Kiss the Girls

38

    T HIS WAS harder than hard.
    I slapped on a happy, make-believe smile as I barged through my own front door back home in Washington. A day off from the chase was necessary. More important, I had promised the family a meeting, a report on Naomi’s situation. I was also missing my kids and Nana. I felt as if I were home on leave from a war.
    The last thing I wanted Nana and the kids to know was how anxious I was about Scootchie.
    “No luck yet,” I told Nana as I stooped and kissed her cheek. “We’re making a little progress, though.” I stepped away from her before she could cross-examine me.
    Standing in the living room, I launched into my best working-father lounge act. I sang “Daddy’s Home, Daddy’s Home.” Not Shep and the Limelites’ version; my own original tune. I scooped up Jannie and Damon in my arms.
    “Damon, you got bigger and stronger and you’re handsome as a prince of Morocco!” I told my son. “Jannie, you got bigger and stronger and beautiful as a princess!” I told my daughter.
    “So did you, Daddy!” The kids squealed the same kind of sweet nonsense right back at me.
    I threatened to scoop up my grandmother, too, but Nana Mama made a serious-looking cross with her fingers to ward me off. Our family sign. “You just stay away from me, Alex,” she said. She was smiling,
and
issuing a baleful stare. She can do that. “Decades of practice,” she likes to say. “
Centuries,
” I always come back at her.
    I gave Nana another big kiss. Then I more or less “palmed” the kids. I held them out the way big men can hold basketballs as if they were nothing but an extension of their arms.
    “Have you two been good little rapscallions?” I began my interrogation techniques with my very own repeat of fenders. “Clean your rooms, do your chores, eat your brussels sprouts?”
    “Yes, Daddy!”
they shouted in unison. “We been good as gold,” Jannie added as convincing detail.
    “You lyin’ to me? Brussels sprouts? Broccoli, too? You wouldn’t lie so brazenly to your daddy? I called home at ten-thirty the other night, both of you were still up. And
you say to me
that you’ve been good. Good as
gold!
”
    “Nana let us watch pro
hoops!
” Damon howled with laughter and undisguised glee. That young con man can get away with anything, which worries me sometimes. He is a natural mimic, but also an ingenious creator of his own original material. At this point, his humor level is about that of the TV hit
In Living Color.
    I finally reached into my travel satchel for their cache of presents. “Well, in that case, I’ve brought y’all something from my trip down South. I say y’all now. I learned it in North Carolina.”
    “Y’all,” Jannie said back at me. She giggled wildly and did an impromptu dance turn. She was like the cutest puppy kept in the house for an afternoon. Then you come home and she’s all over you like sticky flypaper. Just like Naomi was when she was a little girl.
    I pulled out Duke University NCAA champion basketball T-shirts for Jannie and Damon. The trick with those two is they have to get the same thing. Same exact design. Same exact color. That will last for another couple of years, and then neither one of them will be caught dead in anything vaguely associated with the other.
    “Thank you, y’all,” the kids said one after the other. I could feel their love—it was so good to be home. On leave, or otherwise. Safe and sound for a few hours.
    I turned to Nana. “You probably thought I forgot all about you,” I said to her.
    “You will never forget me, Alex.” Nana Mama squinted her brown eyes hard at me.
    “You got that right, old woman.” I grinned.
    “I surely do.” She
had
to have the last word.
    I took a beautifully wrapped package from my duffel bag of wonders and surprises. Nana unwrapped it, and she found the most handsome handmade sweater that I had ever seen anywhere. It had been created in Hillsborough, North Carolina, by eighty- and ninety-year-old women who still worked for a living.
    For once, Nana Mama had nothing to say. No smart comebacks. I helped her on with the hand-knitted sweater, and she wore it for the rest of the day. She looked proud, happy, and beautiful, and I loved seeing her like that.
    “This is the nicest gift,” she finally said with a tiny crack in her voice, “other than you being home, Alex. I know you’re supposed to be a tough hombre, but I worried about you down there in North