He sat back in his chair and took in Olga, who was building sandwiches on the counter beside the sink. She was wearing black pedal pushers she had picked up at Kann’s, a top from Lansburgh’s over in Langley Park, and a new pair of shoes on her feet. All of it courtesy of his Central Charge card. It kept her happy and it kept her out of his hair, so what the hell.

Olga walked toward him, carrying his sandwich. She had a plain face that had hardened over the years. The heavy eye shadow she wore, the hair-sprayed helmet of hair, the pancake makeup, and the red-red lipstick did not enliven her, but rather reminded Vaughn of a corpse. She had kept her figure, at least, though it had flattened out somewhat in the back. She still had nice legs.

“Here you go, honey,” she said, putting the plate down in front of him.

“Thanks, baby doll,” he said.

Olga picked up one foot and wiggled it around. “Capezios. You like ’em? I got ’em over at Hahn’s.”

“They’re all right,” he said with a scowl. He wasn’t angry that she’d bought them. He couldn’t have cared less. But he was expected to react this way. And now she’d justify the purchase.

“I needed a new pair,” she said. “And I’ve been saving every place else. Honey, I’ve got a full book of S amp;H Green Stamps…”

He blocked out the rest of it. Her voice reminded him of flies buzzing around his head. Annoying but harmless. He grunted almost inaudibly, thinking of how he must have looked. Sitting there, acting like he was listening but not really listening at all, giving her his canine grin, his eyes heavy lidded and amused, slowly nodding his head.

Finally, when she was done running her mouth, he said, “C’mon, Olga, let’s eat.”

He finished his cigarette while she went to the stairs by the foyer and called up for their son. He heard her add, “And go down and get Alethea, tell her to come up, too.”

As Olga placed the other setups and drinks around the table, Ricky came in, twelve years old and flouncy-bouncy in that way of his that made Vaughn fear his son was gonna be a swish, and took a chair. He had been up in his bedroom, standing in front of the mirror, most likely, doing the twist or some other crazy dance he had learned from watching that guy, Dick Clark. It hadn’t been long since Ricky was nuts over Pick Temple, that TV cowboy, and now his interests had gone to girls in sweaters. Vaughn hoped. He loved his kid but had never understood him. He should have tried to get closer to him, especially when he was younger, but he didn’t know how. No one gave out road maps on how to be a father. Vaughn tapped ash, thinking, All you can do is the best you can.

Alethea entered the kitchen wearing one of those old uniforms of hers, a shapeless white dress that could not hide her shape. Vaughn watched her walk to the table, hoping to get a look at her legs as the sunlight from the kitchen window went through her dress. She held her head erect and her shoulders square as she crossed the room and took a seat. She wore no makeup, and her hair was hidden under some kind of patterned scarf she always donned when working at their house.

Vaughn put her at about forty. She wasn’t young, but she was allwoman. He wondered what she did to her husband when the lights went out. He thought about it often. Sometimes he thought about it when he made love to his wife.

You couldn’t call Alethea beautiful or anything close to it. Her skin was dark and she had those prominent colored features that Vaughn didn’t go for. No one was gonna mistake her for Lena Horne. Her eyes, though, they did it for him. Deep brown, liquid, and knowing. If there was something, one thing about her, it had to be her eyes.

Olga had a seat at the kitchen table. Alethea closed her eyes, put her hands together, and soundlessly moved her lips. The Vaughns were not themselves religious, but they sat quietly while Alethea said her grace. When she was done, they began to eat.

“How’s it going today, Alethea?” said Olga.

“I’m on my schedule. Gonna get to that laundry next.”

“You feeling okay?”

“Fine.”

“How’s your family?”

“They’re fine. Everyone’s fine.”

Same old conversation, thought Vaughn. Olga, influenced by her girlfriends in the neighborhood who sat around talking about segregation and civil rights when they weren’t talking about their nails or pushing around mah-jongg tiles. Olga, with her guilt about paying Alethea “only” ten dollars a day, when that was the fee Alethea herself had quoted from day one. Olga, still trying to make Alethea feel like she was one of the family; Alethea polite but not giving up anything of herself. And why should she? For Chrissakes, she was their maid. Get in, do your work, earn your money, and get back downtown to your people. Vaughn understood this, but Olga, who wasn’t out there, could not. Okay, so some folks were pushing for equality, and Vaughn had no problem with that. But nobody wanted to mix, not when you got down to it. People wanted to be around their own kind.

“Olga,” said Vaughn, “give me some potato chips, pickles, or somethin’, will ya, honey? This is… this sandwich would leave a bird hungry, right here.”

Anything to shut up Olga’s yap. But when she returned to the table with a jar of sweet pickles, she tried again.

“Alethea, isn’t it awful about that boy down in Mississippi?”

“Yes,” said Alethea, “it sure is.”

“They lynched that boy!”

“That’s what the newspapers say.” Alethea’s voice was void of emotion. She kept her eyes averted from Olga as she replied.

“The way they treat those Negroes down South,” said Olga, shaking her head. “When do you think this will stop?”

“I don’t know,” said Alethea.

“Do you think it will get better for your people soon?”

Alethea shrugged and said, “I just don’t know.”

When they were done, Olga cleared the table. Vaughn watched as she separated Alethea’s plate and glass from the others she had put in the sink. Later, Olga would wash Alethea’s things more thoroughly than she did the rest. Vaughn noticed that Alethea was watching Olga arrange the dishes.

Alethea turned back to the table and, for a moment, looked into Vaughn’s eyes.

FOUR

DOWN IN HIS room, Buzz Stewart turned on the fourteen-inch Philco that sat on his dresser and switched the dial to channel 5. The Saturday edition of The Milt Grant Show was still in progress. Local band Terry and the Pirates were onstage, and the kids were dancing up a storm.

Milt Grant’s show was on Monday through Saturday on WTTG. On Saturday, Milt went up against the nationally telecast American Bandstand. Everyone knew that Milt Grant had come up with the concept first, but the preppy kids and those whose parents had desk jobs had gone over to Dick Clark. To Stewart, the kids on Bandstand looked like pussies and fakes. The kids with rougher edges and rough tastes, greasers and the like, and those who liked their rock and roll on the raw side, had stayed with Milt Grant. Hell, Link Wray headed Grant’s house band. That was enough to make Stewart go for him right there.

Many of the famed Milt Grant’s Record Hops were held in the Silver Spring Armory, not too far from Stewart’s house. At these events, packed to the walls with kids from local high schools, Stewart saw acts like the Everly Brothers, Fats Domino, and that wild boy, Little Richard. Stewart wasn’t much of a dancer. At the hops, he leaned his back against a wall, his sleeves rolled up to show off his arms, and watched the girls. But sometimes, especially when the colored acts got up there and cut loose, he wished he’d learned a few steps.

After the Grant show was done, Stewart took a shower. Then he returned to his bedroom, where his mother had placed a turkey sandwich and a bottle of RC Cola on his nightstand. He played some singles on his Cavalier phonograph while he ate and dressed. First was “Bip Bop Bip,” by Don Covay, on the local Colt 45 record label. Then a Flamingos tune, and “Annie Had a Baby,” by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, and finally, as was his pre-Saturday night ritual, Link’s “Rumble” before he went out the door. Anything by the Raymen got him fired up.