HOW LONG MARY ELIZABETH lived with us I don’t quite remember but when I was fired from my job at the little movie theater on Third Avenue — the talkies had come along, you see — Langley and I sat down and agreed there was no call to keep her with us anymore — really it was more for our sake that we came to this decision — and allotting the necessary sums from our diminishing resources, we sent her off to the Sisters of Mercy Junior College in Westchester County, where she would study music and French and moral philosophy and whatever other educative things would assure her of a better existence. She was grateful and not too sad, having learned from her grandmother that as an orphan she should expect to be trundled off from one institution to another in hopes someday of finding a permanence that would answer her prayers.Her gentle touch at the piano was something I should not have questioned. She was feeling her way through music as through life, a parentless child trying to regain a belief in a reasonable world. But she did not make others feel sad for her, nor did she allow herself to be as self-involved as she had every right to be. She was staunchly cheerful. When we had walked together to the theater, she held my arm as if I was escorting her as a man escorts a woman. She matched her gait to mine, as people do when they are couples. She knew I was proud of my ability to get around town and when I made a mistake, intending to cross the street at the wrong time, or stepping on someone’s heels — because I tended to walk with the assurance of a sighted person — she would stop me or steer me with the slightest pressure of her hand. And she would say something as if what had just transpired had not happened at all. That Buster, she would say — as if she hadn’t heard the horn that had blown or the driver who had cursed — that Buster, he’s so funny. He gets into these scrapes and just barely escapes with his life and the expression on his face never changes. And you know he loves the girl and doesn’t know what to do about it. That’s so sweet and dopey. I’m glad it’s still playing. I could watch it forever. And you play just the right accompaniment, Uncle Homer. He should come down from the screen and shake your hand, I mean it.
I CANNOT AT THIS moment bear to speak of what became of Mary Elizabeth Riordan. Not a night passes that I don’t recall how, when she was going off to school, we all stood with her on the sidewalk waiting for a taxicab that would take her and her one suitcase to Grand Central Terminal. I heard a cab pull up and everyone saying goodbye, Langley clearing his throat and Siobhan who cried, and Mrs. Robileaux blessing her from the doorway at the top of the steps. They told me how lovely Mary looked in the smart tailored coat that had been our gift. She was hatless on this chilly sunny September morning. You could feel both the warmth and the breeze blowing through it. I touched her hair and felt soft wisps of it lifting. And when I took her face in my hands — the lovely thin face and resolute chin, her temples with their soft and steady pulse, the slim straight nose and her soft smiling lips — she took my hand and kissed it. Goodbye, goodbye, I whisper to myself. Goodbye, my love, my girl, my dear one. Goodbye. As if it is happening at this moment.