“I guess I could use a break.”
“Great—I’ll count on it.”
“It’ll be good to see you,” Teresa said. “So tell me about what’s been happening out there. What are people working on?” Teresa relaxed and listened to Carla talk about the doings of mutual friends. It would be good to get away for a while, she thought. She wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to get away from, but she pushed away the question and focused on Carla.
* * *
For most of a day, Teresa made minor adjustments in the sculpture: tightening a metal plate that didn’t sound quite right, changing the slope of a track by a tiny amount. She was killing time and she knew it, but she couldn’t figure out what else to do. The sculpture sounded fine—it echoed the rainstorm, a metallic version of rain on sand. That was the sound she had wanted, but now she found herself vaguely dissatisfied. The more she listened, the less she liked it.
Eventually, she stopped trying to figure out what was bothering her and started working on all the little jobs that she had been avoiding. She added six lifters and a motor to the sculpture’s base, then positioned the foot of each track so that eight balls ended up at each of the six lifters.
After two days, the new parts were installed and ready to go. She loaded the balls into the lifters, turned on the motor, and watched as the lifters rose slowly up the side of the sculpture. When they reached the top, the lifters tipped forward and released the balls into their starting positions, and the sculpture began to play. She sat beside it and listened as the sounds washed over her studio.
That night, Jeff got home from work around nine. She hadn’t seen much of him lately: he had been staying late at work and leaving the house in the morning before she was awake. She told herself that she hadn’t had a chance to mention Carla’s party to him, but she knew that she hadn’t really wanted to. She was sure that he wouldn’t be interested in going. But that evening she couldn’t put it off any longer, and she told him about the invitation. To her surprise, Jeff was willing to take the time off work to go to the party.
They flew into San Francisco Airport on Friday night, rented a car, and drove directly out to the Headlands Art Center. On the plane, she found herself feeling awkward with him. He had been home so little lately that it was like traveling with a stranger. She couldn’t shake the feeling.
The party at the Headlands was just like old times—an assortment of artists and would-be artists, a cooler filled with beer, California jug wine served in paper cups, chips dumped hastily into bowls from the potter’s studio downstairs, guacamole dip from the burrito place near Carla’s apartment. Just like old times.
She mingled with the crowd, telling friends what she’d been doing, describing the piece she was working on for Santa Fe. As she talked about her work, she grew more and more excited about it, her own interest reawakened by the support of her friends. Ned, a fellow sculptor, listened to her description of the pivoting hands. She hadn’t been entirely happy with the pivoting mechanism. On a napkin, he sketched a few ideas that might solve the problem. She sat in a corner with Brenda, a musician, and talked about the overall shape of the composition.
Eventually, she retreated to the rickety wooden fire escape that Carla had dubbed the smoking porch. From there she could hear the crash of the surf over the party music. Through the window, she could look in to the party. Jeff was sitting in the far corner with a couple of men she knew vaguely. They both worked with synthesizers and computer music. The three men seemed to be having an animated conversation.
“Getting a breath of fresh air?” Carla said from the doorway. “Mind if I keep you company for a while?” She stepped onto the porch and closed the door lightly behind her.
Teresa shrugged. “I may not be very good company, I’m afraid.”
“Yeah? What’s going on?”
“It’s just strange coming back. I realized how much I miss having you folks around. I’ve been feeling pretty isolated, I guess.”
“You should get in touch with some artists out in Flagstaff. That’s only about an hour away from your place, isn’t it?”
She thought about the gallery opening. “Yeah. I guess that might help.”
“Yeah, but that’s not the real problem, is it?” Carla studied Teresa’s face. “Something going on between you and Jeff?”
Teresa shrugged. “It’s more like nothing’s going on. At first, he didn’t have time for me. Now it seems like I don’t have much to say to him.”
“Is something going on with this Ian guy?”
“No, nothing’s going on.”
Carla studied her. “Look, I recognize all the signals. You may not be sleeping with him, but something’s going on.” Carla leaned on the railing, looking toward the beach. “Jeff’s never around, so you’ve been spending time with this cute guy. He’s unavailable—but you hang out together. You talk and you flirt, and now you’ve suddenly realized that you’re infatuated with him, and you don’t know what to do about it.” Carla glanced at her. “Oh, don’t bother to deny it. I know how you operate, and you’re feeling guilty.” She waited for a moment. “Am I close?”
Teresa leaned on the railing beside Carla. “Maybe. It’s hard to say.”
“So, what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about Jeff?”
“What about Jeff? I don’t know what’s going on with him. He’s all caught up in his work; he doesn’t seem to care anymore.”
“Well I’ll bet he doesn’t know what’s going on with you.”
Teresa started to deny it, then stopped herself. “Maybe not.”
“Count on it. You’re really good at shutting people out when you don’t want to deal with them.”
“I am?”
Carla shook her head. “Hey, think about it this way—would we be having this conversation if I hadn’t started it?”
“Probably not,” Teresa admitted.
“Definitely not.” Carla put her arm around Teresa’s shoulders. “It’s okay—you just need a little pushing, that’s all. And Jeff may not know how.”
Teresa stared out at the dark beach, avoiding her friend’s eyes.
The door to the studio opened and the noise of the party poured out. “Carla,” a man called. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
Carla dragged Teresa back into the party, and for a while she drank wine and pretended to have a good time. The party ended at around two, and Jeff drove the rental car back to Carla’s apartment. Carla was a little drunk and a little high. She rode in the back seat, humming along to the tunes on the radio. Teresa felt depressingly sober, despite the wine she had drunk.
At the apartment, Carla unfolded the sofa bed and then went to her room. As Teresa was undressing, she caught Jeff watching her intently. “What’s up?” she asked him.
He shrugged. “I was going to ask you the same thing. Is something wrong?”
She kept her face carefully neutral. What could she say? She didn’t know how to talk to him, she didn’t know where to start. She felt shut out of his life and divorced from her own. It all sounded like accusations, and she didn’t want to get into it. “I’m fine,” she said. “Just tired, I guess.”
“You’ve been working hard. But it seems like your work is going better, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” She shook her head. “I just don’t want to talk right now, okay?”
“Fine.” He turned away. “If that’s what you want.”
It was what she wanted, but she found herself wide awake, lying beside Jeff and listening to his rhythmic breathing. Though she was tired, she couldn’t drift off to sleep. She got out of bed and went to the kitchen. Carla’s light was out. Teresa sat at the kitchen table and then, on a whim, picked up the phone and dialed home.
When Ian’s face appeared on the screen, she immediately felt better. “Hi, Ian,” she said. “I just called to see how you were doing. I missed talking with you.”
“It�
�s nice to hear from you. I missed you, too.”
“Sure you did.”
He studied her calmly. “I did. You’re the most important person in my life. When you’re not here, there’s an empty place.”
“Thanks.”
Ian smiled. “My pleasure. Did you have fun at the party?”
“Yeah, I guess. I realized how much I missed my friends out here. It was great to talk to some other artists about my work. I wish I knew more artists out in Arizona.”
Ian hesitated. “There’s an artists’ cooperative in the Flagstaff area. I have the address on file.”
Teresa grinned. “Sometimes I think you have everything on file. I’ll take a look when I get back. But not right now. Right now, I just want to talk. Heard any new jokes lately?”
They didn’t really talk about anything important—they just chatted about this and that—but she felt better by the time she hung up.
Jeff was lying still when she came back to bed. She sat on the edge of the fold-out couch, ready to slip under the covers.
“Who were you talking to on the phone?” he asked her softly.
She froze. Light from a street lamp filtered through the curtains. His features were smudges of shadow, unreadable in the dim light. “I thought you were asleep.”
“I’ve been awake for a while now. I felt you get up, and I couldn’t go back to sleep.” He sat up in bed, and the shadows on his face shifted. He was silent for a moment, and then he spoke. “We’ve got to talk.”
“About what?” she said, keeping her tone light.
He was quiet, and she wanted to run away. “I’ve been leaving you alone too much,” he said. “Because I wasn’t there when you needed me, you found someone else.” It was a simple statement of fact, not an accusation. “You’re seeing someone.”
“No, I’m not,” she said. She turned away from him, folding her arms protectively across her chest.
“You’re in love with someone else.”
She tried to feel angry with him, indignant at his accusations, but the anger wouldn’t come.
“I’ve been so caught up in my own work that it took me a while to notice, but these days, when I talk to you, you’re thinking of someone else. You get up at night and don’t come back to bed until morning. You’ve got secrets—sometimes I’m afraid to ask you the simplest question. When I do ask—about your work, about your day—you answer in a word or two, and I’m afraid to ask again. We used to talk about your work—but you don’t want to anymore.”
She wished she felt angry. Anger would protect her from the great sadness that threatened to overwhelm her.
“Who is it?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No one.”
He waited, watching her face. “Someone you met at the gallery opening,” he said. She didn’t respond. “I don’t have to know,” he said at last. “But you have to tell me—are you leaving me?” He put his hands gently on her shoulders. She tensed at his touch. “Talk to me, Teresa.”
She would not look at him. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. No—no, I’m not leaving.”
He put his arms around her. “I don’t want to lose you. You have to talk to me. Please.”
“I can’t talk about it,” she said. “I don’t—” Her voice broke.
“Do you still love me?”
She could feel the beating of his heart as he embraced her, the warmth of his body against hers. “Sometimes,” she said. “But sometimes…” She put her hand to her face, trying to hide her tears. She did not want to cry. “Sometimes, I feel like you don’t even see me. I feel like I’m not even there. You think you can go away when you want and come back when you want, and I’ll still be there, just waiting. You can’t do that. I need…” She shook her head, upset by the burst of words. She had lost control. Her protection was gone. He could see how weak and stupid she really was. She had always known that it was dangerous to reveal herself.
“I’m sorry, Teresa. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me.” He rubbed her shoulders gently. “I screwed up. But you have to tell me what’s going on. You can’t just clam up and expect me to figure it out. It doesn’t work that way.”
“I’m sorry too,” she said. She felt his body pressed against her. It seemed like a long time since he had held her close. She shivered in his embrace.
He stopped rubbing her shoulders. “You’re cold—I can feel you shaking. Come on—get under the covers.”
She relaxed enough to lie down on the bed, and he pulled the blanket over her. His body was warm. With a corner of the sheet, he dried her face.
“What happened in the past doesn’t matter. I don’t care about all that. But you’ve got to tell me when you’re mad at me, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on. Promise me that.”
“I’ll try.” She closed her eyes, but knew that he was still watching her.
“And I’ll try, too.” He paused for a moment. “Suppose I took some time off from work. We could drive down to Santa Cruz and spend a few days by the ocean. Can you afford the time off?”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Yeah, I could use a few days off—but what about your project?”
“They’ll do without me for a few days. They’ll just have to.” He watched her, his eyes steady. “I think we both need a vacation.”
“All right,” she said at last. “I’m willing to give it a try.” She felt spent, drained. She lay in his arms, and finally she slept.
* * *
On the drive to Santa Cruz, she felt awkward at first, as if she and Jeff were strangers on a first date. She kept smiling and making light conversation: “Isn’t the weather nice?” “I wonder if it’ll rain.” “Do you suppose we’ll hit much traffic?”
Half an hour into the drive, Jeff glanced over at her and said, “It’s okay, Teresa. You don’t have to make small talk.” She bit her lip, suddenly silent. He reached over and took her hand. “Look—I’m not mad at you. Are you mad at me?”
She considered the question. No, she wasn’t angry. Confused maybe, but not angry. “No, I’m not mad.”
“Then let’s just relax.” He squeezed her hand. “Why don’t you tell me about how your piece for Santa Fe is going? I’d like to know.”
She started telling him about the sculpture. At first, she was nervous, but she had relaxed by the time they got to Davenport, a small town just north of Santa Cruz. That night, they stayed at an old Victorian house that had been converted to a bed-and-breakfast inn. The house was perched on the cliffs above the ocean, and Teresa insisted on leaving the bedroom window open, despite the cool ocean fog. From the room, she could hear the pounding surf. They made love, and she fell asleep in Jeff’s arms.
The next morning, he brought her breakfast in bed and suggested that they drive home, rather than fly. “Last time we drove, we were in too much of a hurry. I’ve never shown you the parts of the desert I really love,” he told her.
She had her doubts about the trip. Her memories of the drive from San Francisco to Winslow were of long bleak stretches of highway. But Jeff was so enthusiastic she kept her reservations to herself. She had almost forgotten what he could be like when he wasn’t working. All the intensity that he had been focusing on his work was now concentrated on her. “All right,” she agreed. “We can drive.”
The trip took seven days, with many stops and detours along the way. They wandered among the twisted trees of the Joshua Tree National Monument. They visited the ruins of an Indian pueblo, strolling among the remains of walls that marked where rooms had once been, and startling lizards that were sleeping in the sun. They hiked out to see Arizona’s biggest natural rock bridge and climbed on massive sandstone boulders.
Late in the afternoon of the sixth day, they sat together on the flat, sun-warmed surface of a boulder the size of a school bus. It was quiet, but not silent, Teresa realized. A raven flew over, its shadow rippling across the rocks. It called once, and she heard the rustle of feathers as it cupped its wings to lan
d on a distant rock.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Jeff said.
“It always just seemed hot to me,” Teresa said. “Hot and empty and uncaring.”
“No, you got it wrong,” he said. “This land has its own kind of power. I find myself listening to every rustle of leaves, hearing the hiss of sand blowing over sand, noticing the way the light changes during the day. It focuses my attention, and I see things I’d normally overlook, hear things I would normally ignore. It changes in subtle ways. Each day is a little different. I think it’s beautiful.” He took her hand, and they sat together until the sun started to set.
That evening, one day’s drive from home, she called Carla from the motel, just to let her know that everything was going fine.
“Jeff and I both have to get back to work,” Teresa told Carla. “But things are much better between us. I just hope it lasts.”
“What about Ian?”
“I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”
Carla shook her head. “You know, you haven’t changed a bit. You always were amazed when you found out that some ex-lover was carrying a torch for you. You always seem to expect them to vanish without a trace when the love affair is over.”
“Ian won’t carry a torch,” Teresa said. “He’s not built that way.”
Carla shrugged. “Have it your way. But you may be surprised.”
* * *
When her alarm went off at six, Teresa woke to find herself alone. Jeff, as usual, was gone, and Ian did not greet her from the monitor in the corner. She waited a moment before turning off the alarm, wondering if Ian would notice the noise and say good morning, but he did not appear. She was not sure if she was disappointed, relieved, or both.
As she got out of bed she noticed for the first time the sounds coming from the kitchen. She pulled on her robe and walked down the hall.
Jeff stood in the middle of the kitchen, his back to her, the calm eye in the middle of a hurricane of activity. Coffee steamed from the coffee maker on his left, eggs sizzled in a pan on the stove behind him, and four pieces of brown toast sat patiently in the toaster to his right. He was intently sawing a grapefruit in half.
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