The trip took no longer than I thought. As I cut the engine and tossed out the anchor the spray came up to hit my face. It felt good. So I dropped my clothes on the deck and followed the anchor overboard.
There’s something about swimming in deep water that’s like being rocked in a cradle. The ocean has a swell to it, a body that you can feel. You rise with it and fall with it as you do with a woman; the motion soothes you and rests you and untangles all the knots.
Later I climbed back aboard and padded down the deck in my bare feet to the cabin. I pushed open the door and went in. I reached for a towel but my hand hit the empty rack. I’d just turned to tap the light switch when a voice came out of the darkness.
“Looking for a towel, Luke?”
One came hurtling out of the darkness, hit me and fell to the floor. I bent to pick it up.
I couldn’t see her. She was in the shadows of the bunk but I heard her laugh. “My God, you’re skinny. I watched through the porthole. I could count every bone.”
Quickly I wrapped the towel around me. I heard her move, then her head blocked out the moonlight coming through the porthole. I felt the touch of her hands on my shoulder, and as she turned the moonlight caught her face. I reached out for her and I knew even before my fingers touched her that she was as naked as I.
I don’t know how long we stood there in the tiny cabin, our lips touching, our bodies molded so that I could not tell where I left off and she began.
“I love you, Nora,” I said.
I felt her stir slightly in my arms. “I love you, Luke.” She laid her cheek against my chest. “I told you it wasn’t goodbye.”
I picked her up and carried her back to the bunk. “We’ll never have to say goodbye again, you and I,” I whispered. Her arms reached up and led me down into a wonderland I never had known before.
How sweet the flesh of love.
She was sleeping on her side when I awoke in the night, her back against the wall, her knees drawn up as much as space allowed. Her eyes were closed and even in the moonlight I noticed how long and dark her lashes were, and how like a little girl she looked when asleep. Slowly her eyes opened.
She closed them again for a moment, then opened them slowly. A mischievous smile came over her face. She drew my head down to her breast. “Come here, baby.”
Her breasts were like small ripe fruit, sweet and firm and warm, like the yellow clings on the trees in July. I kissed them and I heard her soft sensual cry of delight.
Later, much later, she lay with her face buried in my shoulder. “Luke,” she whispered. “It was never like this for me before. Never.”
I stroked her head gently. I didn’t answer.
She raised her head to look into my eyes. “You do believe me, don’t you?” I nodded without speaking.
“You must believe me. You must!” she said fiercely. “No matter what people may say.”
“I do believe you.”
To my surprise she began to tremble and was suddenly very close to tears. “There are people who hate me! Who envy everything I have and everything I do. They’re always making up stories about me. Telling lies.”
I remember how very, very wise, how much older than she, I felt at that moment. “Forget about them. There are always people like that. But I know you. And anyone who knows you knows better than to listen to them.”
I pressed her head down to my shoulder again, and after a while her trembling stopped. “Luke, what are you thinking?” She looked up into my face. “Luke, I have one terrible confession to make.”
A sudden fear came up inside me. If she had been lying about anything, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want anything to change between us. I didn’t speak.
I think she knew what was going through my mind because she began to smile teasingly. “I can’t cook.”
The relief that went racing through me was almost comic. I began to laugh. Then I crawled out of the bunk to go and make coffee.
When I came back I saw that she had found an odd length of wire. She sat quietly toying with it while I drank the strong black coffee. I sat there fascinated as it came to life and took on the outline of a man about to dive into water. She noticed and put the wire down.
“Don’t stop,” I said. “I wish I could do things like that.”
She smiled. “Sometimes I wish I couldn’t. I’d like to stop but I can’t. I keep seeing things in things and it’s as if they had to come out. Do you know what I mean?”
“I think so. You’re one of the fortunate ones. Many people see things but they can’t make them come out.”
She looked at the wire figure for a moment, then flung it casually aside. “Yes, I’m one of the fortunate ones,” she said, almost bitterly. “And you? What are you?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. I never thought about it. I’m just a guy, I guess, waiting for the war to end.”
“And what will you do then?”
“Find a job. Maybe if I’m lucky I can get to build a few houses before I’m too old to get a kick out of it. I don’t know whether I’m really any good at it. I never had a chance to prove myself. I went right out of college into the Air Force.”
“Professor Bell says you’re very good.”
“He’s prejudiced,” I said. “I was his favorite.”
“Maybe I can help. I have a cousin who is a fairly well-known architect.” “I know,” I said. “George Hayden. Hayden and Carruthers ….”
“How did you know?”
“Your mother told me.”
She looked at me thoughtfully, then held out her hand for a cigarette. I held the light for her. She took a deep drag. “Mother doesn’t waste any time.”
I didn’t answer.
She leaned back. “It’s so quiet out here. So big and empty and so far away from things. No noise to tear at your ears, no people to bug you. Just a tremendous deep calm. As if you’re alone in another world.”
I didn’t speak.
“Luke.” She didn’t look at me. “Do you want to marry me?” “Yes.”
Now she did, her eyes light and dark all at once. “Then why don’t you ask me?”
“What could I offer a girl like you?” I asked. “I’ve got nothing. No money, no job, no future. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to support a wife.”
“Is that so important? I have enough—”
“It is to me,” I said, interrupting her. “I’m old-fashioned like that.”
She knelt down beside me and took my hands. “That doesn’t matter, Luke. Believe me, it doesn’t. Ask me to marry you.”
I studied her silently.
Her eyes fell away from mine. “That is—if you really want to. But you don’t have to just because of what happened between us. I want you to know that.”
I reached out and turned her face up to mine. “I love you,” I said. “Will you marry me?”
She didn’t answer, just looked at me and nodded, the tears bright in her eyes. I leaned over and kissed her gently on the lips.
“I’ll have to let Sam know.” “Sam?” I asked.
“I have to. It’s part of his job. He’ll have to issue a press release. It’s better than having some gossip columnist getting it first and making something dirty out of it.”
I didn’t answer.
She put a hand on my arm. “Sam’s a good friend.” “Sam was your date the night I met you,” I said. “Oh, so that’s it. You’re jealous of him.”
I didn’t answer.
“You don’t have to be. Sam’s been a good friend to me for many years. Since I was in school.” “I know. He went to great lengths to tell me.”
She stared at me for a moment. “And that’s all he’s been. A good friend. There was never anything between us, no matter what people say.”
“Is that one of the things you were trying to warn me about?” I asked. “Yes. But it’s just another of their dirty lies!”
Right there I made the first mistake of our marriage. It was a lie all right, but the lie was her own. I don’t know how I knew it but I did. Maybe it was the honest, candid look in her eyes or the straightforward tone of voice. Something about them didn’t belong. This kind of thing I never felt in her; it didn’t fit.
But the mistake was my own and there’s no going back and doing it over. One lie leads to another, not only for the liar but for the pretending believer, until the truth becomes too terrible a thing for either to face. But I didn’t know that then.
Instead, I thought that whatever it was that she didn’t want me to believe had been over for a long time. It had happened before I knew her and it didn’t matter now. I loved her and she loved me and everything else was yesterday. I leaned over and kissed her cheek lightly.
“I believe you,” I said.
__________________________________________
I glanced at Dani, sitting next to me, then across the table at Nora seated between Harris Gordon and her mother. Without making a point of it she managed studiously to avoid my gaze after our polite words of greeting. I wondered if the demons of memory ever returned to plague her as they had me.
Harris Gordon glanced at his watch. “I think we’d better get ready,” he said. He looked down the table at Dani and smiled. “Run upstairs and get your coat, child.”
Dani looked at him for a moment, then silently left the room. An awkward kind of silence fell upon us as if she had taken with her the invisible means that made communication amongst us possible.
Gordon cleared his throat. “Dani can ride with her mother and grandmother.” He turned to me. “I’d appreciate it if you’d come with me, Colonel. It will give us a chance to talk.”
I nodded. That was what I wanted. I still knew no more than I had last night after his telephone call. All through breakfast we had carefully avoided talking about the one thing that had brought us together.
“We can go in my car, Mother,” Nora said. “Charles will drive us.”
A soft sigh escaped Mrs. Hayden as she got to her feet. She looked at me with a faint grim smile. “Growing old is a painful process. It’s never quite as graceful as we’d like it to be.”
I returned her smile, nodding. I knew just what she meant.
When Gordon followed the old lady out, Nora and I were left alone. She picked up the coffeepot. “More coffee?”
I nodded.
“Cream and sugar?” I looked at her.
She flushed. “How silly of me! I forgot. Black. No cream. One sugar.” We were silent a moment. “Dani’s very pretty, don’t you think?”
“Yes, she’s very pretty,” I said, sipping my coffee. “What do you think of her?”
“I don’t know what to think. It’s been so long and I’ve only seen her for a few minutes.”
A trace of sarcasm came into her voice. “I didn’t think you’d need time to make up your mind.
You used to say that you were both tuned in.”
“We used to be,” I said. “But that was a long time ago. She’s grown up now and so much has happened to us both. I don’t know, maybe it will come back in time.”
“You used to be more sure of your daughter.”
I glanced at her. “There were many things I used to be more sure about. Like right now, I’m sure you’re deliberately making a big thing out of the word
daughter
. If you’re trying to tell me something, this is as good a time as any.”
A veil fell across her eyes. “You’re exactly the way you were when we first met. Painfully blunt.”
“It’s too late for polite lies, Nora. We took that trip a long time ago and it didn’t work. The truth is simpler. Nobody stumbles over things that way.”
She looked down at the tablecloth. “Why did you come?” she asked bitterly. “I told Gordon we didn’t need you. We were getting along all right.”
I got to my feet. “I didn’t want to. But I’m sure if you had been getting along so well, there wouldn’t have been any need.”
I turned and went out into the foyer. There was a peculiar knot in my gut. Nora hadn’t changed a
bit.
Dani was just coming down the stairs. I looked up at her and everything inside me stood still. It
wasn’t a little girl coming down the steps now. It was a young woman. Someone I had known very well. Her mother.
She was wearing a suit, her coat flung casually across her shoulders. Her hair was fluffed up, bouffant I think they call it, the lipstick fresh on her young mouth. The child that had sat next to me at the breakfast table disappeared again.
“Daddy!”
The ice inside me vanished. The voice was still a child’s voice. “Yes?” She came down and spun around in front of me. “How do I look?”
“Like a living doll.” I smiled, reaching for her.
“Don’t, Daddy,” she said quickly. “You’ll muss my hair.”
The smile left my face. She was still a child if that was all that worried her. But maybe it wasn’t that at all. Nora acted like that when she wanted to preserve what she called her
image
. I wondered if my daughter had grown to think like her too.
Dani seemed to sense my uneasiness. “Don’t worry, Daddy,” she said, in the same oddly reassuring voice she had used when Nora had come into the room. “Everything will be all right.”
I looked down at her. “I’m sure it will.”
“I know it will, Daddy,” she said with a curious emphasis. “Some things just have to happen before people can grow up.”
I stared at her.
The old lady came into the foyer then, followed by Gordon and Nora.
“Tell Charles to follow my car,” Gordon said, as he opened the front door for them. “What time are we due in court?” Nora asked as they walked past.
He looked at her quizzically. “We don’t go to court today. We’re merely returning the child to the custody of the juvenile authorities.”
“I’m glad. I don’t think I’m up to appearing in court.”
Gordon didn’t answer, just nodded as she walked on down toward the cars. “After you, Colonel,” he said politely.
Charles was holding the door of Nora’s Jaguar as I came up. A wrinkled smile came to his face. “Colonel Carey.”
“Charles.” I smiled and held out my hand. “How have you been?”
“Fine, Colonel.” His voice took on a warmth. “Despite the circumstances, it’s good to see you again, sir.”
“Close the door, Charles,” Nora said from inside the car.
Charles nodded and shut the door. He shot me a look as he hurried around and got in behind the wheel.
“If you drive, Colonel?” Gordon asked.
I pointed to the little rented Corvair, a pygmy between two giants, his black Cadillac and Nora’s gray Jag.