Tethering Angels

Chapter 1: Jimmy Romano

June 4, 1967. It was the summer of love. I was always told I was living in an age of change and revolution. Part of me was proud of this. I was thrilled when my community started to integrate. The race barriers that had divided us for so long were finally coming down. My town was never full of staunch racists, but it was still a process to tear down our walls and prejudices that were ingrained in the hearts of the adults. The youth did not seem to have as much resistance as in other places around the country. I owe this to the fact that the popular kids were the movers and shakers, the revolutionaries, if you will.
There was a group of students at my all girls Catholic high school, St. Teresa of Avila's, who thought that they were changing and bettering the whole world by tossing out the old, conservative regime in our little microcosm. Avila High, despite its strict uniform code and grouchy old nun police force, was supposedly the epicenter of change. I, of course, had the mind to know that this was not the case. Anyone could flip on the television and see on the news places like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Washington DC. The city was where the big things were happening, but the kids of Rosedale, Indiana liked to put themselves up there.
I don't mean to say that all the change they wanted was bad. It wasn't. I was all for integration, and the empowerment of women was a wonderful idea in and of itself. Heck, I was a woman driver, and most of them were not! What bothered me about them was their enthusiasm over the birth control pill and the idea of women having the choice of what to do with their bodies.
"I'm going to meet Jason behind the old Grant barn tonight," I overheard my classmate Linda McAfee saying to her friends one day.
The old Grant barn was where high school kids from the Catholic schools would go to drink and party. Old man Grant had died 2 years back and his property had not been bought yet. It was in terrible disrepair, but it was a building with a roof above it and a place remote enough to avoid the sight of cops or parents.
"Jason? But didn't he knock up that girl from Harrison High last year?" Her friend Mary Bratcher asked nervously.
"Yeah, but he won't knock me up. She wasn't on the pill."
Mary's jaw dropped, "You're going to do it?"
"If we feel like it. It's my life! I oughta have a little fun before I'm old," Linda laughed.
    "I don't know, Linda. What if someone catches you?"
"At the Grant barn? Who would be there?"
"I don't know..."
Linda shrugged, "Let us get caught. The old geezers who run the world nowadays just have to get used to it. People used to have to worry about the consequences of living and loving. Now with the pill the pressure's off."
"Still, you've only been seeing him for a couple of months..."
"Well, if I don't like it...We're just going to give it a try."
Linda and her friends would roll the waistbands of their skirts to make the hemlines shorter and spew out long tangents about how they would never have children because it would restrict their liberties. They had faith in the wave of feminism that was sweeping the nation, calling for society to stop the war on women that had kept us down for centuries. These girls challenged authority at every turn, from the little old nuns in the school to making a trip into Chicago to participate in rallies or festivals. I was all for women's rights like suffrage and better pay in the workplace, but I didn't see why we had to take pills and throw out moral behavior in order to get it. The suffragettes could stay good and upright 50 years before. Why couldn't we?
From this observation of mine, you probably think I am bitter and stuck up. Perhaps I am, but I really just try to be good. When most people look at me, they probably see a petite little girl of 16: five foot two with blonde curly hair that spends much more time up than down because it is so hit or miss if the curls are all over and pretty. Maybe they notice my eyes. I've always been told they're huge. My friend Patty calls them ingenue eyes, which is high praise, as I want to play practically every female ingenue role the world of theatre can create. I am always desiring a slimmer figure, though most people say it's pretty enough. However, as a dancer, one can always be thinner. Ever since I saw the movie White Christmas, I wanted Vera-Ellen's legs. Unfortunately God gave me my mother's longer torso and shorter legs, from the long line of Irish farmers I am descended from. In a perfect world, I would look like my friend Evie.
I had never been lucky with friends. All through elementary school I would make the mistake of reaching out to the girls or boys whom everyone else had rejected. I saw no fault in these children. I couldn't join the dislike of them without having a reason. Most of the time these outcasts were actually wonderful people. They were realists who saw the world as it was. They were either born that way or had some trauma that instilled wisdom and hurt that made them see more clearly for better or worse.
I never liked seeing children like this alone. Everyone deserved a friend. My plan was always to become their friend, and eventually bring them into the fold so more people could love them. Unfortunately, other kids were never willing to open their hearts. As a result of my outreaching endeavors, I was abandoned by all my other friends.
In junior high, strangely enough, things started to get better. I was able to make the transition to St. Teresa of Avila's Junior/Senior High School. Here, everyone was new to the school, so I got to have a clean slate and start over trying to make new friends with these new girls. I soon met Ella Mills.
Ella was very quirky and liked making up wild stories about simple inanimate objects. When she told the story of a pineapple who had a dramatic love affair, I knew I wanted to be her friend forever. Don't ask me exactly why her strangeness was so endearing, it just was. She was my best friend just because she was my best friend. I couldn't explain it. That's what true friendship ought to be. We were very close from the 7th grade to the 9th grade. She clearly loved learning, but was never very motivated to study. That was where I came in. Every time there was a test, I would sit her down and we would go through all of my detailed notes, page by page until we could talk for 20 minutes straight about each topic on the test. I felt smart and wanted in those years that most girls loathe.
I was always motivated in my academics. My daddy always told me that once I walked in the door on my first day of high school, everything would matter to colleges. College was starting to become a more acceptable option for girls, and my parents were highly in favor of it. I was too. I was thrilled with the idea of going somewhere new and studying to earn a degree that would get me a high paying job until I got married (if anyone wanted me). I was also motivated by being a people pleaser. If I ever did something wrong as a child, all you had to do as look at me and say no and I would melt into a puddle of tears. This was still true. The prospect of being punished was punishment enough. I wanted to make my parents and teachers proud, so I never forgot to study or fulfill any requirements. When homework was assigned, I would do it and turn it in before or when it was due. I didn't believe in excuses for anything.
It took the other girls at school a while before the idea of preparing for college set in, but when it did they turned psycho. Ella fell hard into this trap. For some reason she stopped asking me to study with her. I was alright with this at the beginning, because I was jealous of how well she was doing in biology class and how much teachers liked her all of a sudden. She didn't seem to need me anymore and I certainly did not need her either, or so I thought. I could pass and excel in anything all by myself if I tried. Studying had never been the root of our friendship anyway. We could still be best friends, I hoped.
In the summer before our sophomore year, she and a bunch of other girls in our class went away to camp. I stayed home and took dance classes all summer and did my first community theatre musical. I had a wonderful time meeting new people and doing what I loved, but little did I know that something was happening and all the other girls in my class were becoming very good friends, even if they had previously disliked each other. When we came back to school it was like Ella was another person. She never wore her glasses anymore. She only wore contact lenses and heavy mod makeup. Her skirts got shorter, her hair was more kept than it had ever been, and she had a much stronger connection with Karen Applegate. At first this was fine with me. Karen and I had been friends over the years. We had shared a love of writing and thinking hard about the great mysteries of the universe. Karen seemed to have a bit more of a grasp of human emotion than anyone else I talked to, much more than my mom and dad. She was always a good friend to me when we were alone. That was probably the key. All girls were kind to me when they were alone.
That's how I preferred to spend my time: making one on one connections with people and learning who they truly were, what they truly thought. People the way I knew them always seemed to fade away when they were with a big group of their friends. It took me about 15 years to realize that I did not thrive in group settings at all. I boiled it down to the fact that I could not handle my friends being fake and shallow. Because I was not willing to scream and fan myself over things I did not care about, I was boring. I always felt unwelcome in groups of girls for this reason. Every time I would open my mouth people would roll their eyes at my differing opinion, and if I got too excited people were unnerved. From there I decided to take what I could get in terms of friendship and not beat my head against a wall to impress the girls at school.
I had always been more interested in impressing adults. These were the people who could get me where I wanted to go. They had also lived a little more and knew more what they were talking about. If a girl at school heard me say that, they would tear me to pieces, but it was true. The thing was, deep down, the other girls were suck ups, much more than I was. Nothing made me gag more than philosophy class when girls would gush about absolutely nothing for almost the entire hour. Everyone else was mesmerized by their "brilliant insights" and "wisdom". It bothered me how much of the time they would completely miss the point of what the writer was saying. The purpose was to understand the text, not to critique and come up with their own philosophy. Still, their eagerness to speak gained them much respect from the faculty.
Girls seemed to start caring about college and approval overnight. Good for them, but what about me? I had been trying my best for years and now I was falling out of the race. My parents assured me that my efforts were still being noted, but I was not so sure. I just wanted a little affirmation that I was doing everything right.
With all the inconsistencies with my school friends, it was a great relief to finally come in contact with a real, sweet, genuine human. That human's name was Evangeline Hayes. The summer before my junior year, I did another community theatre show: My Fair Lady. I was put in the ensemble. This was my first show full of adults, and I was the youngest female in the cast. As a result, I knew next to no one. Evangeline was new to town and did not know anyone either, so we became quick friends. She was just a year ahead of me in school. She understood and shared my love of all things theatre, singing, and dancing. Her appearance was like that of an angel: long, thin, sleek golden hair, big hazel eyes, and a tiny figure that I would have loved to possess myself. She had the Vera-Ellen legs.
She could dance like Vera-Ellen too. She was versed in practically every type of dance, while I struggled through classical ballet, modern dance, and a little bit of tap. Every movement she made was refined and graceful. I convinced her to come take classes with me at my dance school. Those were some of my fondest memories of dancing. Most people would define Evangeline by her dancing, but there was more to her than that. She had a bubbly personality and a smile that carried such an infectious joy, it was hard not to also be happy. She really loved to have fun. A fellow woman driver, she loved going fast with all her windows down and letting the wind whip through her golden hair. We spent many a night going home from rehearsals in her car, belting show tunes at the top of our lungs along to the record player she had in her little red car.
Perhaps the most important thing you need to know about Evangeline was her faith in God. She was a Protestant and I was a Catholic. We had spent our childhoods in our separate churches learning that the other was going to Hell. I had never been very close with any Protestants before, but I was expecting there to be drastic differences in what we believed. After meeting Evangeline, I learned quickly that that was not true at all. We both believed that Jesus was born in Nazareth to a virgin named Mary who had conceived by the power of God. We knew what he preached about love, forgiveness, and repentance. He was crucified, died, and then resurrected three days later in order to save us from our sins. We knew that God had a plan for each and every one of us, and good people went to Heaven when He was done. Her faith was simple and beautiful, and as a Catholic girl weighed down by doctrine and dogma, I envied how easy it was for her to just love God with all her heart and soul. I wanted to be just like her and have her faith and happiness. She felt God calling her to go to a college to study dance and theatre so she could live out her dream of bringing joy to people, and when she was through she would teach people about Jesus for a living. That's what she seemed born to do. That's what we both thought God's plan for her was. We were wrong.
One February day in my junior year, I was having a rough day. I hate February and March with a passion. In Indiana, you go months without sunshine and the temperature stays below 20 degrees for too long. Snow is fun at Christmas, but past January you just get tired of it. Roads get coated with ice, but that does not usually keep people inside because we are so used to it. My daddy had decided that this February day was too icy and did not let me drive my 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air to school. He insisted on dropping off my sister Josie and me and having my mom pick us up after she had picked up my other brothers and sisters. I was saddened by the dreary weather and everyone at school had ignored me all day. I hadn't been able to get a word in during philosophy class and I was worried my participation grade would plummet.
         As I laid out the insignificant problems with that day that I hardly remember now, I stopped and said to my mom, "These are all stupid problems that white girls have in America. It could be worse!" And I decided to stop complaining.
          Later that day I went to ballet class. Evangeline had stopped taking classes with me because she was doing another musical. I did not have time because I was contracted to teach in order to help pay for my and my 4 sisters' dance classes. I taught my little girls in the first level of ballet and then took my own class. My mood was boosted immensely and I was ready to have a good rehearsal for the upcoming recital. After we thanked our teacher, I noticed something was slightly off with the girls in the class. They were whispering to each other, looking upset. This is what they often did, and it was usually nasty gossip or making fun of someone's technique. They all took their turn staring at me one by one. I hoped my dancing had not been that bad. Personally, I thought I had just had a good class. Finally my good friend Betsey broke free of the huddle and came over to me.
   "Caroline," she said, smiling but her voice a little shaky.
"Yes?" I asked brightly.
"You know your friend Evangeline? These things are never easy to say..."
"Yes," my sweet friend. She could do some very silly things. What had she done now?
"Dorris called some of us earlier. Evangeline was going home from school today and was involved in a car accident..."
My hand mindlessly drifted to cover my mouth, "Oh my god..." I imagined her in a hospital bed, hooked up to a bunch of tubes. I waited for Betsey to say, "she's ok" or "she's very hurt but will be ok."
"And...she passed away."
Before my brain could even fully process the words, a sob forced its way out of me and I burst into tears.
"She hit a tree..." Betsey tried to explain, "they think the car slid on the ice...I'm sorry!"
She hugged me as I cried for a good minute before stumbling into the dressing room and crying more. The other girls came in one by one and gave me a hug. They told me they would pray for me and for her and her family. My friend Kathy asked if I wanted to go home. I decided that Evangeline would want me to dance, so I stayed for the hour before both my parents came in our station wagon and my mom got out to drive my car home. Josie must have called home and told them what had happened. The minute I saw my mom, I broke into the wildest sobbing I had ever produced.
"My goodness, the minute you see me!" She almost laughed. I hugged her for a few seconds before sliding on the ice in the parking lot into the passenger seat of my car.
"I just don't understand, mom! I just don't!" I cried between hard sobs.
"I don't either. She was an angel God sent you just when you needed her," Mom said, her voice trembling a little.
"Why did he have to take her away? I don't understand! There was so much she wanted to do!"
"I know..."
"We wanted to open up a dance studio for the kids in Deerpaw! We were going to do it together!"
"Oh, that's right..." my mom said quietly.
When I got home I unwillingly ate some leftovers from supper, spaghetti with tomato sauce and a whole lot of saltwater falling from my eyes in a steady, unstoppable stream. My parents were sitting in the living room folding laundry and talking quietly. I stumbled in and slumped down in a chair.
"Going to bed, honey?" My daddy asked.
"No. I have homework," I said shortly.
"I'm sure your teachers would understand..."
"No! No excuses," I sniffed, "I have to."
And with that I marched over to my desk and did my Calculus, read my books, but could not bring myself to focus on physics. I went to bed and cried myself to sleep.
  That night was fairly representative of how my so called "grieving process" went. I never stopped my routine of school for anything. I was up at 6:30 the next morning and was in class at 8, just like nothing had happened. I had a big cry before first period on Betsey's shoulder, but I held it in for the rest of the day. The next day I broke down crying three separate times. Much to my surprise, the girls were nice. They hugged me and told me that it was ok to go home, but missing school just meant postponing the work to a later time. It didn't take it away. I cried every night that week, but I was pretty much done after her funeral. Still, this lingering sense of sadness and loneliness stayed with me.
The hardest part was that no one at Avila knew Evangeline. They had no idea how it felt to miss her. Evangeline went to the big public high school. I knew people there, but I had too much school and dance to see them. My biggest comfort came when I hugged and cried with her mother and she told me how much I meant to Evie. It was also amazing to see how her boyfriend still smiled and joked and still held her light for the entire world to see. I made it my mission to take in her little sister as my own, but my lack of time made it impossible.
There were times when I felt fine and there were times when I wanted to break down and cry out of nowhere. The worst part came when I saw a picture of her car in the newspaper. That little red car had been our sanctuary, the one place in the last few months where I felt truly happy and comfortable with myself. I felt loved in that passenger seat. Now the world had taken it and completely smashed it in, along with my heart.
Evangeline was not a gunner in school. She got fine grades, but they were not her end all be all. I wished I could have her carefree attitude and her knowledge of what was truly important in life. I tried not to care as much about school, but I threw myself in at full force. I never stopped to truly honor her and process my feelings. I felt awful about it, but I felt I could not afford to stop. A college wouldn't care about the fact that I had lost a best friend. All they would see was that my grades slipped away, so I could not let that happen.
And so I finished up junior year with satisfactory grades and was relieved to finally get out of school. I got a job waiting tables at Susie's Malt Shop to earn some extra cash. I was doing another show at the community theatre and was dancing during the day, but the sunshine and warmth made me miss Evangeline more than ever. A year ago we were driving down the highway screaming "Don't Rain on My Parade" at the top of our voices. Now I imagined her tying on her pointe shoes and doing turning leaps from cloud to cloud. It was foolish of me to imagine heaven like this, but I couldn't wrap my mind around it being anything else. It supposedly wasn't a place, it was the state of being with God. I couldn't picture or comprehend this at all. I liked clouds and a big stage for her to live out her Broadway dreams.
I needed someone like her to come into my life again. To take me to a deep spiritual place of pure, undiluted happiness. My parents always said things like, "If you pray, you'll be happy!" Or "Let Jesus be your best friend!" "Let Mary comfort you!". I tried this. I was not good at setting aside prayer time, but when I did I always wound up crying, complaining to God and begging him to show himself to me in some way. I believed in God wholeheartedly, but I didn't understand him, and by no means was he my friend. It was like calling someone on a phone and they never picked up. Just imagine:
"Hello, St. Peter? Could you connect me to God please?"
"Sorry, he already has a couple billion calls waiting. I'll have to put you on hold."
"That's alright, could you connect me to Mary?"
"She's also busy. Do you have any idea how many people she has to make time for?"
"No, I'm sorry. I can't imagine. Well, could you connect me to Evangeline Hayes?"
And he hangs up. It seems my little problems can be on hold for a while. Surely God has many people he's listening to and I will have to wait my turn. I'd waited almost 4 months. I could keep waiting.
So here I was on June 4th, 1967 working my supper shift, ten days away from my 17th birthday. I was trying to be the perfect little waitress: smiling, creating a sense of home and welcome, filling every order perfectly, offering speedy service, everything I ought to do. By 9 pm I had cleaned up spilled milkshakes from 3 separate children, waited on 15 tables, and messed up zero orders. Everything was going fine. In walked a handsome dark haired boy, about 6 foot tall with a quiet confidence about him. He took a seat at a table in the corner. Once I had taken some quick orders I decided to add him to my lineup.
"Evening, sir. What can I getcha?"
"Classic chocolate malt please," he said, looking up from our menu. I could tell he had social skills because he looked me in the eyes. I almost jumped at how pretty they were, a warm brown speckled with flecks of gold.
"Anything else? We have 25 cent fries today," I said cheerfully, plastering an enthusiastic grin to my face.
"Well, that's an offer I can't refuse. Yes, I'll take some of those."
"Will that be all?"
"Maybe a glass of water," He said.
"Alright. I'll get that for you in a jiffy!"
"Thank you," He said, still making good eye contact.
He was cute. He was really really cute. I had to have seen him before though. This town was too small. I just couldn't place where. I got him his malt and his fries and his water and tried to keep from blushing too much.
"Here you are! Chocolate malt, fries, and a glass of water. Would you like anything else?" I asked quickly.
He thought for a moment, "Some ketchup for the fries?"
"Oh! Of course, I'll be right on it!"
"Wait..." He said, I zipped back around.
"Yes?"
"Are you an Avila girl?"
"Yes, I'll be a senior in the fall."
He smiled and nodded, "I just graduated from Thomas More."
That's how I knew him! He was a Thomas More boy! St Thomas More was the all boys Catholic junior/senior high right down the street from Teresa of Avila. The schools would combine for dances and such.
"Oh! Congratulations!" I said. I couldn't think of what else to say. "I thought I recognized you."
"I thought I recognized you too," He laughed. He extended his hand, "Jimmy Romano."
I shook it, "Mary Caroline Kildare...I mean, no one calls me Mary. There are too many Mary's in the world. I mean, it's a fine name I guess...but I like being different." That sounded ridiculous! "I mean, it just gets confusing with so many girls named Mary because the name just gets called and practically the whole room looks up! I...I go by Caroline."
He smiled and nodded, "I see. Well, it's good to meet you, Caroline."
"I'll get you your ketchup," I said, reluctantly pulling my hand out of his muscular but comfortable grasp. He had to have been an athlete.
     I hurried back quickly, neglecting practically all my other tables, "Here you are. Anything else?"
    "No, I'm good for now. Thank you."
    "Alright, just let me know if you need anything!"
      I got back to the rest of my tables but couldn't help but look in his direction. A couple times he was looking at me and we made awkward eye contact before I tried to make it look like I never looked at him in the first place. After eating his food he took out a book and read it for about an hour. The malt shop was a strange place to read a book. It was awfully loud. We always closed around midnight. There was no one left except the rest of the workers, me, and him. No other customers came in.
     "That fella's been in here for a while. Is he a friend of yours?" the manager asked.
      "Sort of," I said.
      "Could you tell him to leave? We can't have loitering around here."
      "Alright," I said nervously. I took a deep breath and approached his table. "Jimmy?"
      "Yes?"
      "You've been here a while...and we're about to close..."
      "Oh! Has it been that long? I'm sorry! I was just wondering when you got off."
      "Midnight. Midnight on nights like tonight."
      "Do you have someone to walk or drive you home?" He asked.
       Gosh, I wish I could say no. "I drive." I said.
       His eyebrows went up, "Oh! Wow! I didn't think...sorry..."
       "It's alright. There aren't many girls who drive."
       "Yeah, I guess not. I was just going to head to the park. There's supposed to be a meteor shower tonight. It's going to be really something. Would you...would you have any interest in watching it with me?"
It was almost midnight, but he was really cute and I wasn't remotely tired. Maybe for just a few minutes.
     "Sure, Jimmy, I would love to."
     "Great! We can walk to the park and watch it there."
     "Alright! Just let me go change out of my uniform and I'll meet you right here!"
      I hurried to the bathroom and changed out of my waitress outfit and into my sundress. I checked my hair in the mirror and applied an extra coat of mascara from my pocket. Now I was ready to go meet Jimmy and sit in the dark park, looking at the sky. He was still waiting by the table.
     "Ready to go?"
     "Yep, I'm all set!"
       And off we went into the night that would teach me to hope again.