Retreat to Love (6 page)

"Yeah, I'm here. You decent now?"

"Rarely, but my fly's done at least."

He edged himself over on the love seat, so I sat beside him. "Caleb, listen, I'm sorry if I was flippant."

"Flippant? I don't think they've invented a word to describe how you were. ‘Antagonizing’ comes close."

"Was I so bad?" Come to think of it, his eyes weren't pure chocolate; there were some bronze flecks in there.

Little smile. "Nah, you were perfect. I have to admit it was funny."

"Can you walk?"

"You kicking me out?"

"No.” Because his staying wasn’t in the least a dangerously appealing idea. “Just asking."

"Yes, you are. I can tell." His tone said he could tell a lot of things, maybe some things I wasn’t telling myself yet.

A couple of different replies jockeyed for position, but I reminded myself about snapping out of it. The moral she-was-there-first ground was definitely the easier path. “Okay, a little, yeah, I am kicking you out. I need to work on my drawings a little, before dinner."

"You know what? I think you owe me for laughing at me so much. Tell me what this big dyed-cloth project is all about." He didn’t act like a man about to vacate the premises.

I shook my head. "It's not that easy, sorry. I have to work it out more myself."

"Come on, maybe talking about it will help."

Why did guys keep trying to force me to discuss my vision? I had a process that worked best in isolation. “Nope."

"Right." He stood up, gimpily. Was he actually offended? "See ya at dinner, then."

And off he limped. Through the studio windows, I watched him find the right path to his cabin, stopping to rip the offending branch off the tree. He took it with him.

The sun shone through the indigo cloth like sea glass in a tide pool. Instead of taking the sketchpad, I started to speak to the view about the project. Talking to yourself isn't supposed to be a good sign, but when you're as alone as I am, it comes naturally.

"Okay,
Chains
is about love, it's about Pappa and Gran and how the parts, the elements, the links in their lives all came together. Even though they both started in Ireland, he was a man on his own deliberately coming here from Liverpool, and she was a child in the middle of a family that didn’t mean to wash up in Houston. But they went from being two to being one and from being one to being a family. The three children, and Zach and I, Ireland and Texas and the Atlantic between them." I was pacing, I was gesticulating, I was mumbling. Must have been quite a sight.

"It's about them, about how they're the consummate love story, about how they completed each other and made a new life—not just Dermot and Bernadette and Matthew, but a reality of life, a lifestyle, together. Ups and downs, babies lost and stories told and learning to grow crops and picnics by the creek and sleeping on the train to their honeymoon. So, it's a chain, there will be links. A link for me, a link for Matthew, a link for Pad Maguire. Broken links for Berneen and Albert. Broken links for Pappa's family back home. A big link, central, holding them both—or two links, intertwined? Sketch it. I don't know. So, each link is a story, each link is the thing itself but in relation to Pappa and Gran, but there needs to be a consistent style to them all. More traditional? No, yes?" I stopped a moment. "Not traditional. New. They left the old country, moved to a new land, found a new life together. So, new style."

Now I had to stop pacing, had to go sketch. Barely made it to dinner—Caleb had changed into shorts—took down the cloth and fell exhausted into bed, too wiped to even brush my teeth.

Next morning, I was up early what would become the base for the quit top, and doe was back in the clearing working the salt lick. I suspected she’d eaten the corn the prior evening. When she started and ran off towards the stream, I wasn’t surprised to see Caleb emerge from the path, putting a lens cap on his telephoto attachment. I waved.

“Hungry?” he asked when I came to the porch to let him in.

“No. Give me a sec and I’ll grab my shoes.”

“Well, I got some good shots before you scared her off today, thanks.”

“Ha, ha.”

“Do you think Zach’ll mind driving us around town a little? I want to get some of the buildings.”

“Did you not notice the size of this place when you came in? We park on the far side of the square and walk two minutes to John Henry’s and that’s all the town there is.”

“Oh.” He shrugged. “I suppose it’s just as well. Suits the idea, anyway.”

On the way to the Main House he told me about it. Wildlife inhabiting human habitations—he was snapping all the animal life he could find in a place, then the structures of the area, and digitally processing buildings with deer and raccoons and whatnot. He bragged on his manipulation skills, on all he did to convey meaningful, elevated messages.

In between ordering me around the kitchen, he waxed what he must have considered lyrical about the destruction of natural habitats, the lack of concern in most municipalities for the ecosystems that had been the basis for their town’s founding in the first place, the ways various animals had adapted to civilization. I told him Frank and Bernadette would have been riveted, which made him laugh. Apparently back at Berkeley, he and Zach had bonded over being misfits in their families. His Silicon Valley folks thought he was still studying computer engineering, and mine thought Zach was still the star of the ecology program. “Though I must say I’m glad we weren’t switched at birth,” Caleb added with what might have been a leer if I’d taken the time to decipher it properly, instead of determinedly ignoring it.

Our first breakfast was a success. Rafael even came in at the end, acrylic-smeared and blurry-eyed, and smiled at the pecan roll we had left out. He didn’t say anything, but we were all too startled by the sight of him to try and open a conversation, so perhaps it was more of a matter of him feeling frozen out. Then he yawned, drank some cranberry juice, and left.

“At least he’s learned to stack away his dishes,” Wren said. “If I accomplish nothing else here, I can go home with that.”

“Do yous all think he’s just nocturnal?” asked Lizzy, when she turned back from watching him walk down the path to WestWind, which suitably enough was the most remote of the cabins, the only one on the far side of the lake.

“If so, I’m in trouble again when it comes to making lunch next week,” Wren moped.

“We’ll have him well sorted by then,” Caleb assured her. “Margie’s strict conscious won’t allow her to let one of the artists bear an unjust burden due to the non-cooperation of another.”

Wren cheered, but I was thinking Caleb’s frequent Margie imitations were revealing a secret dictatorial side of him. The bossiness in the kitchen didn’t help. It was the same at lunchtime, even though all we made was egg and tempeh salad sandwiches with German fries on the side. When I told Liz and Wren about it later on, as we were waiting for Zach to pull up, Wren just thought it was wonderful to have such a helpful food partner, and Lizzy told me any successful meal had to have someone in charge with as many attentive assistants as the kitchen space allowed.

“As Brandon is about to find out, I can be very attentive. ‘Tis a shame you’ll miss the first group meal I’ll ever prepare by standing back. I did make sure there’s nothing poisonous on the menu.”

“Can you just make a couple of people nauseous? If I have to watch Theo and Angelica sneak past my cabin to each other any more I’ll be sick myself,” Wren said.

“You think you’ve got it bad,” I said, “try living next door to him. If he’s working it’s all mega-industrial music out of there, and if she’s there I hear even more than I’d like to. If I’m outside it’s actually decipherable—‘Theo, my God, my deity, my Zeus and Jove!’ Don’t laugh—I’m not making it up. I swear to Theo, I’m not!”

We’d managed to stop making fun of the other retreaters by the time Caleb came to my cabin. And when Lizzy nudged me as he crossed my threshold, I knew it made three of us who noticed he cleaned up pretty good. It was a simple outfit: khakis and a white button-down, but against his gold-brown skin and dark hair, it worked especially well. And he knew how to buy classy shoes, or knew someone who knew, which was almost as good.

My version of dress-up clothes wasn’t as well chosen as Wren’s fawn-colored jumpsuit, which made her even lither and more soft-focus than usual (or, as Lizzy put it, ‘Tres femme, mon cherie’). I figured I pulled off the fitted scoop-neck tee with maxi skirt well enough to eat out at what passed for fine dining in a small Hill Country town.

And if I opted to go by the way Caleb’s gaze lingered on my curves before he directed his crinkly eyes and dimpled chin in Wren and Lizzy’s direction, I looked as good, if not better, as I needed to.

Lizzy gave up her spot on the love seat for Caleb, who was shoulder to shoulder with Wren by the time I’d walked Lizzy to the door. But he was asking me for details about Zach’s break up with his Berkeley girlfriend, Eva, who had stomped my brother’s heart the second she got into grad school. Maybe it was more nuanced than that, but Zach was one of the essential support beams of my life, and I hadn’t taken it well, back when I was in high school and so soon after Pappa’s death, when that beam had crumbled.

Tires crunched on the shell road. Caleb stood, stretched, walked to the door. Wren wasn’t alone in noting the muscle tone in his chest. She grinned at me behind his back. Or maybe she was grinning about his butt, which also deserved a smile.

“That’s him, anyway,” Caleb said, turning back to pick up his bag. Wren mouthed, “Be right back,” at me vamoosed to the bathroom.

Zach did the Zeke / Ned chest bump with Caleb before he turned to me for my semi-hug. “Show me what you’ve been up to,” he said, and, arm around my shoulders, steered me into the studio.

I unfolded my dyed fabric and went to the table to open my sketchbook. Zach leaned in like he of all people was engaged by my artistic vision, muttering, “So we want the two of them together?”

“It’s her idea,” I whispered back. “Apparently he’s her dream man. Something about the way he smiles.”

He shrugged. “Well, it always turned me on.”

“You’re supposed to slip me some dirt about what he was like at Berkeley, too. Who he dated and for how long and is he some sort of deviant in disguise.”

“I’ll have to think on that one,” he said, looking around as Wren emerged from powdering her nose. “Hi. How’re you?”

“Good. Hungry; I get to eat something tonight I didn’t cook, and I’m very excited about it.”

“Let’s go, then,” Caleb said from the doorway.

We hit the town.

Wimberley’s not quite typical for small-town Texas. It’s a bit more scrutinized, thanks to being in the midst of the hill country, with all the amenities: ground rolling off in all directions, bunnies and does leaping about, roads like someone real tall poured an oversize bottle of dark molasses across green fields, cool streams reflecting canopies of Spanish moss.

Plus it’s just easy enough to get to from Austin and San Antonio that it’s cache of B&Bs stay busy most of the year. So along with the small-town stuff like ice cream parlors and a dearth of national chain stores, you get dusty antique and craft stores stuffed with traditional quilts, extra-high gas prices at full-service only stations, and quirky semi-gourmet dining spots. The place we’d chosen was called John Henry’s. As I’d promised Caleb, who took a couple dozen shots of town on film, and ten more on his digital, the Square was small enough to see John Henry’s from Millie’s Hat Shop at the catty-corner end. We paid a few extra dollars at the door for temporary membership. Anyone could eat in the restaurant, but if you wanted bar service, you had to join the club. They fixed us up with some good Texas beer and we crossed the back lawn to Cypress Creek while we waited on our table.

Water lilies flanked both banks, in places so dense the ropy, gnarled roots of the cypress trees weren’t visible as they hooked themselves into the water. The management had scattered some benches and picnic tables across the live oak-shaded lawn, and a few other groups were lounging and drinking in the late afternoon sun. One couple was sharing bruschetta topped with something red; as they fed it to each other, they splatted blobs of crimson on their cheeks and chins. If it weren’t for that visual, it would have been downright romantic.

We walked a ways up the path. There were some kids fishing off the main road’s bridge, skinny little guys. The ducks back-peddling around the edge of the water right near them probably had a lot to do with why they weren’t catching anything. Just to confuse them, Wren tore up bits of her napkin and tossed them at the ducks, which figured out quickly she was toying with them, but stuck around just in case she was hiding something.

“That table’s free now,” Zach told us, tipping his chin at the picnic table on the far end of the lawn. Caleb spied some fresh patrons edging out onto the patio, handed me his beer, and sprinted to claim the table before them.

“Mine, all mine,” he cackled when we caught up to him. I sat opposite him and handed over his Shiner Bock.

“Those people think you’re an idiot,” I said. They were leaning up against the railing of the covered porch, pretending to laugh at a joke instead of us.

“So?”

Zach slid in next to me, telling Wren, “You should keep an eye on those ducks.” She moved around to sit opposite me, facing the water. Already the alcohol had flushed her cheeks; when she’d told me she was a lightweight drinker, I’d figured she could take two or three units before she turned tipsy. But if she was right about her inhibitions, too, maybe the beer’d help her out. Already a couple of times she had flipped her hair in that annoyingly attractive way longhaired blondes have when their pheromones were firing. Having rather flat brown hair myself, the most I could ever manage was letting wisps of it escape from a braid or scrunchie, so unless it was humid I ended up looking unkempt rather than fetching.

Zeke and Ned started in talking about other Zekes and Neds out there, and what had happened to them in the prior years. Like I cared. But Caleb started it, and we were all there on the premise of the two of them catching up. So I heard all about Neil, who’d invented an ergonomic keyboard, and Emily, whose group had just been awarded a patent for their Gamma project, and Warren, who had worked on the Atlas URL. And neither Zach nor Caleb brought up Eva, so I was glad I’d given Caleb enough info for him to flag her as a hot topic.

It took me sighing and leaning against Zach’s shoulder to get him to shut up about him and focus on us gals. Or more specifically, on Wren, whose eyes were beginning to rim with red. Boredom or frustration about hearing yet another geek success story, I couldn’t tell. Either way, she blinked it out of her when Caleb started acting interested in her stories about the agent she’d hooked up with out of college and just recently dropped. His monstrosities ranged from a commission for Wren to make crucifixes for a priest who wanted gifts for his mistresses to selling her bowls to a traveling exhibition of the art of the impaired.

“He told them I was mute, so I couldn’t interview, then pointed out how wonderfully I’d learned to express myself through my work! He says to me, ‘Lauren, baby, this one is perfect—it’s no problem for you to fake it, and if you make it big and they come back asking questions, you can attribute it to a miracle! Think of all the poor desperate souls who’ll buy up your stuff to try to ride the coattails of your encounter with the Lord!’ Well, I called the Enabled Artists and told them my ‘miracle’ had happened a little sooner than Marty had planned.”

As we laughed, Caleb caught my eye. He let his eyes shift towards Wren, smiled, and subtly toasted me with his longneck before taking a swig. He obviously didn’t think she noticed, but from the way her cheeks went red right back to her ears, I knew she had.

Dinner itself was a little less flirty and more friendly. There was a give-and-take to the conversation, and I was happy to feel a part of it instead of like an inexperienced puppeteer watching to see if my marionettes would go where I was hoping they would. Zach ordered a half-pound of fajitas with his salad, making me promise not to tell Bernadette, which brought on the inevitable story of why we were veggies in the first place. How Bernadette said Gran and Pappa couldn’t be our caretakers while they ran their co-op store unless Pappa traded in his chicken ranching for organic farming.

“What would they have done if he’d refused?” Wren asked, pecking away at her burger.

“Handed us over anyway, I suppose.”

“It’s not like they were so successful they could afford to put us anywhere else,” I added. “And having Zach at the store for a couple of years before I was born was enough for them. They didn’t want to try to keep us both under control while they spread the natural word through the Gulf States.”

Zach disagreed. “They’d have kept us there if they’d had to. But Gran and Uncle Matt were pretty set on us coming out every day. When I was ten Frank told me I could come home after school and hang out in front or up in my room if I wanted, but Pappa said I shouldn’t.”

“Matt was already gone by then.” He was a guitarist, and had lived at home throughout early adulthood, until he had the money and reputation to move to LA and make it as a session musician. Our Uncle Dermot, who was stationed in San Diego, was supposed to help ground him, but Matt had spent years wandering up and down the Pacific Coast. The rest of us never heard much from him, but he and Zach had been close since Zach’s earliest days, infant ears turning whenever Matthew crooned songs his way.

“Yeah, and Pappa was lonely. You and Gran were so cliquish, us guys had to bond with each other to stop ourselves from pure-dried boredom.” He’d unleashed the brogue-y drawl.

I smiled. “I’d never-a guessed.”

“It’s the God’s honest.”

“Well, shit fire and save the matches!”

Zach nearly choked on his jalapeños. Most of Pappa’s trademark phrases we kept to ourselves, but once we started exchanging them it took no time before one of us was doubled over.

“Careful, there, lady boy, you cut yourself a fat hog this time,” I said, thumbing at his over-loaded plate. He coughed again and called for another beer.

“Want one?” he asked Wren and Caleb.

“No, you two go ahead,” Caleb said. “Whatever you’re having is obviously doing a lot for you.”

Wren grinned at him. “I knew there was some sort of back-woods fool in that girl there. All it took was one beer to bring it out.”

“I hope it goes back before breakfast tomorrow. I don’t want to find myself bellying up to a mess of grits anytime soon.”

“You have both been watching too much Beverly Hillbillies,” I said, primly dabbing at my mouth and folding my napkin back into my lap. “Y’all hush now, y’hear?”

Stuffed, we all collapsed on my sofa and floor for coffee and lingering chat. I was getting to know them both pretty well now; it was one of those revelatory nights that made you feel even closer. Caleb’s nuevo-environmentalism sprang from spending two weeks hiking Oregon after graduation; he’d been on mini-pilgrimages to a lot of the sites Ansel Adams had immortalized ever since, and was gradually compiling enough for a photo essay.

And Wren told us about the night when she was seventeen and had run away in order to find a home where no one would force her to pack up every few months. Her college fund paid for the bus to Norwich, Connecticut, a deposit on the two-bedroom duplex, and a print run of thirty resumes. She’d been in the same place for the intervening years and had never since traveled further than Cape Cod. GED obtained, she commuted to New London three times a week for five years to get a studio arts degree at Connecticut College. Flying to Austin for FireWind was her first plane ride since her childhood trips to summer with her grandmother in Alaska.

Zach hung around until almost two, long after Caleb and Wren headed out of my den. “You think they’re going off together?” he asked when the sound of her flats on the short concrete path had faded off.

“Dunno. They weren’t being obvious enough for me.”

“Well, I think we done good. Did you notice the way I kept bringing the conversation back to her?”

“Yeah, you’re a master of subtlety, but I picked up on it.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know. ‘No, I can’t stand watching baseball on TV. Wren, what will you do when FireWind is over?’”

He threw a vegan marshmallow at me from the bag he’d imported for my hot chocolate. “You told me to set them up.”

“And you did. Thank you.” I ate the mallow. “Don’t forget to load me up with dirt on college days.”

He groaned. “I don’t know anything. We weren’t exactly bosom buddies, you know, we just saw each other at the lab.”

“Which you were at for hours every day. You know stuff, so spill it.”

“I honestly don’t remember much. He had some girlfriends, off-and-on kind of things. One of them, this brunette with a ponytail, she and Eva hit it off. We doubled a couple of times.” He did the usual brow-crinkling thing, which meant he was pretending to think hard but was just looking for a way to end the stream of the conversation. “Her name was Ellen or Lucy, something like that. Ellen, I think. Helen. Pre-med. They lasted a few months, a year, I don’t know. Then she moved. Or got a new boyfriend, or something.”

“Was her name Ann and she dropped him after sleeping with some guy she met because y’all were meeting at Eva’s place for a movie and this guy lived next door?” I asked.

He sat up and thunked his mug on the table. “Oh God.”

“That was him?”

“Oh Mother God. I’d forgotten.”

“Zach? It was Caleb, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. “Do you think he hates me?”

“Where would you get that?”

“Cause Ann and Shawn ...”

“Cause nothing, Zach, Ann was a bitch. She’d have done it with someone else if it wasn’t with Eva’s neighbor. You just wouldn’t have known so much about it, is all.”

“Well, I’d hate me.”