SAVANNAH DARROW SAT IN THE PASSENGER seat of the car and waited for Bobby to realize she was still there. He needed to cut his hair. The afro would never come back, not like that, not uncombed with a pick in it, not with slouched shoulders. How did she always get that? The slouched shoulders. He was halfway down Beckett Avenue when he turned around and headed for the car. He stood at her window and finally Savannah cranked it down.
“What? he said.
“Why can’t you open the car door for me?”
“Is that what this is all about?”
Bobby had a long face and a big nose and needed to shave. His eyes rolled in his head and he opened the door.
“You know what your problem is? You want to be treated like a lady.”
“That’s a problem?”
“This isn’t...” Bobby looked around for the right word, but he didn’t look at her. He was walking ahead of her. “The Middle Ages. This is now, baby. Women want to be equal, but they want doors opened and chairs pulled up under ‘em, and—”
“So you know what I want?” Savannah said.
Bobby turned around and looked at her.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean,” Savannah said, “you know what I want, but you refuse to give it to me.
You know I want the car door opened, but you won’t give me the car door opened. You know I want flowers just because—”
“You want flowers—”
“But you won’t give me flowers.”
“I can’t believe this,” Bobby threw his hands up in the air.
“What?”
“I can’t believe that we’re having this discussion.
“Savannah, I thought you were past that. I thought you were cool. I thought you were modern. Girl, I thought you were low maintenance. And here you come with all this demanding.”
“I’m demanding?”
“Yes,” Bobby said. Then, in a lower voice, as they headed to the restaurant. “Not here. Not on the Street. Not on Beckett Avenue. We’re not a couple of street niggahs who have to shout all our business.”
“Maybe I am a street niggah,” Savannah said. “Maybe I’m more of a street niggah than you know.”
Bobby thrust his long hands into his pockets and sighed.
“I don’t know why you say I’m so demanding.”
“Because you are.”
“Like how? Give an example.”
“I don’t want to, Savannah.”
“Really, Bobby. You can’t just say a thing and then—”
“Savannah.” His voice was low, but it was final.
She let out a breath.
“Fine,” she said.
She came home at about seven, and her mother said, “I thought you’d be out with Bobby.”
“No. I was out with Bobby all this afternoon, and it was enough.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Darrow said. She was sitting in the den, smoking a Benson and Hedges. She was good with her “ohs”.
Savannah stood there in the den, the curtains were drawn against the last light of sunset.
“He says I’m high maintenance.”
“Hum?” her mother looked up at her.
“Bobby said I was high maintenance. That when we got together he thought I would be low maintenance, but now I’m not.”
“Why are you high maintenance?” she asked in that bland, maddening way.
“Because I want things,” Savannah said. “Because I ask him to do things. Because... He said that my problem was that I wanted to be treated like a lady.”
“But you are a lady,” her mother told her. “I mean,” Mrs. Darrow switched on the light, “you knew that, didn’t you?”
Savannah opened her mouth and uncrossed her arms. Actually, she hadn’t known that.
In the light, Savannah could see the half empty bottle of wine on the table by her mother’s chair. Her mother poured another glass and finished her cigarette.
“You know,” she said. “The problem with men these days is they don’t want to work. I don’t mean get a job. I mean, they work on everything but what they should. Cars, cars. I can’t get your father off of his cars. But... they don’t want to have a high maintenance woman, and that’s the only woman worth having. As far as I’m concerned. A lady is supposed to be high maintenance. Tell that to your,” she pronounced the name disdainfully, “Bobby next time you see him.”
“That was Chris,” Mark said, coming out of the kitchen and throwing himself back onto the couch where he sat across from Rick Howard.
“He’s at the Reardon’s. It’s good for him, I think Sullivan’s mother is sort of like... well, a mother for him. I feel bad that I can’t do that. I try, but,” Mark shrugged.
“It must have really hurt,” Rick said. “To lose your wife.”
Mark nodded, but Rick said, “Christ, that’s so stupid of me!”
“What?”
“To say something like it must really have hurt. Of course it hurt.”
Mark looked at him strangely, like he felt sorry for Rick.
“Of course it hurt,” Mark said, “But it’s still good when someone acknowledges it.
Even when you’re prepared, you’re not prepared. I thought I would be. I thought I could let go, but when Margot died it really wiped me out. Chris was what brought me back. I had to be there for Chris.”
Neither one of them said anything for a moment, and then Mark said, “All right, I know I’m supposed to put away my Freud and dream interpretation at five o’clock, but I’m going to say the Dr. is in right now.”
“Hum?” Rick looked distracted.
“What’s up, Rick?’ Mark said. “You’ve been odd tonight.”
Rick just continued to look at him.
“Actually,” Mark said, “the truth is you’ve been odd for a few nights now. For a bit now.”
Mark realized that Rick wasn’t going to volunteer any information. In fact, maybe he couldn’t. This was often the case. You weren’t supposed to lead a patient, but sometimes, if you wanted to actually help someone, you had to. Besides, Rick wasn’t a patient.
“Okay,” Mark said. “Sidney once said my problem as a shrink is I’m not honest, I want everyone to be honest with me, but I have to share part of myself.”
“Mark, you’re not a shrink right now,” Rick sounded a little irritated.
“No,” Mark agreed. “I’m a friend, and the reason I don’t have other friends is because I really don’t know how to share with other people. So, I’m going to share now.”
Rick didn’t say anything, but Mark could tell he was ready to listen.
“I thought we were starting to be good friends, and I thought you liked me, and I know I sound kind of silly for saying this, but it’s like you don’t anymore. Like you don’t even want to be here. I mean, people tell me I’m tense, and I am. But you’re sort of tense now. Like, I guess what I’m saying is if you want to you can go. I won’t mind. We don’t have to hang out. I mean, we’re adults. And we’re guys so we should be past—”
“It’s not that,” Rick interrupted. “It’s not that at all.”
“Oh,” Mark said. This put him in a new place, and he said, “Okay, then... What?”
Rick opened his mouth, and closed his mouth.
“What, Rick?” Mark said.
Rick didn’t say anything. He looked upset. He looked a little angry and finally he said.
“Do you remember when you first met me?’
“In high school?”
“No,” Rick waved that off with a slice of his hand.
“No. That day, at the conference.”
“Yes.”
“And you came to me with that whole business about the red ties, about—”
“I’m sorry,” Mark said. “I am so sorry. I never really apologized for that, Rick. If that’s what it is I can’t tell you how sorry I am for jumping to—”
“You were right,” Rick said simply. “That’s what I thought about you. And... What I hoped.”
It was so quiet in that house. Mark opened his mouth, but couldn’t find anything sensible to say. So finally he said what he wanted to.
“So you’re gay?”
“Yes,” Rick said. It was like he was coughing up the word.
“Oh,” Mark said. “Well, how long?”
Rick looked at him incredulously.
“All the time, Mark.”
“You mean... Back in high school?”
“Yes.”
“Back when you were playing football and... everything.”
“Yes,” Rick told him.
“Always?” Mark said.
“Always,” Rick repeated.
Mark said, “Shit.”
Neither one of them said anything for a long time, and then Mark said, “Rick, does that mean? I think it means... Does this mean that you like me?”
Rick turned away from him. He stood up suddenly and said, “Look, this is strange for me.”
“You don’t think it’s strange for me?” Mark demanded. “Are you saying you like me, Rick? Are you telling me you’re in love with me?”
“I’ll go,” Rick told him. “I’ll go if you want me to. In fact,” Rick reached for his jacket, “ I think I’ll go right now.”
Rick was pulling on his jacket when Mark said, eyes lowered, folding his hands together:
“Rick Howard if you walk out of here without answering my question you can go and never come back.”
He looked directly at Rick.
“Answer me.”
“Yes,” Rick said.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes,” Rick said, “I’m in… I like you. All right?”
Mark looked like he was shooing a fly away, He blinked, a little disturbed and then bit his lip.
After some moments loaded with silence, Mark said: “Why don’t you sit back down. I’m not... judgmental. There’re only two people that every fell in love me. One fell out of love and the other died. So... I won’t sneeze at it.”
“Mark—”
“Sit down, Rick,” Mark said. “Don’t leave, all right?”
Rick, nervously, removed his jacket, swallowed, and sat down.
Savannah woke up at about twelve to the noise of the television blaring in the dark, hot room. It was hot. The room smelled so bad. Why didn’t Bobby get air freshener? Why was she here?
She turned on the air conditioner, and Bobby woke up by the time she reached the bed.
“Why you turn that on?” he said half asleep. “Air conditioning cost money.”
“I’m hot,” she said.
“I’m not rich like you,” he said.
She thought they were about to fight, but he turned over and went back to sleep, leaving her with that comment.
Savannah lay in bed. Why was she here?
Because there really isn’t any other place to go.
That was always the thing with Bobby, Savannah thought. She would be twenty-eight next year. She told herself that was a bad way to think, always living in the future. Next year was a long way off. When Sidney was twenty-seven he’d had a son and a wife and was becoming an artist. Up until the marriage he’d lived in the house with the rest of the family. The Darrows were multigenerational, and even after they married they went from house to house so that Savannah lived down the hall from her grandmother and her parents slept downstairs. She’d thought she’d be marrying Bobby, but she didn’t think that would happen now. She’d moved out to the apartment complex near town, Castle Ridge, the one that actually had turrets. But she got lonely there. She was always going from place to place, job to job, needing a change.
Savannah decided that the difference between herself and all of her friends was that she didn’t have someone. Someone would show up one day and change her world. He would come and her life would begin.
So when Bobby showed up, unlike anyone else she had known, she was sure he was the someone. It was so hard to find a good man. She didn’t want to date a white man and there weren’t that many of them smart as her in college anyway. It was hard to find a Black man in her world. And then, finally, she had. Or so she thought. She had run into him, literally. She hadn’t been paying attention and she’d crashed into him. He was grinning at her with a little smile, tall and dark, slim in old jeans and a snug tee shirt.
“I’ve met my husband,” Savannah told Sidney.
She brought him by the house. After he left, Sidney said, “No you haven’t.”
Savannah wasn’t in a mood to listen. What the hell did he know? As far as she was concerned Bobby held the secret to life because someone had to. He took her back to his place. It was clean. It was clean for the last time. He placed his hands on her hips and his long hands took hers and placed them on his belt. he helped her unhook his belt and brought the jeans and his white briefs down. His penis rose up for her, she lay down and let him in, her face deep in his hair, soft, thick, combed that time. She pulled and pulled him in and he pushed and pushed into her. Her thighs went around his hips that night. The same time her fingertips finally touched the invisible clap was the same time his body arched up above her and his penis pushed into her. His black face went slack. He cried out. He came.
When it was done his seed was on the bed sheet. The patch they’d made love in was soaked. He undressed her slowly and sucked on her nipples, he sucked on her throat. They made love again. He felt so good. She knew that she felt good. She kept coming. She’d never come so many times. When it was over, in the darkness of the night he whispered into her ear. She could feel his beard against her.
“How do you feel?”
“I feel like this is the end of everything,” she told him. She hooked an arm around his waist. “This is what it’s all about.”