The circulation of envelopes. It reminded Carney of his idea about churn, the movement of merchandise—cabinet TVs, easy chairs, stones, furs, watches—in and out of people’s hands and lives, between buyers, dealers, and the next buyer after that. Like an illustration in a National Geographic story about the global weather, showing the invisible jet streams and deep-fathom currents that determine the personality of the world. If you took a step back, if you were keyed in, you might observe these secret forces in action, how it all worked. If you were keyed in.
Had it been a dumb play, to make his pitch to the cop? Last night he’d spent the entire stretch between his first and second sleep scrutinizing the setup as if it were something out of Moskowitz’s safe, the most precious of stones. Tilting it to and fro, challenging the light to reveal its planes and facets. Checking for color, identifying flaws. He approved. And with that, his midnight plans broke through to his other, daytime life.
* * *
*
The rest of the day was store business. He summoned Rusty for his opinion on when they should put the rest of the fall line on the floor.
“I’d like to see it out there,” Rusty said. “I think they’ll be keen on it.”
He was confident. It was nice to see. Carney thanked him for picking up the slack the last few weeks.
“Thank you for letting me do more, Ray,” Rusty said. “Any time you want to spend more time with family, I’m here.”
“It’s been nice, seeing them every night.” Carney described his routine lately. Hanging out with his family, going to bed early, getting up again. Minus the revenge part.
“So you go to bed at eight? That’s a lot of sleep.”
“No, I get up and do paperwork. Read. Then I go back to sleep again.”
“Why not go to bed later? Do all that stuff before you go to bed.”
“It’s not like that. It’s your body telling you what it wants, and then you do it. That’s how we did it in the old days.”
“Like how now?” The appearance of a prospective ottoman buyer spared them more discussion. They got a bunch of customers toward the end of the day and before Carney knew it, it was quitting time.
John’s wailing greeted him at home. According to May, John had stuck the hand of her Raggedy Ann doll into his mouth so she grabbed it away, and he was overcome by loss. Elizabeth rocked the boy and in a gesture of hubris Carney took him from her arms. Which made him cry more. Which made Carney give him back. He retreated to the hall to hang up his jacket.
Dinner was finishing off last night’s roast beef and potatoes. Since he sacked out early these days, he was not staying late at the store, which meant that for most of the summer the four of them had dinner together. It was a pleasant development, and probably why Elizabeth didn’t get on his case about his odd sleeping hours. In late July, he realized it was the longest stretch of family dinners he’d ever had. Before his mother’s death, his father had rarely been around at meal time, and after that, scarcer still. Dorvay was a period of focused rage; its counterweight was dinnertime, delighting in his wife and kids.
He liked to stare at their faces when he could, and he kept wondering, how can someone you love seem so strange? When John was born, he had Carney’s nose and eyes—they say nature plans it that way. So the father knows the baby’s his, Certificate of Authenticity. Almost two years on, Carney wasn’t so sure anymore if his son looked much like him. May, for her part, still had Elizabeth’s graceful features and keen gaze. But John was already going his own way, and he could barely speak. Who will he be twenty years from now, how close or how far from the blueprint? Will there be some of Carney in there? Carney, on the other hand, hewed to Big Mike more and more all the time. No, he wasn’t smacking tire irons on kneecaps, but the original foundation held him up, unseen in the dirt.
Putting John and May to bed left Elizabeth depleted, so meals were a chance to catch up before she got too beat. Work was picking up, which suited her fine. Idle hours killed her. Sitting around the office with nothing to do but stick your face in the fan. With the summer travel season winding down, Black Star was in the midst of fall and winter travel, booking a lot of conventions. American Association of Negro Funeral Directors, National Association of Negro Dentists. Puerto Rico was big this year, thanks to the new brochures, followed by Miami. Some of the groups they’d handled last year, the Negro Lawyers, the Negro Accountants, had told their friends. They were getting a lot of word of mouth.