The Lesson (22 page)

In the back of her mind Gina was thinking that it might be nice to have a male friend escort her to the New Year’s Eve party. Now that she and her cousins were older a lot of them would come with their spouses, which she knew would exacerbate her sense of being alone at the party. But she also knew her parents were not ready to meet Kevin, even if he was just a friend. They were still so taken up with the recent loss of their shining son-in-law-to-be that they would unfairly compare Kevin to Michael and she would hear about it later. Besides, her parents didn’t understand how a girl could be friends with a guy and not have it lead to romance.

Kevin didn’t understand that concept either.

“Then why don’t I take you to breakfast on New Year’s Day? Town and Country Village on Stevens Creek has a twenty-four-hour place that serves a great breakfast. They squeeze their own orange juice in a machine on the counter. I go there a lot on weekends. After that we could go on a long bicycle ride out to Pulgas Water Temple.”

Push, push, push. He never quit pushing. “Kevin, we need to talk.”

He picked up the cup from the floor and leaned back against the pillow. “I’m listening.”

“I told you the truth when I said I only came over here to bring you the soup because you were sick and there was no one else to help you. I’m not playing with you. I enjoy your company and I think you’re a great friend. But that’s
all,
Kevin.” She did her best to make her face look firm, even sharp, sort of like cheese left uncovered in the refrigerator too long. She had to make him understand that she was serious.

Kevin nodded his head thoughtfully, but his face was inscrutable. When he didn’t respond she felt compelled to fill the silence. “When you start getting romantic and talking mushy it makes me upset. I get nervous and don’t want to see you anymore. I don’t feel the same way about you as you do about me, Kevin. I haven’t hidden that from you.” How cruel that sounded! She tried to soften the blow. “I do like your company, though. But I just want to be friends, nothing more.” Her heart was pounding loud enough for her to hear it. She hoped Kevin couldn’t. Then, for good measure, with contrived sternness she added: “And if you ever start in on that romantic stuff again I will refuse to spend any more time with you.”

There, she’d done it. A line in the sand. After she’d been so harsh, surely he’d never step across it. She hated the thought that their friendship had to end on such a painful note. She’d been hard on him, and not having him around to talk to or take her places would be hard on her.

“I see.” Kevin looked down into his soup cup, deep in thought.

It irked Gina that she couldn’t see his eyes. It made it difficult to tell what he was thinking. There was a long, uncomfortable silence. “Well, do we have an agreement or don’t we?” she said.

She wasn’t prepared for his silence. She would have preferred that he acted all offended. It would have made it easier for her to walk out and not come back if he had ended things in a roar of disgust. She was doing a bad job of this, she knew, but his silence complicated everything. She didn’t know what it meant or how to deal with it. Surely she had royally offended him—why was he just sitting there? No self-respecting man would put up with such a one-sided arrangement.

“We have an agreement,” he finally said. His voice was flat and emotionless, but he gave Gina a strange, mirthless smile.

She returned the smile, but worry nagged at the back of her mind. This seemed too easy. How was she to interpret this response? Discombobulated and not sure if she believed him or not, she decided it was best to leave. “I have some aspirin in my purse. Let me go get some water from Hazel’s back porch before I go. Aspirin will bring down your fever.”

He agreed to that, so she rummaged around in the dark kitchenette until she found an old plastic cup, and then she left Kevin alone while she crossed the yard to the porch. She found only bar soap on the edge of the porch sink, and although the cup looked clean, it had been sitting in that awful garage likely for decades, so she used the bar of soap as best she could to remove anything microscopic that might be associated with toxic waste. After she’d rinsed it repeatedly, she filled it with cool water and brought it back to Kevin. She took two aspirins from a small bottle in her purse and handed them to him with the cup. He thanked her and downed the medicine.

“I’m going to leave you the rest of this aspirin. You may need it.” She set the aspirin bottle on the floor near the Thermos. “I’ll pick up the Thermos later, or you can leave it by my apartment door when you’re feeling better.”

“Okay.”

Kevin seemed to be thinking, hard. Gina got the distinct feeling that he was stalling, that he didn’t want her to leave just yet. But she had to go. She’d made a mess of things, and if she hung around any longer she would be sure to say something even more stupid than what she’d already blurted. Then she’d have even more to feel bad about this evening.

She was still flagellating herself when he suddenly spoke. “Gina, have you ever been aboard a U.S. Navy ship? Fleet Week is coming up in the spring. It will be the only time once a year that sailors can bring their families to see the entire ship. I’d love to show you around the Flint. See the shop where I work. The berthing space. The mess deck. The ammunitions magazine where we store the bombs. I could even take you up to the bridge and show you the wheelhouse. I have some friends I’d like you to meet too. We could make a day of it.”

Whoopee! Inside Gina a little girl was jumping up and down on tiptoes, anxious to get on the big gray boat with its superstructure perched way above the cold green waters of the Pacific. She’d seen the majestic Navy ships tied up at the other big ocean port, Norfolk Naval Station on the Atlantic, when she was a little girl, when her father was stationed at Fort Eustis in Virginia. Her parents had taken her to many military parades, Armistice Day and other events, where she’d seen the rows of handsome sailors, their guns on their shoulders, their uniforms crisp and white, looking straight ahead, marching in step to glorious, stirring marches played by the Navy band. But she had never actually boarded a ship. The thought of going on an escorted tour of one of those grand gray vessels thrilled her. And to see the interior spaces too! She was sorely tempted.

But she had just told Kevin, in so many words, that they needed to cool it. She still felt guilty about accepting his earlier dinner and show invitation when she’d had mixed feelings, and that had turned out, predictably, to be a disaster. It would not be appropriate to accept this invitation now. Doing so would make her ultimatum look less than serious. “I think, Kevin,” she said, measuring her words, “It would be better if we took a little breather. Please don’t call me until I call you, okay? I need to think.”

Kevin nodded in agreement and then thanked her for coming and for the soup.

Gina got up to leave. As she put her hand on the doorknob, she turned around to say good-bye. It seemed to her that Kevin slumped awfully low in the bed. Her heart hurt for him.
He must be really sick.

She hoped that’s all it was.

Toso Pavilion, Santa Clara University

Beautiful, beautiful Santa Clara University.

Gina ran her fingers along the bumpy whitewashed brick facing the gardens behind the mission church. Built in 1822, the thick adobe wall was the oldest structure on campus, an Indian-made relic of its Spanish mission past. It was too late in the year for delicate lavender wisteria blooms to drape themselves lavishly over the garden arbor nearby, but because of Santa Clara Valley’s ten months of sun a year, she could still enjoy scattered blossoms among the gardens’ more than four hundred rose bushes. The towering olive trees, harking back to mission days, would be there all year round, a soft and shady place to read a good book or to sit on a blanket with someone special and talk.

Michael’s graduation day was long past too—nearly two years separated Gina from that bittersweet day. But that didn't stop her from pausing here to reminisce as she walked in the shade of the wall on her way across campus to swim laps in Toso Pavilion.

He had graduated in these very gardens. She gazed across the grassy quadrangle behind the mission church, in the center of campus, and imagined him there, his handsome face among the many excited law school graduates wearing the much-awaited black gown with the silly and hopelessly vintage, European topper. She could still feel the charge in the air and see the proud parents snapping pictures. She saw the uniformed waiters standing behind white-cloth reception tables lined with stem glasses, each with a hothouse strawberry bobbing in cool champagne. It had been an elegant affair on a perfectly sunny day in May, with speeches and music and lofty and moving prayers offered by various Jesuit officials.

And she had been a part of it.

They were not engaged then, not yet. But everyone knew it was coming. Already they were a couple; his family had invited her to all their social events in which Michael took part. When the graduation reception ended and all the family and guests hopped into their cars to drive to Mariani’s on El Camino Real for a celebratory lunch, everyone assumed she would ride with Michael in his new, sleek white Porsche, a graduation gift from his grandfather. She had driven off with him feeling like a fairy tale princess in her pumpkin coach, and so in love with her prince.

Gina remembered that day with poignancy, but no tears came today, just an ache-y heaviness. Sighing audibly, she continued along the side of the mission church and onto Palm Drive, where the soaring palms stood like sentries in front of the main entrance to the university. Before she came to Walsh Administration she took a right to cut through the campus, which made for a convoluted path to Toso but avoided death-defying traffic on El Camino Real. She loved to walk through this part of the campus anyway. Everything she saw was leafy, green, historic, proud, red tiled, and above all, Catholic. Her heritage reached back deep in this place. It was hers.

The locker room was empty as usual this afternoon as she set her backpack down on a bench between two walls of lockers. Nevertheless one could not be too careful. She left the backpack and began her usual rounds, nonchalantly looking up and down the locker rows. All quiet, not a soul in sight. She decided not to bother checking the showers. She’d performed this security exercise a hundred times, and every time she’d felt like a neurotic nut as she pulled back all the shower curtains in both rows of showers, looking for the bogeyman that wasn’t. Casually walking through the locker room and observing what there was to observe was one thing. The neurosis was in the deliberation involved in pulling back each and every shower curtain. She didn’t know anyone else who did this, though she figured there must be old ladies somewhere in long skirts and thick stockings who bent down, straight-legged with their backsides
in the air, to peep under public restroom stalls before entering.

The cavernous locker room always gave her the creeps, a feeling that was enhanced whenever she was alone and undressed; therefore she hastily pulled on her swimsuit, stashed her backpack and clothes in a locker, and walked to the showers. Once inside the first shower stall she pulled the curtain. She didn’t do this for privacy, as there was no need. She had her swimsuit on and was alone except for an overactive imagination, which nagged worse than some people’s mothers.

As Gina put her hand up to the shower knob to turn on the hot water, she heard a distinct, calm voice speak inside her head:

“There’s a man in the shower across from you.”

The voice was so compelling that instead of turning on the water, she turned toward the shower curtain and pulled it aside just far enough to create a small opening to peep through. She looked up, and at least eight inches above her eyes she saw another pair, topped by eyebrows that were clearly those of a man, peering down at her through an identical space between curtain and shower stall wall.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” Gina demanded, her voice so authoritative it surprised even her. At once she yanked her shower curtain open and stepped toward him menacingly. She completely forgot that she was standing there in her teeny black bikini with the skinny ties at the hips. Not that it would have mattered. She was furious.

“I got lost! I was looking for the men’s locker room!” Absurdly, the man—who looked to be in his early twenties and was at least six feet four and well over two hundred pounds—was flustered to the point of blubbering.

“I will show you the way out!” Gina boomed. But before she could take a single step, the intruder began to run, turning his back on her fast and heading toward the exit. She watched him run through the locker room door toward the basketball court. In a matter of seconds, he was gone.

Gina stood there in shock, eyes fixed on the exit, unbelieving, trying to comprehend what had just happened.
Was he really lost?
She didn’t think so, but that didn’t stop her from debating the question endlessly as she swam laps across the pool, her thoughts swirling round and round in circles like the eddies near the pool filter.

She wished she had someone to confide in, someone to tell what had just happened to her. As she glided through the heavy waters of the deepest part of the pool, for the first time she found herself having an imaginary conversation with Kevin instead of Bonnie. Kevin would have some unique insight into this. He would have an understanding ear. Okay, so he’d make some joke about it. After all, “BIKINI-CLAD CO-ED ROUTS LOCKER ROOM PEEPING TOM” was tailor-made for his corny puns. But he was a good listener, and he approached difficult situations differently than a sympathetic girlfriend. That would be true because he was male, but mostly because he was Kevin.