Girls in White Dresses - JENNIFER CLOSE [45]
“I’m afraid of Andy the janitor,” she’d said. “Because he’s an albino.”
“That’s not a sin, Mary,” Father Kelly had said. He’d sounded annoyed, like she didn’t understand what it was she was supposed to tell him. But Father Kelly was wrong. Mary knew that it was a sin to be afraid of Andy the albino. She didn’t want to look down when she saw him, didn’t want to go to the other side of the hall when they passed each other. He always smiled at her, like he understood, and that made the whole thing worse. She wanted to cry when he did that. She didn’t want to be afraid of him, but she couldn’t help it and it made her feel awful, like she was the worst person in the world. And no matter what Father Kelly said, it was a sin. She knew that much.
Mary turned back to her computer as if she was going to do more work, and then she decided against it. She had to get out of the office. She walked all the way home, even though it was so cold that she couldn’t feel her toes after the first block. She didn’t want to stop for anything, didn’t want to wait for the train to come. She just wanted to keep moving, and so she did. She walked forty blocks to her apartment, and by the time she got there, her nose was running and her eyes were watering, spilling down her face. She wasn’t crying, though she wished she were. It was just the cold.
She went up to her apartment and started running a bath, which she’d never done the whole time she’d lived there. She had trouble unbuttoning her blouse because her fingers were numb, but she managed, and got into the bath, which was so hot it burned her skin for the first few minutes. Mary stayed in the bath for over an hour. Whenever the water started to cool, Mary drained a little bit and added more hot water. When she was sure she could feel her fingers again, she got out and put on her most comfortable pajamas, thin flannel pants and a long-sleeve T-shirt that was worn and soft. She curled up on her couch underneath the blanket. She wanted a cigarette. But she wouldn’t let herself have one. Not tonight and not ever again. She sat there for a moment, and then she got up and started lighting all of the candles in her apartment. This would have made her mother very nervous. “You’ll fall asleep and burn the place down,” she would have said. But Mary was wide awake and not afraid of starting a fire. She turned off the lights and sat on the couch, watching all of the flames light up the room. She breathed in and out until she didn’t want a cigarette anymore. She sat there for a while, and then she leaned over to the candle closest to her and blew, softly at first, and then harder, so that the flame vanished. She got up and walked around to each candle, blowing them out, watching as the flames turned into long winding tails of smoke, and she watched them curl and twist, up in the air, until they were gone. And then she went to bed.
His name was Harrison, but no one ever called him Harry. Isabella learned that right away.
Isabella was drunk. It was happy hour and her friends had ignored her requests to go somewhere that served food. She’d ended up sitting on a bar stool in her rumpled work clothes, plotting to stop for pizza on the way home, when Harrison approached her and introduced himself. And because she could think of nothing better to say, she asked, “Do people call you Harry?”
“No,” he answered. He looked as though she’d asked if people called him Bob or Walter.
“Oh,” she said. She shouldn’t have had the third dirty martini. She could hear her voice from somewhere deep inside her head. And from in there she sounded retarded.
Isabella was tired. It was already almost eight o’clock and it would be a lot of work to talk to someone new. She had to be at the office early the next day. She contemplated excusing herself, getting up, and leaving. She could be home in