Random Hearts (24 page)

That same day Vivien put her house up for sale. They also
discontinued their search for Orson's and Lily's apartment.

The agents had brought with them the cold wind of reality,
however absurd the premise. It did cross her mind that the possibility existed
for criminal accusation, but that had not been the main point. Love or hate.
Take your pick. It had put the matter between them in perspective.

There was no point in searching for the apartment. Ridicule
had, in a way, destroyed the premise. It had been an excuse, a dependency. It
would take forever, the agents had said, which was the unspoken reason for the
search.

What they needed now, she decided, was to escape their
memory completely, destroy the influence of their past lives, obliterate them
once and for all.

From the beginning, from the very moment that her conscious
mind grasped the totality of her involvement with Edward, she had distrusted
it. Perhaps it was her New England upbringing which glorified self-discipline,
revered reticence. The pleasure, the ecstasy, the sheer joy of it was undeniable,
and she had surrendered to it briefly. But hadn't she surrendered herself once
before? Never again she had vowed. Never never never. People had a tendency to
repeat mistakes, and the emotions were an unreliable barometer, she told
herself. The FBI agents had made that clear as well. They had questioned the
speed of her involvement, something which she had asked herself. Entanglement
was the word the agents used. Could it really happen so swiftly? Hate had
brought them together, not the other. Love could not possibly grow out of hate!
Logic told her that their relationship was merely a common defense against the
fear of inadequacy. It had set off some bizarre mechanism that had,
temporarily, she was certain, unleashed the floodgates of sexual passion.

Whatever the reason, she could not deny the feeling, the
communication of the senses. In his presence, in his arms, she had felt alive
with a new sense of herself. She was not faceless, not the lump of unfeeling
flesh she had been with Orson. Again Orson, resurfacing in her mind, mocked her
as always. Still, she had never been so aware, so conscious of her body and of
the full range of her senses. Her intellect, too, had never seemed sharper,
never more exploring. Even her thoughts were eloquent, her explanations to
herself, articulate. If questions and mysteries persisted, they would be
resolved through tough and honest reasoning and logical action. In the end,
nothing must stand in the way of her complete independence.

She had also agreed with the agents about the house. It
reeked of Orson. It was an illusion to think there was any sanctuary here from
his presence. It was impossible to get his stink out of the walls, the floors,
from the mute and mundane objects. Edward had shown more courage, more resolve,
by dumping everything.

Looking for a quick sale, she deliberately priced the house
low. The brokers she called were quite pleased to take it on. Edward had
already cut most of his lines with the past. It was her turn now to take the
final steps.

She called her parents in Vermont.

"As soon as the house is sold, I'll be going
away," she told her mother.

"Where?"

She ignored the panic in her mother's voice.

"I'm not sure."

As she spoke, Edward stood beside her. They had decided to
go somewhere where all possible reminders of the past could be expunged—maybe a
foreign country or some totally different environment in the States.

"You mean just leave Ben with us for an indefinite
period?"

Leave Ben? But wasn't Ben an inhibitor of her independence?
Why were all these crazy emotions warring inside her? She had no prior
experience with these ancient battles. Her other life was safer, more secure.
Damn Orson, she cried to herself, leaving her stranded like this.

"I'm not sure, Mother. It's just an idea. Besides, all
Orson left in insurance will go to Ben."

"That's only money, dear. Ben is your child."

"And Orson's..." She wanted to say more but
checked herself. How deep was the power of hate, she thought sadly. Had they
destroyed her sense of motherhood as well? Could things between them ever be
the same?

"He asks about you often, Viv," her mother said.

"And I think of him." Her voice caught. She
disliked this new Vivien, but she hated the other one. "I haven't made up
my mind."

"Orson would not approve of this," her mother
said. "He would have expected you to carry on with your
responsibilities."

"Would he?" Her anger felt like molten lead,
over-whelming her.

"Yes, he would," her mother persisted.

"To hell with Orson," she cried.

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that, Vivien."

"Don't pretend, Mother. I'm finished with
pretending."

There was a long silence at the other end of the phone.

Vivien felt the tears well behind her eyes and spill over.
Her shoulders shook with restrained sobs.

"We love you very much, Vivien. That goes for Dad and
Ben."

"I know, Mother." She managed to say it without
conveying her agony. Then she hung up.

When she went upstairs, Edward was waiting for her. He took
her in his arms and kissed her cheeks.

"Salty. You've been crying."

She nodded.

"It will all come out fine," he said.
"You'll see."

Her heart thumped. "Don't you ever say that to
me," she cried angrily. "I will not be patronized."

"I hadn't meant—"

"But you did. You have no special gifts of prophecy.
The next thing you'll say is trust me. I've heard that before."

"So have I."

She wondered if she had overreacted.

"I might have been testy, but I won't apologize."

Yet she did not disengage. Then his caresses soothed her,
and they made love. Sometime in the middle of the night she shook him awake.

"I have to leave this house," she said,
shivering. "I still feel his presence here."

He tightened his embrace. "As long as we're
together," he said.

His response frightened her. To still further comment, she
kissed his lips. No sense raising painful issues just yet, she thought.

In the morning she wrote a note to Dale Martin, telling him
she was considering going away and reiterating her desire to set up the trust
fund. She told him to mail any papers to her present address, as she was
planning to leave a forwarding address.

The next day they visited some of the apartments that they
had seen earlier. They found a small efficiency that did not have a Yale lock
and arranged for the rental of a bed and dresser from a furniture rental firm.
The apartment was on the ground floor of a small building that was surrounded
by mature trees which blocked the light, but it was the only place they could
find where they could move in immediately. She had filled two suitcases and a
cosmetic case, leaving all her other possessions to be sold or carted away when
the new owners arrived. She did not look back when she left the house.
Sentiment for the past, she told herself, was the enemy. She was in transit to
a new life.

"No regrets?" Edward asked when they had
unpacked. They had bought a minimum of dishes and pots and pans from the
hardware store and stocked the refrigerator with basics. They had bought linens
and towels in a nearby department store. They did not order a telephone. And,
of course, they brought with them the little bud vase and filled it with a
fresh new rose. There was nothing from the other life now except their clothes.

They spent every moment together. And although they did not
question their relationship in conversation, as if it were a pact between them,
they both felt the sense of transition. Of impermanence. Neither had the
courage to confront the dread specter of commitment. It was enough to feel, she
decided. Wasn't it?

They had not bought a television set or a radio, no
newspapers or magazines. Sometimes, when the days were bright, they drove along
the Potomac and then walked along the paths of the parkland that lay beside the
George Washington Parkway. Since there was still a chill in the air, the trails
were usually deserted, and they could savor the delight of being totally alone
with each other. They had shrunk the world to their own specifications.

Although the bed they had rented was double sized, they
clung to each other all night, using a minimum of space. And they still made
love as if they were the last ones on earth.

Despite the delicious feeling of euphoria, the sensation of
drifting on calm waters on a sweet sunny day, Vivien did preserve for the
moment some vestiges of practicality. The house would be sold. This would
provide enough money for them to pursue another life, which remained vague and
undefined. Beyond that, she felt no desire for material possessions. Since they
possessed each other, what more could they desire?

There was also the matter of talk between them. She
remembered what he had said: What did you talk about? Between Edward and her,
options of talk, like their existence, were deliberately narrowed. Even when
she described her earlier life, the life before Orson, her childhood and
girlhood, she would measure her words against her memory of old conversations
with Orson. Had she told Orson that? If she was to excise the past, she had to
also excise everything that went before.

Finally, to spare herself the tension of the editing, she
eliminated from her thoughts anything that referred to her past life, her past
self. There was only the now. Only Edward.

"Can you make believe? No. Not make believe. Truly
believe that all life began at the moment of our meeting." So that, in the
end, despite their mutual caveats and prohibitions, the only discussion between
them could be what they felt toward each other. There was only themselves to
contemplate and their now circumscribed world of the present. The past was
irrelevant and the future uncertain.

"When did you first feel you know, this sense of
attraction?" she would ask.

"When I first saw you. And you?"

"It was later, at the coffee shop I felt it."

"Did it come as a bolt from the blue? A flash of
light? Some explosive cosmic force taking possession of you? Something like
that?"

They would be naked, clinging to each other. The weather
had hit a rainy spell, and they rarely went out, except when it was necessary
to buy food. Outside, the rain splattered against the windowpane. Days and
nights merged. Conversations, like a moon-pulled tide, ebbed and flowed without
any sense of time passing. Always the same theme surfaced, disappeared,
resurfaced, like bobbing flotsam. Life lost all purpose other than themselves,
knowing themselves, understanding how this had happened.

"Yes, something like that," She touched his cleft
with her fingers, tracing a line down his neck.

"Was it something tangible? Physical only? Did you
feel a yearning, an urgent need?"

"Yes, of course."

"Something beyond the flesh? Beyond biology? Like you
had lost a piece of yourself and suddenly found it? Something like that?"

"Yes, something like that."

"Can you be sure? Try to say it. I want to hear it in
your words."

He would become inert, thoughtful. She studied him
minutely: where his flesh creased when he smiled; the direction in which his
chest hair curled, like a windblown wheat field; his flesh, alternately rough
and smooth; the secret places of his manhood; the way his skin cooled and
popped into goose bumps. And the sounds taking place within him, the pumping,
whooshing, gnawing sound of his physiological life, the body alive. But his
thoughts were mysteries to be plumbed, only hinted at by words, expressions,
movements, all guarded and reflexive.

"Like...?" She would watch him struggling,
journeying in his mind. Listen, she begged herself. Make no judgments. Do not
commit.

"Like ... punching through the clouds, finding blue
sky."

Not that. Beside him, she would tense up, stiffen. A plane!
He had described an airplane, which meant that he had not completely exorcised
her, Lily, that she was still alive inside him. And since the image was clear
to her as well, Orson, too, remained.

"No," he would correct, perhaps understanding the
image. It was awesome, being beside him, listening, touching, but not truly
knowing the inside of his thoughts.

"Say it another way." She hungered for
explanations.

"Like a pile of dry tinder, something hidden and
unseen, a mysterious life force, suddenly becoming hot, bursting into flame,
lighting up a totally interior world that we didn't know existed. All we knew
was what we could sense, the source of the flame."

"Where did it come from?"

"From inside us."

"And you feel it now? This heat? This power?"

"Yes."

"And will it burn forever? Always?"

"Yes."

What she yearned for was some part of herself to detach,
fly out of her being, hover over the room like a beam of light, probing his
thoughts, then hers, evaluating, like some all-seeing, all-encompassing
computer that could calculate truth and feelings and track its eternal
validity, test and compute the furthest range of its power. She wanted proof,
absolute surety.

When they kissed, she imagined that, with some magic
special maneuver, he could suck her inside him, absorb her into his
bloodstream, into his mind. But when her eyes opened, she was, of course, still
outside him. And when he entered her in other ways, she willed herself to open,
not just her body, everything! To draw him into her, absorb him inside her.
Wasn't it the only way she could always be certain of him, to foreclose on any
future betrayal? Only then, with him absorbed into her, could she be certain of
his permanence.

She had resisted it from the beginning, from the moment
that her brain required a description of what she felt. Love? To declare it,
even secretly to herself, meant a further diminishment of its currency. It was
clichéd, overused, abused by countless lies and seductions. It had lost all
value, all meaning. What she dreaded most was that he would send it first out
of the silence.