“Will you keep the Rocks?” Aegina asked.
“Yeah. For now, anyway. Sally’s running the place. It makes its costs. Actually, it’s doing well. There are people who come through the website now. What about you? Will you sell?”
“C’an Cabrer? Oh, no. It’s home to me, more than anywhere. And it’s Charlie’s too. He loves it, and he still loves coming here. So, no, we’ll keep it. Not that you can sell a property in Spain now anyway.”
“No, right.”
“Luc, Charlie and I both watched Ryan,” she said. “We absolutely loved it.”
“Thank you.”
“Was he really a spy, your father?”
“I’m not sure. He could have been. He used to vaguely mention doing what he called his State Department work. But I really don’t know. I made all that stuff up.”
“I was very moved by it. I saw you, of course, and your father.”
Luc’s greatest success had come only in the last two years, with the French television miniseries, broadcast in Britain and many European markets, about an American journalist, Ryan, living in Paris during the Cold War. Under the cover of reporting European events for an unnamed American newspaper based in Paris, Ryan was a minor CIA operative through the decades after World War II. The series’ popularity and critical acclaim stemmed from the mix of Ryan’s cloak-and-dagger work with the more quotidian drama of raising a child in Paris as a single father. There was something of the tenderness of François Truffaut, several critics had noted, in the relationship between Ryan and his growing, sometimes fractious son. Luc’s French agent was now “talking” with HBO, AMC, and other television companies about producing an American version of the series. It would be like drug money, his agent said, the sale to the Americans, with an executive producer credit, but Luc was worried that the Americans would also ruin it. A not entirely unpleasant dilemma.
“You know, I never thought much about my father—I didn’t see him—while he was there. I’ve been thinking about him a lot. When I look back now, he seems a shadowy character.”
“I’m sure you miss him.”
“I’d like to see him again. Talk to him. See who he really was.”
“And have you got someone in Paris?”
“Just Sophie.”
“Who?”
“Sophie—my made-up girlfriend, years ago, when we went to Morocco. You had somebody too—”
“Dennis! Yes! But do you really have someone? I hope you do.”
“You do, huh?” The likelihood of meeting anyone who wouldn’t make him feel even lonelier seemed increasingly remote. Life was a dwindling process now, not a building proposition. He couldn’t imagine being with someone new, opening up, feeling appreciated and understood, without having to explain his dubious non sequiturs and increasingly arcane or redundant frame of reference. “Not really. But I have friends. You know. A sort of life. You? Are you seeing anyone?”
“I have been.”
“Ah.” Why did that feel more desolating than the death of his mother? “That’s nice.”
“It has been.”
“Not an unqualified statement.”
“No. One changes. Or things change.”
“Who was it? Or is it?”
“Was—nobody. Someone I thought I understood, but in fact, didn’t.”
“That I understand.”
Their salads arrived.
“Gracias,” said Luc automatically.
“Yeah, no problem,” said their waitress.
“You wanted to give me something?” said Aegina.
“Yes.” He pushed a small manila envelope in front of him across the table. “I found an old shoe box in my mother’s closet. It contained the certificate of marriage between her and your father, and a divorce document, for same. Also an undeveloped roll of black-and-white film, old one-twenty stock. The bloke at the fotografería in town still does film processing.”
Aegina drew a handful of photographs from the envelope. They were glossy and new. “Oh, my God,” she said softly.
Luc shifted his chair so that he could look at them with her. “Obviously taken by your father. I guess she took the one of him.”
“My God, Luc. Look how beautiful your mother was—look at her hair: it’s almost black.”
“Is that his boat?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Not Mallorca, is it? Looks more like Italy or somewhere.”
Aegina looked at him. “It’s the honeymoon voyage.”
“So it would seem.”
Her father had always kept his old Agfa Solinette aboard the boat. He had carefully photographed anchorages, ports, views of small coves from the hills rising above them, harbor approaches from the sea, stretches of coastline all over the Mediterranean. These photographs, adeptly composed and exposed, always in contrasty black-and-white, some dating back more than sixty years, had illustrated his articles and his one book. Visible in many of those old photographs, resting peacefully at anchor against a backdrop of an ancient Greek or Italian fishing village, lay a small, pretty, white-hulled sailboat, his beloved Nereid—on which, Aegina knew, her father and Lulu had sailed from Mallorca on the day after their wedding in July 1948. A short time later they had separated, and Nereid had sunk. There had never been any further, or more specific, details. When she had asked her father, several times, why he had no photographs from that summer, he told her they’d all been lost when the boat sank that September. Yet he’d managed to save the camera, and the important books, and everything else of any value that had been aboard the yacht.
“Can I get copies of these?” she asked.
“These are yours,” said Luc. “I made an extra set for you.”
She went through them slowly. “It’s so strange—to think of them together.”
“On a little boat too. She hated boats.”
Aegina looked at him. “What happened to them? He would never tell me.”
“She wouldn’t tell me either,” said Luc. “They fell out—that’s the way she put it: ‘We fell out,’ she said. And that’s all she ever said.”
Aegina handed him three photographs. “What are these?”
“I was wondering if you might know. If he ever said anything about that. It looks like a shipwreck.”
Three photos of men waving, in obvious distress, from the bow of a wrecked, apparently sinking fishing boat.
“No,” she said. “He never mentioned anything like that.”
“I suppose they saved whoever it was.” He gave the three photographs back to her.
She pulled a photograph from her handbag and handed it to him.
“Oh, jeez,” Luc said.
He stared at the faded color shot of himself and Aegina—so young—leaning against a ship’s rail, both smiling awkwardly into the camera.
“I’ve never seen this,” he said. “Where is this?”
“It has to be on the ferry. Minka must have taken it. I don’t remember her giving it to me. I found it a few days ago.”
“I would guess on the way to Morocco,” he said, unable to look at her, “rather than on the way back.” It sounded flippant, he immediately regretted it.
She took it from him and put all the photographs in her bag. She looked up at Luc. “Did you know that your mother seduced Charlie?”
Luc stared at her, trying to read her face. It betrayed nothing. “When?”
“On her birthday. When he was fifteen. It might be called rape now. Certainly child abuse.”
“No, I didn’t know that. I’m sorry to hear it.”
“Are you surprised?”
“No.” Not at all. “I won’t be absurd and apologize for her. But . . . I’m sorry to know that.” Then, he couldn’t help it, “Thanks so much for telling me.”
“I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to.” Aegina stabbed a for
k into her salad. But she put it down and looked across the table at Luc. “Do you know how I found out?”
“No.” Luc wanted to get up and dive headfirst over the iron railing to the concrete quay below, but he sat still and modulated his voice into a pleasant tone. “Why don’t you tell me.”
“Charlie never actually told me—he wouldn’t tell me who it was, only what happened—but I put it together. She gave him the Moroccan shirt—the original, the one I brought from London. I saw it in his room after the party—he kept it for years. He thought he was in love with her. And of course, she didn’t want to see him again, like that.”
Luc remembered Charlie wearing the shirt the night of the birthday party.
“Fuck,” said Aegina. “I’m sorry, Luc.” She reached across the table and pulled his hand out of his lap and wrapped hers around it. “I don’t know why I told you—except I think I’ve been wanting to for years . . . I’m not sure why. And it’s the Rocks . . . it wasn’t easy for me there either. I’m sorry.”
She let go his hand, put the photographs in the envelope and the envelope in her bag. She pulled out a twenty-euro bill and laid it on the table.
“I’ll get it,” said Luc.
“No, it’s all right. Let me. Thank you for the photos. I’m so sorry . . .” Aegina stood up abruptly. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “Bye.”
“Bye.”
She walked away.
Luc turned his head and watched her until his eyes filled and he could see nothing but an unfocused wash of light and color.
He looked back in the direction of the boats spread below until the port came back into focus. He looked down the long quay ending in the small port light that blinked at night. He looked out toward the sea, which today sparkled with a harsh relentlessness.
The chair grated on the tile and Aegina sat down beside him. She’d pulled it around the table until she was right beside him. She put both hands on his arm and he turned to look at her. He saw that her eyes were wet.
“Come up to the house for dinner.”
“No, thanks. You’ve got Charlie and Fergus there. Family time.”
“They’re both going back to London tomorrow. I’m staying on for a bit. Come up tomorrow.”
He blinked again. He felt her hands tighten on his arm. “Come up, Luc.” She was looking into him in a way he remembered from long ago . . . the toolshed one night.
“What time?”
“Seven.”
Aegina leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. She drew back and her thumb moved gently across his cheek where it was wet. Her eyes wandered all over his face and finally came back to his eyes. “You’ll come, right?”
“Yes. I’ll come.”
“Seven.”
“Yes.”
“Good,” she said.
She stood again and walked across the terrace. He watched her as she got into her rented Renault Clio, and followed the car until he lost it down on calle Llobet.
He looked back out across the port, this time to the rocks and the dirt road along the harbor.
He felt suddenly strange. Off-kilter, weak . . . dizzy? Was he going to have a stroke . . . now?
After a moment he realized what it was.
He was filled with joy.
Gerald came to the surface gasping, wheezing, unable to get his breath. The water felt icy, making it even harder to breathe. He kicked instinctually—sharp pain shot through his legs again. His knees were on fire, but the cold water began to numb them. His hands flailed, attempting to paddle—he touched flesh.
He twisted his head and saw Lulu facedown in the water close by. He pulled at her, managed with tremendous effort to turn her faceup, but submerging himself again. He kicked, screaming in pain, though this came out as a few bubbles. His chest spasmed trying to inhale, and he knew he would only suck in water. He kicked and somehow surfaced. He could only blow bubbles in the water around his mouth. One hand found Lulu again, the other feebly paddled; he went under again. Surfaced . . .
So he brought them both to the rock face, where he could move no more, but hung onto a button of limestone while holding Lulu’s head, her face anyway, out of the water, against his chest. He looked up but saw only the rock rising to the sky. “Help . . . Ayuda,” he exhaled aloud, several times.
Gerald looked down at Lulu. She was breathing. Strands of pure white hair were plastered untidily across her tan face—she looked disturbingly half drowned. He would have smoothed the hair away if he’d had a third hand. Then a small wave washed over her head. With a great effort Gerald lifted and held her more tightly against him. Her face emerged from the water with her hair perfectly drawn back from the hairline, as if she herself had tilted her head back underwater and rose face upward through the surface. Now she appeared groomed, and lightly asleep, as if she would open her eyes at any moment and look directly up at him from the cradle of his arm against his chest.
Now, at last, he could tell her.
As he opened his mouth to suck in breath to speak, another wave, a larger wave, washed over them, broke against the rock and pulled them away from the shore. Gerald lost his grip on Lulu. She floated away from him.
“Wait . . .” he bubbled into the water. His hand found some piece of her clothing. He pulled at her. But he was underwater. She hadn’t heard it yet. He was going to say:
I did come back, you know. With the sheep into the cave. You got out the same way Odysseus did . . . out of the very same cave . . . Then I lured them away—you never saw the film I gave Milly, did you? That would have shown you. I got them away from you and I took care of them—
Did she hear? Where was she?
Suddenly he knew that she’d fallen from the rocks. She’d cut her chin. He’d got his arm around her. He held her head up out of the water and looked into her face. She was only asleep. Her hair was shot through with gray; it would be white before long. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She was all right now. He’d saved her.
Gerald cradled her head against his chest and struck out strongly for Nereid.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I could not have written this book without the love, nonjudgmental support, and belief in me and my work that I’ve received from my brother, David. I can’t imagine what or where I’d be without him. At best, living in a highway culvert, screaming at passing cars for interrupting my exquisite daydreams. I’m also inexpressibly grateful for the love and support I’ve received from Liz Sharp, Cynthia Hartshorn, Matthew deGarmo. Ports through all storms.
Many people gave this book generous editorial help. At Antioch University in Los Angeles, Steve Heller was my first, last, and most sanguine mentor. Also at Antioch, Dan Bellm, Gayle Brandeis, Jenny Factor, Seth Fischer, Christine Hale, Tara Ison, Jim Krusoe, Alistair McCartney, Bernadette Murphy, Susan Taylor Chekak, and Howie Davidson and Audrey Mandelbaum. I want to thank Antioch friends Mary Guterson, Vanessa Franking, Wendy Dutwin, Wendy Fontaine, Eric Howald, Ashley Perez, Rachael Warecki, Marcia Meier, Arturo Sande, Daniel José Older, Elizabeth Earley, Susan Nunn, Christina Lynch, Christine Buckley, Lee Stoops, Andromeda Romano-Lax, who are all somehow part of this book.
Joan Juliet Buck, Tony Cohan, Damien Enright, Kim Dana Kupperman, David Nichols, Peter Selgin, and Liz Sharp all read the book in various drafts and offered constructive help, and hope. Kim Dana Kupperman also gave an early draft its first copyedit, and got me a job.
I’m grateful to Michael White, of the MFA program at Fairfield University, Connecticut, and Mark Spencer and Diane Payne of same at the University of Arkansas at Monticello.
I’m grateful to my writing students, all of them, everywhere. It always seems they are allowing me to work out my own stuff on their time.
In Los Angeles, and elsewhere, Annie Nichols for so much over many years.
Many people, in many places, were kind to me in ways
that directly and indirectly helped me during the writing of this book, and afterward: Jon Billman, Dick Bloom, Selma Bornstein, Olivia Brown, Susan Burks, Jo-Ann Chorney, Peter Collier and Jeanne Davis, Bridget Conway, Tom Corwin and Marlene Saritzky, Larry Cronin and Marla Reckart, Ruth Ann Duncan-Thomas, Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Leonora Epstein, Meg Files, Josephine Franzheim, Roberta Franzheim, Rick Gilmore and Donald Craig of Rick’s A/C & Radiator, Waco, Texas, Doug Grant and Kathryn van Dyke, Kate Griffin (especially!), Amy Hagemeier, Kim Hayashi, Sheyene Heller, Kelly Horan, Martha Kennedy at AJ’s, Tucson, Arizona, Elaine Lembo, Herb McCormick, Flo and Georgie Neve, Stephanie Pearmain, Richard Podolsky, Karena Rice, Jenny Rider, Bennett Scheuer, Aurelie Sheehan, Sue Slutes, Isabelle Stone, Jut Wynn.
I’m extremely grateful to Jennifer Haigh, whose novels inspired me as I wrote this one. And to Richard Russo, whom I often observed scribbling in composition books at several cafés in Camden, Maine. He made it appear quotidian and possible. And both have been generous to me since I’ve completed this book.
Kate Griffin and Georgie Neve found me my extraordinary agent, Patrick Walsh, who (while on holiday in Africa) scribbled also: hundreds of suggestions throughout a bulky manuscript that considerably improved the novel before he promptly sold it. Thanks also to Clare Conville, Carrie Plitt, Alexandra McNicholl, Jake Smith-Bosanquet, Henna Silvennoinen, David Llewelyn, Dorcas Rogers, and all at Conville & Walsh. Also in London, David and Anita Burdett, Isabel Costello, John and Sarah Standing, and, not least, Gillian Stern.
You can never sufficiently thank your editors for their leap of faith, and all the people in a publishing house who prepare and send a book out into the world. My visionary editor Sarah McGrath and her team at Riverhead Books would be any writer’s dream assembly of book hatchers: assistants Danya Kukafka and Sarah Stein; publicity savants Jynne Dilling Martin, Claire McGinnis, Margaret Delaney, and Alexandra Primiani; art director Helen Yentus; marketing team Lydia Hirt, Kate Stark, Mary Stone; copy chief Linda Rosenberg and copy editor Martha Schwartz; managing editor Lisa D’Agostino; and Geoff Kloske, the publisher supporting all of this good work. In London, I want to thank editor Susan Watt, Jon Watt, and copy editor Lizzie Dipple, of Heron Books/Quercus Books.
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