C O M
E T O S A N T A F E
By Jean Nicolazzo
he
view from my front window never changes much. The sun makes
its daily arc from east to west, and the gables on the house
across the street glow coppery for an instant in the late
afternoon, then retreat into shadow again. That's just about
all the drama I can take now.
There is enough drama
inside my quiet house, with Mason slinking around making cups
of tea and sliding them toward me without a word. I wonder
what it costs him to look at me, still swollen, bruised and
bandaged after a month, still silent about what happened out
there in the high desert. I never asked him what he'd felt
when I opened my eyes at St. Vincent Hospital and cried out in
anguish to see him at my bedside, and not Paul. In the quiet
house, the silence between us falls like a crystalline
curtain. I know I could shatter it in an instant if I begin to
speak about Santa Fe.
I spend my days in
the front room watching the sun move, tracing the river of
pain as it flows through my body. It starts at my head, in a
dull throb behind the eyes that radiates outward along the
cheekbones and down to the jaw. My face feels as if it is
knitting itself back together, cell by cell. Four broken ribs
make crying an excruciating luxury, so I've learned to
suppress the sobs before they break. My left arm, which they
told me had somehow been wedged under and then through the
twisted steering wheel, suffered several breaks. The right arm
is intact, although as luridly bruised as the rest of my body.
I look like I've been tie-dyed, dipped in deep blues, purples
and garish yellows. I'd spent hours in front of a mirror when
I first got home, exploring every inch of my traumatized
surface. Now I feel a nostalgic sadness for the bruises as
they begin to fade. I'm glad to still have the pain, and throw
away the Percodan Mason carefully sets down before me. As long
as my pain continues, so does Paul.
I met Paul when we
both worked for the newspaper. He'd arrived with a reputation
as a prima donna, a fallen star who was humbled to leave New
York and work with the bumpkins in the hinterlands; that's how
the legend went, anyway. I hadn't had much occasion to talk
with him, but I had taken note of him, as everyone had. He was
impossible to ignore. He looked to me like someone who didn't
fit into the space he'd been given in the world, that if he
raised his voice or flung out his arms, walls would tumble. He
told me later, in what was meant as a self-deprecating remark,
that he was always too big for the room. When I look back on
it now, I see that it was the air of imminent tragedy that
drew me to him, the sense that his was a high, hot flame that
could burn out quickly if it wasn't fed continuously. It was
clear that our provincial newspaper just wouldn't supply
enough fuel.
I finally spoke with
him at a dinner party given by the publisher. Our hostess
thought we'd satisfy some mutual social need - he was
garrulous, I was curious - so we'd been seated next to each
other. I do remember being anxious about this, but not
understanding why I might be.
"I was
huge," he said to me more than once that night, resting
his head heavily in the cradle of his hands. He said that with
a rueful smile, and I wasn't sure how to respond each time he
repeated it. He poured wine in my glass and his, a continuous
stream of chardonnay that bolstered his charm and my
receptiveness as the night went on. He'd been talking about
his days before coming to the newspaper, the days when he was
a star in New York.
"Well, I was
always small," I finally said in reply. "How does it
feel to be among the Lilliputians now?"
"I don't think
there's anything small about you, Anna. " He made a
dismissive gesture around the room. "You're much bigger
than this place. You're receiving signals on lots of
frequencies. Most people only have one channel open, and the
infinite noise of the universe just passes them by. But not
you." I opened my mouth to answer and caught a glimpse of
his wife, watching us tight-lipped from another table. I
quickly looked away and back to Paul.
"You think no
one notices you, burning like a candle in your little office,
but I do," he said again, dropping his voice low so I had
to lean in to hear. His eyes locked with mine. "I do
notice, you know. And what I already know about you, Anna, is
this: you're someone who needs a larger life. I know this
about you as well as I know it about myself."
I moved back in the
chair and glanced around the room, looking for a lifeboat. I
felt I might be in danger of drowning.
"Paul, I think
you're drunk."
He nodded, pushing
out his lower lip. "Yes, I am. But you'll learn that I'm
brilliant when I'm drunk. I see things ordinary people don't
see. And I see that you need more in your life than this job
and...," he paused and craned his neck, "...Mr.
Anna. Which one is he, anyway?"
I pointed out Mason,
who was absorbed in conversation with my boss. Paul squinted
at him for a long time. "So that's him. What's he
do?"
" He's a
lawyer."
"I thought he
might be a lawyer. Before you showed me who he was, I thought
he might be a lawyer. Believe it or not, I've given a lot of
thought to the kind of man you might be married to." He
raised his glass to his lips and lifted his eyes to see my
reaction.
Paul took a long time
to sip his wine. In the interval between his lifting his glass
and setting it down again, the whole treacherous path unrolled
before me, and I saw myself rushing headlong toward the
vanishing point. Across the room Mason looked so earnest, so
self-contained and innocent. Paul's eyes, when I looked back
again, were two open windows, and without hesitation I climbed
inside.
If a single act can
be weighted with both faith and perfidy, unbounded optimism
and dour cynicism, belief and unbelief, goodness and evil all
at once, then it was that act. I looked back at Paul, and made
a new covenant. I consider that moment often, the moment that
marked a clear distinction between before and after. Before I
looked back at Paul, my boundaries were impenetrable. I moved
in my own private space, alone in my marriage to Mason, a
marriage of two separate people. I believed it suited me, this
aloneness. But by looking back at Paul, I abandoned my vigil
at the border, and waved him in.
In the car on the way
home, Mason asked, "Who was that man leaning on you all
night?
I shrugged and stared
out the window. "Paul Greer. The new columnist."
"He really
seemed to like you."
"Oh, he was
really drunk," I said, " And I think he likes all
women."
"Especially you,
I'd say." Mason continued looking straight ahead, and I
was grateful for that.
"Well, to a
drunk man, I can be quite fetching, I guess." I laughed
then, a thin twitter of a laugh laced with nervousness. It
would have fooled no one who was paying attention.
The rumors about us
started not long after that night. Paul resigned abruptly,
partly out of boredom with the job, but partly because of the
rumors.
"I refuse to be
entertainment for them," he told me. "I don't want
to be a spectacle, and I won't make you one, either."
"Don't worry
about me," I said. "I don't care what they're
saying. It means nothing to me."
In fact, that was not
true. I cared a great deal about what they were saying. I
savored every word. Through the rumors I lived it twice, first
in the hazy afternoons with Paul, then through my coworkers'
cautious questions. I always laughed them off, and returned to
my computer screen.
" People must be
really bored to be looking for intrigue in my life. Look at
me. I do spreadsheets!" I'd point at the printouts as
irrefutable evidence of my steadfastness, a true indicator of
my failure of imagination.
Paul drifted
dangerously without a job, another fugitive satellite
wandering through space, its mission abandoned, unable to
land. He didn't need a job for the money; the connection
between his income and his productivity had long ago been
severed, through some charmed arrangement he'd made when he
was "huge". Without employment, he developed a new
routine. He'd arrive alone just before noon at a tavern
several blocks from the newspaper offices, with his New York
Times and his cell-phone. He'd order a glass of wine, read the
paper and begin his series of telephone calls to me. I'd hold
the phone in the crook of my neck and try to work while he
read to me from the Times, odd snippets from the Science pages
about dolphin behavior, or a review about some book that we'd
both read and hated. I pictured him perched at the bar, his
reading glasses slipping down his nose, his wine glass
emptying and magically refilling. The second call was more
somber.
"What are we
going to do about this?" he'd ask, after long silences.
"This", of course, was us. I never had an answer to
that. I knew at that point that it was beyond answers, that
there was no course of action we could decide on and follow
without leaving bodies in our wake.
After the third call
I was compelled to join him, slipping out the back door,
hoping that no one would notice what time I'd left my desk.
I'd take my place at the bar next to him, pulling the barstool
up close, inching into the space between his parted knees. We
would reach for each other and hold tight, as though we'd both
fly into pieces if we weren't holding on. Some days I didn't
go back to work. We'd stay there all afternoon, ordering food
but not eating, and I'd watch the small windows along the bar
change from pale blue to lavender to black. Our conversation,
desultory but intensely focused at once, wandered through the
entire catalogue of our consciousness, and we marveled at the
many points of intersection. Paul became more lugubrious with
each passing hour. His glasses of wine gave way to small
tumblers of ice and vodka by the time the room lights came on,
and when we finally left he'd be staggering. Sometimes I'd
follow him home so I could will him to steer clear of bridge
abutments. Then I'd watch him stumble into his house, where
all the lights were on but no one ever met him at the door.
This was our routine,
for the most part, for several months. The incandescent spark
between us had quickly taken on some darker, smoldering
undertone that threatened to burn us up, turn us to ashes. I
watched Paul walk toward his car, worshipping the shape of his
head, the slope of his shoulders. I had split in two. There
was still one version of me that went to work, ran the numbers
on the costs of paper and distribution, went home to Mason in
the evening and watched the news, sitting on the sofa we'd
bought together. The other version of me was the one that had
been poured into Paul, pumped through his veins, breathed
through his lungs. In the same way, he inhabited me. I thought
sometimes that when people looked at me, they'd see his face
shining through mine.
We decided then to
start leaving the city to meet somewhere else. It was his idea
to take separate flights out of town and meet at a hotel,
where we could luxuriate in large soft beds. Paul needed the
best hotels; the king-size beds with duvets, deep armchairs,
room service around the clock, marble baths, and mini-bars. He
especially needed the mini-bars. His morning routine in the
hotel never varied. He'd start with a thin clear stream from a
tiny bottle of Absolut into his coffee cup. He'd top that off
with the darkest French Roast, delivered in gleaming silver
pots to our door. No cream, no sugar. Until he'd finished the
first cup, he wouldn't say a word. I don't know what he did at
home. His life at home was a dark terrain where I never
ventured. He rarely spoke of it, and I never asked.
Paul seemed to be
approaching an abyss. He stood at a place where he could peer
down at the river snaking below. I was willing to match him
step for step, to inch toward oblivion with him in a somnolent
shuffle. He urged me along; he tested my vertigo at every
turn.
"Let's see if we
can spend twenty-four hours completely naked," he
suggested once in San Francisco, spurred on by a dose of
Absolut bravado. We lounged nude on damask-covered sofas while
room service waiters opened our chilled wine and pretended not
to see. But that wasn't enough. He needed to walk through the
halls naked, stand at the elevator holding hands to confront
the other guests when the doors slid open. I burned with
embarrassment, but didn't let on. He seemed unaware, like Adam
before the fall.
Another time, in New
Orleans, he said, "Wear nothing but my jacket when we go
out to dinner." In the dark corner of the banquette in a
restaurant I let the jacket fall open while we ate our etouffe.
In the hotel elevator we fell upon each other, and he carried
me to our room. Let loose from the modulating influences of
home, we were free to fall from whatever dizzying heights we
could construct together. I knew even then it was a form of
insanity, but it was like oxygen to me.
When we returned home
after these trips, we were forced to face the loose ends
unraveling in our absence. Then the despair would settle on us
again like a familiar blanket, and we'd pull it close around
us. His wife was asking questions. He'd never tell me how he
deflected them, only that she was asking and it wasn't good.
"I can't get
thrown out of the house now," he said, and my unspoken
reply was, Why not? Come to me. But I didn't say that; it
would have been an empty suggestion anyway, as he would have
pointed out. I still had a husband, although Mason never asked
questions, never asked why my business trips were suddenly so
frequent.
I wondered sometimes
what it would take for Mason to notice that I wasn't really
there anymore. Our lives had run a parallel course over the
fourteen years we'd been together, but they had been, I
believed, quiet and harmonious. We'd had a rift a few years
ago; I'd wanted children and Mason had insisted on an abortion
after an unexpected pregnancy, but the wound had closed,
quietly and surely, and I never thought about it after that.
Then Paul asked why I
had no children.
"Mason had been
very clear about that from the beginning. He didn't want them,
and I thought I didn't care. Until I got pregnant, then I
seemed to care very much. It really wasn't fair to him."
"To you,"
Paul said. "It wasn't fair to you."
I told him about the
abortion, and for the first time since it happened, I cried.
It was as though Paul knew me better than I knew myself; he
knew where the scar tissue was hidden and he held my hand as
we traced the bumps together. After I told Paul the story of
the interrupted pregnancy, I went home and peered at Mason
over the dinner table, wondering if he ever thought about it.
Mason had always impressed me with his ability to close out
the ledger on each day and move on to the next. He held no
grudges, sheltered no underground streams of resentment. His
conscience was not troubled by things left undone or unsaid. I
had always admired that. Now I heard Paul's words: How can he
look at you after that? I had never considered that before,
but now it seemed so reasonable. Where was Mason's remorse?
Where was his conscience?
That night, in a
fitful state of agitation, I asked him. We'd eaten dinner in a
thick silence; at least to me it had a viscous quality, a
stickiness that trapped every thought. Mason seemed oblivious,
eating and thumbing through Lawyer's Weekly, so I'm sure I
startled him when I cleared my throat and asked, "Do you
ever think about the abortion?"
He took a moment to
look up from his paper, then regarded me with his mouth open.
I thought for a second he was going to say, "What
abortion?" But finally he said, "No, I don't. Why?
Do you?"
I nodded slowly and
he watched me, looking for cues.
"Even now, Anna?
You still think about it?"
"I've never
stopped thinking about it." I realized only after I said
it that I wasn't lying.
Mason raked his
fingers through his hair. "Well, you've never said
anything to me before. At least not since we resolved
it."
"We never
resolved it. I got an abortion because I didn't want to be a
single mother, which I knew I would be if I'd had the baby.
That was the only resolution. Then it was over, as far as you
were concerned. But not for me. I've lived with it for six
years, and I still live with it."
"Live with what,
though? I don't know what you're talking about, honestly I
don't."
"Every time I
see a child of the right age, I think, he'd be five now. He'd
be in kindergarten now. It never stops." My eyes brimmed
with tears. All of this was bubbling up without my consent,
surprising me almost as much as it was surprising Mason. He
continued to stare at me, confounded.
"What do you
want me to do, Anna?" He said this not unkindly, not
harshly, but it stung me like a slap.
"It's too
late," I said, standing up. "You can't do anything
now. It's done, isn't it?"
I turned and left the
room, trembling and sick. Mason stayed at the table; I don't
know whether he finished his dinner, but it wasn't until an
hour later that he came after me. I was lying on the bed,
still and mute, when he came into the bedroom. I didn't know
why I was stirring things up between Mason and me; didn't we
both value the unruffled surface of our marriage beyond any
other quality? We had commented on it many times, how
effortless our life together seemed. But it was exactly that
smoothness that I found so infuriating now. There were few
complicating bumps and fissures to engage us, and when we did
encounter one, we skated elegantly around it as though it
wasn't there.
Mason came into the
room and avoided this bump by stretching himself out on the
bed next to me, propping his head up on several pillows, and
opening his book. I knew it was a signal to me that he was
there if I wanted to say more. He read his book, apparently
untroubled, probably well beyond the time I rolled off the bed
and crept into the guest room, where I spent the night.
A deeper chill seemed
to settle over Mason and me after that, which neither of us
mentioned to the other. I did tell Paul, who reacted with
alarm.
"Don't do that,
Anna," he said to me, shaking his head. "Don't
destroy your marriage. Why would you want to do that?"
"Don't you think
I've all ready done that?" We were sitting in the tavern,
leaning on the bar. Paul swirled the ice in his glass and took
a long drink. He looked away.
"No, I don't
think you have, yet. I've destroyed mine. But I did that long
before I met you." He turned and flashed a quick, bitter
smile, and looked away again.
"So why are you
still married?"
He smiled again.
"You'll have to ask my wife."
"Come on, Paul.
Don't joke. Why are you still married?"
"It's
complicated. Three kids, twenty years. I don't know."
I felt a shiver
ripple through my body. "Have you done this before?"
I asked him suddenly.
"Not this,
exactly," he said, smiling still.
"What, then?
Something like this?"
He lowered his head
and looked up at me, his eyes moist.
I pushed on.
"You have, haven't you?"
He still didn't
answer. He drained his glass and signaled for another drink,
then turned back to me.
"Anna, I never
claimed to be a good person. I'm not like you. That's what I
liked about you from the beginning -- you seemed so serene, at
peace with yourself and the world. So good. Everything I
wasn't."
"Fuck you."
I was trembling. I hated that inarticulate, guttural curse,
but it's all that would come out. "Fuck you, Paul. My
whole life is upside-down, and to you this is just
sport."
I stood up to go and
he reached out and pinched the edge of my sleeve.
"No, Anna. Don't
go."
He pulled me into the
circle of his arms and legs and held tight. "I've never
done anything like this. Not like this." He buried his
face in my hair. "I don't think I've ever been this lost.
I'm such a mess, Anna, and I'm making a mess of your life,
too. I ruin everything I get near."
"Not true,
Paul." I pulled back to look at him. " I'm ruining
my own life, if you don't mind. You can't take all the credit
for that."
He didn't react. He
held on tightly while we waited for the intensity to fade. It
seemed to me like just another afternoon disintegrating, as so
many of them seemed to now, into drunken self-flagellation.
Although I sometimes drank with Paul, I usually stopped after
one glass of wine. My mind was clear on this day.
"You can fix
things, too, Paul."
He looked up at me,
still clutching the sleeve of my sweater.
"I don't know
what you've made a mess of, really, but I believe in
forgiveness and redemption. Don't you?"
He turned his palms
up, and stared down at the floor.
"Even for the
worst kind of criminals, there's forgiveness. Redemption
follows. You only have to ask."
"Anna, you don't
know what I've done in my life, the people I've hurt."
"I don't have to
know the details. I know that even for you, there's another
chance."
He stared at me
mutely, then shrugged on his jacket. Suddenly exhausted and
numb, I watched him as he moved toward the door. I moved to
follow and he put up his hand.
"Don't. Stay
here. I need to be alone for a little while."
I watched him walk
out the door of the tavern into the waning light of the late
afternoon, and had the first shiver of awareness then that he
might not be coming back.
For six weeks, I
heard nothing. Desperate, I called his cell phone and left
messages. I sent emails into the void. Some nights I'd drive
by his house, peering into the brightly lit windows looking
for clues. Once I saw his teen-aged son, tall and loose-limbed
like his father, ambling down the long driveway, and I stopped
breathing until I realized who it was. I moved through my life
as though I'd been drugged. Mason and I avoided each other. If
he noticed how stunned I appeared, he never mentioned it. At
work, my boss confided that it was a good thing I wasn't
taking those long lunches anymore.
"I didn't want
to lose you, Anna," he said. "But I was starting to
get pressure. People were asking questions."
I offered him no
explanation for my renewed commitment to work. I came in
early, left late, ate a sandwich at my desk in the middle of
the day, and waited desperately for a word.
It came, finally, in
an email. It was a Friday morning. I'd arrived early, before
eight a.m. Alone in the office, I booted up my computer and
checked for mail. When I saw his screen name my heart stopped;
I double clicked.
"come to santa
fe"
Santa Fe? I checked
my voicemail. There was a message from Paul.
"Well, hello
there. I've come to the desert to straighten out my life. I'm
watching the sunrise over Santa Fe. It's amazing. I miss you.
Give me a call." He sounded strangely calm and whole.
With my heart thumping, I dialed the number he left for me.
When he answered, I could barely speak.
"Oh my
God," I said, again and again, and he laughed.
"Will you
come?" he asked, as though no time had passed, no
explanations were necessary. I pushed away from my desk and
slipped out.
At the airport, I
slid my credit card across the counter, my stomach churning.
This would mean, I realized, that I would probably have no job
when I came back, perhaps no husband. Nothing mattered except
getting on the next flight out to Paul.
The flight out to New
Mexico was one of those rare, cloudless journeys where the
geometry of the countryside was laid bare, the sheltering,
gentle bumps of the northeast flattening out to become vast
fertile checkerboards of golds and greens and yellows. I
followed the rivers as I could identify them, the Connecticut,
the Hudson, the Ohio, the Mississippi. A stopover in St. Louis
went on for an excruciating hour, and I paced the busy
corridors of the airport in a haze of anxiety. At last, on the
plane again, we were headed southwest and I felt myself expand
with the landscape. I stretched my legs out and waited, and
somewhere over Texas I felt the cord that tethered me to my
daily life finally reach its breaking point and snap. I was
free.
Paul was to meet me
at the airport in Albuquerque, a fact that both comforted and
terrified me. The slow shuffle through the plane after it
landed was torture, and when I finally squirmed past the knot
of baggage-burdened couples I rushed through the door, looking
for his face.
He wasn't there. One
after the other I searched the expectant faces of the crowd
gathered around the doorway, and none of them was Paul's. I
stood alone in the middle of the corridor while the throngs
rushed past me, dragging luggage, carrying children, rushing
off into the evening. I had no bags to fiddle with, nothing to
distract me, and I was beginning to feel dizzy, when I heard
my name.
"Anna!"
I whirled around to
see him, sitting in a far corner at the opposite gate. His
legs were outstretched, his arms bundled in front of his
chest. He was smiling, and his face looked as though he'd been
in the sun for a long time. I rushed over and sank down in the
seat next to him, and drew my hands up to my face, unable to
speak.
"I can't believe
you came," he said, and reached out to me. We held each
other without speaking while the airport emptied around us,
and when he kissed me I noticed right away he tasted like
coffee. Only coffee, with no sharp alcoholic tang at the edge.
I pulled back finally and pushed his sun-streaked hair off his
forehead.
"Where have you
been?" I shook my head, and held his face with my hands.
"To hell and
back," he laughed. "Especially back."
He led me to his
rented car, a shiny red missile with a convertible top, and
for the first time since we'd known each other, we rode in a
car together. He drove and fiddled with the CD player,
glancing at me occasionally and shaking his head in wonder. We
spoke little. We were both nervous, and I was tired and
exhilarated, overwhelmed with what I'd done.
Paul had called at
sunrise, and now an astonishing sunset spread across the
twinkling sprawl of Albuquerque. In the short span in between,
I'd crossed the country and shed my life. I didn't know if
Paul saw it that way, but to me my flight out there was
nothing less than a refutation of everything that bound me to
the earth. We sped through the landscape, so foreign to me in
its immense openness, the sky more vast and clear than any
that had ever hung over me before, and I bowed in submission.
I felt in some ineffable way that I'd come home.
It was fully dark by
the time we reached Santa Fe, and Paul navigated the
mysterious, adobe-lined streets like they were his own. The
inn where he'd been staying was near the Plaza, a lively,
tourist-clogged square of shops and museums. He pointed it out
to me, like a tour-guide, and led me inside.
"Do you want a
drink?" he asked, walking into the narrow bar adjoining
the lobby. I hesitated. I did want a drink, but what about
him? I sat down warily at a round table while Paul spoke to
the bartender, and he returned with a glass of wine and a
bottle of mineral water, which he poured with a flourish into
a lemon-bedecked glass. He put the wine in front of me.
"To
redemption," he said, lifting the glass of water.
I tentatively lifted
the wine to my lips and asked, "Do you mind?"
He laughed. His laugh
was sure and strong, without the sharp edge of cynicism it had
at home. "I wish I could say that doesn't look good to
me. But I can enjoy it vicariously. Drink up."
I took a few sips and
felt my limbs loosen, and sank back into the seat to gaze at
him. He looked different. His hair had grown shaggy around the
ears, and he'd let a shadow of a beard overtake his chin. His
eyes were clear and bright, and though still hidden behind the
creases of middle age, I felt they were looking right through
me now.
"Tell me where
you've been, Paul. I want to know everything. I can't believe
I'm here with you now."
"Oh God, Anna,
how do I tell you where I've been? I feel, in some ways, that
I don't have to tell you. It was like you were there with me
all along. I kept seeing you walking up the road, and I'd die
every time it turned out to be someone else."
"Why didn't you
call me?"
"I had to do
this alone. I was very sick, you know. I could have
died." He sipped his water, pushing the lemon wedge down
into the glass with his finger. "I was drowning."
"But where have
you been, Paul? Were you here?"
"No. I was in a
hospital. I checked into a hospital and detoxed, and they told
later that I was almost dead when I got there. My blood
pressure was so high I nearly had a stroke. My systems were
ready to shut down from all the poisons running through my
veins. I really don't remember the first five days or so, I
was so full of drugs." He shook his head. "After
that was over, the real fun started." He took my hand and
rubbed it absently. " Endless rounds of therapy.
Individual therapy. Group Therapy. I told them all about you,
how you saved my life."
"How did I save
your life?" I wanted him to tell me everything he'd said.
I wanted to hear his testimony about who I was to him. But he
just smiled and narrowed his eyes at me.
"You had lunch
with me."
"That's
it?"
"That's it for
now." He took another drink from his glass and put it
down decisively. "Are you hungry? Do you want some
dinner?"
I was not satisfied,
but I knew Paul enjoyed the drama of telling the story slowly,
parceling out in small bits the parts I'd want to hear. I
could wait, but I was not hungry.
"Can we go up to
the room? I think I'd like to rest first."
He led me through the
lobby, looking over his shoulder at me and grinning as I
followed, as though he'd constructed this place himself, just
for me. The inn was quiet and intimate. His room had an adobe
fireplace, wrought iron sconces holding candles, a balcony
overlooking the Palace of the Governors, and an immense
four-poster bed that I couldn't reach without the stepstool.
He lit the candles while I stretched out on the bed, then he
lay down beside me. For the first time, we made love while he
was sober. The tension that had been building all day rolled
up and over me and I finally burst, crying from the pain and
frustration of the past six weeks and the aching joy of being
there with him. I drifted off to sleep, under the comforting
weight of his arms and legs.
I didn't wake up
until sunlight slanted through the curtained window. Paul was
sitting in a chair by the balcony, a coffee cup in his hand.
He lifted it up in greeting.
"Another perfect
day in Santa Fe," he said, taking a sip. Then, as if he
knew I what I was thinking, he said, "Coffee. Just
coffee. Want some?"
I sat up in bed and
watched him while he moved around the room, and he brought me
my coffee and sat on the bed.
"You'll need to
buy some clothes, I guess," he said, stroking my hair.
"We can go shopping after breakfast."
"I'm in no
hurry." I looked around the room, at the heavy cottonwood
beams along the ceiling, the fleshy curve of the fireplace.
"This room is so comfortable."
"My wife didn't
think so," he said with a laugh.
I shivered slightly .
"Your wife?"
"Sure. Well, she
had to come out here. It was part of the therapy. She was here
for about a week, but all she did was complain about the
hotel. The room was too small. The plaza was too noisy. She
acted like it was all a big inconvenience for her."
"But I thought
you said you needed to do this alone." I felt the knot
tightening in my stomach again. "That's why you didn't
call me."
"Anna." He
put down his coffee cup and reached out to me. " I'm
still married. I had to do this family therapy. My son came
out for a couple of days, too."
I stiffened and
pulled away from him.
"Anna, please.
Isn't it good to be here now? Isn't it good to be together for
another perfect Santa Fe day?" He was in bed with me
again, and I couldn't resist him, or the logic of his
argument.
When I stepped out of
the shower later, I heard his voice through the bathroom door.
I thought he must be talking to someone at the hotel, but then
his tone hardened. "Knock it off!" I heard him say.
Then: "Laura, that's enough! I'm not listening to
this!" He slammed the phone down, and I dressed quickly
and went back into the room. He was pacing and sucking hard on
a cigarette.
"What's going on
with your wife?" I asked him.
"She thinks I'm
with someone." He continued pacing. He wouldn't look at
me.
"Well you
are," I pointed out. I sat on the bed and watched him
pace.
"Well, if she
wants war, she can have it. She should know by now who she's
dealing with." He reached for the phone again.
"Wait until I'm
out of here, please," I said. "I don't want to hear
this."
I left the room and
rushed down to the lobby, and out into the dizzying sunlight.
Stalking blindly past the Indian jewelry vendors on the floor
of the Palace of the Governors, past the festival of dancers
in the park, past the lineup of costly things in the shops, I
could see nothing but Paul, pacing in the hotel room. I passed
a fitful hour sitting on a bench in the plaza, then went back
to the hotel, expecting to find a silent and empty room. But
he was there, still on the phone with his wife. I slipped into
the bathroom and shut the door, turning on the faucet to drown
out his voice. It didn't help, so I shut off the water and
sank to the cold floor. Through the bathroom walls, he didn't
sound angry anymore. He seemed to be crying. I crept across
the bathroom and, in spite of my strong desire not to, pressed
my ear to the door.
"Laura," he
sobbed. "I'd be so lonely without you. Please don't
leave. Please."
I spread my body out
on the cold, hard marble and buried my face in my arms. I
stayed that way for a long time, numb, unable to move, long
past the time I heard him hang up the phone. Finally I peeled
myself up off the floor and opened the bathroom door.
Paul was sitting at
the desk, smoking a cigarette. In front of him was a glass
with three melting ice cubes, and next to that, two empty shot
bottles of Absolut. He seemed surprised to see me.
"Were you in
there all that time?" he asked.
I just nodded and
climbed up on the bed.
"I guess I was
on the phone for a long time. Didn't you take a walk?"
"What's
that?" I said, pointing to the bottles.
He glanced over at
them and snorted. "Armor. I was talking to Laura."
"I know that.
But do you need that to talk to her?"
He bit on his thumb.
"I guess I do."
"I'm going back,
Paul."
He expression didn't
change. "Why? You just got here. Stay with me."
"I don't belong
here."
"Anna, don't get
melodramatic. Let's take a ride. Let's see New Mexico."
"What about
Laura? Didn't you say you'd be lonely without her? What about
the vodka?"
"What do you
expect me to say to her, Anna? She says she'll take my kids
away. She could do that, and I'd have nothing. She knows
exactly what buttons to push. I knew she'd do that; that's why
I needed a drink. Why do you think I'm still here, spending a
fortune on this hotel? I can't go home yet. I can't face her
yet. Come on, let's get out of here. Let's take a ride."
I drove the red
convertible, because Paul was drunk again. We left Santa Fe
and headed north, toward Taos. I didn't know where I was
going, or why I was still there, but driving seemed like the
best thing for the moment. Paul drifted off right away,
twitching and moaning from some dark place in his sleep. With
him slouched in the seat next to me, I suddenly felt more
alone than I'd ever been.
The landscape outside
Santa Fe undulated before me, stark tawny hills dotted with
mean brush, miles of stirring emptiness. Outcrops of startling
orange rock walls burst through the ground, alive with tiny
lizards darting in and out of crevices. I pushed down hard on
the gas pedal, exhilarated by speed. That car had been
designed for empty highways. The strangeness of the terrain
was heightened by the acute blue sky, and I sped past it all,
getting far away from the chill that lingered from the cold
bathroom floor.
I looked at Paul
sleeping, still beholden to his face in a way that defied my
understanding. I loved it, every angle and plane, every curve.
I loved his mouth, even while it opened to lie to me. There
was no going back, not to any of it, not to silent dinners
with Mason and the spreadsheets at the newspaper, and
certainly not to the eternal afternoons at the tavern with
Paul. There was no going back to anything. I could only keep
driving forward, faster than I'd ever driven before.
When I close my eyes
now, I can still see it, a strange white apparition like a
fugitive sail from a deathship, a ghost, a harbinger of
annihilation. I saw it then, dancing specter-like in a
powerful wind, about a quarter mile in front of us, moving
across the highway from the opposite lane. I do remember
wondering, without any sense of alarm, what it was. I don't
remember much else, though. They tell me now it was a
tarpaulin, just a big piece of white plastic that flew off a
truck coming the other way. I don't remember, but I like to
think that I turned to Paul and took his hand, and he woke up
and smiled at me, just before the dancing thing slapped onto
our speeding car and wrapped around it like a shroud. The
windshield filled with a stark white glare, and I kept
driving. I lost control, I guess. That's what they tell me,
now.
While I was still in
St. Vincent Hospital, Paul was buried in a family plot in
Connecticut. Mason had told me only that Paul's wife had come
to Santa Fe to claim his body and take him home, and that yes,
Mason spoke to her briefly, but no, he didn't think he should
tell me what they said to each other. He said that someday the
time might be right for that, but not now.
I watch Mason closely
these days as he steps gingerly around me, still asking no
questions, waiting for me to heal. I thought I knew something
about love until those cups of tea started appearing at
precisely the moment I wanted them, each a finely wrought
offering of forgiveness and redemption. I wonder if he knows
that when I close my eyes I see Paul smiling at me, his eyes
clear and sober. I wonder if he knows that I smile back at
Paul and say, "I forgive you." Maybe someday I can
tell him about that. But not now. Now it is enough for Mason
and me to occupy the quiet house together, fragile as teacups,
convalescing separately, sheltering our two flammable
briquettes of grief.
Copyright
© 2000 Jean Nicolazzo
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