Babylon Sisters Page 10

“How’d it go?”

  “They want to run a ten- to twenty-page supplement in every issue with ads for strip clubs, escort services, and porno products of all kinds.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Welcome to Atlanta. The Amsterdam of the South.”

  “I know Miss Iona ain’t havin’ that, so what are your other options?”

  “I can close it down and go teach in a journalism school somewhere, or I can find a story we can cover the way we used to and make people remember what the Sentinel is all about.”

  “I vote for option two.”

  “You and me both. Now all I need is a real reporter and a great story.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes open.”

  “I’d appreciate it.” Louis’s eyes were following Amelia up and down the pool as if he were afraid that one of these times she’d get to the other end and just keep swimming.

  “Phoebe’s letter came from Smith today,” I said, trying to sound casual. Louis knew how much Phoebe’s heart was set on Smith. He turned away from Amelia and looked at me.

  “Is she in?”

  “I didn’t open it.”

  He looked surprised. “Aren’t you going to?”

  I shook my head. “Not the way things are. I think it would just piss her off.”

  “Do you want me to tell her?”

  I nodded. “I’ll bring it by tomorrow. You can read it to her or send it on. Let me know when you know, okay?”

  “I will.”

  We both sat there for a minute, watching our friend cutting her graceful path through the water and thinking about my daughter, stamping her little feet in frustration somewhere out in the world. I had underestimated her reaction to an obvious lie from the person she depended on most to tell her the truth—me. It was time to figure out how to face up to my own lesson in all this and admit to my child that I knew a lot more than I was telling, but not yet. I just wasn’t ready to let Burghardt Johnson back into my life if I didn’t absolutely have to. The last time I let him get close to me, I almost lost myself. But this time I stand to lose my daughter, and nothing is worth that.

  “I just miss her,” I said.

  Louis nodded. “I know.”

  “What if I was wrong?”

  He reached over and took my hand and patted it like a kindly uncle. “Wrong about what, my guilt-ridden friend?”

  “Wrong about not telling her.”

  “What about not telling him?”

  “In spite of what seems to be the current consensus, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t wrong about that.”

  Louis shrugged. “Sometimes a miss is as good as a mile, Cat.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that if I had a daughter as special as Phoebe is, I think I’d like to know.”

  “You’re not B.J.”

  “Not even close,” Louis said, trying to tease me out of my funk. “He’s a lot taller, but I’m much better-looking.”

  “Yes, you are,” I said. “On his best day.”

  “You might mention that to Amelia if you can work it into the conversation.”

  “She doesn’t even know B.J.”

  “I mean about how good-lookin’ I am.”

  I laughed. “No problem.”

  Amelia executed a perfect turn and headed back in our direction as Louis reached into his wallet and handed me a card with several phone numbers on it.

  “What’s this?”

  “I think you should call her.”

  “Amelia?”

  “Phoebe.”

  “I want to,” I said. “I’ve never wanted to do anything more, but I can’t risk it. If she hangs up on me, I’ll have to catch a plane up there tonight and act like an old-fashioned black mother.”

  “I’m going to give you the number anyway, in case you change your mind.”

  “It’s her mind that needs changing, remember?”

  “I think she’s sorry she ever sent those letters.”

  That was music to my ears, but Louis had said I think. “Did she say that?”

  “She said she missed you. Is that close enough?” He was still holding out that card like he was prepared to dangle it there all night. Louis was the eternal peacemaker.

  “She gets her stubbornness from me,” I said, slipping the card in my pocket so we could move on.

  “Third generation,” Louis said, glad he had made me smile, “but that’s okay. I like stubborn women. The meaner the better.”

  I followed his eyes back to the pool. “Then what are you doing with Amelia?”

  He turned back to me with that lovely lopsided grin. “You really want to know?”

  I grinned back. “Absolutely.”

  “I’m falling in love with her.”

  21

  After Amelia got out of the pool, Louis volunteered to serve the drinks, and we let him. I lay back in the chair next to my friend, who was wrapped in a fluffy white robe that made her cocoa-colored skin look like rich milk chocolate. She looked peaceful, and I couldn’t resist suggesting a reason why.

  “So,” I said, “how long have you and my favorite editor been keeping company?”

  She opened her eyes and had the nerve to blush. “Since the Sweet Honey concert.”

  That was exactly when I had noticed the change. I congratulated myself on being so observant. They went out friends and came back soul mates. “What happened?”

  She laughed a little and shook her head. “The hell if I know. I’ve always liked Louis, you know that, but we’ve got three divorces between us, and I’m not looking for complications in my life right now.”

  We spend half our lives longing for love and the other half running from it. “Go on.”

  “Well, you remember you said you couldn’t go, so I had an extra ticket. When Louis said he had never seen them and would love to go, it seemed like the perfect solution, except I wasn’t sure I wanted him to go.”

  “Why? You two have been going to the movies for years.”

  They like the big-budget Hollywood stuff like Spiderman that I wouldn’t see on a bet.

  “Yeah, but movies, or dinner, or even another concert is one thing. Sweet Honey is different. It’s special. It’s completely and unapologetically and magically black and female. You know what it’s like! It’s a ceremony or a ritual or something with real power, and I wasn’t sure he could handle it.”

  She was right about that. The annual visit of the famous a cappella quintet to Spelman College’s Sisters Chapel was a gathering of the tribe like no other. Amelia and I used to take Phoebe, and the three of us would dress up in our most celebratory colors and our most special silver bangles and earrings that hung to our shoulders so we could feel them swaying against our necks when we started dancing in the aisles. Then we’d head out into the night like the beautiful black birds we knew ourselves to be.

  Sweet Honey will bring that out in you, and by the end of the concert, the sisterhood is so thick you can cut it with a knife. That much unadulterated womanness makes some men uncomfortable. They feel overwhelmed, intimidated, ill at ease. To compensate, they talk too loud or demand the attention of a sister who is still savoring a private moment or in some way impose their will when they should just relax. Amelia didn’t want to put Louis in a situation that would bring out the alpha male in him. Once you see a man act like that kind of an asshole, it’s hard to forget. You keep wondering when he might do it again.

  “So he was all right?”

  She grinned at me. “He got it, Cat. He totally got it. It was the same kind of energy we have at the Sweet Honey shows. In fact, it was as good as having you there, except afterward, we got to take it all home to bed.”

  I laughed. “Well, I can’t compete with that. Guess I’ll have to find a new best friend. Two, actually.”

  “Don’t even try it,” she said, smiling. “You’re going to have to be my maid of honor.”

  I sat up and looked at her, gazing serenely at the pink blush of the evening sky. “You’re
getting married?”

  “Of course,” she said. “How many men can totally get Sweet Honey, make me laugh, and make me come all in one night?”

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  “As soon as he asks me.”

  I was confused. “He doesn’t know yet?”

  “Miss Iona said I don’t have to tell everything I know.” Amelia turned toward me with a grin. “Neither do you, by the way. I think it’s more romantic if he comes to it on his own.”

  “He’s halfway there already,” I said. “Maybe a little closer than that.”

  “He’s still playing catch-up then,” she said, as Louis stepped out of her back door with a bottle of champagne and three glasses. “I’m almost home.”

  22

  I made it until midnight without calling her. It took me that long to figure out what I was going to say. Baby Doll had imposed only one condition to end our estrangement. She wanted me to admit that I had lied about the fantasy gaggle of possible baby daddies and tell her the truth. Although I thought her use of the fake diaries to send letters to those guys without my permission was really a terrible thing to do, she was doing it in self-defense because of the big lie I kept trying to get her to swallow, or at least pretend she did.

  Turns out, she learned the things I taught her about how important truth was so well that she was now applying the same standard to me. She wasn’t prepared to pretend. Even if her method was wrong, her question was legitimate, and I was prepared to answer it. Part of it, anyway. I was prepared to tell her the diaries were fakes and admit that I did know who her father was. But his identity was still going to have to be my secret for a while longer. I was going to ask her to respect that, woman to woman, and I hoped that she would.

  Then I was going to tell her she got a letter from Smith.

  I made myself a cup of tea and sat down with the number Louis had given me in my hand. Phoebe is everywhere in this house, in this room. There are baby pictures, and christening pictures, since my mother insisted. Pictures of us with the family we stayed with in Martinique the summer she learned to speak French and play blackjack. There are pictures of her with Amelia and Jason at his graduation from high school, and one of her and Louis on horseback the time they took lessons together on a dare from me and loved it so much they went once a week for years.

  In every picture, my daughter is fully engaged in the world around her. Her eyes reflect curiosity, happiness, confidence, and peace. She is an unself-conscious beauty whose intelligence and good health shine through at every age. Maybe Louis was right. Maybe her father would want to know. The thing that’s hard for me to explain about B.J. is that I don’t hold it against him for leaving. Loving somebody doesn’t mean you have the right to change who they are, even when you wish they could be somebody else, just for an hour or two. Which, of course, they can’t. I know that now, but I also know that whatever else we did, or didn’t do, our baby girl turned out perfect.

  Except for being stubborn as a mule, which, no matter what Louis says, is a trait she gets from her father’s side, not mine. Mothers can’t be stubborn. We have to see all, know all, understand all, and forgive all. Or get as close as we can, anyway. It was time for me to show her how it’s done. I smoothed out the card, picked up the phone, and punched in the first of the three numbers I had to use to get through Phoebe’s protective sisterhood shield, when I realized there was somebody already on the other end of the line. I hadn’t even heard it ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Catherine?” said a voice I thought I’d never hear again. “Burghardt Johnson. It’s been too long.”

  There was no way to prepare. No way to figure out what to say to make it through such a moment without sounding like an idiot. His voice sounded exactly the same as it had on all those late-night phone calls when he had spun his dreams for me like the finest silk on a golden loom. His voice was all it took for all those memories to come flooding back. All those memories I am careful to keep locked away for examining when I’m finally old enough to understand and probably too old to care. There they were, reminding me that I had been in love once, too. And how long ago was that, anyway? Two years? Ten? Almost twenty?

  “It has been a long time,” I said. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

  That was nice. Truthful. Just the right note of friendly surprise. Warm without being too fuzzy.

  “You sound exactly the same,” he said. “How long has it been?”

  Nineteen years, fifteen months, and sixteen days, but who’s counting? I hadn’t realized I was counting until the number popped up like the lottery when you win and the identical digits suddenly leap off that ticket like they’re six feet tall.

  “Long enough,” I said. “Are you in Atlanta?”

  Our airport is one of the busiest in the world, and sooner or later, everybody you know passes through it. “Not yet, but I’ll be there next week. I’m working on a story about Haitian refugees, and several of my contacts out there told me that if I was serious, I needed to get in touch with a sister named Catherine Sanderson.”

  After eighteen years, he was calling me professionally? I didn’t know if I was relieved or disappointed. Confusion seems to be the zone I immediately gravitate to when I’m around B.J. When I had told him what I intended to do about Phoebe and he didn’t try to talk me out of it, I had the same problem. Did that mean I hadn’t made any progress at all?

  “I do work with a lot of refugee programs,” I said, marveling at how quickly I clicked into that tone. Two could play this game, whatever the hell it was we were playing. “Was there something specific you needed to know?”

  He didn’t say anything for a minute; then I heard him release his breath in a long whoosh, or maybe he was still smoking.

  “There’s something very specific I need to know,” he said. “Do we have to do it like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I pretend it’s not a little strange for me to be calling, and you pretend I’m just another reporter trying to research a story.”

  “Is that what we were pretending?”

  “Can we start again?”

  “Sure,” I said. “The phone didn’t ring so the call doesn’t really count anyway.”

  “Shall I hang up?”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said, surprising myself with how quickly I assumed control. Maybe I had made some progress after all. I guess that’s what learning to be strong will do for you. “Let’s just have a moment of silence and then I’ll answer.”

  “All right,” he said. “How long a moment?”

  “As long as it takes,” I said.

  “As long as it takes for what?”

  “For me to figure out what to say!” And that was really the truth, even though we were falling into the kind of easy back-and-forth we’d always had. That was then and this is now.

  “Don’t think about it,” he said. “Just go with the flow.”

  “Nobody says ‘go with the flow’ anymore,” I said.

  “Where I’ve been, everybody says ‘go with the flow.’ ”

  “Then go with it,” I said. “Starting now.”

  I sat there, holding the phone while he exhaled again. This time it sounded more like a sigh than a smoke, but I still had no idea how to play this scene. I guess I had no choice but to take his advice and go with the flow.

  “Babylon Sisters,” I said. “This is Catherine. Can I help you?”

  “ ‘How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’ ” he quoted another part of the verse from which I’d taken the name. “I like that.”

  “Good. Are we still pretending?”

  “I’m not. This feels much better. How about you?”

  “Much better. So are you really coming down here?”

  “Yeah, and people really did keep telling me to contact you. They didn’t know I knew you, of course.”

  “Are these the same people who were telling you to go with the flow?”


  He laughed. “I take it you’re not a big fan of New Age clichés?”

  “I’m not a big fan of clichés. A great journalist I used to know told me once that clichés were the last refuge of an undisciplined mind.”

  “Used to know?”

  “I haven’t seen him in a very long time.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  “Are we pretending again?”

  “Maybe just a little.”

  “I miss him like crazy,” I said. “How’s that?”

  “Best news I’ve had in ages,” he said, sounding like he really meant it. “I’ll call you next week. We’ve got some catching up to do.”

  Suddenly the thought of sitting down with him over a glass of wine, trying to fill in the last two decades, did not appeal to me. Amelia had said to let sleeping dogs lie, and that was what I was going to do.

  “B.J.?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s don’t.”

  “You don’t want to see me?” He sounded disappointed.

  “I’d love to see you. I just don’t want to . . .” To what? Take a stroll down Memory Lane? Have to ask you why you didn’t even bother to say good-bye? “I’d like to start from where we are now, you know what I mean? I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about the past. Okay?”

  “No problem,” he said quickly, like I was about to hang up on him. “We can pretend we just met.”

  “No pretending,” I said. “Let’s just be who we grew up to be and let it go at that.”

  “No pretending at all?”

  “None.”

  “You drive a hard bargain, Cat.”

  “That’s part of my charm, remember?”

  “How could I forget?”

  23

  Miss Iona had gone to visit her sister, so Louis was in the office alone when I walked in and dropped the Smith letter on his desk.

  “And good morning to you,” he said. “What’s that?”

  “Phoebe’s letter. I think you’d better handle it.”

  He turned it over in his hands gently. “I really figured you were going to break down and call her.”