Stone Angels

by Michael Hartigan

  Jealousy finally took over and one Friday afternoon, after seeing the same kid from Halloween, the one dressed like Superman, flirting with her during our Seventeenth Century British Literature class. I decided to cut the flip-flopping.

  I nudged in front of the other guy leaving class that afternoon.

  “Lily, do you want to go to JRW?” I said walking in stride with her.

  “Um, of course I do.”

  “I mean with me, do you want to go with me?”

  She giggled and smiled as we exited the building into a dreary, rainy Rhode Island afternoon. She popped up an umbrella.

  “That’s why I answered ‘of course.’”

  I grabbed the umbrella and held it high so we could both fit underneath. She brushed her hand over mine and diverted out from under the relative dryness of the umbrella.

  “Hey, where you goin?” I yelled after her.

  “Class, lower campus,” she yelled back. In the few seconds she stood in the rain her hair soaked through.

  “Your umbrella,” I yelled and started moving toward her. She walked backwards away from me, a huge smile creeping across her face.

  “No, you hang on to it. It’ll give you a reason to come by my place tonight to return it. I expect you’ll stop by around eight, when my roommate is at her night class.”

  She held her hand up to her lips and then opened it to blow me a kiss. Water sprayed from her upturned palm like a garden sprinkler, the drops shooting up, intermingling and disappearing with the rain. She turned and scurried away, splashing through a few of the larger puddles, I imagined on purpose.

  I smiled for the rest of the day.

  Lily bought a new dress, a tight, low-cut designer gown in a sort of sea-foam green. Her parents sent her the money. I picked my tuxedo to match. She smiled when I told her of the coordination efforts.

  The night of the dance I met her at her dorm hall with a bouquet of large white lilies and small greenish-blue flowers (I don’t know what they were called). In the doorway we stared at our achieved elegance, and we both smiled. She plucked one of the lilies from the bouquet and pinned it to my lapel.

  “So, before we go can I ask you something?” she said. We were alone in the foyer. She continued without waiting for me to answer. “Why did it take you so long to ask me? After this summer I figured I was at the top of your list.”

  “My list? Lily, you are my list. I just didn’t know if you’d say yes.”

  “Actually, I didn’t know if I’d say yes, either. After that night I told you about my ex down south, I kinda thought maybe this whole thing with you would be over. But you didn’t get up and run away, you just sort of drifted away the last few weeks.”

  The night wasn’t starting off as planned. Something was spooking Lily and I had to quash it immediately.

  She was right, though. The confidence boost of the past summer with Lily dried up. She suddenly intimidated me and if I deserved her, I didn’t see it. But the fact she said yes to my invitation, and the fact that she was now irked I had not asked her earlier, told me that my doubts were airier than a handkerchief in the wind.

  “Yeah, I wanted to apologize about that. To be honest, I started thinking you were too good for me, that this whole thing was too good to be true.”

  “What!” Her green eyes started to fire up. “Where in the Hell did you get that idea?”

  “I don’t know. I was unsure if you felt the same way I did.”

  “I slept with you, Shaw. Obviously there is something there. Did someone say something to you?”

  “No, no.” My eyes shifted to the floor as I said it. To disguise my hesitation I checked the clock above the door. We were running late. “We should really get going.”

  “Somebody said something. I know you, Shaw, I’m not stupid.”

  “Fine, let’s get going and I’ll tell you on the way.” We left the dorm and as we walked I told her what Duncan had said on Halloween and how I felt she deserved better than me. I hated telling her, but she deserved the truth.

  Initially, Lily was angry. She kept saying I was wrong. She kept trying to reassure me that she was not out of my league. She said some very colorful things about Duncan.

  “I’ll have to chat with him,” she said.

  “No, absolutely not,” I said as we waited for a cab to bring us to the hotel.

  “Why not? He insulted me too, ya know. I think I have the right to smack him.”

  “Maybe, but just forget it. I’m trying to. The less he’s in my life, the better it is.”

  A white City Cab pulled up. We spent the five-minute ride downtown staring out the windows, not speaking.

  A line outside the Biltmore Hotel shook with anticipation. Hundreds of students waited in the cold for them to open the doors to the ballroom. I paid the cabbie and looked over at Lily standing underneath an old gas streetlamp. She looked just like she did that first night I saw her. She looked around trying to recognize people in line and rubbed her bare arms to warm them up. She turned her head and saw me staring at her. I must have been smiling because she gave a coy smile back and diverted her eyes to the sidewalk.

  Almost in silent, slow motion I stepped up the curb, removed my tux jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. Standing behind her, with my hands gripping her arms, I felt the tension between us melt away. She cocked her head back towards mine, magnetically pulling my face over her shoulder. She kissed me with sweet, tender, glossy lips and I surrendered to her completely.

  “Hey Antony and Cleopatra, you coming?” Shoddy yelled from the middle of the now-moving line. “Let’s go, save it for later!”

  The ballroom was decorated with giant snowflakes and icicles, despite it looking like potential rain outside. An elegant, formal dinner was served. Lily and I sat with Shoddy, Lindsey, Emily, and their dates. The food wasn’t bad; a thin piece of chicken in a lemon piccatta sauce with capers and potatoes. Shoddy went around the table introducing everyone’s Cokes to Captain Morgan. Once dessert was served, a thin slice of frozen chocolate cake, everyone exchanged the dinner table for the dance floor.

  Lily and I chatted as freely as when we first met. I felt comfortable again. When we danced, we danced close to both the slow and fast songs; she pecked my cheek a few times. We formed a typical dance circle with a half-dozen classmates. During Billy Jean, Shoddy and I made fools of ourselves when we attempted a Michael Jackson impression. The night flowed smoothly, lubricated by liquor and plenty of laughs. Fun came easy and without effort.

  Around midnight the crowd dwindled as students left the hotel for various after parties or private time with their dates. Lily had gone to the bathroom with Emily and Shoddy and I stood at the edge of the dance floor making bets on which couples would hook up. A young lady named Kerry from our freshman year Psychology class was sandwiched between two tuxedos, grinding to the bass and sloshing her drink down the cleavage spilling from her yellow strapless dress. That was an easy bet.

  On the far side of the dance floor near the DJ, Duncan came into view. He requested a song, gave an awkward thumbs-up gesture and jumped back into a group of scantily clad girls.

  One of the girls was wearing a familiar green sea-foam colored dress. She stood out among the others because she wasn’t dancing. She was there with a purpose more serious than the rest. And she appeared to be yelling at Duncan.

  I pointed it out to Shoddy and we both made our way easily through the waning crowd. As the song faded I could hear Duncan snicker and say, “So you’re saying you want to fuck me, then?”

  Shoddy reached him first. Lily was in Duncan’s face and Shoddy had to wrestle her away.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are, asshole? You don’t know me. You don’t talk about me like that,” she yelled.

  Lily was drunk. Thanks to Shoddy and me, she had gone on quite a ride with the Captain. She raised her hand like she was going to slap Duncan but I acted first, and in the process of grabbing her hand I knocked into Shoddy who fell into Duncan. Scu
ffle ensued. Duncan bellowed from underneath a pile of gowns and tuxedos. He was swearing at Lily and me. The words, “loser” and, “whore” came out a few times.

  I pulled her away from the melee and back to our now empty table. I tried to calm her down before I spoke to her. She spoke first.

  “What the fuck?” she slurred. “What’s wrong with you? I was trying to talk to him.”

  “Yea, I know, and you almost hit him Lily. The real question is, what’s wrong with you?”

  “Me! Nothing, you ass. I was standing up for you.”

  “Who said I needed anybody to stand up for me? Especially you!” She was taking jabs at my manhood, whether she knew it or not. I was getting angry. “And didn’t I tell you to leave him alone? I could’ve sworn I said that.”

  “You tell me what to do now? I can take care of myself.”

  “No, just with Duncan. Stay away from him.”

  “I can do what I want. I can slap who I want.”

  “Not him, I don’t trust him.”

  “Wait a minute,” she said, and hiccupped. She put her fist to her lips then started again. “Wait a minute, do you not trust him or do you not trust me?”

  “You just don’t seem to be able to stay away from asshole guys, do you? You’re just drawn to them.”

  I felt bad immediately after saying it but it was too late to retract.

  “Excuse me? I am not some whore, Shaw.” The emerald pools were back in her eyes. “You are really saying this? After what I told you about that? After what you just told me on the way here?”

  It was getting very hot in that ballroom. To buy myself some time, I undid the bow tie and let it hang around my neck.

  “Just let me handle things next time, alright?”

  “Oh because you were doing a bang-up job at avoiding him.”

  “Fuck this, I don’t need you telling me how to deal with people.”

  She was crying outright. Her voice went from anger to almost pleading.

  “Shaw, I can deal with you letting him call me a slut. But how can you let him just walk all over you for years.”

  “Drop it, Lily.”

  “No, talk to me. You just avoid it all the time! Either talk to me or go kick his ass! Enough of this repressing rage, manly bullshit!”

  “Don’t talk to him, Lily and frankly, I’d like you to just shut up.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry I wanted to defend my boyfriend!”

  It was the first time she ever called me her boyfriend. She got up and ran out the door, grabbing Lindsey who was approaching us with caution.

  By the time I absorbed what she said, Lily and Lindsey had left the hotel and jumped in a cab back to campus.

  Shoddy was standing at the edge of the dance floor staring at me, his mouth agape. He started towards me but I just turned away.

  “Shaw, wait up!” he said.

  I could barely hear him; the music had started again. I didn’t want to hear it from him. I couldn’t stand any of his brotherly advice.

  As far as rainstorms go, Providence was the prince of precipitation. I stepped out of the hotel and into a monsoon. Another line of students had queued up at the cabstand and no cabs were in sight.

  Screw it, I thought. I’m not waiting for Shoddy to come out and lecture me. I was so angry, mostly with myself for having said such stupid things to Lily that I just wanted to be alone. Braving the risk of pneumonia, I hoofed it the three miles back to campus in the pouring rain wearing stiff dress shoes and a raggedy tux. It was just the latest one of the many decisions I regretted making that night.

  By the time I reached campus, the suave, sophisticated, tuxedo-clad gentleman that began the night was slashed down to a mere wet dog. The black tie was in my inner jacket pocket. Of the six buttons on the greenish vest only two were actually buttoned. My white shirt was undone at the neck and the sleeves savagely shot out of the jacket arms. The pants were still intact; save for the half un-tucked shirt covering the left pant leg. My right shoe was not tied and the laces dragged solemnly behind me like wounded soldiers marching home from war. Rain washed over me in loud bursts due to the intense wind that carried it. Everything was drenched.

  Noah would’ve even had trouble that night. We were all together in that ballroom as one happy family of couples. Now I was alone. I was angry and alone. The night hated me. The wind detested me. I disgusted the rain so it tried to cleanse me. As I pushed through the storm onto upper-campus my jacket blew back and my hair dripped onto my nose. I could smell a faint hair-spray aroma from the little droplets. The water was greasy. It clung to my face, slid down my jacket and soaked into the pants like they would a sponge. It was not enough to say I was soaked to the bone. My veins and nerve cells were shivering from the cold dampness.

  Then came more wind. I have never been witness to such anger in the atmosphere. Small whirlwinds swirled up the wet leaves to either side of me when I walked past the chapel. In its courtyard the wind was worst. It came from the darkness overhead. In a grand sweeping motion it screamed down from shadow, curled around the steeple and looped back through a large oak tree before cracking back up and around the turret. It slid down the chapel roof, down across the open courtyard and blasted me with all its fury. It entered my throat, scratching all the way to the lungs. It was grainy, coarse, burning. It wasn’t air I was breathing. Whatever it was spread through my body and dispersed through my skin into the air before swinging back up to the shadows. All I could notice was its blackness.

  My walking had ceased. The wind had blown me back a few steps and knocked the jacket from my shoulders. Water seeped into the fake leather rental shoes in the middle of the flooded courtyard and the trickle from the hair to the face now streamed. My jacket swam in the courtyard pathway between the brick and muddy grass. As I bent over to pick it up the stream of ice water rushed down the back of my pants and along my inner thigh, down to the puddles of my feet. The coldness caused my body to spring upwards. I decided to leave the jacket to be devoured by the mud. I turned my head to the sky to watch for another punch of wind. I didn’t like being broadsided. The rain pierced my eyes; even if the wind came again I could never tell.

  Instead of turning away or closing my burning eyes, I just stared. I tried to look around the rain bullets. I tried to see through the sheets of glass smashing over me every second. I wanted to look into the rain; I wanted to know why it hated me.

  The wind hurled itself around the chapel for another swipe at the broken, soaked victim gazing into the sky. I prepared myself for its second blow but no wind came, only a soft, bubbling voice. I could feel someone watching me.

  Maybe it was Lily. Maybe she followed me from the other end of campus, riding the back of the wind.

  I spun around to nothing. I spun again, water sloshing in torrents.

  Nothing. Nobody. Of course she didn’t follow me. She had left first and was dry now.

  I looked down to the drowning jacket. The single white lily that had been so neatly pinned to the lapel was gone. On the other side of the courtyard I heard a soft gurgle and watched the flower swirl twice then disappear down a gutter.

  A dozen cold stone eyes were studying me. They blinked as the blue light flickered over the faces of stone angels. I stood drenched, defeated and encircled by the stone seraphim sitting silently in judgment.

  They watched me drag the tuxedo jacket through the puddles and across the courtyard. Angels, I thought, were supposed to watch over me, guide me. These wore menacing, shadowy visages.

  As I passed the last stone angel sitting cat-like at the courtyard exit, questions started popping in my head. I asked myself what had gone wrong; what was wrong with Lily? What was wrong with me?

  The last question lingered the longest, probably because I too was lingering in front of the last angel statue.

  I bent closer to examine the intricate detail carved in the hair and cheekbones. Water followed the curves and snaked along every tiny etch. Yet, despite the flood, the angel was stoic. It
withstood the rain while I was soaked completely through. The angel had its purpose: to unwaveringly light the courtyard. What was mine?

  At that moment, staring at an inanimate stone statue under the college torch while heaven’s floods crashed over me, I made a decision. I decided to take control. I decided to be steadfast. Lily needed a rock. I decided, for Lily, to be a stone angel.

  When I returned to my room that night Lily was passed out in the hallway leaning against the door. I carried her inside and laid her on her back on my bed. Her mascara was streaked down to her chin, the lipstick smudged and her previously styled hair tossed loosely and sopping over her shoulders.

  She didn’t flinch when I wiped the smeared makeup from her right cheek, erasing the runny Revlon mask and revealing her smooth, milky skin. Why did she even wear makeup, I thought. She’s as close to perfect as you can get. The ruined makeup made me furious. The truth was, she didn’t need makeup anyway—her natural beauty surpassed anything in a bottle. Now, that true beauty was hidden under layers of mud-flecked and rain-smudged concealer and mascara.

  I rubbed it all off, washed it all away. When her soft, lightly freckled nose and cheeks were clean I peeled her dress off. She wore tiny white underwear and no bra. She shuffled slightly and turned her face to me, still asleep, innocently draping her left arm over her exposed breasts. I chuckled, thinking that even in her sleep her attempt at modesty served only to enhance her desirability. I pulled the white sheet up over her shoulders and let it settle, the outline of her body clearly defined in linen.

  I shut the light and, realizing the intense heat pouring from the ancient radiator, cracked the window beside the bed.

  A rush of moist air ruffled the sheet and Lily, semi-conscious, pulled it up to her chin. She nested deeper into my bed and a smile grew across her naturally rose-petal pink lips