Part 8 (2/2)

”And so-well, I guess I'm wondering how you felt, when you got the news from Spain.”

The news from Spain. Oh, dear G.o.d, ”the news from Spain”! Spoken in that deep ponderous undertaker voice. The unctuous importance of it, as if he were saying: The news from Hiros.h.i.+ma. The news from Dallas. Lighten up, Charlie, she felt like telling him.

Her eyes met Liza's, and she saw that they were united, somehow, against Charlie's solemn ardor. But she also felt an obligation to protect his dignity.

She made her own voice serious and hushed. ”Well, it was terrible,” she said. And it had been. But at the moment she was feeling pretty jaunty. In fact, she was afraid that if her eyes met Liza's again, she might start laughing.

She went on, though, in the serious voice: She had been staying with Michael and Sylvia Webster, an American couple she and Denis had met at a party in Cannes and become quite close to. She and Sylvia had been out shopping, and when they came home at teatime Michael, unusually, was there. He was with the diplomatic service; they had a teletype machine in the office. He had already arranged for Alice to fly to Barcelona, though there was no hurry by that point. It always seems like you have to hurry, even when it's too late. It's also so strange, Alice said, what you remember from a time like that. No memory whatsoever of the flight, or anything about Barcelona. What I remember was the shaving kit-Sylvia had taken me that day to a beautiful leather-goods store on the rue Saint-Honore, and I'd bought Denis a shaving kit; and that's the thing I really remember about the days right after his death: how the thought of that shaving kit could just undo me. They asked me if I wanted to see Denis, she added, and I knew that I definitely did not.

Charlie was scribbling and looking stricken, she saw. Liza's face, too, was creased and sad.

All this was new to them. It was a terrible story.

”An adventure! Are you ready for an adventure?” Alice said to Veronica, when Liza had put her in the baby carrier and strapped it onto her chest, so that Veronica faced forward. She hung in the harness tilted out and slightly downward, like the figurehead of a s.h.i.+p.

They were walking down to the beach with the dogs; they had left Charlie on Alice's couch with a box of letters and photographs. ”Fair game,” Alice had told him. ”Anything you want, really. We can go into town later and make photocopies.”

The dogs were running around like crazy. The baby laughed and screamed at them, pointing, kicking her legs. ”They're pretty silly, aren't they?” Alice said. She unlatched a gate and they walked along a short boardwalk and then down some steps onto the beach. The strong, cold wind exhilarated Liza, and she laughed. She and Alice both started to run. The ocean was the color of slate, enormous. The waves ran very fast, halfway between the sh.o.r.eline and the horizon, forming white tops that skidded toward each other and joined. They were the same each time, but they seemed, somehow, impulsive, a series of sudden whims.

After a few minutes Liza and Alice slowed to a walk, breathing hard but, as Alice pointed out, warmer. The baby's cheeks were flaming; she watched, yearning but not making any sound, as the dogs went on running, away from them.

”So,” Alice said to Liza, ”and what do you do?”

”Oh.” The question startled Liza, maybe because she'd spent so much of the day as an observer. ”Well, I'm a musician.”

”Really? What kind of music?”

”Early music.”

”How early?” Alice, still panting from the run, sounded eager, and was looking at Liza with real interest.

So Liza talked, about the consort tradition and how it had led into the baroque, which Alice turned out to know something about because she had a friend in London who was a choral conductor. ”Purcell,” she said. ”He'd be an example of one of those transitional guys, right?”

”Exactly,” Liza said. ”What I play are the stringed instruments-lute, dulcimer-”

”Theorbo,” Alice said, surprisingly.

Liza laughed. ”Theorbo.”

”Impressive, aren't I? But let me tell you something: I know that there is such a thing, but I have absolutely no idea what it is.”

”It's like a two-headed lute.”

”And hautbois d'amour. That was the other terrific name I remember. 'High wood of love.' But again: could not tell you the first thing about it if my life depended on it.”

Liza, looking into Alice's red-cheeked, animated face, felt suddenly lacerated, such an unexpected rawness that she forgot to breathe. ”Well, it's an oboe,” she said finally. ”Hautbois: oboe. You can see where the word comes from-”

”An oboe,” Alice said. ”How interesting.” Then, ”How ... disappointing. It sounds like it should be something more than an oboe. Something more courtly.”

”The oboe d'amour is tuned a third lower than a regular oboe,” Liza went on automatically. ”But otherwise it's pretty similar. My cousin David plays both.”

They walked a few more steps, then Liza said, ”I'm in love with him.” She felt relieved an instant before she said it-before she even quite knew she would say it.

Alice stopped and turned to face her. They stood looking at each other for a moment. Then Alice said, ”Oh, my dear,” and put her arms around Liza and held her-loosely, because the baby was between them, but for a long time.

Alice was not the first person Liza had told this to. She had talked to a psychologist when she first came to California halfway through her soph.o.m.ore year of college. That was right after David, who was two years older, had, suddenly and without telling Liza of his plans, gotten married. Their affair had all taken place in the summers, when his family came and opened their house outside the town where Liza's family lived in Vermont. Liza had fallen in love with him at thirteen and slept with him since the summer when she was fifteen. She was shattered. She had driven to his college to talk to him; he'd permitted her to question him, horribly, in the vestibule of his apartment building, because his wife was upstairs. Liza, knowing that she was desperate and that the questions were useless, tried anyway to ask him about his marriage-Why hadn't he at least let her know in advance?-but he, white-faced, had not only refused to talk about it but acted as if he didn't understand why she was so upset. It was as if he had amnesia, Liza had said later to the shrink in California, or as if he was implying that I'd made the whole thing up.

The shrink had talked to her about incest, how it was always a complicated violation of some sort. ”But I wanted to!” Liza had said. ”Even then,” the doctor gently insisted.

And the other person Liza had talked to, her friend Amanda (who'd been her roommate at UCLA), had called David ”that p.r.i.c.k” or ”that exploitative a.s.shole cousin of yours”-which gratified the part of Liza that was angry and hurt, but left the part of her that still loved David feeling lonely and wrong.

No one had ever known-Liza herself had not known-that what she wanted was for someone to hold her and say, ”Oh, my dear.”

She bathed in it, was infinitely soothed; and yet, in some way she couldn't understand, she was also saddened.

(Years later, when Liza was divorced from Charlie and long since over David, and she thought of this conversation, she would still wonder about that sadness. Some of it had been for herself, certainly. But some, she had come to feel-and hoped she'd felt back then-had had to do with Alice. Wanting to say ”Oh, my dear” back to Alice, and feeling too young and shy to say it.) * * *

It was when they got back from the beach that Charlie asked Alice about her name. ”I thought it was Alice Carlisle, but all these letters are addressed to Alice Montgomery.”

”Yes, that was my maiden name, and my stage name. I went back to it after Denis died. And I never even bothered taking my third husband's name, which turned out to be smart, because that was another short marriage.” In fact, it had lasted just over a year: the English choral conductor she'd mentioned to Liza on the beach.

”I'm glad we straightened that out,” Charlie said. ”That would have been pretty bad, to get your name wrong.”

”Well, but not the end of the world,” Alice said.

They were getting ready to leave, gathering the baby's things, which had somehow spread themselves over the room: a rattle on the floor, a box of wipes and a changing pad on the kitchen counter, a cloth book about animals sticking up between the cus.h.i.+ons of the couch. Charlie was fretting because he'd made a pile of things to take to be photocopied, but they were running late; they needed to drive to Vermont tonight; Liza's family was expecting them.

On the beach, Alice had heard about the Vermont plan: it was going to be a weekend-long family reunion, and it would be the first time Liza had seen David since that night in the vestibule of his apartment building. ”So I have a baby, and he has three-year-old twins,” she had told Alice. ”We'll both be well insulated. But I'm scared.”

”That you'll feel it, or that you won't feel it?”

”Both. It would be terrible either way. But I think I'll feel it.”

”I think so too,” Alice had said. She had asked Liza about her marriage to Charlie, and Liza had said she thought it was good. ”I really do. We do love each other. And Veronica-we're both crazy about her, and Charlie's a great father. But also: it's me trying to play by the book.”

”Which can almost work sometimes,” Alice had said.

Now, gently, she told Charlie not to worry: she would photocopy the stuff he wanted over the next day or so, and mail it to him.

”Are you sure?” he asked, and she wanted to hug him too, as she had Liza.

She walked them out to their car and watched them stow Veronica in the car seat, and then she did hug them both, and they thanked her for everything and she said, ”Oh, please.” Then they said they would stay in touch and she waved them off, imagining the Christmas cards.

It was getting dark, the sudden darkness that falls over the Atlantic in winter: a somber shutting down, the ocean withdrawing and becoming invisible. She went back upstairs and ran herself a bath. Undressing near the bathroom window, she saw a low shape running lightly through the garden: a fox.

She lay in the hot water wis.h.i.+ng for gin. Not that she'd ever actually take the drink, after all these years-you make the phone call, you go to a meeting, the whole boring yet weirdly effective catechism-but just remembering that old feeling of the first few sips, that first inkling that you were going to begin to relax and feel warm. It would be pleasant, that was all she was thinking.

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