“Not on this trip, Mom. She needs her rest,” I answered.
My mother nodded. “Okay, I understand,” she said. “She’s going to need all of the rest and energy that she can get. It took me eleven hours to deliver you.” She took a quick look at my son, and I proceeded to read her mind. She wanted to ask how long it took for Denise to deliver him, but she held her tongue instead.
“Five hours,” I filled in for her. Denise made sure that I knew, yet I declined to participate in Walter’s birth because of all the emotions that would have been involved.
“Well, the guest room is all ready for you,” she told my son, blowing off my answer. I was sure she had heard me. “Lucy, could you get my grandson’s things and take them to his room, please,” she addressed the maid.
The word “grandson” lingered in my head for a second. I was shocked and caught off guard by it. Usually, my parents called Walter “the boy.” Maybe they really were coming to grips with my son. It was definitely not an overnight process.
When Lucy, short for Lucienda, gently took my son’s bags, he began to smile.
My father caught his stare and grunted, “Young man, that’s exactly what got your father in trouble. You mind your manners.” It had a lot of bite to it, yet my father tried to camouflage the deep flesh wound with a sheepish grin.
My mother turned and looked at him with horror. She got sour and snapped, “They’re no different from you. Neither one of them.”
I thought of retrieving Walter’s things and getting the hell out of there already! I didn’t bring him there for that. My father’s comment was highly disrespectful to all parties involved; my son, his mother, myself, and Lucienda, whether Walter understood the slander or not.
I said, “Thanks a lot. Thanks for starting us off on such a good foot. I really appreciate that,” and walked away from him. How could I have regularly brought my son around such lethal venom? My father had just reminded me, in light speed, why my son had only been to Barrington twice.
I decided to lead him into the house while my parents got to arguing with each other out on the front lawn.
Once we made it inside, Walter looked up and asked me, “Was my mom a maid?”
Evidently, he did understand the slander. “No, she was not,” I told him.
“So why did he say that to me then?” Walter had tears in his eyes. I knew I couldn’t stay there after that.
I shook my head and responded, “Let’s go get your things. We’ll have a talk about it tonight. Just me and you.”
“We’re leaving?” he asked me. He seemed surprised by my suddenness. He was attempting to hold back his tears, but they were rolling down his face already, while he tried to wipe them away. I could feel my son’s shock and anger in my gut, and I decided there was no other decision to be made about it.
“You don’t want to stay here, do you?” I asked him, just to make sure. My mind was already made, even if he said yes. We were leaving. Pronto!
“No,” he told me with a sniff. That settled it. We marched up to the guest room and picked up his bags.
My mother stopped us on our way back down the stairs. “What are you doing?” she asked me. My father was standing at her side. He had apology written all over his face, but it was too late for that.
“Your father has something to say to you; to both of you,” my mother informed us.
“Yeah, well, he can save it for another time. If there is another time,” I told her. I didn’t even want to look at the man. He had ruined everything.
“Well, you’re not driving back to Chicago right now, are you? Junior, you just got off the road. You should at least give your legs a rest.”
“I will,” I said, as my son and I made our way to the front door. “At the Titan Hotel.”
“Well, maybe we could all have dinner over there,” she suggested. She was trying her best to keep things from falling completely apart.
I wasn’t so optimistic. “Or, maybe not,” I responded to her. We were quickly back out the door.
My parents argued some more while we reloaded the car.
“Junior, we’ll be over there for dinner this evening. You hear me?” my mother yelled toward my son and I.
I climbed inside and started the ignition. When I looked up again, my mother was at my driver’s side window. “I love you, honey.” Then she looked inside at my son and added, “I love you both.”
I said, “Yeah, I just wish that he would learn how to,” and drove off. I didn’t mean to be so short and disrespectful to my mother, but if I stayed there a second longer, I might have said and done some vicious things to my father, things my son did not need to hear or see.
The Titan Hotel in northern Illinois was one of the most elaborate and expensive hotels around. The average room there costs no less than two hundred seventy-five dollars a night, and it was only eighteen miles from my parents’ house, off Northwest Highway. I tried to use every excuse I could to stay there, and had managed to do so on four separate occasions, including a stay after the prom with an ancient-history girlfriend.
When we pulled up to the heavy, gold-trimmed doors, Walter asked, “Is this where we’re staying?” I imagined he would have sounded a lot more excited about it had he been in better spirits.
“May I take your bags, sir?”
I popped the trunk and the bellboy hauled our bags inside for us. Then I gave the car keys to the valet parking attendant.
“Enjoy your stay at the Titan,” he told us.
“Oh, we plan to,” I responded.
I had already made reservations from the car phone for a room on the twenty-third floor with my platinum Visa card. The twenty-third floor was one level down from the penthouse, where there was a dance floor, a restaurant and bar, and a large outdoor swimming pool. There was an indoor swimming pool and a sauna on the fourth floor. The Titan Hotel was a visitor’s dream!
By the time Walter had taken a good look at our bedroom, he was already in better spirits. The color television set was thirty-five inches with surround sound, cable, and pay-per-view movies.
“Man, this place is tight!” he told me. He took a seat on the La-Z-Boy chair and leaned it back as far as he could.
“‘Tight’ means good, right?” I asked him with a grin.
“Yeah,” he answered, clicking on the television.
“Are you hungry?” I asked him. “How about we start off with some seafood. You like shrimp, don’t you?”
He nodded like a madman. “Yeah, I like shrimp. And crab cakes.”
“Coming right up,” I told him. I got on the phone to order room service. I planned on going all out for my son, no matter how much it cost me.
We watched college football on cable while we ate our seafood. We planned on buying trunks and going swimming once our meals settled. The Titan Hotel had a gift shop that sold swim trunks and beach towels. Then we could shower, re-dress, and shoot some pool and play video games on the penthouse level.
After we had done all that we could do in one day, I sat with my son inside of the penthouse restaurant, while he enjoyed an ice cream float of vanilla and Sprite.
“What do you think?” I asked him. “Did you enjoy yourself today?” By then it was after ten at night. I wasn’t planning on giving Walter a curfew that evening. If he could hang, I was willing to let him stay up until the sun rose.
He said, “Yeah, I could stay here every weekend!”
I chuckled and asked him, “Would you like to?”
“How much does it cost?” he asked me.
“Let’s put it this way,” I answered, “if we planned to stay here every weekend, then we’re talking Tiger Woods money. Can you handle that?”
He nodded and said, “Yeah, I can handle it. Just give me ten years.”
I smiled. “Oh yeah? And would you bring your son out here?” I asked him.
He licked his lips of ice cream and responded, “Yup. I would bring my whole family.”
“My father brought me here
when I was young, too,” I said. My father had taken my mother and me to stay at the Titan twice. I’d been in love with the place ever since. Every few years or so they added something new to keep up with the times, like the computer room on the twelfth floor.
Walter looked up at me for a second and asked, “How come … he’s so mean?”
He didn’t even know how to refer to my father, and I couldn’t blame him. I had ignored my parents’ messages all that night, and had only called home to talk to Beverly briefly. She knew how important bonding with my son had become to me. I was going to allow no one to get in the way of that.
I said, “Sometimes, son, people get ideas about what they would like to have for themselves and for their children, and they kind of lose their way in the chase. I think that’s what happened to my father.”
Walter frowned with his lips still covering his straw. “He looks successful to me. You do too. So what is he mad about?”
My son had a good point. However, he did not see the struggles that I had along the way, including my dealings with him and his mother. Nor could he imagine the struggles and drive that his grandfather had.
“I wasn’t always successful, son. And there were a lot of wrong decisions that I made along the way.”
Walter took it all in and asked, “Did you ever want to marry my mother?”
The power of innocence can conquer mountains sometimes. I made sure that I used the right words, or the politically correct words, so to speak, so that my son would not hate me.
“You know, you’re going to find out in life that everything doesn’t work as planned, and your mother and me were one of those things that was not going to work.”
Walter put two and two together. “He doesn’t like my mother, does he?”
I took a deep breath, wishing that I could avoid the question. “Unfortunately, not,” I answered.
“Why? Because she wasn’t successful enough? She is now. What about now? You think he’d like her now?”
I said, “With some people it just doesn’t matter. They form an opinion of someone else, and they try their hardest to go to the grave with it.”
My son nodded and said, “Like white people. They always think that we’re doing something wrong.”
I didn’t want to admit it, especially while we were smack in the middle of being served by them, but again, my son had a valid point. “Not all of them,” I told him. “Some of them have made changes concerning their feelings toward African-Americans.”
“Yeah, as long as you make a lot of money,” he snapped. Maybe he could be a politician after all. He surely knew the name of the game; money, power, and race.
My son was throwing out his full deck of cards at me, and I wasn’t sure how long I would be able to match him.
I said, “Well, you can’t worry about how others feel about you, you just have to go ahead and be the best person that you can be. That means that you have to stop worrying about the streets so much. Because there’s nothing wrong with being a good student and getting ahead in life.”
He nodded. “I know,” he said. “My mom talked to me about that after I got stabbed at school.” Then he asked, “You think that … my grandfather’s a good person?” He was forcing himself to think as a family. I considered that to be progress, but his question was another tough one.
Damn! I thought to myself. I needed some fresh air. I said, “Sometimes people can be very selfish, and in their selfishness, they don’t see that they’re actually hurting others with their words and actions.”
As soon as I finished my sentence, I thought about myself. Was I a good person? Hadn’t I made assumptions about Denise’s character and discarded her because she wasn’t “successful enough” for me? Like father like son, I thought. Suddenly I felt nauseous, as if I had too many drinks that evening with not enough food to hold it down.
I said, “Let me ask you a question, Walter. Do you, ah, think that I’m mean, like my father?”
My son looked at me and slowly nodded his head. “You used to be,” he leveled with me. “That’s why I never liked being with you. But now, you know, since this summertime, it’s been fun.”
I had to take a long sip of my drink to calm my nerves at the table. I hadn’t felt such strong emotions since Denise first told me she was pregnant with Walter, thirteen years ago. I didn’t even feel as emotional when my wife told me that she was pregnant, because we were both expecting it. To hear my son tell me that he was finally beginning to have a good time with me was the best news in a long time, and all the love that I should have felt for him years ago wanted to pour out of me all at once.
Before I could gather my composure, I told my son that I was sorry and that I would never be mean to him or his mother again, and basically went on to promise him the world. When I realized it, Walter was holding my hands and telling me that it was okay, while he looked around the room at who might have been watching us. My son was actually embarrassed at my overflow of emotions. It was funny how quickly the tables had turned.
The next thing I knew, I broke out laughing and wiped my face off as if I had been crying. It wasn’t me who had cried. It was some other guy. It was some deep spirit inside of me that jumped out and was taking over. It was love.
My son said, “Do you want to play some pool now? Those other guys just left the pool table.”
I nodded. Walter wanted to get me back to being a normal dad as quickly as possible. I told him, “Yeah. Why not?” I asked our waitress for the bill, while Walter scrambled to grab the pool table.
My son and I went to bed after one o’clock in the morning that night. Afterward, I woke up to use the bathroom. When I came back out, I stood at the side of the bed staring at my son in the dark. He was curled up under the sheets like a human snail. I sat down on the long, pinewood dresser and thought about him. He was a hell of a kid! And it didn’t seem to take much for him to love me. All I had to do was love him, spend time with him, and respect him as a young, maturing human being with dreams, aspirations, and emotions of his own.
Before I knew it, that sobbing, tear-running spirit called love had jumped up and taken control of my body again. The second time, however, there was no one there to be embarrassed about it, so I let it take control of me as I cried in the dark.
Walter Perry III was my first, and so far only, son, and I loved him. It was just sad that it had taken me so many long years to come to the point of accepting it, and wanting to be a real part of his life instead of just a monthly paycheck.
Dealing with the Truth
FTER the incident at Walter’s school, I had the boy on academic lockdown. He was not allowed to watch videos, nor play any video games. I wanted him at home, doing his homework and reading good books, period, end of story. Jimmy needed to be concerned about tightening up his grades, too, if he wanted to play basketball his freshman year of high school. So he drew some of the heat as well. And I didn’t want to hear a damn thing about being unfair! He was in school to learn what he needed first, and if he was doing what he was supposed to do in the books, then I had no problem with him playing basketball.
Before wrapping up my things at work, I gave my attorney, Melvin Fields, a call for an update on the possible lawsuit with Walter’s junior high school. I was leaning strongly toward telling him to drop the lawsuit and settle with the school out of court for Walter’s medical bills, personal damages, my loss of pay, and his attorney’s fees. But to my surprise, Melvin had some other news for me.
“Remember you were asking me about the possibility of a custody battle for your son?” he asked me. He sounded overexcited for some reason, and that was unusual for him. Melvin was one of those show-me-the-money lawyers who only got excited for major cases. I guess he wanted to be the next Johnnie Cochran. He was only working for me because he respected my career and dedication to the community. I really thought that he liked me in another way, but I wasn’t trying to go there with him. The man had enough women in tow already, and I was far f
rom being a groupie.
Anyway, I said, “He still doesn’t have a case, right?” I was a little concerned. I wondered why Melvin was bringing it back up. It was already settled that we would win the case in court, hands down.
He said, “Well, I was going over everything with the lawsuit and all, and a friend of mine brought it to my attention that Walter Perry Senior was a major realtor during the sixties and seventies. And we’re talking about major major! But he’s pretty much kept things under wraps. Did you know anything about that?”
I thought about Walter being from Barrington, Illinois. “I didn’t know exactly what his father did, but I knew that he had some money,” I answered.
“Yeah, well, you just don’t know how much money,” he informed me. “We’re talking multimillions here! How much was Walter giving you a month again?”
I could see where Melvin was going with the case already, and I didn’t like it. As much as I would have loved to stick it to Walter and his family, I just wasn’t that kind of woman. I didn’t need their damn money anyway! That was why I never bothered to pursue finding out more about his family in the first place. If I really cared, I could have asked around, or even taken a drive up to Barrington to find out for myself.
Melvin had been digging himself up a high-profile case, but I was not the one to give it to him. He had just helped me to make up my mind; I wanted to settle with the school out of court. I just didn’t need the extra stress or attention of a court case of any kind. I had enough things going on in my life as it was, and more money was not the solution.
Melvin went on and said, “I have to look into things a little further, but this is definitely something that we need to look into. Inheritance is serious business!”
I said, “Okay, well, I hate to cut you off, but I’ll need to talk to you about this a little later, because I have some runs to make.” I didn’t even want to think like Melvin. That was exactly why I wouldn’t date him. He wanted to go after Walter and his family’s money, and all the while, he was just like them, pretentious and very much into classism.