Acts of Love (26 page)

“Wait a minute.” Luke would have been amused at her stubbornness, but it was too desperate and sad to be amusing. “They weren't the reason I came; as you said, I could have sent them. I want very much to talk to you. It's a long trip from New York and I'd be grateful for a couple of hours before I go back.”

“We have nothing to talk about.”

“We have Constance.”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Sit down.”

He debated briefly among the two chairs and the couch that faced the windows. He chose one of the chairs and Jessica sat in the other, with the glass-and-beechwood coffee table between them. Rain lashed the windows; the room was as gray as the sky, but she made no move to turn on a light. “Were you with her when she died?”

“No. Her housekeeper called me in New York.”

“Did anyone know whether she was in pain or  . . . afraid? Whether she wanted someone near her?”

“It seems she died in her sleep. She was sitting in a large, deep chair in her library—”

“The blue one?”

“Yes. Next to a round table covered in white fringed silk.” He was describing the room as if it were a stage set and Jessica closed her eyes, remembering it. “The lamp was still on; there was a volume of Shakespeare's sonnets with a bookmark in it; and the box of your letters, very close to her. It was probably around three or four in the morning and she probably was asleep—those were the few hours of sleep she got each night. I think she had no premonition, no time to wish that you and I were with her. I got there the next day and she looked peaceful and”—his voice caught briefly—“very beautiful.”

Jessica heard the change in his voice and for a moment she forgot that she was angry at him and did not want him there. “She loved you very much.”

“She loved both of us.”

That was twice in one minute that he had linked the two of them. Jessica's resentment returned. Why was he forcing himself into her life? She looked away, at the rain whipping across her garden beneath dark, lowering clouds, but that only made her more aware of the snug enclosure of her house and the close presence of Luke, sitting with her, safe from the storm.

“You wanted to know why I read your letters,” he said, and instinctively she tightened inside.

Luke stood and paced, as he did at home when he was organizing his thoughts. The wood floor was warm beneath his bare feet and he wondered briefly why he did not feel ridiculous, wearing borrowed clothes in a home where he was not welcome and wandering around without shoes or socks, but in fact he felt oddly at ease. Perhaps that was because many things reminded him of Constance, perhaps because he felt sheltered and safe while rain drummed on the roof and wind whistled around corners. “I was closing my grandmother's house, sorting and packing everything either for shipment to New York or giving away to the people she had named in her will. When I opened the box of your letters, I was curious—so many, and almost all in the same handwriting—so I read the first one. I liked the voice—an ingenue effusively thanking my grandmother for her praise after a performance in summer stock—so I looked at a few others and folded inside one of them was a newspaper clipping about a train accident in Canada.” He paused, but Jessica said nothing. She was still looking out the windows, seemingly absorbed in watching the storm. “I could have stopped then, but I wanted to find out what had happened to you. I'd admired you for a very long time, I'd always regretted that we never worked together, and I was as baffled as everyone when you vanished. I once asked my grandmother, by the way, if she knew where you were. She said she did not. I assume you asked her to say that.”

Still looking out the window, Jessica nodded.

“I didn't see that in a letter.”

“It was in a telephone call.”

Again Luke waited, but it seemed that was all she was going to say. When a silent minute had dragged by, he returned to his chair. “When did you buy the two boxes?”

“Seven years ago.”

“Where? They look Italian.”

“They are.”

A low growl came from Luke's stomach. He tightened his muscles, trying to control it, but if Jessica had heard, she gave no sign. “Where in Italy?” he asked, and embarrassment and impatience were in his voice.

She turned to him then, her shoulders sagging. Every word he said, just the sound of his voice, brought everything she had ever cared about into her living room and she felt she hated him for forcing the past on her when she had worked so hard to erase it. But she could not push him out of her house as long as the storm continued, and she did want to talk about Constance. She had heard the growl from his stomach and knew that pretty soon she would have to give him something to eat—common decency, again—but she was not ready to do that yet. She felt lethargic and defeated and thought she would not feel good again until he was gone.

“Did you find them in that little town near her villa?” he prodded.

“No.” She thought back, remembering. “It was the first time I visited her in Italy, and we drove to Florence and spent the day at the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace. She was strong enough to do that, then, and we walked all day and talked—we always had so much to talk about; it seemed we would never have enough time—and then, on the way back to our hotel, we passed Signore Forlezzi's shop. The windows were dusty—well, they really were quite dirty—but we could see inlaid boxes piled every which way, and Signore Forlezzi sitting on a stool repairing something, a lamp, I think, and he looked up and said, ‘Ah the sun has come out! Two such magnificent ladies to brighten my—' ” She bit off the words.

“So you bought the boxes,” Luke prompted after a moment.

She nodded. “There were two identical ones, the most beautiful, and we both said, ‘For our letters.' When did you last see her?”

“A week before she died.”

“Was she very sick?”

“Frail, but not sick. We walked through her gardens and talked about some of the directors and producers she'd worked with. . . .” He paused. “It just occurred to me. We covered a lot of territory, a lot of experiences, not exactly a review of her life, but as if she wanted to see it all in a kind of panorama before she died. I don't really believe in that, but . . .” His voice faded.

“What is it?” Jessica asked.

“I was remembering how her hand felt on my arm. We were walking through that damned maze she liked so much—I always felt claustrophobic in it, so I started walking faster—and she put her hand on my arm and told me to slow down. She said she kept the maze for the pleasure of solving its mystery and that I ought to give myself up to it, not fight it. ‘You can't control it,' she said, ‘the way you—' Well, that was the gist of it.”

“Go on,” Jessica said.

“It's not important.”

“Please. I'd like to hear what she said.”

He gave a small shrug. “ ‘You can't control it the way you try to control everything else in your life; you must bend to its demands, as you do with poetry and fine wine.' ”

Jessica smiled. “I can hear her say it. But didn't she include ‘love' and its demands?”

Luke thought back. “You're right. Love, poetry and fine wine. I think you knew her better than I did.”

“No, just differently. What else did she say?”

“We talked about my parents, and a nanny she'd hired when I first came to live with her, and about her work with directors and producers, including me. She had a criticism of something I'd done when I directed her in
Long Day's Journey into Night
I couldn't believe it; it was almost ten years ago and she'd never mentioned it before, but it was there all the time waiting to be talked about.”

“Was she right?”

Luke contemplated her. “I'm not sure.”

“What did she say?”

“I'd asked her to think about the whole family as equally destructive because all of them kept saying unforgivable things to each other. So that was how she played Mary Tyrone: sharing the blame for the wreckage of the family. But that last week we were together, she told me I'd been wrong, that Mary was all victim.”

Jessica shook her head. “You were right. Dependency is a curse and Mary used it as a weapon against all of them, James and their sons. I don't think she was aware of it all the time, but sometimes she knew exactly what she was doing.” She stopped, stunned by the joy that welled up in her as she became an actress again, sharing with a director the analysis of a play. But she was frightened, too, to discover how close to the surface that other life still was, and she forced the conversation back to Constance. “What else did you talk about?”

Luke had seen the brightness in her eyes, and he saw it die. An ache of sadness filled him. He wanted to comfort her, but he had no idea what comfort he could give, nor did he think it would be welcome, and so he let Jessica guide their talk. “Mostly we reminisced. Or she did and I listened. As if she was trying to tell me, in a short time, all the things she thought were important.” He gazed across the room, seeing Constance's library and her terrace overlooking the Umbrian hills. He turned back to Jessica. “There's one thing I'd like you to know. She wrote an extraordinary letter that week; I received it after she died. She used to sit on her terrace whenever the weather was good, and she wrote—this isn't exact, but it will be close because I read it so many times—‘Sitting here, my whole being gathers in the wonders of this lush, serene landscape, and I feel I am its caretaker. But of course we all are, aren't we?—all of us who have been given a world filled with such richness and beauty and abundance. We are its—' ”

“ ‘—caretakers,' ” Jessica said, her voice merging with Luke's. “ ‘And each other's caretakers, too, and there should be nothing but gratitude in our hearts.' ”

Luke chuckled. “I should have known she'd use it more than once. She never wasted a good line, or a good paragraph. I found places in your letters where you quoted her saying something she'd said to me. I'll bet she ended that letter, 'I'm grateful for you, dear Jessica.' ”

“And I suppose yours was, ‘I'm grateful for you, dear Luke.' ”

They laughed softly together. “You must be hungry,” Jessica said suddenly.

“No. Thank you, but—” He saw her eyebrows go up, and he laughed. “Well, yes. I had breakfast on the plane, but that seems like three days ago.”

She stood up, reaching for her cane. “We'll have a late lunch.”

Luke stood with her. “May I use your phone? Robert expected me a long time ago. I suspect Angie's brought him up to date, but, still, I should call.”

“It's on the counter between the kitchen and the dining room. If you want privacy—”

“No, this is fine. By the way,
did
Robert call to tell you I was coming?”

“Probably. He's very reliable. I didn't answer the phone for a few days.”

Bemused, Luke gazed at her. “What if your publisher had called?”

“He knows I sometimes don't answer.”

She reached out and turned on a lamp that curved over the coffee table. The room sprang to life and, startled by the sudden brightness, they looked at each other, across the circle of light. “I hadn't realized how dark it was,” Jessica murmured. She turned and limped with her swinging, unbalanced gait to the kitchen. She turned back again as she opened the refrigerator and saw Luke watching her. Anger flared in her eyes. “You were going to call Robert.”

“Yes.” He found the number in the slim telephone directory that covered the San Juan Islands, and when Robert answered he told him where he was. “I don't know when I'll get to the inn, but I want to make sure you're holding the room for me.”

“It's yours. I'd appreciate knowing if you're going to be very late.”

“I won't be.”

He hung up and walked around the counter into the kitchen. “What can I do?”

“Nothing; it's going to be very simple.” Her back to him, Jessica turned on the flame beneath a covered pot, then began to slice duck breasts on a wooden cutting board built into the dark green granite countertop. The kitchen was designed so that she had to move no more than a few steps to reach everything around the U-shaped counter.

“I'd like to help,” Luke said quietly.

Her knife paused, then went on. “Can you make a salad?”

“I think I remember how, from the days before Martin.”

“Martin?”

“Butler, chef, protector and moral center. He pronounces on whether or not things are proper and appropriate.” He opened the refrigerator and found salad greens and endive and put them on the counter.

Jessica handed him a wooden board and a knife. “Tomatoes in the basket near you. Do you find him amusing?”

“Yes, but admirable, too. He believes in duty and concern for others and mutual responsibility, and I've never seen him bend his beliefs for convenience or his own desires. I find that so rarely that Martin seems quite special.”

“You find it rarely in the theater?”

“Anywhere.”

She was silent. She had almost asked him how strongly he believed in those things himself, but that would have made the conversation too personal. “Does he live near you?” she asked.

“He lives with me, in a sense. I built a separate suite in my apartment, with its own entrance. He's made my kitchen his own, so he says he has everything he needs.”

“Except a place of his own and a family.”

“Many people don't have families.” He glanced at her, but just then she turned away to open a cabinet door and reach for a platter. “Let me do that.”

“I'm fine,” she said shortly, and took down the platter.

The room was very quiet. Luke watched Jessica overlap the thin slices of duck on the platter and scatter tiny Spanish olives around it. “Do you always have duck breasts ready for unexpected guests?” he asked.