This Gorgeous Game

by Donna Freitas

  “That is such a guy thing to say.”

  “Well, I’m a guy.”

  Despite my exhaustion, I can’t let his comment slide so I heave myself off the ground, again taking off, this time toward Gregory Hall, shouting, “I bet you can’t catch me even if you try your hardest.” Jamie is up and running after me and in less than a minute we are both across the courtyard and at the entrance to the building, tagging the wall. Neither of us can tell who got here first so we call a truce. It must be late because we are alone.

  “So after class, I thought we could go to the Public Garden,” Jamie says, in between breaths, before we go inside.

  “Okay,” I agree, deciding that I will show him my favorite place, the bench under the willow tree, thinking that this is a nice idea—to share a place so special to me with Jamie.

  “We should really go in. It’s after four.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Sure.” I am hesitant, reluctant even, but I follow Jamie inside, consoling myself that we have three hours of sharing an armrest and being near each other ahead of us. When we reach the auditorium he opens the door to let me go first. Father Mark’s voice carries into the hallway and I tiptoe inside, trying to be quiet. Jamie follows and we grab two spots in the back row. Creak go the theater-style seats when we push them down. Creak. Father Mark stops speaking and peers from the podium into the audience packed with students, staring at the latecomers, zeroing in on us. On me. Entering his classroom late. Disrespectful. He stops long enough that I wonder what he is thinking, if he is upset. His reading glasses fall from his face and dangle on their chain. Papers rustle. He picks up his eyeglasses without moving his gaze from mine and I suddenly feel prickly. Hot. Cold. Uncomfortable. Guilty.

  Then he returns to what he was saying and I sigh with relief.

  Looking up at him now, standing there on the stage, so tall and confident, it seems strange to have witnessed this same person become frantic and unnerved. For a passing moment I feel ashamed about my recent behavior, my resistance, the rebellious daughter testing the boundaries and the patience of the father.

  After going over the syllabus, expectations for attendance, and assignments, to which I only half listen because my other half is otherwise occupied with Jamie’s proximity, Father Mark explains that he will end tonight’s class early, that he’ll see us again next week—and to make sure we check our assignment—but that before we go he’ll read a poem aloud, that he’ll do this at every class meeting. When he announces his selection—Pablo Neruda’s “Sonnet XVII” to be read in both English and the original Spanish—he regains my full attention. My cheeks catch fire because I immediately know what he means to do.

  “Olivia Peters, please join me on the stage,” he says in that booming voice of his, now amplified even bigger by the sound system.

  I sink down further in my chair and it groans from the movement. Jamie leans toward me and whispers, “You’ll do great.”

  “Don’t be shy, Olivia,” Father Mark says into the mike.

  Feeling dazed, I get up from my seat—creak—and make my way to the front of the auditorium, up the stairs and onto the stage. All the while Father Mark is explaining how I am a special student in this class because I won a contest, his contest, that I show great promise and he is thrilled to have me here. He’s decided to introduce me to everyone through the Nobel Prize–winning poet Pablo Neruda, because he knows that Neruda is one of my favorites. I climb the stairs to the stage, listening to his words, how he describes me to everyone as if we are on the best of terms, as if I hadn’t just walked in late to our first class meeting and avoided him entirely these last couple of weeks.

  When I arrive at the podium my heart is pounding and my hands are shaking, but Father Mark is smiling, like he is loving this, loving not only standing up in front of everyone, but standing up in front of everyone with me. He shifts sideways, barely, and points to the papers on the lectern. On the left is a copy of the Neruda poem in Spanish, and on the right, a copy of it translated into English.

  I hesitate.

  “If you had come to my office this afternoon like you promised weeks ago you would have been prepared,” Father Mark whispers in my ear, sending a shiver through me but not the good kind, and immediately I want this over with so I begin.

  “Hello,” I say, and remind myself to breathe, squeezing even closer to Father Mark so I can speak into the mike. “Pablo Neruda’s Soneto Diecisiete,” I begin to read, slowly, deliberately, trying to pronounce everything correctly. As I process the meaning of Neruda’s words I think, What an odd choice Father Mark has made, but this passes quickly and soon I am done, the class applauds, and it is Father Mark’s turn to read the English. I am about to walk away when Father Mark hands me the sheet with the poem on it and says, “This is for you, Olivia,” and I smile and take it because what else can I do? We are on the stage in front of an auditorium filled with his student admirers. Before Father Mark can utter the first line I am across the stage and heading down the steps, the paper crinkling in my sweaty hands, listening as he reads.

  I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,

  or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

  I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

  in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

  As I make my way back to my seat I tune out the rest, only catching one more line—so I love you because I know no other way—before I am sitting again next to Jamie who smiles at me like everything is wonderful and I did a good job. When my fingers grip the armrest he places his hand on mine and I begin to relax again, remembering that soon I will be heading off with him to the Public Garden for a romantic evening. But sneaking into my thoughts are questions like Has Father Mark always been this strange? This awkward? and Did something change or did I just not notice it before?

  After finishing the last line of the poem, Father Mark dismisses us and we file out, slow, up the aisles and out of the auditorium into the warm summer evening. Students congregate in the courtyard, chatting, because it is the kind of weather that makes you want to linger, but Jamie and I don’t because I want to leave right away.

  “Let’s go,” I say, and take his hand, trying to pull him across the courtyard. Jamie lags behind, glancing at the students hanging out near Gregory Hall.

  “No more races tonight, Olivia. Slow down.”

  And so I do because he is right and I am being silly with all this rushing.

  “Don’t you want to see what other people thought of our first class? Of all the fuss he made out of you, Olivia?”

  “Not really.”

  “You shouldn’t be embarrassed. He’s proud of you.”

  “Let’s just go.”

  “I know that for you seeing Father Mark is normal, but it’s new for me.”

  This comment halts me and I turn to face him. “I’m sorry. I should’ve thought…I should’ve been more sensitive…I just wasn’t thinking. Do you want to go back?”

  He steps closer and takes my other hand. Looks at me. Hesitates. Unsure what to do.

  That’s when I see Father Mark out of the corner of my eye. Watching us from afar. Suddenly I want to run. Panic flickers across my face.

  “I guess we can hang out after class another night,” Jamie says, finally, and thankfully I am soon tugging him again, walking so quickly across the quad that it prompts Jamie to remind me once more about how we are not running a race.

  “So did you enjoy the class?” I ask, once we are safely through the campus gates, because I feel guilty, like I somehow cheated Jamie out of the full Father Mark seminar experience, which included gushing afterward with our fellow classmates.

  “I did. I don’t care if he’s assigned piles of work. The opportunity to take his class was one of my goals when I decided to attend HMU. He’s just brilliant, you know?” Jamie looks straight at me, eyes locked, as we walk along the sidewalk, but I can’t enjoy the moment. The mention of Father Mark’s greatness sends a wave of nausea r
olling through me. “He made such a big deal out of you tonight,” Jamie presses, excited on my behalf.

  “Nah. It was only a poem.”

  “Don’t be so modest.”

  “I’m really looking forward to the rest of the class, of course.” I’m doing my best to muster enthusiasm so I don’t rain any more on Jamie’s parade. “Public speaking makes me nervous, though. Unlike for some people I know.” I give Jamie a playful shove, relieved to shift the topic even if only a small amount.

  “Are you referring to my improv group? Is there something I actually do better than the talented Olivia Peters?” Jamie grins, swinging my hand in his as we turn onto Arlington Avenue, near the entrance to the Public Garden.

  “Maybe.” I return the grin as we enter the park and make our way down the path and around the beautiful flower beds. Soon I settle back into a happy place where there is only Jamie and me holding hands, walking along as if we have all the time in the world. I lead him toward my spot, the bench under the weeping willow tree, the same bench by the lake where “The Girl in the Garden” takes place, because I want to share it with him, this part of myself that has enough history to go all the way back to my dad, my real father, who took me here when I was small.

  “Wow,” he says, when we arrive and sit down, looking out over the water, close enough that our shoulders touch. “It’s beautiful. I can’t believe I’ve never been before.”

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  The sun drops little by little, until the rose red of the summer’s evening tips into bright blue twilight just before dark. We talk for hours, about his family, why he became a philosophy major, his faith, how he never knew he was funny until he got to HMU, and how he’s always been shy. He asks me questions, too, about growing up in Boston, about my writing, my favorite color, my favorite flavor of ice cream. I tell him about how Dad left when I was little and what it was like to grow up with priests substituting as fathers. How my mother is an amazing woman though she’d never say so herself. And I tell him about “The Girl in the Garden,” how, in the story, a girl magically appears one day to a boy who visits this spot every afternoon and they fall in love. But I leave out the part about heartbreak because right now discussing heartbreak doesn’t seem the right way to go. The only answers I do my best to keep short or avoid altogether are the ones to do with Father Mark, even though Jamie is eager to hear every last detail of what I know about the man and whether he’s revealed anything special about how to succeed in class this summer. Eventually, after yet another one-word answer, Jamie changes the subject to something far more preferable.

  Jamie asks whether I’ve ever dated anyone. Just one person, no one important, I tell him. There’s never been anyone significant, not until recently. Not until him. And that’s when we look into each other’s eyes. We lean toward one another and kiss for the first time. Then we kiss once more. We are about to kiss again and I am elated and lost in the moment when something slides out of my bag and floats to the ground by our feet and Jamie turns to see what it is.

  The paper with the Neruda poem sits alongside the lake’s edge. Jamie reaches down to pick it up before the wind takes it sailing into the water, holds it up toward the lamplight overhead. “Huh,” he says. “Did you notice that there is another poem on the back?”

  “No.” I resist the urge to snatch it from his hands to put it away.

  He reads aloud:

  “For M. in October,” by Thomas Merton

  If we could come together like two parts

  Of one love song

  Two chords going hand in hand

  A perfect arrangement

  And be two parts of the same secret

  (Oh if we could recover

  And tell again

  Our midsummer secret!)

  If you and I could even start again as strangers

  Here in this forsaken field

  Where crickets rise up

  Around my feet like spray

  Out of a green ocean…

  But I am alone,

  Alone walking up and down

  Leaning on the silly wind

  And talking out loud like a madman

  “If only you and I

  Were possible.”

  Goose bumps stand up on my arms.

  “Interesting choice,” Jamie says. “Do you know Merton’s history?”

  I turn my head to look at him, force myself to admit, “No. I don’t. What is it?”

  “Merton was a Trappist monk, a famous one—famous for his writing, kind of like Father Mark actually. When he was in his fifties he got sick and was in the hospital for a long time. While he was there, he fell in love with his nurse.”

  “Really.”

  “She was only like, twenty-two or something.”

  “Oh.” I am strangled into silence. Oh, I think, then quickly swat this unpleasant thought away.

  “No kidding. Creepy.”

  “Yeah. Creepy.”

  Something inside me twists, contorts, but I can’t let myself go there so instead I use all my energy to focus on Jamie and how I should enjoy my Jamie time while I have it. This determination plants itself firmly and so I let the poem, Father Mark, the class, the rest of the world, my sense of it, disappear until me and Jamie are all that is left, on the bench under the weeping willow tree, kissing. Kissing some more. And when at one point Jamie leans back to take a breath and in the silence those thoughts, the thoughts I want to erase, begin to push their way back into my mind, I lean forward and say to Jamie, “Kiss me again,” and he does and I am saved.

  ON CHARLES BEACH

  SWISH, SWISH. MY FEET BRUSH THROUGH THE GRASS AS I make my way along the bank of the Charles River, flip-flops and sunglasses dangling from one hand, a stainless-steel travel mug filled with coffee grasped in the other. In my bag is a big blanket with the novel I’m reading and Father Mark’s story edits, which I vow to deal with today. Once and for all. There is a nice breeze—there usually is at this time of the morning. The summer smell of green fills the air and the glare on the river is bright and glitters in the sun. I set up my stuff—coffee, book, a flip-flop holding down each corner of the blanket by my feet. The edits, though, I leave safely tucked away in my bag. For now.

  Mom, Greenie, and I call this place Charles Beach. We’ve been having picnics here since I was a kid, though I don’t know how it got its name. It’s most definitely not a beach, especially since there’s no sand and to get here you have to cross a bridge over Storrow Drive. Even this far down the bank near the water you can hear cars whizzing by in the background—and the Charles, though a big river, isn’t the ocean. Not even close. Noise and all, I love it. The rhythmic lap of the water against the river’s edge, the pat, pat, pat of the morning joggers passing behind me on the path, the rowers gliding across the water, so smooth, so fast, so silent, so together. Lying on the blanket in the grass with my novel and my coffee all to myself. This is my sacred time.

  I put on my sunglasses and prop myself up on my elbows, watching the crew boats from Harvard, MIT, HMU. I enjoy the view and daydream about Jamie and sigh, relaxed.

  Then, out of the corner of my eye I notice the manuscript edge that peeks out from the top of my bag and it chips away at my peace. I’m beginning to think Father Mark’s demand for revisions will never end, that working on this story is no longer about making it publishable, but an excuse for him to be in constant touch with me.

  And if I just could take away his excuse…

  “I thought I’d find you here,” says a voice from above, startling me for a second before I realize it’s only my mother.

  I take off my sunglasses and turn to see her looking down at me, her head blocking the sun, her short hair hanging forward in two slants that frame her chin. She holds a glass of orange juice in one hand and a large Tupperware container in the other.

  “Did you just walk that glass of juice over the highway?”

  “Well it didn’t walk itself.” She moves to sit down and
I am practically blinded by the glare of the sun. “What a gorgeous day.” She parks herself on my blanket, sitting cross-legged in her light blue seersucker Mom-shorts, culottes she calls them. “You left without eating again and I’m a mom so I worry about these things. You are getting so skinny, Olivia.”

  Her concern gets to me so I take the container she holds out. Ham, egg, and cheese on an English muffin. My favorite. Immediately I feel a stab of guilt. Mom likes to call this particular breakfast Heart Attack on a Plate so she must be desperate to get me to eat. Even though I’m not really hungry I take a big bite and force it down. “That was really nice of you, to carry this all the way from the house and over Storrow Drive,” I say, and smile, doing my best to ease her worry, wanting to give her the impression that everything is fine and dandy.

  “I’m not leaving until you finish the entire sandwich.”

  “I’m not five anymore.”

  “Yes, but lately you’ve hardly touched your food.”

  “That’s not true,” I say, nibbling away, talking with my mouth full to try and make her scold me or at least laugh.

  “You may not be five, but I can tell when one of my daughters is pushing things around on her plate to make it look like she’s eaten.”

  I don’t have a good response to this.

  “Olivia?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yup. Perfect.” I shove the rest of the sandwich in my mouth, gulping it down, hoping this will satisfy her.

  “Let’s talk about Father Mark,” she proposes, and I almost spit everything back up. I wait to respond until I am sure that everything has been safely swallowed.

  “What about him?” My words are slow. Hesitant.