He arrived late for her presentation. He’d read the article she had included as a sample of her scholarship. It was good—very good, in fact. He knew she’d spent the morning interviewing with Michael and several of the other professors. He would have been one of them if he hadn’t been teaching a summer course to pay Isabel’s hospital bills. Evelyn was probably relieved that only her presentation was left.
He entered the room as quietly as possible and sat in the back.
She recognized him. He could tell because, for a moment, she paused. A long moment, and he waited, holding his breath, worried that she had lost her place because of him. But no, she went on. “Any more questions?”
“Dr. Morgan, I realize this is beyond the scope of your study, but are you claiming that the Green Man and the Magical Woman originated in pre-Christian fertility rituals? And do you have any evidence for this hypothesis?”
“The texts themselves support such a hypothesis. The Green Man is clearly an embodiment of the changing seasons. In The Tale of the Green Knight, for example, Gawan’s armor is made of green metal shaped like leaves. The Magical Woman—in this case, Elowen—is most likely what remains of an ancient fertility goddess, a goddess of life and death. But the same pattern is found in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Of course, it would take me another dissertation to explore all the permutations of this particular theory.”
There was polite laughter. More questions that she answered clearly and, he thought, cleverly. She had changed in the years since he’d last seen her. She seemed confident in her work—confident in herself. But beneath her gray suit, she still looked the same: the auburn hair, now pulled back with a barrette, and the straight, slender figure that had climbed up the hill to Gawan’s Court.
“Well, I think Dr. Morgan would probably like some lunch,” said Michael. And then she was shaking hands and being escorted out the door, and Brendan was afraid he wouldn’t have a chance to see her before she left.
He waited in the faculty parking lot. She had probably driven from Richmond, so it was safe to assume that the only compact car in the lot was her rental.
She didn’t notice him until she was almost at the car door.
“Evelyn Morgan,” he said. “You know you’re going to get this position, don’t you?” He’d heard that from Michael himself, so he felt confident telling her.
She looked at him as though not knowing what to say. It had never occurred to him that she would be embarrassed, yet that was exactly what she seemed to be.
“I know,” he said. “It’s been a long time. More than ten years since I met you in Clews, I’m thinking. Shall we start over?” He held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Morgan. I’m Brendan Thorne.”
He was relieved when she laughed and shook his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Dr. Thorne.”
And then he had to explain about Oxford. That was embarrassing, but she didn’t seem to mind. Actually, she seemed glad. Which made him ask, rather boldly he thought, “Listen, assuming you get this position, which you will, can I take you out to dinner to celebrate?”
“Um, sure,” she said. And smiled. It was the same smile he remembered, the same freckles across her nose. Standing close to her, he could see that she looked older. She had lines around her eyes that hadn’t been there in Cornwall. They made her look—not less beautiful, but more kind.
“Terrific,” he said. “I’ll see you in September.” He held the door open as she got into her car and then closed it behind her. September was a month away, but he’d waited ten years to see her again. He could wait another month.
Even when he knew she had moved into the small white house at Carter’s Corner, he didn’t go visit. Even when he knew she had started teaching, he didn’t stop by her office. Not for a week. Every morning, he looked at himself in the mirror and asked what he should do. He had to tell her about Isabel, but how should he do it? Listen, I’m married, but my wife’s been functionally dead for three years. Three years ago, the doctor wanted me to disconnect the machines, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. She’d been so alive; I couldn’t be the one who let her die. Do you still want to have dinner with me, Evelyn?
Telling her would assume too much about the dinner, would assume she had a romantic interest in him. He wasn’t at all sure of that. If that interest ever developed—well, he would tell her then.
“You’re a coward, Brendan Thorne,” he told himself in the mirror. But he still remembered her screaming in the forest, running away from him. He had just met her again, and although it had been years since they had seen each other, he knew he didn’t want to lose her.
Finally, he found his copy of Green Thoughts and went to her office during office hours. This early in the year, no students would be there, and he wanted to find her alone.
She was already grading papers. “Dr. Morgan, I presume?” he said. “I believe I invited you to dinner.”
“You did,” she said, smiling. He would drive her to Richmond, take her to a proper restaurant. Get to know her again. He wanted, very much, to know her again.
“And, by the way, would you do me the honor of signing my copy of Green Thoughts? I had no idea you’d written this, E. R. Morgan. Every third poet is named Morgan in Cornwall. I bought it when it was first published. It’s been sitting on my bookshelf for years.”
She signed the book, and he asked her about classes. They were going well; she was adjusting to life in a small town. The students were different, of course. Less cosmopolitan, more likely to be the first in their families to go to college. But she’d been assigned a poetry class to teach, and she was enjoying that.
“I did get a poem on plumbing yesterday!” she said. “It rhymed, too. But what I wanted to say is, I’m going to try writing poetry again, myself.”
“That’s terrific!” he replied. “You know, I think you have a rare and genuine talent. I wish I had your ear for rhythm. It would have helped me with my translation of The Tale of the Green Knight.”
“Your translation?” She looked puzzled.
“The one nobody heard about. You know what Oxford University Press told me? There wasn’t enough scholarly interest in such an obscure Cornish poem. Three years later, they published the translation by Thomas Holbrook.” Who was an idiot, and whose interpretations were sometimes ridiculously inaccurate. He grimaced. “Well, at least my translation got me out of graduate school. And into Bartlett.”
It still bothered him that his translation had been superseded. That scholars like Evelyn used Holbrook in their research. But that was all right, he thought later, walking across campus. They’d set a date for dinner, and when he looked inside his copy of Green Thoughts he saw that the inscription said: To Brendan, with love. Evelyn.
It was another two weeks before they found the time to drive to Richmond for a real date. In the meantime, they had lunch together, walked around campus together. He was starting to wonder if she thought of him as anything more than a friend. But he was too nervous to ask—or to take her in his arms and kiss her, although each time he saw her, he thought about what it would be like. And then he remembered her screaming and running away.
They had an early dinner at a restaurant in Richmond. He’d been worried that the conversation might be awkward, but they talked as though they had known each other for years. He told her about his father’s death and selling the bookstore.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “That must have been difficult. You know, I tried to send you a letter there once. I guess it never reached you. Maybe it was after your father died.”
“It must have been,” he said. “I would certainly have written back to you, Evelyn.”
“Then you weren’t angry?” she asked. How beautiful she looked in the flickering candlelight. He was reminded once again of how he had once thought of her: Queen Elowen, by John William Waterhouse.
“I could never be angry with you,” he said, taking her hand across the table.
Afterward, they drove to the Museum
of Fine Arts. In the gift shop, he saw a notebook with Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott reproduced on the cover. It reminded him so much of her—the same auburn hair, the same line of cheek and jaw—that he bought it for her, despite the depressing subject matter. “For your poetry,” he said. “Just don’t pay attention to any curses, all right?”
“ ‘The curse is come upon me, cried the Lady of Shalott,’ ” she said. “I don’t think anyone hates me enough to curse me. Unless it’s the student I might have to flunk this semester!”
Afterward, he walked her up to her porch. “Evelyn,” he said, “is it safe to kiss you? I’ve been holding off, you know. Worried you would run away again.”
“I’m not going to run away,” she said. “I promise.”
“All right.” He put his hand on her cheek, leaned down, put his lips on hers. Tentatively at first, waiting for her to draw back. But she didn’t draw back.
Instead, she said, “Do you want to come in?”
This was the moment. He had to tell her about Isabel. He should have told her earlier, at dinner, during one of those pauses that happen in even the best conversations. But he had not.
She was looking up at him, waiting for an answer. They hadn’t turned on the porch light, and her eyes were dark, like the sea. He wanted to drown in them.
“Yes, I want to come in. Most definitely.”
She turned and opened the door. He followed her up the narrow stairs to the bedroom. There, he kissed her again, neck, shoulders, unbuttoning the blouse he’d imagined unbuttoning all through dinner, tossing it on the floor. Since Isabel’s accident, there had been no one, and he wondered if he would remember how to unhook a bra, how to make a woman cry out with pleasure. But his fingers remembered, traveled along the curves of her body as though it were a landscape he had known all his life. He kissed her breasts, her stomach, listened to her moan and whisper, “Yes, there.” And when he entered her, it was like going home, like going where he should have been all along.
Afterward, she slept with her arms around him, curled against his back. He lay awake in the darkness, thinking about his life, about the two women he had loved. Isabel, fiery and opinionated. So very much alive, until the accident. He’d loved her even when they had disagreed, which had been more often than he liked to remember. He had mourned her loss for a long time. But lately, he’d felt that grief loosening, as though a rope tied around his heart had slipped its knot. And now here was Evelyn, intelligent, poetic, elusive. He didn’t think they would ever have his and Isabel’s epic quarrels. She would be more likely to keep her opinions to herself, avoid disagreeing with him. He would have to make sure she stood up for herself; he knew how overbearing he could be at times. But he could see them together, years from now, growing old: teaching, writing, pottering around the garden. It would be a good life.
When he finally fell asleep, he dreamed of Gawan’s Court. The clouds were dark overhead, and he could feel a cold wind pulling at his clothes. A woman stood there, auburn hair streaming in the wind, her white robes lifted and tossed. She was holding her arms out to him. Her mouth was open, she was saying something, but he couldn’t hear, the wind was too loud. Lightning crashed out of the sky, hit one of the standing stones. He raised his arms as though they could protect him and stumbled back. And then the rain fell, a driving gray rain, soaking him in an instant. He looked around—where was she? All he saw were the standing stones, the sea in the distance. The woman was gone.
“Evelyn, are you done for the day?”
For the past month, they had been a couple, although he hadn’t yet told Michael Fitch. He knew he would have to. The university had rules about dating other employees. But he hadn’t wanted to tell anyone yet, hadn’t wanted to disturb the delicate equilibrium of their relationship. Somehow, he still thought of Evelyn as someone who might disappear. It seemed so magical that he had found her again, that he had found happiness again with her.
In the mornings, they sat together in her living room, drinking coffee and going over their lesson plans. He would make a joke about Chaucer, and she would get it, tell him not to make jokes while she was drinking because, if she laughed, it would send coffee up her nose.
He had given her a copy of his Arundell Press translation, and he liked to see it on her bookshelf. It made him feel as though he had become a part of her life. During the day they would stop by each other’s offices, checking in about how classes had gone, eating lunch together under a tree somewhere on campus, sharing some of their sandwiches with the squirrels.
In the evenings, they sat in front of the fireplace, drinking wine. It was already cold enough that he could build a fire. And they would talk, mostly about the poetry she wanted to write, because she hadn’t yet started to fill the notebook he’d given her. It was too difficult to concentrate on poetry when you were grading student papers, she said. And the article he was supposed to complete by Christmas.
“I have to write something,” he told her. “Here I am, a tenured professor with a translation, an article, and a bunch of reviews to my name. Michael told me they were expecting more of me. But what am I going to do, write articles to appease the department chair? Edit a special issue? The problem, Evie, is that I seem to care more about literature than about scholarship. Medieval Studies asked me to write about the chivalric code in The Tale of the Green Knight. What do I care about the chivalric code? As far as I’m concerned, the poem is about chopping the heads off giants.”
“And eternal love,” she had said, smiling. “Don’t forget the eternal love.”
“Like in Green Thoughts. You know, underneath that practical exterior, I think you’re an incurable romantic.”
But she looked practical tonight, sitting in her office with a stack of papers in front of her.
She looked up and said, “Why didn’t you tell me about your wife?”
For a moment, he stood silent. What could he say? “All right, come on. Let’s go.”
“Where?” she asked.
“Just come on, all right?”
He turned and walked down the hallway and to the parking lot. He could hear her footsteps behind him. Without a word, they got into the car. He drove along the roads he knew so well, toward the Henrico County Medical Center. Whenever he looked over at her, she was staring out the window. About halfway there, she said, “Where are we going?”
“To see my wife,” he said. He knew, had known as soon as she had asked about his wife, that he was going to lose her. He had lied to her, not directly but by omission. How much he wished he could go back, even to yesterday, so he could tell her. But that possibility was gone. Time worked that way—time was linear; it didn’t circle back. Once you lost something, you couldn’t regain it. That was life. He drove faster than he should, angry with himself.
At the front desk, the nurse said, “It’s past visiting hours, Dr. Thorne.”
“Please,” he said. “Can I go in just for a minute?”
The nurse nodded, and he walked down the obnoxiously pink hallway to the long-term care facility, with Evelyn following behind him. He did not look at her, could not look at her.
He opened the door, walked up to one of the two beds, and said, “There she is. There’s Isabel.”
Evelyn stood, staring. He knew he ought to say something, ought to explain. Slowly, haltingly, he told her about the accident. “The stable called an ambulance, but by the time it reached the hospital, she was in a coma. She’s been like this ever since. The doctors say there’s no hope, that she’ll never recover. But I can’t bring myself to disconnect her.”
He took her hand. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you. I thought—” He’d thought that he would lose her again, and he hadn’t been able to bear it. “I wanted to be with you so badly. I thought if you knew, you’d never give me a chance. Evelyn, say something.”
She reached out and touched Isabel’s hand. He glanced at her face. She didn’t look angry. No, she looked sad, and for a moment he thought, It’s going to
be all right. “Evelyn,” he said.
Suddenly, she put her hand on her chest. Her eyes opened wide and she stared at Isabel lying on the bed with the tangle of tubes around her. Then, she turned and ran. He ran after her, down the pink hallway to the reception area and then out the hospital’s swinging front doors. She was standing beside a taxi that had just dropped off a patient in a wheelchair. He stopped, out of breath, and watched as she climbed in.
She looked back at him once as the taxi drove away. He stared after her, not knowing what to do except stand there.
“Dr. Thorne!” He turned. The nurse was standing just outside the swinging doors, calling to him.
He walked back to her.
“Dr. Thorne, your wife has stopped breathing. We think it may be her heart, some sort of heart failure. The doctors are working on her now.”
He followed the nurse into the reception area.
“Just wait here, all right?”
“All right,” he said. And sat, waiting, head in his hands. When the doctors came to tell him there was nothing more they could do, he nodded, stood up, and walked out of the building. The next morning, he called the department to tell Michael Fitch he was leaving, left a note for the landlady, and packed a suitcase.
In one night, he had lost them both. There was nothing to keep him anymore.
Brendan had never sold his father’s house, and now he was glad. He reopened it, hung his clothes in the closet, sat down at the kitchen table, and wondered what he was going to do with the rest of his life. He had given up the job he’d spent so long working for. And now here he was, right back where he had started. In the house where his father had told him stories about Gawan and the giants.
Had he made the wrong choices? Should he have worked at the bookstore, carried on his father’s business, instead of going to graduate school and studying literature? He didn’t know.
His stomach grumbled, reminding him that he’d had nothing to eat since lunch on the airplane. He walked into town and then down to the harbor to watch the fishing boats. As he stood leaning on the harbor wall, his cell phone rang. He looked at it. The English department, again. He cursed at it under his breath, then threw it as far as he could into the sea.
The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story Page 6