Well in Time (41 page)

As Calypso walked back to the orangerie, she realized that the house was ready for habitation. The cleaning crew had even brought over her clothing, had moved her food from one kitchen to the other, and then had cleaned the orangerie, as well.

She fished in her pocket for the keys as she did a quick walk through, looking for things that would need to be transferred in the future. Her laptop still sat on the desk and she coiled its wires into her pocket before hoisting it under her arm. With a last look around, she stepped through the front door and locked it, making final one phase of her life, even as she was about to begin a new one.

Walking back to the house, she encountered the tortoise, toiling along in the same direction.

“You must have gotten the word,” she said companionably. “Treats at the kitchen door over here from now on. Understand?”

The tortoise didn’t stop to look at her, but continued his earnest shuffle toward the house.

“You are the most understanding of creatures,” Calypso marveled. “If only my husband understood things so clearly.”

She bade the tortoise good evening and went toward the welcoming salon lights of her new home.

She was standing in her new bathroom, arranging the items of her daily toilette on an étagère by the lavatory, when it hit her. She stared at herself in the mirror in dismay.

A woman of late middle age stared back at her. Her long hair was pulled up in a knot on top of her head and her newly washed face had smooth, unlined skin. What struck her were the eyes. They spoke of humor and intelligence and a depth of experience that, as a younger woman, she had only hoped to gain. She looked like someone who would understand the full implication of what she was about to say.

“You called him your husband again,” she said to the woman in the mirror. The woman looked back at her silently, apparently as quietly bemused by this revelation as was Calypso.

§

In the night, wind seethed in the plane tree outside her new bedroom window. As she had anticipated, it was a delicious sound, like the very soul of the huge old tree singing the secrets of earth’s day. In it she heard birdsong and rain, the glad shouts of flowers as they opened their petals to the sun, the slither of lizards and the slow scratch of the tortoise along the garden’s gravel.

With this recitation of the day just past came bruits of the one to come, as if the duende of the
genius loci
, cornucopia in his left hand and libation bowl in his right, were sitting in the branches, humming the new day into existence. Calypso lay long, listening to the singing of her new life into being.

Her mind was filled with ecstatic images of the rooms that were now hers to inhabit, with plans for the renovation of the wildly overgrown garden, and with imaginings of the dishes she would prepare in her new kitchen. She had yet to even turn on a burner of the new La Cornue stove that sat, solid and massive as a bank vault, in blue and gold splendor against the east kitchen wall. In her new study, a Louis Quinze desk already held her laptop on its inlaid leather top, just waiting for her fingers to allow inspiration to flow.

So many future delights danced and fluttered through her tired brain that at first she could not even approach slumber. Her entire body relished the cool, smooth finish of antique linen sheets. The high-ceilinged space around her seemed to zing with energy, as if rejoicing in its own beauty of proportion and its softly tinted new plaster. Occasionally, her eyes drifted open and wandered toward the dark bulk of the marble mantlepiece and her imagination lit a winter fire there, relishing the coming of long nights of rain, its rush and splatter syncopated with the rising and falling of the flames.

Only in the bass undernote of the wind did her mind pick up the thread of another narrative. Her hand stole from her side toward the empty half of the bed. She fell asleep with Javier’s face rising before her, his lips drawn in that perfect arc that precedes a kiss.

§

In the morning, Calypso dressed in old jeans and an indigo sweater, slid her feet into a pair of slouching blue and white striped espadrilles, wrapped a bright scarf around her neck, and hurried downstairs to her kitchen. It was the first day of her new life and she was determined to stay aware in order to soak in every delicious detail of it, moment by moment.

Everything was new to her. The kettle she filled with water was a copper one she had found moldering greenly in the cupboard on her first inspection of the house, now polished and gleaming in morning light. She managed to light the burner of the new stove and put the kettle on to boil, ground coffee in an antique wooden hand grinder, and slide the grounds from the little drawer into her French press. Each act was a tessera in the mosaic of her new life and world, invested with the sacred importance of ritual.

While the water was heating, she opened the west side doors and shutters and went out under the pergola. Its vines filtered golden morning light onto the restored wooden table. She threw a fresh white linen tea towel down on the tabletop and brought out a basket of bread, a plate of butter, a pot of local strawberry jam that one of the ladies of the cleaning crew had brought her, and laid out flatware and an antique faience plate.

Back inside, she stood before the Provençal hutch and its shelf of cups and saucers, choosing carefully which would become her morning favorite. Finally, from among Limoges cups covered in hand-painted roses, Lunéville with innocent bouquets of flowers and Minton with elaborate oriental designs, she chose a large hexagonal cup of white Paris porcelain, decorated only with a gold ring around its lip. Even though it had a chip along the edge and its saucer was mismatched, Calypso responded to the dignity and resilience of the two hundred-year-old vessel.

“When I’m your age, I’ll have a few chips and dings, too,” she said.

Setting the cup on the counter, she filled it with hot water from the kettle and then filled the French press. From the drawer of the hutch she produced an antique tea cozy stitched like a Provençal
boutis
in a charming cicada pattern and, from a cupboard, a worn Empire tole tray in chapped red enamel and spotty gold.

She depressed the French press and the smell of hot coffee welled up blissfully. Putting the press on the tray, she popped the tea cozy over it, added a bowl of brown sugar cubes, a little pitcher of cream and the warming cup, and carried the tray outside.

Settling in behind the table, faced so that she could look down the sun-dappled length of the pergola, she poured her coffee, and slathered bread with butter and jam. A small breeze shivering through the leaves of the plane trees and the Roman fountain’s languorous plash, were rustic music spiked with birdsong. Calypso thought, then, of the figure in the vault. Down in darkness, like an anchor for a ship bobbing in a pleasant harbor, the Goddess radiated her joy up and outward, filling the world with song.

Sharp concussions of footfall on gravel interrupted her musings. Before she could rise to investigate, a voice behind her said, “There you are! I’ve been hammering on the front door.”

Her body convulsed in shock and joy.

“Is it
you?
”

She pushed back her chair, twirled to face him, and collided with his onrushing chest. His arms went around her, pressing her to him, and she smelled the scent that, since their first embrace almost fifty years before, had annihilated all reason in her. She buried her face in his shirt and clung to him, her arms wrapped around him.

“Oh, my God, Javier!” was all she could say, and was not surprised when he was too overwhelmed to respond.

§

They sat half the morning under the pergola, catching up. She plied him with food and coffee, which he accepted but did not eat in the intensity of their chatter. Their coffee grew cold. Wasps trekked through the jam on their plates, unheeded. They bent toward one another, holding hands across the table, lost in the amazement of being together again.

“You’ve been traveling a long time,” Calypso said.

“Yes. Two full days. But you won’t believe it, Caleepso. I was in such a hurry to get here, I forgot my passport back at the ranch. It took four days to get a temporary one issued. Can you believe something so stupid as that?”

He rubbed his head, amazed at his own mistake.

In her mind’s eye, she traced his long journey down from the Sierra into Chihuahua City. The unbearably convoluted and frustrating bureaucratic hassle over the passport and then the airport, the flight into El Paso, then onward to New York, the change of planes, the hop across the Atlantic, then customs and the rush across Charles de Gaulle Airport from the international terminal to the domestic one and finally, the short flight to Montpellier. It made her tired just to think about it.

“You rented a car in Montpellier?”

“Yes. I spent the night there last night, at the Palais Hotel. I wanted to come last night, but I was too tired.”

“I’ve missed you.” Her chest was compressed with emotion and it came out in a whisper.

“I have missed you too, Caleepso. I need to tell you something.”

She was suddenly wary. What if he had come to insist that she come back to Rancho Cielo? Or worse, unbearable to think of, that he was so tired of missing her that he wanted out—wanted a fresh start, so that the wound of her absence could heal?

Tears glossed her eyes and she could barely wheeze, “What?” It came out more sharply than she had anticipated.

He pulled his hand away, stood, and brought his chair around to her side of the table. She turned her chair to face his and he reached for her hands with both of his.

“Caleepso,” he began, in a voice so serious that it terrified her, “I need you to know that…” He stopped and gazed down the length of the pergola, collecting his thoughts. “That I have been thinking.”

He stopped to look her straight in the eye.

“There has never been a time when you did not support every single step of my life, starting that very first day in Berkeley. You have never denied me anything my heart really wanted. You’ve followed me into warfare and into a kind of exile in the mountains. You’ve helped me build the ranch and to rebuild my life.”

Calypso smiled slightly, hearing the listing that she had anticipated. The only real issue, she knew, was what he had included in the other pan of the balance.

“When you decided to buy this property, I was angry. I thought you wanted to leave Mexico for good. I thought maybe you even wanted to leave me. I went a little crazy with that thought. I couldn’t really believe it but I couldn’t let it rest either.”

He let go of her hands and rose from his chair. She looked up his tall frame to his beloved face, now furled in thought, and knew the verdict was about to be pronounced. She braced herself for it, with her fingers curled around the frame of her chair’s seat.

“And then I thought about what I’ve done for you. I took care of you after the rape. That was the start. And I killed a man for you—but my guess is you don’t consider that a plus. I built Rancho Cielo with you in mind. I wanted it to be beautiful and big and strong, so you would feel safe and happy there. And you know, Caleepso,” his eyes sought hers with a kind of desperation, “I have always loved you. I would give my life for you.”

She nodded and swallowed the lump in her throat.

“Then maybe six days ago, I felt something. Just a knowing. And I knew I had to get to you fast. Were you in danger, Caleepso? I was certain I needed to come to you.”

“Only in danger of dying of loneliness,” she whispered.

“But nothing happened about a week ago? I had a big hit of your energy, Caleepso. So strong, I dropped what I was doing—I was building new gates for the courtyard—and I just ran to my truck and came.”

“About a week ago?”

So much had happened so fast. She rummaged her memory for something that could have jolted him, almost six thousand miles distant. When it came to her, she covered her mouth with her hands in astonishment.

“Oh! Of course!”

“What?”

There was no way to explain it to him. She realized he would have to experience it for himself. She took him by the hand, saying, “Come,” and led him into the kitchen. Taking up her ring of keys, she unlocked the door leading to the north entry room, now set up as a mud room and laundry. The same huge Provençal armoire that had guarded the secret stairs was now centered on the wall, leaving the door in the tiled floor unencumbered.

She knelt and unlocked the concealed door and struggled to raise it. Javier shot out his arm and with one heave, pushed it back against the wall and held it, as Calypso maneuvered the metal loop over the hook in the wall.

“If this thing ever fell on you,” he said severely, “it would kill you.”

“Swatted down like a fly! That would be an ignominious death, for sure,” she smiled.

She reached into the armoire and produced flashlights for each of them. “You’ll need this. Be careful going down. It’s even more treacherous than it looks.”

They spiraled carefully down into darkness. When she reached the landing at the bottom she said, “I’m very sure that you’re about to see what—or who—brought you here with such speed.”

She turned and smiled at him, where he balanced on the bottom step, one hand braced against the stone wall of the stairwell.

“Watch your head. This door is very low.”

As they ducked into the vaulted room, the beams of their flashlights immediately spotlighted the statue. Calypso heard Javier gasp and turned to see that he was struck speechless, his eyes fixed on the figure before him. They stood for a long time with their lights playing over the polychrome and gold surface of the Queen of Heaven.

“Caleepso!” Javier breathed at last. “It’s the same figure that’s on the locket!”

“Yes.”

He approached the image and reached out to stroke it but drew his hand back before his fingers touched the surface.

“This is more than a statue,” he said, stepping back. “This has power!”

Calypso nodded.