Eye to Eye Page 17

  Ms. Cartwright’s lips tighten, no doubt erasing thousands of dollars of good face work. She crosses her hands in her lap and interrupts.

  “I don’t know anything about irony,” she says. “But I do know that these children should be reading something with a better moral lesson. How are they supposed to take anything of value away from a poem like this?”

  Between “children,” “morals,” and “take-home lessons,” I am truly, truly, truly at the end of my deeply frayed rope. This is more like Romper Room than college. I take one deep breath and do my best to respond.

  “This is some serious bullshit,” Jack Moynihan mutters audibly from the right side of the room. I’ve been letting Jack audit the class since his born-again liberal arts experience, and for the most part he’s been quiet and listened. But even a frat boy has his limits. The obscenity is followed by more murmurs of aquiesence.

  “God, Mother,” Paige says, the fury in her voice now totally unmitigated. “I told you not to act this way when you came to class. You don’t understand. Dr. Weatherall isn’t like you, and this isn’t like high school. It’s poetry. It’s about language. But you wouldn’t understand that. You don’t understand anything. You can’t even wear the right bra, how can you even talk about Millay!”

  Jack Moynihan laughs, and Paige seems to suddenly to remember that he’s in the room.

  Ms. Cartwright gives Paige a death look. “Of course,” she says, with guarded Southern politeness, “you would be able to tell me what to do, since you know everything. Since I gave up my youth to send you to some fancy school, so you can tell me how you know better.”

  And suddenly, my classroom has become the Jerry Springer show. I wouldn’t have believed it possible, except that Paige had to have learned a total lack of boundaries somewhere, and now it was crystal clear where the lessons have been taking place. No wonder she hates women in any kind of authority. I felt sorry for both of them, and dismiss class early before the shame spiral tightens further.

  “I’d be happy to answer any questions you have at a later time,” I offer to Ms. Cartwright on the way out the door. “But as I didn’t know you were coming, I have other appointments this afternoon. Paige has my e-mail if you need to contact me.”

  If she writes me up as Satan herself and mails it to the actual president of the United States, not just Atlanta State, I am overjoyed to realize that I no longer care.

  I confess. In the scant three hours between returning home from my afternoon at school and my date with Maxwell, I probably down a good five ounces of vodka. Alcohol in moderation has generally been my post-grad-school motto, and alcohol in moderation on first dates is one of the ten commandments of dating. As are: thou shalt not boss thy date around, and thou shalt not complain about thine own life, thou shalt not talk about thyself all the time and thou shalt not express too many strong opinions. If there were such a thing as a dating heretic, I was gearing up to be burned at the stake.

  When Maxwell knocked on the door looking finer than fine in a cream-colored silk shirt and an only slightly creamier pair of pants, I had already decided that he was driving.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “Normally I would be coy and charming, but this has been a day for the record books. Welcome to the longest week of my life. As a result, you are the lucky man who gets to squire me to dinner, your choice of venue, as driver, of course.”

  Fortunately, I could apply makeup well from beneath the door frame of a collapsing house in a 6.0 earthquake, so I look positively glowing, not to mention smiley from the liquor. For all he knows, I console myself, this is my actual personality.

  “Longest week of my liiiiiiife,” I sing. “How was yours? Less brutal?”

  “I was looking forward to telling you this,” he responds. “Since you’ve been following the papers, I presume. My company just landed Maggie Mae Mischner. It’s going to be announced tomorrow. Evidently, she decided that she wanted to return the dress.”

  “And that calls for legal representation?” I interrupt.

  “She feels that the store mislead her not only about the return policy of the dress, but also about the nature of the dress itself. She thinks that all of her problems with her ex-fiancé began when she brought the dress home, and as a point of pride, she wants the money back. The boutique owner, who’d been nothing but understanding up until then, told her that the dress had been altered, and had a ‘tawdry past.’”

  “Please,” I beg. “Please, please, please tell me that ‘tawdry past’ is a direct quote.”

  “Indeed it is. Maggie Mae considered the comment a sort of verbal assault, and allegedly pushed the boutique owner, who is alleging that Maggie Mae caused her to spill a pitcher of their complimentary champagne punch on a rack of new dresses. Maggie Mae is pleading ‘mental distress’ and the owner wants the cost of the dresses covered.”

  “It’s like, if Chekov wrote chick lit,” I say. “Only the ‘gun in the first act’ is a fifteen-thousand-dollar wedding dress. It has to go off by the end. Flaw-less.”

  Maxwell isn’t smiling exactly, in fact, something in Maxwell’s demeanor leads me to believe that he feels sorry for Maggie Mae Mischner. I’m not sure that I approve.

  “Just promise me that you’re not defending her.”

  “She’s genuinely distressed.” He folds his arms like he’s about to start some grand closing argument.

  “She’s an embarrassment to women everywhere.”

  “But you’re not bitter,” he says.

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “For the record, ma’am.”

  “Do NOT ma’am me today, mister.”

  “For the record, Ms.,” he corrects. “She’s got some mental problems of her own.”

  “Please,” I say. “Tell her to JOIN THE CLUB. Next excuse.”

  “Not here,” Maxwell remarks. “Over food.”

  Maxwell and I drive to a hole-in-the-wall vegetarian joint near Virginia Highland, run by vegan Indians and populated largely by a crowd that I recognize well from my days at Langsdale: socially-conscious white folks in hempware and smelly thrift-store jeans. Silent Bollywood films play on the two television sets at either end if the restaurant, and Maxwell and I are beyond overdressed. I like that we are sitting at some ratty diner-style tables, ordering delicious ginger carrot juice and debating the future of a one-time bride to be.

  “If you do meet Maggie Mae Mischner,” I warn, “tell her that I deeply resent her representing women who want to get married, in a crackheaded crazy-bitch fashion. Tell her it makes us all look like crazy bitches.”

  And I was violating dating commandment number six left and right: thou shalt not curse like a sailor.

  “You’re gonna eat with that mouth?” Maxwell asks.

  And at that exact moment, our food arrives. Macaroni and cheese made with neither milk nor cheese, a concoction called kalebone, which was some form of grain shaped to look like a rack of ribs, along with some greens cooked without pork of any form. It looked delicious, but from the moment that first piece of kalebone entered my mouth, I knew we were in trouble.

  “You like?” Maxwell asks, excited. “It’s amazing what you can do without meat.”

  All I could think, as I attempted politely to masticate the eco-grease in my mouth, was that I should have ordered all vegetables. Grains pretending to be meat is like Ian pretending to be black, or David pretending to be Andrew, or Asa pretending to be normal or me pretending not to be all but gagging on this overfried piece of greasy bulgur, the consistency of cartilage, doused past recovery in barbeque sauce. There is no way I can get through more than three bites. And the next course I attempt, macaroni and “cheese”? It’s like eating that food I got when I was super little to feed to Baby Alive. The whole experience reminds me of when I finally talked my parents into buying me freeze-dried ice cream at the National Air and Space museum, which in my seven-year-old brain was going to taste like ice cream, but actually tasted like sugared fiberglass. All I can think i
n the face of my rack of kalebone is that somewhere, across town, at the OK Café, there are diners eating actual macaroni and cheese that came from cows and not from whatever bastardized plant they’d pulverized into grainy yellow sauce.

  “I love it,” I lie.

  Maxwell seems pleased, but I wish I was having dinner here with Ronnie, who would have elevated the whole meal past disgusting and into heresy. It was no fun eating ass-y food with someone who clearly had so deprived himself of delicious meat products over such a long period of time, that he found said ass-y food delicious. Then I notice the cook peering out at me, clearly not fooled by my faux-pleasure. Clearly annoyed. Eating with Maxwell was definitely better than eating alone, but I made a mental note that the moment the evening was over, I was buying my ticket out to L.A. With each bite of kalebone I promised myself a rack of real BBQ, cooked specially by Earl, followed with another side of meat and Ronnie’s own macaroni and cheese.

  “You seriously eat this on a regular basis?” I ask him.

  “How do you think I keep this body?”

  Even my poorly socialized, just-back-in-the-wild dating self can smell the promise of nudity thick in the air. Hurrah! Which leads me, unfortunately, to violate many other dating commandments. Ronnie would be hitting me over the head, as she believes in no more than a single kiss on the first date. Erotomania later, but just a teaser on date one. Exhaustion, booze, and the thought of Maxwell’s earth-friendly body all create one big rationalization in my head about why it’s okay to go home with him. But once we reach his house, however, the dream dies a bit. I was expecting übermetrosexual digs. Instead, he has a large denim sectional sofa plopped across the room from the largest television set I have ever seen in home use. The floors are covered in dingy white wall-to-wall carpeting, and a lone picture of a tiger in a jungle is mounted slightly crooked over the sofa.

  “Sorry,” Maxwell says. “I just moved out from my ex’s last month. She took most of the furniture.”

  It’s one of those moments where that little inner voice chants, RED FLAG RED FLAG RED FLAG RED FLAG RUN DORIS RUN RUN.

  But no, just like the girl who heads up the stairs instead of out the door in the face of danger, I say, “That must be hard. I broke up with my ex not too long ago. Although he didn’t have any furniture, unless you count some ten-year-old futon worn down to a frayed nub. Which I didn’t.”

  Maxwell tries to laugh, but the chortlelike grunt that comes from his mouth is deeply and decidedly bitter. And just then, in ever-dying embers of my Atlanta fantasy dating world, with more perfect than perfect Maxwell sitting across from me, I miss Zach.

  “Let’s not talk exes,” he says, the bitterness now gone from his voice. “I don’t want to focus on anything but you.”

  A line! A dirty, well-delivered line! God, how I’ve missed those.

  “Okay, but nothing too crazy. After all, we’ve only just met.”

  And then, in spite of exes and kalebone, and the unromantic reality of life in the city, I let Maxwell help me break at least two other dating rules, and one that I hadn’t even thought of.

  ronnie

  Kalebone. I don’t understand. Where Earl comes from, kale is a green, and where I come from, bone is not rubbery. So, Doris’s work may be cut out for her with this Maxwell dude. First of all, I never heard of no brother (who wasn’t Muslim) who preferred fake ribs to actual ribs from an animal that doesn’t deserve to die, blah, blah, blah and all that vegan stuff. I know I must sound like Ian, talking about what “black people do,” but what can I say? Grad school didn’t completely indoctrinate me with its hippie politics.

  Maxwell, if he were normal, meat wise, would be a catch of sorts. But it’s funny, if there’s one thing I’ve learned with going back and forth on trying things out with Earl is that you can’t fit round holes into square pegs. And even if it seems to be a fit, like for example, Maxwell and I presumably going together better because we’re both black, educated, single, and share the same politcs, etc., etc., those are all superficial things, on one level. La Varian Laborteux back in grad school was the exact same package as me and he was a square peg to my round hole, and I’m not trying to be sexual here, because he was actually way small-minded when it came to basic rules about how you should treat women—with generosity, respect and kindness, as you would anyone else. And by that I mean telling the woman you’re dating (me) that you’re married to someone else (your, uh, WIFE!) The black man plus black woman equation in that particular instance equaled not so hot together.

  I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately since Doris will inevitably keep trying out Maxwell even though she still loves Zach. After that, one of two things will happen. She’ll either get over Zach and fall madly in love with Maxwell, or she will discover that she and good old Maxwell aren’t quite the right fit, which will have nothing to do with race. Although that will be the first thing that people will suspect, and sometimes it can be. But it will have everything to do with his man-made material shoes. And kalebone.

  I have always thought about this stuff since I, like Doris, am a Rainbow Coalition kind of gal. I’ve dated representatives from all over the globe. Earl, though, he’s always been a different proposition, admittedly because of my own prejudices, mostly because of his cultural markings, as we used to say in grad school. There’s the white guy who’s dating a black woman, and then there’s the white guy who’s dating a black woman. Earl and I, we’re in the second category, in the “Oh, like those two people would really go out with each other. Puhleeze. That’s fiction, right?”

  Uh, no. Fortunately.

  I don’t mean to bring the man-woman relationship chatter to a screeching halt to talk about identity politics. I only mean to say that, if I’m going to be generous and kind and respectful and all live and let live to my fellow humans, I should give Katie, the All-American Beach Blonde Pain In the Ass some slack for trying to wedge herself in front of my Badass Sexy Biker Man. I should. And I should be more generous and kind (I’ll get back to you about respectful) to Ian, The Devil’s Spawn, whenever he’s mouthing off about my “cowboy biker dude.” Poor kid can’t see his own blind spots about his cultural markings, though I’d bet money that he’s about to find out.

  My nephew’s one of these kids trying to make it in hip-hop. He’s got a group and all that, and they write their own lyrics and he’s pretty good at freestyling or spiting or flowing, as the kids say. I’m not as up-to-date on the lingo as I could be, because I’m officially too old school or bookworm-y to keep up. But I do know that the kid, my nephew, is good, actually. Just as a listener of hip-hop I can tell shit from Shineola and my nephew Blake has the goods. So I have this idea that Blake and Ian should meet up somehow. Ian’s got drive and ambition (and a fuckload of dough) and connections. Blake has the talent (and a fuckload of attitude) and no connections, so who knows?

  I’ve driven out to Riverside so I can broach the subject with Blake who, like Ian, is too cool for school. Literally. He’s dropped out and is working temp jobs so he can do the music thing at night, which my brother, Joe, can’t stand. “That boy needs discipline, is what he needs! Needs someone to put a foot up his ass so he’ll quit all this hip-hop bullshit!” He actually kicked Blake out of the house until my sister-in-law, Tina, said she’d kick Joe out if he didn’t let her baby back in the house. Joe cussed and carried on for an hour until he agreed. He’s like Mike Brady, my brother. A genuine Ward Cleaver. It’s a Wednesday, on of my days off from Ian, and even though I’ve not told Ian my grand idea, I want to invite myself (and Ian) to Blake’s next gig. It’s a showcase somewhere out in Corona, California. Not very Hollywood, but according to my nephew, showcases like this are where “all the good shit be happening.”

  Blake has just made it home and is poking his head in the fridge, looking for something to eat, which, my brother always says, “He should damn well pay for since he’s got a job.” My brother and sister-in-law are in the living room watching a fight on pay-per-view while
I try my best to play Cool Aunt. You know, be casual and nonchalant and bored, like I care. Blake finally pulls his head out of the fridge and when he stands up tall, he’s a good six-two to my five-seven. Hard to believe, but years ago I used to change this kid’s diapers.

  “Hey,” I say, when he turns around with a plate full of leftover meat loaf. “You don’t give your aunt a hug?”

  He smiles a lazy smile. He’s happy to see me, but, you know, gotta play it cool. Classic teen and newly post-teen maneuver. “What up, Auntie Ronnie,” he says. He puts his plate down on the counter and bends down to give me a hug. “What you doing here?”

  I sit down on one of the bar stools and watch him cut up his meat loaf to microwave it. “I thought I mentioned it? That showcase you told me about? I wanted to talk to you about it?”

  “For real?” He squints at me. “You never have asked me to go to a show.”

  “I know.” I’m a little too fast and apologetic. “But that’s just because I’ve been gone so long, in Indian-ner. If I were here, I would have gone.”

  He nods, grabs his plate and puts it in the microwave. I continue my spiel over the loud hum. “You know how much I like your music, right?”

  “Yeah, and what about that last demo thing we did, were you feeling that?”

  “Yeah.” I nod gravely. “Felt it strongly.”

  The microwave dings. “Corny, Auntie Ron,” he says, digging into his meat loaf.

  “Soooo. Do you mind? If I come, I mean.”

  “Hell, no,” he says. “I don’t mind. That’d be cool. You could see me do my thang.” He takes the last bite of his meat loaf.

  “There was, like, a pound of meat loaf on that plate. When did you eat all that?”

  He shrugs. “I’ma go back in the fridge to see what else is in there.”

  “Better leave a twenty-dollar bill on the counter, boy.” My brother is suddenly behind me and slaps me on the shoulder. He’s almost as tall as his son and is sporting a black track suit. He runs a hand over his cleanly shaved head. “See what happens when you don’t finish high school and get a crap job? You end up being a broke-ass, mooching off your parents.” Or you go to grad school and become a broke-ass…