Canyon Road

by Thomas, Thea

  Sage was touching her friend's elbow and gesturing to the gazebo, so engrossed was Tina in the pool and orchestra that she couldn't look anywhere else.

  Tina and Sage turned to the gazebo, Sage started to make a little wave to Anthony when her eye caught Michael's. Her hand froze as their eyes met.

  "Sage," Tina said, "do you see that wonderful, wonderful looking man there?"

  "That's him!" Sage whispered.

  "Him who?"

  "Michael, that's Michael."

  "Oh boy, Sage. Yeah, you'd have to be blind to not call that gorgeous. But isn't it a strange coincidence, him being here? Sage... Sage? How long are we going to stand here like we're waving good-by to the Queen Mary?"

  "Ahh, yes, embarrassing." Sage moved toward the gazebo, Tina shadowing her.

  "Sage!" Anthony said, getting up, taking her hand, kissing her cheek. "I've been waiting for you to get here. Everything else just fades away when you're around. But before I get too faded away, I'd like to introduce you to my grand-nephew, Michael, who, I've just been learning, you've recently met."

  "You're grand-nephew!"

  "Yes. Michael was just telling me about your recent accidental encounter, and then you appeared, right on cue."

  "I have no secrets!" Sage said.

  "On the contrary, you are a woman of great mystery." "Let me introduce Michael's friend, Millie," Anthony continued.

  "I'm happy to meet you," Sage said, finally noticing the small woman in the large wicker chair, "And this is my friend, Tina."

  "Nice to meet you, Tina. Sage," Anthony said, "do you mind if I whisk you away for a few moments? I have something I'd like to discuss with you. You don't mind being left with Michael, do you Tina?"

  "Of course not."

  Anthony took Sage by the elbow. She cast a glance over her shoulder to Tina who was thoroughly engrossed in striking up a conversation with Michael.

  "My grand-nephew seems to be a hit with women."

  "Oh? Is he a womanizer?"

  "No, I think not. On the contrary, I suspect. I suspect he's shy. Well, look at the mouse he's with. If he was aggressive, wouldn't he be with someone more stunning?"

  "She seems very nice," Sage said quietly.

  "She's very nice, very nice. But Sage, I'm not interested in talking about them."

  He led her beyond the third pool into a sunken rose garden, and sat with her on a small secluded white bench, trellised about with rose vines.

  "I'm so glad you came this evening, Sage."

  "I very nearly didn't as I'm still in mourning. But Tina wanted to come so badly."

  "I'm sorry, Sage. Do you feel this party is too soon?" Anthony studied her carefully, anxiety on his brow.

  Sage took in his sincerity, and lost heart to make a criticism. She decided to go with Tina's point that Victoria was not Anthony's relative. "No, it's all right, Anthony. I... just don't feel much like partying."

  "But I'm so glad you're here," Anthony said. "I ah, ahm. I'm stuttering...."

  Looking at Anthony, Sage had to agree with Tina. Excellent physique, a great mass of grey-silver hair, youthful blue, long-lashed eyes – he was very attractive. Good looks certainly run in this family, she thought.

  "You see Sage, I threw this party tonight for you. I knew you wouldn't come if I told you you were the guest of honor. But...ahh, I understand this is a hard time for you. I have someone from my staff check on you a couple times a week just to make sure you're all right, but you're a strong young woman and don't want to be treated as though you can't make it on your own. What can I do to let you know I'm here without intruding on your sense of privacy? I asked myself.

  "Throwing a party was the only thing I could come up with. Have a party and hope you'd come. Losing your Aunt Victoria has been terribly hard on you, if I could bring her back, dear girl, I would. But I can't. All I can do is be here. I just want to say to you, 'be happy, be well.' "

  "I am well, Anthony. And, I'm okay, but I'm still sad. This party, well, it does feel too soon for me. Like I said, I came because of Tina. She's helped me through this time with such patience I felt she deserved a break from my mopey self."

  "That's what I'm trying to point out, though, Sage. You won't let me in you life to help you through this time. I think you need a break from being mopey. You won't go come over for dinner, you don't say anything real on the phone. I did the only thing I could think of that might bring you out. Because I want to see you. Because I've been waiting for a moment such as this to talk with you."

  Anthony caught up Sage's hand, pressed it to his lips. She was sure she felt him tremble. "Sage, all I want to say to you is that I do love you. Now, without your aunt hovering, I can confess it. And instead of a stiff property-settlement proposal, I want to make a sincere, love-motivated, heart-felt proposal...."

  Sage pulled her hand away. "Oh, no!"

  "I know, Sage, it's too soon. Please don't think I'm indiscreet, I'm just saying that I've wanted to let you know how I feel, needed to let you know. I love you for yourself. I'm not interested in material things. Goodness knows I have lots of everything and I'm still lonely. Victoria couldn't imagine that there would or could ever be anyone but herself.

  "To know you Sage is a rare gift in anyone's life. Please accept what I've said at face value, and I'll drop the subject for the time-being. Think about what I'v said when you're ready. I want nothing more from life than to be permitted to love you with devotion."

  A group of people wandered into the rose garden.

  "Well," Anthony took Sage's hand again, kissed it lightly and returned it to her. "Enough said for the moment. Now I feel as though I can sleep in peace. Shall we re-join the party?"

  "You go ahead, Anthony. I want to admire your roses and... think for a while."

  "As you wish, my dear. You look so pensive. Please be happy!" Anthony left the rose garden.

  "You did just great, Sage," she thought to herself. "You really let him know how you feel, you really let him off the hook!"

  She wished she could concentrate on the heady roses around her, but she found herself mentally wandering through the recent past, before Aunt Vicky was killed in the riding accident, when the three of them, she and Aunt Vicky and Anthony, would frequently go out together. How different this Anthony seemed from the serious, aloof man of those times. The warmest he'd ever been to her was perhaps to be paternal. Now he was affectionate. In addition, he seemed almost relieved, despite his sympathy, that Victoria was not around.

  Sage reached into a more distant past, when she first came to stay with Aunt Vicky, after her parents had died. The worst time in her life. At that time Anthony was married. Strange that she hadn't thought of his wife in all this time. Alison. Whatever happened to Alison? Such a nice, pretty lady, although very quiet. That's what Sage particularly liked about her. She was quiet like Sage herself.

  There had been times, at parties not too different from this one, that Sage, an awkward, unhappy adolescent, and Alison, an unhappy, neglected wife, would sit on the sidelines and watch the activity go by, rarely saying anything to each other, but enjoying one another's company all the same. Well, Alison had fallen out of the picture somewhere along the line and all Aunt Vicky had to say about it was that Anthony had finally gotten rid of that excess baggage.

  Sage's reverie was interrupted by the somewhat less than dulcet tones of Tina's voice nearby in the maze of the rose garden.

  "She's in here somewhere, I know it!"

  Sage stood. "If you're looking for me, here I am."

  Tina popped up. "We saw Anthony wandering about alone and wondered where you were." She came around the corner with Michael and Millie in tow.

  "Are you bored already?" Sage asked.

  " Far, far from it. We were just talking about taking a tour around the mausoleum and I thought maybe you'd like to come along, although I know you're already familiar with the place."

  "Sure, why not. Perhaps Michael knows the property better than I."

/>   "I doubt it," Michael said in a reserved tone.

  "Yeah. That brings up a question I've had," Tina said. "If Sage has known Anthony for years, and you have probably always been his grand-nephew, why don't you two know each other already?"

  "Ah, well," Michael began slightly ill-at-ease, "My family lives in Massachusetts. Uncle Anthony is my grandfather's very much younger brother. In fact, Anthony and my father are only a year apart. So, in the first place, my grandfather and he weren't close in age. Then, when Uncle Anthony came out here to be a rather, ahm, unorthodox business tycoon, the family really lost track of him.

  "I remember meeting him only once when I was a child," Michael went on. "He brought his wife, Alison, with him, and I liked them both very much. I couldn't understand why everyone in the family always said his name in a whisper. I never heard from him until suddenly I got a letter when I was an under-graduate at MIT, telling me he had an excellent job for me when I was 'through playing with school'." Michael studied the three feminine attentive faces and hitched his shoulders shyly. "I didn't come directly, but, to make a long and personal and boring story short, here I am."

  "Not boring!" Tina said. "So that explains that, doesn't it, Sage?"

  "I didn't ask!" Sage said, embarrassed.

  "Oops, no you didn't. I'm the only nosey person here."

  "I've wondered too," Millie piped up, "why you seem to like your uncle so much, but know almost nothing about him. I mean, I know things about him, 'cause, you know, he gets written up in those magazines sometimes, and the gossip at work. Of course that stuff is probably all a bunch of baloney, but..." Millie trailed off. "Well, next intellectual discussion, I'll discuss physics, I promise."

  Amused, Michael broke in, "let's take that tour and see if we can get lost in this place."

  "What a great idea, but with Sage, it's unlikely," Tina said. "She has an uncanny sense of location. I'm always telling her it's her Indian blood, and she's always telling me it's her Indian socialization."

  "You told me you're mother was Zuni."

  Sage looked at Michael with new respect. "I'm impressed. People never seem to remember a tribe."

  "I have a great and abiding respect for Native Americans," Michael said seriously. "I've made an effort to know a few things about as many tribes as I can, even though it's an endless study."

  Michael had turned and was leading Millie through the rose garden. Tina poked Sage in the ribs and raised an eyebrow, whispering, "beauty and brains!"

  Sage smiled at Tina but said nothing, trying to sort the onslaught of new information. She already felt bewildered by her encounter with Anthony. But Michael's comments touched her in a deep and secret place that almost no one had ever been, other than her darling mother.

  "Come on," Tina urged, rushing ahead. "The Queen of Hearts has ordered the white roses painted red."

  "Yes, yes, I'm coming," Sage answered. But I have nothing but heart's blood for paint, she thought.

  When the four of them came to the edge of the rose garden, the ocean, although several miles away, seemed to come to their feet. The plush night enveloped them and they fell silent.

  "What's that phrase they say, when everyone becomes silent at the same moment, you know, that French or whatever...." Millie asked.

  "Ange passe," Sage answered, "an angel passes."

  "Wow!" Tina sighed.

  "Finishing school." Sage waved her hand as if to dismiss it altogether and changed the subject. "Anthony owns all of the property downhill from here to the highway. Short of breaking our necks, this is all the further we can go. Toward the south he has grazing land and north are the... the..." she stuttered, "horse stables."

  "Oh, yes," Michael said, "Uncle Anthony took me through them. He has some remarkable horse flesh it seems to me, although I don't know much about the creatures."

  "I love horses," Millie said.

  "Yes, he has some of the finest animals in the area," Sage said quietly. "Shall we go through the house?"

  "Oh..." Millie was disappointed. "Aren't we going to go look at the horses?"

  "It's rough terrain. I mean, it's not oriental carpets."

  "It's not a good idea, really," Tina agreed.

  "What a pity!" Millie pouted.

  "Don't worry, Millie. I'll bring you over next week-end and we'll ride," Michael promised. "We'll all go."

  "Well, okay, if it's a promise," Millie conceded.

  "It's a promise. Will you join us, Tina and Sage?" Michael asked.

  "I don't... ride any more," Sage answered.

  "And I never did ride," Tina added.

  "Hmm. Well, all the more for us," Michael answered, puzzled. "Let's go look at the house then."

  "Castle," Millie corrected.

  "Great idea," Tina agreed.

  The four of them skirted behind the orchestra. When they came to the mansion, Sage led them down several steps and through a side door virtually grown over with ivy.

  "This is the wine cellar. We can access the small kitchen upstairs through here, and adjacent to that is the lounge."

  They went upstairs and came out in the small kitchen, by itself as big as an apartment.

  They went into the adjoining room, the "lounge." Along one twenty-five foot wall was a full bar attended by three bartenders, more formally dressed then the people they were waiting on. On the opposite wall stood a massive stone-work fireplace. The room had dark mahogany walls and a mahogany beamed ceiling, furnished in mahogany furniture dimly lit with antique brass light fixtures, the upholstery and carpet a deep sea-green. A wonderful essence of exotic spices wove through the air.

  "What a wonderful aroma," Michael said.

  "Mulled wine," Sage waved at a huge cauldron, steam rising from it. "It's one of Anthony's specialties. It's truly wonderful. It's curious how it puts you in exactly the mood you'd like to be in. If you're sad and you wish you were happy, it cheers you up. If you feel fidgety and you wish you'd settle down, it calms you...."

  "A magic elixir," Michael said.

  "Exactly!"

  "Well, then, what are we waiting for?" Tina led the way to the cauldron. A sober middle-aged woman poured four cut-crystal cups of the heady-smelling potion.

  "What now?" Tina asked.

  "Well, my favorite room is the library," Sage answered.

  "Ish!" Tina and Millie said together, while at the same moment Michael said, "perfect!"

  "Divided opinion again!" Tina said.

  "No, no, the library is fine," Millie amended. "I know Michael loves books!"

  They passed from the lounge into a long mahogany hall, busts in little niches along the walls, delicate lighting warming the wood tones, thick, cushioned carpet underfoot. They passed three or four busts when Michael stopped.

  "Einstein?" He backed up to the previous one. " Bach?"

  "I'd have thought you had gone down this hall," Sage said.

  "No. All I've been in is the front entry, the dining room, some study, and the bedroom I stayed in. And, oh yes, I guess it's the 'big' kitchen."

  "You'll see he has no busts of family," Sage said. "I believe I'm quoting Anthony fairly accurately when I say that he says the only family he makes claim to is the family of great minds. I'm sure there's no offense meant, by the way, Michael."

  "Oh no! Who am I to be offended? I agree with him."

  At the end of the hall Sage pushed at a point on the mahogany paneling, and an invisible door opened to them. They stepped through the doorway.

  Tina, Millie and Michael openly and silently gawked at the library before them. A three-story, forty-by-thirty foot room with thousands and thousands of books on all walls, little wrought iron stairways running up the walls, wrought iron cat-walks around the walls, deep cavernous red over-stuffed furniture scattered about like flotsam, floor and table lamps with beaded shades and potted palms everywhere like jetsam, giant tables with giant atlases spread out on them, and a mahogany parquet floor with dense red and green oriental carpets.

  Th
e door they came through, heavy with bookshelves on the back side, closed behind them, invisibly, silently.

  The four of them moved quietly into the room, carrying their mulled wine. To their left was a cozy and crackling fire. Over the mantle hung a life-sized canvas of a beautiful, but aloof woman astride a black fine-boned, high-strung Arabian horse. In front of them, hand reaching up and petting the horse's mane, but looking out pensively across the library was a stunning, huge-eyed girl, blonde animate hair caught forever, buoyed up in a breeze.

  "Oh! Sage!" Tina said reverently, eyes transfixed.

  "My, my" Michael whispered.

  "I can't believe he put it here, when he knows how I love this room."

  "But it's beautiful," Millie said.

  "It used to belong to my Aunt Vicky. I sent it to Anthony a couple of weeks ago."

  Sage moved across the room and sat with her back to the painting, sipping her wine.

  "Well, I don't understand," Millie said.

  In hushed tones, Tina told Michael and Millie about the recent death of Sage's aunt.

  The three of them came over to Sage, pulling chairs close to her.

  "I'm sorry, Sage," Michael said. "We were clods."

  Sage looked up from her wine, tears in her eyes. "No, you didn't know. But Anthony does, that's what surprises me. The painting was done when I was thirteen, I was still mourning my parents death. I've never liked it because of that. Aunt Vicky, however, was always very fond of it. Anthony had it commissioned as a present for her. She always had it in her room. But since the accident, I really couldn't stand it. I gave it back to him. I don't understand why he would hang it in my favorite room...."

  Michael reached over and patted her shoulder. "I'm sure he didn't mean to hurt you. Let's try sipping our mood-changing wine for the time-being."

  At that moment a great door opposite the fireplace slid open and Anthony entered.

  "I guess I know where you can be found," he said, eyes bright on Sage. He took in the painting behind them. "Oh, no Sage. I'm sorry! That painting... I expressly told Robert to make sure it came down before tonight. What an over-sight! I'll have a word or two with Robert."