I really didn’t mind it myself. It didn’t make a difference to me. In fact, just plain Brock sounded more personal. The boy would probably never call me “Dad,” that was for sure.
Walter had me tempted to ask a few questions about his father, but I felt it was inappropriate. Denise was definitely going to have to level with me that night. I wanted to know everything.
After dinner, we were finally alone. Denise said, “Brock, I’m getting ready to go and pick up Jimmy. I’ll call you later on tonight.”
“What does that mean? You want me to leave?” I hadn’t even asked her any of my questions yet.
“Well, I figured it would be nice to have you over for dinner since you’re just getting back in from out of town, but I have other things to do.”
I was just about to heat things up when I saw Walter getting himself ready for their car ride by tying up his sneakers. I calmed myself down and said, “I have a few things I want to talk to you about tonight. I don’t like how things seem to be between us.”
Denise brushed it off and responded, “All right.” She seemed to be in a rush all of a sudden.
“Are you gonna see him out there tonight?” I asked her, referring to Jimmy’s father.
“Of course I will,” she said to me. “But I don’t have time to talk about it right now, I’m already running late.”
“All right, well, I’ll talk to you later on then,” I told her on my way out the door. A younger man may have gotten pissed by the brush-off.
Denise nodded and said, “Okay,” and headed to her car.
“See you, Mr. Brock,” Walter said to me, waving.
I waved back to him. “All right, Walter. And you come up with some more original movies, okay? I like the truck driver thing.”
He smiled and slid into the car. Then I waved to Denise through her front windshield before she took off. I felt terribly empty when I climbed into my Maxima. Denise was making me feel like the outsider that I was. I actually thought that we were a lot closer than that. Maybe I had it all wrong.
I got back to my place on the South Side and had a sudden urge to look at old pictures of my ex-wife. I was thinking that maybe it would have been more practical for me to have worked things out with Teresa than to get involved with a mother of two. However, Teresa never made me feel the way I did with Denise. I never had any feelings of urgency around my ex-wife. It didn’t seem like I cared about too many things when I was with her. Whenever I was with Denise, I considered everything. Maybe that was because my whole relationship with her was more of a long shot.
It’s funny how people love to gamble. Gambling causes a rush of excitement, getting something for nothing, or getting more than what you thought you could get. Maybe my luck was running out with Denise and I was finally being shown a closed door. I hated to admit that, because that would have meant Larry Nicholson knew something after all.
“Shit!” I cursed. I couldn’t believe I had let myself get so close to someone with such a complicated lifestyle, but I wanted to at least talk to Denise about it before I jumped to any conclusions. If I was gonna go out, then I was gonna go out fighting.
Right when I began to sit down and think up a game plan, I got a call from my sister, Debra, out in Tucson, Arizona. Debra was thirty-four, the same age as Denise. She went to DePaul three years after I attended. She studied in political science, graduated in the top tenth percentile of her class, and received scholarship and grant monies to attend graduate school at Arizona State. Talk about a power sister on the move, Debra was one of them. Since she had relocated to the land of the sun, I kept forgetting to think about her and her war stories concerning love. Debra was not married, had no kids, and was not even concerned about starting a family. Every time I talked to her, I wondered if any of that had changed. She was so entrenched in the black politics game in Tucson that she even called herself D. Brockenborough to throw people off from her gender. That gave her opportunities to move up the ladder pretty swiftly while working on plenty of political campaigns in that area. It even got to the point where political competitors would fight over who received her services, and Debra made no bones about switching teams if better opportunities presented themselves to her, including working with white politicians. I often joked with her and called her a trader, but she paid me no mind at all.
“How have things been going lately, big brother? I talked to Mom and Dad, and they seem to be doing fine. How are things with you?”
I used to hate when Debra called me “big brother” years ago. It made it seem as if she was rubbing her success in my face, just like Larry would have assumed. I wasn’t always so sure of myself, especially concerning my little sister. She had made our parents proud, while I made them scratch their heads and ponder. Maybe something really was wrong with black men, myself included. Many of us just didn’t seem to be able to take the heat of competition.
I joked with her and said, “Teresa’s moving back in with me.” Debra never liked her. She considered my ex-wife a whiner long before I could see it. I just thought that Teresa was a little sensitive.
Debra responded, “I know you wouldn’t do that, Dennis. So what’s really going on in your life?”
“What’s going on in your life would be a better question,” I told her. I didn’t feel like talking about myself to Debra that night. She would start figuring out solutions when sometimes I didn’t want any. When you get to a certain age, you can call it senile if you want, but you like to figure out your own damn problems.
“Don’t wanna talk about it, hunh? Same old big brother,” she said with a chuckle. “It’s good to see that you’re healthy.”
“What about you? Have you been doing anything healthy lately?” I could picture my sister calling me from one of the tallest buildings in Tucson, as she paced in front of her office desk where she was working overtime. Since it was after eight in Chicago, it was only after six in Tucson. Debra would work up until nine at night sometimes, a workaholic just like Denise. I guess I was already used to dealing with her type of woman from being so close to my sister. Of course, I never dated my sister. Her body wasn’t as fine as Denise’s anyway. Debra had a blackboard butt like a white girl. Not all black women were gifted. I used to wonder if that had something to do with my sister’s reluctance to flaunt her sexuality, but I excused that as plain ridiculous thinking on my part. White girls didn’t stop flaunting what they had.
“Well, I’ve been playing a lot of golf lately,” Debra answered.
“Golf?” Despite the popularity of Tiger Woods, I could picture her being one of three black faces out there, all of which were newcomers who couldn’t play a lick. “What kind of scores are you getting?”
“Well, I just started breaking a hundred recently.”
“And what kind of campaign are you working on this year, white or black?”
“Power has no color,” she answered.
I took that to mean a white campaign. “So you’re trading on us again.”
“No, I’m simply trying to learn how to get us what we need.”
“By sleeping with the enemy?”
“Whatever it takes.”
I didn’t mean that “sleeping with the enemy” term literally, and I was terrified to ask if she meant it that way. If my little sister was out there literally, sleeping with white men in the politics game, then I didn’t even want to know about it.
I said, “So, how hot is the weather out there, the same as usual?”
“Well, does Chicago have wind?”
We laughed, and were off the subject that quickly. Debra didn’t want to go into her personal life either. Good idea.
I looked at my watch, wondering how long it would take for Denise to get back in from picking up her son.
“When’s the next time you might make your way on home?” I asked my sister.
“Oh, I’ll pop up when I’m least expected. You know how hectic my schedules can be.”
“Yeah, well, get in touch with me when you do,” I told
her.
“All right, big brother. I’ll talk to you next time.”
I hung up with Debra and thought about how quickly she could size up an unconfident man. If America kept producing women like Denise, Debra, and plenty others, a lot of these young men could end up wearing skirts in the next millennium. That was the prevailing thought line for my game plan with Denise. I figured it may have been time to show her a little bit more of my backbone.
Denise didn’t call me until after eleven. I forced myself not to call her because I didn’t want to seem pressed about it, and I wanted to see if she would stand by her word.
“Brock, this has turned into a very long night for me, and now I’m extremely tired. So if it’s at all possible, how about we do lunch tomorrow instead?”
I paused for a moment. “It doesn’t sound like I have a choice,” I told her. I had been waiting for nearly four hours to talk to her. It really seemed like she was trying to avoid the issue.
“Don’t take it like that,” she pleaded.
“How am I supposed to take it then?”
“Just meet me for lunch tomorrow.”
It sounded real simple to her.
I asked, “What if I can’t meet you for lunch tomorrow?”
She sighed and said, “Okay, you win. Let’s talk now.”
I didn’t like how that sounded either. I said, “Denise, what do you and I mean to each other?”
She didn’t answer me right away. I guess she had to think real hard about it. Then she said, “I need time to evaluate that kind of question.”
“I don’t,” I told her.
“Okay then. What do I mean to you?”
“You mean a lot to me,” I told her.
“And what exactly does ‘a lot’ mean, Brock? I mean, where do you expect us to go with this?”
“Oh, so I guess now it’s all coming out. You never meant for us to be much,” I said. I swear, if I was ten years younger, I would have started cursing her out, full of immaturity and ego. Fortunately, I was getting too old for that kind of irrational behavior. I believed that Denise realized my maturity and was using it to her advantage to keep me at arm’s length.
“Brock, it’s not as if we’ve made some kind of commitment to each other. We’ve been having a good time and everything, but you have your private life and I have mine.”
“Oh, so that’s how you see it? I thought I was part of your private life. I don’t have a private life outside of you. I thought I made that clear when we first started sleepin’ together.”
I didn’t mean to go there. I hadn’t felt that passionate with a woman for a long time. Like the saying goes, It’s a thin line between love and hate, and Denise was really bringing that thin line out of me.
“I think you need to calm down before we finish this conversation. Okay? Because I’m not going to get into this.”
She said earlier that I had won, but in reality, she had. Denise had effectively turned me into a whiner. I felt ashamed of myself. I had to get a better grip on the situation. What would a young man like Larry think if I didn’t? I had to lead by example.
I said, “I understand that you’ve had a very hard time to get to where you are, Denise, but life isn’t easy for any of us. And when you find yourself with an opportunity to make life more meaningful by including another loving and giving person in it, I don’t find anything wrong with that. Now, I’m not the most religious man, but you’ve been going to church every Sunday for years, and I still don’t think that you’ve learned how to open yourself up to sharing the gift of love that God gave to all of us.
“So, with that, I’m sorry for wasting your time, and I’m sorry for caring so much and wanting to be a part of you and your family.”
Denise gave me another long sigh. “Can I call you tomorrow?” she asked me.
I said, “I don’t want you to feel obligated. You’ve made it perfectly clear to me tonight that you don’t need me in your life. I’m just window dressing.”
“I didn’t say that I didn’t want you in my life.”
“Nor did I, but it seems that you only want me on your terms I’m a human being, Denise. I’m not some damn vibrator that you can turn off and on. I got feelings over here.”
“I understand that.”
“Do you? I mean, do you really? Because it just seems to me that you’ve gotten so used to showing your own strength and pushing your way through everything that you’ve forgotten how easy it is to step on people in the process.”
“Brock, I’m sorry. Okay? But like you’ve already said, things have not been easy for me, and I just don’t count on too much from people anymore.”
I said, “Look, you told me when I first started going out with you that we all need to push a little harder to attain our goals in life, but now you’re turning your back on all of that. Or maybe I’m not a part of your goals.
“I’m not asking you to count on me, Denise, I’m just asking you to be real with me,” I told her. “And if we’re really gonna be together, then I think that you should also let everyone involved know about it. Because it’s not like we just met each other yesterday. We’ve been doing this for a year now, slippin’, slidin’, and hidin’. And frankly, baby, I’m tired of that shit.”
“Well, you’re just gonna have to give me time. I’m not gonna tell you anything right now that I really haven’t thought about yet,” she told me.
That was a bunch of bullshit, but I was going to let it slide. Denise had plenty of time to think about where things were headed between us. Even Debra would have thought about it after seeing the same man for a damn year! Or would she? Had relationships become so fruitless to women that they didn’t expect anything out of them? Then again, since Denise and I both had hectic work schedules, the most we got to see of each other in that year was an average of once or twice a week. Maybe we did need more time together before I could realistically expect progress.
I calmed myself down again and said, “All right. That’s fair. We’ll do it that way then.” I was planning on playing my cards slowly and taking things as they presented themselves, one step at a time.
“Thank you,” Denise told me.
“Okay. Well, have a nice sleep.”
“I sure will.”
I hung up with her and felt honestly confused. Was Denise all talk and no action? I was itching to find out. I knew one thing though, no matter how rich or powerful women got, men still have to handle things like men, and that means explaining your territory: how you feel, what you expect, what you’re not gonna take, and how you need to be respected.
I had a lot of respect for Denise. There was no question about it. However, if I ever expected to take things further with her than just being a sneak-around friend, then she had to have some respect for me as well.
Strength and Angels
FTER taking lunch, I walked into my small office, near downtown Chicago on Halsted Street, and prepared my desk for a two-thirty appointment. Elmira, my Latina secretary, gave me the message that Walter Jr. had called while I was out.
“He didn’t leave a message?” I asked her. That was unusual for Walter, but I figured whatever it was, it had to be dealing with our son. If he was calling during work hours, then it was urgent. Or at least from his point of view. I was just hoping that he wouldn’t be bothering me concerning a custody battle unless he was seriously ready to go to court. In all honesty, I didn’t believe he had an inch of a case! Nevertheless, that didn’t mean that I wasn’t at least nervous about it.
“He just said that he’d call you later on tonight at home,” Elmira told me.
I told myself not to worry about it. I had a job to do.
“Any other messages?” I asked my secretary. She would have told me on her own if there were; I wanted to move on to a new subject as quickly as I could by forcing the issue.
“No, it was just that one call,” Elmira answered, with her beautiful, dimple-faced smile. She was a really attractive young woman, who received
plenty of invitations to dates, from every kind of man under the sun. But Elmira was smart enough to know what true love was, and she wasn’t going to sell herself short by being overwhelmed with the offers.
I felt guilty when I first thought about hiring her because I realized there were many sisters in Chicago in need of a good job. However, after I thought about how black men and women had been ignored by whites, hiring their own people, I decided that my Latina sister, a minority herself, was just as needful for a fair opportunity. Besides, she was the best applicant for the position. Then she was able to get me plenty of clients from Chicago’s Latino community, which I did not expect at the time I hired her, but I damn sure accepted after the fact. So it all worked out for the best.
At precisely 2:36, Sylvia Livingston, a thirty-nine-year-old mother of three, and a lifetime resident of Chicago’s South Side, walked into my office. It had just stopped raining earlier, and the sun was back out in full force, creating a muggy heat. Sylvia had walked right through the middle of it, wearing a burnt orange suit, an off-white blouse, and a matching wide-brimmed church hat. Fresh sweat was pouring down her face as she furiously wiped herself with a handkerchief.
“Oh, I’m so sorry I’m late, Sister Stewart, but those buses never seem to act right when you’re in a hurry. Those bus drivers get ta’ socializin’ and singin’, and all the while, you got some place ta’ get to,” she said as she took a seat in front of my desk.
Sylvia was one of my most progressive clients. I had called her down to my office to discuss different programs to shell money away for her youngest son to go to college in ten years. She was one of the few welfare recipients that I could convince to start some kind of savings. She understood the type of determination it would take to turn her finances around. She found herself a steady job, got off welfare in less than three months, and had been working hard, steadily, and more important, saving her money ever since. I was so proud of her commitment and progress that I made an oath to myself to sing her praises as much as I could to other clients who needed an extra push to believe that they could make it.