The Lesson (21 page)

Then there was the Kevin problem. Now
that
she couldn’t blame on fate. After all, it was she
who had let Kevin into her apartment late at night after meeting him in a private home only an hour earlier. She could have refused to open the door. She could have pretended not to hear the knocking. She could have yelled through the locked door and threatened to call the police. But she had not responded in these predictable ways. Predictable because, had anyone asked her before he had actually shown up at her apartment late that night, she certainly would have said that she would never open a door to a young man who was practically a stranger, someone she had met and only spoken to briefly that same evening. So why had she felt so comfortable opening the door to him?

There was something about Kevin that was irrepressibly sweet—an innocence, really—that she wasn’t used to seeing in a young man, which mixed incongruously with an unusually large dose of self-assurance that bordered on cocky. Cockiness she had seen before, but it was never undergirded by goodness and decency. Rolando had been like that, she realized now with stinging clarity. Aside from the obvious fact that Rolando was physically gorgeous, it was his confident ways that had enhanced his attractiveness to Gina. But underneath the preppy clothes and knowing smile was something ravenous with flesh-tearing teeth, or so it had seemed in a few seconds of terror that had not dimmed in her memory in the least in the few weeks since she had shared spaghetti and a sinking couch with him in his apartment.

She reached for another cookie. When she had finished eating it, she suddenly realized there was only one left. Remembering her father’s warning, she rolled down the top of the sack and set it on the passenger seat. She didn’t want to eat her last excuse for lingering in the car, though it was tempting. She’d still have to go into the garage if she ate the last cookie.

Thermos in hand, Gina knocked on the garage side door. A muffled voice summoned her inside, and as she stepped into the room, she saw with alarm what the soft edges of the night had concealed. In the shaft of harsh afternoon sunlight
thrown from the single door, the garage and its humble contents looked worse than she remembered: dustier, shabbier, grungier. The air was staler in the daytime too because, though winter was around the corner, a late fall sun baked the wooden roof and walls.

“Kevin, it’s me, Gina.”

It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, and as they did she saw Kevin, lying on his stomach, his left arm flung over the side of the bed haphazardly. The top half of his sleeping bag was pulled down so that his bare back was exposed to his waist. His hair was mussed and damp and clung to his head in sections. In his feverish state he did not realize at first that it was Gina standing at the foot of his bed, but when she said his name he immediately turned himself so that he was propped on his right side, his bare chest toward Gina. His face was wan and his eyes were glassy, telltale signs of fever. An old black desk phone, practically an antique, was parked on the concrete floor next to the bed, its cord meandering off somewhere into the darkness of the kitchenette. It pained Gina to realize that his only connection to help and sustenance was that old phone. She didn’t see so much as a pitcher of water anywhere. He looked bad and he needed nursing. She was glad she had come, but not glad enough to stay long. Though the side door to the garage had been fully shut when she arrived, she intentionally left it open all the way, not just for the light it shed, but for respectability. Sick or not, she wasn’t going to encourage him.

When Kevin turned over and saw her standing there, looking at him half-naked, he quickly reached for his T-shirt that hung on a nail on the wall and just as quickly pulled it over his head.
“Gina! I didn’t realize it was you.”

“My mom sent you some of her homemade chicken soup,” she said, turning to her reason for coming. She took one step toward the foot of the bed and lifted the Thermos for him to see.

“She’s an unusual woman to take such interest in a sailor she’s never met.”

“My mom is hospitable to everyone,” Gina said.
But likely more hospitable to an up-and-coming lawyer than a poor sailor.

“I already like her.” Kevin sat upright and positioned a pillow behind him for support. “She has good taste in men.” He motioned with his hand toward the edge of the bed. “Why don’t you sit down?”

“I can only stay a minute.” She ignored his suggestion to sit on the edge of his bed. It seemed too intimate. After last night she didn’t want to do anything that smacked of familiarity. So instead she stepped over to the other bed on the opposite side of the cramped room, not three feet away. She glanced at the lumpy sleeping bag to check for spiders. Seeing none, she gingerly sat down. As she did she consciously set aside an immediate inclination to bend down and peer under the bed. Doing so would make her appear as neurotic as she felt, or worse, insult her host. Nevertheless she made a point of adjusting her feet on the floor in such a way that they didn’t rest too close to the bed, just in case something furry had taken up residence in the vast darkness under the mattress. There was no box spring.

“How are you feeling?” She should at least make small talk.

“Terrible. Hot. Thirsty. Really tired. I think I have the flu.”

“I think you do too. What have you had today? I mean to eat or drink?”

“Nothing. I thought of going up to the bathroom on Hazel’s back porch for a sip of water from the sink but I could never seem to muster up enough energy. I’ve just been lying here, drifting in and out of sleep, praying for God to help me. In my wildest dreams I never thought He’d answer by sending a real angel.”

“Don’t get ideas. My mother insisted.”

“Sure she did.”

Gina didn’t like the way this was going. Did he really think she was interested or was he just goading her because it was his nature to be a flirt and a hopeless tease? She couldn’t have been plainer last night. And why oh why was she stuck in another sticky wicket? She wanted to show kindness to the sick but she also wanted to get out of there. Her worst fears about how he would interpret her visit had come to pass, as she knew they would, but she wouldn’t just drop the soup and run. That would not be polite, and one could never
be impolite. She needed to stay a respectable length of time, but at the same time, she wanted to make this conversation short. Every minute she sat with Kevin in that dilapidated garage, trying not to think about the gorgeous naked chest she had just seen, made her more uncomfortable with her own thoughts.

“So. Let me pour you some soup, Kevin.” She unscrewed the Thermos top, which doubled as a cup, poured a little of the steaming broth, and handed it to him. The rich smell of fresh, hot chicken soup temporarily overcame the stale odors of tobacco ash and a closed-in sickroom. Kevin looked at the cup of soup in his hands and then at Gina. Her heart was warmed by the tender gratitude she saw in his eyes. Maybe she had done the right thing by coming. Maybe she shouldn’t see so much into this after all. He was just this nice but lonely guy and he was sick and had no one to care for him. She was the one who just happened to be available to help. She was obsessing over nothing.

Quit being so melodramatic.

Gina was still thinking these thoughts to try and calm herself as she sat back down on the lumpy bed across from Kevin. As she did she stole a glance at her feet to make sure they were still safe from unknowns under the bed. It was awkward to sit on the bed because her legs were long and the bed was low, and she was still wearing her church heels, which made her knees sit several inches higher on the floor than usual, so that it seemed she was looking between her knees to see Kevin across
the room. The awkward physical position added to her overall sense of awkwardness in being there. She hoped her discomfort with the whole situation was not obvious.

Kevin took a sip from the Thermos cup. “It’s good,” he said.

“Thank you.” Gina was never comfortable with silence. She had to say
some
thing. “Heard any more drunk sailor jokes lately?” was all that came to mind. Now that was stupid. Of course he hadn’t heard any more jokes. He had left her at her apartment only late last night and gone straight back to the ship for his watch, and when it ended had driven all the way back to San Jose to awaken, sick, in his garage. Obviously he hadn’t had a chance to hear any drunk sailor jokes.

“No, but I’m sure I’ll get plenty of material to make up my own when I get back to the ship.”

He took another sip of soup while Gina fidgeted. All she could think about was the awful words she had spoken last night and his manly chest, and it certainly was bizarre to string those two incongruous things together in one thought. She’d told him last night, essentially, that she didn’t feel
that way
about him and now he was sitting up in bed just feet from her with his beautiful chest under that T-shirt and she was thinking, if not quite feeling,
that way
about him
.
This whole scene was surreal.

Kevin looked at her thoughtfully over the top of his cup and his expression changed. He looked serious. He put the Thermos cup on the floor next to
the telephone. The narrow space between the two beds was not wide enough for a side table. “Gina, I want to keep seeing you.”

“We’re not
seeing
each other,” she said, challenging him. It had occurred to her that she was in trouble with Kevin a lot because she tried too hard not to hurt. If she showed the least bit of niceness it only encouraged him. What’s more, she felt guilty at times. She was too wishy-washy about their relationship. She would change that, starting now.

“Okay. We’re not seeing each other. Then I want to keep not seeing you.”

Another joke
. Gracious, Kevin, can’t you ever be serious?
“Kevin−” She paused to suck in a big breath and to gather courage−“I’m trying to be honest with you. I came out here today only because you’re sick. You don’t have anyone to bring you something to eat and there’s no kitchen here for you to prepare food yourself. I’d feel guilty if I led you on, to make you think there’s anything more to my being here than the concern of a friend. I came here because it’s the right thing to do. And
that’s all.
”

“Well then," said Kevin, nodding his head slowly, "I consider you a first-class friend. And you certainly shouldn’t feel guilty.”

No, she shouldn’t, but she always did. “Guilt is encoded in my genes. I may attend a Protestant church, but my DNA is Catholic. I’ve been confessing my sins to a priest every Saturday night since I was old enough to genuflect. I could say, ‘Bless me father for I have sinned,’” before I knew who Captain Kangaroo was. When I was in high school I spent so much time repenting that St. Justin’s gave me my own confessional box. They engraved my name on a brass plate above the door.”

“You know you sound ridiculous.”

“No, really,” said Gina. “When I was a little girl, St. Justin’s had a huge millstone—a real one—outside the catechism building, and next to it they engraved the scripture. That millstone makes me what I am today. Scared me out of a lot of worse sins. I used to imagine that thing around my neck, pulling me down, down into the depths of the cold, black ocean. I owe a lot to those people.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute about you.”

Gina sighed audibly. “Then you don’t know me very well.” How quirky, Gina thought. She was being more serious about her past than he knew, but he thought she was wildly exaggerating, that she was making a big joke, which just went to show how he had her up on a pedestal. It was impossible to talk to Kevin when he viewed her as a fairy princess with a puffy pink halo.

“Guilt is divine, a gift with a purpose. It’s supposed to drive you to God, but only when you’ve done something truly wrong that has separated you from Him,” said Kevin.

“I know that.”

“Then there’s no problem. You’re not capable of the things you suggest. Don’t worry about it. I don’t.”

Gina sighed again. Nothing she could say would make him understand her mixed feelings about this relationship. And everything she didn’t say made her uncomfortable.

“New Year’s Eve is coming up soon. I have liberty,” said Kevin, switching the subject. “Why don’t we go out and celebrate someplace nice? Just as friends, of course. So you won’t feel guilty.”

She saw the smile in his eyes. He was impossible. So sure of himself. Gina wondered if he ever really listened to her. She was tempted to confront him, but she had an ironclad excuse for saying no this time. A legitimate excuse to say no was easier than confrontation. Besides, she’d been wishy-washy so many times. She was ashamed of herself. She needed to end this once and for all. But he always made it so difficult!

“I already have plans for New Year’s Eve,” said Gina.

Kevin cocked his head in a question.

“My mother’s cousin, Pietro, is coming from Italy. Trabia, that’s outside Palermo in Sicily. Actually he’s my second cousin, but he’s as old as my mother so me and my sisters call him Uncle Pietro. My mom does a lot of Sicilian cooking at holidays, not just when he comes. Cannoli and other things. It’s a lot of work. I always help her in the kitchen.”

“You’re going to spend the entire evening cooking?”

“No. Later in the evening the whole family is getting together at my Aunt Peaches and Uncle
Joe’s place. Uncle Joe is my mother’s older brother. They moved into a mobile home park recently, on Monterey Road, and they have a clubhouse. They’ve invited all of my mother’s family to a New Year’s Eve party. There’ll be a buffet and music and all my aunts and uncles and cousins will be there. It will be mostly old people, but it’s family. When the whole group gets together we always have a good time. I like to see my cousins. I hope they all come.”