by John Muncie
As platters of food came and went, so did the pitchers of margaritas. There were loud toasts to canoes and Vulcans and Rudy challenged everybody at the table to tell a joke that began, “A priest, a minister, and a rabbi . . .”
Of all the rowdies, Alyssa was the rowdiest. At one point she proposed they all go to the tattoo parlor down the street and get smiley faces on their butts. After she was shouted down, she tried to talk Don into dancing the zembekiko with a margarita glass on his head.
It made Abbi smile to see Alyssa so loose and unguarded. And made her a little smug; she knew the reason why, and it had nothing to do with margaritas or canoeing.
About the time the pitchers hit empty for the second time, Marius yelled down the table, in an accusing voice, “Lissy, you’re drunk as a skunk.”
Alyssa assumed an exaggerated expression of hurt dignity. “I beg to differ, my Czechoslovakian friend. I can hold my margaritas as well as anybody in this room.”
“Not as good as me. I’m as sober as a judge,” said Marius. He was wearing a ragged T-shirt and dirty shorts and his eccentric tufts of yellow and white hair stuck out from a newly sunburned scalp. He looked like someone who should be standing in front of a judge.
“Oh?” she said. “All right then, do this.” She cleared her throat and said, so quickly that no one could be sure exactly what they’d heard, “Rubber baby buggy bumpers. Rubber baby buggy bumpers. Rubber baby buggy bumpers.”
That silenced the group for a second. “Wow,” Nattie finally said, “I’ve never seen anyone’s mouth move so fast. Okay, big talker, it’s your turn.” She pointed to Marius.
He waved his hand in dismissal. “What is this? What is this, ‘Rubby bumper buggy bumpies’?” he asked, mangling the phrase.
“Calisthenics for actors,” said Alyssa. “It loosens up your jaw and mouth. All my kids at school can do it, even the sixth-graders. Go ahead, three times fast. The sixth-graders do it five times, but I’ll compensate for age.”
Marius took a drink from his margarita. “I need fuel first.” He swallowed, then started: “Bubber babies—” He stopped again and took another sip. “Rubber bubbers baby booper. I mean rubberbububub— Roooberbaby—” He threw his hands up in surrender and the group whooped in appreciation.
Marius clinked his fork on the edge of a margarita glass for attention. “You have vanquished me, fair and square, my blond goddess. I will never be able to say, ‘Bubber rabies bugger . . .’ three times fast or slow or anything.”
He picked up his glass. “But this I can say. Here’s to the finest canoeists ever to row the Shenandoah. Here’s to an exceptional group of artists and friends.”
Then he raised the glass higher and looked down the table at Alyssa. “To borrow from the Irish: May the road always rise to meet you, may the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine upon your face. And may you find peace in the arms of your true love, my fair friend.”
CHAPTER 44
For the rest of July and into August, Alyssa did find peace in the arms of Tug Palifax. Though she would admit to no one, especially herself, that Tug was her true love.
Tug spent his days at the farm, his nights in Alyssa’s bed, and his early mornings sneaking back to Limespring. A two-hour afternoon nap in his studio kept him from total collapse. Despite the distractions, his drawing regime intensified. Partly inspired by Degas’s horse-racing pastels, he concentrated on the connection between horse and rider. Alyssa took him to the Middleburg Horse Show, where he watched riders taking horses over a series of large, colorful jumps.
Meanwhile, Alyssa had a farm to run, animals to tend to, and a new school year to prepare for. Sometimes while Tug drew, she sat next to him, marking up a dog-eared copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, absentmindedly running her fingers against his leg.
They only altered the routine for weekends. On the pretext of exploring the surrounding area, Tug, day bag over his shoulder, would get in his Chrysler station wagon on Saturday morning and roar off from Limespring. Three minutes later he’d turn into the Finally Farm drive, park the Chrysler behind the barn, and spend the weekend exploring Alyssa.
The other Limeys weren’t buying it. Tug was gone too much and engaged too little. He didn’t even argue with Marius at lunch anymore. He’d just sit by, listening to the banter, letting his thoughts drift down Limespring Hollow Road. He was clearly preoccupied, and when he wasn’t around, the Limeys gossiped about what, or who, was preoccupying him.
Abbi asked him point-blank after Operation Scheherazade, when Tug had resumed his drawing sessions at Alyssa’s place.
“I stopped by your cabin at eleven last night,” she said, cornering him at breakfast one morning. “You weren’t there. Does this mean what I think it means?”
“It means I was at the studio,” Tug said, putting on a bland expression.
“No, it doesn’t,” she said. “I checked there, too.”
“Well, then, I was out for a walk. It’s too hot to walk in the day. So I go out at night.”
Abbi gave this excuse the derisive snort it deserved. “All right, you don’t have to tell me,” she said, starting to walk away. “I guess I’ll just ask Alyssa.”
He seized her arm and pulled her back. “There’s nothing to tell. Operation Scheherazade worked. That’s all there is to it. Nothing more, nothing less. And if you say anything to her, I’ll break your arms.”
“Oh, relax,” said Abbi. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
Alyssa had no one to convince but Darryl, whose weekly phone calls from California were short and businesslike. She could set her clock by him. Every Thursday night at ten the phone would ring; she’d take it to another room and reappear shortly thereafter. “Darryl,” she’d say matter-of-factly to Tug. He’d nod, then the two of them would go back to pretending Darryl didn’t exist.
And while Roz called frequently, her conversations were filled with chatter about the structural beauty of Chicago. “This city is eye candy for architects, Mom. Everywhere you go there’s a building more beautiful than the next. And now Uncle Ron’s letting me actually design! Oh my God, you wouldn’t believe . . .”
Alyssa missed Roz terribly, but between her daughter’s explosive happiness and her own exhilaration, there wasn’t any room for moping. She’d read once that people who fall in love think about each other more than five hundred times a day. She thought about Tug at least that many times. But “in love”? She couldn’t let herself think that.
Alyssa’s official version to herself was that it was just a summer fling. What else could it be? Tug was four years younger, a successful artist with a name and a following, and probably not just a professional following. Tug clearly loved women; she just happened to be the one he was with now.
It was ridiculous to think he’d give up New York and the adoring legions of young, beautiful, and thin females for a forty-three-year-old, ten-pounds-overweight married drama teacher. Nor would she ever move back to New York. It made her suffocate to even think of it. And she’d never give up the farm.
In a few weeks she’d tell him good-bye and tuck away the memory of this summer like she’d tucked away Roz’s starbug earrings. From time to time she’d pull it out and let herself be overwhelmed by the past.
CHAPTER 45
Tug was ducking out earlier and earlier from Limespring. When he and Alyssa first started their charade, she had insisted he not only eat dinner every night with the fellows, but also hang out with them afterward for walks, chats, showings, and poker games.
“Finally Farm’s off-limits till ten,” she’d said the first week.
But by the second week, he was showing up at nine. And by the middle of the third week, Tug and Alyssa found themselves eating dinner together on her front porch.
“Up for some dessert?” Alyssa said. “We’ve got that Ben and Jerry’s from last night.”
“Later,” he said. “I’ve got other ideas.”
It wasn’t long before they were upstairs in her bedroo
m.
“You look like you’ve been dipped in gold,” Tug said. Alyssa was standing by the window that looked out onto the side pasture. The late evening sun hung low in the sky, gilding everything, including her naked body.
He’d taken off her clothes, leaving them in a little pile by her feet. He knelt down and slipped off her sandals. As he lifted her right foot, he pressed his lips against her toes, lightly running his tongue across her skin. Then he moved to her foot, her ankle, her shin, the inside of her knee, the smooth skin of her inner thigh. As he ascended her body, his hand traced the same path on her other leg, until his mouth and fingers came together between her legs.
She leaned back against the window screen, into the stream of sunlight, and closed her eyes. Putting her hands on Tug’s head, she pulled him close. She swayed her hips into his mouth, rhythmically, pressing him harder and harder against her. The sun slipped below the mountains and the golden light deepened to dusk. Finally she grabbed his hair in her hands and pulled him to his feet.
“I want you in me,” she said.
Tug wrapped her in his arms; they kissed. She could taste herself in his mouth. Then he pulled back. “Turn around,” he said. She turned to the window. He pushed against her hard; her face and chest pressed into the window screen.
And then the phone rang.
“Shit,” Alyssa said.
“Don’t answer it,” Tug said.
“It’s Thursday.”
Tug looked at the bedstand clock. “It’s only eight-fifteen. He doesn’t call till ten.”
“I have to get it. It could be him.”
She pulled away, a grid of little squares imprinted on her breasts and the left side of her face. She sat on the edge of the bed and reached for the phone.
“Hello,” she said, trying to hide the breathlessness in her voice. She mouthed at Tug, “It’s Darryl,” then turned back to the phone.
“You’re calling early. How’s everything in San Diego?”
The upstairs phone wasn’t cordless; she couldn’t leave the room as she usually did when Darryl called. She motioned for Tug to leave, but he ignored her, flinging himself facedown on the bed instead and putting a pillow over his head.
Though the sound was muffled, he could still make out some of the one-sided conversation going on next to him. The phrase “the Amerigas guy finally fixed it” came through, so did “Yeah, she called me last night.” When he heard her say, “Things are fine. Terrific,” the temptation was too great. He moved the pillow slightly aside.
“Of course. Right after the Chicago trip,” she was saying. Then, after a pause, “August twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth.” Another pause. “No, that weekend I’ll be in D.C. There’s a faculty meeting Monday.”
It was the very ordinariness of the conversation that made it so maddening. It was as if the summer hadn’t happened, as if he never existed. Tug listened, horrified, fascinated, unable to pull the pillow back over his ears.
“So you haven’t gone surfing yet?” she said into the phone and chuckled at her own insignificant joke.
Jesus, he thought, they’re chatting together and laughing together like an old married couple. Which is exactly what they are. What did I expect? When Darryl calls I become invisible.
“Okay, that’s great. I’ll talk to you next week.”
The phone clicked down. The next thing Tug knew, the pillow was pulled from atop his head and he was back in the darkening glow of her bedroom.
“Now, where were we?” She was standing next to the bed, the pillow in one hand, an anticipatory look on her face.
“You were married.”
CHAPTER 46
At five in the morning, there was no going back to sleep for Alyssa. She lay in bed, kneading the satiny edge of the cotton blanket between her toes. It’s what she did when she was upset. Her mother used to joke that she’d given birth to a kitten instead of a little girl.
She and Tug had gone to sleep angry at each other, breaking Dear Abby’s cardinal rule for a successful relationship. She and Darryl had obliterated the rule years ago. For a while, she’d even stopped sleeping in the same room with him. She’d read Roz a story at night and pretend to fall asleep next to her. Then Roz got too old for bedtime stories.
“You were married,” Tug had said, with an unfamiliar edge to his voice.
“You knew that going into this,” she’d answered, her voice mirroring his. When the lights were out, she’d lain on her side, offering her back to him. He’d done the same.
He was still turned away from her as she waited for him to wake. When he finally stirred, she ran the tips of her fingernails down the shallow valley in the middle of his back.
“That feels good.” The edge in his voice was gone. “More.”
She added the other hand, running them in waterfall succession.
“I know this is hard for you,” she said quietly. “It’s hard for me, too.”
Tug turned onto his back. “Come here.” He pulled her to him.
Forty minutes later, they were interrupted by a bell for the second time in less than twelve hours. But this time it was an alarm clock, not a telephone.
Tug left Finally Farm even more bedraggled than usual, with dark circles and puffy little sacks under his eyes. “I’ll be back after breakfast,” he said. But he didn’t return. After a big plate of pancakes and sausage, he went to his cabin and, while sorting through some pencils, decided to lie down for a few minutes. The next thing he knew, Abbi was knocking on his door, holding both their lunchboxes.
He bolted through the meal, sidestepped a discussion about the “outsider art” at Baltimore’s Visionary Art Museum, and got to Finally Farm at one-thirty. There he found Alyssa, trowel in hand, in the garden amid basil plants.
“You look better,” she said. “I figured you’d collapsed and taken a nap.” Her understanding smile hid the fact that she’d worried all day about how much Darryl’s call had hurt Tug, or worse, if he were beginning to pull back, knowing that they had only the final days of August left together.
She pinched off some shiny basil leaves and crushed them between her fingers. “Smell this.” She held her hand under Tug’s nose. “This is proof there’s a God.”
Tug cupped his hand against hers and inhaled deeply. The air was filled with the strong, unmistakable scent of basil.
Objectively, he could say the smell carried overtones of mint, citrus, licorice, and cloves. But he could no more think of basil as a catalog of overtones than he could think of a Matisse as a collection of pretty colors.
When he pressed his nose against the crushed leaves, the whole summer flooded in. Along with the smell came the image of Alyssa, sitting next to him on the porch, sharing a lunch of tomatoes, basil, olive oil, and French bread. When he inhaled the smell of basil, he inhaled the feeling of her back pressed against his chest as they drifted in and out of sleep, he heard the little humming noise she made in the shower, he tasted her skin.
He took another breath and held it. He knew that smell would always bring him back to Virginia and to Alyssa. Basil, summer, Alyssa, inextricably linked. He also knew that this would be one of those indelible moments. Alyssa bending over him, the soft-turned earth of her garden under him, the insistent whine of the mosquitoes, the thick, damp air—all of it would be etched forever in his mind.
He pulled her hand, bringing her closer to him. “I think you’re proof there’s a God.”
Alyssa was wrong about the call from Darryl and summer’s end. They didn’t give Tug a reason to pull back, they were powerful forces pushing him on. He refused to be invisible.
“Alyssa,” he said, “I don’t want the summer to end. I don’t want us to end.”
Alyssa froze. She didn’t want it to end either. But it had to.
“Tug,” she said, pushing away the panic, “we’re months, years, eons from the end of summer. Look, even the dogwoods haven’t started turning yet and they’re the first to let you know when fall’s closing in. There�
�ll be plenty of time for talk later. Maybe in bed, afterward.” She gave him a lascivious look. “But now, we work. I’ll finish around the basil, you tackle the tomatoes.”
Tug let her evasiveness slide by. Along with draftsmanship, he was also learning patience that summer. He’d wait. But he didn’t have eons, and he wasn’t going to give up.
CHAPTER 47
“Don’t stop. Show me more.”
Alyssa was stretched out on the bed, eyes closed, arms resting on the pillows behind her head. Tug was on his knees facing her. He cleared his throat with a pedantic “ahem” and touched her face.
“Note the zygomaticus muscle,” he said as he ran an index finger down her cheekbone to her mouth. “Artists often call this the ‘smiling muscle.’”
Alyssa stretched her zygomaticus.
It had begun to pour an hour before. She and Tug had rushed around the kitchen putting pots and pans under the leaky spots. And it was still pelting down hard on the tin roof, sounding like a concert of snare drums. But they’d kept the French doors to the balcony open, letting in cool air and the occasional ricocheting raindrop. The only light came from the living room, which diffused up the stairwell and into the bedroom, creating a kind of twilight. Illumination enough for an anatomy lesson.
“Further note,” Tug continued, “that when the zygomaticus is used, it tends to create wrinkles at a right angle to the pull of the muscle.”
Alyssa’s zygomaticus contracted. “Wrinkles?”
“I mean, theoretically. It creates them, theoretically,” said Tug.
“Move on to other parts, please,” she said.
“Certainly.” He ran his fingers down her bare breastbone. “This, of course, is your sternum. And these are your clavicles.” He traced the long bones below her neck that connect the chest and shoulders. “You have excellent clavicles, Miss Brown. I would venture to say they are world-class clavicles.” He stroked them slowly, back and forth.