Thorns of Truth (36 page)

“Preview of coming attractions,” he whispered.

“I don’t know if I can wait.” The marvelous thing about being over forty, she thought, is that you didn’t have to be coy.

But Eric, instead of answering her, was easing downward. She could feel his breath tickling her belly, causing the muscles in her abdomen to contract so sharply it was almost a cramp. Dimly, she was aware of her hips arching, rising to meet his mouth where he was kissing her now.…

She rocked against him, crying out softly, words that made no sense, even to her, as if she were listening to some strange woman talk in her sleep. But who the hell cared? This
was
a dream, she decided. The kind of erotic dream that left you damp and trembling, and almost sick to your stomach with yearning.

She pulled away from him, and scooted down on the bed. “Your turn,” she whispered.

Rose took him in her mouth.

A minute later, he was on top of her again, and she was guiding him into her. This time he didn’t withdraw. As she strained against him, he held on to her hips in a way that, for once, made her grateful for their generous curves. Their bodies, slick with sweat, made soft sucking sounds as they drew together, then apart. She couldn’t remember when she’d felt so consumed, so utterly shameless, like an animal in heat.

When she came, it was like summer thunder. Endless rolling waves promising blessed relief from the heat. Then Eric was coming, too, arching against her with his eyes closed and his mouth parted in a silent cry. Deep inside her, she could feel him pulsing. Low and quick, like a panicked heartbeat.

Eric collapsed onto her.

“Christ,” he gasped.

She let out a breath that felt like the last, drawn-out chord at the end of a symphony.

Eric twisted around, his profile silhouetted in the dim light. “You really think you can turn it on and off?” he asked in a voice soft with wonder. “A woman like you? Rose, if nothing else, believe this: you weren’t made to sit on a shelf.”

“Who said anything about sitting on a shelf?” She drew away slightly, feeling the tiny sweat-soaked hairs on her chest and stomach begin to prickle as they dried. “Just because—”

“Rose, I want to marry you,” he cut her off, speaking as calmly as if they were driving down the street discussing the traffic up ahead. “I know all the arguments—that it’s too soon, your life is too crazy right now. That’s why I’m not asking. And I’m not going to until you’re ready. All I want is for you to know where I’m coming from—and where I hope we’re headed. Fair enough?”

Rose was too stunned to reply. Of course. She should have known. What all this had been leading to. At the same time, it was crazy; it made no sense at all.

“Eric, I …”

He laid a finger across her lips. “Wait. I have a story for you. About the woman I fell in love with before I met you.” His arms wound around her, holding her close, as if he were afraid she might slip away otherwise. “She
was
you. I know this is going to sound either cracked or ridiculously New Age—I barely believe it myself—but there it is. I saw you in my mind’s eye long before we ever met. I actually knew more or less what you would look like … except you’re even more beautiful.” He kissed the top of her head, where her snowy stripe radiated outward like a falling star. “The only thing I haven’t nailed down is the ending.”

“You couldn’t possibly have—” She stopped, forcing herself to think carefully about how best to put into words the feelings trapped inside her, bumping furiously against one another. In a more measured voice, she finished, “Maybe you
did
have someone particular in mind … or maybe I just happened along at the right moment, when you’d gotten tired of looking.”

Something flashed in his eyes. In a clipped, almost brusque voice, he answered, “If you really believe that, then you’re selling yourself—and
me
—short.”

“Eric, I …” She felt curiously numb, even as she lay shivering in the circle of his arms. “I can’t marry you. Not ever.”

“That’s it, case closed?” Behind his light tone she sensed the pull of something far more weighty than anything he could put into words.

“What about children?” she argued. “You said you wanted a family.”

“We’d
be a family. You and me. Rose, I want you to be my wife.”

“Eric … no. I can’t. It wouldn’t be fair.” She tensed, and tried to turn away, but he wouldn’t let her. His fingers gently closed about her upper arm, raising gooseflesh.

“Fair to whom?”

“To either of us. I was married for twenty-one years. I have grown children. That woman in your mind’s eye? She wasn’t me. You just mistook me for someone who hasn’t yet come along.” She felt a stab of sorrow as full comprehension of what she was saying kaleidoscoped into sudden, jarring focus: that the best years of her life were behind her.

“Just think about it, okay? That’s all I ask.”

Rose, a deep regret softening the hard muscle of her resolve, opened her mouth … but whatever she’d been about to say—she didn’t quite know herself—was canceled by the jarring sound of the phone on the nightstand.

Eric snatched it up, impatiently, as he might have in his studio at work. “Eric here.” He listened for a moment, his look of annoyance shifting to one of concern. He handed her the receiver, mouthing, “It’s for you.”

Startled, Rose reached for it.

“Mom?” Jay. His voice was shaking. “I tried you at the office … but Mallory said you were out. With Eric. I’m glad I found you.” A sharp inhalation of breath. “Mom … it’s Sylvie. She’s in really bad shape. Rachel wants her to go to the hospital, but she won’t … Mom, she’s asking for you.…”

Sylvie? Asking for her? But no hospital—how serious could it be? Was it some kind of ruse to lure her over there?

Then reality kicked in. Sylvie, Rose knew, would never drag her over under false pretenses. If she wouldn’t go to the hospital, it was because she saw no point in it. She …

She wants to die in her own bed.

Dear God.

Her hand flew up to cup her mouth.

Suddenly none of the thousand and one reasons for being angry at Sylvie seemed to matter. Maybe they’d never mattered. Maybe everything that was truly important was embodied, like the seed at a fruit’s core, in the plainest of all facts: Sylvie was her mother.

Sylvie had acted selfishly, yes. But in demanding more than her mother was prepared to give, Rose herself had thrown away something valuable and rich. Was it too late? Would Sylvie be gone before Rose could get there—before she could give her mother the one thing
she
had withheld?

Forgiveness.

A sense of desperate urgency seized her and jerked her off the bed. Her bare feet slapped down on old floorboards that, though sanded and varnished, seemed to ripple in waves as she steadied herself, holding a hand pressed to her heart.

“Tell Rachel I’m on my way,” she said to Jay before hanging up.

Chapter 13

S
O THIS IS HOW IT FEELS
, Rachel thought.

In med school, during her psychiatry clerkship, she’d often tried to imagine what it would be like to experience a nervous breakdown. Whether you would comprehend what was happening, or merely think it was the people around you who were acting crazy.

Now she knew.

Because it couldn’t possibly be real, what she was hearing. It was as if the mother she’d known all her life had been replaced by a perfect stranger—one of those talkative, harmlessly cracked women on buses and planes who always seemed to attach themselves to her. A woman with sunken cheeks and ashen lips, saying things that made no sense …

“I was afraid, so afraid. Overjoyed and terrified at the same time. Pregnant after all those years of trying, but—” Mama’s green eyes flooded with tears. “I could only
pray
that it was Gerald’s baby.…”

Propped against a mound of pillows and bolsters, Sylvie resembled an old doll in a museum, her porcelain face a web of tiny cracks. Yet the hand clutching Rachel’s wrist was achingly familiar—the hand that had soothed Rachel to sleep as a child, and guided her across a thousand busy intersections.

“Mama, please, don’t try to talk,” Rachel pleaded, her throat tight from held-back tears.

Sylvie went on as if Rachel hadn’t spoken. “I was young … too young.…” Her voice was a cracked, feathery whisper. “Married to a husband old enough to be my father. Oh, I loved him! Don’t ever doubt that. Gerald
was
like a father to me in many ways. He sheltered me … kept me safe … gave me everything I asked for and more. But he couldn’t … give me …” Her tear-filled eyes sparkled with a queer, glancing light, and she seemed to be straining, not only to breathe, but to find the right word. “…
passion
,” she forced out at last.

“I fell in love, you see,” she continued, the effort showing in her face. “With Nikos.” Sylvie blinked, as if struggling to bring Nikos—perched on the mattress beside her, across from Rachel—into focus. In her blurred gaze was a love so naked, so exquisite, Rachel had to turn from it as if from a too-bright light. “What could have been more
wrong?
He worked for us, you see.… But you already know that. What you
don’t
know is that it was way back then that we first became lovers.” Her bluish lips parted in a wisp of a smile. “I was in love, yes, but every night I cried myself to sleep … hating myself, that I could do such a thing to my husband.” She closed her eyes a moment, allowing herself the luxury of an uninterrupted breath.

“Mama, you don’t have to …” Rachel’s words were cut off by her mother’s fingers tightening about her wrist.

“Yes … I
do
” Sylvie insisted. “Please … listen … before it’s too late.” She paused, her gaze drifting to the paneled door that stood open at the far end of her spacious bedroom, as if, any second, she expected Rose to appear, though it had been only fifteen minutes or so since Rachel had spoken to Rose’s son.

Rose.
Why
was
Mama so anxious to see her?

Sun poured in through the windows’ old leaded panes like water into a pale-blue vase, bringing to life the room’s surfaces—a bouquet of delicate tapestries, sprigged fabrics, buttery woods. The Aubusson rug by the bed was more threadbare than Rachel remembered, but still as lovely as ever. As was the four-poster bed, with its carved garlands and rosettes, where, as a child, she’d spent hours playing. The same bed where …

Had she? Here? In this room … with Nikos?

“I’m listening, Mama.” Rachel, though she couldn’t quite absorb it, was morbidly spellbound by her mother’s tale.

But Sylvie only squeezed tighter, her thumb rubbing fretfully against the tender underside of Rachel’s wrist, making it burn. “Rose is coming? She
did
say she was coming?”

“Yes, Mama. Jay said she’s on her way over.” Rachel maintained a low, soothing tone, but she felt like screaming.
What does Rose have to do with any of this?

Sylvie seemed to relax, sinking deeper into her throne of pillows. She looked so frail, all crumpled in on herself, like a withered leaf. Rachel wanted to snatch her up, physically
carry
her to the nearest hospital. She was aware of a steady pulse of alarm throbbing in her, as unremitting as a flashing red bubble light.
Mama, please don’t die!
she cried inwardly.

“And then, yes … pregnant. After all those years, I was pregnant.” Sylvie closed her eyes, and her speech became slurred, as if she were drifting off to sleep. But her twisted tale continued to steal past her lips like wind whistling through a window someone had neglected to close all the way. “Gerald and I had been to every specialist, had every kind of test. They never found anything wrong … but even so, as much as I prayed I might be wrong, I knew in my heart the baby wasn’t his. There was a slight chance, though … and that’s what kept me going.” She opened her eyes, and cast an apologetic glance at Nikos, who patted her shoulder comfortingly. “I’m sorry, my dear. But it’s the truth. I was such a timid mouse—afraid of my own shadow. Imagine what Gerald would have done had he guessed the truth!”

Rachel was shocked to see that Nikos was crying. Tears trickled down his staunch, weathered face like snowmelt from a mountain ridge. He didn’t bother to wipe them away. When had she ever seen him cry? Never, she realized, and was filled with a deep affection for this man who had been so much more than her mother’s faithful companion; he’d been like a stepfather to her, and a grandfather to Iris. As steady as the axle about which the wheel of their family turned.

She watched him struggle mightily to gain control over the emotions threatening to wrench him apart, his great knot of an Adam’s apple working. Rachel forgot her own anguish for the moment, her heart going out to Nikos as he bent over Sylvie, cupping her face in his large, work-worn hands as gently as if it were an eggshell that might crack. He kissed her tenderly. First on one cheek, then the other.

“I don’t blame you,” he said, his voice a soothing rumble. “You did what you believed you had to.”

Sylvie gazed up at him in gratitude, and in that instant she appeared almost transparent, as if the sunlight slanting across her face were radiating from a source deep inside her. “Darling Nikos,” she whispered. Then, slowly, she swiveled her head toward Rachel. “
You
were the reason I kept silent, my
shainenke.
Remember the story about the fire? The night you were born, the hospital burning down? It happened just as I described it. What you didn’t know,
couldn’t
know”—she swallowed hard—“was that the baby girl I rescued, carried in my arms down that fire escape—she was you, just as I said, but you weren’t
mine
.”

Rachel seemed suddenly to be looking at her mother from a great distance, as if the room had telescoped, leaving only Mama’s face, floating like a pale petal at the end of a long tunnel. The bed on which Rachel sat seemed to sway, and she gripped hold of one of its carved posts to keep from losing her balance.