Dark & Light: A Love Story

CHAPTER 1

The young black woman sitting on the doorstep of 2274 Broadway stood up suddenly and bent from the waist like a yogi, with her arms crossed and hanging below her head. Her wrinkled T-shirt pulled out of her gray sweatpants and exposed her lower back.

Edmund wondered if she was a panhandler. He didn’t see a cup by her feet, though.

Straightening her back slowly, she lifted her face to the clean September sky and took a deep breath. Her hair was tied in a coarse knot on top of her head; the knees of her sweatpants were worn through. Twenty years of steering around vagrants had exhausted his compassion, but this woman’s small, private smile appealed to him.

He forgot about her once he put his key in the lobby door, but she was there again the next evening, sitting on the same doorstep and eating sunflower seeds from a cellophane packet. Judging by the smoothness of her face, he guessed she was under thirty. When a frail woman with a silver ponytail jogged past her in a skin-tight lavender body suit, she laughed amiably to herself and cracked another seed between her teeth.

The laugh implied intelligence. She was prettier than he had noticed the day before. Her dark eyes sparkled, and her breasts made a taut ridge between them in her T-shirt. He assumed she had landed in this place due to bad luck: a layoff from work, an eviction. With decent clothes, she might be able to find a job in a week or two. He hoped he didn’t see her here again, because then he could assume she had gotten back on her feet.

The following day, his forty-sixth birthday, he overheard four of his programmers making plans for a bachelor party. Apparently, Wilfredo, the fifth programmer, had invited everyone on the team to his wedding except Edmund—this despite the fact that Edmund had stuck his neck out by hiring him, overlooking a two-year, drug-related gap in his résumé, and then mentored him patiently ever since.

No one remembered his birthday at their weekly meeting. For years, he had thought of this team as his last remaining circle of friends. Their meetings, usually full of wisecracks and problem-solving, were the closest thing he had to a social life these days. Despite disagreements, despite his own reserve, he had believed that they all liked and respected him. Listening gravely to Wilfredo’s status report, however, he saw his mistake: not one of them considered him a friend.

He stayed at his desk until eight, took a cab home, and searched the web for information on the structure of the brain, current famines, and an idiotic, terrifying movie he remembered from childhood, The Crawling Eye. He spent the last hour of his birthday listening to sound samples, mostly of Chopin and Roy Orbison, before ordering two CDs as a present for himself.

At midnight, sitting up in bed, he found himself unable to lean over and turn off the bedside lamp. For twenty minutes, he stared into the puckered creases by the base of his thumb and imagined himself already seventy, looking back at the wasted years. Even from this perspective, he couldn’t see what, realistically, he should have done differently.

The woman on the doorstep was back the next night, picking listlessly at a stray thread on her jeans. She had come to mind several times that day, as an unfocused fantasy that dared not progress beyond her smile.

Her sunny amusement had vanished. Preoccupied, she sat in a low slump.

He stopped at the corner, by the wire mesh trash can. The idea came as suddenly as a stolen kiss; the weighing of pros and cons took less than thirty seconds. She needed help. He had no good reason not to give it. If she stole his two computers, his TV, his audio equipment, he could afford to replace them. A life of cautious, methodical decision-making had left him alone at midnight, barely able to breathe. Fuck it, he told himself.

She didn’t look up until he came within six feet of her. She had a spray of freckles and tiny moles across her nose and cheeks. The ends of her hair poked straight up through the knot, ragged and stiff.

Less certain than he’d been a moment before, he said, I’m sorry if I’m intruding on your privacy. I’ve noticed you here for the past few days.

Her fingers stopped picking at the dark denim.

I just wanted to say, if you need a place to sleep— (was he really going to let the words out of his mouth?) —you would, you would be welcome to stay at my apartment temporarily. There’s a sofa-bed in the living room.

Her eyes traveled past his shoulder as she calculated. By making this offer, he had marked himself as an oddball, he saw, a possibly dangerous character—someone she needed to be careful with.

She gave him a wide smile. Her teeth were crooked, and one of the incisors had a line of gold around it; he wondered whether the gold served a purpose or if it was ornamental. That is so thoughtful. But you don’t have to worry about me, I have a home. This is just where I wait for my husband, so we can go have supper together. It’s okay, I don’t take it the wrong way. I appreciate you being concerned. God bless you for reaching out to a stranger.

The false friendliness, so obviously meant to get rid of him, toppled his idea of her as an elevated soul—but even worse was her voice, loud and harsh.

I’m sorry, I misunderstood, he mumbled.

No, that’s all right! You take care. And thank you anyway.

Coming home to his apartment, he cut up a bunch of broccoli for dinner. He had narrowly escaped a disaster so outlandish that it embarrassed him to imagine it. What if she had agreed? What would they have said to each other over dinner—this night or the next dozen nights? By acting on desperate impulse, he had nearly put himself in an absurd, impossible situation. He would never make the same mistake again.

While the sweat on his face dried, he stood at the kitchen counter flipping through a Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue that had come in the mail, and dogeared the pages featuring shearling moccasins and a large-dial bathroom scale. A hooded cashmere robe reminded him of his daughter; he had given her a similar one for Christmas, years before. He called his ex-wife in Houston to ask whether Kristen (who still lived somewhere in Manhattan, as far as he knew) had found a job yet, and to send an offer of help if she needed it. Trish was talking on her other line, though; her sleepy giggle told him she was stoned. She said she would call him back in a few minutes, but the call never came.

It was two reasons why Careese chose this spot to pass the time until the nuns opened up the Sanctuary for supper and sleeping. Her brother Camron’s corner was around here somewhere and she held a slim hope of running into him, seeing a face she loved. The other reason was a happy memory. When her daughter was three, they went to see Central Park near here, and ate at this same Burger King across the street. Nicole chased a Chinese boy up and down between the tables, the both of them laughing so hard they shrieked. Nicole was a different person in those days, more cheerful—she would put a paper bag on her head and say, You like my new hat? That was the day Careese finally accepted that she was a mother, instead of always running away from it. She could handle the job. Her little girl was cute!

The buildings here looked clean, not grimy like the Bronx. She took inspiration from the place, and from all the hardworking people who had what she wanted. They dressed so nice, even the ugly ones looked good.

But now this man with the crooked mouth had to come up and invite her to his place—now she had to stay away. Most likely he wasn’t some evil psycho, just shy and strange. You couldn’t know, though. What if he came back with a knife because she refused him? That story String Bean told her in the fourth grade stuck with her forever, about the father and son in Texas that grabbed black women in their truck and chained them in their basement to rape and torture.

It took a serious situation to drive her back to Broadway again. She was ladling out sticky white rice and kidney beans at the Sanctuary—in a low mood because they told her at Bronx Haven she would have to wait another week to take the Career-Builders Workshop—so she didn’t joke around like usual, Would you prefer the T-bone or the filet mignon? Crazy Colleen, the squinty one who taped pieces of paper onto her purse with messages like Carole Lombard slept with 10,000 men, Colleen said, I’m sick of beans! What do you think we are? Careese said, Just leave them alone if you tired of them, and then Colleen started yelling, You’re a phony! You’re full of it! and dumped her bowl on the serving table so the wet beans dripped down Careese’s sweatpants and down on the orange rug. In a rage, Careese thought if someone finally held this crazy lady responsible for her actions, maybe she would learn to not act so crazy. So she went around the table and stared her down with threatening eyes, and Colleen screamed, Don’t you touch me, and shoved with her hands, and one of them pushed on Careese’s breast.

She didn’t stop to consider. The slap hit Colleen’s cheek so hard, her fingers stung.

Sister Geraldine sat Careese down at the long work table in the kitchen with all the initials carved in it. Held her hand and said with her thin lips, I’m so sorry, Careese. I know you’re a good person, with a good heart. Same motherly eyes that kept Careese from falling apart her first night (What’s gonna happen to me, I’m in a bag lady shelter, there’s people here that smell like shit!)—only now she was kicking her out. Careese pleaded, they went back and forth, but then Sister Geraldine’s hand slid away and Careese knew it was over. After Careese had helped out every way she could, washing the sheets and vacuuming and cooking! It was like getting dropped into the ocean with your arms tied behind your back while your mom just watched you sink.

At the front door—all her clothes in the same two C Town shopping bags she came here with—Sister Geraldine said, You can come back again after three months. I hope we see you then. Careese said, I won’t need a place to sleep in three months, meaning I just need one tonight. In other words, If you was really so damn holy, you would of forgiven.

A long empty truck banged by like steel thunder. The yellow bodega sign said, COLD BEER OPEN 24 HRS. Stay calm, she told herself. Slow down. Bronx Haven didn’t open up again till nine AM so she couldn’t call her counselor. No use going back to the Crisis Center, they just sent her to the City Women’s Shelter, where the girl on one side itched her head all night and the lady on the other side kept coughing, and Careese had to worry about catching TB and lice at the same time. Stan might say Okay, she could stay, but Tanya would say No because of the kids, like having their aunt in the house for twelve hours would mess them up for life. Her mother—don’t even think about it, she burned that bridge too many times. (Your daughter has seen too much of you already, and Careese couldn’t argue. That last time, year and a half ago, Nicole going to church Easter Sunday morning in the same frilly white dress Careese used to wear, and the white gloves and the little hat, and the two of them passed in front of the KFC on Westchester Avenue where DeVaughn was cursing Careese in a crazy rage cause she joked around with the cashier, and Careese called out to Nicole and went to hug her but her mother saw the tilt in her walk and dragged Nicole forward fast, and the little girl didn’t dare to disobey her Grandma with even a glance back, and that was the picture of her daughter that she carried with her, a girl so brainwashed and controlled that she was afraid to peek at her own mother.)

Wasn’t nobody she could call. Aunts, cousins, friends, either they disapproved of her or they was still drinkin’ and druggin’.

DeVaughn? Uh-uh. She wasn’t going to give up hope just because a skinny nun with bad skin threw her out. Not yet. No way.

She ended up on the subway. Half the people at Bronx Haven had done it one time or another, now it was her turn. Just one night—in the morning, Gloria would call around and find her a bed.

Didn’t seem too bad at first, just a lot of tired people on their way home reading papers in different languages, different alphabets even. The crowd got thinner the further out they went, and the train rocking on the tracks calmed her nerves down. They came up from underground way out in Brooklyn, a flat area with dark apartment houses—past a big racetrack, and then houses with boats in their garages, and then over black water with reflections of lights, and far away was the World Trade Centers, small as two cigarettes, and a half moon over the water, and a smell like dirty ocean. She pretended she was on vacation in Venice, Italy, and these dark streets was really canals, and the people that lived in the houses all traveled by gondola.

A cop came through now and then, so she couldn’t stretch out and close her eyes, even after everybody else left the car. Then somewhere between midnight and dawn, a teenage boy got on, with muscle arms like Popeye. Sat across from her, rapping along with his earphones, Fight all day, fuck all night, you heard me right, angry and with his knees wide apart, looking straight at her. His hair was cut almost to a clean shave, the part wide as a butterknife, and his head kept going and going in back like it got squeezed too much at birth. She wished someone else would get on but no one did, and she thought about getting off but if she did he could follow. So she just read the ads over the windows, over and over, Lotto, technical school, dermatologist, until he crossed the train and sat down next to her with his knees open and touching hers.

For a minute she just sat in her own fear, hearing his thumpy little music through the earphones and smelling his soap smell and waiting for the next stop so she could run—but when he put his hand on her thigh, she said, Excuse me, I’m married—not outraged, just neutral—and moved his hand off, all the time waiting for that cop to pass through again, while the dirty lots and falling-down shack houses went by and nobody got on the train, and then the boy reached over and touched her hair, and she talked faster than she could think, I’m asking you to not put your hands on me, because I’m a person like you’re a person, okay?

Maybe he couldn’t even hear her through the music. He said something she couldn’t understand, had something wrong with his tongue, she had to ask him to repeat it, and this time he said it angrily, a bunch of words in a row and the only ones she could make out was care of me.

The train slowed down, coming into a station. She put her hands on the handles of her bags, but he grabbed her arm tight.

What if someone gets on at the next stop, what you gonna do then?

He squeezed harder, till the muscles and blood vessels hurt against the bone. Pulled her hand over to him, and she pulled her hand back, and then he said more angry words she couldn’t understand while they had a tug of war with her hand. She was losing the fight when the cop came back into the car. "Officer," she said, and the hand clamped down harder, a threat she understood better than his words. But she grabbed her bags and stood up anyway, and the boy had to let go. The cop was white and skinny, not in that good shape. He kept a suspicious distance, and Careese asked him for directions back to the city and he told her to just get off at the next stop and cross over the tracks.

The cop stayed by the door when she got off, making sure the boy didn’t follow. She gave him credit for doing his job right.

Up the steps on shaky legs to a covered bridge over the tracks where the token man could see her. Waited there till daylight, watching the stairs every second just in case.

Gloria saw how shook up she was, gave her a big hug and listened to the story while rubbing her back with one hand, round and round. Put her on the Executive Director’s couch (Mr. Mastrangelo was speaking at a government hearing up in Albany) and gave her a long red coat with a white woolly collar from the donation closet to use for a blanket. You did good, honey. Not everyone could’ve held it together. Gloria always took care of her. First person to accept her in spite of knowing the worst things she had done, first person to even hear those things. Flat pink face and a tiny pointy nose—about as opposite from her as a person could be, but Careese appreciated her so much.

It didn’t seem like she could ever sleep on such a hard shiny vinyl couch, but she put the fuzzy coat collar over her eyes, like laying down under a lamb, and next the lunch bell jingled out by the elevator, which meant she had slept four hours in one blink.

Gloria couldn’t talk, she had a new client with blood on his forehead rocking back and forth in her office chair, so Careese went to practice typing in the computer lab, and then she volunteered to help out stuffing envelopes in the conference room, spent the whole afternoon folding letters, but we can’t do it without the support of compassionate friends like you, and sealing up envelopes with a crumbly yellow sponge. The other two volunteers kept complaining, They work us like slaves, and It’s cause we’re clients, not staff, till Careese couldn’t listen any more. She said, Well, we lived wrong and now we got to pay the price. The clock ticked a couple times before the others caught that it was a joke, and then they snickered out loud, all three of them, and by the time Gina the Director’s assistant came to check up, they was singing old rope-skipping songs while they folded and stuffed, Have you ever ever ever seen a long-legged sailor and such.

Five o’clock, she found Gloria rushing down the hall with a jacket on because Tameka Hawley had city marshals at her house evicting her family and blah blah blah—and by the way no place had any open beds. You’d better just spend the night at the Y. It’s only sixty-five dollars—you’ve got enough in client savings.

It hit her like a stab in the chest. That money was to go toward security and the first month’s rent on a place of her own, but even worse, Gloria was moving on to the next case like Careese was a part on the assembly line instead of a special client who had done everything right.

If you couldn’t find me a shelter today, you might not find me one tomorrow. I can’t spend all my money that way.

Step back, babe, take a deep breath, Gloria said. I have to drive over to Tameka’s and talk to her before she abandons her kids, but you can go talk to Romeo, he’s at his desk writing reports. Don’t listen to fatalistic thoughts, they’re your worst enemy. I’ll see you tomorrow, and then we’ll see what we can find.

What Gloria didn’t say was, Come stay at my place for the night. Careese had made the same mistake as before with Sister Geraldine. It was just a paycheck to these people. The love shut off at five o’clock.

Careese, I have to hurry. Will you be all right?

No I won’t be all right, I’m gonna get raped on the subway tonight because of you.

That was when she remembered the man on Broadway.

Okay, his lips looked crooked like he had fangs underneath, but a crooked mouth didn’t mean anything. He spoke politely, more than most people. His suit looked clean. Her best instinct said, Not dangerous, just the shy, awkward type. And if he carved her up into pieces, well, then Gloria and Sister Geraldine would see the consequences of their actions.

Careese, talk to me.

Go do what you have to do. I’ll figure something out.

So Gloria rushed away with her butt cheeks bouncing in time with her face cheeks, and Careese rushed back to Manhattan. She tripped running up the stairs to the train, banged her knees, and ripped the hole in her sweatpants even wider. But the 4 train was pulling in so she kept running, and crowded in with her two bags, not even knowing if she had blood on her or not.

She got to her old doorway twenty minutes later than she used to, still breathing hard. Trainloads of people poured out of the station every five minutes, but each crowd that came up, he wasn’t in it. The more he didn’t come, the more she stopped worrying about what a risk she was taking and instead worried where she was gonna sleep. The panic grew like Jack and the beanstalk, till it filled her up inside.

Then, bang, there he was, carrying a store bag with a quart of milk in it. Pale skin over a dark suit, more grim than she remembered. His collar was clean white and stiff, and his gray hair looked like wiry metal, with a straight-line part. Preacherman of doom. And she wanted to go behind a closed door with him?

He’d almost passed her by when she remembered the boy, Popeye.

Excuse me—sir? she called out. A loud bus was pulling out from the stop, he didn’t hear. She had to follow him.

Hi, she said, and put both bags in one hand so she could give him a friendly wave.

He kept walking and looked down at the C Town bags and her knees. Yeah, the sweatpants had blood around the rips.

Remember me, last week? You came up and asked did I need a place to stay?

He still didn’t stop, not till they got to the corner. I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you, he said. His mouth was a straight line, tight as a rope.

I had a couple problems since then. My situation changed.

He pulled his mouth back even tighter, like he was trying to see would it go