The Blue Bath (20 page)

“Are you trying to erase it?”

She turned to him. “What? No. I love it.” She watched him finish his apple and lick the juice from his fingers. After a moment she smiled.

“What?”

“We’re eating your reference material.”

“Yes.” One corner of his mouth curved upward. He pushed himself up off the floor with one hand and started toward her, laying the knife down on a table. “What will I paint now?”

He ran his finger up and down her arm. She glanced up at the windows and frowned. Time was passing.

“Dark already.”

“It’s not dark.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Get dressed. I’ll show you.”

She hesitated. Surely he knew that they shouldn’t go out in public. But she pulled on her clothes as he waited. It wasn’t likely anyone she knew would be walking the streets of Shoreditch. He handed her his coat and on her way to the door she grabbed her purse, but he shook his head.

“You won’t need that.”

She followed him down the long hallway away from the lift. Where was he taking her? At the far end of the passage, a metal ladder rose into the ceiling. Daniel stepped onto the second rung and began to climb. Kat watched him vanish into the darkness until a sliver of dim light appeared, waxing into a larger rectangle as he pushed open a hatch to the roof. As he disappeared through it, she took hold of the thick rails and followed him up. Her arms felt weak and her hands scraped against scabs of corroded paint.

When she reached the top of the ladder, Daniel grasped her forearms and pulled her up through the hatch. For an instant she hung suspended, her toes pointed down into the mouth of the passage, the full weight of her body in his hands, before he swung her to the side and set her down gently.

The flat roof was covered in flaking tar paper. So wide and dark that it seemed to lose mass in places. Kat moved instinctively to its center, planting her feet wide and keeping her eyes down. She could hear the distant hum of traffic. The wind rushed past her, lifting her hair off her face. A faint geometric pattern emerged on the ancient tar paper under her feet. A heap of tiles, cracked and chipped around their edges, lay nearby. She matched their shape to the pattern etched on the paper.

After a moment, she realized that she was half crouching and willed herself to stand straight, immediately dizzy under the vaulted gray sky. Daniel stood at the edge of the expanse. She watched him move along the perimeter, his eyes on the horizon. He stopped and kicked lightly at the low wall beside him, the brick flaking and crumbling, and then glanced back at her.

“You have to look hard to find darkness in cities. There is always light. And London is so far north that in the winter you can always see the red glow of the sun just below the horizon.”

She forgot that he had grown up here. It was a part of him she knew nothing about. As he rested one foot on the low wall that bordered the roof, he became the darkness, blocking out the lights behind him, his broad shoulders spanning city blocks, obliterating entire neighborhoods. As he leaned out over the edge, Kat found herself involuntarily leaning backward, as if to balance the building.

She took a few steps toward him, wishing he would come away from the edge. After a moment, he turned to face her. He said something, but the wind took the sound.

“What’s that?”

“It’s changed. The city.”

“Maybe you have.”

He smirked at her, his face coming into sharper focus as she moved closer to him.

“
Peut-être.
”

She stopped where she stood, mouth open. “
Je ne crois pas!
You learned French!”

“
Je te jure.
Someone once suggested I should.”

“How long have you been waiting to show me that?”

He laughed and held out his hand to her. “A long time. Come closer.”

She edged nearer to him, lifting her feet deliberately, the roof rough and blistered under them. She felt light-headed. From the elevation or from having eaten only half an apple all day. He stood motionless, watching her. She tried to keep her eyes on him, ignoring the city beyond and below. When she was within reach, he grasped her hand and led her the final few steps. They stood together balanced on the rim of the building. Kat held her breath and looked out over the city. She took in the pale gleam of streetlights, the phosphorescent glow from windows, the sustained voltaic arcs of headlights. Daniel was right. There was light everywhere. The city fizzed and burned with it.

They stayed there for a while watching the city pulse and spark below them, spread out in diminishing detail and increasing familiarity. From decorative cornices atop adjacent warehouses, to the newer steel-and-glass towers in the middle distance, to the immediately recognizable shapes in the city skyline—reduced to the size of tourist souvenirs amid the masts and jibs of tower cranes.

When they grew tired of standing, they sat against the wall of the adjacent taller building, its ancient brickwork blooming with salty efflorescence. She nestled between his legs, his hands resting lightly on her knees, while the sleepless streets coiled around them in incandescent rings.

He talked about the way the light moved differently in London than it did in New York. About the way the August heat there made the buildings shimmer. She listened, feeling the vibrations his words made against her back. The rest of the time they watched the thin edge of young moon that sat low on the horizon. She told him that she thought she would like to live by the ocean for a while. There were other things she wanted to tell him, but not yet. There would be time.

The word that kept running through her mind was “redemption.”

They returned to the studio and slept for a while. When Kat opened her eyes again the rectangles of window above her were brighter than the ceiling. Daylight had returned. Daniel sat at one of the tables. He had a sketchpad before him, but he wasn’t drawing. His hand rested in his lap while his eyes moved restlessly around the room. Keeping vigil.

The smooth green dress lay where it had fallen by the side of the bed, bold and garish against the rough, used floor. Clutching the sheet around herself, she bent down and grabbed a handful of the slippery fabric, the movement drawing his eye. She managed to find the bottom hem of the dress and work her arms through to the top. In one fluid motion, she stood up and let go of the sheet, feeling it slip from her as she pulled the dress over her head.

Smoothing the dress over her body, she found that it looked just as garish against her pale skin as it had against the floor. She bent down again and retrieved her purse and necklace from the floor. Somewhere in the studio were her earrings and her ring. She did not see them. So small and delicate, they could be anywhere. She imagined the ring, a perfect circle, rolling across the floor the night before.

She finally spoke, her voice low.

“I have to go.”

“You don’t.”

“He’s coming home today.”

Daniel’s expression changed instantly, his face clouding dangerously. Jonathan. He thought she meant Jonathan.

“My son.” She said it quickly, her eyes remaining on him.

He allowed his head to drop into his palms before lifting it to look at her.

“Tell me that you’re coming back.”

“I’m coming back.”

As she slipped her feet into her shoes, Daniel came toward her. She watched him reduce the space between them until he could reach out and touch her. Taking her face in his hands, he studied her intently. His gaze shifting downward to the dress, frowning, as if he did not recognize it. The extra height of her shoes put her close to eye level with him and she met his eyes, milky blue in the white room.

“Say it again.”

“I’m coming back.”

She could feel his warmth through the thin silk. And so, for the second time, the dress glided silently to the rough floor, pooling around her feet like so much paint squeezed from the end of a tube.

*   *   *

S
HE DROVE QUICKLY
, heading too far north before managing to find her way back down to the Ring Road, which took her back into Kensington. She parked and crossed the wide pavement across the road from her house, passing in front of the Greek embassy. As she did, the guard emerged from the side of the building and started up the driveway toward her. He stopped halfway up the drive. She saw him see her. Alone. In the green dress. In the pallid early-morning glow. This time he did not ask her why. This time he looked away.

She moved through the house like a thief. Turning on no lights. Gliding through the silent rooms. Taking inventory of the strange and ordinary things. Entering the bathroom, she caught sight of her face in the large mirror. The unfamiliar image arrested her. The downward curve of her mouth, with its thin, pale lips. The shadows under her eyes and the thin vein tracing a faint blue line along her left browbone.

She showered quickly, stepping into the stream of water without waiting for it to warm up, gasping at the shock of the cold on her skin. Only the tears were warm on her cheeks. The salt stung her skin. She had been right about the stubble on his face. She was sore everywhere. Rubbed raw. Turned inside out. She felt everything like it was the first time. The cold water, the raw skin on her face, the weakness in her legs, the pain in her heart. His hands on her skin, his mouth, his breath, his heat.

After the shower, Kat dressed and made her way downstairs. Her whole body ached. She leaned back into the couch cushions. She would close her eyes for just a minute. And then she heard the door being pushed hard against the jamb, as if it might be unlocked, followed shortly by the clatter of the seldom-used knocker being deployed against its brass plate. It was shaped like the head of a lion, and Will used it at every opportunity. She ran to the door, pulling it open with both hands.

And then he is here. Spilling into the front hall. And she is on her knees, his skinny arms encircling her neck. His cheek against her chest, the pulse of life humming under his skin. And they built a dam! With sticks! And Fen helped. And Ollie. And he fell in the stream! Well, his foot. And it was so cold! And there was a thunderstorm—so very loud. He pulls back to demonstrate, pressing his palms flat against his head, his eyes wide. And she is Mummy again.

But now Will is squirming away from her embrace and Jonathan’s mother is leaning down to kiss her cheeks and taking the measure of her with concerned eyes. And Jonathan’s father is in the doorway with Will’s bag. And would you believe the traffic on the M3? This time of day? And Will is kicking off his trainers and heading toward the stairs. And the cousins, Ollie and Fen, have come along and they fill her arms—Is this really your house, Auntie Kat? Do you love it?—before dashing upstairs after Will. And will they stay for tea? They will. And the house seems bigger each time they see it. And it does seem bigger suddenly. Full of noise and motion and people with dark curly hair and eyes like Jonathan’s. And she sits back on her heels in the middle of it all until Jonathan’s father reaches down with both hands to pull her up. And she wonders how it is that they don’t see it on her face.

Kat tidied up the dishes from tea so Will could set out all his crayons and markers on the table. He talked while he drew, lost in the task.

“… the storm was so big and Grandpa said that’ll be the ruin of it then. But Ollie said maybe not. But when we went to look before breakfast the dam was gone.”

She sat beside him, examining the rushing stream he had drawn, complete with sharply formed cresting waves threatening to overflow its banks. “The water is brown,” he informed her, his eyes serious. “It is pulling the earth into it in great clumps. In this one the dam,” he indicated a large, elaborate structure stretching itself across the stream, “is still intact.”

She smiled. A new word. From Grandpa, she guessed. Or Ollie, so clever for his age.

She watched him in silence for a while, the tip of his tongue edging out of the side of his mouth in concentration.

“A little fox was here. While you were away.”

He glanced at her, but made no reply, reluctant to relinquish his story for hers just yet.

“I think he came to see you, but you weren’t home.”

“No.” His hand passed briefly across his brow to brush aside a wayward lock of hair that had fallen over his eyes. “He came to see you.”

“You think?”

“He knows that you’re sad.”

“You think?”

“I know.”

She leaned closer to him so that her head was next to his. He reached up and grabbed a handful of her hair, pulling his fingers through it absently the way he sometimes did. She closed her eyes, feeling the gentle tugs on her scalp. When she opened them, he was looking at her. His face with its wide forehead and dark eyes. So much like Jonathan’s face. The similarities becoming even more evident as the roundness in his cheeks waned.

“When is Daddy coming home?”

She swallowed the rising lump in her throat. “Soon.”

She sat with him in the quiet, watching him filling in the empty spaces.

Later, after she had sent him upstairs to brush his teeth and get washed up, she heard the sound of a door banging open. Her pulse quickened. Was it Jonathan? She entered the kitchen and saw that the door to the garden was open. Looking out into the gathering dark, she saw Will standing in the center of the garden, arms extended, holding a piece of paper over his head. No coat, bare feet, white shins visible below his short pajamas. Head tilted back, face to the sky. She shook her head in bewilderment. Careful to keep her stocking feet inside, she leaned out into the darkness and called to him.

“Time to come in.”

He dropped his arms and turned to her, chewing his bottom lip, his face small and sad.

“What is it, Pie?”

She stepped out into the garden, the wet grass soaking through her socks with each step. He held out the paper to her as she approached. It was one of the drawings he had done earlier. “I made it for Nana. But I don’t think she can see it. She’s so far away.” He raised his arms over his head again to illustrate the inadequacy of their reach.