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“Don’t,” his wife said softly, placing a hand on his arm.
“You talk to her,” Sam said, jerking the paper back up.
Harriet lowered her head slightly, took a long breath, and then looked at her daughter. Althea was standing there, arms rigid with anger. “Honey,” she said, “if you had the money to go on your own, it would be a different matter. But you don’t, and since your father doesn’t agree with you that it’s a good trip to make, you can hardly be furious with him for not giving you the money.”
“I’m eighteen,” Althea began.
The Times came crashing down. “Yeah,” her father said, “so maybe if you’re old enough to want to go palling around with Muffy, Scruffy and Whupsie—the Honky Sisters—you’re old enough to support yourself.”
“Oh, Dad,” Althea said, storming into the kitchen.
The Times was thrown to the floor. “What is it with that girl?” he said, yanking first one shirt cuff down over his wrist and then the other.
Harriet was eating her scrambled eggs.
“If I had the advantages she has—”
“You didn’t,” Harriet said.
“You better believe it.”
“I know, Sam.”
It was even odds whether the man named Sam Wyatt would explode or deflate at this point. His wife, sitting next to him, chewing, watched to see which it would be. When he fell back into his chair with a sigh, a faint smile passed over her lips and she moved on to her English muffin.
Sam took a deep breath, straightened his tie and then paid serious attention to his tie clip. “I don’t want her to get hurt,” he said quietly.
“I know, honey,” his wife said.
He let go of his tie clip, plunked his arms down on the arms of the chair, and looked at himself in the dining-room mirror. He straightened his tie again.
At fifty, Sam Wyatt possessed a handsomeness that was not easily defined. He was one of those men whose looks came alive with expression, animation, and since he was forever—as his eldest daughter would say—”intense,” he was most often rather striking. He was tall, nearly six foot one, and squarely made across the shoulders. His skin was a deep, ebony black, and his closely cut hair had gray coming in fast at the sides. His mouth—perfectly fine when still—had a curious habit of lifting to the right side when in use. (Four years ago, when Sam brought home a publicity photograph of himself from the office, three year-old Samantha had burst into tears. “That’s not Daddy!” The Wyatts had finally pieced together that what was scaring Samantha was the absence of “Daddy’s cook-ked smile.”) Sam’s nose was long and a tad sharp (“Where do you suppose that came from?” Althea would ask, pulling on it). And his eyes were large and bright, veiled by long lashes.
“Sam,” his wife said, lowering her English muffin, “is there something else? Something other than Althea, I mean.”
Sam thought for a moment and then sat back up to the table. “Would you want to go to Southampton with a bunch of white girls?”
“Not particularly,” Harriet said, pulling the bit of muffin into small pieces on her plate, “but then, I’m not Althea. And they’re nice girls, Sam, and I know she wouldn’t have been invited unless they really wanted her to go. And it’s preseason—” She frowned as Sam started humming “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”; she picked up a piece of the muffin and bounced it off his nose. “You’re worse than a weather vane,” she said. “Make up your mind, are you in a good mood or a bad mood?”
“Yeah, I’d like that—weather reports,” Rosanne said, swinging in from the kitchen with a coffeepot. “Nobody told me hurricane Althea was gonna tear up the kitchen this mornin’.”
“What is she doing?” Harriet asked.
“Aw, nothin’,” Rosanne said, putting the coffee down on the table, “she’s okay. Killed the last muffin, though. I think it’s behind the refrigerator.”
Harriet giggled and the sound of it made both Sam and Rosanne smile. Harriet Wyatt was one of those lucky women who in her forties had gained ten pounds and a rather astonishing new voluptuousness. But her black hair—straightened and coiffed in a stunning sleek cut around her neck—her spring suit and silk blouse and her gold hoop earrings and bracelets did nothing by way of indicating that she could be a woman who giggled. But that was Harriet, forever coming forth with warm and happy surprises. That is, unless she thought one was wrong, and then she would grow ten feet tall (it would seem to Sam) and everything about Harriet would turn hard with the warning, “Just try and mess with me.”
“Can’t imagine where she gets her temper from,” Harriet said.
“Yeah,” Rosanne said, going around Sam’s chair to pick up the newspaper from the floor. “Here, Mr. W, let’s set an example,” she said, refolding it and placing it at his side.
Sam gave her a look out of the corner of his eye (with the side of his mouth rising accordingly) and then reached for the coffee.
“I wanted to ask ya somethin’, Mrs. W,” Rosanne said, moving back around the table.
“Coffee, Harriet?” Sam asked.
She nodded and turned to Rosanne. “Shoot.”
“Like, well,” Rosanne said, rolling up her sleeves, “Howie’s a good editor, isn’t he?”
Both Harriet and Sam burst out laughing.
“What? What?” Rosanne wanted to know, looking at one and then the other.
“I knew it!” Sam cried. “Harriet, I told you she’s going to write a book about us. Remember?”
“I’m not writin’ a book,” Rosanne declared, stamping her foot. “But let me tell ya, if I was”—she poked Sam in the shoulder— “I wouldn’t waste it on the likes of you. I got a lot more interestin’ things to write about than you two spoonies.”
“Hear that, Harriet?” Sam said. “She says we’re too boring.”
“Then thank God for boring,” Harriet said to the skies above. She looked back at Rosanne, smiling. “Howard is a very good editor.”
“I thought so,” Rosanne said, starting to clear the dishes. “He’s gonna read a friend of mine’s book.”
Sam’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t say anything.
“Sam,” Harriet said, sipping her coffee, “I’m supposed to have a meeting this morning with Harrison.”
He nodded, but then, after hesitating a moment, said, “I wanted to talk some more about that job offer.”
“Aw, no,” Rosanne said, balancing the pile of dirty dishes, “you’re not gonna leave, are ya?”
Harriet reached out to touch Rosanne’s arm. “I’m only thinking about it, Rosanne, so please don’t mention it to Howard.”
“Naw, I won’t,” Rosanne promised, going out to the kitchen. “He’s down in the dumps enough as it is.”
“We all are,” Harriet sighed. “The place is a battlefield.”
Sam was sitting there, stirring his coffee. “How long do you have before you have to give them a decision?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A couple of weeks, I guess.” She looked at him. “Why?”
“Well,” Sam said, slowly putting his spoon down on the saucer, “I wish you could put it off for a little while.”
“Why?” she said again, clearly puzzled.
“Well, with summer coming—I don’t know,” he mumbled, shaking his head.
Harriet was frowning. “I don’t understand. On Sunday you were all for it. As I recall, your exact words were, ‘It’s time one of us took a risk—go for it.’”
He sighed, sitting back in his chair. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m not so sure you want to leave—”
“What are you talking about, Sam? Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said to you for the last year? It’s—”
Seven-year-old Samantha chose that moment to come in and announce a crisis concerning a missing blue sock.
“I’ll help you, honey,” Harriet said, rising from her chair. “Sam,” she added on her way by him, “I want to talk about this some more tonight.”
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Sam mumbled.
Harriet stopped in her tracks and turned around. Finally, her husband looked at her. She started to say something, stopped, squinted slightly, and then said, “We do have to talk, Sam. We do.”
“I don’t know where it is!” Samantha wailed from the hall.
“Did you hear me, Sam?”
He nodded, tossing his napkin on the table.
“Honey,” Harriet said, coming back to him.
“I know, I know,” he said, lifting the jacket of his suit from the back of the chair. “We’ll talk tonight.”
As Harriet went in one direction, Althea came in from the other. She avoided her father’s eyes, intending to pass him by, but he caught hold of her arm. “Hey,” he said, pulling her back to face him.
Althea was not going to cooperate.
“Look,” he said, tilting her chin up, “Althea, in a couple of years, you’re going to be able to do whatever you want. You can run for mayor of Southampton if you want to, and I won’t care. But for right now, while you’re in school, while you’re living here with us, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to pacify your old man.”
Althea rolled her eyes.
Very slowly, very deliberately, he said, “I love you, you know. And I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“I don’t see how going to Southampton is going to hurt me,” Althea sulked.
Sam slid his arm around his daughter and made her walk him to the front door. “Look, I think it’s nice that your friends invited you, but I don’t think they understand—”
“Understand what?” Althea persisted, twisting away.
“That I don’t want anyone looking at my daughter like she’s a second-class citizen and, Althea, that’s what you’ll get out there.” He shook his head. “You know, you act as though your mother and I don’t know anything about how this world works. Well, let me tell you something, we didn’t get where we are by hanging out—” He raised his hand and then dropped it, shaking his head again. “Did it ever occur to you that there was a reason why we decided to raise you kids here and not in the suburbs?”
“‘Cause you work here.”
Sam closed his eyes and then, slowly, reopened them.
“You’re so uptight, Daddy,” Althea said, turning away. “You’re so uptight about everything.”
Sam looked at his daughter’s back and sighed. And then he left for work.
Sam regretted almost every decision they had made concerning how to bring up Althea. For one, they never should have enrolled her in the Gregory School. Yes, it was true, at the time Sam had been extremely proud that Althea had been accepted at one of the best private schools in the city. And yes, he had been very proud that he and Harriet had been able to send her there at a cost of nearly five thousand dollars a year.
And, actually, the Gregory School had been fine until Althea hit her teens. Looking back, Sam and Harriet wondered at their naiveté. After putting their daughter in a nearly all-white school, how had they expected Althea to maintain many black friends? The one black boy in her class Althea didn’t even like. (“He’s a jerk!” Althea had exclaimed, when her parents asked why she wasn’t going to the dance with him instead of John Schwartz. “Just because his father plays for the Jets, he thinks he’s God’s gift.”) And when they talked about pulling her out of Gregory, Althea’s counselor had made a very good point: Althea was happy there, and her grades and popularity showed it. And so the Wyatts had tried to compensate by pushing Althea into extracurricular activities—a plan that failed as well. (“I don’t want to go out for the team at the Y—I want to swim for Gregory!”)
Althea graduated from Gregory with a 3.8 average and the Wyatts were relieved when she expressed a desire to stay in New York and attend Columbia. (“Smith!” Sam had yelled during Althea’s time of uncertainty. “Harriet! Your daughter wants to go to Smith with a friend named Poo!”) And again, Sam had been very, very proud of Althea. And of him and Harriet. How many blacks, he wondered, how many kids anywhere, were smart enough to get into an Ivy League school and had parents who could afford to send them there? (“The way I figure it,” Sam had said to Harriet as they sat down to plan out Althea’s tuition for the next four years, “we can send Althea through school, or we can buy Mexico.”)
Althea, thus far in her freshman year, had done extremely well, but Sam was still nervous about her. Of all the different students, Althea still undeniably gravitated toward those affluent whites she had grown up with at Gregory. She did have some black friends, and her last boyfriend too (thank God) had been black, but still…
It wasn’t that Althea disregarded her heritage. On the contrary, Althea made being black seem like an asset in the world. An asset because to know Althea Wyatt was to associate a young black woman with all the things all people everywhere coveted: brains, beauty and the brightest of futures. Did that bother Sam? No, not really. What gnawed at him was how self-centered Althea seemed to be. That everything Althea sought was for her own benefit, hers alone, with apparently no thought of rechanneling some of her good fortune back into the black community.
Harriet did not worry about it as much as he did. But then, Harriet was forever clouding the issue (for Sam) by claiming that Althea, as a black woman, couldn’t afford to give anything away until she reached that almost nonexistent place called power. “For you it’s a white man’s world,” Harriet would storm on occasion. “But for me, Sam, for Althea, and for our little Samantha in there, it’s a man’s world first, Sam, and then it’s a white man’s world.” And then Harriet would burst into tears and Sam would feel terrible as Harriet would say, “You make me so furious sometimes. You always say you understand and you never have. You just don’t know, Sam, you just don’t.” Sniff. “And I’ll tell you something else, Sam Wyatt, why should our daughter do a darn thing for all those groups of yours? Look at them, Sam—they’re all men. And who do you men help? Young men. You have two daughters, Sam—don’t you think you could give one scholarship to one woman? Can’t you guys even pretend that women matter?” (Sam, incidentally, no longer participated in any group that did not include women.)
But the issue of race and of sex and of Althea’s upbringing had another all-encompassing issue attached to it. It was the issue of addiction. From the day she was born, Althea had clearly been her father’s daughter. She looked like him, she talked like him, and her attitudes were just like his—in the old days, that is. Would Althea inherit it? they wondered. Had Althea been given it when she was little? What does one do when scared of the onslaught of it? It that has raged through half of your child’s heritage, it that is waiting out there, on every street corner, in every school-yard, in every place where people are—what could the Wyatts do about it? They could—and did—watch over their baby, try to safeguard her in ways that caused these other problems. Like the Gregory School. Had they really sent Althea there to educate her, or had they sent her there to keep her safe?
Hmmm…
No, it was true. They had sent her there to keep her safe.
And Columbia? Living at home?
They had kept her there to keep her safe.
Safe from it?
Yes, safe from getting sick like her father.
Sam Wyatt was the youngest of six children. His father had been an “army man,” which sounded a good deal better than “a cook.” Private Wyatt and his family moved from camp to camp in the United States, living in the colored housing where all the other indentured servants in the guise of privates had lived in the late 1930s and early ‘40s.
Sam was seven when his father went off on a drunken spree from which he never returned. They had been living in Texas then, at a camp that was frantically processing young men for shipment to the South Pacific. The army lost the trail of AWOL Private Wyatt in Nogales, Mexico, where he had apparently taken up with a barmaid named Juanita. Penniless, Sam’s mother Clowie had no choice but to parcel her children out to her siblings. Sam landed in Philadelphia at his aunt Jessima’s.
Aunt Jessima had the fear of God in her and she did her best to instill it in Sam. Sam’s childhood and teenage years seemed like one long prayer meeting, with Aunt Jessima’s particular friend, Reverend Hope, officiating. Sam behaved, he did as he was told, and vowed that when he grew up he would never enter a church again.
By the time Sam enlisted in the army in 1956 the Wyatt family was sadly depleted. His mother had died of pneumonia in Milwaukee; his brother John had died in a car crash in Arizona; his brother Matthew, in the army, had shot himself through the mouth in Germany; and Sam’s sister Bernice, only two years older than he, had been stabbed to death by her boyfriend in Los Angeles. His eldest sister, Ruth, had not been heard from in years; and his brother Isiah was preaching the gospel somewhere in the Everglades of Florida.
Sam spent four years in the army, was honorably discharged as a sergeant and went to Howard University on the GI Bill. He was smart, he was cocky and he was known for his way with women and having a good time. With his business degree in hand, he landed in New York City in 1965 and was hired in the personnel department of Electronika International. He was very well paid to assist a Mr. Pratt in all phases of personnel operations, and since Mr. Pratt did nothing Sam assisted him in all phases of nothing and enjoyed a pretty footloose and fancy-free time of it.
And then he met Penn graduate Harriet Morris, another Philadelphia expatriate, who was working as a secretary in the publicity department of Turner Lyman Publishers. Harriet was the first woman Sam had ever felt inclined to be faithful to. She was very pretty and very smart, and was the product of a middle-class Methodist family that was so happy it used to make Sam sick. In fact, if it had been anyone but Harriet, Sam wouldn’t have gone within ten miles of a person like her. Harriet was a devout churchgoer. Harriet read the Bible every night before going to sleep (she still did). Harriet didn’t drink. Harriet was forever saying things like, “Look on the bright side.” And Harriet was very critical, very hard on anyone she didn’t think was living up to his potential—namely, Sam.
On their fifth date Harriet ventured to tell Sam that he was a fool to be in personnel. Sam, drinking a martini, dressed in a very expensive suit, asked her how much she made at Turner Lyman and, when she told him, he pointed out that he made five times what she did. So what the hell did she know?
“Did you major in personnel at Howard?” Harriet asked him, smiling over her Coke.
Of course he hadn’t.
“Did you interview with Electronika to work in personnel?” she asked.
No. He had interviewed for their training program.
“And they offered you more money to go into personnel, didn’t they?”
