Soul Catcher (14 page)

I went straight for the wall with the fancy dresses. The first one that caught my eye was a flowing white gown, tapered at the waist and fanning out at the thighs. It had a long white scarf, the kind that killed Isadora Duncan, and when held up to the light, the dress sparkled.

‘Hey, Ann!’ I called. I held up the dress. ‘I think there’s a mistake on the ticket!’

‘Thirteen hundred?’ she said.

Shocked, I returned it to the rack and kept searching. There had to be something elegant but not so expensive that
if I ruined it I’d be in debt for life. Mom and Ann sat on stools at the counter, talking and laughing. I could tell they were keeping an eye on us.

Gwen chose an orange jumpsuit that looked like a used aviator uniform. A band of thick elastic pinched her waist. Elephantine pants stopped inches above her ankles. A shapeless top zipped all the way above her head and fell over into an enormous collar. The sleeves were so long she had to roll them up. She thought she looked great. I thought she was crazy. Ann told her to choose any socks or stockings she wanted and keep them as a gift. Gwen took camouflage-print knee-highs.

I fell in love with a white dress of sheer lace with a Victorian collar, long lace cuffs and a built-in satin underslip that gave the dress a slinky feel.

‘It looks like a wedding dress,’ Mom said softly.

Gwen whispered, ‘You look like some kind of prude!’

I ignored her, and selected real old-fashioned stockings — sheer white — and a garter belt. I knew just what I needed, and it wasn’t a chastity belt. Mom was more right than she knew: tonight I would consummate my marriage.

Patrick was due at about six. Gwen and I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning the apartment, while Mom and Ann dipped gourmet cookies into herb tea and talked about their ex-husbands. At one point — I missed the transition, being occupied with earthly matters such as chasing fast-moving tumbleweeds of dust — they switched to wine. Their whispered conversations would explode with laughter. I waited until a quarter past five to go into the kitchen and break up the pre-party party. They had everything laid out on the table: ceramic tea pot, tea cups smeared with chocolate, one empty and one almost-full wine bottle, two wine glasses also smeared with chocolate, and pads of paper on which they’d drawn cartoons and scribbled words. I caught a glimpse of Mom’s pad before she flipped it over. Amidst the cartoons were two lists:
Pro
and
Con.
I glimpsed my name, but couldn’t see which heading it fell under.

‘Patrick’s coining in less than an hour,’ I reminded them.

‘Lovely,’ Ann said.

‘He’s a very nice boy,’ Mom said. ‘I’ve spoken with him on the phone, he has such a nice voice. I’ll bet he’s not bad looking, either.’

They laughed.

‘He’s very good-looking,’ I said.

Their faces went serious and they stared at me.

‘All I ask is that you clean up this mess and make yourselves presentable before six o’clock. Please.’ I marched out of the kitchen and to the small bedroom, where Gwen stood in front of the door-mirror, intently teasing her limp hair. I heard the women’s laughter from the kitchen.

I sat on my bed. ‘It’s almost five-thirty already.’

Gwen turned to me. Half her hair was electrified and the other half was lifeless. ‘Relax. There’s plenty of time. I mean, like, all you have to do is put on your clothes, right? Me, I have to do my hair, put on makeup and get dressed.’ She held up three fingers.

‘Gwen?’

‘Ummm.’

‘How many times have you, you know?’

She caught my eye in the mirror, and grinned. ‘Say it.’

‘You know what I mean.’

She teased out a section of hair before answering, ‘Just that once.’

‘When you got pregnant?’ I was surprised; she had made herself out to be so worldly.

‘Say it louder, why don’t you!’

‘What was it like? I mean, did it really hurt?’

She shrugged. ‘Yeah, it hurt. But I figured you just had to get that part over with. They say it gets better. Why do you want to know?’

I picked at a hangnail on my little toe. ‘Just curious,’ I said. When I raised my eyes, I caught the last of her smile in the mirror.

‘Happy New Year, Kate.’

T
he table was crammed with bowls of sticky black caviar, cornichons and olives, a half-moon of melty brie, a big basket of sliced French bread — or
baguette,
as Ann referred to it — and sparkly champagne glasses waiting to be filled. Ann dimmed the light so the glasses had a peachy glimmer, and the food practically glowed.

‘Radiation alert!’ Gwen said, lighting candle after candle — tall white flickering stalks — around the living room. ‘These ladies really know how to live.’

Her hair was all teased and sprayed. And that orange bomber suit... she looked like Phyllis Diller in pajamas.

I was demure in my new borrowed dress, certainly more grown-up than Gwen as far as I was concerned. As she flitted around, lighting candles, I struck several poses to test my new self-consciousness, the new sensation of being an attractive woman.

‘Think they’d mind if we had a drink before the party?’ she whispered.

‘I think they’d mind if we had a drink
during
the party.’

But Gwen was already dropping cubes of ice into two glasses, and filling them with vodka and orange juice.

‘Cheers!’

‘Happy New Year!’

And we drank.

Six o’clock came and went with no Patrick. At close to seven, Jerry arrived with two dozen red roses. Mom arranged them in a tall glass vase which she placed in the middle of the dining room table. All evening, as guests arrived, the roses were commented upon. ‘They’re from Jerry,’ Mom would say. She would beam at him, wherever he was: standing next to her, or across the room talking to someone. They loved each other, that was clear. Their affection touched off all kinds of emotions in me: quick, deep feelings of loneliness, happiness, bewilderment, even jealousy.

One of the guests was a twenty-four-year-old woman named Eleanor. She was Russian royalty, a princess, or would have been had the Bolsheviks not interrupted the Czarist reign. She was American-born and had a heavy New York accent.
‘Hoi,
she said, and a few giggles bubbled out of me. I knew it was mean to laugh, I just couldn’t help it. Actually, I felt sorry for the woman. She had a distinct air of loneliness about her. She told me that she lived alone in a tenement apartment in the neighborhood, and had once worked in Ann’s store. She was now employed as a secretary for an insurance company. In a sudden, conspiratorial moment, she told me that the one single man at the party — a fat lawyer with a ring of dark hair encircling a shiny bald spot like a monk’s tonsure — had been invited for her. They were supposed to match up.

‘Then why don’t you go talk to him?’ I asked her.

She shrugged her narrow shoulders. ‘Nah,’ she said. That must have been what she said to her mirror when she got ready to come over:
nah.
Her ash blond hair was pulled back with an elastic band, and under a plain brown skirt she was wearing old boots with holes at the sides where the width of her feet had worn through.

We were like a couple of Cinderellas before the ball. Waiting. Princess Eleanor and me, standing together by the
caviar, in the foyer, in the kitchen doorway. I didn’t know what she was waiting for. I, of course, was waiting for Patrick, and was beginning to have serious doubts that he would ever show.

Finally, I decided to call and find out. I excused myself, disappeared into Ann’s bedroom, and dialed Grove.

The phone had rung into my ear twelve times, when the door creaked open and in walked Patrick! He looked pale and exhausted, as if he’d been running. He stood in front of me in his bluejeans, Frye boots and green sweater, and hooked his thumbs into his belt loops like an
aw shucks
cowboy returned from a distant prairie. He shrugged his shoulders and half-smiled.

‘It took a while to get here,’ he said. His smile stretched into a grin. ‘You look beautiful.’

He bent down and kissed me very gently. As he pulled back, I leaned forward and kissed him again. Then I kissed him again and again and again.

‘I’m so glad you came,’ I said.

‘Better late than never.’

I absently dropped the phone receiver on the pillow, and patted the spot next to me. He sat down and clasped his hands between his knees. He stared into the mirror on Ann’s closet door: a cowboy and a virgin.

‘You look like a bride,’ he said, staring at my mirror-eyes.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his fist. ‘Do you still want me, us... I mean, do you remember what we said?’

My heart was pounding. Remember? I’d been doing nothing but waiting. And now, here it was New Year’s Eve and Patrick was next to me, and I wanted nothing else.

‘Yes:

He flipped his fist, and his fingers uncurled. In the middle of his pinkish palm was a shining gold band. ‘I hope it fits,’ he said.

I hadn’t expected a ring. It was beautiful, perfectly round, with a pinkish tint to the gold. I held out my left hand and he
slid it down my fourth finger, but it was too big.

‘I’ll wear it on my middle finger,’ I said. ‘Anyway, that way no one will ask questions, but we’ll know.’

He looked at me, uncertain whether I was just avoiding wearing the ring where it belonged — on my fourth finger — or compromising to circumstance. I knew then that he was afraid. I wasn’t sure of what, exactly, but it was clear on his face.
Fear.
I had a terrible feeling that the main thrust of his fear was insecurity, and that he was at the door of his addiction again. Standing there, debating whether or not to open the door to the easy white gravityless world. Something inside of me, my heart or stomach, wrung with a desperate need to stop him. There was no place for me beyond that door. We had made vows to stand by each other, and the only place we could possibly do that was in my world, the one most people called reality which, if nothing else, was a world of unaltered states, of mutually-agreed upon points of perception. My mind was fixed on the physical consummation of our vows, on an image of solidly joining our bodies, a sharing of forces and of health. That was what I thought: that when we made love, something miraculous would happen to us and to him and to me. It had occurred to me that we would gain each other’s strengths, but I had not imagined we would also share each other’s weaknesses. The glow of despair in his eyes, as he slid the ring onto my finger, undercut my confidence. It was as if he didn’t believe anything could make him whole, even me. I curled my fingers into my palm to keep the ring from falling off.

We leaned back onto the bed in a long, tight hug. His round face was all I could see: pale skin and dark blue eyes. He kissed my neck slowly, gently, and I drifted with the warm, peaceful sensations of feeling myself touched by him and touching him. Then I realized that the small, tinny voice of Silvera was speaking to me. Not to me, exactly, but into the phone. ‘Hello?’ he was saying in his gruff, unhappy voice. ‘Hello? Hello! Hello!’ Patrick froze and looked at the
receiver lying on the pillow. Then he looked at me. There we were, on a bed, loving each other, with Silvera right there with us, but completely blind and helpless. We both started laughing hysterically. Silvera hung up with a fast, loud click.

It was a great moment, but it made me uneasy. I didn’t want to take any chances of blowing our rendezvous, the real one, later.

‘C’mon,’ I said. ‘Let’s go in to the party.’

The living room buzzed with people. Patrick seemed nervous, so I held his hand and we walked over to Gwen. She was sitting on the couch with Princess Eleanor, who was pressed into the corner, listening. Gwen, of course, was doing all the talking. She was leaning forward, gesturing and laughing. She would break into quick smiles, giving her orange lipstick a real workout, and then throw her head back and start talking again. The princess looked scared. She glanced at Patrick and me, and nodded. I couldn’t tell exactly what that nod meant: hello, or thanks for saving me.

‘Hey!’ Gwen said to Patrick. ‘What the fuck kept you?’

‘Gwen!’ I protested.

‘Lookit,’ she said, ‘everyone knows he’s late. So big deal. Why not just get it right out in the open?’ She looked at the princess for confirmation. ‘Like, what I’ve been trying to tell you, El, is you have gotta learn to make it up as it comes along. Don’t
worry
so much.’

Patrick leaned toward me and whispered, ‘Can we have a drink?’

‘Booze table’s over there,’ Gwen nearly shouted, pointing a stiff finger.

I said, ‘Let’s go say hi to Mom and Jerry. Remember Jerry, from Thanksgiving? He’s Mom’s boyfriend.’

‘You’re kidding me!’

‘Nope, they —’

‘Don’t kid a kidder.’

We turned around. It was Ann. She was coming our way, dragging Jerry by the arm. He broke into his Mr Friendly
smile, pumped Patrick’s hand, slapped his shoulder. He said, ‘Good to see you again, son!’ His face was flushed. Ann’s smile was larger than life. They were tipsy and I saw my chance.

‘Think Mom would mind if we had a little champagne?’ I asked.

Jerry surveyed our faces like a judge. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’re fifteen.’

‘And a half.’

Jerry nodded. Motion carried. ‘And you are how old?’ he asked Patrick.

‘Eighteen in May.’

Ann and Jerry both nodded. Jerry said, ‘That would average the two of you out to about sixteen and three quarters each.’ He looked at Ann.

‘Between them they’re close enough to legal age,’ she said.

‘All right, have a drink!’ Jerry said.

Mom floated out from the kitchen in her black velvet caftan, like an earth mother from Planet Happiness. ‘Hello, Patrick!’ She kissed him lightly on the cheek, as if she already knew him, then wove her arm around Jerry’s waist.

‘You’re only young and in love once, isn’t that right?’ Jerry asked Mom.

‘The other times you’re older.’

They laughed up a storm. I couldn’t wait to get Patrick away from them.

“The children have requested, and received permission, to drink champagne tonight,’ he informed her.