Soul Catcher (15 page)

‘Of course!’ Mom must have been soused, too. ‘Go! Don’t waste your time with us oldsters.’

We poured ourselves champagne, drank one glass each, quickly, then refilled our glasses and sipped our way to the living room. We joined the princess at her station on the couch.

‘Wouldn’t you like some champagne?’ I asked her.

‘Oh, I’d love some!’ Apparently, she had been too shy to
get some for herself. Patrick went to get her a glass.

‘You have a very interesting friend,’ she said to me. I looked at Patrick, thinking she meant him. ‘No, your girlfriend,’ she said.

‘Oh, Gwen.’

The princess leaned over and snatched her purse from the floor. She zipped it open, dug around inside, and produced a plastic tag reading
the more people i meet, the more i like my cat,
from which dangled three keys. ‘This one’s for the front entrance, and these two are for my door.’ She presented them to me.

‘Why?’

She whispered: ‘Your friend asked me if you could use my apartment for a few hours. Do you think you’ll be finished by two o’clock? I’m a litle anemic, I get tired.’

I stared at her. Was she joking? Did Gwen really do this or was it some kind of sting operation?

‘Go ahead,’ the princess said. ‘It’s okay. At least I’ll know someone had a good time in my apartment.’ She smiled insecurely.

I took the keys.

Patrick returned with a glass of champagne, which he gave the princess. In return, she gave him a knowing smile.

I informed Mom that Patrick and I were going out for a walk. As we were putting on our coats, Gwen dashed over and pulled me into our bedroom.

‘Jesus F. Christ,’ she said, as she searched frantically through her suitcase. ‘I know you haven’t thought about precautions, Kate. It isn’t so romantic when you get knocked up.’ There was a fierce look in her eyes as she handed me a small foil packet.

‘Strawberry flavored?’

‘Use it.’

I slipped the condom into my coat pocket. ‘Thanks.’

She winked.

Walking downtown on Second Avenue, toward 78th
Street where the princess lived, Patrick asked me what Gwen had wanted. I told him.

‘I already thought of that,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’

That shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. I knew in my logical, media-informed mind that birth control was something you were supposed to undertake with meticulous and unerring attention. In my other mind — the fifteen-year-old mind that was innocent of experience — it was something I could not bring myself to face. That should have told me I wasn’t ready for sex. But it didn’t. Because he had planned ahead, I told myself, I didn’t have to. My thoughts had veered more to the abstract, not to blood and guts, conception and birth, contraception and abortion. I still saw sex as something beyond me, an obscure, unconnected, almost ethereal act suspended from the reality of life. It was still, to me, some kind of dreamy love bond, not a physical act with the capacity to root you to earth.

Slushy grey snow lined the avenue, splattering as cars whizzed past. It was after eleven and people were rushing to be somewhere, anywhere, when the clock struck twelve.

We turned the corner at 78th Street and headed toward First Avenue. Eleanor lived in two rooms of an old tenement building. We walked through her dark living room to the bedroom. Moonshine filtered through the windows, dousing the double bed in silvery shadows.

Patrick took off his army jacket and spread it over the bed, with the inside facing up. It took me a moment to understand that his plan was to stop the blood stain from permeating to the patchwork quilt. I felt a warm rush of trust. I had heard of girls whose innocence was either ridiculed or simply not believed by their men. I had heard of bitter accusations, and of girls who had sex just to prove their claim of virginity was true. With us, it was different. There was trust and love and desire, all the basic elements of emotion were there. Everything I felt then was strong, even if somewhat contradictory. Safety and fear. Excitement and numbness. Physical titillation and stinging pain. The thrill of
gaining experience and despair at losing innocence.

Afterwards, we lay entwined, body and soul. Our breathing was grainy and slow, synchronized as an ocean gently lapping at sand. I thought he was asleep. Then he said, ‘Does it hurt?’ I nodded. He carefully drew himself out of me.

‘Hold your legs together,’ he said. He got up and went to the living room and I could see the shifting and flexing of muscle under his skin, the subtleties of his movement. Then his slender white body dissolved into silvery darkness. He reappeared with a roll of paper towels. He tore a bunch off and wadded them up.

‘This will absorb it,’ he said.

I pressed the wad of paper towels between my legs. Patrick lay next to me, leaning on his elbow, stroking my stomach. When the numbers on the digital clock on the bedside table flipped to read twelve, he leaned over and kissed me deeply. It was a long, warm, sexual kiss.

‘Happy New Year.’

I combed my fingers through his messy hair. ‘Happy New Year.’

We waited until the bleeding had mostly stopped before cleaning up and getting dressed. I found some Kotex in the princess’s bathroom, and stuffed one into my underwear. Patrick promised he couldn’t see a bulge through the dress. We were very careful. He washed the inside of his jacket and dried it with a hair blower we found. There was a stain, but it didn’t show through to the other side. We put the paper towels and used condom in a shopping bag, which we deposited in a trash can on our way home.

It was not yet two o’clock. We decided we would say we’d walked all the way to Times Square and watched the old tradition of the lit-up ball descending slowly on a rod into the drunken cheering crowd.

Mom and Jerry had dozed off on the couch. Gwen was asleep in our room. Ann was cleaning up the kitchen. The only sign of a party was the two people who remained,
sitting at the dining room table, drinking champagne and laughing. It was Princess Eleanor and the monk-haired lawyer. He was smiling, and his round cheeks were bright red. The princess was giggling. She was sitting with her legs crossed, tapping one worn boot excitedly in the air. When we walked into the room, she looked disappointed.

‘Oh!’she said. ‘It’s late, isn’t it?’

The man stood. ‘Time to get going, yes.’

‘Well,’ the princess said meekly, ‘it’s been very —’

‘May I walk you home?’

She seemed shocked. ‘Thank you! Yes.’

The next day, we all piled into a cab and went to Rockefeller Plaza to skate. The pain between my legs didn’t bother me; I felt elated, beautiful, unflappable. And Patrick, I thought, felt confident and excited, too.

The sky was overcast and everything looked grey, though now and then a cloud would move and sunlight would trickle through. It was warm out, and little by little scarves unwound and zippers came apart. By the time we had rented skates and put them on, it was too hot, and we all abandoned our jackets to the coatcheck. Patrick carefully folded his jacket so the stain wouldn’t show. This thrilled me; it was our special secret. He held my hand as we maneuvered the blades of our skates over the rubberized surface to the rink.

Once onto the ice, Patrick kissed me on the forehead and then sped away, his bright green sweater blending into the colorful tapestry of the skaters. I moved slowly along the railing, catching occasional glimpses of Patrick or Gwen ripping along. She’d traded in her white ladies’ skates for a pair of boys’ black racers. Except for the skates, she was dressed all in white: white jeans, white sweater, white scarf. Her blond hair sailed behind her. Her speed and confidence made me want to tell her about last night. I tried to catch up with her, but she made a sudden turn and I crashed into a couple who had been skating arm-in-arm. They sneered, scrambled up and glided away. I was like a beached whale
sitting on the ice, frantic amidst a blur of skaters. Then Patrick’s green flashed out of the human potluck. He lifted me up in one swift movement and steadied me with an arm around my waist.

‘You really stink at this,’ he said.

‘It’s been years,’ I lied. I’d been skating every winter of my life but had never gotten the hang of it.

Mom and Ann didn’t even bother trying. They sat on the sidelines drinking cocoa and talking. They were both wearing skates as if they were high heels, sitting casually crosslegged, swinging their feet. Jerry was loitering by the railing, catching his breath. When Patrick and I skated past them, Mom started calling out to us, and Ann and Jerry joined in. ‘Go, Speed Racer!’ ‘Ginger and Fred!’ ‘Hey, do it, kids!’ Everybody looked. It was terrible. When we were halfway around the rink, Jerry and Gwen sailed past us, skating backwards and sticking out their tongues. It was a wonderful day. Patrick told me seven times that he loved me. The thrill of being lovers was all I needed; I could go on and on without sleep or food. I was dying to tell Mom we were married, but knew, even in my love-delirium, that there was no way she would take us seriously, especially since a snowman had done the honors. No, we would go on being lovers in secret. We would share each other’s bodies in perfect, private friendship, on the leaf-matted floor of a shadowy forest, under a bridge, on a borrowed bed.

After skating, we went to the movies and saw
Lady Sings the Blues.
It was the story of Billy Holliday, and Mom had been dying to see it. The beautiful woman makes the world fall in love with her, and then destroys herself with heroin. I had told Mom all about Patrick when I ran away from school. Was this her way of telling me something, of expressing disapproval or concern? She made no indication that she even remembered. But I did. And so did Patrick.

Later, he asked me if there was supposed to be a hidden message.

‘Like what?’

We were sitting on the living room couch, our first moment alone all day. He was leaning back into the cushions, and his leg was bent between us, creating a barrier.

‘Why wouldn’t anyone look at me after the movie?’ he asked.

‘No one was looking at anyone,’ I said. ‘Patrick, I haven’t advertised your problem.’

‘Problem? Is that what it is?’

‘Well —’

‘I’ve been straight.’ He bared his palms as if to say,
look, nothing hidden.

‘But Patrick,’ I leaned toward him, ‘there’s nothing to worry about. I don’t care what anybody thinks.’

‘But they know. They know about me.’

‘I guess I mentioned it to Mom when I ran away. I was scared.’

Sighing, he said, ‘Kate —’ then stopped himself, and shook his head in defeat. But who had defeated him? Had it really been me? The thought that he could feel I would contribute to his sense of defeat terrified me.

‘But I love you,’ I said. ‘I would never do anything behind your back. It doesn’t matter if Mom knows, because you’re straight now. I mean, everyone has something to be ashamed of

‘Do you?’

‘I don’t know. Probably. I’m not perfect.’

‘But you are. You know just what to say. Even now.’

‘I try —’

“That’s right. You try too hard. Kate, you seem to think that just because we made love last night, everything’s okay now. It isn’t, it
isn’t.
How can it be?’ He stared at me, his eyes fury-blue, a storm.

‘How can it
not
be?’

‘Kate,’ he whispered, ‘I ran away from school to get here to see you. I failed the test. Now I can’t go back.’

My gaze fixed on his bouncing knee. I couldn’t think of
anything to say; my brain was numb, my stomach churned, I was crashing.

‘You’re too idealistic,’ he whispered in a deep, insistent voice. ‘It doesn’t mean I don’t love you, though.’

‘What
does
it mean?’

He shook his head, shrugged. Lone cowboy, about to make his getaway. ‘I just won’t see you for a while,’ he said. ‘There’s no way around it.’

‘Then how could you come here last night? How could you?’

He grabbed my arm and pulled me forward. Staring straight into my eyes, pinning my attention down, he said, ‘I had to come here last night. I had to see you. I promised.’

I had gotten too high, too happy, too fast, and now I was knocked lower than ever. I couldn’t cry, could hardly feel anything other than sick to my stomach. ‘But Patrick —’ I started, unable to find words to complete the sentence, let alone the thought.
But Patrick. How could you leave me? How could you claim me with such devotion and then tell me you’re going away?

Finally I said, ‘Are you going to try to get back into school?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.’

‘Where will you go?’

Til stay with a friend for a while.’

‘Who?’

One side of his mouth curled up. ‘Listen Kate, I’m sorry this is happening. I hope you’ll be able to forgive me. I really want you to believe that I love you very much.’

‘I guess I believe it.’

‘You don’t need to guess.’

I rolled the ring around my finger, feeling the cool, smooth surface, deciding. Finally, I took it off and put it on the cushion between us. ‘This really has been a farce, hasn’t it?’

Worry lines etched his forehead. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Please, keep that.’

I left it on the couch for a few moments before picking it up and holding it in my hand. When it was warm from the heat of my palm, I held it out to him. ‘Would you wear it?’ I asked.

He hesitated, but then took the ring. It fit perfectly on his pinky.

He promised: ‘I’ll never take it off.’

P
atrick had run away from school and robbed a newsstand to get the money to come see me New Year’s Eve. That information circulated quickly enough through school. But there was more, things only I knew, from two brief phone conversations with him. He admitted to ‘borrowing’ Tamara the cook’s wedding ring from her campus apartment. She was divorced and kept the ring in a small enamel box in her living room. Patrick visited her during the first few days of winter break. When she left the room to answer the phone, he happened to open the box and see it. The ring. Perfectly round, pink-gold, a band of eternity that would hug his pinky forever. He never returned it, and I never told; it was one of our special secrets.