Others took turns toasting him, and the lobster hung there, horizontal in the air, wilting ground-ward at its two ends. Rourke reacted to the compliments as if in response to narrowing roominess. His friends didn’t seem to notice his discomfort. One fact of life is that it’s simpler to live vicariously than to live free. They singled him out because he’d gotten away and they hadn’t, and obviously that would reflect badly on them unless he happened to be specially endowed.
He looked at me. I looked away. Despite Rourke’s attentiveness—his voice as it petitioned my ears, the tenderness I saw in his eyes—I couldn’t act as I felt. Though I longed to assure him of what he already knew, that nothing had changed, that I loved him all the more the less he tried, my head was reeling. I had the sick sense that I was facing another confrontation, another loss. I could not bear another loss.
Rob broke into talk about St. Patrick’s Day in Montauk, about the day he and I met. “Evie gets off a red Ducati driven by this big blonde and she walks away like she doesn’t even know the girl. She passes off her helmet to some guy with a club foot, and two huge dogs start following her. German shepherds. And in the background they’re playin’ that accordion thing, the thing the fire department plays. What is that thing? Jesus, I’m drawing a blank. C’mon, help me out here.”
Lorraine poked her stirrer through her drink like she had a job to do, which was to perforate the bottom of the glass. “The bagpipes.”
“That’s it,” Rob said. “The bagpipes. I was thinking, This girl is different. Very different. Right, Harrison?”
Rourke nodded, once. “Very different.”
After dinner, they decided to stop off and get dessert at a fancy pastry place. In the parking lot there came the usual figuring out of who was going in which car. Lee, Mark, Brett, and Chris went in Mark’s new Saab because Chris was thinking of buying one. Joey and Anna rode with Rourke in the GTO because there was a thunking noise in the rear on hard acceleration that Joey was pretty sure could be cleared by re-routing the parking brake cables. Rob didn’t give me a choice. He just said, “C’mon, you ride with us in the Cougar. It’ll give me an excuse in case Lorraine gets any ideas.”
All three of us sat up front, with Lorraine in the middle. She kept putting lotion on her hands. Whenever it vanished, she would begin again. Rob was singing.
You’re just too good to be true. Can’t take my eyes off you.
You’d be like Heaven to touch. I want to hold you so much.
As he sang, Lorraine looked out the windshield at nothing. The perfumey heat of her against my left side and the cold of the door on my right combining with the smell of Jergens was nice, but bittersweet. I figured Rob didn’t want me to ride with Rourke because Rourke didn’t want to ride with me.
We had to stop at Rob’s house to walk the dog. Rob was the only one who could walk it because it was a Doberman he’d rescued from a gas station. Rescued meant stolen, but Rob had no problem with that, since the dog had been abused and the stinking fuck owed him money. The idea of Rob having to rush home a couple times a day to walk the dog was funny. He was always shooting off to deal with something urgent and unexplained—picking up the cake for his nephew’s communion, catching the end of a Little League game of some troubled kid, getting his grandmother at the hairdresser’s, shoveling snow at a neighbor’s house, dropping off a deposit at the bank for his father.
The place where Rob was living at the time was cramped, and with all of us inside it felt like a Winnebago or the cabin of a boat. We barged in on his roommate, a guy they called Uncle Milty, who was lying on the floor watching the Rangers play Edmonton. He leapt to his feet and tucked in his shirt when we came in, and he made us a snack platter.
“You should’ve told me you were coming,” Uncle Milty said from the kitchen. “I woulda bought sodas for the girls.” He was short; just his chest and head were visible over the island that divided the two rooms. He loaded up a cutting board with olives and leftover tuna and a couple of tubes of Ritz crackers still in wax paper.
“Damn, Uncle Milty,” Joey said, grabbing some cheese cubes. “You’re hospitable.”
He and Chris were on the sofa, checking out the end of the game. Mark too. Brett was using the phone. Rourke was in the kitchen leaning on the counter. I was near him, leaning too. Neither of us spoke. I was ashamed to stand so close to him, but I didn’t know where else to be.
Rob walked in. “What’s wrong with you cafones? You just ate.”
“What do you care?” Uncle Milty asked. “It’s my food. You last the week on a jar of peanut butter.”
“I’m just sayin’,” Rob huffed. The muzzled dog sniffed at the bare platter. “You coulda saved a couple olives for the dog, that’s all.” Rob gave the chain collar a jerk. “C’mon, Cujo. They don’t give a shit about you.”
By the time we reached the dessert place, I’d lost all sense of direction. While the guys went up to the counter to pick out pastries, I sat with the women and played with packets of sugar, trying to figure out where I was geographically.
Rourke was leaning against the coffee bar in his midnight-blue cotton bomber jacket, and he was telling a story about golf. I could tell because at one point he had simulated a golf swing, tossing up an arm, waving flat into the horizon as if to hail an imaginary party onward. His hair swept about his face. With one hand he righted it, then said something to make everyone laugh. To watch him was to feel again what I’d felt exclusively with him—like a woman, feminine and frail, light and in love. I remembered how with Jack, I’d always felt we were intrinsically the same, and though there was refuge in that, there was also a forfeiture of individuality. With Rourke, I experienced opposition, like the simple reflex of a knee when you knock it—legitimate and artless and completely beyond your control.
Mark came to the table first, saying good night. “We’re gonna take off before dessert,” he told us as he distributed kisses. He and Brett had each had a double espresso at the bar, he said, and they were ready to shoot back to the Big Apple. They had to work in the morning.
When he bent to my ear, he whispered, “Why don’t you catch a ride with us?”
Though I felt ashamed of his familiarity, I knew I should not be. I reminded myself that he had been generous. I’d been clear, but he’d been clear too. It was not impossible that I’d misjudged things, and in the process, that I’d misled him. Often, I misjudged things.
I pulled away, saying, “Good night.”
Mark moved closer. He took my hand and shoved cash into it. Forty dollars. “It’s a long walk back to New York,” he warned. Then he turned and passed through our little crowd like a mayor, smiling and shaking hands. Was it possible that Mark knew something I didn’t? Could he see what I couldn’t see? Maybe Rourke had been standing there all along, saying of me, What’s with her?
I kicked out my chair, grabbed my coat, and started to run after him. But before I reached the closing door, Rob casually stepped out and stopped me, saying, “Where to, Countess? This is Jersey.” There is a sensation, lifelike in me still, of Rob holding me, inducing me gently back from the door, steering and stepping like a competent dance partner, delivering me to the haven of Rourke’s arms.
And then Rourke’s mouth on the base of my neck, the mouth I’d waited for, like for proof of God. We kissed, lightly—the first new kiss, and I wondered at the taste, like a willowy almond after-flavor. I had to stretch to reach him, and he had to bend, lifting me a little.
“Did you get my letter?” he asked.
“Yes, I got it.”
And hours later in the car, outside Rob’s place again, the two of us clinging tightly to the heat and pulse of the other.
Are you really here?
Yes, I’m here. Are you? Are you here?
Then when it was nearly dawn, I remember him looking at his watch. It was thick stainless steel with a marine-green face, and the silken hairs of his arms were pressed beneath it. It was five minutes after four.
“I h
ave to be in Rahway,” he said, “at the prison, in an hour. Rob is going to take you back to the city. That okay?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s okay.”
He pulled me closer. “I’m done on Friday morning. When’s your last class this week?”
“Thursday afternoon.”
“Feel like taking off for a few days?”
“I would like that,” I said.
“I’ll call in a little while, as soon as I’m done.” Rourke kissed me on both eyes, and I remember thinking, He seems happy. I wanted to be happy too. We kissed once again before I left with Rob, and it was nice, like home again, or anyway, as close as you can come.
Ear Bar is on Spring Street, and by the time I arrived that Thursday night, everyone was there. Everyone except Mark; his absence was conspicuous. Rob was near the door, with Eddie M. and Lorraine and Lorraine’s friend Tracy Hollis, a dental hygienist. The elastic cast of rum stretched like a girdle about them. One of Eddie M.’s hands was cupped on the base of Tracy’s ass. No wonder they called him a bastard. I wondered about his wife, Karen, whether she was over at her mother’s. Karen was always over at her mother’s. I’d never met her. “Me neither,” Rob liked to say, “except that time at the wedding.”
Rob kissed me distractedly, without breaking from his story. It was unlike him. He was criticizing Lorraine—something derogatory about bowling. “First off, she’s got her own ball, some designer thing. She gets it up over her head, see, like this, but she can’t insert her fingers all the way because of the nails—so the ball isn’t too secure—and she starts toward the pins. And I’m just sittin’ there thinking, If anybody so much as sneezes, she’s gonna break her back.”
Rourke was halfway up the bar, flushed and tilting forward on his stool. He wore a sweater. He looked heavy and broken. He looked exactly like what he was not—a drunken Irish boxer. It was awful to see him that way. I glanced back at Rob, who remained emphatically preoccupied. He wouldn’t even look to check. Normally he was always looking to check.
I approached Rourke slowly. He watched me approach, lifting his beer bottle to his mouth, dipping his head, swallowing hard.
He said, “Hey.”
I said, “Hey.”
“How was school?” he asked. I could hardly hear him.
I said that it was fine.
“What classes did you have?” he asked.
“Sociology. Drawing from life.”
“Drawing, that’s right. You said you’re drawing rooftops.”
“Rooftops, yes.”
His eyes searched my face. “Did you bring any with you?”
I said no, I didn’t.
“Oh. Too bad.” Rourke seemed to wait, or prepare, or gather something stray. “I talked to Black Jack today—did I tell you about Black Jack?”
“No,” I said.
“One of the inmates I worked with this week. A former fighter. There are a couple boxers in there. He ran guns through Jersey in the fifties.” Rourke slurred when he spoke, and struggled to find the right words. “He took the fall for a murder he didn’t commit. That’s what he told me. A trooper. No witnesses.” Rourke looked at me, and then beyond, eyes darting around table legs, over floor tiles. “He’s been in twenty-six years. His wife remarried. He’s never seen his son.”
It was a strange story to tell. It was as if he were entrusting me with something important, as if there were more that he wanted to say. I suppose I should have inquired further, but as it happened, the moment of his openness coincided exactly with the moment I resolved to defend myself against it. I’d contented myself for so long with his opaqueness that I actually preferred it. I trusted it more.
“Sorry I couldn’t call you earlier,” he said. “You got the note, right?”
He’d left a note at the front desk in my dorm saying he couldn’t pick me up as planned, but that I should meet them tonight at Ear Bar. I’d almost missed the note. I’d been waiting in my room for his call when Juanita the guard had called up instead.
The bar was cold; I drew my sweatshirt tighter. Rourke whistled to Rob, gesturing for him to close the front door, then Rourke took my hands in his own. I remembered the night in high school after the play at Dan Lewis’s house when he’d done the same thing.
The bartender came by with two shot glasses. “Here you go, Harrison. Rob sent them over. One’s for your girlfriend,” he said, meaning me.
Rourke reached for a shot glass and offered it to me, but I declined. He emptied one, then another. “I’m celebrating,” he stated. “I took a job—a regular job.”
I didn’t understand. “When?” When wasn’t right.
“Six hours ago.”
“Where?”
“Out West. Colorado Springs,” he said. “Training. Other fighters.” His jaw ticked left.
“No more fights?”
“No more fights. A few fights. A couple commitments. Then I’m done.”
Colorado seemed far, farther than the last place he went. Florida. And before Florida, California. He had also lived in New Jersey and New York. Five states, maybe more; Rourke made me think what a big country America is. You could really get lost out there. Training other fighters. I didn’t like the sound of that. I didn’t bother to say I was happy for him; he wouldn’t have wanted me to lie. What I felt primarily was an acquiescent and moving sorrow, like seeing a bird flying very far in the sky or a tiny cortege passing in the rain.
“I won’t be able to get away this weekend after all. I head out first thing Saturday morning, at about five.” He came forward, his head tapping my head. His neck stretching, his lips touching mine softly, once, twice. “You wouldn’t consider taking a ride cross-country with me, would you?”
I remember his drunken breath on my neck was warm, and the fragrant smell of the alcohol plus the smell of him was dizzying. I remember listening and hearing, like when you listen to a shell and hear the sea. There was remorse, but also unspeakable things—ambition, surely. Cruelty, perhaps. Did he hear me too? Did he hear that I could never go back to waiting, could never become another of his faithful friends, preserved in time, occupying the cherished but forsaken asylum of his youth? Did he hear that I would sooner move on than allow myself to be aligned with things in his heart that were dead?
Whether or not he was sincere about the drive cross-country, I answered as if he was, because, in fact, he should have been, because, in fact, he wished to be. Sometimes men hate themselves for not being heroes, and they need to know they can be forgiven. Sometimes when you love someone, you need to pass their tests.
“I don’t think it would be good—for me, you know, to go—like, not such a great idea.” I imagined the flight home alone, the sight of this great nation moving in reverse, west to east, me leaving him behind. It would have been impossible. He knew that. “It’s just—I haven’t been well.”
Rourke pulled my hands deep into his lap and manipulated them thoughtfully, tracing the veins. I was free to regard him—exposed and illogical and lame and drunk, and so very sorry. Was he crying? I thought he was crying. If only I’d thought to ask about what, but I was too moved by the completeness of my feelings—compassion, fury, desire, tenderness, fear, love.
“You don’t understand,” he slurred, nodding downward. “You’ll never be what I am.” I asked what that was, and he said, “Exactly what you see in front of you. A failure.”
“Do you remember,” he asked, “how to drive shift?”
His legs were parted and his knees skimmed the dashboard. His head drifted back onto the seat, and he closed his eyes. I started his car, keeping to my side, though I was small. Being next to him right then was like being a Lilliputian, like stepping with due caution about a slumbering giant—by his size you knew that the setback was only temporary. I drove him back to Jersey because he’d asked me to, because I loved him, because I trusted no one else. I remember moving through the quills of highway light that seemed like a forest. And the music on the radio, the music like a watche
r, like it had intellect, like the box had eyes.
Juliet, when we made love you used to cry
You said I love you like the stars above, I’ll love you ’til I die
A precise halo of clove-pink light marked out the room on the top floor of his house—the same room I’d noticed the first time I visited— his mother’s. From the street I could just make out the wallpaper, indigo with ropes of yellow rising like blossom ladders. She must have been waiting for him. In the driveway was a white Oldsmobile; I pulled up alongside it. I did not have to wake him. He had been roused instinctively by the impression of the streets near his home. For some time he had been staring ahead, grim in the grim richness of his thoughts, and this consoled me, ironically.
I accompanied him to the door of his studio. I retrieved the key from the grass when he dropped it, and though I did not help him undress, I laid his clothes on the chair. When I turned, he was curled like a deserted boy on his left side, which was peculiar since I’d known him always to sleep facing up. He was in his underwear. It was true he was bigger since I’d seen him last, but his weight was decisive, controlled. Once Rob told me and Lorraine that when Rourke hit fighting weight, he had to maintain it to the quarter pound. Rob had said, “He sucks the water out of lettuce and spits green.”
It was awful to see him drunk, to see him give up. Gently I journeyed like a pilgrim to the wall of his back, close enough without touching to reclaim some of the life of which I had been dispossessed. I kept watch over him through the night. I could be forgiven for seeking out memories of Montauk—of being sunburned, of being in love. After passing one last time through these halls of memory, I sealed them off like rooms locked from the inside. I would not go back. I would ask no more of life than that it allow me in all fairness to hold the perfect knowledge of perfect things. I told myself maybe love can be love regardless of the absence of its object—and devotion, devotion—so long as you are willing to be captive to it, and you stow it secretly, like a mad relative in the attic. Maybe there was an invisible way to love him, like a radio frequency. Maybe if I listened at night, I could draw it.
Anthropology of an American Girl Page 53
