Wherever There Is Light (9 page)

“I sent it to my friend, Simon, at the
Pittsburgh Courier
. It made me feel less helpless. Simon got it to the AP.”

“Derrick would've approved.”

“He would've.”

They were silent. Then Kendall said, “Can you forgive me? For blaming you.”

“It's okay.”

“I felt—I feel so—so responsible.”

“You're not.”

Her face was melting toward tears. Julian wanted to hold her, wanted to leave the church and take her to Café Society to hear Big Joe Turner, to the Carnegie for pastrami with Russian dressing—anything to chase her sadness away. He touched her arm, and it stirred him when she covered his hand with hers. Despite her dressy clothes, the man's rectangular Hamilton with the cracked leather band was on her wrist.

Kendall saw him looking at it. “My grandfather left me his watch.”

The choir, in scarlet robes, filled the balcony behind the pulpit.

“It's about to start,” Kendall said, and returned to her seat.

As the choir sang and the minister preached, Julian was preoccupied with thoughts of Kendall and only heard snatches of the service. “The Nazis ain't got nothin' on Jim Crow,” the preacher thundered. “Our brave son of Harlem, Derrick Larkin, was neither afraid nor dismayed. Not even a hanging tree could separate him from the love of Jesus. . . .”

After two hours Julian decided that it was crazy for him to pursue Kendall. White and colored, it wouldn't work. And she had dreams. Julian would be in her way. He should find a white woman with a yen for a mansion in the Jersey suburbs. That idea infuriated him, since she wouldn't be Kendall, but he meant to stick to his plan—at least until the preacher announced that Derrick's brother and his dearest friend from college were going to perform a song.

Eddie had told Julian that Otis could tickle the hell out of the ivories, but Julian was unprepared for the music he heard as Otis played that baby grand. Julian recalled hearing the Utica Jubilee Quartet perform the spiritual on WJZ, but Otis was jazzing it up and that pounding music in a minor chord rose to the vaulted ceiling, asking,
LordLordLord
,
why, oh why did You let my good brother die
?

Then Kendall, standing alone in the center of the pulpit, sang:

I am a poor wayfaring stranger,

Travelin' through this world of woe . . .

Her voice was darker than Julian had ever heard it, and the loneliness that he'd seen behind her radiant facade was on display for all to hear.

I want to see my good Lord's glory

I want to walk His Promised Land

I'll tell Him our long, sad story

He'll heal all hatred with His loving hand . . .

Light slanting through the stained glass windows behind Kendall enveloped her in a red, yellow, and blue mist. Otis went somewhere else on the piano, somewhere beyond this broken world where the sky is saturated with sound instead of light. And Kendall, a songbird in velvet and silk, went with him, head thrown back and clapping her hands. The church followed her, this girl blown by a gale of her own making, and the clapping reverberated across the sanctuary like stone being hammered to dust.

I'm just goin' over Jordan,

I'm just goin' over home . . .

As the final notes of the song faded, Julian wondered if he was really supposed to be released from this life without ever loving anyone. In which sacred text was it written that he and Kendall were destined to be prisoners of their skin? And here was a better question. What color was love? Julian laughed out loud, and while Eddie glanced at him as if a few of his screws had come loose, Julian figured that even God would have to forgive him for backing out of his plan, because only in Kendall's presence did his anger dissolve and make room for hope, and no being, divine or human, could blame a man for trying to save himself.

O
ne evening, eight weeks after the funeral, as an ice storm was transforming New Jersey into a skating rink, Kendall called Julian at his apartment.

“How— How are you?” he asked.

“Better, thanks. I'm doing better.”

Julian had been so excited to hear Kendall's voice and—because he didn't want to scare her off—so intent on hiding his excitement that the gift of speech deserted him. When he recovered it, the best he could do, much to his chagrin, was “I'm listening to
The Lone Ranger
.”

“How's Tonto?”

Julian laughed, but he was still distracted, because listening to the radio was only part of what he was doing. The other part of him was studying a Baedeker's guide to Paris. On Valentine's Day, after refusing a fix-up with a friend of Fiona's, he'd bought the guide at Brentano's. Since then, he had given up seeing any of his regulars and spent his free time with his face in the guidebook, imagining visiting Paris with Kendall and impressing her with historical tidbits and by not having to stop for directions.

Kendall said, “I have to be in Miami the weekend of March eleventh. For a regional sorority meeting.”

That information led to a sudden change in his plans. “Me too.”

She chuckled, and Julian realized that he'd just claimed to belong to a sorority.

The operator broke in, requesting that the caller deposit another dollar. “Julian, I'm using the pay phone in my dorm, and I'm out of change. I'll be at the Mary Elizabeth Hotel. On Saturday. Is two o'clock okay?”

“Yes,” he said, and was asking her to call back collect when she hung up.

The Mary Elizabeth Hotel was in Overtown, a colored neighborhood in the City of Miami, and Kendall, with her khaki satchel slung over her shoulder, was standing in the entranceway, under a lime-green banner with swirly black lettering:
WELCOME ALPHA KAPPA ALPHA
.

“So that's your sorority?” Julian said as he held the car door for her.

“The oldest Negro sorority in the country. It was founded in nineteen-oh-eight. At Howard.”

Just the mention of where Derrick had gone to school was enough to keep them quiet, and Julian wondered if it was still too soon for her.

As he drove across the causeway, Kendall said, “We get together every March to elect officers and talk about budgets. But this year we were writing letters asking people to contact Mrs. Roosevelt and see if she'll help Marian Anderson find a place to sing in Washington.”

The Daughters of the American Revolution, owners of Constitution Hall, had forbidden Marian Anderson, a Negro opera singer, from performing on their stage. In response, the president's wife had resigned from the DAR and detailed the fiasco in her newspaper column. Julian had followed the story thinking that with Japan invading China and the civil war in Spain and Mussolini cozying up to Hitler, the last thing those DAR biddies should worry about was the color of a singer. Julian, having made a fortune from Prohibition, was in no position to complain about some Americans' preoccupation with bullshit. Without the tight-ass legions busting up saloons, his wallet would've been a lot thinner.

Julian parked on Ocean Drive, and they walked north.

“Would you like to get an early supper?” he asked.

“You and me? At the same table? We can't. Miami Beach's no different than Mississippi.”

“Who says?”

“Jim Crow.”

“And how about not caring what people think? I thought we were gonna work on that.”

“We are, but it doesn't change the rules.”

“Let me show you something.”

Julian marched up a walkway of crushed seashells toward a hotel and stood before a sign in the bottom corner of the lobby window:
NO JEWS, NO COLOREDS, NO DOGS.

“Rules are supposed to protect people,” he said. “You play along, there's a payoff. But what do these rules do for me? Or for you?”

Kendall laughed. “Or for dogs?”

They started walking again. Men and women, all of them white and dressed with the fastidiousness of well-to-do tourists, streamed past, and Kendall noticed them gawking at her and Julian. From the corner of his eye Julian saw her break into a triumphant smile, as if she'd proved her point.

Julian, more accustomed to overt hostility than subtle odiousness, saw admiration in the faces of the tourists. He'd known Jewish and Italian girls as dark as Kendall and saw nothing peculiar in a white man strolling beside a woman with a light-caramel complexion. The gawkers, he thought, were responding to the loveliness of her face and how her tight ruby sweater and coral-pink skirt emphasized the curves and swells of her body.

“They're looking because you're beautiful,” Julian said, and took her hand.

Kendall squeezed his fingers, then let them go.

“You don't want to hold my hand?”

“I do, but does it have to be in Florida?”

“Where else?”

“Africa?”

She was grinning. Julian said, “The rules again? Fu—”

He caught himself before he cursed, which doubled the width of Kendall's grin.

“Fuck the rules?”

“Exactly.”

Kendall stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the lips. Julian held her hand, and they strolled along Lincoln Road, window-shopping at Bonwit Teller, Saks, and Harry Winston, and then went south on Washington Avenue. They didn't say much; they didn't have to, which pleased them both, for when they reached the end of the avenue and stood outside Joe's, a restaurant with the rugged simplicity of a hacienda, something new had sprung up between them, an ease, Julian thought, that a white couple would probably have taken for granted.

Kendall said, “We can go in?”

“Why not? They let Al Capone in.”

Julian wouldn't have been so confident if he hadn't stopped by yesterday to double-check his arrangements with the owner, whom he'd met last winter while eating there with Walter Winchell.

A waiter in a tuxedo uncorked a Riesling, and after they ordered the house specialty, Kendall removed a pack of Marlboros and a matchbook from her satchel. Before she could strike a match, Julian fished a gold lighter from his pocket and held it for her.

“Didn't know you smoked,” he said.

“Now you know all my bad habits: I smoke and say
fuck
.” Kendall smiled. “Which do you prefer?”

“Guess.”

The game ended there. Julian smoked a cigarette to keep her company. Kendall said, “You never asked how I got your phone number in New Jersey.”

“Didn't have to. I spoke to my mother on Thursday.”

“Did she mention the fire?”

“No, she didn't.”

“The building behind Mayor Scales's store burned down. Hurleigh lived in an apartment there. Rumor is that it was arson, and Hurleigh won't come near Lovewood.”

“That's good, right?”

Kendall peered at him. Julian had no intention of telling her about the Goldstein twins' proficiency with gasoline and matchsticks, and he was relieved when the waiter brought their dinner: stone crabs with mustard sauce and the sides of creamed spinach and fried potatoes were renowned for keeping conversation to a minimum.