Each weekend, Phoebe meant to break up with Jake, but she couldn’t find the courage to destroy him. And, she knew she’d miss him. Spending time with Rob brought shivers of excitement and fireworks under her breastbone. If sensations were made visible, sparkles would emanate from her head. From her skin to her soul, her sensitivity grew until being touched had become exquisitely painful.
Weekends with Jake provided a welcome calm, where she could sit back and let the world wash over her.
“I can’t say good night yet,” Rob said.
She swung out her leg from the edge of the desk where she sat. Electricity ignited, but they couldn’t touch, since Mary Alice or any hungry coed might appear in an evening burst of need. “Me either.”
Rob spun the air between them with his finger. “Do you feel the energy?”
She nodded, unable to speak.
“Ripening air.” He gazed up as though reading the wall. “?‘This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.’?”
“Shakespeare.” Phoebe imbued her guess with authority. “Romeo and Juliet?”
“Brooklyn turns out quite learned girls.”
“You’d be surprised what Erasmus can teach.”
“The priest?”
“The school.” She didn’t admit her ignorance of Erasmus High being named for a priest. Keeping up with Rob took work.
He traced her hand resting on his desk, running his index finger over each of her nails. “Winsome,” he said of her pale polish. “Opalescent.”
Phoebe closed her eyes against the blood rushing up her legs. He worked his way to her forearm with the softest of touches.
“I want to be alone with you.” He held out his hand and drew Phoebe from her chair. Before opening the office door, he peeked out and checked in both directions. After a moment, he nodded. She tipped her head forward as though the CIA spied on them.
He left the room first. A few moments later, she followed, ten paces behind. Paintings of horses lined the hall. Rob slipped into a door at the end of the corridor and began climbing the staircase, Phoebe following.
When they reached the uppermost floor Rob’s patrician fingers touched her shoulder and turned her left. He reached around to open a door, slipped past, pulled her inside and latched the lock behind them. In the dimness, she made out a broad conference table, oak chairs with wide arms, and a worn brown couch.
“Where are we?”
“Wait,” he said. He led her through another door to a wrought iron staircase that coiled up to another floor. She climbed the steps behind him. Cold curlicues along the railing bit into her palms. At the top, he pushed hard against a heavy door that opened to a steeple. Wooden beams crossed the ceiling, circling a huge brass bell. The walls surrounding them were chest high. The campus sprawled before them.
“I give you the tower.” He swept out his arms as though offering her a palace.
“We’re allowed up here?” She tiptoed to the edge and surveyed the paths filled with people.
He came from behind and enclosed her, covering her hands with his. “We’re invisible.”
“What if somebody comes up?” Flashes of want overwhelmed her.
“I locked the door below.”
“What if someone wants to come in?”
Rob ignored the question and pressed his lips to the back of her neck. She arched back, catching the scent of Muguet des Bois perfume rising from her heated throat. He touched her breasts, first with tenderness and then with ownership.
“So small to be enclosed in an iron circle.”
“Cotton.”
“Cotton like iron.”
“Small?”
“Small as in wonderful. Small as in bijou, delicious and perfect.” He spun her and teased open a button on her blouse. She began to stay his hands and then stopped. Rob was no high school boy, no college kid, not a member of the Church Avenue softball team. First, second, third base—you didn’t play those games with professors.
“I adore you.” He held his hand inside her bra, the not-so-iron barrier, and ran his hand over a now-bare breast. “You are the satin of youth, and I must possess you. We are in the very wrath of love.”
CHAPTER 4
Phoebe
May 1964
“Again?”
Her mother’s question followed her from the kitchen as Phoebe raced into the downstairs bathroom. She fell before the toilet, raised the seat, and vomited. Tears leaked as she pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead. She’d thrown up every morning for the past week. Waiting for her period had become her constant occupation.
She washed her face with cold water, careful not to splash her blouse, and dabbed her skin dry before turning to go back to the breakfast table. Her mother stood outside, arms crossed, blocking Phoebe’s path as she tried to leave the bathroom.
“Again?” her mother repeated. “Still you’re going to tell me you caught a bug? Whose bug is it?”
“I just don’t feel well, Mom.”
“Do I look stupid? You don’t feel well at exactly eight o’clock every morning? You’re lucky your father leaves early for work.”
Lucky why? Her mother conjured her father for anything related to the body or emotional state of her daughters, using him as a cudgel to crack them open.
“You’d better tell me how much weight you gained at camp, Deb,” she’d say, “or I’ll ask your father.” As though her father’s dentist eyes could weigh Deb with one glance. And yet her threat often worked. Neither sister wanted Daddy drawn into their battles with Mom.
“The cafeteria food is awful. Maybe I have food poisoning.”
“And last month the food tasted perfect, right? Now, voila, you’re a delicate flower?”
Phoebe erased all expression until her face became a blank slate. “It’s the cafeteria.”
As she walked away, her mother threw out more words. “You better pray that’s the case. And if it’s not, you make sure to talk to me first.”
Phoebe kept walking.
Her mother caught up with her and grabbed her shoulder with a mobster’s grip, forcing Phoebe to turn and face her. “I mean it. You’re barely eighteen years old. The smoke from your birthday candles still hangs in the kitchen. You need me, daughter of mine.”
? ? ?
Phoebe slid her tiny gold locket back and forth on its thin chain as she waited at Katz’s Deli for Rob. She’d lied to her parents, to Jake, and even to Deb, about the heart, telling them the necklace had come from Helen (and swearing her best friend to secrecy).
“You can’t put my picture in there,” Rob said when he gave her the present. “At least not yet. But simply wearing it will bring me close.”
He planted kisses on her bare shoulders as he placed the almost weightless chain around her neck.
Everything would work out.
I love you. I love you. Rob had vowed his devotion countless times.
Her parents would adjust. Being Jewish meant little to them. Her cousin in Great Neck had married an Italian girl, and they attended the baby’s baptism bearing pink-wrapped presents six months after they’d gone to the church wedding.
Jake would explode.
Phoebe worried the edge of her wool sweater, soothing herself by pressing her fingers hard against one another.