An Emergence of Green (13 page)

The dream was explicable; it was an amalgam of circumstances. She was aware of Carolyn’s body because she had been sketching it. Not only that, she had just finished an interpretation of it on canvas. Because she was recreating Carolyn’s body, she was imbued with a sense of it. True, they did touch more than most women, but that was because of Carolyn’s water phobia, and only their hands touched...

Except for today. But anyone, male or female, would enjoy the lovely tactile sensation of that long silky hair...

I am a sexual being,
she told herself. With years of only intermittent and mostly unsatisfactory sex. Everyone knew masturbating didn’t do it all. A head of cauliflower could look like a sex object after a while.

There was really no problem; nothing sexual would happen between them.

This would be their last day together before he took her away...Except for a few final touches, the painting of Carolyn was finished. She would show it to her. Why not? Carolyn would not know the painting was of her; it was too abstract.

Her eyes were drawn to a seamless blending of simple harmonies, sensuously curved lines of randomly varied shades of green. Lacking mathematical regularity, the curves were of exquisite symmetry, flowing to the edge of the canvas, laid against a golden background, an echo of sunlight. Carolyn’s gaze was drawn upward to a patch of green, a shade soft yet compelling. She saw that it was a stylized eye, looking out into its own self-contained distance. She stared again at the endlessly flowing, graceful lines.

“It’s like a musical composition. As if you took pieces of music and…” She faltered.

“I don’t mind that comparison at all.” Val’s voice was soft.

“The greens vary so in the curved lines…There’s a pattern everywhere except in the color changes—”

“It’s meant to convey layers, depths. Unexpected, unpredictable layers and depths.”

Immersed in the painting again, Carolyn murmured, “God, I’d like to have this…” When Val did not respond, Carolyn turned to her.

“Carrie, it’s still drying.” Val seemed taken aback. “It needs to dry for a while. Then, to be varnished. And I think I still might want to change something.”

She looked at Val, puzzled. The speech pattern had contained a clumsiness she had never heard from Val. But she clearly understood that Val would keep this lovely, lyrical painting. “As long as I have visiting privileges,” she said lightly.

Val’s smile was sudden. “You can’t possibly drag home any more paintings of mine, not even to avenge the Bahamas. What are you, crazy?”

Obligingly Carolyn chuckled, then immersed herself again in the painting.

“Even Michelangelo would be flattered.” Val’s voice was soft, warm. “Come on, we’ve got a few minutes—let’s go float in your pool.”

Proud of her new boldness in the water, Carolyn slid off her raft and clung to the side of the pool at the deep end, near the ladder. She could now submerge her body in water over her head, so long as she had the side of the pool or the raft to cling to.

Val swam over and gripped the side of the pool to face Carolyn. “Enjoy the water where you’re going, Carrie,” she urged. “I understand it’s one of the really beautiful places in the world.”

Carolyn placed her hands on Val’s shoulders, feeling their breadth and strength as a new and equally secure anchor. She touched her cheek to Val’s. “I’ll really miss you and Neal.”

She felt Val’s body come up against hers, felt Val’s arms slide around her, and too late realized what would happen. Moments later she surfaced, still in Val’s grasp, trying to stop laughing so that she could stop coughing. “You crazy woman, one of us had to hold on!” She clung to Val until her coughs subsided.

Silently, Val assisted her out of the pool. She pushed wet hair off Carolyn’s face, smoothed drops of water away with soft wane palms. Carolyn said, “I’m okay. I really am.”

Abruptly, Val released her. “I’m sorry.”

“It was just as much my fault—”

Val stepped away from her and seized her towel. “Carrie, take care.” With several swift strides she reached the fence and vaulted over.

He worked late, cleaning up his in-box. He walked into his house carrying an elaborately wrapped box. With a mock bow, feeling slightly foolish, he presented it to Carolyn. Surprised, laughing in delight, she placed the box on the bar and removed the huge red bow and silver paper. She held up by its spaghetti straps a sheer nightgown the color of eggshell.

As he saw her widening eyes, her pleasure, he felt less guilty. Margie had done a wonderful job. After all, he had told her what to buy, and with all that had to be done before he could leave his job for two weeks he hadn’t had any time to spare. “It’s been too long since I bought you anything like that, Princess.”

“You’ve never bought me anything like this.” Stroking the filmy fabric, she walked toward the bedroom. “It’s the first thing I’m packing. But it’s too expensive, too pretty to wear to bed.”

He sat on the side of the bed; she leaned down to kiss him. He pulled her down with him. “Honey, we have to pack,” she protested as he kissed her throat.

“In a minute.”

She stole a look at the clock. Ten to eight. If she were next door she might be playing a game with Val and Neal, maybe cards. And loving Neal’s playful competitiveness, his uncomplicated honesty, the uncluttered seriousness of his mind, his joy in her attention to him.

“Paul,” she whispered as he groaned and came. “Dear Paul.” He lay motionless as she stroked the disheveled gray hair at his temples.

They were packing. By now Neal would be getting ready for bed. If she were there, she would be curled up on the sofa talking with Val, or watching the early channel nine news, or asking about art, or maybe talking about her own job. Sounds of baseball, or perhaps rock music, would emanate from the radio in Neal’s room. Another comfortable evening of blending into the two lives in which she had been absorbed as one of their own.

“Was it something I said? Or did?” Paul asked. “All the sparkle you had when I got home seems to be gone.”

With guilty vehemence she protested, “Honey, what we just did was a little tiring. I didn’t take the catnap you did.”

“I want to make you very happy this vacation,” he said softly. He snapped the fasteners on a suitcase and carried it into the living room.

Her friendship with Val—this new, deeply felt pleasure in her life—how could she remove the one abrasive grain of sand, his glum, passive acceptance, his pained martyrdom?

Perhaps if he was reassured in every way of her love…Perhaps when she returned, if she could see just a little less of Val…Maybe, with herself as a conduit of goodwill, over a period of time the hostility between the two of them could break down. Maybe, just maybe it was possible.

If he was that determined to make this vacation wonderful for her, she would do her best to make him happy as well—in every way. These next ten days she would concentrate all her being on him, his pleasure, his happiness.

 “Just the beginning, darling.” Watching the limousine driver stack their luggage in the trunk of the long blue car, he regretted that he had not thought to request traditional black. And he wished that Val Hunter lived in the front house instead of the back one, so that she might see him taking Carolyn away.

“First class all the way, Princess. Nothing but the best from here on.” Waving the driver away, he held the limousine door open for her.

Late into the night in Miami Beach, in still, balmy air, they strolled barefoot along the ocean edge. Since their early days together he had seldom mentioned his boyhood, and he related again stories whose pain and harshness had so faded out of her memory that they acquired fresh poignance as he spoke. Later, she wore the nightgown, and in moonlight that cut a swath in the ocean below their balcony she welcomed him with a responsiveness that brought his lovemaking to swift and passionate heights. The next morning she woke to his hands again on her body.

They flew in a nine-passenger Cessna to the Bahamian island of Eleuthera, holding hands as the dark blue sea under the tiny plane turned translucent green. That evening, in the bar of the Winding Bay Club, feeling like expatriates, they shared the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games with several dozen raucous, cheering strangers, all of them Americans. As a smiling Bahamian waiter replenished her rum drink, Carolyn watched dramatic aerial shots of glistening Los Angeles with tearful pride in her newly adopted city, and when at last the American athletes marched joyously into the Coliseum behind their flag to the buoyant strains of “The Stars and Stripes Forever” she wished with all her soul she were home.

Blue-green seas of crystal purity, blinding white sand, swiftly changing cloud formations in hurtfully blue skies—everything evoked memories of the vivid color in Val’s paintings. Carolyn strolled perfect, unpeopled beaches with Paul, waded in the transparent water gazing at tiny, luminous, swiftly fleeing fish, collected seashells at low tide, lay with Paul in the sun.

Eager to explore, they rented a car and with it a quietly courteous guide who took them over unpredictably surfaced roads and through villages of brilliantly hued, neat houses built next to delapidated shacks and ancient buildings dating back two centuries or more. They stopped at other island resorts where Carolyn explored the modest gift shops. They rode along unmarked roads through a profusion of flowering foliage to emerge on the white or rose-tinted sand of an immaculate Caribbean-facing beach, or, on the other side of the island, on windswept cliffs overlooking the crashing Atlantic.

She went on their excursions with enthusiasm, hoping to exhaust him, or, failing that, to exhaust herself so that she could truthfully plead tiredness when she could not bring herself to another crescendo of response to his lovemaking. Time alone with him in their beach-front cottage—whatever the hour of day or evening—meant lovemaking; her tissues were becoming more and more tender, her insides recoiling as from an invasion.

In the evenings they had dinner in the club dining room, to the sound of murmuring conversations and taped music of the Caribbean, with an occasional pop tune she remembered issuing from the radio in Neal’s room after he went to bed. After dinner they would stroll back to their cottage, the coconut palm fronds dancing in the breezy, balmy air, his arm around her, his hand possessively stroking her hip. And soon she would lay listening to the ocean and the wind in the palm trees as she caressed him, as his fingers insistently stroked, seeking wetness for his poised penis. Then the groaning question: “Do you feel me?” “Yes…yes, Paul darling…” “Better than on our honeymoon…Never this good…” Kissing her throat, her ears, her face; the final piston thrusts, his descent into sleep.

Washing herself then, patting cool water on her tissues, a soothing welcome comfort between her legs.

Five days into their vacation, early in the morning they were to take a Bahamasair flight to stay overnight in Nassau, she awakened with fierce itching and burning. She examined herself; her vaginal lips were bright angry red.

“I’ll check at the desk about getting a doctor,” Paul said, his tone uneasy, his forehead creased in concern.

“I don’t think it’s necessary.” She laughed in her embarrassment. “It’s not like that infection I had four years ago, remember? There’s no discharge. It’s just that—” She laughed again. “We’ve been…well, let’s wait a day or two, please? I’d be mortified to have a doctor tell me—”

“Okay,” Paul said immediately. “But we’d better stay here. You’ll be too uncomfortable to—”

“Yes,” she said. “Maybe we could get a cab to the nearest pharmacy. I’ll pick up some ointment. I’ll be fine.”

Later that morning, relaxed on the patio of their cottage, she savored the beautiful clarity of the water, the salt smell of the soft air. There would be no invasion that night, perhaps for two or three more nights.

That afternoon they strolled down to the club’s tiny gift shop, located in a frame building near the beach. She bought Neal a white Winding Bay T-shirt and several decks of cards with scenes of the islands, the bright blues and bleached whites of the Caribbean. She had already bought him, in other gift shops, a brilliant blue T-shirt emblazoned with a great white shark, and an assortment of shells.

“You’re really crazy about that kid,” Paul observed dryly. He pointed at a tall black woman strolling gracefully on the walkway beside the gift shop, a basket of fruit balanced on her head. “Can’t you just see his mother doing something like that?”

“Honey?” The eyes she turned to him were neutral, her voice seemed detached. “Would you have loved me if I’d been six feet tall?”

“Sure.” There had been only the barest hesitation. “I would,” he added.

“What?” Her thoughts had withdrawn from him; she examined a tray of gold chain bracelets.

“Love you if you were six feet tall.”

“Oh. That’s good.” Did Val ever wear bracelets? Probably not…

That night, feeling guilty at her sense of relief, she suggested to Paul, “If you want to make love, honey, I could—”

“No.” His tone softened. “It seems too much like masturbation after the real thing.”

As she turned over to sleep, she reflected that perhaps he was as weary as she of their bouts of sexuality. Her body her own for the night, she fell deeply, pleasurably asleep.