Lone Star (53 page)

I don't do well when I first wake up, he tells her when she asks, and she does ask.

She can't sleep. If someone threw her off a cliff into the sea it would feel less like fear. She hasn't been able to close her eyes to oblivion since the rain the night before. She stares either into his peaceful face or the highway outside. The bleached Miramare is so close, she can pitch a paper airplane into one of its open windows. The bed creaks. Probably everyone at the small inn has heard their unrestrained coupling. She doesn't care. That's what she's become. From three shirts to hide the curves of her flesh to the Twickenham nude at the football stadium, running and shouting his name naked from the field. Johnny, Johnny . . .

JOHNNY!

He bolts upright in the red bed.

“Oh, thank God, you're awake.” She jostles him. “Come on, what's your actual name?”

He falls back. “Johnny.”

“I'm serious.”

“Me too.”

Then why didn't you turn around in Trieste when I called your name, she wants to ask, but doesn't want to draw attention to the washed-out Johnny that wasn't him.

“Come on. What are you hiding?”

“Nothing.” A teasing smile plays on his face. “Maybe I'm a descendant of the Founding Fathers. Or of the Pilgrims.”

“Are you?”

“Maybe.”

“Be serious. Why can't you tell me your name?”

“Tell me yours.”

“Chloe Divine.”

“Divine indeed,” he murmurs, his hands gliding up her thighs. A panting swallow. “Well, I'm like a rainbow.”

“Let me see proof. I can show you proof. Let's see yours.”

“Chloe,” he says solemnly, “sometimes you have to have faith even if you don't have proof. Especially if you don't.”

“I want to make sure my faith is not misplaced, that's all,” she says. “I just want to know who you are.”

He shows her his ID. On this ID card, issued by—he flashes it too fast, she doesn't catch it—is his name. Johnny Rainbow. It's probably fake. She's heard of that. People getting fake IDs to get liquor. Hard to acquire in little Fryeburg, but some kids in North Conway had gone to Boston once and returned with laminated plastic. On Saturday nights they would show it off to all the squares.

“You're telling me your name is Johnny Rainbow?”

“For realsies.”

“So if I marry you, I'll be Chloe Rainbow?”

He laughs with joy, pounding his Lone Star tattoo, pulling her down on himself, embracing her. “Chloe Divine Rainbow. The greatest name in all the world! I want to marry you just so you can carry that name for a long time.”

“
That's
why you want to marry me.”

Tickling her, he rolls her over on her stomach and caresses her spine. He kisses her shoulder blades, the nape of her neck, the nape of her everything. I want life and bliss, he murmurs, your dizzying breasts reanimating my loins and lungs.

In between pleading and singing they are vised together as Chloe has never imagined a vise: she is the plaything between an acetylene torch and a jackhammer. Gentler, gentler, she begs him. To him who loves me and washes me from my sin, gentler, gentler.

Gentler what? Gentler hands, softer mouth, less . . .

Gentler mouth, like you're kissing me to the beat of your excited heart, one and two, and one and two, and one and two, gentle, rhythmic, soft, yes, like that, now a little faster, a little faster, Johnny, be less gentle, be more, more, more . . .

More of everything. Who ever touched her like that? Who ever will again? More of him who is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. The mystery of all the stars is in your golden mouth, Johnny. You hold the sun in your voice, a drumbeat of life in the gifts placed upon your lips. I want to recite you with my blood. I want to engrave you on my body.

I want to kneel before you.

I kneel before you.

Wide-eyed he gazes at her afterward, kisses her under the endless thunder of the ice floes breaking up in the turbulent spring rivers. Every minute awake is poured out like this, drenched in lava, overflowed in seas.

Through the convulsions, the spasms of the dying night, he sings by the open windows, plays his guitar naked in their uncovered bed. Someone below yells encore, encore. He has enraptured the crowds. Chloe is almost sure it's not
she who moans encore, encore. He has been singing, kneeling behind her on the floor, his drumming hands keeping immobile her arching hips. She stifles her desperate moans, he holds back nothing, and obligingly there is an encore, a rout, panting lovers, fools, kings, nectar and poison all at once. How could anything else ever be like this, feel like this, and all the while, he sings into her quivering shoulder blades and into the night air, he sings save me from the dark before I utterly perish.

Save me from the dark before I come undone.

Very soon dawn. Very soon gone. They make stupid promises all the young make. Of course we'll write. Of course we'll call. Keeping in touch is easier than ever. This isn't
Little House on the Prairie
. We don't need the Rural Free Delivery Route of 1903. And I'm not overseas forever. I'll be back. My first tour is only twelve months. Then I'm back. Yes, I'll train with the Rangers, but we'll write letters. I'll get furlough next summer. We'll meet up. I promise. I'll meet you in San Diego. Give me your address there. Give me your address in Maine, too. Don't worry. I won't lose it. I never lose anything, or forget anything. I promise I'll get in touch. One day, Chloe Divine, you will see me walking down your country road, returning for you. I promise. On and on and on and on and on.

He kisses the bliss and sorrow from her eyes.

Don't cry, beautiful girl. Love does break your heart, don't it? Do you want me to tell you whose heart you've broken?

No, she says. Do you know why I cry? Because even as I live it with you so happy, I fear it will never come again.

To be fair, he says, right now you don't seem that happy.

Covering them both with one damp sheet, he pulls her out onto the balcony and shows her the Adriatic, still and crystal, the distant shores of Croatia, the blue sunrise mist over Trieste,
the white limestone walls of the medieval castle for princes and princesses.

We are at Lover's Fortress. Nothing can touch us here, nothing can hurt us.

Tell me about the duke and duchess, about Max and Charlotte, she says. Please tell me they lived happily ever after.

He hesitates as they stare out on to the leafy firs partially obstructing the view of Miramare.

Oh no. What happened to them?

Maximillian was tried for treason and shot, and Charlotte of Belgium went mad and was committed to a sanatorium where she died.

Chloe never wants less for the sun to rise.

Don't weep, Johnny says. Life is beautiful.

“O
NWARD, MY BRIDE,” HE SAYS IN THE EARLY MORNING.
“I have only one mother, and I have to see her today before I fly.”

“Do you have to?”

“To see my mother?”

“To fly.”

He smiles. She doesn't.

“You don't have to come with me,” Johnny says. “You haven't slept. I can go by myself. Stay here. I'll be back late tonight.” He takes his duffel and his guitar. In other words, everything but her.

“Yeah, famous last words,” she says, springing out of bed. “Of course I'm going with you. Into the mountains, right? To get lost in the Alps, where no one will ever find us?”

He smiles again, as if she is ever so funny!

Castello di Miramare not only has a boat dock and a bus stop but also a rail station. It has everything. They catch a train to Gemona, and from there a train to Tarcento. The trains are pristine, quiet, and a little Italian lady wheels a shiny cart around, selling espresso and napoleons. They load up on both plus a bagful of biscotti. “Shouldn't we bring something for your mom?” Chloe asks. “Not good to arrive empty-handed.”

“The only thing she craves we can't bring her,” says Johnny. “But if we have any left, we'll give her some of our biscotti.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Over a year ago,” he replies. He is next to the window. He asked and she let him. She'd let him take her in an open car if that's what he wanted. She huddles next to his arm.

“Why so long?”

“I couldn't come.”

She remembers Johnny owing Emil money for twelve months and not being able to pay. “Why not?”

“I was busy.”

“Too busy to see your mother? No wonder she's mad.”

“She's not mad. Well, she might be a little mad I'm only staying for one day.” Changing the subject, he says he wishes they had time to go to Cividale. It has a pastry shop from heaven, he says, and has the best speck.

Chloe wants to say she wishes they had time for a lot more than a speck of ham.

“Am I going to meet your mom?”

“I don't know. We'll play it by ear. Sometimes she's okay. Other times . . . we'll see.”

“Tell me something about her so I don't embarrass myself with stupid questions,” says Chloe. “Is she nice?”

“Is my mother nice?”

“I mean . . .” Chloe means to say is she nice to strange girls? Strange girls with bare legs and without a stitch of makeup, wearing green sweaters over improper coral dresses, girls you drag in behind you, hiding them, letting a mother know after one glance why you are so late and why you can stay so briefly.

“Yes, she's nice.”

“How long has she been in Tarcento?”

“Two years. She might be leaving soon, my father said.”

“Really? She's all better?”

“He didn't say.”

“So why would she be leaving?”

“He didn't say.”

Chloe clears her throat. “So what's the matter with her?” She takes his cool hand. “Why is she in Tarcento?”

“She's convalescing.”

“From what?”

He continues to stare out the window. So does she, over his shoulder. He is right to stare. Northeastern Italy is lousy with sweeping vistas of endless mountains and flowing rivers carving out a myriad of gorges. The architect said
one
valley,
one
snowcapped peak, one rocky glen, one chalet, and the builder replied, not enough. I will give you thousands. And it still won't be enough.

“The problem with my mother,” Johnny says, “is she never quite figured out what kind of woman she wanted to be. So now she's spent the last ten years of her life trying to recover from the ill effects of her ignorance.”

“What do you mean what she wanted to be? Like a career woman or a wife?” And why would she be convalescing from that?

“Yes, but what kind of career woman, what kind of wife?”

“Wasn't she a singer?”

“Yes. She did once want to be a star.”

Well, so what? Chloe's mother once wanted to be a dancer. But she wasn't living by herself in an Italian hamlet.

“My dad was quite a catch. But she thought
she
was the catch, you see. She was much younger than he was and misunderstood some basic things. So they fell in love. You know the way people sometimes do.”

Chloe's heart shrinks into a tight fist, but Johnny isn't looking at her.

“Falling in love is the easy part,” he says. “You give yourself to me on Italian shores. You give me your naked body, and I'm young and you're young. It's not even a riddle. The answer is yes a thousand times scrawled across all the stars in the heavens. It was for my dad, too.”

Chloe swallows. “What did you mean when you said to Hannah that your dad was made wretched in a brothel? You weren't, um, talking about your mother, were you?”

Johnny laughs. “Some son I'd be if I were. No. That was before my mother. That's not what I'm talking about. That one is definitely a story for another time.”

She waits to hear anything he deigns to bring forth from his mouth.

“The question is, do you have staying power past the rapture?” Johnny asks. “Do you give renewable pleasure? Do you suffer, believe, endure? Do you fail? Are you the real thing or a temporary flicker? So here's the problem. My mother was the temporary flicker. But the really unfortunate part is that both she and my dad mistook it for an eternal flame. They should've never gotten married, because one must know the difference, and they did not. My mother just didn't have the goods. Not like your mother.”

“What?” Chloe hoots. “My mother doesn't have . . .
goods
.”

“Your green cabin on the lake is the real thing.”

“How—how do you know?” How would he know!

“Because I know when it's missing. It's been missing my whole life. My mother wanted from my dad what he couldn't give her. But she couldn't be what he needed either. For a long time I believed it was because he was a terrible husband, and I loved my mother, and still do, and so I blamed him and modeled my whole life on wanting to be only one thing—not him. But after he and my mom split up and he remarried, I saw the way he was with his new wife. She dotes on him and he responds with love and kindness. Kind is not a word I'd have ever used to describe my old man. But the way he walks through the door and laughs at Kerri's stupid jokes and watches her play guitar. He never looked at my mother like that when she sang.”

“Even though she was beautiful?”

“Even though she was beautiful.”

“Your mother wasn't devoted to your father?”

“My mother,” says Johnny, “was a beauty queen.” As if that answers Chloe's question. “She wanted my father to be devoted to her.”

“Who wouldn't want that?” Chloe mutters.

“Exactly. Mother was like, take me out dancing, to parties, to your social functions. Let me get dressed up. Let me see you adore me in public while I make you proud by being a bauble on your arm. And my dad was like, yeah, okay, hotcakes, but I'm starved, and the kids are failing math. While you and I are tripping the light fantastic, who's gluing the Egyptian pyramid for Johnny's school project?”

“He's sort of right about that,” Chloe says. In her house, her mother takes care of all she can take care of, and her dad takes care of the rest.

“But my mom didn't care about chicken cutlets or pyramids,” Johnny says. “Plus she hated to cook, hated math, hated school projects. She liked to sing. And she liked to look pretty. And then she started liking other things. With gin in them. And my dad was away a lot, working. So sometimes he acted as if she wasn't the runner-up in a beauty pageant. He wanted his kids to be fed and the beds to be made. And my mother was like, I'm a beauty queen! And he was like, I don't give a fuck, feed my kids! And she was like, if you care so much, then be home more, and he was like, I'd be home more if you made it more of a home. That's the part my mother didn't get most of all—that she was stunning and yet he wasn't home. If he wasn't home for her, then who would he ever be home for? Well, we found out. His new wife who bakes him pies.”

“I assume, um, not a beauty queen?” says Chloe.

“Blonde and petite and quite fetching. That's what I mean about deciding what kind of a person you want to be. Because on that decision rest all your life's expectations. And if they're not met, then whoa. And woe.”

Rocky glens and mountains into the horizons fly by their windows. “I just want to be loved and cherished,” says Chloe. “That's what I want.”

Turning away from the canyons and the roaring waters, he kisses her. “You are adorable. You say it as if you've just
discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls.” He smiles. “That's what everybody wants. Welcome to the human race, Princess of the Orient. Your fellowship is seven billion souls.”

She can tell he wants to say more, but doesn't. Not just then. They pass through old hamlets and villages, streams below, snowy mountains above. Italy is taking her breath away. Italy, right?

“Why is it so hard?” she finally asks. “To be loved? Seems such a simple matter.”

“What are you, a statue?” asks Johnny. “A movie? A flavor of ice cream? Make yourself into chocolate; who won't love you then?” He lifts his arms, crooking them above his head, glancing at her with bemusement, as if he can't believe she doesn't know the answer to this simplest of all trivia questions.

“Are you laughing at me?”

“No.” He cups her face. “You're just naïve, china doll. You may have school smarts, but you've got another decade of living before you be all growed up.”

“All right, old man, you haven't had another decade of living either. You're like two minutes older.”

“But I know this. Before you can be loved, you have to make yourself into a civilized being, not a wild brute, a human being capable of loving another, of giving another person something they need. I said the same thing to my mother, but she didn't ever want to hear it. Let your father give me things, and then we shall see, she said.”

“Is that the trick we must learn?” mutters Chloe, eyes past his black stubble to the fields beyond.

“Yes, to love another is the trick we must learn?” he says, leaning sideways and kissing her green shoulder. “What a magic trick it is.”

Tarcento is a stony Italian town on the fast-flowing, transparent green meandering Torre River, a narrow tributary of the pre-
Alpian Isonzo. The elms and the firs cover it like a canopy, the range of ancient mountains surround the town on all four sides like a forest or a fortress. The river is full of large rocks and whirling basins. Chloe thinks it might be very good for fishing. They cross the stone bridge and then walk for miles on the road hugging the river. They walk hand in hand because they are lovers. Chloe's body aches in all the places he has recently been and now is not. Squeezing his long thin hand, she prays as she walks that this will not be a permanent state of her being, throbbing on empty without him.

The turnoff they're looking for is a dirt road that leads to the Tarcento Pensione nested on the banks of the wild Torre. The grounds the house stands on are parklike. Immaculate like the Italian trains. The only clue to what kind of a place it is, is the carefully camouflaged fence, hidden by bushes and trees. Chloe doesn't want to make
any
comparisons, favorable or otherwise, to other camouflaged fences she has been told about recently by the surreal Adonis at her side. This fence has a gate and an intercom, and though the gate is locked, Chloe needs to assume that Johnny's mother is not a prisoner and can leave if she wants to, but chooses not to. The Italian voice on the intercom says gravely, “
Ciao, chi e questo
?”

Johnny replies in Italian. The only words Chloe understands are Ingrid Camala or something like that. Maybe Coomala. Kumala? The gate clicks, unlocks, and slowly swings open. They walk down the winding path to the pastel-blue house, Chloe thinking all the while that no gates or fences can keep someone in when the choppy river is but an embankment away. For God's sake, hasn't anyone here read the biography of Virginia Woolf? Before they get to the house, Johnny stops walking, turns to Chloe, and runs his palm over her silky hair, perhaps meant as tenderness, or perhaps to smooth her out before the presentation. “Are you ready?” he says. He kisses her. He doesn't sound anxious, but who can tell? “It'll be fine. Remember, best to speak as little as possible. Our role here is not to talk. It's just to listen, if we can bear it.”

Chloe doesn't know if she can bear it. Can
he
bear it? Depends on what your mother wants to say, she thinks, as they walk up the porch steps of the house.