Academy Street

by Mary Costello

  ‘All the more reason to kiss you then.’ He drew her to the shadows. He was a man used to getting his own way. He took her face in his hands and kissed her and paused, until she kissed him back. The kisses grew longer and with the wine and his hands moving on her back she felt herself yielding, arching into him, her body egging her on. When they drew apart he was smiling. He seemed bemused, triumphant, arrogant. He became, again, strange to her. His face did not move her. There was little in him she wanted to know.

  ‘Till next time, then,’ he said.

  Inside the cab she could smell his cologne. She closed her eyes and laid her head back. She longed for a passionate, even outrageous, life. She pictured him naked, rutting. His hands on her, all over her, in her. Strange hands, strange eyes. And his mind, his thoughts, alien too, and so apart from hers. She opened her eyes. She could not give herself to this stranger. She would need to be known. She would need to know him too, decipher him, make unstrange his mind. She would need to be a little in love. And this man—a divorcé and a man of the world—would not wait. This was the way with men.

  In the days following she tried to want him—she wanted to want him. But in her private fantasies she could not call him forth. It was David who came, always David, his face known to her, his voice tender and lonely, his mind adhered to hers. They had come together once, like planets colliding. Her body had never forgotten him, not for an instant, as if by being her first, by taking and entering and impregnating her, he had annexed her, and some twist or quirk of nature had ensured that he remain. Her Adam, her primary man, the first and foremost, the father, the one who had made his mark and against whom all others would be measured.

  Frustrated, impatient, she vowed to sublimate desire. She turned to learning. She had always considered herself an unlettered woman but resolved to cultivate a life of the mind. Theo’s legacy, the fire of his passion and early curiosity, was igniting in her now. She enrolled in an evening class on Greek Mythology at the library a few blocks away on Broadway. From the start she was intoxicated. Alone, she wept for Demeter’s grief, for Prometheus’s torment as he lay bound to the rock. The gods and goddesses entered her and resonated and she was porous to every myth and odyssey, as if the ghosts of Olympus had always lain dormant in her, waiting to be resurrected. She encountered them everywhere, found them threaded through her days, in ads and logos, in films, on the signage of trucks, in the names of towns—Troy, Ithaca, Delphi Falls. Ancient Greece was all over America. On street corners she saw people descend into the subway, and felt a little shiver at their blind oblivion, had an urge to forewarn them, hand them coins, beseech them not to look back.

  She relayed the tales back to Willa—each week returning with books, reading aloud passages that told of the antics of Zeus and Apollo and Aphrodite, so that Willa too was drawn in, playfully taking sides, expressing faux outrage and delight, bringing a new way of seeing to Tess.

  ‘He’s a piece of work, that Zeus!’ Willa said. ‘Now Hera—she’s my kind of woman. If my Zeus ever, ever strayed, I tell you, hon, Hera’s got nothing on me in the jealousy department! My Darius—you know he’s named for a king?’ She paused. ‘Darius, King of Persia.’ She smiled, as if a gentle memory had surfaced. ‘But, king or no king…’ She sighed, shook her head. ‘Oh, Tess, it ain’t love if it ain’t jealous.’

  How odd they must look, two women in their forties, one black, one white, sitting in the park, or walking home along the streets, sharing mythological aches, trying to outwit each other with priapic puns.

  ‘So, which crazy god has put a stamp on you, Miss Lohan?’ They were sitting in Willa’s apartment, by the open window, drinking iced tea. Willa’s sons were grown up now too, and working; one a policeman, already married.

  Tess thought. ‘Mmm…Probably Persephone.’ The sun was streaming in. She remembered a picture of Hades in his chariot, and the ground cleaving open as the chariot and team of horses dived underground with the captive girl, crying. ‘Or maybe Orpheus.’

  ‘No, you’ve got to pick a girl.’

  ‘Eurydice then.’ She remembered Orpheus’s grief, ascending from the Underworld without his beloved.

  Willa shook her head. ‘You’re obsessed with the Underworld!’

  Her voice trailed off. She turned towards the light and Tess was caught by her sudden calm and poise, the tilt of her face, and her eyes, in that instant, a little melancholy. A small tendril of hair curled in on her temple. The smooth curve of her neck gleaming with the heat, her small wrists, her slender fingers—all of her familiar and beautiful, and now unexpectedly sensual. Tess’s heart pounded. She looked away. The lace curtain lifted in the breeze. In the distance the city hummed. A silence fell and Tess looked at her friend again and something stirred in her and she could not tear her eyes away. The white collarless blouse, almost see-through, rested on her collar bone. Underneath, her skin, her breasts. There was something infinitely tender, infinitely delicate, about the small mound of each breast, the thin filmy cloth like a veil over them. She had a sudden longing to reach out, move aside the fabric, touch a breast, lay her head there, her mouth, ease her terrible ache for human touch, human love. The room was flooded with light and she was blinded, mesmerised. Scarcely breathing, she raised her eyes to Willa’s face, and they held each other’s look. Then Willa stood and moved away. Tess placed her hands flat on her lap and closed her eyes and came to her senses. She had almost lost her mind. She had almost lost the run of herself.

  The evenings of that first winter alone, and of the winters following, had a denser darkness. In the streets she was assailed by glances, light strobes, flashing neon lights. Her working days grounded her. She was grateful for the comfort of routine, the rhythm of each day with its journey, its duties, the small news and gossip of other nurses’ lives.

  Occasionally she thought about retiring, moving house, taking a trip back to Ireland, but she did none of these things. There was, in her nature, a certain passivity, an acquiescence that was ill-suited to change or transformation, as if she feared ruffling fate or rousing to anger some capricious creature that lay sleeping at the bottom of her soul.

  Theo had long since separated from her, and when his college education was complete he pulled up the drawbridge to his inner life, locked his heart against her. He had been a fatherless boy and now he was a man and she accepted this, and understood. He went to work for a firm in the city, and year after year advanced in his field. A gambler of sorts, he explained, trading commodities, buying and selling gold, silver, rice, soya beans. ‘Coffee beans, too,’ he said, picking up the coffee can in her kitchen one day. An image of Africa formed—of Kenya, and Isak Dinesen, and Robert Redford washing Meryl Streep’s hair in a film she’d seen, Meryl’s head back, the water falling from the jug onto her hair, sparkling in the sun. That night they danced outside the tent. She remembered the music clearly. Lately she’d been doing this, slipping into reverie or something that resembled reverie.

  She looked up at Theo. ‘How tall are you?’ She herself was growing down. He half smiled. ‘Six foot two. You know that. Why?’ She had known. Since he was a teenager and had played basketball, she had known. She did not know why she asked. She remembered buying razors when she saw the first tufts of facial hair, leaving them in the bathroom for him to find.

  When he was twenty-eight he became engaged to
a tall Jewish girl named Jennifer, a lawyer, who sometimes accompanied him now on his visits to Tess. A perfect couple, both blond, both beautiful. They bought an apartment on Riverside Drive. He was closer now to the girl than to anyone, ever, in his whole life. Before the wedding they took Tess to meet her parents and friends at a country club in Westchester County. Out on the lawn she watched Theo moving among them. She saw his ease, the way they embraced him, appropriated him. She could no longer hug him or kiss his head. To touch an arm was the extent of what she could do. All evening long she smiled and mingled, but she felt remote. It seemed at times that she was marooned on an island, a moat of water, wide and black, separating her from all human love. She thought of Claire, years ago, and her house and garden in New Jersey, and how all things change or end or disappear, and this would too, this day, this moment. She looked around. And you too, you will all disappear.

  She returned home after midnight. She stepped inside and stood still, alone again. She had left the radio on all day. Others had people waiting. She took off her shoes and poured herself a glass of wine and sat at the kitchen table. He had been long gone but now the going was complete. She had sent him out of her house into his fate and he had grown and succeeded and become unknowable to her. She wanted to cry out, roll on the floor. She had loved him wrongly. She had become too attached. She should not have grafted herself onto him. She made a fist of her hand and bit on her knuckles. There was nothing before her now. He belonged to someone else. She remembered the couples at a party years ago, the looks, the trust, the secret signs, and a rage—an unbearable pain—pierced her and she let out a howl and flung her glass across the kitchen, hard against the wall and cried as the wine ran down, sudden and fast, in thin purple rivulets until it reached the skirting board and then parted and flowed right and left and over the top onto the floor.

  She walked out into the night. The streets were warm, quiet, almost tropical. Under the sky there was nothing, no one to cling to. The paucity of her life made her unspeakably sad. She tried to put her finger on what had marred her, what had excluded her from life. Again she began to cry. What she had longed for was to be of one mind with someone. Of one mind and one body. Love. She walked along the edge of the park. Ahead of her, nothing but this longing, this sickness, this time.

  She walked along Sherman Avenue, Broadway. She felt calmer. There was something about walking, steps unwinding out of the body, that brought comfort and clarity. Was there not something in her that secretly savoured this state of longing? Waiting with constant hope and everything before her, all to play for? Was not the ache sweeter, in a way, more enticing, more seductive, than the sating? Like waiting for the afterlife, she thought, but never truly wanting it to arrive. Because then, what would be left? It would spell the death of hope in the everyday, like love born dead.

  She stopped outside the church, its great wooden doors locked. Its stone walls hinted at further silence and sympathy within. And then the night stood still and she looked up at the stars. A serene peace entered her, and her heart lifted and it came to her with the clarity of a vision: Theo had love. He was in love, and loved, and beloved. He was understood. And in the better part of herself she knew this was all that mattered.

  In the better part of herself. Had she not glimpsed beauty? Had she not, at times, felt blessed? Had she not felt the surge and soar of love, the glint of grace and, once, had not the planets collided, and had she not burned with passion? Love had existed, she had felt its throb, its inner vibration. Even if, on that night, their carnal bodies had not bestowed beauty on the act itself. But it had existed. Had not a child come out of it and been delivered fully fledged to the world? Images from the past returned to her: entering Willa’s apartment in the evenings, the child running into her arms, making her heart leap in her breast. To give joy like that. To see him sitting in his bath, eyes closed, laughing, as she rinsed his hair and the warm water trickled down his face. Or lying on the floor drawing men on the moon, animals marching in pairs onto Noah’s Ark, asking her to spell a word, and she, she, in the wash of him, feeling the truth of him deep in her soul.

  She walked on home. She moved with divine calm, as if all the world were sleeping. She remembered a line from a book: For the beautiful word begets the beautiful deed, and felt vast, deep, complete.

  PART THREE

  I4

  OVER THE YEARS, over long winter nights and summer afternoons, Tess found a new life in books. As if possessed of a homing instinct she would often leave her hand on a title on a library shelf or in a book bin outside a bookstore that somehow magically fitted her at that moment. The mere sighting of a book on her hall table or night stand as she walked by, the author’s name or title on the spine, the remembrance of the character—his trials, his adversity—took her out of ordinary time and induced in her an intensity of feeling, a sense of union with that writer. Another vocation, then, reading, akin, even, to falling in love, she thought, stirring, as it did, the kind of strong emotions and extreme feelings she desired, feelings of innocence and longing that returned her to those vaguely perfect states she had experienced as a child. She was of the mind now that this evocation, this kind of dream-living was sufficient, and perhaps, in its perfection, preferable to the feeble hopes embedded in reality.

  The things she had hankered after—encounters with beauty, love, sometimes the numinous—she found in books. She flinched from the ugly, the vulgar, but never from suffering or the pain of shame, discerning in the author’s soul a striving to transcend these states, to draw out of injury or anguish some revelation, some insight, that would deliver both character and reader into a new state of grace. She suffered for the characters, for the authors too. She lived in a divided world, the inner at a remove from the outer other. It was this inner alter-life that rendered her outer life significant and in which she felt most exquisitely contained. She became herself, her most true self, in those hours among books. I am made for this, she thought. In the shade of a tree a bird would call and she would lift her head from her novel, arrested, heart-weakened. Then she would remove her glasses and come to, up out of a trance and into the world where joggers and school children and old couples linking arms drifted in shade and mottled light, a world that newly bedazzled her.

  It was not that she found in novels answers or consolations but a degree of fellow-feeling that she had not encountered elsewhere, one which left her feeling less alone. Or more strongly alone, as if something of herself—her solitary self—was at hand, waiting to be incarnated. The thought that once, someone—a stranger writing at a desk—had known what she knew, and had felt what she felt in her living heart, affirmed and fortified her. He is like me, she thought. He shares my sensations.

  There did not seem to be enough hours or days or years left in her life to read all she wanted to read. She moved about the world with gratitude, porous to beauty and truth. At Mass she felt a new appreciation for the Scriptures, the Gospels, the sounds of the Psalms. She went to certain Masses, certain churches, for the music alone, to be exalted. She attended recitals, listened to radio concerts. It was as if she had undergone a tenderising of the heart, a refinement of the soul, with everything reaching her at a pure and distinct register.

  She went to dinner occasionally, and to concerts, with Willa or Priscilla. Theo and Jennifer took her out for her birthday and at other random times. Two years into their marriage Jennifer gave birth to a son, Alex, and a
year later to a daughter, Rachel. At the first sight of each grandchild she had been profoundly moved. Her very flesh and blood were there before her. It was miraculous. She had a new sense of her place in the world, of a continuum. She thought that Theo, if he had not already done so, might now seek out his own father, and was torn between curiosity and mild dread at the prospect of such news.

  When she was sixty-two she retired from her job at the hospital and moved from her apartment on Academy Street into a building with an elevator, thirty blocks south. Before she left, she received from Willa a farewell gift, a kitten. At the last minute in her old kitchen the two women embraced. She thought of how something in Willa always helped constellate Tess’s better self. She remembered the moment of overpowering sensuality she’d felt in Willa’s kitchen years before. There had been that moment, and no more, the instinct never awoken again. And no fear, no struggle, no shame. This was, Tess knew, in part to do with Willa, with her ease, her serene understanding of all human matters. The love was implicit. And she knew, if she had ever broached the subject, what Willa would have said. Oh, honey, when it comes to the heart, it ain’t about men or women, but people.

  Her new apartment was on a quiet street in the 170s, not far from her aunt Molly’s old home. The residents were older, more sedate, than those on Academy Street. There was a school at the end of the street and through her open window she heard the cries of children in the playground. She named the kitten Monkey, because of his antics. She began to talk to him. She did not like to leave him alone for long. She let him sleep on her bed, waking early to his soft purr vibrating against her temple. Sometimes she kissed him. She had not known such reward could come from so insignificant a being.