“Take off those shoes, Jon. And your socks, if they’re wet. I can’t have you getting sick.”
Once she had the coffee machine working, Naomi went up to the loft and returned with thick, hand-knitted, red and blue striped socks. “These should fit you, they belong to…” Abruptly she broke off.
He took them from her, and the cup of steaming coffee a moment later, and sat on the piano bench where he could watch her as she moved around, evading him.
“Naomi.”
Her shoulders drew together, and he hated it, hated to see the fear in her.
“Come here, talk to me. We’ve found out we still like to kiss, but I want to know.”
The socks were indeed comfortable and warm, the coffee a welcome fortifier for his chilled bones. He realized he had never even looked at his watch since he had landed in Bergen and had no idea how late it might be, the light here being no help at all.
“Know what? There is nothing to know.”
The black dress was too much to take. He had never seen her in anything even remotely like it, and he hated it.
“I got a letter. From Joshua, from our son.”
Naomi stood very still, waiting for his next words.
“He wrote to me. He asked if I’m his father.”
When there was no reaction he rose and went over to her.
“I know I’m his father, seeing those pictures over there is proof enough for me. But, Baby…”
The smallest gasp escaped her at the stupid endearment, but she did not turn to him.
“He shouldn’t have done that.” Her voice wavered a little. “I asked him to let it rest. But he’s just like you, he can’t let well enough alone, he has to poke and worry at things until he finds what he wants.”
“I want to know why you left me, Naomi. I want to know, and I have a right to know. The sooner we start talking, the sooner we will know how we’re going to do this.”
“Do what?” Her eyes were wide and dark with trepidation.
“Well, you didn’t really think I’d come all this way on my own just for a few stupid answers, did you? For that, I could have sent Sal, or maybe a busload of lawyers. You were mine, and you still are, I can see it. It’s right there in the way you look at me. Don’t deny it.”
“No.” She said it very softly, but without hesitation.
“Why did you run like that, Naomi? Why did you leave me like that, without a word, without a chance to clear things up? What have I ever done to make you do that? I want to hear, and right now. And the child, Naomi, God, our child, yours and mine…”
“Jon…” In vain, she tried to free herself from his hold.
“No Naomi, I’ve waited and wondered for so many years, but now I won’t wait one minute longer. I’m here. I want to know.”
The tears came, silently and slowly they spilled over and ran down her cheeks, and Naomi wiped them away with the back of her free hand.
“Nothing.”
It came out like a sigh, so low Jon thought he had misheard.
“You did nothing, Jon, nothing to make me run from you. It was not your fault.”
He had been ready to hear many things, but this shocked him more than any of the versions he had conjured up over the years, the many imagined wrongs he might have committed, or, a possibility he had always pushed far away into the darkest dungeons of his mind, another man.
Another man who had won her away from him, receiving her smile, touching her, holding her during the night, hearing her soft whisper when she was in his arms.
“You met someone else.” His voice was dark with hurt. “You met someone you loved more than me. Was that it?”
He went over to the shelf to stare again at the images of their past, happy faces in a carefree time, lost forever. The bitter insight that his journey had been in vain added to the fog of jet-lag and made him feel the exhaustion of his long flight, and brought the coldness back to his limbs. Sal’s words with their cool common sense rang in his ears, and here, seeing her like this, he had wanted everything again, right away, without reserve.
“There wasn’t anyone else, Jon.”
The words did not register at first; he had lost himself in the memory of that day when she had folded him into a neat parcel on that stage for smoking just before the show. How fiercely he had loved her then, seeing the concern for him in her furious face, and the reaction of the others who had bowed to her will and put out their own cigarettes hastily enough. She had been queen that evening, so much younger than any of them and yet leading them on a leash like puppies.
“Never anyone else?” Jon could hardly believe what he had heard. “Never anyone else, Naomi? No one? Not one?”
“Jon.”
She touched his wrist to catch his attention. Her tears were gone, but her face was still pale and wan. “You should know better. How could I ever love anyone else after you, after having been yours?”
He had her against the wall in an instant, his hands on her body this time, holding her tightly, the kiss hard and deep, punishing. Miraculously, she melted into his rough embrace, moaning softly when his thighs moved against her, moaning into his mouth in the way he loved so much. His hands slid over the stiff, unforgiving linen of her dress to her breasts and cupped them, but there was too much fabric for his taste. But again she pushed him off, with an effort this time, though.
“Jon. No.” It did not sound entirely convincing.
This time he did not let her go again. “Tell me, Naomi. You want me, you love me still, and me, I’m just crazy to get you in bed right now. I want that awful dress off you, and I want to make love to you so badly it’s killing me. I need you in my arms again, I truly do. I know I can make all the pain and every bad memory go away if you’ll only let me, Baby, so please, tell me what happened so we can go on from here!”
She was pleasingly mussed, the braid no longer neat and straight, her face framed by escaped curls, softening her features. Against her weak protest, he reached for the ribbon and freed her hair, unraveling the strands until the long locks sprang back to life and fell over her shoulders like the black curtain he had always loved on her.
“You honestly don’t remember?”
For the life of him, he could not recall any incident that might have driven her away, as hard as he tried.
“We gave the concert that day, and what a success it was. There was the party at the house later, and we all ended up in jail.” His memory of that night was foggy. “We ended up in jail, but Sal got us out the next morning, and I went back to the house and you were gone. There was nothing left of you, nothing, not a note, no explanation, just an empty house.”
And my broken heart, he thought.
Naomi sank down on the couch, her legs pulled up against her chest, her arms knitted around them.
“You really don’t remember, do you?”
Jon couldn’t tell if there was a trace of accusation in her tone. Dismally, he shook his head.
The concert, and the many thousands who had attended it, and he, Jon, up there on the stage, singing to the thunder of their applause, took the final step into stardom, the great breakthrough he had been working so hard for, and here it was, on a warm July night in Hollywood. At twenty-seven, he had it all, at last. His face was on the front page of magazines, on billboards, on posters all over the city. He was handed from one glitzy party to the next. There was not one opening night, premiere, or event that he missed. Everywhere he went, he was the celebrated centerpiece.
“We had stopped living, Jon. Your career, your fame, was all that mattered. You were moving away from me a little more each day. But the thing that really made me flee was the night of the concert, and I knew I had to go, and not only go but vanish completely from your life if I wanted to save my own. And the baby’s.”
“Ah.” He returned to his perch on the piano bench. “So you knew you were pregnant before you left. And you didn’t tell me.”
Again, the cruel pain of being cut off.
&nbs
p; “I never had a chance.” She tried to hide it, but he could see she was crying again.
She had meant to tell him, she went on, right after the concert, but there was never the right moment for it. After the performance they had celebrated, first backstage, and then, with an ever-growing crowd, at their house.
“There were people everywhere, Jon, there was no chance to get you alone at all, and…” There was no way to say this without hurting him again.
“And Jon, I was waiting for you to…I don’t know, make more of me than I was. I was only your little lovebird, your plaything, and I did not want you to marry me because I was pregnant. Even then, at twenty-one, I had that measure of pride.” She held up her hand to stop him when he sat up straight in indignation. “Don’t say it. I know you loved me. And that was not the final reason, either.”
For him, it was quite enough. He hung his head to stare at his knees and his folded hands.
“The night of the concert.” Her skirt had tangled around her legs and made it difficult for her to rise from the couch.
Jon rose and went to sit beside her and clasp her hands tightly. “Oh no, you’re not going anywhere, Naomi.”
The resistance was weak at best, as if all the fight had gone out of her once she had decided to talk to him, but for good measure, he sat down beside her and pried her stiff fingers from the fabric to hold them in his.
Outside, darkness was settling over the bay, clouds lowering themselves onto the hills and the water like a thick grey blanket closing off the view.
“Baby.” His voice nearly broke on the love word and the strength of his feelings. “Please, Naomi, something happened. Something scared you so much it made you make that decision that night. You were unhappy, and then something happened to push you away forever.” Gently he laid her hands against his chest to warm them. “But Naomi, look at me. Please look at me.”
She raised her eyes to him.
“You should know better, love. You should know you can talk to me about anything at all. Tell me what happened that night, I beg you. If I did something to turn you away, I need to know, so that I can set it right.”
“But how can you not remember, Jon?”
She could not hold herself together anymore. Helplessly he watched her crying bitterly, unable to find the words to comfort her or ease the pain for her. At least she did not pull away from him again.
“I recall the party after the concert.”
Jon tried to conjure up that evening.
Everyone had been there. There had been people in the house, in the garden, even spilling out onto the beach and through the open gates into the street. No one had taken control, and even Sal had said to let the world see how famous he now was, and to hell with everything else, at least for this one night. A bit of notoriety could not be all that harmful. Art had brought Wes along, and Jon could remember standing in a corner of the porch at one point and accepting the pills offered with the promise that he would be able to party all night on them, and hey, he was going to have the surprise of his life when he took his girl to bed later. The only drawback, Jon had found out soon enough, was that he felt more than drunk; he was delirious with his success anyway, and now high on drugs and alcohol, and somewhere at that point his memory simply vanished into a mist. It did not lift until the following morning when, hungover, he had stepped out of the police building into a blinding dawn and right into Sal, who gave him the harangue of his life.
He remembred being in the cedar grove with a girl, a stranger, kissing him wildly, her bare thighs wrapped around him, her hands on his crotch. He was ready to give in to the temptation of a quick, hot encounter but had pulled away because she was not the right one.
He had found her in the kitchen, sitting on the counter, feet dangling, a glass of Coke in her hand, chatting with Russ.
“We ended up in bed, yes?”
Naomi forgot her own misery for long enough to shoot him an impatient glare and huff at him. “Of course, Jon. We always did.”
This made him grin in delighted embarrassment. “And you remember that night, Babe, and I don’t. So tell me.” Gentle encouragement only, which nonetheless made her retreat again into that stillness he had begun to hate.
A terrible fear was growing in him that she would offer him a vision to destroy him, confront him with a truth he had locked away so safely he had never been able to retrieve it on his own. Wild suspicions boiled up in his mind, apprehension making his back prickle with sudden sweat. He had hurt her; in his drunken, drugged state, he had dragged her off, taken her away to the solitude of their bedroom and done things to her, forced and abused her, driven her away, after she had seen the darkness of his true soul.
“The drug raid,” Naomi interrupted his panicked fantasies. “Don’t you recall the drug raid, Jon?”
“Drug raid?” And there it was, as if she had unlocked a door for him.
The reason they had gone to jail. Here was the memory he had never called up from its lair.
She was speaking again, in a dreadful, tortured monotone, revealing to him what he should have known all along. “At some point you came to me in the kitchen, and we went upstairs. You were so hyped and so wild, you could hardly wait to get my clothes off, and I laughed at you, and Jon…”
Slowly her head came up.
He could hardly believe his eyes; despite the tears and grief and turmoil, there was something else in her face, a softening of her lips, a faint flush in her cheeks, her gaze, wandering to his mouth. Desire, despite everything that had happened and the long time that had passed, there it was, plain to see, easy enough for him to recognize.
“And we made love. I was loving you, Baby, say it. It isn’t hard at all to say.”
He could see it now, could recall it in shattering clarity.
Her hair spilled on the pillow, her arms reaching for him, lips receiving his feverish kisses and whispering his name. Passion had been riding him wildly, full on fame, drink, and pills as he had been, and she had been his, no reserve, no other thought, nothing.
He made an effort to clear his mind of the all too delicious image.
“And then they raided the house, the police,” he tried, only to be interrupted by her.
“They raided the house Jon, yes. Someone had called the police, and they stormed into our bedroom while we were…”
She caught her breath, searching for words, so Jon added softly, “While we were having sex. There’s no shame in that. You can say that, surely.”
“They turned on all the lights, there must have been ten of them, and they pulled you away from me, and…Jon, you fought them, and you bellowed, there is no other word for it, naked as you were. Don’t you remember that?”
Dismally, he shook his head.
“They made the crudest jokes, and when I tried to cover myself up one of them took the sheet from me, and I sat there, exposed, while you raged and screamed. They wondered how many girls you had done that night, and one asked if he could come back after his shift to have a go at me. It was awful.”
She paused, her eyes on their hands. “There were cracks about the little chick in your bed until one of them found your jeans and a shirt and they took you away, and everyone else they could get their hands on, I don’t know, most of the people must have fled by then. I didn’t dare move from the room until everything was quiet again.” Her face flushed as the shame of that night overwhelmed her. “One of them said to just leave me there, I would be of little use and looked harmless enough, and another considered asking for my driver’s license; I seemed to be minor and maybe they could get you for that.”
Jon could just see it.
He could see her wandering around the deserted house after everyone else had vanished, all by herself, scared and crying, his sweet girl. What a terrible mess there had been in every single room, the beds used and the sheets soiled, every bath reeking of vomit and worse, the kitchen a sticky, filthy place, spilled drinks and overturned bottles everywhere, food on the fl
oor, the fridge door wide open, the shelves raided. The living room had looked as if something had exploded and smelled like a pit.
It was growing dark outside. He could see lights twinkling across the bay where single houses stood sprinkled like little beacons of life in an otherwise empty landscape. On a small island at the mouth of the bay, a lighthouse had begun casting its bright ray in a ponderous rhythm, highlighting spots on the hills and passing right over their window. Weariness was catching up with him, his stomach growling with hunger. He had not had a cigarette in ages and wanted one badly now. It would have to wait though, all of it, for a while.
“Naomi, listen to me. If I had remembered, if I hadn’t been such a stupid, self-centered bastard, don’t you think it would have gone differently? Do you really believe I’d have left you alone there?”
Deep down he felt the budding fury at what she had told him, the understanding of her shame and fear, but the sense of his own failure was stronger still.
“Do you think I’d have allowed that? Would have allowed them inside our bedroom, to see you like that? Not on my life.”
She gazed at him for a long time as if she now saw him clearly. “I’m going to change.” Naomi said.
So many questions and so many things to talk about, but when she returned from the loft in a red wool skirt and a cream cashmere sweater, Naomi stopped him with gentle fingers on his lips.
“Not now, Jon. Get some rest. I’ll send down some food. You should sleep for a while. You look tired. Anything we say now will become unreasonable, and then maybe we’ll get hurt when it isn’t necessary. Also, I need to get back to work.”
“But tonight, Baby.”
The braid was back, but now tied off with a jaunty red ribbon.
“I never want to see you in black again. You looked like a widow. You aren’t a widow, and I don’t plan to make you one for a long, long time.”
She made him promise to return to his room, eat something, and relax, and please, no smoking in the rooms, he would have to go out on the deck for that. This made her look at him critically. “You are going to need other clothes. So senseless, Jon, a silk shirt and that thin jacket? Didn’t you think?”
The Distant Shore (Stone Trilogy) Page 3