He put his arm around her. “You dope. Do you also wish I were a virgin?”
“Not that.”
He leaned over and kissed her head. Ghosts, she thought. We bring them with us into our new world. They’re always out there, hovering close by, ready to join the party at a moment’s notice.
“You’re shivering,” Brody said.
“We’ll go in soon,” she said.
Olivia heard an owl hooting and then the night was silent again. She needed to let Grace go. Brody had been married to her for fifteen years before she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. She suffered for a year and then died. When Olivia met Brody, two years after Grace’s death,
he was a bear in hibernation. Big, brooding, a little sleepy, slow to answer her questions. One of his friends, who worked with him at the veterinary hospital, told Olivia, “Have patience. He’s still grieving. He’s barely reentered the land of the living.”
I’ll bring him back, Olivia thought then. There was something that drew her to his sorrow, his dark moods. She’d never liked sad sacks, but Brody was different. He was wounded, deeply, and she felt a powerful urge to help him heal.
At first her desires were simple: She wanted to see him smile. She wanted to hear him laugh. She wanted him to stay for a glass of cognac after dinner. Soon enough, she wanted him in her bed. And then she wanted him in her life.
Over the first months, while they traveled back and forth to see each other, he lightened—he looked better, moved faster, no longer fell into long silences. She had feared at one point that she had fallen for a sad man and couldn’t love his happy twin. But this was a gift, a discovery. The stronger he got the more she loved him.
“Someone’s awake,” Brody said, pointing toward the windows on the second floor of the inn.
Olivia couldn’t see anything beyond the sheer drapes, but a halo of light brightened a corner of one room.
“Carly?” Brody guessed.
“I bet,” Olivia said. “She seems unsettled.”
“Her boyfriend bailed.”
“There’s something else. She seems brittle, breakable.”
“Carly? Carly isn’t the breaking kind.”
“That’s why I’m worried,” Olivia said. “I always had a rule. Only one kid in crisis at a time. The rule didn’t serve
them well since Nell was always in crisis. Could be that Carly needs her own meltdown.”
“I don’t think she’d allow herself one. She’s got your strength. I’ve never seen you fall apart.”
“Tomorrow,” Olivia said. “Tomorrow’s my meltdown day.”
“Whew. At least it’s not our wedding day.”
“Swim with me,” Olivia said.
They swam side by side, slowly, back and forth across the length of the pool. Olivia could feel her mind settle with each stroke. Water, darkness, and Brody—all were good for her soul.
“Wait—I hear something,” she said, just as they were about to start another lap.
They leaned back against the wall of the pool, trying to quiet their breath. Sure enough, a keening sound penetrated the night.
“Oh my God,” Olivia said. “Someone’s having sex.”
“Not Emily and Sébastien,” Brody said. “Emily won’t even look in his direction.”
The voice—definitely female—cried out and then was silent.
“Nell,” Olivia and Brody both said at once.
“I so don’t want to hear my daughter going at it.”
And then a wail erupted from the inn. The sound reverberated in the dark night.
“Spare me,” Olivia said, laughing.
“Shhh,” Brody said. They could see someone move to the window. A man, naked, silhouetted by the lamp behind him.
They both dropped underwater and their laughter escaped in bubbles, lifting to the surface of the pool.
When Olivia came up for air, the man was no longer standing in the window. Brody’s head emerged in front of her.
“What’s his name again?” she whispered.
“Gavin.”
“I hate him.”
“Why?”
“He’ll break my daughter’s heart.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. Mothers know these things.”
“I bet we’ll be throwing them a wedding a year from now.”
“Impossible. He’s too sure of himself. She’s not sure of anything.”
“Maybe she’s getting stronger. It’s been six months.”
Olivia had driven down to L.A. when Chaney killed himself. She booked a room for a week at a small hotel on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica and deposited Nell onto one of the twin beds. Nell slept. Olivia spent most of her days perched on the other bed, making calls to her theater manager, to her director, to the Rainier Theater in Tacoma where they were scheduled to open with a touring production the following week. Nell slept through the phone calls, the room-service meals, the constant calls from Chaney’s mother.
Olivia dragged Nell out of bed for the funeral. They sat in the front of a Baptist church—the mother’s church, not Chaney’s—and listened to a long string of eulogies that seemed to have nothing to do with the young man either of them knew. He was complicated, he was dark, he was ambitious. Chaney? Chaney was Nell’s twin, a sidekick in the game of life. They went to dive bars and played pool. They took camping trips on weekends and
blew off auditions if the weather was great and they didn’t feel like leaving the wilderness. They wrote a screenplay about a mutant housewife who took over the world and they took meetings with Hollywood execs where they talked very seriously about the motivation for their antihero named Wackjob.
After the funeral Nell’s mood changed from miserable to angry. She spent one more day at the hotel, tucked under the duvet, but no longer sleeping. She raged against Chaney. Why didn’t he tell me? She raged against herself. Why didn’t I know him?
Olivia felt safer leaving the angry Nell alone in L.A. Besides, she had to fly to Tacoma to settle an argument between her director and her lead actress. So the next day she helped Nell move into a house in Venice, a well-located firetrap a half block from the beach. She warned her daughter to make sense of this experience before she fell into bed with the next guy. “Sometimes I hate you,” Nell had said. But they held each other for a long time before Olivia pushed back, wiped tears from Nell’s eyes, and said her goodbye.
Now, six months later, her daughter was hooting and hollering with a stranger in the middle of the night.
“Look,” Olivia said, pointing to the second floor of the inn.
Both Nell and Gavin stood in the open window. They kissed for a moment and when they stopped, Nell walked away. Gavin looked out and Olivia was sure that he could see her—that he looked right at her—and then he pulled the window closed. The light went out.
N
ell stroked Gavin’s leg as she lay stretched beside him, both of them turned upside down in bed.
“I liked that better,” she said.
“Better than what?” he asked.
Their voices were hushed. It was sometime in the middle of the night. Everyone else in the inn was sound asleep. A half hour ago, standing by the window, Nell had said, “Let’s go for a swim.”
“I’m not done with you yet,” he had whispered, taking her back to bed.
But this time he was gentle with her. They made love as if they were lovers, she thought. Tenderly, sweetly.
I could love this man, she thought.
“I liked this version of sex better than round one,” she now
said, curling into him. “When you held me down. I don’t know. It was scary and sexy. But that’s not my kind of thing.”
“It seemed like your kind of thing.”
Other lovers had tried S&M with her, tying her to the bedpost, teasing her with a feather. One boyfriend showed up with a doctor’s bag of toys. But it was all playacting and none of it really stirred Nell. Gavin didn’t seem to be playing a role when he treated her that way in bed. And yes, she had a very real physical response to his demands.
But now he played a different role. He murmured sweet things while he touched her. He moved with her, letting his own body match her rhythm. He asked her to keep her eyes open so they could watch each other. And that, too, made her want him with a fervor that surprised her. She came easily, but this time, instead of exploding, she felt herself melt into him.
She leaned up and looked at him. His hair fell over his eyes and his face looked soft with sleep. He looked younger than she had guessed on the plane.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Why?”
“Curious.”
“Does it matter?”
“Are you jailbait?”
He gave a half smile, a smirk really, and she wondered if he could be twenty instead of thirty. His body was so thin and sinewy—like a teenage boy. Weird. Could he be that young?
As if he knew what she was thinking, he pushed his hair off of his face and leaned up on one elbow to look at her. In an instant he was older—much older. Could he be forty? His skin
looked weathered as if he lived in the sun, doing some kind of hard labor. Jail, she thought. Not jailbait. He had done time. For something. It was in his voice when he commanded her not to move.
Odd, but even this—the thought that he might be an ex-con—didn’t scare her. Had sweet sex softened the hard edges of this man?
“I like lying here with you,” she said, stroking his back. “I want to know who you are.”
His fingers ran through her short hair and then in an instant he made a fist, grabbing her hair at the roots and holding firm. She gasped.
“This is who I am,” he said, his voice low. Then he released her hair and stroked her face. “This is who I am,” he repeated, his voice a whisper.
She felt herself stir again. Did she like the mystery of him? Did she want to solve him or to keep him unknowable?
“I’m scared of the first version of you,” she said. “And I’m scared I’ll fall for the second version.”
“Don’t fall for me,” he said quickly. “I’m going to disappoint you.”
“Why?”
“It’s what I do. It’s why I’m on the road all the time.”
“No Seattle,” she said.
“No Seattle,” he told her.
Her hand moved gently over his body; she couldn’t stop touching him. His long thighs. His beautiful hands. His hairless chest. Their voices as soft as the night air.
“Tell me about your sister,” he said.
“Carly?” Nell pushed herself up and turned around in bed. Gavin followed her and they rearranged themselves, their heads on the pillows, side by side, looking up at the ceiling.
“She’s very different from you,” he said.
“Yeah.” Nell laughed. “I could use some of what she’s got. She could use some of what I’ve got.”
“She’s never picked up a guy on an airplane,” Gavin said.
“Never. I can promise you that.”
“She has a boyfriend?”
“He’s not good enough for her.” And then she remembered his skydiving accident. Poor Wes!
“You love your sister.”
“I do. And she makes me nuts.”
She turned toward him and saw his smile.
“Do you have siblings?” she asked.
He shook his head. It didn’t matter. He could say he had seven brothers or a twin sister and either would be a lie.
“Has your sister ever had a boyfriend who was good enough for her?” he asked.
Nell put her palm on his chest. She could feel the beat of his heart.
“No,” she said. “Why?”
“I’m just getting to know you,” he said.
No, she thought. You’re getting to know my sister. She pushed the thought away.
“This is nice,” she said. “Talking like this. I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again.”
He put his hand on top of hers, pressing her hand into his chest.
“I want this,” Nell murmured. “I want you.”
“You want so much more than that,” he said.
“Now I’m scaring you,” she said, smiling.
“I’m not scared,” he told her. “I know what will happen.”
“It might not,” she said. “You might decide to give love a chance.”
He laughed. “You’re very sweet.”
She reached over and kissed him. “We could have a good time together,” she said.
“Shh,” he said. “You talk too much.”
He turned her around and wrapped his arms around her. She could hear his breath slow; she could feel his heart pulse against her back. It’s so easy, she thought, to be with a man. It’s so hard to be alone.
She fell into a dreamless sleep.
“T
hey’ve been fucking all night,” Carly said into the phone. “I can’t sleep.”
Carly was lying in bed, her cellphone tucked by her ear. It was two-thirty in the morning—five-thirty in the afternoon, California time. Wes had been surprised by her call. “I thought you were done with me,” he had said. “I might be,” she told him. “You’re the only one I could think of to call at this hour.”
The minute she said it, she regretted it. He always gave her a hard time about not having friends. “
You
don’t have friends,” she would counter. “I’m a guy,” he’d tell her. “Guys just need buddies for sports. We don’t need to talk to anyone about where to get a manicure.”
She knew where to get a manicure. She didn’t have girl problems that needed a call-out to five sorority sisters to meet
for cosmos and Kleenex. She had Wes and they talked the same language. She didn’t need to learn girl talk to feel better about herself.
She stretched her legs above her. Her muscles tensed and then eased. She had stopped playing tennis when she went to Stanford. Maybe she’d join a league again when she returned to California. Maybe she’d work less. Maybe she’d leave Wes.
She remembered her lie about his broken leg and felt a pang of guilt. What’s wrong with me, she thought.
No wonder she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t turn off her mind. When Carly was little her mother would come into her bedroom and turn an imaginary key on her forehead. “Now go to sleep,” Olivia would whisper. How did she know that Carly’s mind churned for hours on end? Sometimes even now, in her twenties, Carly would turn the key on her own forehead, hoping that she’d fall into an easy sleep.
“Who is this guy?” Wes asked. “Nell’s bedmate?”
Wes had told her he was between meetings. She guessed that he was itching to hang up, to get to the next meeting, but his guilt kept him captive on the phone. Or was it his fear? Was he scared she’d leave him? Was she scared to leave him? How did people manage relationships when love doesn’t fit any algorithm that she could define?