The Porter's Muse Page 3

  Chapter 4

  “Not Stupid” Claims Bomber in Letter to Paper

  Dateline—January 10, 1957: After pleas for surrender, the City’s ‘mad Bomber,’ insisting he is a stable man, demands justice and promises to resume bombings later this month.

  Banshees. They stole every piece of Russell McNair Lamberton’s life that wasn’t on his person the day he died. Jewelry, photographs, even his treasured argyle socks, all gone, carried away in the night by banshees, tip-toed and rummaging. Delia Lamberton, Daddy’s second wife, didn’t see or hear a thing. She was certain, still, that a band of banshees had stolen her husband’s belongings. And that’s the reason she had nothing of my father to give me.

  A year I’d given that woman to grieve. One—whole—fucking—year of keeping Mother at a safe distance. I protected Delia, I’m sure of it. Yet all she could spare me was some bullshit story about banshee thieves!

  Mother had pitched everything that reminded her of Daddy the evening he packed a small suitcase and told her he was leaving, which he did later that night. But not with that suitcase. Mother emptied that out, shoved his things into three brown paper bags, and labeled each—You/Ain’t/Shit!

  She threw that suitcase out right after he walked away, along with the things he thought he’d have a chance to come back for, just because he acted as if that suitcase was his, even though it belonged to her.

  Daddy would meet me after school after that, and we’d wander down to Lexington, except for pizza Wednesdays at Patsy’s, and pass the time on some old lady’s stoop, who’d never ask why we were there but always poured a fresh cup of coffee, black no sugar, for my father and a glass of sweet tea for me. She’d bring it down as soon as we perched. “Take as much time as you need,” was all she’d say, before heading back inside. I thought it was strange, but Daddy brushed it off as simple southern hospitality—way southern, as in Puerto Rican hospitality, he made clear. “When you see a hint of brown,” he’d say, “just know you’re looking at family; so treat folks as such.” Daddy wasn’t all that brown. In fact, I’m still not certain he was brown at all. But he insisted that I give all that politeness toward white people that had been drummed into me at Saint Mary’s to folks tan, brown, and even blue-black with as much graciousness just the same.

  Mother taught me to say Yes, Ma’am and Yes, Sir. Daddy made sure I didn’t pick and choose when and to whom. This is as close to their coming together on anything about my upbringing that I can recall.

  I felt as if I’d dodged a bullet every time Daddy and I didn’t get caught lollygagging after school. I was supposed to be hating him as much as Mother. Quite honestly, these thieved bits of time we had together were so much more enjoyable than when I had to share him with Mother. They quarreled all the time. And what was left of them when they got around to me was shit. I’d rather they’d pitched it down the john than try to pass it off as love.

  They fought about everything when they were together: money, the rent, sex they weren’t having together and the sex they had apart. That man up the street; the woman across the hall; anyone with a beard or a tight skirt fell into the fold of their taunts and accusations. I’m pretty sure that Mother had something going on with that porter who helped Daddy get on with the Brotherhood. Daddy assumed it, too. But he forgave her that indiscretion because getting on the New Haven Line made us middle class Negroes, and they could, at least, stop fighting about the rent. There was no letting up about money because Daddy had fine taste, and Mother had a perfect figure, which meant he spent too much on frivolities and she bought every piece of sample couture (hot, of course) she could get her hands on that mimicked what she’d cut out from magazines left behind by passengers on Daddy’s shift.

  Daddy wasn’t just a lady’s man; he was every woman’s man: handsome, silk-tongued, and neglected—at least that was part of the story he told. Mother was frigid and self-absorbed—the other half of his forlorn tale. These two chapters of his marital woes read like Hemingway’s Mr. and Mrs. Elliot, and far more women fell into than retreated from his perfectly woven deception.

  Any other reason would have been flat-out adultery. But since Daddy wasn’t getting any at home, it was the duty of those who understood him to make things right, so much so that every neighborhood floozy, and a few impressionable ingénues, lined up to heal his ailment, bragging that they’d relieved the suffering married man, whose frigid and self-absorbed wife had abandoned in the bedroom.

  Sharp Lamberton picked those women off like ducks in open season—entertaining two at a time, three at least once that I know of, all between Mother’s leaving for work in the morning and coming home around four.

  Perfumes and lipsticks, stenches and smears, none belonging to Mother yet hers by proxy. Daddy hadn’t an ounce of decorum to spare. Mother, hell-bent on not projecting her incredulousness, slept warmed under a picnic throw, while wedged between mattress and rail on her side of the bed. She’d wake early and take hot baths, each time fiercely scrubbing away the skin perished from her body overnight. Each shed layer chilled her spirit. But her skin, exfoliated and buffed, was flawless. Daddy’s infidelity may have extinguished the fire in Mother’s heart, but it made her more beautiful.

  She was radiant the day he left her.