Cypress Point

by Diane Chamberlain

  She and Gabriel could talk all day and all night and never run out of things to say. He told her about growing up in the English Village section of Oakland, where a white Realtor had purchased the house his family had wanted and then transferred the title to Gabriel’s father, which had been the only way a Negro family could get into that neighborhood. His mother had been a housekeeper, his father a porter on the Southern Pacific railroad, where just about every man Gabriel knew worked. His father had died on one of the trains when Gabriel was eleven years old, killed by a fellow crew member during a game of craps.

  Gabriel’s family had little money after that, and he’d worked his way through school and college. He’d met his wife, Cookie, at Berkeley, and they’d been married eight years when she discovered the lump in her breast. By the way Gabriel spoke of his late wife, Lisbeth knew he’d adored her, yet she never felt he was comparing her to Cookie. Gabriel knew how to focus on the future without letting the past get in the way, and he was teaching her, through his example, to live the same way. The fact that they both had suffered in their childhoods and their early adult years certainly drew them together, but it was their yearning to create a future that would be peaceful, bright and full of love that sealed that bond.

  Dating Gabriel was not without its problems, though. Lisbeth had to find a new place to live after her landlord kicked her out the night she’d brought Gabriel up to her room. She’d only wanted to get him out of the rain while he waited for her to get ready for their date, but the landlord was livid, the tendons in his neck taut as ropes beneath his skin. He had teenage children, he yelled, as if she didn’t know, didn’t hear them playing Elvis on the phonograph at all hours of the night and day. He did not want them to witness interracial dating, and he couldn’t have a colored man in his house. So she left, finding an apartment in North Beach, four blocks from Gabriel’s, with a phone that was available for her use anytime she wanted. Her landlady was a boisterous Italian woman who didn’t care a whit what color Lisbeth’s friends were, and whose house always smelled of tomatoes and olive oil and oregano.

  Now that Lisbeth no longer spent her free time huddled in her room eating, the weight dropped off her without her even trying. Diets had not been what she’d needed. All she’d really needed had been the unconditional love of a man, and that she had found in Gabriel.

  She loved being out on his boat more than she enjoyed dining with him or listening to music or dancing, because out here they were alone. There was never anyone staring at them, never a look of disapproval or shock from a stranger, as there was sure to be when they ventured out of North Beach. Occasionally, someone would make a disparaging comment loud enough for them to hear, using language that belonged in a sewer, and it would only make Gabriel hold her hand tighter. Sometimes, he would apologize to her, as though the rudeness of others was his fault, and that irritated her no end. He had nothing to apologize for.

  At least once every couple of weeks they got together with Carlynn and Alan. They were a compatible foursome, and they’d play bridge at Alan’s apartment, or go to a movie, or meet at Tarantino’s for cioppino. Conversation often seemed to turn to the topic of healing. Gabriel had even taken the three of them to Oakland to meet his mother, who remembered more than he did about his great-grandmother, and who filled their heads with stories they would never have believed, were it not for Carlynn.

  “So, Liz,” Gabriel said now, once they were sailing smoothly downwind. “When is Alan going to pop the question to your sister?”

  “This weekend,” Lisbeth said, licking a bit of pear juice from her thumb. “They’re going to Santa Barbara, and he plans to ask her sometime while they’re there.”

  Alan had shown her the ring, a beautiful large diamond in a white-gold setting, and told her his plans. Lisbeth had been surprised at being taken into his confidence, but Alan had been anxious to tell her. He was a brilliant physician but a bit stuffy and private, and to see that sense of romance and excitement in him had touched her.

  “Any chance she’d turn him down?”

  Lisbeth laughed. “What do you think? She loves him to bits, and she’s dying to have babies.” Carlynn had found the right man, of that Lisbeth was certain. They were both bright, intense people with a passion for science and medicine and a shared curiosity about Carlynn’s ability to heal. Lisbeth herself would not have been happy with a man like Alan—not that Alan would have been happy with her, either. She needed someone like Gabriel, whose great joy in living was written all over his face.

  Lisbeth was careful never to bring up the subject of marriage with Gabriel, although that was certainly where she hoped their relationship was headed. She was afraid he might think she was pressuring him, though. They had only been going out for six months, she would remind herself. Alan and Carlynn had known each other three times that long.

  “Carlynn’s not a virgin,” Lisbeth said suddenly, shocking herself more than she did Gabriel. She clapped her hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe I just told you that.”

  He raised his eyebrows at her. “And how did you find that out?” he asked.

  “She told me a couple of weeks ago when we were driving home to see Mother. We had a very long, sisterly conversation in the car.” Despite her mother’s usual criticism, the visit to Cypress Point had been wonderful. She’d felt whole to be back at the mansion, nourished by the scent of the sea and the cypress. She wished Gabriel could visit the mansion with her sometime, but knew that would never be possible.

  “Were you shocked?” Gabriel asked her.

  Lisbeth gazed in the direction of Angel Island. We’ve been lovers a long time now, Carlynn had told her, and Lisbeth had sensed that her sister was moving far, far ahead of her. Somehow, all of Carlynn’s medical skills, all her education and everything else she had accomplished that Lisbeth had not paled in comparison to this. Carlynn knew sex. Lisbeth had thought about the way Gabriel kissed her, his hands running up and down her arms or through her hair, never moving anyplace she could interpret as pushing her into something she might not want to do.

  “No, I wasn’t shocked. But I was—” she lowered her gaze from Angel Island to Gabriel’s attentive face “—jealous,” she admitted, feeling the color rise into her cheeks.

  “You mean, you want to make love with Alan?” Gabriel teased her, and she threw the rest of her pear at him.

  “Don’t make this so hard for me, Gabe,” she pleaded.

  “Sorry.” He smiled at her. “Is that something you want, baby?” he asked.

  She loved it when he called her baby. “Don’t you?” She bit her lip, waiting for his answer. She’d wanted him to make love to her when he’d been nothing more than a voice on the phone.

  Gabriel let out a long groan, leaning back in the boat and looking up at the sky. “Hell, yes,” he said. “But I’ve been trying to be a gentleman.”

  “Well, stop it.” She giggled.

  “I will, if you insist.” He glanced toward the shore, then grinned at her. “Think we should go in?” he asked. “Have you had enough sailing for today?”

  She laughed. “We just got out here,” she said. “Besides, we can’t do it yet,” she said. “I have to get a diaphragm first. Carlynn told me about a doctor I can go to.”

  “I could use a rubber,” Gabriel said, and she laughed again at his sudden enthusiasm.

  “I didn’t even think you thought about sex,” she said. “That’s what I told Carlynn.”

  He groaned again. “Why’d you tell her that, Liz? Now she’s going to think I’m queer.”

  “Not for long she won’t.” She smiled coyly at him, enjoying the banter, but she hoped she wasn’t giving him the impression that she wanted sex for the sex alone. “I wouldn’t do it with someone I didn’t love, Gabe,” she said, the smile no longer on her face. “I only want to do it with you.”

  “I know that, baby,” he said, his face just as serious. “And if I didn’t feel the same way about you, I wouldn’t have waited this lo
ng.”

  That night, they made love in the double bed in his North Beach apartment. She’d been nervous at first, but Gabriel had taken his time. She’d read about sex, but he knew more than had been written in the books she’d analyzed until the pages had started to fall out. Or maybe it was love that had been missing in those books, maybe the men in those stories did not take the time to teach, and to learn, what pleased him, and what pleased his lover.

  She remembered something she’d heard one time: sex would either make a relationship better or it would make it worse, but it would not leave it unchanged. She was certain it could only make what she and Gabriel had better, but when they had finished making love, Gabriel rolled onto his back and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke toward the ceiling, following it with his gaze. She knew something was wrong.

  “What is it?” she asked, resting her hand on his bare chest.

  He blew a smoke ring, then spoke without looking at her. “I’m afraid of costing you,” he said. “Costing you way too much.” He rolled his head on the pillow to look at her, and in the smoky, dark room, without his glasses on, he looked like a stranger. “The whole world’s not like North Beach, you know,” he said. “You haven’t even told your mother about me.”

  “Yes, I have,” she said, already distressed by the tenor of the conversation. “At least, she knows I’m going with someone named Gabriel. I’ll tell her the rest when I have to.”

  “I don’t want to be a ‘have to’ for you, Lisbeth,” he said. “It makes me feel like a burden.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I know you didn’t. But that’s the way it is, isn’t it? That’s the reality.”

  “It doesn’t matter what my mother thinks, Gabe,” she said. “She hasn’t truly been a part of my life for a long time.”

  “But you still visit her, and Cypress Point is still important to you. I know you love it there.” He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on his windowsill and rolled over, bracing himself on his elbows to look down at her. “I’ve taken you to Oakland,” he said. “I’ve introduced you all around, to my family and my neighbors. I showed you the house where I grew up and the places I hung around. What can you show me from your childhood? I can’t meet your mother, can’t set foot in the house you adore unless I pose as a delivery boy, can’t walk through your old neighborhood without scaring people out of their wits.”

  “I don’t care about that, Gabe,” she said fervently, worried that she was lying to herself as well as to him. “I’d give all that up for you in a heartbeat.”

  “I don’t know that I should let you,” he said, sitting up and leaning back against the wall.

  Lisbeth felt something precious slipping from her grasp. “Are you saying you want to break up with me?” She started to cry, silently, not wanting him to know.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t want to break up. But I’m not sure about our future, together, Liz.”

  Before they’d made love, he’d been full of tender words for her. Now he sounded as though he was pulling away, ready to end what they’d nurtured together for the past six months. And suddenly, she thought she knew the reason why.

  “Was I not as good as your wife?” she asked, unable to hide the tears in her voice. “In bed, I mean. Not as good as the other women you’ve had?”

  “What?” He looked truly surprised. “Oh, Lizzie. Oh, no, baby.” He moved toward her, pulling her up by her shoulders until she was in his arms. “You were perfect,” he said. “I didn’t mean that at all. I’m just thinking ahead, that’s all. Thinking about…how hard it could be to be married. How hard it would be on our children. I’m sorry, baby.” He lowered his head to the hollow between her throat and shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

  She felt his tears on her shoulder then, and he pulled her even closer to him, so close she could barely breathe, and that was where she wanted to be. Always.

  Although Carlynn was thrilled to be engaged to Alan, she knew there was trouble ahead and that it would take the form of Delora Kling. As soon as Carlynn told her mother about the engagement, Delora started planning.

  “We’ll have the wedding on the terrace,” Delora said. “The weather in September should be ideal for it to be outdoors. I heard a harpist the other day who would be perfect. Wouldn’t that be lovely, dear? It’s so rare to hear a harpist at a wedding. Of course, if we have it here, that will limit the number of guests we can have. Would you prefer it to be in one of the cathedrals instead?”

  Carlynn did want to be married at Cypress Point, but she also wanted Lisbeth to be her maid of honor, along with Penny Everett as her bridesmaid. And Lisbeth was attached at the hip to Gabriel, as she should be. Carlynn had no problem with that—she adored Gabriel—but Delora was sure to have a fit if her “second daughter” showed up with a Negro by her side.

  She and Lisbeth were closer than ever as they talked over wedding plans and shopped for the wedding gown and bridesmaids’ dresses. Lisbeth looked fabulous these days. She was only two sizes larger than Carlynn, and Carlynn persuaded her to try on wedding gowns, as well as the bridesmaid’s dress. She told Lisbeth that it would help her see how a dress would look on her to see it on her twin. But really, she’d just wanted Lisbeth to enjoy the thrill of seeing herself in a wedding dress. Only later did she think it might have been a little mean of her to make Lisbeth see herself as a bride without a wedding of her own in sight.

  Lisbeth fell in love with one of the dresses. She couldn’t stop fingering the lace and looking behind her at the long train, and she spent a long time admiring herself in the mirror before she took it off. She tried to persuade Carlynn to try it on, as well, but, although Carlynn also loved the dress, she had never seen Lisbeth so enamored with an article of clothing.

  “No,” she said, selecting her second choice for herself. “That one will be yours someday.”

  They left the bridal shop and began walking toward the bus stop.

  “I guess, if Gabe and I ever get married, it won’t be at Cypress Point,” Lisbeth said as they walked.

  Carlynn heard the wistfulness in her sister’s voice. She had no doubt that Lisbeth and Gabriel would be together for the rest of their lives, no doubt that they were meant for one another, and yet there would always be that extra burden for them to carry. They would never have the freedom to live their lives as she and Alan would.

  “Honey,” she said, putting her arm around her sister’s shoulders as they walked. “We have to have a serious talk about my wedding.”

  “You mean about having Gabriel there, don’t you?” Lisbeth asked, and Carlynn knew her sister had been expecting this conversation.

  “Yes,” Carlynn said. “Alan and I want him there. He will be your guest. I’m going to insist upon it. It’s my wedding, after all.”

  Lisbeth looked at her with affection, but there was doubt in her eyes. “It’s at Mother’s home,” she said. “Mother will make the rules.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it, though,” Carlynn said. “Maybe we’re not giving Mother enough credit. I don’t think she’s a racist, exactly. It’s just that all the Negroes she’s ever known have been servants or waiters or other service people. She never had an opportunity to meet them under any other circumstances. We really don’t know how she’ll react. We’re guessing. Maybe you should just show up with him. If we act like there’s nothing amiss, what’s she going to say?”

  Lisbeth was quiet for a moment. “I couldn’t put Gabriel in that position.”

  Carlynn sat down on the bench at the bus stop. Lisbeth was right. That would be unfair to Gabe, and unnerving for the rest of them as they awaited Delora’s reaction.

  “What if Mother knows, and says it’s all right?” Carlynn asked. “He’d come then, wouldn’t he?”

  “Of course, and that would be wonderful,” Lisbeth said. “It would also be a miracle, though.” She ran a hand through her blond curls, which she now wore looser and longer, in a style that was so flattering Carlynn w
ished she’d discovered it first.

  “Well, I’m going to talk with her about it,” Carlynn said.

  “Good luck,” Lisbeth said. She didn’t sound at all optimistic.

  Carlynn called her mother that evening from the phone in her bedroom, and Delora immediately launched into a litany of problems she was having making arrangements with the photographer and the caterer. Carlynn listened patiently, and when Delora stopped to take a breath, she said, “I need to talk with you about something, Mother.”

  “Don’t tell me the wedding’s off,” Delora said. There was more of a warning in her voice than there was sympathy.

  “No, of course not. Nothing like that. I just wanted…” she hesitated. “You know, of course, that Lisbeth will be bringing her boyfriend.”

  “Yes, I have his name on the list. Gabriel, isn’t it? Shall I put him at the head table, next to Lisbeth?”

  “That would be perfect, Mother. But I thought it would be best if you knew a little bit about him before the big day.” Carlynn screwed up her nose as she spoke. She hated this. Gabriel’s color should not be an issue, and she felt as though she, herself, was making it one.

  “Well, tell me about him, then,” her mother said. “Where is his family from?”

  “Gabriel’s a fabulous person, Mom,” Carlynn said, avoiding the question of family, “but I thought I should let you know ahead of time that he’s a Negro, just so you wouldn’t be surprised when you saw him.”

  There was a long silence on the phone line, and Carlynn wondered if her mother had fallen into a dead faint.

  “This figures,” Delora said finally, in disgust. “Lisbeth goes out with no one her entire life, and then when she finally does, it’s with a colored man. Well, it’s out of the question, Carlynn. He can’t come here.”

  “It’s my wedding, Mother.”