"Orcas is by far the most beautiful of all the islands," Susan Fletcher said. "I hope you'll have time to see it."
Jessica smiled. The residents of each of the islands staked their claim to theirs being the most beautiful. We all need to think our own place is the true paradise, she thought. Even when it's an exile. The thought startled her, and she knew surprise was on her face when Luke came through the French doors.
222 ~ Judith Michael
"What a lovely setting," he said, and placed Jessica's sweater around her shoulders. She waited for him to ask what had surprised her, but he did not. "Another ideal retreat."
"I hope you'll see some of our island before you leave," Susan Fletcher said.
"I hope so. I think we'll have time. It depends on how soon breakfast is ready."
"It's ready now." She went through the French doors and by the time Luke and Jessica had seated themselves, moving their place settings slightly apart, she was back with juice and coffee. "Pancakes on the way."
Luke drank his juice and surveyed the view. He seemed content to let the silence go on. Susan Fletcher served their breakfasts, gave them a swift glance, then left, and once again the silence was complete. "There should be birds," Luke said, and at that they heard one, then two, and then a third.
"Perfect timing," Jessica said, and they laughed together, and she waited for him to say something about the night before, but he did not.
"We can take a drive around part of the island," he said after a few minutes. "I'd like to see as much as possible, if you would."
"Yes, I'd like that."
"I read the history of the islands last night. Did you know there was something called a Pig War on San Juan Island?"
"Yes, but wasn't it really just a quarrel over the shooting of someone's pig.''"
"That was it. An American farmer shot a British farmer's pig and the British government of Canada, which claimed the San Juans then, issued a warrant for his arrest. American troops came in to prevent it; they camped on one end of the island and British troops camped on the other. But not a bullet was fired."
"Except at the pig."
He chuckled. "And the whole thing took thirteen years to resolve."
"Thirteen years?"
"Sometimes it takes people a long time to change their minds."
Jessica shot him a quick look, but he seemed absorbed in cutting a piece of pineapple. "Did anyone win?" she asked.
"Not in any traditional sense. They negotiated a boundary that gave the San Juan Islands to the U.S., but by then I'm not sure how much the British cared."
"Grown men acting like little boys," Jessica said. "Marching in with guns. Couldn't the boundary have been negotiated without armies?"
"Probably. If we could go back and act it out that way, then we'd know."
"That might make a good play. Maybe there were even three scenarios."
"Like points of view in Rashomon. You know, it does have possibilities. Maybe I'll try it sometime."
"To write it.^"
"Yes."
"But. . . you're a playwright.''"
"Mostly as a hobby. I've written two in the past six years. I don't have a lot of time. But I find it very satisfying."
"You haven't tried to produce them?"
"I wouldn't do it myself and I haven't shown them to anyone else. I'd like your opinion, though."
"I'm not an expert on what makes a good play."
"I think you are. No one could understand better what makes characters live, and whether they lend themselves to the interpretations of fine actors."
Once again Jessica felt herself being drawn into his life, away from Lopez. But he must know it won't work, she thought. After last night, there's no reason for him to stay another day.
"I brought them with me, as it happens. Those quiet afternoons on your terrace, I reread them. I think they're not bad. But of course I'm a little close to them."
She smiled absently. The truth was, she wanted to read them. It would give her a different way of knowing him. And she didn't care whether that made sense or not. "Could you leave them with me when you go back to New York? I'd return them quickly."
"Of course," he said without hesitation, and she felt a brief pang of disappointment. "But you could read them today and tonight, if you'd like. It seems I'll still be here; the airline is booked until the first flight tomorrow morning. I've overstayed my welcome in your studio, but I'm sure there will be plenty of rooms on Lopez; October is hardly high season."
"No, of course you won't do that. It would be absurd for you to move again."
"Thank you; that makes it much simpler," he said easily.
224 ~ Judith Michael
Jessica gazed across the valley at Turtleback Mountain. She and Luke both knew that there was regular ferry service from Lopez to the mainland, and rental cars available for the drive to Seattle. Why weren't they talking about that?
Susan Fletcher removed their plates, asking if they wanted anything else. "No, everything was wonderful," Luke said. "We'll be leaving in a few minutes. Can you recommend a good driving tour? We have about half an hour."
"I'll bring you a map."
The moment for talking about the ferry was gone. Luke and Susan Fletcher bent over the map, marking roads with a pen; and on their drive around the island there were shops and homes and restored public buildings to discuss. The plane was waiting when they arrived at the airport and on the flight back, Luke and the pilot talked while Jessica was silent. Her car was parked at the airstrip on Lopez and they drove to her house. Driving home together after a trip, Jessica thought. How domestic that sounds. How domestic it feels.
"I'd like one more ride together," Luke said. "Could we do that?"
"Yes, what a good idea."
They saddled the horses and rode for two hours, as fast as the trails would allow. The ride had a valedictory feel, and the sadness that went with it. As if in sympathy, the sky grew hazy and then darkened to a dense gray fog that swept in from the sea, obscuring everything beyond the nearest trees. They slowed the horses to a walk as Luke said, "Rain when I got here; fog when I leave. But what a glorious week of sunshine in between."
The house was muffled, like a cocoon, the windows gray with fog, the rooms dark. Hope ran ecstatic circles around them as Luke turned on lamps, moving with easy familiarity from one to the other, creating small circles of light that pushed away the gloom. He took Jessica's suitcase to her bedroom, then ran his hand over his hair, drenched from the fog. "I think we need to get dry."
Jessica was looking out the living room window. "Yes."
From across the room, he said, "What do you see?"
"Fog."
"And you find it interesting?"
She was silent. Luke went to her and put his hands on her shoulders. Her muscles tightened, but she did not move away. He ran his hand over
her hair, as he had his own; it was soaking wet and plastered to her head, and she felt his fingers following the contours from her forehead to her neck. "Is it that you don't want me to look at you?"
They both knew the answer. He had been switching on lamps when she took off her riding cap and abruptly turned away. She knew how she looked: thin, gray, pinched. Like a wet mouse.
Luke turned her within his arms. "It doesn't matter. Don't you understand.^ I love you. What does the way you look have to do with that.?"
Jessica met his eyes. She saw no revulsion in them, no pretense, no uncertainty. Just the tenderness she had seen earlier. And love. Within her, something let go. As if a dam had burst, warmth flowed through her and she put her arms around Luke, her body shaping itself to his. Pliant, suddenly free, she met him with a passion equal to his, one she had thought she would never know again.
But in fact she had never known this passion. What she felt for Luke was new to her, all-encompassing. She opened to him, and to the self she had tried to banish, with an intensity that made her draw back, her eyes wide.
"It's all right," Luke
murmured. "I can handle it if you can."
She broke into laughter. "I'll try."
"It takes practice. Years and years—"
She kissed him. If they talked about the future, they would ruin everything.
"Jessica," Luke said, "if you don't want—"
"Yes," she said. "Yes. Yes. I do."
A quick breath escaped him and she knew he had feared that once again she would shut him out. Not now, she thought. Not today. Arms around each other, they went to her bedroom. Without her cane, her leg dragged, and for a brief moment, she tried to hold back. No man had seen her since the accident; no one had shared her bed. But Luke was helping her walk, and she wanted him— Oh, I want him, I love him, whatever happens afterward, I want this now, please let it be all right, let him love me without second thoughts —and so she stayed within his arm, letting him partially support her until they stood beside her bed.
Fog pressed against the windows, making the room seem like a cave as they undressed each other, letting their wet clothes fall to the floor. Jessica shivered; her skin was damp and cold. She pulled back the quilt as
226 ~ Judith Michael
Luke turned on the lamp, and when they lay on the soft blanket he pulled the quilt over them. They lay quietly in each other's arms as Jessica's shivering subsided, and as they grew warm, their bodies began to shift, curve meeting curve, bone nestling within bone like the pieces of a puzzle coming perfectly into place. Everything happened so smoothly—Luke's mouth on her breast, her hand moving over his body in a long, searching caress, his body lying on hers, hers opening to receive him—that they flowed into each other as if they had become sound, weaving together into one pure note.
Jessica's body came to life. It had been both prison and prisoner for so long that the sudden rush of warmth and arousal burst the bonds she had forged and she felt her spirit soar. It was the exhilaration of freedom, of gathering in instead of pushing away, and for the first time in years she knew that what she was feeling was joy: something else, like love, that she had thought would never be hers again. And so she let everything go, the fears and angers of the past years, the tight control with which she had squelched her longings, the inward-turning, self-enclosed life of the recluse. She let it all go. For this moment, with this man, she was open to everything. And when she looked down, at her body beneath his, it was beautiful.
"My God, you are magnificent," Luke murmured, moving inside her, feeling her draw him deeper and make him more completely a part of her. At first he had been afraid to hold her too tightly; her bones seemed so fragile, her body so thin and pale. But he discovered how strong she was, and how intense her passion, and in the midst of his love and delight in her, his relief that she had let herself come to him, and his first stirrings of hope for the future, he felt a great pity at the depth of her need. She had gone through too many solitary months, and her fears had seemed to ensure that they always would be that way. But they won't, Luke vowed. She will never be lonely again. And then her arms came around his shoulders as her hips rose powerfully to meet him, and his thoughts scattered before her wondrous sensuality: a radiance that made every feeling so vivid, every response so intense, it was as if everything were new, as if they were discovering love-making, and all that it could be, for the first time.
They lay together through that long, gray afternoon, Hope curled guardian-like in the doorway, the lamplight encircling the bed in gold. They made love with their mouths and their hands, in frenzied bursts of passion that left them stunned and breathless, and in languid movements
/
CTS of Love ~ 227
that brought them slowly to a pitch they prolonged until they could not wait another moment, and came together in a rush of joy and exultation that was reflected in the wonder in their eyes. Their bodies wrapped around each other like vines that curve and twine together in sunlight and showers until they merge into one. They lost track of time and space; they were so close they breathed together, and whatever each desired the other understood so instinctively that it seemed this had always been theirs.
"It doesn't seem possible," Luke said at some time in the afternoon. He was resting on one elbow, caressing Jessica's face. "I've been looking for you all my life and you were always there, so close to Constance, and because of that, close to me. Why didn't she tell me about you.'* About your letters.'*"
"You haven't asked that, all week," Jessica murmured dreamily. She was languorous and content; there was nothing more she wanted than this moment, this afternoon, this man.
"I wondered about it, but I suppose I thought it was one more of her minor eccentricities. But it doesn't really make sense. Does it to you.?"
"She thought it made sense."
Luke's hand stopped moving. "You know why she didn't tell me?"
"We talked about it one time when I was in Italy." She looked up at him. "Don't frown, Luke. It makes you look like a medieval monk."
"You can think of me as a monk, after this afternoon.?"
She laughed, a long, happy laugh. "No, how could I.? Well, then, it makes you look like a Renaissance conspirator."
"Much better; it's nicely colorful. Why didn't Constance talk to me about you.?"
"Because she wanted us to be together. Married."
Luke gazed at her. "If you wanted that for two people, you'd talk about them to each other."
"Not if you'd already tried to keep your grandson from marrying one woman and he'd told you that you weren't an expert in marriage and didn't know anything about the facts."
He frowned, then quickly smoothed it away. "You know too much about me."
"Look who's talking."
"Well. That's true. But, my God, Constance and I had that talk a long time ago."
"Yes, but it seems there were other times, and each time you told her,
228 ~ Judith Michael
not too politely, that you'd find your own women. And do you remember the time, after your divorce, when Constance said you'd been angry at her for years for not marrying and giving you a father? That made you angry, too. After all that, she was sure that if she pushed me as a candidate for marriage you wouldn't even consider it. You'd tell her again that she wasn't the one to give advice, that you'd do your own searching."
Luke was silent. "She was probably right," he said at last. "I didn't shut her out as often as I did other people, but once in a while I did turn on her and tell her to leave me alone. Once, maybe more than once, she called me rigid. Others called me cold. You called me that, after we met at one of your opening night parties. And you were right."
"Have you changed .f^"
"I think so. I hope so."
"How.^^"
"Partly your letters. They made me see myself through your eyes. And Constance's illness, her move to Italy. I began to realize that she'd die someday—it's amazing how we ignore that fact until it hits us between the eyes—and I'd be alone. There was no one I loved besides her." He was silent. "But she should have talked to me about you, if she really wanted us to be together. You're sure she really wanted that?"
"Would you bring me the box of her letters?"
Luke went to the living room and brought back the inlaid box. Jessica sat up, reaching for a silk robe beside the bed and pulled it around her shoulders against the chill in the room. She took the box and walked her fingers across the tops of the folded letters crammed inside. The box, identical inside and out to the one in his library at home, gave Luke a sudden feeling of dislocation, as if he were in both places at once. And with that, he knew with brutal certainty how incompatible Lopez and New York were, and that Jessica would not easily consent to come back with him. "Jessica, I want to talk about—"
"Here," she said. She opened a letter and handed it to Luke.
Jessica, my dear, this will be short because I have so little energy. I've thought of dictating my letters to you, and that may come, but not yet. I like to think I can fend off those dramatic changes that all point to death. Luke left
a little while ago; we had a lovely visit. He's lonely and, much of the time, angry as well, but
A
CTS of LOVE ~ 229
I can't guide him to happiness, or even presume that I know which path w^ould lead him there. I think he would be happy with you, and you with him, but I will not propel him toward you with one of those infuriating shoves mothers in Victorian novels always give their sons and daughters. I'm leaving it to you, dear Jessica. Please find a way to him; give my dream a chance. If it works, the two of you will drink a toast to my memory and my foresight. If not, you'll have lost no more than the time it takes to dine together a few^ times. Oh, my dearest Jessica, you've been my child and my dearest friend for so long; I sit in my library at night and picture you and Luke, hand in hand, and it gives me great joy. I'm not at all ready to die — damnation, I vant to see the two of you together! — but this is one role I cannot manipulate. I have not destroyed your letters as you once asked me to do because I'm sure that Luke — my wonderful inquisitive Luke—^vill read them and then perhaps he w^ill be the one to find you. Dear, dear Jessica, take care of yourself and ensnare my grandson. He needs you. And I think you need him. And I will send you, from very far away, my blessings. I love you. Constance.
Jessica was crying. "That was the last letter I ever had from her." She touched the tears that were on Luke's cheeks. "I let her down, you know, and I can't forget that. She wrote to me, asking me to come to her. She said she missed me and thought I missed her—oh, and she was right!— and that we needed to be together. And she begged me to come. But I couldn't let her see what had happened to me, especially after all the letters I'd written ... all those fantasies."
"She wouldn't have cared, any more than I do."
"She would have worried about me. Fretted over what I would do. She would have wanted to call people, write letters,/?M.f^ people to be kind to me. I couldn't stand that."
"But she was dying and wanted to be with you."
Acts of Love Page 27