“I could have got into trouble,” JJ said, but he seemed excited, not afraid of that prospect.
“Come into the kitchen with me, okay? I’m hungry.”
“I’m fine. Y’all got any government cheese?” JJ laughed. “You remember that? Some of it was always in Alice Graham’s refrigerator. I’d have died without that cheese.”
Sylvia shook her head. “I’m not eating that nasty mess.”
“Why did they send it in four-by-four blocks? Blast from the past.” JJ chuckled. “Just like me. I’m government cheese.”
“Yes you are. That’s exactly what you are.” Sylvia knew JJ was joking of course, but she didn’t like the comparison he made with the cheese. He was not unwanted, or just good enough for the hungry poor. She was not the hungry poor. What did the kids say? “Get over yourself.” She was trying. Not everything had to hurt.
“I know there’s some crackers in here,” she said as she searched the cabinets for any snack. She could eat. In fact, she found that she could eat any time. The craziest part was she even liked the weight. The only time she really liked her body in her life was when she was big-pregnant when she knew she looked like she was supposed to and was not unacceptable by mistake. She would never again be as fat as she’d been when she was young, but a few pounds comforted her, made her feel like herself.
“You know I’m going to ask you. You know that right?” Sylvia turned to stare at JJ.
JJ shrugged, like he couldn’t imagine what she was about to say.
“You think I don’t know why you came back?”
“I came to see you and Ava.”
“I know what you came to do. You got grown and you got your little nerve up. Ava’s married, JJ.”
“I heard. I know Henry. I knew Sean better.”
“Sean’s in prison. That beautiful boy. All those Bailey boys were beautiful. Nothing good has happened to a one of them, except Henry.” Sylvia paused, careful with Jay’s feelings. “He should be out or close to out by now.”
“How long?”
“Six years.”
“Damn. Sorry. What did he do?”
“What do they all do? Drugs. I’ve said it for years. Whatever you see going on with the very poor is just a few years away for everybody else. People think they outrun it in their little suburbs. You don’t outrun nothing for long.” Sylvia had moved to Development Drive running from a poor, dirty past. Even then she was grown enough to know she was only buying them all a few years’ time.
“Was it crack? Might be meth. There’s a lot of that out here in the woods.” JJ nodded. Back then in the least valuable neighborhoods in town, Jay remembered a line of young men and old boys on Sugar Hill, on the creek and West End, stationed every few yards, waited for you to slow down with your folded bill, no conversation necessary, a drive-through service for what you needed and in the background, run-down houses with poor people, poor families and old people in dark ugly rooms like the one he’d grown up in. Sean right there hustling with those boys, even then.
“What do you know about prison?”
JJ looked surprised but he wouldn’t look directly at Sylvia. “I just know that’s a long time to be locked up.”
“You get yourself caught up with the police, in the system anything can happen to you. You know that don’t you?”
“I know.”
“I’m telling you right now, you need to not worry about Ava. She’s got her mind on other things.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s fine, honey.” Sylvia put her back to JJ and opened the cabinet behind her, scanned jars of ingredients like edible food or some junk food (please Lord) might suddenly appear. “She’s okay, JJ. I don’t know what you expect, but she’s fine. She’s been working at Wells Fargo now. It used to be Wachovia, if you remember that. Anyway, she’d been there since she got out of school. They told her to come see them when she graduated and she did. She’s one of the chief loan officers. Can you believe that?” Sylvia had gone into that very same building years before in her best dress, with her pay stubs in her pocketbook, asking for a five-hundred-dollar loan that she didn’t get. It felt like a hundred years ago. “She’s okay. Nobody has everything they want,” Sylvia said.
“She always was smart.”
“She is still. At least she thinks so.” Sylvia smiled. “You can’t tell her nothing, but that’s not new.”
“Good to know some things are the same then,” JJ said.
“You should go by the bank and surprise her. She was just talking about you. We both were. She would be tickled.”
“I want to.” JJ paused. Sylvia could feel him trying to gather his thoughts. None of this was going to be easy for any of them. “I will soon.”
“You should see her when she’s working. You wouldn’t even know who she is. She’s mine and I take a double take when I see her in town. Well, wait until you see her. I can’t believe she came from me.”
“Is she happy?”
Sylvia wasn’t sure what to say. Whatever JJ wanted from her, from the town, from the house he spent the past few months building, was tied up with her child. What he needed from her and what her child needed probably did not connect. It would be a miracle if they did after all this time. Sylvia had not known if she’d ever met a black man who was a romantic. The ones she knew had too much harsh life, too much reality drilled into them from early on. But this man in front of her thought he could star in his own adventure, be the hero in his own story. Sylvia smiled at him, this strange creation.
“What?” JJ said looking around. “What is it?”
Sylvia shook her head. If Sylvia were being honest she wasn’t entirely sure she knew the whole truth of how Ava was. She didn’t know that much about herself, much less about her child. “She’s as happy as anybody.”
“How are you, Sylvia, really?”
Sylvia thought she’d never again know happiness. The dead spaces in her now, the ones inured to feeling couldn’t connect her to that emotion. Of course she loved, a few people, some days, but never again could she access happy—a diamond ring down the drain she’d had to dismantle the whole works to get at. “I’m all right.”
JJ stared into her face with his naked face, his eyes scared to death. “I’m going to be happy, Mrs. Sylvia.”
“Honey.” Sylvia resisted cupping his face in her hands.
“She has feelings for me.”
“There is no way on this earth you can know that. Have you talked to her? You don’t even know her anymore.”
“I know it was way back.” JJ shrugged his shoulders. “Some feelings don’t go away. Maybe they aren’t supposed to.”
“She wants a baby, JJ. She’s on to another part of her life. That’s all she can handle right now.”
JJ nodded like he understood. “I’m not trying to make things difficult. I swear about that.”
“I need a drink of something.” Sylvia opened the vegetable drawer in the fridge. One lone shriveled lemon rolled in the fruit compartment. She picked up the dry fruit and smelled it.