‘Are you sure?’ he said, his voice husky with desire.
She nodded, her face serious.
He pushed inside her, and the intensity of it almost made him cry. They moved together as one, a perfect unit of passion, all the restraints of their lives falling away. There were no others out here in the desert. Just them, making love.
She came first. He heard her cry out – felt her quivering around his cock, the sensation making him climax. He gasped at how deep the vibrations within him felt.
*
Joy woke within his arms, the two of them covered by her old Navajo blanket. Immediately, she knew that she regretted nothing. Already the navy sky had lightened to a rich sapphire shade, as golden and white light began to radiate from behind the McDowell Mountains. She looked at Lewis and found his eyes were open. She wondered how long he had been lying there, watching her sleep.
‘Good morning,’ she said, smiling at him and stretching her legs, enjoying the sensation of his body wrapped around hers.
‘I’m sorry, Joy, if I took advantage of you last night –’ Lewis began.
‘You didn’t take advantage of me, Lewis,’ she said, sitting up and putting her dress back on. ‘I think it’s more likely the other way around.’
‘You’re married, Joy, and Samantha just walked out on me yesterday. I wasn’t myself . . .’
He was leaning back on his elbows, and she could see him struggling to find the right words. He was embarrassed. Her heart sank.
She turned her back to him and zipped up her sundress. To her last night had been more than an act of comfort sex, but to Lewis that was probably all it was.
‘Look, it’s fine,’ she assured him. ‘Last night I was on a mission.’ She paused and licked her lips, turning to face him again. There was no subtle way of telling him. ‘Before I met you in the Rusty Spur, I had walked in on my husband having sex with another woman in his office.’
‘God, that’s awful.’
‘That’s why I was in the bar,’ she said, trying not to show her emotions. ‘I wanted to pick someone up, get back at Eddie.’
‘So last night?’
‘Rebound sex . . .’ she said, standing up and trying to look casual. ‘Wasn’t that what it was for you?’
She saw him blink.
‘Yes, I suppose it was.’
‘So we’re okay?’ She tried to look cool, composed, although she felt far from it.
She began to walk back towards the car, and he fell in step beside her. Streaming around them, between the hazy silhouettes of the chollas, were banks of Mexican gold poppies, interspersed with wild hyacinth, lupin and desert bluebells. A golden field beribboned with blue. Her father would have loved it. She could see buckwheat, and purple trailing windmills, mounds of delicate lilac phacelia with white desert chicory. There seemed to be a bonanza of spring flowers. And most of the cacti were blooming as well. The little hats of flowers atop of the tall saguaros, the ring of blooms around the heads of the Arizona fishhook cactus, orange flowers bursting out of prickly pear and the claret cup cactus with its nest of yellow blooms all greeted them as they walked by. The diversity was overwhelming. All this nature lifted her heart. She didn’t know what she was going to do about Eddie, but she did know that this resplendent desert landscape made her feel as if she was worth something.
By now the buttery sun had emerged fully from behind the McDowell mountain range blessing her desertscape with an almost divine light. Some people looked at the desert as a frightening place, a land of death. But Joy saw it differently, like her father. It spoke of life against all odds. It was a land for survivors. She would survive her husband’s infidelity because she had to, just as Lewis had to survive his wife’s abandonment.
Instinctively she took his hand in hers and stopped walking.
‘Lewis,’ she said, turning to him, ‘let’s be friends.’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Friends.’ But there was something to his tone she wasn’t quite sure of.
She sensed the changing air, the final drops of chill from the desert night moving over for daytime heat. A red-tailed hawk soared in the sky above, giddy with its liberty. It seemed a fitting symbol for this new day. Despite her heartache over Eddie’s betrayal, her anguish at what she had seen in that office, Joy possessed something now that she hadn’t had the previous morning. This night had given her a sense of freedom she’d never felt before.
Joy drove them out of the desert. The silence wrapped around them, but it was not uneasy. He sat beside her, watching her drive down Cactus Road to park outside his house. He was still in the fog of his hangover. All of her movements seemed to be in slow motion, the gentle bite of her lip as she concentrated on parking, the flick of her dark hair as she swept it out of her eyes, the slow measure of her hand turning the key in the ignition. The street had never seemed so quiet, and there was a thumping in his head, a rush to his body, as he looked at her. When she turned to him to say goodbye, he saw a little part of himself locked inside her: a kindred kindness. Last night they had looked after each other. This he had shared with Joy. He wanted to kiss her again but stopped himself. For where would it have led? Into his house, up to his bedroom, under the covers? He had to let her go and fix things with her husband.
Alone, his house already felt different. Hollowed out. He went upstairs to the bedroom and took in Samantha’s pillaged wardrobe, the trail of clothes on the floor. He knew that she would never come back.
It was only when he was in the kitchen, drinking coffee and thinking of Joy Sheldon again, that he remembered he had forgotten to check the mailbox.
*
Back in her home the stillness was shattering. Although everything looked the same, Joy felt as if the house had been through a hurricane and was now askew, distorted and unbalanced. It was a house of lies.
There was a letter from Eddie on the kitchen table. She ripped open the envelope. One sheet of headed paper – Sheldon Scottsdale Realtors. She skim read it. She didn’t want the words to puncture her heart, take a grip of her head and spin her back to who she’d been yesterday. She never wanted to be that woman again. That fool.
I waited up all night, she read. I’m worried. I’m sorry. It just happened the once.
Now she knew he was lying. What she had seen was not a one-time fuck. She could tell. There had been complicity between Eddie and Erin, and that only grew with time.
I waited as long as I could. I had to go to work. Come by the office. I love you . . .
I love you . . .
I love you . . .
He had to be kidding. Did he really think she would come to him? Stand across from him at the same table where she’d seen him going down on Erin? She tried to hold on to her righteous anger, but it tugged at her like a kite trying to break free. She had done the same as her husband now, had she not? She was a cheater too.
But her cheating didn’t cancel his out. It all hurt. Pained her to her core. The betrayals – her husband’s, her parents’ – ran deep within her life, like the craters of a riverbed parched by drought and cracking right open, sore and needy. She wanted to wash it all away. She needed a storm, a flood, a bolt of lightning to illuminate the desert plains and show her the way forward. She was a mother whose children no longer needed her, a wife whose husband no longer wanted her and a daughter who was lost.
All she had was a friend.
Joy sat at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands. Everything was broken. Years of trust, love, solidarity. She could not stay here.
*
IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT
Those were the words he needed to hear. He turned the postcard over in his hand. On the front was a map of Ireland with a shamrock and the words ‘Greetings from Ireland’ written in green. He looked to the west coast, trailed it north from Galway to Mayo to Sligo: Marnie’s land. He was in no doubt now that she had forgiven him.
He heard her.
‘It’s not your fault,’ Marnie had said to him as she’d trie
d to take his hand in hers, but he’d pulled away from her, tugging the tips of his chilled fingers out of her grasp. He had told her to leave him alone. He’d blamed her, and he’d blamed himself. He would never forget the last look she’d given him. Her emerald-green coat tied tightly around her waist with the collar up, her dark hair like a storm cloud around her pale face, her eyes had brimmed with sorrow, with pity, for him – and he couldn’t bear it.
‘Just get out of here – get away from me!’ he’d yelled at her, and she had stepped back as if he’d hit her. But her last words were etched upon his heart. He would never forget them.
Marnie had turned round and walked away, her heels clicking on the cold lino. Marnie in green, diminishing through the swing doors, disappearing out into the dawn rain. He’d never seen her again.
He had tried so hard to forget those dark hours, the longest ones of his life. He was still shocked at how much his life had changed overnight. He’d lost everything – his work, his girl, his family. He’d spent the past twenty-two years in America trying to reconstruct himself, but the problem was that Samantha had been part of that past too, and he’d never really been free from it during their whole marriage. He had tried to save himself through saving her. It was only natural that Samantha had become fed up. She hadn’t asked to be rescued.
Could he go back? Could he find Marnie again? His friendship with Joy had changed him. Her gentle reassurance had given him back some self-belief. Her touch had awoken his passion. Maybe he wasn’t the broken man he thought he was. Maybe Marnie really was waiting for him to come back . . .
The Irish Sea, 28 March 1967
It was on the ferry home that Lewis opened up to Marnie. He told her about his father, Philip Arthur Bell. A man he couldn’t remember, who had died in the final months of the Second World War. Bell had been in the Allied bomber squadron that took a hit over Dresden in February 1945. Lewis had been three at the time and his sister Lizzie only two.
‘Tell me about your mother?’ Marnie asked, tucking her arm into his as they sat on the deck of the boat. Despite the rain, she wanted to be outside for one last look home. The two of them were huddled together, Lewis in one of his black Italian suits, the collar pulled up against the rain, his thick, dark hair misted with raindrops.
‘She’s Irish, isn’t she?’ she pushed.
‘Yes, but she never spoke about her home. I don’t know where she’s from in Ireland. We never met our grandparents. In fact, I think they were dead before we were born. The only relatives we knew were my father’s, and they lived in England.’
‘So where did you grow up in England?’
‘Mainly the Home Counties – Berkshire, Bucking-hamshire, Surrey. A year in Suffolk; a few weeks in Norfolk. Everywhere and nowhere in particular.’ He avoided her gaze, taking out his cigarettes and offering her one.
She could see he was uncomfortable, but she wasn’t going to stop her questions. She had just introduced him to her family; now she wanted to know about his.
They turned into each other to shield the cigarettes from the wind and the rain. He cupped his hand around hers. She focused on his long, elegant fingers as he struck a match and lit her cigarette.
‘What do you mean nowhere in particular?’ she asked, exhaling a plume of smoke.
‘My mother found it hard to cope with the two of us on her own so she left us with various relatives of my father’s from time to time. She said she was trying to find a new father for us, but really she just didn’t want us in tow.’
‘That’s a little harsh.’
Lewis gave her such a cold look it made her shiver. ‘You wouldn’t think so if you met my mother.’
‘Did you like any of your relatives? Who were they?’
‘Most of them were doddery old aunts. Some spoiled us rotten, and some were mean. Best of all was Uncle Howard. He was my father’s brother. I loved living with him.’
As the boat began to roll upon the waves, and the soft drizzle spattered their faces, they fell silent. Marnie watched the Irish coastline fading into the hazy distance and felt a pull on her heart, as she always did when she left her homeland. She loved Ireland, yet she couldn’t live there. She had dreams, too big for the country where she was born.
She turned to Lewis. He was looking into the distance too, but his eyelids were flickering, and she felt he was further away from her, back in his past. He’d had a sad childhood. No father, a heartless mother and an unstable younger sister who he felt responsible for. She wanted to take away the pain of all that. Eva had warned her about Lewis. Told her he was a heartbreaker, but to be honest Marnie suspected that Eva was a little prejudiced. She didn’t seem to think much of any man, not even her husband, the great George Miller.
Marnie squeezed Lewis’s cold hand and stamped his cheek with the warmth of a kiss.
‘A penny for your thoughts,’ she whispered.
‘I’ve never understood why Uncle Howard abandoned me,’ he told her quietly. ‘I’ve never worked out what I did wrong.’
The look on his face tugged at her heart. She had never seen him so vulnerable. She cupped his rain-spattered cheeks in her hands and kissed him hard on the lips. It was that glimpse of the boy inside the man that made Marnie really fall for Lewis Bell.
Eight
Relativity
Scottsdale, Good Friday, 24 March 1989
Joy knew exactly what time her mom would be out of the house. Every year on Good Friday her mom went to the old mission church in downtown Scottsdale at noon for the Stations of the Cross. She had never missed it, not even when her husband was sick.
Joy parked her car in a street two blocks away from her parents’ house. Her mom’s old Ford was of course gone from the drive. She walked round the back of the house and lifted up the loose piece of sill on the back washroom window. The key was there. The cold metal stung against her hot palm.
She unlocked the back door and slipped inside. She took off her sandals, dusty from the desert, and padded across the kitchen. Where to begin?
She went to her father’s oak desk in the front room. It was unlocked, but as she riffled through the drawers and compartments, she knew in her heart there was nothing there. It was too exposed a place to hide what she was looking for.
She went upstairs and looked in her mother’s wardrobe, lingering over the one suit of her father’s that her mother had kept. His second-best suit. He had been buried in his best. She stroked its sleeves, smelled it and tried to summon her father’s presence. Why had he left her? She hadn’t been ready.
She pulled herself away from the wardrobe, leaving it exactly as it had been and looked in the dressing table and the cupboards beside the bed. Nothing. Joy hunted in the bathroom cabinet and the chest of clean laundry, dug through things in the back of the wardrobe in her old bedroom, but again she found nothing apart from mementoes from her childhood, little daggers of memory that speared her heart.
Back downstairs she searched every cupboard and drawer in the kitchen. She looked inside old casserole dishes and in a dusty, cracked teapot on the sideboard. Still she couldn’t find a thing. Could it really be that there was not one line in existence about who she really was? No documentation? No original birth certificate? When she had applied for her passport two years ago her mom had given her a certificate. A certificate that showed Joy hadn’t been officially registered until they’d moved to Scottsdale. Shocked, Joy had asked her mom about it only to be told that they’d simply forgotten to do it until then. She should have known there was something up, but the possibility that she could have been adopted had been the last thing on her mind.
Joy stood in the middle of her mother’s kitchen and stared out the back window. She felt different. Loosened, undone, but a little better now that she was no longer in her own house. Her night in the desert with Lewis had changed something within her. Her thighs were still trembling; her heart beat as if at hummingbird rate. She felt opened out, exposed, as if all her nerves were on the outside of her
body, tingling like antennae. She was not herself. She was another Joy, from another planet. When she pushed her hands through her hair she wouldn’t be surprised if she caught tiny stars between her fingers. Lewis had saved her. God knows where she might have ended up last night if she hadn’t met him. She had felt so wild she would have picked up any old lunatic.
‘Friends,’ she whispered, remembering the pledge they had made to each other this morning.
‘Just friends,’ she reminded herself.
It had only been a few days since Joy had last been in her mother’s house and had planted the Easter lily cactus in the garden, and yet looking out into the backyard she could see that the two orange and lemon trees were overloaded with fruit. She knew her father would have collected them by now.
She slipped her sandals back on and opened the patio doors onto her father’s pride and joy. It made her sad to see how quickly it was possible to tell a garden was unloved in the Arizonian climate, when living things quickly shrank and shrivelled up under the full glare of the sun. Sometimes Joy dreamed of living in a place that was lush, to saturate herself in its damp essence and not worry about thirsty plants and bleached, bony soil. Yet the desert was her first love. This was where her heart lay, in its blood-red sands, her soul stripped bare by those searing rays from the sun.
Joy looked up at the first orange tree. It was laden with fruit, the scent of the full blossoms intoxicating. She breathed it in.
‘Just go get a ladder and pick the oranges, Joy,’ she imagined her dad telling her. ‘You overthink things, girl.’
The ladder, the rake and net were all in her dad’s garage. She also needed to find one of Dad’s old sunhats to protect her face. She walked round to the front of the house, pulled up the garage door and as soon as she stepped inside, she was hit by a smell that took her back to her childhood – those Saturday afternoons spent helping her daddy in the garden. Joy felt tears welling. She wished so much that her father was still here so she could talk to him. Would he feel as threatened by her birth mother as her mom did? She felt not. He’d told her in the first place. But why had he waited until he was dying? Had he been afraid that he would lose her love?
The Gravity of Love Page 17