Mother smiled when Evelyn handed it over, and Evelyn smiled back. She’d held a tender spot in her heart for the woman since the dinner, and a repulsion toward her father that couldn’t be tamed. It was as if all her affection toward him had shifted over to Renard. Her beau’s na?ve belief that her father approved of him, his security in it, only made her love him more.
She left her mother and Ruby to mope and went out on the porch. She could hear Brother and his friends playing cops and robbers a block away. It was summer, and the orange nasturtiums and red zinnias bloomed across the street on the porch beside Miss Georgia’s rocking chair. Evelyn had already met Renard that day on North Claiborne, but some nights when he needed to see her sooner than the following afternoon, he came for her here. He’d walk by the house, kneel behind the petunia tree, and whistle. They’d walk the few blocks to a bench and though they scarcely did more than kiss, she’d been tending an irrepressible urge to allow him to make a woman out of her. Even tonight as she waited, she wondered if this night would be the one.
She dallied on the swing almost an hour—the full heat of daytime had become unbearable, but the cool night breeze felt nice on her skin. When he didn’t come, she told herself he was probably with Andrew, and she went back inside. Ruby was asleep; her mother had retired upstairs. Evelyn stood over her sister, stared at her, trying to glimpse a change. What happened to the face of a broken woman? Did it turn to convey the loss or did it conspire with her heart to hide it? Looking at her, she thought it was the former. She remembered seeing Ruby so crumpled only when she was a toddler and their mother would leave her. Now as an adult, Evelyn felt genuine sympathy for her for the first time in her life. She sat on the edge of Ruby’s bed and stroked her hair, but when Ruby stirred, Evelyn retreated back to her own corner of the room, back to her own life.
The next morning she went out in search of Renard. It was a Saturday, and she thought he’d told her he’d be working at the French Quarter restaurant that weekend. She chose one of her Sunday dresses, pinned her hair up, and dabbed a touch of lipstick on her cheek for color the way she’d seen Ruby do. Aside from Andrew, she had never been introduced to anyone in his life before, and she wanted to make a good impression.
She walked to North Claiborne, then St. Bernard, stood amid the mothers buying snap peas and chickens for their evening meal, the bakers unloading mounds of white bread. She stepped onto the bus. It was so crowded the whites were seated in the Negro section. Evelyn didn’t mind standing though, not today. The closer she got to her stop, the more excited she became. She could see Renard through the restaurant window before the bus came to a complete stop. She watched him while she waited for the whites to disembark. He didn’t even know she was there. He moved in a steady rhythm, bending down to pack boxes, taping them, lifting them and stacking them in a large pile. An air of peace shone through him while he worked, almost as if he had merged with the movement itself and they were bound together on some mission that surpassed what lay ostensibly before him. She didn’t want to interrupt him; she didn’t want to interrupt something so sacred; she would say hello quickly, then head back home. She stepped off the bus and walked toward him. She was only a few feet away when a policeman approached the restaurant window. He tapped on it loudly until Renard came out, then he shouted, “There’s some trash from your store in the street, boy. Old fruit and the such. It’s starting to stink.”
“I’m mighty sorry, sir. Mighty sorry.” Renard bent his head for the officer in front of him. “I’ll have someone clean it right away.”
The officer smiled, a slow stretch across his face that felt more malicious than joyful. “Is that right, boy? You’ll have someone see to it?” His smile stretched even wider, and he leaned into the backs of his polished black shoes. “Just who do you think you are, boy?”
“No, sir, I mean, yes, sir, I’ll see to it myself right away, sir.”
“That’s more like it, boy. That’s more like it.” The officer stepped back and watched Renard fumble through the street, lifting particles of trash near the store and even stray bottles from the billiard room next door. When he was done, he wiped his hands on his white apron and walked back over to the police officer, reached in his pocket, and slipped him a bill of cash. The officer yanked it from his hand, and it was Renard who said thank you. He watched the officer walk off until he was out of sight, then he ducked back into the shop.
Evelyn would have gone in then. Renard went back to hunching over the boxes, oblivious to the fact that she’d seen him, and she longed to touch him, join him in his oblivion. Each time a box hit the dolly, she started toward him. She told herself she should go at that very moment, but something glued her to the road, and when finally he went out to check the street once more for litter, she ran away so she wouldn’t be seen.
Evelyn didn’t see Renard again until a couple of days later, and she had to run into him in front of the Sweet Tooth, the way the insurance man would meet her neighbors out in their driveways sometimes. After she left the restaurant the other day, she waited for him on her swing but he never came. She wondered if it had something to do with that officer, the way he’d spoken to Renard, but Evelyn didn’t have reason to believe the officer didn’t speak to him that way every day. Why would one encounter effect change? Still, she was glad she hadn’t revealed her presence. She hadn’t been embarrassed for him, only sad. If he knew she was there, though, he’d be embarrassed for himself, and he might not be able to recover.
Now, the way he was standing, with his hands in his pocket and his head down as if he didn’t have every pure thing in the world ahead of him, she wondered if it was her Renard, or if she was seeing visions. Of course it was him. She approached him slowly. When he caught sight of her, there was only faint recognition.
He nodded at her instead of speaking.
She tugged at his arm. “Renard, where have you been? I’ve been so worried about you.”
“Nothing to worry about, girl.” He smiled a distant smile.
“What do you mean, ‘nothing to worry about’? You were supposed to come by yesterday, and the day before that. Where were you?”
He looked off to the side. His eyes appeared misty, not as if he had been crying, but as though he had obscured them to avoid seeing. “Look, Andrew and I been busy with some things. I just didn’t get to it.”
“You didn’t get to it?” Everyone around them turned to stare, but she barely noticed her voice rising. She lifted her hands to pummel them into his chest, and only then did he really seem to see her. His face sort of softened then, but she wasn’t sure, there was so far he had to go. “What is it, baby?” she asked.
He pulled her by the wrist behind him. They walked for seven blocks before they slowed, then turned down several roads in a confusing wind. When he finally stopped in a secluded street she hadn’t known existed, he let go of her hand. He lifted both of his own, then dropped them at his side, like a balloon expanding and deflating.