The Blessings (12 page)

It's seven in the morning when they touch down at Málaga Airport, though it feels like midnight in his bones. Alex read that jet lag is partly psychological—you know you're supposed to be tired, so you feel tired—but as he drives the rented Fiat down the highway, squinting into the sharp sunlight, the heaviness in his head is real. Rebecca is impossibly alert, sitting up straight and holding her blowing hair out of her face. “There's the Med!” she yells, pointing to a wrinkle of blue in the distance. “See?”

The highway is easy enough to navigate, but once they start the climb into the mountains, the road becomes narrow and twisting. Starchy white villas perch haphazardly in the foothills, as if they might go sliding right down the side. “Gorgeous,” Rebecca breathes while Alex guides the car slowly around the hairpin turns, his long legs crammed into the small front seat. The road is flanked by olive trees, the live ones vertical and green and the dead ones leaning at stiff black forty-five-degree angles. He brakes hard for a goat crossing the road, an old man zipping by on a moped. A fancy-looking restaurant rises from the dust like a mirage. A mile or so later, Alex spots a hand-lettered sign for the village and follows the arrow down more steep turns. He was sure he'd recognize their hotel from the picture on their refrigerator, but Hotel Plaza Lorca looks just like every other building here—white walls, a ceramic tile sign, a bright splash of flowers. A green lizard sits like a handprint on the wall. The owner, a short, unsmiling woman, shows them to their room, where warm air drifts lazily through the screenless windows. Rebecca tips her, then sighs and kicks off her shoes. “Let's wash the plane off,” she says, so they end up showering and having sex and napping off the jet lag (even though Alex read that's what you're not supposed to do). When they finally reemerge, dressed, he looks at his watch: two fifteen p.m., U.S. time.

“I'm starving,” Rebecca says, hooking his elbow.

“Maybe we should ask the woman for a recommendation?”

“Nah. Let's just see what we find,” she says.

Even at this hour (eight fifteen, Spain), the sun is high and warm. After nine months in a study carrel, it's good to feel the sun. They wander into the village, a jumble of sloppy hills and cobblestones. The air is thick and drowsy and smells like flowers. All the houses are white—to reflect the sun, of course—and crowded closely together, strung with colorful laundry on clotheslines. Alex cannot imagine living in such tight quarters. At least they all have balconies, infinitely nicer than their balcony in Princeton, and all of them face the sea. In fact, the entire town seems angled toward the glimpse of blue water, like thirsty flowers tilted toward the sunlight. At the crest of a hill, they see a little pink church: Saint Isidore. Alex wishes his mother could see it. He looks again at his watch—nearly three, U.S.—and pictures a Tuesday, his mother dismissing her fourth graders in their plaid uniforms, collecting her papers, driving slowly home.

“How about this,” Rebecca says, and stops.

The restaurant has tables on the sidewalk and a chalkboard sign. The other diners all seem like locals, speaking in loud Spanish and smoking cigarettes. A few thin cats roam the place, rubbing people's ankles. As they take a seat, Alex is aware of how touristy they must look, with his pasty skin and their sunglasses—Rebecca's are huge and tinted green, something a celebrity would wear—but Rebecca owns her tourist status, the same way she owns everything about herself, charming their waiter by trying to chat with him in her halting Spanish. She orders for them both.

“Bella,”
he says, beaming, and returns minutes later with a pitcher of sangria.

Alex fills the glasses, and Rebecca proposes a toast. “To
España
,” she says, and holds her glass aloft, waiting for him to speak.

“To us,” he adds, feeling corny, but Rebecca looks pleased. They clink and drink, and she tosses back her hair, expelling a deep, dreamy sigh. “I'm so glad we're here,” she says, slipping off her sandals and propping her bare feet in Alex's lap. “It reminds me of how essential it is to get out of your environment every now and again.”

Alex nods, sipping at his drink.

“It makes life at home seem so much smaller, doesn't it? It gives you such perspective. The world is so much bigger. Things back there just feel less important.”

In truth, Alex is having just the opposite reaction. Being so far away from home makes everything there seem bigger, more important—but he doesn't feel like debating the point. He drains his glass and pours another.

“So tomorrow,” Rebecca says.

“Tomorrow.”

“To the beach.”

“To the beach,” Alex agrees.

She pushes her sunglasses on top of her head and smiles. “Is it possible we've been together over a year and I've never seen you on a beach?”

“No,” he says. “You have.”

“Where?”

“Maine. With your parents.”

She laughs. “A beach in a
sweatshirt
doesn't count, my dear.”

Alex laughs, too, just as the paella arrives in a sizzling cast-iron pan. He eats selectively, nudging the spindly shrimp antennae to the side, washing down the briny bites with more sangria. Rebecca, of course, deconstructs her shellfish like a pro. “Next dinner party,” she announces, tapping her fork on the rim of the plate. “Paella. It'll be Spanish themed—we'll make our friends more jealous of us than they already are.” She presses her smooth knees against his under the table, and as she beams at him, a heady feeling sweeps through his entire body, the flush of sangria, recognition of his own good luck.

For dessert, Rebecca orders churros and hot chocolate so thick they eat it with spoons. When Alex glances at his watch, he's surprised to see how long they've been here; still, he feels no pressure to leave. Everything feels slower in Spain, he thinks. Not inattentive, just unhurried. Even the sun seems to set more slowly, clinging to the sky. By the time the waiter clears the dishes, Alex is slightly drunk, and the wine has brought a deep rosy color to Rebecca's cheeks. Looking at her, in a foreign country surrounded by strangers, Alex is reminded of how beautiful she is. He puts his hand on her arm, her skin warm from the sun.

“You look pretty,” he says.

She smiles and kisses him, tasting like chocolate. “I think Spain is going to be good for you,” she says.

In the session with the family counselor, after his father said that he was leaving and Meghan had a meltdown, Alex started going numb. Sitting there in his chair, he felt as if he were being consumed by pins and needles, as if his whole body were falling asleep and dragging him under.
Alex?
The counselor had pinched his arm.
Can you feel that?

“You were shutting down,” Rebecca said when he described it. They were in bed, as usual, but this particular story had her sitting up, clutching a pillow in her lap. She sounded almost excited, as if seeing a species she'd only heard existed but had never seen. “You were protecting yourself.”

Alex laughed uneasily. “From what?”

She looked at him with sad affection, as if his naïveté were endearing. “From the pain you were feeling in that moment,” she said.

Meghan had recounted this same scene—her part in it, anyway—when she came to visit them in Princeton.
At least you were expressing how you felt
, Rebecca reassured her. Alex was listening to their voices drift in from the balcony to where he sat reading on the couch. When Meghan had arrived that afternoon, the three of them hung out together, touring the campus and getting overpriced lattes, but gradually his sister and his girlfriend formed an intense clique of two. They were a match made in heaven, Alex realized; he was surprised he hadn't anticipated this. Rebecca, the compassionate listener, and Meghan with so much to tell. Right away their conversation assumed that gentle, meaningful gravity that Alex associated with women talking (it amazed him, how quickly girls got right into things), and he knew he should be glad that they were bonding but instead felt annoyed for no reason he could discern. Having his sister around, Alex felt cast back in an old role, like the person he'd been in high school—awkward, clammed up, agitated in some vague way—while Rebecca slid easily into the part of an older sister or a cool aunt, the one you'd call if you needed to be bailed out of jail.
You've stopped purging now completely, right?
she asked Meghan, all three of them crowded in the kitchen, the girls chopping vegetables for dinner while Alex hovered unhelpfully, drinking a beer.
I don't have to police the bathroom door?
Rebecca's candor made him nervous—his family never talked to Meghan this way. But his sister answered easily, unfazed by the questions. After dinner, the two of them migrated to the balcony, wrapped in huge sweaters and sipping mojitos, while Alex sat alone inside. He longed to go to the library but knew that he should stay. Not that Meghan would care. His mother would.
My family had no idea how out of control I was
, Meghan was saying, Rebecca responding with that affirming murmur Alex had heard so often that he'd started to think of it as his.
I puked ten times after every meal
, she said.
I was puking in shoeboxes in my room
—had he known this? He pictured his sister's room, its plush rug and pink curtains, the giant, heavy-headed panda bear sagging in the corner.
When I tasted stomach acid, I knew I was done
, she said with a sad laugh. He was startled, alarmed; he was irrationally jealous. How could anything he told Rebecca now compare with this? At midnight, Alex took his book to bed but still could hear the dip and rise of their voices, clinks of their glasses, like an adult slumber party, until finally, at nearly two a.m., Rebecca climbed into bed beside him. Her cheeks were flushed, her breath sweet. A shred of mint was caught in her teeth.

“It's totally amazing you two are siblings,” she said.

“Tell me about it,” Alex snapped, then felt guilty. He attempted a laugh. He curled toward Rebecca, touching her shoulder experimentally, but her eyes were closed, hands pressed palm to palm beneath her cheek, breathing through her open mouth. She was already asleep.

On Wednesday, Alex and Rebecca drive in the direction of the water and end up in a town called Nerja, a strip of outdoor restaurants and crowded beaches at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. Alex is amazed to find the Mediterranean looks exactly the way it does in pictures—that same bright, unreal blue.

“Race you,” Rebecca says, grinning, as they drop their stuff on the sand. She strips down to a white bikini and runs for the water, where she dives under immediately. Alex follows her in, but slowly, watching his feet. The water is startlingly clear, calm as a lake—the opposite of the ocean at the Jersey shore, foamy and green and thick with seaweed. The sand is different, too, more like pebbles than grains. His family would probably hate it, he thinks.

As he wades in deeper, Alex thinks of the stir his trip must be causing back home—surely the entire family must know his itinerary, calling his mother for updates on where he is and what he's doing. The same key words will be repeated over and over, spreading through the family like a game of telephone:
the southeast coast
,
the Sierra Nevadas
.
Yes, the actual Mediterranean Sea!

The water is cool, the sun burning his shoulders. Rebecca floats a few feet away, eyes closed. Alex quietly paddles over to her and pokes the middle of her back. “Boo.”

“Oh!” Rebecca says, splashing upright. “You startled me.”

He smiles at her, takes both her elbows, and places her arms around his neck. Then he wraps his arms around her shoulders. He's starting to feel a little like a different person in Spain, more confident and loose, almost like he's acting. But as he leans down to kiss her, eyes level with his own wrist, he sees that he forgot to take his watch off—it's soaked. “Shit,” he says, dropping his arms. “My watch.”

Rebecca frowns. “Isn't it waterproof?”

“I don't know,” he says, and wonders why he doesn't.

“Well, we'll buy you a new one,” she says, and shrugs, which bugs him. The watch was a graduation gift from his dad, and he's sure it wasn't cheap. “We can haggle for it,” she adds. “Have I mentioned I'm an excellent haggler?”

She is—just this morning, she bartered her way into a leather bag—but Alex turns toward the shore. “I've got to take it off,” he says.

“Oh, stay,” she says. “If it's ruined, it's already ruined.”

The logic is sound, but Alex has to at least try to save it. “I can't.”

“Of course you can't,” Rebecca replies—was that an edge to her voice? If so, she corrects it instantly, smiling. “I'm going to stay in a little longer,” she says.

Alex holds his arm above the water, like a limb in a cast, as he heads back toward the sand. He remembers Abby saying that traveling can underscore people's differences and thinks this might be true. Rebecca is lax with possessions, he's more careful. Rebecca is the kind of person who wanders aimlessly, while he asks for directions. But maybe these are the good kinds of differences, he thinks, the kinds that complement instead of clash.

On the sand, Alex weaves his way through the sunbathers, trying not to wince on the pebbles. The Spanish people are all darkly tan, slick with oil. Some women are topless—he averts his eyes, although he doesn't think it's required. On the towel, he unstraps his soaking watch—examining it to see if any water got in the glass; it did—and lays it in the sun. He puts his sunglasses on, picks up his book. But instead of reading, he finds himself watching Rebecca. She's the farthest person from the shore. For minutes, she swims back and forth, slow and languid, her long body skimming the horizon, dark head gleaming in the sun. When finally she comes out, Alex notices other men notice her, staring unabashedly as she saunters toward him. Watching her approach, Alex considers again what it would be like to be married to Rebecca: a life of adventure, he thinks. Of travel. Of weeks like this.