“Probably the same thing you were doing,” she said.
“Well, I was trying to convince Derek Galvin to go skinny dipping in the canal. So I hope you weren’t doing that.”
“Skinny dipping with you?”
“No!” he said, looking horrified. “By himself. Why would I want to go skinny dipping with Galvin? Jesus Christ.”
“OK.”
“What are you reading?” Emmet said now. He tipped at the book like a cat with a toy. “Sorry,” he said then, quickly, with a wobbly smile.
“Ted Hughes,” Catherine said, unnecessarily, because in the same moment Emmet had reached over, closed the book and pulled it to him; he was examining the cover.
“Oh, yeah, I read something about this lately. Your one was his missus, wasn’t she? Who topped herself?”
“Sylvia Plath.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “See, I know about poetry.” He opened to the description on the inside jacket flap. “Oh. These are about her, are they?” he said, after he’d read for a few seconds.
“Yeah,” Catherine said. “He wrote them for her.”
“For her birthday?”
“Kind of. Every year, like. She’s been dead for thirty-five years now.”
He nodded. “It’s sad, isn’t it? The way she died.”
There was this aspect to him, Catherine had noticed lately: this bluntness and frankness that startled her. These questions or statements he came out with, as unvarnished as a child’s.
“Yeah,” she said. “It was sad.”
He had settled on a page and had begun to read the poem. “9 Willow Street,” she saw.
“It’s about when they went to Boston,” Catherine said. “He was teaching at Harvard.”
“Jesus,” Emmet said, after he had been reading for a few moments. “They sound like a right barrel of laughs, the two of them.” He assumed a deep, plummy voice. “‘I folded / Black wings round you, wings of the blackness / That enclosed me, rocking me, infantile / And enclosed you with me.’ Jesus.” He shuddered.
“He doesn’t sound like that,” Catherine said. “He didn’t go to Gonzaga.”
“Signs are on him,” Emmet said, and he kept going. “‘And your heart / Jumped at your ribs, you gasped for air. / You grabbed for the world, / For straws, for morning coffee, anything / To get airborne.’” He looked at her. “Could he not just make her a fucking coffee?”
“Give me that,” Catherine said, and she snatched the book from him.
“Are they all that melodramatic?”
“Are you going to stay here and torment me all morning?”
“I might,” he said, grinning in response, but he looked distracted. He was looking at her but he was not, she knew, concentrating on what she was saying as she told him now that she was on a deadline with this essay. He nodded, but he was doing the thing she had known other guys to do—it had taken her a while to work it out, but she knew what it was now—which was the thing of letting her talk, encouraging her to talk, even, so that they could use it as an excuse to look at her more closely. He was studying her face now, she knew, instead of listening to her. And he was grinning. And he was cute when he grinned like that, there was no denying it. And he was cute, there was no denying it, when he didn’t grin.
But he wasn’t James. Nobody was James.
“James,” he was saying now, and Catherine stared at him.
“What?”
“Did you see James this weekend?”
And that was another first: blushing at the mention of James’s name; and she blushed harder as she talked about the dinner he had thrown, and she saw Emmet noticing this, and thinking about it, puzzling over it; tracking the blush across her face as it spread.
“And, em,” he said, picking up the book again, “what’s your favorite poem in this?”
“‘Robbing Myself,’” Catherine said immediately. She opened the index and found the page, pushing it towards him. “It’s about Hughes driving to their house in Devon after they’d left it. They’d split up by then, and he was going back to check on his potatoes and apples.”
“His potatoes?” Emmet said, incredulously. “What a fucking culchie.”
From across the library, someone shushed them.
“You’re incorrigible,” Catherine said. “I’m not going to let you read it if you’re going to slag it off.”
“No, no,” Emmet said, pulling the book to him. “I’m sorry.”
“It would have been a couple of months before Plath died,” Catherine said. “He says December. The December dusk.”
“‘Over fallen heaven,’” Emmet said. “For snow. That’s good.”
“Yeah,” Catherine nodded. “That’s good.”
He read on. “He likes his potatoes all right,” he said, raising his eyebrows.
“No talking,” Catherine said. She watched him read.
“‘Pigs’ noses,’” Emmet said with a smirk, and she rapped on the table beside him.
“Sorry,” he said, and he kept reading. And she watched him, as he came to the passage where Hughes crept through the house, the silent house, listening to the absence of his family, of his wife and children, feeling like a trespasser, seeing their books, the walnut desk, the Victorian chair he had bought for five shillings—Love, love, I have hung our cave with roses—
“Shit,” said Emmet, at the line now, she could see, about Plath’s tears, her last lonely weeks in the house. Did she imagine it, or did he shudder, reading about the house closed up again, tight as a casket, the stained-glass windows glowing? And then Hughes was back on the road again, and Emmet’s eyes were climbing from the bottom of one page to the top of the last, and to the image she loved so much that seeing him read it for the first time, she knew she could not trust herself to speak:
I peered awhile, as through the keyhole
Into my darkened, hushed, safe casket
From which (I did not know)
I had already lost the treasure.
Emmet exhaled long and deeply after he had finished.
“Fuck,” he said. “That’s fairly depressing.”
She laughed. “Yeah.”
“So she wasn’t dead yet?”
“Well, she was when he wrote this.”
“Fuck.” He closed the book again, looked at it in his hand. “Well, nice cover, at least,” he said, and she burst out laughing. He was laughing too, as he looked at her, but she could see that he was confused too, or hurt, even, by her laughter.
“His daughter did that painting,” Catherine said, pointing to the splodges of color, the rusty reds and yellows.
“Did she?” Emmet said. “When she was little?”
Catherine laughed again. “No,” she said, and Emmet looked at her, disbelieving. “When she was an adult. She’s an artist.”
“Fair enough,” Emmet said, puffing out a breath.
“Here,” Catherine said. “Give it to me.”
But it was too late: he had already seen the inscription.
“Oh,” Emmet said. “That’s nice. He has nice handwriting, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“Mine’s a fucking disaster.”
“I know,” she said. “And so does my mother.”
He looked at her, bewildered for a moment, and then he got her meaning, and he laughed. “So, em,” he said, rocking back on his heels, “is James seeing anyone these days?”
“James?”
He nodded.
“No.” Catherine shook her head firmly. “No. For James it’s not that simple.”
“Oh?”
“No. Not that straightforward.”
“Well,” Emmet said, seeming to cast about for a response. “It’s not straightforward for a lot of people, I suppose.”
Catherine gave a little laugh, a laugh which might suggest that this was a cute idea. “Yeah. But slightly more so for James.”
Emmet nodded. The book was in his hands again, turning and turning. He swallowed. “Yeah. I can ima
gine.”
“Can you?”
He looked at her as though this was a test. “I think so.”
“I don’t know if anyone can imagine it, really,” Catherine said, feeling her throat swell with the importance of the statement. “He’s had some terrible things said to him.”
Emmet frowned. “By who? Not people in college?” He looked almost angry.
“Just people,” she said, shaking her head as though it was something she could not possibly go into. “You know.”
He shook his head now too. “That’s fucking appalling,” he said. “Poor James.” He looked at her. “You’re such a good friend to him,” he said then. “He’s lucky to have you.”
There it was again: the openness, the plainspokenness. Few people she knew would speak like that. Aidan, maybe, but with him it was somehow harsher. It was, with Emmet, the blush that made the difference, but it was also the way he said things. Like he meant them. When he was not joking, he was utterly serious. Was that true of everybody? She tried to think. Maybe. Probably. But no, she did not think it was. She glanced at him. He was not even looking at her, did not even seem interested in, or heedful of, her reaction. He was looking at the Hughes book again. He opened it at random, and quite astonishingly—or maybe it was just the way the spine was now, from her own use of the book—it fell open at “9 Willow Street” again. But he did not look at that poem—which reminded Catherine so much of Baggot Street, so much of the flat, the coziness in which they all lived—but across the page, to the end of another poem. It was “Child’s Park,” she saw; Plath in the park, going nuts at the girls who were pulling up the azalea flowers. Yet more than that. Always more than that.
“‘What happens in the heart simply happens,’” Emmet read. “That’s all right, as poetry goes. That’s at least not as dreary as fuck.”
“Don’t read the rest of it, then,” Catherine said, with a laugh that, she saw, came as a relief to him.
“Here you go,” he said, handing her back the book, and as he did so, his hand touched hers, and he let it stay there for a moment—for just long enough for her to know that he meant something by it. He glanced at her, like a child in trouble, his eyes cautious, the mischief only around the corner, the blush high on his cheeks again. “Right, I have to head off,” he said then, and he stood. “I’ve already missed a meeting with my Politics lecturer, talking to you.”
“Don’t be blaming me, Doyle,” Catherine said.
“I will if I want to,” he grinned, and he walked away.
“What on earth was that about in the library with poor little Emmet Doyle earlier?” Zoe said. They were having lunch outside one of the lecture halls; Catherine had been having a sandwich by herself when Zoe had come up to her.
“Nothing,” Catherine said, shrugging.
“And thanks for letting me know you were going out for lunch. I was waiting for you to come over to me for the last half an hour.” She ripped open her sandwich: chicken and stuffing, the same thing they had every day. “I’m bleedin’ starving.”
“Sorry,” Catherine said again.
“Well?” Zoe said, her mouth full. “I mean, you say you’re not going out with him, but to me it looked like the two of you were in the process of breaking up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it looked very serious. Did Emmet get his mid-twentieth-century poets mixed up or something?”
“Emmet Doyle doesn’t know mid-any-century poets,” Catherine snorted, feeling immediately guilty, remembering how Emmet had looked so closely at the Hughes poems.
“I was talking to Conor earlier, by the way.” Zoe fixed her with a look. “And he was telling me that you two aren’t talking at the moment. He told me you had an argument in the Buttery a couple of weeks ago. Over James. I thought I was hearing things.”
“Did he tell you what he said about James? Did he tell you what he called him?”
“Camp, I think.”
“Yeah,” Catherine said hotly.
“Which,” Zoe said, raising her eyebrows, “James kind of is. I mean, I think James would admit that.”
“Oh, fuck, don’t you start.”
“Start what?” Zoe said. “You’re the one who took it upon yourself to tell Conor and me about James. And others, for all I know.”
“I didn’t tell others,” Catherine lied.
“Well, fine. But my point still stands.”
“What point?” Catherine almost spat.
Zoe did not flinch. She rarely did. She regarded Catherine steadily, and sipped from her coffee, and put the cup down. “You can’t protect him, Catherine.”
“Protect who?”
Zoe actually laughed, though it was not really a laugh. “Oh, please. You know who I’m talking about. You’re too involved, Cath. Aidan and I have been meaning to bring this up with you for a while now.”
“Aidan and you?” Catherine spluttered. “What are you, a crack team of fucking meddlers now, or something? Or, wait, are you sleeping together?”
“No, Catherine,” Zoe said in a warning tone. “Look, I don’t want to have a fight with you. I’m just saying. You need to give James some credit. You need to stop trying to protect him all the time.”
“I’m not trying to protect him! How could I protect him?”
“Well, that’s kind of my point.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Catherine said, and she began to gather up her lunch things.
“I know you’re his friend,” Zoe said quickly. “His closest friend, I know that. But you have to let him fight his own battles. You know?”
“Oh, yeah,” Catherine said bitterly. “Because that’s really worked out so well. For so long. Leaving people like James to fight their own battles.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Zoe said, pointing at her. “Don’t paint me as some—”
“Saying nothing, instead of standing up and taking a stand?” Catherine said, hearing immediately how ridiculous the sentence sounded. “Instead of doing something to make things easier?” she said.
Zoe stared. “What are you talking about, Cits? Nobody is trying to make things difficult for James. If anyone is making things difficult for James, it’s himself. And you, I might as well tell you, are not at all helping by hanging around him like an overprotective mother. Or like his girlfriend. Or like his fucking wife, actually. You do realize that people are assuming that you two are a couple?”
“I don’t give a fuck what people assume,” Catherine said. “What the hell am I supposed to do about the things that people assume? What can I do about it?”
“You could stop holding hands with James in public, for one thing.”
“We don’t hold hands,” Catherine said. “We link arms.”
“You look like you’re holding hands,” Zoe said, shaking her head. “It’s the closeness. The physical proximity. It has the same effect.”
“Oh my God. Are you serious? Are you seriously talking to me like this? Fuck off,” she said, and she jerked her hand to the side, and this was how she spilled Zoe’s coffee, which went all over the table. “Oh, shit,” she said, moving to get things out of the way of the spreading brown liquid.
“Here, here,” Zoe said, already soaking up the spilled coffee with a wad of napkins she had produced from somewhere. “It’s all right,” she said, and she glanced up at Catherine. “Is your book OK?”
Catherine just nodded; she had knocked Birthday Letters down onto her lap as soon as she could, but she was pretty sure some of the coffee would have got at it.
Zoe sighed. She reached across and took Catherine’s hand, patted it briefly.
“Emmet touched my hand in the library,” Catherine said.
“Oooh,” said Zoe, and she raised her eyebrows. Then her face changed; something seemed to occur to her. “Does Emmet know about James?” she said.
Catherine said nothing for a moment, weighing up her options, or trying to. Then she nodded, a short, sharp
nod.
“Well, thank goodness for that at least.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, at least you’re not pretending to him.”
“I am not pretending to anyone!” Catherine exploded. “I told you! What am I meant to do about what people assume? James is my friend. And I’m worried about him. I’m being as good a friend as I can to him so that he doesn’t feel—”
“So that he doesn’t feel gay?” Zoe cut in.
Catherine stared at her. “I can’t believe you said that.”
“Well, I did say it, Catherine. And I’m not sorry I said it. I mean, if you don’t care about yourself, and what people think about your availability…”
“Availability! What is this, a fucking matchmaking festival?”
Zoe shrugged. “At this stage of life, yes. That’s what it’s meant to be.”
“Maybe for you,” Catherine said contemptuously.
“Maybe for James, too, if you’d let him.”
“You don’t know anything about him. You met him a month ago, for fuck’s sake!”
“I know that, and if I’d met him three hours ago, it would still be crystal clear to me how much you’re potentially fucking things up for him. What do you think this is doing to James, Catherine? Parading around with a girl on his arm virtually every time he’s out in public? What kinds of opportunities must this, this illusion of yours be wrecking for him?”
Catherine scoffed. “There are no opportunities,” she said.
Zoe regarded her for a long moment. “And why do you think that is?”
“Because he’s not ready,” Catherine said, slamming her hand down on the table. “Because he doesn’t feel ready for someone. When he’s ready for someone, someone will come along. Until then, I’m his friend, and it’s my job to look after him.”
“To look after him?” Zoe said disbelievingly.
“To look out for him, then,” Catherine said. “I don’t care about the semantics. Put it however the fuck you want to put it.”
“Jesus Christ, Catherine,” Zoe said, shaking her head. “On second thoughts, you should stay well clear of Emmet. He doesn’t deserve this bullshit. He doesn’t deserve to find himself involved with someone like you.”
Tender Page 20
