The Memory of Us: A Novel

by Camille Di Maio

  I lost our little tournament, five to three, and was ready to lick my wounds with the company of a good book. I kissed Father good night and went upstairs to put on my coziest pajamas. After lighting a fire, I opened The Misfortunes of Mr. Teal and settled into my warm bed. I loved nights like this.

  Hours later, nodding my head in drowsiness, I heard a plinking sound on my window. I ignored it, thinking it was hail. It would have been unusual but not impossible. I had twelve pages to finish in the book, so I widened my eyes and refocused my attention. But I heard the sound again.

  I walked over to open the window and was shocked to see a figure down below. “Julianne!” It was Kyle, shouting as quietly as he could. He was soaking wet. “Julianne! I need to talk to you!”

  I held my finger up to my lips and nodded. “I’ll be right down.”

  I went to my closet to grab something to wear but changed my mind when I considered the absurdity of the whole thing. If Kyle was here so late at night and in the rain, there must be an emergency. Instead, I put on a heavy, plush robe and a pair of slippers. I grabbed a towel for him, thinking that he must be cold. Tiptoeing downstairs, I slipped out the back door and adjusted my eyes to the darkness so that I could see him.

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand. “Let’s get out of the rain.” We ran toward the gazebo in the distance.

  When we arrived, he let go of my hand and I wrung the rain from my hair. I handed the towel to him. He patted himself down until only dampness was left.

  He looked very serious and was about to say something. But when he had a chance to really look at me, the corners of his mouth turned up just a little. “You’re wearing your pajamas!”

  “You pulled me out of my house in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain, and you’re talking about my pajamas? I thought you were in some kind of trouble, so I hurried down!”

  “You’re right . . . my fault. I guess that you just surprised me.” He smiled a little wider, but I could sense sadness in his eyes. “It’s a nice surprise.”

  I was suddenly aware that my pink terry cloth robe had loosened, and the rain had made the summer nightgown cling to my skin. I pulled the robe tight around me, embarrassed.

  His voice was clenched when he spoke again. “No, there’s no trouble. But I did want to let you know right away . . .”

  “Yes?”

  He looked down and ran his fingers through his hair. “My father. He died this evening.”

  Without thinking, I threw my arms around him. Against his chest, I felt him breathe a heavy sigh that sounded like the release of months of strain. I heard the quickened beat of his heart. He put his arms around me, too, and we held each other there, swaying slightly, comforting one another in our shared sadness. I had really become close to his father during this ordeal, and I felt the loss as well. At the same time, enveloped by the one I loved, I welcomed the physical closeness to him that I had craved for a year.

  I started to sob from all of it, and he held me tighter.

  I don’t know how long we stood there, sheltered from the rain, leaning on each other in the dark.

  Pulling me closer, if that was even possible, Kyle laid his head down on my shoulder, and I could hear him choking back a few of his own tears as he breathed. My hand moved to the back of his head as I stroked his hair slowly. I heard him shudder just a little, and before I knew it, I felt his lips press gently against my neck.

  A chill ran through my body, and I froze in place, unsure of what to do. In another circumstance, I might have thought that it was a kiss. But this was not an ordinary situation by any means, and I didn’t want to let my feelings take over the moment. It was excruciating to stand there, unresponsive.

  I felt his lips on me again, a little more insistently, moving gradually up from my neck to my cheek. There was no mistaking what he was doing now, and I didn’t want him to stop. I continued to stand still, not even breathing. He picked his head up and looked at me. While I could control my body, I couldn’t control my expression, and I knew he could see the complete longing that I had for him. He moved his hands to my face, cradling it, and then slowly placed his lips on mine.

  Gently, gently, he kissed me, several times, each time with a little more fervor. When I responded, suppressing nothing now, he gasped sharply and kissed me harder. We continued like that, two people desperately needing each other, a year of hesitation washed away in the rain.

  He pulled back, looking at me again and brushing my cheek with his hand.

  “Julianne,” he whispered. And with that one word, he said a thousand.

  He put his arms around me, holding me close to him, and I could feel the wild beating of his heart. It matched my own. We stood there again, laughing and crying all at once.

  Taking my hand, he led me to the bench in the gazebo. He never released it but only held it tighter.

  He whispered again, holding his head down. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.”

  I couldn’t get any words out and just looked at him. If he were to look up, I knew that my face would say it all.

  “I’ve been in love with you since I first saw you,” he said. “I suppose that it was only a matter of time before I gave up trying to deny it.”

  All I wanted was for him to kiss me again, but a part of me feared that this unexpected turn of events was the fault of the news he had come to share about his father. The morning might bring him regret. Which would mean heartache once again.

  “Kyle,” I said, putting both of my hands in his but pulling away from him. I couldn’t believe what I was about to say. “What are you doing? You’re losing everything you worked for. This isn’t what you came here for tonight.”

  “No, it’s not. Really, I surprised myself as much as I must have surprised you. But I’m not sorry. I’m not. Please trust me on this. You are all that I’ve wanted for a long time.”

  “But what about—”

  “No—shh, hush.” He pulled me back to him. “I realized in these last few months that I couldn’t be a good priest if I knew my calling was elsewhere.”

  “Kyle—I don’t know what to say.” My mind was reeling.

  “I think that I’ve been rejecting the notion for all this time because I didn’t believe that you could ever feel the same way for me.”

  My eyes widened. “How can you say that?”

  “Look at you. You’ve been surrounded by friends and admirers for so long, how could I expect you to see me through all that?”

  “You are mad, you know that? I knew as soon as I saw you helping my brother that day there could be no one else.”

  He leaned in and kissed each of my eyelids tenderly. Then, pressing his forehead against mine, he twirled a strand of my hair in his finger, and we reveled in the closeness.

  Oh, how alert my senses were! Without remorse, I could see him, touch him, hear him, breathe in his scent, taste the sweetness of his kiss. I savored the exhilaration of the moment.

  I realized then that I had not asked him anything about his father, and that is what he had come for in the first place. I told him so.

  He smiled, a look of complete contentment on his face. He continued to stroke my hair as if it were a precious possession. “You know, he is the one that brought us together. Not intentionally, that’s not what I mean. But watching you care for him, seeing your devotion to helping him, I knew for certain that this is where I was meant to be all along. He was ready to go, and you helped make that happen. He is at peace, and I am too, because of you.”

  Kyle kissed the tip of my nose and then moved down to brush my lips again.

  “I’ve tried . . . so hard . . .” I whispered, in between breaths.

  “What is that, darling?” He was distracted by what he was doing, but I turned his face to look me in the eye so that he could really hear what I was saying.

  “I tried so hard not to interrupt your plans and your ambitions. I even avoided you at times just so it wouldn’t be difficult.”
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  “You are an angel for that. But you have to realize that you are my dream. In fact, I even talked to Father Sullivan about you.”

  I stiffened at this and pushed him away. “You did?” I could only imagine what the kind priest could possibly think of me now. “How could you do that? He must hate me.”

  Kyle laughed and pulled me back to him. “Of course he doesn’t hate you. Father Sullivan has been my confessor ever since I was a child. He knows me better than anyone. This isn’t news to him. In fact, I think he saw it coming even before I did.”

  “But surely he must want you to be a priest, like him.”

  “Father Sullivan wants me to be whatever I am led to be. And I know that is with you.”

  “And just when did you know that for sure?”

  He grinned. “About ten minutes ago, when you threw yourself at me.”

  “Kyle, please, I was trying to comfort you!”

  “Oh, is that what you were doing? My fault, then—I take it all back.”

  “Don’t you dare!” I pulled him toward me and kissed him hard, leaving no doubt in his mind that I much preferred this course for us.

  When I was confident that I left not a shred of doubt in him, I asked, “Where do we go from here?”

  “Well, that is for another day. Because if your parents find you out here with me, there won’t be another day.”

  I didn’t want him to leave and have this enchantment end. I didn’t want to sleep for fear I’d awake and find that I had been dreaming. But the brisk air biting my skin told me that this was real and that Kyle was right.

  “Besides, I have to get back,” he said. “The undertaker is coming first thing in the morning, and that’s only a few hours away. I may not be able to come see you tomorrow, but please know that I will be thinking of nothing else.”

  “Can’t I help with the arrangements?”

  “There isn’t much to do, honestly. My father was a private man and didn’t know very many people. But there will be a burial shortly, and it would mean a lot to me if you were there. I know that he would have liked that.”

  “Of course I will.”

  He took my hand again and led me back to the house, staying in the shadows away from the moonlight. There was no sense in risking anyone seeing us.

  Approaching the protection of the back porch, he put his arm around my waist and drew me to him. After kissing me deeply, he said, “Julianne . . . my love,” and then ran off into the darkness.

  It occurred to me as I dried myself off that it had been raining the last time Kyle and I had a momentous conversation, too. Maybe God was trying to warn me off. But I didn’t want to listen.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I kept my eyes closed at the break of daylight, basking in remembered details, one by one. Every word and every touch had been absolutely perfect.

  The only cloud in my newly sunlit world was the fear that Kyle might have second thoughts in the reality of the day. After all, a lifetime of expectation and effort was not going to be easy to release. Maybe he didn’t really mean those things and had let his guard down temporarily. Certainly the emotions of losing a parent could distort one’s intentions.

  The nagging fear only grew worse and soon converted my previous elation into outright panic. To compound everything, I wasn’t going to see Kyle today, so I couldn’t be comforted by his reassurances. If there were any to come.

  I became frantic with ways to occupy myself so that I wouldn’t think of it. I organized my closet, then alphabetized the books on my shelves. I helped Betty in the kitchen. I read the Daily Post. Italy had beaten Hungary in the World Cup last night. That would surely be what everyone talked about today. But nothing worked. Maybe I needed a change of scenery.

  It was Monday, so Father planned to go into the warehouses earlier than usual to get a start on the week. Maybe I could ride into town with him. But he beat me to it.

  “Julianne.”

  “Yes?”

  “If you can spare the time, I could use some help with the bills of lading. They need to be grouped into shipping lines and then calculated for invoicing. Remember, you lost our match, so no getting out of it.”

  He needn’t have thrown in the reminder. It was the perfect chance to get out of the house. And it would be nice to spend the day with him.

  “Of course I can spare the time!” I gave him a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. He looked at me as if I were a crazy woman. Sorting chin-high stacks of paper was not my, nor anyone’s, idea of how to spend a day, but he had no way of knowing how desperate I was for a distraction.

  “You’re driving,” he said. I grabbed my handbag, and he handed me the keys to the Aston.

  Father talked about business all along the way, technicalities that I couldn’t possibly keep straight. Shipping was his life, his mistress, his religion. Even over backgammon, he’d regale me with updates on cargo regulations. He’d been that way as long as I could remember, but I wondered if it had always been so. Was it who he was, or was it his escape from the devastation of Charles’s birth, his public version of Mother’s clandestine drinking?

  Today, though, I was relieved that he wasn’t attuned to the finer details of my life. Unlike Mother, whose sobriety seemed synchronized to my rides home with Kyle in the last few weeks. She’d tried cornering me several times already to register again her concern over the amount of time that I’d spent with him. Before last night, I had honest excuses.

  “It’s good practice for school, Mother.”

  “It will help me keep up my skills over the summer break.”

  “No, there’s not anything between the McCarthy boy and me. He’s a gardener, Mother, really!” I’d tell her anything she wanted to hear.

  But now? Would I be forced to choose between my parents and Kyle, my obligations and my love? Could they ever accept the Irish Catholic boy who lived by the tracks?

  We pulled up to the cavernous square of redbrick buildings that framed Albert Dock. The water gave off the putrid smell of low-tide fish and harbored sea vessels. But I knew that to my father, it smelled like money. A flock of gulls basked in a sunny spot that had escaped the shadow cast by the warehouse. But they scattered at the sound of the car door, save for one whose injured wing prevented him from flying off. I sympathized with him as together we watched the rest of them soar past a Cunard liner and disappear.

  The monotonous project of sorting the bills of lading was heartily welcome today. I categorized them by imports and exports, and then by shipping companies—Maersk, Messageries, Intermodal, and so forth. Meticulously, I calculated their charges for temporary storage in our warehouses. It took me nearly six hours.

  When I was finished, I peeked into Father’s office and saw that he was still working. I debated between taking a bus home and waiting for a ride with him, and decided to help a little longer. Dusting the shelves and doing some filing, I stayed busy for another hour. He emerged then, jacket slung over his shoulder.

  “Well done, Princess. You’re a natural, you know. You could be great.”

  “Thanks, but I have other plans.”

  “I know, I know. But I hope you know that it’s always here for you if the nursing thing doesn’t work out.”

  “The ‘nursing thing’ is working out just fine. Maybe you should come see me in London sometime and I can show you.”

  “I’d like to. You know that. But I can’t get away.”

  That was his excuse for everything. Why he hadn’t come to my ballet recitals. Why he was late for my graduation ceremonies. I knew he loved me, but there was no doubt as to his priorities.

  I tossed him the keys this time and sat in the passenger’s seat before he could protest. I was tired and dusty after being in the warehouse, and I couldn’t wait to shower off. My thoughts turned to Kyle again, to the impossibility of last night and the agonizing fear that he would think it was a mistake. It was too painful to contemplate. I had to think about something else, and I knew just the thing.

&nb
sp; “Father?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Why didn’t you have any more children? You know, it would have been nice to have a sister—or a brother.”

  Now, in a theatrical production, this would be his cue to pause, reflect, and tell me in choking words that I did have a sibling. And he was so sorry for keeping my brother from me. The turning point of the script.

  But it wasn’t like that. He didn’t miss a beat.

  “Oh, you know, Princess. The business was going through a major expansion when you were born, and there just wasn’t any time. Besides, once you start with perfection, you can only go downhill from there.” He squeezed my hand as if he were proud of the compliment he was paying me, but I pulled it away and looked out the window.

  “That’s too bad. It would have been nice.”

  “I’m sure it would have. At least you have Lucille. She’s like a sister to you.”

  “Yes, at least I have Lucille.”

  Poor Charles. Was he entirely forgotten?

  I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep all the way back.

  He pulled up to the front door and told me that he had some documents to drop with a client.

  “Tell your mother I won’t be home until late. Mr. Laurent is in from Paris, and I need to meet with him about the opera shipment.”

  But Mother had something to tell me first. As I closed the door and walked toward the grand staircase, she called out to me.

  “Julianne.” She said it like a command.

  I turned around. She was sitting in the parlor with her back toward me. In front of her lay pile upon pile of fabric swatches. Her finger landed on the top one, and she traced its scrolled pattern as though hypnotized.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m having the Victorian chairs reupholstered. What do you think of this?”

  She gripped the corner of the nearest one, and still she didn’t look at me. I stepped into the parlor and approached the table. The fabric was hideous, not something that I ever would have imagined her choosing.