Fall Love

by Anne Whitehouse

  She etched this image on her mind so that it might warm her in the frozen mud of a future November. She had seen a moon swell and shrink, the days thin. Her path was still in shadow but a gradual lightening led her to hope that the sun would burn through the fog and the wind would sweep the fog away.

  She passed a shingled cottage. Through a blue-shuttered window, she saw a family of early-risers applying themselves to breakfast, the man buttering a slice of toast, a woman with a cup raised to her lips, a book by her plate turned face-down, its spine creased. To be so close and yet distanced by glass: automatic frames were always suggesting themselves to the artist in Althea. Then, as she saw the fog lifting, she ran the rest of the way. After the dirt road ended, she followed a path between rocks to the beach. Spatters of morning light touched the cove before the water could wet her.

  In two motions she shed her clothes, and then walked into the sea. Carefully she stepped over pebbles and larger, flat stones. The ocean was calm. Water lapped gently against her thighs and hips as she paused, half-dry, half-wet. Then a small wave broke and she dove into it. Her head felt wonderfully cold. She swam under water and then emerged into the air again, wetness streaming from her skin and hair. In long, easy strokes, she swam far out in the deep water. For a long time she floated on her back, gazing up at the vast sky, which was clearing quickly now, but not with the blue promise of the day before. The color of the Sound in the distance was light, milky blue, but when she looked down into the water she was treading, she saw a liquid both dark and translucent. There her skin, though tanned, appeared white.

  She swam to a rock poking out in the sea and climbed it. Seaweeds grew over it, and baby mussels no larger than a fingernail. Naked in the morning summer light, she sat on the rock in the midst of the gently rocking sea, utterly alone except for seagulls and sandpipers and a fishing boat out in the Sound that was passing by. She waited until it was gone, then stood and dived cleanly back into the water. For a while she swam happily, and then headed back to the shore.

  Emerging from her swim, she felt magnificently alive. As she stood on the beach, the light slanting over her, the sea water dripping off of her, with the whole world around her and no one to see her, she felt almost as if she were a goddess risen from the foam. She was conscious of such vastness in herself, of love and desire, that, even had she wanted to, she did not think that she could have held herself back from returning to Paul and to Jeanne.

  * * *

  The morning had been alive inside Althea before the night had left her lovers. Waking next to a still-sleeping Paul, Jeanne didn't know why she suddenly thought of meetings in French cafés, varnished wooden tables, and flower arrangements. Sunlight flooded the room, over the blue dresser, the painted floor and hooked throw rugs, and Paul spoke next to her in his sleep. She couldn't make out if the sounds were words. She called his name softly.

  He awakened to light streaming through the curtains, Althea missing beside him, and Jeanne's face bent over his as she leaned on one elbow, tracing, with her forefinger, the bridge of his nose. When he smiled, she traced that, too, and he lifted his head and brushed her finger away by meeting her lips. She gave no resistance; her eyes were wide on his, yet he felt her shudder, as if she were fleeing from him. One moment split into infinitesimal hairs, like a dandelion bloomed to filaments of silver seed.

  * * *

  Althea entered the bedroom from the deck, and stood looking at Paul and Jeanne from the doorway, as they sat side by side with the sheet pulled over them. Paul laughed and beckoned, and then his laughter died in his throat as she approached. Under her straight bangs, Jeanne's brown eyes gazed levelly at her. She smiled, welcoming Althea as if the bed were hers and Althea were the visitor.

  It surprised Althea to note that she wasn't disturbed by Jeanne's attitude. It would have made her miserable instead to have found Jeanne clinging to the pillow and crying, or hidden speechless in the sheets, remote and ashamed, and to have felt herself to blame for it. Not until she saw Jeanne, relaxed and gratified—Althea sensed—by more than sleep, did she understand how hesitant she'd been to face her, and how she must have wanted to leave her first to Paul's ministrations. She couldn't help but sense what they had been up to while she was under the waves. As she slipped off her shorts and shirt, she felt radiant, sublime, eternal.

  If the similarity between the women had struck Paul first the evening before, the morning conveyed to him their difference: Jeanne, softened and still warm from sleep; Althea, cold and exuberant, her hair like tangled seaweed, wet and rough, her skin as tawny as the grains of sand that stuck to it and made touching it like touching a fine grade of sandpaper.

  But not all of her was tan and much of her was smooth. There was a sweetness in Paul's mouth as if he had sunk his teeth in the skin of a fruit and burst it. Here was what he could not fathom: a shifting yet definite boundary. Three had not become one, not really, but in their fluid, altering unions he felt a rapture that even at its apex was agonizing for what it couldn't contain, couldn't connect, couldn't unite.

  Now they pressed further; they seemed to want to acquire a conviction of what they were, together, like this. For they were no longer innocent, and each knew that they would soon be parting.

  Chapter 5

  Bryce had truly been surprised to receive the letter postmarked August 8, 1980, from Meridian and addressed to him in his mother's looping, slanting handwriting. Communications between him and his family had become so rare that it might be more accurately said there wasn't communication.

  He was an adolescent when it was discovered he had multiple sclerosis. One of his grandfathers had died from that disease as a young man, and Bryce's worry for himself made him not only careless but sometimes cruel. In his own eyes, if not in others', his second secret seemed less shameful: that only a man could arouse his desire. Yet the encounters preceding his affair with Paul hadn't generally managed to raise his estimate of mankind.

  It was strange, Bryce thought, how, when he was growing up, he had suffered from his parents' overprotection, but, once he came to New York, he rarely heard from them. It made him wonder if they had really been so worried about him after all, if all the attention they had showed him were something other than true concern. It was almost as if, once he'd left Mississippi, he'd ceased to exist for them.

  They hadn't wanted him to move to New York. They didn't like New York; it was too dangerous, full of criminals, radicals, and weirdos; they had no wish to go there themselves. They couldn't understand why anyone would want to live in such a chaotic and expensive city—a city so "un-American" (their adjective). What repelled them attracted Bryce. Since he was financially independent, having inherited a trust fund from his grandfather, they couldn't stop him. It was as if they were in unspoken agreement with him: the disappointment was mutual, and from now on they would expect nothing from each other. Bryce had never discussed his homosexuality with his parents, but he assumed they knew, and that this was at the core of their attitude that he had somehow failed them.

  He was hardly a flaming rebel. Six years earlier he had graduated from the University of Mississippi with highest honors and with the reputation of a sophisticated eccentric. Like so many bright, liberal-arts oriented young people of his generation who were vaguely uncertain about what they wanted to do, he decided to study law.

  The state university had been his parents' choice; Columbia was his—not for the school, but for New York City. He didn't like law school, but he hadn't expected to like it. He skipped many classes because of ill-health or indifference, but he showed up for his exams and passed with average grades. He didn't care, for he had no wish to be a whiz on Wall Street. Nor did he want to confront brutal courtroom dramas, issues of life and death. He desired safety, a comfortable life without too many headaches. He wasn't particularly ambitious about a career, but was more interested instead in keeping abreast of the cultural life of the city, about which he was enthusiastic, selective, critical, often disparaging,
and always knowledgeable.

  After two years in Columbia housing, Bryce bought his penthouse apartment in 1977, in an Upper West Side building. He got a handyman's special at a rock-bottom price. The owner had died; it hadn't been inhabited for years, and now the son, who lived in California, was selling it. About the apartment, as about everything else, Bryce had definite ideas, and little by little he had it fixed up according to his eclectic yet traditional tastes.

  The next year he got his degree and passed the bar. He had a part-time, easy-going practice. He drew up business contracts and real estate agreements. It was pretty standard stuff, which came his way through word of mouth, through people he knew. He worked out of his apartment and set his own schedule, according to his inclination and his health. In addition, he managed his investments wisely, he was not extravagant, and, when he wasn't having an exacerbation of his disease, he lived quite pleasantly.

  Bryce thought he'd come a long way from Meridian, yet still he felt a sense of dread when he held his mother's letter in his hand. He stared at the flap of the envelope with a stencil of daisies around the border. He didn't want to open it. He imagined it contained bad news, followed by a reproach of some kind. Otherwise, he wondered, why would she have written him?

  Nor was he mistaken. Under the perky print at the top of the page, "A Note from Mary Crawford," was a somber communication. "Your uncle Bill is very sick with the cancer," his mother wrote. "The doctor expects the Lord will call him soon. It could be weeks, it could be months. We know you've always done just as you pleased, but hadn't you better come down to see him before it's too late."

  At the inference that he would prefer not to do what he ought to do, Bryce felt a pinprick of anger that interfered with his grief at the news that his favorite relative was dying. He could practically hear his mother's aggrieved tone. At the bottom of the page, his father, elder brother of Bill, had added a single line, "Bill asked for you," and he'd signed it, not "Dad," but "Russell." That message had clinched it. Bryce called his parents, resolved to return. They both got on the phone to speak to him.

  Surprising him once more, they betrayed no emotion at his decision, but acted as if his homecoming were the most normal event in the world. They discussed travel plans as if they'd never been estranged from each other. Bryce was relieved, but also a little let-down. He'd expected more from them—at least some polite curiosity regarding his life, about which they knew nothing, but they seemed indifferent. Even the information about his uncle was offered in guarded terms. Maybe when I get home, we'll talk, Bryce thought. He astonished himself by the depth of his hope. He wasn't sure himself why he kept the news a secret from Paul. Maybe it was because he'd always been so negative about his family. He just knew he didn't feel like discussing it. Perhaps he was more like his family than he'd realized.

  * * *

  In mid-August the airplane was half-empty. No one, it seemed, was flying south for the dog days. The atmosphere the day Bryce left New York was amazingly clear and remained so as they flew over the range of raised brown folds that was the Appalachians. Bryce looked down thirty-thousand feet of cloudless space. A single passenger on a row for three, he raised the armrests, stretched his legs, and nursed a beer. Approaching, he recognized the arterial highways of his hometown Meridian and could pick out the city's landmarks from his lowering height.

  Both of his parents were at the airport to pick him up. As he emerged from the gate, Bryce spotted them first before they found him. They stood side by side, just behind the railing past the waiting area. His heart constricted as he recognized the hopefulness on the faces five years older than he last remembered them. He wished he could prolong the moment before they met and inevitably disappointed each other.

  But then they saw him, and he forced himself to smile broadly and call out, "Mom, Dad," loudly, so that everyone around overheard him. He hated himself for doing it, but he felt it was expected of him.

  He was surrounded by strangers embracing his fellow passengers and exclaiming theatrically, as Southerners like to do. He had almost forgotten his reaction, which was to feel more withdrawn. Yet in this he was like his parents, and it brought them together. Unused, his greeting felt stiff when he hugged and kissed them in the airport corridor, first his mother and then his father. He almost didn't look at them when he did it. He felt his father's moustache tickle his cheek.

  Then Russell slapped him heartily on the back, and immediately Bryce saw him think twice about it and cringe. It was as if Russell were mimicking the reaction he'd expected in his son. On cue, his mother started chattering, to distract them. Because they were his parents, Bryce knew them well, even though he hadn't seen them in years. He felt that he could read their thoughts—thoughts that, except for indirect allusions, they would keep to themselves.

  Naturally they wanted to introduce him to acquaintances they happened to run into at the airport. He had returned to a city where people were as likely as not to know each other, at least people of a certain social stratum, and it occurred to him that his parents were more comfortable when they were displaying him to others, because then they didn't have to speak to him, and they were protected by social decorum.

  But Bryce soon tired of it. He excused himself, expressing a wish to retrieve his luggage, and so his parents set off with him for the baggage claim. Mary waved good-byes to her friends.

  "What are you doing these days?" Bryce asked his father.

  "Oh, I usually make a few calls around ten o'clock about some deals. I get out in the afternoon, play golf, shmooze with the fellas. Your mother doesn't want me around the house all day." Russell winked at Mary when he said this last.

  "It's just that I'm so busy I don't want to be responsible for you." Mary reacted predictably to her husband's teasing, defending herself with a description of her days' activities. "I've still got to run the house, do the shopping, oversee Bessie—who, you know, is still with us, although she's getting feebler. I also have my ladies clubs, my charities, and of course Peggy and the children. I'm always filling in for her. Then there are all the other people who are always calling me. I know you'll think it's strange"—she directed this last to Bryce—"but there are a lot of people in Meridian who seem to value my advice quite highly."

  "I'm sure they do," said Bryce mildly. Once he would have protested, and they would have gotten into an argument. He'd let her make him angry, and then he'd regret it. But now she calmed down, and he thought to himself that maybe he'd learned something.

  For Mary, her son's degenerative disease had been a sad surprise, but she blamed "his accompanying mental attitude that made him impossible to live with," without inquiring into her own attitude or that of her husband.

  "How are the grandchildren?" Bryce asked now, to change the subject.

  "They're just splendid," said Mary, and began to describe them. Bryce's sister Peggy, seven years his senior, had her own home with three girls and a husband who sold insurance, but who had never persuaded his sickly brother-in-law to put a premium on his life. There were cousins as well, and aunts, and the aforesaid uncle whom Bryce remembered as slim and sleekly handsome.

  There was a family party the first evening. It was a shock for Bryce to enter the general hubbub of his mother's sister's living room: cocktails on the sideboard, the swell of chitchat in Southern intonations he was accustomed to in his own speech but not in others'. On all sides he felt warmly welcomed, though, just as it used to do, his cane got in the way of cordial hugs and handshakes. This seeming aloofness had always been taken for arrogance in Mississippi. In New York Bryce was allowed to be severe.

  He was given a seat on the sofa and a whisky and soda and was inducted into light gossip that tactfully didn't deal with himself, but with a spattering of births, deaths, and marriages, real estate developments, business finaglings, and early plans for the opening of the hunting season in late October. It had been so long since Bryce had heard this kind of conversation that it didn't make him as impatient as it use
d to. He was eased into regional rituals and not asked to explain himself; and because he wanted to make amends, he kept his razor-edged tongue well sheathed and actually found himself enjoying a party of familiar faces after such a long absence.

  * * *

  On the morning after his return to the South, Bryce waited outside his uncle's room for the first time in years. The door was cracked open enough to reveal an ashy, penetrable darkness and a voice with a thinner timbre than he remembered saying something whose meaning he didn't make out. His mother had offered to accompany him, but he'd refused and gone alone. A nurse had answered his cautious knock. She let him come just inside the front door before telling him that his aunt was with his uncle and that she'd have to inform her employer first of his arrival.

  Bryce waited awkwardly while he watched the incongruously uniformed woman in white recede down the hallway. He had braced himself for even more unpleasant surprises, but now he wondered if he were adequately mustered for what he would find different on returning to his Mississippi home in the wake of his uncle's grave illness. Sleeping alone, for instance, Bryce observed to himself as he awaited the nurse's return, is not such a brave act, after all, but on the first night in his boyhood bedroom, he had suffered an attack of homesickness. His life had grown unaccustomed to the feeling of singleness that was suddenly severing it like a whip line too faint to see. It was already with the sense of someone missing that he had received the summons to the invalid's bedside.

  The door opened to a braided rug that lay on the floor like an oval pool in the dimness. Ahead of him, against the wall, stood a shiny, dark dresser surmounted by a half-length mirror. Before the looking glass, on a lace-edged doily, were arranged old photographs in gilt and silver frames that glimmered in the weak light coming in from the doorway.