February 13, Monday, promised light relief from the cold snap.
At 6:00 AM the mercury was already touching 32°F.
Dressed in a handsome navy blue with chalk pinstripe suit, Gray kissed Sister on the cheek. “You know it’s already bumper to bumper on Route 66 outside of D.C.”
“Crazy. What time is your meeting?” Sister, like Gray, was already dressed for work.
“Eleven. Then lunch at the Press Club, which I truly enjoy.” He sighed. “I’ll be home Tuesday night.”
“Here.” She handed him a Tupperware container filled with pasta, just as he liked it. “In case you wind up working late.”
“Thank you, sweetie. You make the best tortellini. Sure you’re not part Italian?”
Gray tried to limit his time in Washington to one or two days a week. Although nominally retired, his old firm kept summoning him to solve sensitive problems with huge clients. Skilled at mathematical sleight of hand, accountants could bury profits, hiding them from other accountants’ scrutiny. Gray, well paid for his brilliance, kept a small condominium in a high-rise near D.C.’s Kennedy Center. This way, if there were a performance at night he could attend, and as he had many good friends in D.C. his time spent there was convivial. What troubled him was the work, which just lately involved an uptick in campaign finance malfeasance on the part of clients. Given that it all was confidential, he kept these qualms to himself, but at times the weight of it bore down on him. What also bore down on him was the confusion of those campaign finance laws.
Never asking for details, Sister invariably knew when he needed a lift. She respected his loyalty to the firm and the confidentiality of many of his cases.
No sooner did Sister watch his car rumble down the drive than Tootie appeared in the kitchen with her laptop.
“Good morning,” said Sister. “What will it be?”
“Sister, I can make my own breakfast.”
“I know that, but I do a better job than you.” Sister enjoyed taking care of someone young.
Tootie smelled the enticing aroma of fresh oatmeal. “Whatever’s on the stove,” she said.
Sister puttered around as Tootie devoured real oatmeal: steel cut oats, the kind that takes forty minutes to make. The dogs, bored that no bacon was frying, slept at her feet. At the window, Golly hungrily eyed the birds outside at the feeder. Every now and then, the big cat emitted a kitty cackle.
“Dream on, Golly,” taunted Raleigh.
“You just wait until spring,” mused Golly. “It will be a feathery mass murder.” She sighed in contentment at the thought.
Sister sat back down with her second cup of coffee, black, her broken black hair dryer on the table before her.
Tootie stared at the hair dryer for a moment saying nothing. She returned to her oatmeal.
“I’m thinking about opening a hair salon,” said Sister, patting her impressive head of hair.
Spoon poised midair above her oatmeal, Tootie asked, “With one hair dryer?”
Sister smiled. “It’s broken. Circumstantial evidence suggests Golly had something to do with it.”
“I didn’t know Golly’s fur needed styling.”
“Thank you,” Golly called from the window.
“The last two weeks she has been on a tear,” said Sister. “She’s a one-cat terrorist operation.” Sister unscrewed the side of the handheld dryer, poked at the wires. “It’s easier to buy a new one. I will lose my temper trying to fix this thing. If I put it on the front seat of the truck, I’ll remember to get one and get the same brand. It was a good dryer.”
“Did I ever tell you about the time my mother took me to the most expensive place in Chicago for cornrows?”
“You did not.”
“The weight of it. All those beads.”
“I bet you looked so pretty.”
“I guess, but I don’t want to spend my life doing my hair. All I have to do now is take a shower, dry off.”
“You’re lucky. Now may I ask why you brought your laptop to the kitchen? You can work in the den.”
“I want to show you some handmade cards from a hand press in Washington. This lady is making money.”
“Really?” Sister shoved the broken hair dryer to one side.
On the kitchen counter, a small TV had its sound turned low. After the weather report came local headlines. Tootie happened to look up and see a familiar face on screen.
“It’s Mrs. Norton!”
Sister turned around and saw the headmistress of Custis Hall in front of a microphone, crowded by reporters. Sister turned up the sound.
“Custis Hall is not in the habit of hiring enemies of the United States,” said Charlotte Norton. “We are not amused by these allegations.”
A young female reporter, asked, “Will you take legal action?”
“First, we need an emergency board meeting, but if the board approves it, yes, we will.” Charlotte Norton looked utterly displeased by the prospect.
The TV journalist turned back to the camera, and then the report played video of yet another allegation by Congressman Dave Rickman.
Standing in front of the national Capitol building in the cold, he warmed to his subject. “We have been attacked by terrorists. Just because this happened in 2001 doesn’t mean we can let down our guard. They are here. They are undercover and I want a full investigation of Tariq Al McMillan of Custis Hall. I am convinced he is, shall I say, ‘a person of interest.’ ”
“Why is that?” a male interviewer asked, tone flat.
“He is an Arab. They all hate us.”
“Congressman Rickman, are you saying that all Muslims hate us?”
“Haven’t they proven that?” Behind him, the top of the Capitol dome shone rosy as the sunlight just touched it. Rickman had perfectly staged this moment.
“Congressman Rickman, Mr. Al McMillan is a Coptic Christian,” the interviewer stated.
The well-groomed Rickman paused, gathering his thoughts as it were. “I don’t believe any Arab is a Christian. I will root out every enemy of this country. Every single one.”
The station then cut to Tariq in his campus office, sitting at his beautiful new desk. Composed and handsome, he quietly countered the congressman’s spurious allegations, also remarking that he had been in close contact with the Egyptian embassy and he sincerely hoped this would not be blown out of proportion.
“Is he out of his mind?” shouted Tootie. “That congressman?”
“No, Tootie, though Rickman appears to have studied a long-dead and very notorious senator from Wisconsin, a mean drunk who upended this country for a while, accusing everybody and his brother of being communists.”
“How can he get away with this?” cried Tootie. “I took Mr. McMillan’s class. He’s a good teacher.”
“You didn’t call him Al McMillan?”
“He told us McMillan was fine. I learned so much in his class. Like I didn’t know that places like Iran and Iraq were created after World War One. Or how the British divided up territory with no regard to the different peoples, and the big split between Sufi and Sunis. He’s a really good teacher. He’s not some terrorist.”
“For some people, anyone with dark skin is suspect.”
“But he’s a Christian.”
“Rickman isn’t,” said Sister, “though I bet he parks his sorry ass in a pew every Sunday with wife and children, and then makes sure we all know about it.” Sister had witnessed enough hypocrisy in her life and was no longer shocked by it. If anything, it was amusing—until it hurt others.
“Can’t we do something?” asked Tootie.
“I’m sure before the day is over I’ll have both a call and an email about that emergency board meeting,” said Sister. “All I can do at this point is to go to the meeting, if it’s called. Apart from Tariq himself, accusations like this open the door for all manner of miseries inflicted upon schools. That Custis Hall is private and exclusive ups the ante. Rickman gets to kill two birds with one stone. He looks like he’s putting America’s national security first, but it’s also a sly attack on the so-called elites.”
“Because they hired Tariq?”
“Because they experience more freedom than the state schools, even though they adhere to state regulations. What I have learned about education sitting on your alma mater’s board has been eye-opening. You know, I don’t know if I could teach today even at the college level. I don’t think I could swallow the bullshit.”
Tootie, rarely hearing Sister swear, just looked at her.
At seven-thirty that morning, Tariq phoned Crawford at home.
“Mr. Howard, did you see the news this morning?” The young professor’s voice trembled.
“I did.” By contrast, Crawford’s voice was strong and confident.
A brief silence followed. “Do I no longer have your support?” asked Tariq.
“You will have my support when you show up in my hunt field.”