The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story (25 page)

She had told me once that she was sensitive to heat, but now she gave no sign of it. Like a sand-trooper she worked,

without letup, five days in a row. We were chalking up excellent times in our practice, and much of the credit was hers. She was as perfect a ground-crew as she was everything else she chose to be.

Why did I pick that time to distance her? Shortly after she met my landing, there were my walls again; I got to talking with some other pilots, didn't notice she was gone. I had to put the sailplane away by myself, no small job in the sun, but made easier by my anger at her walkout.

When I entered the trailer, she was lying on the floor, faking exhaustion.

"Hi," I said, tired from work. "Thanks a lot for the help."

No response.

"Just what I needed, after a really tough flight."

Nothing. She lay on the floor, refusing to say a word.

Probably noticed I was a little distant, reading my mind again, and got mad.

Silence-games are silly, I thought. If something's bothering her, if she doesn't like what I'm doing, why doesn't she just come out and say so? She won't talk, I won't talk.

I stepped over her body on the floor, turned on the air-conditioner. Then I stretched out on the couch, opened a soaring book and read, thinking that there is not much future for us if she insists on acting this way.

After a time she stirred. Still later she rose, infinite weariness, dragged herself to the bathroom. I heard the pumps running water. She was wasting the water because she knew I had to haul every drop of it from town, fill the trailer tanks myself. She wanted to make work for me.

The water stopped.

I put down the book. The wonder of her, and of our life together in the desert, was it corroding in acids from my

past? Can't I learn to forgive her thorns? She misunderstood, and she was hurt. I can be big enough to forgive, can't I?

No sound from the bathroom; the poor thing is probably sobbing.

I walked to the little door, knocked twice.

"I'm sorry, wookie," I said. "I forgive you. . . ."

"RRREEEEEAAAAAARGHHH! A beast exploded, inside. Bottles disintegrated against the wood; jars, brushes, hair-dryers hurled at walls.

"YOU GODDAMN (SMASH!) SON OF A BITCH! I (VLAMSHATTR!) HATE YOU! I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU EVER AGAIN! I'M (THAKL!) LYING ON THE FLOOR PASSED OUT GODDAMNED NEARLY DEAD FROM HEAT-STROKE WORKING ON YOUR DAMNED GLIDER AND YOU LET ME LIE THERE WHILE YOU READ A BOOK I COULD HAVE DIED YOU DON'T CARE! (VASH-TINKL-THOK!) WELL I DON'T CARE EITHER RICHARD GODDAMN BACH!! GET OUT GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE AND LEAVE ME ALONE, YOU SELFISH . . . PIG!" (SVASH!)

Never; had anyone; in my life; talked that way; to me. Nor had I seen anyone act like that. She was breaking things, in there!

Disgusted, furious, I slammed from the trailer, ran to the Meyers, parked in the sun. The heat was relentless as ants swarming; I barely noticed. What is the matter with her? For her sake I've given up my Perfect Woman! What a fool I've been!

When I was barnstorming, my cure for crowdophobia was simple: get away from crowds at once, fly off and be

alone. So effective a fix was it that I began using it for per-sophobia, which it cured equally well. Anyone I didn't like, I'd leave, nor thereafter a word or thought of them.

Most of the time it works perfectly-leaving is an instant cure for whomever ails you. Except, of course, on the one-in-two-billion chance that the whomever that ails you happens to be your soulmate.

It felt like I was locked on a rack and stretched. I wanted to run, run, run. Jump in the plane start the engine don't check the weather don't check nothing just take off point the nose any direction, firewall that throttle and GO! Land somewhere, anywhere, fuel, start the engine, take off and GO!

Nobody has the right to shout at me! One time, you shout at me. And you never get another chance because I am permanently and forever gone. Slam-clank done and finished and through!

Yet there I stayed, fingers on the blistering handle of the airplane door.

My mind, this time, didn't allow running.

My mind nodded, OK, OK ... so she's mad at me. She's got a right to be mad at me. I've done something thoughtless again.

I set off walking into the desert, walking to cool my rage, my hurt.

This is one of my tests. I'll prove I'm learning if I don't run away. We have no real problem. She's just a little . . . more expressive, than I am.

I walked for a while, till I remembered from survival training that people can die, out too long in this sun.

Had SHE been too long in the sun? Had she collapsed not from spite but from heat?

Temper and hurt vanished. Leslie had fainted from the heat, and I had called it faking! Richard, can you be that much a fool?

I hurried toward the trailer. On the way I saw a desert flower unlike any we'd seen, quickly dug it from the sand, wrapped it in a page from my notebook.

When I entered, she was lying on the bed, sobbing.

"I'm sorry, wookie," I said quietly, stroking her hair. "I'm very sorry. I didn't know . . ."

She didn't respond.

"I found a flower ... I brought you a flower from the desert. Do you think it wants water?"

She sat up, wiped her tears, examined the little plant gravely.

"Yes. It wants water."

I brought a cup for the plant to be in, and a glass of water for it to drink.

"Thank you for the flower," she said after a minute. "Thank you for the apology. And Richard, try to remember: Anyone you want to keep in your life-never take them for granted!"

Friday afternoon late, she came down happy from a flight, bright and lovely; she had stayed in the air more than three hours, landed not because she couldn't find lift, but because another pilot needed the plane. She kissed me, glad and hungry, telling me what she had learned.

I tossed a salad, listening to her, stirred it in the air over its bowl, dished it into two parts.

"I
 
watched your landing again,"
 
I said.
 
"Like Mary

Moviestar for the camera. Your touchdown was light as a sparrow!"

"Don't I wish," she said. "I had full spoilers all the way down final approach or I would have rolled on into the sagebrush. Bad judgment!"

She was proud of her touchdown, though, I could tell. When she was praised, she often switched the subject to something alongside not quite perfect to spread the shock of the compliment, make it easier to accept.

This is the time, I thought, to tell her. "Wook, I think I'm going to take off for a while."

She knew at once what I was saying, looked at me frightened, gave me a door to change my mind last minute by speaking two levels at once:

"Don't bother taking off now. The thermals are all cold."

Instead of turning back, I plunged ahead. "I don't mean take off in a sailplane. I mean leave. After the race tomorrow; how does that sound? I need to be alone for a while. You do, too, don't you?"

She put down her fork, sat back on the couch. "Where are you going?"

"I'm not sure. Doesn't matter. Anywhere. Just need to be alone for a week or two, I think." Please wish me well, I thought. Please say you understand, that you need to be alone, yourself, maybe go back and shoot a TV thing in Los Angeles?

She looked at me, her face a question. "Except for a few problems, we've been having the happiest time in our lives, we're happier than we've ever been, and you suddenly want to run off to anywhere and be alone? Is it alone, or do you need to be with one of your women so you can start over new with me?"

"That's not fair, Leslie! I promised changes, I've made changes. I promised no other women, there aren't any other women. If our test wasn't working out, if I wanted to see somebody else, I'd tell you. You know I'm cruel enough to tell you."

"Yes, I do." There was no expression in the lovely planes and shadows of her face . . . her mind was sorting, sorting, fast as light: reasons, suggestions, options, alternatives.

I thought she should have expected this, sooner or later. My cynical destroyer, that viper in my mind, doubted our experiment would last longer than two weeks, and we'd been living in the trailer six months tomorrow, not a day apart. Since my divorce, I thought, never had I stayed six days with one woman. Even so, time for a break.

"Leslie, please. What is so wrong about getting away from each other once in a while? That's the murderous thing that happens in marriage . . ."

"Oh, God, he's getting on his soapbox. If I have to listen to that litany of reasons you've got for not loving . . ." she held up her hand to stop me, "... I know you hate the word love it's had all the meaning mangled out of it you have told me a hundred times you never want to use it but I'm using it right now! . . . litany of reasons you've got for not loving anyone but the sky or your airplane, if I have to listen I am going to scream!"

I sat quietly, trying to put myself in her mind and failing. What could be wrong with a vacation from each other? Why should the idea of being out of touch for a while be so threatening to her?

"To scream would be to raise your voice," I said with a smile, by way of saying if I can poke fun at my own sacred rules then it can't be a terribly bad time we're in for.

She refused to smile. "You and your damn rules! How long-oh God!-how long are you going to drag those things around with you?"

A bolt of anger tensed me. "If they weren't true, I wouldn't bother you with them. Don't you see? These things matter to me; they're true for me; I happen to live by this stuff! And please watch your language in front of me."

"Now you're telling me how to talk! I'll goddamn well say what I goddamn well please!"

"You're free to say it, Leslie, but I don't have to listen. . . ."

"Oh, you and your stupid pride!"

"If there's one thing I can't stand, it's being treated without respect!"

"And if there's one thing I can't stand, it's being ABANDONED!" She buried her face in her hands, her hair cascading, a golden curtain, to cover her misery.

"Abandoned?" I said. "Wook, I'm not going to abandon you! All I said . . ."

"You are! And I can't stand . . . being abandoned. . . ." The words choked out in sobs through her hands, through the gold.

I moved the table, sat with her on the couch, pulled the rigid curled ball of her body to lean against me. She didn't uncurl; she didn't stop sobbing.

She was transformed that moment to the once-was never-gone little girl who had felt abandoned and abandoned and abandoned after her parents' divorce. She had since rejoined and loved them both, but the scars from her childhood would never disappear.

Leslie had fought her way to where she was by herself, lived her life alone, she had been happy alone. Now she had

let herself think that because we spent so many happy months together, she was for the first time free from that part of her independence that meant alone. She had her own walls, and I was inside them right now.

"I'm here, wook," I said. "I'm here."

She's right about my pride, I thought. I get so carried away protecting me at the first hint of storm, I forget she's the one who's been through hell. Strong as she is, and smart, she's still scared.

In Hollywood, she had been the center of a lot more attention than I ever had to face. The day after our nine-hour telephone call, she had left her friends, her agent, studios, politics; left them all without goodbye, without explanation, without knowing if she'd be back soon or never. She simply left. Looking west, I could see question marks over the town she'd put behind her: Whatever happened to Leslie Parrish?

She's the center of a lot of desert, now. Instead of her dear old cat, peacefully died, there's not-so-peaceful rattlesnakes and scorpions and sand and rocks for comfort, her nearest world the softly violent one of flight. She's gambling everything, letting Hollywood fall away. She's trusting me in this harsh land, with nothing to shield her but the warm power that surrounds the two of us when we're happy together.

The sobs came slower, but still she was curled tense as oak against me.

I don't want her to cry, but it's her own fault! We agreed this was an experiment, spending so much time together. It was not part of our agreement that we couldn't have a few weeks alone. When she clings to me, denies my freedom to go where I please and when, she's becoming a reason herself for me to go. She's so smart, why can't she understand this

simple fact? As soon as we become jailors, our prisoners want escape.

"Oh, Richard," she said, bleak and tired. "I want it to work, being together. Do you want it to work?"

"Yes, I do." I do, if you'll let me be who I am, I thought. ' I'll never stand between you and anything you wish; why can't you say the same for me?

She uncurled and sat away from me at the far end of the couch, silent. No more tears, but there was the weight in the air of so much disagreement between us, such a distance between our two islands.

And then a strange thing: I knew that this instant had happened before. The sky turning to blood in the west, silhouette of a gnarled tree looming just outside the window, Leslie downcast under the load of difference between us; it had happened exactly this way in a different time. I had wanted to leave and she had argued with me. She had cried, and then was silent and then had said, Do you want it to work? and I had said, Yes I do, and now the very next thing she's going to say is. Are you sure? She said those words before, and now she's going to say

She lifted her head and looked at me. "Are you sure?"

My breathing stopped.

Word for word, I knew my answer. My answer to that had been, "No. To be honest with you, I'm not sure . . ." And then it faded out: the words, the sunset, the tree, they all faded. With that swift view into a different now came a massive sadness, a sorrow so heavy I couldn't see for tears.

"You're better," she said slowly. "I know you're changing from who you were in December. You're sweet, most of the time, it's such a good life we have together. I see a future so beautiful, Richard! Why do you want to run away? Do you