The Side of the Angels

by Christina Bartolomeo

  “That sounds really nice, Louise, and if you ever decide to take up greeting card poetry, I will remember it for your future use. In the meantime, this is your life we’re talking about. Are you going to wait to bring this matter up with Johnny until you’re sixty and Johnny’s been through two divorces?”

  “You’re exaggerating, Nicky.”

  “You know I’m not. Either she’ll dump him or he’ll get more and more daredevil, because he’s the kind of person who’s just going to tear around trying to outrun how bad he feels. He doesn’t know any other way. If you won’t approach him for your own sake, how about for his?”

  “I did approach him,” said Louise, shutting me up but good.

  “You did?”

  “I more than approached him. I slept with him.”

  “Boy. Oh, boy, oh, boy.”

  “After your mom’s wedding I drove him home, because he’d had a lot of champagne. He was drunk and I seduced him. On purpose.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “That’s what I said, when I woke up yesterday and there he was. And then the phone rang, and it was Betsey, and as soon as he heard her voice he gave me this look of … I can’t describe it, Nicky. It was a look of horror. A look that said, what have I done? So I grabbed my coat and ran out while he was still on the phone and headed for the airport.”

  “Are you sure it was a look of horror? Maybe he was just startled.”

  “It was horror, all right. It was like that scene in The Godfather when the guy wakes up with the horse in his bed.”

  “I think it’s just the horse’s head. And I can’t believe Johnny would feel that way about waking up with you. Maybe he just needed to throw up from all the champagne.”

  “Maybe. But he didn’t stop me from leaving.”

  We sat over the cold dregs of our coffee for ten more minutes. I was stumped. Had Johnny been that drunk? Had he been even as drunk as Louise thought he was? My cousin Johnny could hold his liquor better than any man I’d ever known. It would take more champagne than he could drink in an afternoon to sucker him into sleeping with Louise if he didn’t want to.

  “And what about Hub, how’s that been shaping up?” I finally remembered to ask.

  “I broke up with him two weeks ago. I tried to call you a few times, but this intimidating woman told me you were on the phone with reporters and she couldn’t disturb you. She got really annoyed when I wouldn’t leave my name.”

  That must have been Margaret. She thought every caller was a secret spy or a condo time-share salesman.

  “I broke up with him the day I went to get fitted for my bridesmaid’s dress. I was standing there, on the little stool you stand on so they can do the hem, and all around me were these wedding dresses on hangers, dresses the shop was working on. And I thought, I can picture myself in a wedding dress. I can picture the veil I’d want, and how I’d do my hair. But try as hard as I could, I couldn’t picture Hub standing there at the altar, with his hair slicked back, waiting for me.”

  I couldn’t picture it either, mainly because it was hard to believe that even for his own wedding Hub would consent to take a bath.

  “He might clean up very nicely, Louise,” I said tentatively.

  “No, what I meant was that as hard as I tried, I couldn’t picture driving away with him. I couldn’t picture buying a coffeepot with him, or going on vacation with him sitting next to me on the plane and patting my hand during the turbulence. I couldn’t picture any of it. So that night I called him and I said, ‘Hub, when you think of us five years from now, what do you think of?’ and he said, ‘I never think five years ahead about anything.’ And I thought, this is just not enough energy to carry us along.”

  “How’d he take it?”

  “Not well.”

  “He’ll get over it. He’s probably already writing a song about it.”

  “Probably.” Louise sighed. “That’s the last time in my life that anyone will ever write a song about me, I bet.”

  “Hey, all those sonnets and serenading are overrated, if you ask me. Look at Helen of Troy. What good did it do her? And don’t quote me Yeats about Maude Gonne, Louise. I might just throw up.”

  “Is my mother going off on a real honeymoon?” I asked Louise before we went to sleep. I was sleeping on the fainting couch, my cousin on my bed under six blankets with a hot water bottle (Louise doesn’t adjust well to cold). She’d been too lonely to sleep in the adjoining room.

  “She’s leaving tomorrow afternoon. The Greek islands.”

  “I’ll call her tomorrow morning and congratulate her.”

  Congratulate her, my ass. Not invited to my own mother’s wedding. Left to handle the Louise-and-Johnny mess alone. Suddenly she was the wayward one, and I was the heavy. And I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one bit.

  I tried not to think about Tony’s face when I’d left tonight, or about him and Suzanne roaming New York together, holding hands and window-shopping and taking a buggy ride in Central Park. Not that Tony would do any of those things publicly. At least, he’d never have done them with me.

  Perhaps I should invite Jeremy to visit. Tony probably thought Jeremy was one of those whey-faced Englishmen who have bad teeth, probably pictured Jeremy as a pasty, stoop-shouldered consolation prize. I’d show him.

  19

  THE NEXT MORNING, I left Louise in an exhausted sleep. When I got to the office, Margaret, Lester, and a couple of unhappy-looking conscriptees were practicing a few ditties to perk up the troops on the picket line, from a mimeographed booklet Margaret had dug up entitled “Sing Along With Labor.”

  “Just like a tree that’s planted by the water,” caroled Margaret a half step out of pitch, “we shall not be moved.”

  “I never got that,” I said to Kate, lowering my voice so as not to hurt Margaret’s feelings. “Why wouldn’t you be able to move a tree that’s planted by the water? The roots would be all muddy. I’d think that would be the easiest kind of tree to move.”

  “It keeps her happy,” Kate said. “And I had to find some way to get Lester inside before he succumbed to frostbite.”

  “Is Clare still in mediation?”

  “I hope so. She’s not here, anyway.”

  “I need to borrow her office to call my mother.”

  Clare’s office looked almost as if it hadn’t been tampered with. I wondered what Tony would tell Clare about Doug’s absence. Knowing Clare, she would put two and two together. Perhaps she already had. It would account for her sudden coldness to Doug at yesterday’s meeting.

  Doug’s Elf gifts were still lying on his desk. Perhaps I should buy a singing lobster for my mother as a wedding present. Maybe the store stocked some for every occasion. I might even be able to find a lobster couple in a tux and bridal veil that sang a duet of “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Oh Promise Me.”

  * * *

  “We didn’t elope,” said my mother. “We merely decided to handle it the simplest way possible. At my age, I’m not waiting to see what David’s Bridal has in stock in my size. We wanted to get on with things.”

  For the first time in my life, I couldn’t imagine what my mother was looking like on the other end of the phone. I could hear how she sounded … carefree and happy. I just couldn’t picture her looking like that.

  “Who are you,” I said, “and what have you done with my mother?”

  “Is that any way to talk to me the day after my wedding?”

  “You couldn’t have let me know?”

  “I told you, it was a sudden decision. Spur of the moment.”

  “You are not a spur of the moment person.”

  I could hear, very faintly, the crackle of tissue—my mother always packs her suitcases with layers and layers of tissue between her clothes, a special thin, rustling-sounding tissue. I don’t know where she buys it.

  “Ma, this is so unlike you. You didn’t even get married in the Church.”

  “I’m sure God will understand.”

  �
�You didn’t say that when Michael’s friends had that Mass-and-barbecue to celebrate their lifelong commitment. You said, and I quote, ‘I don’t know what the Church is coming to. These liberal priests. No standards anymore.’”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “That was three months ago. You didn’t even know Ira three months ago.”

  “You’re going to like him even more when you get to know him,” she said firmly. “We’re going to go to the Greek isles for a week or so. Can you believe that? I bought a two-piece and it’s the middle of December. I paid sixty dollars.”

  My mother was married. That was amazing enough. She’d married a Jewish man—my mother, the most insular Catholic since Torque-mada—and what was more, she’d gotten married in a civil ceremony, without blessing of clergy of any sort. It almost defied belief. But even more startling than all these revelations put together, my mother had purchased a two-piece. My mother, who still owned a bathing suit with a little skirt on it.

  “Anyway, honey,” said this person, “we’ll be back in two weeks unless we decide to stay and do the Holy Land. You wouldn’t believe the packing a trip like this requires.”

  No, I wouldn’t. My mother and father had never traveled farther than Cape May, New Jersey, on a vacation.

  I said, “Ma, you take care of yourself over there. Wear a lot of sun-screen.”

  “I packed it already.”

  “And don’t forget nights could be chilly.”

  “Ira got me a pashmina. Betsey said that you shouldn’t buy one of those, that they hurt the mountain goats, but Ira said he got a cruelty-free one, and it’s lovely.”

  Ira, Ira, Ira. She was really in love.

  “Do you have your passport up to date?”

  “Ira has a friend at the State Department. I don’t like how my picture turned out, though. They wouldn’t even wait for me to put on lip-stick.” “Ma. This was so quick.”

  There was a pause.

  “You know, sweetie,” said my mother, who never in my memory had called me that, “the past few years, my life just hasn’t been very interesting. Since I gave up the shop, I started to feel like a cliché, like one of those widows over at St. Ignatius that you see sitting in the back row every morning at Mass, the ones who are there because they have nothing better to do with themselves.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. She hadn’t known what to do with herself partly because I spent so little time in her company. Maybe that was her fault, but maybe my skin could have been thicker. To me, Ma’s judging remarks had been like arrows in the flesh. But to my mother, criticism was just a medium through which she conveyed information, anxiety, possibly even affection.

  She was saying, “For the first time in my life I wasn’t worried about money and could sit back, but what was I going to do, learn to play canasta? Then Louise came up with this idea, and I thought, well, why not? Just for a social companion. And see what happened.”

  “I guess it’s true, that you always find love when you’re not looking for it.”

  “No, that’s not true, not for someone your age. You should be out there. Ira knows any number of men who’d love to take you out. Gentlemen, just like him. But younger, of course. Older than you but still young. Young enough.”

  Great, I thought. With Ma locating dates for me from among Ira’s geriatric set, I’d find myself settled down with a nice peppy sixty-twoyear old before the year was out. Ten years from now I’d be trimming his toenails and driving him to his monthly urologist appointment. Whoever said that bit about how it was better to be an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave had obviously never considered the varying expectations of the two roles.

  “Ma,” I said. “Don’t you worry about me. You whoop it up out there in the Greek islands and you go on to see the Holy Land. How often do you get that chance? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said my mother. “I thought we could take in the Wailing Wall and the ruins at Petra and maybe even hop over to Egypt.”

  “Ma, congratulations. I mean it.”

  “You’re not angry? I didn’t do this to hurt you, Nicky. I had the big wedding when I was young, and it was perfect. With Ira, it didn’t matter how. And Johnny and Louise were so handy.”

  “Travel safely, Ma. Enjoy yourself and take a lot of pictures for me.”

  “When I see you at Christmas I’ll have a suntan.”

  I didn’t remind her that her pale Irish skin burned even in May. Ira would bring sunscreen and buy her wide-brimmed straw hats.

  If my mother was happy, really happy, she wasn’t as likely to mind what I did with my life. Okay, that was a pipe dream, but maybe she’d mind less, distracted by Ira. This concept was a little scary—as if I’d suddenly been informed that God actually wouldn’t be too bothered if I robbed a bank or cheated on my taxes—but on the whole a great relief.

  I tried to picture my mother camel-riding in the Valley of Kings, or fox-trotting with Ira as the ship’s jazz combo played “Walking My Baby Back Home.” I tried to imagine it, but I couldn’t. Some things, as my mother had always told me, we have to take on faith.

  When I emerged from Clare’s office, Louise had arrived. She was applying felt lettering with a glue gun to a banner that a contingent of our nurses would carry tomorrow, when Clare or her designee went to the state house to testify before a subcommittee on a new needle-stick safety law. The law would require Rhode Island hospitals to switch to retractable needles within the next three years, and Clare had played a large role in drafting the legislation.

  The banner read, “Safe Needles Save Nurses’ Lives.” Louise was jazzing the lettering up with some “alarm lines” around the edges of the words when I came up behind her.

  “I see they put you to work.”

  “I asked for something to do. I want to hang around for a few days, if you don’t mind.”

  “Mind? It’ll be great.”

  She began to draw an exaggeratedly pointed needle next to the banner slogan, and made it drip with tiny scraps of red-felt blood. On the scene for an hour and she was already a natural.

  I returned to my desk to discover that Eric had ornamented my keyboard with a large E, executed in painterly fashion with white correcting fluid. I spied the tail of his shirt disappearing into the men’s room, and went right after him.

  “You can’t come in here,” he said. He was wearing the same shirt he’d worn the day before, a brown and black stripe that had probably been bought at the Salvation Army. His skinny wrists stuck out of it. Suddenly, I wanted to take him to a department store and buy him a warm pullover, to scrub his little face and show him how to brush his hair. Someday, when he put a little weight on him, he’d be a handsome kid. Now he was a scrawny brat with exhausted but loving parents who couldn’t keep pace with him. Why did people have so many children if they weren’t up to it?

  By a social worker’s standards you could not make a case that he was neglected, but Eric was not thriving. Someone should say something before it was too late.

  I sighed. I had been born with an urge to interfere even stronger than my mother’s, it seemed.

  “You can’t come in here,” Eric repeated. “Didn’t you see the sign? Men’s room. No girls allowed.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I? What did you do to my screen?”

  “I was just expressing myself.”

  I pulled two dollars out of my pocket.

  “You express yourself by going down to the pharmacy right now and buying me a nail file.”

  “I don’t know what a nail file looks like, Torchhead,” he said.

  “Ask the lady at the counter. Then you’re going to sit with me while we scrape that off.”

  “I have homework.”

  “I’ll help you with your homework afterward. Is it English? If it’s math, Kate can help you. If it’s English, we can ace it, me and you. Bring it on.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do. Only Tony
and my mother can tell me what to do.”

  “You want me to call Tony?”

  “Give me another two dollars for Pop Rocks,” he said. Pop Rocks were a rather frightening candy that sizzled and popped on the tongue. Eric liked to open his mouth while consuming them, to display the never-failing wonders of this process.

  I pulled out a five. Some days you have to know when you’re beaten.

  “There’s plenty. Now go,” I said.

  “I have to piss.”

  “You piss when you get back.”

  He departed with a smirk of satisfaction on his face that robbed me of all triumph.

  Talks were broken off that afternoon, less than three hours after the local and the hospital went into mediation.

  “It was a joke,” said Tony. “We offered two hours of mandatory overtime, then four. They stuck to eight hours of overtime, on demand, per shift. That means sixteen-hour shifts for nurses at management’s request. And they wouldn’t discuss staffing at all.”

  An impasse was declared. On the evening news, every local channel showed Bennett Winslow standing in front of the hospital, saying, with the kind of shameless bravado that was a Finchley and Crouse signature, “Why did nurses return to the bargaining table if they weren’t willing to negotiate? Why did they waste our time?”

  Winslow was beginning to perk up as he sensed the nearness of victory. Assurance was returning to his mellifluous voice, and he no longer visibly cringed at the tough questions.

  “I’m bringing them back in,” said Clare. We sat around the conference table, not looking at each other.

  “Another three days,” said Tony. “That’s all I’m asking. If we go back in then, it’ll still be before the holidays.”

  “Won’t that be a jolly, forgiving season inside the hospital,” said Kate. “I’m sure a lovely Christmas spirit will prevail.”

  “At least we’ll manage to get them a paycheck in time to buy presents for their kids,” said Tony morosely. “Or pay the heating bill.”