Warm Wuinter's Garden (44 page)

“She’s indomitable, isn’t she?”

“It sure seems like it.”

“I get jealous. Oh, Dad. Let’s make sure we
take some time to go somewhere to talk.”

“There’ll be plenty of time to talk.”

“I always think that. It seems it should be
true. Then, I get back here and realize that I haven’t talked at
all. Only chatted. Remember the night we both ended up
downstairs?”

“I hear your mother, honey. I’d better help.
See you tomorrow.”

“Bye, Dad.”

After Nita hung up she looked around her
kitchen. It was spotless. She rarely ate anything but breakfast at
home, so it was easy to keep it that way. The living room, both
bedrooms, study and bathrooms were clean, too. Towels were
carefully folded; blouses were neatly hung.

During the weeks when Dan Herlick had been at
the house, there had been disorder. Shoes had not made it back to
the closet, or, sometimes, even back to the bedroom. There had been
mornings when she had awakened late to dirty dishes in the sink and
empty wine glasses on the coffee table. Newspapers had been left
about.

It had not been all bad. There had been
moments in the dark when a coma like comfort had come over her as
he had held her wrapped tight within the heaviness of his arms and
legs. Tight against his chest’s warm wall, held by his thick arms,
his stocky legs locked around her own, she had felt a certain
freedom. Within that fleshy cage she had allowed herself to drift.
But each time, comfort had moved to conflict when his caresses had
become more sexual. Despite his concern and careful entry, despite
a moment stretched to minutes, despite an urging no more insistent
than an ebbing neap tide, despite her ache to be loved and safely
lost beneath his careful weight, despite her wishes, wants, plans
and formulations, there would come a point when his gentle pulsing
pushed her ache from love and lovelorn longing into pain and
mindless panic. Despite her feverish admonition to herself to go,
go, go to where they were headed, her body would contract,
compress, withdraw. She couldn’t stop his slightest pulsing from
feeling like a deadly pounding. A cancer causing smashing of her
cells. His cautious, controlled breathing would sound like a
ravener’s undeniable roar. A fingertip’s touch upon her shoulder
would magnify to rapine force. Witless, she would buck and thrust
to try to free herself. She would twist and turn beneath his
innocent, ignorant savagery. Her brain would swell with all her
bruising’s fluids. She would want to bolt her body. She would
pause, unpoised, then, free-fall into her carcinogenic mirage.

After a dozen nights of this, feeling the
hope that she had brought back from Clarke’s Cove slipping from her
grasp, she had made herself talk. She had tried to share her fears.
Dan Herlick had been as gentle with his questions as he had been in
bed. She had been ashamed that his capacity for kindness far
exceeded her chary estimate. He had listened and told her that he
would do as she wanted.

She could think only of one thing to ask of
him. Patience. She thought that she might try to see someone who
could help.

From her files of divorces she made a list of
names of therapists, but she became too busy to call. Then, she
became too busy to see Dan Herlick.

One evening, in the middle of all the
emotion, she had used the last of a gloamy sunlight to plant the
pot bound starts her mother had given her. Two weeks later she had
thought to water them, but, by then, they were dead.

As Nita carefully packed her suitcase and
sorted through her briefcase choosing the files that she should
take with her, she wondered how she’d shape the truth about the
fate of those seeds were her mother to ask about them.

* * *

“Excited?”

Lise nodded.

“Scared, too.”

“How come?”

“I’m not too sure about our timing.”

Brad opened his arms in concession.

“We can wait.”

“I don’t know. So much has gone on.”

“Maybe a little good news would be
appreciated.”

Brad grabbed Lise from behind and took small
nips at her neck right along the hair line.

“Ooooowww. That gives me the shivers.”

“It’s supposed to. Look, decide when we get
there. You’ll know.”

Lise nodded. She looked around the
kitchen.

“What’s left?”

“You tell me. We’ve got the sleeping bags,
boogie boards, the tent. The back packs went in first. You wanted
your book bag, right?”

Lise nodded her put in marionette
theatricality, “Have to.”

“You really think you’ll get any work
done?”

“Have to.”

“Toothbrushes, all that, were in the little
thingamajig, right?”

Yeah.”

“Then, that must be it.”

Lise pulled an imaginary hat down hard on her
head.

“Okay, cowpoke, let’s ride.”

“Wait just a sec, darlin’.”

Brad walked menacingly toward Lise. She
backed away.

“No, no, no way. C’mon. None of that. We’re
late.”

Brad kept coming.

In an exaggerated drawl, Lise said, “Ease
back, Bradford, or I’ll lame that mule’s leg.”

Brad clucked.

The phone rang. Lise laughed.

“Saved by the bell.” She pointed. “You, not
me. You get it. I’m gone.”

Hello? Dr. Adanan. How are you?”

Lise shook her head as she left the house.
She pulled the hose toward the slumping cosmos she had planted
along the edge of the driveway.

““Pitiful. Poor babies. I know it’s too hot
to be watering, but if you don’t drink now, you’ll die before we
get back. I’m sorry I forgot you. There’s been too much going on.
Try to make do.”

Lise hoped the next few days would help Brad
and her to make do, too. She felt as droopy as the cosmos looked.
She loved going fast, but the last few months had been ridiculous.
She had been living at the lab, and Brad, to satisfy a committee
member who had made a last minute decision to take a one year
appointment at the University of Sydney, had been working non stop
on his dissertation. Lise couldn’t remember them taking a day off
since a balmy Sunday in late April.

Lise looked at her hand. She pointed the ring
at the sun and watched the color change. Twisting it around on her
finger, she used her thumb to feel the slight dimples in the smooth
surface of the cabochon ruby, which had been Brad’s great
grandmother’s. His great grandfather had bought it for her when he
was in Burma working for a British spice company. After he had
inherited it, Brad’s grandfather had had the stone mounted in a
man’s ring. He had given it to his only grandson on Brad’s
thirteenth birthday. And, now, Brad had remounted it again and
bestowed it on her.

Lise remembered how when she had opened the
box, she had had to fight hard to find a simple smile to put upon
her face. Now, four days later, she was still searching for the
easy smile. She kept pushing back the urge to take the ring and
slip it back into its gray velvet box.

Lise kept telling herself that she loved
Brad. Through practice, she had gotten herself to the point where
she didn’t question that a dozen times a day. But marriage wasn’t
love. It was commitment, and commitment was something different.
Commitment meant that you kept looking even when you knew what you
would see. You kept listening even when you knew what you would
hear. Could she stay alert in marriage? Her mother had, but could
she? Would she? A marriage had habits and patterns and customs, and
she could not understand how habit could not be stultifying. She
thought that at some point marriage must feel like sitting in a
well-worn seat in an over heated room, either fidgeting or drifting
off into bored sleep.

After finishing her watering Lise twisted the
hose into a rubber lariat. She opened the passenger side door and
climbed in backwards so that she could straighten up the
baggage.

Married. At twenty six. Too young. Too
unknown. Too frightening. Too focused. Too boring. Too…

“Hi. I’m driving?”

“Yeah. Sure. What’d Adanan want?”

Brad shrugged in dismissal.

The usual. Attention. Reverence. Do you think
when I get out of here that I’m going to be like him, like so many
of them? Blind with pride, but, still, so hungry. Just a needy
little boy in a big herring bone jacket.”

“No.”

“Thanks.”

“Denim, probably.”

“Lise,” Brad protested.

“Kidding.”

“Great.”

They were on the highway before they spoke
again.

“Brad?”

“Professor to you, babe.”

““Why do you want to marry me?”

Brad’s turned his head to show Lise the
seriousness with which he was thinking.

“Many reason, the biggest of which is legal
sex. It’s such a foreign concept. It’s so hard to imagine that I
think I just have to experience it.”

“No, really. Why?”

“I love you.”

“You can love me without marrying me.”

Brad took his eyes from the road to look at
Lise.

“Feeling caged? Trapped?”

“No.”

“You are. You will. I know that.”

“Why? I love you. Why should I feel
trapped?”

“You know why, Lise. No trust.”

“Fill me in, Professor.”

“You sure you want to hear this? I don’t want
to be the one who ruins the first time we’ve had off in
months.”

Lise considered whether she did want to hear
what Brad might say. She had his ring on her finger. In less than
two hours, they might be talking about their marriage to her family
before she was sure that she wanted to get married. She had to
hear.

“Shoot.”

“Okay, but if I end up sleeping in that tent
alone or walking the beach with Lot’s wife, I’m gonna have a
hissy.”

“I’ll be okay, Brad. Tell me what you think.
That’s what we do best, right? What’s your theory?”

“My theory is that you’re a very nice person.
Just like your folks. But, you’re not a pushover. There’s a
toughness inside. You’re more like your mom than your dad. You want
to please people, but you want your own way.”

“What’s that got to do with trust?”

“Hang on. I’m building a theory. This is the
intro. The lit review. A little latitude, please.”

Brad looked at the speedometer before
continuing.

“You also want to do the right thing. Be
good. So, there’re three things that you want to be good, to be
true to yourself, or to your wants, and to be pleasing to others.
How often are those three things going to line up? Not that often.
Well, then, what’s the decision making rule when two or more of
those goals are in conflict? I don’t think you’ve established a
clear rule about that just yet. So, I come along. You like me. One
criterion is satisfied. Your family, except the gimlet eyed Dilly,
approves after they get past a few of my anomalies. Number two
lines up. We have an honest, interesting healthful time. We have
what a budding relationship is supposed to have. All three criteria
light up green. Okay, so far?”

Lise nodded.

“We go along. We’re having a pretty good time
in the middle of a situation that most people would consider a bad
time poverty, stress, few rewards. Supposedly, there are few things
more destructive of a relationship than a doctoral program. We’re
involved in two, yet, somehow, we’re paragons of grace under
pressure. Things go well. You get nervous. You begin to worry about
what happens if things continue to go well, or even better. The
longer you like me, the worse, the uglier, it will be when you
stop. And, you’re sure you’ll stop. You know that. You’re very
sure. It’s always happened that way before. Here’s where the trust
comes in. You don’t trust me to stay interesting and, maybe worse,
you don’t trust yourself to stay interested. It’s ironic. You’re
afraid things will get static, and you have to have things alive
and always growing and changing, but at the same time you’re
assuming that you won’t change, that what has always happened with
you has to happen again. You’re afraid you’re going to use me up,
absorb all my juices, make me a husk. A shell too light and too
empty to hold you. Or hold your attention.”

As the words slowly tumbled from the mouth of
a face which was staring far down the road, Lise felt her heartbeat
jump and twitch like the wings of a bird caught by a cat. She
squinted her eyes and imagined the few cars ahead on the hot gray
road as molecules wandering across the field of vision of a
microscope. Interesting.

She felt Brad’s fingers slide down the
shallow valleys between her own. She started to pull her hand
away.

“Ssshhh. Easy.”

She turned her hand over and they held hands.
Finally, his fingers moved again. She looked down and watched as
his fingers wrapped themselves around the ring.

“Unbetroth me.”

She kept her hand still as he worked the ring
free.

“I can wait. You’re just too skittish. The
trust will come. You think a moment’s inattention means more than
that. You’re afraid it presages a long, slow dying. That’s your
theory. Entropy. I don’t think that way. I think it only means
you’ve turned your head. You’ll turn it back. That’s my
theory.”

“I’m not that sure.”

“I know you’re not, Lise. It’s one of the
things I love about you. Filled with questions. Like a good
scientist. It’s why you are a good scientist. But this ain’t
science. In science, you jig the bug and see what it does.”

Brad reached back across the seat for Lise’s
hand. He brought her hand toward him. He stuck two of her fingers
in his mouth and slowly licked them.

“In life, the bug jigs back. I think that’s
what makes life more interesting than science.”

“It’s an engaging theory, Professor.”

Lise held out her ring finger, now wet,
toward Brad.

* * *

“A uniform? Oh, you dog. Would I were a
woman. Look at you. How come you’re even here? Aren’t you supposed
to be en famille aujourd’hui?” Raoul brushed something from Peter’s
shoulder than only he could see.