Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [72]
13
Perry pulled the shade up on his two-way mirror that took up a side of his printshop and squinted from the suddenness of the light rushing in. Just he and Tyrone in the shop this Monday and the color glossies of JFK, LBJ, and Martin Luther King looking down on them. Tyrone was in the back of the shop greasing down the press, and Perry was at his window; he always started his day at this window, watching the early birds of West Philly rush by. Sometimes they’d stop in front of his mirror, forgetting or not knowing that people inside could see out. And sometimes Perry had to look away, out of respect, like when the women lifted their skirts, maybe to knot the tops of their stockings to hold them at mid-thigh. Other times he’d get a comedy routine as people primped and tilted their hats, or straightened their ties, blended their rouge, or put spit to their eyebrows.
Right now he watched Ramona hurry past like he watched her hurry past every morning at seven forty-five. He instinctively straightened his back and sucked in his gut when she walked by. She never stopped to check herself in his window mirror, though. She was hard and soft, all right, just like his second wife. Soft look to her that fooled a man, made him think she was the embraceable type, the type that would purr and coo and call him papa. Then turn to steel like his second wife would, have a man’s balls dragging the ground, she would get so mean.
He felt sorry for his son that he had fallen for such a hard and soft woman. Tried to tell him, “Man, don’t let that beauty blind you. Better to have a less perfect-looking woman who knows how to smile.” Tyrone had given him that insulted look, though. Like how dare he try to tell him whom to love. Perry didn’t push. He was really just getting reacquainted with the boy. So he didn’t want their views on women to come between them at this tender, redevelopmental stage of their father-son two-step. And at least Ramona seemed like a decent enough woman, took pride in her appearance, hardworking, consistent; he couldn’t remember not seeing her on the other side of his two-way mirror rounding this same corner every morning for the past five or six years. Seven forty-five, like clockwork. They had that in common, Perry and Ramona, they were both consistent. Not like that night owl Candy, whom Tyrone had left the bar with Saturday night a week ago. Even though Perry had all but set it up by asking Candy to keep an eye on his son, Perry had gotten an unexpected twinge, a tightness in his stomach that he told himself was not envy as he watched Candy take off her yellow headband and then Tyrone lean down and kiss her. Shit, he thought, it wasn’t like he and Candy had ever had anything heavy between them. Just some drinks, some talk, some laughs, some pleasures, and that had been more than a decade ago. It’s just that when Tyrone took Candy’s hand and walked out of that bar, he wasn’t gawking. He looked strong to Perry, young and strong, and sure of himself.
“Yo, son, your lady just walked past,” Perry said to chase away that twinge that he had convinced himself was not envy. “Yo, Ty,” he said again. This time he yelled to be heard over the hum and grunt of the press starting up. “Miss Ramona just turned the corner.”
He could see that Tyrone was grinning even from the back. His shoulders got wider suddenly, and his neck tilted. Boy got to learn how not to let his feelings spill all out through his muscles like that, Perry thought. That was his main regret over not having had a greater hand in his raising him, boy never learned the ways of city men, how to hold his face like stone even if he was melting inside.
Tyrone was at the window with Perry now. His whole body grinning. “Where is she, Pops? I don’t see her. Which way she go?”
“She gone, boy. Already turned the corner. You