They discharged me from the hospital on Thursday. My parents collected me and Mom insisted that I stay at their place for a day or two before I went back to the old neighbourhood to resume my life. Mom was always very concerned about my ability to look after myself, even though I had been doing fine on my own since moving out. I loved my independence, but getting some home love from your Ma was always a good feeling.
When they took me back to my place on Saturday morning I ventured down to the call box outside the corner shop. I’d never called Jessie on the phone before and had no idea what her number was, so I looked it up in the tatty phonebook dangling from the bottom of the phone booth. It was easy enough to find the Lombard’s number because the address was printed right next to it. She picked up after a few rings and said she’d come over right away.
“Gee, you have a nice place here, Danny.” she said after I ushered her into the small studio flat I called home. She surveyed it all from top to bottom, her lips pursed and her head nodding as she took in my art wall hangings and fairly modern furniture. “You have great taste in decor.”
My flat was on the top level of a 3 story building just two or three hundred meters down a side street from Jessie’s place. There was no view from my window other than the back of the building next door, but there was a little garden that you could look out onto when standing in the corridor. It was pretty. Sometimes I’d go down there and read a book in the sunshine if I didn’t feel like walking down to the beachfront where there were usually too many distractions for reading.
“I like it here.” I said, nonchalantly. “It’s mostly student nurses and doctors living in the building because it’s so close to the hospital. And the rent is reasonable. Most of the time I eat in the work canteen, so not really a problem for meals living on your own, you know.”
“Student nurses? Hmmm… dodgy environment for a bachelor, Mr. Peterson. Do the nurses make house calls for recently discharged patients?” she teased.
I laughed. “No, I’m just an annoyance to them because I play my music loud too often. None of them have good taste in music. Very sketchy Culture Club and Yazoo fans.”
She smiled and asked, “What kind of music do you like?”
“My tape box is over there.” I motioned to the little wall unit that I had my hifi set up on. She sat down on the rug in front of my pride and joy Technics component stack sound system and opened up the cassette briefcase with all my illegally recorded tapes in it.
“Hmmm, Bauhaus, The Cult, Echo & The Bunnymen, Lloyd Cole… who are all these guys?”
“What? You don’t know any of them?” I asked faking disbelief. “This is real music, not that crap you hear on the radio.”
“You’ll have to educate me.” she said, pushing the case across the rug in my direction as I sat down across from her, grunting in discomfort as I lowered myself.
“Sure thing. Let’s start you off with the mild stuff.” I pulled out a recording of The Blue Nile, which was a band I had come to enjoy and dropped the cassette into the tape deck.
The music began playing and after a few bars of the second song “Tinseltown In the Rain” I could tell that she was enjoying it.
“It’s nice. I like it.” she said, her head moving slowly to the rhythm. “Where’d you find out about these guys? I’ve never even heard of them.”
“Oh, I belong to an underground music cult.” I joked. “We meet in secret every other week to share all the esoterica we can find.” She screwed up her eyes and smiled at me.
Talking to Jessie was easy. Conversation flowed naturally unlike with other girls I had gone out with where you felt you might upset them if you said the wrong thing. She was a different sort of girl. Familiar, not stuck up. I think it had a lot to do with the fact that we were from the same side of the tracks and identified well with each other. There were no pretences. My parents may have graduated from our blue collar neighbourhood and moved out to supposedly greener pastures in the suburbs, but this area was where we both grew up. We knew its sinews. Kids living here had different attitudes to those living in the more affluent parts of the city. They got given cars for their 18th birthdays, or trips to Europe just for passing exams. We got bicycles, if we were lucky. We were kids from lesser means but we were totally in tune with our upbringing and station in life.
After a few minutes I remembered that it was polite to offer guests something to drink.
“Hey, would you like some tea, coffee, maybe some Coke?”
“Are you having anything? I’ll have a coffee if you are. Milk, no sugar.”
“Coming right up.” I said and got back to my feet, grunting as I did.
“Oh dear, are you okay?” she asked as I winced my way back to a standing position.
“Well, I’ve been in better physical shape, but I think I will live to tell the tale of making a beautiful young lady a cup of coffee.” I would have smiled more broadly but the stitches in my upper lip were still trying to hold together the soft flesh that had split apart from one of the many blows I had received. She smiled at me when I called her beautiful.
She joined me in the kitchenette and put her hand on my back as I was stirring the coffee. I felt a tingling sensation at her touch. Her hand dropped down to my waist and she linked it with her other arm, pulling herself against my body, resting her head on my shoulder. A gentle and tender embrace. I finished preparing the coffee and turned in her direction.
“Shall we sit?” I asked.
“Floor or couch?” she asked, taking her mug from me with expert precision.
I had a small two seater couch with a coffee table and a couple of occasional chairs in the main space of the flat. It was cozy, but most of the time I would sit on the floor in front of the hifi if I had visitors, letting them have the comfortable seats.
“Let’s sit on the couch.” I said.
From behind I noticed the shape of her body. She was wearing tight fitting snow washed jeans that showed off the shape of her legs which were perfectly toned. She had an amazing figure.
We sat on the couch, she on my left side, angled slightly towards me. She looked into my face, observing the damage from the beating I took. Her free hand reached up and gently touched me there, away from the worst bruising.
“Is it sore?” she asked.
“A little bit. The weirdest thing is if I rub my finger under my eye socket here it feels like my lip is getting a pin prick. Must be nerve connections that have been damaged in some weird way.”
“That is weird. How’s the rest of your body coping? Do you have any other injuries besides the ones on your face?”
“They were kicking me in the ribs, so ya, some bruising there too. Fortunately nothing broken. That would’ve really sucked.”
“Can I see?”
Interesting. She wanted a look at me without my shirt on. I had nothing to hide and I wasn’t ashamed of my body, even though I wasn’t the best built guy, so I said sure and put the coffee cup down on the table. Gingerly I took off my T-shirt, revealing a kaleidoscope of bruising all down the side of my body, plus some on my back.
She drew in a short, sharp gasp as she took in the damage. “Oh my.” she said. “This is really horrible, Danny. I feel so bad.”
“Why? It wasn’t your fault.” I replied.
She put down her coffee cup next to mine and reached over to gently touch the darkest of the bruises. Feeling her fingers touch my skin was soothing and her scent alone was making me forget all about my physical troubles. I closed my eyes and leaned back into the couch as she continued to dance her fingers gently across the battleground of my upper body.
“Dan,” she said softly. “I know that I just broke up with Micky and this might be sending the wrong signals, but there’s something going on with you and I… that I am finding very difficult to resist.”
I opened my eyes, turning my face to meet hers and I knew in that instant that she was right. Resistance was futile. It just felt right between us. Like as comfortable as pulling on an old faithful pair of jeans you’ve owned forever.
“I know, I feel it too.” I said. “And, honestly Jess, I don’t care who you went out with before, or how long ago it was or what anybody thinks. I want to be with you.”
And there it was. I had officially asked her to be my girlfriend. She smiled and leaned over to kiss me on the lips, stopping short of my stitches.
“I’m so happy to hear you say that. I really am. I want to be with you too.” She was beaming.
“I’m really happy.” I replied. “It’s going to take me a bit of time to do anything physical, but we’ll get there.”
“Don’t worry, we can take our time. I am in no hurry.”
She rested her head gently on my chest and I could feel the chorus of a thousand angels resonating in my heart. Now we were a couple. Wow. How I had dreamed of this day for so many years. The sweet little girl who’s hand I had held in 1969 became my girlfriend in 1988, nearly twenty years later.
Jessie stayed with me the whole day, making herself quite at home. We listened to more of my tapes (some of them she really hated and didn’t hesitate to tell me so either) and we lay next to each other on my bed and napped. We ate peanut butter sandwiches for lunch and watched a little Saturday afternoon TV. I was surprised to learn that she loved both rugby and soccer. She told me that her Dad used to play soccer in local clubs so she was used to going along with her parents to matches nearly every weekend. Like me she was an only child. She didn’t have any cousins as her parents were both only children. Same as mine.
I asked her about what happened with her Mom. She said that one day she had come home and found a note on the fridge that her Mom had written. It said that she needed to go because her life wasn’t working out the way she wanted it to. Her Dad was struggling to cope with her absence and his drinking had intensified since she’d left. Her parents would argue mildly like most married couples, but her Dad’s drinking was something that her Mom couldn’t put up with anymore. Jessie felt sad for her Dad. He had had a horrible life growing up as an orphan and his appetite for alcohol was probably the result of this. But in spite of this weakness he was never abusive to either her or her mother. Quite the opposite, she told me. He adored her Mom, but it obviously wasn’t enough for her.
“So you have no idea where she is now?” I asked.
“None whatsoever. Nobody at her former office knows either. Her boss says that she just pitched up that last morning, said goodbye to everyone she was close to and left. She didn’t even give in any notice.”
“That’s really bizarre.” I said. “Apart from the note she left, did she not even call?”
“Nope. One day she was here and the next day she was gone.”
We were back on the couch, Jessie reclining with her head on my chest. The TV was still on. She continued talking about her Mom. “We were never very close, like I have seen some other girls are with their mothers, but it does hurt not having her around, you know. I mean, I’d just like to know if she ever had any love for us at all, me in particular. I wasn’t a difficult child. Sure, I’ve never had any great burning ambition to be like, successful and all that, but…” she trailed off.
“How’s your relationship with your parents, Danny? I met them at the hospital, they seem so nice. I really got on with your Mom. She’s so young still.”
“She is.” I replied. “She was only 16 when she and my Dad had me. Times were different back then. Most kids left school at 15 and just kind of made their own way in life. She met my Dad at a party somewhere and it was love at first sight. Or so they both say, but in different ways.” I chuckled, remembering that they both told slightly different versions of the story of their meeting.
“And you get along with them both?”
“Ya. I do get a bit agitated when Mom fusses over me like I was still a little boy. Like the last couple of days when I was staying with them she wouldn’t let me do anything. She waited on me hand and foot. It got a bit much at times, to be honest. I like my independence.”
“And did she ever work? Like have a job? I can’t imagine becoming a mother at the age of 16.”
“She worked for a little while as a receptionist, but gave that up. I don’t think she quite understands the corporate world.”
“And now that you’ve left home, what does she do?”
“Good question! Apart from checking up on me every other day she has her various projects that keep her busy. She helps out at the SPCA a few days a week, plus there’s a bridge club she is part of. I have no idea how to play bridge, but Mom seems to be quite good at it.”
It was after that part of our day’s conversations that she said she needed to get back home and see about sorting out something for her Dad to eat, because if she didn’t feed him he would just drink until he passed out, like I had seen on that Friday night when I took her home. I walked her down to my building foyer and we kissed goodbye. We stood locked in an embrace for what felt like an eternity. I said I wished she would stay the night.
“I’ve had a really good day, Danny. We can spend the day together again tomorrow. Are you up for going on another walk?” she asked.
“Sure, I think if I wear a balaclava I probably won’t scare away the kids with this Frankenstein face.” I joked. She laughed.
“Nah, let’s do it, it will do you good to breathe in some sea air.”
We finally parted and she walked back to the frontline, just a street away from me, but now it felt like a thousand streets away. My body ached, but my heart ached more as I watched her walking away.
I was in love. That much was certain.
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