Fall Love

by Anne Whitehouse

  Sometimes in the past either she or the man she'd waked up next to hadn't wanted to be there. But now, gazing back into Paul's eyes with their smile lines crinkled in the corners, she did not want to be elsewhere.

  Paul laid his palm against her cheek, breathed in her ear, smoothed back her hair, while murmuring caressing endearments. He did all this to her, and more, thrilling her until she felt hollowed out by sensation. When she finally got up, she could only speak in monosyllables, and she walked in a daze, as if drugged.

  She went through the motions of making breakfast, and somehow it got prepared: coffee and hot milk, buttered toast and honey, sectioned oranges arranged in fans. She and Paul took the meal outside to eat in the sheltered little nook at the back of the house. The space was a small, uneven polygon, paved with flat stones and furnished with a round glass-topped table and four chairs. The backyard ran down to it, and on two sides a low cement wall had been built up, set with sea-washed, speckled stones, their contours worn smooth as eggs.

  Sun-warmed, protected, Althea and Paul sat at the table, slowly eating and gazing about at the new day. The wind danced around them, in the grasses, in the trees.

  It’s as beautiful as the day before, Althea thought. And the day before that.

  She found herself focusing myopically on the separate parts of him: first his hands, now involved in the duties of eating. She stared at the shape of the indentation where his thumb met his hand as he picked a piece of bread from his plate, and then licked his tapered, oval fingertips, dripping with the creamy local honey. She gazed at his face: his soft, lank hair, the sharp angles of his cheekbone and jaw. She wanted to memorize every detail of his presence. The beauty in each new revelation of his body enticed and absorbed her. Only his face was not beautiful, but this somehow made him more appealing, the whole of him more interesting and attractive, as if a slight dissonance were required in order to appreciate his perfect symmetries.

  He didn't object to her scrutiny. It appeared that she was free to study him. She believed he welcomed it, and so she relaxed. She finished her toast and laid her bare arm on the table next to him. She stared at it until the tanned skin and the fine blond hairs blown every which way down the length of it looked like a stranger's. She predicted just how he would take her arm, and she was right. Her sense of connectedness to him seemed too strong to be only a coincidence. She felt his eyes questioning her as he cupped her wrist, and knew that she did not have to speak to reply. Between them a chord vibrated: alive, mysterious, hypersensitive.

  It was as if she had been starved of a food she could barely remember the taste of, but now, eating it again, she desired it. She wanted to laugh and cry all at once, and yet she sat silently spellbound by the touches of sun and soft breeze and his hand circling her wrist and calmly stroking her arm.

  She thought of how she had scrimped and slaved to earn the money for this vacation. Until Paul arrived, she had been happy but lonely; she needed him to make her vacation complete. All this she had predicted; she had counted on it even while she had worried that his coming would crimp her style. What she had not counted on was falling in love. She realized that she had already invested too much in her belief in him. But it was too late; she wanted this love, this late-summer passion, and she was bound to have it. She gave herself permission to enjoy whatever he offered her.

  With excitement and a sinking heart, Paul realized that Althea was in love with him. He couldn't help comparing women and men. Women become attached so quickly; then they drag you down, he thought. Men are more skeptical; they want space.

  He certainly did. But he wasn't ready to run away from Althea yet. He desired the sensation of her leaning up against him; he wanted to see their reflection together, as alike as brother and sister. He wanted to see how far she would go; he wanted to measure himself against her.

  "I want to show you a place I discovered yesterday when I was picking blackberries," he told her.

  "All right." I probably know it, she thought, but I'll humor him anyway.

  Yet she never had explored the thick bayberry bushes and blackberry brambles that grew past the low stone wall at the edge of the front yard. Now he led her into them. He went first, folding the branches back so she could pass. "You see, there is a trail," he said.

  And so there was: a narrow indentation, almost a shadow, which continued when the brush gave way to tall grasses down a slope. At the bottom was a pond drying up, its mud banks exposed.

  "Who made this trail?" she asked, keeping up with him.

  "You don't know?" He turned around to face her. She shook her head. They were standing in the grasses. She smelled a rank animal smell, and suddenly guessed the answer, but said nothing. Yet she saw the look of recognition cross his face, that he knew what she knew. He smiled, and took her hand. "Look!"

  A female mallard and her baby were swimming in the pond. As they approached, the ducks scooted out of the water and disappeared into the grasses on the other side.

  "I never knew about this pond, though it's so close to the house. If it weren't for the bushes, you might see the roof and the porch from here," she said.

  They had reached the water's edge. She bent to pick up a down feather. Around the pond were hoof tracks that had dried and hardened in the mud. "I've seen a doe and fawn in the front yard," she said. "So this is where they drink."

  "And that's not all. Come with me."

  She followed him away from the pond, in the other direction from the house, up part of the slope they hadn't travelled. He drew apart the brush to show her a hidden clearing, oval in shape, shorter than a person's length. The grasses and vegetation were packed and brown.

  "It's the deer's bed," he explained.

  Surprised and delighted, Althea watched Paul changing before her eyes from a city-bred dancer to a man versed in country ways. She stepped past him into the deer's bed. Not knowing what had come over her, she crouched in it like a deer. Feeling his eyes on her back, she stared at the ground, pretending she was an animal, exposed to him. I’m really letting myself go, she thought.

  She was dizzy. His arm went around her waist, supporting her.

  * * *

  The days started and faded in the pastel palettes of sunrise and sunset. Althea woke up happy and went to sleep happy. Hers was a thin, all-inclusive happiness that went skimming over the surface of things. It was satisfying as long as she didn't breach it with doubt. For the first time in her life, she was living for the moment, and she was determined not to question it.

  She had rested on sandy beaches and been buoyed by ocean waves; she had cycled past ponds and green fields and shingled gray houses long enough to have gotten the city out of her system. First she was rejuvenated by the earth and sea. Then she was transformed into Paul's lover. She couldn't remember when she had last been so uninhibited. To her delight, silly, sensual intimacies had quickly developed between them.

  They teased each other and talked nonsense. She was lighthearted, and so was he. They didn't explain themselves or ask for explanations. It's been a long time, she reflected, since she had been so relaxed. But it wasn't only that. There was no logical way for her to explain her bond to him, a compound of recognition, attraction, and opposition.

  For her, love had begun with seeing, with how Paul had let her study him. Ever since his arrival, she had observed how he looked around him with curiosity and interest, his glance alighting on her and flying off. Yet, if he wished, he could gaze at her so that she felt he was effortlessly seeing into her soul; she carried the memory into her sleep of his blue eyes, focused on her. If he continued to see her like that, she thought, she would soon have no secrets from him.

  But he didn't. He practiced a number of subtle withdrawals, and she, observing them, followed his lead. That is why, in the next days, she did not press him or question why he failed to ask her about her life or wonder aloud about her paintings, though he punctiliously allowed her time to work on them.

  Or, rather, she continued
to devote several hours each day to them, which he soon accepted as a matter of course. Their time was comfortably divided into periods of solitude and togetherness.

  Although Althea knew he was a lost cause, she couldn't stop herself. In the days that followed, he never turned on her, denigrated, or belittled her, though she knew that many men do so when they feel trapped. She believed that, despite his past or his future, he wanted her; she could feel him weaken when she touched him, the way a woman is said to weaken at the touch of her beloved. Though she was aware that these moments did not reciprocate for the intensity of her feeling, she nevertheless cherished them with a tenderness that matched his sensitivity- that is, when he wished to show it.

  * * *

  Althea and Paul sat together at the edge of a bluff overlooking the sea, ten yards off the trail to the beach at Black Rock. Tall grasses camouflaged them from passers-by. Althea sat on the ground between Paul's legs, leaning against his chest. His arms wound loosely around her neck; his fingertips rested lightly on her collarbone; his chin grazed her neck. Below the cliff, waves swelled and crashed on the sea, flinging off gauzy veils of mist. The roar periodically drowned her thoughts. She felt drowsy, yet also enlivened.

  "I don't know why I never get tired of watching the waves come in. Why is such a monotonous sight so endlessly fascinating?" she wondered aloud.

  "It's like watching a fire," said Paul. "Its flames are monotonous, too, yet never quite the same."

  Far out to sea, the triangular white speck of a sailboat reflected the sun's glare. Althea clasped Paul's fingers, which lay loosely over her chest. She felt his hand under hers move with the shallow rise and fall of her own breath.

  They had been together four days. She was like a sleuth looking for clues he dropped about himself: comments made casually, descriptions of habits, any possibly revealing detail. She was always on the alert. Already she had memorized any facts of his upbringing and anecdotes from his past that he had thoughtlessly disclosed.

  She knew that he'd grown up in the Midwest: he was born in Michigan and moved to Minnesota before he started school. He had attended the Chicago Art Institute before dropping out to dance. He had come to dance relatively late, but was now performing with two small, well-regarded companies—he had raised his eyebrows as he told her this, to detach himself from the praise.

  "I'd love to see you perform," Althea said now, remembering this conversation. As she spoke, she pictured a darkened theater and a spotlit stage where Paul transformed a sequence of steps into an exalted, fleeting vision. As proof of his enchantment, she imagined an enraptured audience, men and women alike who smiled on him, their chins sweetly upturned, their eyes misted. "You're graceful even when you turn in your sleep."

  He laughed and stroked her windblown hair. They heard some people approaching on the path and grew silent, not wanting to give themselves away. The people passed. Althea felt a sudden desire to make Paul speak about the two of them, to acknowledge her presence in his life, but she did not dare. He would not like it, she knew. She would only hurt herself.

  So instead she asked him about his garden, which she had seen, and which for her was a roundabout way of asking him about his life with Bryce that she was not brave enough to broach directly. Though they hadn't discussed it, she could tell that this area of inquiry was off-bounds to her. She chafed at the limits he imposed, but she was too insecure to offend him deliberately.

  She knew that he liked being admired, and she assumed that he wanted to be understood, just as she craved his understanding of her. Love demanded it of her, and she exclaimed suddenly, without thinking, "I wish I knew all about you!"

  Instantly she felt him cringe and withdraw. "You never will," he said, "for I don't intend to let you." He was shocked, she was hurt. A glum, stunned silence lasted until they biked into town to go food shopping. Then they each seemed to decide that there was no point in squabbling, and that a truce, in which they ignored their dissonant wishes, was preferable. As expiation, Althea filled the shopping basket with foods Paul said he liked. She automatically took out her wallet in the check-out line, and he did not protest. Yet she was so accustomed to feeling poor and to counting every penny that it was impossible for her not to consider that he was taking advantage of her. She reminded herself that he was her guest and that she should have no objections to footing the bill. Nevertheless, when he paid at their next stop, a seasonal farm stand offering local produce, she was relieved. Her feelings reverted to goodwill towards him.

  They carted the groceries back in sturdy plastic milk crates lashed to racks mounted over their bikes' rear wheels. They were tired out by the time they reached the house. The exertion was cathartic: Althea's hurt had faded, and she sensed that Paul's resentment had, too.

  Yet a pall had descended, compounded of his disillusion and her disappointment—she was too aware of him not to notice it. She imagined how she must have sounded to him—"I wish to know all about you!"—and she shrank from the shame of it. She reproached herself; her stupidity pained her.

  Still, they ate lunch companionably, but she was relieved when, afterwards, he went off by himself, leaving her to paint. The routine of putting on work clothes, getting out supplies, and mixing colors was soothing. Shielded by the blue screen to one side, with light streaming through the windows to the north and west, she stood, safe on her island of solitude. How grateful I am to be alone with my work for a while, she thought. I need this. I need to forget everything else. She reflected, It can feel like Heaven just to be left alone to look at what's yours.

  Now, facing her unfinished works, she acknowledged one inspiration: Monet's waterlilies. A way of painting without edges or outlines, without drawing, where the images seem to rise from depths of movement and stillness, she enumerated to herself.

  But today she couldn't find her way in the paintings. She was too distracted by the unpleasantness with Paul to give them the concentration they required. She thought, not for the first time, of how stringent art was, at least for her. Art exacted total devotion from her without the promise of any immediate return.

  I think of myself as frugal, she thought, but look what I've done: I've spent all my money on a vacation, and I've fallen in love with a man who will never marry me.

  Althea paused in her revery. I might as well give up my fruitless efforts to paint and enjoy what's left of the day, she decided. She began to put the paints away. She gathered the brushes to wash them. On her way to the kitchen, she stopped before the front windows. The sloping yard, the spreading landscape, the sea in the distance—all were gilded in the late afternoon light. She wondered where Paul was, and then she saw him entering the yard. Her serious thoughts and worries about him drifted away like dust at his return. She was pleased to see him, and she came running out to the porch to greet him.

  * * *

  Paul saw Althea entering the edge of his vision; he felt her energy floating out before her to seize him with invisible fingers. He envisaged them as a couple in a romantic movie, impelled across a landscape toward each other. With this idea, he thus distanced himself from her even as they met and embraced.

  It had become his habit in the afternoons to wander freely while she remained behind in the house. She was working on her paintings—so she said. Each day, when he left, he pictured her in his absence applying herself diligently to whatever she was doing. He liked to think that she was preoccupied while he played.

  As soon as he was past the yard, he ceased to conjure her. The beautiful Block Island summer afternoon invited him. He considered where he might go, by bike or on foot, exploring. He followed the winding coast. Balancing on rocks, he peered into tidepools. He gazed at dark mussels and periwinkles in the clear, cold water. He pursued his thoughts.

  Why is it that I'm only interested in what is intense, yet I'm exhausted by intensity? he wondered. He was a little afraid of Althea, because she connected to his inner self in ways that he had not anticipated. Out of boredom and curiosity he had com
e to her, and to get even with Bryce for leaving him so abruptly. He had found her transformed by her vacation, turned all to gold. She had appeared to him like a vision waiting on the tarmac, tall, her tawny-flecked eyes radiating hope. Under her welcoming smile, her mouth was serious, almost afraid. He believed he understood her, but he wasn't sure that he wanted to. He knew that he did not wish for her to understand him. When he remembered how avidly she'd said she wanted to understand him, he felt uncomfortable and apprehensive all over again.

  The fact was that, having betrayed Bryce, he began to feel kindly towards him. It was as if, having purged his resentment in revenge, he could now afford to be generous, at least in his thoughts. He believed he had the psychological advantage, and that it made him secretly powerful.

  As he dreamily watched the waves wash over the rocks, recede, and wash over them again, drowning the tidepools and then exposing them, he looked back on his life with Bryce. He thought of their roof garden in the spring, a green oasis overlooking the city. With nostalgia he remembered May dusks full of murmuring voices, children playing on their narrow side street, and mothers watching from the stoops. He recalled the feathery green fronds of locust trees in the late sunlight and the slanted shadows of fire escapes against the glowing brick walls of tenements and apartment buildings.

  He pictured their roof at twilight as if it were a stage, the penthouse part of a set, and he and Bryce actors. Barechested, in loose, old jeans, he tended the garden, while Bryce lounged by the fountain feeding the goldfish and sipping a drink. The penthouse was behind them, and behind it was the sky and the lowering sun.

  He thought of how, years and years ago, he'd left his home in Minnesota, in the heartland of the continent (fields of wheat clean and yellow in September, a blaze of sumac by a blue lake) for a city life of more sordid circumstances. At first every day had been an adventure, and he'd congratulated himself for having escaped the blandness and dullness of life back home. For a long time he'd lived hand-to-mouth and thought it romantic. He had come to New York to dance, he'd had some triumphs on the stage, and he looked forward to more. Dance hadn't made him rich, but he hadn't expected it to. He'd always survived and sometimes he'd flourished. However, this existence had begun to pall even before Bryce had offered him a life comfortable enough to be luxurious in Manhattan. He had every intention of going back to that life, but he planned to make the most of this vacation while it lasted.