CLIFF WAS THINKING about his wife, Lynne, when Neena called. He was sitting in his downtown law office where the ceilings were nine feet high but suddenly felt like those dropped ceilings in the basements of his youth with the recessed lighting and the brown stains from the shoddy plumbing. He’d partied hard in those basements back in the late sixties. A real lady’s choice back then with his oversized ’fro, and good weed in tow, and his acceptance to the Ivy League. But he was tall and the dropped ceilings were oppressive, like the faux wood that paneled those basement walls, the wall-to-wall carpeting in the smartly done upstairs portions of the house, the living room suites covered in custom vinyl to protect the likes of him, he guessed, the truly poor, from coming in contact with the upholstery fibers.
He hadn’t been truly poor for decades, though. He and his wife lived in an old-wine part of the city where its age meant value, not decline. The homes were mansion-sized brick, though not garish displays, carved into stunning topography and set back amid specimen plantings from a century ago. The interior spaces were voluminous, rooms to get lost in. Though the basement had low ceilings because of the piping, so Cliff refused to finish the basement, determined that if they had children they’d party upstairs so that some teenage boy in the middle of a growth spurt wouldn’t have to suffer as he did. So far, though, there were no children; he and Lynne had been married for fifteen years so that it looked as if there would be none.
The law office was empty when Neena’s call came through. It was after seven and that’s why Cliff had been thinking about Lynne, because of how late it was and he’d not heard from her all day. He was thinking that he should have heard from her several times by now. She should be a little melancholy since her Alzheimer’s-suffering mother was living with them now, she should need to cry on his shoulder or at least hear his voice during the course of her day. Then the phone rang and the caller ID flashed OUT OF AREA and he assumed it was Lynne since she was always losing, leaving, her cell phone somewhere and having to use a pay phone. He was irritated when he heard a voice other than Lynne’s; he would have let the call go into voice mail.
“Who are you? We met where?” he asked, interrupting Neena, an edge to his voice.
“On Filbert Street. Not far from the bus station,” she said. “Remember your friend was wearing sandals in the snow and you chided him.”
He tried to picture Neena. He couldn’t, though he remembered the night. Remembered that at the point when Bow Peep introduced them, Cliff had been distracted by a woman across the street laughing very hard at something a man was saying in her ear. The woman’s laugh was that of someone thrilled to be alive because she was so in love with the man whispering in her ear. At first Cliff thought the woman was his wife, Lynne. It wasn’t Lynne and he was both relieved and disappointed.
He remembered, too, feeling a sting in his own toes when he’d seen Bow Peep’s exposed feet. He and Bow Peep were closer than most brothers. They’d grown up next-door neighbors on a broken-down West Philly block back when broken-down blocks in West Philly were the exception. The kids on his block set apart as a result, ostracized by the parents who threw their children sweet sixteen parties in the finished basements. Though Cliff was given a pass because of his smarts and his charm and his looks, Bow Peep too because they were inseparable until Cliff went to college and Bow Peep to war. Cliff suffered a type of survivor’s guilt when Bow Peep returned with only a portion of his sanity intact. He became Bow Peep’s guardian of sorts. Bow Peep would insist that it was the other way around, that he’d been on the point in the jungles of ’Nam and to this day could sniff out danger after dark; he had Cliff’s back, he would say.
Cliff tried again to picture Neena’s face, couldn’t, though he did remember that she’d dropped a five-dollar bill into Bow Peep’s flute case and the gesture had softened him. Now he apologized to Neena for his rudeness just then by cutting her off. “It’s been a grueling day,” he said, “but that doesn’t excuse my poor manners.” He didn’t say that he was mainly irritated because it should have been his wife calling. “So what can I do for you?” he asked Neena.
She replied that she had a somewhat unusual case, was there a fee for his initial consultation.
“You’ve got my ear right now,” he said, “for free.”
She laughed. Made him think again about Lynne’s laugh. That crystal laugh that he’d had in his head all day today. He’d just told himself when the phone rang that he wouldn’t tighten up inside if it was Lynne and she said, “Hello, Cliff,” and then the laugh. It was just a laugh, for goodness sakes, that’s all, nothing representational about the laugh, no metaphor, no joke, as in joke’s on him.
He banged his fist against the desk to stop himself. Asked Neena to excuse him for a second as he pushed the hold button and grabbed his fist and stood and yelled out, fuck, from the pain in his hand. Hoped he’d not broken his hand. Though he deserved a broken hand, wished he could kick his own ass for allowing this emotional implosion.
He massaged his hand until the throbbing subsided. Was about to switch back over to Neena’s call, but the red light no longer blinked, meant she’d hung up. Just as well, he thought, as he gave up on trying to picture her, thinking instead about the other events of that night. On his way home his car had skidded on Lincoln Drive, an omen, he thought, because when he finally arrived home the front door was ajar from where his mother-in-law had gotten out again. She’d gotten out last month and he and Lynne accepted that they couldn’t leave her alone. Switched off their schedules so that someone was always with her. That had been Lynne’s night, he was sure, as he’d hit Lynne’s cell phone on the speed dial. “Is Babe with you?” he’d yelled into the phone at the sound of her perky hello. Could tell by her pause that Babe was not.
He remembered that he’d lost reception then because he was down in the cellar, calling out for Babe, then out the back door. Dialed 911 as he ran through the yard and gave the police dispatcher her description, light complexion, could almost look white, silver hair, no idea what she was wearing, a bathrobe, one of my suits, she could be naked, she could be on her way to freezing to death.
He remembered rushing through the park that bordered their house, thinking how much he hated his life. Though he had enormous affection for his mother-in-law, he hated this new layer of obligation to her. He hated practicing law anymore, hated this city anymore, hated that his wife was so absorbed in whatever the hell was absorbing her these days that he could no longer access that cottony part of her, that come-to-me-baby durable softness. Hated that he would be fifty-three his next birthday and that his knee was gone as he could feel what was left of the cartilage being ground to a fine dust as he ran through the park, hollering for Babe, trying not to concentrate on the knee.
Remembered feeling on the brink really of letting it all out, his rage. Rage about what? About the plight of the black man in America that hadn’t changed much since his days as a token black in the Ivy League? No, that rage was familiar, a global rage that had been simmering all of his life; he knew how to manage that rage, live with, thrive in spite of that rage. That was a shared rage, communal. Could look at a version of himself, the judge in a courtroom perhaps, and know that when they peeled back the civilities, the rage was there; or at a board meeting for some foundation, across the table, just one other black man, the eye contact, yep, same rage; on the golf course, though it was a public course, fore, yeah brother, I’m pissed off too; the same rage, really when he was honest with himself, as the rapper’s rage. This rage, though, pacing back and forth in his chest like a lion in a zoo trying to figure a way out, was a different rage. This rage felt too personal to share with the brothers, stamped with his name only.
He remembered the rage thinning out some when he found his mother-in-law stretched across a bench in the park talking to the sky as if she was talking to Cyrus, her doctor-husband who’d died not long ago. Remembered his relief as he tenderly wrapped her up in his coat and carried her into the house. Remembered that she’d told him a joke about a man and a woman having coffee in the woman’s small kitchen after a night of passionate love-making and the man is sitting there dressed in the woman’s pink robe and they hear a sound like thunder, but it’s not thunder; it’s a banging and the man asks, What the hell is that? And the woman just looks at him as if she’s lost her speech. And he says again, What the hell is that? And she blurts out, My husband, my husband, he’s early, he’s been at sea, he shouldn’t be back this soon. And he looks at himself sitting in the pink robe and says, No problem, where is your back door? And she says, I don’t have a back door. And he looks at himself again in her pink robe, and he says, Okay, so where would you like a back door?
Cliff remembered that he’d laughed. Laughed so hard until his eyes ran. Laughed so hard until Babe laughed too. Laughed until Lynne rushed in, demanding to know why he’d hung up on her just then. He remembered how her coat had fallen from her shoulders when she grabbed her mother in a hug and he looked at Lynne squeezed into the clothes she wore. Tight jeans, tighter top, high-heeled leather boots. An extreme look compared to how she usually dressed. Usually dressed in loose flowing silky things; tunics, and layers of sheer over satins. Though it had been the curve of her hips that had first attracted him, and he’d tease her that he thought rich girls were supposed to be thin; she was built like those down-the-way sisters, he’d relaxed into the unstructured fit of her clothing. She was an artist after all—mixed media—flighty and sweet. He’d tried to tell himself that he was being ridiculous, that there was nothing outrageous about the outfit, really. But then she turned around, the stretchy red top she wore showed cleavage, her breasts had a pinched look. He was close to asking her who the hell had been pulling on her breasts. Remembered swallowing the thought, almost choking. Where had such thoughts come from anyhow? This was Lynne, his pure-to-the-bone Lynne, even as her face held that speechless expression like the woman’s face in the joke Babe had just told. “Where you been?” he asked.
“I was at a reading, one of my students at the Germantown Y,” Lynne had said out of breath. “And why’d you hang up in my ear?” she demanded.
He remembered watching as she wiped her hands over her face in big circles, leaving splotches of red because her skin was light, thin, showed everything, stretched even tighter it seemed with her hair pulled back beneath her characteristic scarf/headband, her light brown curls falling every which way to the rhythm of her neck going side to side. “I hyperventilated all the way home thinking Mother was lost. And where were you? This was your night, after all. God, the least you could do is to be here on your night,” she’d said on an extended glare as she stood under the archway between the living room and the foyer.
He remembered that it was as if he was seeing her the way he had not seen her in years, through eyes unencumbered by the day-to-day married people’s ramblings: the what to eat for dinner, where; the game tonight or The Sopranos; your turn with Babe, no yours; the case lost, won, dentist appointment today, colonoscopy next week, am I the only one who loads, empties the dishwasher around here.
He remembered that he’d had to turn away from her because her look was uncontainable at that moment: her shallow lips plumped suddenly, slicked with a cherry-tinged gloss; her raw soft beauty usually covered up with the swatches of spats and irritants and familiarity breeding contempt, exposed. Remembered that he became aware that he was seeing her the way another man—not her husband—would see her. Remembered how suddenly desirable she appeared. And then his rage erupted like a sudden-onset toothache and he said, “You know what, Lynne? I’m sick of this fucking shit.” And she demanded that he be specific, that he say exactly what fucking shit he was sick of. And he didn’t say because he couldn’t say.
He remembered that Lynne was so angry that she slept downstairs in the room with her mother that night and he sat awake half watching Law & Order reruns, half reading Randall Robinson’s Quitting America, then falling asleep, then waking in the middle of the night hot and itchy, tangled in his sheets, his manhood throbbing. He got up to turn down the thermostat, to pull the sheets tight on the bed. To go to the bathroom. He remembered looking around for water to pour. Lynne usually left a picture of ice water on the nightstand to satisfy her middle-of-the-night thirst. The cubes hitting the glass had always been such an erotic sound for Cliff, a prelude when he and Lynne were new together; when she’d wake at about two in the morning and sip her water and then reach for him, her mouth so wet and cold as she put it there and there and Lord-baby-yes, even there and he’d feel flattened, as if he was on that Hell Hole ride at Wildwood Beach of his youth that spun him around so fast that he was plastered to the walls, liquefied and turned inside out to a giddy dizziness. No ice cubes chimed that night, no crystal picture in there with lemons floating on top, no water goblets on the matching crystal tray.
He remembered that the house was quiet as falling snow as he tiptoed downstairs for water. He ran the water from the faucet and stood in the middle of the redone kitchen with its hard stainless steels and opulent woods. He drank back-to-back glasses of tap water. The taste of the water reminding him of childhood on his broken-down block of Ludlow Street where his mother would call him in from his hard playing and make him drink two glasses of cold faucet water back to back because she’d lost a nephew to dehydration. Actually sunstroke but Cliff knew that his mother went out of the way to use big words around him when he was growing up. Credited her for his heightened verbal skills.
He remembered that on his way back upstairs he’d stopped in front of Babe’s door. Had the thought suddenly that Lynne might not be in there. That she’d put her tight clothes back on for a rendezvous with the night. He’d put his hand on Babe’s doorknob, eased the knob around, quietly opened the door to Babe’s room.
He remembered that the air was warm and smelled of rubbing alcohol and baby talc. There were two lumps in the bed for sure. Told himself he’d not expected otherwise. The gooseneck night lamp was angled toward the bed and drizzled Lynne with yellow light. His Lynne. He tipped across the Berber-covered floor and stood over Lynne, turned back the covers and kissed her cheek. He pictured the broad curve of her hips in the tight jeans, his throbbing increasing to unbearable at the thought. He pulled at her shoulder. She made sleep sounds, half yawns, half moans, and tried to cover herself up again. Then he lifted her, whispered in her ear to forgive him please for cursing at her like that, please. He tried to cradle her and carry her across the room. She’d put on weight. He’d not noticed how much until just then. He managed to get her through the door and out into the darkened foyer.
He remembered her frightened expression once she was fully awake. “I can walk,” she said. “Cliff, your back’s gonna go out, your knee. We’re gonna fall. Put me down. I can walk.”
“And I can carry you. What? You think I can’t still carry you?” he said as he started up the stairs.
“You can, Cliff. Of course I know you can,” she’d said, even as she reached out for the banister and let go a scream as he staggered midway up and almost fell backward. He righted himself, though, and made it to the second floor and into the bedroom where they dropped onto the bed like two wild geese just shot down out of the sky.
He remembered that he moved on top of Lynne, saying her name, saying please, Lynne, please, an anguish to his tone as he slid her nightshirt over her head, and then reached to turn on the light so that he could look at her.
He remembered that she grabbed his arm, preventing him from reaching the light. Then she called his name. Called him baby, saying Oh God, please as she pulled at him and grew him. Their clumsy shifting and groping eased into their familiar rhythm.
He remembered that with the approach of his dam-burst, he felt a ball in his throat, enlarging into a boulder-sized mass, an accretion of every suspicion he’d felt of late. Remembered that as his manhood exploded, he cried. He came and cried. He kissed Lynne and squeezed her and made cracked moaning sounds in her chest. He remembered that she held him; she held him and held on, her eyes pressed shut, he guessed, so that she couldn’t see him cry.
The red light on the phone was blinking. He’d not even heard it ring. The caller ID flashed OUT OF AREA and he figured that it must be Neena again. Wouldn’t allow his expectations to be raised that it might be Lynne. He answered and it was Neena and his stomach dropped. She apologized; she was on a pay phone, she said, and had to put more money in. “So do I still have your ear for free?” she asked, laughing.
He tried again to picture her. Still could not as he listened to her laugh, the laugh open and continuous, accessible, an invitation in the laugh. He knew a woman’s laugh. Had been interpreting a woman’s laugh since the young ones of his youth in those finished basements. Read laughs the way some men read a woman’s lowered eyes, or subtly moistened lips, a blushed cheek, an exaggerated sway of the hips. Throughout the fifteen years he’d been married, he’d heard the come-ons in the laughs, the I-know-you’re-hooked-up-but-we-can-be-discreet laughs from all types of women. He’d returned those laughs with a smile that said, Yeah, but I’m committed to my wife and in love with her too, then a polite kiss on the cheek to salvage the woman’s ego; a whisper in her ear, but if I weren’t, we could make merry. Thought again about Lynne’s laugh, the way it gushed of late like water from a spring that’s found a new opening, free at last, it just flowed and flowed.
He still couldn’t picture Neena, and before he could think further about what he was doing, he was telling Neena that actually, she had more than his ear, laughing himself as he said it. “I’ve got a fund-raising event tomorrow evening on Broad Street. I don’t know how close you are to town but I’ll be there at around seven. If you can stop in, please, make yourself known to me. Possibly we can talk for a few minutes there. You can tell me what makes your case enticing.”