A Day in June

by Marisa Labozzetta

  What Daylight Saving couldn’t guarantee was that Jason would show after the sun and moon had changed shifts, his silhouette barely recognizable, sitting and waiting for Ryan like a shutout latchkey child on the steps of her three-decker. How many times had she imagined this scene or one like it: Jason returning from the seminary and telling her that he’d made a mistake, chosen the wrong one, that it was her and only her all along? And now he’s there, tugging on the sleeves of his thin navy windbreaker to cover his cold hands like a repentant teenager who hadn’t listened to his mother and worn a jacket unsuited for the weather: Jason with a sheepish grin that begs for a simple smile—an opening that will ease him into a justification for his sudden appearance.

  Get up, she thinks. Don’t sit there waiting for me to make the first move like always. Get the fuck up! And, as though he hears her, he rises like Jesus from the crypt, rolls away that heavy boulder between them, and meets her face-to-face.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Hey.”

  * * *

  Jason didn’t leave right after his talk with Father Curran. He didn’t want to set his vocation back for nothing and admit, yet again, that he was wrong about his life’s direction. And he certainly didn’t want to hurt Ryan any more. He decided to plunge into religious life deeper than ever and try to file his feelings for Ryan into the appropriate sections of his brain Father Curran had described: fond memories was too vague; fantasize about—okay; not wanting to exchange what he had for her—he couldn’t seem to locate that compartment, or maybe it just didn’t exist.

  At first glance, his fellow novices appeared a motley crew: JP and Holden with unruly curls, freckles, and wry senses of humor; Louis, Rory, and Clayton as hairless as Marines with necks and southern accents as thick. Ricardo and Amit, dark and exotic. Rob and Tyler, never without a tune except during meditation.

  On the other hand, in their jeans and T-shirts they were as identical as a litter of kittens: eager, earnest, pious, gregarious, and at the same time loners. They sat together from morning until night: in the white-washed classroom bifurcated by a dark chair-rail, with its old wooden desks, small windows, and the ubiquitous crucifix above the chalkboard; in the library, plopped in comfortable but worn, mismatched sofas amid stacks of books; in the stark refectory seated on two hard benches lining the long oak table; and in the chapel.

  At night they sat alone in their rooms. Most had old-fashioned mahogany dressers and two straight-back chairs, equally user-unfriendly. There was a desk with an attached bookshelf like the one he’d had in college, and a sink and medicine cabinet in the corner, a towel rack above the radiator, and an old brown iron hospital bed from which on the blank canvas of white walls he played out past scenes and envisioned new ones of Ryan. The drab green café curtains and plastic blinds made him long for the colorful and comfortable décor created by the woman who drove him crazy.

  He thought about her when the seminarians gave each other haircuts, when they washed down the tub and shower of the avocadogreen-tiled bathroom, when they prepared meals at the homeless shelter or tutored children at the local elementary school. “Don’t cut it too short,” he had cautioned her about his hair. “Use the large scrub brush,” she had insisted when he cleaned the bathroom.

  He thought about her in the weight room with its scraped red wooden floor. He played soccer and touch football on the lawn muddy from heavy rains—he and his buddies splattered with dirt, like hooligans out for a wild romp—all the while hoping the bodies crashing, the takedowns, the headers, would rattle his thoughts, shake them up like marbles in a pinball machine, until they dropped into holes and rolled to those secret compartments in his brain where they’d come to a quiet standstill. He formed a trio with Rob and Jared, and attempted some form of classical guitar since Rob was hot on Chopin and Bach. And he prayed—everywhere—that the thoughts would settle like dust on his dresser. But they never did.

  * * *

  On this first day of spring they stand speechless after their initial greeting: he in the anticipatory limbo of awaiting her next move, which he knows she carefully weighs.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

  She hesitates. Even if he didn’t look so pathetic standing there shivering, he could understand why she would hesitate. He wants to touch her—her face, her arm, her hand, anything—but she stands as impassive as the stone lions on either side of the steps, and he doesn’t dare.

  “Come on up,” she finally says, leading the way to the apartment he has never seen and whose address he found online.

  He settles for the warmth of the hissing radiators to welcome him as they step into the small foyer, where out of habit he removes his shoes. She does the same and lines up her tall boots alongside his sneakers on the colorful prayer rug. She’s wearing black-and-whitestriped socks on top of dark black tights or stockings or whatever she calls them. Then she unwinds the extraordinarily long scarf that’s looped around her neck several times, takes off her coat and hangs it on a coat rack. He unzips his windbreaker and follows suit. Their actions are slow and deliberate, intended to kill time.

  “You should have dressed better,” she says.

  “I know.” He looks down at his outfit. “I’m sorry. I kind of picked up quickly to catch an early bus. I slept in my clothes. My nice stuff is probably all wrinkled now anyway, but I can change.” He nods toward his duffle bag.

  She purses her lips.

  “I meant you should have worn something warmer. You came from Charlotte, not Aruba. You know how crazy the weather is here this time of year. Don’t they give you gloves in the seminary?”

  Damn, she could be cutting. But he’s too literal, that’s what she used to tell him. Takes everything too seriously. He’s been in her presence for nearly ten minutes now, and all they have managed to talk about was the weather, and he’s already messed that up. He’s discouraged and nervous.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “Tomorrow’s supposed to be in the sixties.”

  “Nice place. Why’d you leave Brighton?”

  “Change of scenery.”

  “You live alone?”

  He follows her into the kitchen, where she goes for the teakettle on the stove and takes it to the sink, as though determined to carry out some daily afternoon routine. But she freezes with the empty kettle in her hand and leans against the sink.

  “You kidding? I couldn’t afford this space on my own. JP’s gotten even more popular since you left. I have a roommate who could, however, but chooses to have company.”

  Male or female, he wants to ask, but doesn’t.

  “She should be home in a little while.” She reads his mind.

  “What does she do?”

  “Tiffany? Oh, what day is it? She’s finding her true passion. She really doesn’t need to work, but she does want to be instrumental in contributing to society.”

  “What’s she leaning toward?”

  “Probably some sort of social service. She volunteers for an NGO peace organization that deals with disaster PTS, but they can’t offer her a position without an advanced degree, and, well, she can’t seem to decide where she wants to get that.”

  “Wouldn’t be too hard in this town.” Now he’s filling time, solving a problem for some woman he doesn’t even know.

  “You would think not. But Tiffany is particular—that’s the part of her breeding she can’t shake. She’s thinking of Tufts School for Diplomacy or Georgetown’s Institute of Politics and Public Service. It’s new. Tiffany likes new when it comes to education; everything else she likes is old. The fact that she’s loaded doesn’t exactly push the envelope.” She finally spins around and turns on the cold water, letting it run.

  “Sounds like a do-gooder. Maybe she should be a Jesuit.”

  “Have I missed something? Has the church reversed its opinion on women priests? You Jebbies now accepting us?”

  He thought he’d made a joke. He should have known better.

  “No. They’re not
.”

  That he said they and did not include himself in his last statement was not lost on her for a second. She stands with her back to him for a moment, the empty teakettle in her hand, before she fills it and places it on the burner. When she turns around, her face is as flushed as his own, for his statement has shocked even him. And they smile at each other for the first time.

  Chapter 15

  Monday, March 17

  RYAN KNEW ALL along he’d come back. At least that’s what she tells Tiffany the following morning when Tiff questions the cell phone on the coffee table and the blue windbreaker and white sneakers in the foyer. That he didn’t charge his phone and left it in the living room was new: Jason was not a man one had to pick up after; he was like her father in that respect, rendering attention to detail. If the cap was missing from the toothpaste tube after he got up this morning, she might even be elated. She always knew he’d come back, but she didn’t know he’d come back this different.

  When Ryan ran or worked out at the gym after their breakup, she used to listen on her iPod to an old Beatles song her mother had played when Ryan was small. Ryan had liked to study the album jacket: individual portraits of the quartet wearing funny sideburns and mustaches, one looking happy, the others pensive, or maybe even sad or troubled. She thought two were cute and two were ugly. Her mother said it was the last album they made together. “The Long and Winding Road” had been Ryan’s favorite song, probably because it had been her mother’s favorite, and some days Lauren used to move the arm of the record player back and drop the needle onto that track over and over again.

  That’s when Lauren got into her nostalgic mode and recounted how the Beatles had begun, how she’d first seen them on some program called The Ed Sullivan Show when she was twelve, how Faye had laughed at the ridiculousness of the lyrics of their first song and their bowl-shaped haircuts, and how Ryan’s father had adored them in college and purchased every one of their albums as soon as it came out. Whenever things got rocky and her parents’ arguing frightened Ryan, Lauren would play the recording and soothe the girl, telling her that the long and winding road would never disappear no matter how much her parents fought, that it would always lead them back together again.

  Ryan used to picture her parents meandering along a serpentine dirt road amid a dense green thicket of trees and bushes. What road? Where had it started? Where did it end? How could she get there? Of course now she interprets the metaphor exactly as her mother used to, and it fills her with an undeniable hope—no, affirmation—that fate played a role in it all, and that destiny had put Jason on that road back to her.

  She had had to control herself when she first saw him sitting on the steps last night. Suddenly there was a God; prayers were answered; life existed after death. Why hadn’t she washed her hair that morning? He loved the smell of her shampoo. Then again, maybe he was there to tell her some bad news: Her father was dead; there’d been a terrorist attack in Charlotte she hadn’t heard about. She wanted to punch him. That would have felt good. But at the same time she wanted to wrap her arms around his neck and welcome this prodigal son—of a bitch. She became aware of her every action; she heard her father: Listen, Ryan. Stop talking so much and listen. So, Jason, what do you have to say for yourself?

  He was here because he had doubts. Why no notice? Because he did not want to be dissuaded by any negative words or vibes she might have spoken or given off. He wasn’t that courageous.

  “I think I may have made a mistake, Ryan.”

  He’d said it. Before the tea water even came to a boil. The words she’d been longing to hear for nearly two years. He’d fucked up. He wanted forgiveness. He loved her. Well, she was jumping the gun a bit—that he didn’t say. But he did seek redemption and a second chance. Would she? Could she find it in her heart to allow him this time to explore? Was he kidding? Would she ever.

  They had intended to go out to dinner. Something simple, like Pikalo’s, the Dominican spot on Centre Street, but the night got colder, really cold, and Tiffany never showed anyway, affording them the privacy they wanted. The prospect of leaving the hissing radiators and comfy navy blue mohair sofa with all of Tiff’s geometric throw pillows made them put off going out. And how could she interrupt his talk about the seminary?

  “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t feel out of place there. But there’s no place for you. No. That’s not it. You’re everywhere there.”

  “You always said I took up a lot of space.”

  She sensed him studying her out of the corner of his eye while she strained to understand the words she seemed to draw out of him, because for all his talk of envisioning of her in his mind in the seminary, he couldn’t look her in the eye when he had her there in the flesh.

  “Am I keeping you from anything tonight?” he said, as though it had just occurred to him that she had a life, one he hadn’t been part of for quite some time.

  “Zumba.” She could have said she had a date.

  “Don’t miss it on my account.”

  “I pulled a hamstring last week. Better to let it rest. Besides,” she said, looking toward the window with its chipped paint, “it’s cold.”

  She scrambled eggs while he buttered toast and sliced an avocado. She apologized for not having much food in the apartment; it was Tiffany’s turn to shop. He poured two glasses of wine from an open bottle in the refrigerator and they took their plates and returned to the couch, where she sat with her legs tucked under her and he stretched his out on the coffee table.

  “You have jelly on your lip,” he said.

  She wiped the corner of her mouth.

  “You missed. Let me get it.”

  He extended his hand toward her face, but instead of aiming for the spot of jelly, he pulled her face toward his and kissed her in an action that surprised even him.

  “It’s gone,” he said.

  Seconds later he was lying on top of her, kissing her hard, his tongue playing with hers.

  “Is this allowed?” she mumbled, coming up for air.

  “I’m on leave.”

  “How much time do you have?”

  “As much as we need.”

  “I mean away from the seminary.”

  “I just told you.”

  Then his hand was on her breast, cupping it, squeezing it so hard she winced. “Sorry,” he murmured, his face in her neck, his hand continuing to find its way under her sweater, over her bra. She was aching. He was moving so fast, yet not fast enough.

  She hesitated to invite him. She hadn’t shaved her legs in a few days; she hadn’t showered since morning; she felt self-conscious of the body she wanted to offer in perfection after such a long absence. It didn’t bother her that he carried an odor of perspiration and hormones, and it certainly didn’t seem to bother him. And there were clothes on the bedroom floor; she hadn’t done laundry this weekend.

  “Let’s go to my room,” she said anyway. Tiffany could walk in at any moment.

  They were almost naked before they hit the full-sized mattress, his mouth devouring every part of her, the considerate restraint he’d shown in the past nowhere evident. He moved so aggressively she barely touched him, merely responded as he sucked her nipples, dragged his tongue all over her, and pulled down her panties. No matter they weren’t the sexiest she owned; he never looked. When he maneuvered his mouth between her legs, all he had to do was touch her with his moist tongue and she was in spasms. He entered hard then, with all the force of a man who was near death and had this night and only this night to play out his fantasies. His fingers reached for her hardened nipples as for reassurance that he’d really satisfied her and she hadn’t pretended. In view of where he’d been for so long, she allowed him anything, even if it caused her discomfort.

  Afterward, he lay on top of her, panting for so long she had to nudge him off because she couldn’t breathe under his weight. She cuddled up to him—so close she could smell herself on him—not wanting him to think she had rejected him in any way; he wrapped
his arm around her. She prepared to fall asleep, happy for the first time in so many nights, when he turned toward her and began kissing her body all over again. Never had there been a repeat performance like this in their years together. He had gone away a gentleman and returned a cowboy.

  * * *

  “Where you going?” he asks as she hands him a tall glass of orange juice along with his cell phone and heads toward the shower.

  “It’s Monday. I have a job, remember?”

  “Right.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Reacquaint myself with the city, I suppose. Meet for lunch?”

  “Maybe. Still have my number?”

  “Actually I deleted it.”

  She comes back to the bed, picks up his phone, and enters her number. “I’ll text you when I’m ready.”

  “I might camp out on your doorstep all morning.”

  “I wouldn’t make a habit of that. They pick up vagrants. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Tiffany’s already gone.”

  She kisses his naked, snow-white body goodbye and flies out the door a happy woman before he has a chance to pull her back down onto the bed. She is higher than a kite. This was so easy. Too easy. What would he have done if she hadn’t let him stay the night? Call up a friend? He never had a best friend; everyone was his friend. Did he have enough money on him? Maybe she should have given him some.

  * * *

  He walks the neighborhood, taking in the narrow renovated clapboard homes with neat fenced-in yards and the large white-pillared mansions on the corner. Nannies push strollers. Fathers mimic pregnancy with infant carriers strapped to their chests; they march hand in hand with mitten-protected toddlers, as though setting out to backpack the Yukon. He could see himself as a stay-at-home dad, or maybe dropping the kids off at daycare.

  He used to think there were enough children in the world needing surrogate fathers, and so he rationalized a future that included another deprivation—fatherhood. But there is so much he could teach a child; so much he could learn. He is feeling reborn himself, reborn and free. He stops at a small Cuban grocery store and buys rolls and ripe plantains and a can of black beans. He’ll make some rice and beans and fry the sweet plantains for dinner. Ryan loves them.