Sunburn (12 page)
She watched him try to keep talking, but he opened his mouth and no words came. She found herself beginning to cry. She pulled him to her and held him.
The sun broke through. His head was in her lap, and she ran her fingers through his hair, over his back.
Suddenly he got up and walked away, nearly out of the church’s enclosure. He stood near the wall for a long time, facing the other way, occasionally bringing his hand to his face. Then he turned back to her and walked again the length of the aisle. He stood over her where she sat.
“I won’t have you pity me,” he said.
“I don’t.” She held the bottle up to him. “Have some wine. It’s delicious with the pears.”
They smiled at each other, and over the rest of the food, he told her of the ensuing months, of his search for her, his failure, his obsession. He had traveled overland to Turkey, into the oil countries of the Near East, around to Egypt. The summer had passed and he hadn’t gone home. Instead, working odd jobs whenever he could, stealing when he had to, he had made his fanatical way around to Algiers, where he had been deported for lack of money.
Back in the States, he’d been drafted and sent to Vietnam, where he had tried so hard to die that he’d been cited three times for heroism. After those two years, he’d come back to Europe to drift, to maybe find something. He didn’t mention running guns, but to her it made sense.
They sat apart now while he talked, not touching each other.
“But why are you here? What are you doing?”
“Just living.”
“And you’ve never seen her again?”
He shook his head.
She took a mouthful of wine and closed her eyes, the sun beating down on her. She swallowed and took the step.
“Maybe we could find her.”
“It’s been eight years.”
“Douglas and I would help you.”
He laughed. “I can’t see that.”
“So you really think there’s no hope? Why did you tell me about it then? I would like to help you, but not if you don’t care anymore.”
He looked down at the ground, then at her.
“Why do you want to do this?”
Because I am lost, she wanted to say. Because I’m bored. Because I need to feel like I’m doing something that has a meaning.
And thrumming beneath these unexpressible reasons, a current at once more powerful and more dangerous: Because I need an excuse . . . even a foolish, quixotic one . . . to see you again. Because I feel my heart beginning to thaw.
“Lea?”
She couldn’t form an answer. No words were adequate. Reaching for his hand, she took it and held it against her breast. Her eyes glistened as though she would cry, but she held back her tears.
With his gaze locked into hers, Michael nodded all but imperceptibly.
He put his hand behind her neck and brought her to him.
It was nearly dusk. They pulled up to the white house in the black Peugeot. Berta got out first. Lea sat for a moment, one arm resting on the win dowsill.
She couldn’t forget, would not forget that kiss, though it had gone no further than that. They walked back down the hill acting like the strangers they were. He had been exhausted. She, tense and guilt-ridden.
Now, walking into the house, she was afraid. There was a familiar smell in the living room, an odor of old furniture, and today, suddenly, it was repellent.
“Douglas!”
Her husband appeared as if by magic, and as she went to him she took him in. He wore loafers, light blue socks to match his light blue slacks, and a pale yellow, short-sleeved sport shirt. She smiled at him. His face was handsome in a dignified way. He was relaxed, his light hair uncombed.
He kissed her lightly. “Have a nice time?”
His kiss made her nervous. She smiled, and kissed him again.
“If you get me a gin and tonic, I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Done.”
He walked to the kitchen and she sat on the sofa, feeling it give slightly beneath her. She touched her lips with her fingers, and sat not moving. She heard Douglas inside, bantering with Berta, preparing the drinks.
The room darkened quickly. Upstairs, she heard Sean cough. The front door, left ajar, let in the evening breeze. She stretched, and then fastened her eyes on the painting between the kitchen door and the corner. All but invisible now, it was a typical after-the-hunt still life in dark hues—a few pheasants and a hare on a table with a gun. It was an altogether unexceptional work, made interesting only by the gash of red, which Lea knew to be blood running from the rabbit’s mouth, out over the table to a pool on the floor.
Douglas came back in, switched on a light, and got the gin from the cupboard. She patted the sofa next to her.
“Come sit by me.”
“Should I get the door? You cold?”
“No. Fine.”
He sat down and they drank. Gradually, she began to feel better. The drink was good and she told him so. They talked about Sean and his earache, about the letters Douglas had written during the day. He took her hand.
“We were right,” she said finally, “about Mike.”
“How so?”
“We went up to the Villa Vella today and had lunch, and I asked him . . .” She hesitated. How would she put it in words? “I asked him if there wasn’t something hidden about his life. You know, something to account for that feeling, for that song if nothing else.”
“And there is?”
“I don’t know if you’ll believe it.”
“Try me.”
She began Mike’s story, and he listened with a faint smile.
“I’m not sure I believe it.”
“If you could’ve heard him tell it, you’d have no doubts.”
“Then why is he here in Tossa?”
“Waiting. Marking time. I don’t know.”
They sipped their drinks. Kyra came down, followed by Sean, who had a wad of cotton stuck in his right ear. His earache had flared the other night after he’d gone out for a late, drunken walk. Now it was beginning to clear up, but the last time he’d had one, it had left him hard of hearing for two weeks.
Lea whispered quickly to Douglas.
“Between us, huh?”
He nodded and got up. “Sean, how are you feeling?”
“Pain and anguish, the fate of modern man.”
“Listen to him,” Kyra said.
“Drinks?” Lea was up and moving toward the kitchen. She and Kyra got glasses, tonic, ice, limes.
When they returned, the men were sitting at the dining table, talking. Kyra gave Sean his glass and he patted her on the rear. She sat next to him, resting her hand easily on his leg.
She does love him, Lea thought. She looked at Douglas. And I love him. It might have been a mixture of guilt and pity, but she didn’t feel it then. Suddenly, looking at her husband of seven years, she forgot all thoughts of Mike.
She remembered meeting Douglas for the first time, his confident reserve, which went so well with her own style. He’d been so refreshing. Classy. Not a teaser like the one or two other boys she’d gone out with. He’d been surprised that she had not been married before. And their lovemaking . . .
She smiled to herself as the talk continued at the table. This reserved, almost bookish man and she had spent their first three years in bed, it seemed. They had devoured each other. Their friends had thought them antisocial. He’d made her grow up, finally. Not that he’d forced anything with her, but the love, curiosity, and endless lust had worked out its permutations with an ease and variety that had stunned them both. Still, only today . . .
She was aroused, and took his hand under the table, putting it high on her leg.
Berta brought in the dinner. They were all talking now, moving easily from Franco to Nixon to food to a popular record that Kyra had picked up yesterday.
The lentil soup was delicious. A heavy, almost too heavy, dose of rosemary made it distinctive, and Lea thought it was the nicest dinner they’d had yet. Everyone seemed so happy.
Berta joined them at the table, and she, too, was in a good mood. Kyra said something to her in Spanish and they laughed. She had brought in the other courses—a salad, a bowl of lima beans, a tortilla, which was not a pancake like a Mexican tortilla, but an omelette of potatoes and onions, and a lamb roast. Sean cut the tortilla and Doug carved the roast. They drank two bottles of rosé.
After dinner, they’d decided to go to the fun house in Lloret and go bowling. They all piled into the Peugeot and sped along the winding road, singing dirty limericks to the tune of “Cielito Lindo.” When they arrived, they discovered that the fun house had been closed for the season, so they walked to a flamenco club nearby where sometimes there were real flamencos. Here they’d been lucky and had stayed for two shows.
“That was fun,” Doug said when they were preparing for bed.
“Yes,” she said, abstractly.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“No. I’ve just been thinking.”
“Awful late for that.”
“I think we need an event.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, something to look forward to or plan for, or be involved in. I’ve been thinking about our talk this morning and how we really do seem to be drifting. Not you and me together so much, but in our lives separately. Sometimes I feel that we’re only going through motions. Don’t you?”
He sat on the bed and didn’t answer.
“I’m talking about what our lives should mean, Douglas. Maybe I’m just getting older, but I don’t want to think of my life as getting to be an adult, writing some clever ads, then plodding along to senility.”
“You’re really upset, aren’t you?” He sat her down next to him and put his arm around her. “I love your idealism, you know.”
She wanted to hit him. “Damn idealism. I’m feeling trapped. Not with you,” she hastened to add, “but with this whole way we live.” She felt for a moment that she had lied, that it was him, but she kept on. “Isn’t that why we’re here? Isn’t that why we got away? To look at ourselves and see if maybe we’re not doing something wrong? And possibly change? I mean really change.”
“What do you want to change to?”
“I don’t know. I feel almost like I’m sleeping, that nothing touches me.” Just then, she began to grow aware that she might be describing him. “That maybe if I’d get involved in something, and not something so artificial as work—something real, that I instinctively feel . . .” She stopped. Then, “Don’t you feel that your life is pretty empty, going nowhere? Doesn’t it bother you to think that nothing ultimately means anything?”
Kindly, he answered, “It’s not that it bothers me or not. That’s not the question. I can’t really help it if that’s what I really believe. You know? Would you have me, or you, believing that events interact, make a difference? No, I used to think that. I used to be religious, too. But I gradually lost faith in all that. It turned out to be meaningless. I didn’t want it to be, but there you are. Time went by, and I got used to it.”
She lay back on the bed and listened.
“Why do you think I gave up trying to write novels, for Christ’s sake? I just, deep down, couldn’t buy the fact that events were significant—that anybody could or would give a shit. There was no order, and all this ‘artists bringing order to their world’ just didn’t do it for me. And it does eat me up, Lea. I hate it. It’s like a disease, this galloping unfaith in everything . . .”
“And us?” she said.
He was silent for a long time. She aimlessly scratched his back.
“I love you,” he said at last.
“But if everything is meaningless . . .”
“What I mean is that, finally, it will never matter that I loved you.”
She began to cry. “Why are you so afraid to be hurt?” She didn’t know where that had come from. “You’re blocking yourself off from me and everybody and everything, just because of some stupid intellectual idea you have that nothing affects anything else. That’s not true. I affect you, and you know that. You’re just not letting anything near you. This galloping unfaith, as you call it, guarantees that your life is empty and will stay empty.”
She quieted down. “I’d like to force you, Douglas, to let yourself feel something.”
“I do feel things,” he said feebly.
“Name something that really touches you then.”
He was silent.
She knew he was wrong. That song of Mike’s, that single event, had meant something. It had opened a door for him. In a way, it had exposed everybody. Douglas might have been able to put it out of his mind, but it had been there—a presence, an event. It had flooded her, made her passionate again, and that had affected him. Like this talk now . . .
She wondered if that chance song had changed everything and everyone they knew.
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