The City Below (15 page)

"No." She looked helpless.

"Then what say, folks, aren't we going to see the monument? Wasn't that the plan?"

"What about Lincoln?" Terry said. "With malice toward none." He tossed his head back toward the Little Tavern. "Except that asshole."

Half an hour later, Terry and Didi were on the Mall heading, they thought, for the Lincoln Memorial. The wind and snow were worse than ever, and they could no longer see where they were going. They'd become separated from Bright and Sally, which had worried them at first, but now all they wanted was shelter. Away from the street, they'd become disoriented. Even the towering Washington Monument was blanked out. This was tundra. At one point, Didi stopped and fell against Terry. "I can't catch my breath. I can't breathe in this wind."

"Take it easy, take it easy," Terry said, but he was thinking, Symptoms! Shortness of breath. Pulse rate. He opened his coat around her, a cave. She leaned into the hollow of his body, burying her head.

"I'm scared, I'm scared."

"Don't talk, Didi. Deep breaths, in and out. Come on now, in and out."

They kept going. They found the edge of the Reflecting Pool, a step down into a field of snow, and they used it as a line to follow. Soon the huge white temple, pillars and pediment, loomed above them. Terry kept his eyes on it as if the thing would disappear again. A mansion in the clouds, a Parthenon:

They moved into the vacant circular road. Beyond the memorial, the cloud was punctured eerily by headlights moving along the Potomac Parkway, but no cars came here. As quickly as they could, they crossed the apron and began to mount the long, broad stairs. But that side of the temple was more exposed to the river wind than anyplace yet, and Terry practically had to carry Didi up. At the top they fell into the cavern in which Daniel Chester French's marble Lincoln sat, big as God.

Terry led Didi around behind the statue to get away from the dangerous weather. "Are you all right?"

Instead of answering, Didi leaned against the wall, struggling for breath. Above her head, a line etched in the marble caught his eye: ...
IS ENSHRINED FOREVER.

Neither knew the word "hyperventilate," but that was what she had been doing. Nothing to do with varicose veins, an organizing clot.

Didi had expected to suffocate at any minute, which had made her panic, which in turn had made breathing nearly impossible. She was more afraid than she'd been since pressing herself against the wall of Terry's truck while the madman had swung his sword in her face. She held on to Terry now as she'd longed to do then. Once she could breathe again, she began to cry.

How fragile you are, he thought. He closed his arms on her.

He had always liked her for being strong, full of verve and wit. Yet here she was so needy, needy for him. He stroked her sides, rubbing his hands lightly up and down. Aware of the thickness of her tweed coat, that she could not feel his touch, he pulled his right glove off with his teeth and let it fall. He crooked his forefinger at her cheek and began to gently stroke her there. How fragile you are, how sweet.

"Why haven't I seen you?" she asked.

"After what happened in the Garden, I shut down inside."

"It was scary."

"It still scares me, Didi. Sometimes I dream about it And what happened to Bright, I feel—" He stopped because what he felt had yet to present itself in words.

Didi said, "This wind's scary too. Will they still have the inauguration?"

"I think they have to. He has to take the oath, right?"

"I guess." Didi pulled back and found his eyes. "What do you think of me, Terry?"

"I think you're my friend."

"That isn't how you make me feel."

"I'm sorry, Didi." He closed his eyes and leaned against the marble. Christ, all he could do was say he was sorry. Where was Bright? Where was Sally? If something happened to them now, would that be his fault too?

Leaning together—it could have been all that occurred between them, two young people, lonely and afraid, consoling each other. But Terry's physical sensations, which moments before had been concentrated in his nearly frostbitten face, slowly began to settle in his groin. He opened his eyes and looked at her. He noticed her lips, too red, too big. He remembered having her tongue in his mouth.

He kissed her. She kissed him back. He slipped his ungloved hand inside her coat, into the crevice between her belt and her blouse. She pressed against him.

Moments later he stopped, pulled back, made her look at him. "Is this okay?" he asked. She nodded. He removed his second glove and dropped it He unfastened the buttons of her coat, carefully, as if something might spill out, then the buttons of her blouse. It was cold; each understood that the parted shirt was as far as this undressing would go. His hand inside her bra, he found her breast. The palm of his hand had never seemed so sensitive as when it pressed the small, hard nub of her erect nipple. He kissed her again. When she opened her mouth now, he sucked as if her tongue would give him milk.

***

The only Young Democrats to show for the party at Georgetown were the ones staying on campus, plus a few who dragged themselves through the storm from GWU. Sixty or seventy kids in the huge McDonough Gymnasium, with beer and chips enough for ten times that many. The band did not make it either, but some local genius hooked up a record player to the PA system, and the randy voices of the Everly Brothers began to bounce off the towering empty bleachers. The panicked refrain of "Wake Up Little Suae" echoed across the vaulted space, vibrating the red-white-and-blue streamers and the poster photographs of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. For a long time that song alternated with "All I Have to Do Is Dream," because apparently they were the only records that could be found.

The Young Dems weren't complaining. They jitterbugged to the one song, slow-danced to the other. Eventually someone arrived with other records, but by then the night belonged to Don and Phil.

Terry and Didi were not the only couple to drift up into the dark privacy of the vacant stands, but the gym was so big, and its nooks so numerous, that they might as well have been. They were both half blitzed, but they moved purposefully, holding hands. They found an isolated corner in deep shadows behind the highest row of seats. There were barbells arranged neatly by a bench. Exercise equipment was attached to the wall. The cement floor was covered with vinyl mats, which both took as absolute permission, an act of fate that obliterated what few of their inhibitions remained. They faced each other, kissed tenderly, then went slowly down.

Given all that they had to overcome, their lovemaking was a first-time success rare for their kind. It was passionate, but without the usual pretense that they were being swept away. Perhaps because he was drunk, Terry felt freed from the obsessive self-awareness that had always undercut him. He was focused instead on Didi, on her wondrous body, her breasts, her mouth, her tongue, her thighs, the deep cavity between her legs; his fingers swam in it As for his own body, in its nakedness and freedom, it felt like someone else's.

Didi helped by seeming so unlike the virgin he knew she was. When he stopped at the crucial moment to say, "Jesus, should I get a—?" she covered his mouth with her hand. "Never mind," she said. "Where would you get one now?" And she smiled with such abundant acceptance that he put the thought of birth control aside. With her other hand she guided him in, and then they began to move together so naturally, it seemed they'd been joined like this before. She bridged up under him and suddenly began saying, "Good, good, good!" How did he know to do this? "Good," she said, "Oh, sweet T, good!"

A loudspeaker blared above them, "All I have to do is dream ..." If Didi Mullen had any sense of doing something wrong, it was in thinking, even while Terry caught the rhythm of the music inside her, what a perfect memory this would make someday. To leave the present for the future, that's what is sinful.

Terry allowed the idea of wrong nowhere near his mind until the next morning, when he awoke under a suffocating blanket of it Despite the frigid air around him, he was wet with perspiration. He found himself on the couch in the lounge of Healy, with no memory of how he got there. On furniture and mattresses around the room, boys slept He realized he had slept. He had dreamed.

When he sat up, a mass shifted in his chest, like a bubble in a bottle. Not air, panic. The bends. The hangover clangbird clawed at his head. He looked at the mound on the couch across from him, softly falling, rising, falling again. He saw the black arm protruding from the blanket McKay.

Without thinking, Terry tossed his own blanket aside. He saw that he had slept in his shirt and trousers, like a drunk He went over and shook his friend. "Bright Bright."

McKay came to slowly, bewilderment in his one eye. His patch was in place. "Huh? What? What?"

"I need to talk to you. Something happened."

McKay sat up. "What's wrong?"

"Jesus Christ, man, I think I made a huge mistake last night I'm not sure what I—"

A sly smile came across McKay's face. "You mean you and Didi?"

"Yes."

McKay freed his hand from the blanket to slug Terry's shoulder. "Don't be a jerk, Doyle. It's about time you got laid. You said it was great
You
said you never felt better." A cheesy grin had transformed his friend's face into something awful, and Terry saw, as if reflected in McKay's one good eye, an image of his own ridiculousness. Didi was one issue, Bright was another.

"I wanted to tell you I was sorry."

"Sorry for what?"

Terry just stared at his friend, unable to say it For your eye. Finally he managed, "Just sorry for everything."

"Can the self-flagellation bullshit, Terry, will you?"

Is that what this was? Self-flagellation about his first girl? About a black man with one eye? "Sorry I woke you, I meant" But Bright had rolled over and seemed asleep again. Jesus Christ, Terry thought, he's blind. Blind in that eye—it only fully hit him now—for life.

Terry stumbled back to his couch and fell on it, but he faced the window now instead of the room. The sky was blue above the snow-crested college buildings, the storm had passed, but not the one inside Doyle. John Kennedy's inauguration would go on as scheduled, to be followed by a splendid parade, more parties, and a new day in America. But not for him. Where was this misery coming from? Getting laid? Altar-boy guilt' Making Didi think he loved her? Not even the first clear recognition of Blight's fate accounted for the feeling. Terry asked, and asked again, What? What have I done?

Across the quad, Georgetown students were trudging through the snow toward the chapel. Puffs of vapor came out of their mouths, only to disappear instantly in the cold. Some walked with hands covering their ears, a sight that made Terry want to block his senses too. His mind. He got up again, found his shoes and coat, and stumbled to the bathroom, where for a long stretch of moments he stooped over a toilet bowl expecting to vomit.

In the corridor outside the lavatory was the phone booth. Terry went into it He dialed the long distance operator and asked for Mass. General.

The ward nurse told him his brother wasn't there, and neither was his grandfather. When he asked how his mother was, the nurse did not answer. The silence seemed unending. Finally she said his mother wasn't on the ward any longer. She asked him to hang on while she paged the doctor, who would talk to him.

He hung up and dialed the operator again, to call home. Nick answered on the first ring.

"It's me," Terry said. "What's going on?"

And again, that silence.

"Did Ma come home? They let her out already?"

"No, Charlie. They didn't let her out"

"What then?"

"She died. She died last night We called down there. They said they couldn't find you. You were supposed to be at some dance, but they couldn't find you."

"She what?"

"She died. She died, Charlie."

"How? She was over the hump. What—?"

"She fell out of bed, okay? She hated the fucking bedpan, and she wanted to go to the bathroom, and she fell."

"She fell? Wasn't anybody watching her?"

"Yes. I was. I was watching her. She fell, and the blood clot broke and killed her. Because I went to sleep, okay? In the chair beside her bed I fell asleep. Okay? Because I couldn't watch her alone."

"What?"

"I fell asleep, didn't you hear me? And she fell out of bed, get it? And you didn't even fucking call. You said you'd call."

"She's dead?"

"She's dead, Terry." Suddenly Nick's anger dissolved in stifled sounds of weeping. After a moment he managed to ask, "Are you coming home?"

"Of course, I'm—"

"I can't handle this alone, Terry. Gramps is useless. We need you."

"I'll catch a plane. I'll get there as fast as I can. Jesus, Nick." It struck Terry how far from weeping he himself was. "I'm sorry, Nick."

"Me too. Oh, me too." And then Nick hung up.

***

Terry pushed through the drifted snow, crossing the campus toward Visitation. There, a nun answered the door. He asked for Didi and the nun showed him to a bench in the cold vestibule. When Didi appeared, he saw in her face that she knew. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"Ma's dead."

They stared at each other, not moving.

Terry said, "I got to leave right away, and I didn't want you to think—"

"What? Wait a minute. What?"

"Ma died last night They looked for me at the dance, but they couldn't find me."

"Your ma?" Didi closed the distance between them, instinctively ready to embrace him.

But Terry put his hands up, stopping her. "It's because I wasn't there."

His statement jolted her. "What do you mean?" she said.

"She fell because Nick and Gramps couldn't take care of her alone."

"That's ridiculous. She was in the hospital. That's what nurses are for."

"You don't understand. I didn't call her. I was going to call last night, but then—"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute. Last night? Are you saying your ma died because last night ... you were with me?"