The Vanishing Half(53)
“That’s enough,” Loretta said softly, but she didn’t have to. By then, the mood had soured. Belinda and Eunice left before the game even finished. Stella washed the wineglasses while the girls cleaned up their toys upstairs. It was getting late, nearly four. Blake would almost be home. Beside her, Loretta silently dried the glasses with a plaid dishtowel.
“I’m sorry,” Stella said. For what exactly, she didn’t know. Sorry for coming over, for ruining the card game, for being exactly who Eunice Woods accused her of being. She didn’t defend Loretta, not even to silly Cath Johansen. She conscripted her own daughter to lie, afraid her husband would find out she socialized with the woman.
Loretta gave her a strange smile.
“You think I want your guilt?” she said. “Your guilt can’t do nothin for me, honey. You want to go feel good about feelin bad, you can go on and do it right across the street.”
Stella set the wet glass on the countertop, dried her hands on the towel. So this is what Loretta really thought about her—a white woman swarming around to assuage her guilt. And wasn’t it true? She did feel guilty, but if anything, spending time with Loretta only made her feel even worse. Her real life seemed even more fake by comparison. And yet, she didn’t want to stay away, not even now, not when Loretta was angry at her. Loretta reached for the wet glass and knocked it off the counter, the glass shattering at their feet. She stared up at the ceiling, suddenly exhausted. She was too young to look this tired, but she must be, fighting all the time. Stella never fought. She always gave in. She was a coward that way.
Loretta bent to pick up the glass, but not thinking, Stella jutted her arm out and said, “Don’t, baby, you’ll cut yourself.” Then she was kneeling on the tile, cleaning up the mess she’d made.
* * *
—
FIRST MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. in Memphis, then Bobby Kennedy in downtown Los Angeles. Soon it felt like you couldn’t open a paper without seeing the bleeding body of an important man. Stella started switching off the news when her daughter came bounding into the kitchen for breakfast. Loretta said that, a couple months ago, Cindy asked her what assassination meant. She told her the truth, of course—that an assassination is when someone kills you to make a point.
Which was correct enough, Stella supposed, but only if you were an important man. Important men became martyrs, unimportant ones victims. The important men were given televised funerals, public days of mourning. Their deaths inspired the creation of art and the destruction of cities. But unimportant men were killed to make the point that they were unimportant—that they were not even men—and the world continued on.
Sometimes she still had dreams that someone was breaking into her house. More than once, she’d prodded Blake out of bed to check. “I told you it’s a safe neighborhood,” he grumbled, climbing back under the covers. But hadn’t she felt safe once, years ago, hidden in a little white house surrounded by trees? Now she slept with a baseball bat behind the headboard. “What’re you gonna do with that, Slugger?” Blake said, squeezing her tiny bicep. But when he traveled for business, she could never fall asleep without touching the worn handle, just to remind herself that it was there.
* * *
—
“YOU NEVER TALK ABOUT your family,” Loretta said.
In her backyard, she stretched out on a lawn chair, her face half hidden behind sunglasses. She wore a purple bathing suit, her legs still speckled with water from the pool. Stella craned her neck, watching the girls splash around. In two weeks, school was starting again, Kennedy back at the Brentwood Academy, Cindy off to St. Francis in Santa Monica. A good school, only half an hour away, Loretta said, and Stella felt relieved. She wanted to tell Loretta that it was for the best—there was nothing wrong with putting your head down and trying to survive—but she would only have made Loretta feel even more like she’d given in. Now Loretta was complaining about her in-laws flying in from Chicago—they planned to stay ten whole days, and Reg, of course, said yes, because he could never tell them no, and because, of course, she would have to do most of the entertaining while he was off to set.
“What about you?” Loretta said. “Does your husband get along with your parents?”
The pointed question caught Stella off guard; she was distracted, already wondering what she would do with the ten days when she wouldn’t see Loretta at all.
“My folks are long gone,” she said. “They’re . . .”
She trailed off, unable to finish. Loretta’s face fell.
“Oh honey, I’m sorry,” she said. “Look at me, bringin up bad memories—”
“It’s all right,” Stella said. “It happened so long ago.”
“You were young, were you?”
“Young enough,” she said. “It was an accident. Nobody’s fault.” Bad things happen, they just do.
“What about brothers or sisters?” Loretta said.
“No brothers.” Stella paused, then said, “I had a twin sister. You remind me of her a little.”
She hadn’t planned to say this, and as soon as she did, she regretted it. But Loretta only laughed.
“How so?” she said.
“Oh, I don’t know. Little ways. She was funny. Bold. Nothing like me, really.” She felt herself tearing up, hurried to dab her eyes. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m going on like this—”