Back to Wando Passo, David Payne [little red riding hood ebook .TXT] 📗

eyes, for once are clear—clear and furious. Addie has the strange, specific thought that he is someone else, a man she’s never seen before. The man she knows—who courted her and whom, last week, she married—is one she’s never thought about as handsome, yet this one, standing in the hall beside them, is more than handsome, he’s beautiful, radiantly beautiful, with the spiritual beauty of one in pain. And this radiant stranger, without so much as a glance at her, says, “Excuse me, I must see about Louisa’s ride,” and turns and walks away.

Addie looks back at Clarisse. She has no choice. “It is nothing, niña,” she says with jeering sympathy, “an old joke between friends.” And now the mask has dropped. Clarisse’s eyes, her yellow eyes, burn and simmer, they glow like stoked coals that come to life and die and resurrect themselves again. The pain and hatred in them shock Addie to her core, but there’s no mistaking what they are. “But, Mami, let me have those,” she says, reaching for the plate. “I’ll take them away. They are disgusting, no?”

“I will see to it,” replies Paloma, holding fast.

“Él me pidió que lo hiciera,” Clarisse says sharply. “He asked me, Mamá, not you. ¿No es cierto?”

Paloma hesitates and then lets go. “Disponga de ellas correctamente. Póngalos en el río.”

“Sí, Mamita, sé qué hacer.”

“Donde hay corriente,” Paloma calls as Clarisse walks down the hall, “y luz del sol en el banco.”

“Sí, entiendo, in the river, on the sunny bank.”

When she’s gone, Paloma turns to Addie. “Forgive her, niña. She means no harm. She’s had too much to drink. We’re glad for you, but it is a hard day for her.”

“Why, Paloma?” Addie asks. “Why is it a hard day for her?”

Paloma’s stare does not retreat. Her expression is that of someone greatly burdened, without subterfuge, powerful, direct, and sad, someone watching a disaster unfold that she is not afraid of but is powerless to stop.

With a swift and unexpected gesture, she puts her hand—which is long and narrow, like her son’s—tenderly on Addie’s cheek.

“Pobrecita,” she says, “you have come to a dark place.”

THIRTEEN

In the parking lot, as they strapped the children in, Claire refused to look at Ran.

“What?” he said to her across the luggage rack, when they finally closed the doors.

“Don’t ask me what. You know what.”

“No, really, Claire, what? I quit writing in the middle of a song this morning and took the kids so you could get to work; I found a rotten sill in the kitchen wall and called the excavator—he’s coming in the morning, by the way; I made dinner, picked them up at school, came to the party, shook Marcel’s hand and went the extra mile and invited him to supper; I did everything you asked and more.”

“I’ll say. Including getting tanked and calling him a nigger in front of the whole school.”

“I didn’t call him nigger, I said, ‘Hey, nigga.’ There’s a difference.”

“Is there, Ran? I think the semantic subtleties were lost on your audience.”

“My audience…” Ran’s eyes furred like coals. “You know what, Claire? I love you, but sometimes you’re so pure of heart and righteous…” He bit his tongue.

“What?” she said. “You’d like to rough me up? Give me one in the old piehole? Bang, zoom, to da moon, like your old man did your mom before she bailed?”

“You bitch,” he said. “I never touched you. Did I ever touch you?”

“No, you never did, but the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and even when it does, it has a tendency to roll back eventually.” Even as this left her mouth, Claire knew it was unfair. But having allowed herself to hope—again—having listened to his claims he’d changed and had a “come-to-Jesus” with himself, she was bitterly disappointed and spitting mad. More than angry, she felt burned. And now the words were out there in the world and past recall.

“What I was going to say,” Ran said, “is that I love you, but sometimes I don’t like you very much.”

“That blade cuts both ways.”

They faced off, in dire country now, a place they’d visited before, which neither had expected to return to. Or had they only hoped? Ransom felt especially bemused. Each step he’d taken through the day had been aimed at reconciliation, the correction of past wrongs; each had seemed innocent and natural—how had they led here?

“Tell me something, Claire,” he said. “When you look in the mirror, can you honestly tell yourself that you, Claire DeLay from south of Broad in Charleston, who grew up with a black maid and servants, are one hundred percent politically correct and certified error-free, that there’s no lingering trace of racial prejudice in your own heart?”

“Yes, Ran,” she answered without hesitation, “I honestly think I can.”

“That’s interesting,” he said. “That’s interesting as hell. Because if you and Deanna and all your new pals inside, if every white college-educated liberal in the whole United States is as pristine and enlightened as you are, or think you are, then why is race still tearing us apart?”

“I don’t know, Ransom. Maybe you should write an op-ed piece.”

“Maybe I will,” he said. “All I know is, fifteen, twenty years ago, way back in the bad old days, when it was me and Cell and James and Ty, two black guys, two white, backstage at three thirty in the morning breaking down the mixers and the amps, we called each other ‘nigga’ this and ‘nigga’ that and passed a joint, and everyone was laughing, we felt close. Now the word’s off limits and everybody minds their p’s and q’s, but no one’s laughing anymore. It’s hard for me to see the big advance. Where did everybody’s sense of humor go?”

“I don’t know, Ran. I think little girls getting blown to bits in church on Sunday mornings might have put a crimp in it—that and black men getting lynched with their cocks stuffed between their teeth. I think the