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Still, she now found herself wondering how things would have turned out if Tinker’s old truck had held up long enough to get her home, or if Guy hadn’t been waiting just outside her door.
She turned to see Guy standing in the doorway that separated the kitchen from the hall. He was watching her with a dead look in his eyes, propping himself up with one hand against the wall. “What is there to eat around here?”
He hadn’t shown much interest in eating for quite a while. “Come sit down,” she replied. “I’ll fry you up some eggs. Got a bit of salt bacon, too.” He nodded and crossed to the table, pulling back a chair and collapsing into it. “You want coffee?” He despised the chicory she’d grown up drinking, so she’d taken to buying the more expensive beans to please him. Bought a new percolator and a hand grinder, too, as he liked his coffee better freshly ground.
“Yes. But the food first.” He put his elbows on the table, rested his head between his hands.
She nodded, realizing even as she did that he wouldn’t see her doing so. She turned and crossed to the stove, igniting all four of the electric eyes, hoping that one of them would begin to glow. The old stove was failing. It had been new when she was a girl, purchased by her nana right after she got the house hooked up to the power lines. But now the burners took a lot longer than they should to glow red, sometimes not heating up at all. They needed a new stove, but she felt it best to hold off on a purchase that would anger Guy. He had firm opinions about how “their” money should be spent. Maybe after he went a few days without a hot supper, he’d realize the wisdom of replacing it, or maybe he wouldn’t even care. Regardless, until it was good and dead, she’d force it to limp through.
She pulled out a heavy iron skillet from the drawer where she kept the pans. She set it on the stove, happy to see the back right burner had begun to heat. Once the pan was on the active burner, she switched off the others and went to the refrigerator to fetch the bacon and eggs. She watched, silent, as the white fat of the bacon began to liquefy, a memory from a chemistry class—how many years ago now?—of an experiment to determine the viscosity of some solution rising up in her mind. It fell away at the sound of Guy’s voice. “You got that coffee yet?”
She turned. “Not yet. I was getting your food ready first.”
“I said I wanted the coffee first.” He looked up at her, clenching his fists.
She didn’t contradict him. It wasn’t worth it. “I’m sorry. I’ll get it started.” She’d get some food in him. Some coffee. Maybe then he’d be sober enough to talk some sense.
“No, you might as well finish with the food since you got it started.” He lowered his head back into his hands. “It would just be nice if a man would be listened to every once in a while around here.”
She said nothing. Just grabbed a fork and turned the meat. She went to the cupboard and pulled down a plate, which she brought over to the stove. She fished the bacon from the pan before it cooked too crisp—Guy liked it tender—and cracked two eggs into the hot fat. Sunnyside up. Mustn’t crack the yolks. Guy wouldn’t touch them if the yolks got cracked. As soon as the food was ready to his liking, she carried the plate and fork to the table and set it down beside his elbow. When he didn’t look up, she placed her hand on his shoulder. “Here you go,” she said. “I’ll get your coffee.”
He grunted, but didn’t otherwise react.
She crossed to the counter to retrieve the coffee mill and the canister that held the beans. As she began to crank the mill, she looked over at Guy. He hadn’t budged an inch, hadn’t even made a start on his breakfast. She realized that he was killing himself, slowly, right before her eyes. She had to break him out of this mood, get him up and going again. Or failing that, she fin
ally acknowledged, she would have to get him out of here. Yes, he was Robinson’s father, but she couldn’t have her boy growing up around a man like this.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, the sound of his voice startling her, even though it came out quiet, his words, mumbled through his hands, nearly indiscernible. “You may be right.” She deserted the coffee mill on the counter and drew near to hear him better.
She waited a few moments, but he didn’t continue. “Right about what?” she asked, pulling out a chair and joining him at the table.
He looked up at her, his eyes red, still dazed from drink. “About this damned dry spell of mine. I can’t just sit around waiting for it to pass.”
She nodded, feeling hopeful for the first time in a long time. “Anything, Guy. Anything you got to do. You just tell me.” She said it, and she meant it, too. She wanted him to find his way back to himself. Still, she braced herself for whatever might come next.
He leaned back in his chair, pushing away his plate and fixing her with his gaze. “I’ve been thinking it’s this place—Savannah. It’s this town that’s the problem. If I could just get out of here . . .” His eyes lowered, a flash of guilt showing in them. “If we could get out of here. Get back to New York. I’m sure I’ll be able to work again.” As he spoke, he leaned forward, a fire building in him, the likes of which she hadn’t seen since the old days, back in Atlanta. “We could even take Willy if you want. There are others there like him. He’d be happier there, too. The change would be good for us all.”
For a brief and bright shining moment, she let herself be infected by his zeal. Maybe it was, after all, Savannah’s fault. It was true, before Edwin had found Guy and brought him south, Guy seemed to have been making something of himself. She imagined her small family living happily in that great northern city, far from old memories, far from Jim Crow. Then reality set back in. “It’d take money to get us set up in New York. We don’t have that kind of money, Guy.”
His eyes opened wide and he pointed toward the ceiling. “I already got that figured out; Binah’s done married herself one of the richest fellows in creation. You write your sister. You write Binah. You ask her to arrange for Edwin to make you a loan. He got me down here. He can help get me the hell back out of here.”
She shook her head. She hadn’t shared any news of Edwin with Guy. She’d figured it best not to bring up her brother-in-law. “No, he isn’t rich anymore,” she said, steeling herself to weather his disappointment. “Binah wrote me to say that his parents have cut him off. Edwin is in no position to help us.”
A small smile curved his lips, and a light ignited in his eyes. He laughed. “Good ole Edwin’s gonna learn what being a working man is like now.” It surprised her to see Guy so callous about his supposedly dear friend’s misfortune—especially since Guy himself had been counting on that fortune. Worse, it infuriated her that he would take any satisfaction in the thought of her little sister doing without. But before she could speak, he continued. “No problem, we’ll sell the house. That’ll give us something to get started with.”
Jilo pulled back. “We can’t do that, Guy.”
His face darkened. “And why the hell can’t we? A second and a half ago, you were saying you’d do ‘anything.’ ”
“Well, ’cause Nana left this place to me, Opal, Poppy, and Binah. Even if they agreed to sell it, we’d have to split it all four ways.” She wondered if they might. Based on their history of not visiting, Poppy and Opal didn’t give a damn about the place, and Binah might just be happy for the cash.
“And where the hell are they? If it weren’t for the two of us, this place would’ve been a deserted ramshackle long ago. No, this here place belongs to us. No need to share anything.”
She cast her eyes around the kitchen of the house that had been in her family now for three generations. It was true, this place belonged to her, and she belonged to this place. She realized that even if her sisters would be willing, she wasn’t. This was her home. And she knew, as badly as she wanted to believe in Guy, he’d blow through the windfall, and she and the boys might end up homeless in that great northern city. “No, Guy, that isn’t going to happen.”
Guy reached out with a wide sweep of the arm and sent his plate flying. It crashed against the wall, taking a divot of plaster out before falling and shattering on the floor. Jilo pushed back from the table, ready to flee, ready to fight, but Guy was already up and stomping down the hall. She followed him out through the living room, catching hold of the front door as he passed through it. She held up her left hand to fend off the protesting screen. “No more, Guy,” she called out after him. “No more. We can’t go on living like this. I’m not gonna go on living like this.”
He didn’t stop. He didn’t turn around. She waited there in the doorway and watched as he marched down the sandy drive, around the bend, and out of sight.
