The Vanishing Half(88)

That night, Frantz asked where she’d been.

“The hospital,” she said, too exhausted to lie.

“The hospital? What happened?”

“Oh, I’m all right. I was with Jude. Reese had surgery.”

“What type of surgery? Is he all right?”

“I don’t know.” She’d never asked. “Something with his chest, it looked like. He’s fine now. Just a little out of it.”

“You should’ve called. I’ve been waiting up.”

She would leave him. She’d always had a good sense for when it was time to leave. Call it intuition or restlessness, call it whatever you want. She’d never been the type to overstay her welcome. She knew when it was time to leave Los Angeles, and a year later, she would know to leave New York. She knew when she ought to be with a man for six weeks or six years. Leaving was the same, regardless. Leaving was simple. Staying was the part she’d never quite mastered. So that night, when she looked at Frantz in bed, his dark brown skin shimmering against the silver sheets, she knew that she wouldn’t stay with him much longer. Still, she sat on the edge of the bed and slipped his glasses off, blurring right in front of his eyes.

“Would you still love me,” she said, “if I weren’t white?”

“No,” he said, tugging her closer. “Because then you wouldn’t be you.”



* * *



—

WHEN SHE LEFT FRANTZ, she wandered a year, not telling anyone where she was going. Her musical had ended and she was beginning to tire of theater, although she’d stick around years longer, joining improv comedy troupes, auditioning for experimental plays. Acting seemed to be the one thing she never knew when to quit. Before she fled, she saw her mother one last time. They were sitting together in the backyard, sipping chardonnay by the pool. It was an unnaturally bright winter day. She was shocked by the warmth, shocked that there had ever been a time when she hadn’t found the idea of a warm February day remarkable. She closed her eyes, sunning her legs, not even thinking about poor Frantz, huddled by their rattling radiator.

“I used to come out here in the mornings,” her mother said. “When you were at school. I never had anything to do, but somehow, I was always floating out here, thinking.”

It was a lovely day. Kennedy would remember this later, how she could have said nothing, could have lain out there in that sunlight forever. Instead, she handed her mother the photograph.

“What’s this?” she asked, tilting her head to look at it.

“It’s from your father’s funeral,” Kennedy said. “Don’t you remember?”

Her mother said nothing, her face blank. She stared at the picture.

“Where’d you get this?” she said.

“Where do you think?” Kennedy said. “She found me, you know. She knows you better than I do!”

She hadn’t meant to yell. She just expected her mother to feel something. She would show her a picture of her family and her mother would start to cry. Wipe away tears and finally tell her daughter the truth about her life. Kennedy deserved that, didn’t she? One moment of honesty. But her mother pushed the picture back toward her.

“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” she said. “I don’t know what you want me to say—”

“I want you to tell me who you are!”

“You know who I am! This,” her mother said, jabbing at the picture, “is not me. Look at it! She doesn’t look anything like me.”

She couldn’t tell which girl her mother was pointing at, her sister or herself.



* * *



—

JUDE LEFT HER PHONE NUMBER on the back of the photo. For years, Kennedy didn’t call.

She kept the picture, though. She carried it with her everywhere she traveled: Istanbul and Rome, Berlin where she lived for three months, sharing a flat with two Swedes. One night they got blitzed and she showed them the picture. The blond boys smiled at her quizzically, handing it back. It meant nothing to anybody but her, which was part of the reason she could never get rid of it. It was the only part of her life that was real. She didn’t know what to do with the rest. All the stories she knew were fiction, so she began to create new ones. She was the daughter of a doctor, an actor, a baseball player. She was taking a break from medical school. She had a boyfriend back home named Reese. She was white, she was black, she became a new person as soon as she crossed a border. She was always inventing her life.



* * *



—

BY THE EARLY 1990S, her acting jobs began to dry up for good. No director had much use for a blonde in her thirties who hadn’t yet proven to be a star. She played a few older sisters on a handful of network shows, then a teacher or two, and then her agent stopped calling her at all. She felt too young to be washed up, but then again, she had ridden an improbable string of luck. Her whole life, in fact, had been a gift of good fortune—she had been given whiteness. Blonde hair, a pretty face, a nice figure, a rich father. She’d sobbed out of speeding tickets, flirted her way to endless second chances. Her whole life, a bounty of gifts she hadn’t deserved.

She became a spin instructor for two years, the studio placing photos of Charity Harris on the flyer to attract customers. But she grew tired of sweating all the time, her legs twitching and cramping, and so, in 1996, she finally decided to go back to school. Not real school, she told everyone, laughing at the thought, but realty school. She’d sold ads for shitty products on daytime television for years, why couldn’t she sell a house? On her first day, she sat awkwardly at the tiny desk, staring at the handout the teacher was passing down each row.