Loonglow (20 page)

“Easy's overrated.”

“I know!” She touched his leg. “I asked her if she'd rather not be Jewish if she'd had the choice, because it would be easier.”

“It's no gift being average. At least you have things that make you special.”

“I'd hate to be conventional.” She smiled. “I told my mother I thought life was fuller when you don't take everything for granted. I'm glad I know what it means to fight for things.”

“And to have things to fight for. My life was completely programmed.”

“Do you think your sister felt that way?”

He stared at his feet. “She could have been a great musician. She was twenty times more talented than I am.” His voice sounded hollow. “She could have used someone to help her appreciate being different.”

She touched his arm. “When Kevin died, I started thinking about losing everyone I loved. I'd call my mother just to make sure she was still alive. I think maybe it was the suddenness of it, his just being dead one day without warning; maybe if he'd been sick for a while I wouldn't have felt so panicked.” She sat up and took off her shoes, trailing her toes in the water. “I don't understand why I'm so unnerved by this. You'd think having my father die would have prepared me.”

“It never goes away completely. And Kevin was just a boy.”

“Younger than I am.” Her voice faltered.

“You have to give yourself time. You can't live forever in a state of paralysis.”

“Not in New York, that's for sure.”

“When I first moved, people back here said, Be careful, in New York they kill you on the street just as soon as look at you. If I'd listened to them, I would have spent my days locked up in my apartment. You ride the subway? they'd say, horrified, In the evenings? As if I'd confessed to grand larceny. A person can lock himself in away from life forever if he worries about what might happen. Hell, I could get killed here falling down in my own bathtub.”

“It'd take days to find you, too.” She swished the water back and forth. “I agree with you, I do. I know I can't live in fear—but I still can't sleep at night. I tell myself I'll always have my memories of Kevin and I should be grateful for the friends I do have, but …”

“I wish I could help you.”

“You do.” She looked over at him almost shyly. “I never expected it to help so much just to talk to you about it. You understand what I feel without looking at me as if I'm having some sort of nervous breakdown.” She squeezed his arm, then jumped to her feet, stretching her arms toward the sky as if in supplication. “So is this water forbidden, or what?”

“You mean to swim in?”

She lit up. “Can we go for a swim?”

“Uh—if you want, sure. You like to swim?”

“Like to?” She put her hands on her hips, then suddenly pulled down her jeans in one quick motion. After a moment's hesitation, she pulled her shirt over her head, diving in before he had a chance to blink. By the time he'd made up his mind to join her, she had swum the length of the pond and back. “Freezing!” she called out. In the lake she seemed like a completely different person, making her way through the water with such assurance. He'd never seen her do anything physical before, he realized. Taking off everything but his briefs, he jumped in, swimming out to her. “And here I thought you were the delicate type,” he teased.

“Didn't expect me to jump naked into your private lake as soon as I got the chance?” She splashed him, but he ducked. “Well, seen two, seen 'em all.”

“Not true,” he said, and she pondered his words for an instant before splashing him again. “Race you,” he dared.

“Silly boy.” In a minute they were speeding across the lake. He was panting by the time he'd beat her, but she'd given him a good race; she might even have won, if he hadn't been so much taller.

“Humiliating,” she announced when they reached the shore, shaking her hair.

He let her get dressed first, turning his back and doing a few more strokes. The blood was coursing fiercely through his body; he was incredibly happy, as if he'd been given a glimpse of the life he'd always wanted.

He could just turn and lift her in the air, he thought, just reach out and suspend her high above him. It took nearly all the strength he had just to keep his back to her until she'd finished dressing.

Louey hesitated at the doorway to the living room. The music beckoned, but she felt out of place, uninvited, like a prowler.

Clay sat at the piano, playing Chopin as his mother listened in a high-backed chair, her eyes closed and a peaceful smile on her face. She looked at Louey briefly as Louey sat down on the couch, then nodded toward her son.

What a mass of contradictions Clay was! Watching him in earnest concentration on the music, Louey thought of how she'd taken him for someone aimless, thoughtless, casual as air. Yet here he was, playing gorgeous music so sweetly. It was like discovering a secret part of him. The way he treated his mother—gently, as if she were a priceless vase, a wounded bird—fit in with his playing. Glancing at Dulcie, Louey thought she saw her body fill out with the music. She wondered if Clay's mother had ever shown him the surprisingly resilient self she'd revealed to Louey, the side that wanted more.

Clay played for them for hours, fingers flying, lingering to summon poignant melodies. This was life, thought Louey, listening to beautiful music: pure emotion.

“What did you and my mother find to talk about?” he asked her the next night.

“I've never met a woman who hates men so much.”

“Dad.”

“Yeah.” She thought of the confusion on his mother's face as she'd spoken of her husband. “She hates herself for having loved him.”

“But all men aren't like my father. She hasn't taken an interest in anyone else since he left.”

“She can't let herself fall for something any man might tell her, since she was so trusting with your father. She has no faith in her judgment; she made such a terrible mistake.”

“Poor Mom. I'd hoped she'd get over it and make a new life for herself. Whatever else it was, this house used to be alive. She was a master at big lavish scenes, making people adore her. Now she seems to have lost the stomach for any of it.”

“She thinks she's a failure. The one thing she created, her family, turned out to be completely fraudulent.”

He was silent. “I'm not fraudulent.”

“No, but she's never made her peace with you. She doesn't trust the love she has for you because in some ways you're an extension of your father. She wants to love you but she hates herself for it.”

“Wonderful.”

“She's terrified that what she feels for you is as misplaced as what she felt for your father.”

“I lost touch with her a long time ago.” Her words should have upset him, but he felt calm, as if he now understood clearly a truth he'd always suspected. “I've been at a loss to know what she really does think of me.”

“She loves you more than anyone in the world, Clay. When I told her she should be proud of having raised such a good person, it was as if I was confirming some dream she'd been afraid to hope for.”

“Right.” He was surprised at the bitterness in his voice.

“Right,” she said emphatically. “It's no small thing to raise a boy who genuinely cares for women. Most men are filled with contempt or fear, as if women were aliens from another planet.”

“We're all obsessed with the same things, aren't we? That's no big revelation.”

“But it is, to most men. I told your mother it's because of her that you're not fucked up about women. And look at what fabulous women friends you have.” She poked his arm.

What a heel he was; now she was congratulating him on his hypocrisy.

“We are friends, aren't we?” she said softly.

He met her eye and nodded. To his surprise, he realized it was true.

“Well …” Clay pulled the car up to Louey's apartment.

“I had a wonderful time.” She yawned, stretching after the long ride. “Thank you so much, Clay. I feel almost human again.”

“What did I tell you?”

“No fooling you.” She poked him playfully, and Clay looked down at his hands on the steering wheel, suddenly unwilling to face the abrupt end of their visit. He would never again have such an opportunity to be with her continuously, to have her all to himself, he realized. Watching her sleep part of the way home had been even harder than on the way out.

“It'll be strange not seeing you every day,” she said as if reading his mind. The wistfulness in her voice stabbed at him.

“Well, we could …”

“How about dinner Friday? What the hell, I could even cook. I think my kitchen still works.”

She was probably just being kind to repay his mother's hospitality. “I'd love to.”

“We'll see about that after you taste my cooking.” She laughed. “Well, toots”—she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek—“can't put off the post-partum blues any longer.”

He turned to kiss her, but she had already slid out of the car (damn his reflexes!) and was reaching in the back seat for her bag. “See you about eight?” he said. “I had a swell time.”

“Ditto. Don't let the screams of mortal terror keep you awake.”

He waited until she'd gone safely inside and then sat for a few moments until he saw the light of her apartment go on. Tempted to stay and watch her, he shook himself and started the car again.

Friday arrived and Clay prepared for dinner, uncharacteristically nervous. He was unable to decide whether to bring wine or flowers, so finally he gave in and bought a bouquet of purple tulips and a bottle of champagne. Nothing in his closet looked remotely right.

When he arrived (twenty minutes early, for which he compensated by walking around the block six or forty times), he discovered that she wasn't ready. She buzzed him in, greeting him at the door sheepishly in a pair of shorts and a shredded T-shirt that made her look slightly plump and lascivious at the same time. He wanted to throw her against the wall and reduce her to the wreck he'd become; instead, he handed her the flowers. She beamed. Tulips were her favorite, she confessed. She pointed him toward her champagne and left to change her clothes.

Just take those off and I'll be fine, he thought, no need to put on a stitch. He fixed himself a drink with hands that had started shaking, then filled her glass to the brim. No telling why he was such a bundle of nerves, as he already knew there was no chance for him here. He'd just spent a full week living with her like a brother, for Christ's sake. His first sip didn't sit well on his stomach, so he put down his glass.

When he looked up she was framed in the doorway, grinning unabashedly in the dress he'd bought her, holding the tulips in one hand and a tall glass vase in the other.

“They were so beautiful I nearly stapled them to me instead of bothering with the dress. Here, help me arrange them.”

He jumped up and took the flowers as she went to get water, wondering if everything was going to take so much effort this evening. Louey seemed a little nervous as well, no doubt unaccustomed to having a formal dinner guest.

“You look just beautiful in that dress.”

“Thanks. One of my admirers gave it to me, to try to turn me into a lady.”

“How'd it work?”

“Nothing's
that
good.” She picked up her drink and winked at him, grinning and depositing herself next to him on the couch. She wore the gown as if it were a sweatshirt and jeans, yet if anything she looked more lovely than if she'd been aware of its effect.

Dinner was a blur; he was conscious of her laughing at jokes he didn't realize he was making and of the glow of her skin in the evening light. Though he'd now spent many nights with her, this evening seemed different, suffused with an odd tension. Was he imagining it?

The meal was a surprise, haphazard but delicious. She confessed that once she had made a dish using all the dried red peppers left over from a friend's effort to cook for her, not realizing how potent they were. Her guests had sat politely through as much of the meal as they could bear, then one by one had bolted to the kitchen for relief.

“Good thing you have other friends to try these things out on first.”

She took her glass from the kitchen table, walking across the open room to the couch, and announced that coffee and dessert would be served shortly. He joined her, loosening his tie.

“Clay,” she said softly, after a pause. “Are you ever going to start working on the book again?”

He grimaced. “I don't know. It seems so far in the past, so trivial somehow.”

“It's not a bit trivial. You're a good writer.”

“I'm stalled at the ending; I go blank.”

“If it were a book you were reading, how would you want it to end? Maybe if you decided what your real message is, how you feel deep down, something would come to you.”

“Love is very different from what I thought it was.” He considered. “Not that I know what it
is.
”

“I always thought I knew what it was.” She traced the rim of her glass. “I had it, after all, with a bang, as it were. But lately I've realized I had better redefine my expectations, because I'll never have that again. And I certainly couldn't bear ever losing it again.”

“Life has to go on, you know. What if you had a lover who died? You wouldn't want never to love anyone again, would you?”

“Mia didn't die.” He heard tears threatening. “One thing Kevin taught me was that death is the only thing we have no control over. Mia's leaving me wasn't a senseless freak accident; it was something she did, something she did to me. I tried to think of her as dead before, but now I know it's completely different. He didn't abandon me; he was just taken away. I won't ever have the chance to see him again, to hear his sweet little voice.” She shrugged as a tear rolled down her cheek. “Mia wasn't taken; she left. She chose to go. And the woman that's out there somewhere, alive, isn't the person I thought I loved, or she could never have stopped loving me, as if I were just a—” Her mouth set. “I shouldn't have expected her to be my fantasy, anyway. No one can live up to that.”