The Myth of You and Me (21 page)

“Sort of.” In a rush, I said, “I’ve been living in Mississippi, in Oxford. I was supposed to help Oliver Doucet with his memoirs. He’s a historian. His daughter, Ruth . . .” In the way Will kept his eyes trained on my face I saw an effort to conquer impatience. I was beginning the story too far back. I said, “Oliver wanted me to bring this package to Sonia. Obviously, she’s not here, so I guess I should go.” I turned back toward the door.

“Wait, wait a minute,” Will said. He reached out like he was going to touch my arm, then let his hand fall. “Don’t you at least want a beer or something?” He was headed to the refrigerator before the
yes
was out of my mouth.

I sat on one of the couches, and Will shifted his dog so he could sit on the other. The dog yawned hugely and resettled with its head on Will’s leg. “So,” Will said, “tell me why you’re here.”

I told him. He had no idea why his address was on that postcard. He’d been in touch with Sonia on and off ever since he moved to Gloucester, about a year ago, and had seen a lot of her lately. He said this in a casual way that put to rest any lingering doubt I had about whether there was something between them. He said he didn’t know where she was. After that there was a long silence before I thought to ask him about himself. He was a veterinarian. He’d gone to vet school at Tufts, and then moved to California with his girlfriend. But he didn’t like it there, and so he came back to Massachusetts. I wanted to ask, but didn’t, what had happened to the girlfriend. I thought of him saying, when he was a boy, that he was unlucky in love.

“I should’ve known you’d be a vet,” I said.

“Because of that day with the dog?”

I nodded, pleased that he’d known immediately what I was talking about.

“I felt so helpless handing him over to that woman,” he said. “And then I made a fool of myself in front of you, kicking that tree and crying like a baby.”

I shook my head. “I was just worried you’d hurt yourself.”

He laughed. “I did. My foot was killing me.”

“You didn’t show it.”

“I was trying to be a tough guy,” he said. “And failing. You had a knack for catching me in vulnerable moments.”

“Yeah, but that was why I . . .” I swallowed back the word
loved.
Our eyes met and held too long. “Liked you,” I finished, looking away. There was a silence. My mind raced, looking for another subject, and then to my relief Will spoke.

“So what do you think is in it?” Will asked, pointing at the package.

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe it’s just Oliver’s way of giving me something to do.”

“To get over his death?”

“Maybe,” I said, although I thought with some surprise that this was one motive I hadn’t considered.

Will looked at his watch. “It’s late,” he said. “And I’ve been up since five.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, sliding forward on the couch. “I’ll go.”

“No, stay. It’s a long drive.”

“I don’t want to impose.”

“Just stay,” he said. “If she’s really left town she’s not going to come back on the weekend, so there’s no use waiting at her place. I’ve got plenty of room. There’s a futon in there.” He pointed at the back of the room, where a door opened into darkness. “I’ll show you the beach in the morning. The water’s too cold for swimming, but it’s pretty.”

Though I felt that I shouldn’t stay, there was no reason not to. It was hard to let go of the habits of avoidance and restraint I had always practiced in his presence. “Okay.” I glanced at him and then away. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” he said.

The room in the back was small and seemed to be a repository for all the things Will no longer used. The built-in bookshelves along one wall were full of college and vet-school textbooks,
The Lord of the Rings
and other books he must have read as a boy, and a set of encyclopedias from 1983. There was a small futon with a white mattress that had a few holes in the fabric, and a sturdy but awkward-looking table beside it, painted three shades of green. His guitar was on a stand in the corner.

“God, that looks awful, doesn’t it?” he said. He was looking at the futon mattress.

“You don’t play anymore?”

He shot me a look of confusion, and I pointed at the guitar. “Oh, every once in a while.” He shook his head. “I never got good enough.”

He left the room. I heard his footsteps clanging on the metal staircase. I walked over and touched the guitar. Two of the strings were broken.

I heard Will’s footsteps again and moved away from the guitar. He came in with an armload of bedding, and we unfolded the futon and put on the sheets. “I think your feet will hang off it,” he said. “Mine always did.” He flipped open a blanket and smoothed it down. He seemed in a hurry, and his rapid movements were making me more and more tired. “Okay, good night,” he said.

I said good night. He closed the door behind him, and I felt both relieved and bereft. I changed into a T-shirt and boxer shorts, and then there was a knock at the door. I opened it, hyperconscious of the way my breasts now swung loose and heavy beneath my shirt.

“Pillow,” Will said. He thrust one at me, and I took it, hugging it to my chest. We stood like that a moment. Each of us seemed to be waiting for the other to speak. Will’s eyes darted to my mouth and back up again, and for a moment I wondered if he was going to kiss me.

“Good night,” he said again. And then he pulled the door shut.

He had been right about my feet. On my back, I let them dangle off the futon, and then curled onto my side. Many times I had imagined spending the night with Will. I had never imagined it like this. Perhaps I had been wrong about his desire to kiss me, or perhaps that girlfriend was still a presence in his life. Several months after Sonia and Will broke up, Sonia showed me a letter he’d sent, in which he said he still thought about her, that he hadn’t really dated anybody else. She’d said, “What does ‘really’ mean?” I supposed he had dated other girls, but hadn’t fallen for any of them. I pictured him lying in a single bed in a dorm room, a snowdrift against a solitary window, dreaming of Sonia while the phone rang and rang, some girl he couldn’t love on the other end of the line. There was no way of knowing what would happen if I went upstairs.

I heard him moving around up there, water running through the pipes. There was a creak as he got into bed. A click as he turned out the light. I lay awake for a long time, listening to the bed groan beneath his restless weight. I wanted to believe that I was the reason why he couldn’t sleep.

16

O
ver coffee
the next morning I said that I should be getting back to Boston, but Will argued that in all likelihood Sonia still wasn’t home, and that as long as I was in Gloucester, I should let him show me around. To prove there was no reason for me to go, he called Sonia and left a message on her answering machine. I noted without comment the way he said, “Hey, it’s me,” the fact that he had her number memorized.

The morning was overcast and windswept, but we went to the beach anyway, and Will fell silent at the sight of the white spray against the rocks. He was one of those hosts who, in showing a place to a visitor, seems struck anew by its pleasures himself. This was not one of the mild, welcoming southern beaches I was used to, but an imposing one, where you seemed more likely to drown than dog-paddle. The scene was nearly monochromatic, like a black-and-white photo, the sky light gray with a hint of blue, the clouds etched in darker gray, the water a matte silver-gray rolling with white. We stood on the sand, looking out at two blurred outcroppings, one supporting houses, the other a lighthouse. On our right were huge rocks—“Mostly granite,” Will shouted over the wind. After a moment he moved away from me toward the water. I stayed where I was, studying his profile against the dark, enormous rocks.

With his hair blowing in the wind, that intense, unreadable expression on his face, it was a little too easy to picture Will as Heathcliff gazing across the moors. In high school I read
Wuthering Heights
and
Pride and Prejudice
over and over, torn between the murderous, consuming desire of Heathcliff and the secret, reluctant love of Mr. Darcy. On the whole I preferred Mr. Darcy, but when Heathcliff beat his head against a tree and cried that he could not live without his soul, I longed to be caught in the grip of a strange and violent passion. I thought with some amusement that with those two for ideals of romance it was no wonder I had so long harbored feelings for a man as remote and changeable as Will. I felt a little ridiculous, because it was clear to me that morning that I was still as enamored of him as I had been at sixteen.

Will turned and caught my eyes on his face. “What?” he shouted.

“You could be the hero of a tragedy,” I said, but he didn’t hear me. He came closer, and I had to repeat myself at a louder volume, with greater embarrassment.

“God, I hope not,” he said.

“I meant it in a good way.”

“How can you mean that in a good way?” he asked. I couldn’t tell if he was amused or offended. I shrugged. “Come on,” he said, jerking his head toward the rocks.

I clambered up behind him, wary of the sharp barnacles, and stood on the rocks, droplets of ocean water hitting my face, my hair tangling in the wind. I hadn’t dressed appropriately—I was wearing a T-shirt—and all the hairs on my arms stood up. I tasted salt on my lips and glanced over at Will.

“Want to go for a swim?” he said.

“You first.”

“You’re really cold, aren’t you?”

“I’m okay.”

“You’re shivering.” He moved like he was going to put his arm around me, and then he hesitated. “Let’s get out of here,” he said instead. “Let’s go eat.”

We ate lunch in town, and then spent an hour browsing through an enormous used-record shop. Will seemed to know the guy behind the counter, a kid with a seventies-era Rod Stewart haircut, but he didn’t introduce me. I wandered by, heard them talking about a band I’d never heard of, and moved on. Will bought a stack of records, and as we walked outside—the sun was out now, the sky blue—he showed me one of them and explained why it was a good find.

“Now what?” he said, looking up and down the sidewalk. He seemed alert, almost excited. “How about a walk?”

We followed the boulevard past the statue of a fisherman, then backed up at Will’s insistence to read the inscription—
THEY THAT GO DOWN TO THE SEA IN SHIPS 1623
–
1923
. “It’s touristy, I know,” Will said. “But it still makes me . . .” He shook his head.

“Sad?” I suggested.

“Yeah, thanks, wordsmith,” he said. “I was going to say it gave me a thrill of sorrow, or something poetic like that.”

“That would indeed have been poetic,” I said.

“Are you making fun of me?”

“I’ll leave that to your judgment.”

He laughed. “Come on,” he said. We walked down to the water, which looked prettier now under sunny skies. Will pointed to a contraption about two hundred feet out that looked like an enormous high chair and explained that during the St. Peter’s festival a greasy-pole contest took place out there, in which competitors—all men—walked an enormous, slick telephone pole to capture a red flag, most of them coming away with bruises or broken ribs instead. “I’m entering this year,” he said.

I stared at him. “You are?”

He nodded. “There’s a log in my backyard I’ve been greasing up to practice.”

“Really?”

“Every day after work,” he said. “That’s what I do with my solitary life.” He looked solemn, but now I understood he was teasing me.

“You’d think I’d know better by now,” I said. “I believed you.”

“That’s sad.” He shook his head. “That gives me a thrill of sorrow.”

He took me to the lighthouse we had seen that morning from the beach, promising me a view of Boston. As we walked out the narrow point, the weather began to change again, and by the time we reached the lighthouse the breakwater was high, and the wind whipped away all sound and made my hair fly around my face. We looked out across the water. Boston was ghostly through the fog. Will turned to me and shrugged. He sat on the ground, and I sat beside him, my shoulder brushing his. We looked at each other. He gave me a quick smile and then gazed out toward Boston again.

As we walked back down the point, our steps fell into a left-right, left-right rhythm, my stride as long as his. “Where do you think Sonia is?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “Have you talked to Suzette?”

I shook my head. “I couldn’t find her number. Did she get married or something?”

“She is married,” he said. “I don’t know her new last name. Her husband’s first name is Chris. He’s an investment banker or something.”

“You met him?”

“I went to a party there once.”

“So you know where they live?”

“I don’t know the address,” he said.

“You could draw me a map.”

We walked in silence a moment. “Okay,” he said. “Before you go back tomorrow I will.”

“Great,” I said, but I wasn’t thinking about Suzette, or Sonia, anymore. I was thinking about the fact that he wanted me to stay another night.