Fifty-One Years Ago

Fifty-One Years Ago

The first time Liam met Cory, she was coming out of his bedroom.

"Hi there," she said.

She was wearing a green wrap dress, her curly hair running halfway down her back. The shock of her standing there—this beautiful girl in his bedroom doorway—like she belonged there, made him step back.

"Can I help you?" he asked.

"I don't know, can you?"

She smiled at him, her eyes shining. It wasn't just that she was beautiful, though she was beautiful. But it was more than that when she looked at him with those eyes. She was so familiar to him. So present. Liam had never seen her before, and suddenly he felt like he'd never not seen her.

"I'm Cory," she said.

"Liam."

She held out her hand, and he took it just as his cousin Joe walked out of his bedroom too.

"Hey, bud," Joe said. "This is Cory."

"I heard."

"She just transferred to Midwood…"

Liam nodded, keeping his eyes tight on Cory. He didn't even look over at Joe—Joe who had recently transferred to Midwood and moved in with Liam's family. He'd moved, more specifically, into the top bunk in Liam's room after running into some trouble at his own high school in Vinegar Hill. His father wasn't in the picture to help out. And his mother (Liam's mother's sister) decided Joe needed a change. Needed a good influence, needed someone with his head on straight. Needed someone like Liam.

Cory was still holding his hand.

"Where'd you transfer from?" Liam asked her.

"Immaculate Heart, unfortunately."

"Like… unfortunately you went to Immaculate Heart? Or unfortunately you're stuck at Midwood now?"

Cory tilted her head. "What's wrong with Midwood?"

"How long do you have?"

"Not long actually. I was on my way out."

Liam cleared his throat. "Is Cory short for something?" he said. "That's a guy's name, isn't it?"

"Wow, you're the first person to ever point that out," she said. Sarcastic, but not angry. "It's short for Cordelia. Which I like less."

"Cordelia. Like King Lear ?"

She nodded. "Exactly," she said. "My mother's a lit professor at Brooklyn College."

This surprised him. "What does your father do?"

"Most days? Drink."

But she smiled. She smiled that smile again, Liam working hard to hold her gaze. Like she could disappear if he didn't. Cory was taking her hand back, pulling her hair off her face. What a feeling this was, standing this close to her. Brand-new, for him. He wanted to be exactly where he was.

"I've seen you before," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"At the library. After school."

It didn't seem possible that she'd been in his vicinity and he'd missed her. But the way he'd been studying, he guessed it was possible. What did the guidance counselor say about Liam? That, in her thirty years at the school, she had never seen a student as driven as Liam was. She meant it as a compliment, but she also meant it as the opposite.

As if hearing Liam's thoughts, Cory leaned toward him.

"You were extremely focused."

"I wasn't that focused."

"Never apologize for focusing," she said. "Joe says you're going to Yale next year?"

That's when they looked up and realized Joe had left. He'd gone downstairs or back inside the room. He'd gone somewhere away from them.

"How about you?"

"I'm a sophomore so… I have a little time."

"But you're going with Joe?"

"Maybe. I don't know."

He nodded. Joe was good-looking. Too good-looking, really. He was already six foot two with shaggy hair and a strong jaw and chiseled muscles and all the rest of it. That's part of the reason why he got in trouble. That's part of the reason he didn't think he needed to try hard. Liam wasn't bad looking, either. Maybe not as tall or as broad, but he had Joe's jaw and he had really nice eyes, kind eyes. And he had a couple of years on him, so there was that. But he wasn't Joe.

"You should know," Liam said, "Joe's got a lot of girlfriends."

"You have at least one yourself."

He looked at her confused. "How do you know that?"

"She was at the library with you," Cory said. "She was trying to get you to stop focusing."

Liam felt his skin heat up, his cheeks turning red. He and Christina had been dating for the better part of two years. She was planning on working at her father's dress shop after graduation. She was putting pressure on him to think about getting engaged. But that was the last thing he wanted. He had one foot out the door of this house, of this street lined with its identical homes, of this provincial slice of Brooklyn a world away from New York City. Everything about being here made him feel trapped. The broken television his parents couldn't afford to fix, the moveable tub his father soaked his frozen shoulder in, his classmates seemingly all too happy to raise kids on these same streets where they grew up. Rinse and repeat.

He wanted none of that. The reason the guidance counselor said Liam was so driven was that he walked into her office the first week of his freshman year and laid it out for her. He would do anything that was needed to get himself to somewhere better. To get himself to a completely different life.

"You guys staying together after graduat—"

"No." He answered before she even finished asking. "Definitely not."

She laughed. "Didn't mean to hit a nerve there."

"You didn't," he said. "I'm just not taking anything with me from here."

She smiled, but she started to walk past him, toward the stairs. "That sounds like a dare…"

He turned around. "Where are you going?"

"I've got to go back to school. There's a meeting tonight for the literary magazine. Not a lot of outlets at Midwood for writers, so…"

Jabberwocky —that was the name of the school's literary magazine, wasn't it? Liam wasn't sure. He wasn't sure he'd ever even picked it up.

"What do you like to write?"

"Oh, you know. Short stories. Plays. Poetry. All sorts of things."

"What are you writing now?"

"That's a longer conversation."

He wanted to say, Let's have it. He wanted to hear all about her writing and anything else she was willing to tell him. It was unnerving.

"Nice meeting you, though," she said. "Liam."

His name had a finality coming out of her mouth that he didn't like. He stared at her, unsure what to say. She was almost at the staircase.

"Just… would you… can you wait a second?" he said, his words jumping over themselves, fast and furious. And, if he was being honest, a little desperate.

He didn't sound anything like himself—at least the self he'd always thought he was, calm and collected at all times. Suddenly, the real him could be summed up by one thing: he didn't want her to leave.

She shrugged. "I don't want to be late."

"Fuck late," he said.

She laughed, took him in again.

"Okay," she said. "Maybe."

And, like magic, Cordelia started to walk back toward him.