Strings Attached (12 page)

Fourteen

 

New York City
November 1950

On Monday afternoon I met Hank in the lobby and we took the stairs down to the basement of the building. I stepped into a big room with a painted concrete floor. I followed him past the washing machines and into another room of storage areas separated by chain-link fences. Each apartment had its own space.

Hank went to the storage unit for 2A. He fitted a key into a padlock on one of the doors and pushed it open. Inside were cardboard boxes, a bicycle, and an overturned chair with stuffing popping out of the seat. The skates were balanced on top of a cardboard box.

“This is where we come when they drop the Bomb, I guess,” he said. “We’re supposed to duck and cover with the baby carriages and the bicycles.”

“Hey, don’t forget ice skates and catcher’s mitts.”

He picked up skates. “Will these fit?”

He waited while I tried them on. I wouldn’t call Hank’s mother and me a perfect fit, but her skates would do.

We took the crosstown bus to Rockefeller Center. Hank bought tickets and we laced up our skates. Hank
took off quickly, and I stepped cautiously out on the ice. It looked so easy, but as soon as my feet hit the ice they slid out from underneath me and I fell backward with a whoop.

Hank circled and skated back to me. “Oh. You really don’t know.”

“You think I was lying?” I shook my head, laughing.

He held out his gloved hand, and I placed mine in it. “Come on, I’ll hold you up.”

We made a slow circuit of the rink. After a few turns I understood the rhythm of the motion, how to push off, how to glide instead of taking staccato steps. I let go of Hank’s hand.

We went round and round, not talking, smiling at everything and nothing — the little girl in the plaid coat, the older couple holding hands in their thick gloves. The music was playing, and people were laughing, and it seemed as though that golden Greek god posing so magnificently behind us was the still center of a quickly spinning world.

“I hope you get the part,” Hank said. “You were right — I
am
falling asleep in Science class.”

I laughed, and I heard it ring out into the cold air, a crack of happiness. I felt at that moment that things were just about to change. I’d get the part, I’d find another place to live. I would be free of all debts.

I tilted my head back as we skated, looking at all the people lining the railing looking down at us, no doubt wishing they were skating, too.

A soldier leaned against the railing. He had a camera in front of his face and he was aiming it at the rink. It looked like he was aiming it at me.

The toe of my skate locked in the ice, pitching me forward. Hank saved me from falling. When I looked back up at the railing, the soldier was gone. Could it have been Billy? That would be crazy — how could he find me in the middle of Manhattan?

“Tired?” Hank asked, and I nodded. “It’s not too late; we could get a hot chocolate.”

But I wasn’t feeling carefree anymore. My mind couldn’t hold the blue sky, the sound of the blades against the ice, the pleasure of my body moving in a new way. My heart had seized up like an engine, just because I’d glimpsed, for one second, someone who looked like Billy. “I can’t. This has been lovely, Hank, really, but — I really have to go.”

We skated off the rink, bumping onto the rubber matting. Hank awkwardly made his way on his skates inside to retrieve our shoes, and I sank onto a bench. I tore off my gloves with my teeth and went to work on my laces.

“Need some help?”

I looked up and there he was. All my breath went out in a rush. He seemed so much older in his uniform, with his new short haircut.

“How did you find me? When did you get here?” I tried to stand, awkwardly, with one skate unlaced, and I had to grab both of his hands to stay upright. Skin against skin, the hard feel of his cold fingers, the look of his mouth — it all sent a charge through my body, and it was all I could do not to throw my arms around him. I wanted to — why didn’t I?

His face changed a bit. I saw how he’d hoped that I would, but he wouldn’t push me. We were somewhere between sweethearts and friends now. “I went by your place, and you weren’t home, so I waited for a while. I saw your
upstairs neighbor and she told me where to find you. You cut your hair.”

“I just did it. You don’t like it.”

“Your beautiful hair. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

“It’s still me,” I said.

“Kit, I have your shoes.”

Hank. I had forgotten Hank.

I twisted, almost losing my balance again. Billy dropped one hand and put his arm around me to steady me, then kept it there.

In all my imagined meetings with Billy, I had never imagined being this unprepared.

“Billy, this is my neighbor, Hank. Hank, this is Billy. Someone from home.” I babbled out the introduction. I didn’t say boyfriend because he wasn’t anymore. I wasn’t sure what he was.

“Glad to meet you,” Hank said.

“I think I can handle it from here,” Billy replied, taking my shoes from Hank. “Nice meeting you.”

His voice was cordial but I could see how flattened Hank was.

“Billy,” I said. “Hank and I came together. We can all walk back together.”

“Sure, let’s do that,” Billy said. He knelt down to take off my skates. He lifted out my foot and cradled it in his lap. Hank stared down at Billy’s hand on my foot.

“No, I — I have someplace to go first,” Hank said. “An errand. I forgot. I’ll see you later, Kit.” Hank took his mother’s skates and swiftly knotted them together and slung them over his other shoulder. “Bye.” He turned abruptly and threaded through the crowd, the skates bumping hard against his back.

“Sorry about that,” Billy said. “He seems like a nice kid, but after all, I’ve traveled on a bus for a million hours to spend time with you.”

When I stood up, my steps were uncertain, as though I were wearing lifts in my shoes. I could feel the air between the soles of my feet and the ground. It was like something important had altered, like gravity, or the air itself.

Fifteen

 

New York City
November 1950

The apartment was dim and chilly. I hadn’t pulled the shades open yet in the living room. I quickly crossed to them, and the even gray light of late afternoon flooded in.

Billy stood in the doorway to the living room, his cap in his hands. He turned it over and over while he looked around.

This was it, the moment I’d dreamed of, and I couldn’t seem to move. He was looking at
our
apartment, the one we’d live in together, only I couldn’t tell him that. I couldn’t tell him that this could be our future, if only we could say the right words, get back what we had.

All I knew, standing there, looking across the room at his uncertain face, was that I still loved him. It had been crazy to think that I didn’t. I had run here to New York not just because I was furious at my father. I had run here because I couldn’t imagine being in Providence without Billy.

Billy’s tie was crooked, and I wanted to straighten it. All those things I could do once, I couldn’t do now. That simple gesture, of straightening his tie, looking up at him, and he would look down and kiss me. Did I have a right to those familiar gestures?

He cleared his throat. “It’s nice. I didn’t realize you could get such nice places in New York.”

“I make a pretty good salary at the Lido,” I said. We were talking like strangers. In my head, a counter was whirring. Counting up the lies. “It’s not the Riverbank.”

At the mention of my old job, he blushed, and I realized that I’d made a mistake. I shouldn’t have brought up something that would remind us of that night. I quickly tossed my coat on the couch. “Should I make coffee?”

“You drink coffee now? You never drank coffee.”

“I’m a New Yorker now,” I said. “At least, I’m trying to be. Everybody drinks coffee, not tea. And you can get a bag of chestnuts for lunch and just walk in the park. I’m trying to get up the nerve to go into the jazz clubs in the Village. Maybe we could do that? While you’re here. How long are you here?”

The question escaped before I knew it. Because what I was really asking was,
When do I have to start dreading when you’ll go?

“I have two weeks,” he said. “But I guess I have to go see my parents. I haven’t really been in touch.”

I crossed to him and took his cap. Our fingers tangled and he held on.

“Kit. You don’t know how good it is to see you.”

“What happens after two weeks?” This was the answer that would hurt, that would take my breath away. “Are you being shipped out?”

“I don’t know. Probably. They don’t tell you anything in the army. Some of us will be picked out for more training. I’m trying to get into the Signal Corps… maybe work with photography somehow. But it doesn’t seem like it will happen.”

“That would be great.”

“I’d still be going to Korea. But at least I’d be doing something. Not just… shooting people I don’t know.”

I wanted to ask him if he was afraid, but I couldn’t. I’d talked for hours and hours to Billy, lying on the grass in a park, at a beach, in a car with rain drumming on the roof. We talked about everything. But now there were places so tender we couldn’t go near them. Things that were just too hard to say. I had no right to ask him the questions he wouldn’t want to answer, no right to go to those secret places and hope I could make them better.

Could we still make things better for each other? Or was that gone?

“Why did you do it?” I whispered. Our fingers were still touching. “Why did you enlist?”

He pulled his fingers away. “I didn’t see another way to go. I was boxed in. I’d lost you. I thought I was going to be arrested for what I did to Toland. Jamie and I drove around for hours. Then we got a little drunk. Suddenly, we decided that the army was the answer for both of us. I still don’t know why.”

“Have you heard from Jamie?”

He shook his head. “He hasn’t written. I think we both want to forget that night.” He looked down and away, his hands dangling. “The question is, can you? You said you were afraid of me. That was the worst thing I ever heard. The worst thing I could imagine.”

He looked so stricken, so lost, that tears came to my eyes. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt him. I couldn’t see, I was so mad. And the funny thing is, I can’t even remember why. I was so afraid. I don’t know why I’m always so afraid of losing you.”

“You were so angry at me.”

“I’m never angry at you. I’m just angry. The awful thing is that people get in the way.”

“You keep saying I can help you, but I can’t, Billy. I’ve tried.”

He nodded. “You know something strange? The army is helping. I mean, basic is awful, you’re exhausted and you get yelled at all the time and you don’t know what you’re doing, but you can’t get mad. You can’t really step out of the lines, you know what I mean?”

“My father said that the army would make a man out of Jamie. It made me furious.”

He took a step away and walked to the window. His profile was sharp against the light. “I know, it seems like a stupid thing to say, like the army can just make you into something new, something better. But sometimes it can be true.” He turned around again. “I’m in basic with all kinds of fellows, from places I never thought about. I’m about to go over an ocean. The world is just bigger than I knew. Maybe I can see farther.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know what I’m saying. There’s places I can be, ways I can be that I never thought about. If I make it through alive.”

I crossed to him quickly and put my hand over his mouth. “Don’t say
if.
Don’t ever say
if.
Say a prayer, right now.”

I prayed silently.
Dear God, please let him live. Please. We’ll do it all over again, we’ll do it right. Don’t ignore me, God. Amen.

He ran his palms over my short hair, over and over, and then cradled my head against his chest. “From the first minute I saw you, it was you. It will always be you.”

The cloth of his uniform was rough and unfamiliar. I felt his heartbeat speed up against my cheek. I was conscious
of everything — the vague street noise from outside, the ticking clock, my own breathing.

We were alone, truly alone, maybe for the first time. There were no parents, no friends, no brother, no sister. Just us.

He must have had the thought at the same time. His hands moved over my back and down to my waist. I pressed against him.

He pulled away slightly. “Let me just look at you.”

“I don’t have much time. I have to get to work in an hour.”

“You’re not going to work tonight?”

“I have to. You know that. I didn’t know you were coming —”

“What time do you get off?”

“If I can leave right after the last show, I can get out by three.”

“Three a.m.?” Billy’s arms dropped from around my waist.

“Three shows a night, seven days a week. This is New York — people stay up until four and five in the morning. Where are you staying?”

“At a buddy’s in Brooklyn.”

There was a short silence. I guess I should have offered him the couch. But that seemed just too much temptation for both of us.

“You should call home.”

“I know. But my mother will want me to take the next train up. I’m not ready yet. I’ll go up on Thanksgiving, I guess. The thing is, it’s awful to say, but I don’t miss home. Everybody knowing my business, calling after me, ‘Billy, where are ya going?’ ‘Billy, stop in, I got something
for your mother!’ I couldn’t go five feet in that place without somebody stopping me from doing what I wanted. I’m sick of it.”

“So is the army so much better?” I asked, trying to joke.

“No,” he admitted. “It’s different. One thing about the army, it sure isn’t personal.”

I remembered what Flo Foster had said about Billy.
That boy has something chasing him.
I still didn’t know what she meant. Maybe it was home.

“We’re here
now,
Kit. Now is what we’ve got. Look” — he grabbed my hand —“I know I have to win you back. I know that night is like… a stain between us. If it scared you, it scared me, too. You have no idea how much. But we can get it all back. I’ll make it happen. I’ll make it all happen again, for the first time. We can start again, can’t we?”

“I don’t know.”

He drew back, puzzled. “Then why did you write to me?”

I stared back at him, realizing that I had no idea what to say. Answers become such complicated things when you have a lie between you and the person you love.

He kissed me gently, and there was the answer we needed. Billy had always had the softest mouth. It had always been able to unfold something closed inside me.

“Remember?” he asked. “I do. I remember every perfect day. How we met. The beach at Narragansett. Just driving around with Jamie. We had it absolutely perfect. Remember?”

I did. I remembered every moment. But what, out of all those memories, should I land on? Lying on the coarse sand, tasting the salt of the ocean on his mouth? Dancing
in a white dress on a deck on the beach? Sharing autumn pears while we walked, not paying attention to streets and sidewalks? Because when I thought of that, my heart rose with joy, but at the same time, other pictures came, of a fist smashing into a face on a dark rainy night. Of clothes flying through the air, catching on a breeze, caught on scrub on a two-lane road.

If I could just concentrate on the beginning. If I could just get it clear.