Iron Lace Part 44

As he was searching for the right response, she carefully skirted him and disappeared into the crowd that was surging forward to see the Indian tribe just turning the corner. He tried to follow, but he was cut off immediately.

Against his will, he was carried along by the enthusiastic crowd. The beat, the steady insistent beat that had drummed all morning, seemed to swell in intensity. Now it was a primal roar, the throbbing of hundreds of hearts and voices. He was immersed in it, and he couldn't fight his way out to find Belinda again, no matter how hard he tried. He could feel the heat and soft give of flesh, smell sweat and beer and woodsy perfume. He was carried forward, stumbling once, then righting himself easily, because there was no room to fall.

The crowd was chanting words he didn't understand. The sound rumbled in his chest until he wanted to chant with them, chant past the strange lump in his throat, chant his own pain. But he couldn't follow the voices of those around him. He was still a stranger here, and his pain was his own. The words, the ritual celebration, were theirs.

The crowd began to fan out and thin as they neared the Indians. People were moving to the sides in respect. He was thrown against a small female body clutching a little girl in her arms. He grabbed them both to stop them from pitching forward, and realized it was Debby.

"Hey, are you all right?"

She laughed. "Sure."

"Let me take her. She'll be safer." He reached for the child, and she went to him willingly. She was tiny, a beautiful little girl with a head of soft dark curls and pale brown skin. She clutched a rag doll in her arms. "Is this Vicki?"

Debby said something, but he couldn't hear her over the chanting. She nodded.

They moved toward the edge of the crowd. The Indians, this time costumed in orange and blue, were surrounded, and only flashes of them were discernible. As Phillip and Debby moved away from the center of the action, the noise lessened.

Phillip lowered his head. He felt required to say something to the child. "I like your doll."

She held it up for him to examine. The doll was handmade. Dark-skinned, like the child holding it. Someone had wanted her to have a toy that resembled her, instead of the white baby dolls that were the only commercial ones available.

They were far enough away from the heart of the noise that Phillip could be sure Vicki heard him. "What do you call her?"

"B'linda."

"Did Belinda give you this?" It would be just like Belinda to be sure that Vicki had a doll she could identify with.

She nodded, and her curls bounced against her cheeks.

He smiled. "She's beautiful, and so are you."

"I gotta learn to hold a baby."

"Do you?"

"B'linda's going to have a baby."

For a moment he didn't understand. "What do you mean?"

"B'linda's got a baby inside her. I gotta learn to hold a baby so I can help when her baby's borned."

Debby snaked her way to their side and held up her arms for her daughter. Phillip held Vicki tightly against him. He couldn't seem to relinquish her. He didn't know what Debby saw in his face, but her arms dropped to her sides. She pushed her mask back and waited warily for him to speak.

"Why did Belinda move in with you?" he asked.

"That's for her to tell you."

"Vicki says she's pregnant."

Debby held out her arms again, and this time he swung the little girl into them. Debby tried to move past him, but he put his hand on her shoulder. "Debby, please."

She lifted her chin. "There's n.o.body more careful than Belinda."

He knew how true that was. They had never made love without birth control. "I know that accidents happen."

She looked relieved, as if she had been afraid he would think Belinda had gotten pregnant on purpose. "You want to talk about this, you talk to her."

But he and Belinda had already talked about it, only Phillip hadn't known it at the time. They had talked casually about children, about making a home together, about commitment and responsibility. She had carefully, subtly, led him into those conversations and listened to his answers. And then she had gone away.

Because none of his answers had been the right ones.

Debby disappeared with Vicki, and the chanting swelled again. The Indians would move on, but they would leave honor and a fierce, stunning pride in their wake. The lump in Phillip's throat threatened his breath.

From the moment he left Nicky's house, he had been a bystander, an observer. He had thought himself above the ragtag mobs in the street, but now he saw the celebration for what it was. Nothing had kept these people, his people, down. Not slavery, not Jim Crow, not the prejudices that would probably rule the city for decades to come. These descendants of the slaves who had defiantly danced in Congo Square, who had developed their own patois, their own religion, their own traditions, had turned their backs on the Mardi Gras that the world knew and made their own. It was a life-affirming celebration, rich in satire, spirit and courage.

He thought of Aurore Gerritsen, who had lost her daughter because of her own prejudice and fears. He thought of Rafe Cantrelle, the man he supposedly resembled, who had nearly lost his daughter because he had been too afraid to love her.

He had not been raised at the knees of his grandparents. They had not been childhood heroes or role models. He had never known them, but still they had bequeathed him a legacy of uncertainty. Like them, he was afraid to love, to hold Belinda safely beside him and make a home despite the mess the world was in. He had never found a place where a black man could truly live free, and so he had never lived anywhere. He had existed on the sidelines, moving, noting, reporting, then moving again. Like his grandparents, he had never taken the largest risks or reaped the largest gains.

Like his grandparents, he had been afraid.

But there was more to Aurore's story than cowardice, revenge and betrayal. Now, at the end of her life, she was struggling to set things right, no matter how agonizing that was. And Rafe had died fighting for his daughter, for Nicky's future and, at the very end, for her life.

His grandparents had bequeathed him uncertainty, but they had bequeathed him more, as well. For the first time, Phillip realized what their story meant, and why Aurore's revelations had been so painful to hear-and so powerful.

Aurore and Rafe had been doomed by their love.

But they had bequeathed their grandson a second chance.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.

Finding men to clear the trash and debris from the abandoned house and yard in Belinda's old neighborhood had been the least of Phillip's worries. There was serious termite damage to the upper gallery, and vandals had destroyed more than half the windows. The iron lace that defined both galleries-and had so enchanted Belinda-was rusted, but not destroyed. Phillip cleaned it himself, gently sanding off the rust with fine steel wool until it was ready for multiple coats of black paint.

The day after he closed on the house, painters came to sand and prime the old barge board siding, and carpenters tore holes as wide as Lake Pontchartrain in the gallery floors before nailing new boards in place. Replacing the windows took most of a week, because the sashes, sills and ancient louvered shutters had to be carefully repaired, as well.

The inside of the house had fared slightly better. The cypress floors and most of the woodwork were still intact, and a thorough cleaning and waxing restored them to their original l.u.s.ter. Plasterers patched walls and ceilings, and electricians came along behind them to wreak havoc with the fresh plaster. There was no hope for the kitchen, and Phillip had it gutted, replumbed and rewired. But he bought no appliances. That could wait. The yard, even after its liberation from years of trash, was an eyesore. On his darkest days he was tempted to hack the tangled jungle to the ground with a machete and start all over again. But there was a magnolia tree as tall as the house on one side, and a centuries-old live oak dripping Spanish moss in the back. There was jasmine spilling over the fence, and a row of gardenias that, despite years of neglect, were loaded with buds. He brought in Jake-who could hardly contain his delight-for a lesson in landscaping. Together they tamed the worst of the wilderness, and even Nicky, who had shown great talent as a window washer, agreed that the two men had made a good start.

He chose a warm spring evening after most of the work was done to park in front of the white stucco house on Claiborne. He had carefully timed his visit. It was too late for dinner, too early for Belinda to be immersed in lesson plans. A brief call to Debby had a.s.sured him that Belinda was home.

She was sitting alone on the front gallery when he walked up the steps, almost as if she had been waiting for him. But she hadn't been waiting, because in the instant when she first realized who was there, her eyes grew wary and her back stiffened.

"Hi." He moved closer slowly, leaving a carefully calculated distance between them. He leaned against the gallery and rested his fingertips on the railing. "How have you been?"

"I'm not complaining."

"Of course not. That's not your way."

She got up, as if she were going inside. He gripped the railing to keep himself from lunging at her. "Don't go."

"I don't see any point in staying."

"I'd like it very much if you would."

She lowered herself back to the chair. His gaze darted down, just low enough to see if his son or daughter was making its presence known. Belinda was still slender, but, to his educated eye, her shape had grown lusher and more womanly. For a moment he imagined a better look. He had missed everything about Belinda, but the sweet glide of his hands over her warm flesh had been somewhere near the top of his list.

"I heard you were back in town," she said.

He riveted his gaze back on her face. "Did you?"

"I heard you got knocked around pretty bad in Selma."

He had gotten a chestful of tear gas and a crack on the skull that would have been deadly if one of the white marchers hadn't thrown himself in the policeman's path just before the club made contact. "Not as bad as some."

"Did you make it all the way to Montgomery?"

It had been the longest walk of Phillip's life. "I made it. But I didn't come here to talk about that. I have something I'd like you to see."

"I have to do plans for tomorrow. You know my evenings are busy."

"I know lots of things about you, Belinda. More than almost anyone, wouldn't you say?"

She had never been a woman who spent time on verbal games. "Debby told me that you know about the baby."

He nodded slowly. "I do."

"I don't want anything from you. You didn't want this to happen, and you don't have to do anything now that it has. I'll manage just fine."

"I have no doubt you will. You're resilient to a fault."

She stood again. He pushed himself away from the rail. "I think, under the circ.u.mstances, you can spare me a few minutes. Don't you?"

"What for?"

"I told you. I've got something to show you."

Her back was still straight, but she seemed less sure of herself. "Did you come here with some idea that you could buy me off?"

He frowned. "What?"

"I don't want your money, Phillip. I don't want it for myself, and I don't want it for my child. I take care of what's mine. I don't need your help, and I don't want you messing with us."

"Don't you?" He moved closer, cutting her off so that she would have to push past him to get to the front door. "What exactly is it that you don't want me messing with? You don't want me to be a father to my own kid?"

"Do you think that any father is better than none?"

Anger flared. "I'm not just any father. Who do you think I am? Some no-account b.a.s.t.a.r.d who doesn't live up to his responsibilities?"

"No!" She folded her arms. "You'll live up to them, all right, if I let you. But there won't be any joy in it. Don't you think this baby will know that? I was raised like that. My mama was so tired and so poor that every kid she had was just one more burden. She fed us what she could and made sure we had a place to sleep, but she never once looked at any of us with love! Most of us didn't come out of that family in one solid piece. And I won't have that for my baby. I won't!"

"Belinda..." He took a deep breath. He had understood the depth of her pride. He just hadn't understood the depth of her sorrow. "Sweet girl, come with me. Let me just show you something. Just this. Then you decide. I won't crowd you. But you have to come with me."

"I don't have to do anything!"

"Yes. You have to do this." He towered over her. She was not a woman to feel menaced by anyone, but she seemed to wilt. Not from his words or his proximity, but, he suspected, from her own revealing display of emotion.

"Then will you leave me alone?"

"There is no way I'm going to desert you or this baby. No matter what you do or say. But I'll help you work out a way to make my presence less painful, if that's what you want."

She considered. He thought she would refuse again, but she nodded at last. "What do you want to show me?"

"Come with me. It's a short drive. My car's out front."

They made the trip in silence. She gazed out her window, and he couldn't even see her profile. The drive was a chance to castigate himself over and over again for all the mistakes he had made-and to wonder if he was making another by bringing her here.

He parked in front of her old shotgun. "Let's take a walk."

"What for?"

"Because we're here, and that's what we came for." He got out and rounded the car to open her door. He held out his hand to help her from the car. She took it reluctantly and dropped it as soon as she was standing.

"Have you been back here since you moved?" he asked.

"No."

He took her arm and steered her to the sidewalk. "I've missed living in the neighborhood with you."

She didn't respond.

"I wake up in the mornings sometimes, and I hear the mockingbirds singing outside my window. I turn over, and I put out my arms to find you, but you're somewhere else."

"Don't."

"I'm just telling you what I'm thinking."

"Where are we going?"

He might have done a million things wrong in this life. He had certainly done a million things wrong with this woman. But he had done one thing right. He had picked exactly the right moment to show her the house. The sun was just setting, and the remaining light was saturated with color, a brash Mardi Gras display of violet and bronze. The house was painted white now, waiting for its final coat of color, but the light had transformed it into a shifting rainbow. The iron lace, black and glistening, stood out in sharp relief.

He faced Belinda and put his hands on her shoulders; then he turned her to face the house. "This is my house." He dropped his hands and waited.

She stared at the house, taking all of it in. It would never be one of the city's finest architectural gems. It wasn't a large house, or even an unusual one in a city where whimsy and artistic vision had constructed entire blocks worthy of their own fairy tales. It sat on a street that tourists would never visit, on a lot that was surrounded by plainer, shabbier homes. But tonight, it was a masterpiece of hope restored.