Tara Quinn - The Night We Met

As timing would have it, my oldest sister, Alice, had me paged in the dorm one evening the next week. She’d been sent by my parents to talk me out of my madness and spent a full hour telling me everything wrong with a man she’d never even met.

“He’s divorced, Liza!”

I certainly couldn’t argue with that.

“You’ll have to leave the Church!”

I couldn’t argue with that, either.

And when she told me that if I went through with the wedding she and my other two sisters, like my parents, would be unable to participate in my life, I didn’t debate the issue.

I cried myself to sleep instead.

Two weeks later, Robert Kennedy announced his campaign for president of the United States and Rome indicated that while it deplored the concept of rock and roll Masses, it wouldn’t prohibit them. I read the news with an almost clinical detachment. Once I married Nate, I would no longer be attending Mass of any kind. I’d be married to a divorced man—a union the Church refused to recognize. And like Nate, I saw no point in worshipping within a society to which I could not belong.

I would miss attending mass.

But my God I’d take with me.

Putting down the newspaper, I went out to the hall, dropped a dime into the phone and dialed my brother, William, at his apartment in Los Angeles. I asked if he’d give me away at my wedding.

He agreed!

North Vietnam agreed to meet with the United States for preliminary peace talks during the first days of April—something I paid careful attention to now that I loved Nate and knew about Keith. And on the fourth day of that month, Martin Luther King was shot in the neck with a single bullet while standing on the balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Crying, not understanding the injustice of a good man’s life ending in such a senseless way, I called Nate. He couldn’t make sense of the tragedy any more than I could, but talking to him helped just the same. I mentioned that my brother would be giving me away at our wedding and finally told him that my parents and sister would not be attending. It seemed like such a small thing at that point.

On April 18th Great Britain sold the London Bridge to a United States oil company that would be erecting it in Arizona. I wasn’t sure why Arizonans wanted a British bridge, but I liked the idea of bridges being raised far from their homes. I hoped that symbolism would apply to me, too.

The next day, walking back from class, I turned onto the block of the convent gate and saw Nate standing there, his face at once welcoming and somewhat grim.

I flew to him, almost dropping my books, and my whole being felt as though it was soaring as he grabbed me up, books and all, into a full-bodied hug. Glancing up, tears in my eyes and a smile on my lips, I meant to ask him why he was there, how long he could stay, why he hadn’t told me he was coming. I kissed him instead.

Just like that. With no thought. No worries about how to do it. My mouth went straight to his. In that moment, it no longer mattered that I’d lost most of my family, my church, all sense of security. I’d found the home I wanted for the rest of my life.

“I only have tonight,” Nate was saying several minutes later as we walked toward the pub where we’d first met. I’d brought my books inside, told my roommates not to expect me until curfew and hurried back to him without even changing out of my plaid jumper and white blouse. At least I’d grabbed my navy sweater for when the sun went down.

He was holding my hand—hadn’t let go since I’d come back out from the convent—and now he squeezed it. “I want to meet your folks.”

Oh. My spirits plummeted. “If we’ve only got a few hours, Nate,” I said, keeping my voice light, “I want to spend them with you—alone.”

“You love your parents,” he argued. “I’m not going to be the cause of a rift between you. I’d like to meet them, talk to them, assure them that I’m honorable and want only what’s best for you.”

“They won’t listen.”

“By your own admission, all they want is for you to be happy.”

That used to be true—when I was still a member of their church. When they thought I was in my right mind. In their view, they weren’t cutting off their support to punish me; they were doing what they thought was best, refusing to go along with my hare-brained idea because they believed that their rejection would bring me to my senses. And the hardest part was that I understood—which made it impossible to hate them.

Only to grieve their loss.

“We can take a cab out to their house,” Nate said, “and if all goes well, have a late dinner before I catch my plane back.”

“We can’t.”

“Of course we can.”

“They won’t see you, Nate.”

“What do you mean, they won’t see me? They don’t even know me.”

“I know them.”

He stopped by a pay phone outside the pub. Pulled change from his pocket. “Call them.”

“It won’t do any good.”

“Humor me.”

Because I loved him so much, I complied. I knew the effort was wasted.

And still, I had to take an extra second in the glass-enclosed booth after the call, collecting myself before I could face Nate. I’d had no idea my father had so much coldness in him.

“Well?” Nate asked, standing with both hands on his hips, facing me.

I shook my head. Hoped that would be the end of it.

“They aren’t home?”

I couldn’t start our life together with lies.

“They said that if we go there, they’ll call the cops.”

I would never forget the look on Nate’s face.

In May, Vietnamese peace talks began in Paris, Mission: Impossible won an Emmy Award and I graduated from college. Nate came to the ceremony. And so did my brother, William. The two men—eight years apart in age—were as wary of each other as prowling tigers. But that night Nate played piano at the pub again and during the second set William asked me to dance.

“He’s talented,” my older brother said to me as we moved slowly around the crowded floor.

“Yeah.”

“He’s not shallow.”

“I know.”

“He loves you.”

I got choked up at that.

“And you love him, don’t you?”

“Very much.”

William didn’t say any more about Nate and me after that, but when the break came, he bought a round of drinks. And by the time I had to be back at the convent dormitory, where I’d be staying until July as a summer student, taking a first-session graduate class, the two men were discussing baseball homerun records and an outfielder who’d played 695 games straight.

I’d never been a fan of the sport, but I was going to love it from then on.

Robert F. Kennedy was killed in early June. People everywhere were shocked, horrified that the assassination of prominent people was now part of our reality. We’d suffered two of them in two months.

At a time when I was taking a blind leap away from everything familiar and safe, my country was in turmoil. I wondered what God thought of how we were treating His world. I wondered if I’d ever feel safe again.

Consumed by fear—more menacing in itself than anything else—I squared my shoulders and requested counsel from Sister Michael Damien, the Mistress of Postulants. Had I entered the convent she would have been my mentor, training me in proper decorum, regulations and spiritual matters.

I hadn’t spoken with her since I’d told her I would not be entering the convent, the day after I’d answered Nate’s first letter.

I was in awe of her and intimidated beyond measure.

“Thank you for seeing me,” I said quietly, eyes downcast as I sat with her on a warm cement bench during the postulant recreation time after lunch.