Free Academy Street by Mary Costello Page B

after-tow she
lost her tread and floundered for a second and lunged back towards the shore, desperate
for the touch of the sea floor.
    In the evening they gathered up their belongings and piled onto the boardwalk, to
the hot dog and drinks stands. Oliver and the others drifted off. They found themselves
together again, a sphere of uncalm surrounding them. His silence was overbearing,
a force field, sucking everything out of her. He raised his head and looked from
him, as if nothing had happened. There was an eerie depth to him, an inwardness that
was infinite. She thought he was not in command of it.
    That night they all met up again at City Center ballroom on West 55th Street. She
was fevered, agitated, consumed by the day’s events. The ballroom was heaving, dancers
jiving to the Irish show band. Oliver found a raven-haired girl and never left her
side. Anne and Tim danced and then, pitying her, Anne went to the bathroom and Tim
took her onto the floor. The crowd swelled and swayed and she searched for the head
of David among the throng.
    He appeared at her side. She had gone outside for air, sat on a window sill. Under
the streetlight he smiled at her. He was very tall. His smile drew her to him and
she felt herself in the presence of something good.
    ‘Hello, stranger,’ she said. She knew she would remember this day for the rest of
her life.
    ‘How’re all the patients? Any more falls?’ She had told him, before, of patients—men
mostly—fainting when blood was drawn, at the sight of the syringe even. She suspected
him a faller himself.
    ‘Every day, without fail,’ she said, smiling. She wanted to dance, but not just yet.
He sat down beside her, their arms almost touching.
    Minutes passed and nothing happened. She felt him retreat into the depths again.
He could not help it. She gazed at his hand resting on his thigh and longed to hold
it, make something of it. She sensed a longing in him too. She closed her eyes. She
remembered something she had read—that the more desperately a man is in love, the
greater the violence he must do his feelings to risk offending the woman he loves
by taking her hand.
    They began to walk. The night was warm, the streets alive. She told him again about
the place she came from, the family left behind, the father. She wanted desperately
to get him back.
    ‘I never knew my father,’ he said. ‘My mother reared me and my brother. When I was
eight my cousin told me my father was a bus driver. I’d stare at all the buses going
by, at the drivers. Wondering…is it you? When I got on a bus, I thought he’d surely
know me, he would just know me.’ He threw away his cigarette. ‘One day when I was
walking home from school a bus passed and the driver waved at me, and smiled. I thought
it was him—I was certain. For a long time I searched. Now, well, I think…he probably
wasn’t a bus driver at all.’
    She felt him grow remote once more. She searched her mind for things to say. It was
all she could do not to touch him.
    ‘I have to go,’ he said.
    She was stricken. She caught something in his eyes—confusion, anger—as if hijacked
by feelings he did not understand. She watched him walk away.
    ‘Will you be here next week?’ she asked his back, almost whispering. It took all
the courage she could muster.
    He turned and walked back to her. She felt herself in the lap of the gods. He brought
his face to hers and kissed her. She could taste the cigarette.
    And then he was gone.

8
    MUSIC DRIFTED THROUGH open church doors onto the sunny street where she was walking
and stopped her in her tracks. She entered the vestibule and read a notice for a
lunchtime recital. She listened. First, she discerned piano, then cello. She stepped
into the dim interior and stood by the baptismal font at the back. A small audience
sat in the front pews, the musicians to the side. The notes changed, grew loud and
discordant, then softened again and ascended in a pure harmony. Alone, the piano
played