“You freak me out. You truly do. So what happens? We go to Toronto and you say to Carl, ‘Listen, Jon asked about London, and hey, I think we should do it! Let’s buy the Mandarin Oriental and call it Carlsson House’?”
“Well, not the Mandarin. That’s too large for our concept. But, yes, that’s how it would go.”
“I give up.” In desperation he threw up his hands and left the store to smoke a cigarette outside on the sidewalk.
He picked the subject up again when they were on their way back to Helen’s. “And here? In New York?”
“A small house, near the Park, off Madison,” she replied.
“What do you mean by a small house?” Jon asked and received another of those unwilling replies. “Small. Like the St. Regis.”
“Small, Naomi?” he repeated stunned. “Small?”
It occurred to him that even though she never talked about it and professed to have no interest in the business at all, in truth, she knew everything about her family’s properties.
“Paris Hilton is not so reticent about her heritage.”
“She’s blond and has nothing else to do. Me, I’m not going to spend my family’s money if I’m not prepared to work for it, and since I don’t want to, the whole thing is not my concern.” She did not look at him. “Jon, you just don’t know what you’re talking about. You think it’s glamorous and prestigious and it makes me into something more, or better, or whatever. But in reality, if I were to really take on that job, you would see almost nothing of me anymore. I would be traveling, visiting the different hotels, and I would have to spend a lot of time in Toronto.” She smiled sadly at him. “I would have my own jet. No more cruising in rented planes. And I would probably have to move to Kleinburg. Stop talking about it already.”
“You know,” he commented after a long while, “You are like a gift wrapped in many layers of tissue. I get a glimpse of what’s inside when I remove one. Every time I peel one off, I see something new, something that was hidden before, but the whole thing is still a mystery.”
Naomi did not respond. For the time it took the car to cross the river and make its way along the promenade to Helen’s house, she remained silent and thoughtful. When they stopped, she said, “Jon. It’s like this. There is this huge family business with all these obligations and responsibilities, and I’ve known all my life what was waiting for me once I was old enough. Everytime a boy approached me, I was never sure if he was seeing me, or my family’s wealth. That is why, when we met, I was still a virgin. I know you wondered. Then you came into my life, and you loved me for me. You wanted me, and you never asked, you never gave a damn about where I had come from or who I was. For you, it was only me, Naomi. You took me with you to Los Angeles, and you saw the songwriter in me, you valued me for my lyrics, not for what came with me.” She took his hand in hers. “When I followed you to Hollywood, I didn’t know I would give it all up. I wasn’t happy with what was planned for me, but I was prepared to take it on, after a time.” She paused and smiled at him so sweetly it turned his heart over. “And then I realized I didn’t want it at all. I wanted to be with you, and lead a life filled with music, and love, and laughter. I wanted it very much, Jon. I wanted to spend my life with the man who did not care at all who I was.”
Jon had the weirdest sense of displacement, hearing the echo of his own words. “We are,” he said with slow realization, “we are the same. We were both looking for the same thing, for the person who would love us for ourselves, who could see through the trappings and disregard them. You did not care one whit who I was, you treated me like any other man who wanted too much too fast. I loved you the moment I saw you.”
She nodded gravely at him. “So you see, you may be a superstar, but you hold my love, if only for that one reason: because you wanted me for myself. Not Olaf Carlsson’s daughter, not the hotel heiress, just me, Naomi.”
It was so ridiculous in its own way, he laughed out loud.
“Seems to me we are well matched, then. Two neurotics who want nothing more than honesty, and here we are, killing ourselves with the fear of losing the other, when in truth each of us knows we really found what we were always looking for. I understand your reticence a lot better now, but Baby, it doesn’t matter. Flaunt your hotels at me all you like. I know what’s really important is you and me.”
He begged her to let him do it his way.
She was his wife, and he would not travel to her ancestral home as her entourage. It was his duty to provide for her, and he was proud to do it, to show her off to the world and show how well he cared for her.
Doing it his way meant picking up the phone and giving orders to the office in LA, she realized soon enough, and then expecting everything to be arranged exactly as he wished. There was no sense fighting it. What seemed like arrogance was only the visible part of his deep longing for privacy and security, and she had come to accept it.
“Your hatred of the world frightens me sometimes,” Jon said when the plane taxied toward the runway. “Why don’t you take what it offers you so generously, why don’t you take what I offer?”
“You,” Naomi said, taking the blanket the flight attendant held out to her, “are like a piece of forbidden candy. Sweet, colorful, juicy, expensive, and found only in the most exclusive stores. But you give girls a toothache just like any other piece of sugar.”
“Tell me, Baby,” Jon said after they had been served coffee and sandwiches, “tell me about yourself. We’ll be in your hometown in a short while, and after all this time I still don’t know who you are.”
“What is it you want to hear? You know me better than anyone else.”
“Except Sal, the bastard,” he growled. “I recall you sitting with him in Geneva, and you shone like a star down there while I had to stand on the stage and do the soundcheck and couldn’t be with you. He stared down your neckline the whole time, and I was in agony, fearing he would make a successful pass at you and I would be left with empty arms, would have to see you walk away with him and maybe even wave gracefully in my direction before he took you to his room, to his bed, whatever, had the chance to make you his before I even had kissed you again. And Baby, I was dying for that kiss. My lips were still tingling from that magic moment by the lakeside, and I wanted to find out very badly whether I had imagined it or if there was a true miracle happening there. I wanted to undo that outrageous braid of yours that stroked your breast with every move you made, and I wanted it to be me who opened your blouse to reveal those lovely, rosy mounds and taste that peachy skin.” He reached for his coffee cup. “In that hallway, when you said those terrible words to me, God, how I wanted you. I wanted you right there against that wall. It nearly fried my brain. It’s a good thing you were so reticent, or the couch in my dressing room might have been witness to that burning passion. And oh, what a pity that would have been, you being what you were, my sweet, sweet virgin, my wonder, my lovely revelation.” Jon sighed and took her hands, “You taught me, Naomi, that true bliss is giving pleasure to someone you love, and not seeking release. I’m never as happy as when I see you smile for me.”
She had to take a few minutes to digest his words before she could speak again.
“You always return to that day. You are such a hopeless romantic, and I marvel at what you saw in me. I was just a naïve young girl in jeans and a cotton blouse.”
“You were the sweetest vision, my darling. You were like an answered prayer, shaped from the mist for me, only for me.” He paused briefly as if diving back into his memories. “I know that’s the reason I never really cared about your background. The gods sent you to me, and so I knew it was right, I knew you belonged with me and nowhere else, and that was it.”
“Jon.”
She turned his hands over in hers, his modest gold band glinting in the overhead lights of the jet, and kissed his palms tenderly. “It was the other way around, and it is too delicious to recall that moment, I know. It was you who had come across oceans and mountains t
o pick me up and take me away, my mystery man, finally in flesh and blood. The echo of my yearning dreams, the arms I had longed for in my empty bed without even knowing it, the kiss that woke me from my mindless innocence. You, on that stage, while I talked to Sal, you think I could have noticed any other? Sal had it right, you know. I did not even realize they were there. Your presence was so overpowering, you filled all my senses. I felt you close every moment.”
He felt the light shiver running through her body, reliving that day.
“I wanted your touch. Your kiss. Your hands on my body, on my naked skin, opening me up, oh…I wanted to know how it would be to feel a man, suddenly I wanted it more than anything else. When you held me against that wall in the hallway I ached for you, I prayed for you to go on, to overwhelm me. At last I was ready for a man, and it had to be you. God, I wanted to see your body, even then I dreamed of opening those shirt buttons and running my fingers down your chest. But more than that, I wanted it to have meaning, be special, last forever. Not a quickie in the hallway. But later, the next night, I couldn’t wait, I counted the hours and the minutes until that door closed behind us and I finally had you all alone, all mine. You were so beautiful, so sure of yourself, and then so surprised, and suddenly it seemed you were a different man, gentle and patient and mindful not to hurt me, and God, Jon, when I felt you pushing, so slowly, I wanted to die with pleasure.”
The chime woke them from their memories.
Naomi made the driver take them the long way, following the Gardiner Expressway down along the lake toward downtown, and as always, her heart opened when the skyline spread out before them, the tower reaching toward the sky, the great stretch of water vanishing toward the horizon, and the many high-rise buildings glinting invitingly in the pale sunlight.
“Your hometown. And still I don’t know much about your life here. Where was your school? Where did you play, and where did you go for ice cream with your girlfriends? Who stole your first kiss?”
Jon pointed to the arena where he had performed on his last tour through Canada, calling it an overheated monstrosity, but the people had been very kind and the audience extremely appreciative.
He did not tell her how he had walked those streets, alone, gazing into every woman’s face that even faintly reminded him of her. How he had hoped to meet her here, in her hometown. He had been nearly desperate, but Toronto was a large city, and he had no idea where to look. His search had nearly driven Sal to a nervous breakdown.
“I was not here then,” Naomi was saying softly. “I’ve not been here in a long, long time.”
He knew this now, of course, but then he had not. He had imagined the crowd in one of the malls parting, revealing the one image he wanted to see so much: Naomi, unaware, moving toward him, and he would catch her, hold on to her and make sure she did not run, not until he had his answers. Or, a nightmare vision, her on the arm of a strange man, loving laughter in her face for someone else, happy, and he, just a forgotten image from a past she had long laid to rest, seeing him there amid the bustle and going past him without a second glance, recognizing but dismissing him completely, gone forever. The thought almost killed him even now.
“You searched for me. You thought you would find me here.”
Jon turned his head away and pretended to watch the scenery, but she persevered. “Don’t look away, you miserable man.” She tugged at his jacket. “Speak to me. You did, didn’t you? You crept through Toronto hoping you would run into me, guessing I would be here, with my family. Confess!”
Grudgingly, he nodded.
“Jon. Look at me.”
“Baby, don’t torture me like that. You know it. I wanted to know, I needed to find out what had happened to us. I wanted you back so badly. All the time, every day, each morning when I opened my eyes and late at night before I went to sleep. And yes, I hoped. Over the years we were here six times, and every time I looked down at the audience I hoped to see you. I wandered through the city and prayed to run into you. Here I had that hope, wild as it was. But I always came away with my arms and heart still empty.”
She laid her arm around him and her head his shoulder.
The car had left the city behind and passed through a rural area, deep in snow. The sky was dusky even though it was still early afternoon when they entered the small town of Kleinburg.
“Here?” Jon asked, impatient to see where she had grown up.
“Not much farther.”
A cold tightness closed around her heart as they drew closer to the Carlsson property. She had been back a few of times—never for longer than three days—unable to bear the house or the feelings it brought back of that time when she had sought refuge here.
“You fled everything.” Jon was gazing out of the car window. “My God, I made you run from every place you knew. I made you hide in a strange country, among strangers, pregnant with my baby. I made you face that all by yourself, and you, so young, so fragile.”
They turned through a huge gate onto a narrow road that wound through a dense forest of snow-laden trees.
It occurred to him they had been driving for quite a while.
“Is this all your property?” Jon asked perplexed, “Where are we going?”
“We’re here.” Her voice sounded distant and tired.
The trees opened up to reveal a large park laid out in English fashion, expansive stretches of lawn interspersed with little copses, a fountain in the center of a circular planting, and behind it, fronted by a tiled driveway, a huge, three-storied manor.
“You’re kidding me,” Jon breathed. “Naomi? This is not a house. This…you grew up here?”
“We all did.” She smiled unhappily. “It’s been my family’s home for two hundred years, more or less.”
“Baby, your secrets are all so deep and well hidden. You drive me crazy, Naomi. I must be the stupidest man in the world, because even though I should know better by now, I still find the truth hard to accept.”
“Then don’t!” She grabbed his jacket and held him back as he started to climb out. “Please, Jon. Don’t get out. Let’s just turn back and go home and pretend it was only a joke! I don’t need to be here, and I don’t want you to change your perspective of me. Please.”
“No, love.” He shook his head at her. “The running days are over.For you, and for me, too. We are going to face this together, and you will show me the room where you slept after you left me, and we will explore every corner of this monstrosity together until all the ghosts are laid to rest.”
The great winged door flew open to reveal Lucia and Olaf, beaming and waving, happy to see her again so soon, talking at the same time, embracing Naomi tightly and shaking hands with Jon.
“Jon, I’m overjoyed,” Olaf said, “that you let her step back into the family. And in New York, you should reside in our hotel until your house is ready. There’s a family suite there. I have never understood Naomi, insisting she prefers anonymous places, even in London.”
“London, dear heart?” Jon murmured. “Didn’t we talk about London? Monopoly again?”
“Well no,” Olaf amended. “Not exactly London, but Oxfordshire. Only a small house.”
“Haven’t I heard those words before.”
Naomi squirmed, but had the good sense not to speak up.
Wandering through the manor, he asked her how many people worked there for the family, but Naomi did not know.
And how many of her relatives lived here permanently?
Her uncle and his wife, their son with his family…there were not many left.
Her parents, when they chose to spend time here, and sometimes the Danish branch came to visit.
“All those youngsters at our wedding. Where did they come from? Why is it so important for you to take over the business? There seemed to be a lot of younger folks.”
But not the direct line, she explained. Her family was very traditional in that. They liked everyone in the family to work in the business, but only direct descendants woul
d inherit it, and that would be her and her Uncle Carl’s son.
Naomi opened a door at the end of a narrow hallway on the third floor, far away from the bustle and the rest of the guests.
“Here.”
It was secluded, a quiet room looking out over the park and the forest, with not much more than a big canopied bed, a wardrobe, desk, and chair. The floor was covered in a thick carpet, and on the bed was a quilt that looked well used and old. The en suite bathroom was small.
Jon tried to imagine it, Carl and his wife bringing Naomi here after her flight from LA. Helping her to climb out of her clothes and into bed, drawing the blue curtains to give her peace, letting her settle in.
She had slept, she told him as she stood by the window. She tried to drown in sleep, shocked and frightened, so lonely.
“You left me alone,” he heard her say, and for the very first time there was a trace of accusation in her voice. “You left me, Jon. I was barely twenty-one, and I had only you in that crazy place, and you left me alone. I can’t remember any other time in my life when I was that scared.”
He felt something like elation at her tone. It was such a huge relief to see her angry at him at long last, to see her replace the grief with accusations. “Yes, I did. I left you alone in that house that night. I didn’t even think about it. The party just followed me to jail.”
Her hand tightened in the velvet curtain. “When we were in Geneva, before you left for Amsterdam, you promised you would take care of me if I came away with you. You promised I would never come to harm. But you broke your promise.”
“Yes,” he said again, “I know. I was stupid and thoughtless, and there is no way to excuse it.”
“I never wanted to leave you.”
Jon decided not to give her comfort this time.
“Your indifference nearly killed me.”
This he could not let pass.
“I was never indifferent to you!” He took her shoulder to turn her around. “I was thoughtless, mindless, selfish, and arrogant, that I will accept. But Naomi, I was never indifferent.”
The Distant Shore (Stone Trilogy) Page 29