The Gravity of Love

by Noelle Harrison

  She sat down on a plastic sack of soil and took a breath. It was deliciously cool in the garage, and she imagined her dad right there beside her, putting his arm around her shoulder. She looked at all the shelves crammed with jars, pots, and bits and bobs. No one had touched the place since he’d died, and nor were they likely to. None of her family besides her had any interest in the garden.

  Right on the top shelf she saw a large shell that her father had bought for her in a yard sale when she was about twelve. Next to it was his special box, as he used to call it, where he kept all the pictures she’d ever made him at school.

  She took the stepladder and pulled it open, climbed up to the top step and took down the shell. She remembered its name now – abalone. She held it up under the bare light bulb and saw that the inside of the shell was iridescent, with swirls of green, pink and opal like the Northern Lights. One day, she promised herself, she would baptise this shell in the sea. She would bring the sky underwater.

  Next, Joy climbed back up the ladder and retrieved her father’s special box. Setting it down on his workbench next to the shell, she unlocked it and started to spread out all the pictures she’d made her father as a little girl. Most of them were of flowers, secret gardens, forests and woods. Joy smiled as she saw how, even as a child, she’d been obsessed with plants. She pulled them all out, something she had never done, and looked at her progress over the years. They were good – bold and imaginative – and carefully composed, but she hadn’t painted since school. That part of herself was buried.

  She was about to put the pictures back when she saw a brown folder squashed into the bottom of the box. She pulled it out and stared at it for a long moment. She had never seen it before, but still she knew what was inside.

  *

  His head spinning, Lewis lay back on his bed. He felt as if he had been blown over. Like a tree felled in a storm.

  In his hand he clutched the postcard from Marnie.

  He gazed up at his ceiling fan, slowly spinning the hot, dry air in his empty bedroom. He felt like a stranger in his own life. How had he ended up here?

  He closed his eyes and suddenly he was back in 1967 with all the other young Londoners flocking out to play, listening to new music, being daring and adventurous. Lewis had loved being part of it. He had belonged in that bright new world, but the sixties were long over now. In fact the eighties were nearly over. Everything was changing. The Iron Curtain was being torn apart, and the world order was reshuffling. Nothing seemed as abandoned and free as it had been back then.

  He tried to summon a memory of one of the many parties he’d been to, the pretty girls with glittering eyes, the throbbing music and the heady clubs taking him to all the corners of his imagination. But he couldn’t do it. All he saw was Marnie, in her dark green coat, appealing to him, yet all he felt was Joy’s touch, the press of her lips upon his, the feel of her tender body, her softness consuming him. He knew he was in danger of transferring his heartache for Marnie to desire for Joy. Just like he had with Sammy.

  Lewis sat up in bed, his eyes open. Suddenly his head was clear. It was obvious what he had to do.

  *

  A single piece of paper slid out from the brown folder onto her father’s workbench.

  Joy stood frozen, her hands shaking as she began to read. She started at the top of the page. There was a heading, Department of External Affairs, and an address in Dublin, Ireland. It was printed in green, a small green harp beneath it. The letter was addressed to her parents Mr & Mrs Jack Porter with an address she didn’t recognise in Brooklyn, New York. The letter was dated 13 March 1953.

  Joy read every word carefully – twice. It was a letter granting permission to adopt an infant from Ireland. In the letter it stated that her parents must produce evidence to show they were Catholics and that they undertook to raise the child as a Catholic.

  She put the letter down and took a breath. The brown folder was still in her other hand and she could feel there was something else in there.

  She opened the folder up and there was her birth certificate in black and white. She tried to read slowly, but she found herself gobbling up the words.

  date of birth: 1951, 26 April

  place of birth: Ballycastle, County Mayo

  name: Joyce Mary

  sex: Female

  name and surname and dwelling place of father:

  Richard Lawrence, Gloucester, Great Britain

  name and surname and maiden name of mother:

  Aoife Catharine Martell, formerly Martell

  father’s profession: Soldier

  There was more. An old black-and-white photograph. She picked it up.

  A toddler smiled at the camera, plump cheeks and chubby legs in a little white dress and holding out a tiny bunch of flowers that looked like buttercups. She stared at the child’s face and it dawned on her that she’d never seen any photographs of herself as a baby before. Her parents had told her they were lost in a fire at their home in New York before they’d moved. But that had been a lie too.

  She flipped over the photo and written on the back in her father’s hand it said:

  ‘Little Joyce the day she chose me.’

  Joyce. Joy. It was her.

  The facts began to filter through. Her real name was Joyce Mary Martell. Her mother was called Aoife. She wasn’t even sure how to pronounce her name. Her father was called Richard Lawrence, and he was from Great Britain – a soldier. They were not married. And Joy hadn’t been a baby when her parents had adopted her. Her birth certificate stated her date of birth was 26 April 1951, but the permission for her adoption was given on 13 March 1953, which meant she was nearly two when they took her to America. Horror swept through her. Had she been with her birth mother the first two years of her life? What had happened to her, to Aoife?

  She opened the folder wide, hunting for more information. A picture of her mother, a letter, an address . . . but there was nothing.

  Joy sat down on a stool before she keeled over and brought her hand to her pounding heart. The past year, since Joy had discovered she was adopted, she’d assumed she’d been given up as a newborn. But she’d been nineteen months old, nearly two, when her parents had taken her to America. She would have been talking, running around; surely she had some memories of her mother? Yet she couldn’t remember a thing.

  Joy imagined what she would have done if anyone had tried to take Ray or Heather from her when they were babies. She would have killed for them – she knew it.

  She looked at herself as a little girl in the photograph. That open-hearted baby face, the offering she had for her new father. The sheer innocence of it made her want to cry.

  But part of her also wanted to storm into the house now, wait for her mom to return from church and confront her. She wanted to demand that she tell her absolutely everything. Joy wanted to know. Where was Aoife Martell? Why had she given her child up?

  Yet Joy couldn’t bear the idea of a confrontation. She could already see her mom’s tears, feel the way she pricked Joy with guilt for wanting to know anything. Wasn’t it better to just go?

  Joy put the letter and the picture back in the brown folder and slipped it into her bag, along with the abalone shell. She tidied her childhood artwork into the box and placed it back up on the top shelf. As she did so, she was struck by a new feeling – the sense of an ending. Her father’s life was over, as was the fiction of her childhood – and her vulnerability to her mom’s judgement.

  Joy knew she couldn’t hate her mom or blame her, yet her love for her was twisted up inside her gut.

  She would go for now.

  On the way out, Joy picked up the yard brush and pushed it up into the dense foliage of the orange tree, shaking the branches. A single orange tumbled into her outstretched hand. She lifted it to her face and inhaled its sweet juicy promise before popping it into her bag.

  *

  What if Marnie didn’t want to know him when she actually saw him? Lewis thought. He wasn’
t the successful graphic designer he’d once hoped to be. He was much older now, a worn-out typesetter whose wife had just walked out on him. He dreaded Marnie asking about his life, the list of failures beneath his name.

  Yet he had questions for her too. Why had she married Pete Piper? Why had she left London and moved back to Ireland? But, most of all, why had she waited all these years to contact him?

  Lewis knew he couldn’t tolerate another day without finding out. This was what compelled him to call Doug up and tell his father-in-law he was going to take that Easter vacation to Ireland after all. He probably wouldn’t be back for at least a week.

  He made no mention of Samantha. It was clear her parents didn’t know that she’d left him, and he couldn’t face their upset, their questions and well-meaning interference.

  The lack of distress he felt today over Samantha’s desertion was strange. Yesterday he’d been devastated. Yet this morning, instead of thinking of his wife, or of trying to contact her, his thoughts kept returning to his night in the desert with Joy. He knew that he’d been very drunk, but still something about Joy Sheldon had enticed him. She was too modest and meek to be his usual type. A different breed from Marnie and Samantha, both bold and confident women who turned heads, Lewis’s included. Joy had a different effect on him. She made him want to stay still. When he was beside her, inside her, he’d felt a sense of peace.

  ‘Just friends,’ he whispered, reminding himself that at this very moment Joy was most likely sorting things out with her husband.

  Valued. That’s how Joy had made him feel.

  And he realised he’d never had a real friend before.

  *

  The afternoon was warm, but not too hot. Joy walked within the scent of orange blossom, back towards her car. There was a whole beginning to her life that had been hidden from her. All those unknown smells, sounds, feelings that she had shared with her birth mother were part of the fabric of her being.

  Her bag swung against her hip, heavy from its load. She had all that she needed in the trunk of her car: her packed case, her passport – never used – and the book on Ireland from the library. She had left a letter for Heather at home. She didn’t know what to write to Eddie, and so in the end, she wrote nothing. She had no words for him. Not yet.

  As she walked up Scottsdale Road she saw a figure in a pink Sugar Bowl uniform cycling towards her. It was Carla.

  As soon as the girl saw her she braked, and Joy smiled at how the bicycle was a little big for her – Carla was balanced on her toes on the sidewalk, wobbling a little from side to side.

  ‘Hi, Carla,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Okay,’ the girl said warily. She looked hot, beads of sweat pooling above her lips.

  ‘I heard you’re going to California?’

  ‘Yeah, San Francisco. I’m going to waitress there until college starts in the fall,’ she said, her eyes dark and glowering. ‘I can’t wait to get out of here.’

  ‘Me too.’

  Carla wiped her lips with the back of her hand. ‘Are you going somewhere, Mrs Sheldon?’

  ‘Yeah, actually I am. I’m going to Ireland.’

  ‘Ireland?’ The girl looked stunned. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s a long story. But will you do me a favour, Carla?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, hesitant.

  ‘Before you leave for California, call Heather and ask her to come with you.’

  Now Carla’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. ‘I don’t understand. She’s getting married, isn’t she?’

  ‘I’d rather she didn’t, to be honest. I’d rather she followed her heart.’

  Joy said nothing more, but she held Carla’s gaze. The girl dropped her eyes to the sidewalk in embarrassed understanding.

  ‘Okay, bye.’ She pushed off as if to cycle away.

  ‘Carla!’

  The girl twisted round on her seat. Joy could see her eyes begin to fill with tears, her lips trembling. How love could make a fool of you, she thought. There was no worse pain than rejection. Her heart went out to Carla.

  ‘Don’t give up on Heather,’ Joy called after her, wondering if her daughter even deserved Carla’s love.

  Still, she had sowed her seed. She would have been furious if her own mom had tried to stop her marrying Eddie all those years ago. But she had been crazy about Eddie, mad to marry him, and she’d been pregnant. It was different for Heather. She was in love all right, but not with her fiancé.

  *

  Lewis rooted through his wardrobe and threw aside all the jeans, chinos, shorts and checked shirts that had been his uniform for the past few years. He found a couple of pairs of okay Levi’s and some plain shirts. But he was looking for something in particular. At last he found it, hanging up behind all of Samantha’s old maxi dresses. It was his tailored Italian suit. He took it out and held it up to the light. It was still sharp black, with not a ripped seam in sight. In fact, its straight-leg cut, the height of style in 1967, was now back in fashion in 1989.

  To his surprise the trousers still fitted. A little tight on the waist, but comfortable. He took one of his plain white shirts and put it on and found a blue silk tie that his parents-in-law had given him one Christmas. Finally he put on the suit jacket and looked in the mirror. What he saw gave him a shock. His face looked older, and his hair was peppered with grey, but he was still himself, a ghost from the past. To see the old Lewis excited him, as if anything was possible. He blinked, looked again. Memories flickered in the mirror. Was he ready to go back?

  He had worn this suit all through that night and into the next morning of his last day in London. He put his hands in the pockets and felt something solid in the right-hand one. It was his Zippo. He flicked the wheel with his finger and amazingly it ignited, a quick flame shooting out. After all this time there was still a spark.

  London, 13 April 1967, 7.32 p.m.

  All smartened up in his best suit and ready for the big night, Lewis met with George in the Hereford Arms. Did his boss even know that his secretary lived barely five minutes away, let alone that half an hour ago she’d been naked beneath Lewis? Had he any idea how this same secretary was a hundred times more talented than his whole team of men? Lewis wondered, though, how much Marnie might have told Eva Miller. Either way, George clearly didn’t know. There was no mention of Marnie as he asked Lewis to show him his designs for the Phoenix International Airlines brief.

  ‘I’m not going to show Rex anything yet,’ he told Lewis. ‘But I want a lead on our approach so I can give him a sense of it over dinner.’

  Lewis cleared the spindly table of the overflowing ashtray and empty pint glasses. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the surface clean before spreading out the final design that he and Marnie had plumped for. It was the phoenix, bold red, head turned to one side with its predator’s beak, wings curving upwards in abstracted semicircles and its tail feathers in an arrow shape as they emerged from the blue flames to mirror the pattern of its wings.

  George perused the design, his face giving nothing away.

  ‘This is the emblem for the aeroplanes – to go on their tail wing,’ Lewis said. ‘It will be developed into a crest on the crew’s uniforms, which will be blue and red, and on all their other material.’

  ‘So no letters on the plane?’

  ‘Just PIA for Phoenix International Airlines – underneath the phoenix.’

  George took out his cigars without offering one to Lewis. Instinctively Lewis took his Zippo out of his pocket, flicked the lid open and lit George’s cigar for him. His boss took a couple of meditative puffs. Lewis wanted a cigarette but somehow felt unable to light up in front of his boss, as if to do so would be a comment on George’s lack of generosity.

  ‘Not sure they’ll like the fact that there’s an image of fire on the plane,’ George said at last.

  ‘But it shows the bird rising from the flames, triumphant, soaring into the sky. It’s a powerful image of flight.’

  ‘I gu
ess it’s the obvious choice for an airline from Phoenix,’ George said as he puffed on his cigar. ‘But I like it. Yes, I do. And I think our man from Phoenix will like it too. The colours are so bold and clear.’

  Lewis felt relief wash through him.

  ‘This is excellent work, considering how little time you had. Well done, old chap.’ He patted Lewis on the back. ‘So are you going to buy me a pint to celebrate?’

  Now was the moment. As Lewis stood at the bar ordering their pints he prepared to reveal his big secret. Marnie and her talent. He tried to formulate the right words.

  This isn’t just my work . . . Marnie helped me.

  No, that wasn’t enough.

  Marnie and I came up with this design together. You should try her out. She’s good.

  Too good.

  He returned to the table and placed the pints down, careful not to spill them.

  He could have sworn he was just about to tell George when Eva Miller walked in. Elegant, willowy and dressed in a black lace minidress covered in silver cording, beads and sequins, heads turned as she made her way through the crowd.

  ‘Isn’t she a sight for sore eyes,’ George said, putting out his cigar.

  It was true – Eva’s beauty was staggering. Her jet-black hair shone as if polished. It was cut into a perfect geometric bob, its wings pushed behind her neat ears to reveal the biggest earrings Lewis had ever seen – two chandeliers of silver sparkling either side of her glowing face. She must have been well over thirty, and yet there was nothing remotely middle-aged about Eva Miller. A man attempted to stop her on the way over, but she smiled at him sweetly, patted him on the shoulder and swung on by.

  ‘Women, eh?’ George winked at Lewis.

  Could he spit it out now? Tell him quickly about Marnie. But Eva was upon them. He would have to tell him later, after the success of the Phoenix Airlines pitch. It would be easier then. Lewis took a slug of his pint and felt a pit of dread in his stomach. He had no idea how George was going to react when he did find out.