Digging Out (29 page)

“Not too far away.”

“Do you know lots of actors, like?”

“Not personally.”

“Have you ever run into Paul Newman? He’s my favorite. Is he still married to Joanne Woodward?”

“I think so.”

“I love their salad dressing, don’t you? They make pickles now and ketchup. And chocolate. I saw these small square bites wrapped up with a photo of Paul and that beautiful young woman.”

“I think she’s his daughter,” another woman says.

“I don’t know that for sure,” the first one answers.

“Is the life easier there, being warm and sunny all the time? Is that why you left here?”

Before I can answer, tell them in fact that the Newmans live in Connecticut, Sophie adds, “It’s Malibu I’d like to go to. I had a friend who told me there’s a stretch of beach where all the houses are as big as Caerphilly Castle, with at least five bathrooms in each one. I hear the houses sit right up on the sand next to the ocean and there’s nothing but one star living smack-dab next to another. Barbra Streisand and John Travolta. People like that.”

“Where do you live, Alys?” Enid asks.

“Santa Monica.”

“Is that close to Malibu?”

“Pretty close,” I say, still trying to be polite despite the fact that both Enid and particularly Sophie seem to have it in for me.

“So why did you leave Aberfan?” Sophie asks challengingly. “That is, if you don’t mind my asking?”

I actually do mind, so I say, “I needed to get away.”

I glance up and catch Evan’s eye. He’s across the crowd and deep in conversation with Oscar and another man.

“I heard you left because you were pregnant,” Sophie says.

Nobody else seems to have heard. I’m sure I turn beet red, but I look straight at her and ask innocently, “Where did you hear that?”

“I don’t know—around,” she says offhandedly, as if everyone knew.

I feel like she has just stuck her tongue out at me again.

“Another drink, anyone?” one of the men asks.

Several of the men have gathered around Evan. They whisper and laugh like small boys, and I sense they are talking about me. I am afraid that, like Sophie, they are saying terrible things. But Oscar
looks over at me kindly, then clears his throat. It seems to be Evan they are on about because he puts his hands in his trouser pockets and tilts his head, looking down as if he’s embarrassed. Almost immediately the men raise their voices and begin to sing. At first the words are unfamiliar; I only hear their deep, clear tones and see how the music gathers them into themselves, their arms around each other.

Evan finally joins in, entwined, his friends on either side, and I hear “Love Changes Everything.” Evan looks straight at me as he sings and I blush. Everyone in the pub joins in, including Sophie Greenway, singing straight to me.

By now the pub is full; there is hardly room to stand. At the end of the song, everyone applauds. Almost immediately they begin another, and the attention is off Evan. He edges his way through the group toward me.

I hope he is ready to leave. The smoke is starting to get to me. He holds my gaze until he is close up.

“Are you ready to go?”

As we say our good-byes, I glance at Sophie and Enid over his shoulder, then follow Evan toward the door.

All at once we are out in the clean, open air. It is cooler and we pull closer to each other. The feel of his shoulder against mine and his voice go straight through me.

“Are you cold?” he asks, which saves me from having to comment on Sophie or Enid. He takes his cardigan off and wraps it tightly around me. We walk back up the hill in silence to Mam and Da’s, where we’ve both parked our cars.

There is an energy between us. Crackling. I am nervous. When we get to the cars I start to walk toward mine.

“Why don’t you leave yours here?” he asks. “Drive with me.”

I stop. Why not? I can easily walk up here tomorrow morning. I’ll be doing that anyway. But I don’t like the idea of not having a way out if I need one. Not being able to leave Evan’s house if something unforeseen should arise.

“No, I’ll drive it down now.”

“That seems rather silly, doesn’t it?” His tone immediately changes the charged atmosphere.

“I’d just rather have it near,” I say stubbornly.

“All right, have it your way as usual, Alys.” And he gets into his
car and slams the door. I follow him in my car down the hill and around until we are at the bottom of the drive. He gets out to open the gate. I follow him up his dirt road and park next to him. He comes over to open my door. Somehow I know he will apologize, and he does.

“Sorry, Alys. I didn’t mean to jump all over you.”

“It’s okay.”

“Come on, then. Let’s have a nightcap before you try out my guest room.”

Once we are inside, Evan starts a fire. Then he pours out two glasses of red wine, handing me one and pointing to a comfortable overstuffed chair near the fire. We haven’t said a word, as if neither of us is willing to chance saying anything else that might upset the other. I sit. He sits. He raises his glass to me; I acknowledge him, raising mine.

“So,” he starts.

I look at him, a half smile.

“How are you doing now, on your third day? More time with your mam and da, seeing the Joneses—is it what you expected?”

My eyes travel around the room. How does it feel being back, seeing Beryl, seeing my parents, Hallie’s parents, being here now with Evan?

“You know,” I start, “it’s oddly comforting. All of it.”

“Really. I would have expected you to say it was difficult. Or that you’ll be glad to go back to the States.”

“As I said, Evan, in all these years I haven’t spent a lot of time going over things. It was too painful. But the one thing that has come up for me again and again is your face: your delicious smile, the way it immediately used to comfort me. We have both suffered—not just you. You act like you are the only one of us that felt anything. It’s beginning to make me feel nuts. You don’t say what you mean. You just kind of bash me. What’s that kind of behavior called, passive-aggressive?”

“Sorry, Alys.”

“No, you’re not. You’re actually not sorry, Evan. Why do you keep saying you are?”

“Because I’m trying to be sorry. I’m trying, but when I look at you I remember how deeply I loved you, how the thought of you ever
leaving me was so terrible’ and then you did. I remember how much you hurt me, how it about killed me. And now here you are, in front of me as if none of it ever happened.”

I sigh. I don’t know how to deal with this. Of course a part of me realizes it’s not really just anger. It is his sadness, his disappointment. I understand that. But it’s relentless, the weight of his inability to forgive me.

“Okay, so if you felt so much, why didn’t you come after me?” I ask quietly.

There is a long silence. The fire is roaring with gunshotlike cracks.

“I wanted to. Every day for weeks, and then months. By the time I’d screwed my courage to the wall, you’d already gotten together with Marc.”

“But that was more than a year after I got there!”

“I know.” He looks into his wineglass, draining it of every drop. “I counted every minute, every hour and every day of it. I felt so betrayed by you, it sucked the life out of me, it made me immobile.”

We are back to where we started in this conversation. Stuck. It has been a very long time since I have let myself feel the depth of my own sadness about that long-ago time. And about Evan. Strangely, in this long moment between us, I do not feel the excruciating loneliness that I remember. When I look up, Evan is staring at me.

“It was a hard time,” he says.

“For both of us,” I say.

He nods. “For both of us.”

He shows me the guest room, which is up a narrow stone-walled spiral staircase and has fire engine red walls. The windows are small. He tells me one looks out over the field behind the house, and the other looks out into the garden. Evan lifts my suitcase up onto a stand near the washbasin. He turns on a light near the full-size brass bed, illuminating a beautiful patchwork quilt.

“How in the world did you ever get the bed up here?” I ask.

“I didn’t. The farmer’s wife left it for me. It’s one of the permanent fixtures in my life here.”

“I guess so.” I laugh.

Evan leaves me to unpack and get comfortable. I note that the ice has been broken. There is definitely less tension in the air.

Back in front of the fire, watching the embers, talking a little about our careers, he tells me how wonderful it has been, being a part of so many children’s lives, watching the population of children regenerated, living through it all. He must be revered by all the parents. I tell him how grateful I’ve been to Hannah’s teacher, who has been so supportive and understanding through the past difficult year. He asks me about my own career, and I embarrassedly admit that I haven’t been able to write much of anything in the last year, even though I have a manuscript due to my editor.

Before we go off to our separate quarters, we agree to have dinner together tomorrow night, here.

“I’m home from school early tomorrow. No meetings in the afternoon for a change. You have yourself a full day with your parents. I’ll pop that little leg of lamb you brought into the oven. We’ll eat about eight?”

“That sounds so nice.”

“Good,” Evan says.

“Thanks for letting me stay here,” I say.

“Not a problem. I hope you sleep well. It’s a great sleeping room, the red room. I’ve always slept like a log in it.”

“I’m exhausted.”

T
he next morning, I am up early. Unlike a Colorado morning, the flat, gray light of a Welsh morning does not stream through the window. Rather, it presents itself—it just is, somehow.

I put on my shorts, jogging bra, a T-shirt and sneakers. The house is quiet. I can see Evan’s car from the window so I tiptoe down the stone stairs—hoping not to wake him—-through the library, through the mudroom and outside. I walk up behind the field to the right until I am along the ridge of the hill. In the distance there is a bit of sun through the dark clouds.

I notice that my senses are heightened. I take in a deep breath and do a few sun salutations, bending low and reaching high, and then I start a slow jog up along the ridge path. It is a splendid morning, brisk, and the low fog sits on the hills like a soft coverlet. The view is altogether so familiar, and yet it is as if I am seeing it for the very first time. In the distance there are many more single cottages tucked in, smoke curling out of their chimneys.

What would I have been like had I stayed? Would Evan and I have married? Would we have more children? I pick up my pace and then for the next thirty minutes I am in my routine, thinking about nothing but the soft, cool air, my feet hitting the ground, a loose jaw, and my breathing. Before I know it I am back at the bottom of Evan’s drive. I can see his car has gone. I am relieved. Mostly since Marc’s death, I’ve gotten used to quiet mornings. Mornings without much talk. Hannah is definitely not a morning person, nor am I.

And the cottage is all mine. There is a fire going, and Evan has left me a note on the breakfast table under a vase of orange poppies:

Walking around his house, touching his belongings, looking at the life he has made for himself makes me feel as if he is still in my presence.

I fix myself some coffee and berries and call Dafydd, leaving a message saying I miss him and am having a fine time. I don’t tell him I am so glad I came by myself or how wonderful these few days away from responsibility and parenting are beginning to feel. I also don’t tell him I have checked out of the Angel Hotel and am now staying at his father’s house. But I do say that I hope he has been in touch with Hannah, that I am longing for news of both of them, and that I will try him back later.

It’s too early to visit Mam and Da, so I drive into Merythr to find something typically Welsh for Dafydd and Hannah. It has bloomed into a gray summer morning, the chill just under the warmth of it.

I pass an older woman who is wearing a blue raincoat with a plaid scarf tied around her head; gray hair escapes out the sides of the scarf and in the front. The size and shape of her remind me of Gram. As she passes, I see the canvas bag on her shoulder is full of vegetables and a loaf of bread. I touch the shilling hanging from the silver chain around my neck and long for my grandmother. I turn and watch her back as she disappears into the crowd.