Now You See Her (6 page)

I move to the study and e-mail the final version of “Ticked Off,” then shower and dress, rejecting a tweed wool two-piece
from my Mrs. Martin Baynes days. My new closet rallying cry is “Down with heather!”

Down, in fact, with the whole palette of fade-away colors. The emerald jacket that Meg Givens admired? It hangs beside a new
bolero pantsuit of indigo. I am molting, by choice, out of muted colors. It’s not easy. Old habits die hard, even when you
try to kill them. Today’s choice is the indigo.

I’m due in Roxbury at ten. On the sidewalk approaching my Beetle, I hear—

“Good morning, neighbor.”

“Trudy Pfaeltz, hi.”

She crosses Barlow Square toward me in green scrubs and a trench coat, a small box under one arm. In her later thirties, Trudy
has a pug nose, pale freckles, and dark blond hair pinned back. Her face has the pallor of someone who seldom sees the sun.

“Just home from work?” I ask. “God, were we busy. Night shift is run, run, run. The hospital should issue every nurse a skateboard.
The surgical floor’s a zoo.” Trudy shifts the small box. “I stopped at Pets Galore in Allston. This seed is supposed to promote
a vocabulary in talking birds.”

“Your parakeet?”

“If Kingpin doesn’t get past ‘pretty bird,’ I’m going to wring his chartreuse-feathered neck. But, you know, this box of seed
is a test. If it works, I might handle a line of pet products. It’s a multibillion-dollar industry.”

“Along with the vending machines. Trudy, with your schedule, how do you do it? You must never sleep.”

“Like Ben Franklin said, Reggie, time is money. My six vending machines are going to buy me a new minivan. Milky Ways will
make my down payment. You might look into something like it. You could trade in your little car.”

We both gaze at my black Beetle with its red silk rose in full flower in the dashboard bud vase. Now is not the moment to
discuss automotive upsizing. I have something else in mind. “Trudy, let me ask, do you treat homeless patients?”

“When they’re brought in unconscious or injured. Boston City gets most of them, but I treated a few when I worked in the ER
years ago. Why?”

“Yesterday I talked to a homeless woman, probably in her late sixties. She seemed lucid but partly confused. Does street life
cause hallucinations?”

“Dementia. It’s a contributing factor. Street people tend to be unstable to begin with, and then a trauma pushes them over
the edge. They can develop remarkable survival skills, but malnutrition takes a toll. Plus alcohol and drugs are a factor,
sometimes abuse. It’s hard to know, Reggie, because these people don’t get regular workups. We don’t have good records. But
if the woman didn’t make sense, it’s par for the course. You’re not hearing-impaired.”

“Thanks, Trudy. I’d better let you get some sleep.”

“Not till I turn the birdcage into a language lab. By the way, I’m going to start representing Cutco cutlery. How about a
free demonstration? No obligation.”

“Knives?”

“Cutco is premium cutlery for every lifestyle.”

“Trudy, my lifestyle is cutting up fruit.”

“Sounds like the eight-inch trimmer to me. Meanwhile, here goes the birdseed experiment. You look spiffy. Great color. Going
shopping?”

“Going to work.”

“Like he said, time is money. See you soon.”

In moments, I’m on my way across the South End line to Warnock Street in Roxbury, a section of Boston I’d never go near in
my former life. Every store has a pull-down steel grate for nighttime lockdown, and every person on the sidewalks is black.

It’s jarring to be the whitefish out of water, to face a lifetime of prejudice and stereotypes. But the Roxbury streets are
definitely not my comfort zone. A parking slot opens up, and I ease the Beetle in beside Bertie’s Bar-B-Q. Next door is StyleSmart,
the store where I work Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

“Reggie, good to see you. And that indigo looks so fine. It brings out your eyes.”

My boss, Nicole Patrick, glides across the floor as if this shop is a ballroom, as if its customer seating area is a salon,
as if the racks of business-dress clothing fill a dance floor.

And why not? Our clientele comes here to learn to dance, so to speak. StyleSmart, you see, provides business-dress clothing
for the low-income and no-income women trying to enter the workforce after years on welfare. The idea is to outfit them for
post-welfare lives. It is a not-for-profit consignment shop of sorts, meaning its inventory is donated by women like my former
self, who seasonally went through her walk-ins to thin out whatever had “expired” and replenish her wardrobe. The customers
here pay little or nothing for their purchases and fashion consults. Nicole Patrick is a social-worker-turned-fashionista
for the working poor. Me, I’m the chief consultant.

At least, that was the original plan. My Aunt Jo matched us up practically on her deathbed, thinking her niece and friend
would cross-pollinate. It’s funny how things turn out differently under the law of unforeseen outcomes.

“Reggie, step back there a minute.” Nicole teeters on four-inch mules, her hair upswept today. Her skin tone is between milk
and bittersweet chocolate. She raises an aerosol can and practically arabesques in her turquoise peplum jacket, its jet beads
clicking as she moves. Her onyx drop earrings swing as she shakes the can.

Is she spraying bugs this early in the season? I swear, one spider sighting, and I’ll quit.

“They’re cookin’ up spareribs at Bertie’s, Reggie, and if that landlord doesn’t do something about the vents, our whole inventory
will smell like a smokehouse. ‘All manner of baked meats,’ says the scripture, but Genesis isn’t Bertie’s. Here goes.”

A mist of orange oil rises. Suddenly, StyleSmart smells like— “Creamsicles,” I say. “Ummm, it takes you back in time, like
snow cones on a hot day. Glad you’re here a few minutes early, Reggie. I sold the suit we’d put on Oprah. We got to find our
girl another outfit.” We stare at the nude mannequin. “Let’s dress our Oprah up real fine.”

“How about that burnt-brown outfit on the far rack?” It’s my background that should make me valuable to Nicole. I repeat,
“Definitely the burnt-brown with a nice scarf.”

“Let’s think on that one for a few minutes.” This means no. I have struck out, backslid in just minutes to my old clothes
habits. Women on the job aren’t nuns, Nicole says. A little plumage keeps the season bright. She tells this to our customers,
making sure I overhear.

Moreover, she coaxes me into apparel from the donation boxes. The indigo bolero I’m wearing came from one such box. But don’t
think for a minute I’m skimming the charity clothes. For every peacock feather, so to speak, I donate something from my closet
filled with sedate heathers, bland taupes, and innocuous blues. Accessorized, they’re sometimes just right for our clients.

Crazy as it sounds, the used clothes are an upgrade for me, a makeover that Nicole Patrick calls Operation Peacock, with Nicole
as my consultant and personal shopper. In other words, my fashion fairy godmother.

“I got some new size tags for the racks,” Nicole says. “Let’s put ’em on first. You take the skirts, I’ll do the tops. I’m
also expecting someone I want you to meet.”

The shop is ours alone for the moment, and I seize the opportunity. “Nicole, when you were a social worker, did you have Rastafarian
clients?”

“My caseload had its share of families with young men in dreads.”

“Were they—” I want to ask, religious fanatics? Cult members? “Were they believers?”

She shoots me a look. “Believers? They tried to find their place in the sun in a world that is mostly hostile to them. Es-tranged,
I’d say.”

“What are their beliefs?”

“The history is complicated, Reggie. Mainly, it’s a mix of Marcus Garvey’s back-to-Africa movement and Haile Selassie as God-on-earth
in Ethiopia. It’s not my religion, but one big thing: the Rastas oppose Babylon.”

“You mean Babylon as a symbol of sinful luxury?”

“For them, it’s more like a symbol of centuries of white power oppressing black peoples. Here in North America, the shackles
of the slave days become the shackles of poverty, inequality, the trickery of whites. They eat natural foods.”

“I hear they smoke a lot of marijuana.”

“Tokin’ offenders?” Nicole chuckles, snaps a size 16 tag, and looks my way. “Reggie, most of America is hopped up on drugs
of one sort or another. Think of the pill pushers on TV. Think of all those feisty little schoolchildren getting off the bus
with their tummies full of sugary Froot Loops. They turn the kids’ energy into an illness. They call it attention deficit
and dose them up good, so they sit cooped up inside the whole livelong day. Who benefits? The drug makers. That’s the real
‘disorder’ we’re talking about.”

I recall my son Jack’s Ritalin year, practically a rite of passage for every other fourth-grade boy at Fox Country Day. Marge
Hooper and Leah Stromberger had coaxed me to their pediatrician because Tucker and Brent behaved so much better. Jack did
too, but we wanted our real son, not a Stepford boy. Even Marty agreed, Marty who hardly gave the family a thought.

“Okay,” I say. “I take your point.” We work along. The new spring hues are light and bright. “I hear the Rasta colors are
red, green, and gold. Are they symbolic?”

“They’re from the Garvey movement. The red stands for the Church Triumphant of the Rastas. It symbolizes the blood shed by
martyrs in the history of the Rastas.”

“Do their preachers wear red robes?”

“Not that I know.”

“I have one preacher in mind, a red-robed preacher with dreadlocks. He was—or is—called Big Doc. What can you tell me?”

“Not very much.”

Nicole can clam up when you least expect it. If knowledge is power, Nicole Patrick guards hers carefully. Years of social
work made her the eyes and ears of Boston’s black communities: Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan. She’s a storehouse of information,
but prying it loose is something else.

I’m not ready to be shut out. “This Doc headed a group home on Eldridge Street near the turnpike. I’m trying to find out—”

Just then an unlikely customer enters, a tall white woman in a plaid jacket and a briefcase-like handbag. She and Nicole exchange
air kisses. “Reggie, would you come on over? There’s someone I’d like to introduce. Regina Cutter, this is Ms. Caroline French.
Ms. French represents the Newton Home and Garden Alliance.”

We shake hands. Caroline French has light brown hair and ivory skin and a certain eagerness about the eyes. Her emerald-cut
wedding set brushes my fingertips.

“I love this shop,” she says to me, white-to-white. “The heavenly aroma—it’s my favorite, sorbet à l’orange. And how inspiring
to know so many women are rising to their full potential.”

“Reggie, Ms. French and I have been talking about our StyleSmart ladies modeling their new career clothes for a luncheon benefit
event. It’s a fashion show that Ms. French is chairing next month in Newton.”

Newton, the home of Boston College, the Chestnut Hill Mall, many large and lovely homes.

“Such a paradigm, your store,” Caroline French says in well-modulated tones. “Your women bravely helping themselves to a better
life… and the great determination of your people to get going.”

Your people, so different from hers. From the shop’s front window, I notice that Ms. French gets going in a Mercedes SUV.

Nicole says, “Reggie, Ms. French tells me the Alliance hopes to name StyleSmart as the beneficiary of their fund-raising this
year.”

It’s my cue. “How wonderful! StyleSmart so very much appreciates the opportunity to work with your organization. Did Ms. Patrick
tell you she envisioned this store after years as a social worker? No? Well, the store is flourishing. With the help of groups
such as the Newton Home and Garden Alliance, we can continue to work with the women whose self-esteem and economic independence
we strive to advance.”

This goes on. We all look at our calendars and commit to a plan. Caroline French rises, and we all promise to finalize the
specifics.

After she leaves, Nicole practically orders me to script and direct the Newton fashion show. “You can talk that white talk,
Reggie. Those home and garden ladies can do us a world of good.”

Opportunity knocks. Like Nicole, I can strike a bargain. I look her in the eye. “Before I say yes, Nicole, I want to know
who lived in a group house on Eldridge Street about thirteen years ago. I want to know what happened to the red-robed preacher
who was called Doc or Big Doc. The house was destroyed by a fire, and I want to know who were the people in that house and
where they went.”

“Well, that’s a bundle.”

“There’s more. I need to know about a man named Henry Faiser. He’s black, and he lived in that house. He’s now in prison for
a murder he possibly did not commit.”

Silence falls like a winter night. What I hear next is a ticking sound in Nicole’s throat. She lowers her voice to a throaty
whisper and says, “Reggie, you got a nice new life goin’ for yourself. You got a roof over your head and lights in the darkness
and taps running hot and cold water. You got kids, maybe one day some grandkids. You got spirit, Reggie, just like your Aunt
Jo said. But you got to be careful it doesn’t turn into ‘vexation and vanity of spirit’ or you’ll have ‘no rest in your spirit.’
So don’t you go looking for new trouble. Take a word of good advice. Mind your business. Stay away from evil dealings.”

I
n Boston, regular coffee means with cream. I sip, wipe off donut glaze icing from my fingertips, and look at my watch. It’s
3:14 p.m. Finally, Frank Devaney appears.

“Reggie, sorry. Couldn’t get away. Let’s sit in the back. I’ll grab a coffee. You all set?”

We move to the farthest of the fast-food pink plastic molded seats, which allow you ten minutes before your spine cries out
for a chiropractor. Devaney balances coffee and a cream-filled donut. With his back to the wall, he can see whoever comes
in. He likes fluorescent light and quick customer turnover. They appeal to his idea of public privacy. I resist a joke about
the cop-donut connection as he sits down. His eyes are bloodshot, and he could use a shave. He scans the room, flips his necktie—chrome
yellow with red comets— over one shoulder, arranges a plastic fork beside a napkin, and centers his donut as if it’s a first
course.