by J. M. Monaco
When we arrived at Jon’s flat we stopped in the kitchen first for a drink. It was bigger than I expected and unusually clean for two young men, although Jon mentioned Martin wasn’t so great at tidying up after himself. After hearing Jon’s story about British education and government spending it was a quick move to the bedroom. There I saw two walls covered with a colourful combination of tightly stacked bookshelves and musical equipment. I was impressed that his books and music were labelled like a library, in alphabetical order. After I selected several books to scan, one on public health, another on sociology, another on photography and art, Jon made sure he set them all back in their right places afterwards. To my relief, he took hold of the situation by dimming the lights and playing the mesmeric and, I have to admit, sexy, Miles Davis record, ‘So What’.
When I saw him undressed that night for the first time, that touch of low lighting from the bedside lamp casting a golden shadow across his skin, it was a revelation to see all his strength captured in his long legs, particularly his well-defined thighs, calves, and surprisingly, his narrow torso. I found this sudden physicality appealing but somewhat overwhelming. But it was the combination of those two things – what a turn-on.
We continued seeing each other, sleeping together, and soon enough were at it like rabbits to the point of amorous exhaustion. He made sure we managed our time together around the demands of our courses, his music, cycling, and any paid work commitments. It was hard to imagine he ever found time to sleep with all he had going on.
I was excited I’d met a clever one who took such pride in his organisation skills, but could also work magic with his fingers on the keyboard and in the bedroom without me having to guide him. On top of that he was what my mother and Nonna would have called a handsome fellow who happened to not be too aware of his good looks, and, well, he just so happened to show a genuine interest in me. There was one other major plus: he wasn’t a psychopath. It was hard for me to believe, but there was nothing difficult about our relationship. One thing, though, always lurked around in the back of my mind in those early days.
I couldn’t quite get the likes of Rob Segal out of my mind. Was my thing with this Jon Weinstein serious or just a fling? Did the fact that I wasn’t Jewish matter at all to Jon in the same way I assumed it mattered to Rob, whose Manhattan-Mindy girlfriend could offer him everything his Jewish heart, and, let’s be honest, his Jewish family, desired? But then, who cared if we were just a fling? I told myself I would be OK with that too. After all, I reminded myself, it was the sexy, woman-on-top, late 1980s, with Madonna starting that underwear-as-outerwear trend, although I never quite built up the courage to buy myself a corset. I still felt the urge to confront this fling or no fling issue one night after seeing a late-night film when we waited at a bus stop near Marble Arch.
‘So, have you dated lots of non-Jewish women before me or am I the first?’
He didn’t seem put out by the direct question, but was thoughtfully silent before answering. ‘Yeah, I have. And I also had a Jewish girlfriend when I was an undergrad but it didn’t last long, maybe four months or so.’
‘But would you ideally want to marry a Jewish woman? You know, keep the tradition and all that, have Jewish kids.’
I was nervous about how far to go, but I knew I had to face up to the truth at some point. I knew that any talk about marriage and kids with someone you haven’t known a long time is the kiss of death. I was treading on dangerous territory, but what the hell, I thought, what do I have to lose now after everything that’s been? I prepared myself for the end with some sense that if that was the case, at least, feeling the force of Madonna behind me, I would be the one in control this time.
He was quiet again in his usual, thoughtful way before answering. ‘Well, I guess I want to live my life in a way that’s not dictated by all that stuff, all those boundaries. It’s too constraining. If I consciously try to seek out a Jewish woman for that reason then I might miss out on something else. Plus, marrying a Jew wouldn’t guarantee happiness, better mothering or happier kids for that matter. Kids can grow up rejecting their religion and not wanting anything to do with it. And anyway, this Jewish girlfriend I had once was a bit of a nutter, a total control freak. She was the last person I wanted to settle down with.’
I said nothing, not wanting to risk revealing my own nutter tendencies, although I had been proud of my ability, at that stage during my time in London, for at least managing to pull off the impression that I was as normal as everyone else. This was helped, I’m sure, by the mask of my respectable academic study in art history. When it seemed things were going my way, so much so that I felt the same rare sensation in my being that others would have defined as contentment, I began to worry less about what bad things might be lurking around the corner.
Although there were pedestrians a fair distance away at the other end of the street, our bus stop had gone quiet after a busy time of people catching night buses or taxis. A minute or so passed with silence between us as we were both gazing outward to the road, pondering what to say next. But our thoughts were broken when suddenly we witnessed a dreadful thing. A car sped past us on the opposite side of the road and hit a person who was walking across at the same time. The impact was enough to send his body into flight over the car then with a thump onto the street.
I screamed at the same time that Jon shouted, ‘Oh my God, did you see that? Did you see that?’
The car didn’t stop and the person was left there, unmoving. We started to cross quickly, noticing a couple of other cars were approaching. We saw that he was young, maybe around twenty-five, with short dark hair, a couple of days unshaven, with features that suggested he could have been Middle Eastern. I remember he wore a black leather bomber jacket that felt softer than a rose petal when I touched his shoulder. He was breathing but remained completely still. His eyes widened when he saw us, not turning his head but moving his gaze in my direction, then Jon’s, then back at me again. His lips quivered but he couldn’t speak. The first person we saw was a waiter at a nearby restaurant who had only just stepped out to light a cigarette. Jon shouted at him for help.
‘This guy’s been knocked by a hit and run. Call an ambulance,’ he shouted, trying to keep his floppy hair out of his eyes. I steered a couple of potentially oncoming cars away from us. When the street went quiet again I crouched low and held the man’s cold, motionless hand.
‘It’s OK, everything’s going to be OK. You’re going to be OK,’ I said, knowing I had no idea how things would turn out. The waiter moved a bit closer, still staring at us, now smoking.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Jon shouted again. ‘He’s been hit by car. A hit and run. Call an ambulance.’
With that, the waiter seemed to realise finally what was happening and ran inside.
After that, the restaurant staff and customers came over, and passers-by appeared asking us what had happened. They’d seen nothing, they said, and stayed with us until the ambulance and police arrived. I squeezed the man’s hand and just before the ambulance took him away I noticed one of his eyes shed a tear that trickled down into his ear.
The police took us to the station with them to record our statement. The car was dark blue, we thought, or was it black? A smallish model, maybe, older, but we weren’t too sure, we told them. No, we had no idea what make it was, who was driving – man or woman, never saw the licence plate. It was dark. It was gone as fast as it came.
‘How could someone do this?’ I asked, not expecting an answer. ‘How?’
‘You wouldn’t believe what some people are capable of, love. The things we see around here,’ the young female officer said, chewing gum. ‘I could tell you some stories, I could.’ The smell of spearmint mixed with stale cigarette smoke surrounded her. She was pretty in a no-need-for-make-up kind of way.
Jon’s composure held up, although I noticed he closed his eyes every now and then and took deep, slow breaths as we waited. But I was a wreck.
‘It w
as his eyes, Jon. He was so scared. What if he didn’t have any ID on him? What if he doesn’t make it? What if his family end up wondering what’s happened to him?’ I tried hard not to, but kept repeating the words, ‘It was his eyes. He was scared he was going to die.’
Jon said little but held my hand in a grip, then wrapped his arms around me.
When we made it back to his flat we lay in bed, Jon making efforts to keep me calm. ‘The guy was in a state of shock,’ he said, ‘but it’s amazing how strong a young body can be. If he’s lucky he can recover from his injuries. But then again,’ Jon admitted, ‘he was knocked high up in the air and came smashing down. And he wasn’t moving. It could be his neck.’
After that we said nothing but held each other, Jon keeping my hand in his, stroking my arm, kissing my cheek every now and then. I cried for the hit and run guy at different times that night, prayed he would survive and be able to walk away.
The next morning was a Sunday and we phoned the police station hoping they could tell us any news. We were kept on hold for a long time and almost gave up until an officer returned to inform us that the man had died a few hours before in the hospital. He didn’t tell us anything about the extent of his injuries, didn’t know any details, just that they would be in touch if they found the driver. We never heard from them again.
Our shared witnessing of the hit and run that night, our look into the eyes of another human being near to our own age who was so close to death, created a special bond between us. Over the following months Jon and I spent many nights together awake in bed, surrendering ourselves to the inward space that was created from our memory of that night. We stayed close, wrapped in each other, legs and arms intertwined. His mouth quivering. That tear rolling into his ear. How precious, we thought, to feel the heat from our bodies, to taste each other’s kiss again, both of us imagining in our own different ways that if he hadn’t crossed the street at that very second he’d still be breathing, would maybe at that moment be lying in bed and taking in the scent of his own lover. I had a picture in my mind of his mother crying for her baby.
Jon and I didn’t bother ourselves with the usual anxieties or questioning about the future of our relationship. None of those tedious things mattered to us, the stuff that made up the worries I had brought up that deadly night about Jewish girlfriends, long-term commitments.
‘I want us to just be, Jo…just as things are. But for a long time,’ Jon whispered to me one morning after bringing me coffee in bed.
‘Me too. But I’m going to have to go back home. Soon. I’ll need to go back.’
It was all decided in simple, straightforward terms, so easily that I’m reminded again how luck can work its way into the most mundane circumstances.
Final exams of the year approached and my plans were to fly back to Boston and take a summer class again to make up the credits I needed to graduate the following academic year in May.
‘You know I was talking about you today to someone I know in the department, an Irish PhD student,’ Jon said when we met at the arts library. His mood was unusually light and cheerful in spite of the stress of course deadlines. ‘I mentioned your grandmother was from Ireland and he was telling me that people like you, children, grandchildren, can get an Irish passport. And the thing is, Jo, if you have an Irish passport you can live and work here because the UK and Ireland have some kind of common area agreement thing, and are both part of the European Union. Yeah, can you believe it? Looks like Ireland is looking for its people to come back home.’
‘Really? That can’t be right. Is he sure? No, that sounds too easy,’ I laughed. I felt a surge of excitement, mixed with fear. Could this happen for real? Could I have the freedom to pick up and leave Boston without anything stopping me, with Jon behind me the whole way? Was Jon serious? But his smile was wide and sincere.
‘Let’s call the Irish Embassy and find out, but Jo, he wouldn’t have said that if he didn’t know for sure.’
And so it was. How funny fate is. How different things could have been.
We hugged long and hard at the security gate at Heathrow on the morning of my departure. As we stood there I took in Jon’s sweat, absorbed by his T-shirt, the one he had worn the day before when cycling to the student halls to stay with me. I welcomed the smell of a body embracing the challenges of life. But then I was going back to the overly hygienic, God-fearing USA and I was going to have to make the best of it, at least until my Irish passport application came through.
‘This is only the beginning, Jo,’ Jon said with a hopeful tone, his voice cracking slightly. ‘You’ll finish your degree, get your passport, and then, hey, the world’s your lobster, as they say. What’s there to worry about? I’ll still be here if you come back. If you want me.’
By that point I couldn’t hold back the tears or speak.
‘Don’t forget to call me when you get there,’ he said. ‘So I know you’re OK, that you arrived safely.’
It was the first time ever in my life that anyone, family or friend, had asked that of me. A little phone call was all it was, to let him know I was still alive.
Seventeen
After looking through photos I fall asleep for a couple of hours and wake up disoriented when I hear movements downstairs; the fridge door closing, the tap turning on and off, cupboards opening then slamming shut. I make my way into the kitchen and see my father sitting alone at the table, hat and jacket still on, staring at a can of Budweiser Light and a shot glass filled with brown liquid. It’s never clear when he’ll be home. I glance at the clock: 1pm.
‘I finished work a bit early,’ he says, looking into his glass.
I dig a bit more. ‘Oh, but you said you’d be working till around five.’
With his eyes still lowered, he says, ‘It’s always like this, changes on the day, the job, when they tell you to go. They move people around at the last minute. You never know. It’s good I ain’t got money worries,’ he says with a chuckle. ‘Driving trucks keeps me busy.’
He ends with a heavy shrug, raises the shot glass to his lips and swigs after taking away the toothpick. His usual negative disposition seems different today; more pronounced. Bleaker. His shoulders and torso are slumped. His face doesn’t just register as blank, the furrow in his brow communicates something else; it’s as if the firing squad has prepared him. The offer’s up for any last words, but he’s too tired.1 Just get it over with.
‘Well, maybe as Ma just died it’s not a bad idea to not go to work, you know, spend time with the grieving.’
He shakes his head. ‘Nope,’ he says. ‘Can’t sit around. No point. Good to stay busy. No, I don’t sit around.’ But he continues to do just that, sitting and staring into his glass.
I bring out some photos of my father and mother together when they were young in an effort to inspire him to tell a story or two. Maybe he’ll even manage a smile.
One of them appears to be the only picture from their wedding day, my mother wearing a simple white dress. My scrawny-looking young dad with chiselled cheekbones, slicked-back shiny-black hair, wears a basic dark suit and tie. My grandmother, Deirdre, is leaning toward Terry on one side and her husband, my grandfather, is on the other side of the frame standing next to my father. My grandfather’s younger face is close to what he looked like in his miserable older years, but the skin looks tight and rigid. His mouth appears locked with only a suggestion of a slight upturn at the corners. In fact, none of them are smiling. Their stolid faces reveal an odd kind of acceptance. Here we are then. There’s nothing else we can do about it now so let’s make some attempt at having a half-decent party.
My mother is pregnant with Dave on the day of their early September wedding. She would have been sixteen when she and my father both lost their senses, if they ever had any then, when they let their young bodies take over before thinking of any consequences. Would that have been the same night my grandfather packed the brutal punch that sent Ma down those stairs? She’d stayed out all night and didn’t
tell her parents where she was and when she returned the next morning, there he stood, waiting.
‘He punched me right in the face. On the nose, actually. I thought it was broken for a while, but it was OK, just hurt like hell.’ The blow knocked her backwards down the flight of stairs – ‘Oh, no, there weren’t too many stairs, I don’t think’ – and when she hit the bottom he moved fast after her, pulled her up and threw her a couple of other punches for good measure, one to the jaw, the other to the side of her head. ‘Wow, did I end up black and blue after that one. That’s when I got this little chip in my front tooth. See? Right there.’ This was not the first time her father would strike her, she told us on multiple occasions, each time with an odd sense of pride, perhaps in recognising her own robust nature. ‘Well, he knew what he had to do when we got out of line. I guess I deserved it. He let me know I wasn’t going to get away with that kind of thing.’
My mother sometimes pined for the decisive quality a good parental smack would convey. ‘Kids can use a bit of discipline these days,’ she said when Dave’s daughter, Amy, acted up in her teen years. ‘They’re walking all over parents nowadays.’
I count back nine months from my brother’s birthday at the end of March and work out that Ma’s night of passion with Jimmy O’Brien, the guy every other girl in the neighbourhood wanted, the guy with the fast car, would have happened sometime in June. The perfect season for romance. I imagine the young Theresa Doherty with her firm teenage body, with the curves she hates because they dare to bulge to extremes in those places where older and younger men’s eyes lingered. Yet at the same time, she loves her physical power, the way it controls Jimmy, drives him crazy when she flaunts herself from a distance. She’s just waiting for the right time to hand herself over in the name of love to her older nineteen-year-old boyfriend. If she had been any younger and if it happened today, Jimmy O’Brien just might have been thrown in jail. He should count his lucky stars that all he had to do was plead guilty to the parents about his role in the crime, the deed that was discovered only when there was talk of a baby, and take the punishment of marriage.