Out beyond the town, right on the horizon, a ship moved slowly over the water, leaving behind it a spume of black smoke. They watched it in silence as it crossed their vision, keeping their own thoughts. When it moved behind the fort, Sean seemed to come to a decision. He took his cigar from his mouth and threw it down to the ground below, then polished off the coffee.
“Seems to me, Sis, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, that we’ve been doing a pretty good job of avoiding each other this past month or two, and it’s on my mind a lot now. It’d be a shame to never get to know you in person after the reams of paper we’ve sent to each other. Is there maybe something getting in your way around me? I know your husband a lot better than I know you, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but you’ve always been, well, at least you’ve always had a special place in my mind, like we were the ones who should be close, and somehow, now you’re here, I feel farther from you than I ever have, except for right after the war when you were just a kid.”
She studied his earnest face. “It always seemed like you were avoiding me,” she said. “I’ve always thought it should be you that takes the first step, like you’d consider me intruding.”
He smiled, shaking his head. “Man. That son-of-a-bitch act I do must really work well.”
“Oh, it’s not so much that . . .”
“Then what?”
“I mean, it’s not that you act cold. You’re friendly enough. It’s just like you don’t want to be any more friendly.”
“And you don’t call that being cold?”
“Well, maybe.”
He laughed. “Maybe. Damn sure. What else would it be? And probably I’d go on being that way, except that lately it seems as though things with you and Doug have pretty much gone beaver, as they say. And I don’t like to see it happen. I care a lot about you both. And maybe also for the first time in my life, I’m beginning to realize how nice it is to let yourself care. It’s a good thing.”
“Well, it’s what’s wrong with Doug and me.”
“Yeah, it seems like it.”
She cupped her hands around her coffee, and stared again over the trees toward Tossa. “I guess I’m just tired of—” She stopped herself. “I don’t know. Doug has always had a way about him. Kind of an enthusiasm. And since we’ve got here, I’m beginning to think that it’s always been a superficial thing. No, that’s not it exactly. But it was for some outside interest. Always. I mean, he’d get excited about a piece he was doing, or about a new room we’d want to put in our house, or about almost anything he was doing, but always it was on that level. I think when we got here, and there wasn’t anything to do, he tried to internalize all that gusto and found there wasn’t much there to get enthusiastic about.”
“You’ve tried to help him?”
“Come on. Sean, I’m not such a callous beast as that. Of course I tried, but somehow I was part of all he didn’t care about.”
“And how did that grab you?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“What I mean is, were you upset or mad or anything else that you’d seemed to have lost your place in his affections? Something that major going on with your husband of some years, and I should think you’d fight for your position a little more.”
“Instead of what?”
“What do you think?”
She swallowed down the last of her coffee. The grounds nearly gagged her, and she made a face, then smiled at her brother.
“You think I’m having an affair with Mike.”
“No. But I’m probably the only one who doesn’t.”
“Well, I’m not.”
He shrugged. “It’s not important. Doug thinks you are and that’s important. That he doesn’t let on that he cares is the real problem, Sis. Don’t you talk to each other anymore?”
She shook her head.
“Because maybe what he needs is a little jolt from you. Something to make him realize that . . .” He stopped. “You know all I’m trying to say, I guess. Unless you’ve kissed him off, you ought to help him.”
“I haven’t kissed him off, as you put it.”
“Prove it.” He crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue at her. They both laughed. “It doesn’t matter much to me, you understand, but I’m looking at it from your perspective as somebody who doesn’t want their marriage to be over.”
She was quiet for a minute, and then said, “To tell you the truth, Sean, I’m not really sure. I don’t know if you’ve ever lived with someone when the spark just went out. It’s like there’s a vacuum and if you get too close, you get sucked into it. Doug’s given up on living, as far as I can tell, and I’m just starting to come alive.”
“But don’t you ask yourself why?”
“Sure. I think it’s got to do with us both having the time to examine what we’re doing, and while I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve been wasting time and should do something about it, Doug is at the opposite pole. He never thought before that he was wasting his time, and now he thinks he’s come to realize that everything is a waste of time. Up until we stopped talking, whenever that was, he kept going on and on about how nothing had any meaning for him. He’d say that if he could just find a small thing that touched him, he’d use it as a base to build on, but he’s gotten so morbid. ‘We’re going to die in the end, anyway.’ Or ‘What will it all matter in a hundred years?’ I tell you, it drives me crazy. It’s not how I feel at all, and I also feel powerless to touch him, or bring him back. He’s going to need some shock, or something, and maybe that won’t even make a difference.”
“Is that why you’re seeing so much of Mike?”
“No.” She paused, then came out with it. “I’m fascinated by him.”
The big man stood up and, putting his hand on the ledge, vaulted over it to the flat roof. He walked across it to the outer edge, and took another cigar from his shirt pocket. Biting off the tip, he struck a wooden match against the stucco, and stood puffing for a moment before he turned back to face his sister.
“Well,” he said, “at least we’re talking.”
“What do you think I ought to do?”
He sat back down. “Shit and Shinola. Damned if I know. It’s hard, though, isn’t it?”
She looked at his rugged face and, for the first time since she’d arrived, saw the brother she’d known as a child. His face must look like that when he sleeps, she thought. She reached out and touched his hair. He stared at the ground below, and sighed.
What went on with him? she wondered. This was so rare for him—letting anyone see him without his face being animated. She didn’t really know what his natural look was. Whenever he talked, or appeared in a room, his eyebrows arched, his step quickened, and he was alive. He rarely showed himself as tired or dejected, and when he did, it was always with an intensity that made them almost positive ways to feel. Now, though, he was simply relaxed. His shoulders hung easily, not in a tired way, and his eyes looked neither left nor right. He chewed absently on the cigar. Even as she watched him, it stopped smoking, and still he chomped away, by all signs unaware that he was not alone. She stroked his hair as though she were petting a dog. The intimidation she’d always felt around him had eased, and suddenly she felt at home with him again.
“How are you, really?” she asked, almost whispering.
He took in a deep breath, let it out slowly, then shook his head. “Well, I’d say offhand I’m coming out of the other end of the tunnel that Doug’s going in.” It was strange to hear him talk with that vacant look on his face. His mouth moved and he seemed to mean what he said, but he didn’t emphasize. “Most of the time now, I find myself slipping into something like awe over the simplest, smallest things. For the longest time before, I wouldn’t let anything get near me, as I guess has been obvious to you, and pretty much passed through things with a cynical eye, if you want to call it that. Not that I felt just like I suppose Doug does. I always knew things could reach me, or hurt me, or whatever, but in a way that knowledge protected me. I knew I was playing with fire.” He chuckled without changing expression. “Learned that early enough, I guess. Anyway, now I think I’m starting to believe that you ought to live out on the edge, and frankly, Sis”—here he seemed to come again to life, and began feeling for a match—“it scares me.”
“Because of Kyra, you think?”
“Yeah.” He puffed on the cigar, deep in thought. “Yeah, because of Kyra.”
“What happened?”
“Why the change, you mean? I don’t know. I’m getting old, maybe, is all, and I see her as my last chance.”
“For what?”
“Same as you. To live. I’m scared all the time now, I tell you, but it’s new. When I lost her that night in Barcelona, I thought I couldn’t stand it, and thought about what it would be like if she were gone, or lost, or whatever, and it came to me that, like it or not, she was far and away the most important thing in my life. Then I also knew, like a bolt out of the blue, that she loved me too.” He wagged his head from side to side, his eyes dancing. “Nice poem, that.” Anyway, I guess you’d say I’ve opened up, at least to letting myself feel things. And on one level, I’m a wreck. I lie awake now at night and think how lucky I am, and when I come up here, I see all this around me, and I’m like a kid again. I mean it all gives me so much joy.” He shrugged. “I know it sounds silly to talk about it.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Well. It kind of reminds me of the first time I went up in a glider. I remember that first drop to clear from the pilot plane, and how I really thought we were gonna die. In fact, the whole time up there I was scared to death, but I don’t think I ever enjoyed anything more. I thought of that the other night, and I wished I’d have applied that analogy a little sooner, instead of just having tried to make it through however many years it has been. Of course maybe I am a fool. I know in my mind that everybody watches out for themselves, but it’s different with Kyra. We both feel kind of like you do, as though we’re coming out of something together. And now things fit together, and I couldn’t go back, not even if I tried, and I don’t know why in the world I would ever want to try.”
She came down after a few more minutes. He said he wanted to stay up for a while. Her cramps were getting painful, and she decided to go back upstairs and lie down. Sean had said that Kyra and Doug had gone into town to buy mussels. “They’re both stir-crazy anyway, though I guess their reasons are different enough.”
She changed to her robe in the bedroom, then stuck her head out the window and yelled up toward the roof.
“Isn’t there any damn hot water, Sean?”
Presently her brother’s face appeared over the edge of the roof, smiling down at her. “Pardon?”
“Can’t we get some hot water?”
“I’ll have Berta draw you a bath downstairs,” he said, and she heard his footsteps crossing back overhead.
She lay on the bed with her eyes closed, and almost immediately, it seemed, though it must have been nearly a quarter of an hour, Berta knocked at the door.
“The bath is ready.”
She opened her eyes and followed her down to Sean’s bathroom, where the mirrors were already steamed from the hot tub.
While she soaked, Berta came in twice. She brought her a cup of hot tea with lemon peel, and some fresh white towels. Lea found herself wanting to talk to her, but in the end was content to lie silently in the hot, soapy water. What could she say? Her Spanish was poor. The woman certainly was a jewel, but really, what did they have in common? Maybe when Kyra got back, she would talk to her. Or maybe she’d go on into town. The hot water felt wonderful.
Sean was right. When Doug got back, she’d talk to him. But God, she was getting sick of talking. A shiver ran through her. She turned the hot water on with her toes. At least they wouldn’t be home for a couple of hours. In all that time, she might think of something to say.
Fourteen
At first, I wasn’t at all pleased that Kyra had decided to come down to Tossa with me, and for a moment, I was tempted to pretend I didn’t see her and roar with squealing tires and spewing gravel stones from the courtyard as she ran waving at me from the house. But on reflection, even before I reached the main road, I was glad of her company.
We’d never really gotten along well, to say the least, and since I was now seriously contemplating moving on, it seemed a good time, or at least an opportune one, to find out what she was like. I admit that I’d been unfair. She was no more nor less than a remarkably well-built woman of twenty-five, probably no more conniving than others, whom I had taken it into my mind to dislike. True, there had always been a stridency in her voice that I had instinctively hated, but as we drove on down toward Tossa, her voice, in its quieter reaches, sounded like Lea’s.
I had a bottle of
tinto
cradled between my legs, and from time to time would take a drink. Drinking in the morning wasn’t the great evil it was cracked up to be.
“What are you going into town for?” I asked, offering her the bottle, which she refused.
“Sean’s going to write. I like to get out when he’s busy.”
“Well, we’ll find ourselves some mussels and have a hell of a dinner.”