Maddy put his arms around my shoulder. “You need two things, little bit. First, a nice cup of tea. Secondly, you need to tell someone what’s going on.” He spread his leathered hands on either side of my eyes, wiping away the tears with thick thumbs.
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Start at the beginning.”
And so I did.
19
CARDINALS
HOW TO START AT THE BEGINNING? Where was the beginning for me and Tom? It was hard to remember a time when I didn’t feel like I knew Tom for half a lifetime.
I always thought that the day on which I met my husband would be significant, singular, special in some way. Surely there would be an indication of the change that was to come. But that was the stuff of the fairy tales that my father read me as a child. Closing my eyes, I could feel the scruff on Daddy’s chin as it rubbed across my forehead. I was back in Daddy’s lap, worshipping the picture of Cinderella descending the steps: her gown so white it was almost blue. That’s where we get our ideas—as little girls tucked in our fathers’ laps. Our lives unfold like a race to the glass slipper—to be saved by the lonely prince.
Instead I met my husband at a Xerox machine, and Tom was no prince. He was not even handsome, but his cuteness, his steady demeanor and intelligence soon consumed my thoughts. Although there may not have been a beacon pointing to a life together, the friendship we forged was undeniable.
Tom and I lived together, but apart, in the house on Hudson Street for nine months. During that time, there were evenings where he would knock on my door, ever the gentleman, offering me a plate of the lasagna he had made. Or I would bring him the Tribune I had rescued from the Doberman next door. We passed each other on our way out, on our way in. On days when Tom was going to be in the office, we carpooled. The time passed—minutes, hours—through inane chatter about nothing.
Since moving out of the long-term hotel, I saw the Megans and Loris and Tiffanis infrequently. I had heard that Megan had quit her job and was waiting tables while she tried to find something else. Riding an elevator with Tiffany, I learned that she had left her boyfriend. The next week she was sporting a diamond tennis bracelet.
“How could I not forgive him!” she chortled.
As for me, I spent hours huddled over copy, red pen poised. I had been at Sandalwood & Harris for almost two years, and I was rewarded with a three percent increase. I was not writing, either at home or at work, and I complained to Tom over grilled cheese one Saturday afternoon when I was helping him strip wallpaper from the powder room.
“Jillsandra hasn’t done anything?” he asked.
“No. I try to write at night, but I end up staring at the screen until I fall asleep. I’ve got nothing.”
The fact—which I would never reveal to Tom—was that I did have spurts of inspiration; they just didn’t occur when I was at the keyboard. Rather, they happened on the Friday evenings I went to Tony’s. They happened as I strolled Wabash on Saturday afternoons. They happened as I rode the antique gold flanked elevators at Macy’s.
And they happened most often when I drank.
When I wasn’t working, I was walking. And when I wasn’t walking, I was drinking. Sometimes I drank as I walked, bourbon lacing the Diet Coke in my McDonald’s cup. Walking made me feel powerful, and drinking made me invincible.
There was a moment, just after the second glass, when my eyes cleared and everything seemed possible: I could be a writer; I could be happy. I could, I could. Do. Anything.
The liquor’s warmth seeped through my brain, and words formed, whole phrases, suspended in the sky above me like cartoon captions. But then there was the subway ride home. And then I changed into pajamas. And brushed my teeth. And by the time I sat down at my computer, the screen lulled me into sleep.
“You need inspiration,” Tom suggested over lunch one day.
“Any ideas?”
“Actually, yes. How about if you tag along on my photo shoot this Saturday. I’m shooting a bunch of anorexic, over-priced, empty-noodled models.”
“Hmmm, sounds inspiring.”
“Now don’t be a doubter. If you like people watching, it doesn’t get any better than this.”
“Sure you’re not just out for slave labor help again?”
“So what if I am!” Tom winked. “Holding the aperture meter is a lot less messy than drywalling, and I’ll even take you to dinner afterwards.
“Okay, it’s a date.”
That was June 1999. The next week Tom took me to the Natural History Museum, and we ate ice cream sitting on the steps next to the formidable lions.
Our third date was to a movie and our fourth was to eat Chinese. All Saturdays punctuating the dreary weeks I had to myself. Weeks where I saw Tom hardly at all.
On the fifth Saturday Tom knocked on my door, a box of Puffs in one hand and a nose the color of Santa’s.
“No date tonight. I’m sick.”
“Gosh you look awful. Bad cold?”
“Yes. Wanna make me chicken soup?”
“Do you need me to make you chicken soup?”
“No, I’ll just go to bed. Rain check on our date?”
“Sure.” My mind began racing with the long hours I would have to fill. “Tom, can I ask you something?”
He nodded and coughed, mucous obviously rising in his throat.
“What are we doing?”
“You mean that literally or are you being deep?”
“Are we dating?”
He cleared his throat. “I’d say so. If we weren’t, I wouldn’t be so disappointed about having to cancel tonight. After all, I had big plans.”
“Oh?”
“Tonight I was going to kiss you.” Tom stuffed a tissue up to his nose. “But there’s the phlegm and everything.”
“Phlegm can be sexy, on the right man.”
“Yeah?”
“No.”
“Goodnight, Jo. Next weekend?”
The Saturdays splayed out in front of me like autumn leaves collecting on the vintage lawns in Hyde Park. Having lived in Chicago over fifteen years, Tom knew all the nooks and crannies of the city. Together we saw the city as native and naïf, through a photographer’s lens and a writer’s eyes. We strolled, sometimes holding hands to jaywalk across the street, at times talking over each other, at times saying nothing at all.
Two things lingered in my mind: Tom’s mention of a kiss (that had never happened), and the weekdays that hung on either side of the Saturdays.
One Saturday in November, when the trees had bared and my clothing layers tripled, Tom and I packed a picnic lunch and boarded the purple train.
“I can’t believe you haven’t seen the universities in this town,” he had said a few weeks before.
“Does University of Chicago not count?”
“Okay, that’s one. What about Northwestern? You take the purple line until it stops. That’s got to speak to the poet in you.”
“I’m a non-existent writer, not a poet.”
“Tell ya what. Next Saturday we’re going to Loyola. Will you pack us a picnic lunch? And wear a heavy windbreaker; the wind is ferocious where we’re going.”
We descended the steps at the station and headed to Loyola. The sunny day was unseasonably mild and before long I took off my jacket. I pointed out a few good places for us to eat our picnic. I was hungry, and my new sneakers rubbed a blister.
“Just up ahead. We’re almost to the chapel.” Tom pointed to the spire 400 yards away.
“Ham and cheese in a church?”
“A chapel. Wait until you see what’s behind it. Jillsandra will burst with inspiration!”
“How do you know so much about this school?”
“All my sisters went here. Very Catholic family, ya know.”
I knew Tom’s family lived two hours away, and that he had gone to DePaul, majoring in photography.
“Why not Loyola?”
“No photography.” He bit his lips, and a slight smir
k escaped. “And I couldn’t get in.”
He checked his watch. “Good, it’s three hours until another service.”
Once inside, I took in the candles, flames dancing against the rose glasses in the south transept. I lingered at the votives, whispering to Tom, “I always thought this was a really pretty tradition. But I can’t say I completely understand it.”
“No candles in the Methodist church?”
“Just two big ones.”
“My very Catholic mother always called them vigil candles. They’re for you to remember people.”
“Dead people.”
“Mostly, but some people light them to pray for lost causes.” He leaned in close. “Or writer’s block.”
I struck a match and lit a candle in the back row. Its lone flame flickered in the darkness.
“For Jillsandra?”
“For Grace.”
Tom crossed himself, ending with a kiss on his fingertips.
“Come on. Time for lunch.”
It was almost 2:30 in the afternoon when, my stomach rumbling and my head full of ghosts and candles, Tom pushed open the Art Deco doors at the back of the chapel. There, 200 feet across the sandstone courtyard, in all its bold, exuberant power, was Lake Michigan—the lake that I had run beside, its wind chapping my cheeks, erasing who I was and where I had been. Suddenly the massive body of water was before me and around me and took my breath away.
We descended two shallow steps, and I slowly crossed the courtyard to the stone wall. The wind from the water stung my eyes, sliced through my sweater, and instantly made me shiver.
“You’ll want that jacket back on,” Tom advised.
But I didn’t. I wanted to feel the frosty air swirling around me. In all my time in Chicago I had not felt this alive.
We returned to the Loyola Chapel courtyard frequently, dubbing it our spot. One Sunday afternoon just before Thanksgiving, we huddled in down parkas on the stone wall. Tom had brought heated seat pads.
“I never heard of such a thing. But I’m not complaining!” My hands gripped a Styrofoam cup of hot cocoa, the steam escaping in the wind.
“My mom’s purchase. She’s the kind of mom who thinks of everything—kinda drives you crazy, but your butt never gets cold.”
We sat silently sipping our cocoa and gazing at the foreboding water and the birds dipping and soaring, again and again, hunting for food. One of the things I had grown to appreciate about Tom was the fact that conversation was not mandatory. Dr. Weisz was constantly asking me, “How are you feeling?” “How was this week?” “Can you rate the grief you feel?” but Tom simply sat beside me, as content with silence as he was with conversation.
He fiddled with his camera, adjusting the lens, focusing on one particularly crazed bird, unrelenting in his water dives.
“The patterns birds fly are so random,” I said.
“Hmmm, but they’re not.”
“I don’t mean when they fly in formations; I just mean this guy’s crazy dives.”
“I still doubt they’re random. But then again, I don’t believe in random,” Tom said.
“What does that mean? Everything has a plan?”
“Yep. Everything.”
I set my empty cup on the ledge and stuffed my frozen hands, mittened insufficiently, inside my parka sleeves.
“You can’t believe that.”
Tom lowered his camera from his face. The dimples appeared as he smiled.
“Can if I want to.”
“No, I mean, what about a baby dying? There’s a plan for that?”
“Ah, you had to pick the hardest example.” Tom pulled his right glove off with his teeth to grab another roll of film. “I can’t say God’s hand is in a baby dying, but I do think that life moves to a certain rhythm, and things are just part of that.
“I just don’t think things happen randomly.”
I sat quietly for a moment, then, “And Grace being killed? That was part of a plan?”
“You’re misunderstanding. You’re making a plan the opposite of random.”
“And isn’t it?”
“No,” said Tom. “Grace died because she chose to walk on a mountain, and a deranged psychopath chose to go up there and look for someone to kill.”
My heart skipped a beat, and a shudder ran through my body.
“So she asked for it?”
Tom set the camera down, then, and put his hands on my wrists.
“God, no, Jo, that’s not what I’m saying at all. But I’m saying there’s free will, and I think that certain things are supposed to happen, or certain people are supposed to react to events. And I do think God oversees it all.”
“But doesn’t save people.” I blinked against threatening tears. “He didn’t intervene to save Grace.”
“He can’t save everyone.”
“He’s God. I mean, if you believe he’s God, then why not?”
“I don’t know, Jo.”
“And doesn’t it bother you that you don’t know?”
“No, not really. It bothers me more to think everything’s random. What the hell is the point of that?” Tom reached over and pushed my hair from my face, tucking it into my hood. “I prefer to focus on the things I know were planned—things like what that bird is doing. Or like us meeting.”
“You think we were meant to meet?”
“You don’t?”
“I’m all about random,” I reminded Tom.
“So we just happened to be in the same creative team meetings. And I just randomly drove by when that jerk was trying to take advantage of you at Tony’s. And you just randomly responded to an ad at the house where I live.” Tom smiled. “Sorry—your theory doesn’t hold water.”
The truth was, I had wondered more than once at the serendipity of our friendship. But I couldn’t reconcile the good and the bad, the happy coincidences and the evil happenings.
“I bet you believe in happy ever after too, don’t you?”
He placed his hand over his heart, dramatically. “Hello, my name is Tom, and I’m an optimist. I do believe in happy.”
I giggled. “You’re a little nutty.”
“But a happy nut.”
Tom picked up the camera, stood and aimed it at me. “Laugh again.”
“Say something funny.”
“I got nothing. Just fake laugh.”
“Why?”
“Because your laugh jumps into your eyes, and it’s something to behold.” Tom pulled me to my feet and positioned my head, chin up, nose pointing toward Lake Michigan. I heard the sound of several clicks.
He looked over the camera lens. “Anybody ever tell you that you have the saddest eyes?”
“Uh, I don’t think that’s a compliment.”
“Sure it is. Mona Lisa had sad eyes.”
“Yeah and an ugly face.”
Swinging the camera strap onto his shoulder, Tom reached over to tuck more hair inside my hood. “Your eyes are like falling into a deep well, where you can’t get out and you can’t see where you’re going.”
He smiled. Those dimples. “Hey, how was that for poetic?”
“You just compared my eyes to drowning.”
“Well I do feel a little like I’m drowning when I’m around you.” Tom took a step closer. “But it’s a good kind of drowning.” Another step, his breath now closer. “Are you as cold as I am, Jo?”
I nodded, and he pulled me gently into his arms. Tom’s chin was above the top of my head, and he rested his right cheek against my unruly curls, my hood slipping away. His long arms enwrapped me so closely I felt I would disappear. From the cold. From myself.
“You give good hugs,” I whispered.
“You’re fun to hug. Your hair smells like … you.”
His cheek rubbed against my hairline, pushing the curls back, until his cheek rested on mine, Tom’s lips dangerously close to mine.
My breathing quickened and I pushed against his chest.
“Tom, what are we—”
“Shut up. I’m trying to move in for a kiss.”
His lips found mine then and, eyes wide open, I tried to calm my racing mind. Too close, it shouted. Too close! Tom’s eyes opened and, lips locked, we stared into each other’s eyes.
“Jeez, you kiss with your eyes open!”
“I guess.”
“You’re trembling.” Tom rubbed my arms and then pulled me in for a deeper hug, his mouth still hovering near mine. “Are you cold or …”
“A little scared.”
“Of me?”
“Of this.” I had thought of this kiss since the sick Saturday. Tom’s face loomed in my daydreams, and I counted the hours until our weekends together when I lost myself in Tom’s kindness, his boisterous laugh. Slipping my hand into Tom’s, feeling it swallow my own, I felt safe. And now the gentleness of his supple lips sent a shiver down my thighs.
Yet I felt as if I couldn’t breathe, and I pushed away.
“I really like you, Tom.” I couldn’t look into his eyes. “I think I maybe more than like you.”
“I maybe more than like you too, Jo.” He lifted my chin and pressed a kiss onto my forehead.
“I just need to go really slow.”
“I can do slow. As long as you’re not scared of me. I couldn’t handle that.” Tom peered deeply into my eyes, almost as if he could see what stared back at him. Almost. “I’d never hurt you, Jo.”
Our Saturdays continued, as did the kisses. And although I wanted them, I felt my body tense as his mouth pressed harder and harder on mine, his hand roving tenderly, slowly.
“Are your eyes open?” he murmured one evening, mid-kiss. We had been watching an old Bette Davis movie on his sofa. “I’m always spooked I’m going to open my eyes and there you’re going to be—staring at me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s a control thing, JoAnna,” Dr. Weitz had said. “You’ve experienced a tragedy beyond your control. Perhaps this is one thing you think you can do to show you are in control of your own life.”
“It’s a, a control thing I think,” I stammered.
“Not sure a relationship is something you can control.” Tom leaned back against the sofa, his hands interlocked across his chest. “My mysterious Jo. What’s deep inside that beautiful head of yours? What have those sad eyes seen?”
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