Acts of Love (39 page)

I know that! she thought angrily. But I won't go to New York or London, so what good does it do to . . .

There's Australia.

She stood up sharply, as if listening. Australia. I never thought of that.

She cleared her breakfast dishes, her mind racing. She and Constance had both been to Sydney; audiences had loved them there. And what could be farther away from the places where she was known?

But . . . so far away. With nothing and no one to turn to if . . .

But wasn't that what she wanted? Nothing and no one familiar. A new place, to begin again. She remembered the nurse who had been so good to her when she was in the hospital, a young woman from Sydney who had written the letters she had dictated to Constance. A lovely young woman, warm and comforting, unpretentious, friendly.
Maybe they're all like that. Constance and I did think everyone was so kind, when we were there. Maybe they'll make me feel at home and give me a chance to make my way.

Sydney. A vibrant city, English-speaking, with a famous opera house, a symphony, and lots of theaters. And Melbourne, with its theaters, close by. Mostly new theaters with good equipment; productions that were polished, if not as sophisticated as those in New York and London; enthusiastic audiences.

And so far away, she thought again. As far from New York as one could go without beginning to circle the globe back again.

If I did go there  . . . if I really did  . . . I could work for the Sydney Theater Company. Or, if they don't want me, I could find a producer and we could rent a theater together. We could do two plays a season, or three, as many as we could handle. I'd be in the theater again, not on stage, but part of it; I'd be where I belong.

She went to her studio. Luke had restored the bed to a couch and had left everything exactly as he had found it. It was as if he had never been there. Jessica sat at one of the easels, gazing blankly at an unfinished painting. Without thinking, she reached for a brush and a tube of paint, and as she did so, she felt the rush of comfort that always came when she was working and settled in the closeness of her studio.

If I left, I'd be risking all this. Why would I do that?

Because, it seemed, she might not have that rush of comfort forever. Already it was diminished by the memory of the world Luke had brought her, and by the things he had said to her.

Sydney, she thought again as she painted. I could do it. I have the money to start again, and even back my own plays for a while, if I had to. I could do it.

Alone?

Yes, just as I've been for the past years. I know how to do that.

Her heart sank.
I don't want to be alone. I want to be with Luke.

But she could not do that Perhaps someday, after she'd become a successful director, with her own prestige and influence, she could go to him. . . .

Nonsense. He won't wait that long, and why should he? He has his own life to make. I can't think about that.

Think about making a new life instead. Think about making my own way, my own place, my own name. Not sitting on the sidelines letting the world get away from me, but part of it, part of the theater. Luke thought love was enough, but it isn't. I have to have my own value, my own self. That's what I have to create. With no connections to the past. And no connection with Luke.

And if it doesn't work out, I can always come back here.

Of course it will work out. I haven't been gone that long; I remember everything. I can do this. I know I can. Luke is right: I can do anything if I really want to.

At the end of the day she left her studio and went into the living room. She had forgotten to turn up the heat when she left and the rooms were chilly and forlorn, as if she had already gone away. She looked around, at the familiar rooms that had sheltered her for so long, and felt a moment of pure terror at the thought of leaving them. She waited for it to pass, but it did not. It settled within her, like a small knot at the base of her stomach.
What am I thinking of? I can't go out there, facing people, trying to . . .

Luke thought I could. Constance thought I could.

If they really believe that, I should, too.

The terror was cold and heavy within her.
Well, I'll just have to live with it . . . for a while.

She walked through her rooms and back to the greenhouse, and absently began picking yellowed leaves from a geranium plant.
Robert can find someone to rent the house, or at least to take care of it. And the horses, too.

There were no more reasons not to go. After dinner, she made a fire and sat before it, as if warming herself before going out into the cold. The wind had come up and a branch scraped the window, causing the dog to bark. Jessica patted the couch and she jumped up, nestling beside her, her nose nudging for attention. Jessica stroked her sleek back and head.
I'm leaving everything else behind. But I'm taking Hope with me.

Once again she looked out at water, but this time from far above, as if her white stucco cottage with orange-tile roof was floating through the pale blue sky above Sydney Harbor, its great glass windows framing the busy scene below. It was like a theater, Jessica thought, sitting in her living room and watching sailboats and ferries, catamarans and water taxis, yachts, freighters and ocean-going liners crisscross the harbor, miraculously avoiding collisions that seemed inevitable until the very last minute. And it was the closest to the theater she had come in the ten days she had been in Sydney.

She had arrived at the end of November. It had taken six weeks to finish her illustrations and arrange with Robert to have her horses and her house cared for. When she was almost ready to leave, she wrote to three producers whom she had met years before in Sydney, asking to see them. All three replied with flattering letters urging her to call as soon as she arrived. But from the moment she stepped off the plane, Sydney overwhelmed her.

It had been six years since she had been in a city. All those years, when she had been living so quietly in Arizona and then on Lopez, she had forgotten what a city sounded and felt like. Sydney, with its three million people and driving energy, seemed huge, deafening and frantic, as foreign as if she had landed on another planet.

The city sprawled outward from the harbor, old buildings and new piled together like blocks that children had tumbled out of a toy chest The streets climbed up from the water on long hills lined with jacaranda and fig trees. Traffic was dense, fast and ruthless: a never-ending stream of cars and trucks that, to an American, seemed to careen toward disaster, since they drove on the left, as in England. The sidewalks were jammed with uniformed schoolchildren, tourists, business people and shoppers, all instinctively dodging each other, then clustering patiently at red lights even when no cars were coming from either direction. Often Jessica was jostled on street corners when she did not move with the crowd. Each time, she received a profuse apology, but she thought she was the one who should be apologizing, for being slow and stupid, for not fitting easily into city life—she who had fully mastered New York for so many years without giving its tumult a conscious thought.

But she had repressed all memories of New York, until now, when sights and sensations and the din of traffic brought it all back, and made her shrink from calling the producers to whom she had written. What am I doing here? she thought. I don't belong here. What did I think I could do here? I ought to go back where I belong, where I know what I can do.

But she did not go back. Instead, she began to look and listen, and soon found things that gave her pleasure. First was language, because language had been her whole life. She liked the Australian accent: a smooth version of Cockney, the words like notes sliding up and down the scale, as jaunty and cheerful as the people themselves. And she liked the names of places: sounds and syllables that rolled on her tongue like poetry or music. “Kirribilli,” she would say. “Woollahra. Wooloomooloo. Taronga. Parramatta.” They made her smile even when she did not feel like smiling.

Then she began to explore Sydney, at first tentatively, then more determinedly. She went again and again to the harbor, an enormous natural bay bisected by the great arc of the Harbor Bridge, with fingers of land jutting out all around its periphery to form coves, harbors, inlets and dozens of small beaches. From Circular Quay, she took a ferry crowded with tourists and a tour guide who gave a running commentary as they made a circuit of the harbor, complete with anecdotes about Sydney's history and the people, including American film stars, who owned the houses and apartments that climbed up the hills from the water's edge. She took other ferries to the suburbs close to the center of the city, thinking about a place to live. One day she took a ferry to the Taronga Zoo, built on a steep hill, where she navigated the paved roads in a small motorized cart for disabled visitors and spent hours gazing at koalas and kangaroos, emus and wombats, and hundreds of other animals and brilliantly colored birds never seen in America.

In another motorized cart she drove along paths in Sydney's vast Royal Botanic Garden, through tropical forests, rose gardens, herb gardens and stretches of lawn dotted with flowering bushes and enormous eucalyptus, palms, and Moreton Bay and Jackson Bay fig trees with trunks of thick cords braided together and branches stretching straight outward like welcoming arms.

To get around the rest of the city, she took taxis, telling herself she was interested in everything. But she was lonely and it was difficult to concentrate.

She was always alone. People looked at her with sympathy and often made way for her as she limped onto a ferry or across a crowded street, but she spoke to no one except waiters in the restaurants where she ate. I'll meet people when I'm in the theater, she thought. It will happen very quickly. But until then she missed her house, and her garden with its familiar view; she missed her horses and the farmers waving as she rode past; she missed her occasional conversations with Robert, the sound of the waves as she sat on her terrace, the moon through her bedroom windows. She missed Luke.

She missed him in quick flashes that brought back a sentence, a phrase, a smile, and then vanished, leaving her aching inside. She missed the sound of his footsteps in the house, the quiet way he worked beside her in the kitchen, the warmth of his body in her bed. She missed the feel of him. At any moment, when she relaxed her guard, she felt his arms around her and his lips on hers, she felt him inside her as she drew him deeper and heard his sigh of pleasure, she saw his smile and the long, absorbed look in his eyes when they sat by candlelight talking, talking, talking . . . oh, how much they had had to talk about!

He had written to her, brief lighthearted letters that arrived every few days while she was finishing her work on Lopez.

Martin has found a new cookbook and has decided to try every recipe, first page to last. My chances of getting into the kitchen have dwindled to nothing. But I'm not sure I want to. I prowled around it the day I got back and it struck me that it was unfinished: it desperately needed something to make it complete. And of course that was you, and the two of us, side by side, doing mundane tasks that seemed magical because we were together.

I saw your publisher at a dinner party the other night. I may have sung your praises too vociferously, because one of the guests asked me if I'd become an agent in my spare time. Only for extraordinary people, I said.

Tonight I sat in my bedroom, very late, holding the blanket I told you about, ships and sailboats and links to my parents. It occurred to me that I took nothing from Lopez that was a memento of my week there. I wish I had. That is a sentimental thought that would amaze many people who think they know me.

I've decided to cut out and frame the illustrations from your books that I like the best. There's a wall in my bedroom that's perfect for them, catching the sunlight.

New York is like a fabulous circus after the farms and forests of Lopez; I stayed home tonight to catch my breath. One has to get acclimatized to all the highjinks in order to survive. After dinner I pulled out my plays, thinking about your wonderfully perceptive criticism. I'm about to rewrite whole scenes. I can hear your voice reading the dialogue, with the fire sputtering and crackling in the background, and Hope watching over us, and I know that the magic we found was not just in the kitchen. I'll be working on the plays for some time, I think; I'm grateful for the time you gave to them.

Grateful, Jessica thought. Grateful. I did it because I love you.

She had answered him twice, her letters cooler than his, and then she had left Lopez without telling him where she was going.
It can't drag on; it's finished. It's the past and this is now, and I'm starting over again.

And so she took ferries and taxis and kept moving, learning as much about her new city as quickly as she could. It was a hodgepodge, seemingly without rhyme or reason. There were frame buildings with lacy steel balconies that seemed transplanted from New Orleans; there was a stretch of George Street raucous with discount hawkers shouting their prices into microphones, Castlereagh with garish discount stores close to European designer boutiques, and William Street, where she saw her first Boomerang School. She thought there was no center to the city, but then her taxi came to a stretch of high rises near the harbor, where the crowds were more dense and parks and restaurants lined the streets, fountains played, the hospital stretched a full block—a sprawling pile of turreted and columned red stone straight out of the nineteenth century—and office buildings, shops and hotels clustered tightly, as if creating their own private city.

Just a few blocks farther were neighborhoods, called suburbs, crowded with mansions on private beaches or clinging to the hills above, with apartment buildings scattered among them. Farther inland stretched street after street of smaller homes and cottages dwarfed by the trees around them, each with its own garden. Sydney in November was a city of flowers.