Chapter Thirteen: Holy Matrimony
[From the Willow manuscript, Part 4.]
In high school I had a few dates, but Argo was my true love, as I always believed he would be. I don’t know why I went out with other boys when my heart was Argo’s, but there are social pressures. Somehow, despite Argo’s intention of becoming a priest, I had always believed we would one day marry. He would realize that the priesthood was not for him, and that our love would be greater than his desire (need) to become a priest. But when Argo went to Connecticut and didn’t write or visit month after month, I grew angry. The dates I went on were perhaps to spite him or perhaps to satisfy myself that I was still marginally attractive. The dates reaffirmed my femininity which had begun when Argo and I made love the summer I turned 17.
But then after two years in his Connecticut seminary, Argo was sent to Rome to study at the Vatican. He had said he would have more time to visit, but he never did. Had he loved me, at least as I needed him to, I was certain he would have found a way to visit. He had written only a few letters, and they were addressed to the family, which I understood, I guess, but that left us separated by time and the Atlantic Ocean. Ironically, when he did manage one visit in two years since we had seen him off to Rome at the airport, I was spending my junior year in England and never got to see him.
Then, three weeks after I returned from Cambridge, as I was going through my music tapes in my room, I came across a cassette with a sheet of paper wrapped around it. When I removed the rubber band and saw the handwriting on the paper, my heart jumped. It was Argo’s handwriting, and it was the lyrics of a recorded song on the cassette tape. The song was sung in Italian by an operatic tenor, but Argo had translated the Italian into English. The title of the song was “Dio, Como Ti Amo” meaning “God, how I love you.” I didn’t know what to make of the lyrics, which seemed rather old fashioned, but when I played the tape and read along substituting the English for the words sung by the tenor, I cried.
It was a beautiful song about how much the singer loved her, but it was also sad because the lovers were separated. Argo was obviously telling me that he still loved me, and while I would always love him, I had already decided that while he had been my first, he would not be my last. It was obvious, even to a starry-eyed girl, that Argo was going to be a priest, and that meant I had to go on without him. And while my succeeding affairs were never quite as beautiful or magical as those times with Argo, the others were good in their own way.
I remember having played the tape for days, and each time it made me cry. It was cathartic, I suppose, my crying, for each time I cried I realized more fully that Argo and I would never again be together. I was finally strong enough to destroy the tape and the lyrics and so destroy any last glimmer of hope that I would ever again feel Argo’s arms around me.
It was in the summer of 1991, I had just graduated and was preparing to enter law school, when Argo wrote from California with an enclosed newspaper article about his ordination. He had received permission to attend the wedding of his friend, Joe Machiarolla, and would try to pay us a visit before returning to school. Why he was still associating with those people was puzzling, of course, but it was after all his surrogate family, and I recalled how close he had been to Joe’s grandmother. Yet that was Argo, complex, contradictory, and confounding.
I was in my room watching, appropriately enough, a rerun of Law and Order, when suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping on my bedroom window. Actually, it was a clod of earth that landed with a thud. Bailey, my ice white toy poodle, yapped as he always did at an unfamiliar noise. His little tail wagged furiously as he stood on my bed and faced the window with all the bravado his ten pounds could muster. The evening summer thunderstorm had just passed, and when I peered through the blinds I saw Argo standing in the garden looking up.
I grabbed Bailey in my arms and ran down the stairs and out the back door. It hadn’t occurred to me until I was outside that I was wearing only a tee shirt, light cotton shorts, and no shoes. Fortunately holding Bailey would provide a modicum of modesty.
“Argo, what are you doing here?” I asked.
“I’m cleaning the mud off my shoes,” he said as he held up one foot and scrapped the mud from his shoe with a twig.
“Well you are standing in the garden after it poured for half an hour,” I said smiling at his obvious concern which seemed to override his surreptitious visit.
“Yea, pretty dumb, huh,” he said looking at me with embarrassment.
“Not as dumb as not using the front door.”
“Now there’s where you’re wrong,” he said, his face as alive as I had ever seen it. “Had I knocked on the door, your parents would have known I was here, and I would not have been able to talk with you alone.” He wiped his hands on his pants and flashed his beautiful smile.
“Now, that’s where you’re wrong. They took the girls to Charleston. There’s no one home but Bailey and me.”
My heart pounding, I went up to my room to make myself more presentable while Argo finished cleaning his shoes on the back porch. He was dressed in black with a short-sleeve shirt and collar. Around his neck hung a cross with a blue sapphire set in the center. I threw on a bathrobe, ran a brush through my wilted hair, and rushed back down to find out what Argo had to say that my parents could not hear.
Argo sat in his usual place on the couch and I brought in a tray with coffee and cookies.
“It’s from a new coffee place called Starbucks,” I said of the coffee as I placed the tray on the coffee table and joined him on the couch. It was where we had shared our first kiss, and I wondered if he felt as uncomfortable as I did. “I think they mix it with a French roast.” One cup was less than 10 calories, and I learned to drink it black, but I remembered that Argo took milk. “Dad buys it because it tastes like his demitasse, which no one but him can stomach.”
“It’s good,” said Argo after taking a sip. “Aren’t you going to put milk in it?”
“I started drinking it black after we had run out of milk. I prefer it this way now.”
“Well, there sure is nothing better than hot coffee on a steamy summer night,” said Argo.
“Now I thought you’d be pleased. Weren’t you the one who told me that ice cream is not good to eat in the summer?”
“What I said was that ice cream is a high caloric food which in the long run will heat your body.”
“Well, coffee is low in calories.”
“But it doesn’t cool you off in either the long or short term.”
“So no good deed goes unpunished,” I replied. “I should have brought you ice water and saved the good stuff for myself.”
“But you’re a kind and generous person,” he said smiling. “And I’m an ingrate, unworthy of your largesse.”
“Yes, I know,” I said taking another sip. “So how was the wedding?” I asked.
“It was fine --- in that it was like all the others,” Argo answered.
“You sound like there’s a problem.”
“Well, I don’t care much for Joey’s selection --- in that I don’t think she’ll make the kind of wife he expects. But I could be wrong.”
“You sound like a typical friend,” I said. “No one could be good enough for your buddy.”
Argo thought a moment. “She doesn’t come from the same background, so her values are different. And he’s only known her a few months. They met in Las Vegas. I don’t know, he knows her better than I do, and he’s a big boy.”
“He’s your age, right?”
Argo nodded and sipped his coffee. I did too, and we sat there for a few moments in silence. It seemed he was looking for a way to begin to tell me what he wanted to, but then he took a cookie, perhaps to give himself more time.
“So how does it feel being a priest,” I said stupidly. I had hoped that would get him started. Looking back on it, I don’t know why I was so nervous, but I could feel the sweat under my arms, definitely not caused by the coffee.
“I’m pleased, of course, but I’m more a student than a priest,” he said softly. “My assignment is to study --- to achieve success --- what my assignment will be after I get my doctorate is yet to be determined.”
“What do you think it will be?” I asked.
“I guess to teach and do research,” he said, his eyes looking up as if the answer were hovering above him. “But I may be used in some administrative capacity at the new university. The Legion is planning on building one in Connecticut --- that’s not for a few years, though. If they finally do, I might be assigned there.” He didn’t seem to mind that the decision on how he would spend the rest of his life would not be his. “It’s probably a matter of money; they have the land, but the outlay of capital for the building is huge. Without the Vatican’s support, I doubt the Legion could afford to build it on its own.”
“And if you had your druthers?” I pursued.
“I’d opt for an assignment here in the Metro area --- whichever university would offer the best research facilities. Rutgers would be ideal if they would assign me to a secular school. If not, St. John’s probably has the most money. Of course, the Ivy League would be most prestigious, but Catholic priests ….” He trailed off a moment, looked into my eyes, and quickly asked, “But what about you? How does it feel to be a Rutgers alum?”
“Good. I’m looking forward to getting started.”
“And you have a job waiting for you; that makes things a lot more comfortable.”
“Yes and no,” I answered. “I still have the pressure of proving that I deserve the break.”
“I suppose, but you got into Camden Law, and that’s the biggest step,” he said seriously. “I’m sure your dad is already proud as can be.”
I nodded.
“And who better to help you through the classes?” he added.
“I guess,” I said tentatively.
“What do you mean?” asked Argo sensing my ambivalence.
“Well, you know how Dad thinks; he’s got a mind like a laser. Mine tends to be a bit more diffuse.”
“That’s probably a function of experience in the real world,” he said sounding more like a textbook than ever. “Academics is always more theoretical, more explorative. Without the constraint of the immediate, the pragmatic, the mind tends to march around an issue.” It seemed he was talking as much about his situation as mine. “Once out in the real world, things become more focused. And experience, having been there before, lights the path that needs to be taken.” He paused a moment and added, “That’s what I meant about my not yet feeling like a Legionary. At Cal Tech I’m still just a student. I feel --- despite my ordination --- I feel unsure about the precise nature of my role in the Legion.”
He took another sip of the coffee, and we sat in silence that was just about to feel uncomfortable when he began, “I came to apologize, Willow.” And with those words I knew what was coming.
“That tape I left for you,” he continued. “I had no right to do it. It was stupid and selfish.” He paused. “I’m not apologizing for my feelings; I’m apologizing for burdening you with them.”
It seemed the blood had run from his face and his eyes became soulful. I wanted to tell him that it was all right, but nothing came out.
“It’s that I do think of you often, and I guess I was feeling lonely, at least more than I should have. And when I heard that song, it triggered all the feelings I have --- that I never stopped having for you. The music reached me in a place deep inside, and the lyrics seemed to have been written for me, even though they must be two hundred years old.” I couldn’t look into his eyes and hung my head as if I were somehow complicit. “I needed to express my feelings, and that was simply selfish of me. What, after all, were you to make of it? It was just insensitive, and for whatever discomfort I caused I apologize. I truly apologize.”
We were at opposite ends of the couch, and I wanted to throw my arms around him and pull him close, but all I could do was wipe the tears that rolled down my cheeks.
“Please don’t cry, Willow,” he said, his voice low and pained. “I couldn’t write you letters or call without alerting your parents,” he plead, and I nodded in agreement. “And it was probably for the best that I didn’t. I could see your anger when we met at the airport …I expected it.”
“I wasn’t angry with you … just the whole situation,” I for some reason lied.
“You have to live your life … you can’t just wait … to count on me. I know that. But I just want you to know that … I still feel the same about you.”
He looked as if he were going to touch my hand but didn’t move.
“I belong to the Church and to the Legion, but a part of me is yours, a deep part. And I’m sorry for hurting you. Of all the people in the world I do not want to hurt, you are the most important, and you are the person I have hurt. I’m truly sorry.” I could see tears well up in his sad brown eyes.
He took a bite of a cookie and part of it rolled off his chest and onto the floor. We both reached down for it and nearly bumped heads. He got it before I did, and when we both straightened up, his crucifix somehow caught a loop on my robe. I tried to pull away, but we were stuck. I looked up at him and our eyes met, then we both tried to get ourselves untangled. Finally I managed to twist the cross to allow the loop to slide off.
“Did I rip it?” he asked.
“No, nothing can kill this one,” I answered. “It’s a lot stronger than I am.
l
I met Ron Blackmon in my first year at law school in Camden, New Jersey. He was tall and sandy-haired with green eyes and dark Fu Manchu moustache like the one Robert Redford had in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He had graduated from Rutgers a year ahead of me, and our paths had never crossed.
We met in the law library during my second semester one evening where I was studying for my Constitutional Law class. He was working on a torts paper and asked if I could spare him a pen as his had run out of ink. I never found out if the pen request were a ruse because we started chatting and he was so charming I forgot.
It was, I suppose, too fast and too rash, but I was captured by his smile and his easy wit.
“Are you seeing anyone else besides me?” he asked that first night. He took a seat next to mine and twisted his body to look directly into my eyes.
I answered a bit curtly, “I’m not seeing you.”
“Well that’s a lie; you’re looking right at me,” he said flashing a toothy smile that ended in dimples you could fit nickels in.
“That depends on the meaning of seeing,” I replied trying not to smile.
“Well seeing is believing, and I don’t see you seeing anyone else, so you and I are now seeing each other, exclusively.”
“Okaaay.”
“So as we’re seeing each other, let’s see each other at dinner tomorrow.”
His line worked, and we did see each other for dinner the next day, and the day after that, and the one after that.
My parents liked Ron, and the times he came for dinner were happy times. There were laughs and genuine rapport between my father and him. The law and football were always the main topic of conversation, and Ron always eventually agreed with Dad whether the discussion entailed the appropriate use of certain Jet players or whether it involved a particular statute of New Jersey law.
Until I had met Ron, my studies were far and away the most important part of my life. My success in school was due to my work ethic as much to any innate ability. Unlike Argo, for example, I had to perform due diligence to achieve my magna cum laude status. But when Ron came into my life, my focus changed. Perhaps my hormones kicked in or perhaps my values changed. In any event, getting A’s was no longer a top priority. I struggled during my second semester and all through my second year. My A’s had become B’s and B’s became C’s, and I was embarrassed. Granted the competition was stiff; Rutgers Law was highly rated and selected the best students with the highest LSAT scores. I was nevertheless certain that had I not been involved with Ron, I would have been a more successful student.
Ron was obviously better at segmenting his life than I and didn’t suffer any loss of academic standing because of me. For him, school was school and romance was romance, and the one did not cross over into the other. In Ron’s first year, he finished in the upper third of his class, and that is where he graduated. Sadly, I finished in the bottom third.
Ron’s father was a civilian statistician working at the Brooklyn Army Terminal and his mother taught fifth grade in New Brunswick, where they lived in a middle class, largely Jewish neighborhood. Together I doubt they earned as much as my father, but they were comfortable and delighted that their son had been accepted to Rutgers Law. It was like getting a scholarship since the tuition and board was $5,000 dollars a year when tuition alone to Columbia or NYU, for example, was five times that amount.
During my first year, I lived in the dorm, which was a Rutgers requirement, but after that my parents paid the rent for a small two-room apartment a few blocks from campus. Camden was a horrid place with street after street of burned out buildings and broken bottles of cheap wine and whiskey on the sidewalks. Suffering from years of urban blight, the Camden streets were unsafe, especially after dark. Muggings, as I knew first hand when I visited as an undergraduate, and even rapes were not uncommon, and the law students learned to walk in groups whenever possible. Every bathroom on campus had intercoms and alarms.
Perhaps that is why my parents were not terribly upset when Ron moved in with me. A big man, I barely reached his shoulders, was a big deterrent for the predators who sat in wait in the doorways of abandoned buildings used now as shooting galleries for the drug addicted.
And perhaps that was why my parents were pleased to learn that Ron had asked me to marry him. He had spent a great deal on a beautiful engagement ring which shone as bright as our future. I was 22 when I walked down the aisle of St. Timothy's, the parish in which I had gone to school and which I was attending when I first met Argo. My mother insisted I wear her wedding gown, but there was simply not enough of it to let out, and I got to pick my own. Eileen and Karen were the flower girls, of course, and I believe I was more excited for them than I was for myself. They were beautiful, slim and darling … and willowy.
It was a perfect day in June, and they threw rice as we got into the white limousine to begin our life together. Ron was imposing in his tuxedo and even I felt pretty in my off the shoulder gown with three-quarter length lace jacket as we danced at the reception. We sorely needed the money we received from the wedding guests, so a lavish honeymoon was out of the question. A long weekend in the Poconos had to do.
On the surface, being married was not much different from the way life had been. We still shared the same tiny apartment, still went to class, and still spent almost all of the rest of the time studying. The difference, at least for me, was a sense of belonging, a security in knowing that Ron had promised himself to me and that we would be one. And so, when he graduated, passed the bar exam, and was offered a job in a successful firm in Trenton, I was as happy as if I had gotten the job.
We decided to stay in our apartment in Camden to save money. He would get a new car and drive to Trenton, and we would get a new place once I graduated and started work at my father’s firm in Newark. That was the plan, at least.
It was just a month before I was to graduate when I became pregnant. The gynecologist told me that a small percentage of women get pregnant despite taking birth control pills, and I had apparently fallen into that percentage. Ron could not have been more displeased and accused me of failing to take the pills. When I showed him my pillbox with all the pills to that day taken, he accused me of throwing them away. My blood boiled, and when I told him to go to hell, he slapped me across the face and slammed the door on his way out of the apartment. I wiped the blood and tears from my face, anger crazily mixing with guilt.
He apologized, but it made little difference; he didn’t want a child, and I was not about to have the baby he did not want. I got an abortion, and things went downhill from there. He wanted to move close to his Trenton firm leaving me to commute to Newark; he wanted to spend as little as possible on an apartment preferring to save money instead; and when I objected to his choices for apartments, he rented one on his own.
I moved back with my parents, failed the bar exam, and filed for divorce. It was uncontested.
l
I’m not too sure why I spent so much time writing about my failed marriage other than to give some perspective to my vulnerability when it came to Argo. In truth, I never stopped loving him. Perhaps that was so because one never really loses a special place in one’s heart for a first lover, or perhaps it was because Argo had become forbidden fruit, or perhaps it was both. We never really know for sure why we love someone. In Argo’s case, of course, it was not too difficult to understand. Unlike so many other bright men I had met, Argo was not compelled to remind me of it every chance he got. For Argo, intellect was only part of him; he respected his emotional side and allowed it room to grow. And, of course, he was a beautiful man, almost delicate, a living doll you might say.
But Argo was complex, even contradictory, at least to my mind. He was sensitive, somewhat withdrawn as the very bright often are, but not so much so that he had left no room for others. He was kind to all of us, even protective, and in that violently so. He had no compunctions about punching the boy next door to keep him from preying on Karen, nor did he allow himself to be bullied even by bigger boys. He acted swiftly and quietly and then went on as if nothing had happened.
Of course, the most contradictory aspect of his personality was his balancing act between his religious dedication and me. I have no idea how many men who are planning to enter a Catholic seminary have affairs and/or believe it is not sinful for them to do so, but I suspect the number to be very low. I am certain there was never a seminarian who sent an Italian love song to his one-time love. I was never much on religion but I know that his sending me a love song is a violation of his vow of chastity. It may be all right for the president of the United States to admit that he had lust in his heart, but it is certainly a sin for a Catholic priest.
I had enough will power, fortunately, to put both Argo and Ron out of my mind and devote myself to my work. My father had counted on me, and I was not about to let him down. Even though I had failed the bar, my father had me working on important projects, and when I passed on my second try, he was wise enough not to make a fuss over it. To have done so would have been to underscore my failure the first time. I had my father’s trust, and that meant the world to me. His unwavering support during my worst time was a life support I know I can never repay no matter how successful I have been or may become.
Yet I knew I had to begin again a life, independent of my parents. Within a year I rented a condo with an option to buy and began dating. I was a woman for whom professional success, while self-defining and validating, was simply not enough. I needed the love of a man to feel whole, and while I secretly felt just a bit abashed by that realization, I had learned to accept what I was. Of course, what I was according to my Catholic school education, at least, was somehow a lesser being than those who chose the religious life. Sex was nothing to be proud of; indeed, it was most often sinful, a sign of weakness. If a girl could not become a nun, she would have to settle for being a wife, also a lesser being, until she became a mother, when she was redeemed for her baser instincts. That was perhaps the largest reason for my having renounced Catholicism, that and the fact that it took Argo from me, and I was oddly proud of my strength in rejecting what for my parents was a central part of the lives. While I doubted I would ever marry again, I was certain that I did not want children. However, I was equally certain that I wanted a man, and the problem was finding one.
Perhaps I was gun shy, having had a bad relationship with my ex, and having been with Argo had perhaps spoiled me. In any event, I dated very few men in the first three years of my new independence, and only two more than once.
One of the two was Marty Garko, a one time, one year NJ Jets linebacker. He had a breach of contract claim against the football team, and after my father got a good settlement for him introduced us. Marty was a full foot taller than I and weighed almost twice what I did, and I was no runway model. It was his physicality that first attracted me to him, of course; he filled the doorway when he entered the room. He limped noticeably from the injury, which cost him his career, but he was sweet as he was big; and oddly enough we went to a Knicks game on our first date. I like basketball only a little bit more than baseball and even less than football, but Marty was impressed by the athleticism of what Argo had described as pituitary cases, and Marty’s excitement was infectious.
“How can someone your size eat so little,” I asked at the late dinner at Roscoe’s on 6th Avenue. He left half of his spaghetti, half of his veal Oscar, and had no room for dessert. He did finish off the bottle of Beaujolais after my one glass. I, on the other hand could have eaten what he had left but thought it would have been just a tad awkward to have done so --- our first date and all. I did have the tira misu and demitasse chaser.
“I don’t know,” he said with a sheepish shrug, his bright blue eyes squinting deeply. He had a round face made even more so by a buzz cut and round eyeglasses, and the widest neck I had ever seen --- probably twenty inches around. With small ears and heavy lips, he could have been a Mr. Potato Head come to life. “It’s an on and off thing with me … sometimes I eat a lot for a week or so and other times, I don’t know, I eat less. I’m in a down period now, I guess. When I played, I had to stay under 230 to keep my speed, so I was used to dieting. That was what I had, speed over the bigger guys.”
“They come bigger than you?”
“They do. There are a lot of Rhoid Rogers in the game.”
“Steroid users?”
“Yes, not all of them, but a lot.”
“I thought they have tests.”
“They do, but there are some that don’t show up, like ‘The Clear.’ They don’t have a test for it, not yet anyway.”
And that was how the date went: we talked about football, and training for football, and the politics of football, and the groupies of football. I learned about his high school football in Arkansas, his college football in Oklahoma, and his one year in New Jersey on the Jets. The conversation was beginning to move toward a comparison of football tight ends vs. backcourt basketball players when I suggested that it was getting late.
It was probably my fault that it went that way; I had given him little chance but to answer my questions. Marty was a gentle giant who was more comfortable responding to words than generating ideas, and that made him different from the men of my world. He was guileless and innocent of the dating game wherein the man was supposed to ask questions of his date to keep from being considered too self-centered. Had I given him the chance, I felt confident he would have shown enough interest to ask his date at least a few questions. And that’s why we went on our next date.
It was a dinner dance sponsored by Rawlings Sporting Equipment and provided me with a rare opportunity to wear a formal. This one was a bit décolletage for a second date, but it fit well and came with an off-white lace jacket that was actually capable of being buttoned. Marty had already arrived and was waiting in the living room under the watchful eye of little Bailey while I was deciding which shoes to wear. Then the phone rang. The caller ID read St. John’s University so I didn’t pick up, but when the announcement finished, Argo’s voice came on loud and strong.
“Hi, Willow. This is a voice from your not too distant past. Maybe you recognize it. I’m calling you from St. John’s in Queens, from my new office, which I spent all day setting up. I got your phone number from your mom who said you were going out. I thought I’d get you before you left, but I guess I’m too late. I’ll try you tomorrow. Bye.”
“You are too late,” I said aloud, decided on my three-inch heels, and went to meet Marty who pinned a corsage on my jacket before we left for the Cotillion Terrace in his new gray Mercedes.
We made love that evening, and I was small in his arms.
[From the Willow manuscript, Part 4.]
In high school I had a few dates, but Argo was my true love, as I always believed he would be. I don’t know why I went out with other boys when my heart was Argo’s, but there are social pressures. Somehow, despite Argo’s intention of becoming a priest, I had always believed we would one day marry. He would realize that the priesthood was not for him, and that our love would be greater than his desire (need) to become a priest. But when Argo went to Connecticut and didn’t write or visit month after month, I grew angry. The dates I went on were perhaps to spite him or perhaps to satisfy myself that I was still marginally attractive. The dates reaffirmed my femininity which had begun when Argo and I made love the summer I turned 17.
But then after two years in his Connecticut seminary, Argo was sent to Rome to study at the Vatican. He had said he would have more time to visit, but he never did. Had he loved me, at least as I needed him to, I was certain he would have found a way to visit. He had written only a few letters, and they were addressed to the family, which I understood, I guess, but that left us separated by time and the Atlantic Ocean. Ironically, when he did manage one visit in two years since we had seen him off to Rome at the airport, I was spending my junior year in England and never got to see him.
Then, three weeks after I returned from Cambridge, as I was going through my music tapes in my room, I came across a cassette with a sheet of paper wrapped around it. When I removed the rubber band and saw the handwriting on the paper, my heart jumped. It was Argo’s handwriting, and it was the lyrics of a recorded song on the cassette tape. The song was sung in Italian by an operatic tenor, but Argo had translated the Italian into English. The title of the song was “Dio, Como Ti Amo” meaning “God, how I love you.” I didn’t know what to make of the lyrics, which seemed rather old fashioned, but when I played the tape and read along substituting the English for the words sung by the tenor, I cried.
It was a beautiful song about how much the singer loved her, but it was also sad because the lovers were separated. Argo was obviously telling me that he still loved me, and while I would always love him, I had already decided that while he had been my first, he would not be my last. It was obvious, even to a starry-eyed girl, that Argo was going to be a priest, and that meant I had to go on without him. And while my succeeding affairs were never quite as beautiful or magical as those times with Argo, the others were good in their own way.
I remember having played the tape for days, and each time it made me cry. It was cathartic, I suppose, my crying, for each time I cried I realized more fully that Argo and I would never again be together. I was finally strong enough to destroy the tape and the lyrics and so destroy any last glimmer of hope that I would ever again feel Argo’s arms around me.
It was in the summer of 1991, I had just graduated and was preparing to enter law school, when Argo wrote from California with an enclosed newspaper article about his ordination. He had received permission to attend the wedding of his friend, Joe Machiarolla, and would try to pay us a visit before returning to school. Why he was still associating with those people was puzzling, of course, but it was after all his surrogate family, and I recalled how close he had been to Joe’s grandmother. Yet that was Argo, complex, contradictory, and confounding.
I was in my room watching, appropriately enough, a rerun of Law and Order, when suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping on my bedroom window. Actually, it was a clod of earth that landed with a thud. Bailey, my ice white toy poodle, yapped as he always did at an unfamiliar noise. His little tail wagged furiously as he stood on my bed and faced the window with all the bravado his ten pounds could muster. The evening summer thunderstorm had just passed, and when I peered through the blinds I saw Argo standing in the garden looking up.
I grabbed Bailey in my arms and ran down the stairs and out the back door. It hadn’t occurred to me until I was outside that I was wearing only a tee shirt, light cotton shorts, and no shoes. Fortunately holding Bailey would provide a modicum of modesty.
“Argo, what are you doing here?” I asked.
“I’m cleaning the mud off my shoes,” he said as he held up one foot and scrapped the mud from his shoe with a twig.
“Well you are standing in the garden after it poured for half an hour,” I said smiling at his obvious concern which seemed to override his surreptitious visit.
“Yea, pretty dumb, huh,” he said looking at me with embarrassment.
“Not as dumb as not using the front door.”
“Now there’s where you’re wrong,” he said, his face as alive as I had ever seen it. “Had I knocked on the door, your parents would have known I was here, and I would not have been able to talk with you alone.” He wiped his hands on his pants and flashed his beautiful smile.
“Now, that’s where you’re wrong. They took the girls to Charleston. There’s no one home but Bailey and me.”
My heart pounding, I went up to my room to make myself more presentable while Argo finished cleaning his shoes on the back porch. He was dressed in black with a short-sleeve shirt and collar. Around his neck hung a cross with a blue sapphire set in the center. I threw on a bathrobe, ran a brush through my wilted hair, and rushed back down to find out what Argo had to say that my parents could not hear.
Argo sat in his usual place on the couch and I brought in a tray with coffee and cookies.
“It’s from a new coffee place called Starbucks,” I said of the coffee as I placed the tray on the coffee table and joined him on the couch. It was where we had shared our first kiss, and I wondered if he felt as uncomfortable as I did. “I think they mix it with a French roast.” One cup was less than 10 calories, and I learned to drink it black, but I remembered that Argo took milk. “Dad buys it because it tastes like his demitasse, which no one but him can stomach.”
“It’s good,” said Argo after taking a sip. “Aren’t you going to put milk in it?”
“I started drinking it black after we had run out of milk. I prefer it this way now.”
“Well, there sure is nothing better than hot coffee on a steamy summer night,” said Argo.
“Now I thought you’d be pleased. Weren’t you the one who told me that ice cream is not good to eat in the summer?”
“What I said was that ice cream is a high caloric food which in the long run will heat your body.”
“Well, coffee is low in calories.”
“But it doesn’t cool you off in either the long or short term.”
“So no good deed goes unpunished,” I replied. “I should have brought you ice water and saved the good stuff for myself.”
“But you’re a kind and generous person,” he said smiling. “And I’m an ingrate, unworthy of your largesse.”
“Yes, I know,” I said taking another sip. “So how was the wedding?” I asked.
“It was fine --- in that it was like all the others,” Argo answered.
“You sound like there’s a problem.”
“Well, I don’t care much for Joey’s selection --- in that I don’t think she’ll make the kind of wife he expects. But I could be wrong.”
“You sound like a typical friend,” I said. “No one could be good enough for your buddy.”
Argo thought a moment. “She doesn’t come from the same background, so her values are different. And he’s only known her a few months. They met in Las Vegas. I don’t know, he knows her better than I do, and he’s a big boy.”
“He’s your age, right?”
Argo nodded and sipped his coffee. I did too, and we sat there for a few moments in silence. It seemed he was looking for a way to begin to tell me what he wanted to, but then he took a cookie, perhaps to give himself more time.
“So how does it feel being a priest,” I said stupidly. I had hoped that would get him started. Looking back on it, I don’t know why I was so nervous, but I could feel the sweat under my arms, definitely not caused by the coffee.
“I’m pleased, of course, but I’m more a student than a priest,” he said softly. “My assignment is to study --- to achieve success --- what my assignment will be after I get my doctorate is yet to be determined.”
“What do you think it will be?” I asked.
“I guess to teach and do research,” he said, his eyes looking up as if the answer were hovering above him. “But I may be used in some administrative capacity at the new university. The Legion is planning on building one in Connecticut --- that’s not for a few years, though. If they finally do, I might be assigned there.” He didn’t seem to mind that the decision on how he would spend the rest of his life would not be his. “It’s probably a matter of money; they have the land, but the outlay of capital for the building is huge. Without the Vatican’s support, I doubt the Legion could afford to build it on its own.”
“And if you had your druthers?” I pursued.
“I’d opt for an assignment here in the Metro area --- whichever university would offer the best research facilities. Rutgers would be ideal if they would assign me to a secular school. If not, St. John’s probably has the most money. Of course, the Ivy League would be most prestigious, but Catholic priests ….” He trailed off a moment, looked into my eyes, and quickly asked, “But what about you? How does it feel to be a Rutgers alum?”
“Good. I’m looking forward to getting started.”
“And you have a job waiting for you; that makes things a lot more comfortable.”
“Yes and no,” I answered. “I still have the pressure of proving that I deserve the break.”
“I suppose, but you got into Camden Law, and that’s the biggest step,” he said seriously. “I’m sure your dad is already proud as can be.”
I nodded.
“And who better to help you through the classes?” he added.
“I guess,” I said tentatively.
“What do you mean?” asked Argo sensing my ambivalence.
“Well, you know how Dad thinks; he’s got a mind like a laser. Mine tends to be a bit more diffuse.”
“That’s probably a function of experience in the real world,” he said sounding more like a textbook than ever. “Academics is always more theoretical, more explorative. Without the constraint of the immediate, the pragmatic, the mind tends to march around an issue.” It seemed he was talking as much about his situation as mine. “Once out in the real world, things become more focused. And experience, having been there before, lights the path that needs to be taken.” He paused a moment and added, “That’s what I meant about my not yet feeling like a Legionary. At Cal Tech I’m still just a student. I feel --- despite my ordination --- I feel unsure about the precise nature of my role in the Legion.”
He took another sip of the coffee, and we sat in silence that was just about to feel uncomfortable when he began, “I came to apologize, Willow.” And with those words I knew what was coming.
“That tape I left for you,” he continued. “I had no right to do it. It was stupid and selfish.” He paused. “I’m not apologizing for my feelings; I’m apologizing for burdening you with them.”
It seemed the blood had run from his face and his eyes became soulful. I wanted to tell him that it was all right, but nothing came out.
“It’s that I do think of you often, and I guess I was feeling lonely, at least more than I should have. And when I heard that song, it triggered all the feelings I have --- that I never stopped having for you. The music reached me in a place deep inside, and the lyrics seemed to have been written for me, even though they must be two hundred years old.” I couldn’t look into his eyes and hung my head as if I were somehow complicit. “I needed to express my feelings, and that was simply selfish of me. What, after all, were you to make of it? It was just insensitive, and for whatever discomfort I caused I apologize. I truly apologize.”
We were at opposite ends of the couch, and I wanted to throw my arms around him and pull him close, but all I could do was wipe the tears that rolled down my cheeks.
“Please don’t cry, Willow,” he said, his voice low and pained. “I couldn’t write you letters or call without alerting your parents,” he plead, and I nodded in agreement. “And it was probably for the best that I didn’t. I could see your anger when we met at the airport …I expected it.”
“I wasn’t angry with you … just the whole situation,” I for some reason lied.
“You have to live your life … you can’t just wait … to count on me. I know that. But I just want you to know that … I still feel the same about you.”
He looked as if he were going to touch my hand but didn’t move.
“I belong to the Church and to the Legion, but a part of me is yours, a deep part. And I’m sorry for hurting you. Of all the people in the world I do not want to hurt, you are the most important, and you are the person I have hurt. I’m truly sorry.” I could see tears well up in his sad brown eyes.
He took a bite of a cookie and part of it rolled off his chest and onto the floor. We both reached down for it and nearly bumped heads. He got it before I did, and when we both straightened up, his crucifix somehow caught a loop on my robe. I tried to pull away, but we were stuck. I looked up at him and our eyes met, then we both tried to get ourselves untangled. Finally I managed to twist the cross to allow the loop to slide off.
“Did I rip it?” he asked.
“No, nothing can kill this one,” I answered. “It’s a lot stronger than I am.
l
I met Ron Blackmon in my first year at law school in Camden, New Jersey. He was tall and sandy-haired with green eyes and dark Fu Manchu moustache like the one Robert Redford had in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He had graduated from Rutgers a year ahead of me, and our paths had never crossed.
We met in the law library during my second semester one evening where I was studying for my Constitutional Law class. He was working on a torts paper and asked if I could spare him a pen as his had run out of ink. I never found out if the pen request were a ruse because we started chatting and he was so charming I forgot.
It was, I suppose, too fast and too rash, but I was captured by his smile and his easy wit.
“Are you seeing anyone else besides me?” he asked that first night. He took a seat next to mine and twisted his body to look directly into my eyes.
I answered a bit curtly, “I’m not seeing you.”
“Well that’s a lie; you’re looking right at me,” he said flashing a toothy smile that ended in dimples you could fit nickels in.
“That depends on the meaning of seeing,” I replied trying not to smile.
“Well seeing is believing, and I don’t see you seeing anyone else, so you and I are now seeing each other, exclusively.”
“Okaaay.”
“So as we’re seeing each other, let’s see each other at dinner tomorrow.”
His line worked, and we did see each other for dinner the next day, and the day after that, and the one after that.
My parents liked Ron, and the times he came for dinner were happy times. There were laughs and genuine rapport between my father and him. The law and football were always the main topic of conversation, and Ron always eventually agreed with Dad whether the discussion entailed the appropriate use of certain Jet players or whether it involved a particular statute of New Jersey law.
Until I had met Ron, my studies were far and away the most important part of my life. My success in school was due to my work ethic as much to any innate ability. Unlike Argo, for example, I had to perform due diligence to achieve my magna cum laude status. But when Ron came into my life, my focus changed. Perhaps my hormones kicked in or perhaps my values changed. In any event, getting A’s was no longer a top priority. I struggled during my second semester and all through my second year. My A’s had become B’s and B’s became C’s, and I was embarrassed. Granted the competition was stiff; Rutgers Law was highly rated and selected the best students with the highest LSAT scores. I was nevertheless certain that had I not been involved with Ron, I would have been a more successful student.
Ron was obviously better at segmenting his life than I and didn’t suffer any loss of academic standing because of me. For him, school was school and romance was romance, and the one did not cross over into the other. In Ron’s first year, he finished in the upper third of his class, and that is where he graduated. Sadly, I finished in the bottom third.
Ron’s father was a civilian statistician working at the Brooklyn Army Terminal and his mother taught fifth grade in New Brunswick, where they lived in a middle class, largely Jewish neighborhood. Together I doubt they earned as much as my father, but they were comfortable and delighted that their son had been accepted to Rutgers Law. It was like getting a scholarship since the tuition and board was $5,000 dollars a year when tuition alone to Columbia or NYU, for example, was five times that amount.
During my first year, I lived in the dorm, which was a Rutgers requirement, but after that my parents paid the rent for a small two-room apartment a few blocks from campus. Camden was a horrid place with street after street of burned out buildings and broken bottles of cheap wine and whiskey on the sidewalks. Suffering from years of urban blight, the Camden streets were unsafe, especially after dark. Muggings, as I knew first hand when I visited as an undergraduate, and even rapes were not uncommon, and the law students learned to walk in groups whenever possible. Every bathroom on campus had intercoms and alarms.
Perhaps that is why my parents were not terribly upset when Ron moved in with me. A big man, I barely reached his shoulders, was a big deterrent for the predators who sat in wait in the doorways of abandoned buildings used now as shooting galleries for the drug addicted.
And perhaps that was why my parents were pleased to learn that Ron had asked me to marry him. He had spent a great deal on a beautiful engagement ring which shone as bright as our future. I was 22 when I walked down the aisle of St. Timothy's, the parish in which I had gone to school and which I was attending when I first met Argo. My mother insisted I wear her wedding gown, but there was simply not enough of it to let out, and I got to pick my own. Eileen and Karen were the flower girls, of course, and I believe I was more excited for them than I was for myself. They were beautiful, slim and darling … and willowy.
It was a perfect day in June, and they threw rice as we got into the white limousine to begin our life together. Ron was imposing in his tuxedo and even I felt pretty in my off the shoulder gown with three-quarter length lace jacket as we danced at the reception. We sorely needed the money we received from the wedding guests, so a lavish honeymoon was out of the question. A long weekend in the Poconos had to do.
On the surface, being married was not much different from the way life had been. We still shared the same tiny apartment, still went to class, and still spent almost all of the rest of the time studying. The difference, at least for me, was a sense of belonging, a security in knowing that Ron had promised himself to me and that we would be one. And so, when he graduated, passed the bar exam, and was offered a job in a successful firm in Trenton, I was as happy as if I had gotten the job.
We decided to stay in our apartment in Camden to save money. He would get a new car and drive to Trenton, and we would get a new place once I graduated and started work at my father’s firm in Newark. That was the plan, at least.
It was just a month before I was to graduate when I became pregnant. The gynecologist told me that a small percentage of women get pregnant despite taking birth control pills, and I had apparently fallen into that percentage. Ron could not have been more displeased and accused me of failing to take the pills. When I showed him my pillbox with all the pills to that day taken, he accused me of throwing them away. My blood boiled, and when I told him to go to hell, he slapped me across the face and slammed the door on his way out of the apartment. I wiped the blood and tears from my face, anger crazily mixing with guilt.
He apologized, but it made little difference; he didn’t want a child, and I was not about to have the baby he did not want. I got an abortion, and things went downhill from there. He wanted to move close to his Trenton firm leaving me to commute to Newark; he wanted to spend as little as possible on an apartment preferring to save money instead; and when I objected to his choices for apartments, he rented one on his own.
I moved back with my parents, failed the bar exam, and filed for divorce. It was uncontested.
l
I’m not too sure why I spent so much time writing about my failed marriage other than to give some perspective to my vulnerability when it came to Argo. In truth, I never stopped loving him. Perhaps that was so because one never really loses a special place in one’s heart for a first lover, or perhaps it was because Argo had become forbidden fruit, or perhaps it was both. We never really know for sure why we love someone. In Argo’s case, of course, it was not too difficult to understand. Unlike so many other bright men I had met, Argo was not compelled to remind me of it every chance he got. For Argo, intellect was only part of him; he respected his emotional side and allowed it room to grow. And, of course, he was a beautiful man, almost delicate, a living doll you might say.
But Argo was complex, even contradictory, at least to my mind. He was sensitive, somewhat withdrawn as the very bright often are, but not so much so that he had left no room for others. He was kind to all of us, even protective, and in that violently so. He had no compunctions about punching the boy next door to keep him from preying on Karen, nor did he allow himself to be bullied even by bigger boys. He acted swiftly and quietly and then went on as if nothing had happened.
Of course, the most contradictory aspect of his personality was his balancing act between his religious dedication and me. I have no idea how many men who are planning to enter a Catholic seminary have affairs and/or believe it is not sinful for them to do so, but I suspect the number to be very low. I am certain there was never a seminarian who sent an Italian love song to his one-time love. I was never much on religion but I know that his sending me a love song is a violation of his vow of chastity. It may be all right for the president of the United States to admit that he had lust in his heart, but it is certainly a sin for a Catholic priest.
I had enough will power, fortunately, to put both Argo and Ron out of my mind and devote myself to my work. My father had counted on me, and I was not about to let him down. Even though I had failed the bar, my father had me working on important projects, and when I passed on my second try, he was wise enough not to make a fuss over it. To have done so would have been to underscore my failure the first time. I had my father’s trust, and that meant the world to me. His unwavering support during my worst time was a life support I know I can never repay no matter how successful I have been or may become.
Yet I knew I had to begin again a life, independent of my parents. Within a year I rented a condo with an option to buy and began dating. I was a woman for whom professional success, while self-defining and validating, was simply not enough. I needed the love of a man to feel whole, and while I secretly felt just a bit abashed by that realization, I had learned to accept what I was. Of course, what I was according to my Catholic school education, at least, was somehow a lesser being than those who chose the religious life. Sex was nothing to be proud of; indeed, it was most often sinful, a sign of weakness. If a girl could not become a nun, she would have to settle for being a wife, also a lesser being, until she became a mother, when she was redeemed for her baser instincts. That was perhaps the largest reason for my having renounced Catholicism, that and the fact that it took Argo from me, and I was oddly proud of my strength in rejecting what for my parents was a central part of the lives. While I doubted I would ever marry again, I was certain that I did not want children. However, I was equally certain that I wanted a man, and the problem was finding one.
Perhaps I was gun shy, having had a bad relationship with my ex, and having been with Argo had perhaps spoiled me. In any event, I dated very few men in the first three years of my new independence, and only two more than once.
One of the two was Marty Garko, a one time, one year NJ Jets linebacker. He had a breach of contract claim against the football team, and after my father got a good settlement for him introduced us. Marty was a full foot taller than I and weighed almost twice what I did, and I was no runway model. It was his physicality that first attracted me to him, of course; he filled the doorway when he entered the room. He limped noticeably from the injury, which cost him his career, but he was sweet as he was big; and oddly enough we went to a Knicks game on our first date. I like basketball only a little bit more than baseball and even less than football, but Marty was impressed by the athleticism of what Argo had described as pituitary cases, and Marty’s excitement was infectious.
“How can someone your size eat so little,” I asked at the late dinner at Roscoe’s on 6th Avenue. He left half of his spaghetti, half of his veal Oscar, and had no room for dessert. He did finish off the bottle of Beaujolais after my one glass. I, on the other hand could have eaten what he had left but thought it would have been just a tad awkward to have done so --- our first date and all. I did have the tira misu and demitasse chaser.
“I don’t know,” he said with a sheepish shrug, his bright blue eyes squinting deeply. He had a round face made even more so by a buzz cut and round eyeglasses, and the widest neck I had ever seen --- probably twenty inches around. With small ears and heavy lips, he could have been a Mr. Potato Head come to life. “It’s an on and off thing with me … sometimes I eat a lot for a week or so and other times, I don’t know, I eat less. I’m in a down period now, I guess. When I played, I had to stay under 230 to keep my speed, so I was used to dieting. That was what I had, speed over the bigger guys.”
“They come bigger than you?”
“They do. There are a lot of Rhoid Rogers in the game.”
“Steroid users?”
“Yes, not all of them, but a lot.”
“I thought they have tests.”
“They do, but there are some that don’t show up, like ‘The Clear.’ They don’t have a test for it, not yet anyway.”
And that was how the date went: we talked about football, and training for football, and the politics of football, and the groupies of football. I learned about his high school football in Arkansas, his college football in Oklahoma, and his one year in New Jersey on the Jets. The conversation was beginning to move toward a comparison of football tight ends vs. backcourt basketball players when I suggested that it was getting late.
It was probably my fault that it went that way; I had given him little chance but to answer my questions. Marty was a gentle giant who was more comfortable responding to words than generating ideas, and that made him different from the men of my world. He was guileless and innocent of the dating game wherein the man was supposed to ask questions of his date to keep from being considered too self-centered. Had I given him the chance, I felt confident he would have shown enough interest to ask his date at least a few questions. And that’s why we went on our next date.
It was a dinner dance sponsored by Rawlings Sporting Equipment and provided me with a rare opportunity to wear a formal. This one was a bit décolletage for a second date, but it fit well and came with an off-white lace jacket that was actually capable of being buttoned. Marty had already arrived and was waiting in the living room under the watchful eye of little Bailey while I was deciding which shoes to wear. Then the phone rang. The caller ID read St. John’s University so I didn’t pick up, but when the announcement finished, Argo’s voice came on loud and strong.
“Hi, Willow. This is a voice from your not too distant past. Maybe you recognize it. I’m calling you from St. John’s in Queens, from my new office, which I spent all day setting up. I got your phone number from your mom who said you were going out. I thought I’d get you before you left, but I guess I’m too late. I’ll try you tomorrow. Bye.”
“You are too late,” I said aloud, decided on my three-inch heels, and went to meet Marty who pinned a corsage on my jacket before we left for the Cotillion Terrace in his new gray Mercedes.
We made love that evening, and I was small in his arms.
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