The Lyre and the Lambs

by Sydney Avey

  I pull two par avion letters out of my box. Before heading back to the apartment, I walk into the park next to the post office and sit on a bench to read Alaya’s letter. The other letter from Israel I set aside. It has Roger’s son David’s return address, written in the Palmer perfect penmanship David picked up so quickly the few times we brought him over for a visit. Alaya’s handwriting is perfect too, where mine is a scrawl. We are mirror twins. I’m the left-handed one.

  The breeze exhilarates, passing scents of Bay leaves under my nose, washing smells of rosemary and mint through my hair. Cocooned in my car coat, I read through the tissue-thin pages of Alaya’s letter again and again. It’s not good news. It gives me a lot to think about on the short drive to the apartment.

  R

  Roger is on the phone when I burst through the door. He cups his hand over the receiver mouthpiece. “I just heard. I’m on the phone with Valerie.”

  I wind my finger in a circle to let him know to wrap it up. I want his full attention right now.

  “Okay Valerie, your mother just got home. She’ll fill me in on the rest of the details. … No, I don’t want to put her on the phone right now but I will have her give you a call later today. … Yes, I promise.”

  I plop down on the sofa like an overstuffed bag of groceries about to split and look up into the face of this man I married only six months ago.

  R

  Roger and I had conducted the classic office romance after my mother died. Well, it was classic in the sense that we had been secretive about our relationship. The day I quit my job there was no longer a need for secrecy, but there remained a need for discretion. Roger always respected my status as a middle-aged widow living in a conventional suburban neighborhood.

  Then, I adopted a more unconventional lifestyle, living in a one-bedroom rental and running an art gallery in Carmel-by-the-Sea, and Roger took a transfer to the East Coast. We agreed that our commitment to each other was exclusive but we were unwilling to set parameters beyond that. To say that our bi-coastal arrangement put a strain on what we were both hoping would be a happily-ever-after outcome would understate the situation.

  To everyone’s surprise, we hung in there for seven years, nurturing our romance with long weekends in San Francisco and New York City. Every year Roger would declare this was his last year with General Electric and every year they would promote him, pay him more, pile on the incentives and ply him with that one last project that would secure his position in the financial world’s hall of fame. Money and perks weren’t terribly big motivators for this talented man, but the chance to make a lasting impact on how business gets done tempted him every time.

  Time slipped away. I was busy running the gallery and negotiating showings of my found-object collages. Invitations to teach, to speak, to jury art shows and to mentor young artists were pouring in. I was on the road so much it made me laugh when I realized, I’ve become my mother. But this was no laughing matter.

  I took a quick trip back to Los Altos to explore this revelation with Father Mike. Leora sacrificed all her relationships for her work as an itinerant court reporter. She loved the life. When her health failed and she could no longer travel on the court circuit, she just shriveled up and died. I loved my life in Carmel, but was I willing to put Roger off forever?

  Seek God’s will, Father Mike told me. He knows your heart better than you do.

  Roger and I pondered all this in our weekly long distance telephone calls.

  “Dee,” he would say, “let the gallery go. You don’t own it. You don’t need the money. Spend your time doing what you like to do.”

  “Well that’s the problem,” I would say, “I like everything I’m doing. I like business and I like art. And now I find I like sharing what I know with other people. I just wish I had more time to do everything I like.”

  Then we would spend the rest of our dimes talking about how much we missed each other and how much we wanted to be together, but we never made any real plans.

  Father Mike cautioned me about putting my relationship with Roger on hold for too long. We experience God when we show our love to other people, he told me; an absolute revelation to a girl raised by a mother who pushed everyone away. A wonder, also, that such advice came from a man wedded only to his calling.

  It was Leora who actually brought this dear Anglican Scotsman into my life, post-mortem. In her last years, she succumbed to a neighbor’s prodding and began attending Saint Matthew’s, an activity she hid from me for reasons I cannot fathom. Force of habit, I guess. Father Mike showed up to help me through a grief I didn’t know I had, and to help me connect with my family. I would have been content to file those faith lessons away for reference when I felt I needed them, but that’s the thing about God. He has this way of upsetting the file cabinet and resetting the agenda. I began to pay attention when Roger had a heart attack.

  Because I was not Mrs. Roger Russell, I didn’t get a phone call. I let a few days go by after I didn’t get my Saturday morning wake-up call and then began dialing numbers at GE. I managed to locate one of Roger’s colleagues who informed me that Roger had just been moved from the new intensive care unit at Bellevue Hospital into a private room.

  “Dee, I’m sorry I didn’t think to call you,” John said. “That was unforgivable of me. We’ve just been so busy with the quarter-end reports.” I hung up on him. Not my finest moment. After I got done blaming Roger for having a heart attack and not bothering to tell me, I cleared my calendar and called my travel agent. Two days later, I sat by Roger’s bedside fighting shock at how thin and pale he looked. It seemed like every bone in his body poked up beneath the lightweight blanket that covered him. Gray that had looked so elegant at his temples the last time I saw him now salted his thinning hair. Normally robust, he was wan and weak. It scared me.

  I thought back to the shy man who boldly pulled me to him, the lover whose kisses ignited fire in places in my widowed body I thought had gone cold forever, and all the years between then and now that we missed waking up in each other’s arms. How foolish we had been.

  Roger grew stronger every day. The hospital was the last place I wanted to be with him, but it gave us a bubble in time where our other commitments receded and we began to make our plans.

  “Dee my darling, this is a real wake-up call for both of us.”

  “Yes it is. You need to take better care of yourself. No more globetrotting. I’m sure your doctor won’t approve. Find projects that will keep you stateside.”

  Roger sat up in bed, gripped my hand and held it between his. “Listen to me, Dee. I’m not going back to work. I’m done.” He saw the alarm on my face and laughed. “I’m not done for, honey, I’m done with this crazy life we’ve been leading. It’s time to get married and settle down. I know what I have to do to make that happen. You figure out what you have to do to make that happen.”

  Six months later, I had trained my assistant to run the gallery and was unpacking boxes in the apartment in Los Altos when I heard a key turn in the lock. The door swung open and Roger walked through, set a bottle of champagne and two glasses down on the kitchen table and thrust a dozen long-stemmed red roses into my arms. Then he dropped to one knee, pulled a small velvet box out of the pocket in his bomber jacket, flipped it open, and slipped a dazzling, one-carat sparkler onto my finger.

  R

  Roger hangs up the phone and comes to sit beside me on the saggy couch we found at a garage sale. “Dee, I’m so sorry to hear about Fred. How awful for Laura. I’m glad you could be there for her, but I’m sorry you had to go through it.” He takes my hand and we sit in silence. How do I tell him there is more bad news?

  I pull Alaya’s letter out of my pocket. “That’s not all. I stopped at the mailbox. There was a letter from Alaya. Domeka has been implicated in some kind of violence in the Basque Country and he’s going to have to stand trial.”

  “What kind of violence?”

  Roger knows that I have twin nephews but he’s never m
et them. They are young men in their mid-twenties now, as different from each other as they could possibly be. It wasn’t always so. Valerie met her cousins on her first trip to Spain. They were like puppies that followed her around Alaya’s farmhouse. Valerie told me how they vied for her attention by showing off their language skills and ability at sports. But it was Danel who managed to forge a bond with Valerie, despite the fact that she is ten years older that he is. Danel, child of his mother’s heart, was the one who accompanied Alaya on visits to the United States when Elazar was too busy with his coaching responsibilities. Although Elazar has aged out of Jai Alai competition, he stays busy coaching young competitors and working with the Olympic committee to get Jai Alai accepted as one of the competitive games.

  Domeka is closer to his father. Elazar was pleased when Dom did well in amateur competition, but it was clear early on that he didn’t have what it takes to rise in the international spotlight the way his father did. Elazar radiates a personal alchemy that is rarely duplicated. He possesses raw talent, a ruthless desire to succeed, and an incredible sense of timing. He knows the exact moment to throw the switch that releases a personal charm that is genuine. It’s easy to see why he captivated my sister.

  Dom is happy in the shadows. He loves nothing better than to poke around the orchards making sure the apple harvesting is progressing well, or putter in the out-buildings checking the cheese processing and inventing improvements. Basques, I have discovered, are very enterprising people. Elazar is no exception. It did not take him long to recognize the value of Domeka’s attention to the family business and gently steer him away from a career in sports. How shocking, then, that Dom should be accused of criminal activity.

  “I don’t know what he’s gotten himself involved in.” I re-read Alaya’s letter for clues. “Alaya doesn’t give any details. She just says that she’s very afraid for him. She won’t be coming for Christmas this year like we’d planned, but she’s sending Danel over. She seems to think he’s not safe. It’s very confusing.”

  “Does she say what date the trial is set for?”

  “Sometime in the spring.”

  “That will give us plenty of time to figure out what we can do to help. Certainly we can offer financial support for a good attorney.”

  “They don’t need money, Roger. They need to be airlifted out of that country!”

  Roger snorts a laugh through his nose, but this is no laughing matter to me. He knows very little about what goes on in that ancient region, split by the Pyrenees Mountains, commanding the lucrative resources of the Bay of Biscay. Historically, the region is a hornets’ nest of angry passion. It is neighbor against neighbor over the issue of whether the Basques should fight to retain their own language and culture by forming their own country. To be fair, I never knew any of this either until I discovered I was part Basque. I’m not sure whether this is the time to say what I’m thinking.

  “I suppose it’s possible that Domeka has somehow gotten himself involved with the separatists.”

  Roger turns pale. “You mean you think he might be a terrorist?”

  By the time he completes that terrible sentence, his words have gained steam. He expels the accusation in a squeak that rises a full octave above his normally testosterone-fueled bass tone. I guess he knows more about the situation than I gave him credit for.

  “That’s an ugly word, Roger.” I want to stop this line of thinking immediately. “No, I don’t think Dom is a terrorist. But it’s certainly possible he somehow ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.” My sister must be frantic. “Roger, maybe I need to go over there now.”

  Roger puts a hand on my shoulder as if he is trying to keep me from rising up in air and taking off into the sun now beaming through the skylight directly overhead. My stomach growls in response.

  “You must be hungry. Let me go into the kitchen and make you a sandwich.”

  We haven’t even talked about my plan to pack my things and go spend a few days at Laura’s. Roger disappears into the kitchen and begins rattling around in the refrigerator for sandwich makings. He calls to me, “Are you going to stay with Laura for a few days until the curiosity about what happened dies down and people leave her alone?”

  Is this what people mean when what they say married couples think each other’s thoughts?

  R

  First Comes Love

  First Comes Love

  Roger opens a can of tuna fish in the kitchen and Puffy smells it before I do. The old Persian slides to floor from the space she has claimed on the sofa, her belly landing in the shag carpet before her hind feet hit the floor. Slowly, she waddles over to her dish under the kitchen table.

  Puffy is the cat Valerie brought to Carmel with her those many years ago when she would show up at my door with some pronouncement or other having to do with her living arrangements, or my living arrangements, her latest boyfriend or my inattention to Roger. After one of those visits I found Puffy curled up on my pillow, her cat carrier stowed in my closet. I called her in Palo Alto that night.

  “Oh Mom, I am the worst person in the world! I was going to ask you to keep Puffy for me for a while and I just plain forgot to ask!”

  “Valerie you know I’m allergic to cats. Why can’t you keep her?”

  “My lease is up and my landlord won’t extend it. He says keeping a cat violates his renter policy.”

  “You didn’t know that when you got Puffy?”

  I should have known better than to have pursued that line of questioning. How often have I repeated, Valerie is an adult who can make her own decisions and live with the consequences, out loud, over and over. She didn’t owe me an explanation of her behavior then any more than she does now for the ultra-modern house she put up on the lot I gave her. Still, I’m living with the consequences of both decisions. But I have to admit I love Puffy despite the fact that I’m now on allergy medication.

  Valerie obviously inherited her gypsy-like behavior from the women in our family. Except for Alaya, who has been content to live her entire life in the family home passed down through generations of Moragas, we don’t form lasting attachments easily. But I have changed. Father Mike helped me see that the pit I dug for myself when I kept people at a distance was called loneliness, a far more painful condition than the discomfort that sometimes precedes intimacy.

  Time and again I watched Valerie stumble on that same rock. First it was Peter, the charmer she brought home from Stanford who is now pitching for the Pirates. I see his darling wife and their two little girls when the television camera broadcasts their faces, glowing with excitement, after Peter has pitched another winning game. It’s a cold wind that blows in Pittsburgh, Valerie used to mutter and look away.

  Then it was Gibert Borrell. Doctor Gibert Borrell. Valerie met Gibert in Spain and, true to promise, he followed her back to the United States. Spanish men can make a girl feel very special, but one special girl is generally not enough to satisfy the Latin appetite. Still, she let him back into her life. To be fair, she was very vulnerable at the time.

  Valerie had fallen deeply in love with Ander Ibbara, a young attorney she met when I deeded her my Uncle Iban’s house in Bakersfield. Valerie and Andy’s sister, Pilar, cooked up a plan to turn the house into a Basque Cultural Center, and that’s when Valerie got her first taste of organizing and managing something. She served on the Board of the Center, commuting back and forth between Palo Alto and Bakersfield. That’s where Andy, the community’s rising young politico, weekend cowboy and most eligible bachelor, opened his arms to her. But Valerie and Andy could not come to terms with where to live. Of course, it goes deeper than that. Where to live is really not as difficult as how to live. Andy was firmly planted in the Central Valley. He had a thriving law practice to manage and a horse ranch to play with. Valerie was a Bay Area girl with a PhD in Spanish Literature, a publisher, a university teaching contract, and property of her own to play with. Valerie let Andy go. Freedom to live the life she chose seemed like
a good trade-off until the day she got word that Andy had married someone else.

  My saddest day was when Valerie celebrated her thirtieth birthday curled up in a fetal position on my bed in the Carmel duplex, Puffy wedged up under her arm. After Gibert finished his hospital residency at the San Francisco Medical Center, he promptly asked Valerie to be his wife.

  “Mom, it would have been perfect if I could have said yes,” Valerie sobbed and gulped air, trying to fit her words in between hiccups.

  “Why couldn’t you say yes?” I knew why, but I let her tell me.

  “We both could have had a career.” She calmed down, sat up on the bed, and started down her list. “He loved the property in Los Altos. We could have lived there.”

  I lowered my chin, raised my eyes to look at her, and waited.

  “But he cheated on me!”

  There it was. What I was expecting.

  “And, I want children and he doesn’t. Not American children.”

  Okay, that one I wasn’t expecting. I’d given up on ever having grandchildren. I was very proud of Dr. Valerie Carter, Professor Valerie Carter, and novelist Valerie Moraga Carter. I was amused by Valerie the land baron and neighborhood irritant, but the day Valerie gave her engagement ring back to Andy, I put away my dreams of ever hearing a child call my child Mommy.

  That moment was not the time to suggest to Valerie that she couldn’t have it all. She understood that she was up against a clock that can’t be adjusted to fit ambitious agendas. She’d made her choices and now the pain of emptiness overwhelmed her.

  “Oh baby.” I sat down on the bed and gathered her in my arms and we cried together.