Acts of Love

by Judith Michael

  "Maybe." He cleared a spot on the foggy window as Angie turned onto Fisherman Bay Road. Lightning tore a gash through the sky over the water, followed almost immediately by a crack of thunder, and Luke thought of the cab as a small, vulnerable boat in a windswept sea as it splashed along the road, its windshield wipers whipping back and forth. He leaned forward, trying to see through the rain, and as he saw landmarks he remembered, and pictured in his mind the Inn at Swifts Bay and Jessica's house, he could no longer ignore the fact that he was on the island uninvited, as he had been the first time.

  There had been no reply to his letter. After two weeks of waiting, he had telephoned, and telephoned again. Four telephone calls, with no answer, and no tape recording asking him to leave a message. With each failure, he had grown more stubborn until finally, almost angrily, he did what he had done the first time: he made reservations for the flights to Seattle and Lopez early the next morning, and then he called Robert, to book the same room he had had before. "And would you do me a favor?" he asked. "I've written to Jessica but I haven't been able to reach her by phone, and I want to make sure she knows I'll be there tomorrow. If you could get a message to her that I hope to see her around noon or early afternoon, I'd be grateful."

  "I can do that." Robert did not mention the peculiar getaway of his first visit, and Luke, grateful for his discretion, did not mention it either. But now, as the cab turned into the uphill driveway of the inn, he felt briefly paralyzed. It suddenly had occurred to him that if Robert had talked to Jessica, she might well have asked him to tell Luke to stay away. And if Robert did that, what choice would Luke have but to turn around and go back to New York?

  "Let's go on," he said abruptly to Angie, who had turned to look at him. "I'll check in with Robert later. I'd like to go to Watmough Bay."

  "You're pretty wet," Angie observed mildly.

  "I'd just get wet again."

  She nodded and as lightning flashed and thunder tore across the sky, she turned around in the empty parking area and drove down the driveway back to Port Stanley Road, continuing around the island toward Watmough Bay. The road followed the shore, then turned inland past a small

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  rain-spattered lake, through broad farmlands edged with dense groves of cypress, and finally to the southern end of the island, where, once again, the shoreline came into view. Luke remembered it all as he had seen it from the high front seat of Robert's truck, and as soon as he recognized the turnoff to Watmough Bay Road he said, "There's a driveway up ahead, almost hidden—"

  "I know," Angie said. "Jessica gave me raspberries from her garden a couple of times. She's got a green thumb, that lady. And a generous heart."

  Bemused, Luke said nothing. If Angie had known all along where he was going, how many others knew.'' How fiercely Jessica must have made her wishes known, he thought, if her privacy was guarded by everyone on an island that seemed to have no secrets.

  The sign with the carved fountain was darkened by rain, and the driveway was like a path in a fairy tale, disappearing into a dark and moody forest. Angie drove to a curve in the drive that was about ten steps from the front door, and stopped. "You'll probably want me to come back for you."

  "Yes, thanks. I'll call as soon as I know what time."

  "Of course, Jessica has a car. She might drive you back."

  "I'll let you know."

  "I'd better wait now, though; she might not be home."

  Luke looked at the closed garage door at the other end of the house. Her car was probably there; why would anyone go out in this rain.^ But there was no way to be sure. "Fine," he said. "But I'll pay you for this much. And would you mind taking my suitcase to the inn?" He did not want to look as if he were ready to move in when Jessica opened her door.

  Finally he stepped out into the rain, just as lightning slashed and thunder broke above his head. Hurrying, he yanked open the back door of the car to lift out the cardboard carton, still draped in the plastic the pilot had flung over it. He tucked it under his arm and ran to the large overhang that protected the flagstone entryway and the front door. There was no doorbell, so he used the fountain-shaped brass knocker. He heard a dog bark, but nothing else, and so he knocked again. He was about to knock a third time, when the door opened.

  Her face froze in surprise as she looked up at him, and their eyes held for a long moment. She looked exactly as she had looked in her garden, though now, up close, he could see more clearly the faint outlines of the

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  beauty that had been hers. Her eyes, blue-green as he recalled, were darker, still large and heavily lashed but deep-set and shadowed amid lines etched by pain. One could imagine the radiant smile that had drawn others to her, but deep lines of pain were there, too, flanking her mouth, stretching to her chin. Her face, once luminous and clear, was drab, pasty, almost colorless, sagging beneath its own weight. Her hair—those masses of tawny gold that Luke remembered—was silver-gray, curling closely about her head, exposing her thin, corded neck. She wore narrow black pants with a pale pink silk shirt open at the neck, and her figure was still slim, but where she had been tall and stately, she stooped now, leaning on a cane, her body off center, almost twisted. Her dog stood beside her as she looked up at him with surprise turning to a stony anger.

  "You had no right to come here."

  It was the voice Luke remembered, the voice no one who had ever heard it could forget, flattened—perhaps deliberately—but still recognizable, and the shock of that voice emerging from her drab face and stooped body was so startling that for a moment he could not answer. But the rain was drumming above him and suddenly he felt very chilled. He heard Angie back up to turn around and saw Jessica look up sharply and raise her hand to stop the cab from leaving.

  "I'm sorry," he said quickly. "I thought Robert would have told you 1 was coming here from New York. I asked him to call you."

  "It doesn't matter. You had no right to come."

  "I came as a friend. I brought you something that belongs to you. And now that I'm here, do you think I might come in?"

  She hesitated, but just then lightning streaked horizontally across the sky and almost simultaneously thunder crashed like an avalanche above her roof. She stood to the side. "Come in."

  Luke picked up the cardboard carton and walked past her into the house. Immediately the dog, black, sleek and curious, circled him, nosing his legs, his hands, his suitcase.

  "Hope," Jessica said quietly, and the dog hesitated, then went to her side. She put her hand on its head and they stood there, a country portrait, Luke thought, in a very sophisticated room.

  From descriptions in her letters he thought he knew what her home looked like, but he was struck by the dramatic beauty of the large living room: its white walls, white-cushioned furniture, pale gold hickory floors.

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  and flashes of vibrant color in throw pillows, paintings, flowers massed in tall vases, and bold works of art displayed on tabletops and shelves, from Baccarat paperweights to Peruvian feather belts to a table covered with dozens of carved figures, arranged in a wedding scene, from Indonesia.

  It was one of the most beautiful rooms he had ever seen. Its backdrop was a wall of windows looking out on shrubs and flowers bent almost flat by wind and rain, and, beyond them, a beach darkened by tumultuous waves. But no sounds of the storm invaded the house. Within its walls, everything was tranquil and hushed.

  "Sanctuary," Luke murmured, setting down the suitcase and the carton in the small foyer.

  "What does that mean.^^" Jessica had closed the front door and now she stood with her back against it, watching him.

  "Your home is like my grandmother's in Italy, very beautiful, very quiet and serene. A retreat. A place to forget what you've left behind."

  "You don't know anything about that." She paused, as if realizing for the first time that this man
was Constance's grandson. "I mean, you don't know about me. Of course you know about Constance." There was another pause, and Luke imagined her struggling between simple decency and her anger at him for intruding. Finally, decency won and she said, "You're very wet; please take off your jacket. I'm sorry I have nothing for you to change into."

  Luke hung his jacket on a coat tree, then sat on a wooden bench and pulled off his shoes. "If you give me a towel to sit on, I'll try not to soak your furniture."

  "Wait. I do have something." She walked through the living room and the dining space at its far end and disappeared through a doorway. In a moment she was back with a pair of faded khaki pants. "I wear them sometimes for gardening. They're oversize for me, so they might fit you. Go through that door and turn left."

  "Thank you." He walked through the living room in the opposite direction from the one she had taken and opened the door at the end. He was in her bedroom, a high square room with an antique bureau and a white four-poster bed angled to have a panoramic view of Watmough Bay. The antique rug was pale rose and blue, and on the bed was an antique patchwork quilt of faded blue, mauve and ivory. Luke wanted to linger and study the photographs and paintings on the walls, but instead he turned left into

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  the bathroom. He took a minute to admire the soft warmth of clear pine cabinets and countertops, and the freestanding tub on claw feet, angled, like the bed, for a full view of the bay and the horizon, and then he stripped off his wet pants and socks and pulled on the khakis.

  They were cut large, with a drawstring waist, and once he turned down the cuffs they fit surprisingly well. He toweled his wet hair and face and it was then that he realized that the bathroom had no mirror. He looked into the bedroom. None. And there had been none in the living room. From what he had seen, Jessica's house had no mirrors.

  He hung his wet pants over the edge of the bathtub and, barefoot, walked back through the bedroom, luxuriating in being warm and dry. He was also hungry, but he had invited himself into Jessica's house, and now was wearing her clothes, and he was not about to tell her he also needed to be fed. He opened the door to the living room and saw her standing at the window, looking at the storm. The dog was curled up nearby, watchful, its nose on its paws.

  "Are they all right.''" she asked without turning around.

  "Yes. It's good to be dry. Thank you." There was a silence. "The carton is for you, from Constance." He went to the foyer and brought it to a glass table in front of the windows, near where Jessica was standing. Setting it down, he stared at an inlaid box in the center of the table, a twin to the one in his library, filled with Jessica's letters. "This is extraordinary. Do you know that Constance had an identical box?"

  "We bought them together." She had turned and was watching him pull off the tape that sealed the carton. His face was in profile and the past swept over her as she looked at his sharp features and heavy brows. He was as assured and dominating as she remembered, even in a rumpled, open-necked white shirt and drawstring pants, even in bare feet. He was part of everything that once had been her entire life, and she knew she should not have let him into her house.

  He pulled off the last strip of tape and opened the box. "She left these to you in her will." Carefully he lifted out a layer of newspapers and then several folds of tissue paper and laid them on the table. He looked up. "You don't seem interested."

  / am, oh, I am, but I don't want you here. I want to be alone with whatever Constance left me and with my memories. "Why didn't you send them to me ?"

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  "Because I wanted to meet you."

  "We knew each other in New York."

  "Barely. And a lot has changed since then."

  She contemplated him and then, abruptly, her glance went to the inlaid box. "Constance's was empty," she said.

  Luke shook his head. "Crammed full." He raised the lid of Jessica's box and saw hundreds of letters packed inside. "Why would you think she could destroy yours any more than you could get rid of hers?"

  "You read them." Her eyes blazed with anger, and Luke was startled to see how her face came to life.

  He closed the lid. "I'll tell you why I read them if you want to hear it. But first I'd like you to see what Constance left you."

  After a moment, Jessica came forward, leaning on her cane, her left leg swinging out with each step. When she reached him, Luke stood aside so she could look into the carton.

  "Oh." It was a long sigh. She took out one of the slim books. Its cover was torn, the lettering worn and faded, but Luke had packed it and so he knew it was a first edition of Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude, and he knew that O'Neill himself had given it to Constance, and inscribed it. Jessica ran her fingers over the lettering and then opened the book. Her head was bent so that Luke could not see her face, but he heard her murmur the inscription. " 'To the incomparable Constance, with incomparable love.' " She looked up at Luke. "Constance laughed at that; she loved his extravagance. We talked about doing the play together, opening in Provincetown and then moving to New—" She cut off her words and stood still, her head bowed. A tear fell on the book and she hastily wiped it away. Then, with a small shake of her head, she looked into the carton, lifting books, reading titles. "The whole collection. It was so precious to her; she collected them all her life. I was sure she'd left them to a library." She looked up again. "Thank you. You packed them with great care."

  "They were important to her. And so were you."

  He had reminded her of her letters, and Jessica's face became stony. "Thank you for delivering these; I'm very glad to have them. Now that you've done it, I'll call Angle to pick you up."

  "Wait a minute." Luke would have been amused at her stubbornness, but it was too desperate and sad to be amusing. "They weren't the reason I came; as you said, I could have sent them. I want very much to talk to

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  you. It's a long trip from New York and I'd be grateful for a couple of hours before I go back."

  "We have nothing to talk about."

  "We have Constance."

  She hesitated, then nodded. "Sit down."

  He debated briefly among the two chairs and the couch that faced the windows. He chose one of the chairs and Jessica sat in the other, with the glass-and-beechwood coffee table between them. Rain lashed the windows; the room was as gray as the sky, but she made no move to turn on a light. "Were you with her when she died?"

  "No. Her housekeeper called me in New York."

  "Did anyone know whether she was in pain or . . . afraid? Whether she wanted someone near her?"

  "It seems she died in her sleep. She was sitting in a large, deep chair in her library—"

  "The blue one?"

  "Yes. Next to a round table covered in white fringed silk." He was describing the room as if it were a stage set and Jessica closed her eyes, remembering it. "The lamp was still on; there was a volume of Shakespeare's sonnets with a bookmark in it; and the box of your letters, very close to her. It was probably around three or four in the morning and she probably was asleep—those were the few hours of sleep she got each night. I think she had no premonition, no time to wish that you and I were with her. I got there the next day and she looked peaceful and"—his voice caught briefly—"very beautiful."

  Jessica heard the change in his voice and for a moment she forgot that she was angry at him and did not want him there. "She loved you very much."

  "She loved both of us."

  That was twice in one minute that he had linked the two of them. Jessica's resentment returned. Why was he forcing himself into her life? She looked away, at the rain whipping across her garden beneath dark, lowering clouds, but that only made her more aware of the snug enclosure of her house and the close presence of Luke, sitting with her, safe from the storm.

  "You wanted to know why I read your letters," he said, and instinctively she tightened inside.

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  Luke stood and paced, as he did at home when he was organizing his thoughts. The wood floor was warm beneath his bare feet and he wondered briefly why he did not feel ridiculous, wearing borrowed clothes in a home where he was not welcome and wandering around without shoes or socks, but in fact he felt oddly at ease. Perhaps that was because many things reminded him of Constance, perhaps because he felt sheltered and safe while rain drummed on the roof and wind whistled around corners. "I was closing my grandmother's house, sorting and packing everything either for shipment to New York or giving away to the people she had named in her will. When I opened the box of your letters, I was curious—so many, and almost all in the same handwriting—so I read the first one. I liked the voice—an ingenue effusively thanking my grandmother for her praise after a performance in summer stock—so I looked at a few others and folded inside one of them was a newspaper clipping about a train accident in Canada." He paused, but Jessica said nothing. She was still looking out the windows, seemingly absorbed in watching the storm. "I could have stopped then, but I wanted to fmd out what had happened to you. I'd admired you for a very long time, I'd always regretted that we never worked together, and I was as baffled as everyone when you vanished. I once asked my grandmother, by the way, if she knew where you were. She said she did not. I assume you asked her to say that."

  Still looking out the window, Jessica nodded.

  "I didn't see that in a letter."

  "It was in a telephone call."

  Again Luke waited, but it seemed that was all she was going to say. When a silent minute had dragged by, he returned to his chair. "When did you buy the two boxes?"

  "Seven years ago."

  "Where.'' They look Italian."

  "They are."

  A low growl came from Luke's stomach. He tightened his muscles, trying to control it, but if Jessica had heard, she gave no sign. "Where in Italy .-^" he asked, and embarrassment and impatience were in his voice.

  She turned to him then, her shoulders sagging. Every word he said, just the sound of his voice, brought everything she had ever cared about into her living room and she felt she hated him for forcing the past on her when she had worked so hard to erase it. But she could not push him out