Tender (9 page)

“It is a big deal, if you ask me.”

“How?”

James just stuck out his lower lip.

“How?”
Catherine said again. “I mean, look at his wife.” She pointed down to the woman, who had dropped now to her hunkers and was winding the ropes, her legs brown and strong, her sunglasses pushed up on her blond hair. “I mean, if that’s what he’s into, then he’s not going to be into me.”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, for Christ’s
sake,
Catherine.”

“What? I’m nothing like her.”

“You’re a woman,” he said flatly.

“I’m not a woman.”

“You’re not a woman?”

“I’m a girl.”

He shook his head impatiently. “Makes no odds.”

“Well, I don’t agree.”

“Well,” he said, and now his tone seemed almost angry, “you have the luxury of not having to agree.”

Startled, she attempted a laugh. “What’s got into you?” She nudged him. “James?”

“Nothing’s got into me, Catherine,” he said, his voice thick with something. “Nothing at all.”

He got to his feet, and she followed him, confused and embarrassed; what had she done? Was he pissed off with her for being so naive, the way Conor had seemed so often during the year, making snide allusions to her virginity, giving her the full force of his derision when she had got something wrong? But James was not like that—but was he? What was he to her, really? she found herself worrying again, as she got into step beside him; what was this? Being down here with him had done nothing to quieten the questions that had been bothering her. She was alone with James. She had been alone with him several times that day. Now here they were again, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, on a beautiful day, sunlight glinting on the water, the sky giving them its acres of blue—so was this something? She could not get a handle on it. Was this
them?
Suddenly she felt the urge to laugh, although nothing was funny. The word
this
was slamming itself against her consciousness;
This! This! This!
bouncing off the walls of her mind, and when James stopped, now, and began to turn to her, she stopped in her tracks, panicked. Was this how it happened? If he tried to kiss her, she thought, she would want to throw herself into the canal. It would be like one of her uncles, turning to her. And yet what else had she brought it to, this thing between them? Coming down here. Talking to him, confiding in him, the way she did. If this was happening now, who was she to refuse it? Who was she to dispute it? This must be how it happened.

“Catherine,” James said, and she jumped. He noticed, and burst out laughing.

“Are you all right?” He reached out and took her arm; she felt it twitch.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was just…”

“Are you worried I’m going to murder you?” he said, and he moved his hands to her neck. “Oh, Catherine,” he said, grinning, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry to have to do this to you—”

“Stop,” she said, managing to laugh; she felt paralyzed by the sensation of his fingers at her throat.

He moved away from her. “You’re very jumpy.”

“Am I?”

He sighed, putting his hands in his pockets. “Listen, Catherine. There’s something I need to say to you.”

She inhaled sharply, and he looked at her, his gaze suspicious—but something else in it, too; something like hurt.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said. “It’s just—it’s so fucking hot, isn’t it?”

He shrugged. “It’s warm.”

“Well, I’m hot,” she said, almost panting.

“Catherine,” he said, hunching his shoulders high. “You know the way I was saying to you earlier, about my mother really liking you?”

She nodded; on the way down to the canal, he had told Catherine how taken his mother was with her, how she had really, really wanted him to bring Catherine as his guest to the neighbor’s wedding. Catherine had laughed it off, uncomfortable, but he had insisted; his mother was really crazy about her, he had said. It had been a relief to be able to change the subject to the French family and their boat, but then that, in turn, had become something uncomfortable, and now this, whatever it was. Under her arms and on the palms of her hands, Catherine felt sweat collect.

“Oh, your mother is so lovely,” she said, nodding eagerly. “Your whole family. I mean, the ones I’ve met, and I’m sure the others, as well—”

“And in her head, you know, Catherine, my mother will already have us married off.”

Something punched its way out of her, some incredulous, horrified noise. It sounded like a laugh, sort of, she told herself; it had not been a laugh, but it might pass for one. She might get away with it. The sky, the grass verge, the glint of the canal waters seemed, for a moment, to spin.

“That’s ridiculous,” she said, laughing more normally. She waited for James to return the laugh, but he just shook his head.

“I’ve seen the way she looks at you. I could hear the two of you downstairs this morning, chatting away a mile to the dozen.”

“It was just small talk, for Christ’s sake,” Catherine said, in her tone now a kind of pleading. What the fuck was happening? “She was asking me about my family.”

He nodded curtly. “She likes family. She likes new generations.”

“Oh, well. I mean, your eldest brother is married, isn’t he? And Breege is practically engaged, your mother said.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said grimly. “All doing their duty.”

“Well, then.”

“No, no, my mother is delighted with you,” he said, giving her a strange, unreadable smile. “I can see it very clearly. She’s looking forward to the day.”

Catherine took a breath; raggedly, it found its way through her, and raggedly, it pushed out again. What was happening could not, surely, be happening, she told herself; they were eighteen years old—well, James was nineteen, but nineteen was
young,
too young—and they had met not even two months ago—and she did not, did
not
think of him that way—so this could not be happening,
could
not—but what had she stumbled into, what had she caused?
This! This! This!
was beating inside of her, a pummeling in her blood; and what was that way he was, now, looking at her? What was that look in the blueness of his eyes? It looked like anger, looked almost like hatred, but he could not, surely, hate her—not if he was bringing this up with her, not if he was trying to haul this future down on top of her; but was that what he was doing? Was that possible? Was this some kind of hallucination, some voodoo?

“But I’ll never be getting married, Catherine,” James said then, and he shook his head.

“Oh, Jesus, me neither,” Catherine practically shouted.

James held up a hand to dismiss this. “Oh, no, you will, you will of course,” he said, clicking his tongue. “Of course all that will happen for you.”

“No, no, I never want to get married,” Catherine said, feeling the need to stamp it truly down. “I want my freedom. And I can’t see myself ever meeting that person. You know?”

Then came a laugh, the very thing she had been wanting from him, but it was not the light laugh she had hoped for; it was hollow. It was hard. “Oh, yes, Catherine,” he said. “I think I know what you mean.”

Better not to speak at all, she decided now; nothing she could come up with could work for her, none of her words could carry her through. She had never known confusion like this; it had such infuriating depths, so many levels opening and sliding into one another. James was seething, it seemed to her; he was rigid, beside her, with a darkness that appeared to have come upon him from nowhere, and she was its landing ground, it seemed—or, maybe, she was its cause? It was in his eyes, and it was in the set of his shoulders, and it was in the lock of his jaw, and she saw all this, and she wanted to run from it, wanted to protest; how had she provoked it?

“All of this is a way of saying something, Catherine,” James blurted.

“Yes?” she said, her heart pounding.

“It’s a way of saying I won’t be giving my mother a wedding. I’m not that kind.”

“OK,” she said, dumbfounded.

He looked at her. “I’m…different,” he said slowly.

“OK.”

“So that’s how it is.”

She nodded; a rapid one-two. She knew but she did not know. She knew but she could not trust herself. She was so often wrong. She was so often sloppy, melodramatic, blurting her exaggerations like a fool.

“OK,” she said again.

James bit his bottom lip, pressing the teeth in hard. “I decided a while ago that I wanted to tell you, but there was never the chance—over the phone wasn’t right.”

“Oh God,” she said, picturing the front room at home, the cord across the hall. “Of course not. No, no.”

“So I asked you here.”

“Yes.”

“Because I feel so close to you. And because I wanted to tell you in person.”

“Oh, yeah! I’m so glad you told me, James. I’m so glad…”

“You’re not the first person I’ve told, obviously.”

“Obviously,” she said, feeling, despite herself, a little offended.

“I mean, Amy and Lorraine know. I told them a few weeks ago.”

“OK!” she said, nodding, desperately trying for the right note of brightness. “OK!” she repeated, and she sounded like some annoying bird.

“Of course, they said they already knew.” He laughed properly for a moment. “Fuckers.”

“Ha!” Catherine said, with the same stupid brightness.

“But the big thing for me now, you see, is to tell my mother. Because she doesn’t know, needless to say. And I think it’s time for her to know.”

“Oh—” Catherine started, but James shook his head to indicate that he did not want her to speak.

“I’ve been needing to tell her. This weekend has just confirmed that for me. The way she’s been around you. You know? It’s time.”

“OK.”

“And it’s not going to be pretty, Catherine,” he said, kicking at the dust of the path as he walked. “I know that much.”

“Ah, no,” Catherine said quickly. “Ah, James.”

“No, no,” he said firmly. “I know that much. She’s not going to take it well.”

Catherine swallowed. She tried to find the right thing to say, and when it came to her, she felt a rush of gratitude. “But your mother is so
brilliant,
” she said, taking James’s arm. As she said it, she was picturing Peggy as she had been at the kitchen table that morning, cigarette in hand, gold bangles jangling, freckles on the bridge of her nose, the V-neck of her cotton top. That was a nice top, a modern top, a top that not many women Peggy’s age, Catherine thought, would wear. None of this she said to James; none of this could be helpful to him. But still, she said again, she was sure that his mother would be fine. Would, she said again, be
brilliant
.

He shook his head. “I don’t think so, Catherine.”

“But
why?
” Catherine felt almost stung; this seemed to her, suddenly, like a battle she wanted to win. “Why do you say that? Initially, maybe, she’ll be surprised. But she’s so
great,
James. She’s so mad about you.”

“How she is
now
is not what we’re talking about, Catherine,” James said, snatching his arm away from hers, and his tone was as sharp as she had ever heard it. He stepped ahead of her, his hands shoved in his pockets again. “How she is
now,
” he said over his shoulder, “is not the problem. The woman she is now is a woman who is seeing her son in a certain way. With you, for instance—well, I’ve told you.”

“She was just being friendly to me, for Christ’s sake!”

He stopped and looked back at her. For a moment she thought she saw tears in his eyes. But no, he was not crying. He was grimacing. He looked truly disappointed in her; he looked utterly sick of her. He sighed, staring past her now to the fields on the other side of the water. “Maybe I should never have let her believe even as much as she does.”

Catherine said nothing. Tears of her own were ready to start up, she suspected; she did not trust herself to speak.

“I mean, all of this, can’t you see, all of this—the way she sees the two of us, the way she’s so delighted with you—all of this, Catherine, is
why
.” He shook his head, and it was not dampness she had seen in his eyes, Catherine realized; it was pain.

“James,” she said weakly.

“You know, I was always close to Amy—you know that.”

She nodded. He had told her that Amy had been his best friend all through the last years of school; he had told her how, since Amy had started college and he had gone to Berlin, they had grown apart a little, and that this had been sad for him, but that it had felt natural. And anyway, he had said, now he had her. Now he had Catherine. Catherine had not allowed herself to think it through, what James had meant by this. Catherine, like the frightened child she was, had not allowed herself to ask. Now she felt a stab of envy at the thought of how much better Amy would have been at handling this situation, this conversation; how much better, it struck her, Amy very possibly already had been. Had he told Amy and Lorraine that he wanted to tell his mother? Probably. And probably they had not reacted anything like this; probably, they had reacted with common sense and calmness.

“And, you know, I think my mother had ideas about me and Amy too, is what I’m saying, but it didn’t matter so much back then,” James said. “We were kids. And Amy was never out here with me, not the way you are now.”

“OK,” Catherine nodded.

“I suppose what I’m saying is that I’ve never had to see the way my mother looked at a girl before now. At the way she looked at me with a girl, I mean.”

“Right.”

“And so,
no
. No more. It’s bad enough. I’m nineteen years old, Catherine. I have to put a name on it. I need her to know.”

“Of course you do,” Catherine said, and she reached out to touch him, but could not land on the right place; every part of him seemed to be some kind of force field. She let her hand go to the top of his arm, near where she had seen his father touch him the day before; she rubbed him there. He seemed to start at the feeling of her hand on him, as though he had not known it was coming, but then he relaxed. But then he sighed heavily, so maybe it was not relaxation at all; maybe it was exhaustion.