“Listen, there’s something I need to tell you.”
There were few more effective ways to change a room’s atmosphere than such a pronouncement. Suddenly, the cake seemed soggy and uninteresting, the lights too bright, Cheryl’s absence notable. What was taking her so long? “Is something the matter?”
“Everything’s fine. It’s fine.” Ian’s wide eyes narrowed when he smiled but also when he was being serious. “I shouldn’t have said it like that. It sounds like I’m making a big speech. Everything is fine,” he said again. “Rebecca. Christopher. You know we think the world of you. Of. What you’ve done. For Andrew. For us. For Cheryl’s mom.”
“You’re not getting a divorce. You’re not moving away.”
Ian laughed. “Nothing like that. See, it’s all come out so different than I wanted. I’m just trying to. Clarify. That before I say anything, you need to understand that Cheryl and I, you know. We think the world of you.”
“I know that.” She’d come, over time, to assume so. It was odd to have love declared. It made the thing seem suspect. Christopher was nodding slowly and looking toward the window. He was not given to direct exchanges. He had to be drunk to navigate a complicated conversation. The day they’d finally admitted that they needed to divorce, they’d shared a bottle of wine.
Cheryl came in. She’d found the tray, the teacups, the sugar bowl, she’d known it all. She filled the cups and handed them around. The room was quiet as befitted this ceremony.
“I see you’re talking.” Cheryl was in on this, too.
“I wish we were. What’s the matter?” Rebecca panicked. The television was blaring, but she didn’t want to leave and scold the children.
“There’s no problem. I just . . .” Ian was at a loss.
“We need to tell you something. About something. Three weeks ago, Ian was on his way home from the dealership. It wasn’t so late. Eight? Late enough that rush hour was over.”
“There was no traffic.” Ian watched his wife.
“Now that night, he was bringing home one of the new cars. They do that sometimes, the salesmen. Give them a run. Get to know how it feels.”
“The series three. A beautiful one, jet black, black interior. A special choice but there’s someone out there who’ll love it.”
“So he’s driving home, a little late. In this brand-new black BMW. You can tell where this is going.”
“I can’t.” Christopher must have been eager, to pipe in thus. “What’s happened?”
“There are certain things you need to know, Rebecca. Christopher. Certain things you need to understand. If you’re going to raise a black son.” Ian’s words were not unkind. “All little black boys need to hear this from their mom or dad at some point. If Jacob were black, you’d have had this talk already.”
“What talk?”
“They pulled him over, Rebecca. The police.” Cheryl crossed her arms.
“Which is fine. I’m used to it. It’s a nice car—”
“But more than that—”
“A brand-new car, with dealer plates—”
“They made him get out and lie on the ground—”
“It was dark—”
“He was wearing a suit. A Brooks Brothers suit. Like he does every day at work—”
“It was cold. There was still salt on the pavement. Stained my tie. The dry cleaner says there’s no getting that out. I had to throw it away.”
“They called another car, and another. Three cars. One man, in a suit, on his way home, lying on the icy pavement. Six policemen. Cars rushing by.”
“Not so many. Downtown Bethesda, eight at night. Maybe some people heading to the movies. A restaurant.”
“Guns drawn. Shouting—”
“She wasn’t there—”
“You said there was shouting. I’m telling the story—”
“There was some—”
“Screaming at him, Get on the ground, boy, show us your hands, boy. Boy, that’s the thing. He’s thirty-five years old. We know what that boy is.”
“This was different.”
“I can’t stop imagining it. You try. Imagine it. Flashlights. Sirens. And Ian. He’s been at work the whole day. It’s freezing. He’s lying on the street. What else are you going to do in that situation?”
“But I don’t understand.” Sometimes the truth was the best. Rebecca did not understand.
“You don’t understand. That’s why we’re telling it.” Cheryl’s eyes were tired but fierce. “That’s his point. You don’t understand. Ian wanted to tell you. To prepare you for the talk you need to have—”
“I wanted you to know.” Ian was clearer now. “Maybe I shouldn’t have.”
“Go on, Ian. Please.” Rebecca pushed her plate away. She wanted to get up, move around the table, sit by the man, hold his hand. That was her instinct.
“I don’t remember, is the thing. One second, I’m driving home. Thinking about dinner, I’m so hungry. Thinking about how I need to go to the dentist. Thinking about how I want to take off my tie and kiss Ivy good night and shower. Feel warm again. It’s so cold and so dark. This time of year, I’m so ready for the clock to change. Spring forward. Then these lights, red lights, blue lights, and I know it’s for me, for this black BMW. I’m not speeding, by the way.”
“He’s not speeding. That’s not the point.”
“So I do what you do. Pull over. Hazards on. Car off. Hands on the wheel.”
“But this is ridiculous.” Christopher scoffed. “What about just cause? I’ve never heard of anything like this.”
Cheryl laughed. Not even meanly, but genuinely. “You’ve never heard of anything like this, Christopher, that’s why we’re telling you.”
“Then the shouting. But I couldn’t make it out. And I didn’t know what to do. I’d already done everything I could think to do. I’d turned off the car, had my hands on the wheel. Hearing this voice, yelling at me, and I know I’m going to need to do something, I know I’m being told to do something. I just don’t know what it is.”
“He can’t hear well. I don’t know if you knew that. But he can’t.”
“I can’t hear well, it’s true. Been that way since I was a kid.”
“Not that it’s the point.”
“So I open the door. I figure that’s it. They want me to open the door.”
“What would you do?” Cheryl looked at Rebecca. “What do you do?”
“What can you do?” Rebecca didn’t know. “I would have opened the door.”
“I opened the door, and they’re still shouting.”
“Screaming at him. In the middle of downtown Bethesda. Five blocks from the dealership. Restaurants. Pedestrians. This beautiful place that we live in.”
“Get down, get down. I barely understand, but I know to get down.”
“He needs to get down.”
“I sort of throw myself out of the car. On my knees. I don’t know what else to do. But I figure. On my knees. They’ll understand.”
“On his knees.” Cheryl was whispering.
“On my knees.”
Like a prayer, Rebecca thought. Or like a beggar.
“On the knees of his Brooks Brothers suit on Old Georgetown Road. Like a—I was going to say a criminal, but that’s something else, isn’t it. Like an animal.”
“They said, Hands on your head. I put my hands on my head. They said, Down motherfucker. I lay down. On the road. They said, He has a gun, and I prayed that they saw I didn’t have a gun. It was the keys. I had the keys in my hand. Just an instinct. I don’t know. The keys, they’re in my hand.”
“Like a criminal.” Cheryl stared at Christopher. “But less than. You worked with criminals, didn’t you, Christopher? That’s a criminal. Your old bosses are criminals. My husband is not a criminal.”
“Innocent until proven guilty.” Christopher took a bite of his cake. “The world out there. It’s gone mad. Planes fall from the sky. The people with power abuse it.” He still sounded drunk. “Please. Finish the story.”
“I lay there on Old Georgetown Road. The road itself was right up under my cheek. Dirt on my suit.”
“You know why that matters?” Cheryl was calm. “Respectable. It’s the thing they wanted us to be. His mom. My mom. You wear nice clothes, people will know you’re a nice person. You dress like the person you are. But of course, that doesn’t actually make a damn bit of difference.”
“It’s not like I was . . .” Ian searched. “In jeans? A sweatshirt? My suit. Be calm. I told myself. Nothing less calming than telling yourself to be calm. I breathed deep. I thought of Cheryl. I thought of Ivy. I thought of Andrew. I thought of you. I thought of the people I love and thought, well, I’m not going to die on Old Georgetown Road on a Thursday night in February. I’m not going to do that.”
“You thought of us.”
“I thought of you, Rebecca. Of course I did. I thought of my family.”
“That’s what he wanted to tell you.”
“What happened?” Christopher was rapt.
“Nothing.” Ian coughed. He looked embarrassed. “I put my hands on my head. My face on the road. I waited. I counted. It took forever. Ten minutes. Minutes and minutes. Hundreds and hundreds of seconds. I kept counting. It was like when Ivy was born. And the nurse said, Count with me. Count. Keep counting like your life depends on it. Make Mom breathe, Mom, meaning Cheryl, get her to breathe. That’s what I did. I did that.”
This was still inside of Rebecca’s body, this counting, this breathing. Jacob would be twelve in the fall. A dozen years since she’d been in that room, outnumbered and afraid, breathed as her body tore asunder and the baby who became the near man in the next room, the one watching cartoons with his brother and his brother’s niece, entered the world. Had she ever lain down in the road? Rebecca knew that she had not. Why don’t we do it in the road? That song had made her blush, as a girl.
“So he needed to tell you. You can see why. All little boys want to be police officers when they grow up. Some little boys need to be told why that’s not the best option.”
“I can’t quite—this is terrible.” Christopher was reaching for something better to offer.
“Obviously nothing happened. You’re here telling us this story. You didn’t do anything wrong!” Rebecca felt hysterical.
“He did something wrong.” Cheryl was determined. “He was who he is. That’s wrong.”
“That’s not it.” Ian put a hand on his wife’s forearm. “But I lay there. On the road. Then they came over. One of the cops. He said, Get up. He said, Go home. He said, Don’t speed. He said, That’s it.”
“What do you mean that’s it?” No gesture seemed right. Rebecca wanted to throw something at the handsome wallpaper that Joyce Cohen had recommended.
“I got up off the road. The one car drove away, then the other, then the last. They got back into their cars and drove away. I was still holding on to my keys. The keys they thought were a gun. I got back into the car. I was all wet and dirty. I sat in the car, I turned it on, I drove home.”
“They must have thought you were someone else. They must have been looking for a black BMW and your black BMW drove by and they thought, well, they thought it was the car they were looking for.”
“Rebecca.” Cheryl was shaking her head. She bit into the cake. “Rebecca.”
“She doesn’t know, Cheryl. They don’t know. They didn’t need to know. But now you do need to know. This is what happens, Rebecca. It happens when you’re a black man, it’s going to happen to your black son. And you need to know that it’s coming. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”
Rebecca looked at them. She felt at once calm and enraged. “Christopher. Will you tell them to turn the television down? I can’t hear myself think.”
“You see why I sent Jacob out of the room.” Ian was still apologetic. “But he should hear it, too. He’s to be his brother’s keeper, right?”
Christopher left the room.
“I don’t know what to say.” Rebecca wanted to cry. “You’re a good man.”
“That I am.” He still knew it, she could tell, the way he said it. Ian knew this, would never forget it.
“It doesn’t matter how good you are, Rebecca. A black man is still a black man.” Cheryl drank her tea, calmed. “He came home. He didn’t want his dinner anymore.”
“But this was a mistake. A terrible mistake. Ian, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.” She had already said that.
“Andrew’s going to be nine. But he’ll be twelve. Sixteen. Twenty-one. He needs to be told the things he needs to know.” Ian was gentle. “Black kids don’t get to be kids much longer than twelve, really. I don’t mean to be presumptuous, you understand, Rebecca. I have so much respect. You’re wonderful parents. You love Andrew. But I hope you’ll tell him this story. Or I hope you’ll let me. I think he needs to hear this from me.”
