White Vespa (16 page)

“I know you did.” Myles was sitting with his back up against the housing for the engine, a cap pulled over his eyes.

“The smell, it makes me remember.” Anne smiled, but the smile looked a little desperate.

“Yeah?”

“Sometimes I don't want to.”

Myles' eyes came into focus. Anne was trailing a hand in the sea as the boat pushed forward, a bow wake like a great arrowhead.

“You okay?”

She reached down into the water, the tug of it setting up a rushing, white rooster tail. She was looking through, to somewhere down below. “I haven't been okay for a long time. I can't even imagine it.”

The light off the broken waves fanned across her pale face, a glittering, flickering light. Her face dissolved under it, shimmered like a mirage about to wink out.

Myles went forward, knelt on the sloshing floorboards to get his head close to Anne's. “So tell me.”

“No,” she whispered, nodding her head astern to where old Manólis stood stolid at the rudder.

“Come on, Anne, tell me.”

“Not here.” Her eyes flashed angrily.

Myles squeezed her shoulder and retreated, pulled his hat down a little lower over his dark glasses. He sat watching Anne, her face cast down, her eyes open, but she was somewhere else. Gone. Still, the broken light washed over her face in dancing gold. Myles knew he should leave her alone, let her tell
him what she wanted and let that be enough. He looked away, to the shoreline on the left that passed before his eyes like a movie projected on a bed sheet. Everything steeped in watery gold. Myles craned his head around and looked back toward Pédhi then ahead, to where the inlet opened to the sea. They'd come most of the way. Once they made it to the mouth it wouldn't be far on around to Ayía Marína.

Getting in the water often seemed to call Anne back from wherever it was she retreated to when she was feeling bad. Maybe it would turn out that way today, too. Anne had looked low from the moment he'd arrived at her room. Perhaps she'd just looked hung over. He'd squeezed orange juice for them while she slipped out of the long dark T-shirt she'd slept in and pulled on her black one-piece suit. She'd draped her long, thin arms around his neck and kissed him quietly on first one, then the other corner of his mouth. It'd been as if she was reaching from far away, her eyes not confident her arms would get there, her kisses find his warm mouth.

On the Vespa, from Sými town to Pédhi, she'd whispered in his ear, “I'm holding on tight.” When they crested the hill in Horió and started down toward Pédhi, Myles had throttled up, and felt her arms tighten on his ribs. And she'd kissed his neck. “More,” she'd said hoarsely, dreamily, as if they were in bed. But she'd drifted away again as soon as they were off the scooter, as soon as their bodies were parted.

Myles sat watching her from behind his dark glasses, but he was thinking about himself. His heart was the one that had called him to Anne, had called him to Bryn before Anne. His heart swam toward darkness, or flew, a swift dropping down a chimney, a bat turning through the narrow places in a long cave. Toward what? Toward a heart already finally broken.

Myles took off his glasses and rubbed at his stinging eyes. The sun and the wind and the sweat. He poured a little water from a blue liter bottle into the palm of his hand and splashed his face, rubbing at his eyes with the tail of his shirt. All hearts, he thought, are broken, already and finally broken. Was Anne's heart more broken? Broken is broken and it happens every time and lasts forever. So why didn't his love go everywhere? He laughed low and bitterly.

Anne's eyes lifted for a moment but Myles was looking away, staring into the blur of his own myopia. People carry their grief differently, maybe. And maybe, as Jim had said, some people carry more, if only because they can. But
it wasn't that, it wasn't a question of how much, that had nothing to do with what called him to Anne. No, some griefs simply did not speak to him, were mute. And some did speak. Myles shook his head. He knew well enough how distant Anne seemed, even to him, most of the time. And yet, hopeless, Anne yearned. And somehow it is always one voice out of the general bellowing that carries the burden of our living, for us, to us. Myles heard that voice in Anne's.

Myles grabbed at his cap and reached over the gunnels, plunging it into the rushing sea. He let it soak for a moment and then pulled it out and clapped it on his head; quick streams of cold sea water sent rushing down his neck. He gasped and through his wet sunglasses could see Anne was looking at him quizzically, amused. He smiled back, ready as he could be for a picnic and a swim.

The boat rounded land's end; the wake bent as they bore left, running now in the passage between Sými proper and the islet of Ayía Marína. Anne spotted a small, deserted beach on the little island, and they throttled down; Manólis stood at the tiller, and their wake ran in on the beach. Anne pulled off her light shirt, stepped out of her sandals, and dove over the side, her pale body in the black suit slipping into a blue wave with barely a ripple. She was lost to Myles under the surface glare but then she showed close in. She stood up, shaking herself, and waved for Manólis to bring the boat. Myles handed out Anne's straw basket, then he was in, too, pushing the boat back toward deeper water.

Alone, they swam. Sooner or later, they thought, they would have company on the little beach, so they swam alone while they had a chance, floating high in the salt or tumbling in antic games. Underwater, their breath escaped like weightless mercury and sought the surface as if alive. In the bright vibrations of air and sea they forgot the darkness of the morning; they sent their laughter skipping over the glassy water. It was too good to last. Soon enough they saw four walkers coming down the stony track from Pédhi and then Manólis reappeared with two more couples. Myles and Anne exchanged low curses; they decided to swim back to Ayía Marína to have a look before the invasion. A small, whitewashed monastery rose glittering out of the rock behind Anne's basket, and they swam for that. They pulled out on the rocks and lay there, alone a little longer.

Myles reached over and took her hand, “What water.”

“Mmm.” She was squinting against the sun.

“I hate to think I'll get used to it.”

“Maybe you won't.”

“I'd have to leave not to and I don't want to leave,” Myles said.

Anne laughed, “Or die.”

“That's a better option?”

“Sometimes it seems like it might be,” Anne said, then fell silent, breathing. When she started talking again, it was tentatively. “I . . . I came here for what? For revenge,” Anne laughed uneasily. She sat on a rock in deep shade, in the mouth of what looked like a cave but was not.

“Paul?” Myles was in the light, looking away, out to sea and Turkey beyond, hung low and brown between sea and air. He wanted to hold her, but he couldn't.

“That bastard.” She hiccupped. “All my life I've been waiting for him to get his.”

Myles wanted to say,
For what?
but he didn't.

“When I was little I thought Dad would catch him, beat him black and blue, but I was the one that got beat—
for lying
—when I tried to make it happen. So I forced myself to wait. I couldn't imagine my own dad could be so stupid, blind to what Paul made no attempt to hide from me. Back then I don't think I'd ever even heard the word
denial
. The old man couldn't see Paul for what he was, not at all.”

Myles peered at Anne out of the corner of his eye, watched her scrawling something on the sand between her knees. Her mouth seemed shaped for a sob.

“And did your dad catch him?”

“Never. I started thinking it would happen at school, if not the principal then some roughs would grab him in the locker room and beat him shitless. But no—the kids liked him, maybe even liked him mean, liked to watch the other kids get hurt, especially girls. Mostly he hurt girls.

“Then I thought maybe the law would get him. By that time he was at Seattle Prep and into who knows what. I didn't know what. By then I was more or less beneath his notice. And glad of it, believe me. But I kept thinking he couldn't live like that, that retribution would find him out sooner or later. Or that he wouldn't be able to sustain it, that his own heart would at last say
no
.”

“So you?”

“I decided to do something,” Anne said, her voice flat.

“Aha. What?”

“I didn't know what. Or maybe I didn't know how. How to fight him and not become him.” Anne looked up, her wide eyes hard under a furrowed brow. “And for a long time it didn't matter. I didn't know how to find him. He just drifts. He has money enough to keep going, to leave the wreckage behind. I decided, when I didn't know where he was, I swore that if I ever caught up with him I'd kill him.”

“
What?
” Myles exclaimed.

“And then I found out that he was here, on Sými, and I came, but even before I got here I knew I couldn't do it.” Anne wiped the sand clear between her knees, her fingers starting a new design, moving with a will of their own.

“No, I couldn't kill him. Myles,” she looked up again, eyes glittering, “but not because I don't think he deserves it. I think he does. If I got the news that he was dead I'd rejoice. But I just can't do it, can't cast that proverbial first stone. Paul, you know, he could throw that stone and laugh.”

“Are you sure?” Myles said.

“That he could throw it? Yeah, I'm sure. I've been sure a long time.”

“As long as you haven't been okay?”

“Just as long.”

Myles dug his toes in. As he sat there, silence ringing around him, Anne changed; the Anne of the photographs began to appear, like an image in a developing tray, slowly overtaking the blank face that had been there a minute before.

Anne spoke in a whisper, and Myles bent his head close to hear. “It must have been a snow day, winter. There wasn't any school and we were home, the house empty except for us. There had been snow overnight, two or three inches. It was morning, early, but I'd been out riding already, taken Pie out in the snow and the fog.

“I remember, in the barn, I turned the lights on, that from inside the fog seemed to kill the light. I stabled her and got the saddle off, hoisting it onto my hip and struggling with it into the tack room.

“I measured out some oats and, once she'd got her nose in the feedbag, started to brush her. I loved to brush that girl. I was humming something from the radio, so young and so pleased!” Anne's voice broke, but just for a moment. When she resumed, her voice was steady, hard.

“Then I heard someone else in the barn. It was Paul. When I looked over the rail of the stall I could see him up in the darkness of the loft, above the light, fiddling with the old block and tackle that hung from a beam up there. I ignored him. The barn was my world; he wasn't supposed to be there. Pie shone under my hands. I loved the way her pale coat glistened from the brush.

“Suddenly Paul's head appeared over the door of the stall.

“
Still messing with that fucking horse?

“I don't know what I said, something like,
What of it?
or,
What's it to you?

“
A regular smart mouth,”
he sniggered and dropped out of sight behind the stall wall. Her coat gleamed under my hands in the dusky barn light and she nickered. Pie loved that brush. Nothing else mattered. There was a whole world in that stall, my world.

“Then the door swung open and Paul pushed in, a rope in his hand.
Get out!
I screamed, but he just laughed, whispered,
Fuck off.
He threw a loop he'd tied in the end of the rope over Pie's head and yanked. Pie swung around, still chewing, looking bemused, and then Paul dragged her out of the stall.

“I didn't understand.

“Paul let go of the rope that was tight on Pie's neck and ran to the rope dangling from the block and tackle. He started pulling on that rope, hand over fist, and still I didn't get it. Suddenly, the rope got taut and I understood.

“Pie freaked, reared back on her haunches and just leapt, rushing from one side of the barn to the other, trampling the floor, filling the air with a cloud of dust and yellow straw. She charged at Paul but veered off, rushing into the far corner of the barn, and when she did Paul rose out of the dust, rising up toward the light, dangling from his end of the rope, supernatural, howling. But when Pie charged back, hooves flashing, Paul dropped down, back onto the dim floor.

“Somehow, he got the slack around a post, and the next time Pie ran he held her, and her head jerked up and around, her eyes flaring, furious. Paul jeered at her. He was so small and so mean.

“Then she reared and that was a terrible mistake. Paul stumbled back but while she was still up he got his footing and backed away three or four steps, still pulling around the post. When she tried to get her forelegs down she couldn't, and she got really frightened, bleating. I, I ran toward her, but she didn't know me, and I saw a horseshoe right in front of my face, but she was turning, and it missed, and I dropped to the ground, screaming.

“Pie wheezed and spit, and her mouth opened wider and wider. Her tongue wagged madly in her mouth. She started to twirl on the end of the rope, stumbling, awkward. I couldn't look away. I wanted to, I, but I couldn't.

“Paul yelled over the din,
Come here, come here,
and I did, I crawled over to him, choking in the cloud of dust. He was shouting at me,
Hold on, you little cunt, hold on.
And I did, my white hands on his black belt. Every time Pie reared up higher Paul pulled, and she went on up.”