Angela Flournoy - The Turner House

“Camille tried to chat with you earlier,” she said. “I was checking my email on your laptop when she called. I told her to try again tomorrow.”

“I’ll catch her in the morning,” Troy said. He sat on the ottoman in the living room and took off his sneakers. His nine-year-old daughter, Camille, and his ex-wife lived in Kaiserslautern, an American military community outside of Frankfurt. He’d bought her a new laptop with a webcam so they could talk for free online.

He and Jillian ate on TV trays set up in front of the couch. Jillian associated sitting around the table every night with the strained family dinners of her childhood in Lansing, when she and her younger two sisters had to report on the highs and lows of their school days before they could eat dessert. Table or no table, Jillian had never broken the habit of recounting her day in detail. He listened to her talk about a man who came into the salon with a shopping bag full of bootleg DVDs. A customer gave him a $100 bill, expecting change, and he ran out with the money.

“I promise you, you never seen a old-ass man move that fast,” she said. “And we tried to play the DVD he gave her. It was blank!”

Troy laughed. They were skilled at this, being good when things were good between them.

“We need to go ahead and start looking into flights for Camille this summer,” Jillian said. “It’s almost that time.”

He walked into the kitchen with their dirty plates. This was their agreement: she cooked and he cleaned up afterward. He’d never made such agreements with Cara, or the women he’d dated before. He had cleaned up plenty of times with other women, but it always felt like a favor he was doing them, rather than an expected contribution. Now he felt mature enough to where it didn’t hurt his ego to clean the kitchen or fold the laundry without being asked.

“Babe? Did you hear me?” she called from the couch. “I said it’s time to start looking for flights before they start going up.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Troy mumbled. He sponged Worcestershire sauce and cold lamb fat from the skillet. Every summer Troy sent for Camille for a month. For three years it had been the only time he’d seen her in person. Jillian had come to look forward to the visits too. Troy knew she wanted a child of her own, a child that he was not poised to give her. Viola had always called him the Lucky Boy because he was the last son born, and Francis had tried harder to be present in his life than he had the six boys before him. They’d gone fishing on Lake Saint Clair, to countless Lions games out in Pontiac. One summer when Troy was twelve, Francis, inspired by an announcement on the morning news, had tracked down the SwimMobile for Troy and two of his friends. He dropped them off on the west side. He must have noticed their apprehension at swimming with kids from unfamiliar blocks because he’d told them, “This whole city belongs to you. Specially at this age. Don’t let nobody stop you from enjoyin it.” He’d sat in his truck as they splashed around in the mobile pool—an eighteen-wheeler with an open cargo container in the back filled with hydrant water—listening to the radio and smoking his pipe. Francis even attended Troy’s graduation from basic, something he’d never done for Quincy, Russell, Lonnie, Miles, or Duke when they finished boot camp. This extra time spent was not enough for Troy, because Francis still existed behind a wall of formality. You could not go to Francis for advice about girls, or bullies, or even siblings. He would shrug off responsibility with something like, “Your mama got a better head for that sorta thing,” or “Might as well ask Cha-Cha, what’s an old man know?” It was if his father had finally figured out the value of sharing his time with his children but not his heart. Troy tried to give more than this to Camille, via video chats, spontaneous gifts in the mail, and support of her extracurricular interests, which ranged from German and French classes to ballet. It took a lot of energy, and Troy did not think he had enough reserved for another child, nor enough money.

“We should put her in a little summer program,” Jillian said. “She’s old enough now to do a day camp, or maybe a short sleep-away one. There’s this one in the Upper Peninsula that’s a week long about ecosystems and stuff. Maybe Cara would help pay.”

He dried his hands and came over to the couch.

“I met with Dave earlier tonight.”

“Oh yeah? What’s he talking about?”

“Um.” Troy hopped back up and went to the fridge for a beer. “Ha. It’s funny. We was talkin about my mama’s house, actually.”

He could feel her eyes on him, even as he faced the fridge in mock deliberation (they only had Heinekens to choose from). He knew her head was cocked, that she was incredulous that he’d brought the issue up again. Soon her neck, that beautiful, elongated, near limb that had drawn him to her in the first place, would be tensing up, shrinking into her shoulders.

“Dave knows a guy who can help with the house paperwork, but it’ll cost extra. And, um, I was thinkin maybe we could wait to bring Camille out here till the second half of the summer, like late July?”

He turned around to find her posed just as he’d imagined.

“What the fuck, Troy? What’s there to even . . . help with? Huh? We had this . . . conversation not three fucking days ago.”

“Yeah, but the more I think about it, we gotta do this, Jill.”

He sat on the couch, ignored her hostile posture, and moved in close. If they were willing to be close to each other, it could not be considered a fight yet. He put his hand on her thigh.

“Why?” she asked. “You need to . . . to really think about why. You’re gonna piss folks off . . . damn near everybody. And the house is basically worthless. Why?”

“Cause people like Cha-Cha and them always get taken advantage of,” he said. “So scared of breaking the rules, like somebody is even thinking about them. Wasn’t nobody thinking about us when they made these rules. But they wanna sit around and follow them.”

There was a difference between violent, destructive crimes and bending rules that were prejudiced or predatory to start. Over the last few months, as the housing bubble burst, he’d read article after article about banks pressuring black and Latino homebuyers, even those whose income and credit scores could have warranted a better deal, into subprime mortgages. It was illegal and deplorable to steal from your neighbor, yes. Manipulating a housing system that had manipulated people who looked like you for decades? He saw no harm in that. But for as long as he could remember, Cha-Cha and Tina had acted like the integrity police. They had been above getting illegal cable installed in the nineties when everyone had “black boxes.” They wouldn’t let anyone drive their cars if they weren’t on the insurance, not even around the corner. A couple years back they had overextended themselves financially to prevent their son Chucky from filing for the unemployment compensation he was entitled to. It was a particular sort of Turner weakness: self-sabotaging self-righteousness masked as self-reliance. It made Troy sick.

“You know, Cha-Cha’s not the only one who put some money and time into that house,” he said. “When I first got out the service, I lived on Yarrow with Mama, and Cha-Cha never came over to see how I was doing, let alone how Mama was doing. He came over to ‘handle business,’ like check on the water heater or whatever, but that’s it. And doesn’t spending time count more than his stupid money, especially cause his money comes with strings attached? Like, when I was in high school I had to take the bus out to Cha-Cha’s house early every morning, and Tina would take me and Chucky and Todd to school. It’s cause they had a better basketball program over there, and by that time Kettering was a shithole. I’d wake up around six just to get there, and wait for Tina to wake up around seven-thirty and take us. I had made it on this traveling team, and I needed new team shoes and a special jersey. Daddy and Mama didn’t have the money, so they told me to ask Cha-Cha, which is what they always said when they didn’t have the money, but that’s not my fault, right? Remember I’m only fourteen, fifteen years old. The shoes and jersey were like a hundred dollars.