Authors: Replay
With good reason, Jeff knew; this new project had been forming in his mind ever since he'd begun writing the first book, the one about Heyerdahl and the lunar-orbit astronauts. That had been a modest critical and commercial success when it was published, two years ago, in 1973. He felt sure that this one, for which his research was almost complete now, would surpass even the best segments of his earlier work.
He would write, this time, of enforced exile, of banishment from home and country and one's fellow men. In that topic, he felt he could find and convey a core of universal empathy, a spark of understanding rising from that metaphoric exile to which all of us are subject, and that Jeff grasped more than anyone before him: our common and inevitable expulsion from the years that we have lived and put behind us, from the people we have been and known and have forever lost.
The lengthy musings Jeff had elicted from Alexander Solzhenitsyn—about his exile, not about the Gulag—were, as he'd told Linda, unquestionably the most profound of all the observations he had gathered to date. The book would also include material from his correspondence with deposed Cambodian Prince Sihanouk, and his interviews in both Madrid and Buenos Aires with Juan Perôn, as well as the reflections he had garnered from Nguyen Van Thieu after the fall of Saigon. Jeff had even spoken with the Ayatollah Khomeini at his sanctuary outside Paris. To ensure that the book was fully democratized, he had sought the comments of dozens of ordinary political refugees, men and women who had fled dictatorial regimes of both the right and the left.
The notes and tapes he had amassed overflowed with powerful, deeply moving narratives and sentiments. The task Jeff now faced was to distill the essence of those millions of heartfelt words, to maximize their raw power by paring them to the bone and juxtaposing them in the most effective context.
Harps upon the Willows,
he planned to call it, from the hundred and thirty-seventh psalm:
By the rivers of Babylon,
there we sat down, yea, we wept,
when we remembered Zion.
We hung our harps upon the
willows in the midst thereof …
How shall we sing the Lord's
song in a strange land?
Jeff finished his Key lime pie, set the plate aside, and sipped the heady richness of the fresh-brewed Jamaican coffee.
"How long do you think—" Linda began to ask, but her question was interrupted by the sharp ring of the phone on his desk.
"Hello?" he answered.
"Hello, Jeff," said the voice he'd known through three separate lifetimes.
He didn't know what to say. He'd thought of this moment so many times in the past eight years, dreaded it, longed for it, come to half-believe it might never arrive. Now that it was here, he found himself temporarily mute, all his carefully rehearsed opening words flown from his mind like vanished wisps of cloud in the wind.
"Are you free to talk?" Pamela asked.
"Not really," Jeff said, looking uncomfortably at Linda. She had seen the change in his expression, he could tell, and was regarding him curiously but without suspicion.
"I understand," Pamela told him. "Should I call back later, or could we meet somewhere?"
"That would be better."
"Which? Calling back later?"
"No. No, I think we ought to get together, sometime soon."
"Can you get to New York?" she asked.
"Yes. Any time. When and where?"
"This Thursday, is that all right?"
"No problem," he said.
"Thursday afternoon, then, at … the Pierre? The bar there?"
"That sounds fine. Two o'clock?"
"Three would be better for me," Pamela said. "I have an appointment on the West Side at one."
"All right. I—I'll see you Thursday."
Jeff hung up, could sense how pale and shaken he must look. "That was … an old friend from college, Martin Bailey," he lied, hating himself for it.
"Oh, right, your roommate. Is something wrong?" The concern in her voice, on her face, was genuine.
"He and his wife are having bad problems. It looks like they may get a divorce. He's pretty upset about it, needs somebody to talk to. I'm going up to Atlanta for a couple of days to see if I can help."
Linda smiled, sympathetically, innocently, but Jeff felt no relief that she had so readily believed the impromptu falsehood. He felt only guilt, a sharp, almost physical stab of it. And, intensifying that guilt, a rush of undeniable elation that he would be seeing Pamela again, in only three days' time.
EIGHTEEN
Jeff took the elevator down from his room at the Pierre at 2:20, turned left, and walked past the gray Italian marble with brass inlays that marked the entrance to the Café Pierre. He found a quiet table toward the back of the long, narrow bar, ordered a drink, and waited nervously, watching the entrance.
So many memories he had of this hotel: He and Sharla had watched most of that pivotal 1963 World Series from a room here, near the beginning of his first replay, and he'd stayed here frequently in the decades past, most often with Pamela.
She walked in at five minutes before three. Her straight blond hair was just as he'd remembered it, her eyes the same. Her generous lips were set in a familiar expression of seriousness, but without the bitter, downturned tightness he had seen her mouth take on during those final years in Maryland. She was wearing delicate emerald earrings to match her eyes, a white fox fur … and a light gray, stylishly tailored maternity dress. Pamela was five months pregnant, maybe six.
She came to the table, took Jeff's hands in hers, and held them for a long, quiet moment. He glanced down, saw the plain gold wedding ring.
"Welcome back," he said as she sat down across from him. "You … look lovely."
"Thank you," she said carefully, her eyes on the tabletop. A waiter hovered; she ordered a glass of white wine. The silence lingered until the wine was set before her. She sipped it, then began rubbing the cocktail napkin between her fingers.
Jeff smiled, remembering. "You going to shred that?" he asked lightly.
Pamela looked up at him, smiled back. "Maybe," she said.
"When—" he began, and stopped.
"When what? When did I start replaying again, or when am I due?"
"Both, I guess. However you want to start."
"I've been back for two months, Jeff."
"I see." It was he who turned away this time, stared at one of the gold sconces against the satin drapes.
Pamela reached across the table, touched his arm. "I couldn't bring myself to call, don't you understand? Not just because of the differences we'd had last time, but … because of this. It was a tremendous emotional shock for me."
He softened, looked back into her eyes. "I'm sorry," he said. "I know it must have been."
"I was in a children's clothing shop in New Rochelle. Buying baby clothes. My little boy, Christopher—he's three—was with me. And then I felt my belly and I knew, and … I just broke down. I started sobbing, and of course that frightened Christopher. He started to cry and call out, 'Mommy, Mommy' … "
Pamela's voice cracked, and she dabbed at her eyes with the napkin. Jeff took her hand, stroked it until she regained her composure.
"This is Kimberly that I'm carrying," she said at last, quietly. "My daughter. She'll be born in March.
March eighteenth, 1976. It'll be a beautiful day, more like late April or early May, really. Her name means 'from the royal meadow,' and I always used to say she brought the springtime with her."
"Pamela … "
"I never thought I'd see them again. You can't imagine—not even you can imagine what this has been like for me, what it still is like, and will be for the next eleven, almost twelve, years. Because I love them more than ever, and this time I
know
I'm going to lose them."
She started to weep again, and Jeff knew there was nothing he could say to make it easier. He thought of what it would be like to hold his daughter Gretchen in his arms again, to watch her playing in the garden of the house in Dutchess County, all the while aware of the very day and hour when she would disappear from his life again. Impossible bliss, incalculable heartbreak, and never a hope of separating one from the other. Pamela was right; the unbearable, ever-constant wrenching of those paired emotions was beyond even his acutely developed empathetic powers.
After a time she excused herself from the table, went to stanch the tears in private. When she returned her face was dry, her light makeup newly applied and immaculate. Jeff had ordered a fresh glass of wine for her, another drink for himself.
"What about you?" she asked dispassionately. "When did you come back this time?"
He hesitated, cleared his throat. "I was in Miami," he said. "In 1968."
Pamela thought that over for a moment, gave him a perceptive look. "With Linda," she said. "Yes."
"And now?"
"We're still together. Not married, not yet, but … we live together."
She smiled a wistful, knowing smile, ran her finger along the rim of the wineglass. "And you're happy."
"I am," he admitted. "We both are."
"Then I'm glad for you," Pamela said. "I mean that."
"It's been different this time," he elaborated. "I had a vasectomy, so she'll never have to go through the difficulties she once had with pregnancy. We may adopt a child. I could handle that; I did before, when I was married to Judy, and it wasn't the same as … You know what I mean." Jeff paused for an instant, regretting having raised the issue of children again, then went on hurriedly. "The financial security has helped our relationship considerably," he said. "I haven't bothered to go all-out with the investments, but we're quite comfortable. Very nice house on the ocean; we travel a lot. And I'm writing now, doing some very rewarding work. It's been a kind of healing process for me, even more so than the time I spent alone in Montgomery Creek."
"I know," she said. "I read your book; it was quite moving. It helped me put away so much of what went wrong between us the last time, all that bitterness."
"You—That's right, I keep forgetting you've been replaying for two months already. Thank you; I'm glad you liked it. The one I'm working on right now is about exile; I've interviewed Solzhenitsyn, Peron … I'll send you an advance copy when it's done."
She lowered her eyes, put a hand to her chin. "I'm not sure that would be a good idea."
It took Jeff a moment to catch her meaning. "Your husband?"
Pamela nodded. "It's not that he's an overly jealous man, but … Oh, God, how can I say this? It would require too many explanations if you and I remained in touch, started writing and phoning and seeing each other. Don't you see how awkward that would be?"
"Do you love him?" Jeff asked, swallowing hard.
"Not the way you obviously love Linda," she said, her voice steady but cool. "Steve's a decent man; he cares for me in his own way. But mainly it's the children I'm thinking of. Christopher's only three, and Kimberly's not even born yet. I couldn't take them away from their father before they even had a chance to know him." A sudden fire of anger flared in her eyes, but then she dampened it. "Even if you wanted me to," she added.
"Pamela … "
"I can't resent your feelings for Linda," she said. "We've been apart too long for me to turn possessive, and I know how much it must mean to you to have that work out positively, after the problems you and she had the first time."
"That doesn't change anything about the way I feel for you."
"I know," she said gently. "It has nothing to do with us, but it's real, and right now it takes priority for you. Just as I need this time with my children, my family; I need it desperately."
"You're not still angry about—"
"Everything that happened last time, with Russell Hedges? No. Not angry at you; we both set that in motion and did what we thought was best. There were so many times, during those last few months particularly, that I wanted to turn to you, apologize for having blamed you … but I was stubborn. I couldn't handle all the guilt I felt. I had to saddle someone else with it to protect my own sanity, and that should have been Hedges, not you. I'm sorry."
"I understand," he told her. "I did then, too, though it was difficult."
The longing in her eyes, the deep regret, mirrored his own emotions. "It'll be even harder now," she said, covering his hand with her smooth palms. "It's going to take a lot of understanding, on both our parts."
The gallery was on Chambers Street in TriBeCa, the Triangle Below Canal Street, which had replaced Soho as Manhattan's primary artists' enclave. Since the mid-eighties, though, the same process that had led to the exodus from Soho had begun anew in TriBeCa: Trendy bars and restaurants were sprouting on the side streets off Hudson and Varick, the prices in the shops and galleries had begun to reflect the spending power of their uptown patrons, and loft space was at a premium. Soon the young painters and sculptors and performance artists whose presence had set in motion the flowering of this once-desolate corner of the city would be driven out to some new bohemia, some thoroughly undesirable, and thus affordable, sector of this congested island. Jeff spotted the understated brass plaque that identified the Hawthorne Gallery, and led Linda through the doorway of the renovated building that had once been a tenement next to an industrial warehouse. They came into an elegantly sparse reception area, white walls and ceiling, a low black sofa facing a curved black desk. The only decoration was a surprisingly delicate piece of hanging ironwork, its elongated slender swirls like a distillation and extension of the intricate iron filigree typical of the gates and balconies of old New Orleans.
"May I help you?" asked the whippet-thin young woman behind the desk.
"We're here for the opening," Jeff said, handing her the embossed invitation.
"Certainly," she said, consulting a printed list and crossing off their names. "Go right in, won't you?"
Jeff and Linda walked past the desk, into the main gallery space. The walls were the same stark white, but devoted to the display of what might have seemed a riot of images, had their placement not been subject to such careful design. The one huge room had been subdivided here and there into intimate little alcoves suited to quiet study of the contemplative pieces they contained, while at the other extreme the full grandeur of the larger works was enhanced by the openness of the areas in which they were exhibited.