The Side of the Angels (42 page)

“I'm betting on fall, so rearrange your thoughts about the location and color scheme,” I said. “Never underestimate Louise and her stubbornness. And Ma, I should fill you in on something.”

I told her about Tony. It didn't take much time, but it seemed as if I recited the story of Tony's and my happy reconciliation for hours, because my mother said nothing at all while I was talking. I tapped the receiver with my fingernail.

“Hello? A reaction would be good here.”

“As long as he makes you happy,” she remarked in pinched tones.

“How should I know if he'll make me happy, Ma? We just got back together. There's every chance that he'll make me
un
happy. Every once in a while. And very, very happy on occasion. We'll see how we do the rest of the time. He's a difficult guy, you know.”

“You're not exactly easy yourself,” she pointed out.

“Now you're siding with him?”

“I'll be back for New Year's Eve. We'll have a big party at the house.”

“Could you try and like him, Ma? I'll try to like Ira.”

“What do you mean? No one couldn't like Ira.”

“You're right. Ira is a saint, a living, breathing saint. You be even more of a saint and give Tony a chance, or he and I will be celebrating the new year with one of those Holiday Inn champagne weekend packages. I hear they're pretty nice, and you don't have to drive on New Year's Eve.”

“Don't get huffy with me. Louise says he's improved a lot, so we'll see. Since there's no talking you out of this.” Of course she'd already
hashed it over with Louise. Why had I wasted my breath giving her the news?

“If that's the best you can do, Ma …”

“Have I ever been rude to a guest in my house? I said bring him, and I meant it.”

So, God help me, I had a place to go for New Year's Eve, and even a date.

I'd looked in on Wendy on my way out of the office. She was wrapping Christmas presents for all the secretaries. I hadn't even bought one for my own secretary yet. Her energy amazed me. She could wreck Ron's life and scheme her way to the top, and still find time to pick up tiny muslin sachets to tie into the ribbons of her gifts.

Career robot, I thought. But when I looked again, she seemed to be another person entirely. Just twenty-five, just young and making every mistake her character and situation could predictably work toward. If she stayed with Ron, she'd be taking on a man far more confused and weak-willed than she realized now. If she left him, the break would be ugly, painful, and public, since I would bet that every employee in the place knew what was going on, and had probably known sooner than I had.

At Wendy's age I had yet to meet Tony. Or Jeremy. My father was still alive. I thought I knew all there was to know about love and work and friendship, and I'd barely started on my way.

“I hear we're going to be traveling together,” I said with false joviality.

She stared at me.

“California,” I said. “I wasn't going to let Ron throw you to the lions out there. I'm coming, too.”

There was disappointment in her smile. I wanted to throttle her. Then I saw a package on her desk, a package marked “For Nicky” in bubbly schoolgirl handwriting. Wendy had gotten me a present. The stupid kid. The poor, stupid kid. I'd have to buy some suitable basket of overpriced toiletries at the duty-free and wrap it tonight, though I had no wrapping materials at home except tinfoil and the Sunday comics. Also some duct tape and a leftover shirt box from Macy's. It would have to do.

“We'll have a good time in California,” I said. “It'll be an adventure.”

She nodded.

“Are you going home for Christmas?”

I hadn't asked her about her plans before this. Why hadn't I? Wasn't that just the normal kindness you'd show to anyone you worked with? For all I knew Wendy was an orphan, with nowhere to go for the holidays.

“I'm staying with my mother, in Aspen.”

“Skiing?”

“I don't know how. My mom can't believe it. She's always bugging me to take lessons, because skiing's what she does all day and she doesn't like to leave me alone. My dad's in Vermont, and he said I could come up there, too, but he and his wife have a new baby, so I thought Aspen would be better all around.”

“My mother just announced she's having a big New Year's bash, if you're back by then.”

“Maybe,” she said, and smiled at me, a quavery smile completely unlike the practiced teeth flashing that was her usual office smile.

“Great food,” I said, reminding myself to make sure to force Ma into ordering party platters and sheet cake from the grocery store. “Dancing. Think about it.”

Then I left before I could ruin even this feeble beginning. It was painful, somehow, to think of Wendy by herself in some condo in Aspen, thumbing through
Vogue
and pining after Ron, maybe calling one of her girlfriends, only to get the answering machine. I couldn't feel angry at her for this mess with Ron, when I'd made many an equally sorry romantic mistake in my time. Only luck and chance had thrown me back together with Tony. Otherwise, I might be just like Wendy, taking what I could get from a man who didn't have much to give.

Maybe Louise was right. Maybe it wasn't for us to judge what other people did in the pursuit of love.

In that underheated bus, staring into the snowstorm, my feet curled up under me, I was paralyzed to think that it wasn't a sunset Tony and I
were walking off into, it was the mess of complications that any sea change brings. If I could have rung the bell for the bus to stop and dashed out onto the highway, I think I'd have thumbed a ride to Florida or some other silly warm place and not looked back. I was that frightened that we were asking for disaster. Disaster had been our modus operandi up to that point, you could say.

Louise had advised me almost two months earlier to make room for love in my life, and here I was, literally doing that. It might even work out. My brothers would welcome Tony instantly as one of them, as they had before. My mother would accept him when she got it through her head that he wasn't going away. I had a misty vision, suddenly, of us all pooling our money to buy a cottage somewhere on the Eastern Shore, for weekends and vacations and bird-watching, should any of us ever learn to identify a heron or an osprey. We'd get a pair of communal binoculars and fight over who got to use them, though only Michael would ever spot anything other than a possum. Ira's grandchildren could come down on summer vacations and teach Joey and Maggie's current and future babies—and Johnny and Louise's?—how to swim.

I had an imagination and it could take me that far, even if I didn't have the optimist's blissful certainty that everything would be fine. Louise will always be the one of us who peers ahead with trust and confidence. The gift of hope was not a gift that the godmothers laid in my cradle, but if I ever learn it, at some creaking and advanced old age, it will be because of my cousin. My cousin, my companion, my ally until the end. My undeserved blessing.

There was a foot of snow on the roof of the airport, big drifts of it that looked as if they'd bring down the whole tentlike structure. It seemed to take hours to crawl from the airport entrance road up to the Flyer drop-off spot. I was out of the bus while the others were still assembling their bags, stopping to tip the driver five dollars for getting us there alive.

Tony's flight was due in ten minutes, the arrivals board said. I felt that the whole airport should know this, that all the hurrying, clamoring,
self-obsessed people should stop their noise. What did they know? Could anyone on any plane, traveling toward this place on a thousand converging flight paths, could any traveler be more important? I wanted to shove aside every baby carriage, every luggage trolley, every twittering tour group in my way. I stood on the people mover, cursing every passenger who darted in before the door could close and we could lumber to the correct terminal. Airports weren't fast places, I remember thinking. Not really. They just looked fast.

And then I was at the gate, in an anxious, pressing crowd. We waited a long time, people milling about, inaudible static on the PA system, clots of angry customers for the next flight out of that gate mobbing the gate agent. Then the airline rep announced that Tony's flight had touched down and was on its way to the gate, as if this flight were no more unusual than a pleasure trip on a sunny June day. The crowd pressed forward once again. The passengers came off the airplane, so many of them, all strolling from the plane as if they had infinite leisure, the lazy worthless bums. The selfish pigs. One after another they plodded up the carpet and were claimed and made much of. And still no Tony.

Then there he was, at the top of the gangway, lugging the largest duffel bag ever allowed in carry-on. It must have held every possession he owned. I don't know how he'd been able to lift it, with his bad knee. When he saw me, over the heads of the jostling, clumsy crowd, he dropped it there and came to me and held me tightly.

“I thought you'd never get here,” I said.

“As if you'd be that lucky,” he said, and kissed me over and over again.

No one noticed. He recovered the bag and we each took a handle, although Tony protested that he could carry it himself. We joined the crowd heading down the long corridors, so numerous and slow-moving it looked like a procession. A procession of the unwittingly fortunate, I knew in my rejoicing heart. Of travelers who—this time at least—had arrived in safety, and were heading home.