My fault. I should never have made that stupid promise. I should have been stronger. Why in God’s name did I do that?
God, if only Brian would come back, she thought. I want him so much. I need him.
Rachel turned off the television, and went to the back of the apartment. Next to their bedroom was the extra room Brian used as an office. The room they’d planned to use as a nursery. She would wait there until he got back. At least she would feel less alone, surrounded by his things.
She sank into the deep leather chair in front of Brian’s desk, staring at his typewriter, an old Smith Corona manual he’d had since college. His lucky typewriter, he called it.
There was a page in it now, half-typed.
And a stack of pages in the metal basket beside the typewriter. His new novel. It looked as if it were about half-finished. How could that be? Hadn’t he just started? Or was it just that she hadn’t been paying attention?
She felt a pang, remembering how close she and Brian had been while he’d been working on Double Eagle. Each day, reading what he’d written, telling him what she thought was good, what seemed like extra words that ought to be cut. Crying with him when the memories raked too close to the bone. Laughing at humor so black no one who hadn’t been there would understand.
So where had all that closeness gone? There had to be at least some of it left, hadn’t there?
Rachel then rolled the page out of the typewriter and began to read.
... dark, but he found the ladder, his palms meeting the metal rungs still warm from the sun, which had gone down hours ago. There was no moon, but he could see well enough with all the lighted windows [392] above and below him. In fact, damned if he couldn’t see all the way to Coney Island, lit up like a Christmas tree. Laura was waiting, up there in the fort they had built together when they were kids. The two Luckies he’d swiped from his father’s steel lunch bucket were nestled in the front pocket of his shirt. One for each of them. He thought of how it would be. Laura beside him, her shoulder snuggled against his, her bare legs stretching out from under a too-small dress, long and darkly golden as maple syrup. He felt hot, even with the breeze blowing cool against his neck. And angry with himself all of a sudden. Maybe it was time he stopped meeting her up here. Now that he was close enough to fourteen to suspect that Laura’s mouth was made for more than shooting of wisecracks and smoking Pop’s Luckies. ...
Rachel let the page drop. She felt cold, as if a hole had been opened somewhere inside her, and all her blood were draining out.
Rose. He’s writing this book about her.
Why didn’t he tell me?
What did it mean?
Rachel began to shiver. She was afraid. She wondered if maybe she was even more afraid now than she’d been in Vietnam.
Part III
You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will,
But the scent of roses will hang round it still.
Thomas Moore
Chapter 26
“No, that one’s too dark. Too formal. Now this ...” Sylvie selected a wallpaper sample and held it up against the sheetrock. “There, you see how it picks up the light from outside? You almost feel as if you’re inside a van Gogh.”
“Yes,” Nikos nodded thoughtfully. “I think you are right. Once again. But you must give me credit for one thing—knowing what this house needed most.” He turned to her, smiling, his dark eyes gleaming. “You.”
Sylvie felt his hand, warm and heavy, on the back of her neck.
The swatch of William Morris paper with its bright mustard sunflowers slipped from her fingers and fluttered to the floor. How quiet it was. The painter’s crew had all gone home, and the late afternoon light filled the room with a glow like dark wild honey. The ladders propped by the window cast long, rippling trails of shadow across the canvas dropcloths on the floor. Outside, she could hear pigeons murmuring in the rain gutter.
Sylvie, a little frightened, her heart beating fast, thought, What shall I do? I want him. But am I ready to take everything that goes with it? Love, perhaps even marriage?
No. Maybe.
No, I don’t know. I can’t think. Not when he’s touching me like this.
Warmth spread from Nikos’s hand, down her spine, filling her with slow, warm waves of desire. Dear God, how wonderful to feel this way again. After so many years.
Sylvie shivered, watching motes of dust eddy within the slanting bars of yellow sunlight. Then she felt a tiny gray speck of dread.
If Nikos knew the truth about Rose, would he still want her? If he knew how she’d lied, denied him what he’d wanted perhaps more than anything?
And her own life? Did she want it to change? All those years, [396] trying to do what was right, what was expected. Now she was doing just as she pleased ... and it felt nice.
She drew away slightly.
“Wicker,” she said. “That’s how I’d furnish this room. Like a garden, with white wicker furniture, cover the cushions in one of those splashy Japanese fabrics ... and over there by the window, a basket of dried flowers ...”
But Nikos wasn’t listening, she could see. He was massaging her shoulders now, loosening the knotted muscles with deep, circular strokes of his thumbs.
“Nikos ... ,” she protested weakly, “you’re not paying attention. You hired me to—”
“You’re too thin, Sylvie,” he interrupted. “I can feel your bones. Like a starling.”
“A sparrow,” she corrected with a nervous laugh.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“Yes ... no ... oh, it does feel good. But, Nikos, I thought you wanted to go over these samples with me. I can tell you what I think will work best, but you have to make the final choice. It’s your house, after all.”
“I like what you like.”
His hands moved down the slope of her shoulders, caressing her arms, bare in her short-sleeved summer blouse. She felt a sharp prickling of gooseflesh.
“Nikos ... this will take forever if you don’t cooperate.”
“I have been very selfish, keeping you from your other work, no?”
“Other work?”
“Running a bank is not work?” He smiled, the seams in his leathery brown face deepening.
Sylvie understood. He was not joking. Replaying his words in her mind, she seemed to step out of herself, and see herself as Nikos probably saw her. A woman growing stronger with age, rather than weaker. A woman who now had more than the faded remnants of youthful prettiness. A woman with a good head, who was finally learning how to use it.
Yes, the bank was her responsibility. Not the way it had been with Gerald. But still, these days when she walked into a board [397] meeting, there was no more clearing of throats, shifting of eyes. The men greeted her with respect, met her gaze directly, listened to her ideas.
God, the fears she had clung to for so many years, like that lumpy old baby blanket that Rachel, until she was two, had dragged everywhere. And now, for the first time in fifty-eight years, Sylvie felt free.
Letting herself fall in love with Nikos could only spoil it all.
“Nikos ...” Now he was kissing her neck, his lips whispering over her skin, sending delicious shivers through her. Sylvie, sighing, relaxed against him, leaning into the safe cove of his muscular arms and broad chest. She felt so weak. She couldn’t stop herself from wanting him.
“I warn you,” he murmured, “I am a jealous man.”
“And just who is it you’re jealous of? Mr. Caswell at the bank? He’s eighty, but I hear he’s pretty spry. And there’s Neal, who does my hair, but I suspect he’d prefer it if I were a boy. ...”
“No, no, no. It. This house.” He chuckled softly against her ear. “You care for it more than for me, I am afraid.”
She considered this. “You know, I do love this house. But not the way you think. It’s what I’m doing that I love. It’s like being an artist in a way, isn’t it? This house is a blank canvas. Nikos, do you know something? I always want
ed to be a painter. All that time I spent as a kid wandering around in museums. Poor Mama, she had big hopes for me, too. We couldn’t afford meat, but she bought me sketchbooks and a watercolor set. And, oh dear, was I terrible. My horses all came out looking like dogs.”
“One might say the same of Picasso’s.”
Sylvie swiveled to face him, tilting her chin back so that she was looking directly into his dark eyes. “I have you to thank, Nikos. For showing me what I am good at. If it weren’t for you ...”
“You would have discovered it yourself in time,” he finished for her. “You are a remarkable woman, Sylvie. You lacked only one thing ... faith in yourself.”
“Oh, Nikos ...”
He kissed her, slowly, lightly, with the gentle care of an old friend. Then his kiss deepened, a lover’s kiss. Impatient. His strong [398] fingers catching in her hair, pulling it loose from its pins. Sylvie felt it tumbling in a warm flood about her shoulders.
She was caught, achingly, between the desire to hold him, and the desire to run.
Nikos murmured, “Shall we christen it, my darling Sylvie, this house you love? Here? Now?”
Sylvie knew then what she wanted.
This, she thought.
Exactly as you say. Here. Now. This particular moment, no looking back, or looking ahead. The sun slanting just so. Your lips, your fingertips like brushstrokes against my skin. A painting. Eternal.
Sylvie took a step back, and slowly began undressing. Blouse first. Six pearl buttons, one for every year it had been since she’d lain with a man, felt a man’s hard flesh against hers. Now the skirt. Oh, her fingers were shaking so! Careful not to catch the zipper in the seam. Slip next. Panties. Thank goodness she’d always taken the trouble to buy good ones. Real silk, with lace trim.
Last, she took off her necklace, bracelet, earrings, placing each piece on the dusty windowsill.
And, finally, her ring—an exquisite marquise diamond surrounded by sapphires, at least two hundred years old—the ring Gerald had placed on her finger when they were married.
There. Oh lovely, the sunshine on her naked body, like a giant invisible hand cradling her in its palm. She felt ... oh, sixteen ... a young girl on the brink of womanhood.
Fool. You’re past fifty. Wrinkled, and all skin and bones ... didn’t he say so himself? Doesn’t he see the purple veins in your legs, the gray in your hair? How can he want you?
Sylvie stared at Nikos. He had stripped off his khaki slacks and chambray work shirt, and stood naked in the dying sunlight. She saw that he had aged, too, the hair matting his chest, gray, the great slabs of his muscles sliding toward their inevitable decline. Like an old graying tiger, she thought. But seeing him like this only made her want him more. And, there, oh dear God, just look how he wanted her.
Then he was leading her toward a stack of fresh dropcloths in the corner of the room. I’ll remember this, always, Sylvie thought. Each little thing. The roughness of the canvas against my bare skin. The smell of new paint. The cooing of the pigeons outside.
[399] And this man: the light sheen of sweat on his strong brown shoulders. The good earthy smell of him, like new-mown grass, like bread just out of the oven. And, oh, the solidness of him.
She felt him enter her, and the sweetness of the sensation was like coming home after an interminable absence. Her eyes flooded with tears. Over Nikos’s shoulder, her blurred gaze caught a flash of sudden brilliance. A last ray of sunlight striking the diamond of her wedding ring on the sill, throwing off a dazzling prism, a bouquet of colors.
Please understand, my darling Gerald. It’s not that I love Nikos more than I loved you ... not that at all ... it’s me. I am finally beginning to know the person you loved. The woman Nikos loves now ...
Then Sylvie cried out. “Nikos!”
His mouth pressed open against her temple, hot breath spilling through her hair, and she was thirteen again, floating in the deep claw-footed tub that stood in her mother’s kitchen, letting the warm water eddy deliciously along her scalp, and down, flowing into other, secret tributaries, the tender nipples of her budding breasts, the soft tendrils of hair waving like seagrass between her thighs.
Nikos filled them all, her secret places ... oh God, was there ever such a feeling as this?
Lovely. Sweet.
Oh Nikos ... yes ... yes ...
Then it was over, and she lay in his arms, feeling the cool air on her sweat-sticky limbs, and the quick hot pulse of his breath gradually begin to slow.
Nikos squeezed her once, very hard, the muscles in his arms compressing, hard as bricks. And he whispered in her ear in a husky voice, “Marry me, Sylvie.”
Sylvie felt the beautiful thing they had wrought spring apart, like pearls scattering from a broken necklace.
Why, oh why did everything have to be so complicated?
I’m afraid, she thought. When there’s someone to cling to, I’ll cling. And I’ll grow weak again, like roses unable to stand free, once trained to a trellis.
“I can’t,” she said, easing away, sitting up. The cool air rushed at her. She shivered.
He stared at her, his face puddled in shadow, black eyes pricked with stars. His mouth a wound. “But why?”
[400] “My daughter ... ,” she began. Then let the sentence die. What had she been about to say? That it wouldn’t be fair to Rachel?
But it wasn’t that.
Sylvie brought her hand up, stroked his cheek, sandpapery with the end of the day. And felt her tears come, hard tears, stinging her eyes, driving a spike through her throat.
I can’t marry him. But there is one thing I must do. I must tell him. About Rose. Too long, I’ve kept it from him.
Thirty-two years, she’d kept this secret. And now she would have to trust him. He deserved that much, didn’t he?
He might hate her, he probably would ... but at least he’d know ... and perhaps he could see Rose, from a distance of course ... learn more about her ...
He would have to understand, though, how disastrous it would be to approach Rose, to risk having her learn the truth.
But he would see that, wouldn’t he? He was intelligent, and sensitive.
“Nikos, my darling, there’s something I must tell you ... something I should have told you a long time ago,” she began, feeling strangely out of breath. “About my daughter. Our daughter.”
Nikos sat up, his face suddenly tense, alert.
“Our daughter,” he breathed. “Yes, I have always known it was so. Rachel looks nothing like me—she is fair and lovely like you, Sylvie. But in my heart, I have felt she is mine. Oh, my dearest Sylvie, you have no idea how good it is to hear the truth.”
“Not Rachel,” she corrected him.
Nikos was staring at her as if she’d gone mad.
For one brief instant Sylvie thought she had gone mad. Why else would she feel this way, as if she were shrinking, growing smaller and smaller?
“Who, then?” he asked in a ragged whisper.
“Her name is Rose.”
Then she told him. Everything. How desperate, how frightened she’d been. That grimy hospital, the fire. The frantic decision that had turned her life into a terrible deception. The years and years of aching and longing to hold her child, even just see her.
Finishing her tale, Sylvie felt beaten, as if she had had to live it all over again, only worse, because now she had to face her crime mirrored in Nikos’s incredulous black eyes.
[401] Would he hate her?
Maybe better if he did. Better than more lying, deceiving.
And could he hate her any more than over the years she had hated herself?
Suddenly the room had grown cold; the rich sunlight had retreated, faded into the gray sheetrock. She tried to stand, but her legs were trembling so badly they wouldn’t support her. Her vision blurred, like staring through a rain-swept windshield, the room rushing at her.
And now the most incredible thing.
She felt Nikos pulling at her, pulling he
r against him, his great arms wrapping about her.
His chest heaving, his face wet with tears.
“Oh, Sylvie ... my poor Sylvie ...”
It’s like a miracle, she thought, astonished and grateful.
His words seemed to lift her, and she felt the huge weight of her misery rising, a chunk of it tearing free. He understood. He forgave her. And if he could do that, why then, perhaps she too could begin to forgive herself a little.
Then Nikos, in a voice that seemed to rise from the bottom of the deepest well, said, “Thank God, thank God. My child. My own daughter. We’ll find her, Sylvie. We’ll tell her together. It’s not too late. ...”
No, no, he had misunderstood.
What he was saying ... it was impossible.
She had to tell him ... but she couldn’t speak. She felt unbearably fragile, as if, with the slightest movement, she might fly apart in a thousand pieces. She wanted to shout, beat at him with her fists. But she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She could only stare at Nikos in helpless, anguished appeal.
But no, not Nikos’s fault, hers.
God help her, she had given him the power to destroy her, to destroy both her daughters.
Chapter 27
The boy in the leather bomber jacket glared across the desk at Rachel.
“Aay, just who d’you think you are? You’re telling me about my old lady? That’s my kid she’s havin’. So you can just knock off with the Marcus Welby roo-tine. I can take care of Tina just fine.”
“Like hell you can,” Rachel snapped, then sat back in her swivel chair, startled and unnerved.
She told herself, Stop it, you’re supposed to be in control. Firm but helpful, and focused only on her patient.
But for weeks now Rachel had felt as if she were on a tightrope. Tense, anxious. Jumping at every little thing.
Well, I am on a tightrope, she reminded herself. David out to get me, blaming me for Alma, turning everyone at St. Bart’s against me.
Yes, that was it. This kid reminded her of David, though they looked nothing alike. Something in his callousness, his utter disregard for his girlfriend’s well-being.
Garden of Lies Page 45