Heart Stopper (8 page)

“Dr. Joseph.” Reyna’s voice was real; it cut through Priya’s imaginings and she dropped her briefcase. A few sheets of paper spilled out and the wind caught them and blew them towards Reyna’s feet. This time as she reddened, Priya cursed out loud. She chased after one sheet that was wrapped around the base of one of the young saplings planted along the walkway. When she had retrieved the paper, she turned to see Reyna examining the other sheets.

Reyna asked, “Taking work home?”

“Just some notes.” Priya held her hand out and Reyna gave her the crumpled sheets.

“My mother asked me to invite you to dinner tonight. She seems to have been quite taken with you.” Reyna’s tone seemed to suggest surprise.

“I’m not really organized for anything, it’s quite short notice.” Priya was annoyed at the arrogance of it. After the things this woman had said to her.

“I’m sorry I didn’t mention it earlier, that’s why I actually went to your office. If you want to leave your car at home, I could follow you and give you a ride to my mother’s place. It’s very hard to find. I’m staying with her. Maybe pick up some things at your place; I could give you a ride back in tomorrow.” Reyna was already starting to turn away.

“Maybe I had plans already.” Priya felt as childish as she sounded. Almost like she had just stamped her feet and sulked. There was that annoying smile again on Reyna’s lips.

“I was merely passing on an invitation from my mother. You are free to refuse. I’m sure I’ll manage to eat what my mother has prepared. She is an amazing cook. I was only trying to help by offering a ride; you are of course free to bring your own car as well if you want.” Reyna said it so graciously, the words so subtly flavored with a smile that Priya now felt like a teenager and a gawky one at that. And she knew she couldn’t avoid the talk with Catherine.

“You are very kind.” She tried not to choke on the words, tried to sound like a 35-year-old adult. “I live in Barna, it’s on the way out to Connemara. If you want to follow me, I’ll pick up some things for the night. Which one’s your car?”

Reyna pointed to a silvery blue Mercedes coupe parked beside James’ quiet Lexus.

“Okay, I’m in the blue Volks over there; it’ll be easy to keep in sight.” Priya set off for her car without waiting for Reyna’s response.

∞

She was tempted on the drive home to lose Reyna, but she kept a steady pace and pulled in to her driveway with the Mercedes still behind her. Reyna had the top down and her hair had come loose from its ponytail. She took off her sunglasses and looked at the house with curiosity.

“Would you like to come in while I get my things?” Priya was hoping the woman would stay put, but Reyna nodded and got out of the car. Her sleekness reminded Priya of her first impressions of Catherine. They didn’t look alike, Catherine’s face was softer, her eyes a pale shade of blue. But they shared a grace in their movements.

Priya opened the front door of her house. She was trying to remember whether she had left the house in a fit state for visitors. She was aware of every movement that Reyna made and conscious of the slight air of neglect that permeated the house.

“Come through to the back, you could wait out on the deck. Would you like a glass of wine while you wait?” Priya rushed Reyna through the front room and into the kitchen suddenly anxious to show off the nicer side of the house. She was pleased to hear the intake of breath as Reyna caught sight of the view from the kitchen window.

“No wine for me, thanks. The drive is difficult enough as it is. Remembering to stay on the right side of the road, or the left side. At least I was able to rent an automatic, I don’t drive stick shift. Perhaps a glass of water?”

Priya fetched Reyna the water and left her on the deck admiring the view. She ran upstairs and grabbed her toothbrush and a change of clothes that she threw into her little overnight bag. She leant out to close the window and saw that Reyna had stretched out on one of the deck chairs right below her. Reyna’s face was tilted to catch the shy rays of the Galway sun, the dark glasses sparkling. Priya stared at the bow of Reyna’s lips, a memory flicked; of touching those lips with hers. Her gaze moved down; that body had lain beside hers, her body remembered the slight weight, the warmth against her back.

“Did no-one tell you it was rude to stare?” Priya jerked her head back into her bedroom. She heard Reyna laugh. It was a quiet sound and she was irritated to realize that she liked the tone of it even through her intense embarrassment.

∞

Priya went down the stairs ten minutes later to find Reyna in the living room looking through the stack of her paintings. Reyna had lined them up facing out from the wall and their colors brightened and warmed the gloom of the small room. There were a mixture of portraits and landscapes. Reyna was staring at the large canvas she held in her hands and didn’t seem to notice Priya entering the room. It was a seascape in oil, stunning in its vitality, the sound of the waves almost crashing into the room, evoking the taste of salt spray on lips.

“Those are private!” Priya felt the hurt and anger flash back into her. She walked over and took the canvas out of Reyna’s hands. “I don’t mean to be rude. Can we please go now?” Priya was collecting the paintings as she spoke, placing them back in the stack, turning them around to face the wall.

Reyna didn’t say anything, just looked at Priya with a faint tinge of pity in her eyes. Priya stalked to the front door and held it open and Reyna, still silent, strolled past her to the rental car.

They had not spoken since they’d left Priya’s house. Priya was conscious of Reyna’s energy; it flowed through the car and filled every corner. Reyna’s body appeared relaxed but it hummed with the lazy current of a sheathed cable. Her hands on the steering wheel, clean cut nails, long fingers, slender wrists. A little crescent scar nestled within the junction of the index and middle finger of her right hand, white against the cream tan. Priya imagined herself reaching out and touching that scar. A little jolt of electricity seared the tip of her finger. She shook her head and turned to look away, to watch the landscape flow past in barren waves. Her finger tingled.

“Look, how about a truce for the moment? For Catherine’s sake. I’m sorry I looked at your paintings, I was curious and they were just lying there.”

Priya remained silent for a few minutes. Then she sighed and turned her attention back to interior of the car.

“I don’t get many visitors, in fact, apart from my best friend, Michael, I don’t get any visitors. So I just forgot about them being there,” she said.

“They’re wonderful. I’m surprised you haven’t become a professional artist. Or, are you? In secret, painting at night and selling your work in galleries around the world, under a pseudonym, I saw that you didn’t sign your work.”

“One does not become a painter, one does Medicine or Engineering, or Science.” Priya had put on a slight Indian accent.

Reyna laughed. “You’re kidding me! And that sounds nothing like your father. He has an American accent.”

Priya had a sudden thought that laughing came natural to this woman though her face had seemed to settle in unsmiling lines.

“My mother. How do you know about my dad’s accent? Did you meet him after he retired from the clinic? I got the impression you weren’t at your grandfather’s clinic till way after my dad left.”

“I only started working for my grandfather in 2009; I think your dad had already been gone from there for about 10 years. I used to call him up and ask him stuff about the early records and patents from his work with my grandfather. I liked him, still do. I’m so sorry about your mum; I never got to meet her, though I occasionally heard her in the background telling him where to find the stuff I asked for.”

“Thank you.” Priya sighed again, then spoke in a very quiet voice. “They were such a weirdly mismatched couple you know, but they were together for 45 years. Went everywhere together, fought like cats and dogs. He’s a tall man, but he seems tiny now without her.”

∞

As they drove over the rough sweeping asphalt roads deeper into Connemara, the weather changed. Gusts of wind blew slow drizzle like grey insects across the windscreen. The sun was still shining, but was too weak to dry out the air. In the car, the heater battled against the condensation and Reyna fiddled with the controls trying to clear the glass.

“How do you deal with this weather?” Reyna muttered as she finally found the right setting and the windows cleared within seconds. The sun broke through the cloud as if in protest.

Priya said, “I’ve had time. My experience of the phrase ‘it was a beautiful day’ came from Enid Blyton books I’d read in India in which the Famous Five took picnics with ginger beer any chance they could. When I was a kid, I wondered at that phrase. What was a ‘not’ beautiful day? Why this fascination with the sun and its level of shine? What was so wrong with rain? I have to say when we moved here my world expanded to include new concepts of need, Please God let the sun shine, Please God let it not rain today, Please God let them be able to identify me when they find me dead from the cold, but still attached to this radiator.”

Reyna laughed and Priya pointed to the crisp jut of mountain against sky in the distance. “When the sun shines like this there is no place on earth more beautiful than Ireland. I remind myself of that when the grey dampness gets too much. Every time I landed back in Shannon after visiting my parents I used to come out of the airport and just breathe in and feel that particular mix of cleanliness and moisture wash out my lungs. I know there are other places with clean air, but I don't know what it is about the Irish air. I guess it feels like home.”

She stared out again at the brown and gold of the sparse landscape with its latticework of stone.

“Is that why you didn't go with your parents when they went to New York?” Reyna asked.

“I was just starting college and I'd been on my own so much at that stage that it didn't seem to make much difference. They were such a unit, you know. When I graduated I went on to do my postgrad and then when I realized I was gay I couldn't tell them.”

“Did you ever tell them?”

Priya turned to her. “Yes, that was a surreal experience. I’ll never forget sitting them down at the kitchen table, two Indian people in their seventies. I’d never spoken to them about anything even vaguely relating to sex or sexuality before. And now I was telling them that their only daughter was a lesbian. I think my mom thought I was changing nationality again.”

She smiled as Reyna laughed again.

“For all their worldly travels, they really were quite innocent. My mother never really got it. She still suggested guys from good families every time I saw her. You know, if she'd been able to talk when I saw her in India the last time she'd probably have told me about a great guy she had found for me.” Priya found her eyes were filling and whispered as she turned away again, “And I probably would have agreed.”

Reyna laid her hand on Priya's for a second and then jerked it back to the steering wheel. She said, “Seems so strange to me. Leo and Catherine were so easygoing about everything. It barely even seemed to register with them that I was gay.”

They had reached the turn-off from the already narrow road onto a road that was barely one, with tufts of grass popping up in between two worn stone tracks. It was the bog-cutting season and stacks of turf were piled at the sides of the deep cuts in the dark ground on either side of the road.

“I used to spend some summers here. Leo had the house and the three of us used to visit.” Reyna had to slow down as the car skewed sideways a few inches on the loose stones. “It’s okay, the road will get better soon. It'll be worth it, Catherine really is an amazing cook.”

“How come he had a house in Connemara? I thought foreigners couldn't buy or build here.”

“Leo was Irish. It’s his family home. He left Ireland when he was very young.”

They turned onto a slightly wider road.

“Was Daniel not with ye? You said the three of you came here for the summers.”

“Daniel stayed with his grandfather in New York when Catherine left to go to California with Leo. She was pregnant with me.”

“I never heard Daniel mention his father at all.”

“I don't think Daniel ever forgave Leo for causing his mother to go. Daniel grew up thinking of his grandfather as more of a father. And his grandfather didn't have a son of his own so it was the same for him.”

 
“Yes I heard him talk about his grandfather. He was in awe of him, I think. But then I only really spent any time with Daniel after he opened the clinic. How old was Daniel when Catherine left?”

“He was nine. She wanted to take him with her. He chose to stay. Daniel didn’t really know Leo, our father, at all. Leo had set up the place in California and wanted to move there and Daniel wouldn’t leave his grandfather. I don’t think he ever forgave Leo; he never attempted to meet him. But when Leo died 6 years ago, Daniel agreed to meet Catherine, and me.”

“Wow, so you’ve only been in contact for the last few years. That must have been weird, knowing you had a brother, or did you?”

“I knew. I guess I had a very unusual upbringing. I grew up in what you'd probably call a cult. Leo was a very charismatic healer and Catherine developed her skills over the years. We lived on this farm-like place in Southern California. A commune of people, who shared everything, and worked and lived off the land. Very hippyish.”

“That’s funny; I can’t see
you
as a hippy.”

“I wasn’t. I got out of there as soon as I could and I went to college to do Business. Did the usual, worked all kinds of jobs, and took student loans, got through it. I was somehow never taken that seriously in business though when I told anyone my name was Rain. I didn’t get around to changing my name till a few years ago.” Reyna smiled. “The Irish used to have a lot of fun with my name when I visited.”

“So were you working in a business before you went to work for your granddad?”

“No. I was in a totally different field.”

Reyna didn’t say anymore and the sudden quiet was uncomfortable after what Priya had found an easy journey so far. She was surprised by that ease between them after the accusations Reyna had leveled at her.

Priya said, “By the way, I was doing the practical research component of my PhD at the Fairer Research Company when I met Daniel. He asked me to do the interview for the job at the clinic. I didn't get the job there through my dad.”

Reyna had that smile on her lips again; the one that annoyed Priya while at the same time sent her pulse rate higher.

“I apologize if I got that one wrong. I thought your dad had helped.”

“He was the one who suggested I do a PhD in the field because he knew there would be opportunities and he gave me the idea for the thesis and pointed me towards the research company, but he didn't get me the job at the clinic. I guess he was far-sighted and made sure I was in the right place at the right time. But according to Daniel, he’d never have taken me on just because of dad; he said the role was way too important to him for any friend or family influence to play a part.”

“As I said, I'm sorry. I was wrong obviously.”

“You were also wrong about Daniel being my boyfriend.”

“You're determined to set me right about a few things, aren’t you?”

“I don’t understand why Daniel would tell you we were together. What exactly did he say?”

“Well, I don't remember the exact words, but he hinted that he was having a thing with a researcher and I got the impression he was really ‘involved’ you know, which was so unusual for him, he had always been such a lady’s man.”

“He had a certain way about him. It wasn’t just his looks or the money. He had a charisma. He could sell ice to the Inuit. I could see that for a straight woman he would definitely be interesting.”

Reyna laughed. “I think that’s snow to the Eskimos.”

“Daniel could have patented the stuff and sold it back to them in truckloads.”

“Did you like him?”

Priya said, thinking about her words, “I admired him as a researcher, and as a man who could make things happen. And yes, he could be very charming.”

“That hasn't really answered my question.”

Priya wanted to just give an answer, any answer. Reyna was glancing at her, waiting. But she found she couldn’t say anything and just turned to look out of the window.

∞

They had travelled about an hour away from Priya's house and were deep in Connemara. As the Mercedes glided over the road, now asphalt and winding, rising as it hugged the side of a mountain, they were silent, and the silence was now filled with tension. The scenery was overpowering, the fjord stretching out as far as the horizon, its blue water a hundred necklaces of diamonds in the late sun. Clumps of trees covered the shores and the occasional house perched on the surrounding hills.

“I live so close to this beauty and I never come out here.” Priya broke the silence.

“You've never been out here?”

“Oh I have. Over the last twenty odd years, any visitors were taken on the tour of Connemara. But it's been a while, and I never just get in the car and come out here.”

“You've never been tempted to paint here?”

Priya thought for a moment. “I painted from my memories. I guess I lived in my head and painted what I saw.”

“Wow. You must have a photographic memory! Those paintings were extremely detailed.”

“It’s hard to explain. I think in pictures, even numbers and code, they’re expressed in my mind like images. And when I see something, it is stored as an exact image almost. Means I can usually see when something has been moved. It annoys Michael no end.”

Priya felt uneasy as she remembered her bookshelf. And the research figures. She added, “It's not anything special, a lot of people see things in a more visual way. It’s not really like I can look at everything on a page and reproduce it or anything.”

“So why did you stop hanging up your paintings? And why did you stop painting? You have, haven’t you?”

“I stopped liking my memories.”

Priya turned to the window again. She sensed Reyna’s frustration at her withdrawal, but Reyna said nothing.

∞

The turn onto another dirt track came up a few minutes later. The track went down as it outlined the side of the fjord. Reyna pointed to the clump of trees stuck on the side of the hill in front of them. “This is the front entrance, see that gap, the house is in the clearing there.”

A little trail of smoke crept into the air above the clearing tugged and dispersed by the breeze.