The Vanishing Half(48)

“I met the neighbor,” she told Blake that night. “The wife.”

“Mmm,” he said, climbing into bed beside her. “Nice, at least?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“It’ll be fine, Stel,” he said. “They’ll keep to themselves, if they know what’s best.”

The room fell dark, the mattress creaking as Blake rolled over to kiss her. Sometimes when he touched her, she saw the man who’d dragged her father onto the porch, the one with the red-gold hair. Tall, gray shirt partially unbuttoned, a scab on his cheek as if he’d nicked himself while shaving. Blake pressed open her thighs and the man with the red-gold hair was on top of her—she could almost smell his sweat, see the freckles on his back. Then it was Blake’s clean Ivory soap again, his voice whispering her name. It was ridiculous—the men looked nothing alike and Blake had never hurt her. But he could, which made her grip him even tighter as she felt him sink inside.





Eight


The new neighbors were Reginald and Loretta Walker, and when the news spread that Sergeant Tommy Taylor himself was moving onto Sycamore Way, even the most belligerent faltered in their protest. Sergeant Taylor was, of course, a beloved character on Frisk, the hottest police drama on television. He played the straitlaced partner of the rowdy hero, always nagging him about paperwork and protocol. “File that form!” was his signature phrase, and for months, when Blake spied him across the cul-de-sac, he called it out to him in greeting. Reg Walker, mowing his lawn or plucking a newspaper from the driveway, always started before flashing his trademark smile, shrugging a little, as if he figured it the least offensive thing a white man might holler at him from across the street.

Blake loved it, like they were in on a joke together. He couldn’t see how patiently Reg Walker tolerated him. But it always embarrassed Stella, who hurried him inside. She barely watched television at all beyond the news, and she certainly had no interest in cop shows, so when she’d learned about the Walkers, she didn’t care at all that Reg was on some program that Blake liked. Maybe the husbands would be won over by this; if they had to live next to a Negro, he might as well be a famous one. A trusted one, even, a character they never saw onscreen out of his uniform. Imagine their surprise when they first saw Reg Walker: tall, lean, his hair picked out in a short natural. He wore green plaid pants with silk shirts that hugged his broad chest. A gold watch glinted on his wrist, bouncing the sunlight as he climbed into his shiny black Cadillac.

“Flashy,” Marge Hawthorne called him, in the same dramatic way she might have said, “Dangerous.”

On Friday nights, Stella watched the Walkers climb into their car, Reg wearing a black suit, Loretta draped in a royal blue dress. On their way to a party, maybe. Crowding with movie stars in a Hollywood Hills mansion, piling into a nightclub on Sunset with ballplayers. For a moment, Stella felt stupid for distrusting them. Bob Hawthorne was a dentist. Tom Pearson owned a Lincoln dealership. Perhaps, to the Walkers, the rest of them seemed like the undeserving neighbors. Glancing down at herself, already in her pajamas, she couldn’t disagree.

“Well?” Cath asked breathlessly, plopping beside her at the next PTA meeting. “What’re they like?”

Stella shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve only seen them once or twice.”

“I heard the husband is all right. But that wife of his is something else.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she’s uppity as I don’t know what. Barb told me that she wants to put her daughter at our school next year. It’s crazy, if you ask me! I mean, there’s perfectly good schools all over the city with plenty of colored children. They have buses and everything.”

Loretta Walker didn’t look like the type to start trouble, but what did Stella know about her at all? She kept her distance, only peeked out at her through the blinds. Reg Walker leaving for early-morning shoots in his Cadillac, Loretta wrapped in a silky green robe and waving at him from the porch. Loretta returning from the grocery store on Mondays, always Mondays, unloading her trunk. Once a tan Buick pulled into the driveway and three colored ladies piled out, carrying wine and cake. Loretta came down the driveway to greet them, laughing, her head thrown back. A big smile that made Stella smile too. When was the last time she’d seen anyone smile like that?

Through her blinds, she watched the Walkers as if their lives were another program on her television set. But she never saw anything alarming until the morning when she spotted her daughter playing dolls in the cul-de-sac with the Walker girl. There was no time to think. Before she knew it, she’d stormed across the street and grabbed her daughter’s arm, both girls gaping as she dragged Kennedy back into the house. She was shaking, fumbling to lock the door behind her as her daughter whined about the doll she’d left in the street. She already knew she’d overreacted—hadn’t she played with white girls when she was Kennedy’s age? Nobody cared when you were young enough. The twins used to follow their mother to work, playing with the white girl who lived there, until one afternoon the girl’s mother had suddenly yanked her out of their circle. Stella told her daughter the same thing she’d heard that mother say.

“Because we don’t play with niggers,” she said, and maybe it was her harsh tone, or the fact that she’d never said that word to her daughter before, but that was the end of it.