Write My Name Across the Sky

by O'Neal, Barbara

  When we were finished, he lingered, pressing tiny kisses to my chin, my shoulder. “Your skin smells of twilight,” he whispered. “I think of it when you are not here. I don’t want my sheets washed, so I can smell you on the pillowcase.”

  My heart skipped a beat, but I was well versed in the wiles and ways of men. He had many women, and I tried not to think about them. We had promised each other nothing. Unlike many of the other girls, I had no desire to retire into the comfort of marriage, not after the unhappiness I’d seen in my mother’s.

  But his words stirred me. Stirred my growing feelings. I told myself those emotions were nothing but our powerful chemistry, the lusty connection of two bodies that fit together exactly right. I arched a brow. “That must be awkward when the next woman is in your bed.”

  He brushed my hair from my face. “I do not bring other women here. Only you.”

  A hush rippled through me. I looked up at his green eyes, the lush lashes, and saw something I had not glimpsed before. Don’t fall for it. “I’m not sure I believe you,” I said and smiled, tracing his mouth with my finger. “But it doesn’t matter.”

  “I confess there are other women,” he said, and jealousy plucked my heart viciously, surprisingly. “I see them elsewhere. In my home, I only see you.”

  “You don’t have to do this. I know the rules.”

  “Rules?” He captured my fingertip and sucked on it, running his tongue over the tip. “Are you so jaded, my love, that you cannot see this is something remarkable between us?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t, Isaak.”

  “What? Do not tell you that I’ve never felt anything like this with anyone else? Because it’s true.”

  I pushed him away, rolled from beneath him, and sat up, pulling the sheet over my breasts. “Don’t make it more than what it is. I don’t need that fantasy to enjoy this.”

  He sat up too. “Are you sleeping with other men?”

  I met his gaze, lifted my chin slightly. “That is not your business.”

  He flinched but then nodded. “That is true.” He picked up my hand, kissed my knuckles. “Forgive me.”

  I pushed him, toppling him backward, then climbing astride him, casting the sheet aside. “Let me tell you about my mother,” I said. “She was beautiful, the kind of beautiful that makes people stop and take another look.”

  “It is no surprise to me that you had such a mother.”

  I nodded, not in vanity, but I knew my own worth. “Far more than I, but that’s not the point. She was born and raised in Paris, and she had great talent as a pianist and expected to have a life in music. In another time, she would have toured and played and perhaps married a wealthy man. Instead, the Nazis invaded.”

  To my deep surprise, his eyes filled with tears, and he sat up, blinking, and brought us to an equal posture once again. “Go on,” he said quietly.

  “Her parents were killed, and she survived by trading on her beauty. She never told me the whole story, but I could piece it together. In the beginning, she was the mistress of a powerful man, but something happened to him, and she spent the rest of the war starving.”

  His fingers traced my skin.

  “When the Allied forces liberated the city, she met my father, a GI from upstate New York, and married him to flee the city.”

  “And your father, was he a good man?”

  “He is a good man,” I said. “Kind and easygoing, but also a very simple kind of person. A farmer. He couldn’t talk about music or art or the world of letters. He kept to himself, tending the land and animals, and she was absolutely miserable.” I paused, thinking of my father’s way of turning his face away from her sharp words, staring off toward the horizon. “They both were.”

  “She’s gone, then.”

  This was still difficult. She had only been gone five years, and for all her whirling bitterness, her unfilled longings, I missed her. “Lung cancer.”

  “Which is why you do not smoke.”

  “Yes.”

  He bent his head, traced the line of my shin from knee to ankle, lost in thought. “My mother was born in Poland before the war.”

  I knew that he’d been raised in Israel, but not the circumstances. “Go on,” I said, echoing his words.

  I saw his throat move, and he stared for a long moment at the connection between his hand and my ankle. “She survived Treblinka. Not terribly well, I’m afraid. She was frail the rest of her life, but she did find some happiness with my father when she came to Israel.”

  “Is she still alive?”

  “Oh, no. She died when I was a child.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Ten.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  He met my gaze then, and I saw something hard, shimmery, in his cut-glass eyes. “I have found my way to make peace. Perhaps what I do will help you make peace too.”

  “I didn’t tell you about her because of the Nazis but because she should never have married my father. She should have stayed in Paris and joined the rebuilding and taken up piano again.”

  “You judge her very harshly. She suffered things you will never understand.”

  “I’m sure. But that was ended, either way.” I struggled to find a way to express my deepest conviction—that had my mother been a man, she would have found a way to stay and fight for her life, the life she genuinely wanted. “She loved books and music, art and museums, all the things that make up an educated life. She married into a family that was suspicious of all those things, had no use for them.”

  He was listening carefully. “And she planted the love of freedom in her daughter.”

  “Both of us. My sister is a singer. She’s going to be a star someday, I know it.”

  “Her dreams live in the pair of you.” He kissed my wrist. “That’s beautiful, no?”

  “Yes.” I took both of his hands in mine. “But listen, Isaak. Even if I fell madly in love with you, to the point that I could not breathe without looking at your face, I couldn’t leave my work and my life to be with you. I won’t.”

  He looked away. My declaration hung in the air, and I worried that it was too harsh. I worried that I didn’t even mean it. I worried that I was only lying to myself about my feelings being simple lust.

  “Very well,” he said. “I will never ask that of you.” He met my gaze. “If it becomes a thing that you want, you must tell me. Will you promise to do that?”

  “Yes.” Tears stung my eyes, and I blinked them away, but not before he saw them.

  “Oh, my sweet Gloria,” he said, curling his palms around my face. “It costs you to make that stand.”

  I swallowed.

  “I am in love with you. And you, whether you say it or not, are in love with me. Can we stand in this moment of light for now, together?”

  He kissed me, and I breathed in the scent of him, the rugged feel of his hands. “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Now, let’s wander out, shall we? Find some elegant supper and have a walk?”

  When I slipped into the bathroom to wash, I saw in the mirror that his fingers had indeed marked me, with smears of soft purple and green.

  In New York City on a February morning nearly fifty years later, the faintest pale light begins to limn the buildings.

  A movie, a romantic adventure. It still plays that way in my imagination.

  And yet, unlike in a movie, I will now pay the consequences of my foolish actions. So many years later, when I have finally begun to offer something of value to the world, something that heals the wounds of time and life, I will have to flee, leave it all behind.

  I can’t bear it. Worse, though, how can I bear prison? Either way, I will no longer live the life I so love. A tear stings my eye. I don’t want to give this up. This home, these nieces of mine, my Instagram world, this full and satisfying life.

  Wallowing has never been my style.

  But . . . where will I go? Who will be there when I arrive?

  In the dark, I let myself s
hed tears of regret.

  My phone rings in my hand, startling me. The screen says Asher. My heart drops. “Asher? Is everything all right?”

  “Sam is in the hospital. Intensive care.”

  And suddenly the vistas of faraway lands disappear, and I see myself in prison gray, because I cannot leave my niece. I won’t. “I’ll be right there.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sam

  The next time I awaken, my headache is vaguely less horrific. It’s still there, pulsing around the skin of my brain, and I feel dizzy and strange, but I can also actually see a little bit. There are no windows, so I can’t tell what time it is. An IV pumps drugs into my arm, and a machine beeps my heartbeat.

  I swing my head carefully to the right, and there is Asher, sound asleep. He looks terrible, his skin pale and greasy, his hair unkempt. The vision from my dream pops up, of him balding and older, our two little boys, and it breaks my heart in three directions. I was so happy that he was my husband, and we’re not even friends anymore. I ruined everything with my evil, evil tongue. Tears fill my eyes.

  I must make some noise, because he bolts up. “Sam!” He’s at my side, taking my hand, touching my face. “How do you feel? You look better.”

  “I feel awful.” Tears leak out of my eyes, and I’m embarrassed, but I can’t stop them. “But not crazy.”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “Hospital. I think you came and called an ambulance? Or did I dream that?”

  “No, that was real.” He laughs softly and, for one second, drops his head to my shoulder. Everything is in the gesture. Fear. Gratitude. I feel the skin of his forehead against my neck, and my tears flow even harder. When he straightens, he notices. “Don’t cry. It’s going to be okay. We got you in time.”

  “How did you know I was sick?”

  “You sent me an SOS.”

  “I did?” It’s our signal to come right now, like the Bat-Signal against the sky. “How did you get in?”

  “You left the door unlocked.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Yeah. Let me call the nurse, and maybe she can bring you something to drink.”

  “Apple juice.”

  “I’m sure they have that.”

  “It’s such a little-kid drink.”

  He smiles, but there’s something guarded in it, and I suddenly, humiliatingly, remember my questions about our marriage.

  “I’m sorry about the wedding stuff. I just—”

  He cuts me off. “It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it.”

  Heat floods my cheeks. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. You were delirious. You had a fever of one hundred and four.”

  The word surfaces. “Did you tell me it was meningitis?”

  “Yes. You were dangerously close to dying.”

  My heart squeezes. “I don’t remember texting you. Thank you for coming.”

  “Of course.”

  The apple juice arrives, and the nurse checks vitals. “One hundred and one,” she says of my temperature. “Much better.” She pets my forearm. “What can I bring you to eat, sweetheart? Oatmeal? Yogurt? Soup?”

  I shudder. “Not oatmeal. Yogurt.” My throat is still pretty sore, and I sip the juice. “And hot tea?”

  “You’ve got it.” She bustles out.

  The exchange has wearied me, and I close my eyes for a minute. Visions of the game world dance through my head—the girl and the trees and the mood. The swords. I look at Asher. “Did I tell you to bring my notes?”

  “Yep.” He picks up my notebook and hands it to me. “New game?”

  I start to nod, but my neck really does feel stiff. “Yeah. It just showed up. I kept dreaming things about it.” I look at the notes, afraid that I’m going to find gibberish, but the sketches are solid, reminding me of details that I’d lost a little bit. The sword is there—the way to greatness. I flip through the pages, lots of pages, far more than I thought. “This is not bad,” I say with understatement. “Did you look at it?”

  He shoves his hands deep in his pockets. “No . . . I mean . . . I wasn’t going to, but I was sitting there with nothing to do, so . . .”

  I half smile. “So yes.”

  “Yeah. Sorry.” He tilts his head. “I can’t figure it all out, but from what I can see, it’s really good, Sam.”

  “Really?” A sense of hope cuts through my fear. Maybe if it’s good enough, it will be enough to save the company. I glance through the pages. “I keep seeing this forest of trees. Iridescent, but living.”

  “I love it.” His fingers move on my shoulder. The backs touch the side of my neck, and I want to hold them there forever. “You deserve a big win.”

  How can it be so easy between us and so very, very hard? I’m suddenly very tired. “Tina told me you won an Origins Award.”

  “Nominated. Not won.”

  “Yet.”

  He tilts his head.

  “You could have told me. It’s a really big deal.”

  “I didn’t want you to feel bad. I mean—”

  The words are like that giant broadsword in my game vision, slicing right through my heart. “Because you know I’ve been floundering,” I say without question. “Everyone knows. Jared Maloney wants to buy Boudicca.”

  “What? No! He’d ruin it.”

  I look away. The headache is coming back. I’m going to need to call Jenny and tell Morgan, who is lead coder, what’s going on so they can take over running things while I’m out. “I can’t think about it right now.”

  “Right.” He takes my hand. “Look, I need to go, Sam. I have a meeting tonight, and I just wanted to be sure you were over the hump. Gloria has been in the waiting room for a couple of hours, waiting for you to wake up.”

  Tears, humiliating and copious, spill out of my eyes. I want to say, No, stop, don’t go. But I only nod. “Thanks for helping me.”

  My tears spark his, and he squeezes my hand. “See you around, Sam.”

  Then he’s gone, and I feel like all the light has left the world.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Willow

  I am awakened by the buzzer, insistently calling me to answer. Stumbling to the house phone, I say groggily, “Yes?”

  “Miss Willow, there’s a gentleman here from the FBI. Should I send him up?”

  Blinking, I stare at the intercom. “Uh, yeah, I guess so.”

  I have enough time to splash my face with water and shimmy into a pair of leggings and a sweatshirt before they’re knocking on the door. My heart is pounding, and I can barely hear for the rush of blood in my ears. Is this about the painting? It makes my stomach flip, and as I hurry up the corridor, I wonder if I should move it.

  Then sanity rights itself. It’s not a Renoir. That’s ridiculous. I hurry to the door, toss my hair out of my face, and open it. “Hi, how can I help you?”

  It’s a single guy, not much older than me, the kind of person who blends into the furniture. Conservative haircut, balding a little in front, beige raincoat. “I’m Agent Balakrishna, and I was hoping I could speak to Gloria Rose.”

  An electric ripple zaps down my spine as I remember the news story in the cab last night. “I don’t think she’s here. I just woke up.” Be accommodating. Nothing to hide, nothing to see. “Do you want to come in for a minute, let me check?”

  “Sure, if you wouldn’t mind.” He gingerly steps into the foyer, which is flooded at the moment with jeweled geometrics from the skylight.

  He looks up, looks at his feet. “Incredible,” he says.

  “I know, right?” I cross my arms and stand beside him, my bare toes turned blue by a bar of light. “I always think I’m remembering it better than it is, and it turns out I don’t remember it well enough.” As we stand there, my brain suddenly goes blank. Is the Renoir in the parlor? In the music room? Dining room? There are dozens and dozens of paintings on every wall in all those rooms, and some in here, too, which is where his attention flows next. To the paintings in t
he room. “Wonderful,” he says. “Who is the art collector?”

  “Both my mother and my aunt,” I say. My palms are sweating, but one of the things you learn as a performer is to smile through anything.

  “This is magnificent.” He points to a whirling abstract of dots and lines and motion, violets and blues with splashes of yellow.

  “A woman named Eleanor Parrot, a friend of my mother’s. We have quite a few of her paintings.”

  “I know Parrot. Died of a heroin overdose when she was in her early thirties, right?”

  “Yes. Are you a collector?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have the resources. PhD from the University of Chicago.”

  My throat dries, but even so, I’m wondering how a person goes from that kind of intense academics to the FBI.

  As if he gets the question often, he glances at me. “It is quite difficult to find a professorship these days.”

  “I can imagine.” I find my fingers weaving together and force myself to let go. Hands on hips. Nothing to see here.

  His gaze wanders over the rest of the paintings in the circular foyer, skimming most of them, stopping now and then, now at an original Dr. Seuss sketch, framed and signed—“Nice”—and a small, exquisite painting of a dove on a windowsill. “What about this one?”

  “I don’t think it’s anyone famous,” I say, and my mouth is so dry I have to lightly bite the tip of my tongue to trigger a saliva response before I can continue, and as I do, I tilt my head to see if I can read the signature. It’s a stylized scrawl. Morgol? Margal? “I’ve always loved the light in it, though,” I say, creating unity between us. Maybe. “The opalescence of those gray feathers, the detail in his eye.”

  He looks at it for a long time. “Do you mind if I take a photo?”

  My stomach twists. Is this a problem? But I wave my hand like I have no idea why he’d do it. “Sure.” I point toward an upholstered bench against the wall. “Why don’t you have a seat, and I’ll just run and check if Gloria is here.”

  I know she isn’t here. I don’t even know why I’m engaging in this charade, except that fear is pouring rivers of sweat down my back and I need to move to ease it even a little. I can feel the difference in the air when Gloria is around and when she’s not, but I pop my head into the rooms along the corridor, parlor, dining room, kitchen, then greenhouse. Not anywhere.