The Vanishing Half(66)

Blake seemed happy for her when she finally received her diploma in the mail. But he was less thrilled when she announced that she wanted to take classes at Santa Monica College to earn her associate’s degree, or when she transferred to Loyola Marymount for her bachelor’s, or when, last year, Santa Monica College hired her as an adjunct for an Introduction to Statistics class. The job paid next to nothing, but she felt invigorated during her sections, standing at the chalkboard in front of a dozen undergraduates. Her faculty mentor, Peg Davis, was encouraging her to enroll in a master’s program next, even to start thinking about her PhD. She could become a full professor, earn tenure someday. Dr. Stella Sanders had a nice ring, didn’t it?

“It’s that women’s libber,” he complained, whenever Stella worked late on campus. “She’s the one putting all those ideas into your head.”

“Surprisingly, I have thoughts of my own,” she said.

“Oh, that’s not what I meant—”

“It’s exactly what you meant!”

“She’s not like you,” he said. “You have family. Obligations. She just has her politics.”

But when had Stella based her decisions on an obligation to family? That was heart space. And maybe it had always been her head guiding her. She had become white because it was practical, so practical that, at the time, her decision seemed laughably obvious. Why wouldn’t you be white if you could be? Remaining what you were or becoming something new, it was all a choice, any way you looked at it. She had just made the rational decision.

“I’ve told you already, you don’t have to do this,” Blake always said, gesturing to the stacks of tests under her arm. “I’ve always provided for this family.”

But she hadn’t accepted the job because she was worried about money. She’d just chosen her brain over her heart, and maybe that was what Loretta had seen, tracing that long line down her palm.

“You missed my toast,” Blake said when they’d returned from the Hardisons. He was tugging off his tie in the doorway to their closet.

“I told you I had to enter grades,” she said.

“And I told you tonight was important.”

“What do you want me to say? I tried my best.”

He sighed, staring out the darkened window.

“Well, it was a nice toast,” he said. “A nice party.”

“Yes,” she said. “The party was lovely.”



* * *



—

“I KNOW WHY YOU’RE HERE,” Kennedy said.

In the half-crowded restaurant, one week after The Midnight Marauders opened, she smiled at Stella across the table, playing with the white tablecloth. She always showed all of her teeth when she smiled, which unnerved Stella. Imagine, revealing so much of yourself. One table over, an Asian woman was grading term papers in between spoonfuls of split pea soup. Two young white men were arguing quietly about John Stuart Mill. Stella said that she had chosen a restaurant near USC’s campus because it was convenient, although that wasn’t, of course, true. She’d hoped the university crowd might prompt her daughter to rethink her own choices, or, at the very least, to feel embarrassed about them.

Stella unfurled her napkin, spreading it across her lap.

“Of course you do,” Stella said. “I’m here to have lunch with you.”

Kennedy laughed. “Sure, Mother. I’m certain that’s the only reason you drove all across the city—”

“I don’t know why you have to turn everything into some big conspiracy. I can’t go to lunch with my daughter?”

She hadn’t driven near campus in years, and even then she’d visited just a handful of times: the college tour, where she’d trailed behind her daughter, gazing skeptically at the trellises climbing the red brick, wondering how a girl with her grades would ever get in; move-in day, since lackluster test scores were nothing that family donations could not fix; a few shameful weeks later, to plead with the freshman dean after the resident assistant caught Kennedy smoking pot in her room. The drugs bothered Stella less than the indiscretion. Only a lazy girl would get caught, and her daughter was clever but lazy, blissfully unaware of how hard her mother worked to maintain the lie that was her life.

Now Kennedy smirked, slowly stirring her soup.

“Fine,” she said. “We’ll just save your lecture for dessert.”

There would be no lecture, Stella had promised Blake. She would only nudge Kennedy to do what was right. The girl knew that she needed to go back to school. She’d only missed a semester so far—she could go to the registrar’s office, explain that she’d had a mental lapse, and beg her way back in. She would be one term behind her peers—maybe she could graduate after summer school. Stella worked out various scenarios in her head, each time unable to land anywhere besides her own anger. Quitting school to become an actor! The idea was so idiotic, she could barely restrain herself from saying so as soon as she reached for the menu.

The most shocking part? She’d thought Kennedy had already been through her hell years. High school teachers calling because she cut class again, the awful report cards, the nights Stella heard the door creaking open at some ungodly hour and reached for her baseball bat before realizing that it was only her drunk daughter sneaking home. The mangy boys always hanging out of cars in front of the house, honking their horns.