30 Love, page 5
After a few more pleasantries, I offer to assist Mr. Landfair with the grill. He looks at me sternly and points at his apron, his finger touching each of the words silkscreened on his chest: Don’t Mess With My Grill. Then he bursts out laughing, his voice booming so that I jump, startled, before the laughter escapes my throat. Both Mrs. Landfair and Lailah laugh along. Truthfully, I know they are laughing at me, though, because they can see I’m an Eddie King, Jr. (or a Heartbeat) short of shitting a brick.
“Come on out here, boy!” Mr. Landfair says, sliding the back door open and stepping out onto the patio.
The grill is massive and looks like the kind of professional equipment Bobby Flay would own. It’s clear that the grill is one of his prized possessions. If I were into grilling as seriously as he is, I might very well own an apron that bore a threat to all others, too.
As he walks over by the grill, he checks some fancy knobs, but leaves the lid closed.
“So, Dizzy,” he starts, “how is Atlanta treating you?”
“Things are actually going well, sir.”
“You still fucking around with those video games? Boy, your parents surprised the hell out of me when they told me you had actually found some people willing to pay you for that.”
I swallow. I can’t tell if he is insulting me or just poking at me with that humor of his that I haven’t been able to completely decipher, even after all of these years. “Things are going well with work. We’re making applications for mobile phones these days.”
He nods. “I’m going to have to get you to show me how to work this damn phone that my wife got me for my birthday. Damn thing does all kinds of stuff, but I can’t seem to do anything but answer it when it rings.”
“No problem,” I say.
“So how long are you and Lailah going to be in town?”
“Just the weekend.”
“Well, it’s good to see both of you. Y’all don’t come home that much any more, so when you do, I have to break out the grill and make the occasion special.”
I nod. “Speaking of special occasions, sir. There’s something I need to ask you.”
“Sure,” Mr. Landfair responds, fiddling with his grill.
I wait for him to stop before I continue. When he realizes that I haven’t spoken yet, he stops fiddling with the grill and looks up. “What’s on your mind, Dizzy?”
“Sir,” I start, but then I hear commotion inside of the house and turn to look through the glass door into the kitchen.
Just as I make out who’s inside, Mr. Landfair’s voice booms, “They’re here!”
When he slides the door open, I’m immediately engulfed in the arms of my mother. She whispers so softly in my ear that I can barely make out each word, but my brain quickly deciphers it anyway: “Have you told Robert yet?”
Since my parents arrived—and this became a get-together for both families—I haven’t had an opportunity to talk privately with Mr. Landfair without my father standing right there. As the food finishes grilling, I realize that my best bet might be to just make my intentions known to Mr. Landfair in front of everyone. After all, the four of them are in some way responsible for Lailah and I being friends (and now lovers), and since half of the people in the room seem to already know what’s going on, it’s up to me to level the playing field for the fathers.
I decide to wait until after dinner, while the six of us are sitting in the dining room preparing to dive into my mom’s county-famous sweet potato pie. As people mumble small talk around the table, I rise to my feet and say, “Excuse me, everyone.” I immediately see Mom and Mrs. Landfair start smiling, expectantly. The men look up casually. It’s clear by the looks on their faces that they have no freaking clue what I am about to say.
I don’t know if I should be addressing everyone at the table or just Mr. Landfair at this point. Part of the Southern custom is to ask the father for his daughter’s hand in marriage, not the mother. I didn’t create that rule, but because of my slight—okay give a brotha credit—fear of pushing the wrong buttons on Mr. Landfair, I was prepared to disregard the implied sexism of such an act and just do things the “old school” way. At least that is what I’d been planning for the past few days. Now, I find it difficult to get around not asking every parent at the table for his or her permission.
“Because of the friendship that all of you have, Lailah and I were born into families with a lot of love to give. And because it was just the two of us as kids, we became close. Lailah has been my best friend my entire life, but if I were to say that I didn’t recognize that she was everything I could ever want in a woman, even back when we were in high school, I would be lying. And I can’t lie to you all. So I guess it is safe to say that I have loved Lailah all of my life.”
I look around the table at each person seated there, and I can’t seem to make out what my father and Mr. Landfair are thinking, but they have yet to interrupt my speech with any questions, so I continue.
“Lailah and I have decided that we would very much like to spend our lives together, building on this bond that we’ve had our entire lives. So I guess what I’m asking each of you,” I pause, directing my eyes at Mr. Landfair, “is if we could have your permission to get married.”
The mothers explode in celebratory screams, immediately clapping their hands together. The fathers, however, have different looks on their faces. I can’t read their thoughts, so I wait for one of them to speak.
My father comes in first. “I didn’t even know the two of you were an item.” He chuckles as if he could have predicted everything that has happened so far. “Lailah is an amazing woman, and, son, I believe that she will make a wonderful wife. I’d be honored to have her as my daughter-in-law.”
My father looks over at Mr. Landfair, as he sits there quietly, his face stern. By now, everyone at the table is looking at him, and my stomach is so full of nervous gas that if I sneezed I’d burn a hole in the back of my pants.
He slowly opens his mouth. “Lailah is my baby girl, my princess. And I knew that when she was born, I would one day have to give her away to some guy. I have to admit I have wondered at times who that man would be and if he would be the kind of man that she deserved, the kind of man who could be strong, yet sensitive and compassionate to her every need. There were even times when I wondered if such a man even existed, since he had not come along. But now I am looking at you, Dominic Parker, a man I have known since you were born into this world, a man who has been like a son to me over these last thirty years, and I am realizing that the man my daughter was meant to be with was right under my nose the entire time.”
He pauses to wipe a tear from one of his eyes, and I swear I can’t believe I’m hearing these words come from him. My own eyes begin to water, and pretty soon I can hear others at the table sniffling.
“So what I’m trying to say is,” Mr. Landfair says, pausing as he composes himself, “welcome to the family!”
He stands up and walks over to hug me. Although I feel my back crack like a bag of knuckles, the love I feel from his hug makes up for the discomfort. In fact, I feel the arms of everyone in the room form into one huge group hug, and for one interminable moment we breathe together as one single family, the way it was always meant to be.
6
Sitting at my cubicle in the downtown space that JACOPLEX has rented, I brainstorm ideas for the next release of our most popular first-person shooter game. At least I’m supposed to be doing that. The entire team has a weekly meeting in another hour, and I want to have a few things to toss out there for their consideration, but I’m still ridiculously excited about the way things went in Daily this past weekend. For a moment while we were at the dining room table, I thought Mr. Landfair (who’s requested that I stop addressing him so formally) was going to jump across the table and beat the hell out of me with the jawbone of an ass. I was so relieved when he didn’t. And I definitely didn’t expect the tears. I think that did it for me right there. If ever I needed a sign that I was on the right track with all of this, then that was it.
I look up at the Storm Trooper clock on the wall above my clump of cubicles. Restless, I walk over to one of the large windows in the old building and look out onto the street. I can see Peachtree Street from here, and it’s like a tease. We’re on a side street, just on the edge of Hood Central, but we can see the glamour and glory of the corporate buildings a little more than three blocks away. Our CEO, Brandon Duvall, says that our three-year plan is to move those three blocks to Peachtree. My guess is that we’ll scoot up a block each year, or something like that. I’m just afraid I’ll have a jheri curl by the time we make it that far.
“Dizzy, my man, what’s good?” Akil Dobbs says, as he stands in the entry space of my cubicle. His complexion is almost the same dark brown as the cubicle, and he almost blends in with the walls. I’m actually glad to see him, though. He’s probably my closest friend on the JACOPLEX team.
“Chillin’. By the way, I got engaged.”
“You what?”
“I’m getting married.”
“I didn’t even know you were hollerin’ at anyone. Who are you getting married to? Did you find a mail order bride or something?”
“I’m marrying Lailah.”
He bursts out laughing. “Oh man. I thought you were serious. You had me going for a second.”
“I am marrying Lailah.”
“Your friend Lailah? That fine sista who has neva eva eva eva eva given you the time of day?” His mimicking of Chris Tucker’s Friday lines makes his comment all the more comical.
I realize that what I’m saying to him is probably going to sound ridiculous, given that he actually knows Lailah, so I tell him that we can talk about it over lunch if he pays. He gladly agrees.
Shortly after noon, we walk several blocks to the deli I hit up at least once a week. After we get our orders, we grab a table next to the back window.
“Okay,” Akil starts. “Break it down from the top, because I’m having trouble believing what you’re saying. I mean, how in the world did you two go from being best friends to being engaged? I could understand you saying that you guys were messing around. I figure that was going to happen eventually anyway. But this? Marriage? Dude, what the fuck?”
I take a bite of my sandwich and a long swallow of my Coke, knowing that my gestures are only making him more eager. I relish the fact that I have caught Akil off guard. He’s such a smart guy, probably the best software and game developer we have, that it’s impossible to tell this Negro something that he doesn’t already know. Not today though. I have him stumped, and I’m milking this moment for everything it’s worth.
Once I have finished my sip and exhaled a patient breath, I start. “Ten years ago Lailah and I made a promise to each other that if we were still single by the time we turned thirty we would get married.”
He stares at me for a moment, as if there is a deeper, more complicated explanation on the way, and when I don’t say anything else, he shrugs his shoulders. “So you’re making good on a promise you made back when you were still young, dumb, and full of cum? Does that even make sense?”
“To us it does.”
“She actually accepted? I think that’s the part the surprises me most. I know you’re the type of person to follow through on something—even if it’s just to fuck with someone’s mind—but the fact that she went all in with you is the part that’s got me fucked up. Did you have to persuade her?”
“Well, kind of.”
I tell him the story of how Marcia stepped in and helped to reconnect the frayed wires of my friendship with Lailah and how that subsequent conversation turned the tides. I even tell him about the trip to Mississippi and what it was like asking the families for permission for us to marry.
Akil takes a long swig of his Coke and stares at me, stunned. When he finally opens his mouth to speak, he can only utter, “So I guess you’re getting married then. Whoa!”
I nod. “Yeah, man.”
“Are you sure you’re ready?”
“I’m about as ready as I’ll ever be. Why do you ask?”
He laughs to himself.
“What’s so funny?” I ask.
“I was just thinking about Jasmine.”
“What about her?”
He laughs again. “It wasn’t even a year ago that you were all over her like black on Wesley Snipes, and if my memory serves me correctly, you were speculating about a future with her that involved marriage, too.”
“It wasn’t like that,” I say.
“You said, and I quote, ‘She is the kind of sista a brotha could settle down with for the long haul.’ Yep. You definitely said that shit, because we were playing X-Box at my crib at the time. You kept bringing her up. I was thinking to myself, ‘Damn, this nigga is sprung.’ Dude, you so were so wide open a Mack truck could have run up through there.”
“Well, you already know that she wasn’t the one,” I say in my defense.
“That’s not the point. The point is that you thought that she was marriage material, and now you’re saying that Lailah is.”
“Hold on,” I say. “That’s apples and oranges.”
“How so? Break it down for me, because a brotha like me only understands shit that is logical.”
I take another bite of my sandwich before continuing. “First off, in general, any woman that you decide to actually be in a committed relationship with should be someone you can see yourself being with. Why else would you get in a relationship? If she wasn’t someone with the possibility for more, then why not just keep it on the casual tip? So, in my defense, I’ll say that any woman I’m in a committed relationship with has the potential to go the distance. But that’s it. Just potential. Potential makes the difference between a draft pick and a hall of famer. You know that. Now, on to Lailah. I have known her my entire life. My entire life, man! I have always loved her and longed for her. That’s no secret. I just never had a chance until now. Shit didn’t work out with Jasmine. She wasn’t ready for anything too serious. I get that. But what she did was open up space in my life for real love to come into the picture. Real talk, if Lailah had given up the rhythm, there wouldn’t have even been a Jasmine. I know who I want. I’ve always known who I wanted, and now she wants me. And that’s all that matters to me. And that shit doesn’t have to be logical, because love ain’t logical.”
Akil looks at me, his eyes the size of grapefruits. He lifts his hands and starts applauding.
“What?” I say, unclear of what his gesture means.
“You have succeeded, my brotha.”
“Succeeded in what?”
“Succeeded in convincing yourself that you’re doing the right thing. And for all I know, you probably are. It’s just a bit unexpected, that’s all. But I’m your boy. I got your back. It’s my responsibility to do the gut check, know what I’m saying? I’m not shitting on you.”
“For a minute I couldn’t tell.”
He stands up and daps me with one hand, hugging me with the other arm. “No, seriously. Congratulations, Diz.”
“Thanks,” I say, as we take our seats again. “We’re still planning out the wedding details. When I know what’s up, I’ll let you know.”
“Well, I’ll start getting my tux ready. Just let me know where you need me to be and when. And also, let me know when you want to do the bachelor party. I know these sistas who can strip the paint off a Maybach, know what I’m saying? Damn, they get down. These chicks have poles in their living rooms. Do you hear the words that are coming out of my mouth, dude?”
I laugh and breathe a sigh of relief that everyone who needs to know about Lailah and me knows the news. Everyone, except for one person, who I make a point to call as soon as I leave work. I’m sure my cousin, Julian, will probably react the same way as Akil, and the thought of throwing him for a loop gives me something to look forward to for the rest of the work day.
“Yo, J!” I say into my phone.
“Dizzy? What’s up, fam?”
“I’m straight chillin’ in the cut. Got some news for you!”
“You sound amped like a mothafucka. What’s up?”
“My bad, man. How are things on your end? How’s Cool?”
“He’s straight. The store is doing well. Things are definitely shaping up.”
“You’ll have to send me another mixtape of those indie grooves,” I say. “And put me down for one of the Rare Grooves t-shirts.”
“I got you. But I know you didn’t call to talk about the store, so spit the shit, dude.”
I laugh. I can hear Cool in the background talking to their only employee, Ray-Ray, so I know that J must be sitting out front in the main part of his store. “I’m getting married, man!”
“To who?” he asks, the intonation in his voice reflecting the amplified confusion I figured he would feel.
“Lailah.”
“Your homegirl Lailah? I thought she was just your friend. You guys trying to qualify for medical benefits or something?”
“Nah, man. We’re in love. Real talk. And we’re getting married!”
J is quiet for a moment. “Dude this shit is so far over my head that I’m gonna have to get a jet pack to follow you. You just woke up one morning and said you were going to get married?”
I walk J through the full story, using a lot of what I shared with Akil earlier in the day. It takes him a moment to grasp everything, but when I’m finished, he says, “I am happy for you, Diz. Seriously. Just let me know when the festivities are. I’ll see if I can get Cool to come up for some air and come down to the ATL with me.”
“He still with Denise?” I ask.
“Still with Denise? Dude, let me put it to you this way: I expected them to get married before you and Lailah did.”
I laugh. “Well, now we have to go to work on you and get you someone.”
“I’m doing just fine by myself right now. I don’t want to take myself off the market and upset all of these beautiful women in New York City. That would be selfish of me.”
