Carine’s face had grown blurry, as if from behind a windshield on a rainy day. He heard her say, “Oh, sweetie, oh, baby,” and looked down to see her darker hand covering his own, and as he stared at it, confused, the first of the tears streaming down his cheeks landed. The instant he became aware of the tears, he tried to suck them back in, actually tightened his stomach muscles as if he could reverse their humiliating journey, but he remembered what Carine had said about his self-control, his amazing, superhuman, no, subhuman, monstrous self-control, and he felt his whole body go slack, and then he cried like he hadn’t cried in decades, not since—not since . . . since Pappy died? No, he had been teary but—here was that word again—controlled at the funeral, they all had been, David putting an affectionate—or was it a cautioning?—arm around Anton’s shoulder at the very moment he was about to lose it, and he had read the gesture correctly—they were Coleman men, they were in the public eye, there were reporters and photographers at the funeral, dammit—and never let the bastards see you sweat or cry or bleed in public. No matter what. So, no, he had not cried at Pappy’s funeral, no, he would have to dig deeper, go back further to find a time, and now it comes back, comes back with a swoosh, and holy God, just the memory of it makes his throat and chest feel raw, hollowed out—it was the day he had skipped school and gone searching for her. Her. His mother. His beloved, cracked mother, who, he knew even back then, despite everything that they told him (and when had he stopped knowing it?) had sinned but was not a sinner, who would’ve sacrificed her life for him. (And if he knew that, why did he ever stop believing in her love for him?) It was on that day, after the two bus rides to the housing project, after the frantic pounding on the door, after the hairy man in the red shorts who answered the door and looked at Anton blankly when he asked for her, after he swallowed his pride and went over to his neighbor Maurice’s house to ask Maurice’s mom where his own mom was, after he realized that Mam was still in jail, that she wasn’t coming back to him anytime soon, probably, after it dawned on him that there would be no easy slipping back into his old life with Mam, that he would have to return to David and FM, after dread coiled around his chest, and he ran out of Maurice’s home and flew down the three flights of stairs and into the open air. He made his way behind the thicket of bushes that grew near the left side of the building, where drug deals went down during the evening, he knew, but luckily, at this hour there was no one, and he crouched behind the bushes and cried, holding himself from the waist as he rocked and cried, making himself smaller and smaller, as if to burrow into the earth. And as he cried, he felt his tears extinguishing the flame of hope that he had tended and kept burning all this time. He had been a good son to her, faithful, loyal, he had not allowed himself to be seduced by the abundant food and the soft mattress, the piles of gifts they’d bought him for Christmas, even the pride he felt at his growing popularity in school. But it all amounted to nothing, ashes at his feet.
Then, after a long time, he had stopped crying. The boy who rose from behind the bushes was a different boy than the one who had hid behind them. There was something a little hazy in his eyes—in fact, he himself was a little hazy, as if an invisible cartoonist had rubbed away some part of him and filled in the rest with scribbles. But he didn’t know it then. At that time, he was simply hunting for something tangible—and he found it in the silver quarter in his pocket. Enough to make a phone call to FM, to let them know where to come find him so that they could lead him—he choked a bit over the word but steadied himself—home. To their big, luxurious mansion where the memory of a face that would remind him of himself would never again haunt him. Where the wild, dangerous anguish that had seized him just a few minutes ago would not have to be faced again, replaced as it would be by a cool, controlled demeanor. Where he would never again have to take two buses to reach home because limos, taxis, and planes would be waiting for him wherever he went. Never again would he be the son of a single mom whose greatest damage to him was the fact that he felt responsible for her, as if he were the adult and she the child. Not when there was a two-parent family waiting to claim him, to enshrine him, to hand him his patrimony on a silver platter. Anton kicked savagely at a stone in the dust as he headed for the pay phone. By the time he saw David’s familiar car snake down the side street an hour later, he had already said goodbye to all of it—the rude, impudent boys who had made fun of his good clothes as he waited at the bus stop, the shabby-looking woman who had shuffled up to him wanting to know if he was “Juanita’s boy,” the brooding, dark brick buildings that he once thought of as comfort and now wished to never enter again. How wrong he had been, romanticizing this squalor, pretending that he had been in exile the whole time he had slept on clean sheets in a soft bed. Now he knew the truth—this was the true exile. He would never forget it.
And here he was in Carine’s sunroom, remembering it all, the herculean, otherworldly effort with which he had stopped crying that day and made the phone call. How, when he went to bed that night, surrounded by the stuffed bears they’d bought for him, he still felt something was missing, and it was only hours later that he knew what it was: the dream of unification with his mam that had lulled him to sleep for over two years. Once again he had felt his chest begin to heave, but this time he had stopped himself, pulled his own body back from drowning.
Drowning. Carine was watching him, her brow knitted with concern, and he wanted to stop this ridiculous crying, but he was as helpless as a wailing infant. What on earth did she say that resulted in this? Anton asked himself. Hell, what his political opponents had said about him was a million times worse, but nothing, no breakup with a girlfriend, no academic failure, no political setback, had resulted in this total loss of control over his emotions. Poor Carine looked like she was ready to dial 911 for help. He twisted his lips into what he hoped was a smile. “I’m okay,” he gasped. “I’m sorry.”
She squeezed his hand. “Don’t be,” she whispered. “Keep crying. It’s good for you.”
This time his smile was genuine. “Only you, Carine,” he said, “would encourage someone to cry. Everybody else tries to get you to stop.”
“Crying’s good for the soul. I do it at least once a week.”
He turned his head to face her, the tears beginning to dry on his face. “I never do. Not since—” And he found himself telling her the story of going to find his mom.
After he was done, she spoke at last, her voice awash with compassion. “Anton. What are you going to do? I mean, your whole life has been fractured, no? Are you just gonna, you know, soldier on? Pretend like the last few days didn’t happen? Can you?”
He was about to nod, say yes, tell her that there was no choice, there was an election to win and too many people were counting on him and he would settle up on his personal life after November, when he thought: In whose voice am I going to say these things? Brad’s? Dad’s? Uncle Connor’s? He jumped, as if singed by the matchstick flare of his anger. He blinked at her, processing this revelation, unwilling to speak until the anger either extinguished itself, tamped down by the winds of duty, obligation, and responsibility, or blew up into a bonfire that would destroy his old life. He waited as if he were a disinterested party, curious to see which direction the wind would carry the fire, as if the decision were someone else’s to make.
As if the decision were someone else’s to make. There it was, in a nutshell. The laziness, the timidity, the caution. He would make a lousy governor, if this was who he truly was or allowed himself to be. He would also make a lousy son. This was where the legendary Coleman self-control had brought him. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men. A fine Harvard education and this was where he had ended up, a directionless, paunchy prince with no kingdom of his own. No wonder he was mindlessly rushing his way back to David. Without the daring, impetuous, and yes, brave man who had shaped his life, who was he? He had long ago accepted that without David, he never would have had a political life. But now a more urgent existential question nagged at him—without David, would he have any kind of a life at all?
He wanted to find out. The voice within him was small, no more than a murmur. But Anton heard it, and he heard it as the loudest sound in the world. He wanted to find out. Who he was outside the shade of the branches that grew from David’s tree. He knew—had been taught—how to be David’s son, heir to a political destiny. He had that part down pat, to the extent that he had waltzed his way up to the doorstep of the Governor’s Mansion. But did he know how to be a poor woman’s son? Did he know how to right the grievous wrong that had been visited upon her? Did he know how to be worthy of the pride she felt in him, since she was unaware of what a frightened, prissy, ineffectual man her son truly was? Was he man enough not to be ashamed of Juanita, of her country ways, her imperfect grammar, which was sweet as spring water to him but which, he knew, would register as ignorant on the ears of his people back home?