“Oh, but that’s different.” Naomi’s mind was still on the kiss, and where it might have led. “You’re successful, famous; you’ve made your way. You know whatever you put out will be loved by your audience.”
“Yes, now, thirty years after I started out. But the point is, Naomi, I did start out. I didn’t worry about justification or acceptance. I did what I had to do. And now it’s finally your turn to do what you have to do.”
Jon rose and pulled her up with him. “You’re on a good path. You give me the lyrics I want, and you wrote the script for the musical. Now it’s time for you to do something on your own. Something not connected to me.”
“And what if no one wants it? What if I don’t find a publisher?”
Jon brushed some pine needles off his legs. “I think, my dear, the danger of that happening is minute.”
chapter 28
Jon had the pilot fly them into Newark. He grinned at Naomi after the plane had taken off. “You wanted to see New Jersey. Here’s your chance.”
Leaving Positano had been sad; he was leaving a family he never knew he had. Seeing Naomi’s face when she hugged Cesare and Angelica at the airport, he knew she felt the same way. Piece by piece he was picking one brick after another from the wall she had hidden herself behind for so long.
Seeing her now as she peered out of the window at the blue stretch of ocean below, Jon said, “We’ll go back soon. We have to. I loved every minute.”
She smiled. “And bring Joshua. I could still kick myself for not making him come. He’d have loved it, I’m certain.”
Jon was sure it was probably true. Joshua would have loved it, and he would have clamored even louder than Naomi for a Vespa. He could just see his son on one of them, throwing himself down the serpentines.
“We’ll bring him next year. I’m thinking we should come back in spring, when it’s not quite so hot and we can see the almond trees in bloom. Ferro was raving about that. It’s supposed to be very pretty.”
Ferro had taken him to his rooms high up under the roof of the palazzo where he kept his paintings and where he had set up his studio.
Among the many canvasses, Jon had found a smaller version of the Annunciation, a perfect copy of the mural. He had asked Ferro to sell it to him. It would be shipped with Naomi’s portrait, and he could hardly wait for her reaction, to see the delight on her face.
There hadn’t been much time to talk about the house in Brooklyn, and even less to furnish and decorate it. He had to admit that he hadn’t cared a lot until now. Buying those paintings had changed his attitude.
“The house.”
Naomi stopped tucking the blanket around her legs.
“I’m sure you’ve planned every room of the Brooklyn house, haven’t you?” Jon asked.
“No. Not really. The living room and the bedroom will be finished when we get there, and the kitchen, more or less. Why?”
He had learned, watching her run the hotel in Halmar, not to be surprised at the ease and tempo with which she got these things done.
“Because, little beast, you need a study. You need a place for yourself, to write, to work. Where would you want that to be?”
For the longest time she didn’t respond but looked out at the clouds.
“There is one room upstairs, next to the bedroom—” her voice so low that Jon had to lean forward to hear her—“a corner room with a small balcony. It looks out toward lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. I wanted it to be a nursery. But I guess…” She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “I guess I might as well turn it into a study.”
“A room with a balcony is not a really good choice for a nursery anyway, is it?” He managed to return her gaze steadily enough. “We will have to choose a different room for the nursery.”
“Yes.” A defeated sigh, nothing more, but the ghost of a smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Yes, you are right. A balcony is not good for a nursery.”
She fell silent again.
The flight attendant came to serve drinks, and she asked for bourbon.
Newark greeted them with the relentless humidity of an August afternoon.
Naomi stepped out of the plane and stopped in her tracks. She gasped at the hot air; it was as wet as a hot towel right out of the washing machine.
There was no blue in the sky. It shone like a dirty aluminum bowl, the sun hidden in the haze. There was no breeze, no relief. The clothes stuck to her.
Jon gave her a dismal grin. “Newark, baby. It’s what you wanted to see.”
Naomi stood on the tarmac waiting for Sal to pick them up and tried to take a breath. It felt like inhaling water, pretty foul-tasting water too. The sky, low and gray, hung over the landscape like a dirty dishrag; the tepid breeze touched her face as if the fingers of a middle-aged mermaid were trying to caress her. From the distance, she could hear sirens, police cars howling by on one of the convoluted highways, the echo dropping onto the street.
A black SUV stopped right in front of them. Sal got out. “I wanted,” he said, “to get you coffee and doughnuts. Give you a proper New Jersey welcome, but there was a long line outside Dunkin’ Donuts.” He picked up their luggage and put it into the trunk.
Without looking in the rearview mirror, he pulled away from the curb and entered a maelstrom of roads, loops upon loops. “I’m taking you,” Sal announced cheerfully, “on the Pulaski Skyway so you get a good idea of where you are right away. This is New Jersey, Naomi, and I’m betting you’ve never seen anything like it.”
It was true.
She stared at the scarred, dismal, dingy landscape spreading in every direction: rusty towers and high chimneys; a desolate wasteland of decrepit industrial yards; inlets of water, their limpid, oily waves sucking at dead, marshy earth; and highway bridges in the distance, their iron girders whale skeletons stranded in a world of refuse. Incredibly, there were houses, islands of life, sprinkled around this apocalyptic scene, fingers of suburbia undaunted by the surroundings. She wondered how children grew up there in the midst of this nightmare. Were there parks she couldn’t see, some pockets of green, some semblance of gardens, trees, flowers. All she could see from here was gray, brown, black, and dead.
“There,” Sal pointed into the distance.
Hovering like a spaceship, the skyline of Manhattan rose above the nightmare of New Jersey.
Naomi gripped the back of Jon’s seat, excited, elated, her heart calling out to the glittering towers, certain she was hearing their answering echo, welcoming her back. She could hardly wait for them to dip into the Holland Tunnel and resurface in the city. Her heart was beating fast.
“You and this city,” Jon said fondly, “I wonder why you didn’t think to come here earlier.”
“Me too.” She touched his shoulder. “We’re getting a box at the Met, aren’t we? For the season?”
“Yes, yes.” He laughed. “I’ll try my best, but it may be hard. No promises, love.”
“I know you’ll get them to give you one. You have to. Use all your charm and fame and clout and whatever, but I want to go to the Met.”
“Oh, that’s different,” Sal said. “Getting you to the Met now and then is not a problem. Getting you a permanent box will be hard.”
“I don’t care. I just want to go. And to opening nights, too, so we get to dress up, Jon.”
They left the tunnel. Despite the heat Naomi lowered the tinted window and breathed in the humid air, a bright smile on her face. She felt safe, wanted, as if the town had been waiting for her. Even the dingy street vendors and cheap shops on Canal Street seemed to sparkle; and when they stopped at a red light, she smiled so sweetly at a young man hawking fake Gucci purses that he stepped back from the curb in confusion.
“
Stop that!” Sal closed the window. “He’ll think we’re the freaking FBI or something. Or he’ll think he can have your credit cards! This is New York, for crying out loud; you can’t just smile at people!”
“I can,” Naomi replied, “and I will. You just wait and see; no one will harm me.”
With a groan, Sal threw her a glare through the rearview mirror. “This is a huge mistake. You in this city, big mistake.”
She looked back at the skyline when they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, at the twin towers of the World Trade Center casting their long shadows over the other buildings in the setting sun.
“I don’t think it’s a mistake,” Naomi whispered. “I think it’s just right.”
No one was waiting for them when they entered their new home. It was dim and cool inside, and smelled a bit of sawdust and paint; but it was clean and neat, and quite empty.
Jon dropped the bag he was carrying on the wooden floor and looked around. He hadn’t been here since Christmas, since their first look at the inside, and could hardly remember details. So much had happened since then.
“There was not much time,” Naomi said; “I couldn’t do a whole lot. We’ll have to decide what we want soon or this place won’t be habitable.”
In the living room there was a couch, a couple of chairs, and a rug, but that was it. The kitchen looked as empty as if it was a store display; there wasn’t even a coffeemaker.
“Here.” She opened a pocket door and stepped aside to let him see.
The Steinway was brand-new. It stood in front of the bay window; its lacquer shone in the slanting sun beams. There was a desk facing the window with a view of the Promenade and the city, a chair, bookcases, guitar stands, and on top of the grand, a stack of music sheets and his favorite, black pencils. In the bay window, on the broad bench in the niche, lay a load of colorful, soft cushions and a cashmere blanket; a small pile of books rested on a small table, a coffee cup beside them. A lovely blue carpet covered part of the dark hardwood floor.
“A Steinway.” Jon realized it sounded stupid, but he couldn’t come up with anything else.
“Yes.” Naomi was leaning against the wall, her hands behind her back, her feet crossed, just the way she had stood when she had first shown him her apartment in Halmar and given him the time to look around and explore her life. Only this time there was a smile on her face, and the rosy tint of expectation.
“How…” He didn’t even know what to ask. Carefully he opened the piano and let his fingers glide over the pristine, smooth keys. “You weren’t even gone that long.”
“Do you like it?”
“Like it? Are you crazy?” The tone, when he played a chord, was clear and true; it hummed through the space and lingered under the high ceiling like its own memory. “You leave me there in LA, and you don’t tell me where you’re going or when you’ll be back; and then you come here to this empty house, and the first thing you do is buy a freaking Steinway and furnish a studio for me?”
“Well, it was the second thing,” she admitted. “The first thing I bought was a bed.”
“A bed. You left me in agony, in exile, and you buy a Steinway grand and a bed. Is it big enough for two?”
“It is.” A small laugh escaped her. “You are so transparent.”
Jon moved through the room, exploring it. He picked up the books to read their titles, touched the mug and noted the dry residue of coffee in it. Half hidden under the blanket, he saw a pink wool sock. “Did you sit here? During your exile, when you were here, did you sit in this window seat all by yourself?”
“I had to watch them paint the ceiling,” Naomi replied. “I didn’t want them to ruin the stucco.”
There were no curtains up yet, and the panes were grimy on the outside. On the patio Jon could see some potted plants, but they were dry, dead; and the small piece of lawn in the backyard needed trimming badly. The brick barbecue was full of leaves from last fall. It would take a lot to make this place shine. “Let me get this straight. These were the most important things to you? The Steinway, and a studio for me?”
“After the bed.”
“Yeah, after the bed. There isn’t even a coffeemaker, Naomi, and you buy a Steinway?” The stool was just the right height for him; and when he sat down, his hands on the keys, he could see the entire panorama of Manhattan spread out before him: the bridge and its graceful Gothic arches, the river, and the skyline of New York.
She leaned on the piano and looked down at him. Gently she touched his wrist, sighing, smiling. “I can’t imagine anything more important, Jon, nothing at all.”
“Not even a coffeemaker?”
“Not even a coffeemaker, you silly man.”
They walked through the rooms together, hand in hand, exploring every corner of their new home, opening closets and doors and even exploring the musty basement. The house was not as large as the mansion in Malibu, and not as airy, as generous; but it was beautiful in a totally different way with the wooden floors and ornate doorways, the plaster ceilings and the stained glass in the high parlor windows, where Naomi stopped.
“This is where we will put the Christmas tree.” She pointed at a space beside the fireplace. “Right there. We need so much for this place, Jon.”
“We can go shopping as soon as we’re over the jet lag.” He put his arm around her waist. “Show me your new bed.”
As a boy, living with his parents only one block away, Jon had dreamed of owning this house, of using the upstairs room they were entering now as his studio. He had imagined himself stepping out onto the large stone balcony to get a breath of air after working for hours and seeing the city spread out before him. Now, entering behind Naomi, he had to smile at himself. There was no way anyone would have been able to lug a Steinway up the stairs and no way it would have fit through the door. Fondly, he turned the memory of those dreams over and then let go of them.
“It’s not much yet,” Naomi was saying. “I did all I could, but time was really short, and…” She straightened a fold in the satin quilt on the bed. “And I was in a hurry because I wanted to be back with you. When I left you in LA, when I called you from the airport to tell you where I’d be going, I promised myself not to stay away longer than those three weeks but not to come back sooner either. I wanted it to hurt.”
“For God’s sake, why?” Sometimes her reasoning was just too much to take.
“Because,” she answered softly, “because I wanted the yearning for you to be greater than the pain of the shooting. I wanted to feel the need to fly back into your arms, hear your voice, see your smile. And it worked. That guy on the plane when I flew to London, that reporter, he kept pushing his champagne on me; and all I wanted to do was fall asleep and make the time pass until I could be with you and kiss you. God, I wanted to slap his face.”
She walked over to the balcony door. “Here. I want a small couch here, or a settee or something, so I can sit and read or dream and look out at New York. And then, when you’re in your studio right below me, I can listen to you play.”
He liked the way the bed looked. The sheets were new, cream, fine linen; and there were enough pillows for his taste.
“Your mom was here,” Naomi explained. “I asked her to come. I think she also filled the fridge, but we’re supposed to go over soon.”
Jon knew. He had called Helen while Naomi had been busy breathing in Manhattan from the car. They were expected for dinner, and no excuses. They would walk over; take a stroll through Brooklyn Heights on a summer evening.
Looking out at the dusk, at Manhattan beginning to glitter with the myriad lights in the windows, Naomi beside him, he felt as if he had come a long way to end up where he had started out. Only it didn’t feel bad at all. In fact, it felt as perfect as he could imagine.
chapter 29
>
Joshua wasn’t there.
“He told me this morning he wasn’t coming home for dinner,” Helen said, taking a bowl of potato salad out to the table in the backyard. “Said he knew you were coming back but he’d been invited by his other grandparents, and he would see you later.”
Naomi, who had been just picked up the plates, set them back down and leaned, her hands on the kitchen counter. She could hear Jon’s reply. His voice was quite gravelly, anger swinging in it. “He doesn’t think he should be here when his parents get back?”
“Don’t blame the messenger, Jon. He called a couple of hours ago. What was I supposed to do?” Helen came back into the kitchen and stopped, seeing Naomi. “Was I supposed to tell him to come home? He’s not a kid anymore. He’s nearly eighteen, and as headstrong as both of you. He’s just returned from LA, where you let him go on his own, his bodyguard in trail. Do you think I’d be able to tell him where to have dinner?”
“But he was with Harry in LA; he wasn’t on his own.” Naomi sat down at the kitchen table and propped her elbows on it. “Jon didn’t let him travel on his own. He went on a private plane, and Harry and Grace picked him up at the airport, and he was staying at their house, well protected.”
“You and your private planes, your security men and high fences!” With a huff, Helen pulled open the fridge door and peered inside. “You are so far removed from normalcy, you and Jon, you don’t even realize it. You just breeze through life and do as you please. That jaunt to Italy? Maybe you should have come home instead and looked after Joshua yourself.”
Under the Same Sun (Stone Trilogy) Page 26