A Theory of Love

by Margaret Bradham Thornton

  “That was not at all what I was expecting,” Christopher said to Helen as they walked back to their jeep. He knew she was thinking the same. He thought about her word neverness. He wondered how Baudelaire would have used it.

  “Do you believe what he said about colors?” she asked.

  “You mean about their influence on the soul? I do. I read somewhere that one in two thousand people hears colors. For that person, the sound of a color is as certain and distinct as a musical note. The French composer Messiaen saw colors when he heard or imagined music.”

  She considered what he had said. “I wonder what this world would have sounded like to him.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “Paolo really loves this place, doesn’t he?”

  “He does.”

  “More than his family?”

  “Probably. It’s his life’s work.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “I do. But first you have to ask if he is even capable of loving another person. Some people aren’t.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Bermeja

  The following day, the sun seduced all thoughts away. A polo match had been scheduled for the late afternoon, and Christopher and Helen had been invited. The polo field was within walking distance, just one coconut grove from the grass landing strip, but for Christopher and Helen, the sun had not followed the orders of the day, and they arrived just as the last chukker was being played. When the game was over, they stopped by the hotel bar for a cold drink before climbing the steep road to Casa Tortuga. A beautifully turned-out, mildly overweight woman came rushing up, shrieking Christopher’s name with the delight of someone who had just won the high-stakes question on a game show. He leaned down, kissed her hello, and introduced her to Helen as his cousin Charlotte. He smiled and added, “Or something like that.” Charlotte said she had told her husband, Eric, that she could have sworn she saw Christopher arriving at the polo match just as they were leaving.

  Over dinner, Eric explained their reason for visiting Bermeja, something about Charlotte’s desire to return to a place she remembered from her childhood and Mexico offering promising investment opportunities because of the existence of so many monopolies. Eric never missed a chance to inform those around him that he had made—and was still making—a fortune by running around the world col-lecting businesses as fast as some people collect friends. When he had heard about the potential sale of a Mexican cell phone company, he had found a reason to grant his wife her wish to return. From what Helen could tell, Eric offered up this last piece of evidence—turning his wife’s nostalgia for childhood holidays into an opportunity for acquiring monopolies—as proof of just how clever he was.

  As they walked back to Casa Tortuga, Christopher groaned about having agreed to dinner. “Why did you let me do that?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you.” He hung his arm over her shoulders.

  “Charlotte seems very nice, but does Eric ever not talk about money?”

  “I did warn you.”

  “How exactly are you and Charlotte related?” Christopher’s family tree, complicated by too many divorces, remarriages, half and stepsiblings, still confused her.

  “My grandmother and Charlotte’s mother were married to the same man, but Charlotte’s mother was much younger than my grandmother. So technically, she is my step aunt, even though she is only eleven years older.”

  “So how did they both come to spend time here?”

  “You mean my mother and Charlotte’s mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “After my grandfather divorced Charlotte’s mother, he married again. My grandmother was his first, Charlotte’s mother his second. Wife number three was from Venezuela.”

  “Your grandfather must have been very good-looking and very charming.”

  “He was. He was also ruthless. I guess Charlotte came here with her mother, which now that I think about it is very odd, because the house belonged to the woman my grandfather left her mother for.”

  “I thought Charlotte said she used to come here with her father for spring break.”

  “Oh, well, that might be right. My grandfather. That makes more sense. My mother and my grandfather didn’t get along—I think because of the way he treated her mother, so we never spent much time with him. He was never here when we were.”

  “But Charlotte gave the impression that her family and yours were close.”

  “That’s just Charlotte’s way. I didn’t meet her until I was just out of law school. We would run across each other from time to time at a party in New York. Her mother was very social, and Charlotte tries hard to be like her.”

  “Do you have other cousins?”

  Christopher put his arm around her waist and pulled her close to answer her question. “I do, yes I do, but I’ve had too much to drink to remember their names.”

  There were no lights on the road, but the hard jeweled sky was just bright enough for them to see their way home.

  “At least, thank God, Eric and Charlotte are leaving tomorrow. He was very excited to tell me about some bank he was considering buying.”

  “How could anyone come here and not want to stay forever?”

  “Let’s just hope they don’t like it, because if they do, they’ll return on their private planes, their black Denalis with hot and cold running staff will eat up all the roads, they’ll invite their friends, most of whom we won’t like, and we won’t want to come back here because the feeling of just the two of us on this stretch of coast will be gone. Forever. Maybe you should update the article you wrote a year ago, with a sort of World Travel Advisory Warning about it.”

  “I don’t think there is such a thing as a World Travel Advisory Warning.”

  “There has to be. There should be. Or at least there should be some sort of alert system to avoid encounters with those who are so insufferable about their money.”

  “He is rather smug. Do you remember his comment that none of the Europeans knew he was in the Forbes 400?”

  Christopher stopped for a minute to steady himself. Too much tequila had made him dizzy. “He said that? He really said that?”

  She bit her lower lip and nodded. “When he was talking about looking at shooting estates to buy.”

  “I knew there had to be a reason I was drinking so much.”

  They resumed the hike. As they reached Casa Tortuga, Christopher shook his head and smiled. “Oh, well, then, we’re safe. We have nothing to worry about. Sounds as if Eric is well on his way to stabilizing his status as a social leper without any outside help.”

  * * *

  Christopher crashed on their bed and covered his eyes with his hands. Helen lay next to him and rested on her elbows. She reached over and lifted one hand from his eyes. “So, how did you learn to sing so well?”

  He turned his head to look at her. “You’re assuming I did.”

  “Charlotte was very clear.”

  “Ah, the dangers of dinner with Charlotte and Eric persist.”

  “No, really, please, Christopher. She said you sang at your sister’s wedding and that you were really good.”

  “A long time ago.”

  “Six years is not that long.”

  “Okay. If you must know. Five years in a boys’ choir at an English boarding school. But you knew that.” He enjoyed teasing her precisely because she did not know how to tease back.

  “I did. But I didn’t know you could still sing. Why haven’t you ever sung for me?” She sat up and was shaking his arm. “Come on,” she said, laughing. “I want you to sing for me.”

  He split his fingers apart and looked through them at her.

  “First of all, I’ve had way too much to drink. Second, there are certain things I do only once in my life. And third, . . . I’ll think of a third in a minute.”

  “Why only once? Charlotte said you were good. Seriously good. She said you wore sunglasses and acted a little drunk.”

  “I probably was.”

 
“So what was the song?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

  “Of course you do. Come on, Christopher. Please.”

  “You have found me in a seriously weakened state.” He sighed. “Okay, it might have been a Dean Martin song.”

  “‘Moon River’?”

  “Great song, but off the grid. Johnny Mercer, not Dean Martin.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “‘You’re Nobody ’Til Somebody Loves You’?”

  “Cold.”

  “‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’?”

  “Colder.”

  “That’s it. That’s all I know. Please, Christopher.”

  “Okay.” He took a deep breath and sighed. “‘Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu’—in the blue that is painted blue.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  “Also known as ‘Volare.’”

  “No, really I don’t. How does it go?”

  “Ahh, clever girl, but not clever enough.”

  She fell back in defeat next to him. “So you really won’t sing for me?”

  “No.”

  “Please.” She shook his arm again.

  “You do know you have me wrapped around your little finger?”

  She kissed him. “Then sing. Please.”

  “Okay. If I must.” He pushed up on his elbow.

  “‘Penso che un sogno così non ritorni mai più.’” He smiled. “It’s better in Italian.

  “‘Mi dipingevo le mani e la faccia di blu / Poi d’improvviso venivo dal vento rapito / E incominciavo a volare nel cielo infinito.’”

  His voice was muffled in tenderness. It crumbled her heart.

  “‘Volare, oh, oh . . . / Cantare, ohohoho . . . / Nel blu dipinto di blu / Felice di stare lassù.’ That’s it, that’s all I remember.”

  Helen was quiet as if still listening. “Did you sing it in Italian?”

  “I did. It was how my eccentric Italian teacher taught us in our first year. All we did was sing.”

  “With sprezzatura?”

  He nodded.

  She put her hand on his chest as if to feel for his heart. “Christopher?”

  “Yes, my love.”

  “What is the one thing you will do only once? Only for me. Only once.”

  “You want to know the one thing that I will do for you that I will not do for anyone else?” He had suddenly become serious.

  “Yes, I do. Only for me. Only once.”

  “Only for you. Only once. Okay, let me think.” He looked at her—the heat of the evening had made her long blond hair wispy around her face. “Marry you.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Sussex

  There are moments when some understanding simultaneously compresses and expands. When Christopher asked Helen to marry him, he surprised himself. He had spent much of his life letting things come to him—waiting—never rushing or trying to force anything. He had come to value, maybe even cherish, a sense of patience—it had almost become a type of religion for him—of letting things play themselves out. Perhaps his ability to see how things would develop or unravel allowed him this equanimity. He understood that events had their own internal sense of motion. Most of his past relationships were two- or three-sentence stories. His ability to see where things were headed was his own form of perfect pitch. It was nothing he had learned—he could never remember not having it. At times he wondered if he had inherited this ability from his father, it certainly wasn’t from his mother.

  They were married six months later on a beautiful day in June in the village church near Willow Brook. The wedding was small, Helen’s immediate family and neighbors, Christopher’s mother, sister, and brother-in-law, a few friends from work and school. Christopher’s childhood friend Willie, whom Helen had only met once before, flew over from the States to be the best man. At the beginning of the ceremony, the pastor looked down at Henry, whom Christopher had asked to be the ring bearer, hopping on one foot, and remarked that his church was rarely filled with so much youth and energy and hope.

  When Helen walked down the aisle, Christopher thought she had never looked so beautiful. And something about her became clear. Maybe he had always sensed it, but only then did he comprehend it so completely. It was her simplicity surrounded by her ability to live in the present. It wasn’t that she tried to look forward and failed, it was more that she never tried. And he had to assume it was because she liked to exist without needing to ask questions about duration or destination. She always seemed happy where she was. She allowed those around her the luxury of not having to plan. It was almost as if it were a gift she bestowed. For as long as he had known her, he had watched as she thought hard about things and then did what she wanted, which generally had more to do with her heart than with any train of logic. And she rarely consulted opinions along the way. It was as if she lived her life by a set of golden rules of improvisation—Don’t come in when you’re not needed. Listen and be willing to change. Trust. Do not deny or negate. Maybe she did what he admired and could not do. It was her own form of fearlessness. And yet she understood none of the charm she possessed. The idea that there was one thing in the world he could do for her that he had never done for anyone else was something she didn’t doubt. She put her trust and faith in possibilities. She made things happen without realizing what she was doing.

  As she walked down the aisle, Helen had her own epiphany—if that is even the right word. She observed how little Christopher carried forward from his past. Even his relationship with his sister, Laure—whom she had only just met—seemed distant, respectful, almost formal. Now, as she watched him waiting for her, she would always remember thinking how alone he seemed, as if there were some impenetrable boundary surrounding him. Why did she feel she was on the wrong side?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cala Blava

  For their honeymoon, Christopher took Helen to a small hotel in Cala Blava on the Majorcan coast. As consolation for the short four-day trip, he planned to take the last four weeks of summer off. Édouard Beaumont had been so pleased with the terms of the sale of his company that he gave them La Mandala for August as a wedding present. Helen had hoped Christopher would consider returning to Bermeja, but he had said it was too far and the summer months too hot and full of rain. She didn’t care about distance or heat or rain.

  At the outset of the Spanish American War, the Spanish government had expropriated a sizable holding of land from an old Majorcan family and built a small military fort on Majorca’s western tip, a wide promontory that pushed out into the Mediterranean Sea. When the government realized there was nothing or no one to defend, they returned the land to the family with the condition that the property remain a nature preserve. After a number of years, the family sold the parcel of land to an architect from Palma who, as a young boy, had sailed many times past the fortress and had dreamed of transforming it into a place to live.

  The dirt road through the nature preserve was unlit, but the moon was strong. The land was dry, with stands of scraggly scrub pines. Christopher found the driving difficult because there weren’t any signs or markers confirming they were headed in the right direction. After a few miles through land that promised nothing, they saw low lights illuminating the entrance to the hotel. A man dressed in a long white tunic and trousers was waiting. He took their bags and drove them in a golf cart down what once had been a path for goats to a small stone cottage on a piece of land that looked across the water to Africa. It was luxurious and simple—one bedroom and bath, a fireplace, a four-poster bed piled high with a thick white duvet and three rows of crisp white pillows. A small lap pool bordered the edge of the loggia. They were both tired, but Christopher insisted they have the welcome drink that had been left for them—rum with orange peel, cloves, and cinnamon. They sat outside on the terrace. Down below, the hotel’s restaurant was serving its last guests. The sound of laughter twisted up toward them.

  A steady wind was turning the evening
chilly, and Helen went inside to get a shawl.

  “So do you feel different?” Christopher asked when she returned.

  “No, but I guess I thought I would. That it would feel like some big shift. As if a heavy door had closed behind me. But I don’t. It just feels as if everything has become simpler, less complicated.”

  “I didn’t know we had a complicated relationship,” he said with a dip of his chin.

  “That’s not what I mean, it just feels smoother and quieter. How about you?”

  “Me? Do I feel different? I don’t know. I mean, I never thought that much about getting married, and then when I met you I couldn’t imagine ever being without you.”

  “But what if I had resisted you or played hard to get?”

  “I would have had to learn more songs.”

  * * *

  They woke up late and Christopher ordered breakfast. A waiter brought a large wicker basket with carafes of hot coffee, tea, and steamed milk, along with breads, fruits, yogurts, and nuts. After a long breakfast, they gathered books and magazines and newspapers.

  “What are these?” he asked, pulling several manila folders from the pile.

  “Some reading I wanted to do—ideas for my next article.”

  “Contraband,” he said, tossing the folders on top of a suitcase. “If I promised no work, you can, too.”

  “You’re right,” she said and put her arms around his neck and kissed him. “What was I possibly thinking?”

  An hour later they wandered down to the small cove not far from the hotel. He helped her down the rocks. The water was cold and clear and salty. He proposed a swim to the platform anchored several hundred feet from where they stood. The water was calm, but large swells rolled shoreward in a steady slow rhythm. She stood looking at the water. “It seems pretty far.”

  “I’ll swim alongside. If you get tired, you can hold on to my shoulder.”