sat down with my father last night,” he told me. “He says he’s going into wills and trusts. It’s going to take awhile, but he promised that by the time I graduate from law school, he’ll get rid of the clients he has and he’ll have new ones before we hang out the Benedict and Benedict sign. This time, I actually believe him.”
“That’s good.”
“I told him no.”
I turned, startled, to look into his face.
“I told him no, once and for all no. I’m going to New York after I graduate and I’m going to become a photographer.”
“What did he say?”
“He offered me a deal.” Billy’s mouth twisted. “He’s so good at deals. He said, ‘Go to law school first, and after you graduate, I’ll stake you for a year. If you can’t make it you have to come home. But I won’t help you otherwise.’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t need your help.’ It was not a pleasant conversation. I don’t know, it’s like he’s got to do his life over, like he’s making penance or something. If I say no, it’s like I’m damning him to hell.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I assured him, the look on his face breaking my heart. I knew what it was like to struggle against your own father, but Da was nothing compared to Nate. “Besides,” I said, “there’s always purgatory.”
He let out a reluctant laugh, then took me in his arms. “This is why I need you,” he murmured. “I need you to make me laugh.”
We kissed, and I rested my head against his chest. The next words were muffled, but I heard them.
“I also told him that I’m going to marry you.”
I pulled back to look at him. “Don’t you think you should ask me first?”
“I know better than that. You’d just say no.”
“This is one heck of a proposal,” I said. “You don’t even ask the girl, and then you answer for her.”
He grinned. “In less than a year, you’ll be eighteen and I’ll have graduated. We could get married in June and move to New York. We’ve got all year to save up. I’ll get a job —”
“Billy —”
“No, listen. The whole world could explode tomorrow. Did you read Life magazine? It’s not a question of if the Russians will drop the Bomb. It’s when. So what are we waiting for? We’ve got to get going on our lives.”
“So we should elope because the Russians are going to blow us up anyway?”
“We could get an apartment, someplace close enough so that you can walk to the theater and your dance classes —”
“A year is so far away.”
“Can you imagine us in New York? We’d conquer it! We’d get everything we want out of it. And we’d get away! Don’t you want that, too?”
“You know I do. Or at least I did.” I knew I had to say it. “I can’t have you exploding on me again. I couldn’t take that.”
“I’m sorry. I know how wrong I was. It’s like, I get angry and I just can’t see anything. Jamie will tell you — I’ve been kicking myself about it ever since. I just couldn’t stand seeing you with him. I thought… well, I thought the wrong thing. I know that now. I understand that. It will never happen again.”
“Never again?”
“Never, ever again. Never, ever, ever.”
“You’ve got to trust me, Billy.”
“I do. That’s the crazy thing. In my heart, I do. I can do anything if you’re with me. If we’re married. You don’t have to say anything, this isn’t a proposal. No, don’t say a word. I just wanted you to see it like I do.”
Our bodies crashed together and we hung on. The last smell of summer was in his hair. Over his shoulder, past the rooftops of Providence, I could see our future. The apartment, the jobs, the way we’d discover the city and not let it frighten us, because we were together. We would lie together in our own bed, in our own home, and make our own lives.
“We can do it,” he said. “One more year.”
That embrace, right there, on the top of the hill? So tight, so urgent, so necessary. That was how love felt. That’s what safe was.
Twenty
New York City
November 1950
The headline screamed up at me from a neighbor’s morning paper when I bent down for the bottle of milk outside my door.
GANGLAND SLAYING AT LIDO
Ray “The Coat” Mirto Shot to Death on Dance Floor in