Wanting Rita (35 page)

“Divorced?”

“Yes.”

“A…shame. Good…kids…you know…no kids…there.”

“Yeah…it’s good we didn’t have kids,” I clarified.

“Liked her.”

“So did I. It happens.”

He stared with attentive seriousness. “You…work…you work at it. Got to work…at it.”

I kept my voice even. “Yeah…we did, Dad. We worked hard at it. Things just…go a different way sometimes.”

He shivered.

“Are you cold?”

His sagging mouth was set in a frown, as he weakly shook his head. Saliva trickled from his mouth. I reached for a tissue, stood and wiped the sticky dribble. “Surgery?” he forced out. “Surgery…” he repeated, straining for words and thoughts.

“Me?”

He nodded.

“Oh, you mean have I started my cardiology fellowship?”

His eyes opened wider in affirmation.

“Haven’t given it much thought recently.”

“…What….waiting for?”

I searched for warmth in his eyes, but saw accusation. They were crystal clear, more so than I’d remembered since my last visit. His professional suavity and careful breeding had been stripped away, leaving behind the frankness and entitlement of a patriarch. His eyes burned at me. “Become…something…” he said. “Lincolns become…” his voice fell away and his body shook with frustration because he couldn’t find the words to finish the thought. But he saw that I understood his stern meaning.

Dad’s articulate and refined communication style had always marshaled carefully chosen words loaded with inference and subtext. I’d learned to understand and obey him that way. This “new” direct style was a little off-putting.

“Yes… Yes, Dad, I will be applying to Harvard soon.”

His face pinkened. His left eye watered. “House? Selling….it?”

I gave him a swift glance, and then looked at the flowers. “House is fine, Dad. No, I’m not selling it. No plans to.”

His chest sank a little in relief. “…Good…”

We listened to the silence. I couldn’t think of another single thing to say.

“A girl…friend?” he finally asked.

“No, Dad. No girlfriends. Just work.”

He lowered himself and his eyes, as if to close the door and end the visit. I stood and leaned, and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You sleep now. It was good to see you.”

He reawakened and found my eyes. He blinked lethargically. “Son. Glad. It’s…good…you came by.”

I felt so far away from him and it saddened me. “I’ll be back at Christmas.”

I left the room, closed the door and leaned back against it, hearing the kids’ voices rising excitedly, as they ran into the house.

Chapter Two

Under the baking Caribbean sun, I strolled the blanched beach like a pilgrim, wide-brimmed straw hat tied firmly under my chin. My T-shirt billowed, and my feet cooled as they caught the edge of the tide. Even with sunglasses, my eyes were stunned by the explosion of light, the turquoise glass of the sea and the sugar-white beach. I passed a string of yellow bungalows, with vivid orange shutters. I took a path through palms, which arched high and away from the sea, like tall runway models, pausing, swaying, with feathered hats and too much attitude.

I wandered by couples in embrace, and passed families, kicking at sand, building with sand, rolling in sand and skittering across the hot skillet of it, dashing from beach umbrellas and candy-colored towels, heading to the beach bar for a drink or snack. I saw glistening bodies turned boldly to the burning day, seeking the tattoo of color to tempt a lover, to change the facade, or perhaps to shed the old skin without exposing the heart.

Skin cancer didn’t exist here and never would. It simply wasn’t allowed. Life was eternal in this most elegant of islands, where trade winds send enchanting breezes to tempt the skin, heal the mind and stir the heart. And so I mended toward wholeness, trotting away from the beach, toward my hotel.

It took five days to find the near perfect pitch of the place; to match the metronome of my body with the rhythms and themes of spreading peace, rising sun and curling sea; to be conducted by the downright languid largo of the night music.

Nicole and I had come here for a vacation more than a year before, roaming the beaches, hand in hand, like real lovers, discussing law, medicine and politics. We sought approbation in the eyes of waiters and affluent guests who were staying at Villa Nova, one of the top new hotels. We were excited to learn that Elton John had just left and were disappointed when told that Madonna would arrive a few days after our departure.

We called friends back home, high from rum and sun, and described the 28-room country house that lay elegantly among fig trees, wrapped in extravagant tropical gardens. We described the view of rippling cane fields and sleepy villages. We described it all to ourselves as we drove to Sam Lord’s Castle, and sought exaltation in each other’s eyes, as we gave ourselves this exciting, idyllic “presentation.”

Alone now, kicking at the sand, reflecting, I clearly perceived that inside, Nicole and I had already begun to create new presentations, with bullet points such as “What Is Happening to Us?” “Is There an Effective Antibiotic for This Dying Relationship?” and “Who Really is(are) the Guilty Party(ies) Here?”

I did not wish to stay anywhere near Villa Nova this time.

The hotel I had chosen was a series of high and low painted buildings: turquoise, peach and purple. From a distance, they reminded me of tropical fruit drinks. Color simply vibrated. Red, yellow and ivory flowers cascaded over walls and balconies, spilling onto landscaped paths and gardens, rich with exotic frangipani, bougainvillea and golden apple trees. At night, on the patio terrace where I ate dinner, the candlelight, the smooth rasp of the sea, and the gathering sugary scents all merged in the gentle scattering breeze. A drenching moonlight speckled the sea, making life unbearably romantic.

As I sat in the black leather piano bar, I thought of Rita with a brand new kind of aching love. My eyes took in the hanging Japanese lanterns, and the huddled couples. I listened to the gentle lap of the sea. I listened to a black female pianist/vocalist, spotlighted behind a shiny grand piano, singing, IF I HAD YOU. I was slumped over a brandy near an open window, attuned to the breathy alto, as she played low, dejected chords and caressed each phrase with a heavy longing.

I could show the world how to smile.

I could be glad all the while.

I could turn the gray skies to blue,

If I had you.

I could leave my own day behind,

Leave all my pals and never mind.

There is nothing I couldn’t do,

If I had you.

On the sixth day, I began writing to Rita, and continued twice a day for a week. But I didn’t finish a single letter. By the middle of the third week, I began a short story. Maybe it would take us back—way back to Jack’s diner and our first date. I wrote enthusiastically by the sea under a flapping beach umbrella. By the end of the week, I paced the beach with it, wrestling every word, every verb and noun and, finally, on Monday, I threw the story away.

I stayed another week and began another story, but this one was no better than the first. I ripped it up, just like they do in the movies, tossed it into the waste basket and wandered down to the beach bar.

She wasn’t a beauty. Her name was Wendy Ketching. She was bronzed, buxom and from Atlanta, Georgia. Spreading in the hips, with a bit of a tummy, her neon red skimpy bathing suit suggested she was comfortable with her less than classic proportions; her take-it-or-leave-it insouciance was attractive, even if her face was a bit hard, her dyed blond hair damaged, and her husky voice suggestive of vocal nodules. She was no more than 25 or 26.

“A doctor? Wow,” she said, drinking from a long-stemmed beer bottle. “New York? Wow,” she continued, sizing me up, with some interest. Maybe it was my wide-brimmed straw-hat. “Never been there…Big. Loud, I think. But I love watching the ball drop on New Year’s Eve.”

Her parents owned a bar, where she bartended. She’d gone to college and took a degree in business. “We’re going to open another place down in West Palm Beach, and I’m going to run it,” Wendy said, with pride.

Two of her girlfriends came over, laughing and fluttering. One was thin and tipsy, the other, heavy, with a bountiful sense of dark humor. I liked the heavy one the most. We talked about beer, about the sea and about nothing.

By late afternoon, Wendy lay next to me on the beach, her glistening buttery breasts loose in those obliging cups. After three beers, her eyes hazed over, and she grew restless with obvious desire. “I can’t believe you’re alone,” she said. “You staying here? We’re leaving tomorrow…my last night.” She drew a happy face in the sand. “I’ve been kinda bored. First time here. I’m not sure I’d come back. Maybe Jamaica next time. We heard they have a lot more parties and young people there. …I’m going to tell all the barflies back home that I’ve had a hell of time. Parties and booze…well, you know.”

Her friends splashed in the sea and left us alone. They had obviously worked a code.

Forty-five minutes later, we were in my room, fitted together, ramping, bodies greased and gritty from sand. She was high and eager, throwing her hips and breasts into the driving sex.

I sensed a near miss had been avoided. She’d paid her money, planned and dreamed the vacation, with all of those romantic days and nights with Mr. Right or Mr. Sexy. But, until now, she had come up empty, feeling shut out and sexually orphaned in this tropical paradise. She had not been plucked, like those exotic flowers and fruits; she had not been smelled or tasted. Not until I’d come along.

Surely I was not in her original, or even in her revised, vacation dreams; surely not the best or the worst, but, a doctor after all, and from New York, she’d probably reasoned. It would add stature and appeal to her back-home bar stories, told in little whispers, with waitresses leaning close, but imparted with enough volume for the sexy man with the roving eye to hear, whose roving eye had never before landed on her. I could hear the embellished story—launching quiet, lurid excitement into the smoky air: I was handsome and, perhaps, I owned a 60-foot yacht that, at sunset, we had sailed to Mustique and Basil’s Beach Bar, where some famous rock group had just happened to be hanging out.

I sensed that her body’s abandoned force was making up for the two-month anticipation and four-day package that hadn’t, until now, paid off.

My passion was lonely, angry and bitter. When it was over, I lay flat—deadened—as if shot through. She kissed my lips, a chilly kiss, and then spoke about a party somewhere down on the beach and did I want to come. I declined. She dressed and left the room. The next morning Wendy was gone, without a word. I’d sent her a rose and a little note.

Wendy:

Thanks. It was a Caribbean delight.

Alan Lincoln

I sat alone on the beach for another week, trying to write the worthy story that I could send to Rita. It never came to fruition.

I spent Christmas with Judy and returned to work in January. The first weeks were difficult, and my colleagues were supportive and watchful. Insomnia returned but I took sleeping pills. I applied to Harvard and made an extra effort to meet friends for dinner, movies and the occasional party. I realized that when loneliness and regret procreate, the mind grows new weeds that clog the field and choke the flowers. I was still trying to yank up and burn the old ones.

When I heard that Nicole was married and pregnant, I went to see a therapist.

Dr. Marina Raskoffsky was Russian, and although she’d lived in the United States from the age of 10, she still had a little accent; a little hard-edged and wise-about-everything accent, that pushed most of my buttons. I thought, at the time, that it was probably a good thing.

Now in her 40’s, tall, dark and assured, in her sharp face and clean lines, and in her very piercing slate-gray eyes, I perceived a placid malevolence that never allowed me to engage in an easy flow of expression. Her short hair and firm mouth suggested a general at work—at work on her war plans that would surely save the world from itself. With this interpretation, I also realized that I could very well be projecting.

“You are intelligent of course, Alan,” she said. “But so what!? So damned what!? Why do you say you’re obsessed with this woman? Why? Huh? What does that mean to you?”

“Okay… Let’s change the word, obsessed, to love then,” I said.

“Are you playing games with yourself and with me, Alan?”

I stood abruptly, glaring down at her, sitting behind her stained oak desk, with the 8 by 12 photograph of her severe looking husband and Adams Family looking children, all staring at me with an aloof challenge.