Circled Heart (39 page)

“Peter has nothing to do with this discussion and you know it. You did that to take the attention off you, a ploy that has lost its effectiveness.”

I smiled. “It worked fine just now,” then added affectionately, “You will make a wonderful cousin-in-law someday. I won’t have to break you in to all my tricks.” From Crea’s expression, it was clear I found the remark more entertaining than she did. There was nothing of the victim about Crea, I thought, and we will do well together through the years. She won’t take any nonsense from me and that’s healthy for both of us. Despite the seriousness of the meeting I’d set up at St. Michael’s Cathedral, my heart felt released from a burden. God willing, I had a future with Drew Gallagher and although that future might turn out to be many things, I knew for certain it would never be boring. I can’t abide tedium.

The first thing I noticed upon entering St. Michael’s were those glorious windows, the turquoise, purple and scarlet glass gleaming like gemstones. The late morning sun lit the windows, burnished their trim, and splashed color on the pale orange walls. A breathtakingly beautiful extravagance of color. I saw the bent shoulders of the man I sought and went to sit next to him, no words at first. We sat side by side in a back corner pew, where I was content to soak up the brilliant color of the windows and their implied warmth.

“It’s always like summer in here,” I said finally, breaking the stillness. “In its own way as bright and beautiful as Jennie. I can tell she was your inspiration for this.”

At those words Allen Goldwyn turned toward me. His face was the dull color of concrete and his eyes red from sleeplessness, a haggard man consumed by grief. “She was my inspiration for everything,” he told me simply. “For everything. The world is dim and gray now and it always will be.” I laid a calming hand over his trembling one that clutched the pew in front of us.

“I’m so sorry, Allen. I didn’t realize until yesterday.”

“She worried that you cared for me. I told her you and I were friends and nothing more, but she said she wasn’t so sure.”

“Surely you didn’t hide your relationship because of me!” I exclaimed. “Please don’t let that be the reason.”

“I never meant for anything to happen. I could have loved her in secret all my life, I think, content to be somewhere in her orbit. That’s all I needed. Just to be near her.”

“You would have courted me to stay near her.”

“Is that so terrible? I didn’t think it was.”

I couldn’t answer. What would I be willing to do to keep Drew in my life? What dignity would I sacrifice?

Allen continued, “One afternoon we met downtown, purely by chance, and I could tell she was upset. I don’t think she even remembered my name then, just knew I was your friend. I asked her for tea and while she talked, I listened. After that, nothing was the same, not for either of us.”

“Allen, did you know—” I started and then stopped. Was it kind or necessary to mention Jennie’s condition?

“Did I know about the baby? Not right away, but I guessed. At first she said it was Carl’s but I knew. I knew she didn’t care for him. I knew I was the only one. A man knows when a woman loves him, and Jennie loved me. Me.”

“Then if you both cared for each other, what kept you apart? You have a good job with a good firm, you’re talented and making a name for yourself, and you’ll be comfortably situated someday. I don’t understand.”

“Goldwyn,” he said bleakly. “Jennie Goldwyn. Do you honestly think your aunt would let her daughter marry a Jew and a working class Jew at that?”

“Oh, Allen, I never thought about that. It shouldn’t matter.”

“It does matter, though. You know it does. I begged Jennie. I told her we could handle anything together. I told her we could have a life together and what did anything else matter? But I couldn’t convince her to confront her mother. She said we could continue to see each other after she was married, that it would be safer and easier for both of us, and by then I was desperate not to lose her. I would have done anything she asked. I followed her on the train to Boston after Christmas. I begged her to marry me, begged her to take the chance, but she said she couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t. She sobbed like a child, Johanna.” The words brought such excruciating pain to him that he leaned his forehead onto his hands that grasped the pew before us.

I placed an arm across his shoulders. “My dear, I’m so sorry. So sorry.”

Allen shook off my arm and turned his face toward me. “You don’t understand. Jennie was my inspiration, perfect in face and form. Every part of her was pleasing to look at. She was light and color and silk to the touch. She was everything to me. Everything. I don’t understand why she couldn’t take the chance. Why wasn’t I enough for her? I need her, Johanna. Without her I can’t find anything beautiful in the world. I’m nothing but a blind man.” He began to cry in hoarse, desperate sobs that echoed in the empty church. I put my arms around him and held him against me muffling the sound, his head on my breast and both of us shaking from the force of his weeping. I cried, too, for all the lives touched and changed and lost, grieving especially for my Jennie, only a step away from happiness but a step she could not take.

After a while Allen pulled away, taking long, shuddering breaths in an attempt to regain his composure.

We were both silent until I asked, “What can I do for you?” His eyes, dark in an ashen face, brimming with misery and even more red-rimmed than before, met mine.

“Be happy, Johanna. Be happy for all of us. You have the power.” Then he stood shakily. “Just be happy.” He walked to the end of the pew and down the center aisle to the back doors without looking back. I sat in the cathedral a while longer, exhausted from Allen’s raw grief, until the sun splashed through the windows again and dappled the walls with more vivid color. Like Jennie’s smile, I thought, and was comforted. Her spirit lived on in this bright and beautiful place.

Jennie was gone, but for a reason known only to God, I was alive, spared death more than once while other lives disappeared around me. Humbled and exhilarated, I realized that without my deserving it and through no effort of my own, life and hope were still mine and with them, love and beauty and light and joy. Grief and tears and loss, too, all in their time, but that was life as well, and they were all gifts too precious to be wasted or sacrificed because of fear or indecision. Allen was right. I had the power to be happy. I had the will for it, too. The recollection of Drew’s voice came soft as a sigh, so real that for a moment I thought he’d come to sit beside me: “Johanna, what on earth are you doing?” The whisper was all I needed to hurry out and catch the next train for Prairie Avenue.

In any popular novel of the time, I would have hurried to Drew’s house, he would have thrown open the front door, and we would have rushed into each other’s arms. Unfortunately, real life is more pragmatic than fiction. Yvesta answered the door, not Drew.

“He’s at his office, Johanna. Why would you think he’d be home in the middle of the afternoon? And what are you doing out by yourself? You still look too pale, if you ask me.” She ushered me inside and took my coat. “Of course, you can stay, but it may be a long wait. He hasn’t been getting home until after dark. ‘Johanna hurt Mr. Gallagher’s feelings and he’s unhappy,’ I told Fritz.”

“Me?” I protested. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You went home. You left him alone when he liked having you here.”

I followed Yvesta down the hallway and into the kitchen, still exonerating myself. “I have a home, too, Yvesta. Drew Gallagher can’t go through life getting everything he wants whenever he wants it.”

She poured me a cup of tea and set out a platter of cookies. “He doesn’t want everything. He only wants you, but he’s too much the gentleman to tell you in a way that will hold your attention.”

“Too much a gentleman, my foot,” I replied, but the words came out garbled because my mouth was full of oatmeal cookie. Then, more hesitantly, “Are you sure?”

“I know about these things. Mr. Gallagher is a good man, Johanna. You could do worse.” She wrapped two cookies in a napkin and handed them to me. “But you already know that. Now go wait for him in the library. He’ll be home for supper tonight.”

“May I use the telephone to let Grandmother know I’ll be back late?” I asked meekly and at Yvesta’s nod went to take care of that task.

“I’m at Drew’s,” I told Crea, who picked up the other end, “and I don’t know when or if I’ll be home tonight. Don’t worry.”

After a silence, Crea said, “Congratulations, Johanna. It’s about time,” and hung up without a good-bye.

Fritz came in to kindle a fire in the library hearth and then left me alone to wander aimlessly until I spied the small volume of Longfellow’s sonnets I gave Drew at Christmas lying on the corner of his desk. I kicked off my shoes and curled up in a soft, wing-backed chair with the book. The library reminded me of Drew, too, handsome and intelligent; like the books that crowded the shelves Drew hid behind a cover. He concealed himself purposefully, I thought, for protection, afraid someone might actually uncover the little boy whose parents hadn’t loved him, fearful, as well, that he had inherited his brother’s demons. No demons for you, love, I thought with a smile. They won’t be allowed in our house.

Drew had marked several of the sonnets, made notes in the margins, underscored and circled, scrawled the letter J here and there. I was more engrossed in his comments than in the poems themselves when he pushed open both library doors and stood arms akimbo in the doorway.

Looking up, I said, “This is more beautiful than I remember. Listen,” and read, “‘The white drift of worlds o’er chasms of sable / The star-dust that is whirled aloft and flies / From the invisible chariot-wheels of God.’ You quoted those words the night we kissed for the first time. Do you remember? I do. It’s one of my ‘secret anniversaries of the heart.’”

He came in farther and tossed his jacket on a chair. “Does anyone know you’re here?”

“Yvesta knows and Fritz and Crea and Grandmother by now, I assume. Why?”

Drew leaned casually against the desk, arms folded across his chest, observing me with narrowed eyes. “Because I can’t believe anyone allowed you out by yourself. You’re still too thin and pale.”

“Compliments, again. I think I will request sweet things if my alternative is to be criticized for the rest of my life.” At my words he moved to sit across from me in the matching hearth chair, the fire’s warmth between us.

“What are you up to, Johanna?”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“That makes me nervous.”

“No, it doesn’t. I don’t think anything makes you nervous. That’s one of the things I find most tempting about you, the way you stay so calm and slightly amused regardless of the circumstances. It makes me want to say and do things just to get you stirred up.”

“That’s easy enough.” He patted his lap. “Come and sit here.” I eyed him and then shook my head, making him grin. “I’m disappointed to discover you’re all talk, my love.” We looked at each other wordlessly, the fire crackling and Drew’s smile slowly fading, replaced by an intense, searching expression. “Why are you here, Johanna?”

“I thought you might want to marry me. You’ve never put it in those words, so I may have it wrong—I get things wrong sometimes—but I certainly want to marry you. And if not marriage, then I’ll settle for some other arrangement. I warn you, however, that Grandmother will be a hard sell. She is very—”

“Johanna, be quiet.” I stopped obediently. “What is going on?”

“I’m proposing. I’ve never done it before so I may be going about it all wrong, and of course, in novels the woman isn’t allowed to propose. She has to be wooed properly and then act reluctant and shy, but that’s not me and it never will be. I don’t have a coy bone in my body, and when it comes to you, I am as far from reluctant as a woman can be.”

Drew sat with a hand splayed on each arm of his chair and feet flat on the floor, watching me in the still and focused way I thought I could never grow tired of. Please God that I would have many, many years to test my theory.

“Why would you want to marry me?”

“Because I love you, of course,” I answered simply. “I flat out love you. I even love you when I’m annoyed with you, when you’re acting like a typical man, who always has to know everything and get his own way. It’s pathetic, I suppose, but I love you even then. Sometimes, God help me, I think I especially love you then.”

He stood, took one long step, grabbed both my wrists and pulled me to my feet. “This is acting like a typical man,” he said and kissed me roughly, thoroughly, and for a long time. My response gave proof to the words I’d just spoken.

Later, sitting on his lap despite my earlier refusal, I commented, “You can act like a typical man any time and I promise never to get annoyed.” His arms tightened around me and I continued, “This is what I remember from the nightmare. You holding me and the two of us fitting together so perfectly we might have been created for each other. I know that sounds fanciful, but I believe it somehow.” After a moment and more to myself than to him, I asked in a low voice, “Why should I be allowed to be happy like this?”

“Because you make other people happy,” a lift at the end to make the words more suggestion than fact.

“I don’t, though. You of all people understand how annoying I can be, how I force others to do what they don’t want to do, how I want my own way, and how I hate compromise because I think I’m always right.”

“Let me revise my words, then. You make me happy.” A fact this time.

“I don’t know why.” Drew pushed me away to look straight into my eyes, a message in his glance that he hoped I’d understand without further elaboration.

“That’s why,” he said.

But I had to sigh and respond, “I’m sorry, Drew. Please believe me when I tell you I’m done with game playing. I really can’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”

My words gave him pause, and he fumbled for the right words as he said, “I like the way I look in your eyes, Johanna. I like the man you think you see when you look at me, and while I know I’m not that man, you make me want to be him. I like you thinking I’m generous and kind when I’m neither of those things.”