Disguised as a Man: Malachi Martin and Me
by
Sally Hawthorne
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Sally Hawthorne on Smashwords
Disguised as a Man: Malachi Martin and Me
Copyright © 2012 by Sally Hawthorne
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
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Dedicated to Robert Blair Kaiser and to all those who find a way to search for faith in the aftermath of spiritual betrayal. Many thanks also to those of my family and friends for their patience, rejection of vanity and dedication to telling the truth.
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Part I: The Encounter
I came out alone on my way to my tryst.
But who is this that follows me in the silent dark?
I move aside to avoid his presence but I escape him not.
He makes the dust rise from the earth with his swagger; he adds his loud voice to every word I utter.
He is my own little self, my lord, he knows no shame; but I am ashamed to come to thy door in his company.
Tagore, Gitanjali XXXIV
…étant prêtre, il s’est déguisé en homme….
Il est bien plaisant que cette chimère d’un jésuite irlandais…puisse encore séduire….
Voltaire, Questions sur le miracles,
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Chapter One: The Pearl Pendant
“Breathe a word of this, my angel, and I’ll call you a liar.”
I didn’t know what to say. So I said nothing. What else could I do?
“Swear to me, darling. Swear that you’ll never tell a living soul what has happened here today.”
Again, I said nothing.
“Can you promise me that?”
“Um, okay. I guess so,” I murmured. “If it’s really so important.”
“Oh, it is, Sarah. It is. My life depends on it, and someday yours may too.”
I didn’t know what to think. I was used to keeping secrets, but this was all new to me. Since I’d stumbled into this fantasy of my own contrivance, so suddenly I could hardly believe it was real, it hadn’t occurred to me that no one must ever know about it. But here we were, Malachi Martin and me, embracing in his bed, as he talked of the Third Prophecy of Fatima. It had been a strange week.
It didn’t seem possible that this was really happening. In spite of my infatuation, in spite of the many school-girl notions I’d entertained about this man for more than two years, all I’d really expected from him was a meal in a good restaurant, an autographed copy of his latest book and the urbane equivalent of a pat on the head.
What more could I have hoped for? He was fifty-seven and I was nineteen. He had three doctoral degrees and spoke seventeen languages. He was busy, celebrated and refined, a best-selling author. He was on TV. I was idle, empty-headed, callow even for my years, and shy. So shy I couldn’t look at people if they were looking at me. So shy I could barely raise my voice above a whisper.
“Speak up,” people were always telling me, only making the problem worse. “And quit mumbling.”
I tried to, but nothing ever came out right. This occasion was no exception.
Malachi shook his head. He was somebody. I was nobody. He spoke with authority. I mumbled. We had so little in common. He was committed to celibacy. I, while chaste, was not resigned to the condition. This couldn’t be happening, but it was.
Just a few days earlier, on a Monday, St. Patrick’s Day, my school friends and I had been struggling up Fifth Avenue, all four of us holding hands so as not be separated by throngs of revelers. My feet hurt in my new high heels and my ankles were spotted with mud. I worried about the clothes I’d bought and borrowed for the occasion, and did my best to shield my knife-pleated plaid skirt from the weather. Meanwhile, above the neck, things were no better. The drizzle had exposed the true character of my wispy shoulder-length hair. The dictates of those pink foam curlers I’d doused in hairspray the night before could not override nature. The curtain of undulating sheen I’d engineered a few hours earlier had degenerated to a rippling canopy of frizz.
I wanted to call the whole thing off. But it was too late for that. All I could hope to do was hide out in the crowd until he gave up looking for me, assuming he showed up in the first place. But this was my only chance. I had to keep the appointment. There was nothing I could do about my feet or my wilting hairdo, but I was determined to protect my outfit from the reckless good cheer of the crowd. There was no way I was going to meet Malachi Martin reeking of vomit or horse shit or watered-down green beer
My companions, almost as giddy as I was, did their best to protect me. We were all in our freshman year of college. Although Maureen (some names have been changed) was doing pre-med at Dartmouth and Emily was at Yale, we all remembered what it had been like, just a year before, to be obscure and unpopular back at Coronado High School in our hometown of Lubbock, Texas. We were thrilled to be on our own in New York, having an adventure. Karen, who’d flown up with me for a holiday from her biology studies at Texas Tech, was probably the least excitable of all of, and was, in her own quiet way enjoying the scene. We weren’t particularly pretty, but our collective youth and obvious lack of sophistication (Karen was wearing overalls and braids and Maureen was clutching a pillow) attracted enough amused and drunken attention to make the wet, congested, nervous day almost diverting, at least for my friends. All I could really think about, apart from my burning feet and wayward hair, was my 2:00 pm appointment to meet Malachi Martin on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum, still at least a dozen painful blocks away. It was there and then, he had written, that we were to meet, so as to “dispel any ghosts.”
*
It being Monday, the museum was closed but, because of the parade, the steps were crowded. We arrived a few minutes early and my friends moved away to give me a moment to collect myself. I noticed them taking positions higher up the steps, so as better to observe the scene. Emily spotted him first and signaled to me that he was coming my way. A sudden wave of nausea hit and I thought I was going to be sick, right there in front of the museum. I didn’t know whether I was going to throw up or pass out or start to cry, but I felt sure I was about to disgrace myself. Diarrhea seemed likely. Still I didn’t see him. Maybe Emily was mistaken. From the waist up, I allowed myself to exhale.
Then, suddenly, there he was, taking my hand and saying my name.
“Sarah, at last” he said in the voice that had captured my attention when I first saw him on TV. “How good of you to come all this way to meet me.”
“Er, hi,” I said, lowering my eyes to meet his for an instant before I blushed and looked away.
It had not occurred to me that Malachi Martin might be short. But there he was, with his head full of poetry and machinations and dead syntax, all about two inches below my nose. As he embraced me, my nose was struggling to take it all in. He smelled good. He smelled inviting and sophisticated, like a museum or the powder room at Neiman Marcus. The combination of wafting tobacco, Givenchy Gentleman and wet wool suggested to me the presence of wisdom, good will and rich life experience. But that’s what I wanted to believe, that Malachi Martin was decent and loving and wise. He dropped the cigarette he’d been smoking and stubbed it out with his wing-tipped toe. I told myself it didn’t matter. People smoked. So what? On the open air it didn’t smell so nasty, I remember thinking. My nose should have told my brain to tell my legs to run. Instead I consented to have a meal with him.
“Have a little meal with me, Sarah,” he urged. Come with me, angel, please.”
So I went. A little later, installed in a dim corner of a Madison Avenue bistro, I dared to have a steady look at him. His hair, I noticed, was straight and dense, graying to a jaundiced white. It fell over his forehead like a boy’s, almost but never quite concealing an odd ruddy stripe that stretched from his eyebrows to his forehead. A “Jesus stripe,” I marveled. Just like the physical oddity of one of his characters in Hostage to the Devil, the book on exorcism that had made him famous. I wondered if, like the birthmark in the book, it, too, served as an admonition, a red flag, red alert, as if to say keep your mouth shut or I’ll kill you. I wanted to ask him about it but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I kept looking. Apart from this anomaly, his complexion was on the whole more ashen than pale, shiny in places and flaky in others, marked here and there by enlarged pores and broken capillaries. Beneath each round black eye was a labyrinth of wrinkles, but not the kind you get from smiling or climbing Annapurna or even lolling on the beach. It was a face weathered more from within than without.
His eyes, as I’ve said, were round and black. As windows to the soul they were unenlightening: opaque, shuttered, blacked-out, it was as though they were poised for an air raid. The irises were indistinguishable from the pupils, permanently dilated, it seemed, as though he used belladonna eye drops. His nose had a slightly bulbous tip but was otherwise unobjectionable and in proportion to the rest of his sturdy square face.
Thin, pliant lips parted to reveal large, unconvincing teeth. I suspect that he wore dentures. But my experience with boyfriends and false teeth was limited. I never learned the truth, probably because I didn’t want to know. The fact that, after many years of oral intimacy, I can’t say for sure whether his teeth were his own, is surely a credit either to an ingenious contrivance of vanity, or a true Buonarroti of prosthodontists. I’d just gotten rid my braces and was still too aware of own small teeth. The fangs, gaps and serrations were gone, but my overbite remained. It made me self-conscious and reluctant to think too much about other people’s mouths.
Malachi leaned across the table and reached for my clenched fist. His hands were, by his own admission, plebeian. “Plowman’s hands,” he called them, and I silently agreed. They were squat and wide and the hairy fingers were stubby, I noticed as he uncurled my longer, bird-boned fingers and compared them to his. This particular move—pointing out one’s own defects before anyone else can beat you to it—is a clever device for bolstering one’s vanity . I’ve since adopted it. See what an earnest little simpleton I was in those days? His gesture made me giddy. I was flattered and slightly incredulous. It didn’t seem possible that here I was, sitting in an elegant corner of a restaurant glancing shyly at the man of my dreams as he held my hand.
Yes, he was still the man of dreams, in spite of any little imperfections of form, for his voice, the voice I’d learned to love from talk radio and educational television, was as resonant and plausible as ever. His clothes, too, were just what I had expected: a well-cut suit, tailored after the fashion of the current decade, an expensive stripy shirt and a discreet, forgettable tie (I don’t remember it). His size 8EEE feet were concealed in proper dress shoes that day. My own arches throbbing envied him. The difference in our stature that had so caught me off guard, now seemed like a blessing, or would have, if I’d thought to pack any flats.
I was relieved, almost incredulous that Dr. Martin, as he was known in those days, seemed genuinely delighted to meet me. I had expected a more guarded reception, one that set limits right from the start. I had expected him to be formal and polite, which he was, and even indulgent. But I sensed that something more was going on, that it mattered to him what I thought, too. Flattered, I dismissed my initial misgivings about his appearance. Had he been less enthusiastic, it might have bothered me that he was shorter than I’d ever imagined and that he looked older than his age. But he was at least as charming as I’d hoped he would be and his apparent lack of reserve was gratifying. I didn’t mind the unexpected embrace and hand-holding, or his “call me Malachi” insistence. It all seemed innocent enough. Almost avuncular, to use his word for it. Dr. Martin—Malachi—was, presumably, too sensible—and celibate—to be anything but innocent and avuncular with an infatuated, inarticulate, insignificant girl. The ghosts he was determined to dispel were, it seems, his own.
The little meal was not successful. It was impossible to eat in front of him, especially since my guts were still churning from anxiety and an early lunch at a Shraft’s—Emily’s suggestion. Emily usually got her way. After all, she was at Yale, and Harvard had not been her first choice. So while I refused to eat, he dallied with scotch, soda, and, in succession, about thirteen cigarettes. Although I had grown up in a zealously anti-smoking environment, I didn’t mind. The fact that Malachi smoked heavily seemed at least as excusable as my being unable to utter a complete sentence.
Finally he begged me to order “something, anything.”
“Please, Sarah, won’t you have a little drink, at least?” he prompted.
A drink? I knew what he meant but I was too cautious to experiment with alcohol, which my family forbade and I rarely touched. I didn’t even drink coffee at the time. So I decided to order tea. I must have mumbled, for the waiter didn’t understand me. Neither did Malachi.
“What was that, my dear?” he asked, embarrassing me more.
“Tea,” I said. “Hot tea,” I added, mortified to be talking like I was still in Texas, where tea was generally iced.
“Darjeeling or Earl Grey?” the waiter asked.
“Darjeeling is a black tea and Early Grey is perfumed with….” Malachi began.
“Bergamot,” I interrupted, horrified that he would think I didn’t know.
“Yes, Sarah, that’s right,” he said, smiling in a way that made my face burn.
A few minutes later the tea arrived. I smelled bergamot and panicked. Though I drank Earl Grey all the time at home, I wondered whether I ought to add milk or lemon. What would Malachi think if I didn’t do it right? Years later, when, in bad Mandarin, I routinely had trouble ordering tea in China, I resolved never to drink the filthy stuff again. But you can’t blame all your troubles on a beverage. Or maybe you can. The culprit, in my case, has not been tea.
Malachi watched as I struggled with my cup of Earl Grey. I noticed that he blinked a lot, almost as though he were battling shyness. I doubted that my impression was accurate. This was Malachi Martin. Who was he to be shy? Eyelids fluttering, he first asked a few polite questions about the “progress” of my studies in philosophy and religion, my default major at the small liberal arts college I attended in north Texas.
“How are your studies progressing, Sarah? Still working your way through Aristotle?” he asked.
“Well, um, sort of,” I murmured
“Sort of? Whatever do you mean?”
“Um, well, we’re doing Aquinas and that stuff, so….”
“You’re reading the Aristotelians,” he said. “I understand. Do you think the Scholastics successfully reconcile pagan and Christian virtues?”
I didn’t. I considered pagan ethics, so-called, to be superior. But I didn’t dare tell him that, in case he disagreed or, worse, asked me to explain myself. He was waiting for my reply.
“Well, er, I don’t know,” I finally replied.
Even in my panicky state I reasoned that I should not expect someone like him to continue discussing metaphysics or theology with someone like me. I was right. The “conversation” quickly took a turn I did not anticipate.
He stared at my eyes, which I imagined to have become bloodshot and smeared with mascara in the polluted air of Manhattan. I dropped my gaze to my teacup.
“Don’t look away,” he chided, touching my arm. “Let me see your face. Ah, yes, not green but blue and yellow,” he continued when I glanced up. “Chameleon eyes. Perilous enough to deceive any man,” he declared.
I almost spit out my tea. My eye color was one of my more striking features, but that wasn’t saying much, I’d long ago concluded. Suddenly I felt his stubby fingers on my cheek.
“And a true peaches-and-cream complexion,” he said, shaking his head as though he couldn’t believe his own eyes.
Why was he doing this to me? Peaches-and cream? I could feel myself blushing. Strawberries, maybe. Strawberries and skim milk.
Although flattered, I almost resented the platitudinous nature of his flattery. “Such a fine nose, a Roman nose,” he continued.
I shook my head and sighed.
“You disagree?” he asked.
“It’s broken,” I replied softly. “See?” I added, pointing to the bump on the freckled bridge.
“Ah, yes,” he agreed. “How did that happen?”
It wasn’t a long story and is one of my more cherished childhood grievances, but the three words I’d already spoken left me breathless.
“Um, it was an accident,” I replied. “Bicycle wreck.”
“Oh, dear,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Was it serious?”
“I thought so,” I replied without thinking.
“You thought so? By that do you mean that someone else thought otherwise?”
I could feel my hand trembling. For so long I’d wanted to tell someone about the black eyes and blurred vision, the unstitched gashes and broken bones. But this was Malachi Martin. I didn’t want to whine.
“Something terrible happened to you that day,” he said, closing his eyes and sighing. “It was evening, wasn’t it?”
It was. But how did he know?
“How do you know that?” I asked.
He opened his eyes and smiled.
“Oh, I see things sometimes,” he said. “Evil things, especially.”
Shortly before coming to New York I’d re-read Hostage to the Devil, his supposed non-fictional, names-have-been-changed account of five actual exorcisms performed under the auspices of the dioceses where they’d allegedly taken place. I knew that there had been some speculation as to whether Martin himself had been personally involved in some of these rites. Several of my classmates had seemed particularly interested in this purported phase of Malachi’s career, and not just for purposes of ridicule. Some of my friends wondered about the presence of demons in our world, whether we should fear them and, if so, what we ought to do about it. I was a secular protestant, however, and the whole business frightened me slightly less than it made me squirm with embarrassment.
“Evil things?” I said. “What do you mean by that?”
He smiled a knowing smile. “I’m pushing things too fast,” he said. “But I see something…something in your face. Something terribly unhappy. It’s not the sort of unhappiness that just comes about all on its own. There’s an agency behind it. Do you understand what I mean?”
I had a vague idea, an idea I didn’t like. It was this sort of idea—agency-- that meant I got blamed for random events in which I’d had no part. But I decided to play along.
“Well, my brother tipped the bike over,” I said with a smile.
“Ah, did he now? But did he take the blame?” Malachi asked, seeming genuinely intrigued.
I shook my head.
“You did,” he said.
I nodded, appalled at the tears that were springing to my eyes.
“What did they do to you?” he asked, almost eagerly.
I shook my head.
“No, Sarah, it’s all right to cry,” he said, now holding both my hands in his. “Tell me everything.”
“It was nothing,” I said, sniffling. “They…they just yelled at me….”
“Yelled at you? What for?”
“Bleeding, missing a wedding shower, making a mess.”
“They yelled at you for bleeding?”
I nodded.
“Then what happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? How can that be?”
“My mom went to the bridal shower,” I explained. “That was on Saturday. The next day they all went to church.”
“To church? Did you go as well?”
“No. My face was…too much of a mess for that.”
“So they just left you at the house, alone?”
I nodded.
“How old were you then?”
“Eight, maybe nine.”
“And what did the doctor say about all this?
“I didn’t go.”
His dark eyes narrowed.
“After a head injury serious enough to do…this?” he said, gesturing at my face. Was it really that noticeable, I wondered, devastated by his assessment.
“Don’t mistake me, angel, you’re a lovely girl with the face of an goddess,” he said, “but this sort of accident can cause concussion, even cerebral hematoma, a deadly condition not readily apparent, especially in children. My daddy was doctor, you know, and he treated such accidents as matters of life and death. Not to mention attending to the aesthetic aspects, especially for a daughter.”
His outburst of solicitude made me feel guilty. My mom and dad frequently neglected to take me to the doctor when another parent might, but I wasn’t supposed to let anyone know. Moreover, I took a perverse pride in being able to nurse my own illness and injuries. It made me feel more independent.
“I did go to the doctor eventually. I had broken bones in my hand and was having trouble using a pen….”
“That’s hardly the same thing. By then it was too late to reset the nasal cartilage properly without surgery, and you’ve obviously never had that.”
His tone was so harsh that I felt somehow to blame for upsetting him. I wiped my eyes with a napkin and tried not to sob.
“Oh, don’t cry, poupee, don’t cry. I’m not angry with you. You’re so lovely. Even that nose of yours. We won’t talk anymore about it now.
He reached up and wiped away some tears the napkin hadn’t captured.
“Now, let’s see, where were we? Ah, yes, there’s a wide philtrum, very wide for such a delicate mouth,” he continued, still working his way down.
I didn’t know then what a philtrum was. All I could think of at the time was that the word “wide” couldn’t mean anything good when it came to describing an unknown body part. Wide-eyed, maybe, speaking figuratively. Like me. I was very uncomfortable. This was starting to feel more like vivisection than appraisal. I forced a quick smile, hoping to convince him I knew what he was talking about. Maybe then he would change the subject.
“Yes, a very delicate mouth, like Cupid’s bow,” he whispered, reaching over once more to trace with his yellowed stubby finger the line of my upper lip, which, I was sure, dripped with perspiration and tears under smeared makeup.
As my body tensed and I resisted the impulse to pull away, my mind rebelled against such prosaic praise. Three doctoral degrees, seventeen languages and this was the best he could do? Cupid? Not even Eros? Maybe he was out of practice. But that couldn’t be it. By his own admission, he’d never had any.
Despite my embarrassment and simmering dissatisfaction, I tried to force a tolerant smile. What came across my face didn’t feel genuine or right. All I could manage was a mangled contortion of muscles that produced something of a cross between a simper and a smirk. He didn’t seem to notice.
“You ought to smile more, poupee,” he said, lowering his fingers from my face to my hand.
Poupee? Was that what he had called me twice now? Exotic, maybe, but weird. What did it mean? I’d studied foreign languages in high school and ran the term through my rudimentary database of diminutives and endearments. Several minutes later, when he’d moved on to other matters, I was able to conclude that the name had something to do with the French word for doll. But, if this was the case, why did he pronounce it “poopy?” Shouldn’t it be “poopáy?”
At the moment, however, this bothered me less that his suggestion that I “ought to smile more.” What woman doesn’t tire of hearing such exhortations? I had. People had always been telling me to smile more, usually just before or right after they were about to do something I probably wouldn’t like. It’s as though they were warning me to remember to carry an umbrella, because it was bound to be a rainy, rainy day. Smile for the camera, smile when you say that, smile when your heart is breaking, smile, smile, smile. Smile and, just maybe, the whole world will smile with you, not at you. I hated hearing it. But I smiled, even though Malachi was now running the back of his hand against my hair.
“Almost auburn,” he said.
Almost, but not quite, I wanted to say. My hair is brown.
“I think it wants to curl in the rain,” he added, pulling at a fuzzy lock of the stuff.
It does, if you consider “wants to curl” to be a euphemism for chaos. I longed to tell him the story of how my grandmother had once remarked, sighing,
“Your hair is just like my mother’s. I remember on the day of her funeral it rained, and while she was lying there in the coffin, her hair started to curl….”
I think that Malachi would have enjoyed my macabre anecdote—one of many I might have told had I been able to speak. And this would have been just the proper moment to do so, for he wasn’t stopping at the neck.
“You have such a lithe figure, too, Sarah,” he continued, caressing my hand but staring, oddly, at the puffiest region of the white lace blouse I wore under a borrowed navy blue blazer.
Figure? I didn’t know I had one. My body was something I covered up as tastefully as I could afford and then tried to forget about.
“And such nice long legs, too,” he added in a tone of voice he hadn’t used on TV.
I felt my face beginning to blaze. My legs are long, and I’d heard that some guys like that sort of thing. But Malachi Martin was not just some guy. Or was he?
I dismissed this slanderous thought at once. How dare I? Malachi was no ordinary fellow, and certainly not a dirty old man. Even if he did occasionally lust in his heart, he was only human, wasn’t he? In any case, Malachi Martin’s occasional carnal daydreams would certainly not have featured, flattery and long legs not withstanding, a character as unremarkable as I felt that day. His fantasies would center on someone really special, someone like a young Vanessa Redgrave or Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. Later I would learn that I was wrong about winsome redheads and delicate brunettes. He did like actresses, however, and women who’d been married to Greek shipping tycoons. Given such proclivities, real or imagined, I couldn’t believe he could be attracted to someone like me.
The inventory finally came to an end. There was nothing more he could say without raising even my feeble suspicions. And he was running late.
He waved for the check, looked at his watch and mentioned an engagement that was pressing. He asked the waiter for the “little bill.” I think I smiled when he pulled out a pair of dark-framed glasses to look at it. I know I sighed, whether with sadness or relief, I can’t say. The little bill had arrived and the little meal was over. While it hadn’t gone well, it hadn’t been disastrous. We’d each fulfilled our obligations, or so I told myself. I could agonize over every detail later. All I could think about now was getting away without falling down.
We stood up and left the restaurant. As soon as we were outside I began looking around in vain for a taxi. It was still raining and the St. Patrick’s festivities were lively, spilling over into Madison Avenue. Our interlude was over. It was back to the real world now. I’d met Malachi Martin and survived the most challenging social ordeal of my life. My ambitions were satisfied. I was waiting for my pat on the head.
It never came. The next thing I knew we were in a jewelry store, Jolie Gabor, named after one of the famous Magyar socialites. The shop ladies knew Malachi by name.
“Oh, Dr. Martin, how good to see you again,” they gushed.
Malachi responded en français. They chatted for a moment, then reverted to anglais for my benefit. He introduced me as a “niece,” visiting from Texas. As he said this, he gave me a conspiratorial sidelong blink that did not feel particularly avuncular. Maybe it was just my imagination. He then announced that we were in the market for un petit cadeau. The ladies gushed some more and exchanged glances that did not feel particularly commercial. Chattering in a language that was neither English nor French, they sat me down before the counter, as though it were the least unexpected thing in the world for Dr. Martin to drop by with a niece from Texas in need of a present. Malachi sat down next to me.
“What would you like best, poupee?” he asked, blinking his black eyes.
The ladies began pulling out tray after velvet tray of gaudy ornaments for our closer inspection. They pointed at bangles, brooches and beads, asking me how I liked this or that. I marveled and demurred as greed competed with modesty in my brain. While my practical education in such matters had been far from perfect, I had read a few etiquette manuals and was aware of how to behave in a proper, ladylike manner in most typical situations. But none of the books had addressed the contingency of visiting a jewelry store with a Catholic priest pretending to be my uncle. I really didn’t know what to do. Sunday school teachers, Girl Scout leaders and my grandmother had warned me not to accept gifts from strange men—needless admonitions, I believed, as no man had ever offered me directly anything resembling a gift.
But this was Malachi Martin. I didn’t want to offend him or embarrass myself. Besides, I like ornaments of every variety, even the rather garish stuff on offer that afternoon. Frankly, I was dazzled. I tried not to, yet couldn’t help studying the merchandise as I fretted about what I should do. It crossed my mind that Malachi’s generosity might be the result of his feeling sorry for me. I glanced sidelong at his face as he jabbered with the staff, but it was impossible to tell what might be going on his mind. The ladies were obviously intent on making a sale. I wondered if this was the first time he’d come into the shop with a “niece” in tow, in the market for a “little gift.” Sitting next to him, leaning close over the proffered trays, I decided I didn’t care. I was in awe of his melodious charm and fragrant savoir faire. Surely it would be all right to accept just a little gift.
But what? All I could remember for sure were the flower and candy guidelines, and some vague algorithm allowing the receipt of a gift worth so many dollars for each week of acquaintance. None of this applied. No matter what I did, it wouldn’t be right. Ominously, I recalled that the single bouquet an admirer had once sent me by wire had gotten me into serious trouble. My mother had berated the courier, seized the delivery from my hands and promptly, with great violence, stomped the dozen red roses into the garbage. Crushed baby’s breath scattered everywhere. She made me clean it up. I imagined the horror of shattered glass, twisted gold and semi-precious stones scattering all over the living room carpet. Seed pearls would damage the vacuum cleaner motor, of that I was sure.
I didn’t know what to do. Why was Malachi subjecting me to this humiliation of excessive attention and self-doubt? But he insisted that I choose.
“Please, Sarah, you must choose something,” he whispered in my ear. “Something, anything, please.”
“Okay,” I sighed, trying to feign enthusiasm.
I stared at the tray before me, a jumble of cheap-looking mixed-up junk. One of the rings was nice but a ring seemed out of the question. Perversely, I slipped on a bangle, knowing that any bracelet sized for a normal-sized grown woman would slide right off my childish wrist. Something. Anything. But what? A brooch, they suggested? What were they thinking? I was only nineteen, the year was 1980 and the brazenly representational stuff they held before me—enamel lady bugs, sparkling daisies, rhinestone kitty cats--reminded me unpleasantly of the sneering dowagers who went to my church. As much as I resented the ordeal the opportunity before me presented, I didn’t want to waste it. But I’d begun to sense the rising impatience of everyone around me. It was getting to be as bad as the business with the tea. So, almost indifferently, I pointed to a small baroque pearl pendant, supposing—correctly, I believe--that it was the least expensive bauble on offer. Everyone seemed relieved.
Ladies began replacing trays, as Malachi himself lifted my wayward, almost auburn hair so as to place my little prize around my little neck.
“There you go, my angel,” he said, turning me around to admire his gift. He leaned close, touched the plastic pearl dangling a few inches below my neck and sighed into my ear.
“Never take it off,” he whispered. “Never.”
As he pulled away, I realized I was trembling. Then came more polyglot gushing from the ladies. Time lurched forward again. Malachi pulled out his wallet, and, with his back to me, money changed hands. Amidst a chorus of French farewells, we left the shop and found ourselves standing in the rain once more. Malachi raised his umbrella, put an arm around my waist, pulled me close and inclined his face toward mine. He kissed me, not on the cheek or mouth, but on some ambiguous spot in between, some body part the name of which only he would know. It was closer to the lips than I expected, or, bewildered as I was, even wanted. Close enough for saliva to be exchanged. A little too close to be avuncular, in my opinion. But what did I know of such things? Maybe this was the cosmopolitan equivalent of the long-awaited pat on the head. I told myself it didn’t really matter. I’d had my little adventure and, around my neck, I had a modestly-priced souvenir to prove it. I reached up and touched it the plastic pearl. There it was: my little white token of unconditional surrender.
*
As if by magic, a car was waiting for us.
“I had them phone my car service,” Malachi said as he opened the door for me. “I hope you’re impressed,” he added after he sat down close beside me.
“Um, wow, very thoughtful,” was all I could think to say, an unnecessary reply to an unnecessary remark. As grateful as I was to be off my feet and out of the rain, the statement made me cringe a little, as did the implication that I required such solicitude.
“I’ve arranged a nice dinner for you, too,” he boasted further. “In a genuine Irish pub.”
“And with a genuine Irishman,” I murmured, feeling almost clever.
He blinked several times and, squeezing my hand in my lap, said, “Oh no, angel, I’m afraid I can’t come. My subsidiary rights editor, Lila Karpf, will be meeting you.”
“Huh?” I said, confused and alarmed. “Who?”
“Lila Karpf—she’s a fine old gal and eager to meet you.”
I was horrified but didn’t know what to say. I hated meeting new people, especially “fine old gals” who would look down their noses at me and despise both my youth and my shyness.
“I can’t,” I stammered. “Please don’t make me.”
“Make you, Sarah?” he said, frowning, his eyes suddenly still. “It’s meant to be a treat.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But…I don’t know this person. Why won’t you be there?”
The blinking started up again.
“Oh, I’m much too busy today—just getting away to meet you took some doing, my love.” His voice dropped to a whisper, “You can’t imagine, Sarah. It’s this hostage business, you know.”
Several times during the course of our earlier correspondence, Malachi had alluded to the ongoing hostage crisis in Iran. I hadn’t paid all that much attention. While I felt sorry for the people being held and felt apprehensive about the Khomeini regime, I believed that U.S. support for the Shah had been a longstanding, cynical mistake and that this standoff was one of the inevitable results of geo-political shortsightedness. But Malachi’s tone indicated a more personal degree of interest, something I had not foreseen.
“What—are you involved directly?” I asked, lowering my own low voice to the point of inaudibility.
Malachi cast a knowing glance at the driver, who did look vaguely Middle Eastern, squeezed my hand again and said, “We’ll talk about it some other time.”
This was the first time, in person, Malachi suggested that he was something more than a literary priest. But I was too upset about the impending dinner to give it much thought at the time. I was also distracted by the fact that our clasped hands had moved further up my thighs than seemed appropriate. Maybe it was just the motion of the cab. I extended my hand toward my knee and thought I saw him smile as his hand resisted.
My arm was stiff by the time Malachi finished telling me where and when to find Lila Karpf. He and I were not to meet again until Wednesday, when he’d be taking me and my friends to lunch.
“Just over there, at Quo Vadis,” he said, pointing west toward Central Park. “And here’s where I leave you, poupee.”
He leaned very close, so close I could smell the wax in his ears. Something about the humanity of this familiar odor reassured me. And scared me to death. My mouth went dry. He kissed me, almost on the mouth, but not quite. It was wetter this time. I felt more drooled upon than kissed.
“Take her on to Grand Central, my good man,” he loudly instructed the driver, who’d been watching us in the rear view mirror.
Malachi was now sitting erect, signing some sort of paper to pay for the car. He seemed suddenly public and purposeful. It was like he was turning into another person, someone brisk and precise, with more important things on his mind than the fragile vanity of an insignificant teenage girl.
“Goodbye, my love. Until Wednesday,” he said as he got out of the car and raised his umbrella. Then he was gone. As I watched him scurry up Sixty-Third Street I realized how squat his legs were compared to his torso. I’d never paid attention to such proportions before, and it bothered a little that Malachi Martin, the man of my dreams, was short. It was like the time I found out that G.K. Chesterton was obese.
“Nobody’s perfect,” I sighed. Judging from the driver’s snicker, he concurred.
*
I was late and rain-soaked by the time I found the genuine Irish pub. Ms. Karpf, already seated with a drink, stood, shook my hand, and gave me a quick appraisal, looking me up and down from over the top of her glasses. She was dark-haired, pudgy and didn’t smile. I wondered whether she’d been put in this position before, having to stand as surrogate for one of Malachi’s odd encounters. While she didn’t seem exactly resentful, she did seem bored. Our conversation was terse, with her doing most of the talking. She told me about subsidiary rights, the menu, St. Patrick’s Day and what it was like to live in New York. She said almost nothing about Malachi, the only subject that connected us. Later, after dessert and Irish coffee, she took me on a taxi tour of lower Manhattan, obscured that night by heavy rain. The Irish coffee had made me a little less reserved, but seemed to make her more wary. When she dropped me off, finally, at the south entrance of Grand Central Station, she touched my arm for a moment and leveled her thick lenses at my bleary eyes.