The Side of the Angels (40 page)

“Is she angry at me?”

“Let's put it this way. If Hatcher and Draybeck sends you a fruitcake at your office this Christmas, I'd have someone else take the first bite.”

“I'll ship it to Hamner.”

“So, Nicky.”

“So, Tony.”

“Do you have room in that apartment for me? Again?”

“I'll clear out a drawer.”

“I swear I won't neglect you for my work. Most of the time. The great, great majority of the time.”

“You'd better not. But if you do, I'll remind you and you can shape up.”

“And, of course, you'll be there for some of it. We can talk about that later.”

He started to kiss me again, but I pushed him gently away.

“Back up a second. I'll be there?”

“Ron didn't tell you? I heard it days ago. Weingould wants you for the strawberry pickers' campaign. There won't be much internal lit, but he thinks you'll have plenty of press work. He said he doesn't want to break up a good team.”

“Out of the mouths of babes,” I said. “Or rather, directors of orga-nizing.”

That was when Kate came to get us.

“They're looking for you two,” she said. “They're breaking open the champagne.”

“We'll come for the toasts but we're not staying long,” said Tony.

“I can see that,” she said. “I thought you guys would never figure it out.”

“What are these, pine cones?” Tony said as we creaked our way up the stairs and he saw the silver bowl on the window seat.

“Yes, those are pine cones.”

“Geez, will you look at that chandelier? What do you think that thing weighs?”

He had additional comments to make when we reached my room and he noticed the crystal jar of bath salts, the turned-down bed with its wealth of goose-down pillows, the candle lights in each window to celebrate the season, the thick lace-trimmed towels that made me feel like a princess each time I stepped out of the shower.

“Like any guy would dry himself off with these,” Tony scoffed.

“She does have male guests, and I don't see any of them complaining. You should taste her breakfasts.”

“What is this?” He'd picked up the ruffled chintz shower cap Mrs. Crawley provided, a fresh one every week.

“It's a shower cap. I don't use them, but it's a pretty touch.”

“You and your touches. Gotten
aw
ful fancy since that Englishman. What is that in the corner?”

“It's called a fainting couch. It was to catch women when they swooned.”

“Perfect for you. I thought you were going to keel right over when the waitress burned you with the coffee.”

“Are you nervous, Tony? You're nervous, aren't you?”

“Of course I'm not nervous. We've done this before.”

“I'm nervous. And we haven't done exactly this before.”

The floor creaked as he walked over and took me in his arms, and the bedsprings creaked as we lay down together. For the first time in weeks I felt completely warm.

We were clumsy, we had forgotten each other, and almost fell off the bed twice, knocking elbows and tangling legs. We were hurrying, and imprecise, and when he came inside me, it wasn't lyrical passion, but I didn't care. Lyrical passion would arrive again in time. This was more, more than our early love, more than those few fraught nights of renewed desire that had given me hope in the last weeks we lived together. That first time, in the hotel room in New York, I had been still too full of the confidence of youth, that greedy, grabbing confidence that doesn't know that all love can end one way or another. And when I'd been on the verge of leaving him, I'd held him close to lift despair, held him for comfort but not for joy.

These moments were a passion I'd never thought to have with him, the passion of finding what was lost, and finding it not as a resumption of the past but as its own astonishment, its own delight. I recognized our gestures, and the murmured words were those we'd murmured in the past, but they were all turned golden and mysterious, like the Winsack church spires in the light of sunset. I wanted to shout with happiness, I wanted to cry with relief.

And when he said afterward, “You know what I feel like saying over and over again? ‘Thank God.' Just ‘Thank God.' That's romantic, huh? But I just want to say it over and over.” Then I wanted to tell him all he was to me. I had the words at hand, they were coming to me in fleet eloquence, phrase upon phrase. I turned in his arms to look up at him, and he was already half asleep.

I switched off the bedside lamp and put a water glass where he could reach it when he woke up thirsty, as he always did. Then I pulled the covers over him, although I knew he would kick them off sometime in the night, and worn out with celebration, closed my eyes.

The Dresden china alarm clock, covered in rosebuds, showed 3
A.M.
with its glowing gilt hands when a noise woke me up. Tony slept on. He had never been a light sleeper.

The sound woke me because it was familiar. A sound like an owl with whooping cough. It was familiar but out of context. Then I remembered back fifteen years, to when Johnny would stay out past his curfew and stand under my window and call this signal, which he flattered himself sounded like a night bird, to get me to let him in. My parents knew the whole time, of course. They were afraid to crack down on him lest that strain of wildness he got from his mother should take hold, and Johnny should break loose entirely. That never happened. They'd kept Johnny safe, my parents and Louise.

I ran to the window, like the Christmas poem says, and flung open the sash.

“Johnny?”

He was standing there in a dark blue raincoat. His hair was wild, and the belt of his raincoat was dragging in the mud left in Mrs. Craw-ley's backyard by the recent rains.

“Nicky, you have to get Louise for me.”

“It's three in the morning.”

“I know what time it is. Get Louise.”

“She's asleep. She came in after me.”

“Get her. I have to talk to her.”

The cold air was like river water flowing around my neck and shoulders. I was about to run down the stairs and let him in when the window next door to mine slid open, and I saw Louise's head and shoulders parallel to my own.

“Johnny!”

“Louise, just listen to me.”

“Go away. You woke me up.”

“You can sleep again after you hear me out.”

Louise was not a swoon-inducing sight in her nightdress, a purple and yellow tie-dyed burnoose. But Johnny didn't care. Not Johnny. It had taken him a long time, but he'd always dived in headfirst once he decided to take a plunge.

“I know I made a lot of mistakes, Louise. I know I've treated you offhandedly, that I've hurt your feelings.”

“That you got engaged to someone else,” Louise said slowly and distinctly. The air was so still I could hear every word clearly. It felt as if it was going to snow.

“I didn't mean to,” said Johnny.

“I suppose it was just an accident.”

“I wasn't thinking clearly. I didn't know what you were to me.”

“You made me feel fat. For years.”

“Never on purpose. You were more important than I knew back then. You're so important, Louise. You're everything.”

“If I count for so much, why didn't you wake up smiling that morning after Aunt Maureen's wedding? Why didn't you?”

“I was afraid. I was … stunned.”

Louise turned her head to look at me.

“Nicky, do you mind?”

I pulled my head in but kept the window open. Like my mother, I have excellent hearing.

Louise said, “You've always taken me for granted. You've always assumed I had nothing better to do than be at your beck and call.”

“I'm not taking you for granted now,” Johnny said.

I could hear other guests stirring below me, and a few windows going up. Tony slept on. Someone yelled, “Hey, Romeo!” at Johnny, but he paid no attention.

“You talk a good game,” said Louise.

“I'll prove it to you,” said Johnny. “I'll stand out here all night. I'll stand outside your window every night for the next three years, if that's what it takes.”

There was no sound from Louise.

“I love you,” said Johnny. “Did you hear me, Louise? I love you. I
loved you when I was fourteen, when I was sixteen, when I was twenty-one. I loved you through all those silly girls in college, and it doesn't matter that I didn't know it, because it's true, and that's all. I was a fool, and a jerk, and a screw-up, but I love you, and deep down you know that, Louise. You
know
that.”

I heard a snort from the other room, but I couldn't tell if Louise was crying or being derisive.

Johnny was expressing himself pretty loudly by now. Lights went on in a few neighboring houses.

“You love me too, Louise. You know you do. Aunt Maureen and Nicky both told me you did.”

My mother had told him that? She hadn't mentioned it on the phone. My mother was a deep one. Tony turned over in bed, mumbled, and went back to sleep.

“Louise? Talk to me. Give me a chance, Louise. You have to. Louise, Louise, Louise, Louise.”

He stumbled around the lawn, crooning her name.

I stuck my head out the window again. I could see her, her arms folded on the sill. She was so still that I could pick out the exact pattern of the tree branches on her pale face and arms.

“Louise!” I stage-whispered. My throat hurt from the effort not to scream at her. “Are you crazy? Get down there.”

She disappeared. I waited for the sound of the window slamming shut on Johnny's pleas, but there was nothing. Then I heard the door of Louise's room close with its distinctive thud. There were footsteps on the stairs. The side screen door banged. I saw—the whole neighborhood saw—Louise run out to Johnny and put her arms around his neck. He staggered backward, than staggered forward. They looked drunk, reeling around together, but they were only drunk with love. And they had a better right to be drunk with it than most people. They'd waited much longer.

It wasn't until she took his hand and led him inside that I realized my fists had been pressed to my mouth to keep me from shouts of jubilation. I wanted to whoop and holler. What a near miss this one could have been. Somewhere in Greece my mother was probably smiling as she dreamed next to Ira.

I crawled back into bed and curled against Tony, nuzzling my face into his chest. When my cold feet touched his, he turned on his other side, but in his sleep he kept hold of my hand, so that my arm went around him and was tucked firmly under his. I pressed my face against his warm back, and fell asleep at last.

I
T WAS SNOWING
as I walked down Connecticut Avenue, a small-flaked persistent snow that was already sticking to the streets. I was going to the Advocacy, Inc. office. I'd promised Ron a briefing before I signed out for two weeks of vacation.

If the snow kept up, the federal government would close early and hundreds of men and women in thin business shoes would be standing by the curbs, hailing taxis with a desperation that the denizens of other cities save for blizzards. I liked this kind of weather, though. Tonight after the rush hour this soft, unexpected snowfall would reveal the secret, quiet Washington so rarely seen, as the auto-free silence of a hundred years before fell over the city.

I was glad to be home, though I missed them all. Kate and Margaret and Lester and even Eric…. Well, I would miss Eric when time in its kindness had dimmed his memory.

Kate had come to see Louise and me off on the train. Kate's friend Eileen had finally gone home from the hospital. She had gone home to die, I knew without Kate telling me.

Eric had wanted to come to the train station to say good-bye, but he was scheduled for yet another afternoon of evaluation by his school district. Clare had arranged it. She said Eric would surprise us all, and he did. The experts said he was testing off the charts in verbal, reading, and logic abilities and might qualify for an accelerated, high-prestige district program for a handpicked group of kids who were far too smart to be left in a regular classroom to suffer as other children did.

As a parting send-off on our last morning at the office, he'd attached a very realistic model of a hairy tarantula to the zipper of my
suitcase, but Louise removed it before he could see me jump. This disappointment caused him to appear nearly as sad as everyone else looked as we made our farewell rounds at the office.

We'd left for Washington a day before Tony. He was flying in that night, if the snow didn't get too bad.

I was so unbearably glad Tony was going to be with me that I couldn't think about it directly. I thought about arrangements instead. Clean towels. Space in the medicine cabinet. Fresh sheets on the bed and lots of food in the icebox. Men consumed such large amounts of food. I wanted to do what would make him feel welcome, but not go so overboard he'd be self-conscious. The apartment was spotless, and all morning I'd wandered around it, hoping it would be a luckier place for us this time around.

I was saying good-bye, too, good-bye for now to my solitary self. Though I would be alone again, by choice and by default, in whatever years to come Tony and I might have, I would not know the solitude with him that I'd known in the time since we'd first parted. Half of me had treasured that solitude. It's not that hard for women to be alone, actually. We're better at it than men are. We form routines, cook for ourselves, and see friends, and travel. Men alone tend to mope, and grow depressed, and then marry unsuitable young women or get cancer. Men fare better when they have company in their lives. But women give up something real and precious when we decide to say to a man: Here, live with me. Sleep with me in a bed that will now be our bed. Eat your meals with me at a table that will be our table. It's a risky step, because there is so much in any man that's alien, so much to get used to, to keep getting used to, year by year.