What's Mine and Yours(82)
He had kept the truth hidden for so long; it had been his fortune to keep it from her. But now it was out in the open, and he couldn’t hide. He was no good, and she knew it.
Hank was sitting on the curb when Noelle arrived at the hospital. He drank from an enormous coffee cup and squinted across the lot. He didn’t turn to Noelle, and she wasn’t sure whether he genuinely couldn’t see her or whether he wanted to be left alone.
“Hey,” she called. “What are you doing out here?”
“I thought you weren’t coming.”
“Nelson found me.”
“Must have gone well if you’re feeling better and decided to come here.”
“Is that why you’re here? Cause you feel so good?”
Hank chuckled, and Noelle sat beside him. They stretched their legs into the street, watching the cars that rounded the curb to make sure no one ran them over. Noelle peered into the cup and saw Hank was nearly done. She’d never known him to drink more than half a cup of coffee in the morning and finish the rest once he got home.
“Are you avoiding my father?”
“It’s that obvious?”
“I was avoiding him, too,” Noelle said. “And my husband, until you interfered.” She reached for Hank’s cup, took a long swallow of the cold, stale coffee. “My marriage is over. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.”
Hank made a disbelieving face. “You think you’re through with a person, but you’re never through, not when you’ve loved someone like that.”
“You know, I used to hate you and Mama for shacking up as fast as you did. I thought, How could you leave someone you’d vowed to never leave? But I see it now. I don’t care what I promised. Nelson didn’t care if he was ruining our life, and that tells me everything I need to know.”
“I won’t ask you what he did. I suppose you wouldn’t tell me anyway.”
“I should be heading back to Georgia. Get my affairs in order.”
Hank frowned. “I’m not looking forward to you girls leaving. I’ve got a feeling about your mother—that she’ll only last as long as you all are here. You all keep her strong.”
“We keep her mad. That’s her life source,” Noelle said. “Rage.” She laughed. Hank didn’t seem amused, and she tried to comfort him. “Don’t go and assume the worst. She’s just getting started with her treatments.”
Hank shook his head. “I’m not so worried about her dying. You all think about that because you’re leaving—you’re trying to tell yourself she’ll be here when you come back. But I’m thinking about what’s ahead right now, for days and days. Probably longer. Mood swings and appointments and treatments. I’ll be the one who’s with her. I’m the one who’s been with her all along.”
Noelle hadn’t given much thought to all the years Hank and her mother had spent together after she and her sisters left. She hadn’t thought about the conversations they had likely had in the dark, or all their mornings and afternoons together, the quiet hours they’d spent in the unceasing, secret waltz of marriage.
She had seen Hank mostly as an interloper; she had never cared to look at him as a husband, a man in love. She reached for his hand.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go and see them.”
“I don’t know,” Hank said, but Noelle was firm.
“You belong there,” she said. “That’s enough.”
14
November 2002
The Piedmont, North Carolina
If there had been a provisional harmony at Central before, as much as could be expected of any high school teeming with kids from across the county, it started to fracture after the posters. There were two assemblies: the first about the concerned parents, whose actions the principal called shameful. She didn’t say the word white; she didn’t say black. She said instead that schools were a place for students’ ideas, and not their parents’. After, a league of black girls founded a club called Concerned Students for Justice, but they couldn’t get a room assignment for their meetings because they weren’t recognized by the school as an official group. Adira started a petition, and the signatures surged toward one hundred before the administration granted them club status, claiming all they’d needed to do in the first place was fill out a form. There was no uproar from the students whose parents had papered the hall. It seemed they mostly wanted to go undetected; they didn’t want to upset their parents or be found out by their peers. Still, there was talk, and everyone knew.
The high school carried on with its usual life of cliques and crews, flirting in the lunchroom and kissing in the stairs. There was a pie sale to raise money for the senior trip. The new students came and left by bus; the teachers oversaw their arrivals and departures. In the classrooms, they conducted courteous debates about history and war, clashes that seemed faraway. Mr. Riley counted down the weeks until opening night.
The first instance of graffiti was the N-word in permanent marker inside a stall of the boys’ bathroom. The principal called the second assembly to announce an investigation, how seriously they were taking the vandalism, and how it was their duty not to jump to conclusions. It could have been a custodian, a visitor, a student scrawling out rap lyrics, unaware. Then a swastika appeared on a white wall facing the athletic fields, and there were articles in the city paper, a disquieted hush.