White Collar Girl (12 page)

I tilted my head and scanned his scribbles. It didn't look like either one to me. “I don't know. But you spelled gubernatorial wrong. It's with an
e
, not an
a
.” I pointed out his error.

He looked over at me and flashed his imperfect smile. “How can you spell after you just drank those guys under the table?”

“Aw, years of practice.” I grinned and propped my chin on the heel of my hand.

Benny came over and tapped me on the shoulder. “Want me to walk you home?”

I glanced back at the man next to me. “Nah, I think I'll stick around for a little while.”

Benny looked at the man and stepped in between us, leaning forward to whisper in my ear, “You've had a lot to drink. You should really let me take you home.”

I smiled and patted Benny's boyish, freckled face. “Don't you worry. I'm a big girl.”

Benny nodded and reluctantly went back to his seat.

“He's mighty protective of you.”

“Oh, that's just Benny.”

“I think he has a little crush on you.”

“No. You think?” I glanced back at Benny, who was still looking my way, a hopeful smile surfacing on his face.

“He's got good taste,” said the man. “You're the prettiest woman in this bar.”

I laughed. “Even prettier than ol' Marilyn over there?” I gestured over at M.

“Is that who she's supposed to be? I've seen her in here before and I've always wondered.”

“Watch it. She's my coworker. And my friend.”

He laughed and squinted at me, as if trying to size me up. “Who exactly are you anyway?”

“Jordan Walsh.”

“I'm Jack. Jack Casey.” He held out his hand. “I'm with the
Sun-Times
.”

“I'm over at the
Tribune
.”

“What do you do there, Jordan Walsh?”

“I write for society news. And do a few features. And you can stop right there,” I said, holding up my hand. “It's temporary. I'm going to get on the city desk if it's the last thing I do.”

“Well, then, here's to the city desk.” He raised his glass to me.

About forty-five minutes later M left with one of the Leo Burnett guys, and Peter, Randy and Benny left, too. Though Benny did make one last plea to see me home.

Jack reached over for a lock of my hair, rolling the strands between his thumb and index finger. “I'm starving,” he said. “Are you starving?”

“Food?” I smiled. That was all I could do.

I don't remember much after that other than walking out of Riccardo's with Jack helping me up the stairwell. We ended up at a greasy joint at State and Lake, where we had burgers and ate french fries off each other's plates. He fed coins into the jukebox, and we listened to the music he selected:
Rock Around the Clock
,
Maybelline
,
Blue Velvet
. As we lingered over coffee I began to sober up.

Jack was a talkative guy and volunteered all kinds of information about himself. He was raised in a strict Irish-Catholic family. His father was a judge. His mother took care of his five younger brothers.

“Six children?” I couldn't imagine. “That's a big family.”

“And that's not counting the cousins and aunts and uncles. My father had six brothers and sisters and my mom had seven.
Relatives are always dropping by my parents' house. You never know who's going to turn up for dinner.”

“And your mother's okay with that?”

“Are you kidding me? She loves it. You should see her around the holidays. My folks will have fifty or sixty people over for Thanksgiving and Christmas.”

I set my coffee cup down. I was jealous. Or maybe it was more a sense of longing I was feeling. The last time we celebrated a holiday with my relatives was before Eliot was killed. Not surprising that my grandfather had a problem with our Christmas tree. You can see the scowl running across his face in the pictures we took that year. He and my father sat at opposite ends of the table, arguing about the nuclear bomb tests in Nevada. They were both opposed to the testing but still they had managed to turn it into an argument. That was two years ago, and now my parents didn't even bother with the holidays. We tried the first year. My grandparents arrived from New York and left the next day after a blowup with my father. In the meantime my mother had brought out the menorah that we never lit and my father had hauled a tree home that we never trimmed. I remember it stood untouched in the corner, bound in twine, slumped up against the wall, its pine needles dropping to the floor until we threw it out sometime in January.

“And what about you?” Jack asked. “What about your family? You're Irish-Catholic, too.”

I didn't want to get into religion with him. I dragged a cold fry through a pool of ketchup, stalling. “My parents are both writers,” I said.

“Really?” I could tell he was impressed.

I nodded. “My mother's a poet. My father's a novelist.”

“Would I know their work? What are their names?”

When I told him, his eyes went wide. “Hank Walsh? The reporter?”

“Yep.”

“That's your father? I didn't know he was a novelist.”

“He's working on a new book now.”

“And your mother is CeeCee Walsh? I can't believe it. I used to date a girl who was obsessed with her poetry. She wanted to study with your mother at Columbia College but then she stopped teaching. She must be a fascinating woman.”

“She's definitely not your typical mother type.”

“I'll bet. And what about brothers? Sisters?”

I shook my head. “No.” It was true. I had no brothers or sisters, so I wasn't lying. I just couldn't bring myself to tell him about Eliot. Jack must have been new at the
Sun-Times.
Otherwise he would have made the connection and figured out that Eliot was my brother. And if I told him that Eliot was dead, he'd have questions that I wasn't up to answering. No, a dead brother didn't make for good first-date conversation. That was, if this was even a date that we were on.

“I'm not ready to go home yet,” I said after he paid the bill. “We should go dancing.”

“Dancing?”

“Oh, c'mon. It's early.”

“It's not early. It's late.” He glanced at his wristwatch and turned it my way. “It's after midnight.”

“It's a Friday night. Just one dance. Please?”

He looked at me with those eyes and I knew I had him. I could have told him I wanted to go canoeing and he would have said yes.

Half an hour later we were uptown at the Aragon Ballroom. G
ORDON
J
ENKINS &
H
IS
O
RCHESTRA
was on the marquee, and people lined the sidewalks of Lawrence Avenue and Broadway. It was
a perfect summer evening with just enough of a breeze to keep it comfortable. Everyone was dressed for a night on the town, the younger girls in poodle skirts and the older ones in halter-style cocktail dresses that flared at their hips. The fellas wore their best drainpipe trousers and winklepickers. Despite the heat, a few of them were doing their best Brando, wearing rolled blue jeans and leather jackets that would most likely get them turned away at the door.

I loved the Aragon. Walking into the ballroom was like stepping into an elegant city with a sparkling starlit sky on the ceiling. Couples twirled to the big-band sounds, and when they began to play
My Foolish Heart
, Jack reached out his hand.

“This is our song.”

“Is it?” I placed my hand in his. “I didn't know we had a song.”

“Well, we do now.”

He pulled me onto the dance floor, and he smelled of cigarettes and Vitalis. It had been a long time since I'd been held, and I'd forgotten how much the body needs to be touched. I liked the feel of his shoulders, strong and sturdy. When he drew me close, I dared to rest my head on his collarbone.

And that was how it started.

•   •   •

W
e'd been seeing each other only a few weeks, but by the end of July I knew Jack Casey was the kind of guy I could get serious with. And that terrified me. I was fighting it even as I kissed him. Even as I ran my fingers through his hair and along the muscles in his back, I pushed against the feelings welling up inside. I wasn't ready. He'd come along too soon, or at the wrong time—I wasn't sure which. And yet I couldn't resist him. I loved the way he laughed and how his smile was just off-center, with those imperfect front teeth, a flaw that somehow made him all the more handsome to me.

The other thing that frightened me about Jack was that I'd come to depend on him. The last male I'd depended on had been my brother, and when he died, I was lost. Helpless. It took nearly a year for me to figure out how to be on my own. If something happened to Jack, I wasn't sure I could endure that lesson again.

But still I didn't want to let him go, because the truth was he made life better for me. Easier, too. It was the silliest things that melted my heart. Like how he drove me places and carried bags,
or pulled out chairs and opened doors. He stroked my hair in a way that no one else ever had and liked to tuck a strand behind my ear. And he listened. He listened when I complained about the guys in the city room and commiserated with me when it was needed. It was even Jack who found me an apartment. A friend of a friend knew someone who was moving out of a cheap, safe building in Lincoln Park. It was a walk-up above a Polish bakery on Clark Street. Nothing fancy, but it was mine.

My mother came with me the day I signed the lease, and by the time she made it to the third-floor landing, she was panting. “No elevator, huh?” She wrinkled her nose at the yeast smells wafting up from the bakery. The neighbor across the way had a baby carriage parked outside the door. I noticed a couple cans of Campbell's soup tucked inside, resting on a pink blanket.

My apartment was small but cheery with a stream of sunlight coming in from the windows. The wallpaper in the bedroom had been hung upside down, the flowers and butterflies all pointing toward the floor, but I didn't care. My mother noticed that the hot and cold knobs in the bathroom were reversed and that the tub was on a slant going the wrong way.

“The water won't drain out.”

“So I'll get a squeegee.”

“You're going to squeegee your tub?” She smiled and went back into the kitchen. “Oh, the things the young will do to get away from their parents.”

“I'm not trying to get away from you,” I said.

My mother opened one of the cupboards and looked at the empty shelves. “Of course you are, but I'm glad. I think it's good for you. You have a boyfriend now, and you're entitled to your privacy. Not that you and Jack couldn't do whatever you wanted
to back at the house. You know me. I wouldn't object. You're a grown woman, after all.”

“So you're really okay with me moving out? I thought you'd try to fight me on it.”

“Nah. Not me.” She closed the cupboard and leaned against the counter. “I remember I wanted to get my own place down in the Village, but Grandpa wouldn't let me. He was afraid I'd get myself into all kinds of trouble. And that was before I'd even met your father. No, I'm all for you moving out. Not that I won't miss you. Heaven knows I will miss you dearly. I don't know what your father and I will do in that big house without you.”

“I doubt Dad will even notice that I'm gone.”

“Don't say that. Why would you say a thing like that?”

“Because it's true. He hardly ever talks to me.”

“You know how your father is. He's not a talker. Not even with me.”

“He used to be. Before Eliot died we used to talk all the time. About everything.” I hadn't planned on going down this path, but now that I'd taken the first step, I kept on. “We used to be so close, and now—now he just hides in his office and ignores me.”

My mother pushed away from the counter and went into the main room. “You know what I was thinking?” she said, keeping her back toward me. “Remember that table down in the basement? The one with the glass top? That would be just perfect right over here. What do you think?”

“I don't want to talk about a table.”

She looked at me from over her shoulder, her eyes narrow and turning glassy. “You won't change him. He's been broken, don't you know that?”

I did know that. I knew it because I had been broken, too. We all had.

That conversation with my mother stayed with me throughout the day and infuriated me. It wasn't that I was angry with her or even with my father. I didn't know the person I was mad at, because he was a faceless coward who had never come forward. But out there somewhere was a stranger who had taken my brother from my parents and my parents from me.

That night I lay in bed, trying to imagine this villain. What did he look like? How old or young was he? Had I ever passed him on the street? What was he doing right at that very moment? Had he ever confessed to anyone? Did he have nightmares like I did? I hoped that he was rotting from the inside out, his guilt eating him alive.

•   •   •

A
bout a week later, on a drizzly summer day, Jack helped me pack up the last of my things, including the Emerson television set that I'd saved up for. It was too heavy for me to lift, so I waited for Jack to move it. The two of us took turns carrying the other boxes to his car parked out front at the curb.

I'd just dropped off a carton of books and was coming up the front steps for the next load when I heard my father say, “What are you doing with that?”

Jack was on the porch, backing out the front door. At my father's words, he stopped, his shoulders up, frozen in place. I knew what he was holding.

“It's okay, Dad,” I said, coming onto the front porch. “I'm taking that with me.”

“The typewriter? What do you need with the typewriter?” My father had a drink in his hand. Bourbon. I could smell it from across the porch, lingering in the damp open air. “You already have a typewriter.”

“Not an electric one. And he always said I could have it.”

“What else have you picked through and taken?”

I held my tongue, reminding myself that he'd been drinking and that it was best to let it go. I brushed past him, about to head back inside for the next load, but he grabbed my arm.

“I asked you a question. What else have you taken? Like a little thief, you go in snooping around and taking things that aren't yours. Never were yours.”

I twisted out of his grip. “Go ahead, take it out on me. Call me whatever names you want. It's not going to change anything. It's not going to bring him back.”

My father raised his hands, shook his head and turned his back to me.

“Sure—that's right, walk away. You know, it happened to all of us. Not just to you.”

My father turned back around, his eyes focused on me for the first time. “You want to move out—so hurry up already and move out. But you leave that goddamn typewriter here.” My father went back inside the house and slammed the front door.

I wanted to run after him, but my feet wouldn't move. Didn't he know how hard I was trying? Didn't he know that I was exhausted and scared and that he was part of the reason why I pushed myself like I did? Didn't he understand me at all?

Jack was still holding the typewriter, a bewildered look on his face. “So is this going with us or what?”

“No.” I shook my head and told him to take the typewriter back upstairs to the spare bedroom. I no longer wanted it.

“So what was all that about with your dad?” Jack asked, as we carried the last two boxes out to the car. It had started to rain harder, and the sidewalk was slick and shiny with plastered leaves that had fallen. We were dripping all over the place as he put the car in gear and we eased away from the curb.

I lit a cigarette and cracked the little triangular vent window.

“Well?” He turned and looked at me. “What just happened
there?” We were stopped at a red light. The radio was playing
Ain't That a Shame
. I drew down hard on my cigarette. He turned and looked at me.

“It's about my brother, okay?” There. I'd said it. It was out in the open.

“I didn't know you had a brother. How come you've never mentioned him before?” The light changed. The car behind us honked. “Jordan? How come you never told me about him?”

The air inside the car shifted. The windshield fogged up. “He's dead. He died. He was killed.” I took a final drag off my cigarette and shoved it out the window.

Jack pulled over to the side of the road and turned to look at me. “I'm so sorry. I had no idea. Why didn't you tell me?”

“I couldn't.”

“What do you mean, you couldn't? What happened to him? How'd he die? My God, I don't even know his name.”

“It's Eliot. It
was
Eliot.”

“And how did he die?”

I looked out the fogged-up window and reached for another cigarette.

“Jordan, tell me.”

“I can't—I can't go into it right now.”

He smacked the top of the steering wheel. “Jesus, when are you going to let me in? When are you going to trust me?”

“This has nothing to do with you. This isn't about not trusting you. This is about me. About my family.”

We both went silent. Jack pulled back into traffic and the only sound was that of the tires rolling over the wet pavement. I was watching the raindrops collecting on the windshield when I finally spoke. “It was a hit-and-run, okay?”

“Jesus. Jordan, I'm sorry. Did they catch the guy?”

“No.”

“Jesus,” he said again.

My vision blurred as I watched the wipers clear away the rain, wanting them to clear away the past, too.

“I wish you would have told me about your brother. How could you keep something like that inside and not tell me?”

“Because, goddammit, I come from a family where we don't talk about it.” I hadn't meant to snap at him, but I couldn't help it, and I couldn't keep from doing it again. “Don't you get it? We don't talk about him.” I was glaring at him, fighting to choke back the tears. “My mother was a poet before Eliot died and now she won't write because she's afraid of what's going to come out. And my father—
all
he does is write. But neither one of them—
none of us
—talk about it.”

•   •   •

A
fter Jack and I arrived at my new place, at least the two of us had started talking again. And the rain had stopped, but it was muggy inside and out. Opening windows did little to circulate the moist air, and I couldn't remember where I'd packed the fan.

Together we emptied out the car and Jack helped me sort through boxes, hang pictures and rearrange the bed and dresser so there was room to open the closet door. When we finally got the furniture in position, it was late, and we took a break, moved out to the living room and opened a bottle of wine. I settled in on the couch while he plugged in the television set and adjusted the rabbit ears so we could watch Steve Allen.

“Not a bad picture,” he said, coming back to the couch.

I glanced over at him. The blue light coming off the TV danced across his cheek and forehead. His skin looked smooth, his jaw square and strong. I found him especially handsome that
night. I studied his profile, gazing into the dark tunnel of his eardrum, wondering what was going on inside that head of his. He must have sensed my staring, because he turned and faced me, locking eyes with me.

“What?” I brought my fingers to my mouth.

He smiled and reached over to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “I know it hasn't been that long, but, well, I've never known a girl like you before. You're different from the other women.”

“Different? How so?”

“C'mon, don't you know?”

I shook my head. I honestly didn't.

“You're strong. And smart. And you're beautiful. And, selfishly, I think you're good for me.”

I stared into my hands resting in my lap, fingers tangled together. Though I loved hearing every word, his confession made me uncomfortable. I wasn't used to anyone, let alone a man, being so effusive. I didn't know how to respond, so I didn't.

“You don't have to say anything. But I want you to know that I think I'm falling for you.”

My eyes stayed fixed upon my hands. I couldn't look him in the eye. I was stunned.

“No,” he said, catching himself. “I don't think I am. I
know
I am. I love you, Jordan. I do.”

I finally gazed at him and he gave me that imperfect smile. I wanted to say,
I love you, too
, but the words wouldn't come. Here was a man who listened to me, who put me in the center of his universe, who made me the priority of his days. I couldn't remember the last time anyone had made me feel so special. He filled me with raw emotion that rushed to the surface, pushing, pushing, pushing, wanting to get out. And if I did let these feelings out, what then? Would he leave me? Would he go and die on me?
Would he take his love away? It frightened me that a man I'd known for only two months had twisted up my thoughts like this. When I wasn't looking, he had come into my world and stirred things up. I stared into his eyes, wanting to tell him all this, but all I could do was lean forward and kiss him while the
I love you, too
s piled up inside my head.

We didn't speak about love again that night, but about a week later, on a balmy July evening, Jack came by my place with a bouquet of roses. I was touched by the gesture, but I was ever practical, and as I arranged them in a vase, all I could think was that in a few days the water would turn and start to stink. Jack was the romantic, not me. But he was also a handyman, and he changed a lightbulb that had burned out in my closet. Instead of replacing it, I'd worked around the problem, learning by touch alone to find exactly what article of clothing I was looking for in the dark.