Summer Lies (2 page)

The water was indeed absolutely calm, and felt cold only until he started to swim. Then it stroked his naked body. He swam out a long way and then allowed himself to be carried, floating on his back. Susan was further out still, doing the crawl. When the rain began again, he enjoyed the drops falling on his face.

The rain got heavier, and he could no longer see Susan. He called out. He swam in the direction he thought he’d seen her last, and called out again. When he was almost no longer able to see land, he turned back. He wasn’t a fast swimmer, and exerted himself to go faster but only made slow progress, and the slowness turned his anxiety into panic. How long would Susan hold out? Did he have his cell phone in the pocket of his pants? Would he be able to get a connection on the beach? Where was the nearest house? The anxiety was too much for him; he got slower and even more panicked.

Then he saw a pale figure climb out of the sea and stand on the beach. Anger gave him strength. How could she have inflicted such fear on him! When she waved, he didn’t wave back.

When he was standing in front of her, furious, she smiled at him. “What’s the matter?”

“What’s the matter? I was petrified when I could no longer see you. Why didn’t you swim close to me on your way back?”

“I didn’t see you.”

“You didn’t see me?”

She went red. “I’m rather shortsighted.”

His anger suddenly struck him as absurd. They were facing each other naked and wet, rain was dripping down both their faces, they both had goose bumps and were shivering and warming their chests with their arms. She looked at him with the vulnerable, searching look that he now knew wasn’t uncertainty, just shortsightedness. He saw the blue veins in her thin white skin, her pubic hair, reddish blond although the hair on her head was pale blond, her flat stomach and narrow hips, her strong arms and legs. He was ashamed of his body, and pulled his stomach in. “I’m sorry I was so rough.”

“I understand. You were afraid.” She smiled again.

He was embarrassed. Then he gave himself a shake, jerked his head toward the place by the dunes where their things were lying, called “Go!,” and started running. She was faster than he was and could have overtaken him effortlessly. But she ran beside him, and it reminded him of his childhood and the joy of running together toward some common goal with his sisters or his friends. He saw her small breasts, which she’d shielded with her arms when they’d been standing on the beach, and her small behind.

Their clothes were wet. But the towels had stayed dry in the bag and Susan and Richard wrapped themselves in them, sat down under the umbrella, and drank champagne.

She leaned against him. “Tell me about yourself from the beginning, about your mother and father and your siblings, and all the way to now. Were you born in America?”

“Berlin. My parents were music teachers, he taught piano and she taught violin and viola. There were four of us children, and I was allowed to go to the music high school, though my three sisters were far better than I was. It’s what my father wanted; he couldn’t bear the thought that I would fail the way he’d failed. So for him I went to the music high school, for him I became second flute in the New York Philharmonic, and one day for him I’ll become first flute in another good orchestra.”

“Are your parents still alive?”

“My father died seven years ago, my mother last year.”

She thought. Then she asked, “If you hadn’t become a flautist for your father, but had done what you wanted—what would you be?”

“Don’t laugh at me. When first my father then my mother died, I thought, finally I’m free, I can do what I want. But they’re still sitting in my head, talking at me. I would have to get out for a year, away from the orchestra, away from the flute, go running, go swimming, think about it all and maybe write about how it was at home with my parents and my sisters. So that at the end of a year I’d know what I want. Maybe it would even turn out to be the flute.”

“I’ve sometimes wished someone would talk at me. My parents
were killed in a car accident when I was twelve. The aunt I was sent to live with didn’t like children. I also don’t know if my father liked me. He sometimes said he looked forward to the time when I’d be older and he’d be able to see if he could make anything of me—didn’t sound good.”

“I’m sorry. How was your mother?”

“Beautiful. She wanted me to turn out as beautiful as she was. My clothes were as fine as Mother’s, and when she helped me dress, she was wonderful, so affectionate and gentle. She could have taught me how to deal with mean girlfriends, pushy boyfriends, but I had to learn that on my own.”

They sat under the umbrella, given over to their memories. Like two children who’ve got lost and are yearning for home, he thought. He thought of some of the favorite books of his childhood, in which boys and girls got lost and survived in caves and huts, or were attacked on a journey and dragged off into slavery, or kidnapped in London and forced to beg or steal, or sold from their homes in Ticino to become chimney sweeps in Milan. He had mourned with the children over the loss of their parents and shared their hopes of being reunited with them. But the appeal of the stories was that the children coped without their parents. When finally they came home, they had outgrown them. Why is it hard to be self-sufficient, even though all you need is yourself, nobody else? He sighed.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said, and put his arm around her.

“You sighed.”

“I’d like to be further along than I am.”

She snuggled against his side. “I know that feeling. But don’t we make progress in fits and starts? Nothing happens for a long time, then suddenly we get a surprise, have an encounter, reach a decision point, and we’re no longer the same as we were before.”

“Not the same as we were before? Six months ago I was at a class reunion, and the people who’d been decent and nice when we were in school were still decent and nice, and the assholes were still assholes. The others must have had the same reaction to me. And it gave me a shock. You work on yourself, you think you’re changing and developing, and then the others immediately recognize you as the person you always were.”

“You Europeans are pessimists. You come from the Old World and can’t imagine that there can be a New World and that people can make themselves new too.”

“Let’s take a walk along the beach. The rain’s almost stopped.”

They wrapped the towels around themselves and walked over the sand at the water’s edge. They were barefoot, and the cold, wet sand prickled.

“I’m not a pessimist. I’m always hoping my life will get better.”

“Me too.”

When the rain got heavier again, they went back to Susan’s house. They were freezing. While Richard took a shower, Susan went down to the cellar and turned on the heat; while Susan showered, Richard made a fire in the fireplace. He had put on Susan’s father’s bathrobe, which she had kept, red, warm, made of heavy wool lined with silk. They hung up their wet clothes to dry and figured out how to make the samovar that stood on the mantelpiece above the fireplace work. Then they sat on the sofa, she in one corner, cross-legged, he with his legs folded under him in the other, drank tea, and looked at each other.

“I’m sure my clothes will be ready to put on again soon.”

“Stay. What are you going to do in the rain? Sit alone in your room?”

“I …” He wanted to add that he didn’t want to impose, be
a burden on her, mess up her day. But these were meaningless phrases. He knew that his company gave her pleasure. He read it in her face and heard it in her voice. He smiled at her, politely at first, and then embarrassed. What if the situation was arousing expectations in Susan that he couldn’t satisfy? But then she pulled a book out of the many piled along with newspapers beside the sofa and began to read. She sat reading so self-sufficiently, so comfortably, so relaxedly that he began to relax too. He looked for a book, found one that interested him, but didn’t begin it: instead he watched her read, till she looked up and smiled at him. He smiled back, finally free of all tension, and began reading.

When he reached the bed-and-breakfast at ten p.m., Linda and John were sitting in front of the television. He told them he wouldn’t be needing any breakfast next morning because he’d be having it with the young woman in the little house a mile further down the road, whom he’d got to know over dinner in the restaurant.

“She doesn’t live in the big house?”

“She doesn’t do it if she comes alone, and hasn’t done it for a long time now.”

“But last year …”

“Last year she came alone, but always had visitors.”

Richard listened to Linda and John with mounting irritation. “You’re talking about Susan …” He realized they’d introduced themselves to each other only with their first names.

“Susan Hartman.”

“She owns the big house with the pillars?”

“Her grandfather bought it in the twenties. After her parents died the administrator ran down the estate, collected the rent, and invested nothing until Susan fired him a few years ago and restored the houses and the garden.”

“Didn’t that cost a fortune?”

“It didn’t cause her any pain. Those of us who live here are happy—there were people interested in parceling up the land and dividing the house or replacing it with a hotel. It would have changed the entire area.”

Richard said good night to Linda and John and went up to his room. He would not have started talking to Susan if he’d known how rich she was. He didn’t like rich people. He despised inherited wealth and considered earned riches to be ill-gotten. His parents had never earned enough to give their four children the things they would have liked, and his salary from the New York Philharmonic was only just enough to cover his costs in the expensive city. He had no rich friends either now or earlier in his life.

He was furious with Susan. As if she’d led him around by the nose. As if she’d lured him into the situation in which he was now stuck. But was he stuck? He didn’t have to go have breakfast with her the next day. Or he could go and tell her they couldn’t see each other anymore, they were too different, their lives were too different, their worlds were too different. But they had just spent the afternoon together in front of the fire, reading sentences aloud to each other from time to time, they had cooked together, eaten, washed up, watched a movie, and both of them had felt good. Too different?

He brushed his teeth so furiously that he hurt his left cheek. He sat down on the bed with his hand to his cheek, feeling sorry for himself. He really was stuck. He had fallen in love with Susan. Only a little, he told himself. For what did he really
know about her? What actually did he like about her? How would things go, given the difference in their lives and their worlds? Perhaps she would find it charming to eat three times in the little Italian restaurant he could afford. After that, should he allow her to invite him out instead? Or should he run up debt on credit cards?

He didn’t sleep well. He kept waking up, and around six a.m., when he realized he wouldn’t go to sleep again, he gave up, put on his clothes, and left the house. The sky was filled with dark clouds, but there was a red glow in the east. If Richard wasn’t to miss the sunrise over the ocean he’d have to hurry and run in his regular shoes, which he’d put on instead of his running shoes. The soles made a loud noise on the road, once scaring up a flock of crows and once several hares. In the east the red was glowing brighter and stronger; Richard had seen a sunset like that before, but never such a sunrise. As he passed Susan’s house he took care to move quietly.

Then he reached the beach. The sun came up golden out of a molten sea and into a sky that was all flames—it was a matter of moments, and then the clouds extinguished everything. Richard suddenly felt as if it wasn’t just darker but colder.

He needn’t have bothered to be quiet in front of Susan’s house. She too was already up, sitting at the foot of a dune. She saw him, got to her feet, and came toward him. She moved slowly: the sand by the dunes was deep and made walking difficult. Richard went to meet her, but only because he wished to be polite. He preferred to just watch her as she walked calmly and confidently, her head sometimes down and then raised, and when it was raised her eyes were always on his face. It felt as if they were negotiating something, but he didn’t know what it was. He didn’t understand what question was in her eyes or what answers she found in his. He smiled but she didn’t smile back, just looked at him gravely.

When they stood facing each other, she took his hand. “Come!” She led him to her house and upstairs into the bedroom. She undressed, lay down on the bed, and watched as he undressed and lay down beside her. “I’ve waited such a long time for you.”

That was the way she made love to him. As if she had been searching for him forever and had finally found him. As if neither she nor he could do anything wrong.

She swept him along, and he allowed it to happen. He didn’t ask himself: How am I? And didn’t ask her: How was I? As they lay next to each other afterward, he knew that he loved her. This little person with eyes that were too small and a chin that was too pronounced, skin that was too thin, and a figure more like a boy’s than the womanly shapes he had loved until now. With a confidence that after being pushed around from only moderately loving parents to a loveless aunt she had no right to have. With more money than could be good for her. And who saw something in him that he didn’t see himself, and thereby made a gift of it to him.

For the first time, he had made love to a woman as if no images existed of how love was supposed to take place. As if they were a couple out of the nineteenth century, for whom the movies and television could not yet dictate the right way to kiss, the right way to moan, the right way for the face to express passion and the body to shudder with desire. A couple who were discovering love and kissing and moaning for themselves. Susan didn’t seem to close her eyes once. Whenever he looked at her, she was also looking at him. He loved that look, faraway, trusting.