Retreat to Love (24 page)

Most of the time, we were somehow past the point of talking about work. Once in a while, we’d get on the subject, in more than a general ‘so how’s it going?’ kind of way. Wren pointed out, one night in my cabin, that Theo no longer talked divine inspiration. She was so perceptive it scared me. At least she was no longer pissed at Caleb and me. The time we’d been in Houston had probably helped—because she had some distance, or because she felt sorry for me, or because she saw a depth proving the relationship was more than a physical thing, I don’t know. I didn’t want to know, I just wanted to put it all behind us.

Caleb had basically moved into ValeSong, although he left most of his camera equipment at LakeFire, and fiddled around there a few hours a day. Developing, manipulating images, whatever. He and Lizzy and I had carted his small sofa over to ValeSong, so there was comfortable seating for five in my den. We had to shuffle around to get to the coffee maker and fridge, but it worked. Theo found out about my stash of beer and came by more often if the front porch light was on. Zach emailed a thumbs-up icon when I asked him and Rebecca to come by over the weekend with more booze and to hang out.

Not so much when Caleb was around—he tended to see it coming and distract me, I think—but on those mornings when he slipped out of bed to shoot the dawn light, I’d wake up with wet eyes from sad Gran dreams. I kept wanting but not wanting to pack up her fabric scraps and use or not use them in
Patchy Men
or
Tea Time Mosaics
, which occupied me when I needed a break from my men. Once or twice, Lizzy brought up the Irish O’Connors, but I didn’t let her get into it, and she let up.

I felt like myself, but a sketch in pastel rather than an oil.

On Friday, without quite realizing how I’d gotten there, I finished
Nine Patchy Men
. I took a quick jog down to the road and back in along a side path to the creek, went straight to the shower, and came out with the towel still turbaned in my hair to take a look.

The first thing you noticed was the standard-issue masculinity of the army blanket against the incongruously bright patches. I had abandoned the more traditional nine-patch form in order to feature the blanket, and had concentrated on providing as much detail in as small a space as possible for the individual men. I wanted it to invite close inspection, for each patch to be it’s own presentation of ‘patchiness’ rather than going for a cumulative effect. Wren had pointed out it would be more like a series of vignettes that way, rather than an overwhelming bash against the male gender. I couldn’t even remember what she’d said; it was her usual intuitive way of drawing the ideas from my own vision rather than imposing her thoughts on my art.

So I headed to Wren’s cabin to ask her to come and judge me. It started to drizzle as I walked, so I didn’t see her clearly when she asked me in. Once I’d brushed the hair off my forehead and dried my eyes on the belly of my shirt, I noticed her own damp cheeks.

“Hon, what’s up? Are you okay?”

She nodded, not in the least convincing, and sat down. I followed.

“So what’s up then? You’re not sick, are you?”

The breath she drew sucked half the air out of the room, but it didn’t lighten her mood. “May as well be.”

“Why?” Nothing. “Wren, why? What’s wrong?” I sat back and looked at her. Beneath the rims, her eyes were smudged with black, and she was gnawing at a fingernail edged in orange ceramic glazes—which surely wasn’t healthy snacking material. “Is it work?”

She rolled her eyes so dramatically I could hear the snide thoughts.

“Well, what about work, then?” I bit my snippy tongue. Impatience wasn’t going to help either of us.

She stood abruptly and said, “Come on,” without looking to see if I was going to trail after her into her studio. Though, naturally, I was.

With an upward jerk of her chin, she invited me to inspect the orange house. It was small, half of a one-bedroom duplex she’d left open at the adjoining wall, dollhouse-style. There wasn’t much furniture: a brown-orange table and chair, a sunflower-gold bedspread over a futon on the floor, a tangerine carpet.

She had glazed it in preparation for firing, and then gone back to reshape the front door area and the sitting room. There were still raw clay edges and a distinct lack of detail around the front stoop.

“Well?”

I shrugged my left shoulder. “I like the open effect, that’s cool. Like you’re cutting yourself off from the world around you.” The duplex was her current home, the place she was now forced to leave.

“And the door?”

“Well, I guess, I just don’t know what you’re doing there.”

“Exactly,” she muttered, bitter. “I know what I’m trying to do there, but I’m not doing it. I’m just creating a fucking huge mess.”

“Wren.”

“Don’t patronize me, Ash! I know a fucking huge mess when I see one. And this is one.”

“But, Mother God, you can fix it, right? I mean, maybe not this one, but you can use it as a template and do the next one the way you want,” I paused to see if she was gonna listen, when she slammed her left fist down on the house, crumbling it and splatter-staining us both in the process. “Wren—hey!”

Lauren was glaring from within a furrowed brow, and not speaking to me so much as grousing at the air around me. “Supposed to be the happy one. Supposed to look like a beautiful sunset, a sunset and sunrise rolled into one, a new beginning and a place of rest. Supposed to be vibrant and fill you with a longing to come in, sit down, get to know this place. Supposed to put the others to shame but infuse them with power at the same time. Instead it’s a big, fucking, damn mess!” And she flattened what was left of the roof with the heels of both hands.

“Wren, sweetie, come on. A lot of that was in there. It just, you just need to take another stab at it.”

“Shut up, Ash. Just shut up, okay?”

“Fine. All right. Look, I’ll just leave.”

“What’d you even come here for, anyway?”

Well, that was a trap door to a whole snake pit of negativity if ever I saw one. I shook my head. “Just was taking a break, wanted to say hi.”

“Sweet of you.” She couldn’t have meant it less.

“I was going to see if you wanted to take a walk,” a half-truth. “But then it started to rain.”

“So you probably guessed, my answer is no, I don’t want to go on a fucking walk. Can you just leave now?”

“Yeah, I can.” Shit, I should be more gracious. She was obviously beyond frustrated. “Wren, really, you’ll get it. Come on by if you want to talk or get away from here. But you’ll get it.” I leaned toward her to hug her shoulder but she moved away, so I caught myself by turning towards the door. When I got home, I took down the
Men
so she wouldn’t see it first thing, but she never even came by, anyway.

“I just don’t get it, is all,” I protested to Caleb, later on. “It’s not like I put her down or anything. I was trying to be supportive. Or I was until she got all snappy at me.”

He was blasé. “That’s how she is. I told you. It has nothing to do with you, but just wait—she’ll treat you differently from now on.”

“No she won’t.” I even sounded like I believed it.

“She will. She did me. She’s not gonna stop talking to you, not like before, but she’ll stop trying to listen. She’ll stop noticing if you’re being nice or you’re interested or whatever.”

He wasn’t even blushing. “So, you were interested in her.” I don’t know how I said it—it just slipped out, unplanned. I kept letting my guard down with him. Or I was comfortable.

“Huh?”

“Don’t stall. You told me that first night you weren’t ever interested in her, and now you’re admitting you were.”

“No, I meant her work.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Did too.”

“Caleb, my love, you did not. Give me some credit. I don’t mind, but you did lie.”

He growled, softly. Kind of a variation on his pre-speaking hum. “Ash, I was never interested in Wren. Or not really. Just like I told you, I knew she was interested and when I thought you weren’t, I thought about it. For like a minute. But by then she was all weird with me, so I didn’t pursue it.”

“So if she’d responded, you’d have gone for it?”

“God, what are you, a lawyer? Stop putting words in my mouth!”

So to shut off his spigot of indignation, I put something else in his mouth. He pulled back a moment later and confessed he probably would have gone for it with Wren if she’d let him. I found the ticklish spot under his knees.

“But only because I was so dejected and frustrated about you not caring for me. I was feeling like such an idiot chasing after you all over the place.” He found a sensitive spot of my own.

“You were not chasing after me.” I tickled my way from knees to upper thighs. Higher.

“I was, too. You just ignored every one of my advances.” His hands left my body to guide my fingers around his erection. He hummed before speaking again. “Anyway, I never could have fallen in love with Wren. You’re the one for me, Ashlyn. You know it, too.”

It restored significant piece of peace to my soul to be able to make love with Caleb again. And in the morning, even though he’d slipped out early, I didn’t wake up crying. I felt rested for the first time in almost two weeks.

The next afternoon, Zach and Rebecca took Caleb and I on a drive along the Devil’s Backbone. We kept stopping at the scenic overlooks to wander off as couples and admire the views, and each other. Back in the car, we giggled ferociously at Rebecca’s lampooning of all things Zach and at Caleb’s and my stories of Sargie and the other charmers at FireWind. Rebecca turned out to be a huge Lisette Model fan, which pretty much bonded her and Caleb like epoxy.

FireWind was becoming more and more routine. With Angelica and Brandon keeping mainly to themselves, it was just the six of us who piled into Lizzy’s studio to see
In Sickness and In Health
, which she’d completed more than a week ahead of schedule. It was the first time since the Margie-dictated studio visits we spent any extended time discussing art. Mostly we expressed awe; she’d captured vulnerability and dependence and raw struggle when she’d put the two figures together. Caleb took some slide shots for her, Wren directing the angles and presentation.

With ten days left, I finally brought up Caleb’s return to San Jose.

“I’m not going back.”

“Scuse me?”

He laughed and grabbed me for a twirl in the air. Good thing we were in the doe’s clearing or I’da hit the underbrush. “Ash, you think I’m gonna pack up and leave the love of my life sweltering in Texas without me?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

“Oh, don’t pout.”

“What? You make, apparently, all these plans and schemes and don’t bother to mention them to me?”

He hugged me gently to him this time. His arms. His scent. His teasing soft voice. “Sweetie babe—sorry, just sweetie. I didn’t know when you wanted to talk about it. I was going to say something a billion times, but you’ve still been so sad, I don’t want to intrude with all my plans for our happily ever after.”

I widened my eyes. “Happily ever after?”

“Well, why not? You never know. We may as well go into it planning for forever.”

“Great, no pressure or anything.” But the thip-thump of my heart wasn’t from a flight or flight instinct. I thrilled.

“No, no pressure. Seriously. But I’m not going through life regretting missed opportunities. If right now I feel like we could be happily ever after, I’m going to proceed like I may be right.”

“That’s just. I mean, I love you, you know I do. But, isn’t it dangerous?”

“Dangerous how?”

He was daring me to meet his eyes, but I looked into the branches of the black willow instead. “I dunno. Just, dangerous. It makes the fall so much harder when you discover it won’t work out.”

“Ash. Come on.” Then he physically created eye contact, his hand calm and steady on my jaw. “Ash, do you have the slightest of inklings it won’t work out?”

Then he shook my head at the same time I, hesitantly, started to shake it myself.

“See? We’re fine then. There’s no reason to plan a lot of half-steps and ‘what if’ out clauses. Come on.” We’d reached my porch, and I sat on the step beside him. “Let me tell you what I’ve been thinking about, and you tell me which of the things are good for you, and which ones scare you, and which seem terrible. And we’ll go from there, okay?”

I nodded, slipped an arm behind his waist. The gentle press of his weight against my side felt made for me. Damn him his confidence, anyway. I still wasn’t sure he was so right, and considered this just more of his dictatorial take-charge-and-make-gazpacho nature.

But the plans were okay. Some of them. No way was I going to move back into my damn rental, which I was now sure had totally the wrong karmic balance for me, and which wasn’t big enough for the two of us to work in at any rate. My sublease had already emailed about extending the lease, when I’d said I would be going straight to Gran’s after FireWind.

I didn’t want to go as far as Northern California. And Caleb had been adding distance between himself and his parents since he’d figured out their trick of turning him into their arbiter. As he ran down his ideas, we stuck on two plans. He could move into Gran’s with me, or we could find someplace new entirely. He was partial to Arizona.

As if I could just up and change my entire life.

To be with him.

As if my entire life hadn’t already changed.

Not just because of him.

I couldn’t imagine leaving Gran’s behind, but I couldn’t fathom living there without her. I vibrated with Caleb’s gentle suggestion that moving there—even with him—would just exacerbate my loneliness for Gran and make it harder for me to establish my own space to work and live. “Would you ever let her fabric closet get as messy as you keep your studio here?”

I just shoved my shoulder into his side. But I suspected he was right.

That night, mid-darkness and peacefully quiet, I burst into giggles.

“Hmm?” he asked, mellow and deep laughter in his throat.

I shook my head a few times before I could answer. “The very thought.”

“Come on, it can’t be that funny.”

“No, Caleb, really. Me moving to Prescott to hang out in the desert with you? Where it’s all hot and dry and people don’t know how to make decent iced tea?”

“How d’you know they can’t make iced tea? You’ve never been.”

“No one who don’t live between the Rockies and the Appalachians knows how to make decent iced tea. It’s documented.”

“You’re so full of it, babe.”

I pinched his arm.

“Okay, then, you’re so full of it, Ashlyn.”

“Be that as it may be. It’s still bizarre to be planning this.”

“Why? You’ve got nothing holding you back.”

He must have felt my flinch. “Oh, baby, I didn’t mean it like that. You know I didn’t. I just mean, in general, like Lizzy has a job waiting for her and Rafael has his kids.”

“Rafael has kids?”

“Two of them. Didn’t I tell you?”

“No! When did this come out?”

“I don’t know. Last week sometime. Oh, I do know; I was down trying to get some pictures of Hester and he was walking around, started telling me how much his little girl loves peacocks. She’s one of those pink fairy princess kind of kids.”

“So, not to be rude, but where’s the mom? And why is he sleeping with women the first night here?”

“Aren’t you the nosy one?”

“Yes. So tell me.”

“Make me.”

“I will, if you’re gonna be like that.”

His three-second window of opportunity to speak ran up, so I pounced and tickled.

Later, he rolled over and said, “Uncle, I’ll tell.” He kissed the back of my hand and murmured into it. “His girlfriend got pregnant when they were in college and they got married and then when they graduated their daughter was born, and then she convinced him to get a vasectomy.” Adorably enough, he shuddered. “And then divorced him the next year. He gets them all summer now they’re older—that’s why he wanted to go on retreat now, so he wouldn’t be anxious to work when they’re staying with him.”

“Damn. You sure know how to withhold information.”

“Come on, how’s it relevant to anything?”

“Goddess, Caleb, how is anything relevant to anything we gossip about? It’s gossip! You get some, you share it with me, I share it with Lizzy and Wren. It’s the way the world goes round.”

“Women.”

“Sure, women. We’re all horrid beasts. I notice your inherent blame of the ex-wife in Rafael’s story. It could quite easily have been the way he sleeps around or the way he refuses to pitch in around the household. Or all of it together.”

“Wow, a misandrist diatribe. At two in the morning, no less. If I promise I’ll change all the diapers and read all the bedtime stories, will you save the ranting for daylight hours?”

“Okay, I’ve only just decided to move to the desert with you, and you’re naming the children. Slow down.”

He turned and propped himself on his elbow. “You’re coming with me?”

I smiled, which maybe he couldn’t see in the dark, but I could hear his, so maybe he knew. “Yeah, Caleb, I’m coming with you. But I want to go, alone, to Gran’s for two weeks first. I want to help Bernadette sort it all out.”

She and Dermot and Matthew had gotten through a lot of the estate stuff and were dividing possessions without rancor, but both uncles would be gone by the end of the week and there were personal effects and paperwork piles to sort through. And I needed to get the rest of my stuff out of the rental and figure out what to take to Prescott. And I kinda needed to talk some more to Bernadette; it had all been so flustered and unfocused after Gran’s death.

Caleb would just have to find us a place to live on his own.

Our future had been on my mind since before Bernadette’s birthday party, but I never expected to go from tentative discussion to thousand-mile-moving plan in the space of a few hours. My breathing hitched with the return of my racing pulse.

“Ashlyn,” Caleb traced whispery fingers along my hairline. “Thank you. Thanks for trusting me on this, I know it’s not easy.”

I exhaled. “No, it’s not. But in some ways it’s easier now than it would have been before.” I stared at the moon-glow through the curtain. Not to get all anthropomorphic again, but it seemed to be winking at me. Gran used to wink when she wanted to quietly signal my doing something well.

I winked back at the moon and tucked myself in tighter against Caleb. We drifted off together.

I yawned through our penultimate breakfast prep, and Caleb wasn’t much better. He just nodded when I suggested we order yogurt and toppings for a parfait buffet the next morning. And just let Margie try to prevent me serving packaged muffins.

“And just think, next week we have to make dinner,” he grumbled as he cleaned the waffle iron. Since we’d been away for the funeral, Sargie’d had the new Team Three (Wren and Lizzy) trade breakfast/lunch weeks with us, which meant they were now done with all of their FireWind cooking. And it had already occurred to us to feel pressured with the expectations of making the very last of the communal dinners. Week Eight was nigh.

After lunch, back in ValeSong, I gathered together the sketches I’d done in that studio. All of the
Patchy Men
pages were a mess, and I culled them for a few showing my progression through it, as well as a couple with motifs I liked but hadn’t used. I couldn’t hardly look at the
Chains of Love
layouts, so I moved them directly to the recycling pile, except for the one from my first FireWind morning.

Once those were organized out of the way, I added notes to the plans for the mosaic series, and sorted through the scrap pile to find some Pima broadcloth I could test out my bleach-dyeing plans upon. There was a largish section of a pale pink as well as a damask that struck me as particularly tile-like, so I stretched it on a smaller hoop and carried them both to the sink.

Half of the broadcloth I brushed over in a crazed fashion, going for the look of cracked plaster, and on the other half I traced a grid of bleach, then carried it out to the clearing to set in the sun. I tried the grout lines effect on the damask but it didn’t look like it would take well. I put it in the sun anyway.

Straightening, I saw Wren walking up the stream from her cabin. I waved, but she didn’t notice. Or didn’t care. I started to call out, but, for whatever reason, didn’t. I was suddenly exhausted; drained. Things were not going well with her, and I just couldn’t blame myself. Normally I blamed myself for all of the inter-personal problems around me, but this time, I just couldn’t.

Still, there was the news about Rafael, so I checked the angle of the sun and went to Lizzy’s to tell her. She was gratifyingly titillated, and after she’d shown me the rough cut of a small soapstone figure provisionally titled
Lonely Loner
, I brought up Wren’s walking away.

“Ash, don’t be putting me in the middle here. I don’t let her talk to me about you two, and I won’t let you talk to me about her.”

“She tries to talk to you about me?”

“As you do her, so don’t get stroppy. I’m your friend, I’m her friend, and if the two of yous want to work it out and be friends as well, it suits me beautifully. If not, I’ll just be friends with you separately.”

“Wow. I guess I didn’t know we weren’t still friends. I thought this was just a rough patch.”
              “And why shouldn’t it be?”

I shrugged, guiltily. “I dunno. It should be. She’s not …” then I stopped myself from complaining. “I’ll see if we can’t work it out.”

“Good.” Lizzy was better than most at declaring a subject closed with just her tone.

But Wren wasn’t at dinner, and Caleb and I retired early, worn out. He tried to slip out without waking me Saturday morning, but the shower noises roused me, and together we plodded to the kitchen and silently set out all of the food. Part of it was being too groggy to talk much, but part of it was the syncopation of having worked together so often in that space. He handed me bowls when I was gathering the table setting, and I nudged myself closer into the pantry when he needed to get to the fridge. Our choreography was a security blanket whenever I startled myself by remembering we would leave FireWind to start an entirely new life together.