The Good House Part 4

"This deal is still fine. But I want to be honest. Stan tried to call me about five minutes after I hung up from you at lunchtime. I didn't pick up the phone. I couldn't talk to him," Angela said, and she felt her unspoken words being sucked back down her throat. She realized she had just swallowed a sob. Quickly, she wiped the corners of her eyes. Naomi wasn't the kind of friend Angela wanted to cry in front of. Maybe an old friend, if she'd hadn't been hiding from them, but not a new one, especially a client. Why had she brought it up?

She must be desperate to talk to someone, she realized. Life in the outside world wasn't as ordered as it had been at The Harbor, with daily friendship sessions scheduled at two. Paid friendship, after all, was better than having no one to tell.

"Honey!" Naomi said, blanketing Angela's hand with the warmth of her own. "What's wrong? Do you want to get out of here?"

Angela shook her head. "No, enjoy your food. I'm sorry."

"Sorry about what? I thought we were friends."

"We are friends." Angela had spent more time with Naomi in the past year than anyone else. Angela didn't see many old memories reflected in Naomi's face, and that alone made her precious.

"You have to listen to enough of my s.h.i.t, don't you? Tell me what's wrong."

So, against her better judgment, Angela told Naomi about Mrs. Everly's call, the offer on Gramma Marie's house, the time she'd spent in Sacajawea as a child. There were things she didn't say, but she didn't have to. Black Hollywood was a small circle, and there were some things everyone knew. "I think I just want to be rid of that place," Angela finished.

Naomi's eyes, watching her, were wide and all-absorbing. "That's deep, girl."

"Ain't it, though?"

Naomi smiled, virtually blinding Angela with her teeth. "That's the first time I've ever heard you use that word. You never sayain't."

Despite herself, Angela laughed. She dabbed her damp nostrils with her crumpled napkin. "Yeah, well, Gramma Marie drove that word out of my head. I tried to come to her every summer all grown, 'You don't tell me what to do and what to say' and all that mess. By the time she was through with me, I got scared when I eventhought the wordain't . Gramma Marie didn't play."

"That sounds like Mama June, my grandmama in North Carolina, part of that Booker T. Washington generation. Putting your best foot forward. Representing for the race."

"Yes," Angela said, heartened and surprised by this unexpected strand of kinship. "Gramma Marie made me read all of Booker T.'s books-Up from Slavery,the books about Tuskegee. Oh, and I had to readThe Souls of Black Folk by DuBois, too. Had me writing book reports on my summer vacations. Way back when, Mama wasn't allowed to go to school in that town because it was segregated, so Gramma Marie taught her at home. When I came along, she put all that schooling on me, too." And I tried to put it on Corey, she thought, keeping that part to herself. The thought hurt, but not nearly as much as it usually did.

"Just like me!" Naomi said. "Mama June was the first person to make me recite Langston Hughes poems. And she taught me how to walk with books on my head for my posture. I thought she was crazy, but just look at us now, Angela. G.o.d bless those strong black women, huh?"

"Yeah. G.o.d bless them," Angela said. A rare radiance flooded her heart. She hadn't permitted herself to think about how much she missed even her memories of Gramma Marie, given that so much of her grandmother was locked inside a house she could no longer stand the sight of. Tears came, but they didn't feel bitter. Nor drain her strength.

"I'm'a tell you what I think," Naomi said, leaning closer. "Your decision about selling your grandmama's house and that history, that's between you and Jesus. Maybe selling the house will be the best thing, in the end. But something else Mama June used to tell me: I have intuition. I've got a good feel for people and situations. And it sure comes in handy in this town, where people kiss your a.s.s for an hour and forget you an hour later. So I have a feeling about you, Angela."

Angela believed in intuition, too, she realized. She hadn't always, but she did now. She had irrefutable proof of it: She'dknown something was wrong that day of the party. All day long, she'd known it. That might be what had driven her crazy for a little while, just knowing that she'd known. And that knowing hadn't mattered. It hadn't helped her stop it.POP "What's your feeling?" Angela said.

Naomi put her face was so close to Angela's that their noses nearly touched. "You can't make that decision until you go to the house again. Spend a few days with it. See if you're ready to say good-bye."

Angela pulled away. "I can't do that."

"Youthink you can't. But I think you have to, Angela. If you never go back and you decide to sell that house, you might wake up one day and realize you made a mistake you can't fix. And all because you didn't know you were ready. What you gonna tell the ancestors then?"

The ancestors. Now, Naomi sounded like Gramma Marie. It dawned on Angela that she'd never learned more about Naomi's life outside of the business because she hadn't shared more of herself either. So much of her job entailed trying to soothe Naomi's artist's ego, she'd tricked herself into believing that was all there was to this woman. Naomi knew her better than she'd thought, and she didn't know Naomi nearly well enough.

"You know what happened in that house, Naomi." This was the closest she'd come to talking about the Fourth of July with someone who wasn't a shrink.

"Yes, ma'am, I do."

"Then you know why I can't go back there right now."

"I also know that's your grandmama's house, and you can't run from it. If you go back there and the love has been buried by the pain, all right then. That's when you'llknow . Go on and sell it, let someone else love it. But you can't walk around thinking you're the same person you were two years ago-because I saw you two years ago, girl, and it ain't true."

Had Naomi been at the funeral? Of course she had, because almost all of her old law firm's clients and other industry types had attended out of respect. They hadn't been doing her any favors, either. Ironically, Angela mused, her display at the funeral was probably the reason so many clients had hesitated to hire her. But not Naomi. She had seen the whole thing-the beginning of what had felt like Angela's irretrievable descent into a mental bog-and it hadn't mattered to her.

"I can't go through that again," Angela said.

"Angela, youwon't . Look, I'm not saying it won't hurt-of course it will. But my intuition tells me you need to do this. Not a little bit, either. Alot . And you know what? If it'll make it easier, I'll go with you."

A young couple in African-style clothing was hovering a few yards from their table, pretending to read a newspaper article framed on the wood-paneled wall while they glanced at Naomi every few seconds with fevered recognition. They were both in their twenties, an age Angela could barely remember, a figment of her own imagination. Angela both pitied and envied the woman she'd been then, always railing at life because she thought it was so hard-when she still had no idea what hard really was. Hard had just been getting started.

The couple took steps toward them, and Angela knew she was going to lose Naomi's attention to fans-"spreading good juju," Naomi called it. But Naomi did something Angela had never seen her do before: She shifted away from the curious couple. Nothing overt, but enough that her body language spoke volumes, a big red neonDO NOT DISTURB sign. The couple got the message. With sad faces, they drifted back to their seats.

"Think about it, all right?" Naomi said, holding Angela's eyes. "Maybe after you get me my million from FilmQuest. My next shoot isn't until the end of the month. Why don't we celebrate in...what's your grandmother's town called again?"

Suddenly, Angela felt a bubble break.

How could she expect Naomi Price to drop everything to go up to Gramma Marie's house with her? Naomi wouldn't be caught dead in Sacajawea. People like Naomi Price went through life governing their satellites, and Angela was just another of her satellites. Angela had seen Naomi talk to fans and producers alike with this identical intense sincerity, and Naomi's ability to make people believe they were the center of her universe was her greatest star quality.

Down girl,Angela scolded herself, looking away from Naomi's eyes. She was obsessing, a feeling she recognized from a squeezing sensation in her chest. As the shrinks had pointed out, her tendency to obsess and second-guess had betrayed her many times before. What was so d.a.m.ned hard about allowing herself to have one true friend?

"It's called Sacajawea," Angela said, ignoring her misgivings. "And I'll think about it."

And maybe, G.o.d help her, she really would.

Three.

THIS WAS GOINGto be one of the hard nights.

A daily menu of tragedies on the ten o'clock news blared from Angela's television set while she untied the melted ice-pack from her sore left thigh. Early on, she used to coddle herself when she felt tweaks and twinges while she was running, but now she'd learned to endure the punishment and distinguish between normal and abnormal pains. She iced at night, and in the morning she'd wake up groaning and hissing as she swung her cadaver-stiff legs over the side of her bed. How had the gorgeous guy in the park put it? Feeling like she'd been hit by a truck. Right on, mister.

But she could live with that. Physical pain was the easiest part of her life.

As Angela stood at her kitchen counter unwrapping herself, she sipped from her cup of herbal tea and dreaded going to bed. She couldn't put it off much longer. If she didn't hit her pillow by ten-thirty, she'd have no chance of getting up by five-thirty, which was the only routine that gave her enough time in the mornings to jog, read theTimes and the trades, and start making her East Coast telephone calls before the New Yorkers headed to lunch.

She hadn't turned on her lights. The dancing, flickering parade of colors glowing from the television set cast strobelike shadows across the stacks of boxes crowding what was supposed to be her living room. There was a sofa in there somewhere, but mostly the room looked unchanged from when she'd moved into the Sunset Villas apartment eight months before. The only difference now was that most of the boxes had been ripped open. She had never really unpacked, constantly searching through boxes. She could think of much more practical uses for the $2,500 a month she spent on this secure downtown apartment and its 1,500 square feet of glorified storage s.p.a.ce. She'd moved in with the dream of an elegant place to entertain her clients: Her kitchen had Italian granite floors and counters, the balcony was large enough for a party, shaded by potted palm trees, and the obscenely large master bathroom was equipped with a black marble jetted soaking tub she and her aching muscles practically lived in.

So far, no one had seen any of it but her, and the longer she lived here, the more she doubted anyone ever would. She slept here and occasionally ate here, but the apartment felt more cold and austere all the time. She was a visiting drifter. Every morning, Angela awoke to the chaos of boxes and asked herself if she believed this was the way a healthy person would live. The answer, of course, wash.e.l.l no . But as much as she hated not being unpacked, she had not claimed this s.p.a.ce either.

The newscaster's voice made its way past her thoughts. "...Century City toddler is dead tonight after his six-year-old brother accidentally shot him with a handgun their father left within the boys' easy reach, police say. The tragedy happened-"

Instinctively, Angela picked up the remote and changed the channel. She found Lifetime, whereThe Golden Girls were wisecracking in the safety of their comfortable, pastel world. How could she have forgotten never to watch the news before bedtime? Maybe she'd been testing herself, hoping she was ready to reenter the detached society of people who didn't take the nightly news personally. If so, she'd just failed the test.

Angela finished her tea, hoping the valerian root, pa.s.sionflower, and kava-kava would take her down fast, since it was late and she didn't have time for a hot soak tonight. Supermarket tea wasn't as good as Gramma Marie's, but it would have to do. She wouldn't go foraging in her medicine cabinet for her bottle of Xanax, either. Those days were over. She would learn how to do this on her own, all by herself.

"Welcome to h.e.l.ltime," Angela sighed, and she limped toward her bedroom.

h.e.l.ltime. Bedtime. One night at a time.

My mama is not going to be-LIEVE this Mom? Can I talk to you? I want to give you something Angela's eyes snapped open. Eleven o'clock, the bright red numbers on her clock said.

She thought she'd made it. She almost had. But as soon as she'd felt her limbs finally loosening with occasional tiny sleep-spasms, the lid on the Pandora's box in her mind had toppled out of place, releasing the voices. She'd heard that teenage girl from Roscoe's, the one who'd wanted Naomi's autograph. And then Corey next.

The voices almost always led to Corey.

Some people had bad dreams. Not Angela. She wasn't certain she dreamed at all; she couldn't remember a dream she'd had in years. But h.e.l.ltime was the weakness in Angela's defense system-she couldn't control her thoughts when she was in that s.p.a.ce between waking and sleeping, vulnerable. The closer she floated toward sleep, the more animated her mind's menagerie became, playing random images, voices, and whole conversations, as if an entire cast of characters sat in her head waiting for the curtain to rise.

Why,here you are, Angela. So nice of you to join us again, old girl!

Sometimes she bobbed to consciousness and realized she couldn't follow the nonsensical trains of thought, and she drifted to full sleep, relieved and unmolested as the harmless babble whispered in her imagination. But sometimes-oftentimes-her thoughts came back to familiar, painful re-frains. Her thoughts took her hostage. When that happened, she felt herself fleeing to wakefulness like she had fallen into a well, flailing for light and air.

My mama is not going to be-LIEVE this Corey and that girl from Roscoe's would be about the same age now, seventeen. If Corey had been at the restaurant having dinner with them tonight, he might have thought the girl was cute. He might have pretended to be looking elsewhere while he glanced up at her with quick, sly flicks of his eyes, the way she'd first noticed by the time he turned thirteen. MyG od, she'd thought to herself when she observed it, Corey is changing. Corey is growing up.

Except that he wasn't growing up, not anymore. Corey was dead.

Dead.

A handgun his father left within easy reach POP.

You f.u.c.king sonofab.i.t.c.h. Look into this coffin and see what you did. Just like Emmett Till's mama said when they beat her son to death, I want you to SEE it.You did this, Tariq. Look at his face. Look what you did to him with that gun and your lies. It doesn't even LOOK like him anymore! YOU KILLED HIM YOU f.u.c.kING SONOFAb.i.t.c.h I'm gonna take care of you good, Mom Angela jerked to full wakefulness again. Her heart had lobbed itself into her throat, beating hard. She raised her hand to the spot, wondering if her air pa.s.sage was blocked. But, no. She could breathe, even if her breath had hitched slightly. She felt a thin sheen of perspiration across her neck, tracing it with her index finger to her collarbone. When Angela saw the boxes stacked around her bed, she stared and blinked for a few seconds, confused. Where had these boxes come from? Dr. Houston wouldn't like these boxes in her room. She didn't have clearance for so many things. It was against The Harbor's regulations.

But she wasn't at The Harbor, was she?

Angela recognized her venetian blinds slatting the moonlight, the red numbers glowing from the digital clock. Eleven-twenty. This was the apartment. She wasn't still living at the private mental retreat where she'd checked herself in for three months after Corey's death. She had left The Harbor nearly eighteen months ago. Dr. Houston had written her a prescription for Xanax, referred her to an outside psychotherapist, a.s.sured her of how much better she was doing, and told her she was free to go. Resume your life, she'd said. Start your new business, your talent agency. Go home.

Home.

Dr. Houston's pleasant face and manner had disarmed Angela from the start, even if the woman's good humor had seemed naive.A ball of smiles, Angela had thought when she'd first sat in her office at The Harbor. No white coat, no clipboard. She'd offered Angela hot tea and chocolate-chip cookies fresh from the kitchen's oven. She had a sunny dress and gentle questions.

Why have you decided you should be here, Angela?

Angela had notdecided that she should be there, she thought. It all had been decided for her.

I'm afraid I'm going to hurt myself or someone else, Angela told her.

Who are you afraid of hurting besides yourself?

My husband. My ex-husband.She liked the sound ofex, an erasure. An undoing.

She told Dr. Houston how she had browsed through aSoldier of Fortune magazine one day at a newsstand in the months after Corey's death, sobbing, wondering not-so-idly if it was true you could find a hit man in the cla.s.sifieds section. That was what the rumors said. She thought of a movie she'd seen, one of those j.a.panese animes Corey had liked so much-she couldn't remember the name-where someone ordered a hit on himself and then changed his mind. Would she change her mind, too? Probably. She'd be much better off if she followed her mother's example and swallowed a bottle of pills, she thought. Then, standing there, she'd imagined what it would feel like to hire someone to kill Tariq instead, and she knew she wouldn't change her mind about that. She'd instruct the hit man on exactly what to say: "Tell the truth and I'll let you live." And Tariq would sputter and beg, and he'd finally tell the whole truth:Yes, I lied about getting rid of the gun, and I brought it with me to Sacajawea. It was in my suitcase. Corey must have found it. I lied the whole time. Half the words that come out of my mouth are lies, and they always have been. And the hit man would say to Tariq, "I lied, too. This is for Corey, from Angela. A life for a life," and after Tariq's eyes went wide with terror, his killer would pull the trigger. He'd shoot him in the head. Just like Corey.

That fantasy, she told Dr. Houston, was the only thing of late that brought her any happiness.

You have a very active imagination,Dr. Houston said.When did you first start believing you would like to kill your husband?

When I saw that my child had been shot with that gun.

Well, not right away, she recalled, amending her response. At first, since Tariq had promised her he'd gotten rid of the gun years ago, she had tried her best to argue G.o.d and the universe out of the impossible thing they had conspired to try to make her believe. Corey could not have Tariq's gun, and therefore Corey could not be dead. She could not be seeing what her eyes thought they were seeing. It could not be. He got rid of it. He said so.

How did your husband explain the gun's presence in the house?

Lies, Angela said. If he had told her the truth when it happened-if he had fallen to his knees with the sobs of a sinner and admitted that he'd brought the gun with him to Sacajawea-she might have been able to forgive him. She'd wanted so badly not to feel so horribly alone after Corey died. Because, you see, in the end, you are alone. In the beginning, it was everyone's concern-the people at the party, the sheriff's office, the forensics experts who did their tests to determine that the wound, indeed, had been self-inflicted to the head. From day to day, Angela had been able to busy herself with the details of trying to understand what had happened, how it had happened, the exact time it had happened, searching for a suicide note (there had been none, thank G.o.d, so the final ruling wasaccidental death although everyone conceded they would never really know), and planning the funeral. The details at the opulent funeral home had been endless and traumatic in their specificity-what to write on the head-stone, what kind of pillow to have in the coffin-yet it had all been perversely comforting to her, a last project for Corey's sake. Her last chance to be his mother.

Every step of the way, she'd been surrounded by people for whom Corey's death was their most important priority. Sympathetic tones and earnest eyes.We'll look into this. We'll take care of this. But as time had pa.s.sed, the number of people in that circle of concern had shrunk, and they all went on with their lives. The police took longer and longer to respond to her calls, and even when she talked to Sheriff Rob Graybold and asked him to repeat facts for her, she could hear the beginning of impatience after a time.There's really nothing more to it, Angie, he'd told her one day with nearly impolite finality, and she'd felt a flash of aching embarra.s.sment. One by one, they were all gone, until she'd been the only one left.

If only Tariq had told her the truth, if he'd said he was sorry about the gun, she would not have been alone. The aloneness had been almost as bad as seeing Corey's bleeding head in the cellar.

But, no. Tariq had not told the truth. He'd stuck to his original lie, the one he'd first birthed the day he came home and said,I hope you're happy now, b.i.t.c.h. He got rid of the gun, he swore to the police. He didn't care if the gun Corey had shot himself with was identical to the one he'd had, with the same silver packing tape wrapped around the b.u.t.t. He'd been like a hustler trying to con his way out of a petty charge, never telling the truth, not even to save his soul in the wake of his own son's death. He blubbered and sobbed and moaned, lying the entire time. And Sheriff Rob Graybold and the county police decided Corey must have found the mysterious gun on his own, that it did not belong to Tariq. A big coincidence, they said.

It wasn't enough that Angela had lost her son. She'd lost her son to a lie.

And people wondered why she'd made such a scene at the funeral, throwing a metal folding chair at Tariq that glanced off of his jaw and shoulder before clattering to the floor, destroying the mournful tranquility of the church like a bomb. Why it had taken three people to pull her off of him.

And now you're afraid you might hurt yourself?Dr. Houston said.

Yes, because life has f.u.c.ked me by leaving me no one to love, Angela had told her. If you want the truth, doctor, every day feels like a ritual punishment I have to endure before I'm allowed to die. I can stay in bed for days, pretending I'm dead, and I like it. I finally understand my mother-she was such a regular visitor to the psych unit, she should have had her own wing. Now I know why she always ended up there every summer like clockwork. My mother heard the demons laughing, and she saw the truth. You want to know what the truth is? Happy people are just people who haven't learned better yet. Once you know that, it's hard to go back to the bulls.h.i.t. But I want to unlearn what I know. I want to reclaim the fantasy. I want to go back to sleep like the happy people.

Going back to sleep, Angela learned each night, was easier said than done. Eighteen months after she'd left The Harbor, two years and two months since Corey's death, getting to sleep at night was still the most treacherous part of her day.

In the dark, Angela opened her nightstand drawer, which was empty except for what appeared to be a hardcover copy of Alex Haley'sRoots . But it was not. Angela had fitted the book cover atop a small safe built in the shape of a book, a marvel she'd ordered from a spy shop when a client raved about how she was fooling her housekeeper by keeping her jewelry in what looked like a can of WD-40 oil spray. Corey's confession the day he died had done little to make Angela feel more at ease about the possibility of theft. She didn't own much she considered of value anymore, but Corey's death had made her more resolute that she would not take any chances.

The book safe was filled with padding. Beneath that, a small felt ring case. And inside the ring case, Gramma Marie's gold ring.

Even with only the moonlight, Angela could see the ring's tawny glow, dulled by darkness. She slipped the ring onto her left ring finger and squeezed her hand, exactly the way she had when Corey had brought it back to her. She closed her eyes as the precious metal bit gently into her skin.

Mom, I did something, and I have to make it right This was progress, she thought. For the first year, she'd shunned the ring. She'd kept it safe, knowing that it had been Corey's last gift to her, but she'd found it too hard to look at the ring in the beginning. But she had worked her way back into wearing it again. On the days she didn't run, she wore it to work. When her a.s.sistant, Imani, complimented the ring a few weeks ago, Angela had said,It was my grandmother's, and it had felt good to mention Gramma Marie again, honoring her. When Angela wore the ring at night, she believed it helped her sleep. Not always, but sometimes. The spirits of both her grandmother and her son lived in this ring, and perhaps she felt so lost because she was not communing with them often enough, she thought.

Gramma Marie's good-luck talisman. Corey's good-bye token.

Hot tears washed Angela's face, but she was so accustomed to tears that she almost didn't notice them. At least she wasn't doubled over in sobs, her throat peeled raw. Those exhausting nights, thankfully, seemed long behind her. Tonight's tears, like those she had shed in front of Naomi, were not the bitter poison that had driven her to The Harbor. These tears were different.

Go home,Dr. Houston had said.

Barefoot, Angela padded across her bedroom's lush carpeting to her hallway and the living room's hardwood floors, making her way to the little-used kitchen telephone hanging on the wall above the counter. She dialed the number and waited while the phone rang only once.

"Hey, Naomi," Angela said after the voice mail's chipper message. "I'm calling on your cell because it's after midnight, too late to bother you at home. I've been thinking about what you said, and you know what? You're right. I need to visit the house. I think I'm ready, and I need to make this sojourn whether I'm ready or not. If you'd still like to come with me"-her voice faltered. Why wasthis the hard part?-"well, I'd really appreciate it. Maybe you could come up just for a weekend or something and I'll stay a few days after you go. We can work it out. But I wanted to tell you now, before I change my mind. Let's toss around some dates tomorrow, okay?"

By the time Angela went back to bed, she slid into the bosom of sleep as effortlessly as a toddler who had never known loss and had yet to learn fear. No muddy, dreamy voices plagued her.

With Gramma Marie's ring hugging her finger, Angela slept straight through until dawn.