Untold Story (9 page)

She was certain she could make the mooring at the exact location that I thought best. “I’ll work it in . . . what’s the word . . . subliminally. I won’t make it a big deal.” I hazarded that her wish was her beau’s command, or words to that effect. She said, “Lawrence, you know my trouble with men is . . .”

She dropped it. It’s too big a subject.

We were away not long after three and she reckoned though she was normally an early riser they wouldn’t think to check her cabin until about eight o’clock, thinking that she had decided to sleep in for once. That gave us five hours, and three hundred kilometers’ distance. After that, the search would be concentrated on the water, the beaches, the reefs. In the car she put her feet up on the glove compartment and wound back her seat. I thought she was going to sleep but she didn’t. She talked. I hardly knew what she said, and perhaps she hardly knew either. She scarcely drew a breath. I was fitter then than I am now and the rowing had not been a physical strain, easily manageable even if she had not insisted on taking over. But the drive was a demanding one, on strange dark roads, with my strange load, gripping the steering wheel so hard it hurt my hands. After a few hours she insisted that we switch. She drove and talked, small news and gossip about the friends she had seen in Buenos Aires, also a girlfriend who had terrible morning sickness, a film she had read about. In the first light of morning she wanted to stop and have breakfast and even browse some roadside stalls. “What about those beads?” she said, slowing the car. “That stall there. Are they made of some kind of seed?”

Perhaps the enormity of the situation was too much for her to comprehend. It may have been the only way she could cope. I do not know how to account for it, her preternatural calm. I took the wheel again for the short distance to the motel where I had planned to take a break. It was perfect. The Brazilian “motel” is rather different from its North American namesake. It is more akin to the Japanese “love hotel.” It is a place you can rent for a couple of hours or more, and where secrecy and discretion rule the day. In this establishment, which I had previously scouted, one drives up to a kind of sentry box, where the check-in, such as it is, takes place. Money, naturally, must be proffered but no ID is required. One then drives into the motel grounds, set within a high-walled compound, and looks for the apartment number outside the row of garages, each of which is hung with a thick, opaque vinyl curtain from ceiling to floor.

She clapped her hands and hooted as she took cognizance of the setup. “My goodness,” she said. “Lawrence, look at this, a proper tryst!”

I drove into our garage, lowered the window, and reached for the rope and pulley that closed the curtain behind the car. I explained to her that this type of motel is to be found all over Brazil, a country in which it is not uncommon for people to live at home until they marry, and that extramarital liaisons are frequently conducted in such an environment. More wittering from me, I fear, at that point, an attempt to cover my too-evident embarrassment.

“How fantastic,” she said, as I located the door at the back of the garage that led to the apartment. “They’ve really thought this through. Nobody sees you get out of the car, nobody can see the car—how absolutely ingenious.”

Before we went through the antechamber to the bedroom I hesitated, because I wished to explain more, and excuse. Words, however, failed me and all I could do was press on.

The large round bed was, naturally, the centerpiece of the room. By the window there stood a recliner with adjustable foot stirrups, set up as if for a gynecological examination. Two television screens played “adult” channels, which I rushed to turn off at once. I apologized profusely, of course.

“Why, Lawrence,” she said, stalking the perimeter, “I’ve never seen you quite so pink.”

She examined the minibar, the wall-mounted tissue dispenser, the lubricant sachets, and wore a puzzled expression as she inspected what looked a bit like a diving board, which was positioned to jut over the foot of the bed. “At least I understand this,” she said, pulling back the sheet to reveal the mattress’s plastic sheath.

I said to her that I would rent another apartment for myself if she preferred and that I had prevaricated about whether that would be better for her. “Of course it wouldn’t be better,” she said. “You’re not going to leave me on my own.”

Mother never got over her disappointment that the knighthood she believed was due me failed to materialize. She couldn’t understand that I was simply in the wrong royal camp. That day, however, was all the reward I needed. I slept, or tried to, on the recliner and despite the farcical aspect of the arrangements, I was sorely honored that I was the one to be there.

Chapter Eight

On Sunday morning Lydia awoke to the smell of coffee and the sound of a chain saw. When she looked out of the window she saw Carson cutting down the dead oak. He stepped well back and raised his visor. The tree held its breath for a moment or two and then fell in a slow swoon across the lawn.

Lydia opened the window and poked her head out. “You forgot to say ‘timber,’” she called.

“Did I wake you?” said Carson. “Good. It’s breakfast time.”

He had the pancake mixture ready and they ate them with blueberries and syrup at the kitchen counter.

“Who taught you to cook?” said Lydia.

“The television,” said Carson. “What? I’m serious. Who taught you? Your mom?”

“No, she wasn’t . . . I went on a Cordon Bleu cookery course when I was young, and then I didn’t cook for years and years. I don’t know. I taught myself.”

“Okay, that goes in the dossier. Cordon Bleu course.”

“What dossier?”

“The one I’m compiling. You hardly tell me anything, so it’s a very slim document.”

“What do you want to know?”

He folded his arms. “How about you start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out?”

“You’d be bored to death,” said Lydia. “Are you going to chop up that tree?”

“I’ll chop it and stack it and when it’s dried you can use it on the fire. You use the fireplace in winter, right?”

“You do come in handy.”

“Thanks. Now, nice try with the distraction technique, but it didn’t work.”

Lydia started to clear the plates. He put a hand on her arm. She said, “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Once you stop holding back, it’ll just get easier. It won’t be so bad, you’ll see. I’m a darn good listener.”

“No, I mean, this whole thing. Us.”

“Hey,” he said, “come on.”

“Really,” said Lydia, surprised at how fast the tears had formed. “I don’t.”

He took his hand away and sat there with a dazed expression. “Okay.”

She wanted him to argue with her but he didn’t. She wanted him to tell her to stop being so ridiculous.

“Well,” he said, finally. “Is it something I did? Something I said?”

“No, it’s not you . . .”

He laughed. “‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ Don’t I deserve better than that? Guess not.”

She held on to her tears. He was getting up, and in another few moments he’d be gone and that would be for the best. It wasn’t fair to him to let it drag on. And she wasn’t going to get into a situation where she would be vulnerable. She liked her life the way it was.

“I’ll chop the wood,” he said, “and stack it, and then I’ll be out of your way.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

He shook his head. “I don’t like to leave a job half done.”

She could see him through the back door, which stood open. Rufus ran in circles around Madeleine, who had taken up a position close to her master and was getting her long red coat covered in sawdust. It would be a job to brush it out.

Carson stopped the saw for a moment and wiped his forearm along his brow. She felt her stomach contract with longing. At least she should go out there and talk to him, not let him leave without saying a proper good-bye.

When he’d walked into the shelter the first time, he’d been dressed in those same jeans and boots and checked shirt. She’d assumed he worked at something outdoors or manual. He looked like a carpenter. He told her he worked as a claims adjuster for an insurance company in the city. So will your wife be walking the dog? she asked, although he didn’t wear a wedding ring. He told her, no, he didn’t have a wife. If you’re at the office all day, she explained, you wouldn’t be a good candidate for a dog. They’re social creatures, they get anxious if they’re left alone too long. He surprised her again by saying he worked from home. That’s the miracle of e-mail, he said. And when he went out to investigate a claim, he reckoned most times the dog could come along for the ride.

She took him a glass of water. “You looked thirsty,” she said when the saw had juddered to a halt.

“You’re not coming out here to give me the ‘we can still be friends’ speech?”

“No.”

“I was going to tell you something,” he said.

He drank the water and she waited while he finished.

“Is that allowed?” he said. “Okay. When I was twenty-two, just out of college, I went traveling in Asia. I met a girl.” He looked away to the side, to the line of sugar maples at the edge of the yard. “She was Australian, backpacking her way around the world.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” said Lydia. “Whatever happened, it was a long time ago.”

“We fell in love,” said Carson. She knew she would miss the sound of his voice, the way it seemed to come from within his chest and resonate in her own. “I took her back to Oakland, my hometown, and within six months she was pregnant so we got married. I quit graduate school and got a job. We had a beautiful little daughter named Ava, and she was just perfect, you know, the way babies are.”

“I’ll bet she was,” said Lydia softly.

“By the time she was a few months old, her mother and I were fighting. It went on like that for two years. It shouldn’t have come as any surprise but one day when I got back from work she said that she was leaving and taking Ava. I said, No, you stay, I’ll go. She said, I’m taking Ava home. What do you mean, home? I said. I still hadn’t understood. Her parents had sent the plane tickets. They were going back to Sydney, and that was that.”

“Carson,” said Lydia. He was looking at the empty glass in his hand.

“I kept in touch,” he said. “I called, I sent letters and cards and presents. Sarah sent me a couple of photos of Ava, and she put paint all over her little hand and pressed it on a piece of paper and mailed it to me. Then about eighteen months later, when I’d saved up finally for a ticket, Sarah called. Said she’d met someone and wanted to marry him. Our divorce was nearly final. I said, congratulations, maybe I’ll make it over in time for the wedding. I didn’t mind. I’d stopped feeling that way about her. She was silent for the longest time.

“Then she just came out and said it. She thought it would be confusing for Ava to have two dads. She wanted me to stop all contact. And Gary wanted to adopt Ava, he really loved her already, treated her like his own.”

“You gave her up,” said Lydia. She’d given up her boys. If there was one person who would ever be able to understand that . . . but even Lawrence had never really understood.

“I thought about it. I called Sarah back the next week. I said, put Ava on the phone. I talked to her for a little while, she wasn’t even four, and she babbled at me sometimes and sometimes she was talking to her doll. I made silly noises to make her laugh. Then I told her that I loved her and to go and get her mom. I told Sarah I was going to do what was best for Ava. I’d give up my legal rights.”

She reached out her hand but he didn’t take it. He stooped to put down the glass. Before he straightened up he rested for a moment with his hands on his knees, as if he had just been winded. “Today is Ava’s birthday,” he said. “She’ll be twenty-five.”

She wanted to tell him that she knew what he was going through. All she could offer was a platitude. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s all right,” said Carson. “I wanted to tell you, that’s all. I’m just going to finish this up.” He started the saw and lowered his visor, and there was nothing she could say to him over the noise.

Lydia made a potato salad and took it over to Suzie’s house. The kitchen had the air of a yard sale in preparation, the children’s toys, books, and clothes stacked everywhere. Tevis had already arrived and was showing off the marks she had down her back.

“It’s called cupping,” she said. “It’s a really ancient practice.”

“So’s leeching,” said Suzie. “And it probably does you about as much good.”

“Suzie, you are the most closed-minded person I have ever met,” said Tevis.

“I have an open mind,” said Suzie. “I just don’t fill it with junk.”

“No,” said Tevis, “that’s what you fill your stomach with.”

“Oooh,” said Suzie, “you are bitchy today. Weren’t those cups supposed to suck all the negative energy out of you?”

“What am I missing?” said Amber, letting herself in through the back door. “I brought an apple tart. The kids are out in the yard with yours. They’ve brought a frog.”

Suzie gave Amber a hug. “We’re discussing cupping.”

“Oh, like coffee tasting?” said Amber.

“No, like voodoo rituals. Tevis, show her your back.”