The Wide Circumference of Love Read online

  “Yeah, and Blade was about to be all over you, too.”

  The laughter bubbled up, an oasis between them.

  “You got off lucky with just that black eye,” Gregory teased.

  “Till we got home and Dad was waiting on the porch for us with Reverend Reagan and his shotgun for emphasis.” Bruce shook his head.

  “Freedom Summer made you a doctor and me an architect, looking at the shacks those sharecroppers lived in.”

  The mellow satisfaction of the laughter settled like a mist as the two men rose at the same moment.

  Instead of saying good-bye, Gregory told his brother, “All we are is memories, Bruce. That’s all we are. Even more than flesh and blood.”

  Just before the four p.m. meeting, Gregory sat in his car in the hospital parking garage, as cars slowly passed by looking for an open space. He sat cradled by memories that felt on loan, battered and suspect.

  Gregory watched several cars slowly drive past, drivers shooting him impatient sign language and looks that asked, You pulling out?

  No, I’m not, he mouthed. His brother, the doctor had just told him there was no hope for what he feared was imminent. He sat in his car soaked through his skin with sweat and drowning in an unfaithful and mocking memory.

  When they met in 1978, Mercer was driving a Crown Victoria, a whale of a car that pushed everything else off the road, back when everybody was switching to Japanese cars. Mercer’s tape deck was full of Buddy Guy, James Brown, and Lou Rawls, who he had declared were actually priests walking among the savages on Earth. It was them, those men, Mercer swore who were the real holy trinity.

  How many thousands of hours had they spent together, plotting, planning, conspiring to build a company that would leave a footprint in the city? Mercer, like a brother. Gregory felt him in the car with him.

  And Diane was everywhere with him, all the time. Diane, who he had wanted so badly when he laid eyes on her. Gregory had dated what Mercer like to call “the United Nations” by the time he met Diane and had passed into that zone where a man is ready to make his next step with a woman beside him. The time when he prays at night that luck will wipe his slate clean and that he will recognize the woman when she appears. Caldwell & Tate was five years old and the small contracts, one after the other, had begun to widen their network, had gotten people who mattered talking about them. When he saw Diane at the party that night, he’d seen a woman without whom he could go no further. Yet there had come a time when he’d wondered where all that love had gone.

  She had been a judge for a year when they stood facing off in the living room—this time, Diane accusing him of failing her and their children.

  “The one thing that matters to me most, family, that’s what you make a mockery of. I might as well be a single mother. When will you look around and see the family you’ve left behind? Is there a finish line for this race you’re running?”

  “Actually no, hell no. I have to go out there. Mercer and I have to go out there and slay a dragon—a fuckin’ dragon—every day. You’ve got families in trouble lined up, filling your courtroom. You’ll never run out of a job to do. We’ve got a payroll that we magically have to meet. If we don’t have a dozen contracts signed off on or ready to be signed off on, we’re screwed. And you wonder why I leave here at six a.m. and fall through the door at midnight. Nothing we do can crack that damned glass ceiling. We can’t be more than a boutique black firm no matter how good our designs. Diane, you say I should be with you and the kids more, but if I’m not out there scratching and clawing, hustling, I can’t come home to you at all. Not empty-handed.”

  Without their determination, they never could have gotten some of the deals they landed. Caldwell & Tate was always competing against big white firms with track records of building half a dozen huge projects in any given year. There was too much money, too much ego and prestige bound up in the major projects for many black firms to ever be considered. They were always paying what Mercer called “the black tax.”

  Mercer reveled in recounting a presentation in the conference room and imitating the reaction of the corporate stakeholders. He would lean forward, narrow his eyes, and lance one of the designers with a look of withering disdain and ask, “Nigger, what makes you think you can handle a project worth this much money?”

  Of course they had all laughed, for such raw, naked racism would never be expressed. Most often it came wrapped in condescension or paternalisms that could still land a bruising knock-out punch. The more he’d proved, the more he’d had to prove. How many ways could he tell Diane that?

  But now there was nothing left to prove. That night on the Beltway had changed it all.

  “Look, Gregory, we’ve got to face it. Something’s wrong. Maybe you should give some of your duties to the other designers. We’ve got a company to run, employees to pay. Too much is a stake,” Mercer had told him that afternoon.

  Who was this man, ordering him around, he had wondered in astonishment. Mercer, schooling him on the company that was his idea. Gregory had looked at his friend’s smooth, unlined face, the tailored gray shirt and crimson silk tie. Not a wrinkle or ruffle in Mercer’s demeanor. So smooth, not unraveling like him.

  “Lauren will handle the City Center visit tomorrow evening. I can’t risk you taking the lead on that,” Mercer had said. Gregory was expected to accept this conclusion.

  Marshaling a calmness he did not feel, Gregory said, “Let me go with her. One last time. One last client. I promise I won’t say anything, I’ll let her do all the talking.”

  “This is a no-win, don’t you understand? If you say nothing, don’t answer questions, they’ll wonder why.”

  “You can’t just throw me out. Take the company, my work, away like this.”

  “Gregory, you can’t remember a damn thing anymore. You’re always lost or late. Throw you out? We’ve both got the devil at our back. I’m listening to myself saying all this to you. This is breaking my heart.”

  Mercer had stood before him talking about a broken heart when all Gregory saw was a man aging like some gleaming, hardy wood. Not being chipped away, eaten from the inside like him.

  Before he’d slipped away from the conversation, for that was how he thought of it, he’d said to himself, The hell with Mercer. The hell with them all.

  The next evening, he was on the Beltway, headed to the City Center meeting in Silver Spring, Maryland. He would get there ahead of Lauren, remind them that he wasn’t dead yet. He’d popped in a CD, Donny Hathaway’s “Valdez in the Country,” a soothing assurance that he would be all right. Music helped. It grounded and calmed him.

  The Beltway was a tidal wave of cars. How many thousands, he wondered, were at this moment creeping along the cement girdle that wrapped like a snake around the DMV as it was called now—the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia.

  The music and his thoughts, like normal, like before, working together, seamless, automatic.

  Then he had no idea where he was. He felt himself oozing, slipping, and sliding, down a hole he couldn’t outrun or outthink. On the other side of the glass, a nation of automobiles and trucks and the occasional motorcycle. Headlights, with accusing, blistering eyes. His hand had frozen on the steering wheel. Was there an emergency? An act of terrorism? A trickle of wetness and then he was sitting in a puddle of his own urine, the smell of it hot, pungent, filling the small space with his disgrace. The huge green-and-white exits, where would they take him? If only he could stop and ask someone in one of the thousands of cars in front, in back, on his left, on his right.

  He’d dared to blow his horn once, then twice, at a woman in a car on his right. She looked at him. Frantically, he waved at her, not to say hello but for help. She smiled then sped to cut off a car in front of her.

  By the time he finally had the nerve, the will, to exit the Beltway, he was in Pentagon City, swerving off the exit ramp. The lights of a gas station quenched his fright. Parking near the air pumps and car vacuums, he felt his sp
irit, something inside him that he could not name but could only thank God for, take hold of him and set him crawling up and out of the darkness.

  He could breathe. Think. Remember.

  At a Burger King up the road, he had pulled into the drive-through and ordered fries and a cheeseburger, parked on the lot and consumed the food as though it were both his last meal and his first. Half a mile up at a Dunkin Donuts drive-through, he ordered two cups of coffee, which he was certain would help him find his way home. The client would have to wait.

  He staggered through the front door at ten p.m. Diane was away at a conference. Slumping on the sofa, he checked his cell phone and found a dozen messages from Lauren. There was only one thing to do.

  In the basement, in the rear of the top drawer of his filing cabinet, behind yellowing papers and old photographs and documents, his hands found the bottle. He’d sworn he would never go back. Back then he had stopped on his own. Hadn’t needed twelve steps. But if there was ever a night when he needed a drink …

  This meeting with clients would be his last. He had finally agreed with Mercer, with Lauren that he would work from the office. Today, his last hurrah. He couldn’t sit here any longer. As it was, he figured he’d just make the four p.m. meeting. At the first stoplight, he reached for his phone, punched in his GPS, and reminded himself where he was headed: Mount Vernon Square.

  He entered to see Mercer and the investors gathered in the cavernous conference room around a horseshoe-shaped table studying blueprints. He caught Mercer’s eye, winked, and gave him a thumbs-up. Mercer’s wary, worried eyes gave him nothing back, so Gregory walked over to the sideboard and filled a cup with coffee from a silver urn before turning to the wide picture window that looked down on Mount Vernon Square.

  Remember who you are, he thought. Remember what you have done.

  They’d beaten the odds and left an indelible mark on the city and the region, even with the insane deadlines, the clients who paid late or pulled the plug on contracts, the weeks and sometimes months that staff salaries were late. They’d worked on monuments and office buildings in Washington, Fairfax County, and Silver Spring. A sports stadium in Prince George’s County, shopping and recreation centers, and schools. His wall at home was filled with awards, and he had served a term as president of the American Institute of Architects.

  Their signature project was a new library in downtown D.C., the nexus of historic buildings. The building had heralded the remaking of the city’s architectural identity and demographics.

  The library was airy and spacious, a confident and nearly playful glass tower in a city of squat buildings which, even in contemporary design, were still paying homage to Greece and Rome. The library bore the imprint of the best of their design-teams’ skills, with Mercer and Gregory fine-tuning and adding defining touches. That was the last time he’d had fun, been excited about the work.

  The library had altered the city’s landscape in a way that inspired imitations. The building received rave reviews and went on to win awards, but when the congratulatory dust settled, white developers told Gregory—while shaking his hand in admiration—that they liked the design so much they had hired another firm, a white firm, to design a building just like it for them.

  There was the glory of the library, and then in 2009, falling off the economic cliff along with everybody else. The depression they called a recession. Rolling up their sleeves to let go of designers they were as close to as family, getting lean and mean, determined to rise again. It had taken a few years, but they were back.

  Soon after, Caldwell & Tate partnered with another firm to put in a bid to work on the planned Museum of African American History and Culture on the Mall. The memory of the months spent planning for that presentation still buoyed him. A building was a story etched into stone, so there was as much discussion about the philosophy and beliefs that would inspire the design as anything else. Movement. Evolution. Those words had been the foundation of the design. In the end, Caldwell & Tate and their partners made the short list, but they were not chosen.

  The lead investor tapped Gregory on the shoulder and engaged him in a conversation that he heard on a distant loop, only remembering that this man, with his white-blond hair and football-player girth and neon, self-assured grin, merely required that Gregory answer “Yes” to every request. He and Mercer told him “Yes” and then did what the project needed, not what this asshole wanted. It had worked so far. But today they had been called on the carpet.

  Mercer walked to the head of the table and launched into an overview of the project’s first six months. Then he signaled for Gregory to come to the front.

  Just go ahead. Go on, he thought, walking to the podium before a screen that would soon fill with a PowerPoint presentation. For several moments Gregory said nothing, just looked at the six men around the table. How could he make them fall in love with the project again, he wondered, despite the delays and cost overruns. He clicked on the first slide, an image of the finished project. Sleek, modern, but they would be keeping the brick walls and high ceilings of the original building, preserving what had made it unique.

  Finally he told them what he, in his heart, believed: “This building will make anyone who lives in it glad to come home.”

  Chapter Ten

  JANUARY 3, 2012

  We’ve never argued about anything like we’re arguing about this. Diane says I’m in denial. That my pride endangers me. Twice I skipped, just didn’t show up for doctor’s appointments. “Don’t you want to at least know what’s happening?” she keeps asking. There’s too much at stake. Too much to lose. But even this denial, this resistance. It’s not me. I know it isn’t. But neither is the other person inside me. Or is that really me now?

  Gregory touched Juliette Beamer’s ass. Standing behind her at the water cooler as she leaned over to fill her cup with hot water, Gregory touched her backside. First his fingers brushed the silky floral cloth of the dress he had been admiring all morning. Then his fingers tensed and grabbed her, feeling the easy give of flesh beneath his fingers. Her scream bludgeoned him into wakefulness from what felt like the grip of a hallucination. Juliette abruptly turned around. Then he saw the disgust and fear in her eyes.

  “You touched me. Gregory, why would you do that?” she shouted.

  “I—I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  Afternoons when he was bushed and needed a break, it was the image of Juliette’s wide, sensuous face framed by a neat, tight cap of reddish brown curls that he’d dive into. But he had never crossed the line. Had never even thought to. Juliette had worked with Caldwell & Tate for fifteen years, had started as secretary and was now senior administrative manager.

  Gregory shrank beneath the outraged gleam of Juliette’s eyes where he saw the depth of his trespass and the breadth of her pain.

  “It wasn’t me, I mean, it wasn’t me, it was …”

  “Who, Gregory, who? There’s only two of us here, and I didn’t turn around and grab my own ass.” Juliette’s anger swelled her with a fierce righteousness as she stood her ground, her face thrust into Gregory’s so close that he could not see, sense, or feel anything else.

  “I swear, Juliette, I’d never do something like that. It wasn’t me.”

  “What’s going on?” Lauren asked coming down the stairs from the second level. Everyone else was out to lunch.

  Juliette stood now gazing at Gregory, shaking her head. Befuddled pity had overtaken her anger. “Your father,” she said, the words a damning indictment.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean … If you say I did, but I, I didn’t know …” Gregory stammered, sweating, pinned between the curiosity of his daughter and the loathing of the woman who was the linchpin of his company.

  “Lauren, your father touched me inappropriately. I don’t know what’s going on, but something’s wrong. Maybe you should take him home.”

  As they stood at the water cooler watching Juliette stalk away, Lauren hugged her fathe
r and led him into his office, whispering, “What happened? What happened?”

  Gregory slumped into his chair. He felt whipped, near tears. “I don’t know. Why would she lie? Maybe I did what she said.”

  “Don’t worry about that now, Dad. You’re probably just hungry, tired maybe. Let’s go get something to eat.” Lauren comforted him. “Let’s go get some air, you’ll be fine.”

  “What if Juliette tells Mercer?”

  “I’ll talk to her, tell her that you haven’t been feeling well. She knows you, knows how out of character this is.”

  “What if she tells Mercer?”

  “Dad, come on, calm down. Let’s go get something to eat.”

  That evening he couldn’t tell Diane that he had touched Juliette. But who was he kidding? His need to keep secrets had made everything a lie, confusion. He had spent the first few minutes home pensive and brooding, and now he was complaining about a designer he and Mercer had hired several months earlier.

  “We got punked,” he said, while cutting the roast chicken breast. “His recommendations were great. He works well with his team, and his portfolio was one of the best we’d seen in years. Now, it’s like some other person comes in to work every day. Just yesterday I told …” He chewed the sliver of chicken, stopped, swallowed, and reached for his glass of water.

  “I said to …” he began again, placing his knife and fork noisily on his plate.

  “Who did you tell, Gregory? Was it Mercer?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Who else? Who else would it be? We interviewed him together. I remember that. Who else would I be talking about?” he asked irritably, pushing away from the table and heading to the kitchen. “Don’t say anything. Please don’t say a damned word,” he sneered, leaning against the kitchen counter, watching Diane as she rose to stand in the entrance to the kitchen.

  “You don’t get to say that to me.”