The Last Time They Met_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [112]
Not contrite. Not contrite at all.
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On the morning of Christmas Eve, Linda fails to meet Thomas at the bottom of her street as planned. Eileen has just walked in the door, back from New York for the holiday, and Linda cannot bring herself to leave, particularly since it seems to be Linda whom Eileen most wants to see. Though, in truth, they are strangers. Linda has been careful that day not to wear anything that once belonged to Eileen (not wishing to seem a diminished model of the older cousin) and has dressed in clothes bought from her tips: a slim gray woolen skirt and a black cardigan, the sleeves rolled. She is saving up to buy a pair of leather boots.
Linda needn’t have worried. Eileen comes home in tie-dye, fresh from Greenwich Village, where she now lives. She doesn’t wear a bra and has on long leather boots like the ones Linda wants. There are beads around her neck and not a trace of makeup on her face. Linda, with her hair curled for the holiday, looks her cousin over carefully after they embrace.
In the privacy of the girls’ room, Eileen speaks of head shops and sensual massage. Of a band called “The Mamas and the Papas.” Of hash brownies and a job with a project called Upward Bound. She has a boyfriend who plays harmonica for a blues band, and she likes the music of Sonny and Cher. She talks about why women shouldn’t use mascara and why hair is a political statement. Why Linda and Patty and Erin also shouldn’t wear a bra.
“Don’t be ashamed of your past,” Eileen says privately to Linda when the others have left the room. “It was just your body acting, and you should never be ashamed of your body.”
Linda appreciates the kindness inherent in the advice but is more than a little worried about what Eileen thinks she knows.
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During Christmas Eve dinner, Jack bounces back from the door to the apartment to say that Linda has a visitor. She freezes in her chair at the kitchen table, knowing who it is.
“You’d better see to it,” the aunt says after a time.
Thomas stands outside in the hallway, a small package in his hand. The box is inexpertly wrapped with a noose of Scotch tape. He has his overcoat on, the collar up, his ears reddened from the cold.
She is embarrassed at the thought that she has nothing for him.
“I couldn’t get away,” she says. “Eileen had just come.”
He looks hurt all the same. She has hardly ever seen him look hurt, and the knowledge that she has caused this squeezes her chest.
He holds the box out. “This is for you,” he says.
Embarrassment and remorse make her forget manners. She opens the package in the hallway while he stands awkwardly, his hands in his pockets. It takes an age to excavate the package through the noose of tape. Inside the box is a gold cross with a tiny diamond in its center. A gold cross on a chain. A note reads, “For Magdalene.”
She shuts her eyes.
“Turn around,” he says. “I’ll put it on for you.”
At the nape of her neck, she feels his fingers — too large for the delicate clasp. “I’ll do it,” she says, when Jack, whose curiosity can’t contain itself, opens the door to get another look at the mysterious stranger. Linda has no choice then but to invite Thomas in.
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She sees it all from Thomas’s eyes: the wallpaper, water-stained in the corner. The Christmas Eve dinner table next to the sink full of dishes. The counter littered with pie crust and potato skins, crusted fish in a frying pan. The lamp hanging over the center of the table, knocked so often the shade has split.
They walk into the den with the plaid sofa. The smell of cigarette smoke is a pall in the air. The TV is on, a Christmas special.
Linda introduces Thomas to the cousins and the aunt, the cross like a beacon at her throat. The aunt is reserved and wary, taking in the good overcoat and the Brooks Brothers shirt, the leather gloves and the best shoes. Jack is levitating from excitement: here is an older boy