“You’re delivering your paper to me? I said I’d give you time to write in class next week.”
Aidan shrugs, and then shivers. The denim jacket he’s wearing is too light for the March night and it’s soaked. In normal circumstances I’d invite him in, but even though I’ve gotten over my initial shock at seeing one of my prisoners out loose on the street, I’m not ready to invite him up to my apartment. “I had some time on the train,” he tells me, and then, looking at his watch, says, “Actually, I’ve got to go or I’ll miss my train back up. I’m staying at a detention house near the prison. They don’t like it when you’re late. I didn’t think you’d be out so late. Big date, huh?”
I think of the hour I’ve just spent in the Periodicals Room at the library and I hate to disappoint Aidan. When was the last time I was out on a big date? Would you even say that the Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday nights I spend with Jack are dates at all? “Yeah,” I tell Aidan, “a big date.”
Aidan pulls the collar of his jacket up and shoves his hands in his pockets. “So where is the lucky guy? You didn’t have a fight or something?”
“I was hoping to get some writing done,” I say, looking into Aidan’s blue-green eyes. It’s the first time I’ve seen him outside of the sickly glow of fluorescent prison lighting. Even streetlight is better. I notice that his long dark lashes are glistening with rain and even the T-shirt under his jacket is wet. He looks like he’s shown up on my doorstep from the river rather than just Varick Street. “Now I guess I’ll try to read some papers.” I take out the folded pages from the bag Aidan has given me. They’re handwritten I see. Inside the plastic bag is a smaller brown paper bag with the name BOOKS OF WONDER printed on it, a children’s bookstore on 18th Street.
“Hey, I love this store,” I tell Aidan.
“Yeah, I tried five stores before I found one that carried the same book I remembered.”
I slip the book out from its paper covering and see that it’s an old edition of Irish fairy tales. The binding is pale green cloth embossed with golden lettering, the letters springing from the sinuous hair of a woman sitting on a rock. The same hair billows out below her, ensnaring the figure of a man swimming in the waves beside the rock.
“Aidan, this is beautiful, it must have cost a lot, I can’t accept this.”
“Sure you can, Prof. Where would I keep it? What do you think my fellow parolees would make of me reading fairy tales?”
I look at the book and notice that the woman is naked. The man swimming in the ocean is also naked; the selkie’s hair twines between his legs and wraps snakelike around his arms. I feel myself blushing and hope that Aidan doesn’t notice in the dull gleam of the streetlights.
“Well, I’ll keep it for you for now. But when you find some other place to stay . . .”
“Sure,” he says, moving down the steps, his back still to the street. “In a month or two I’ll be able to take my own place—if I can find a steady job. I hope you like the book . . . and my paper. I worked really hard on it. I hadn’t thought about those stories in years.”
Aidan’s got one foot off the sidewalk into the cobblestone street when he turns back to me, casually, as if he’s just remembered something. There’s something in the deliberate casualness of the tilt of his head that makes me think he’s going to ask for money, a place to stay, some favor . . . “So tell me,” he says, “if your mother was Irish and your father was Jewish, what were you brought up as?”
I’m surprised by the question mostly because he is the only one of all who’ve read the piece so far to ask it.
“As nothing,” I say. “No religion. You’re only Jewish if your mother’s Jewish, and my mother had given up Catholicism . . .” I pause, trying to think why it was again that my mother had rejected the church, but like so much else about my mother, I have no direct evidence, only a puzzling silence. Once, when I was about six, I found, in among my mother’s costume jewelry, a slim gold disc embossed with the face of a beautiful woman holding a rose. Something about the woman’s face drew me in a way that the glittery beads didn’t and I put it on. It was a few days before my mother noticed it on me.
“Give me that,” she told me, yanking it from my neck, “before your father or aunt sees it.”
The chain bruised my neck when she tore it from me, but worse than that was the look in my mother’s face. I’d never seen her look like that and I couldn’t imagine what had made her so angry. “She never minded before when I wore her beads,” I sobbed to my father while he put ice on my neck.
“Yes, but this was different. It was a saint’s medal—something Catholics wear—and your mother promised me that except for being christened she wouldn’t raise you as a Catholic. Not that I had any objections, but maybe she thought it would offend me or Sophie.”
“She had me baptized,” I tell Aidan, anxious to offer him something besides the bare lack of religion in my life.
“Oh well, she wouldn’t want you to end up in limbo, would she? Even the most lapsed Catholic mother wouldn’t want that.”
“Yeah, but she waited until I was three. Apparently she wasn’t in such a rush to save my immortal soul.”
“Three!” There. Finally I’ve shocked this good Catholic boy. This good Catholic convict, I remind myself. For some reason it fails to satisfy me; instead I feel vaguely embarrassed, whether for me or my mother, I’m not sure. “She waited to take me to the same church in Brooklyn where she’d been baptized—St. Mary Star of the Sea?”
Aidan shakes his head. “I grew up in Inwood and most of my relatives live in Woodlawn. I don’t know Brooklyn.”
“When the priest saw me walking down the aisle to my own baptism he had a fit.”
Aidan chuckles. “I bet.”
I smile, warming to the story.
“ ‘What were you thinking waiting this long?’ the priest said to her. ‘She’s here now,’ my mother told him, ‘do you want to baptize her or not?’ ”
“And he did?”
“One more saved soul.”
“Your mother sounds like something,” he says. “My mother would never stand up to a priest that way, she was that afraid of them. Now my gran . . . but I talk about her in my paper. You’ll see.” Aidan crosses his arms across his chest and rubs them, obviously chilled. “Well . . . ,” he says.
I still have no intention of inviting him up—I’m not an idiot—but for a second I think we’re both aware that if the situation were different this would be the moment when I would. I picture my apartment—I have the corner apartment on the top floor, which includes a hexagonal tower facing the river—like an empty boat drifting over our heads. He’d like the view. It’s the view he’d have from the prison if not for that wall.
“I’d better catch that train,” he says.
“Yes,” I say, relieved. I think. “I’ll see you next Thursday.”
“Monday,” he corrects me before turning away, “Remember, I’m in your class at Grace now.”
I nod, but he’s already turned around. It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him that he’s really too advanced for that class. He should go into the next level of composition class—I could easily recommend him for it—but I say nothing. I don’t teach the next level.
I watch him walk east on Jane and then turn north on Washington. I think of my father standing in the back drive of the hotel, seeing important guests and dignitaries off in their taxis. He’d always stand and wait until the taxi rounded the bend and disappeared behind the wall of pines that guarded the back of the hotel. When I asked him why he did that, if it was to be polite, he laughed at me. “No,” he told me, “I just like to make sure they’re really gone.”
Chapter Four
Aidan’s fairy tale, as I might have guessed, is an enchanted-prince story. He might have chosen from dozens, all with the same basic plot. A young man of royal lineage and sterling qualities is trapped in a loathsome disguise: a toad, a bear, a beast. An ex-con. The princess must see through this surface ug
liness to the prince inside to save him and restore him to his true nature and his birthright—prince of all the realm. “Beauty and the Beast” or “The Frog Prince” would do the job, but instead he’s picked “Tam Lin,” a Celtic story of a prince kidnapped by fairies, redeemed by true love.
I toss his essay onto the unread stack on my desk. The paper, damp and rumpled, glows in the faint light that filters in from the street. I haven’t turned my desk lamp on yet. And although I’d planned to retrieve Phoebe Nix’s note from the “submit again” box, I do nothing for a few minutes but look out the window.
My apartment is the corner apartment on the fifth floor. It’s only one room, but it’s in the hexagonal tower at the corner of Jane and West. I’ve got three windows, each facing a different direction. My desk is under the middle window of the tower corner. Sometimes I think I’d get more writing done with a worse view, but it’s the view that’s kept me in this one-room apartment all these years—well, the view and rent control. I look southwest down a long expanse of river into the harbor toward a misty region that I think of as the beginning of the ocean. It’s always been my dream to live within sight of the sea and I’m beginning to suspect that this is as close as I’ll ever get.
Tonight though, in the dark and the rain, the ocean seems far away. I can just make out the oily gleam of the river, rolling dark and heavy like some sea creature carrying the lights of New Jersey on its broad back. The air that seeps under my window smells like stone, like water from a deep well. I notice that the wind, coming from the northwest, is driving the rain in, dampening the pages of my students’ papers. I get up to close the window and my fingers brush against the soft wood of my father’s old humidor. Not yet, I think. I’ll read a few papers first, I bargain with myself, before opening the box. I turn on my lamp, but decide to leave the window open for now, and pick up Aidan’s paper.
TAM LIN
This was a story my gran told me. She was always saying that if we were bad, if we didn’t mind the nuns at school or learn our catechism, the fairies would come and take us away. She said the fairies were fallen angels who weren’t bad enough to be devils but not good enough to stay angels. They liked to steal children so they wouldn’t be lonely, but they could only take you if you’d done something bad. I thought that must have been what happened to my brother Sean who’d died when he was four and I was two but when I asked Ma what Sean had done to be taken she slapped me. It was the only time she ever hit me. Now Dad . . . but that’s another story.
Anyway. My gran still told these stories about being stolen by the fairies and one was about a boy named Tam Lin. My gran said this Tam Lin was a good boy mostly except he didn’t always mind his parents or the nuns at school and sometimes went out exploring in the woods when he should’ve been at school. One day he was out in the woods hunting and he got so tired that he laid himself down under a tree and fell to sleep.
I liked to imagine that part. Falling asleep under a tree. I liked to go into Inwood Park, way back where nobody went. A park ranger once told me that the trees in Inwood Park are the only trees on Manhattan Island that have never been cut. A virgin forest he called it, which seemed kind of funny for a city park where people did all sorts of things that weren’t exactly virgin like. Anyway. I always thought it would be an adventure to stay all night in the park, but I’d have been afraid to fall asleep there.
This Tam Lin fellow, though, one day he was in the woods and he found this old well. He was thirsty so he drank from the well and then he fell asleep. When he woke up he was surrounded by fairies. The queen of the fairies was this old lady who was beautiful but kind of scary looking because her hair was white and she was dressed all in green. She told Tam Lin that the well belonged to the fairies and because he had drunk from it he belonged to the fairies now. She said he should be happy because now he’d get to live forever like the fairies. She gave him a white horse and a green suit (because that’s what fairies wear) and made him go with her.
This part scared me because Gran was always saying that if Dad didn’t stop drinking and hitting us the Social Services lady would come and take us away to a home. Our Social Services lady was very thin and tall and wore her hair pulled back so tight her skin looked shiny—like a balloon right before it pops. I thought she looked a little like the fairy queen would look and I guessed Tam Lin would’ve rather stayed with his folks than go with her even if he would get to live forever.
And then there’s always a catch they don’t tell you about first. Like when you buy cereal for the prize inside and then find out you’ve got to save like ten box tops and send away money to get the prize, which is just some piece of crap plastic anyway. You see, these fairies had to pay a price for getting to live forever. Every seven years, on Halloween, they had to sacrifice a human being. On the next Halloween, Tam Lin was out riding with the fairies and they passed the well where he’d fallen asleep. He was surprised because he hadn’t seen it since he was kidnapped by the fairies and he knew then that he was back in the mortal world. He was just thinking that he’d make a break for it and head for home when one of the other riders got the same idea and broke from the pack. Right away all the fairies fell on the boy in a heap and when they were done all that was left was a pile of bones picked clean.
So you can bet Tam Lin was pretty scared and decided not to try getting away until he had a plan.
Four more Halloweens went by and Tam Lin couldn’t think of anything. He saw that the fairy queen was getting tired of him and he knew he’d be the next to go if he didn’t come up with something. Then, on the sixth Halloween, he kind of straggled behind the other riders and when he passed the well he saw a girl standing there. She looked like she’d just seen a ghost, which you could say she had. A whole troop of them.
Tam Lin got off his horse and went over to the girl. On his way he saw a rose and picked it for her—figuring she’d be less afraid if he gave her a present. He pricked his finger on the thorns, though, and cried out. He was pretty embarrassed that the girl saw him hurt himself, but then she got out her handkerchief and wrapped it around Tam Lin’s hand and made a fuss over him. You see, that’s how she knew he wasn’t really a fairy. Because he bled.
“Come with me,” the girl said, when she’d stopped his bleeding.
But Tam Lin heard the fairy horses returning and knew the fairy queen would kill both of them.
“I can’t,” he told her, “but if you come back here next Halloween maybe you can save me.” Then he told her to bring holy water from the church and dirt from her garden. “When you see me ride past you must pull me from my horse and hold me tight no matter what happens. Then I’ll be free of the fairies and we can get married. But if you don’t save me, the fairies will kill me because it’ll be seven years I’ve been with them.”
The girl looked doubtful, but she said she’d wait for Tam Lin and be at the well next Halloween and then Tam Lin had to go.
I always thought that last year must have been the worst for Tam Lin, wondering whether the girl would come back or had she found someone else or would she be too afraid to keep her promise and knowing if she didn’t he’d be eaten alive by the fairies. It’s like when you’re almost up for parole and you don’t want to screw it up but you kind of relax because you start thinking about being home and that’s when you screw up.
Of course I didn’t know anything about parole back then, but I do now, which I guess is another reason I thought about this story.
Because things worked out for Tam Lin. The girl—Margaret I think her name was—was there at the well and when she saw Tam Lin she pulled him from his horse and held him so tight he half thought she’d choke him. The fairy queen was furious when she saw Tam Lin and the girl.
“Let him go,” she said, “and I’ll give you all the silver in the world.”
“No,” the girl said. “I’ll hold on to my Tam Lin.”
“Oh,” says the fairy queen, “that’s Tam Lin you’re holding, is it?”
And when the girl looked she saw she was holding a huge snake—or it was holding her! Still she didn’t let go.
“Let go,” said the fairy queen, “and I’ll give you all the gold in the world.”
“No,” the girl said. “I’ll hold on to my Tam Lin.”
“Oh,” says the fairy queen, “that’s Tam Lin you’re holding, is it?”
And the snake turned into a lion who roared right in Margaret’s face. Still she didn’t let go.
The fairy queen was so mad then that she tore her white hair from her head and screamed, “I’ll teach you!” and she turned Tam Lin into a burning brand that singed the girl’s skin. Still she held on till she could smell her own skin burning. Then she took out the bottle of holy water she’d brought and sprinkled it in the well and she threw the burning brand in after and there, instead of the burning brand, was Tam Lin, naked, I’m sorry to have to tell you, because the clothes had burned right off him.
The Seduction of Water Page 4