Forever in Blue (17 page)

“Do you want to talk about them?”

He looked genuinely unhappy for a moment. “No.”

She looked at him with the hint of a challenge in her eyes. “Then what do you want?”

The reckless happiness was creeping back. He couldn’t help himself. He was like her. He couldn’t keep it down. “Do you really want to know?”

She nodded, knowing she shouldn’t. She shouldn’t have asked. She shouldn’t want to know.

“Here’s what I want to do. I want to pull you on top of me and roll you down this hill. Then I want to take off your clothes and kiss every part of you. And then I want to make passionate love to you on the grass right there.” He pointed to a place near the bottom of the hill. “And then I want to fall asleep holding you. And then I want to wake up when the sun is rising and do it all again.”

She kept her eyes closed for a minute. These were dangerous places they were passing through. How could she not picture it and feel it and want it the way he said it?

“And what will you do?” she asked, her voice hardly above a whisper.

She could practically see the opposing forces duking it out in his head. She wasn’t sure which side was winning or even which side she was rooting for.

A weariness came into his eyes, giving her a clue. “We’ll kiss, because it’s my thirtieth birthday and it’s what I’ve been wishing for. And then I’ll walk you to your cabin and say goodnight.”

“Okay,” she said, happy and sad.

He did kiss her. He rolled her over onto the grass and kissed her passionately. His hands reached under her shirt to press against her naked back. She felt the strength of his longing and it made her woozy.

She sat up before they could be sucked into the next phase of what he wanted.

They held hands on the way back to camp. He kissed her on the cheek at the entrance to her cabin.

“You better get out of here before this thing goes the other way,” he whispered in her ear. “You know, the rolling-down-the-hill way.”

She nodded against his cheek. “Happy birthday, mister,” she said out of the side of her mouth as if she were Mae West.

And so she lay on her crappy metal cot in a cloud of desire. But even in her cloud she perceived a buffeting sensation, a brooding feeling of discomfort beneath her.

They had withstood this night for the most part, but what about the next one and the one after that?

She had the taste of him now. She had the feel of his body. They had said things you couldn’t forget and couldn’t take back. All the ordinary boundaries between them lay in ruins. What was going to keep them apart now? She feared they had both seen the place where they could have turned back and, knowingly, they had passed it by.

Leo looked surprised to see Lena at the door of his loft on Sunday morning. She was surprised to be there.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he said.

“I wasn’t either.”

“I’m glad you did,” he added. He did look happy, and also uncertain. He was looking at her in a different way.

“I’m nervous,” she said honestly. “But fair is fair.”

His eyes on her were different. She couldn’t say why. “You are fair,” he said. “But you don’t have to do it.”

She smiled nervously. “Thanks.”

“Do you want a cup of coffee?”

“Sure.” She considered the state of her nervous system. “Maybe tea,” she mumbled, following him into the kitchen.

He put the kettle on and sat down. Northern light—artists’ light—fell all around them from the high windows.

“Where’s your mom?” Lena asked.

“She volunteers all day at our church,” Leo said. “I thought the privacy might make it easier.”

She nodded.

“But I understand if you don’t want to.”

“Okay.”

She sat and thought.

He looked at her, his elbow resting on the table, his chin in his hand. When she saw him looking, he smiled. She smiled back.

She thought of drinking her tea and going back home. She thought of staying here and taking off her clothes and letting Leo paint her. The second alternative didn’t seem possible, but in a strange way, neither did the first. She had the odd sense of pushing off the edge into unknown territory. She had already let her mind travel. There were possibilities now. It wasn’t enough to go back and forget. She wasn’t the forgetting type.

“I think we should try it,” she said.

“You do?”

“Do you?”

“I do.”

“So let’s.”

“If you’re uncomfortable, we’ll stop.”

She shrugged with a laugh. “I will be uncomfortable. We’d have to stop before we start.” She breathed deep. “But I think we should try it anyway.”

Leo’s bedroom was spacious and skylit. He had dragged a small ruby-colored couch into the center and draped a pale yellow sheet over it. His easel was folded in the corner.

“I was thinking of here,” he said a bit sheepishly. She could tell he’d made the effort to set it up more like a painting class, not just put her in his bed. “We could do it somewhere else, though.”

The colors glowed. The light dusted over the drapery in a beautiful way. She could almost see the painting. “No. This is good.”

He disappeared for a moment and came back with a robe, probably his mother’s. He handed it to her with a question on his face. Do you really want to do this? “I really won’t be upset with you if you don’t,” he said.

“I think I might be upset with me,” she said.

He nodded. “It’s just a painting.”

It wasn’t just a painting for her. She needed to do it anyway.

“I’ll give you some privacy,” he said.

“Not for long,” she joked nervously. It was like when the doctor left the room as you undressed and dressed again. As if the nakedness weren’t embarrassing if you could transition into it alone.

She took off her clothes quickly, before she could think about it and stop. Tank top and loose yoga pants and flip-flops in a pile on the floor. She was too nervous to fold them. She had dressed herself like she’d observed the models did—loose clothes for easy on and easy off. No weird red marks from a tight waistband or pinching bra strap. She’d thought to shave her stubbly parts so she was smooth and unremarkable.

She hurriedly propelled herself into the robe. To what end? she wondered. She just had to get right back out of it. But models always had the robe. Maybe it could be like Superman’s telephone booth. She’d go into the robe a terrified and prudish virgin and come out of it a seasoned artist’s model.

She took the robe off. She sat on the couch. She lay on the couch. She rearranged herself on the couch. Leo knocked on the door. “You ready?”

Every one of her muscles contracted. She felt her shoulders, neck, and head fuse into one ungraceful mass. Apparently she had come out of the robe the same way she had gone in.

“Ready,” she whimpered.

“Lena?”

“Ready,” she said a little louder. This had the quality of a bedroom farce. She wished she could find it funny.

He was nervous too. He didn’t want to affront or embarrass her by looking too quickly or too much. He occupied himself with his easel as though there weren’t a naked girl in the room. She said some things about how it was hot out, also pretending there wasn’t a naked girl in the room.

“Okay, my friend,” he said. His paintbrush was poised in his hand. He was ready to work. He looked at her through his painter’s eyes.

“Okay,” she breathed. This “my friend” business might be doing it for him, she thought sourly, but it wasn’t doing it for her.

He moved the easel to the left. He pushed it a couple of feet closer to her. He came out from behind it. “Head up a little,” he said, coming closer.

She did.

“Perfect.” He came closer still. He was looking now. “Okay, hand more like this.” He did it with his own hand rather than touch hers.

She obliged. She wished she could make her muscles soften a little.

“Beautiful,” he said. He kept studying her. “Legs a little…looser.”

She let out a nervous laugh. “Yeah, right.”

He laughed too, but vaguely. She could tell he was starting to really think about painting now. Why hadn’t she been able to do that when it had been her turn to paint?

“Okay. Wow.” He went back to his canvas. He raised his eyebrows. She could tell he was excited. He was excited about his painting.

Bridget was crouched over her cereal bowl the next morning groggily spooning in the Frosted Flakes when she noticed the unfamiliar car pulling into the makeshift parking area. She didn’t make anything of it at first. Her mind was too full and unkempt as it was.

She dimly registered the slams of a few car doors and some stir at the other end of the tent. Slowly it made its way to her.

“Have you seen Peter?” Karina asked her.

She blinked and swallowed her mouthful of cereal. “Not this morning,” she said. Something about the question started the slow tick of alarm. At the far end of the tent an unfamiliar woman was talking to Alison. Then into Bridget’s view bounced a very small person, a little girl with a messy ponytail that had migrated to the side of her head. It was unusual to see a child here.

None of the pieces stuck together until she saw Alison marching toward her looking agitated, which doubled for excited in the case of Alison. “Do you know where Peter is? His wife and kids are here to surprise him.”

His wife and kids. They were here to surprise him. The ticking accelerated into a wild knocking. His wife and kids had popped out of their theoretical ether and appeared here. To surprise him.

For his birthday, Bridget realized, her thoughts bumping and scraping along. His secret birthday, which she had somehow believed belonged to her. It did not belong to her, she acknowledged with a messy ache in her chest. It belonged to them.

Peter’s wife and kids were far enough away and backed by flooding sunlight, so she couldn’t really see them.

“No. I don’t know where he is,” she said robotically. Suddenly she felt the shame of Eve. Why did everybody keep asking her? What did they know? What did they suspect? She wished she hadn’t stayed up late all these nights. She found herself wanting to be sure that her cabinmates knew she’d woken up among them every morning.

How would his wife feel with everyone seeking information about her husband’s whereabouts from the tired blond girl with the kissed lips and the starry expression? She felt the urge to defend herself, but to whom?

She was stuck there in her chair, midchew, unable to swallow her cereal or spit it out, when she heard Peter’s voice somewhere behind her. She realized she needed to get out of there before this reunion took place. For her sake, but even more for Peter’s. She didn’t want him to see her there. She crouched lower. She momentarily considered crawling under the table and hiding.

He had a wife. A wife. Theoretical and now real, with dark brown hair and a canvas bag over her shoulder. A wife like you had in a real family. Kids like you had in a real family. Kids who jumped around and needed things.

In her mind she switched from identifying with the wife to identifying with the daughter. A daughter like she was a daughter. A person with wishes and disappointments of her own.

These were dangerous places indeed.

Tibby finally let Brian come that Sunday, but not for the reasons he hoped.

She intercepted him in the lobby. It would be worse if he came up to her room.

“It’s pretty nice out. You feel like taking a walk?” he asked her gamely, innocently.

She used to adore his innocence. Now she wondered about him. Was he a bit stupid? No, not stupid, really. She didn’t mean that. He had a high IQ and all. But was he kind of like an idiot savant?

“Yes,” she said dishonestly.

Maybe, Meta-Tibby suggested, she liked his innocence better when her own heart wasn’t so black.

They didn’t walk far. She turned on him in the middle of Astor Place.

“Brian, I think we should take a break,” she said. That was the phrase she had decided upon.

He looked at her, his head cocked like a Labrador retriever’s. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I think we shouldn’t see each other for a while.”

“You are saying that…”

The sadness and surprise was beginning to wear through his trusting expression, but she couldn’t feel anything for him. She saw it, but it didn’t go past her eyes. There were times in her life when she felt his pain more acutely than he did. Why not now?

“But why?” he asked.

“Because. Because…” This was such an obvious question and she hadn’t thought up an answer for it. “I just think…because of the long distance and everything…”

“I don’t mind coming up here,” he said quickly.

She glared at him. Just protect yourself and go away, would you? She felt like shouting at him. Get mad at me. Call me a bitch. Walk away from me.

“I don’t want you to,” she said flatly. “I want to be by myself for a while. I can’t even explain it very well.”

He was processing. His T-shirt blew against his body. He looked thin.

Brian didn’t confine himself to the mirror dance. He did what he did, he chose what he chose in the bravest possible way. She used to love this about him. But now the best thing had turned into the worst thing. She thought he rejected the dance as small-minded and fearful, but now she wondered if he even knew it. Was it rejection or total ignorance? Why, for once, couldn’t he just follow her lead?

There is no such thing as too much love. That was what a doe-eyed and slightly creepy friend of her mother’s had once said to Tibby, seemingly out of the blue. Well, yeah, there is, Tibby thought now.

“Is it because of—” he began tentatively.

“I don’t even know what it’s because of,” she snapped. “I just know that I don’t want to keep going like this.”

He looked up and then he looked down. He watched people cross Lafayette Street. He considered the banner snapping over the entrance to the Public Theater. Tibby was worried he would cry, but he didn’t.

“You don’t want me to come up and see you anymore,” he said.

“Not really. No.”

“You don’t want me to call you?”

“No.”

Had Brian ever taken a hint? Had he always required a total clubbing over the head to make him comprehend even the most obvious point?