Tamara raises an eyebrow. "Can I help you?"
"What are ya'll talking about?"
"None of your business. What do you want?"
Grimacing, Roderick replies, "We're going out. You need something?"
"Where ya'll going?"
"Uh . . ." If he says that they are going to the mall, she will definitely ask for something, or even ask to go along. "The hardware store."
Tamara purses her lips. "For what?"
"A hammer. Remember I said I was going to hammer some . . . hooks in the kitchen? So you can hang your stuff on the hooks?"
Tamara narrows her eyes. "Why you lying? You can't hammer a straight nail." Roderick is a terrible liar; it's one of the things she likes most about him. "I know Lucas is going to help you, baby. You don't have to be ashamed. I still love you even though you ain't no handyman."
Roderick smiles uneasily. "Right. So call if you need something."
Tamara blows him a kiss as he leaves, and then she flips her honey brown hair over her shoulder and rolls her eyes. "I know good and well they ain't going to the hardware store. Roderick can't fix a sandwich."
Marlowe snickers and rolls over onto her back. "Where do you think they're going?"
"I don't know. Some kind of male bonding thing that he doesn't want me to see." Tamara reaches under Marlowe's head and pulls out her curly tresses, dragging her fingers through the wet locks and fanning them out over the bedcover. "Your hair is so pretty. And all you do is wash and go. You make me sick."
"Go natural, Tam. You can do it too."
"Girl, please. Everybody ain't able, redbone." Tamara sighs and continues pulling through Marlowe's curls.
Like most black women, Marlowe doesn't think of herself as mixed. It is all too common to look in the mirror and see evidence of a white or even native ancestor. You would never know it from her gingerbread color, but it is there in the line of her nose and cheekbones, in her wavy locks. Redbone - that's what they say. Good hair. Marlowe had her good hair pressed straight for years until the Olympics came to Atlanta and she fell in love with the high dive. She signed up for a swimming class and set her hair free. She forced herself to embrace it at first, pushing through the fear that she was ugly with a wile mane of crinkly curls floating around her face. But she came to claim it as her birthright. She had to, after the things Nate said to her.
Every detail of that day is etched into her psyche as sharp and fresh as a new wound. She'd breezed into his office fresh from the salon with an extra strut in her step and a glamorous old Hollywood smile playing over her lips. Nate was on the phone, but he hadn't needed to speak to communicate his opinion. His open mouthed stare had been enough.
He'd hung up the phone, frowning. "What happened to you? You got caught in the rain?"
Marlowe's face had fallen as her own slender faith in the new look began to tarnish. "No. I told you I was going to get my hair done."
"So why didn't you get it done?" It had been a comment more than a question: this is unacceptable, Mo.
She could have taken a step back. She could have acted like it was just an experiment, an accident, a mistake. But how could her God given head of hair be a mistake? "Damn, Nate. It's my hair. If I'm happy with it, you should be too."
He'd scoffed. "I'm your man. You should be worried about whether I like it or not."
At that moment, it became more than just a matter of opinion. It was the subtle threat that had bothered her, the subtext that said that if she didn't measure up to his standards, she would have to pay for every discrepancy. The price very quickly became too high. He spent that week teasing her with comments like, "Good morning, Jemima," or "It looks like you combed your hair in the dark." That hurt, but it hurt more when she realized that she had spent most of her relationship with him paying for her failure to be the perfect woman whose icon he had fixed in his mind's eye. She was a teacher with a master's; he wanted her to be a professor with a PhD. She lived in a simple one bedroom apartment; he wanted her to move into a luxury condo. She wore pants suits; he wanted her to wear short skirt suits with three inch heels. Because she had been a tomboy all her life, always on the awkward side of feminine, she changed herself for him, thinking that he was doing her a favor, making her a better woman. But she was a woman anyway, all along. The only way she could be better was to stop being ashamed of the gifts with which she was born.
So she left him, not because he wanted a certain kind of woman, but because she wasn't that woman. She didn't know the identity of the real Marlowe Ross. And if she'd stayed with him, she never would have found out. "You saw him today?" Marlowe murmurs.
Tamara's eyes narrow. "Saw him and her too."
They don't have to use names; this is an old conversation. Tamara is the only person who accepts Marlowe's decision to leave Nate. Everyone else, her friends, her parents, even Roderick, had called her crazy. Yvonne had also been on her side; she'd never liked Nate and always said that he was prissy. But two supporters were never enough to keep Marlowe from drifting to the shallow side of confidence whenever his name came up. That's why she moved to D.C. It is easier to keep her mind straight when she is alone, when she doesn't have to face him at every barbeque and birthday party and worry that she made a mistake. "She came?"
"Yeah," Tamara replies, sighing as she rolls onto her back and lays her head next to Marlowe's. "She's been coming every Sunday for a few months now. She even showed up at Wanda Stewart's tacky engagement party."
Marlowe chuckles. "Was it tacky, girl?"
"Was it ever." Tamara stretches out her arm to examine her manicure; she smiles at her wedding ring. "But that Sara has been turning up everywhere on his arm, watching him like a hawk, honey. You know what that means."
Marlowe falls silent, considering. Finally she shakes her head. "No - Nate wasn't a cheater, whatever else he was."
"First time for everything."
"No, Tam. I hear that enough about brothers. If I have to accuse him of something, I want it to be the right thing."
Tamara squints and clucks her tongue. "Why you getting soft on Nate? I might think you missed him or something."
Sometimes she does. She had loved Nate. He was good to her, reliable; he hardly ever raised his voice. Out of his love of splendor had come a host of creative romantic evenings out that had both embarrassed and pleased her. She had loved him, but he had not loved her, not really, not enough. She knew it the day Nate walked into church with Sara on his arm and accused Marlowe of failing him. That was the excuse he made to his friends and family, to the whole church: Marlowe failed me. If he loved Sara, he didn't have the guts to claim it. Instead, he hid behind his father's robes; Reverend Meadows delivered a blistering cautionary sermon about women being subject to their men, about not being too harsh, too demanding, or having too much attitude. The men in their social circle nodded gravely and glared at their wives. The women sat still and silent at their husband's sides lest one of them become the next witch led to the gallows. Marlowe got up halfway through the service and walked out, her face as red as the scarlet letter. She stopped coming home after that.
"Hello?" Tamara is leaning over Marlowe's face, snapping her fingers.
"Sorry," Marlowe mumbles, rising slowly from her thoughts. She sits up and smoothes her hair down. Tamara is staring at her. "What?"
"What were you daydreaming about? You didn't even hear my question, did you?"
"What question?"
"What were you thinking about, a man?" Marlowe snorts in reply. "You should be. But I got the fix for that." Tamara jumps off of the bed and bounces across the carpet to her walk in closet. She comes out moment later with a dress. She holds it up, looks at Marlowe, shakes her head, and then bounces back into the closet.
"What are you doing, Tam?" Marlowe crawls wearily to the edge of the bed and sits down, swinging her bare feet over the carpet.
"Finding you something to wear." Tamara grunts as she shoves back a pile of clothes. "I know you didn't bring anything cute to wear for tonight."
"Tamara," Marlowe says testily.
Tamara pokes her head out of the closet and eyeballs her sister in law. "Did you?"
"No, but . . ."
"Nuh uh - I don't want to hear it." Tamara puts one hand on her hip and waves her other hand in the air, silencing Marlowe's protest. "I can understand not going to church today, but I will be just as offended as Rod if you back out tonight. He just wants to spend some time with you, Mo." Tamara waddles across the carpet with her arms stretched out; she takes Marlowe's hands and swings them. "Me too. We came up together, and even though I know you didn't like me when we were kids, you're the only sister I got."
Marlowe breaks into a smile as warm as summer. Her pint-sized sister in law is an emotional powerhouse; Tamara gets to Marlowe just as easily as she gets to Roderick.
Tamara's eyes light up when Marlowe relents; she swings their arms cheerfully. "Plus, somebody's got to entertain Lucas. That boy's almost as antisocial as you, sitting around my reception all night like a bump on a log. I'm on my honeymoon - I ain't got time to baby sit nobody except my baby . . . What?" Tamara pulls Marlowe's arms out straight and squints. "Why you looking like that?"
"Like what?" Marlowe tries to turn the grimace that took over her face into another smile.
"You ain't fooling nobody. Why you all frowned up like that?" Tamara purses her lips before frowning herself. "You don't like Lucas?" When Marlowe doesn't answer, Tamara pulls her up from the bed. "Girl, come on here and look in this closet. You are too foolish. Lucas is real nice, even though he does look kind of scary sometimes. He comes to Roderick's parties more than you do." She leaves Marlowe to lean against the door frame while she rifles through the closet. "And he always compliments me," Tamara declares, winking at Marlowe and flipping her hair over her shoulder.
Marlowe folds her arms over her chest. That's why he seems so comfortable here; he visits more than she does. "How often does he come?"
"One or two times a year. But he and Roderick stay on the phone, especially since . . ." Tamara stops short, turning to Marlowe with wide eyes.
"It's okay, Tam. You can say it: since the accident." It hurts every time, but it will always hurt.
"Right. Since that." Tamara takes a short breath and returns her attention to the closet, snatching clothes from their hangers. "Do you know that Lucas stayed with us for a week after the funeral? A week. I'm so glad he was here. Rod needed another man to help him deal with his grief," Tamara says, tapping her chest and sighing.
Marlowe shifts uncomfortably. She'd left the day after the funeral, too absorbed in her own sorrow to notice anyone else's. She goes cold as guilt washes over her. Roderick had never berated her; he'd only asked her, time and again, to come and see him. Marlowe straightens from the door frame, making up her mind to go out tonight and have a ball with her baby brother and his new wife. She'll be damned before she lets Lucas outdo her.
