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Bob thought that at age 31, with a steady job and an apartment of his own, maybe he should taper off on phone calls to his parents. He figured this because he never heard his coworkers talk about calling Mom and Dad. Nevertheless he kept in touch regularly with his parents.
They used to live not far from Port Haven, but now lived far away, down in Florida, and wished Bob would call them more often. Usually they would ask him about girls. They still called them girls. They thought he ought to be "settling down." This was not Bob’s most enjoyable part of their conversations.
"What about that Julie, there in the office?" his mother would say. "She's really sweet and I can tell she likes you, Bob."
Bob would usually change the subject when that came up, because nothing could convince his mother that Julie wasn't sweet, or that she didn't have her eyes on him, or that she wouldn't fall for him head over heels if he only asked her to.
It was way too difficult to explain that Julie had a long-distance, long-term boyfriend who wasn't around much but to whom she was very much connected. Sometimes she flirted, but not in an available and interested kind of way. It wasn't helpful to tell his mother that Julie had a boyfriend. His mother had clearly thought about this, and decided firmly that a girl keeps a long-distance boyfriend only when there's nobody closer that's appealing.
The only girl Bob had flipped over had been Lucy. His mom had said they were distant cousins. He and Lucy, during the one weekend they had spent together, tried to figure out how they could be cousins, but soon realized that both of them only knew their family histories back as far as their grandparents, and they saw no possible connection there. Lucy was a light-skinned black woman, and her brother much darker. Her family being black from North Carolina, and Bob's family being white folks from New England, neither Lucy nor Bob understood how they could be cousins.
But Lucy's mother, Rosa, seemed to buy into the cousin idea, and she was happy to have Lucy go off with Bob to visit for the weekend at college. Lucy had taken a year off after high school and was back to looking at colleges, with UNC high on her list.
The one time Bob visited her house was that weekend when he picked her up. A young black man answered the door, and when Bob said who he was, the man let him in without a word and disappeared. He was nervous when he walked in, but Rosa was so warm and friendly that she set him at ease right away while they waited for her daughter to get ready. She gave him some warm pie and coffee, and Bob remembered asking how it was they were related.
He could still remember her answer. "I don't rightly know,” she said, “but it goes way back. My Granddaddy talked about the Yankee side of the family a few times but said they were too proud to ever talk with us and we shouldn't nose in and bother with them or we'd get sent packing. We knew pretty well we were supposed to stay away from the whole thing. If we asked about it, he'd keep mum, except for those couple of times he blurted out about how proud they were, and mean, not people we'd ever want to associate with. So you can picture how pleased I was to hear from your mother. Here's Lucy coming now. All set, dear?"
Lucy took Bob's breath away. He could perfectly picture her now. Big eyes, broad smiling mouth, short light brown hair with corn rows, some of it streaked lighter, it seemed, a neckline of lustrous tan skin with graceful, strong collarbones. She had a soft and full handshake that fitted his hand like a glove as she looked up to him with bright eyes. He couldn't remember what they said at that first meeting but couldn't forget feeling dazzled that they’d be spending the whole weekend together.
It was Friday morning and Bob still had classes to go to in the afternoon. They chatted for nearly 3 hours in the car, and had lunch together. Lucy went with him to his classes, which Bob had second thoughts about, but she seemed totally engaged. They talked about the professor and about economic development in Latin America after the first class, and about American Indian civilization after the second.
His heart felt so light as they had coffee at a downtown shop, watching people go by and laughing at some of them and their harried habits; and later had dinner and went to a dance, talked more and danced some, and Bob found himself feeling a pang of jealousy when she danced with some other guys. Then they went to the frat for a party where they drank too much and felt sick heading back to his apartment. His roommate had very thoughtfully set up the couch in the living room for Lucy. It had been a long day.
The weekend felt bright and sunny and they were together for just about every minute. For the first time with a girl, Bob seemed never to run out of things to talk about. She was excited to be there and interested in his class work and his talk of New England, while she gave him a talking tour of northeastern North Carolina, where she was from, and told of the people she knew.
There must have been another dance or party in between Friday and Sunday but all Bob could remember was Sunday night because they both knew she was taking a bus home the next morning and he learned she was just as sad to leave as he was to see her go. When they got back to the room, he found a note that his roommate was staying at a girlfriend's that night, with suggestive little comments and drawings meant for Bob but Lucy saw it too, and Bob crumpled it up and tossed it, swish, into the waste basket, and they laughed and then became quiet.
They had a beer then and she talked about the one time she'd been there before and snuck into a party and drank some but not a lot, and partied with a white guy who hooked her into going home with him and became very commanding of her, and she wasn't sure what she wanted from being there with him but was too curious and confused to refuse to hold him, and he became gentle and caring and caressed her and it felt good and then he got her into his bedroom and held her tight in his drunkenness and she described falling under him onto his bed and how he grabbed off her clothes and she was just tipsy enough to go along and too curious to stop and too scared to speak, and he took her virginity there and then Lucy cried, and Bob put his arm round her and stroked her back, and told her that she didn't have to talk about it but that he would never treat her that way and she looked up at him with her bright eyes close to him and her broad soft mouth close by and they slowly closed mouths together very quietly and gently, and then she broke down crying again, and he said he was sorry and didn't mean anything, and she said it wasn't about that, because she hadn't told him the rest of the story and now she wanted to. The boy had finished with her and threw her clothes on the floor and told her to take them and get the hell out of there and he called her a slave girl. She said she could not believe her ears and something powerful welled up inside of her and she grabbed the nearest thing within reach, which was an empty whisky bottle, and she smashed him over the head with it and left him lying on his bed in blood and glass and grabbed her clothes into the living room and jammed them on, shaking violently all over, and went out and called her mother who had been frightened to death about her being missing that day, and she got into unbelievable trouble, and had never wanted to come back there, but was so happy to have time with Bob and her tears streamed down her face and Bob kissed her again, and she held him tight, and thoughts of her being his cousin panged him with guilt but his body was hungry for her and they kissed passionately.
She came to his bed that night and they felt so alive and warm but as Bob thought about it later, many times, he thought sweetly about how little they knew about anything. She had gone down on him and blew air on him, sweeping her breath back and forth, which was tantalizing to him but he realized she thought this was a blowjob. And when they did make love, everything was so slippery and sliding and pleasurable but confusing since he hadn't done it before, that he wasn't exactly sure what was supposed to happen or for how long, so he guessed when it was time to be done and acted like he knew what he was doing and they slept in each other's arms, and he woke with horrible guilt again about maybe being cousins and breaking her mother's trust, but Lucy was happy, exuberant even, as he saw her to the bus. They had very little to say to each other that morning other than easy pleasantries, and it felt awkward suddenly to go their separate ways. As she boarded the bus he tapped her on her bottom, as he thought maybe a guy would do to a girl he had made love with, but she gave him a weird look, got on the bus, and that was the end.
He thought he should feel great about the weekend and his roommate seemed to think Bob ought to feel like a manly man, but Bob felt ashamed and lost, and although he thought about Lucy all the time for a while, he couldn't bring himself to call her, feeling especially embarrassed about how they had said goodbye and afraid she thought he was just another white guy taking advantage of her. So he kept hoping she'd write or call but she didn't.
And when he'd mentioned having spent the weekend with Lucy to his parents on the phone, his mother said, "How nice, Bob. Did she like the school? How was her mother?” But his father wouldn't let him answer his mother’s questions and blew up at him over the phone, saying if he'd known his mother had gone off and given him that phone number he would have put a stop to it, he didn't want to hear about those people, and didn't want Bob to see Lucy or her family or talk about them again, period, end of story.
Bob was a bit bewildered by this but he took it to heart. He found himself focusing more on his studies and felt better turning down invitations than accepting them; he liked staying quiet at home. He wrote off Lucy as a crazy adventure. Once in a while he found himself wondering about their connection. Whether they were linked by blood or by spirit. Whether there was, or had been, something really there between them.
Mostly he didn't think about her, except when some mention of North Carolina or college came up, and now, with this obituary from Linton, North Carolina on his mind, Lucy crept back into the fringes of his thoughts. He looked up where Linton was, and it was in northeastern part of the state, the same town he had looked up on the maps in his car and driven to more than 10 years ago to pick her up.
"Mom?" said Bob, leaning back in his easy chair. "Oh hi, Dad. You're both on, that's great. How's the weather down in Florida?"
"It feels better the more I see your weather reports up there, son," said his father. "How's your job? Going okay?"
"Oh yeah, I'm working steadily, they're giving me my anniversary raise next month."
"Well, well, that's something. Nice to hear."
"Is Julie getting raises, too, Bob?" asked his mother.
"I don't really ask the others about their salaries, that's a bit awkward, Mom. I'm sure everyone's getting their raises like I am. We all do our work."
There was a pause, and it seemed it was now or never, so Bob said, as nonchalantly as possible, "Dad, what do you know about Linton, North Carolina?"
There was silence, which Bob imagined to be a stunned silence, though since no one was saying anything, he wasn't sure what anybody was thinking.
Quietly he heard his father say, "I told you not to talk about those people." It was spoken like a warning growl.
"You mean that side of our family? They're from Linton?"
"Listen! I don't know anything, okay? There are rumors that's where they are from, but I don't know anything. I don't know how your mother found out about them and got a phone number for you but we've been through this before and that's it."
"Look, Dad, I think you should just tell me what you know. It's not going to hurt anything. I'm not going to go down there and dig up trouble. I just want to know what you know."
"I don't really know anything. Everyone used to shut up when the subject popped up."
"So the subject came up sometimes?"
"Well, one time, I overheard my father and his brother talking about it. That's about all I ever heard. Somehow we got the feeling that if they were out there, they were bad people and we should be glad they lived so far away."
"What are you talking about? What people, and what did you overhear?"
"Bob, I don't think your father wants to talk about this right now," said his mother, "Maybe give him some time and he'll have a word to say but I wouldn't push him just now."
"Now I can talk for myself, Molly! You don't need to be protecting me or – I like to say your mother just can't help mollycoddling me. Now leave me be just for a minute here."
His dad took breath and continued, "Now I mean it, I don't know much of anything. My family made sure not to talk about it. Now there were some big splits in my family – my uncles Fred and Roy didn't talk to each other for decades. But this was bigger than that. The rumor was we had a shadow branch of the family that had been split off for generations. My brother and I overheard my father and his brother talking one time. Low voices outside the shed, while we were hiding inside of it. Something about part of the family being slaveowners. The story went that they got mixed up with their slaves, they called it a ‘sinner's den,’ I remember, all very hush hush. They said there was even a fake minister who tried to sneak slaves up north and carry on with them under our very noses. There were jokes about ‘lint on their navels’ and laughing about Linton and the naval station down near there, in Virginia. I didn’t get the jokes but it made me remember the names Linton and Portsmouth, the naval station, because I got it confused with our Portsmouth over in New Hampshire. My brother and I used to whisper about this stuff sometimes and try to make up stories but we quit after a couple of whippings. My brother told me about one other rumor, though, that he heard from a cousin of ours. Something about our great-grandfather or great-great grandfather or something, that he tried to be good and charitable to those slaves the minister snuck in from the South but they just shut him down. They were hopeless and lost souls and our family wanted nothing to do with that … ‘den of sinners’ again’s what they called it. I don’t know, Bob. Everything we ever heard about this stuff sounded sick and creepy and secretive, and we were proud we had nothing to do with it. I don't see why you’d want to stick your nose into it, really. It’s ancient history and doesn’t smell too good. Best let it all rot in peace! Hoo boy, I'm sorry I’ve said anything about it. How did you get me talking, Bob? Look at the time, dear, we have to get dressed. Come on, Molly, we've been on this call a long time. We're going to be late. I'll hang up now. Don’t worry about that stuff, Bob, it’s just nasty family rumors and whatever happened, our family has moved right on, thank God. Bye now. Don’t be long, Molly."
"Well he's right, honey, we have a bridge game tonight and have to get dressed and oh dear, Bob, it's so nice to hear from you. Please don't ask your father about that again, it gets him upset. He's probably going to take it out on me tonight. He'll get snippy with me again about giving you that phone number, he never lets me forget that."
"Okay, Mom, well – you know something, Mom? I'm glad you gave me that number. Thanks for that, I mean it. “
“Bob, I was thinking. Maybe we’ll come up and visit for Thanksgiving, cook you a nice dinner. You could invite some friends, maybe even Julie, and we could see our old stomping grounds again. Have you got plans already for Thanksgiving, Bob?”
“No, no, that might be really nice, Mom. Let’s talk more about it.”
“Okay then, I have to go, dear. Love from both of us.”
“Love you."
It was getting dark. Bob took a deep breath. Dark family rumors. His dad was right, they were impossible to prove, and probably best forgotten. But it put him on edge. He didn't feel like sticking around to hear more glorified stories from Franck. He went out to a quiet dinner by himself, and then wandered around downtown for a while, a long while, hoping Franck might be asleep by the time he got home.
While at the restaurant alone, he had looked around at all the couples having dinner, and decided that maybe he'd just see what happened if he found a moment at work to ask Julie out, to dinner, or maybe to a movie.