C H A P T E R • 21
It was Gary. And I met him at the bottom of the stairs.
“I was just leaving,” I told him and walked past him. Then I turned back. “But let me ask you something.” I took out my notebook and read his quote. “What is the truth behind the lies and innuendo surrounding Cecelia’s relationship with the bank and with the people who love her.”
“That’s nobody’s business,” he said.
He walked to the kitchen and checked behind the door. “Shit.”
Then he turned, “You were upstairs? What did you find upstairs?”
“You didn’t answer me.”
“You didn’t answer me.”
“I know this house from the time we were kids and we shared our spaces. I needed to sit with her things for a moment.”
“You still didn’t answer me. What did you find upstairs?”
I didn’t consider for even a minute telling him about the money.
“I’m wondering what you think I would have found? Why would Mrs. Miller say your father would be ashamed of you?”
“She said that?”
“And she said you and Cecelia fought about what the bank board was not doing to save the bank.”
“No comment.”
He moved to stand between me and the stairs. “I hope you found whatever you were looking for because you are not going back upstairs. And I’m not leaving you here.”
“I’m done for now. I’m on my way to pick up a copy of the newspaper. Have you seen it yet?”
“No. Why do I imagine I’m going to hate it?”
When I’m in New York, I always pick up a copy of the paper at Joselyn’s newsstand at 135th and Malcolm X Boulevard, a couple of blocks over. I love the feeling of anticipation at seeing the Harlem Journal the way 200,000 readers in 60,000 households see it (or so they say, since the paper is not audited).
I watched Gary pick up the paper and skim the front page—stopping to read some of an article, but I couldn’t be sure which one—then flip some pages.
He turned to me with the paper in his hand. “Your so-called revelations are wild and irresponsible, and you’re affecting things you can’t even imagine. Even the rendering of the Harlem movie theater. I don’t know how you got it, but now every dog and his brother is going to try to get that project on his piece of dirt. They’re already calling 110th Street SoHa, for South Harlem.”
I snapped my fingers. “Morningside Heights wants to hook up with its dark uptown brothers?”
He didn’t answer and walked away under his obnoxious umbrella.
“Good paper today, Pearl,” Joslyn said. “Feels like you got yourself some ads too.”
Blind Jocelyn passed along mostly what she heard about the edition from customers who bought theirs earlier in the morning. She no doubt could tell about the abundance of Veteran’s Day ads from the paper’s heft. It was nice and thick.
“Some people are talking about taking their money out the bank. Do you think I should take my money out?”
“Everything I know about the bank is in the newspaper,” I told her. “Really. I have no idea. Except we don’t want people withdrawing their money.” I heard myself say “we.” Interesting.
“Folks like the story ’bout poor Ceel,” she said. “They say the paper looks like an advertisement for an action movie. And they like your publisher’s letter and pictures of the vendors, the local lawless entrepreneurs, that’s a good one.”
“Thanks. I like it myself.”
What you don’t get without seeing it is the flair Al gave the paper. Once Daddy let him have his way with the layout, I have never been bored with the way the newspaper looks.
That’s not always true about the way it reads and I flipped through to give the edition a spot check. Often, when my copy arrived in California, it would just lie in my hands like a dead thing full of camera-ready ads generated by liquor and cigarette manufacturers and stories sent by people with something to celebrate or an ax to grind. And then I would know they had missed. But this edition was alive. I put one copy in my tote.
I also put one each of the Times, the Post, the News and Newsday in one of Jocelyn’s plastic bags, and I took the bag and my tote with Ceel’s lists and notebook up the hill to Viola’s in a gypsy cab.