear it. ‘Why would
I
want to invite this guy – Carl – round?'

Zora looked startled. ‘No reason. I just . . . you're back in town. I thought it might be good for you to make a few friends and maybe – '

‘I can make my own friends, thanks.'

‘OK, fine.'

‘Good.'

‘
Fine
.'

Zora's silent sulks were always oppressive, and as belligerent as if she were screaming at you from the top of her lungs. They ended only with your apology or with Zora's delivery of something a little poisonous, wrapped up in pretty paper.

‘Anyway, a good thing is . . . well, that Mom's been getting out a lot more,' she said, taking a spoonful of froth from off the top of
her Mocha. ‘It's been liberating for her, in that way, I think. She sees people and stuff.'

‘That's good – I hoped she would.'

‘Yeah . . .' Zora slurped the cream into her mouth. ‘She's seeing a lot of Carlene Kipps. If you can believe that.' Thus was the present delivered.

Jerome brought his coffee up to his lips and took a leisurely sip before replying. ‘I know. She told me.'

‘Oh, she did. Yeah . . . Looks like they've totally come to roost. I mean, the Kippses. Except the son – but he's coming over to get married here, apparently. And Monty's lectures begin after Christmas.'

‘Michael?' said Jerome, with what appeared to be genuine fondness. ‘No way. Who's he marrying?'

Zora shook her head impatiently. This was not her main business. ‘I don't know. Some Christian.'

Jerome brought his cup back down to the table, hard and quick. Zora checked for, and found, that worrying accessory that used to come and go with Jerome, but now seemed to be here to stay: a little gold cross around his neck.

‘Dad's going to try to block them, the lectures,' she said rapidly. ‘I mean, under the hate crime law. He wants to see the text of the lectures before they happen – he thinks he might get him on homophobic material. I don't think he has a chance. I wish he did – but it's going to be tough. So far all we've been given is the title. It's
wild
. It's too perfect.'

Jerome was silent. He continued to examine the windblown surface of the small lake in the park opposite. It swelled and surged like a bath two fat men were getting into over and over, one at each end.

“ ‘The Ethics of the University – colon – Taking the ‘Liberal' out of ‘Liberal Arts” '. How
perfect
is that?'

Jerome pulled each of the cuffs of his long black trench coat down over his wrists. First one and then the other. He gripped the tips of the fabric with his forefingers and then put each of these bunched fists against his cheeks and rested upon them.