Helen’s concern subsided. “No. I only went out with him that once. He’s not much of a dancer. He’s more a rock-and-roll type. A bit too casual and easygoing for my taste. I guess I’m more old-fashioned.”
“When I’m better and can move again, I want to take you dancing.”
“I would like that,” she said, with a new warmth in her voice. At last, she could discern with certainty that his feelings had changed. “I would really like that. Goodnight, Bill.” Before leaving, she kissed him on the cheek.
Bill always wanted more than a kind kiss on the cheek from women he fell for, but on this occasion Helen’s assurances were enough.
Chapter 36
Many months later at that time of year in which Manhattan becomes the most magical, decorated as it is for the holidays, with colorful light displays and other seasonal finery, Helen and Bill were on a date, their first evening out as a couple. It wasn’t their first out-of-doors excursion, however, since his incapacitating spinal injury. She had driven him to doctor appointments and physical therapy sessions many times before. Exercise had been the doctor’s strongest recommendation, and she had ensured Bill’s compliance. With her assistance and persistent insistence, Bill, who had never been physically fit as an adult, had begun to exercise for long periods while first confined. Within two months his mobility had returned enough that he could hobble on his own, and the cast and the brace were replaced with a more flexible body support. After this time, in addition to physical therapy sessions, Helen took him to her gym to swim and sit in a Jacuzzi. She made sure he swam more than he sat. With her steady coaching, care, and attention, his recovery was more rapid than expected. At the end of four months, he was walking with ease. At the end of the fifth, although his ability was still limited, his urge returned to swing dance. On this evening, they were going out to celebrate the removal of Bill’s body support the day before and to fulfill the promise he had made to her in June.
The transformation that makes Manhattan seem so different, so memorable, so full of festivity during the darkest days of the calendar, is not solely one of appearance. In fact, the change in scenery is the smallest change that occurs. As Bill had discovered through his errors, appearances make very little difference in a just evaluation of a person’s character. The same is true of a city. Appearances can conceal all kinds of unpleasant, undesirable, hostile qualities. Although dazzling decorations, darling gifts, merry gatherings, and tables loaded with food and drink may be visible, veritable signs of Manhattan’s alteration in December, the real change—when it occurs, and it does in abundance—happens first in something that no one can see or hear or touch. Wherever people live, this invisible, inaudible, untouchable thing most certainly exists. It is universal and inseparable from human life. Some may call it the soul or the spirit or the human heart, but whatever term is used, as the days grow darker, a light grows brighter in it in us, for we are creatures of the light and yearn for light and can not live without it. Even though winter settles in with the darkening days, and snows and ice sometimes appear, sunlight that is absent from the sky wells up within us in another form, and the hope of spring is born. The final month of the year is a time for celebration, not of the past, no so much of the present, mostly for the future, our future, to come.
The hearty and hopeful holiday change that had overtaken the city, as great and grateful as it is, because it soothes for a while some of the customary harshness in this capitol of finance and business, where so much money flows in currents unrelated to human need, was less, however, much, much less, than the change that had come to Helen and Bill. They had undergone what can only be described as a metamorphosis, since Bill’s injury in June. Their constant daily interactions had shown each that the other fulfilled their deepest respective needs, Bill’s for care and appreciation and Helen’s for companionship. The anger they had once had for each other was forgotten. As soon as Frank’s push removed the biggest obstacle to their interaction—Bill’s insensitive and immature longings—their understanding and regard for each other quickly established an active