White People (10 page)

H
ERE AT
the big kitchen table, my favorite artist’s studio, I control a piece of vast white paper; in easy reach enough peeled crayons to map a war. I am ready to commit myself to the drawing of those persons I know best, I know too well. Today each will get not a color—because white people are not, colored, or are they?—but, one shape apiece:

M
Y
R
INGLETED
brother is a small choice circle, like a target made of palest tissue paper, drawn drum-tight, and waiting.

M
Y MOTHER
, Helen, our mother, lover of contract bridge and needlework and Daphne du Maurier’s many books, Mom says “actually” often. That must make her oval. “Actually” sounds oval. Mother wears her hair pulled back at her neck’s fair nape, pulled no-nonsense to the usual oval. Her face is shaped Pilgrimishly upright but can go so suddenly friendly, it stops your air, her beauty. The face is dear as good new round-edged hand soap, guest soap, scented, “not for every day, boys.” Yes, the perfect ample oval, doodled solemn on my page. So ripe and forlorn in her lonely madonna kind of geometry. Makes me sad but good-sad, sitting here, to see the shape I drew for being her.

M
Y FATHER
, son of the brooched socialite, son of the big-eared sun-cured farmer that this socialite so unaccountably adores, my father is the medal-plated minor hero of a major foreign war. This makes Father a rectangle mostly, but one set, disciplinary and royal, on its tallest end. He is a shape you must look up to, sheer rock-facing, you must look it up as you’d look up a number over and over in the phone book, say, forgetting it between. The head end of the former pilot swims so far up in air. Shortstuff, go ahead and signal so he’ll see you—and consider landing—even consider landing on you, way here far below.

O
H, AND
A
RDELIA
, our lifelong helper, cook, and company, who’s right across the kitchen scribbling steam over on her ironing board as I work at drawing here. Ardelia, humming, is bottom-heavy among her (our) laundry, the face of her forever ready at my eye level. She is a brown (colored) triangle, she is a sweet dark tent.

A
ND
I
AM
, what?—maybe a wax crayon line, improving, underscoring other things, a good clear line connecting, I’m beneath them,
around and for them so. Tense. Fine. Sick of being cooperative in keeping them created on a page they barely notice how darn kindly I control.—What is more alone than a single line on so white a page?

W
ITHOUT MUCH ACCURACY
, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they’ll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you’ve changed into that very simple shape. They’ll choose it lazily. Only when it suits them. Maybe one summer morning. You could, for instance, be seated in a wicker chair that your mother, stirred up for six weeks by a crafts class, spray-painted a lurid apple green. Why? You could be slouched on the porch reading, at age ten, page sixty of some Tom Swifty adventure full of selflessness, abandoned lighthouses, adult crooks, plus one loyal and incredibly intelligent beagle puppy. And because you’re curled up, engrossed, chewing on one index finger, book pressed near your face, because at just this moment your father, bringing home a business partner to lunch, trudges up the backstairs, nods toward you and boasts, “Our family brain,” because of this one moment, you will go on laboring under that half-slanderous heading for a lifetime. Bryan = Brain.

And even if you somehow sensed the phrase’s branding-iron finality and whined a protest, it wouldn’t help. This name has already “taken,” in the way a smallpox vaccination takes precisely because it ends up as a scar.

You were hardly reading Hegel. But the more you deny the title, the truer they’ll believe it is. Hey, they’ll think, We’ve really hit on something here. So, that is that. That is you. And, two weeks later, the family doctor, who must have somehow heard, says your eyes are tired because they’re very very weak and overworked eyes and need help; he claims you’ll go on wearing glasses at least until it’s time for college and maybe later, maybe all your life. Glasses make you even more what they said, what your father said, that name he gave—as families give everything—in passing but for keeps.

“C
ANDLELIGHT DINNER TONIGHT
,” Mother would sometimes call aloud and musically. She opened a drawer, lifted out two pronged lumps of protective esoteric fabric. These coverlets were husked off and you’d see silver, unblackened by air: two big twisty candelabra. Into each, a dozen white candles got jammed. For lighting these she used a specialized pencil-thin taper, very long. She touched flame to every upright wick.

Pyromaniacs, we watched. Then we pretended to be blind boys holding out tin cups.

“Very funny. Have you two ever heard of ‘atmosphere’? It’s actually quite rare in this section of North Carolina, but that just makes me try harder, for your sakes. You turn up your noses at eggplant, crabmeat, even artichokes. You don’t want finger bowls on the table, even at Easter dinner. Well, you boys cannot discourage me.”

“Yeah,” Bradley said, “but with just candles, you can’t see what you’re eating. The peas look like all one thing.”

She was in a good mood. After dinner, she’d rush off to preside over some civic meeting downtown. Now she chanted at him, “Well, sticks and stones …”

“All right, children of all ages. Enough.” Father hastily muttered Grace.

Your eyes soon got used to the light. Thanks to it, people looked healthier than they really were. Even our salt shaker gleamed like something faceted and valuable. Mother apologized for leaving early. It was her year to chair the Heart Drive, and three nights a week she would scurry out, officious, her blouse freshly pressed, carrying a clipboard she had bought at Woolworth’s then sprayed matte beige to complement her conservative suits. Now we sat in her atmospheric aftermath, listening to the station wagon grind around the drive. Her exit’s back-door breeze got here tardily, tilting all twenty-four flames.

When left alone with us, Father formally pretended to relax. His face now glowed, a steep stretch of angles, shadows, dents, and fullnesses. “Yep,” he said, stirring his coffee. “Yep” what?

Brother and I sat, silent, staring at our emptied dessert plates.
Bradley toyed with the candle snuffer, holding it to his nose, then one eye. It was a tarnished wedding gift we’d found in a closet. He was allowed to smother one candelabrum’s worth. I got the other. If you could dip the snuffer into your water glass when neither parent looked, then flames hissed out louder and made much more smoke.

“Well, so … tell me, Bradley, old boy. What’d you say you were going to be when you grow up?”

It saddened me, Dad’s waiting—glum—for Bradley’s occupation. You’d think your own father could come up with something more personal than this. He wanted to be chummy but was so bad at it. If only I could tell him: Dad, it’s just us here. Don’t get nervous. What can go wrong? We’re already yours.

After dinner, when we were alone upstairs, Bradley always made fun of Father’s stiffness. But face-to-face, I bet he’d definitely answer.

“Lawyer probably.”

“Well. A lawyer, huh? I guess you changed your mind from last time. Lawyer. Great. Bound to make a lot of money, that’s for sure. Yeah, a first-rate lawyer can just about write his own ticket.”

“Plus,” Bradley added, eyes wide, “when people get caught in a house where some guy’s been murdered and the police say they did it, lawyers can show they didn’t and get them off.”

“That’s right. It’s good for people and it’s a comfortable living, too. Well, if you really want that, I guess law school could be arranged eventually. Of course, both my brothers went to U. Va., but your mother’s father and yours truly put in time at Harvard, their law school there, so it’s just a matter of visiting the places and deciding which—”

“Hey, Dad?” I butted in. “Well, Bradley is just nine years old and, I mean, he could change his mind about four hundred times before then, right? We shouldn’t make him think he
has
to do anything, right, Dad?”

There was a pause. Candles sputtered. On wallpaper behind him, Father’s shadow wavered, his edges wobbling.

“Bryan, I know how old your brother is. Also, I keep telling myself, son, that you’re almost what, eleven? and that you should probably understand by now, it’s fairly aggravating when you cut into other
people’s conversations. As for law school, you can never start planning a thing too early. At least that’s how I see it. And how about you, your plans? Somebody as smart as you, with grades and all like yours, I guess, really, the sky’s the limit. Person like you could do just about anything he sets his mind to, am I right?”

He knew that I took even rhetorical questions to heart, that I’d need at least a minute to choose my life’s work; so, with an unexpected tenderness, even with a measure of respect, Father stalled, “You know, Bryan, I think you inherited the Larkins’ kind of reasoning, instead of the Graftons’ way of acting first, thinking later. The way I operate, for instance.”

I sat looking right at him. He had this whole theory about me and my mind. Now I just wanted to please him. I sat poking at warm tallow on the lowest silver stem. Butcher, thief, Indian chief. It didn’t matter what I said. Anything would satisfy. I’d seen Bradley watching a Perry Mason rerun this afternoon; he was so easy to figure. Father noisily stirred his coffee which was cold by now and didn’t need stirring. My time was running out. I didn’t want a job, mine would be a calling, something with a mission to it. Well, explain
that
to him, anything. Go ahead, just spit out, “Doctor.”

But I couldn’t do it. I honestly didn’t know. It was a silly question even if it was the best he could manage. Uncles, salesmen asked such things. Have you got a little girlfriend? Oh, I bet you do, too. Come on, who, who?

“Well? What are you going to be, Bryan? I guess you heard me.”

Bradley turned his face this way, the rat, smirking so Father couldn’t see; he understood exactly how I felt. I decided: I love Father three times more than Bradley does with his quick cutesy answers.

“I don’t know.” I stared at my hands. “It probably sounds sassy but it’s true.” I looked up at him. “I really don’t know, Dad. I could say something but I wouldn’t mean it. And you want me to
mean
what I tell you. Right?”

He let out a slow elaborate sigh. “Mr. Seriousness, huh? Okay. Have it your way.” Then he turned back to Bradley and, stretching long legs under the table, “So—Corporation or Criminal law?”

I studied the two of them, cozy in the orange glow at their end of the table. “May I be excused?” I asked quietly.

Father tilted this way and around the candlesticks to get a full view of me. His eyes showed: clear, fierce, handsome, glinting with an orange speck for every flame. Then he swung right back to his relaxed and manly pose, smiling at Bradley.

“So,” he said, upbeat. “Corporation or Criminal?”

I
WAS LOADED DOWN
with naturalist’s equipment, bound outdoors to bird-watch when I spotted a whole new month of magazines on the foyer mail table. Walking over, I startled myself in the hall mirror. Today I wore my croupier’s visor to relieve the squinty glare of binoculars plus eyeglasses. This sunshield arched just above my eyebrows and tinted my face a cheerful green. I’d stuffed a notebook and a yellow pencil into my shirt pocket. Binoculars hung from a neck strap. Grandmother had brought this high-powered set from Switzerland, especially for me. I admired myself: Bermuda shorts, argyle knee socks and the brand-new hiking boots I’d got with my own Christmas money.

Mother subscribed to lots of glossy bulletins about good looks for home and self. I stood flipping through these, studying this month’s styles: women with hollowed ideal faces, whitish houses like Museums of Comfort. I turned to a picture of a room almost exactly like Bradley’s, only tidier. The photograph was an ad for linoleum; its caption read “Positively Boy-Proof.” On invisible wires, model biplanes dangled from the ceiling, frozen in nosedives. Pennants praising Trojans, Steelers, Bulldogs triangulated all across the paneled wooden walls. Traffic signs were nailed and tilted everywhere, conflicting demands, just like Bradley’s collection.

Mother had caught him sneaking a red stop sign into our house. “Aren’t you ashamed, young man? You turn right around and take that back. Think of all the accidents you might be causing this very minute.” “Hey,” he said, face lifting, brightening with his own consequences. “Neat-o.”

How did Bradley know just which things to collect? What about
my horde of quartz, fossils, file cards on local birds, my Latin labels? Where did all that fit in? Brother must share traits with the kid whose bedroom they showed here. Even if a decorator made the whole thing up, imagine all the boys’ rooms in the USA that must be just like this. Birds, state to state, look enough alike to be identified as members of the same genus. Maybe ideal standard boys shared such habits or markings, nesting patterns.

I postponed bird-watching. He was somewhere in this house right now, no one else at home. I’d just go say hello. I wandered room to room. The binoculars, snug and Swiss in their horsehide case, slapped amiably against my front side. Hiking boots glided noiseless on our carpeting and Persian rugs. I tracked him to his hideaway upstairs. The door stood half open. I peeked in. He lay there on the oak floor, belly-down, on newspapers. He was arranging countless components from his new and biggest model. He had lined these up as a miser might. Vital parts of the USS
Enterprise
. Ardelia insisted on the papers, claiming that this glue was just impossible to scrub up. Now, between two tennis shoes, he’d cleverly propped the square magnifying lens. Grandmother had given Bradley this, her reading glass, when he’d resented my expensive binoculars. He got this, plus the lederhosen she’d brought him.

With the silver beak of Mother’s versatile eyebrow tweezers, he pinched up a tiny antiaircraft gun. He held it beyond the prismedged glass and, head tilted, frowned into the lens. Then, magnified as in a fishbowl, something pink appeared from one side, an hors d’oeuvre toothpick, the kind Father bought to jab at baby onions in guests’ martinis. This one was laden with a dewdrop of clear glue. It scumbled against the khaki-colored gun no larger than an insect’s leg. Bradley knew I stood watching. He could hear the leather of my neck strap creak as I leaned on his doorjamb. But he couldn’t glance up just yet. I understood the reason. That glue dried so darn fast.