Sunshine and Shadow

by Sharon

  Then she was released—and became more aghast when he uncurled her fingers, removing Clover's halter, tethering it to one of the posts of the sagging wire fence that looped along the tree-fringed field. Her eyes went wide as he peeled off his jacket and dropped it on a dry carpet of grass near a clump of cowslips. Taking her shoulders in a grip that frightened her thoroughly, he set her lightly down on his jacket. His shadow swept over her face as he sat beside her, his manner seasoned, his expression companionable. Does he just want to converse with me? she wondered. She stared down in embarrassment at her knees.

  Breezes whirled across the hayfield before them, raising and smoothing the blue-green leafage like dappling velvet. Chilly water trickled in the creek. Birds sang with dizzying beauty, invading her senses. Sound became a physical presence around her, a comforting vapor. Behind her the bank rose more than ten feet, sheltering them from the road, and she had guilty gratitude for that, as though she were a child again and into mischief. Yet the feelings Alan Wilde aroused in her were far. removed from childhood.

  "Are you shy?" he asked softly.

  She hesitated.

  "If you could handle the monster, you can handle me," he said.

  She had the impression that he was smiling. "Perhaps I'm tongue-tied. I don't know many English men."

  "But I'm not English." His tone conveyed that he couldn't understand how she'd gotten such an idea.

  "That's what we call… others. We call ourselves the Plain People, because that's what we are. Just plain people. We call you the English."

  We call you the English. Alan Wilde felt a wave of elaborate delight. So English was the Amish word for honky. But if there's anything you aren't, darling, it's plain. She was wearing a sunbonnet today. Its heavy black brim projected forward, veiling her features. Only the tip of her nose was visible. Here I am in Wisconsin trying to seduce Holly Hobby.

  "Tell me about your bonnet." He watched the patch of her nose, the tense perfection of her shoulders. "It covers you from the side, like blinders on a carriage horse. Is that why they make you wear it? Eyes forward, hands employed usefully, a life of duty, devotion, and submission?"

  She turned, as he had hoped she would, and he bathed in the winsome pastels of her complexion. Her eyes held an expression that was closer to surprise than to offense; she sensed his irony, but found it alien, obscure.

  "I wear it because it keeps the wind from my face. It's for protection, not restraint."

  "And your clothes—long sleeves, long skirts—are they for restraint, or protection?"

  She watched in fascination as the corners of his mouth curved upward like the tip of a cat's tail. The question was impossible. She couldn't begin to sort through his layers of meaning, and he was making it difficult to retreat. Could it be that in his unorthodox way he was simply trying to be friendly? Or perhaps he was interested in her way of life, as the tourists were. Curiosity about him was expanding inside her, an irresistible force that shoved against her will to deny it. The freedom he felt to question her was staggering, and far wider than, she had been raised to believe was polite or proper, but the frank manners were intuitive and compelling.

  "Are you working on your movie nearby?" she asked, finally desperate for a way to speak to him that was within the realm of her experience.

  "Yes. But that's not why I'm here. I suspected you were an early riser, and I drove here hoping to see you," he said, and saw her receive the news with a jolt.

  "You'd like me to pay for repairing the—"

  "No. No, no…" He began to laugh, and the impulse nearly overcame him to drag her into his arms and hold her against him, kissing away her confusion. God, to be like her, that innocent again. The latent tenderness burned him briefly, and he regretted the poverty of conscience in him that led him to pursue her when he knew that it would have been in her best interest if he left her alone. He wasn't going to stop, and he knew it. The moment he'd touched her, he knew. It had become inevitable, established. He was going to take her to bed. But she was so naive that he was compelled to improve her odds against him, schizophrenic as that might sound. "I want you to understand, Susan. It's you. I came because I want to be with you. Don't invest it with hidden meaning. Don't paint it with elements it doesn't have."

  She stared at him as if he'd slapped her.

  If he meant what he seemed to mean… She felt white-hot shock. Was he saying… ? No. It couldn't be. Even in his world, this couldn't be how things were done. The light green-gray eyes were warm, his body relaxed, almost lazy, as he rested back on his elbows, looking at her. His peach-gold crew-neck sweater lifted color from the fragrant grass. His legs were outstretched, one knee flexed in worn jeans, the posture casually attractive. How natural he looked, how at ease. His expression was even rather sweet. It didn't seem possible that he could mean… There must be no one in the world who could meet someone once and decide right then and there that he wanted to be intimate with that person. She could feel the color building in her cheeks. He couldn't mean such a thing. She was giving his words hidden and shocking meanings, even as he had warned her not to do. Embarrassed, she tried to compose her expression, grateful that he couldn't know the trend of her thoughts. I suppose I ought to remarry, she thought desperately. I'm becoming obsessed.

  "Why?" she asked.

  Her brown eyes were inquiring, her head slightly tilted. It was a good question, but one that he pulled away from exploring, because he had no doubt that the answer would reveal an undertow in his character that he would rather store in his unconscious self. Her looks were almost incidental to his need for her, but that was the obvious explanation, and the safest.

  "In part because you're one of the most beautiful women on God's green earth."

  Her lips parted. She pulled a face and began to laugh. He could see clearly that there was no modesty in her response; it was simple oblivion. Her beauty, or her lack of beauty, if that had been the case, was not part of her value system. She didn't know. She didn't care. And she assumed he was teasing her, and that relieved her uncertainty. He could see that she seemed to have decided he was an eccentric but congenial stranger. For the first time he realized how separate she was from him. She came from a people that formed a little universe in and of themselves, different, apart. He had a nearly overwhelming compulsion to take her in his arms and bring her close. But he recognized now that she didn't understand the full implications of his interest in her, and wouldn't understand it unless he used very graphic language or laid her back in the grass and covered her with his body. Or gave her time.

  She had stopped laughing, though her smile lingered. What a smile she had. He wanted to curl up inside it and sleep for a year.

  I'll give you the time you need, Susan Peachey.

  "Did anyone ever draw line pictures on your back?" he asked, slipping into the role she had cast him in.

  Her nose crinkled. She looked curious, dubious, intrigued in spite of herself.

  "I don't believe so."

  He noted that her dialogue had expanded from monosyllables. There was no doubt she'd decided he was harmless. The internal tenderness nagged him again. He hadn't meant to leave her undefended, and some of the gentleness he felt went into the smile he sent her. "It's a game. I draw something on your back with my finger, and you guess what I've drawn. All right?"

  "All right." She repeated the words, thinking how funny he was, how whimsical. He moved so quickly from one thing to the next that she could hardly follow him.

  Earlier apprehension about his motives had fled, and she wondered if she hadn't listened one time too many to Aunt Mary's story about how she'd let her sister talk her into a covert visit to the fair where an English man in a fancy plaid jacket had offered to ride with her on the Ferris wheel and then forced a kiss on her mouth as they swung above the twinkling lights of the fairground. Daniel might say, "In my opinion, she loved every minute of it," but the story was supposed to be her warning about English wiles. It was hardly necessary. She'd ha
d a few experiences of her own with English men—catcalls from passing cars, obscure innuendos from gangs of young men who lounged near the vending machine beside the grocery store.

  Alan Wilde was another kind of man. There was a refined elegance to his manners, and there was humor, and those were qualities she couldn't imagine in association with ill intentions. Surely he was to be trusted.

  It would be foolish to make too much of his touching her. The English were free and easy in that way. She had seen them holding hands in public, embracing with little reason. They saw nothing indecent in it, no shame. No need to read a meaning into it that was absent.

  Watching him redirect his glamorous frame to her back, she had the slip of a notion that he wasn't as wealthy as she'd imagined. Those knees were one Monday wash away from needing a patch. The thought erased more of her caution, although it stabbed briefly when his arms rested lightly on her shoulders.

  His fingers absorbed the tightening of her muscles. She turned to look up at him, her gaze anxious. She had amazing lashes. They swept downward, curving slightly with pliant silkiness. He reassured her with a smile. Is it just shock, or are you responding to me, Susan?

  "It's a game, remember? You can't look."

  She turned her face forward, looking at Clover nosing under the fence to prune the edges of the hayfield. She gazed at the distance and saw the same horizon, the same fields, heard the same sounds she had always known. Nothing had changed. Nothing altered. The material laws of the earth had not been transformed in the last ten minutes—yet there was this odd thing happening within her. She was becoming weak all over from the touch of this man's hands. Even as she recognized she should stop him, she couldn't pull away from his achingly pleasurable touch. Images came of nights in a warm bed with her husband, of the comfort of a strong body at her side. And of the times in recent months when loneliness overtook her and she would find herself half-weeping from the need to be touched, and she would pick up one of the babies at church and hold it, just hold it.

  Capturing the upper edge of her shawl, he began to draw it gently lower. Again he felt her uncertain resistance.

  "We have to give you a fair chance," he said. "How could you feel anything through this?"

  She kept to herself a dismal revelation: She was feeling much too much already;, he was touching someplace inside her that was desperately needy.

  Wilde studied Susan Peachey from behind. Under the stark, simple lines of her dark azure gown, her back was straight, like a female gymnast's. Beneath her bonnet he could see the fine eggshell flesh of her nape, softened by a scattering of drifting midnight curls, and if he leaned over only a few inches, he could have stirred them with his breath.

  "What's this?"

  She followed the heart-lifting lazy path of his fingers. "A circle."

  "Obviously it's a circle. But what object does it represent?"

  "How could I know? So many things are circles."

  "You're not getting into the spirit of the game," he observed.

  She smiled at the gently chiding tone. "Well, then, it's a ball."

  "Wrong."

  "Is it the ring through a bull's nose?"

  "Very creative. You're coming closer." Interesting. There was a Rorschach inkblot quality to this.

  "Is it the nose plate on a water bowl?"

  "Don't get technical. I'm not a farmer." He shifted to look around at her smile. "It was a wedding ring. You don't wear one."

  "No. We don't wear jewelry."

  Have we got a problem here, Susan? "Are you married?"

  "I was. My husband was killed in an accident two years ago."

  "I'm sorry." Wilde, you incredible hypocrite. "Any children?"

  He was sensitive to the world of desolation in the single syllable. Susan, Susan, what am I doing screwing around in your tender life? His finger moved again on her back. "What's this?"

  "Is it a pitcher?"

  "No. A number."

  "Is it a four?"

  "No." He repeated the motion with the pleasure of touching her running in a thrill up his arm.

  "Is it twenty-one?"

  "Very good. Is that how old you are?"

  Her chuckle sounded pleased. "I'm twenty-five."

  "Ah. Aged." That produced another chuckle. He laid his palm on her back and began to massage her slowly. It occurred to him that he had expected her clothes to feel as archaic as he found her culture, but the cloth was soft, pleasantly saturated with her warmth. For the first time he was able to ascertain detail about the shape of her body.

  "What are you doing?"

  He didn't miss the breathless quality of her voice, the slight quiver. Yes, darling. Respond to me. But don't give me too much too soon. My self-control is only so tempered.

  "I'm erasing the number."

  He continued the game, and was able to discover by the same methods that she had twelve brothers .and sisters, that her parents and most everyone else she knew was a farmer, except one uncle who made buggies; that a sixty-mile bus trip to the zoo in Madison was one of the biggest adventures of her life; that she taught seventeen Amish children in the one-room schoolhouse where she had attended school herself. He also accidentally discovered that she wasn't wearing a bra, and experienced a sharp chain reaction in his body. Ob, Lord, I wish I hadn't found that out.

  "Is that a star?" she asked, enmeshed in her innocent involvement in the game.

  "No. Those are letters." He made them again.

  "Is it AW?"

  "You're getting good at this. AW it was—my initials." He realigned himself to her side, smiling into her wondering eyes. He followed her hairline with one finger and said gently, "You've been branded."

  She stared at him for what seemed like a very long time. Then her lashes fluttered and she looked down, tightening her shawl convulsively. Quickly and gracefully, she rose to her feet, murmuring that she didn't know what had gotten into her, she mustn't stay, there were chores, then school… While she untied the donkey, he had the impression she was trembling. He sat watching until he saw her stop, turning to face him as though it were something she couldn't prevent herself from doing.

  "Good-bye, Mr. Wilde," she said.

  And that brought everything together in his mind. A chain of girl after girl turning, whispering good-bye to an offscreen lover. It was so simple, so dramatically easy that he had almost overlooked it. And it was hard to remember that he actually had the power. All he needed were those great looks and great screams. It was too easy.

  She had begun to walk away, leading the donkey.

  "Susan?" She stopped. "Would you like to be in my movie?" . She turned, very, very slowly.

  "I don't think I could have heard you correctly..."

  "Yes, you did. I asked if you'd like to be in the movie I'm making."

  "Be in the movie…" She repeated the words as though she couldn't understand what they meant.

  "As an actress."

  "Actress. Me? I could never—"

  "You could,, or I wouldn't be asking. You don't have to know what you're doing. I do." He had never seen anyone look quite so stunned. "We can pay you thirty thousand."

  She was so taken aback, because he seemed to be making the outrageous offer in all sincerity, that she heard herself say, "Thirty thousand… what?"

  That made him smile. "Thirty thousand of whatever you want. It would probably be easiest for the accountants if it were dollars. Don't give me an answer now. Think about it. What time does school let out?"

  "Two-thirty…"

  "All right. I'll come by after that and we can talk. You're in the white clapboard building down the road, aren't you?" He rose to his feet, sweeping up his jacket with one hand, and joined her, climbing up the steep shoulder by her side.

  She started to speak again. "I must not have properly understood—" ,

  "You did. No answers until later."

  Walking beside her, amused by her flabbergasted silence, they had just reached his car when he heard her mu
rmur, "If I were to do that, I'd be an opportunist."

  It was such an offbeat remark that he found himself asking, "What?"

  "An opportunist." She gazed up at him, her air candid and instructive. "It means a person who takes advantage of an opportunity regardless or the consequences."

  It had been a long time since he'd met anyone guileless, enough to assume he needed the definition of a word. Quiet laughter rollicked through him. "I know what it means. Why did you choose it?"

  "Why, because it was today's word."

  Her eyes bade him farewell, and she left him, running across the russet-brown face of a Wisconsin field. The donkey cantered at her side. Susan's heels caught her skirts, tossing them in an animated ruffle.

  Alan Wilde stared after her, struck by the spontaneous Tightness of his impulse. The haunting dove of a heroine in his movie did exist. Polly Bates was real. She was Susan Peachey.

  Chapter 5

  Alan Wilde anticipated a fight, and he got one. Those with any conceivable say in choosing Carrie's replacement were appalled at the introduction of Susan Peachey's name into the process. Wilde, they said, you can't be serious, and as soon as he heard that, he knew he was going to win. Can't. That word. He always won arguments that began with the phrase, "Wilde, you can't." It sharpened his appetite for victory. He had spent his adult life sating himself on the meeting and besting of challenges.

  Often there was even a primitive pleasure in the industry dogfights, and in the exercise of examining and expanding the boundaries of his authority. One of his lovers had called it his "power-trip high," and it was not one of the qualities in himself he found particularly appealing. To ignore it, he had begun to try to separate his ego from the core of every dispute. The intense behind-the-scenes film-industry squabbles, the struggles over the fate of a million-dollar budget, were diminished in his mind to a cartoon fray, Tom and Jerry disappearing into a cloud of dust with arms and legs projecting from it.

  Kay Lorine from wardrobe was his easiest victim. Her nervous blue eyes implored him from beneath the brown bangs that hid her eyebrows. When he picked up one of her hands to give it a friendly pat, he discovered that her palms were sweating.