Blue Mercy: A Novel.

by Ross, Orna

  At last, I was able to go to him. I went across and lifted his plate. He had hardly eaten.

  "Was everything all right for you, Sir?" Everybody over fifteen was "Sir" or "Ma'am" in Honolulu.

  He nodded.

  "Can I get you anything else?"

  "Nothing, thank you." Nothing but you, his eyes seemed to say. Or was that just wishful thinking?

  "I'll get your check then?"

  He paid, his tip generous, and I watched him leave, the tallness of him swaying past tables, leading with his left shoulder and then with his right. Moving with soft, sleek grace, like a dancer. Or a big cat. A dark, silken panther. Then he stepped through the beaded curtain and was gone.

  I was never going to see him again.

  Don't be silly. He'll come back in.

  But what if he doesn't?

  The thought was enough. I found myself running into the back. Grabbing my jacket, I tried to slide past Jim-Bob's booth on the way out. "Hey, where do you think you're going?"

  "Female emergency, Jim-Bob. I'll be back in no time."

  "Female emergency my sweet Fanny Adam. You come back here, girl. You come back here now. If you go out that door, you needn't bother..."

  I kept going. I only needed a couple of minutes. I had no idea what I was going to say to him and by now, he might well be gone, faded into the dark. The thought gave me a spur of panic but, when I got outside, there he was standing under the canopy, as if he knew I'd follow. Or maybe just sheltering from the rain?

  "Hey!" he said, as I drew close. "It's you."

  "Seems so." I was suddenly shy.

  "That's so great. I was trying to work out whether to go back in to you or wait till you got off."

  That's how he was from the start, my Zach. At first I didn't trust it, this openness of his. I thought that he was doing the thing some guys do. The frank thing, the disarming thing that says, it's okay, you're safe with me, but you're not.

  "What's your name?"

  "Mercy."

  "That's pretty," he said, something Americans say every time. What they really mean is, that's unusual. "I love your accent. You're Irish?"

  I nodded.

  "I'm Zach." He put out his hand. "Zach Coleman."

  I took it. I felt an energy, like electricity, but gentler, as if the cells of our hands were dancing round each other.

  "I'd love to go to Ireland," he said.

  "Really? Why?"

  "Who wouldn't? Hey, maybe you'll take me?"

  I laughed.

  "What's funny? You could show me round. What part of Ireland are you from?"

  "Wicklow."

  Silence. He had no idea where Wicklow was but again he filled the space, simply and directly. "Do you want to go get a coffee?"

  "I can't. I have to go back to work."

  "Don't."

  "Don't?"

  "Come with me instead."

  "Sure, I'd love to. Except, if I do, I lose my job."

  "Maybe you will, maybe you won't. Anyway, there are other jobs."

  I laughed. "This one suits me, actually."

  "It's not worthy of you."

  "Pardon?"

  "Why do they have to dress you like that?" He made a face but with a smile that took the offense out of the words. "I saw you, the way you did everything. You're too good for them. Don't go back."

  "You don't know what you're talking about."

  But he had taken my hand and was tugging me gently and I was letting him. We walked out into the rain and, for once, because of the small rebellion of running out to him and the way he was looking at me, even the rain felt new and clean and lively. We found a coffee-house and I started to talk and I told him everything, even about Star. I never discussed Star, certainly not with men I'd just met, but Zach knew all about her before we'd even kissed.

  It, the kiss, came four hours later, when I'd stopped talking and started to listen and we'd left the coffee house and were walking, aimlessly down a side street I'd never walked before, avoiding the rest of the world. I was drunk on the knowledge that I was doing something I shouldn't and Zach was drunk on me.

  I haven't mentioned yet that, in my day, I was considered beautiful. I could give you the details -- shade of hair, span of waist and bust and hip, quality of legs, texture of skin -- but that's nothing. You have to see beauty to know it and yes, I've sometimes taken advantage of what the knowing does to some people.

  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, they say, but what if you are the beauty? Then, it's the look in a man's eye coming at you, telling you know more than you want to know. It's the dislike they deal you for desiring you. Beauty doesn't write the book or raise the child or learn the knowledge. It's for the beholder, not the holder. But

  One good thing about it is how it wises you up early to what most men want from a woman. But like everything about him, Zach's way of looking at me was different. His eyes were two clear mirrors and I actually liked what I saw reflected in them.

  So yes, the kiss. His lips were warm, tentative at first, then searching. I remember wondering how so young a man could know how to kiss like that, then recognizing that it wasn't him, it was him-and-me-together, then letting all thought go...It was a tender kiss, with a fluctuating rhythm, like a finely drawn violin duet and, after our lips parted, we were locked into each other in a new way.

  He ran the back of his forefinger gently along my jawline. "My God," he said, staring at me like I was a newborn baby. "You're stunning."

  The kiss sent us swinging down the four blocks to his apartment and up his stairs. All felt natural and easy, even through the usually-awkward bits like finding the keys and getting the right one to fit the lock. Once we were inside the door, it was straight into the sliding off of fabric, the little tussles with each other's buttons and the first glimpses of each other's skin. I was in it, doing it too, not just the observer. Soon everything was off, off, off and we were down to the clear, open bareness of each other.

  It was too much for him. In minutes, he was gone. "Oh, God," he muttered into the base of my neck. "I'm sorry."

  "Sorry for what? We're just warming up."

  I wasn't being kind, I was pleasured by his pleasure. That was as much as I hoped for in any sex encounter and as much as I usually got. Until that night.

  Zach's desire rose again quickly, as I knew it would, but this time he was determined to wait for me. He stayed my hand, he stared me down, he noticed everything and asked me questions and knew very little about what to do. So I had to get involved, to show him. And somehow, in the showing, I found my own way with someone else for the first time.

  Then we were off together, surfing wave after wave of astonishment, rising and dipping with desires and discoveries, until the first birds sang a false dawn and beyond, until the real dawn was rising and I really had to go. Kate, Star's night-sitter, would be awake soon, expecting me to be there.

  I was sometimes late home from Honolulu, but never this late, and I didn't want to meet her -- or worse, Star -- beginning their morning with the sight of me arriving back.

  He drove me home in his car, a Ford Falcon, through still half-dark morning light. The streetlights were still on. Their flash, along with the hum of the engine and his sated silence, made me drift. With the steering wheel in his hands, he appeared older, like a fully-fledged man, handsome and solid. Someone I could stay with, someone whose kindness I could allow.

  What had just happened between us seemed to hold out a promise to me that I hadn't asked for and wasn't even sure that I wanted? Yet I felt I could maybe grow to love this.

  To love him?

  No. I snapped myself awake. I did not hear myself think that. A slip of the mind, and a damnfool one. It was our very first night, I didn't even know him twelve hours ago. And he was just a boy: nineteen years old, for Chrissakes.

  The car braked; we were outside my house. The lights were all off in there, nobody up yet. All the houses around were in darkness: the whole world, except us, in the
half-life of sleep. A question was pushing up in me and I had to ask.

  "That wasn't your first time, I hope?"

  "No," he laughed. "What chance do you think an American male gets to wait till he's nineteen these days? But I have to tell you," he brushed back my hair and touched my face, again with that honest tenderness that was half-frightening. "It was the first time I realized what all the fuss is about. The first time it was so completely, fantastically amazing." He whooped. "Actually, thinking about it: yes, it was my first time."

  That was my Zach, charming and disarming, right from the start. What could I do but, there and then in the car, offer him seconds?

  All is change and change is all, Star. That's the conclusion I've come to as I look back. Days and doings felt solid back then in a way that they don't now I'm in into my forties. With you, it was more obvious. The imperceptible day-by-day changes that take a child from six to seven to eight are more obvious than those that take its young mother from twenty-six to twenty-seven to twenty-eight. On the outside.

  Looking back, I can see that life is always more fluid than it feels while you're living it.

  Certain days come back to me again and again. The day you didn't get the Molly Dolly part. My heart tumbled over itself to see you coming out of school, placing one foot in front of the other with the strain of holding your walk and your head and your face as if nothing was wrong.

  As soon as we got into the car, you collapsed into tears.

  "You didn't get it?"

  "No," you sobbed. "No."

  "Oh, honey, I'm sorry."

  "I have no part" -- sob -- "at all."

  "What? But everyone had to be in the school play."

  "Everyone" -- sob -- "does. Except I told Miss Rossi that I QUIT."

  "What?"

  You were devastated because Miss Rossi had given you the part of Mrs O'Brien. A silly old Irish lady, you said. Not a doll. Or a pony. Or even a tin soldier. The only grown-up. Boring. You wanted to be Molly Dolly.

  Mrs O'Brien had only two lines, while Molly Dolly was the lead role and it had gone to Angelina Boyle, the prettiest girl in the class. I could see where Miss Rossi was coming from. At that time, you were about four inches taller than everyone else in her class. Dolly, you weren't.

  "You said I was the best actress," you cried, making it my fault. "You said I was the best."

  I held you tight while you sobbed, tried to soothe. When the storm eased a little, opening a space, I said, "Don't you want to be in the play, sweetheart?"

  "Not" -- sniff -- "if I'm not Molly Dolly."

  "But won't you feel left out, watching all the others practice and perform if you're not in it?"

  Your chin wobbled. You hadn't thought of that.

  "Y'know, it's not how big or small your part is that counts, it's how you do it. Why don't you and I work together to make sure that your Mrs O'Brien is real memorable?"

  "But I told Ms Rossi I didn't want it."

  "Well why don't I ask her tomorrow to give it back to you?"

  "Mommy, you can't." She frowned. "She won't."

  "I'm sure she will, if I ask her."

  "I hate Angelina Boyle."

  Star got her part back and, for the following weeks, she and I ran through her two lines over and again, as if we were rehearsing Portia for the Royal Shakespeare Company. We used our neighbor, Mrs Quinn, as a model. We modified the script, putting an extra word or two into the bare sentences to make them unmistakably Irish. We experimented with clothes, accents and attitude and, by the time the great day arrived and the parents were taking their seats, Star could not wait to get backstage. I took my seat and watched while the curtain went back and each Mom or Dad scanned the stage until they found their own darling. Star wasn't there, her entrance came later.

  Dolls and soldiers and teddy bears came and went around a bewildering plot centered on Molly Dolly's lost teddy and her refusal to do her homework or chores until he was found. But where was he? The action was interminable, designed in time-honored, school play tradition, to give a speaking part to all. Bored parents fanned themselves with their programs. When, three-quarters way through, Star burst onto the stage dressed not unlike a drag queen, in a lime green evening gown with matching high heels, I could feel the audience around me popping awake. Taller than the rest, she walked across the stage and with hands on her hips, delivered her line in a strong Irish brogue: "Now Molly Dolly, don't you be acting the rascal."

  Her timing and delivery was perfect. The audience hooted into laughter. Molly said her piece and Star delivered Mrs O'Brien's second, final line. "Little girls have to be doing what they're told." Again laughter, not so much for what she was saying, but the look and bearing of her.

  Molly said, "But I'm so sad," which was Star's cue to retreat and let Tommy Soldier step forward for his moment in the limelight, but she decided her appreciative spectators deserved more Mrs O'Brien than was scripted. She turned to the audience.

  "Children these days," she said, throwing her eyes to heaven. "Begorrah!" At which point, the place broke up into a spontaneous burst of applause and cheers.

  I cheered as long and loud as any of them. For the rest of the performance, she was on stage and my eyes could only look at her, no matter what else was going on. She held her character all through, except for one small moment where she slipped and let her rosy pleasure and pride surface.

  That was my favorite moment of the night, better even than her accepting her due of compliments and praise afterwards backstage; or the drive home in the car with her sharing all her thoughts, the purr of the engine beneath her small, delighted voice; or even than tucking her into bed that night after cocoa and biscuits and receiving a special, solemn hug as I bent to kiss her goodnight, a hug full of gratitude and love and a thousand nameless things.

  I can still see that evening, Star. I see it, here, now.

  But still too I hear:

  "Oh, Mommy, after you left this morning I dropped my lunch on the schoolyard ground and Mark Libovitz came over and he was going to jump on my sandwich except that Sabrina and Casey and Fred came around in a circle and stopped him and then we went in and we had Art first today, Mommy, instead of Science because Mrs Golightly wasn't in and Miss Cremona said my painting was good, except not as good as the one I did two weeks ago. Do you remember that one? Oh, look, there's a dog crossing the road. Be careful, Mommy. It was boring during English and I was thinking about that program that we saw last night, with the Monkees, do you remember, Mommy? It was good, wasn't it? Did you like it? I liked the sandwiches you gave me for lunch. I think that's my favorite now. Tuna fish. I used to prefer chicken but I think now I prefer tuna. What was I saying? Oh yes, after Art, what did we do then? Em... Oh, history, that's it. Miss Cremona came in and she..."

  That phase you went through of giving frantic monologues, reporting on everything that had happened to you that day, everything you had thought or felt or seen or heard, and whatever came into your mind while you were delivering your report.

  On it would go, compulsively, breathlessly, ceaselessly into the afternoon and evening, exhausting us both.

  "It's okay, Star. Let it go. It doesn't matter."

  "But I have to tell you, Mommy."

  "Not everything. Why?"

  "Because I have to."

  "But why? What would happen if you didn't? What's in your head now?"

  "Bertie, Mr Malvich's dog and..."

  "Okay." I put my finger against her lips. "Don't say the next thing."

  She stopped.

  "Do you know what you were going to say?"

  She nodded, her two eyes thrust wide, my fingers pressing her into silence.

  "Hold the thought. You got it?"

  Another nod.

  "So hold the thought and let it go without telling it."

  "No, Mommy, I want to tell you. I have to. What I was thinking was --"

  "No, no, wait a minute. You can tell me in a minute."

  Four years since
Joseph Plotkin and things were worse, not better. I had taken it to her teachers in the end, and then to the school psychologist, and then another private counsellor. Four years of nobody helping much, while the problem pretended to fade or disappear, but was really only hiding, to mutate and rear up again.

  Her relationship with trash was not as intense as it had been, though she still clung to certain useless things with a strange anguish. That now seemed almost harmless next to this compulsive sharing of every single detail of her life. By bedtime, we were both exhausted by the torrent of her thoughts and she would be crying at the idea of going to sleep, because sleeping meant not being able to tell me what was on her mind.

  It was clear that Star was trying desperately to hold on to what could not be held -- whether it be trash or the events of the day -- and I supposed it was down to the loss of her father. So...psychiatry. Not gentle-sounding counseling or therapy, but a doctor who had connections to a mental hospital, whose medicine bag included pills and injections and confinement and electro-convulsive therapy and other "cures" that I couldn't believe in, and could scarcely bear to contemplate, except that not to give them consideration meant doing nothing, leaving things the way they were before, or taking the wacko route: psychic healing or crystals.

  Doctor Amanda Aintree -- in her nice professional way -- suggested that her father's absence alone did not account for how utterly unindividuated Star seemed to be. My daughter, for some other, unsepecified set of reasons, didn't seem to know where she stopped and I started.

  What Dr Aintree set Star and me to do was simple but, as she said, far from easy. I was to give Star a list of all the things she could do to take herself to sleep and then let her go to bed without me. I was to encourage her to have friends and wave her off with them when they went out together, knowing nothing more than where they were going and an agreed time for her to be back. I was to encourage her to do as much as possible alone but also to keep her routine stable and settled. She would ensure Star was supported with a weekly session.

  "So no drugs?"

  "Not yet. Hopefully not at all, depending on how she responds."