When Louey woke up, she saw Clay sprawled out on a chair across from her, half sitting, half lying. His hand hung over the side of the chair’s arm, his mouth half open, shoulders posed as if he’d fallen asleep in the middle of a shrug. Even in that position he looked comfortable, and Louey wished that she could be as carefree and at ease as he was, blanking out without a second thought.
His legs were bare and tanned in shorts, covered with golden fuzz. She sat up slightly, pulling the covers up over her bare legs. She seemed to be wearing an unfamiliar T-shirt, and she blushed at the realization that he must have undressed her and put it on. Her clothes lay neatly folded on the table next to his chair; his shirt lay crumpled on the floor at his feet. Clay’s chest was almost that of a little boy’s, honey-colored like his legs, the tan slightly deeper at the belly, which was flat and lightly muscled. A small patch of golden hair on his chest and near the top of his shorts was the only indication that he wasn’t still a boy. She felt an odd affection for his boy’s body, reminded of her brothers’ healthy, buoyant frames. A pang of nostalgia for the comfort of their arms slung casually around her shoulders struck her.
As if conscious of her examination of him, Clay opened his eyes and Louey found herself staring into them. He seemed still half asleep as he held her gaze, scratching his chest and then letting his arm fall into his lap. The palm faced up, like an invitation, and Louey saw that the front of his shorts was full. It was an odd sensation being here with him, somehow so intimately; as Louey examined him curiously, his face flushed, making him look even more like a sleepy little boy caught in the act of doing something naughty, ripe and lush. She looked at the parted lips and wondered if women enjoyed kissing him. As if he’d read her mind, his skin turned a deeper rose and he shivered, sitting up and clearing his throat.
“You sleep all right?” he asked, shifting uneasily and trying casually to clench his fists together in his lap.
“Better than you, I’ll bet.” He was embarrassed, she realized. “I didn’t mean for you to give up your own bed.”
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “I can sleep anyplace.” He cleared his throat. “Would you like some breakfast?”
“I should get dressed and get out of your hair.” Though the prospect of going home held little appeal, she hated to impose on him further.
“Please don’t go, Louey,” he said softly, lowering his eyes. His face grew inexplicably sad, and when he raised his eyes, she saw with astonishment that he was blinking back tears.
“Why, Clay, whatever is the matter?” she asked, alarmed.
He shrugged, looking irritated. “Don’t mind me, I’m just hung over.” Abruptly he left her; a moment later Louey heard him making coffee. “Do you drink coffee?” he called out.
“Tea?”
“Sure. Anything for breakfast? Eggs? Squid?”
“How about some lithium?”
A pause followed, and Louey smelled the aroma of fresh coffee brewing. “Seem to be all out, sorry. Should have been here yesterday.”
“I was, apparently.”
He came in a few minutes later with a mug of tea, sitting down beside her on the bed. He had put on a clean shirt, which made him look slightly more presentable.
“I guess I spilled my guts, huh?”
“I don’t mind.” He took a drink and she watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed. Men had such strange bodies. “You can’t keep those things bottled up inside you, you know.”
“I suppose.” She sniffed her mug and screwed up her nose. “What did you put in here?”
“You did want tea, didn’t you?” He looked altogether too innocent.
“What else is in here?”
“Just a little something.” He drank his coffee impassively. “Rum.”
“For breakfast?”
“Some days nothing else will do.” His tone was emphatic. “Now listen to your mother and drink up.”
She had to admit the hot alcohol made her feel better. She hadn’t slept in weeks, it seemed, until last night. She should feel ashamed of her loss of control the night before, she knew, but somehow she wasn’t. “This is great. Just what I needed.”
“See?”
“You’re very sweet to take care of me.”
He looked away, suddenly red-faced. “You’d do the same for any anonymous wandering city girl.”
“Well …”
“I missed you, you know.” He punched her shoulder lightly. “After all you’ve done for me, this is the least I can do.”
“I don’t know what I would have done without you yesterday, Clay.” She sipped her tea, for the first time able to think about Kevin almost calmly.
“I’m glad you trusted me.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you after I was fired. I’ve been meaning to, you know.”
“Really?” He cursed the eagerness in his voice. “The card was—special, anyway.” She smiled. “I would have called, but I thought—”
“I’d still blame you for the party?”
He nodded.
“It all seems so long ago. I can’t imagine why I acted so deranged. Nothing like having someone die to put things in real perspective, I guess. Everything seems so trivial compared to losing someone so—so finally.” She sighed. “At least now I know I’m not shallow.”
“Shallow—that’s something to aim for.” He sipped his coffee. “Have you thought about going away for a while? You should take some time off.”
“I can’t leave my new job—I’ve only been there a few months.”
“Have you taken any time off since it happened?” She shook her head. “Do they let you take personal days?” She nodded. “Jesus, Louey, you can’t expect to function as if nothing has happened. Go to your mother’s, why don’t you?”
“I can’t face going home. My mother will just worry.”
“By yourself, then?”
“I don’t know what good having more time to think about it would do.”
“Would you like me to take you somewhere?” He was struck with an idea. “I was thinking of renting a car and driving to my mother’s—she’s been nagging me to visit her ever since I convinced her I wasn’t moving back home. There’s a long weekend coming up, so you wouldn’t even have to miss too much work.”
“Wouldn’t it be strange bringing a total stranger?”
He thought for a moment; it was hard to know how his mother would react. “She’d love you.” He wondered if this was true. “How about it, what do you say?”
“When are you going?”
“I haven’t made definite plans—when can you get off from work?”
“How long would you be going for?”
“I don’t know, a week. Is that too long?”
“I probably could get some time—they’re so nice at my new office I think the boss is even worried about my health.” She stopped. “Look, I can’t barge in on your vacation. It’s very nice of you, Clay, but I don’t want to be in the way.”
“You’ll be amazed just how at home you’ll feel ten minutes after you get there,” he teased. “Things are so slow back home that after a few days you won’t have the energy to come back. I’ll have to call and tell them you’ve quit.”
She was wavering. “It would be nice to get out of the city.”
“How can you say you’ve lived if you’ve never seen the South?”
“Who says I’ve lived?” She looked down at herself and laughed for the first time since he’d seen her the previous evening. “All right, so this shirt says I’ve lived. Well, if you really think it wouldn’t be a burden—”
“You haven’t a chance in hell of getting out of it now, girlie.” He took both of her hands and squeezed them. The prospect of having time with her after all these months made him almost light-headed. “Now don’t you think it’s time you took off that tacky shirt and got into something respectable?”
Louey sat in the passenger seat of the rented sports car and watched the scenery speed
by as if she were part of a travelogue. How had she agreed to go away for a week with a boy she hardly even knew? Glancing at Clay’s profile, she could almost convince herself she wouldn’t recognize him on a dark street. Yet here she was. “Traveling in style,” she muttered.
It was true that since she’d broken up with Mia Louey had altered her standards of judging people. Not that she’d found the world such an engaging place the first months after it happened. Yet after some time had passed, she’d taken a hard look at herself. “What am I going to do,” she’d asked Kevin. “Never talk to anyone again? Never trust anyone, so I won’t get hurt?”
“Drink heavily?” he’d suggested.
No, she thought; damned if she would let one unfortunate blow destroy her ability to get along with the rest of the world. After some months, Kevin even noted that she was throwing herself into being “outgoing with a vengeance.” What she now saw could indeed be accomplished more easily with the aid of alcohol she had done then on a self-dare: at bars, parties, and on the street, she took to addressing others as if she’d known them for years. To her amazement, people responded as if it were true.
She was equally surprised at the pleasure it gave her. People were extraordinarily friendly, relaxing into banter more intimate than if she were someone who knew their failings. Her friends insisted that she would be considered a lunatic anywhere but in New York, yet the strangers who so readily told her their worst fears came from all over the globe. “New York is where people go who can’t control their need to blab with people they may never see again,” Kevin had said by way of explanation.
Even at work, the new approach had stood her in good stead. After giving Louey startled looks—no one expected editors to look the way she did, barely five feet tall and hardly dignified—prospective authors fell into easy rapport, surprised that it was pleasant, even comfortable, talking with an editor, after all.
Clay himself had yielded happily, though unlike most of her potential authors, he’d confessed little of a personal nature. Now she supposed she would hear so much from him that there would soon be nothing about him she didn’t know; what else could one do in the country for days?
Yet he’d remained silent for most of the trip so far, playing a lavish selection of tapes. There was something about Ella Fitzgerald’s voice that made one not want to clutter the air oneself, she thought, sitting back and drifting off as it grew dark.
What did she know about Clay, really? She knew he hated having been born to a family with “so obscenely much money,” as he put it; that, as much as he hated his father, he feared he would turn out to be like him. Louey wanted to reassure him that such a thing simply wasn’t possible (but then how did she know Clayton Senior hadn’t been a sweet and charming boy himself once, turned hard with the acquisition of wealth?).
What was Clay doing with her? Most straight men didn’t strike up close friendships with lesbians, unless they were either titillated or secretly gay (neither of which Clay seemed to be). Sometimes when they were out together, she would leave him briefly and on her return not recognize him for an instant as he stood, a perfect idol. Surely women (and men) must have flocked to him in droves? Yet just like Mia, Clay hated his beauty, fearing that it was the only reason people were interested in him. He never spoke about girlfriends—but then neither did she, and she knew he was curious about her and Mia. Who wouldn’t be, she thought; God knows she would scarcely have believed the two of them herself.
Odd that Kevin’s death had made her finally understand how pointless it was to live in the past. Perhaps she and Mia could actually have a sane talk about what had happened, she thought, maybe even put their misunderstandings to rest. She sighed as the country drifted by her window, mourning what could never be again.
Clay’s mother was a fragile beauty with a talent for drawing all attention in a room to her. Here in Tennessee the country—everything—was lavish, colorful; Louey felt she’d stepped backward in time, into another world. Dulcie Lee looked so much like her son it startled Louey. Here, clearly, was where his tenderheartedness had come from, too, though Dulcie disguised her softness with a hauteur that reminded Louey of Mia’s mother. She wondered if there’d been any tenderness lurking in the lovely, brittle woman who’d always seemed so dissatisfied with Mia, and with Mia’s father.
“I’m so happy to meet you.” Clay’s mother took Louey’s hand. “Clay’s talked about you so much I feel you’re practically a member of the family.”
Clay kissed his mother, who clung to him a moment longer than she’d intended. Then she pushed him away with some embarrassment, as if her display of emotion were in fact his own childish enthusiasm. “Good to see you, Mama.” He kissed her again. “You look wonderful.”
“I look like the last thing,” she scoffed, pleased nonetheless. Louey could see on close inspection that Dulcie Lee was older than she appeared at first glance; there were fine lines etched into her face and neck which showed when she smiled. Yet her long hair, blond and luxurious against thin shoulders, gave the illusion that she was still a girl.
After they’d washed up from the ride, Clay took Louey on a tour of the house. “I feel like Jimmy Stewart in The Philadelphia Story,” she told him when they had explored an area several times that of the house she had grown up in.
“My Hepburn days are over, kid,” Clay said. “Pick another movie.”
“Did you really live in all these rooms? I would have gotten lost.”
“What makes you think I didn’t? I had to have some form of entertainment.” His smile faded. “My mother seems so much older somehow,” he murmured.
“She’s so happy to see you she doesn’t even mind that you dragged me along.”
“As long as she knows my father hates the thought of you, you’re halfway toward being her best friend.”
“The thought of me? I think he hates a little more than that.”
He was silent. “No,” he said finally. “He doesn’t know you, and there’s nothing about you to hate on sight.”
“The hook, the scales?”
“Half his wives had those. No, see, as long as I was working with you, he couldn’t enlist me in the firm.”
“Why does he want you to be a lawyer if you don’t want to? Or do you really not want to?”
“I never wanted to do much of anything, Louey, if you want to know the truth—except drink.” He couldn’t meet her eyes. “I guess that’s the sign of a true alcoholic.”
“Did you ever not drink so much?” She held her breath, half afraid to hear his answer.
“When I was writing, I didn’t drink at all.” He smiled bitterly. “So much for stereotypes. When I was growing up, I drank to be companionable with my mother, who, as you’ll notice, has few other hobbies. I suppose I would have been embarrassed if I’d realized what was going on, but all I could see was a sort of desperate need to get away from my father, which I certainly understood.”
“Wasn’t he ever nice to either of you?”
“I think my parents had a brief period when they were happy together, but it ended once she became pregnant with me. She’d had a really hard delivery with my sister, which made her terrified of giving birth, and I think he lost all patience with her. By the time I was born, she told me he never wanted to touch her while she was pregnant—and once he’d forgiven her for losing her shape—as he put it—”
“Jesus.”
“—she no longer could stand anything about him. She couldn’t believe how he’d treated her, as if her body was the result of some vulgar overindulgence and nothing to do with him at all.”
“Cold. He didn’t act that way when she was pregnant with your sister?”
He shook his head, “First shot at immortality, I guess.” He motioned her almost conspiratorily to a small room, where he plopped down on the bed. “This was my hideout; our housekeeper, Mona, used to live here, but some nights she’d let me stay.” He hugged a pillow to his chest. “At least she loved me.”
; “Your mom loved you.”
He stretched out, closing his eyes. “Well, sure, in her way. I never doubted that, but she was someone I took care of, as if she were the child and I was the adult, or so it seemed to me.” He sat up abruptly. “I guess I should check on her. Why don’t I take your stuff to the guest room?”
“Which one? There are thousands.”
“I’ll bet she’s put you in the room across the hall from mine. Let’s go see.”
Sure enough, there were fresh towels and flowers in the brightly painted room across the hall from Clay’s.
“Pink?” Louey snorted. “You guys trying to tell me something?”
“Coming from Mother, it’s a supreme compliment. Pink is her color.”
“Naturally.”
“I’ll see you in about ten minutes, for dinner.”
She nodded. A moment later she found herself facing a strange room and more pink than she’d seen in her entire life.
The next day Clay had three surprises: one waking Louey up; one finding her engrossed in conversation with his mother; and one spending the evening with her in the water.
He woke to find the sun streaming into his room and looked out the window to see the lush countryside and a fresh, clear blue sky he’d missed so much it now struck him almost physically. Standing at the window for what seemed like hours, he finally turned from the dazzling greens and browns and roused himself to go downstairs.
His mother had few words for him as they drank morning tea, nor could he bring himself to make conversation, though it gave him a sad pleasure to look at her. Why did she seem so defeated, as if she knew she was just marking time? One of the things he’d admired most about her had been her unwillingness to give up; even her insistence that her whims be treated with the utmost deference pointed to a spirit that never capitulated. It was heartbreaking to find her so caved in, as if it all had been pretense that she’d lost the will to continue. She patted his hand fondly. He wanted to shake her, force her to come to life again.
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