by Amy Field
“Did you guys get into a fight last night, Sweetheart? I made up the room for the both of you.”
It took Katie a minute to figure out what she was talking about. “What? No, no, of course not. We’re just not sleeping together.”
Her mother was in the middle of cracking an egg for pancakes but stopped mid-crack. “You’re what?”
“We’re not sleeping together. He wants to wait until we’re married.”
Her mother blushed and smiled at the same time. “Why, Katie, that is so mature of you. I just, I never expected, because I know…”
She’d come to her mother herself and asked to be put on birth control at sixteen, and she never made any serious effort to hide her sexual activity from her parents. This was new territory for them both.
“Is he some kind of religious nut?” Her mother’s face showed real concern.
“I don’t think he’s any kind of nut, though he certainly seems to have a close relationship to the Man Upstairs. He’s just principled, Mom, and very, very strong-willed.”
“Like your father.”
“Mmmmm. He reminds me a lot of Dad.”
“I can see that. You know, when your father and I first got together we had to work all of this stuff out too.”
Katie stuck her fingers in her ears. “Lalala, lalala, I don’t want to hear about your and dad’s sex lives when you were in your twenties! Lalala, lalala!”
Her mom flicked a towel at her playfully. “Not just that, though that was important too. No, we had to figure out how to sort out our dreams, and which we could pursue together, and which ones we’d have to let go of for the sake of the other.”
“Like what?”
“Well, you know, I was in pre-med when your father first asked me out.”
“You were?”
Her mom nodded. “Top of my class. And when I graduated I was offered a top slot at the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine, full scholarship.”
Even Katie knew that was a big deal. “Why didn’t you do it?”
Well your dad had already opened his first gas station while we were in school. In those days he worked full time, went to school full time, and managed to find some time for me. I knew that long-term, if we were going to make his business work and have a family, something would have to give. So I let me dream of being a doctor go.”
“Mom!” Katie gushed. “I had no idea. I never meant to get in the way of your dreams.”
Her mother shook her head. “Honey, you never did. That’s the whole point. It’s not that dreams are these fixed points, that they never grow or change. I dreamed of being a doctor for a long time, all through high school and college, but when I met your father I started dreaming new dreams. It didn’t make the old ones bad, and it didn’t make the new ones better. And you wanna know what’s really crazy? I never would have met your dad but for that old dream that I had to let go to be with him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I got assigned to tutor your dad for organic chemistry. That’s how we first met.”
“So without the dream you wound up having to let go…”
“I never would have known the dream I was able to realize.”
Katie fell silent, and the silence was awkward. Her mother kept flipping pancakes and then opening the oven to put them on a warming plate inside.
“Mom, are you saying I need to put aside my dreams of skating to…”
Her mother held up her hand, which happened to hold a spatula dripping of pancake batter. “I’m saying no such thing. It would be wrong for either your father or I to try and convince you what to do with your dreams—they’re yours, after all, that’s the whole point. What I am saying is that this relationship with Jacob is new, and that you come from different cultures and different worlds. If the dream you choose to pursue is a life together, then it’s going to require sacrifice from the both of you, and you’re probably going to wind up dreaming something together that you can’t even fathom right now.”
Her mother’s words stuck with her, and she knew that they were true. She just wasn’t sure how to make them come true in the concrete. A few days later, once she and Jacob flew back to New York, she got a chance to try it out.
After they landed at LaGuardia, Katie made a beeline for the limo service counter. They had a car waiting.
“Wait, Catherine,” Jacob said, strangely out of breath for one so athletic. Airports seemed to exhaust him. “Can’t we just take a cab? Or maybe the subway?”
Katie gave him her best smile. “It’s okay, Honey. I have a driver. In fact, he’s waiting for us. This will make things much, much easier.”
They rode in silence to Katie’s building in Midtown. Her condo was on the 17th floor of a highrise. The doorman greeted her cheerily, “Good morning, Ms. Cory! I see your trip was successful!”
“It was, Gary, thanks,” she replied. She smiled at the man but did not stop to introduce Jacob, who had awkwardly set down his bags to shake the old man’s hand. They shook and he smiled tightly, and together they rode the elevator up to her floor.
The condo was not palatial by any means, especially midtown standards, but it was a comfortable three bedroom, two bath affair, with a large inset 70-inch flatscreen, expensive furniture, and one whole room dedicated to Katie’s skating, both her trophies and her equipment.
Jacob set his bags down heavily by the door and sighed. “Catherine,” he said. “You said you weren’t rich. What is this? A driver? A doorman? A mansion? I know that you didn’t want to overwhelm me at first, but I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed right now.”
Katie set her own bags down on the couch and came back over to Jacob, leading him to an oversized leather recliner. “Ssshhh, Baby,” she said. “I know that this is a lot, and it won’t always be this way. But it’s how things are now so just enjoy it. Why don’t you take a little nap while I settle back in? Then tonight we’ll meet some of my friends for dinner and drinks, maybe go dancing.”
Jacob smiled at that. “I couldn’t imagine anything better than dinner and dancing with you, and of course I want to meet your friends.”
Jacob slept fitfully but rested in the chair, and Katie buzzed around the apartment, trying to get rid of anything that wouldn’t fit into her new life with Jacob. She threw out the condoms from her bed stand, erased her Internet histories, cleaned out the liquor cabinet, and in general tried to make the place look more simple. By the time Jacob rose she was dressed in an expensive but relatively modest cocktail dress and had reservations at one of the hottest new restaurants in the city.
Jacob, unfortunately, had not really packed for a night on the town in New York. He owned a single jacket, which was at least a size too small around the chest, and one single button down dress shirt, which had clearly seen better days. Katie was able to get them into the restaurant based on her celebrity, but the concierge was clearly not pleased at the situation. She wondered what would happen if later they tried to go to a club.
Jacob, for his part, seemed to get more and more overwhelmed. When they arrived three of Katie’s fellow skaters were already in their places and had ordered. They were all eating sparsely and drinking heavily, but when Jacob saw the price list on the food relative to the portions he went ballistic.
“Catherine,” he whispered. “That woman literally has a bunch of asparagus and a slice of beet on her plate. The menu says it cost seventy dollars!”
“Sshhh,” she said, trying to cover for him. “Prices get so confusing with the exchange rates and all that. Just order whatever you like. I’ll take care of it.”
“But I can’t eat a hundred dollar steak. There were homeless people on the street when we walked in here!”
Katie squeezed his leg under the table and he knew to calm down, but he was clearly still agitated. It was nothing, however to his reaction at the club.
They didn’t get there until after eleven, and in fairness Katie was just as tired as Jacob, but she hadn’t seen her New York friends in m
onths and knew that this was their preferred way to reconnect. It was dark enough that the bouncer gave them no trouble about Jacob’s attire, but in the club the atmosphere as suffocating. There was bumping and grinding everywhere, none of the more formal dancing Jacob had been expecting, and probably eighty percent of the people were visibly drunk or high. This was definitely not his scene.
Jacob, normally so full of life and vigor, withdrew totally into himself. He ordered a single beer and sat at a table in the corner, watching as Katie bumped and shook with her girlfriends, and danced with not a few guys as well. Jacob was relieved when, just an hour or so later, she came over and told him it was time to go home.
He as silent for the entire ride, and by the time they got back to the condo you could have cut the tension with a knife.
“Catherine?” He asked. “Am I not enough for you?”
Katie turned to look at him, hurt on her face. “Of course you are, Sweetheart. Why would you ask that?”
He paused, choosing his words carefully. “I know that we come from different worlds, and that it will be hard work to try and make our lives come together. But tonight, I watched: you ate too little, drank too much, spent far too much money, and the way you were dancing with those men…”
Katie decided to land on that last one. It was probably what had hurt him most and potentially the easiest to explain away. “About that, Jacob, that kind of dancing is the custom here. It doesn’t mean anything…”
“I know what it means!” There was real anger in his voice now. “I have been to discotheques in Europe. I know how people dance in clubs, and I’m not opposed to going dancing with you, but you were sending those men signals tonight, and if you want to be married to me then…”
Katie raised her hand. “Okay, okay, I get it. I do. We’re both just feeling this out still, you know?”
“No!” The anger was still there, and rising. “Feeling it out is deciding that you have to sell your condo or I have to apply for a visa and move here. Feeling it out is me getting to know your parents or figuring out when and where we should marry. Feeling it out is not me watching you get drunk and grind on other men. There’s nothing to feel out there, at least not for me!”
Katie started to whimper and the tears started to come. Strangely, Jacob did not come to her aid. He didn’t try to apologize or comfort her. He just sat and watched. It was a long time before he finally spoke again.
“Catherine,” he said, in measured tones. “I love you. And I believe the real you is the girl I met on the mountaintop, not the club-hopping party girl I saw tonight. If that’s true, then I’m still in for this; but if what you want is more of what we had tonight, then tell me now and I’ll be on the next plane back for Zurich.
The sobs came out in full force now. Jacob did respond to this and came closer, putting his arm around and pulling her close.
“I want you, Jacob,” she sobbed into his shoulder. “I’ll leave this all behind. It doesn’t make me happy anyway, which is why I came to see you in the first place. I’m so sorry, Jacob. I’m so sorry.”
Jacob patted her on the back and kissed her on the forehead. “It’s okay, Love. I’ve got you now. Just let it all out.” She fell asleep on his chest a short time later he undressed her, put her in fresh pajamas, and he put her lovingly to bed. He slept, as he had at her parent’s house, on the couch.
Katie awoke the next morning slightly hungover, but grateful that the man she had chosen for her own—weirdly, it seemed, had been chosen for her own, was the sort of person who could undress her and put her to bed without doing anything else to her. Not only that, but even after the night she’d put him through he was up early, had exercised, and made a fresh breakfast for them before her appointment with Pete and her publicist.
The meeting was to take place in the offices of Blade magazine, the premier journal of speed skating and other hardcore winter sports. It was headquartered in an office building in lower Manhattan, just a couple of blocks from Ground Zero. Katie hadn’t mentioned that to Jacob, but he couldn’t fail to notice given the signs and monuments along the way.
The meeting itself went pretty well. It was tense at first, and Pete was very, very suspicious of Jacob, but his honesty and charm eventually won them over. Once her team had a pretty good idea of what was going on they dismissed Jacob into the lobby so that they could discuss options for a press release, how this would effect publicity for the winter games, and what sort of shot of the two of them would look the best for the cover of the summer issue.
After nearly two hours Katie emerged, relieved but exhausted. Her driver was still waiting, and so they got into the back seat of her car and started back uptown towards her apartment. She announced she was starving and was going to have something delivered, and was about to make the order when Jacob asked if they could stop.
“Stop, Honey? Why?”
“Just please, may we stop for a moment. It’ll only be a moment.” Katie could see the seriousness in his face and nodded her head. She knocked on the window, whispered something to her driver, and they felt the car veer to the right and pull up to the curb. Jacob immediately opened the door.
“Oh, no, Sweetheart, are you going to be sick?”
Katie was concerned about him throwing up in her car. That was literally the last thing on his mind. They were pulled off on Fulton Street, somewhere near Greenwich and literally across the street from the 9/11 Memorial. Katie and her driver watched through the window as Jacob waited for a break in traffic, dashed across the street, and crossed into the Memorial Park. There are two great pools there with the names of those who died inscribed in great bronze plates along the side. Katie watched as Jacob walked the pools slowly, his fingers tracing the edges, and then dropped to one near at the far end, crossed himself, and prayed. It was like she had seen back in Switzerland, this overtly religious gesture was performed here in a public park in front of dozens of people, and he seemed totally unaware of the fact. It made her want to join him, but something held her back.
He returned to the car a few minutes later and they were off. Katie asked if he was okay with Thai food, and Jacob gave a noncommittal grunt before falling into a brooding silence.
“Jacob, Honey, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think about this being your first time in New York. Of course you would want to visit the Memorial, and all the other sights.” She leaned across the seat and rubbed his knee. “I’ve got more meetings tomorrow, but then on the weekend we can go to the Statue of Liberty and…”
He cut her off. “I do not care about ‘the sights’, Catherine.” She saw the driver’s eyebrow go up at the use of her given name. “I came to pay my respects to the dead and to pray here, because it is the right thing to do.”
Catherine shook her head in affirmation. “I get that, Jacob, I really do. It’s just hard, because when you live and work around it all of the time…”
“Europe has suffered too, Catherine. My own country, famous for being neutral, was bombed during the War. My mother is from Schaffhausen, and her family’s business was destroyed when some Americans thought they were bombing a German military base. There’s a memorial there too, but no office building across the street. There’s no gift shop at Dachau either.”
The accusation hung heavy in the air. Katie was hurt and didn’t know what to say. Jacob tried to reach out.
“I don’t mean to say this is your fault, Catherine. You weren’t even living in the city when the planes hit, no?” She wasn’t. She’d still been in high school back in Kansas.
“But while I was waiting for you in your meeting, I had a very nice talk with Norma.”
“Who?”
“The woman at the front desk in the lobby.”
“The receptionist?”
Jacob shrugged his shoulders. “Ya, ya. Anyhow, she tells me how close we are to the site, and how so many people she she loved died in the building. Did you know her son was a janitor in the Second Tower?”
Katie admitted that she
did not. What she did not admit, but what was beginning to turn in her gut was that she had been visiting that office on a monthly basis for more than five years and did not know that woman’s name. Jacob had learned it in the first five minutes. This was why she loved him—because he was that guy.
“Anyhow, after having such a good talk, and hearing of her family, and how she has been raising her grandchildren since their father’s death, I thought I should go and pay my respects.”
Katie started to cry. Not huge, sobbing tears, but visibly. She unbuckled her seatbelt and moved over next to Jacob, cuddling up to his chest. “This is why I love you, you know; because you are the kind of a man who meets a woman who has lost a child and then immediately goes to pay his respects.”
Jacob nodded his head. “Ya, Catherine, Ya. This is why I love you too.”
She sniffled and looked up. “What do you mean?”
“Because you also are this kind of woman.”
She wanted desperately to point out the damning evidence to the contrary, but she held herself back. “Thank you,” was all she said as she kissed him on the cheek and settled back into his arm. In just a few minutes they were home, and the delivery man as waiting for them. Katie paid him in the lobby and together they went upstairs.
They fell back into their easy pattern of conversation, and Jacob compared the food he was eating to some that he’d had in Nepal when he visited Everest. Katie, for her part, just talked about similar restaurants that she knew of, both here and in Chicago, and how hard it was to cook with the constant coming and going.
After lunch she took a quick power nap, then announced that she was heading to the rink to work out. Jacob asked if he could come and watch. She agreed. She thought it would be good for him to see Pete outside of the moody mess he’d met him in this morning, plus get a sense of some of the friends he’d met last night as professional athletes.
The athletic center that Katie worked out in was state of the art. The rink itself was kept cool, but the rest of the building set at an ordinary temperature. She went to the locker room and changed into a sports bra and shorts, and then worked for a time, first on the treadmill, then the elliptical, and then on some weights. After that she changed again, this time into a speed suit, and went out on the ice. Each time Jacob was forced to move from place to place. She had given him her smartphone so that he’d have something to read if he wanted, but he didn’t seem to know how to use it. He had picked up a copy of The Village Voice somewhere, but it really didn’t seem like his kind of reading, and he finished it early. She realized that he wouldn’t be coming all of the time, but she wanted him to meet people.
