Portrait of a protege, p.20
Portrait of a Protégé, page 20
part #2 of Portraits Series
“Complex, indeed.” Angela squeezed his hand. Her lips pursed the way Leila’s often did when she mulled over a thought. “Clarence, perhaps you should confront her.”
“No—she’s not ready. When she is, she’ll talk, as always.”
Angela stared into his eyes and inched forward in her chair. She continued to mull until their lips were only a breath apart. “You are no ordinary man, Clarence.”
“And you are an extraordinary woman.”
Slipping his fingers into her hair, he drew her mouth to his, lingering in the sort of softness that made him question his own self-discipline.
“I can tell you one thing,” he said, when she withdrew. “This pacing ourselves is not going to be easy.”
“Have I tested your self-control, Clarence?”
He leaned forward and nibbled at her earlobe. “More than you know.”
Chapter 24
André stood beside Leila as the tinted, back passenger window rose. She folded her arms and sighed. Leila could not have imagined that the old biddy who had harassed her on the lawn less than a week ago, now solicited sadness at her departure. As the Mercedes pulled away from the front yard, made its way down the drive, and turned the bend, Leila waved goodbye to Marvelle even though the old woman was not the sort to look back. The feisty old dowager’s last words rang in Leila’s ears. “You will come see me in Boston. Call first. I am a very busy woman.”
At first, Leila had bucked at Marvelle’s attempts to loosen her up. Having the old woman hover like a schoolmarm didn’t help. She had slapped Leila’s hand. “You hold your pencil like a petit point needle. Your poor paper! How would you like to be poked and prodded? Imagine you’re holding a butterfly wing, not squishing an ant between your fingers! Move your wrists! You’re an artist, not a dabber! You control your colors as if you were trying to separate them like vegetables on your plate. Let your colors mingle and breathe—allow them to bleed!”
The old woman fanned the pages of a tablet, ranting, “Paper that has been wet with paint, no matter the subject or the artist’s displeasure, is happy, fruitful paper, set free! Only blank paper is wasted!” Leila cringed at the notion, but if nothing else, Marvelle gave her permission to ‘waste’ paper—to experiment, to be messy on purpose. Marvelle had ripped a small tear in the thinning weave of Leila’s resistance, and each time the student laid paint on paper, more fibers gave way.
Watching Marvelle drive away left Leila bereft, restless, and churning.
“She’s quite something, isn’t she?” André said.
“She’s something, alright.”
“Grows on you. I know.”
Leila nodded. Answering her restlessness, she turned to André. “Take me downtown tonight. I want to listen to some blues.”
“Is your knee up for that?”
“I suspect a shot of something hard will take care of it.”
He winked. “That’s right up my alley.”
~
Cigarette haze filled the small nightclub, which under any other circumstance Leila found offensive, but in these surroundings, it flooded her senses with the familiarity of a father’s embrace.
Leila hoped for a table near the bandstand, but it was a full house. André maneuvered her through the crowd to a pair of stools at the bar.
“Vodka and tonic,” he said to the bartender and glanced at Leila. “Hennessy?”
“No. Um … Guinness stout.” She leaned back against the rail, watching the band play. Sweeping hair up off her moist neck, she wished she had worn it up or hadn’t worn her black cashmere sweater.
André straddled his tall barstool and faced her. “Your father played blues, didn’t he?”
To how much of her past had Angela and or François made him privy? At any rate, she could honestly answer, “Yes” regarding both her dads—Marcus and Joe—and the blues.
“So, you were on the road a lot?”
“Not exactly on the road, except during vacations. Mostly we just moved. A lot. Places like this feel like home.”
André passed her a sweating mug. “That must have been quite an environment for a young lady.”
She sipped and then licked her foam mustache. “At the time I didn’t think much about it, but yes, I suppose it was.”
“It makes it all the more surprising that you’re so virtuous.”
Leila chuckled at his impression of her. “Yes, well, believe it or not, my father managed to shelter me from a lot. Actually, my husband probably had much more to do with my continuing virtue.”
“Really? How so?”
The guitarist began strumming a classic number, drawing her attention.
“Shush. He’s playing Artie Sparks.”
“Who?”
“You’ve never heard of old Black and Bluesy, Artie Sparks?”
“I’m not up on blues as much as jazz.”
“But still, you’ve never heard of Artie Sparks? Natchez native—blues legend?”
“Sorry, no.”
“Humph.” It was then Leila realized that whatever knowledge André had of Miss Angela Phillips’ past, it was limited by Angela, François, or perhaps the fact that André was more of a Northerner than a Southerner.
During the song, André ordered Leila a second stout. She eyed it with suspicion. When the song ended, she indulged a polite sip, which felt so good going down that it turned into a gulp.
André emptied half his glass. “Tell me about your husband, Ian.”
Leila gave him a sidelong look. “Why the interest in him?”
“I’m curious about him as an artist. But I’m more curious about the sort of man who won your heart and kept you virtuous.”
In a torrent, images of Ian flooded back. Their first encounter. Their passionate courtship. Their wedding night —and all the love they made for two-and-a-half years.
“He was ….” She drew in a deep, aching breath. Struggling to formulate a concise description, she shrugged, shaking her head and staring at nothing in front of her. Ian could never be summed up in casual bar conversation with a man she barely knew.
“Will you ever get over him?” André asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t need to before you give yourself to someone new, you know.”
“I know that I could never give myself to someone else unless I could match the intensity of love I felt for him.”
“Do you have it in you? To love that way again?”
She felt intensely for only one other man. Clarence Myles. “Yes,” she said, surprising herself. She took another big gulp of beer to cool off. Did she love Clarence Myles that way? She hoped André would drop the subject. As she continued to look straight ahead, she sensed his stare as if trying to lure her eyes to his. She would not appease him.
Drawing strands of hair from her neckline, his fingertips caressed her shoulder. Leila’s resolve wavered and she glanced at him and then quickly looked away. Which was more unnerving—the “notion” of Clarence Myles or that André seemed to be trying to seduce her.
“I know what you’re doing,” she said. “And you may as well know, it’s not going to work.”
He chuckled, his fingers now at the nape of her neck. “What exactly am I trying to do?”
She looked at him and met his chuckle with a laugh. “Okay, you do understand that I’m not a virgin, that I was a very happy and satisfied married woman ….”
“Yes.” He kept his eyes on hers.
“I know how this works, and ….” As his caress moved to her earlobe, she lost her train of thought.
“And?”
She drew in a long, flustered breath. “I’m simply letting you know up front that it’s not working.”
He withdrew his hand. “So I see.”
They stayed for an hour longer, mostly listening to the music and keeping conversation light, but he readily reciprocated any attention she spared. It would have been so much easier to ignore him if he hadn’t been so easy on the eyes. She occasionally gratified him with a glance, but she was afraid he might interpret any lingering as encouragement. In fact, she enjoyed his interest but felt too conflicted to allow any follow-through. When her knee began a painless throb, she suggested they leave.
It was near one in the morning when they came in. The entire house was still, except for the ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer. As he assisted her up the stairs, the heat and tension of André’s body spiked her own as she anticipated his next move.
He escorted her to her bedroom door and blocked her entrance. She didn’t care to meet his gaze, but when he drew her close, she couldn’t resist his stare, although she would not melt into him as he likely expected.
“Please don’t,” she pulled away.
He did not loose his hold. “Leila, you can’t tell me you haven’t thought of this moment.”
She shook her head. She couldn’t say she hadn’t thought of his kiss and more. “You don’t understand. I can’t.”
He nuzzled her neck. “And why not?”
“My heart’s tied up with someone else ….” There! She had said it.
He met her eyes. “You’re in love with someone?”
“I don’t know.”
“Either way, I don’t care,” his breath caressed her ear. “I just want to make love to you. I’m not asking for your heart.”
“For me, the two are inseparable. I just can’t—” she drew back from his embrace.
Providing no further opportunity, she slipped past him and into her bedroom, closing him out. Leaning against the door, she listened to him walking away as she bent at the waist, trying to catch her breath. What had she just admitted?
After a restless night of unsatisfied desires and missing
~
After a restless night of unsatisfied desires and missing Clarence, Leila sat in silence at the breakfast table. Angela and François chatted, casting her an occasional glance. They likely speculated on the outcome of her evening with André who had not yet returned from his early morning run. Leila’s attention piqued as the front door opened and closed. She’d had several minutes to prepare herself for the sight of him, yet when he finally entered the room after his shower, her cheeks reddened. She fidgeted with her fork.
From the moment he stepped into the room, Leila felt his eyes. With the same hesitation of the night before, she met his gaze. The intensity of their exchange silenced François and Angela.
François then continued, “ … and so, we need to be out of here within a half hour.”
Without taking his eyes away from Leila’s, André barely acknowledged the itinerary.
“Excuse me.” Leila backed away from the table. “I think I’ll say my goodbyes now, since you seem to have a tight schedule.”
Leila directed her remarks to father and son. “It was a pleasure to meet both of you. I hope our paths cross again.”
François rose. “Well, we hope you’ll come for the grand opening of Chez Goulet. Either way, given what we’ve seen of your late-husband’s work, I have the feeling this won’t be the last we see of you.”
Leila rounded the table and gave him a peck on the cheek. “I look forward to it.” She glanced at André. “Goodbye.”
As she hobbled out, André followed her out into the foyer. “Leila ….”
He looked at her the same way he had the night before but kept his distance. He pulled a business card from his wallet. With his pen, he scribbled on the back.
“If you’re ever in Boston, call me … we’ll have lunch.”
She accepted the card. “Perhaps.”
Chapter 25
Leila Walked, swift though limping, down the road about mid-afternoon and had been gone nearly an hour. When she returned, stepping through the front door, Angela came from the drawing room.
“You just missed Clarence’s call,” Angela said. “He hoped you might be around.”
He had already phoned to let them know when he arrived home, and Leila suspected that the ringing phone at eleven last night might have been him, though Angela had said nothing about it.
Leila returned a dismissive, “Oh, well.”
“Feel free to call him back, if you’d like. You haven’t spoken since he left. I’m sure he’d love to talk to you.”
Was she actually trying to mediate Leila’s relationship with him?
“Maybe later,” Leila said as Garrison stepped into the foyer from the back service entrance. He carried a platter with a sweating pitcher and two glasses. “I thought Miss Leila might be joining you for some lemonade on the porch.”
Angela took Leila by the arm. “Oh, please do.”
Although Leila would have preferred a shower, the idea of a cold beverage was appealing. And Garrison had been so kind as to consider her. In fact, she had been thinking a lot on her walk. She had questions.
The two sat on large, white wicker chairs angled toward each other with a small service table between them. A gentle breeze swept Angela’s hair from her face as she leaned back and closed her eyes. Leila was not a good judge of age, especially when it came to older women, but her grandmother’s smooth complexion and lack of a double chin, not to mention her trim figure, lent her a considerably younger countenance than a woman in her mid sixties.
Miss Angela Phillips had effectively encroached upon her granddaughter’s life, and yet Leila still knew so little about her. She wiped lemonade from her lip. “How much does François know about my grandfather?”
Angela froze and then slowly turned to face Leila. “Why do you ask?”
“I just get the feeling that André doesn’t know anything about Artie.”
“It’s quite likely he does not. Fran is very careful with my personal and private information.”
“So François knows?”
“Yes.”
“But most of your friends don’t realize that the child you had out of wedlock was with a black man.”
“Few—and I mean very few—have firsthand knowledge of your grandfather. I’m sure if some had heard rumors to that effect, they might assume, upon seeing you in person, that the rumors were exaggerated.”
Leila looked squarely at her. “And is that why you threw a dinner party in my honor? To dispel rumors?”
Angela sat erect and tilted her head. She stared at Leila for a moment. “I threw a dinner party for you, dear, because I’m proud of the fact that you’re my granddaughter. You are the one good thing that came of all that mess.”
“Yet if I was your black granddaughter, I would not have even been invited down here.”
Angela stiffened. “My dear, the ugly truth of the matter is that just as a parent may favor one child over another due to appearance and similar disposition, I was drawn to you from the moment I met you. It may be true that if you more closely resembled your grandfather—if you were black—I probably would not have felt so akin. Just the same, I hope you would attribute me with sufficient fairness not to reject you on the basis of skin color. When I first learned of your existence and then laid eyes upon you—I was overcome with … how shall I put it? I was overcome with pride and gratitude.”
Leila looked at her with revulsion. “Pride and gratitude that I was not black!”
“No, dear. As conceited as it may sound, pride and gratitude that you were so like me, not only in appearance but also in disposition. It filled me with hope for your future and an undeserved and selfish hope to be included in it. Admittedly, in some small way, I hoped it might diminish some of my regret and shame.”
“Regret and shame for making love to a Negro?”
At that moment, Garrison stepped onto the porch with a small plate of triangular sandwiches and placed it between them. Angela looked directly at him. Their eyes met.
“No, dear. Regret and shame for making love to the wrong Negro.”
Garrison said nothing, though Leila thought she detected a faint smile as he walked back into the house. Leila beheld her grandmother with bewilderment, but before she could say anything more, Angela stood. Color had left her cheeks. She looked her granddaughter in the eye. “Pin racism on me if you wish, but I am merely a woman who hopes to finally have some peace. Perhaps you are still too young to understand that.”
Angela left Leila on the porch with even more questions.
~
That evening, as Leila stepped out onto her balcony, she overheard the tail end of an exchange between Angela and Garrison below on the patio.
“Oh Garrison, I hope you’re right, dear,” her grandmother said with resignation.
His low voice resounded, “Time, Angela. She’s still young….”
“I think I’ll turn in early tonight,” her voice trailed into the house.
As soon as Angela’s bedroom door closed, Leila loped downstairs. The first place she thought to look for Garrison was the drawing room. When she stepped inside, he looked up from one of the leather chairs, a glass of liquor in his hand.
“May I get something for you, Miss?”
“No.” She paced from window to window.
“Is everything alright?” His voice was as mellow as the room’s ambiance.
“Yes. Everything’s fine.”
“Why don’t you sit? You make me nervous.”
“Okay.” Leila took the seat beside him.
He looked at her sideways.
Leila exhaled. “I’ve been wondering about something.”
“Have you?”
“Did you know Artie Sparks?”
His eyes shifted. “Yes.”
“How did you know him? Wasn’t he older than you?”
“I used to run with him back when the Rhythm Night Club opened, till a year before it burned up. He was older than me and used to get me in the club.”
Leila had not only read about the infamous black club, but Artie had talked about it when she used to jam with him on Saturday nights, back when she lived in the apartment above him on Long Island. “You used to hang at the Rhythm?”
“Yep.”
“Hundreds of people died in that fire.”
“I know it. I knew some of them.”
