“People like Parker reap what they sow,” he snapped. “The children of this city are safer tonight.”
Lacy looked over at Drake, who said simply, “Man, what a mess this turned out to be.”
She nodded. “Wonder what made Lenny the way he is? Was there someone in his family affected by toxins? Did something happen to him when he was in the Army?”
Drake shrugged. “We’ll never know, babe. We do know he’s looking at life without parole, since Michigan doesn’t have a death penalty.”
Lacy was passionate about environmental issues too, but would she pick up a gun and shoot a man for his crimes? She didn’t think she could, but all folks were different. It was obvious that Lenny saw himself as justified.
Wanting to get away from the morbid events tied to Parker’s shooting, she looked around the well-furnished mayor’s mansion and asked, “So do you like living here?”
They were relaxing on the luxurious leather couch in what Drake called his Media Room. He clicked the TV over to the pregame show. “Nope.” Tonight was Game 5 of the NBA Finals, between the Pistons and the Western Division champs, the San Antonio Spurs, who were knotted up at two games apiece.
“Why not?” she asked. “It’s a beautiful place.”
And it was, with its expensive wallpaper, artwork, and highly polished furniture.
“Doesn’t have any bottom.”
“No feelings?”
“None. Sarita’s been after me to make the place my own since the election, but why? I’m going to have to turn the place over to somebody else in the end, so why waste the taxpayers’ money?”
“Good point. Why not get your own place? Could you live there as the mayor?”
“I could, but if this place sits empty, that’s still money down the drain because it has to have security. This isn’t the South, where you can leave a place standing unused for a long time. Here, winter would bust the pipes, meaning more money. So I just stay and live with it.”
“Your home should be a place of refuge. Someplace you don’t mind taking your shoes off and walking barefoot.”
He looked over at her and grinned.
“So, are you going to run again?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“The city needs you, Drake.”
“You sound like my mother, but like I told her, I haven’t made up my mind either way. Myk’s giving me two weeks to decide. He’s my campaign chair.”
“I see.”
Drake asked her seriously, “Do you really want our every move to be on the front page of the paper every morning?”
Lacy shook her head. “Truthfully? No. But if that’s what I have to do to support you in what you want to do, I’ll smile and be nice for the pictures.”
He threw out an arm and drew her to his side. When she was cuddled close just like he liked, he kissed the top of her head. “You’d do that for me?”
“I’d do anything for you except kill somebody or be silent while you romance some other woman.”
He ran a fleeting caress over the tip of her nose. “You wouldn’t sing ‘Stand By Your Man’?”
“No.”
Drake chuckled and pulled her onto his lap. “I promise on the heads of our future many greats grandchildren that I would never ever disrespect you that way. And besides, once you get done making love to me, I don’t have the strength to romance another woman.”
“Say my name!” she commanded, laughing, then placed her head on his chest. She could hear the humor rumbling beneath her ear.
“Woman, you are a mess.”
“I know. I think I’m getting more like my mother everyday.”
“That’s a scary thought.”
“Yes it is, but I’m having fun.”
Drake squeezed her tight. “So am I. Are you ready to meet my grandmother tomorrow?”
“Yep. We can pick up Mama and Daddy at the airport and head right over, if that’s okay.”
“Fine with me. Looking forward to meeting the woman known for dancing on tables with fake princes.”
Lacy smiled. “And I’m looking forward to meeting the matriarch of the Vachon clan.”
“She’s not what you might think.”
“What do you mean?”
“For a woman celebrating her eightieth-something birthday, she gets around pretty good.”
Lacy still wasn’t sure what he meant, but guessed she’d find out tomorrow.
And what Lacy found out was that Eleanor Vachon Chandler was a trip. She arrived at Myk’s house, where they having the party, a fashionable one hour late. She entered the living room wearing an expensive black designer dress and gloves, a killer black hat, some sedate yet eye-popping diamond earrings, and draped fashionably across her tall, thin torso was a blue fox mink stole that had to be four feet long. She was dazzling for a woman of any age, but for someone reportedly in her eighties, Lacy was too impressed.
“Charles needs help with the luggage, boys,” she said regally. The three grandsons got up and they each gave her a kiss on the cheek before leaving to help whoever Charles was with the luggage.
Mavis walked up and they shared a hug. “Hey, Ellie. It’s good to see you again.”
“Mavis, you are always so lovely. I bought this hat trying to keep up with you.”
Her teasing made Lacy know it was okay to breathe again. She’d had no idea what kind of personality lurked beneath all that fine clothing and jewelry, but seeing her warm up to Drake’s mother showed her a lot about what Eleanor Chandler was not, which was stuck up and mean.
She then greeted her granddaughters Sarita and Narice, who both gave her strong, affectionate hugs. Eleanor checked out Sarita’s growing stomach. The ultrasound Sarita had last week showed a boy. “How’s my great-grandson doing?”
“Lively, but only at night. Keeps me awake big-time. Doctor says it’s because when I’m working, all the movement keeps him sleeping, but the minute I get home and put my feet up he’s off.”
Eleanor smiled. “I remember those days. Remember I didn’t like it.”
She held out her arms to Narice. “How are you darling? How’s the school?”
“Fine, just fine.”
“What about that Hatfield and McCoy auntie of yours down in Georgia?”
Lacy had no idea what they were talking about, but Narice replied, “She at least let me repair the roof, but she still won’t let me visit her but once a year.”
Eleanor shook her head and smiled wistfully. “We old women are a pretty set-in-our-ways bunch. You stay as close as she’ll let you. That old bat’s going to need her family one day. We all will, if we live long enough.”
Her eyes then met Lacy’s and she smiled again. “You must be Lacy?”
Lacy nodded.
Eleanor seemed pleased. “Drake described you perfectly to me. It’s a pleasure to meet you and welcome to the family, my dear.”
Lacy then introduced her parents. Eleanor studied Val, then asked, “The Valerie Garner Green?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh my goodness. Lacy, Drake didn’t say anything to me about this.”
“I’m sure it was just something he forgot.”
“No. He didn’t tell me on purpose.” Her voice was filled with wonder as she held onto Val’s hand and asked, “Do you know how many of your pieces I have?”
Lacy and Val grinned.
Eleanor looked to Lacy and said, “And you are by far your mother’s and your father’s greatest work.”
She put her hand to her breast. “I am so glad to meet you all.”
Lacy looked to her tall thin daddy and met his grin. There were no other men here his age, but he seemed content as always to bask in the background of the constellation he called his wife.
Charles turned out to be Eleanor’s chauffeur. He was a fine chocolate-skinned hunk who couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. Lacy thought the Vachon grandsons might be wishing they were twenty-five again, the way they were huffing and puffing w
hile bringing in Eleanor’s fourteen pieces of luggage.
At one point during the back and forth trips, Saint put down a particularly heavy bag and asked, “What do you have in here, Gran, your gold?”
“No darling. It’s filled with soap to wash that coat of yours.”
Narice laughed the loudest and the longest.
Saint drawled, “Good one, Gran.” Then went back outside.
That evening after Mavis went home and Lacy’s parents were driven back to their hotel by Charles to rest up for tomorrow’s full day with Drake’s family, the Vachon grandsons and their ladies listened to Gran tell the story Myk had finally decided he wanted to hear.
“My son, your father, Roland, left for Vietnam in ’63. He didn’t want to go but he was already in the army and that’s where he was sent. They kicked him out in late ’64 because while in ’Nam, he’d become a heroin addict.”
The brothers stared. Lacy saw Sarita give Myk a questioning look, but his face was made of stone.
“He explained to me one day that getting high was the only way he could deal with where he was and what he was doing. The death, the napalm, the killing of entire villages. It wore him down, I suppose, so he turned to the comfort of the White Horse.”
You could hear a pin drop in the room.
Eleanor looked over to her grandsons. “He also came back burning with rage over his situation as a Black man. We Vachons have always been about the race, but he came back talking about genocide and secret government tests and the need for Black men to have as many sons as they could to aid the coming Revolution, as the young people called it back then.”
Lacy understood that. Her mother had explained the Revolution concept when she was a teenager. Val said, in the late sixties and early seventies she and everybody else her age were convinced that one day in the near future there would be a seismic revolution in America fueled by the people, which would redistribute the wealth, eliminate pollution and poverty, and wipe the world free of the great isms: imperialism, racism, and nepotism. In looking back, Val said it was nothing more than a crazy pipe dream, but at the time she and her generation believed in the Revolution with all their hearts.
In response to Eleanor’s last words, Saint asked bluntly, “So is that why he was running around playing Johnny Appleseed all over the country? He was breeding Black sons for the Revolution?”
Eleanor said, “Maybe. I don’t know, Anthony.”
It was impossible to see Saint’s reaction because of the dark glasses, but his mouth was set in a grim line.
Myk asked, “Since we’re playing twenty questions: Who was my mother and what happened to her?”
It was Eleanor’s turn to look grim. “She was an addict, and when you were born, you were addicted as well.”
Lacy’s gasp mingled with Drake’s. Sarita looked stricken. Myk’s hard face didn’t change.
Eleanor said, “I would come and see you every day. You were so tiny, but you were a fighter. Watching you go through withdrawal broke my heart, but you made it, and when the doctors said it was okay, I took you home.”
“So who was she?”
“She was your father’s high school sweetheart. Pamela Duvais. A good girl back then, just like Roland had been a good boy. They were supposed to marry when he came home from the army, but he came home on that stuff and then she was on it too.” She paused for a few moments, as if thinking back, then said softly, “I think that bit of darkness you still have inside of you today Mykal is from all that pain you went through after your birth.”
“Why did she leave me at the hospital, and where was Roland?”
“I can’t answer either of those questions. My son disappeared about two weeks before she was due. After Pam delivered you, she was discharged, and for the first two or three days after you were born she was right there at the hospital with me. Then she stopped coming. I never saw her again, nor did her family. Her mother’s theory was that Pam got hooked again and suffered some tragedy that took her life, but we’ll never really know.”
Lacy’s heart ached in sympathy to the sad story.
Drake raised his hand. “My turn, Gran.”
“You know most of your story, though, Drake. Two years after Mykal was born I received a letter from Roland saying you had been born to him and your mother. He sent me Mavis’s address here in Detroit, but his letter to me was postmarked from San Francisco.”
“So he’d already cut out again.”
“Yes.”
Drake shook his head.
“I wrote your mother to see if she wanted to give you up, but in words very unbecoming a lady of those days, she told me quite plainly, no.”
Drake had never heard that part of the story. “She cussed you?”
“Oh yes. Told me if I wanted to visit, fine, but she was keeping her son.”
Drake smiled. Sounded just like his mother.
Eleanor said with a smile, “I knew then that my second grandson was in good hands.”
Saint said, “Then I came along.”
A deeper sadness crept into Eleanor’s eyes. “Yes, darling, then you came along.”
Saint saved her the pain of telling the story. “I was born in one of the state’s women’s prisons to an inmate named Carla St. Martin. Evidently, Roland came back to Michigan long enough to father me, then split again for parts unknown.”
It was impossible not to hear the cold bitterness in his voice. “After my birth the state severed Carla’s parental rights and placed me in foster care. Carla was doing one-to-five for car theft. Her second offense. I spent the first nine or ten years in one bad place after another until I was placed with Sarita’s grandmother and uncles. Then I was happy. Carla overdosed two years after my birth. The end.”
No one laughed.
To Lacy it seemed that Drake was the only one of the brothers holding no bitterness, and she wondered if it was because of all the love he’d received from his mother and sisters.
Eleanor said then, “You all have lived without your father, but I’ve had to live without my son. Good night,” she whispered in a soft tear-choked voice. She stood, and Sarita stood too. Sarita put a consoling arm around Eleanor’s waist and walked with her out of the room.
Everyone else watched the departure silently.
Later, as Drake drove Lacy home, they were both in a somber mood. Drake looked her way and asked, “Some story, huh?’
“Yeah. Pretty sad too.”
“It is, but in both my brothers’ cases, their wives have brought a lot of sunlight into their lives.”
“What about you? You don’t seem to be as affected.”
“Oh, I’ve go my issues too, but my mother and sisters helped, and so did my uncles. Growing up with no one to call Daddy hurts a lot, especially when you’re young and all your friends have fathers.”
Lacy understood.
“But I have you now. My own personal sunshine. Just like my brothers have theirs.”
She smiled. “And I’ll shine as long as you need it.”
“Good. Because I’m holding you to that.”
Lacy scooted close and wrapped her hands around his arm. “I love you, Drake.”
“I love you too, baby. Want to go and neck with the mayor on Belle Isle?”
Lacy sat up with a giggle. “Sure!”
“You’re so easy.”
She laughed. “Blame it on your romance gene.”
Drake looked her way, and the love he had for her made him so full, he couldn’t stand it. “How long will you love me?”
She whispered, “Until the stars fall from the sky. Now, let’s go to Belle Isle.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “You are a mess.”
“Say my name!” she whispered, laughing too.
And he headed the car for Belle Isle so he could do just that.
Drake Anthony Chandler came into the world fussing and yelling on Sunday September 18, at 7:35 P.M. The day being a Sunday, Myk had to practically get on his knees and
beg Sarita to let him take her to the hospital because Sarita was so engrossed in the day’s football games. But much to Myk’s and everyone else’s relief, the baby was born in the hospital and not in front of the TV during the halftime scores. Both uncles were ecstatic at the news, and Saint and Narice flew in from their farm in Ohio to check young Drake out.
Lacy and Uncle Drake were married a month later, on October 22. The service was held at St Matthew’s and St. Joseph’s, and Lacy didn’t know half the dignitaries and other official people filling the pews. She did know, however, her parents, her sisters- and brothers-in-law; her new nieces and nephews, and Baby Drake. She also knew the man standing beside her at the altar. He was kind, funny, dedicated, and most importantly, the man she intended to have at her side for the rest of her life.
When the priest said to Drake, “You may now kiss the bride,” Drake looked down into her eyes and said, softly, “Thank you for marrying me….” Then he kissed her.
And as Lacy kissed him back with all the love in her heart, she just knew she had to be the happiest woman in the world.
Author’s Note
After the publication of The Edge of Midnight and The Edge of Dawn, many readers wanted Drake to have his own book. Because his half brothers, Mykal and Saint, had such over-the-top personalities, it took a while for Drake to open up and let me see the real him. The result was Black Lace, and I do hope you enjoyed his and Lacy’s story. The issue of urban dumping touches not only big cities like Detroit, but small town America as well. The Blight Court that Lacy was so passionate about is modeled after a recently established initiative in Detroit known as the Department of Administrative Hearings. For more information on the DAH, please visit the city of Detroit website at www.detroitmis.gov/dah/.
A thank-you goes out to Lillian Southern, historian for St. Matthew’s and St Joseph’s Episcopal Church, for the wonderful information she provided on her parish. Because Black Lace is a contemporary novel, I was unable to use most of the church’s wonderful history, but I know it will come in handy for a future historical project.