He loves my daughter, Joy thought. But she’ll never love him back in the same way.
*
Tonight Lewis wanted to drink himself into oblivion. He’d decided to get properly drunk. He had earned the right to sway on the bar stool ordering Jack Daniel’s and chasing each hard-burning shot with a bottle of beer. He was in the Rusty Spur Saloon of all places. He hadn’t been here in years. Since they’d sobered up their act in the mid-seventies, he and Samantha rarely went out to bars. They had become restaurant goers, wine drinkers.
The place was packed with Spring Training fans, and there was a band playing. It was the perfect environment to be alone and drinking. No one saw him. The more he drank, the more sober he felt and the greater his sense of loss. He tried to picture his wife returning to him, but he knew Samantha was never coming back. This had been a long time coming. They didn’t belong together and both of them knew it, and he felt a particle of relief mixed up in all of his anger, shock and rejection.
This loss he felt was an old pain, a wound he had kept buried for over twenty years. The longer he ignored it, the worse it had become. It was the love he had shared with Marnie and had lost, and it was what had happened to Lizzie. All of their fates entangled: Samantha, Lizzie, Marnie. And now the knowledge that Marnie had married Pete Piper just four months after he’d left London was breaking his heart as much as his wife’s desertion. Had Marnie done it on purpose to hurt him? Losing her still hurt after all these years. How could he have blamed her for what had happened with Lizzie? Yet he had.
London, 13 April 1967, 6.17 p.m.
Lewis was driving again, guilt nagging at him for having left Lizzie behind in that house in Paddington, but he’d had no choice. He had very little time.
He put his foot down and the MG roadster darted through the traffic towards Marnie’s flat in South Kensington. He felt the thrill of speed, of the challenge he faced. They had just one hour. They would work together as always. And this would be the last time they kept it secret. Lewis had promised her.
They sat next to each other in Marnie’s flat, the table covered by dozens of her sketches. The windows were open and the light was fading fast as night descended. He could still see the fig tree in the square below, its juicy green leaves sensual and forthright. The sunflower-yellow curtains gently rustled, bombarding his vision with shimmering hope. They were looking at all the drawings Marnie had done while Lewis had been out with Lizzie. He began to forget about everything else: Lizzie and her hideous paintings, the American girl Sammy and his ominous glimpse of Jim. He forgot about the office, the partnership, even George Miller.
They were a team. He and Marnie were as one, focusing on creation, passing cigarettes to each other without speaking, focused only on discussing the images before them. They were arguing. He preferred a looser image, more monotone. She was going for a tightly structured design employing fire-engine red and royal blue with a strong symbol: the red phoenix, emerging from the blue flames. She reminded him of the simplicity of Henrion’s design for KLM: all one colour, pale blue, with one enigmatic symbol of a crown. Lewis argued that fire was a bad idea. Should connotations of disaster be emblazoned on the side of an aeroplane? Marnie countered that it was a fire of power, of energy, the flames so abstracted that they could be the leaves of a tree beneath the phoenix. It was an image that would last the test of time. Just like her work would last.
He teased her, saying she had a bigger ego than George, but she laughed, and he caught her laughter with his lips. They were kissing, unable to stop themselves. He pushed her back onto the table and lifted her skirt up. They made love there and then. Their drawings showering around them like a multicoloured fanfare, he pushed himself deep inside her. He wanted to feel Marnie was his completely. He wanted to trust her.
Scottsdale, 23 March 1989
Dusk had given way to darkness as Joy drove into Scottsdale’s old town. Eddie’s office was close enough to walk to, but she preferred to drive at this time of day. It was cooler now, still a spring night, and she could see the last streaks of sunlight fading away at the horizon.
At night the land lifted. During the day, the heat in the sky could bear down upon the landscape, so that sometimes she almost felt flattened. She looked to the defiance of the cacti sucking what little they could out of the earth, reaching skyward despite the heavier gravity in the desert. How would she have felt in Ireland? To be in such a different landscape, the opposite of all that she had known. Had she ever really belonged in her life? Was she just a visitor to the world of Joy Sheldon, daughter of Jack and Teresa Porter, wife of Eddie? Could she have been a different kind of girl, another woman, if her Irish mother hadn’t given her up?
Joy’s heart began to race. She called this sensation her hummingbird heart, for she’d read that a hummingbird’s heart could beat more than a thousand times a minute. Sometimes it happened when she was excited, or frightened, or a little panicked. Would she and Eddie have found each other if she had grown up in Ireland? Was he her destiny? In truth, she had always thought so.
Joy was filled with a burning desire to touch Eddie, to have sex with her husband right now. What would he say if she stormed into his office, pulled down the blinds and pushed him onto his office table, the fig cake forgotten as they devoured each other?
She pulled into the car park opposite Eddie’s office. Her husband’s Corvette was parked outside, alongside another car. She’d forgotten that he might be with a client. She bit her lip, unsure now whether she should intrude.
She tried the door of the building and found it was open. What if she waited for him in the reception area? Surely he would be finished soon.
Joy walked into the cool sanctuary of the empty reception. She sat on a chair by the door of Eddie’s office, the fig cake resting on her lap. She watched the hands of the clock ticking by. But as well as the ticking clock, she could hear noises. At first she wasn’t sure what she was hearing. But she knew it wasn’t the sound of her husband talking with a client. Then it dawned on her.
Joy stood up, still balancing the cake in one hand, and gripped the door handle with the other and opened it.
What she saw whipped her heart right out of her mouth. Sitting on her husband’s desk, her skirt around her waist and her legs apart, head thrown back, was Erin Winters. Eddie was on his knees in front of his daughter’s future mother-in-law, his face buried in her. He was doing something to Erin that he had never done for Joy in all the years of their marriage.
Joy screamed for one sheer second as the couple unlocked. She saw Erin’s look of horror and her husband’s head turning, his eyes dazed with lust. She didn’t run – not yet. She was in that office long enough to see the sparks of ecstasy still flying between Eddie and Erin. Her scream pealed out. She dropped the cake and fled.
*
Lewis knocked back another glass of Jack Daniel’s on his pew in the Rusty Spur.
His mind was spinning with sounds and images. Samantha’s voice telling him he had to stop living in the past. Lizzie’s laugh haunting him, and Marnie’s eyes – that last look she’d given him reaching into his heart and torturing him.
He dropped his head. It felt so heavy, as if the weight of all these memories was too much to bear. He was sinking on the bar stool.
‘Hey, buddy, maybe you should head home?’
The barman was leaning over him. Lewis mustered himself, pulled himself upright. ‘Just one more,’ he said, trying to look him in the eye.
‘You sure?’
‘Yeah, and make it a double.’
‘Okay, fella.’
‘In fact, do you have any Irish whisky?’
The barman placed the glass of Jameson in front of him. He took a sip. It was lighter than the bourbon, less sweet. He imagined it fortifying him.
‘Have you ever been to Ireland?’ he asked the barman.
‘Nah, but I know plenty of Irish guys. Good drinkers, I can tell you.’
‘I’m going to Ireland,’ Lewis told him.
‘I’m going to find the woman of my dreams,’ he announced to no one in particular, his voice drowned out by the sound of the band starting up again. He looked around; everyone was caught up in their own private conversations, half watching the band. He must look like a sad case, all on his own, drunk and sliding off his bar stool.
He looked towards the door and, just as he was thinking he should salvage his dignity and leave, in she walked. Her long black hair was loose and wild, her face pale in the gloom. She looked like she’d seen a ghost.
She pushed through the throng, a determined expression on her face. It was clear she hadn’t seen him, but as she reached the bar, her eyes finally came to rest on him. Her body seemed to quiver as she started in shock. For some reason Lewis was not surprised at all. It was as if he had been expecting her.
*
‘Hello, Joy,’ he said. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’
His eyes were glittering. He was drunk, but she didn’t care. She was glad Lewis Bell was here in the Rusty Spur.
‘I’ll have a beer and one of those to chase,’ she said. At that moment she’d drink anything. She needed to blot out what she had just seen.
The barman placed a tall, frothy beer in front of her. She picked it up and took a sip then followed it with a gulp of whisky. It burned her throat and made her eyes sting, but already she was feeling a little better.
‘Are you okay?’ Lewis asked. His elbows were propped on the bar, his head lolling slightly.
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ she said, although she wanted to scream out and let the whole world hear her pain. ‘You want a beer?’
‘Don’t think I should,’ he said, his words slurred. ‘I’ve had enough. Don’t you think you should take it easy?’
She felt a sudden burst of annoyance. Why was Lewis here on his own anyway? Was he just like Eddie, looking to pick up some woman?
‘What are you doing here, Lewis?’ she demanded. ‘Where’s your wife?’
*
Her directness startled him. Tonight Joy Sheldon was no longer shy. She looked at him with fierce eyes. It was impossible to avoid her question.
‘She’s gone,’ he heard himself telling her.
‘Where has she gone?
‘Santa Fe,’ he slurred. ‘Gone for good.’
He waved at the barman to bring him another beer. Joy said nothing; she just stared at him.
‘She said it’s been over between us for years.’
‘Are you sure she’s gone for good, Lewis?’ Joy said, her tone gentle now. ‘She might want to try to sort things out between you. You should go after her.’
‘No, she was clear.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s over.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, taking a more genteel sip of her whisky this time.
‘Dead. That’s what I am. I’m a dead man in my wife’s eyes.’
‘I don’t think you’re a dead man.’
‘You just don’t know me well enough yet.’ He gave a lame laugh.
‘Stop,’ she said. ‘Don’t say such things.’ She put her hand on his arm. He looked down at it. He wanted to tuck it inside his, yet he did nothing – just stared at her little fingers pressed into his flesh.
‘Hey,’ he said, tearing his eyes away, looking up at her. ‘We’ve got to stop meeting like this. It’s getting strange.’
‘Maybe we’ve often been in the same place at the same time but didn’t know it before because we hadn’t actually met . . . Scottsdale isn’t that big.’
‘Maybe.’ He considered her. ‘And that’s why you’ve always looked familiar to me. We have seen each other before. Many times.’
Joy nodded. He watched her as she drank her whisky. She was wearing a rather fetching green sundress with a pattern of white daisies upon it. Her pale skin gleamed in the dim bar. She looked fresh, and pure – out of place in this throng of rowdy people.
‘And what are you doing here, Joy?’ he asked her. ‘Where’s your husband?’
‘I can tell you exactly where my husband is.’ She paused, taking another sip of the beer. ‘Eddie is working late in his office.’
‘He’s a bit of a workaholic, isn’t he?’ Lewis asked. For some reason he felt an edge of competition with Joy’s husband.
‘That’s the impression he gives,’ she said, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth.
‘Hard-working, ambitious . . .’ Lewis said. ‘I used to be like that years ago, but not any more,’ he said. ‘Nope –’
‘I’m glad you’re not like that,’ she interrupted, fierce again. ‘Hey, do you want to get out of here?’
He looked at her in surprise. ‘Okay,’ he said cautiously. ‘Where’d you want to go?’
*
She drove him out to the desert, to the edge of the McDowell Mountains. They got out the car and looked down on the lights of Scottsdale, and further into the distance she could see the glow of Phoenix. They sat on the desert floor in silence, staring up at the star-filled sky. Gradually the horrific image of her husband with Erin Winters began to fade away.
‘Look at the comet!’ Lewis suddenly exclaimed. ‘I’ll never get used to the night skies of Arizona. You don’t need to imagine other galaxies – you can just see them.’
‘Those Northern Lights were something else, weren’t they?’ she asked.
She couldn’t help thinking how soulful he looked in thought. Solemn, distinguished . . . so different from her cowboy husband.
‘But what were they doing all the way down here?’ he asked.
‘A massive geomagnetic storm,’ she said. ‘It cut the electricity in Quebec for nine hours. Just one of those freaks of nature.’
‘A miracle,’ he said.
‘Yes, I guess it is.’
She was acutely aware of his body next to hers. She hadn’t sat this close to another man, besides Eddie, ever. It frightened her, but it excited her too, to be on her own with him. She shivered.
‘Are you cold?’ Lewis asked. ‘Here, take my jacket.’
Despite her protests, he insisted on slipping it on over her shoulders. She breathed in his warmth, his aroma.
‘I love the desert,’ she told him, calmed by the feel of his jacket around her. ‘My dad and I used to go hiking every spring, tracking down wildflowers. Not this spring though; he died last year.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It sounds like you were close.’
‘We were.’ She bit her lip to stop the tears from coming. She didn’t want to dwell on her father’s death. It was still too raw. The last thing she wanted was to cry in front of Lewis. She shifted the focus onto him.
‘Are your parents still alive?’
He shook his head. ‘No, my father died during the Second World War, when I was very little, so I never knew him, and my mother died about seven years ago.’
‘Do you miss her?’ Joy asked him.
‘No, I don’t,’ he said, and she detected a slight hardness in his voice.
‘There wasn’t much to miss, Joy. My mother was never really there when I was a child.’
‘It’s complicated, isn’t it?’ Joy said. ‘The relationships between parents and children. Sometimes I worry that I haven’t been a good enough mother. And it’s the only thing I’ve done with my life.’
‘It sounds to me like your children have grown up into fine young people,’ Lewis said.
She looked at the shadows of his face in the darkness. His hair was thick and unruly. It needed a cut, but she liked its wildness. ‘Are you sad that you never had kids, Lewis?’
‘I try not to think about it.’ He shrugged. ‘I guess so, but I don’t think I’d make a good father.’
‘I don’t agree.’
‘You hardly know me, Joy!’ He smiled at her, and she wanted to reach out and touch those laughter lines around his eyes. ‘I’m struggling just to keep those plants alive, you know.’
They sat in silence, smiling at each other. Where would this evening end? She couldn’t go home. Not now. Suddenly she had an urge to confide in Lewis.
‘You know, last year I found out I was adopted.’
‘Really?’ He looked at her with interest. ‘How?’
‘My father told me just before he died. I was born in Ireland but brought to America when I was a baby.’
‘Do you know who your birth parents are?’
‘Nope.’
‘And does that matter to you?’
She put her hands in her lap and stared up at the sky.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It does. It’s my dream to go to Ireland to find my birth mother.’
‘Then I think you should go.’
She digested his words, surprised at how much they meant to her.
‘Thank you,’ Joy said, turning to him, ‘for being the only person, apart from Ray, to see it from my point of view.’
Before she could stop herself she leaned forward and kissed him.
*
He kissed her back, and it felt so good. He knew he shouldn’t. She was married, yet it felt so right, so natural to be kissing this woman.
He took her into his arms, feeling the softness of her body pressing into his. She smelled like the lush spring desert air, the intoxicating and tender scent of orange blossom.
They pulled back for an instant, gazing into each other’s eyes.
‘Lewis,’ she whispered. ‘Make love to me.’
Her words astounded him, sent a shiver through his whole being.
But before he could think straight she was kissing him again, her hands on the buttons of his shirt. Desire curled within him, more intense than he’d felt in years. Samantha was a beautiful woman but her looks had always left him rather cold. Joy felt different, reminded him more of Marnie, the soft contours of her body melding to his. He felt young again, brimming with need and passion.
They fell back onto the hard desert floor. He slipped the straps of her sundress off, and she unzipped it to reveal her breasts. He kissed each nipple, listening to her sighs. She was alive beneath him, in a way Sammy had never been, lifting her pelvis to his. He could feel her yearning for him, as she unbuckled his belt and pushed her hand beneath his waistband, her fingers curling around his cock.
The Gravity of Love Page 16