The Coach House (22 page)

The idiosyncrasy of the experience was nothing short of mind-boggling for Marie. There she sat, silently bi-racial, or at least she believed that could be the case, next to her white husband, listening to blues music in a club with predominantly colored people. She looked around at the other patrons and wondered if they had anything in common, but she couldn’t imagine striking up a conversation with any of them in order to find out.

It was at the 708 Club they came into contact with Calvin and Eve Walker. The place was packed, and Marie and Richard had taken the last empty table. The Walkers arrived right behind them. They approached Marie and Richard. “These seem to be the only empty chairs. May we join you?” Calvin politely asked. Richard nodded with an expressionless face. After brief introductions, the two couples sat back and listened to the music.

Despite the club’s dim atmosphere, Marie could tell Calvin was colored and Eve was white, not a familiar sight in a public place on the south side of Chicago. After the couples had been seated for less than five minutes, a waitress approached them. “The manager has asked you to leave,” she said dryly, looking first at the Walkers and then at Marie and Richard.

“Why?” Calvin asked.

“He doesn’t approve.”

“Of what?”

“Of you. And if I were you, I’d just leave quietly so nothing happens.”

The Walker’s got up to leave. “Richard! Do something. We have every right to be here,” Marie said in a low but firm voice.

“If they leave, you two can stay,” the waitress said to Marie.

Marie shot up from her chair. “No, we’re not staying! C’mon, Richard. Let’s go.” He gave her a puzzled look. She returned a determined look. “Let’s go!”

When they reached the parking lot, the Walkers were nowhere in sight.

“What did you do that for?” Richard asked. “She didn’t have a problem with
us.”

Marie marched ahead to their car and waited for him to open the door. Instead, he got into his side of the car, closed the door, and looked at her with a blank stare through the window. Marie stared back at him before she opened her own door and got in. “What is your problem?” he asked.

“Richard, I don’t want to be in a place that treats their customers like that. The only reason they were asked to leave was because she’s white and he’s colored.”

“So?”

“You don’t think that’s wrong?”

“It’s wrong for a white girl to be with a nigger. That’s what’s wrong.”

Marie’s throat grew tight, her breaths becoming short and quick. She relaxed her hands as soon as she realized she was digging her nails into her palms.

They sat in silence for a few seconds. Then Richard shook his head, started the car, and pulled out of the parking lot into the street. After they had gone several blocks, he said, “You’re upset with me.”

“No. I’m not upset.”

“Marie, I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re upset. And right now, you’re upset.”

She silently counted to five. “I’m not upset. Can we please drop it?”

“Whatever you say, dear.”

Marie sat in silence the rest of the ride home, wondering how much longer she could go it alone carrying the burden of her questionable ethnicity.

* * *

A few days later Richard turned on the radio while he prepared dinner. Jo Stafford was singing.

What a day this has been

What a rare mood I’m in

Why it’s almost like being in love

He looked over at Marie and hummed with the music.

There’s a smile on my face

For the whole human race

Why it’s almost like being in love

“I’ve been thinking,” he said.

“About what?”

“Us.”

“What about us?”

“I think it’s time we started a family.”

Marie stared straight ahead in a trance-like state. She didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything. Richard looked over at her. “You okay?”

“Yes, of course. You just caught me by surprise with the question.”

“Well?”

“I don’t know.”
What brought this on?
She fidgeted with her hair. “Uh…I know we talked about doing it someday, but I’m not sure if I’m ready.”

“Well, I’m ready, and I must say I’m a little surprised you’re not. I thought you wanted a family.”

“What I said is I’m not sure. I…uh, haven’t really thought about it. I guess I always thought of it as somewhere out there…in the future.”

“Well, you know what they say. ‘If you wait too long, the future will be past.’Will you think about it?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I love you.”

“Me, too.”

That night in bed, Richard rolled over toward Marie and cuddled her from behind, his hands caressing her curves. “The more I think of it, sweetheart, the more I can picture us with a baby,” he whispered. She didn’t respond. He waited a respectable length of time and then said good night. She kept her back toward him, eyes wide open, for most of the night.

The next morning, Marie awoke to the sound and smell of percolating coffee. She splashed cool water on her face in an attempt to erase the evidence of a sleepless night. “Morning,” she said to him. He was whipping up a batch of waffles.

“Morning yourself. Sleep okay?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Really? You did a lot of tossing and turning.”

“Well, you’re right. I probably did more thinking than sleeping.”

“What about?”

“About what you asked me yesterday about starting a family.”

“And?”

She walked up behind him, put her arms around his waist, and rested her head against his back. “Don’t start the waffles.”

He turned around to face his wife’s seductive smile. He led her upstairs, to their bedroom. It was the first time they made love without him using protection.
Please God, let this coil work.

* * *

Since Richard’s “I’m going to change” speech, his involvement with the cop across the street and the creepy Russian guy next door seemed to cease, and except for the Buccieri funeral, any activity with mobster types had been seemingly nonexistent, at least from Marie’s vantage point. But Marie wasn’t convinced his questionable behaviors had really ended. She believed he may have just become better at hiding them, and it would be only a matter of time before she would catch him doing something egregious. She was so convinced it was only a matter of time that she started a list, one she kept hidden in a zippered compartment of her makeup bag, a to-do list of things if and when she decided to leave him.

That decision came a few weeks later when Marie noticed a small pile of dirt on the hallway floor. Something made her look up toward the ceiling at the trap door to the attic. There were scuff marks on it that she hadn’t noticed before. She retrieved a step-ladder and pulled down the stairs to have a look. What she found shocked her—a complete set of baby furniture.

Even if he had given up his sinister ways, which Marie highly doubted, the fact that he went out and bought the baby furniture without her knowledge reinforced her belief that it was his world and she was just in it. It was foreign to her. It wasn’t the way she was raised. And it wasn’t how she wanted to live.

She felt her situation was irreparable. Richard was ready to start a family, and what Richard wanted, Richard got, no matter what it took. She couldn’t tell Richard about her ancestry fears when she didn’t have all the facts; she was afraid he would take matters into his own hands and cause who knows what kind of trouble. Ascertaining her actual ethnicity was something she wanted to do on her own terms and in her own time.

And of course there was the comment Richard had made at the 708 Club criticizing whites being with coloreds. If that was his belief, and if it turned out she did indeed have colored blood in her, that could be the end of their relationship in any case, children or no children.

With respect to Richard’s shady activities, Marie was certain that was something he could never give up entirely. There was an expected loyalty when it came to his cohorts, and it was tied to making bigger money than he could make just selling medical equipment.

Unable to think of any way to make things right between them, Marie decided to leave him. It was an agonizing decision to make.

For the next several weeks, Marie tried to act as though everything was normal, but knowing she was planning to leave him, that didn’t come easy, especially when it came to sex. Richard was even more amorous now that he had it in his mind they should start a family. How could she make love to him, whisper sweet nothings in his ear, cuddle up to him in bed, tell him she loved him, when she was secretly plotting to leave him?

Weekends were the hardest—forty-eight consecutive hours of pretending. It was exhausting, especially when it got to the point when the to-do list was at the forefront of her every thought.

By early May, even though she hadn’t caught her husband red-handed, she decided it was time to follow through on each item of her list.

She withdrew all but ten dollars from the savings account she had opened before meeting Richard and stashed the cash in an old brown purse she kept in the back of one of her dresser drawers. It wasn’t much, but enough to get started on her own again.

The only marital account to which Marie had access was the checking account. Up until now, she had always advised Richard when she wrote a check, so he would surely notice if any were missing. Not wanting to cause any unnecessary questioning, she wrote down that account number and put it in the brown purse, thinking she could access money from the bank that way, at least until Richard figured out she was gone.

Typically, Marie would cash her paycheck, keep twenty dollars for herself as mad money, and deposit the rest into their checking account. Now she put the twenty dollars straight into her secret brown purse.

Richard had given Marie several pieces of expensive jewelry during their courtship and the two years they were married. She kept them in a jewelry box on the top of their dresser. She thought he might notice if she hid them somewhere, so she kept them in an easily accessible section of the box, ready to grab at the last minute if she had to.

When Richard was out of town, Marie looked at apartments in different parts of the city. She wasn’t sure where to go, where it would be least probable she would bump into him. She was limited, given her salary, to the less affluent neighborhoods, which she thought could actually work in her favor.

Excited about an ad she saw in the
Tribune,
she made an appointment to see an apartment on the near north side. Unfortunately, Richard spoiled that plan by surprising her with tickets to the Kentucky Derby.

Marie had never been to a horse race of any kind or to Louisville, and she didn’t know what to expect. She bought a large elaborate hat for the occasion. She knew to do that much.

Churchill Downs was impressive with its expansive rolling lawns, lavish gardens, and late-nineteenth-century architecture. They walked the grounds before the race, ate burgoo, and sipped Mint Juleps.

They sat in box seats in Millionaire’s Row. The horses were paraded before the grandstands while the University of Louisville marching band played Stephen Foster’s
My Old Kentucky Home.

While not easy, Marie tried to act as though nothing was amiss. Her list was embedded in her mind like shrapnel. Nothing, including this temporary interruption, was going to change her mind.

Richard bet a considerable amount of money on a stallion named Coal-town. Where he had learned enough about horse racing to bet that kind of money, Marie didn’t know. But she also didn’t care. Coaltown burst out in front when the gates flew open but didn’t keep the lead. He came in second to Citation. Marie learned where the expression “The Run for the Roses” came from when they presented the winner with a blanket of hundreds of red roses.
Sure is a lot of hoopla for a two-minute race.

On the flight back, Richard asked Marie if she had been to the doctor lately.

“No. Why?”

“It’s been over two months and you’re not pregnant yet. There could be something wrong.”

“Richard,” she whispered so as not to be heard by any of the other passengers, “it can take months for that to happen. You’ve got to be patient. Give it time.”

“But if there is something wrong with you, it would be better to have it treated sooner rather than later.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me. Maybe we should have this discussion at home.”

“You could have an infection or a virus or something.”

“I would know that. Can we finish this discussion later…please?”

He ignored her plea. “Well, I had my sperm count checked when I had my physical last month. It’s high. I think you should make a doctor’s appointment. In fact, I think I’ll make one for you when we get back. I’ll go with you.”

Thoughts raced through her mind faster than the horses they just watched. “Let’s let Mother Nature have a chance first.” She loosened her grip on the armrest when she realized her nails were digging into it. Life with Richard was getting more difficult by the day.