Then a few minutes of silence. Normally, Ridley felt about silence the way nature reacts to a vacuum: he abhorred it. But now, for some reason, it felt comfortable.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
“Remember you?” Ridley clearly did not.
“I was only two years behind you at Holy Redeemer. But there’s no reason why you’d remember me.”
“Well, the girls were separated from the boys,” Ridley needlessly explained.
“I know.” She had been there.
“But you remember me?”
She lowered her eyes. “Sure . . . I . . . I had a crush on you.”
“You did?” It had never crossed his mind that anyone would.
“Uh-huh. I used to watch you every chance I got. I remember especially how good you could play the piano. I used to go to the recitals just to hear you.”
The recitals! Ridley had pretty well blocked out the memory of the recitals, especially after that fiasco years ago with David Palmer. In fact, he had rather effectively blocked out David Palmer. Ridley found it embarrassing that Jane would remember any of that.
“I remember the last year you played in the recital. You played that Rachmaninoff ‘Prelude’ so well I was thrilled. I never forgot it.”
“Really? Then you must remember later in that recital when I didn’t do so well as an accompanist.” Might just as well face up to it.
“Oh, that was all the fault of that other boy. He was going too fast. I felt so sorry for you.”
She knew it was Palmer’s fault and she sympathized! Where had she been when he’d needed her? “I never knew any of this.”
“I’ve kept watching you when you come home for vacations. You look so nice when you’re serving, especially now that you wear the collar and dress like a priest”
She’d seen him in the Roman collar, knew he was a seminarian, and still kept her crush alive apparently. This was not hanging together. She was a product of parochial school. So she must have known that priests and even seminarians were off-limits. But here she was, talking to him just as if he were an ordinary young man and not a seminarian just a little more than four years short of ordination to the priesthood. Maybe even flirting with him. He couldn’t figure it out
After a slight pause, she continued. “I was sort of wondering what you were doing tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow night? That’s New Year’s Eve, isn’t it? I don’t know. I can tell you one thing I won’t be doing: I won’t be seeing Adam’s Rib. I’d never be able to talk the old man into the price of another ticket So, I don’t know . . . haven’t got any plans.”
“You’re not going to a party? A New Year’s Eve party?”
“Uh-uh.” He did not bother adding that he’d never been to a New Year’s Eve party.
“Well, would you like to come over to my house? We can have a kind of small party.”
Part of Groendal was hearing Monsignor George Cronyn proclaiming that seminarians should take for granted they would like girls if they gave dating a chance, so nip it in the bud. And part of Groendal told him this might be his very last chance to test that theory. But, if he were to go to the party, what would he tell his parents?
Because he had been carefully programmed, it did not strike Ridley as odd that at age twenty he was still asking permission to use the phone at the seminary and still accounting to his parents for every place he went.
His educated guess was that his parents—read his mother—would deny him permission to go to a mixed party on New Year’s Eve. His mother and Monsignor Cronyn were of one mind when it came to girls. Somehow he would have to invent a party for and by seminarians at somebody’s house. Then pray fervently that neither parent checked. He thought he could carry it off. He seldom if ever lied to his parents. And they seldom if ever checked up on him.
After all this thought, he agreed to go to Jane’s party. She would be able to get off duty after the first showing of Adam’s Rib tomorrow evening. He should come to her house about 9:30 P.M. She gave him directions. It was in the neighborhood; it would be easy to find.
Everything went smoothly the next day. Ridley did all the chores expected of him and then some. His mother readily agreed to the seminarians’ party that night, cautioning him only to be very careful because the weather promised to be rather treacherous. His father was grateful the kid didn’t need any more money.
At 9:30, he set out for Jane’s home. He did not want to be unstylishly early. He, of course, walked all the way. As he neared the house, he looked in vain for clusters of cars parked nearby. He concluded nearly everyone was from the neighborhood and, like him, would be walking.
When he climbed the steps to her front porch, there was no indication of a party of any sort going on. Decidedly odd.
A seemingly breathless Jane answered the bell. She was wearing a green and red floral print dress. She was very pretty and when she looked up at Ridley, her eyes seemed to sparkle.
“Am I early?” As Ridley entered, he looked into the living room. It appeared there was no one but the two of them there.
“No, you’re fine.” She took his coat and hat and hung them in the hall closet.
“Well, then, where is everybody?”
“We are everybody.”
“We are—I don’t understand. I thought this was a party.”
“You can have a party with two people.”
“And your parents?”
“Out. At their own party. They probably won’t be back until early in the morning.”
“You mean we’re the only people in the house . . . no one else is coming?”
Jane shook her head and smiled. “Scared?”
Ridley swallowed. This was a first. He felt that this evening might test Monsignor Cronyn’s theory.
“Don’t worry.” She laughed. “Nothing’s going to happen. I just thought this would be a nice time for us to get acquainted. Besides, I hate New Year’s parties, don’t you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been to one.” It did not occur to him to cover his inexperience with a lie.
“You have lived a sheltered life, haven’t you.”
He could not argue the point.
“Come on.” She led him into the living room. “I put together a snack.”
He looked around. It was a room one could find in almost any home in that neighborhood. Not, in fact, unlike his own. The walls displayed a liberal supply of pictures about equally divided between religious and family; venerable furniture that had belonged to more than one generation; knickknacks owing their continued presence to a family that threw nothing away. An ornate carpet, once thick, now worn thin in spots favored by a series of comfortable feet.
She sat on the couch. He hesitated, then selected a nearby chair. She smiled. The snack, on a tray on the coffee table, was near the couch, not the chair. She brought the tray to him. He took a paper napkin and a plate and selected half a sandwich. It was impossible, at least in those days, to overfeed a seminarian. She seemed to sense that: She pushed the coffee table near Ridley and set the snack tray on it. He was silently grateful.
She returned to the couch and kept what she presumed was the proper clerical distance.
“So,” he took a bite of the sandwich—ham and cheese, very adequate, “you work at the Stratford. Full-time?”
She chuckled. “Hardly. Just evenings. Three, maybe four a week. Plus anything else I can get. Right now, during the Christmas rush, I’ve had a job at Hudson’s. That was neat: the Baker streetcar from here right to Hudson’s. Some of the jobs are not nearly so convenient.”