Jake & Mimi (21 page)

“Yes.”

“You like what I’ve done with it?”

I laugh. When she moves, she dips her head to keep her long hair behind her. Her dark eyes are direct.

“I’m all done,” I say, rising.

“It’s okay.”

“I’m interrupting.”

“Third and final date,” she says softly, just before Scott appears in the doorway behind her. He pulls her into him. She allows
it but doesn’t relax against him, and her eyes, on mine, explain everything.

“How’s that beer coming, guy?” Scott asks. “Jack, is it?”

“Jake. It’s finished,” I say, tilting it back.

“It’s just that we’ve got dinner plans,” he says.

“Me, too.” I walk toward the door.

“Scott,” says Elise. “I’m going to need one more. Will you?” She holds her empty glass to him. Scott glances at me and then
takes it. “Thanks. I’ll show Jake out.”

Scott walks out of the room. Elise and I stand in silence for a few seconds.

“Did it hurt?” I ask her. Her dark eyes hold mine. “The tattoo.”

“Yes,” she says.

“He’s leaving,” I hear Scott say from the living room.

“Sasha said he was my type,” says Elise. She touches my arm lightly. “Go say your good-byes, Jake.” I pause, but she motions
with her head, so I walk out to the living room and lift a hand at the four of them.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Sure, Jake.”

“See ya.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

Elise joins us again from the hall as Scott comes out from the kitchen. She takes the glass from his hand and walks with me
down the hall toward the front door. We turn the corner into the foyer.

“What made you come back tonight?” she asks.

“It’s a long story.”

Before she can answer, Scott appears behind her. “Later,” he says to me, reaching past her to open the front door.

“Thanks,” I say to Elise.

“It was nice to meet you, Jake.” She holds out her hand, and as I shake it, I feel the slip of paper. I palm it and walk out,
and the door closes behind me. I walk down the hall, turn the corner, walk to the elevator, and push the button. Beside me
is the old stone mail chute. I run my fingers along it. Only when I’m inside the elevator and the door closes do I open my
hand and unfold the piece of paper.

212–6128
.

I
t’s been years since I thought of Eileen Post.

Of the day in seventh grade at All Grace girls’ school in Greenwich when Eileen walked into homeroom five minutes late, her
French braid ruined, her headband in her hands, her blouse pulled out of her uniform skirt. One white sock was at her ankle,
the other was smudged with dirt.

“Eileen Post, what in the world —,” said our teacher.

“It’s nothing, Miss Anders,” said Eileen. “I tripped on the bike rack.” But as she slid into her seat near the back of class,
pulling her sock back up to her knee, tucking in her blouse, her excited eyes told the girls around her that it was something
much more. “I’ll tell you at gym,” she whispered to us.

Two hours later Anne, Bliss, Michelle, and I hung back in the locker room as the rest of the girls walked out to the gym for
volleyball. We gathered around Eileen on the changing benches. She sat with her palms pressed down in front of her and looked
at each one of us dramatically. She had been walking on Maple Street, she said, a block from school, when three sixth-grade
boys crossed from the other side of the street. One of them knocked her book bag off her shoulder. Before she could run, two
of them held her against the redbrick wall and the third one touched her through her clothes.

We all sat there, stunned.

“Touched you where?” Anne whispered.

Eileen stood up against the bank of lockers. She motioned to Anne and me. “This is the brick wall,” she said. She had Anne
hold one of her hands against the lockers, and she had me hold the other. “Tighter,” she told us. “So that I can’t move.”
Then she had us each hook her feet with one of ours.

“I was so helpless,” she said. “I couldn’t even kick. They could have done anything.”

“What did they do?” I whispered.

She sat back down on the changing bench. “The third boy,” she said, and then brushed her palm, once, across her sternum, closer
to her neck than to the area of her shirt that covered her training bra.

“That’s all he did?” said Bliss.

“Then he put his hand downstairs.”

We gasped.

“Under your skirt?” Michelle asked, in awe.

“No. On my belt. Like
that
was the magic spot. Then they all ran off.”

We sat back and breathed. Eileen looked around at us again. “They didn’t know anything,” she said.

We made her tell us again, made her go over every moment. “They could have done anything,” she was saying again when Miss
Price, the gym teacher, walked in.

“Girls, what are you doing?” she said sternly. “Come out here immediately.”

We jumped up and walked out to the gym, Eileen in the middle of us, our protective hands on her hair, rubbing her arms, making
sure the other girls could see that we’d been trusted with a secret. They begged us to tell them. Eileen nodded, so we told
the story in fevered, whispered bits as Miss Price demonstrated the proper way for a girl to serve a volleyball.

The “attack” held everyone’s imagination for a week, until Karen Glass told us she had French-kissed a delivery boy and was
going to do it again that afternoon. A few days later Debbie Rose brought a condom to school and passed it around in study
hall. And gradually the girls at All Grace forgot about Eileen’s ordeal.

But I couldn’t forget. Months later I would still catch myself thinking about it in class. And not only at school. At night,
too, alone in bed. For almost two years I kept picturing it, and I realize now that I saw the same image in my mind every
time: Eileen’s small hands pinned tight to the redbrick wall, her feet hooked and separated.

And now, years later, it comes back to me again, at ten to seven on a Friday evening, as I sit in a quiet pew at St. Mary’s
Cathedral on Sixty-first Street and Fifth Avenue. The cathedral where I’ll be married two weeks from tomorrow. Mark and I
meet tonight with Father Cronin, the priest who will marry us. We need him to approve the vows we’ve written for each other,
and we want to hear the words he’s chosen to say in the last moments before he joins us as husband and wife.

I run my hands along the smooth wooden back of the pew in front of me. It’s been so long since I’ve been to church. I’d forgotten
how peaceful it can be. How quiet. None of the sounds of the rushing city. Just the whispered footsteps of the people who
enter, kneel at the beginning of the deep red carpet leading to the altar, and then step quietly into one of the many pews.
I look up at the high ceiling, at the exposed white columns, detailed with engravings of infants and angels. At the stained-glass
windows, each depicting a different saint. It is beautiful, this church. And it has the rich smell that never leaves the memory.
Wood, candles, cloth… and something deeper, something almost beyond words. Tradition. Faith.

I look back at the Chapel of Forgiveness, the small alcove by the entrance where Father Cronin asked us to meet him. It is
empty now, so I stand and walk to it, passing again the basin of holy water just inside the front door. I step into the alcove.
Upon one wall is a wooden scroll.

In your charity pray for the souls of the Paulist Fathers who have gone before us with the sign of faith
.

And then the names of the departed. Irish names, all of them. Mallon. O’Hearn. Ferry. McGrath. A hundred others. I think of
the priests from my childhood, in the church in Greenwich. Father Ryan. Father Derry. Father Connolly. Gentle men, all of
them.

“You’re early, my child.”

I start, and turn around.

“Father Cronin. Hi.”

He is a slight man with a thin, almost gaunt face saved by the red in his cheeks, and gentle but penetrating brown eyes. His
white collar is immaculate against the black of his robe.

“Mark should be here any minute,” I say.

He nods kindly. On the wall across from the scroll is a crucifix. I’ve rarely been so close to one so large, so detailed.
Beneath it, at kneeling level, are rows of candles.

“Would you like to light one?” he asks.

“Yes.”

He doesn’t have to know how long it’s been. I light the wooden stick from the one lit candle and touch it to the wick of another.
The flame sputters and holds. I put the stick down in the tray. A few seconds later Father Cronin’s hand touches the small
of my back.

“And now you kneel,” he says gently.

“Of course,” I say, flushing. I kneel and clasp my hands. The only sounds are our breathing and the rustle of his robe.

“Father Cronin?”

“Yes?”

“I have doubts.”

I hear the front door of the church open, and I turn quickly and look toward it. It isn’t Mark.

“Speak freely, Mimi.”

“I’ve been tempted.”

He doesn’t answer for a few seconds. I watch the candle’s dancing flame.

“What else?”

I don’t dare lift my eyes from the candle to the crucifix.

“That’s all.”

Father Cronin kneels beside me. The sleeve of his robe touches my bare arm.

“We are all tempted, Mimi. Fidelity would mean nothing without temptation. Faith would mean nothing.”

“How do I know, Father? If I’m strong enough? To resist.”

“Do you want to resist?”

I pause.

“Yes.”

“Then you will. Each one of us has strength we don’t even know. It arises out of faith. When you need it, it will serve you.
Now rise, my child.”

I stand to see Mark in the church doorway, looking around. He sees us and waves.

“Sorry I’m late, Father Cronin,” he says, walking into the alcove. He kisses my forehead. “What did I miss?”

“The lighting of a candle,” says Father Cronin.

•     •     •

She wears a little black dress; her legs, beneath the table, are bare and crossed.

“You’ve had girlfriends,” she says, her eyes on mine.

“Sure.”

“Then you’ve had that moment when you knew.”

Her black hair shines in the low light of the bar.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” I say.

She has let the shawl slip off her delicate shoulders, and when she leans toward me, her breasts press against the table’s
edge.

“Scott was standing at the stereo last Friday night. Our third date, right? He was going through the CDs, pulling one out,
putting it back in. I was watching him, and suddenly I knew. I can’t tell you why, but I knew.”

“That you were done with him.”

“Yes. That I would get through the evening, and that would be it. And just as I was sitting there on the couch, realizing
this, the doorbell rang. I went to answer it, and it was you.”

Elise leans back as the old bartender comes with our drinks, a vodka and tonic for her and a pint for me. She takes the lime
in her fingers, runs it along the edge of the glass, then squeezes it into the middle and drops it in. As she raises her glass,
the bracelets on her arm slide down to her elbow.

“I don’t believe in coincidence,” she says.

I touch her glass, and we drink.

It is Friday night at 9:30 and we sit in a small booth at Lessons, on 112th Street and Broadway. We are the only customers
in the place. She takes a sip, and I watch her throat shiver as it goes down.

“You said it was a long story, Jake. Why you picked that night to come back.”

“It isn’t, really. I was just thinking about my past.”

She looks down at her hands and then back up at me, her dark eyes searching.

“Okay,” I say. “It was a year to the day that my grandfather died.”

She takes this in, her eyes deepening. “I like that,” she says.

We sit quietly for a while. Beneath the table I let my knee drift to hers.

“You’re a stewardess,” I say.

Her lips part in surprise, but after a second, understanding dawns in her eyes.

“Clete the doorman,” she says. “Teller of secrets. Actually, I’m a graduate student. That’s why we get to live in Columbia
housing. Sasha and Tracy are stewardesses. Flight attendants, to you.” Her knee presses against mine now.

“Where are they tonight?” I ask.

“Sasha’s in Alaska,” she says, then pauses. She takes the swizzle stick, pushes the lime to the bottom of her drink, and pins
it there. Her eyes look straight into mine. “And Tracy is somewhere over the Pacific.”

I slide out of the booth and offer her my hand. She takes it and stands, and we walk to the door and out onto Broadway. The
wind is up and she holds the shawl tight to her neck. We walk to the corner, and then I spin her and back her gently against
a streetlight. I carefully loosen her fingers from her shawl, and it falls away from her throat. I kiss her, hard, feeling
her breasts against my chest as she comes into me. “Again,” she whispers, but I take her lean arms from my neck and walk off
a few feet. I can feel it gathering inside me. All of it. I look up Broadway, into the night. In the distance I can just see
the black gates of the university. I feel her hand in my back, small and warm. I close my eyes.