Remembering the Titanic (14 page)

“This is where my mother collapsed,” Elizabeth said slowly. It was very hot out. Elizabeth liked the feel of the sun on her skin. Sometimes, when it was really hot, it almost seemed to reach down into her cold, bones. But never quite. “Right over there, that’s where she went down. I thought she was dying.” Her mother’s rosebushes needed pruning again, and Elizabeth thought she saw blackspot on some of the leaves. “I must get someone to see to the roses. Mother will be upset if they’re not cared for, and she shouldn’t be doing it herself.”

“She looks fine to me,” Max said, shrugging. “It’s hard to believe she has anything wrong with her.”

“Well, she
does
” Elizabeth replied testily, moving slightly away from him. “If you’d seen her that day….”

“I know, I believe you, Elizabeth,” he interrupted. “I’m just saying she looks really well. Anyway, what about CCNY?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll have to think about it. It seems too soon to be leaving her alone. She just got home from the hospital, Max.”

“She wouldn’t be alone. She has the staff. Or you could ask one of her friends to come over and sit with her, if you think she needs that. Just while you’re at class. Did the doctor
say
you couldn’t leave her alone?”

He hadn’t. Not in so many words. But Elizabeth
felt
as if he had.

Talking about this with Max was a mistake. He just didn’t understand. He still
had
two healthy, active parents, even if he seldom saw them.

But he had interrupted his painting to come and see her. On an impulse, Elizabeth jumped up and went to pick a rose for him. One of the yellow ones, by far the prettiest, though her mother’s favorites were the pinks. With no pruning shears handy, she broke the stem off by hand, in the process driving a thorn into the fleshy part of her palm. When she cried out, Max was at her side instantly. “I wanted this for you,” Elizabeth said, extending the rose with its broken stem. “For coming to see me. You didn’t have to. I know you’re busy.” Tears filled her eyes, not entirely from the pain in her hand. “I wish you could take me back to the Village with you, that’s what I wish.”

“I wish it too, Elizabeth.” He pulled a white handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wrapped it around the injured palm. Then he took the rose from her, supping it into a buttonhole in his lapel. “Thank you for the rose. I’m sorry you hurt your hand. I’m sorry you hurt in other ways, too, Elizabeth. I wish I could help.” He put an arm around her and she leaned into him, laying her head on his chest. She was so tired. She didn’t understand that. She hadn’t done anything to
make
herself tired. Hadn’t been bicycling, hadn’t joined a march through Manhattan, hadn’t danced the turkey trot all night long at the Victoria. But she
was
very, very tired.

When Max lifted her chin and bent his own head to kiss her, even though it had been a while since they’d been alone, even though Elizabeth missed his kisses and his arms around her, even though she loved him so very much, she felt almost nothing. It was as if mailing that last letter to Vassar sealing her fate and stealing her future had numbed her from head to toe. She almost wept then, with Max’s lips still on hers, because she wanted so much to feel what she had always felt when he kissed her. That wonderful, warm, loving and being loved feeling that had so delighted her. When Max was kissing her, when he was holding her, she was never cold. It was the
only
time she was never cold.

She was cold now. In spite of the heat, in spite of Max’s loving, passionate kiss, she was freezing.

Perhaps that was why she was so numb.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, lifting his head.

The very thought of attempting to answer the question exhausted Elizabeth. Everything, she would have to say, everything is the matter. But Max hadn’t come to visit only to hear her complain. “Nothing,” she said as brightly as she could manage, “nothing’s the matter.” She meant, then, to return his kiss, but Nola came out to see to her roses, and the moment passed.

When Max left, he didn’t attempt to kiss Elizabeth again. Perhaps, she thought without emotion as she stood on the front steps watching him drive away, he was afraid he’d get frostbite.

It’s just as well, she told herself as she went back inside to see if Nola might like to be read to for a while from
The Harvester
. I can never marry Max now. He might as well find some other girl who is free to make him a good wife. I should tell him to do so. It’s the fair thing. He’s too nice to break it off himself, even though he might want to. It’s up to me to set him free. I mustn’t put it off. I should telephone him tonight. He’ll argue, I know he will, but I shall be very firm. Perhaps I might even tell him I don’t love him anymore, that would be the kindest thing to do. I would need to sound as if I meant it. Could I do that?

For Max’s sake, perhaps she could.

She tried. That same night, she telephoned him from the drawing room after Nola had gone to bed, afraid that if she waited, she’d lose her nerve. She thought she did quite a convincing job of it, saying she was going to be much too busy to see him for a while, that she did think she might take some classes at the city college, and what with that and taking care of Nola, the smartest thing would be for him to find someone else to keep him company. She would, she said firmly, certainly understand. It just made sense, she said without a quaver in her voice.

But she did not, could not, go so far as to say she no longer loved him.

Then Max’s voice, the voice that warmed her to her core, said, sounding amused, “You’re not very good at this, you know. You should be grateful you’re not yearning for an acting career. No one would ever hire you because you’re a terrible actress, and you’d starve.” Then his voice deepened further. “Listen to me, Elizabeth. I love you. You love me. I can be patient. I know I’m not always, but for you, for us, I can be. It’ll work out somehow. We’ll make it work out. We’ve been through worse than this, remember?”

She remembered.

“So forget about palming me off on some other poor, unsuspecting girl. It’s you or no one. Do you understand that?”

“But…”

“
Do
you under
stand
that?”

“Yes, Max.”

“I love you, you love me. Cozy, vine-covered cottage, someday living happily ever after, right?”

“Yes, Max.”

“Good night, Elizabeth.”

“Good night, Max.”

She wasn’t nearly as cold when she went to bed that night as she had been during the hottest part of the afternoon.

But that night there was the dream. Of ice. Of cold water, of screams.

K
ATIE GAVE HER AUNT
Lottie strict orders: If Paddy Kelleher was to telephone and ask for her, she wasn’t at home. No ifs, ands, or buts.

“Lyin’s a sin,” Lottie protested. “What’ll I be tellin’ Father Doyle in confession on Satiddy?”

“Tell him I made you do it. He knows me. He’ll believe you.”

It was a knife in Katie’s heart, not seeing Paddy, not talking to him, thinking of him with Belle. But she wasn’t about to swallow her pride. Mary said, “Why don’t you telephone him and ask him to explain it all, then? You’re hangin’ him without givin’ him a trial. That ain’t fair.”

“It wasn’t fair, him takin’ Belle to our special place.”

On Sunday, she deeply regretted her invitation to John to go to the movies. But he was so excited about it, she would have felt lower than the bottom porch step, backing out. And if she left the house, Lottie wouldn’t be lyin’ when she told Paddy, if he called, that Katie wasn’t home. ’Twould be the truth. No sin there.

The movie, with the strange title of
Quo Vadis
seemed long to Katie, although she did enjoy the exciting chariot race. John seemed to like the film. After the movie, they bought ice cream and ate it during the walk home, which Katie enjoyed more than the movie because they talked only of Ireland.

“I’ll take you there, Katie, if you want,” John offered when they reached the steps of their roominghouse. “I know how you feel about getting on board a ship. But maybe it would be easier if someone was with you.”

It was so sweet of him. He really was kind and thoughtful. In some ways, he reminded her of Brian. Not near as good-looking, but easy to be with. And he’d be faithful as the day was long, too, Katie was certain of that.

“We’ll see,” was all she would say.

Paddy called, and Lottie said, “It ain’t right, tellin’ him fibs. Why can’t you just talk to him?”

Katie couldn’t.

And then he stopped calling.

She cried herself to sleep more nights than she could count. Just as many times, she went to the telephone in the hall and picked up the receiver. But her pride, still intact, took the phone away from her and put it back before she could make the call. When she wasn’t with Bridget or talking with John, Flo kept her so busy she had little time to think about her broken heart. And it
was
broken, just as she had always known it would be if Paddy left her.

But her
pride
was intact.

Over the next few months, it became easier and easier to sit with John on a Sunday afternoon, talking, or walk with him to a movie or lend him a book from the library that she’d read and liked. When the weather turned cold and winter arrived in Brooklyn, they sat inside, in the front parlor. They talked of things other than Ireland… music, books, movies. Eventually, they went nearly every Saturday afternoon, and when it got too cold for ice cream, they stopped at a nearby delicatessen for coffee and blintzes.

By Thanksgiving, which Katie had spent the year before in Edmund Tyree’s luxurious Fifth Avenue home with the Tyrees and Paddy, everyone in her Brooklyn neighborhood believed that she and John Donnelly were courting. Katie herself thought of John only as a very good friend who shared her desire to return to Ireland.

But she made no effort to explain that to anyone.

Not even John.

Her heart slowly began to heal, though it still ached. And her pride was doing quite nicely, what with Flo keeping her booked solid through the upcoming holidays. It made her feel good, all the praise she was getting, and it was comforting to know she hadn’t been fooling herself when she’d set out to have a singing career.

On bad days, when she couldn’t get Paddy out of her mind, she told herself that if he’d really loved her, he’d have jumped into a taxi-cab and come to see her in Brooklyn. He knew where she lived. He knew how to get there from Manhattan. If he’d cared that she wouldn’t talk to him on the telephone, he’d have done something about it. And he hadn’t. So how much could he have cared?

Such thinking usually worked, and Katie went on about her business until the next bad day when she had to go through the same thought process again.

Eventually, the bad days came less often. Soon they would disappear entirely. Until then, all she had to do was keep herself busy with Bridget and John and her singing. Easy as pie.

But she couldn’t help wondering if Paddy was making any progress with his book.

He wasn’t.

Paddy believed that he knew why Katie wouldn’t take his telephone calls, why she didn’t want to see him. It was, he was certain, because he’d not been attentive lately. Even when he was with her, which wasn’t often, he was fidgety and out of sorts. And that was because he was getting nowhere with his book. Had barely started it, in fact. Anyways, Katie was doing so well on her own, what did she need with him? Bri would have finished the book by now and been the toast of New York. Maybe that was what Katie was thinking, that Bri would have done better in America than his younger brother. Maybe she didn’t want to talk to him on the telephone because she feared she would say that aloud. She wasn’t mean-spirited enough to want to do that, but it might slip out.

Still, every day he had to fight the urge to hail a taxicab and travel to Brooklyn to face her. He could talk her into coming back to him. He knew that much. He’d promise to finish the book, even ask her to help him, as she had in the past. She’d seemed to like doing that. He could get her back, was he to try.

But he couldn’t do it. He wasn’t what she needed. She needed someone steadier, more reliable, someone with a promising future. She had thought
he
had a promising future, after the magazine article sold. He’d thought so, too. Now they both knew better. Edmund was still holding out hope, still encouraging, as was Belle. But they’d give up, too, soon enough, just as Katie had.

He’d never told her how desperate he was, how impossible it had become to write so much as one sentence about that last night on the
Titanic
. He couldn’t let himself relive it. Near frantic, he had gone to Belle instead, explained how he wasn’t having any luck writing the book. “If you’ll take me to Coney Island tonight,” she’d said, “I’ll help you with the book all day tomorrow. I love it there, and I hardly ever get to go. I’ll bring David, the young man I’ve been seeing Telephone Katie, see if she’ll come with us.” He’d explained that Katie had a singing engagement that night, and when Belle asked why he wasn’t going, he’d said, “She don’t need me there.” He didn’t tell her he’d made up a fictitious meeting to avoid watching Katie being fawned over by so many people. Belle wouldn’t approve. She didn’t hold with lying.

They had gone to Coney Island, which Paddy fretted about some, knowing it was Katie’s favorite place. She’d be wounded if she knew he’d gone with Belle. Or mad. But he needed Belle’s help. They’d sat on a bench while he explained how the words just wouldn’t come. Belle’s beau, David, had gone off to get them something to eat and drink and also, Paddy thought, to give them privacy.

It was a waste of time, though. Belle was too excited to be at the park to concentrate on Paddy’s problems. But she had kept her promise about Sunday. That, too, was a waste of time. She had tried her best to help him make a good start on the book. Nothing she said did any good. When she’d gone, and he sat at the wooden table beside the window in his small apartment, pencil in hand, the hand refused to move, the head refused to think, the words refused to come.