The Side of the Angels

~
A NOVEL
~

C
HRISTINA
B
ARTOLOMEO

Kyoko Watanabe

SCRIBNER

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A
LSO BY
C
HRISTINA
B
ARTOLOMEO

Cupid and Diana

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales
or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2002 by Christina Bartolomeo

All rights reserved, including the right of
reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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Designed by Kyoko Watanabe

Text set in Goudy

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bartolomeo, Christina.

The side of the angels : a novel / Christina Bartolomeo.

p. cm.

1. Women public relations personnel—Fiction.

2. Washington (D.C.)—Fiction.

3. Catholic women—Fiction.

4. Single women—Fiction.

I. Title.

PS3552.A7677 S53 2002
813′.54—dc21       2001057709

ISBN 0-7432-0461-1
ISBN: 978-0-7432-0461-3
eISBN: 978-1-4391-3164-0

To my darling buddy Dan,
who gives me laughter, courage, and love

This book was fortunate to have two wonderful editors. Jane Rosen-man vastly improved the first versions with characteristic kindness and wisdom, and an unerring eye for where it needed to go next. Jake Morrissey shepherded it through successive drafts and publication, giving generously of his time and expertise to a manuscript that he “met” midway through development. Thank you both, more than I can say. Warm thanks also to Rachel Sussman of Scribner, for guiding this book through final production and giving her time and talent generously to its promotion.

Thanks always to my agent, Henry Dunow, for his encouragement, support, and friendship. As agent and fellow author, he truly understands the highs and lows of the business of writing and has seen me through all of them. Much gratitude to Lucy Stille of Paradigm, for past miracles and for her enthusiasm for this book, and to Ethan Friedman of Scribner, who gave me a crucial character, and was always there to reassure. For another gorgeous jacket, many thanks to designer and illustrator Honi Werner, as well as Kyoko Watanabe for a lovely text design. And, for stepping in to get this book through its finishing touches, many thanks to Brant Rumble.

For their camaraderie and advice, my thanks to writers Karl Ack-erman, Angela Nicholas, Leigh Bailey, Larry Doyle, Timothy Murphy,
Elinor Lipman, and Mary Quattlebaum. Special thanks for the stellar teaching of Richard Bausch. For getting me through this book and so much else, love and thanks to Susan Lieberman, Sarah Bulley, Roy Raymond, and my D.C. Tuesday night and Maine Wednesday night therapy groups.

Thanks and affection forever to my former colleagues at the American Federation of Teachers. For teaching me all I know about union organizing, special thanks to: Tom Flood, Jerry Richardson, Norm Holsinger, Rick Kuplinski, Juanita Dunlap-Smith, Don Kuehn, Pat Jones, Tom Moran, Ann Twomey, Candice Owley, Ray Mackey, Marty Keegan, Rich Klimmer, Bob Jensen, and Chuck Iannello.

For their great goodness to me during my time in New England and after, my heartfelt thanks and love to Denis and Noreen Murphy; warm thanks also to Jean Foley and Bonnie Spiegel.

I am blessed to count among my friends: Laura Baker, Jason Juffras, Christopher and Christy David, Kate Bannan, Mike Long, Vandana Reddy, Jared Schwartz, Kate Innes, Danielle Oddo, Kate Callison, Andrew Young, Sam Wang, Peter Darling, Jon Givner, Shannon and Michael Spaeder, Mary Jones, Sylvia Mapes, Carol Goodman, Kathy Dillon, and Peter Leopold. Marybeth Kelly Evans and Ivan Klein have died since this book was begun but I will never forget them or their belief in me. Matt Jacob and Jeff Campbell have been there for every joy and sorrow, the truest friends in the world.

Deepest love and gratitude to my family: my mother and father, John and Dorothy Bartolomeo, my loyal and loving sisters and brothers (Mary, Anna, Angela, Nick, and John) my terrific sister, brothers-, and niece-in-law (Phil, Eddie, Annie, and Kate), and my darling nephews John, Brendan, Cristian, and Samuel. Love and thanks to our extended family, especially Mary and John Heneghan, Gary Lattimore, John Schlecty, Kim Christiansen, Andy Lee, and Leta Davis. Special thanks to my nephew Devin, no mean writer himself, who read this book in manuscript and rooted for it all along the way. I love you all so much.

The Side
of the Angels

M
Y COUSIN
L
OUISE
and I ate lunch together twice a month at her office, no fail. That's what we were doing the first Wednesday in November when my boss's call came, the one that threw Tony and me, if not back into each other's arms, into each other's orbit. Don't you love it when life suddenly behaves like a movie? There we were, Louise and I, speaking of a man I'd just left—not Tony, another man—and I was on the verge of remarking to Louise, “At least I'm not the mess I was after Tony,” when the phone rang.

Tony was my old flame, the man who got away. The man whose getting away had so thrown me off my game that I'd fallen into a series of stupid romances, the most recent of which was a three-year-long involvement with Jeremy, a self-enamored British expatriate who'd been cheating on me for six months before I discovered it and kicked him out on his tweedy, two-timing ass.

“The thing about Jeremy,” Louise had commented a little earlier as she laid out some pink linen napkins and secondhand china (Louise likes to beautify even a weekday lunch), “is that he's the kind of man who's never happy unless he's exercising his talent for persuasion. Which makes a day-to-day relationship difficult, unless you have some strange arrangement where you pretend you're dumping him every other week, or you wear different wigs to bed, or costumes.”

“I would say I was playful in bed,” I said defensively. “I read articles and stuff. Once in a while.”

“I'm not faulting
you,
Nicky. You could dress up in a lion tamer's outfit one night and a French maid's the next and it wouldn't be enough for Jeremy.”

Louise had never liked Jeremy. Suave, educated, well-spoken types
held no charm for her. She preferred her men artistic, tortured, and generally unbathed. Though perhaps she discouraged Jeremy's potential reemergence because she wanted to try her hand at digging up prospects for me. Louise is a professional matchmaker, a harebrained occupation at which she's surprisingly successful. She'd always wanted a shot at seeing what she could do for me. Like a temperance worker with a tippler in the family, she was frustrated that her dedication and devotion to the cause were of no use to her own kin.

“My trouble is, Louise, I can never spot Jeremy's kind until he's stomped on my feelings so badly I don't want him anymore.”

“Which, of course, makes him come after you with renewed interest. Look at how he's acting now, like you're the Holy Grail. Where was all that appreciation these past three years?”

Jeremy had been doing his best—his persuasive, most grandly romantic best—to get me to give him a second chance. I'd dumped him in July. Needless to say, time had not yet dulled the wound.

Louise's phone rang. We let the machine pick it up—she still has one of those old-fashioned manual answering machines, now considered as primitive as long-playing records.

“Nicky,” came Ron's voice through the static, “I know you said not to bother you, but this is important. Call me.”

It was always important. Ron liked to pretend he lived in an atmosphere of crisis. He was an ardent fan of those medical dramas where the doctor races through the hospital corridor shouting angrily, “Get me a CBC on that kid, stat.” Ron wished with all his meager, little heart that he could someday say “Stat.” Unfortunately, there wasn't much call for that sort of thing when you headed a second-rate PR firm that specialized in hopeless causes. Not only was Ron's firm second-rate, so was his taste in names. He had christened his business “Advocacy, Inc.” despite all my persuasions. I cringed whenever I glanced at our letterhead.

Ron clicked off. Then the phone rang again. If Ron applied only half the single-minded devotion to his clueless, charity-bent clients that he did to getting his own way, how much better off the widow, orphan, and unspayed house pet would be.

“Just ignore it,” I said to Louise.

“Nicky, if you're there having lunch with Louise, and I know you are because you told Myrlene that was where you were going, please pick up. It really is important. I mean it. I'm sincere. Please pick up.”

This was a man whose last honest emotion was when he cried at the baptismal font.

“Shouldn't you call him?” said Louise. “Maybe it's some sort of personal problem.”

Louise is good in ways I'll never be. Serene and unflustered, Louise manages to be lovable despite the fact that she floats down the river of life as if on a golden barge.

Nine months younger than I am, my cousin Louise has been at hand for nearly every major event of my life, from my first Communion to my first pregnancy scare. She is my sounding board, my reference point, my unshakable ally. When we were teenagers and nearly every other girl I knew was cruel or unapproachable, Louise was my friend. Because of her, I had survived four years in one of the meanest, snootiest convent schools on the East Coast, the St. Madeleine Sophie Academy for Young Women. Our parents had scraped and saved to send us there; the parents of the other girls considered themselves deprived if they didn't fit in a second trip to Europe every year. We were made to feel this difference. But, because of Louise, the petty hurts inflicted year after year, the sly daily nastiness that adolescent girls are such experts at, hadn't done lasting harm.

Louise got there a year after me, being younger, and a month into her first semester my cousin's uncrushably lighthearted presence transformed the place, for me, from a daily incarceration stretching endlessly before me into a temporary stint, a launching pad, a joke. I'd not only survived high school, I'd largely forgotten it—because Louise was there too, looking out for me in her unobtrusive way.