Whenever You Call (27 page)

I poured myself a glass of wine and went to stand in front of the fire. I began.

“What I am going to tell you will make you think I’m crazy.”

Her expression didn’t change much. She looked, well,
ready
.

I continued. “I’m not crazy, but I will admit that crazy things are happening, things that aren’t rationale or easily understood. I don’t expect you to
explain
what’s been going on, but I do need your respect and pragmatic, lawyerly point of view.”

Sipping my wine, the room seemed horribly quiet.

Jen took a sip, too, then made a pleased face. “Wow, this is wonderful.”

“Just for you.” I paused. “I would ask, for the sake of argument, that you assume I am sane and still the woman you’ve known for thirty years, who was your very best friend in all the world.”

“I promise, Rose.” She sipped more wine. “I admit that you don’t seem in the least bit nuts, nor have you
ever
seemed nuts. But  … an angel named Ralph?”

“It’s a whole lot weirder than that, I can assure you.”

I sat down in the opposite corner of the couch, legs tucked under me, and I began to talk. It took a solid forty-five minutes to hit every single thing, from the very beginning. I got a little lost at times, and was forced to backtrack, but Jen had the kind of mind that could create order out of any amount of chaos and she kept to the trail admirably. Finally, exhausted, I simply stopped. I stared into the fire.

“That’s quite a story,” she said.

I glanced at her. It seemed to me that if she said I was crazy, or anything even remotely critical, I
would
go crazy.

When neither of us spoke again, I got up and went to throw another log on the fire. Then, seeing the fire needed even more encouragement, I added another. From behind me, Jen spoke again.

“I completely believe you.”

I reached for the fireplace mantel with both hands, and ducked my head forward, my back still turned to Jen. I began to sob.

“You know, I
was
brought up Catholic,” she said. “It’s not totally out of the realm of possibility that there is a god and angels and all that other stuff. ”

I turned around, tears streaming.

She said, “What, in the end, do we know about any of it?”

I shrugged and sniffed.

“Go blow your nose and then let’s try to figure out what to do.”

I ran up to the second floor bathroom and blew my nose resoundingly. She called out from downstairs, “Do you have some potato chips or something to eat?”

I took some cheese out of the refrigerator, crackers, and a jar of peanuts, and trotted back downstairs.

We crammed food into our mouths, refilled the wine glasses and drank sloppily. Jen raised a finger. “First of all, why don’t you go see whether you heard back from Joseph Finder?”

“Okay!”

I rushed downstairs. “Yes!”

“Oh my god,” she yelled. “Read it to me in a loud voice!”

I clicked on the e-mail and began to speak out loud, without first reading it silently to myself. “I think we should meet. Please. Trust me.”

“Sounds like he means it,” Jen screamed.

I ran back up the stairs.

“Should I meet him?”

With her little pointed chin raised defiantly, Jen said, “Yes.”

“What if he’s a crazy guy, a stalker, or something?”

“I’ll get my firm to check out his background, just to be sure, but my gut—,”

I interrupted, “You have a gut?”

“Getting legs has changed me.” She danced them up and down on the floor.

I shook my head slowly. “I don’t know why all of this has happened. Why did I suddenly see Ralph …
why?
”

“I have a feeling that Joseph Finder will have the answer to that.”

“Jen?”

“Umm?”

“How are things with you and Tom, anyway?”

She held out her left hand, which I now realized she’d kept tucked out of sight. A diamond ring.

I whispered, “You’re engaged?”

She nodded.

I slid across the couch and hugged her. “I can’t believe you didn’t call me.”

“I was an asshole,” she said. “Tom told me I was, and I knew it, but I felt stuck. I didn’t know how to get back to where we were.”

“I guess the answer was not to try. We had to take this leap.”

Quietly, Jen said. “It’s all a leap.”

“Or, as Brother Ralph said at Isaac’s monastery,
Ask the question as if the answer doesn’t matter.
”

“What’s that got to do with leaping?”

“No fear.”

She sighed. “Yeah.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

A
FTER
JEN LEFT, I sat in the dark living room and stared into the fire’s flames. I felt myself drifting, neither here nor there, as if I’d been given a dose of valium intravenously. Lovely, warm, liquid, sweet. The top of my head began to burn and seemed to shine, though of course I couldn’t
see
it and, therefore, had no way to know it was shining. Mostly, a mild searing sensation and then it opened. The top of my head opened like a trap door, wide and effortless. My eyes closed and I was happier than I’d ever been. That was how and why I remembered.

I lost my virginity to my first love, Mike, my fellow cello player, who was African-American, brilliant, and so handsome that women were known to stop in their tracks in order to better stare at him. Indeed, women seemed to devour him with their eyes, and I never had any doubt that they would literally devour him if he gave them the opportunity. After our first date at that coffee shop, when I’d reached over to tap his white teeth and he’d sucked my finger into his mouth, we moved quickly into complete accord. Both his parents were on the faculty of Smith College, so we had a great deal in common despite the different colors of our skin. When you’ve reached middle-age, it’s impossible to ever fall in love quite like that again. We were so unencumbered, ready, passionate with desire, and, most of all, easy together. It was all so easy.

We’d been together for a month, inseparable and happy to be so. We spent more time at his house than mine because he was an only child and his parents were delighted to have another person around, particularly a girl person. He lived in a row house almost identical to mine, except that his mother, Ellie, was an immaculate housekeeper, as well as being a well-known scholar in early Christian gnosticism (this was long before it had become popular). Their living room’s floor was covered by a faded oriental rug, the walls floor-to-ceiling books, the couch and chairs deep and cozy. In the beginning, Ellie didn’t allow me to go up to Mike’s room, and these small houses had only dismal basements where the washing machines and dryers were awkwardly placed on cold cement floors. So, the living room was our hang-out. His Dad, Jeff, was a Math professor and much shyer than either Ellie or Mike. He stayed on campus until right before dinner time, and Ellie, for the most part, was in the kitchen making dinner, or sometimes in the dining room where a corner of the old mahogany table was her place to work.

Mike and I cuddled on the couch, which was permitted, and we talked. We talked and we talked and we talked. Nothing could keep our mouths shut. I think now that it was because we desperately wanted to be kissing with those mouths, but we didn’t have the necessary privacy. Instead, we moved our mouths in the only other way available. I watched his lips shift shapes, as if they were formed of some new formula that allowed such extraordinary flexibility. He watched mine, too. Our eyes would meet briefly, then return to the mouths. I think, truthfully, he talked more than I. He was, after all, a senior, while I was a mere junior. And shortly after we became an item, he was admitted early to Harvard. So, I was impressed. He’d also had sexual experience, which he whispered about in long, elaborate stories. His whispering lips, when they whispered about sex, made me pound with desire.

It felt as though my heart had shifted to my genitals, where it beat with such a resounding rhythm and force that at times I had to excuse myself, go to the bathroom, and press my hand against myself, not as a further arousal, or to come to orgasm, but more as a warning, a stop sign, a pressure meant to arrest the beat of my heart in such an unlikely place.

Ellie would bring us cokes and cookies in the late afternoon, but as the smells of dinner cooking permeated the house, she’d feed us crackers and peanuts, and sometimes grapes, though grapes were expensive and Mike had a way of popping them into his mouth in rapid succession, so that they’d be gone in minutes. I loved watching those grapes disappearing into his mouth, right where I wanted to go.

He told me everything, including that he planned to go to Yale Law School after graduating from Harvard, with the ultimate goal of running for President. Very appealing. I thought the job of first lady was a good secondary role to being a mother and a novelist, which was
my
plan. Once, we even discussed how we’d decorate the master bedroom in the White House. He was all for simplicity and the colors of navy blue and cream. Despite all the glory that was quintessentially Mike, I pretty much knew that navy blue and cream were not the
right
colors for the White House master bedroom. I suggested terra cotta, pale blue and gold. Mike screwed up that glorious mouth of his and looked at me like I was nuts. I just pointed to the rug on the floor of his living room, which were primarily those colors, and he looked back at me with complete devotion.

Though, truthfully, I loved him more than he loved me. At the time, I didn’t know that, and, more importantly, neither did he. Sexually, we found our ways to be together. We kissed like machines gone wild in the movies, and we found plenty of places around the Smith College campus where we blended in, though I better than he because it was a woman’s college. With our parents on the faculty, it was vital that we didn’t get caught and spread rumors about Professor So-and-So’s Kid having been discovered half-clothed, or worse. After three months, we were frantic to have sex. In Mike’s past, the girls he’d been with had had parents who worked regular nine-to-five jobs, so their homes were empty in the afternoon after school. Since both our parents were academics, our houses weren’t an option. Also, by this time it was almost Christmas and the cold winter weather meant we had to be indoors. Freezing, we wandered around the campus, stopping for hot chocolate at the student center, then trying to find a spot in the library stacks. Unfortunately, the librarians had known both of us for years, and though they considered us a cute couple, they weren’t fooled as we tried to appear studious for twenty minutes at one of the long tables, until one of us would get up to go to the bathroom. If the other then followed five minutes later, a librarian would raise his or her eyebrows at us. Forget about the stacks—we could never get that far.

One Monday afternoon, we passed the Helen Hills Chapel, an imposing white building that, oddly, though I’d seen it many times, I’d never been inside. Suddenly, Mike’s hand tightened and he yanked me up the steps, through the double doors, and into the building. It was chilly, but empty. Christmas greenery had been hung, and beneath the primary odor of an old building were whiffs of pine sap. We glanced at each other, hardly daring to hope.

“There must be someone in the back,” I whispered.

No lights were on in the main sanctuary. It was so quiet, I could hear our breath moving in and and out of our lungs, as if we were on ventilators.

He said, “I don’t think so.”

“They wouldn’t just leave it open.”

Mike gave me a strange look. “You don’t go to church much, I guess.”

“I’ve
never
gone to Church.”

“Aren’t you baptized?”

I shook my head, no.

He grinned, pleased that he wouldn’t have to feel guilty about anything. My original sin was still on me!

We tiptoed forward, peering right and left.

“We can’t do it in a
church
,” I said.

“You don’t think so?”

That heart beat of mine, located in the wrong place, started to pound. I swallowed.

We ducked down a line of pews that ended behind a major column. Mike pushed me against the column and placed his body heavy against me, pressing and undulating. We began to kiss and his hands were under my coat, then my sweater, and finally my bra. My breasts felt alive, as if they were possessed. I arched my back, sending my groin into his. He moaned and began humping me wildly. I had an orgasm and my legs gave out, dropping me so that he had to hold me up.

“I want to be inside you,” he said.

“We can’t—,”

“No one’s here.”

“Do you have—,”

“I have a condom—it’s safe—I’ll be careful.”

“Mike, I don’t know—,” My head turned right and left, looking, checking, searching.

He kissed me, gentle and calm now because he knew we were going to make love. His hands slid out from under my clothing and he grabbed my left hand, leading me into the pews again. His other hand lifted to his mouth and he made the “Ssh” sign. We went quiet, our shoes sliding along the wooden floor, our breathing slowed and simple. A quarter of the way down the pew, he pointed to the floor. I lay down immediately. He lowered himself on top of me, but held himself just off my body with one hand while he quickly helped me to unzip my blue jeans and pull them down.

Then we did the same with his jeans. His penis was hard and it looked ready to explode. I’d felt it in my hand before, but never clearly seen it. Mike shifted hands, so that his full weight was still off my body, freeing his right hand to touch me. He slid his finger inside and ground my hips closer, opening to him.

“Okay,” he whispered, falling back to balance on both knees and still crouching low so enough that no one would see his head over the pews. He yanked out a condom, tore it open with those white teeth and quickly rolled it over his penis.

Then he gave me a look. “It might hurt.”

“Okay, I know that.”

“Rose?”

I stared at him.

“Do you love me?”

My eyes dropped to his penis and I saw it quiver when I said the words, “I love you.”

He began to ease inside of me, his eyes drilling into mine. His mouth came lower and lower and finally touched my lips. We kissed wildly. It began to hurt. He spoke while kissing me, “Try to imagine your muscles down there are like butter melting.”

Immediately, as I did as he suggested, it stopped hurting.

“Good,” he whispered.

We were kissing and I was looking into his eyes, but as he moved more fully inside of me, his eyes closed. I tried closing mine, too, except that they flew open again. And that’s when it happened. Only briefly, an impossible thing that I promptly forgot and had never remembered until now, thirtysome years later.

I saw Ralph, my angel. Ralph exactly as I’ve seen him in the last six months, baggy under eyes, thick nose, droopy chin and cheeks, yellow complexion. He wasn’t smiling. His face had an anxious expression. My eyes widened, watered, and then I blinked. After the blink, he was gone.

JEN called the next morning at ten a.m. “Joseph Finder’s okay—no arrests, tenured at MIT, for crying out loud, married once, divorced ten years ago, owns his house and car, gives money to his alma mater, Amherst, that’s about it.”

“What’s his sexual affiliation?”

She laughed. “He was married.”

“Uh-huh.”

There was a pause as we both breathed into the phone.

I said, “What do you think?”

“You know.”

“I guess I’m supposed to meet Joseph Finder.”

“Lemme put it this way,” Jen said.

“What?” I prompted when she stopped talking.

“If
you
don’t meet him, then
I
will. We need to get to the bottom of all this.”

I sent Joseph Finder an e-mail.

Dear Joseph Finder,

How about coffee today? I have to get to work at 4:00.

Sincerely, Rose Marley

While I waited to hear back, I went into my bathroom to plug in the electric curlers, and began massaging an extra layer of cream into my skin.
Boing!
I rushed back to the computer.

11:30? I have a seminar that begins at 2:00.

I agreed, and then hurried to get ready. Faded, boyish blue jeans with holes at the knees, a tight black turtleneck, my hair curled and pulled into a messy chignion at the nape of my neck. Some make-up. The usual, though perhaps with an extra stroke of blush across the cheekbones. My face was pale, eyes huge, and lips tight.

I grabbed my red puffy parka and black backpack. I could drive, but parking would be hell around there, so I decided to walk to the subway. The air, as so often after a hard rain, was clear and much colder. Had the rain come that day, it might have been snow. I walked hard and fast. I didn’t want to be late, and concentrating on moving quickly kept me from thinking about anything else.

It was a little too early for lunch traffic and the subway was uncrowded. I rode only one stop, but the time was just long enough for me to get nervous. Sweat thickened under my armpits, my hands grew damp, and I yawned compulsively. I gave myself a stern talking-to, saying, among other things, that one of the values of being older,
goddamnit
, was that we could take life’s challenges in stride, blah, blah, blah. I walked along Massachusetts Avenue, dodging pedestrians and surreptitously checking out every man with white hair, wondering if I’d see Joseph Finder before he got to the Miracle & Science Grill. As I opened the door to the restaurant, I sucked in a huge, steadying breath.

The back of his head was immediately recognizable. Thick, glorious white hair. Dramatic and, yes, instantly attractive. My stomach jumped around. I started to weave slowly through the tables, curious that he’d chosen to sit with his back to the entrance. Then I saw the handles of the wheelchair. He was giving me the chance to leave if I wanted to.

Everything slowed down. My face grew numb and tingles exploded up my lower legs. As I got closer and saw his profile, I recognized him: the man in the wheelchair at Widener Library, the one I’d told Jen had practically stalked me. It had to be twenty years, at least. I circled around the table, pulled out a chair, then leaned toward him with my hand outstretched. “I think I know you.”

His handsome, rugged face smiled back. Then his eyes shifted to the right, staring away from me.

I turned to look.

Ralph floated in the corner of the room. He wore a nonsensical grin and the ratty brown wings flapped hello. Both Joseph and I kept our eyes on Ralph, but Joseph spoke.

“Do you see him?”

“No feet, big ’ole furry wings, poked-out eyes—,”

“He’s waving at us.”

My head turned to look at Joseph.