The Night We Met

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  After announcing a short break, Nate came back to the table. Words of goodbye were forming on my lips. Someone had borrowed the chair he'd been using, but then he found another one and pulled it up next to mine. I couldn't just leave.

  The guys were placing bets on which of the three jerks who'd been talking up a sweet young thing at the ski resort had won her favors for that night.

  "She went home with her sister," Nate said dryly. "I saw them go."

  "How d'you know she was her sister?" Arnold chal enged in a good-natured way.

  "She told me. She's getting married next week, and she and her sister, who's her maid of honor, went to Tahoe for a couple of days. It's their last time together as just the two of them."

  Arnold and his pals were distracted when the waitress reappeared.

  "Were you trying to get her to go out with you?" I asked Nate. My gall shocked me.

  "I asked her if she was going to be all right leaving with those guys making such asses of themselves," he said just loudly enough for me to hear.

  "Oh. That was a nice thing to do."

  "It's habit. Girls skiing without a male escort seem to attract the worst kind of male attention."

  He should know; he managed a ski resort. I couldn't help wondering how many managers watched out for the girls, and how many hit on them. More the latter, I expected.

  A few minutes later, Nate excused himself to play again. Before he left, he asked if I'd be there during his next break. Without glancing at my watch, I nodded. I had about an hour.

  The crowd slowly quieted as Nate played that second set, thinning out some, but not much. Couples swayed together on the dance floor. Chairs circled the piano. And then, just after nine-thirty, as Nate struck a new chord, he looked straight at me.

  And started to sing.

  "My Cup Runneth Over." He sang the whole song directly to me.

  It didn't mean anything. How could it? We'd just met. He'd never seen me in the morning. Or any other time of day, for that matter.

  And never would.

  Still, I listened to every cadence, every lilt and syllable, and knew that this was a night I'd never forget.

  "I have to go," I said, standing to put on my serviceable short black coat as he made his way back to the table. "I don't want to miss my curfew."

  "I'l see you later," Nate told his friends, standing behind me. I wasn't sure what was going on until he followed me outside.

  Nate walked me home. The couple of blocks had seemed insignificant when I'd traversed them with crowds of people earlier that evening. Now the quiet stretch of road, cloaked in the darkness of night, seemed far too intimate.

  Nate kept a respectful distance, his jacketed arm not even bumping into mine.

  "The guys told me about this cliff you skied today," I began. "They said you'd have won a medal if you'd been in the Olympics."

  "In case you haven't figured it out, they exaggerate."

  "But not many skiers make it over that particular drop-off upright, or so I hear."

  "Plenty do. And plenty fall, too."

  "How'd it feel, to be flying in the air like that? Were you scared?" I'd had butterflies in my stomach listening to Arnold talk about it.

  "Truthful y?" He glanced down at me.

  "Yeah."

  "Anyone else would probably figure I'm crazy, but I have a feeling you're going to understand this. As soon as I started that run, I was so busy being aware of the wind gliding by—almost as though it was holding me up—and the crisp cold against my face, I didn't even think about landing until it happened. And then it was like any other slope. You do what you have to do to stay on your feet."

  What he'd just described sounded like a moment of pure, spiritual bliss. Such intense involvement in the here-and-now that you were actual y taken beyond it.

  I'd petitioned to join a convent so I could learn how to have moments like that. There was something about this man, something deeper than anything I'd encountered in normal life, that was reaching out to me.

  Almost as if he had answers to some of the mysteries I so desperately wanted to solve.

  Subconscious answers, maybe. But had them, just the same.

  "I've enjoyed talking with you, Eliza Crowley," he said as we arrived at the heavy iron gate in front of St. Catherine's.

  "And I'm glad I met you, Nate Grady." There didn't seem to be much harm in admitting that. I was never going to see him again.

  "My flight back to Boulder leaves tomorrow evening," he said unexpectedly as' I slipped through the gate and shut it behind me. "Any chance you could get away before then? Maybe we could take a walk."

  Looking at him through the iron bars, all I could get out was, "I..."

  "I'm sure you're on a pretty rigid schedule." He seemed to take pity on me. "It's okay if you can't. I won't be offended."

  "I'm...I have...an hour free after lunch." I final y stumbled over the words. Who on earth was this woman uttering them? "We could meet down at the corner and walk through the gardens."

  They weren't owned or tended by the sisters of St. Catherine's, but because the city park was so close, many of the sisters went there. I'd be in plain sight. Protected.

  This could in no way be considered a date.

  And until I moved out of college student housing into the main house, I was free to come and go.

  Curfew aside, of course.

  "Great," he said. "What time?"

  "One?"

  "I'l be there."

  I spent the next two hours lying awake in the long room I shared with seven other college students—

  three of them, like me, soon to be postulants—my nerves buzzing with energy and life. And with guilt... Going to that bar had been so completely out of character for me. And everything that had followed even more so.

  My favorite fictional heroin flashed into my mind, a woman whose inner strength and sense of right and wrong had always spoken to me. My mother had read Jane Eyre to me as a child, and since then, I'd reread it often. Did the feelings I was trying so hard to comprehend bear any likeness to those experienced by Jane Eyre when she first met Mr. Rochester? I hoped not.

  My attraction wasn't physical or romantic. At a time when I felt lost between past and future, when I was no more than an in-between, having left behind who I was and not yet arrived at who I was going to be, Nate Grady saw a person.

  I wanted to talk to him one more time.

  Chapter 2

  One Sunday a month, the novices at St. Catherine's were permitted visits from their parents and siblings. That next day was one of those Sundays and with al the extra people milling around in the grounds, my departure went unnoticed. I wasn't required to stay on the premises—not until I moved from the dormitory—but on Sundays I rarely left, choosing to study with the sisters rather than involve myself in secular activities on God's day of rest.

  Still, I wasn't doing anything wrong in meeting Nate and didn't really understand my relief at being able to escape unseen.

  He was waiting at the entrance to the park, dressed in dark slacks, a white shirt and long, skinny black tie. His hair was neatly parted and combed to one side.

  "I feel kind of sil y, shivering in this sweater while you're not even wearing your jacket." He'd slung it over his shoulder in a way that looked casual and rakish—sexy—at the same rime. I rejected that thought immediately.

  "It's nearly seventy degrees," he said, falling into step beside me without so much as an inappropriate glance at my knees, revealed by the navy plaid jumper I'd worn to Mass that morning. Granted, I was wearing my usual dark stockings. "I can't remember January ever being this warm. Not in my experience, anyway."

  "One year, when I was about twelve, it hit ninety- five in January. My folks cooked hamburgers on the grill and all my older brothers and sisters were there. We played Marco Polo in the pool in our backyard."

  "It's going to be about twenty-five degrees when I get home tonight."

  His words stopped the smile on
my lips—and calmed my heart. He would be leaving soon.

  And I was never going to see him again.

  "Did you bring anything memorable with you from Mass this morning?"

  We'd been talking for almost an hour and I was beginning to feel as if Nate was an old friend. Stil , the intimate query into my spiritual life threw me.

  And yet it thrilled me. Other than the sisters, no one

  had ever engaged me in conversation about this most personal aspect of my life.

  I had no idea how to answer him.

  "My Bible," I finally said, inanely.

  "I meant from the sermon."

  I glanced up at him, careful to lower my eyes before I met his. I wasn't yet under the tutelage that would require me to keep custody of my eyes, but I knew I would be soon. As a novice, I would be required to keep my gaze low, to refrain from direct eye contact. I wanted to practice it now, I told myself.'

  Either that, or I was afraid of liking him too much.

  "Are you Catholic?" I asked him, instead of answering his question.

  "I was born Catholic." He slid his hands in his pockets and we moved around a bend filled with brightly colored blossoms. "But I'm divorced and when the Church wouldn't recognize that, I felt kind of hypocritical staying. I'd done what I knew was right for me, but the Church expected me to remain in a marriage that wasn't working anymore."

  I barely got through the rest of his words, stuck back in the divorced part.

  "How long were you married?"

  "Two years."

  "When?"

  "Before Keith shipped out."

  A couple with two small children smiled at us. I felt

  an urge to tell them that Nate and I weren't a couple, but held my tongue.

  He'd been married at least four years ago. I would've been, at most, fifteen. "Why did you split up?"

  "She was still at university and got involved in antiwar protests. Pretty soon they were consuming her life and I hardly saw her."

  "She was protesting the war your little brother was fighting?"

  Nate didn't say anything for a few minutes and I walked silently beside him.

  "I never blamed her for her beliefs," he said slowly as we passed an elderly man walking a dog. "I supported her right to have them."

  "So what happened?"

  "She couldn't accept the fact that I wouldn't join her. Said she couldn't live with someone who promoted violence. About a year before Keith was killed, she left me for a fel ow student and antiwar activist. They're married now and just had a baby."

  "I'l bet she's got Dr. Spock's book," I said to cover my unexpected desire to comfort this man. I was completely out of my element. "He was indicted last week for conspiring to help others avoid the draft," I added when Nate said nothing.

  "I hadn't heard that."

  "I've been listening to the news a lot lately."

  "Because you're interested or because you know you won't be able to after next week?"

  Could the man see straight into my thoughts? My heart? That idea wasn't as threatening as it could have been.

  "The latter, I'm afraid."

  "There's absolutely nothing wrong with that."

  "It feels... duplicitous."

  "Wanting what you can't have, believing the grass is greener on the other side, is part of the human condition."

  "You make it sound so...normal."

  "It is," Nate said. "Listen, if it was easy to make the right choices, there'd be no glory in doing so."

  His words made me think.

  "You're a smart man, Nate Grady."

  He chuckled. "I've made some pretty stupid decisions, that's al , and had to learn from them."

  I wanted to know what each and every one of them was.

  But I didn't dare ask.

  We moved aside on the walkway to make room for a family dressed in church clothes. The son, about ten, I'd guess, had a stain on the knee of his slacks and his tie was askew. The little girl, with bows in her hair and lace on her socks, was pristine. The sight made me smile.

  "You've never mentioned the rest of your family," I said. "Other than Keith."

  "He was my only sibling."

  "What about your parents? I imagine they took his death hard."

  Hands still in his pockets, Nate slowed. "My father doesn't know. He took off right after Keith was born."

  "You've never heard from him?"

  "No."

  "Have you ever tried to find him?"

  "Nope. What was the point? He knew where we were. If he wanted contact, he knew how to get it."

  Nate didn't seem bitter. Or the least bit victimized, either.

  I glanced sideways as we walked, trying to see his expression. "Aren't you curious about him?"

  "Not really. I vaguely remember him. My mother said he never wanted kids and that made sense.

  He'd come and go as he pleased, and he never heard me when I talked to him. I don't think he loved my mom. They had to get married."

  "Because of you?"

  "Yeah." Nate nudged a stone off the cement with the toe of his shoe without missing a step. "I suppose he wasn't a bad guy. He didn't beat us or anything. Some people just aren't meant to be parents."

  I thought the man sounded incredibly selfish.

  "What about your mother?"

  "She loved him."

  As if that said it al .

  "Do you see her often?"

  "After our father left, she drank herself into liver disease and died ten years ago."

  "So she didn't know about Keith."

  "If the alcohol hadn't kil ed her, his death would have." Nate's voice was far calmer than mine would have been. "She drank a lot, but only after the two of us were in bed. Or out. She was a great mom, always there for us whenever she could be. She had no family support, which is why I think she fell into trouble with my father to begin with. Yet she raised two boys who knew they were loved, who never did drugs or got in trouble with the law. And she did it all on her own."

  "In his sermon this morning, Father John talked about God's work in our society today," I said, returning without explanation to his earlier question. "He mentioned Jacques Cousteau's first undersea special on TV this past week. And the space-probe landing on the moon. Man's potential is limitless. But without God's help none of that could have happened."

  "You say that as if you aren't sure you agree with him."

  "I don't disagree," I said. "Not at all." Father John was a highly revered priest. I was a lowly postulant-to-be. "But I do think human choice and human will also contribute to scientific achievement. To any kind of achievement. What's the point of having a mind, of making choices, if we don't have the power to fol ow through on them?"

  His nod encouraged me to continue. "Take your mother, for instance. She made choices. They didn't al work. But she took what she had and made good things happen."

  "You're pretty smart for such a young woman." Nate's words were teasing, mocking my earlier comments about him. And yet, they held a note of admiration.

  "You sound as though you're ancient," I teased him.

  "Compared to you, I am."

  I slid my hands into the sleeves of my sweater. "How old are you?"

  "Thirty-three."

  Fourteen years older than me. Which was safer than I'd thought.

  "Say something."

  "I'm surprised you even find me interesting." That didn't come out the way I'd meant it. I wasn't fishing for compliments.

  "You've got a sense of peace about you," he said, pausing. "A kind of acceptance."

  I certainly didn't see myself that way. But he had nothing to gain by turning my head. Our futures were clearly determined, and they'd be far from each other, with absolutely no point of connection.

  "You aren't shal ow." He started to walk again.

  "Neither are you," I said, catching up with him.

  "You have something I want," Nate said as we approached the entrance to the park and the moment I'd b
e saying goodbye to him forever.

  I stopped breathing. And then my racing pulse forced air into my lungs.

  I felt like running. But some impulse held me there, wouldn't let me go. "What?"

  "A calm and knowing heart."

  I almost wept. "Oh, Nate, if you could feel it right now, you wouldn't say that."

  "You aren't afraid to face life, to confront your doubts and still head off ful force."

  "I'm scared to death!"

  "On the surface, sure, but deep down?"

  I glanced up only long enough to see the earnest question in his eyes. And without conscious thought, I entered my inner world, the mental space I flowed into when I meditated, looking for the sense of assurance that had always guided me. A world I trusted.

  "Deep down I am content," I whispered, fil ed with gratitude at the fact he'd just pointed out to me. I hadn't consciously realized that my questions and confusions were only on the surface, and that inside, where it counted, I was calm. Peering up at him, I didn't care that tears fell from my eyes. I understood now what this weekend had been al about. God worked in mysterious ways. Sent messengers in a myriad of guises.

  And at that moment I knew without question that Nate Grady was one of those messengers.

  Chapter 3

  I spent the rest of that day with Nate. I was a free woman—didn't have to be anywhere. The other soon-to-be postulants who were used to me hanging around the dormitory, studying or joining them in a game of croquet would be curious, but they wouldn't be disrespectful. Nate called and got a later flight back to Boulder. And we went to a little cafe not far from St. Catherine's and talked for hours. He saw so much more than most people did when they looked at daily life.

  "Where'd you learn to play the piano?" I asked as dusk was starting to fall.

  "Taught myself, mostly." We were drinking hot chocolate. "My grandparents bought a piano and I'd sit down and pick out songs. I didn't learn to read music until I was in high school."

  "You'd just hear songs and sit down and play them?"

  "Eventually." I loved Nate's grin.

  "If you heard a song right now for the first time, could you play it?"

  "Probably."

  I wondered about that morning's sermon—wondered where man's talents were strictly his own and where God was responsible for them.