He got that weird look on his face again. I said I was sorry, although I wasn’t sure for what. For a man, he certainly was moody. Maybe black men were more emotional. I started to tell him that I didn’t mean anything by my comment and that his people had a lot to be proud of. He cut me off.
Carefully placing his pen on top of the pile of papers we had been working on, he said he thought we should end our meeting and “start anew” the next time. He stood up. His face didn’t look exactly mad as much as hurt or maybe disappointed.
I was moved to touch him. I tried to remember if I had ever actually yearned to touch my ex-husband like that.
Instead of touching him, I said I was sorry again. And he said he knew I was and walked me to the door. No accompanying me into the parking lot that day.
Another quarrel. We might as well have been married.
The next few weeks we continued our meetings as necessary. Joe was polite and businesslike and I was the same way back. I felt sick to my stomach at times. I tried not to think too hard about what to wear each time. I would get dressed imagining what his hands might feel like on me. I could see our bodies on my bed, how they looked next to each other.
There was never any mention of our conversation. I decided just to keep my mouth shut. I had to think of the party. After all, the success of the party was integral to my future. It would have been stupid for me to let all of it go over some silly problems with a man I’d never see again. It was hard enough for me to understand men in the first place. This just convinced me that they really were all alike.
And suddenly the event was upon us. People were dancing. Others clustered around old photographs Joe had up on the walls: old Detroit; trolley cars, the court house, sailboats on Lake Windsor. There was a history to Detroit that most of us had never considered. We didn’t study the city in school, never took a field trip there. The closest we got was the Ford auto plant in Dearborn.
Joe and I had agreed on a soul food menu. Well, he said it wasn’t actually soul food, but Southern influenced cuisine. At any rate, it was unusual for a Pleasant Lake party, that’s for sure. Waiters passed trays of miniature spare ribs and corn bread balls stuffed with cheese. The entrée was a choice of blackened catfish or chicken in a sweet mushroom sauce. There were collard greens and black eyed peas as well as broccoli and corn. For dessert, Peach Melba.
I couldn’t eat, of course. But I did manage to drink several glasses of champagne throughout the evening. It was like being at my wedding all over again; busy concentrating on the guests, too excited to eat. But unlike my wedding, there was no husband to share the excitement with. I was the only single woman at the party. And Joe was the only single man. I kept thinking maybe he’d ask me to dance. Just to be polite. But he didn’t.
Everyone else seemed very happy. Even Leslie VanHouten and her husband were out on the floor dancing up a storm. People dressed up for the occasion. A few of the women had on such odd outfits that it was clear they had gone shopping with a vague idea of what one should wear to a jazz club. Victoria Brennan was decked out in an unusual salmon-colored sequined dress with small, pale feathers hanging from the hem.
I wore a black cocktail length dress with a flounce at the hem and a single strap over the left shoulder. Joe had on a perfectly tailored black suit with a dark blue Nehru collar shirt underneath. The same blue as his fountain pen.
The party was conducive to the donating of money. Everyone complimented the unusual setting and Joe was inundated with requests for recipes and reservations. I felt oddly proud of him, and pleased with my own efforts, too. I was on my way to being reinstated into Pleasant Lake’s higher society.
The last guests finally left the club at two o’clock in the morning and the clean up began. I checked the room for items that might have been left behind. I discovered a white glove, a gold plated cigarette lighter and a Chanel lipstick – Salmon Whisper. Probably Victoria’s. I would bring the items to the next League meeting. The meeting where I imagined I would be inundated with compliments, and how-did-you-ever-do-it’s.
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