The Next Time You See Me: A Novel Hardcover by Holly Goddard Jones

Author:Holly Goddard Jones
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781451683363
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 2013-02-11T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

1.

The address Susanna had given him was in Glendale, a subdivision on the west side of town. In Tony’s childhood, it had been one of the newer, nicer developments, the kids who lived there all white and comfortably middle-class. Now, barely twenty years later, it was already on the decline. You could get more bedrooms and bigger garages out in the country, two-story family rooms with grand fireplaces, chandeliers. You could live on a cul-de-sac, on a “lane” or a “way” or a “boulevard” instead of a street. It was funny, driving now through Glendale, to imagine the time when this was close to the best Roma had to offer an average family. Tony remembered those rare days when he went home after school with a white friend, the little thrill of pride he’d felt at boarding Bus 10 instead of Bus 4, which went through the part of town that everyone thought of as the Black Bottoms. He remembered disembodied details from various visits, various houses: a basement rec room, a tree house with solid plank floors. Satellite television. A refrigerator stocked with Coca-Colas instead of a rinsed-out milk jug full of Kool-Aid. He remembered that Stephen Wilkerson had a color TV in his bedroom bigger and newer than the one that Tony and his family gathered around in their living room each night, and he remembered that Stephen’s mother would bring them popcorn in individual bowls while they played Atari. It had been a strange and wonderful treat in those days before microwave ovens: his own little bowl, his own drizzle of melted butter in zigs and zags across the top, and a bottle of soda to wash it down.

Susanna’s house might have been any one of those homes from his classmates’ childhoods. It was a single-story, sturdy redbrick ranch, saved from utter plainness by a small front porch with wrought-iron supports and a wrought-iron railing. Shrubbery, shorn squat and fat, made a procession across the length of the house, and the window boxes still held the skeletal remains of fall mums. Tony turned off the engine and popped the glove box. His back was a misery again. He uncapped the bottle of Darvocet and dry-swallowed two. A light came on at the front porch and the door opened.

A shadow figure waved. He waved back.

He could almost feel angry, looking at this house, though it was a house he could himself afford now—he’d scanned the real estate listings in this neighborhood just a couple of weeks ago. He could feel angry about those nervous bus rides spent trying to hide his off-brand backpack between his legs, about his pathetic gratitude to have been invited, if only for a short time, into a white world. He could be angry at himself for his appreciation of Mrs. Wilkerson’s beauty, of how nice she always was to him, and how he had believed then, without a trace of guilt, that his life would be so much better if only he had a slim, yellow-haired mother who would serve him popcorn in a bowl, on a tray.

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