The B4 Leg

by Various

  Zoe held his face in her hands, moving away a little bit to ask, her voice as ragged and breathless as his, ‘Why?’.

  Max let out a shuddering breath, and the wonderful moment—that moment of hope—was broken, shattered, so Zoe wished bitterly she hadn’t asked such a question. He’d been kissin. her; why had she asked any questions at all?

  ‘Because there can never been anything between us.’

  She touched her lips, swollen by his kisses, tasting of him. Her heart still raced and her body tingled. ‘It’s a little too late for that.’

  Max shook his head. He rolled to a sitting position, and after a moment Zoe did too. Her clothing was rumpled and she could feel sandy grit in strange places—between her breasts, on her thighs. ‘I mean it, Zoe. I can’t give you the life you want. I can’t be the husband you need.’

  A shard of anger lodged inside her, splintering her soul. ‘That’s starting to sound like a tired—and rather convenient—refrain.’

  Max swung his head around to stare at her, his eyes narrowed, and Zoe wondered if he was trying to see. His heart, she thought resentfully, was as blind as his eyes.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he demanded.

  ‘You don’t know what I want, Max. You don’t know what I need. And it’s not up to you to decide whether you can or cannot give me those things.’

  He sighed, the sound weary, and the anger drained out of the moment, leaving a far worse despair. ‘Do you know what I hate about going blind?’ he finally asked, and Zoe just shook her head, not willing even to hazard a guess. ‘The sense of powerlessness.’ Max scooped up some sand and let it trickle between his fingers. ‘I felt that once before, and I never thought I’d have to feel it again. The thought…’ He drew a breath, let it out. ‘It terrifies me,’ he finished so softly Zoe wasn’t even sure she’d heard him.

  ‘When…?’ she asked, her voice just as soft.

  ‘When my plane was shot down in combat.’ He gave a little humourless laugh. ‘Nineteen years ago, half a lifetime, and I still can’t get over it. Pathetic.’

  ‘No—’

  ‘We were captured,’ Max cut across her useless denial. ‘There were five of us. Four men, one woman. Jack, our pilot, was in bad shape. He died en route to the holding facility.’ His face was averted from hers, and Zoe longed to touch him. Reach him. ‘The others were stable, but hurt. More hurt than I was.’ He paused. ‘I was the healthiest, you see. The most capable of giving answers.’

  Zoe’s whole body went cold. ‘You mean—’

  ‘It’s standard,’ he cut across any sympathy she might have been about to offer. ‘You’re prepared for it. You expect it. It’s war after all.’

  ‘But still—’

  ‘There’s no justification for abuse,’ he said, as if he were agreeing with her even though she hadn’t said anything. ‘By anyone, any side. But I thought I was ready.’ Another pause; his head was still averted. ‘I didn’t think I’d break.’

  ‘Oh, Max.’ It was all she could say. There were no words, no useless expressions of sympathy or pity, she could offer, no absolution she could give.

  ‘They kept me blindfolded, you see,’ he said quietly. ‘They never took it off. I couldn’t—’ He paused, his throat working, his eyes now closed. Sweat beaded his brow. ‘I couldn’t stand it after awhile. I thought I might—I thought I was—’ He shook his head, let out a long, slow breath. ‘Crazy. Insane. I felt like I didn’t even know who I was any more. I couldn’t remember what it was like to…see. Feel.’ Zoe swallowed past the lump in her throat. She reached out and touched his arm again; to her relief and joy he didn’t shrug her away. He didn’t, she realised, seem aware of her touch at all. ‘I didn’t answer their questions. I stayed strong. I was prou. of myself.’ The sneer she’d once heard in his voice returned, his deepest scorn reserved for himself. ‘Then they started on the others. I couldn’t tell what they did. I only heard….’

  Zoe remembered his words about Diane, and whether she’d died: No. But sometimes I wish she did. Now she was starting to understand.

  ‘I told them everything,’ Max said after a moment, his voice now flat and emotionless. ‘I don’t even remember half the things I said. I was gibbering like an idiot, tripping over myself to give them the information they needed. I would have sold my own mother.’ He paused, turning to gaze unseeingly at the fathomless darkness, the stretch of ocean in front of them. ‘I sold my own soul.’

  ‘Then you aren’t the first to feel you did so,’ Zoe replied evenly. ‘Plenty of men—and women—have reacted as you did, and no one blames them for it. Max, you were torture.—’

  ‘Don’t.’ He held up one hand, his palm flat in front of her face, obscuring her view. The movement had the effect of both distancing and silencing her even though she was still touching him. ‘Don’t try to excuse or absolve me, Zoe. Trust me, plenty of people have tried. Doctors, nurses, comrades, friends. Even my crewmates. You know we all made it through, except Jack? They told me they understood. They said they would have done the same in my place. As though that makes it better.’ He spat the word with contempt. ‘It’s why I left the air force. An honourable discharge, because of war wounds, but the reality is there was no honour in it at all. I couldn’t hold my head up. I couldn’t even stand to look in the mirror.’

  Zoe wondered how much judgement and condemnation Max had poured on himself. More, she suspected, than anyone else had. Then she was proved wrong by his next words.

  ‘My father saw my true colours. Colour. Yellow.’ His mouth curled in a grim little smile. ‘We haven’t spoken since I left the air force. He fought in Vietnam. He was a POW too. H. didn’t—’ He stopped and simply shook his head. Zoe didn’t say anything; she couldn’t speak. She simply kept touching him, her hand on his arm, faintly squeezing, offering him her silent comfort and compassion. ‘So you see,’ Max finally continued, his tone final, ‘why we can’t be together.’

  Zoe’s hand stilled on his arm. She felt as if a bucket of icy water had been poured over her head, drenching her frail hopes. ‘That’s a non sequitur if I’ve ever heard one.’

  ‘I’m surprised you know the meaning of the word,’ he threw back, his eyes glinting in the moonlight, but for once Zoe refused to rise to the barb, refused right now to let her own pain matter more than his.

  ‘I’m not buying that, Max,’ she said evenly. ‘Not any of it. You’re trying to drive me away now because that’s how you protect yourself. You’re afraid of getting hurt.’

  ‘And now you’re some kind of psychoanalyst?’

  Zoe smiled sadly. ‘No. Just speaking from experience. I’ve been afraid too.’ She paused, her fingers warm against his skin. ‘I’m still afraid.’

  It was a long moment before Max spoke. When he did, the rage and desperation were gone, replaced only by a weary finality that alarmed Zoe more than anything that had come before. ‘Zoe, the month I spent hostage—blindfolded—was the worst of my life. I thought I’d put it behind me when I left the air force. I spent all my time—all my thoughts—on building my business. I even started flying again. When I blacked out in the plane and crashed, it shocked me. There was the pain, of course, but it also brought back the memories of when we crashed during combat. And then the diagnosis—it was like I was reliving it all again. The crash followed by darkness. Blindness. And even now the thought of being completely blind—of losing all light like I did before, of being so helples.…It terrifies me.’ He turned to gaze at her with bleak honesty. ‘I never wanted to be in such a powerless position again. And I won’t let anyone be hurt by it—by my own inability—again.’ He stopped then, and stared out to sea, leaving Zoe caught between fury, despair and an entirely unreasonable desire to pull Max into her arms and kiss him senseless—senseless enough to forget all these so-called reasons that would keep him from her.

  ‘I see,’ she finally said, and to her credit her voice was calm. Mild, even. ‘So your desire to protect me from this powerlessness of yours is
what is motivating your lack of involvement in my life? Our child’s life?’ Max angled his head so he was glancing at her from the periphery of his vision, where he’d told her he could see best. He didn’t speak. ‘Is that why you brought me here to your beach house? To tell me you couldn’t be involved?’

  ‘I’d hoped—’

  ‘Oh?’ Zoe cut him off; fury was winning over despair. ‘And what made you change your mind?’

  ‘Everything,’ Max said simply. ‘Everything is hard.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘You want to talk about torture?’

  ‘Not particularly—’

  ‘Going into town with you. Every second was a living hell.’

  ‘I’m sorry my company was so distressing,’ Zoe said, her tone a mixture of sharpness and levity.

  ‘I don’t mean being with you—’ Max explained impatiently.

  ‘I know you don’t. But it amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it? Because you’re going to let your damn self-pity keep you from trying to be happy. From letting us be happy.’

  ‘I can’t be a proper husband to you, Zoe!’ The words came out in an anguished roar. ‘I can’t stand by and watch—or no. watch, as the case may be—while something terrible happens. And something wil. happen. Sometime. Some day. I’ll fail you. I’ll fail our child. Do you think I can risk that? Live with that?’

  ‘Am I a prisoner of an enemy army?’ Zoe demanded. She flung her arms out. ‘Am I tied, gagged? No. This is not a war, Max. You may be blind, but you’re far from helpless.’

  ‘There will be times…things I can’t do—’

  ‘And there are things I can’t do,’ she shot back. ‘I already told you I can’t cook.’

  ‘Stop trivialising this!’ Max’s voice was low and furious. ‘You may think you can handle it, Zoe. You may see yourself as some kind of damned Florence Nightingale, but it’s simply not going to be like that. Day in, day out—are you prepared to live with the kind of life I’d have to—’

  ‘What, live as a recluse? Does being blind mean you can’t interact with society? Are you going to start hoarding newspapers and collecting cats too?’

  ‘Stop it.’ Max slashed a hand through the air.

  ‘No, you stop it,’ Zoe returned forcefully. ‘Stop feeling so damned sorry for yourself, Max. I know the signs because I’ve lived them myself. After the newspapers ran the story of my birth—When Blue Blood Turns Ba. and more—I was racked with self-pity. I didn’t even realise it at the time—I was so wrapped up in it. Poor little Zoe, who never knew her mother. Poor Zoe, who never felt like she belonged. The dumb one, the non-twin, the orphan. I suppose I let it be an excuse for my less than exemplary behaviour through the years. I let it be the reason why I didn’t even have a reason, why I’ve drifted through life without thinking about a greater purpose, a deeper design.’ Max opened his mouth, no doubt to utter some scathing retort, but Zoe wouldn’t let him. She neede. to say this. He needed to hear. ‘And then when I fell pregnant, I almost—almost—let myself play the poor little victim once more. Then I realised that a baby is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Not because I want a fashion accessory, but because I’ve found a purpose. I want to love and shape this little life, guide her steps and give her strength. I want her to see my mistakes without making them herself. I want to be a mother,’ Zoe finished simply. ‘And mothers can’t afford to sit around and pity themselves.’ She paused, let her voice turn hard. ‘And neither can fathers.’

  ‘I am not—’ Max began. He stopped abruptly. ‘I can see how you might look at it that way, but it’s a point of honour for me, Zoe. I failed someone—several people—before. Diane especially.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Max,’ Zoe said, and meant it. ‘But you can’t let a single episode in the past—as massive and life-altering as it was—define your entire existence. You can’t let it ruin your future, Max. Our future.’

  ‘We have no future,’ Max replied flatly. ‘We can’t.’

  Zoe stared at him. She felt like screaming, like stomping her feet and pulling her hair and crying like a child. A proper temper tantrum, that’s what she felt like having, the kind she hadn’t experienced since she was three years old. Yet even as the urge came over her, it left suddenly and completely, left her feeling empty and flat. There would be no reasoning with Max. No arguing, no understanding. He’d set his course, set his face away from her, and Zoe knew—felt it deep in her bones, in her broken heart—that he would not change. She couldn’t change him. She could, as she’d reminded herself only yesterday, change herself.

  Slowly, her body aching, she rose from the cold sand. She stood behind him, observing the rigid lines of his body with a strange, new, dispassionate calm. ‘Just one question,’ she said, her voice as flat and emotionless as she now felt. ‘Do you love me?’

  He didn’t answer. Zoe realised she hadn’t even expected him to. She turned and walked back towards the house, away from Max. It wasn’t until she reached the slatted wooden path stretching between the dunes that she heard his reply: ‘Yes.’.

  Max stayed out on the cold sand until the sky lightened with the sun’s first pale rays. He could tell that much; the darkness faded to grey, to nothingness, a blank canvas.

  He felt as blank as the sky, empty and leached of light, although perhaps that was merely a way of protecting himself. For underneath that comforting numbness was, he sensed, a deep well of terrible emotion he could not bear to plumb. Grief, pain, loss, hurt, fear, guilt. Too much to feel. Too much truth to acknowledge.

  Zoe was right. He did feel sorry for himself, had been struggling with self-pity since he’d learned his diagnosis. God knew, he wanted to be stoic. Strong. Take it like a man, as his father had urged him too since he was six years old and struggling not to cry when their dog had died. Breaking under hostile questioning had been the last straw for his father; as a son, Max had proved an utter failure. A humiliation, a source of shame.

  And he felt it himself. Perhaps that was why he wasn’t willing to risk a life with Zoe; he couldn’t bear her to be ashamed of him. To lose her because of his own weakness. It wasn’t a point of honour at all; it was simply a matter of fear.

  Zoe didn’t see Max again. She stretched out on her bed and watched the sky lighten, the stars going out one by one as if snuffed by the heavens. Perhaps she slept; she wasn’t sure. When the hour was finally late enough for her to call a taxi service and arrange her transport back to New York, she did so, her body leaden, her heart numb.

  She took a taxi to East Hampton, and then a bus—the jitney, full of sunburned weekenders, laughing and chatting or else sleeping through their hangovers—back to Grand Central. From there she hopped a cab to the Balfour apartment, and she entered the cool, quiet sanctuary of its elegant rooms with something almost bordering on relief. It was the closest thing to an honest emotion that she’d felt since leaving Max the night before.

  ‘You’re back.’ Lila, grey haired, dark eyed, with a faint exotic accent—Zoe wasn’t sure where she was from and realised, to her shame, that she’d never bothered to ask—stood in the corridor that led to the kitchen and the servants’ quarters. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘I spent the weekend in the Hamptons.’ Had she only been there for three days? It seemed ludicrous, impossible. She felt completely transformed, as ancient as if she’d been gone years.

  Lila nodded, somewhat stiffly, and Zoe could only imagine what the housekeeper thought. Zoe Balfour, bored with New York and partying it up somewhere else. She smiled tiredly. ‘I think I need a bath and bed.’ Lila nodded again and turned to go back to the kitchen. ‘Lila,’ Zoe asked suddenly, ‘where do you go so often? My father mentioned something—are you visiting a relative?’

  Clearly surprised, Lila turned around slowly, her eyebrows elegantly arched. ‘My sister. She has cancer—she’s in the hospital. I visit her twice a week. If it is too much—’

  ‘No, no,’ Zoe said quickly. ‘I just wondered. I’m sorry. About your sister, I mean.’ She paused, seeing
the lines of worry on Lila’s high forehead that she’d never bothered to notice before, the dark shadows in her eyes. ‘It must be hard.’

  Something flickered across Lila’s face, surprise perhaps. ‘Yes,’ she agreed quietly, ‘it is.’

  Everyone had a story, Zoe thought as she turned towards the bedroom wing. Everyone had a sorrow.

  ‘Before I forget,’ Lila called, and Zoe stilled. ‘A man came by. He left a letter. It’s on the hall table.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Zoe murmured. She hurried towards the little gilt table where the post was usually left, her heart beating with fast, frantic beats. Had he come? Right from the beach house, beating her own slow journey on the bus, to see her—

  She turned the heavy cream envelope over, ripped it open. Her heart did a curious flip-flop of disappointment and surprise when she read the brief message.

  I would like for us to meet. Please call to arrange a time at your earliest convenience. T. Anderson.

  Her father wanted to meet her? Why? Did he regret the way he’d sent her on her way before? Was at least one man in her life coming back to say sorry?

  It mattered so much less than Max, and yet the message—the contact—gave Zoe a small amount of solace, a little hope. Perhaps at least this would be made right.

  When she rang Thomas Anderson’s offices, she was put straight through to his receptionist; she remembered the haughty, frosty-haired woman with a patina of glossy make-up all too well.

  ‘Mr Anderson will see you four o’clock tomorrow,’ she informed Zoe crisply, ‘at the Collegiate Club on Fifty-fifth and Fifth Avenue. Do you know it?’

  ‘No,’ Zoe said, ‘but I’m sure I can find it.’

  The receptionist hung up.

  It was a beautiful day, the sun bathing the city buildings in light, as Zoe walked down Fifth Avenue towards the meeting place. The trees on the edge of Central Park provided leafy shade for the cobblestone path that led down to Fifty-Ninth Street, the famed Plaza Hotel presiding over that well-known corner. She walked past the streams of tourists and the sidewalk sketch artists, one enterprising soul decked out in silver paint as a Statue of Liberty mime. She absorbed it all, realising that she’d come to love this city, its vibrant energy and its colourful canvas of people. It was a shame, she thought with a wry sorrow, that she no longer had a reason to stay.