The Side of the Angels (8 page)

“I just have to tie up a few loose ends,” I said. “You can address me directly, you know. I'm sitting right here.”

“Sorry,” Weingould mumbled. Ron glared at me.

“It's lucky you're good at what you do,” he said in the elevator. “You'd never survive on tact and charm alone.”

“That's what I have you for.”

T
HERE WERE
M
ENNONITES
in the dining car singing hymns. I scowled in their direction. Being forced to listen to other people's religious views is as bad as being forced to breathe secondhand smoke.

Here I had temporarily escaped my mother's doom-laden reminders to repent, only to be lectured in song by people who had the path to unmechanized salvation all mapped out and were looking awfully smug about it.

I took a large sloppy bite out of my tuna sandwich and opened my copy of
Murder on the Orient Express
, which I was rereading for the third time. I glanced over at them. The women's faces were placid under their unbecoming caps. The men looked self-assured and jovial. For a moment it seemed so tempting: a healthy, hardworking life. The assurance that you were living the Lord's way. Perhaps a nice, strapping husband you had married at eighteen and a few plump, sweet-tempered children.

Then I thought of other sweetnesses, of a picnic with Jeremy at Carderock in the middle of March, when we necked on a blanket like teenagers and pulled the blanket around us when it started to rain. I thought of how in the beginning we'd slept so late and made love so long on Saturday mornings that we didn't leave the house until hunger forced us out for a three o'clock lunch. I thought of all the boys I'd dated in college, of one in particular who drew me valentines in red crayon and kissed like a very angel. Perhaps I would try to become good in extreme old age, when men didn't want me anymore and I needed to settle accounts with my Maker, just in case it turned out he had noticed what I was up to all those years.

I had a whole table to myself. Not many people on this 7
A.M.
Friday
train to Providence. Ron fussed about my taking trains because it removed me from his reach for hours, but like most people who have to fly frequently on business, I've grown to hate flying. Besides, I love trains. They're still somehow both cozy and adventurous. You can walk around. You can eat whenever you want to.

Best of all, even Ron couldn't expect me to phone him from a train, since there is usually only one phone booth at best, and it's always taken. I had refused to purchase a cell phone on the grounds that it would give me brain cancer, though the real reason was that I didn't want one more electronic shackle in my life. Ron had scoffed at me, but immediately went out and bought one of those gamma-ray-shielding earpieces, or some such device. Ron was wonderfully suggestible that way. He had an air purifier in his office, a radon detector at home, and a special alarm on his car that would alert the police departments of five counties to his location should he ever be carjacked.

Johnny had driven me to Union Station. I'd told him not to bother, but he'd insisted. We were barely a block from my apartment when he started talking about Louise.

“She was so damn fussy the other day,” he said. “Not fussy about what shoes we bought, but fussy with me. She picked on every word I said.”

“Now, Johnny,” I said. “Think back. What word was it in particular that she picked on?”

“I don't know. How can I remember?”

“You're right. It was a whole two days ago.”

He swerved expertly to avoid a jeep whose driver, yammering, of course, on a cell phone, seemed to think that the lane markings were just suggestions for him to take or leave and that red lights were for other, less fabulous people. I gave the guy the finger and a look of death.

“Nicky, I've told you not to do that,” said Johnny. “Haven't you ever heard of road rage? You never know who has a gun these days.”

“That little snot doesn't have a gun. He'd piss in his pants if he ever saw a gun. He just has a tiny member and a great, big SUV.”

“Well, it's a bad habit. Every housewife is packing a pistol lately.”

“Which is why you tailgated that guy who cut you off at the Georgia
Ave. exit the other day and got out and yelled at him at the first traffic light until he cried.”

Johnny has a wide, thin mouth and a long, easy grin that tilts up and sideways. When he smiled, I saw my father's smile again.

“Louise,” I reminded him. “You were going to put your cute little mind to remembering what set her off.”

“How should I know about Louise? I can't do anything right with her these days.”

“The other night. Think back, Johnny. You can do it.”

“We went out to White Flint and got the shoes and I thanked her, and I even took her to dinner in Georgetown at that place she likes, La Pommette, and then we walked along the canal down by the lock where the touring barge is tied up, you know where that is.”

I knew. It was a beautiful spot where the path wound down among maple trees and old row houses. Very secluded.

“Then I asked her if she'd be a reader at the wedding and she said she hated getting up in front of people at these things. And I said, what about Cousin Andrea's wedding, where you got drunk and tried to do the Texas two-step during the bride's dance with her father? And she said, why didn't I ever remember the times when she acted charming? Why did I only remember the times she made a fool of herself?

And I said I thought she
was
charming at Andrea's wedding, I even said adorable. Then she got really mad, said I was making fun of her and that she would prefer to be a guest at the wedding just like everyone else. And then she wanted to go home.”

Poor Louise. Shopping for him as if she were his wife, eating dinner together in the gauzy light of La Pommette's back room, strolling along the most romantic stretch of the towpath. Then being asked by Johnny not if she'd ever thought of him as more than a cousin, but if she'd agree to read from Kahlil Gibran at his wedding to Betsey. If he hadn't been driving, I'd have slugged him.

“Johnny,” I said, “did it ever occur to you that you could have, how can I put it, feelings for Louise?”

“Feelings?”

We were almost at the corner where Mass Ave. doglegs over to the station. There was no time to be tactful.

“Romantic feelings. It's not like you're actually related, you know.

Not blood related.”

“Are you crazy, Nicky?”

“Johnny, Louise is the only person you've ever really trusted one hundred percent. Even with me and Mike and Joey, you keep your guard up that one little tiny bit. I'm not blaming you. But Louise has always been the exception. So why are you planning to spend the rest of your life with someone else?”

I almost said, “with someone as boring and stupid as Betsey,” but I didn't want to push it.

“Louise has always considered me like a brother,” said Johnny. “She's never given me a second thought.”

“A second thought? Louise would donate a kidney for you.”

“A romantic second thought, I mean. Has Louise ever said anything to lead you to believe she cares about me in any romantic way?”

“No, but I know. I
know,
Johnny.”

“Excuse me if I don't want to bet my future on your woman's intuition, Nicky. Besides, if I ever say anything to Louise and she looks at me like I'm certifiable, there goes our friendship. I could never hang out with her again.”

“Johnny, you're not going to be able to hang out with her much once you're married to Betsey. You think Betsey's going to let you out of the house every Wednesday night to watch
Law and Order
with Louise? You think she's going to let Louise pick out your ties? You think she'll let you go racing over there when Louise calls crying at one in the morning over some loser?”

He was quiet, appearing to digest this. You never know with men. Sometimes they look as if they're cogitating, when all the time they're just playing the NBA theme song in their heads.

Finally he said, “I would be nuts to screw things up with Betsey. She's a wonderful girl. She has so many great qualities.”

“Which of course is why you marry someone. Because they have great qualities.”

“You want me to marry someone
without
great qualities?”

“I'm saying it's not quantifiable. There are only two reasons to marry someone, Johnny. One is that she's pregnant and her father is
in the Mob. The other is that you want to, for reasons you could never list.”

“I don't know, Nicky. Why'd you have to bring all this up right now?”

He was scowling and uncomfortable, but he was still managing to drive wonderfully, avoiding taxicabs, Metro buses that took up two-thirds of the road, and diplomats who, as we all know, can bump off a few people on their way in to work without fearing legal retribution. There's a reason the subway is so popular in this town.

“Because I thought that it might be rude to bring it up at the rehearsal dinner. Just turn it over in your head, Johnny. I won't bug you for another week or two.”

“That long?”

The station loomed up before us. Whenever you were late for a train, traffic was awful. Be early, and in the middle of an engrossing conversation about affairs of the heart, and every light turned green for you. I leaned over and hugged my cousin, and told him not to come in with me. He knocked the side of his head lightly against the side of mine, his version of a cousinly embrace.

“Go get 'em up there, Nicky. And if I find myself needing advice for the lovelorn, I'll know who to call.”

“Anyone but me.”

“Right.”

Watching the Mennonites unwrapping their homemade sandwiches, I wondered if I was even remotely qualified to boss Johnny about his romantic choices. After all, I was passing up Jeremy despite his sincere repentance, a move that spoke volumes about my unyieldingness, my stony heart. Was there something to be said for Christian forgiveness, a precept that had been drummed into me since I was five and beat up Jamie Raley next door for painting my bicycle black? Then again, what had always irked me about Christian forgiveness was that it was never presented to me as a choice. As soon as you can toddle, you're just ordered to turn the other cheek, even in situations that violate the keen sense of justice that every child possesses. This is hardly the
way to raise mercy-minded adults. After all, the reason most people don't like lima beans is that no one ever asked them if they did or not.

The train rounded a curve and knocked coffee over the page where Hercule Poirot discovers the mysterious pipe cleaner left at the scene of the murder. Poirot, of course, would not be fooled by the intended implications of that pipe cleaner, or by the grease spot on the Countess's passport, or the strange complication of the doorknob and the sponge bag.
He
would never let a bunch of singing Mennonites, even if any had been permitted to board the Orient Express, distract him from the task at hand.

My own wits wandered more easily. Half my mind was on Johnny and Louise as I read.

During the Gulf War. That was the first time it came home to me that Johnny might love Louise, that Louise might love Johnny.

My little brother, Joey, who went through college on an ROTC scholarship, was in the air force reserves, and it looked for a while as if his unit would be called up. This was before he met Maggie, and he wanted to go. Joey's job in the reserves was repairing the exteriors of damaged aircraft, sort of like bodywork on a car. This duty wouldn't have put him directly on the front lines, but there was no predicting what could happen in a war, and Joey was not one to stay put just to be safe. He would just shout “Yahoo!” and charge on in. I'd have worried less about my brother Michael, who, although he is brave beyond doubt, does not get intoxicated by risk. In this way Michael is fundamentally different from Joey and Johnny.

It was Joey's birthday that January night I'm speaking of, and we were all there: Mike, Joey, Louise, Johnny, me. And some girl of Johnny's (there was always some girl of Johnny's) who had to meet other friends after dinner. Joey's unit had been put on alert two days before. We went to his favorite Mexican restaurant, Cactus Cantina, on Wisconsin Ave., and made our way through two pitchers of margaritas, all of us except Michael, who rarely drank. The only time I'd ever seen him plastered was at my father's wake.

After dinner, we piled in Joey's truck with Michael driving, minus Johnny's girl, and drove down to the Jefferson Memorial. It was bitingly cold for going outdoors, but the memorial at night was a favorite
place of ours. In the night quiet there, you can hear the sound of the breezes in the pine trees all around and sit on the wall of the Tidal Basin and dangle your feet above the black, lapping water.

We'd stopped for coffee on the way down. Louise ordered hot chocolate, as always. Johnny teased her about being a baby who still needed her cocoa at night, then drank most of it. We sat on the steps overlooking the water. Louise asked for Johnny's sweater and he gave her his coat instead, leaning against her to keep warm. Joey started to horse around, singing a corny old song about a young man off to war, “Billy, Don't Be a Hero.”

In the song Billy commits some fool act of bravery and all his fiancée gets, all that's left of him, is a letter from the army praising his courage. Joey sang high and squeaky for the fiancée parts, then he started singing, “Billy, don't be a queer-o,” shoving Mike in the arm and laughing. I watched them clowning around. As different as they were in looks and character, a stranger would immediately know that they were brothers. You could see it in the quick turn of their heads when something took their interest, in the way they had of collapsing at the middle when they laughed.