he felt queasy, unsettled, unable to place himself. He was used to the Elmhurst section of Queens, and Main Street, Flushing. He was used to dirty streets and bodegas that smelled like too many cats and the long line outside the yellow brick public health building on Junction Boulevard. He was used to Shea Stadium and LaGuardia Airport—obnoxious Mets fans in their blue and orange hats crowding the subway cars, jumbo jets overhead at any given moment. He was used to sitting in the back row of the classrooms at Benjamin N. Cardozo High School so nobody could stare him down. He was used to a dark, low-ceilinged apartment that he shared with his father, his sister LaTisha, and the belongings of his mother—her head scarves, her record albums, her knock-off Prada bag—things that now simply took up space because she would never be back to reclaim them. He was
not
used to this—a Range Rover with leather seats, a white shell driveway, a golden beach, the Atlantic fucking Ocean, not to mention people who were civil to him even though they knew his mother was a murderer.
“It’s cool,” he said.
Winnie steered him toward the front door. “Come inside,” she said.
Beth pulled the key out from under the welcome mat.
“Has that been there all winter?” Marcus asked.
“It has,” she said. “And this is the last time we’ll use the key until we leave in September.”
“You’re kidding,” Marcus said. “What if somebody steals your stuff?”
Beth laughed. “That’s the beauty of this place. Nobody’s going to steal our stuff.”
When Marcus got inside, he realized there wasn’t much worth stealing. He followed Beth through the rooms, nervously thinking of Garrett behind him carrying bags. He should be helping Garrett. But Winnie had taken his hand and now he was sandwiched between Beth and Winnie both asking him,
Didn’t he just love it
?
Didn’t he think it was magnificent?
The house was big. Marcus could say that with confidence. There was a hallway where you walked in with a living room on the right. A flight of stairs on the left. Past the stairs were a kitchen and dining room that had a row of windows and glass doors looking out over the water, and a deck beyond the kitchen with a green plastic table and chairs. The house was big but not fancy. The furniture was white wicker, except for one nasty-looking recliner the color of a dead mouse. The pictures on the walls were faded watercolors of the beach; the curtains were a creepy filmy material. The floorboards creaked and the house had a smell. An old, grandmother smell. Marcus wasn’t sure what he’d expected—he guessed he pictured something like a fashion magazine, something more like the Newtons’ apartment on Park Avenue which he’d seen for the first time that morning—with real antiques and Oriental carpets and brass candlesticks and sculpture. This house didn’t feel like poverty, just like a house owned by white people who’d stopped caring. How had Arch described it?
A funky old summer cottage
—and Marcus had pretended to understand what that meant. Now he knew, it meant this. This was how white people lived when they relaxed at the beach.
Marcus checked out the view from the deck and then wandered back through the first floor. Garrett brought in a second load of stuff and dropped it at Marcus’s feet in the living room. Marcus was looking for the TV; he didn’t see one anywhere.
“Is there TV?” Marcus asked.
“No,” Garrett said. “Sorry, man, you’re going to have to do without
Bernie Mac
for the summer.”
“Hey,” Marcus said, straightening his shoulders in his new white shirt that was so fine it felt like money on his back.
Fuck you
was on the tip of his tongue. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? Was that a racial comment already? Well, why not? Why not put him in his slave’s place right away? Before Marcus could prepare a response, Garrett was headed out the door again, aiming for load number three.