Under the Same Sun (Stone Trilogy) (30 page)

She had not allowed herself to go any further into that memory. She had held on to the moment of glory and had not followed the path into the darkness and pain that had come right after.

But now, in the warm shade of the pine trees, Naomi carefully opened that door and, for the first time since it had happened, sought out the details of that night, watched it happen, without being inundated in fear and panic.

She remembered being in Jon’s arms and kissing him, the Oscar statuette heavy and cool in her hand, and all those people standing around them; and for once she had not cared. Quite clearly she recalled how she had felt walking toward the waiting car, Sal and Sean with her. There had been such lightness, such simple joy in that instant; nothing had really mattered except where they would get a glass of champagne.

And then…Naomi wrapped her arms around her knees and laid her cheek on them.

The taste of blood. That was the worst memory. She had never told anyone, but the sudden taste of blood as it filled her mouth, choking her, spilling over her face, that had been the worst.

T
here was movement down the hill, and she sighed. He would come after her, always worried, always afraid she had run away again.

“I’m here, Jon,” she called, and he came to her.

Naomi looked up at him when he stopped. Jon looked good, rested, tan. His shirt was half open, and he was in Bermudas, barefoot too. He had not shaved, and the black stubble gave him a slightly sinister appearance, which she found very endearing. There was no gray there yet, not one single hair, not in his beard or on his head, and not on his chest either.

“You look nice,” she said, “really nice. You look as if your skin would taste of sun.”

“Want to try?” He dropped down beside her. “What are you doing here all by yourself? Your cousins are missing you. And, I have to say, I like to see you hang out with them. All of you together, you seem too good to be true. It’s like being in a candy store.”

She slapped his arm, but it was halfhearted.

“This is a nice place you found here, so quiet.” Jon leaned against the tree. “I want to go for a swim. How about you?”

“I was thinking of the shooting.”

That made him sit up and look at her, but she smiled and laid her hand on his chest.

“It’s okay, Jon. I’m okay. I was thinking of our kiss, and the dress, and how wonderful it felt to be up on that stage and receive the Oscar. You know, with all the horror and pain, it is so easy to push the good part away. But there was a good part to that night, a very good part, and I don’t want to forget that.”

His skin was warm under her fingers. “I liked receiving that award. I liked it a lot. For a moment I felt important and special, not like myself at all but like somebody who gave something good to the world.”

“Which you did, you silly chick. That’s what I keep telling you.” He wrapped his arms around her. “I keep telling you, over and over again. Come here, kiss me. Now that you mentioned that kiss at the Oscars…”

“Oh Jon, be serious.” Gently, she pushed him back. “Just for one more minute? I promise to kiss you then, but let me say this first.”

“That better not be an empty promise, my sweet dove. That house is full of girls.” But he let her go, settling her on his thighs, and waited for her to speak.

“Do you really think I could write a book, Jon?” Naomi asked.

He dropped his hands from her waist. “Yes, of course I do. Why do you need to ask?”

She pulled up her shoulders. “It takes so much time. And what if it never turns out to be a success, if no one wants to read it? Then how do I justify all the time I spent on it?”

Jon laughed. “You don’t. You don’t justify anything. You do what you have to do. It’s as easy as that, Naomi, and you should know that by now. Can I choose not to write music? Not a chance. Did you put away the lyrics when we were apart? You didn’t. Did you ever ask yourself, when you came home from a day at work and you sat down to write another of your forlorn love songs, why you were doing it? Did you step back from yourself and wonder why you kept writing them even though no one got to see them?”

“Well, no…” Her fingers were playing with the buttons of his shirt, opening one after another. “But I didn’t write them because I felt compelled to write; I wrote them because I was thinking of you.”

“Not so.” He caught her hands in his. “Stop that. You’re distracting me. You wrote them because you were compelled to put your feelings and thoughts into words. That’s a big difference. There are lots of broken hearts out there, but they don’t all turn into poets. So the question here is, How can you not, at long last, start the writer’s life you were meant to lead all along? Anyway, I thought we were done with this discussion. Why did we go out and buy that computer in Hamburg?”

“Yes. Yes, we are done.” She felt stupid, childish, for bringing it up again. “I’ll just start and see where it leads me.”

“Kiss me,” Jon said. “Come on, kiss me.”

Surprised, she leaned forward and put her lips to his, but he did not move, did not respond.

She pulled back. “Jon!”

He did not react and just gazed steadily at her. Again she kissed him, but he remained passive and didn’t even touch her.

“Jon, damn you! If you want to be kissed, then…then do something!” Naomi took his face between her hands and kissed him, pushing against the barrier of his teeth until his mouth opened. It felt strange, intoxicating, powerful, to be in command for a change when it was always Jon who dictated their lovemaking. She liked it that way, liked to yield to him; but this was heady, wild. Straddling his legs, she opened his shirt and ran her hands down his chest, all the way down to the waistband of his shorts, and tugged.

Jon grasped her wrists. “Right. So you’re not afraid to go after what you want at all if you want it badly enough, you little beast. Seducing me here in your uncle’s garden!”

“You’re impossible.” She felt hot, flushed, and quite embarrassed.

“Yeah, impossible. Nice kiss, my sweet dove. I think we should do this more often; I really like being eaten up by you.” Tenderly Jon pushed her hair behind her ear. “Go on and write that stupid book already. Stop fretting about it. I promise, it will be okay. You don’t have to justify what you do with your time. Not to me, not to anyone.” Another thought occurred to him. “Do I justify the hours I spend in the studio, composing? I’ve never heard you complain about that.”

“Oh, but that’s different.” Naomi’s mind was still on the kiss, and where it might have led. “You’re successful, famous; you’ve made your way. You know whatever you put out will be loved by your audience.”

“Yes, now, thirty years after I started out. But the point is, Naomi, I did start out. I didn’t worry about justification or acceptance. I did what I had to do. And now it’s finally your turn to do what you have to do.”

Jon rose and pulled her up with him. “You’re on a good path. You give me the lyrics I want, and you wrote the script for the musical. Now it’s time for you to do something on your own. Something not connected to me.”

“And what if no one wants it? What if I don’t find a publisher?”

Jon brushed some pine needles off his legs. “I think, my dear, the danger of that happening is minute.”

chapter 28

J
on had the pilot fly them into Newark. He grinned at Naomi after the plane had taken off. “You wanted to see New Jersey. Here’s your chance.”

Leaving Positano had been sad; he was leaving a family he never knew he had. Seeing Naomi’s face when she hugged Cesare and Angelica at the airport, he knew she felt the same way. Piece by piece he was picking one brick after another from the wall she had hidden herself behind for so long.

Seeing her now as she peered out of the window at the blue stretch of ocean below, Jon said, “We’ll go back soon. We have to. I loved every minute.”

She smiled. “And bring Joshua. I could still kick myself for not making him come. He’d have loved it, I’m certain.”

Jon was sure it was probably true. Joshua would have loved it, and he would have clamored even louder than Naomi for a Vespa. He could just see his son on one of them, throwing himself down the serpentines.

“We’ll bring him next year. I’m thinking we should come back in spring, when it’s not quite so hot and we can see the almond trees in bloom. Ferro was raving about that. It’s supposed to be very pretty.”

Ferro had taken him to his rooms high up under the roof of the palazzo where he kept his paintings and where he had set up his studio.

Among the many canvasses, Jon had found a smaller version of the Annunciation, a perfect copy of the mural. He had asked Ferro to sell it to him. It would be shipped with Naomi’s portrait, and he could hardly wait for her reaction, to see the delight on her face.

There hadn’t been much time to talk about the house in Brooklyn, and even less to furnish and decorate it. He had to admit that he hadn’t cared a lot until now.  Buying those paintings had changed his attitude.

“The house.”

Naomi stopped tucking the blanket around her legs.

“I’m sure you’ve planned every room of the Brooklyn house, haven’t you?” Jon asked.

“No. Not really. The living room and the bedroom will be finished when we get there, and the kitchen, more or less. Why?”

He had learned, watching her run the hotel in Halmar, not to be surprised at the ease and tempo with which she got these things done.

“Because, little beast, you need a study. You need a place for yourself, to write, to work. Where would you want that to be?”

For the longest time she didn’t respond but looked out at the clouds.

“There is one room upstairs, next to the bedroom—” her voice so low that Jon had to lean forward to hear her—“a corner room with a small balcony. It looks out toward lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. I wanted it to be a nursery. But I guess…” She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “I guess I might as well turn it into a study.”

“A room with a balcony is not a really good choice for a nursery anyway, is it?” He managed to return her gaze steadily enough. “We will have to choose a different room for the nursery.”

“Yes.” A defeated sigh, nothing more, but the ghost of a smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Yes, you are right. A balcony is not good for a nursery.”

She fell silent again.

The flight attendant came to serve drinks, and she asked for bourbon.

N
ewark greeted them with the relentless humidity of an August afternoon.

Naomi stepped out of the plane and stopped in her tracks.
She gasped at the hot air; it was as wet as a hot towel right out of the washing machine.

There was no blue in the sky. It shone like a dirty aluminum bowl, the sun hidden in the haze. There was no breeze, no relief. The clothes stuck to her.

Jon gave her a dismal grin. “Newark, baby. It’s what you wanted to see.”

Naomi stood on the tarmac waiting for Sal to pick them up and tried to take a breath. It felt like inhaling water, pretty foul-tasting water too. The sky, low and gray, hung over the landscape like a dirty dishrag; the tepid breeze touched her face as if the fingers of a middle-aged mermaid were trying to caress her. From the distance, she could hear sirens, police cars howling by on one of the convoluted highways, the echo dropping onto the street.

A black SUV stopped right in front of them. Sal got out. “I wanted,” he said, “to get you coffee and doughnuts. Give you a proper New Jersey welcome, but there was a long line outside Dunkin’ Donuts.” He picked up their luggage and put it into the trunk.

Without looking in the rearview mirror, he pulled away from the curb and entered a maelstrom of roads, loops upon loops. “I’m taking you,” Sal announced cheerfully, “on the Pulaski Skyway so you get a good idea of where you are right away. This is New Jersey, Naomi, and I’m betting you’ve never seen anything like it.”

It was true.

She stared at the scarred, dismal, dingy landscape spreading in every direction: rusty towers and high chimneys; a desolate wasteland of decrepit industrial yards; inlets of water, their limpid, oily waves sucking at dead, marshy earth; and highway bridges in the distance, their iron girders whale skeletons stranded in a  world of refuse. Incredibly, there were houses, islands of life, sprinkled around this apocalyptic scene, fingers of suburbia undaunted by the surroundings. She wondered how children grew up there in the midst of this nightmare. Were there parks she couldn’t see, some pockets of green, some semblance of gardens, trees, flowers. All she could see from here was gray, brown, black, and dead.

“There,” Sal pointed into the distance.

Hovering like a spaceship, the skyline of Manhattan rose above the nightmare of New Jersey. 

Naomi gripped the back of Jon’s seat, excited, elated, her heart calling out to the glittering towers, certain she was hearing their answering echo, welcoming her back. She could hardly wait for them to dip into the Holland Tunnel and resurface in the city. Her heart was beating fast.

“You and this city,” Jon said fondly, “I wonder why you didn’t think to come here earlier.”

“Me too.” She touched his shoulder. “We’re getting a box at the Met, aren’t we? For the season?”

“Yes, yes.” He laughed. “I’ll try my best, but it may be hard. No promises, love.”

“I know you’ll get them to give you one. You have to. Use all your charm and fame and clout and whatever, but I want to go to the Met.”

“Oh, that’s different,” Sal said. “Getting you to the Met now and then is not a problem. Getting you a permanent box will be hard.”

“I don’t care. I just want to go. And to opening nights, too, so we get to dress up, Jon.”

They left the tunnel. Despite the heat Naomi lowered the tinted window and breathed in the humid air, a bright smile on her face. She felt safe, wanted, as if the town had been waiting for her. Even the dingy street vendors and cheap shops on Canal Street seemed to sparkle; and when they stopped at a red light, she smiled so sweetly at a young man hawking fake Gucci purses that he stepped back from the curb in confusion.