The Side of the Angels

by Christina Bartolomeo

  These moments were a passion I’d never thought to have with him, the passion of finding what was lost, and finding it not as a resumption of the past but as its own astonishment, its own delight. I recognized our gestures, and the murmured words were those we’d murmured in the past, but they were all turned golden and mysterious, like the Winsack church spires in the light of sunset. I wanted to shout with happiness, I wanted to cry with relief.

  And when he said afterward, “You know what I feel like saying over and over again? ‘Thank God.’ Just ‘Thank God.’ That’s romantic, huh? But I just want to say it over and over.” Then I wanted to tell him all he was to me. I had the words at hand, they were coming to me in fleet eloquence, phrase upon phrase. I turned in his arms to look up at him, and he was already half asleep.

  I switched off the bedside lamp and put a water glass where he could reach it when he woke up thirsty, as he always did. Then I pulled the covers over him, although I knew he would kick them off sometime in the night, and worn out with celebration, closed my eyes.

  The Dresden china alarm clock, covered in rosebuds, showed 3 A.M. with its glowing gilt hands when a noise woke me up. Tony slept on. He had never been a light sleeper.

  The sound woke me because it was familiar. A sound like an owl with whooping cough. It was familiar but out of context. Then I remembered back fifteen years, to when Johnny would stay out past his curfew and stand under my window and call this signal, which he flattered himself sounded like a night bird, to get me to let him in. My parents knew the whole time, of course. They were afraid to crack down on him lest that strain of wildness he got from his mother should take hold, and Johnny should break loose entirely. That never happened. They’d kept Johnny safe, my parents and Louise.

  I ran to the window, like the Christmas poem says, and flung open the sash.

  “Johnny?”

  He was standing there in a dark blue raincoat. His hair was wild, and the belt of his raincoat was dragging in the mud left in Mrs. Craw-ley’s backyard by the recent rains.

  “Nicky, you have to get Louise for me.”

  “It’s three in the morning.”

  “I know what time it is. Get Louise.”

  “She’s asleep. She came in after me.”

  “Get her. I have to talk to her.”

  The cold air was like river water flowing around my neck and shoulders. I was about to run down the stairs and let him in when the window next door to mine slid open, and I saw Louise’s head and shoulders parallel to my own.

  “Johnny!”

  “Louise, just listen to me.”

  “Go away. You woke me up.”

  “You can sleep again after you hear me out.”

  Louise was not a swoon-inducing sight in her nightdress, a purple and yellow tie-dyed burnoose. But Johnny didn’t care. Not Johnny. It had taken him a long time, but he’d always dived in headfirst once he decided to take a plunge.

  “I know I made a lot of mistakes, Louise. I know I’ve treated you offhandedly, that I’ve hurt your feelings.”

  “That you got engaged to someone else,” Louise said slowly and distinctly. The air was so still I could hear every word clearly. It felt as if it was going to snow.

  “I didn’t mean to,” said Johnny.

  “I suppose it was just an accident.”

  “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I didn’t know what you were to me.”

  “You made me feel fat. For years.”

  “Never on purpose. You were more important than I knew back then. You’re so important, Louise. You’re everything.”

  “If I count for so much, why didn’t you wake up smiling that morning after Aunt Maureen’s wedding? Why didn’t you?”

  “I was afraid. I was … stunned.”

  Louise turned her head to look at me.

  “Nicky, do you mind?”

  I pulled my head in but kept the window open. Like my mother, I have excellent hearing.

  Louise said, “You’ve always taken me for granted. You’ve always assumed I had nothing better to do than be at your beck and call.”

  “I’m not taking you for granted now,” Johnny said.

  I could hear other guests stirring below me, and a few windows going up. Tony slept on. Someone yelled, “Hey, Romeo!” at Johnny, but he paid no attention.

  “You talk a good game,” said Louise.

  “I’ll prove it to you,” said Johnny. “I’ll stand out here all night. I’ll stand outside your window every night for the next three years, if that’s what it takes.”

  There was no sound from Louise.

  “I love you,” said Johnny. “Did you hear me, Louise? I love you. I loved you when I was fourteen, when I was sixteen, when I was twenty-one. I loved you through all those silly girls in college, and it doesn’t matter that I didn’t know it, because it’s true, and that’s all. I was a fool, and a jerk, and a screw-up, but I love you, and deep down you know that, Louise. You know that.”

  I heard a snort from the other room, but I couldn’t tell if Louise was crying or being derisive.

  Johnny was expressing himself pretty loudly by now. Lights went on in a few neighboring houses.

  “You love me too, Louise. You know you do. Aunt Maureen and Nicky both told me you did.”

  My mother had told him that? She hadn’t mentioned it on the phone. My mother was a deep one. Tony turned over in bed, mumbled, and went back to sleep.

  “Louise? Talk to me. Give me a chance, Louise. You have to. Louise, Louise, Louise, Louise.”

  He stumbled around the lawn, crooning her name.

  I stuck my head out the window again. I could see her, her arms folded on the sill. She was so still that I could pick out the exact pattern of the tree branches on her pale face and arms.

  “Louise!” I stage-whispered. My throat hurt from the effort not to scream at her. “Are you crazy? Get down there.”

  She disappeared. I waited for the sound of the window slamming shut on Johnny’s pleas, but there was nothing. Then I heard the door of Louise’s room close with its distinctive thud. There were footsteps on the stairs. The side screen door banged. I saw—the whole neighborhood saw—Louise run out to Johnny and put her arms around his neck. He staggered backward, than staggered forward. They looked drunk, reeling around together, but they were only drunk with love. And they had a better right to be drunk with it than most people. They’d waited much longer.

  It wasn’t until she took his hand and led him inside that I realized my fists had been pressed to my mouth to keep me from shouts of jubilation. I wanted to whoop and holler. What a near miss this one could have been. Somewhere in Greece my mother was probably smiling as she dreamed next to Ira.

  I crawled back into bed and curled against Tony, nuzzling my face into his chest. When my cold feet touched his, he turned on his other side, but in his sleep he kept hold of my hand, so that my arm went around him and was tucked firmly under his. I pressed my face against his warm back, and fell asleep at last.

  23

  IT WAS SNOWING as I walked down Connecticut Avenue, a small-flaked persistent snow that was already sticking to the streets. I was going to the Advocacy, Inc. office. I’d promised Ron a briefing before I signed out for two weeks of vacation.

  If the snow kept up, the federal government would close early and hundreds of men and women in thin business shoes would be standing by the curbs, hailing taxis with a desperation that the denizens of other cities save for blizzards. I liked this kind of weather, though. Tonight after the rush hour this soft, unexpected snowfall would reveal the secret, quiet Washington so rarely seen, as the auto-free silence of a hundred years before fell over the city.

  I was glad to be home, though I missed them all. Kate and Margaret and Lester and even Eric…. Well, I would miss Eric when time in its kindness had dimmed his memory.

  Kate had come to see Louise and me off on the train. Kate’s friend Eileen had finally gone home from the hospital. She had gone home to die, I knew witho
ut Kate telling me.

  Eric had wanted to come to the train station to say good-bye, but he was scheduled for yet another afternoon of evaluation by his school district. Clare had arranged it. She said Eric would surprise us all, and he did. The experts said he was testing off the charts in verbal, reading, and logic abilities and might qualify for an accelerated, high-prestige district program for a handpicked group of kids who were far too smart to be left in a regular classroom to suffer as other children did.

  As a parting send-off on our last morning at the office, he’d attached a very realistic model of a hairy tarantula to the zipper of my suitcase, but Louise removed it before he could see me jump. This disappointment caused him to appear nearly as sad as everyone else looked as we made our farewell rounds at the office.

  We’d left for Washington a day before Tony. He was flying in that night, if the snow didn’t get too bad.

  I was so unbearably glad Tony was going to be with me that I couldn’t think about it directly. I thought about arrangements instead. Clean towels. Space in the medicine cabinet. Fresh sheets on the bed and lots of food in the icebox. Men consumed such large amounts of food. I wanted to do what would make him feel welcome, but not go so overboard he’d be self-conscious. The apartment was spotless, and all morning I’d wandered around it, hoping it would be a luckier place for us this time around.

  I was saying good-bye, too, good-bye for now to my solitary self. Though I would be alone again, by choice and by default, in whatever years to come Tony and I might have, I would not know the solitude with him that I’d known in the time since we’d first parted. Half of me had treasured that solitude. It’s not that hard for women to be alone, actually. We’re better at it than men are. We form routines, cook for ourselves, and see friends, and travel. Men alone tend to mope, and grow depressed, and then marry unsuitable young women or get cancer. Men fare better when they have company in their lives. But women give up something real and precious when we decide to say to a man: Here, live with me. Sleep with me in a bed that will now be our bed. Eat your meals with me at a table that will be our table. It’s a risky step, because there is so much in any man that’s alien, so much to get used to, to keep getting used to, year by year.

  I didn’t pity my friends who were single women in their forties and fifties. Of all my friends, they seemed most content. It was my married friends who phoned me in tears, who exhausted themselves with the burdens of work and home, who wondered what the hell they were doing with their lives. I felt a rush of fear when I thought of myself as a woman paired. But the fear subsided when I considered that I’d lose much more in doing without Tony than I would in taking this chance with him. And I knew we hadn’t seen all that was good between us, all that was possible. We’d barely scratched the surface.

  * * *

  Being in the office with Ron was a relief. In my business persona, I was far less vulnerable to nervousness and second-guessing.

  “You people sure pulled that one out” was Ron’s only comment on the strike, but I hadn’t expected anything along the lines either of thoughtful regret at his lack of faith or delighted congratulations.

  Ron appeared elegant and beautifully packaged as always. I sat down in one of his office chairs, an enormous squishy cube upholstered in a flat, fuzzy gray wool that felt as if it should have been carpeting material. Ron’s desk was littered with holiday gifts from vendors and invitations in gold-foil-lined envelopes. On his windowsill was a large poinsettia like the one Kate had carried into the hospital that night, with a card attached that said, “Merry Christmas From Duke’s Printing.” Hovering over this greeting in upraised gold acrylic was what I assumed the owner thought of as a ducal crest.

  Either Duke’s was aware of Ron’s Presbyterian roots, or unconcerned about offending its Jewish, Muslim, and atheist customers with a wholesale Christmas message and gift drop. It must be lonely to be an atheist during the holidays, I thought. Like being the only one at a wild party who didn’t drink. I tried to imagine what kind of God Ron believed in. Was he an austere and critical parent like Ron’s late father, keeping in touch only when it was necessary to register disapproval? Was he one of the boys, a Big Guy who’d go round a few holes and laugh at Ron’s jokes when he’d had a couple of drinks back at the clubhouse? Did Ron pray? I couldn’t imagine it.

  “You want one of these raspberry caramels before Myrlene puts them out in the kitchen?” said Ron, holding out a silvery tin decorated with a Currier and Ives scene.

  I grabbed a handful and stuffed them in my purse. You never know when you’ll be stuck in traffic and want something to nibble. Ron didn’t blink at my tackiness. That was one of the traits I liked most in him: deep down, he knew he wasn’t any classier than me, that he was just some Midwestern guy who now owned a few nice suits.

  It had been so many weeks since I thought of him without anger that I was startled. Sure, he hadn’t come through for me on the strike, but he’d never billed himself as someone who could be counted on for that kind of support. He’d delivered, as usual, exactly what he’d promised. I relaxed into the depths of the chair, feeling I’d been gone for months and months.

  “You’re coming this Friday, aren’t you?” said Ron.

  Friday was our office Christmas party. Unlike other, more budget-minded bosses, Ron didn’t believe in playing Chipmunk records and getting toasted on inferior punch in the comfort of our own premises. Instead, he invited each of us and a significant other to an overpriced steak house on Fifteenth Street, where you could get a prime rib for thirty bucks and be condescended to by waiters who didn’t thaw for anyone lower than a cabinet member. No one enjoyed these gatherings except Ron, who drank too much and made sentimental toasts until Dana carted him home.

  “I guess. Yeah, I’m coming. I’m bringing someone, too.”

  “I know who you’re bringing.”

  “Stop smirking, then. How’d the Campsters event go?”

  “Mixed results,” said Ron, his face growing far sadder than it had appeared when he contemplated pulling the plug on the St. Francis strike. “There was a scuffle among the kids about who got to hold the American flag during the singing, and one of them got a black eye. And then the silent auction was a real bust.”

  “Why? Those usually go over.”

  “Wendy may have taken the woodsy theme a little too far. They were auctioning off stuff like a weekend in an unheated cabin in New Hampshire, and snowshoeing lessons in Labrador. Really rich people don’t ante up to be as uncomfortable as that, at least not East Coast rich people. I think we should have gone for a little more conspicuous consumption, maybe left out some of that rustic shit.”

  Poor Wendy. I’d thought all along that this could only end in tears.

  “How did Jantsy take it?”

  “She’s frozen Wendy out, basically. It won’t last. No one else would put up with her the way Wendy does. But Wendy can’t see that, and she’s been moping around a little. She’d even made Jantsy a Christmas present, some sort of knitted throw rug.”

  “An afghan?”

  “Yeah, that was it.”

  “I should have kept on top of that Campsters benefit, Ron, but I thought Jantsy was thrilled with Wendy, and neither of them wanted my interference.”

  “It’s not your fault,” said Ron in a burst of rare generosity. “No one can handle Janet Stratton-Pole-Up-Her-Snooty-Butt-Smith close up, let alone long-distance.”

  It wasn’t like Ron to be understanding if blame was handy to throw around. Something was up. Here it came.

  “Nicky, I have a proposition for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Weingould is very hepped up on you, as you know. He wants you on this strawberry fields campaign.”

  “Strawberry pickers. He sure does. He gave me a call a few days ago, even though he knows he’s supposed to talk to you first. I think he may even come out there himself for a week or so.”

  “He’s very excited. He didn’t think the Toilers would
have a chance to do this campaign. Goreman has been against it for years now.”

  We both knew why. Low-wage workers didn’t amount to much in dues money, and thus their plight was uninteresting to Jerry Goreman, man of the people. Weingould’s getting the green light on the Samp-sonville campaign was a coup appropriate to this season of miracles.

  “Well, as you know, Wendy has been wanting to get more experience in the field for some time now, and I think I can talk Weingould into taking her instead of you. I thought it would get her out of Jantsy’s way for a while and cheer her up.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears, a phrase you often hear but which I’d never fully known the meaning of until now.

  “Cheer her up? You’ve got people risking their necks out there in California just to join the union, and you want Wendy assigned for therapeutic reasons? What’s she going to do, make pretty name tags? This is serious stuff, Ron. She’s not ready for it.”

  “Boltanski can bring her along. She learns fast. And I need you here. We might have a whole new sideline going with historic preservation groups after the Mallard Pond effort turned out so well. They’re always trying to build shopping centers over battlefields out in northern Virginia. I can really see a market. I know you have something going with Boltanski, but I hope you’ll agree that shouldn’t affect our business strategy.”

  “Ron, I don’t care if you’re convinced I’m going to California so I can be Tony’s on-site cupcake. As it happens, I would love to work with him on this one if we don’t kill each other first. But that’s beside the point. The point is, I can do this campaign and Wendy can’t. She is not up to this one. Not in a million years.”