The Vanishing Half(87)

“She never talks about him,” Kennedy said.

“Mine either,” Jude said.

At the end of the table, an old Jewish man hacked into his sweater sleeve. Jude glanced over, fiddling with a candy wrapper.

“What’s she like?” Kennedy asked. “Your mother.”

“Stubborn,” she said. “Like you.”

“I am not stubborn.”

“If you say so.”

“Well, what else is she like? She’s got to be more than stubborn.”

“I don’t know,” Jude said. “She works at a diner. She says she hates it but she’d never go anywhere different. She’d never leave Maman.”

“Is that what you call your grandmother?” Kennedy still couldn’t bring herself to say our.

Jude nodded. “I grew up in her house,” she said. “She’s getting old now. She forgets a lot. She still asks about your mom sometimes.”

An announcement crackled over the PA system. Kennedy added another packet of sugar to coffee she’d never finish.

“This is strange for me,” she said. “I don’t think you understand how strange it all is.”

“I know,” Jude said.

“No, you don’t. I don’t think anybody could possibly know.”

“Fine, I don’t know.” Jude stood, tossing her coffee in the trash can. Kennedy scrambled after, suddenly afraid that she’d leave her here. What if she’d pushed Jude away and now Jude decided not to tell her anything more? Knowing a little was worse than not knowing at all. So she followed Jude onto the elevator, riding in silence to the fifth floor, then she sat beside her in the waiting room next to a wilting plant.

“You don’t have to stay,” Jude said.

“I know that,” Kennedy said. But she did.



* * *



—

THE HOSPITAL RELEASED REESE that evening. When Jude wheeled him outside, Kennedy glanced up, startled to find the sky already cloaked in navy blue. For hours, she’d sat beside Jude in the waiting room, flipping idly through magazines, wandering down to the cafeteria for more coffee, or sometimes just sitting there, staring at that picture. She called in sick to her show. Admitted the flu had gotten to her after all. And in spite of every reason she had to leave, she stayed there in that quiet hospital room, until a brusque white nurse told them they could go. She thought about calling home. Frantz always tried to ring her before her shows, he’d worry if the understudy picked up. Still, she hailed a cab and helped Jude guide Reese inside. He was still a little loopy from the anesthesia, and the whole ride to the hotel, his head kept lolling onto her shoulder. Jude squeezed his thigh, and Kennedy glanced away. She couldn’t imagine needing anyone so openly.

She could have said good-bye outside the hotel, but she climbed out too. She and Jude didn’t speak. They each wrapped an arm around Reese’s waist, and together they lugged him inside. He was heavier than he looked, and by the time they reached the elevator, her shoulders burned. But she still held on until they made it inside the hotel room and gingerly lowered him onto the bed. Jude sat on the edge of the mattress, pushing the curls back from his forehead.

“Thanks,” she said softly, but she was still looking at Reese. That tenderness in her voice only meant for him.

“Well,” Kennedy said. She should’ve left but she lingered in the room. Jude would spend a few more days in the city while Reese recovered. Maybe Kennedy could stop by the hotel again tomorrow. Surely Jude couldn’t stay inside this dingy room all day, watching him sleep. Maybe they could go out for coffee or lunch. She could show her around the city so she’d be able to say that she did more in New York than see a mediocre musical and sit in a hospital waiting room. Jude walked her down to the lobby, and Kennedy slowly wrapped her scarf around her neck.

“What’s it like?” she said. “Mallard.”

She’d imagined a town like Mayberry, folksy and homey, women leaving pies to cool on their windowsills. A town so small that everybody knew your name. In a different life, she might have visited over the summer. She could have played with Jude in front of their grandmother’s house. But Jude just laughed.

“Awful,” she said. “They only like light Negroes out there. You’d fit right in.”

She’d said it so offhandedly that Kennedy almost didn’t realize it.

“I’m not a Negro,” she said.

Jude laughed again, this time uneasily.

“Well, your mother is,” she said.

“So?”

“So that makes you one too.”

“It doesn’t make me anything,” she said. “My father’s white, you know. And you don’t get to show up and tell me what I am.”

It wasn’t a race thing. She just hated the idea of anyone telling her who she had to be. She was like her mother in that way. If she’d been born black, she would have been perfectly happy about it. But she wasn’t and who was Jude to tell her that she was somebody that she was not? Nothing had changed, really. She’d learned one thing about her mother, but what did that amount to when you looked at the totality of her life? A single detail had been moved and replaced. Swapping out one brick wouldn’t change a house into a fire station. She was still herself. Nothing had changed. Nothing had changed at all.