The Gravity of Love

by Noelle Harrison

  Three

  Connection

  Scottsdale, 14 March 1989

  As Lewis drove past Langely Art Gallery, he could see Doug inside wearing his signature black Stetson. Samantha hated her father dressing up like a cowboy, especially since he was Boston born and bred, but Lewis had always found Doug Langely’s love of cowboy culture endearing. And the old man had picked the right town to live in.

  Every day Lewis drove past the large cowboy signboard on the corner of Scottsdale Road and Main Street proclaiming Scottsdale as ‘The West’s Most Western Town’. Around the time his in-laws Doug and Dora had moved to Scottsdale in the early seventies, a replica 1880s Old West town was built at the south-east corner of Scottsdale and Pinnacle Peak Roads. Millions came from around the world to ‘play cowboy’ for the day.

  When he and Samantha had first arrived in Scottsdale, Doug used to drag him along to see staged gunfights on Main Street, or ride a hay wagon into the desert for a cookout under the stars. He’d never had the heart to tell Doug that, much as he admired his father-in-law’s passion, he couldn’t identify with cowboy culture himself. In fact Lewis found it a little distasteful the way the Native Americans had been passed over. There were the cursory souvenirs in the shops, and bits and bobs of native artefacts they would sometimes come across, but the truth was it was rare to see one of the Native Americans from the Salt River Pima Maricopa Community in town.

  He had heard Scottsdale described as the town millionaires built, and there was no denying that it attracted the rich and famous. With his background in art and design, Lewis should have thrived here. That was what Samantha had expected of him, but instead of setting up on his own he had taken a job in his father-in-law’s art gallery, assisting him with typesetting jobs and print work when it came along.

  Where had his old world gone? How had he ended up in this urban desert doing such a menial job? He was supposed to have become someone.

  He had to stop thinking about the past and move on. This business with the postcards was just making him feel bad. He had to keep reminding himself that there was nothing to go back to. His life in London had been wiped out. It wasn’t the same any more. He was married to Samantha. She was the woman he was meant to be with, not Marnie. Her family had taken him in when he had been so completely alone in the world, and he was genuinely fond of his in-laws. They were good people, and they had taught him a lot too. Doug in particular. Time and again, Lewis found himself staying late to help Doug with flyers for all the local fundraising events he took on. He could relax with Doug in a way he had never been able to with his old boss George. His father-in-law made him feel that he was appreciated, no matter what he did.

  ‘Morning, Lewis!’ Doug gave him a cheery wave as he walked into the gallery space. ‘There’s fresh coffee in the pot.’

  Lewis grabbed a cup before sinking into his chair in the back room, which despite Doug’s best efforts was still rather dingy and dark, but at least it was cool. These spring days were pleasant, but once they hit the summer months he found the intense heat almost unbearable.

  All year round in Arizona the air was so dry. Sometimes he felt like he was literally pruning, his skin itching, his lips parched and his hair so flat and static. He missed the rain. He wished for showers of sleet and wet, blustery days.

  It rained a lot in Ireland. Just the idea of standing on a beach in the west of Ireland and feeling the spray from the waves, letting the rain just soak right down into his very bones, was the most blissful fantasy. In Arizona day after day all he might see were clear blue skies. He found himself chasing elusive clouds, praying for them to spill open.

  He picked up his cup of coffee, took a sip. Thinking of Ireland brought him back to those postcards yet again. What did Marnie want from him?

  *

  Joy’s parents were both from New York City, a place so exotic that her heart would race with the idea of living there. She had always felt out of place in Scottsdale. Yet her parents had avoided talking about their family in New York – not once did they visit during her childhood.

  ‘Here in Arizona your dreams can come true,’ her mother would sometimes tell her.

  ‘Did yours, Mom?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she’d say, flashing Joy a rare and genuine smile. ‘I have you.’

  They’d had a big house near the centre of Scottsdale that her parents had had built out of adobe blocks when they’d moved to the town in 1953. Her father would entertain her with stories of all the pioneer characters he knew in the early days when the town was small and everyone mixed, whether they were old timers, friends within the Mexican immigrant families or old Chief Joseph from the Salt River Pima Maricopa Community. Things had changed so much since those days. The town of Scottsdale had grown up into a city, and then just kept on growing. It was pushing into the desert and that had worried her father.

  ‘We’ve got to protect the nature out there,’ he’d told her. ‘We’ll never get it back if we let it go now.’

  Joy had recently joined a group of Scottsdale residents who were trying to get the McDowell Mountain desert turned into a preserved area. She was also working as a volunteer at the Desert Botanical Garden. If she had left Scottsdale to live in New York she wouldn’t have these things in her life. Moreover she could not deny the seduction of an Arizonan spring – the heady fragrance of all the blossoms as she walked down the street this very morning. She surveyed all the flowers opening their petals, a cacophony of colour and scent in this desert oasis, reminding her of the miracle of those iridescent Northern Lights. She felt like there was a shift in the air. Something was about to happen.

  *

  There was a stack of work waiting on Lewis’s desk. He leafed through the jobs lined up for the day, but rather than feeling safe in his little back room and engrossed in the meditative task of aligning letters, he felt restless.

  ‘Hey, Lewis.’ Doug was standing in the doorway. ‘I have to go out. Can you look after the gallery for a couple of hours until I get back?’

  ‘Sure,’ he replied. ‘I fancy standing out front for a bit anyway.’

  He followed Doug out onto the gallery floor. The main space of Langely Art Gallery was filled with a variety of paintings, sculptures and crafts, which to Lewis’s eyes seemed to have no set style. Even after all these years he couldn’t work out what Doug’s taste was. Some of the work Lewis found unappealing: the overly naturalist oil paintings of children and little dogs, and the watercolours of the Arabian horses that always proved a bestseller during the annual Arabian Horse Festival. Yet he never criticised. Who was he to put down someone who was brave enough to put their work out there?

  Sometimes, though, art came in that Lewis really did admire. At the moment they had a small exhibit of bird paintings by the artist Charley Harper. He loved the graphic quality of Charley’s work, and the humour he infused into his pictures. It reminded Lewis of his own design days – how this artist was aiming to communicate as much with the viewer as to express himself.

  ‘So are you and Sammy coming over for Easter this year?’ Doug asked, hovering around the exit.

  ‘No.’ Lewis shook his head, avoiding his father-in-law’s penetrating gaze as he reshuffled their flyers by the cash register. ‘Samantha’s going to Santa Fe.’

  ‘Are you not going with her?’ Doug asked.

  ‘She’s going with Jennifer. Staying with Jen’s sister. Not my scene.’

  ‘Well, you’re welcome to come on over. Dora and I would love to have you.’

  ‘Thanks, Doug, but I’m going away too.’

  ‘Really? Where?’

  ‘Ireland,’ Lewis heard himself say.

  ‘Ireland! That’s a hell of a way to go for your Easter vacation. Why do you want to go there?’

  ‘I’ve friends there,’ he lied. ‘I haven’t seen them in years.’

  ‘You never mentioned anything about Ireland before,’ Doug said, his expression curious.

  ‘Actually my mother was Irish.’ Lewis
considered telling Doug more. In all these years he had never told him the whole story about his childhood. But somehow he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He didn’t want Doug to feel sorry for him.

  Once Lewis was on his own, he poured himself another cup of coffee. Already the heat was blazing on the street outside, and he watched Scottsdale folk walking up and down, some holding up umbrellas to keep off the sun. This is my home, he reminded himself. But he knew he was just fooling himself. Were any of these people fugitives as well?

  He watched a voluptuous dark-haired woman in a flowery red top, denim shorts and a pair of splendid blue cowboy boots as she walked down the street. Unlike everyone else she seemed to be taking her time. He saw her pause by one of the old olive trees, its base surrounded by bright pink flowers. She was looking at something. He strained to see what it was. She stepped back to reveal a hummingbird feeding at the flowers. He had never seen anyone so close to one of them before, and for some reason he was quite excited to watch. The hummer was fluttering right in front of her, unperturbed by her presence. Then it was by her arm, and he could see the woman was staying very still, holding her breath and watching the bird as it hovered beside her.

  It landed on her sleeve. He looked at the woman’s face, and he could see that she was transfixed, just like him.

  Then, suddenly, the hummer darted away, its movements more bee-like than bird. The woman slowly turned away from the flowers and continued on her way. He watched her as she got closer. There was something familiar about her. In fact he wondered if he might have met her before, maybe through Samantha.

  To his surprise the woman stopped right outside the gallery. She took a piece of paper out of her bag, read it, looked at the door and then pushed it open.

  *

  Joy started when she opened the door to see a man standing right in front of her, holding a cup of coffee in his hand. Moreover he was staring at her. She could feel an unwelcome blush creeping up her chest and neck, towards her cheeks.

  ‘That was amazing,’ he said to her.

  ‘Excuse me?’ she said, confused.

  ‘I saw you with the hummingbird.’

  ‘Oh, well, if you stand very still they will come up close. It was probably attracted to me because I’m wearing a red shirt.’

  The man was still looking at her. She was embarrassed by his scrutiny. She opened her bag and rummaged around inside it.

  ‘I have something that needs to be printed up,’ she mumbled.

  He seemed to stir himself and put down his cup of coffee.

  ‘Of course, and what would that be?’

  His voice – she had heard it before. She looked up with a start.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said.

  No man had looked at her like this in years. She should be getting annoyed. Yet for some reason she liked it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he asked her, ‘but do we know each other?’

  ‘Last night. On Papago Butte – the Northern Lights. You were there.’

  The hummingbird woman was looking at him with interest. Her blush had subsided and she was now pale again. He wondered how she kept her skin so unmarked by the sun, living in Arizona. It looked like cream to him. A complexion more common in England than America.

  ‘So that’s what they were,’ he said. ‘I thought you could only see them in the Arctic.’

  ‘Usually. It was a very rare event to see them so far south.’

  ‘I’ll say.’

  She smiled at him. It opened her eyes up. He noticed how blue they were. He pulled his gaze away and gently tapped the piece of paper in her right hand.

  ‘So how can I help you?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said as if woken from a reverie. ‘I’ve come to order some wedding invitations.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ he said, experiencing an unexpected surge of disappointment. ‘Let’s see what you want.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, colouring up again. ‘It’s not my wedding. It’s my daughter Heather’s wedding.’

  He couldn’t help smiling at her. ‘Well, you just don’t look old enough to have a daughter who’s getting married.’ He beamed.

  She gave him a shy smile back. ‘That’s real nice of you to say that but actually I have a son who is older than Heather. Ray is twenty-one.’

  Lewis would not have put this woman past thirty yet she had to be almost forty. Nearly the same age as him.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you must have been a teen bride yourself.’

  ‘I was,’ she said, her smile fading.

  His eyes brushed over her left hand and he saw her wedding band, solid and bright in its statement of possession. She was not divorced, yet there was a sense of a woman who wasn’t used to being complimented. And more than that, a sadness tinged her shyness.

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Lewis Bell.’

  She seemed startled by his formality. ‘Joy Sheldon.’ She shook his hand in return.

  He suddenly felt embarrassed. What exactly was he doing? Was he flirting with a married woman?

  ‘Okay, so let’s take a look at this invite,’ he said, trying to regain some kind of professionalism. ‘When’s the wedding?’

  ‘April twenty-ninth at the Princess Resort.’

  He gave a whistle. ‘Fancy wedding?’

  ‘Yes, her daddy wants her to have the best. I think she’s too young though,’ she said in a hushed voice.

  ‘I see, but there’s no persuading her?’

  ‘You got it. I guess I was the same. Thought Eddie was the love of my life.’ She blushed again. ‘Course he still is.’

  She went over all of her daughter’s requirements for the invite. He noted that it was Eddie and Joy Sheldon who were inviting the guests to the marriage of their daughter Heather to Darrell Winters. There were two golden hearts to be printed at the top of the invite and they had chosen a romantic Gothic font.

  When Joy left thirty minutes later, her presence lingered in the gallery, as if the scent of all those spring blossoms around the olive tree had found their way inside.

  *

  The incident in the gallery had unsettled her. Joy couldn’t forget the way that Englishman had looked at her when she’d first walked in. It was with such admiration, as if she was a beautiful thing, just like the pictures on the walls or the flowers outside. She couldn’t remember the last time Eddie had looked at her like that.

  She chastised herself as she walked back down the street to her car. She was lucky. Eddie might not display that raw desire of their early days any more, but that was only natural. They shared a bed, and they still made love. Most of the other women Joy knew were either divorced or trapped in loveless marriages where their husbands no longer desired them, and they slept in separate bedrooms. Men had become their enemy.

  Darrell’s mother Erin was one of those women. Recently divorced, she was constantly putting down her ex-husband, even in front of her son. Joy found it uncomfortable. Whenever they had Erin over for dinner it seemed as if she was scrutinising her and Eddie, looking for cracks. She could also be quite rude to Eddie sometimes, although for some reason her husband never complained.

  ‘Don’t you mind Erin talking over you?’ she had asked Eddie after the last time Erin had come over for dinner.

  ‘Does she?’

  His answer had surprised her. One of Eddie’s criticisms of Joy was that she talked too much when they had company.

  ‘Have you not noticed?’ Joy pushed her husband. ‘She’s always talking over you and running men down . . .’

  ‘Well, you can hardly blame her. Her husband ran off with a younger woman. Of course she’s sore.’

  ‘But do you like her, Eddie?’

  ‘Of course I do. She’s going to be family soon. And she’s giving Heather a job.’

  Joy stopped walking all of a sudden. She was standing outside a new art gallery that had just opened up. She stared in at a display of Navajo basketry, but she wasn’t really looking at it.
Her brain was ticking over. What day was it? She opened her bag and hunted around for her diary. Her stomach sank when she read her entry for today. She had been invited over to Erin’s house to meet some of her girlfriends tonight and there was no getting out of it.

  ‘The girls want to welcome you into our gang,’ Erin had said on the phone.

  Joy couldn’t think of anything worse than an evening with Erin and her friends.

  She had already tried suggesting she cancel, but Eddie had insisted that she should go. It had surprised her, because he usually never liked her to go out without him, but he said it was important for her to get on with Darrell’s mother. The wedding was just six weeks away, and after the honeymoon, Heather was going to be working at Erin’s beauty salon. It was important that Joy bond with Erin for her daughter’s sake.

  Erin Winters might have been a divorced woman, but she was certainly no victim. From her settlement she had not only kept hold of a big house in one of the new housing developments in Gainey Ranch, but she also had enough money to set up a beauty salon at the exclusive Hyatt Resort. Despite being older than Joy, Erin had flawless skin and not an inch of fat anywhere on her body, apart from her ample breasts. Her hair was long and golden, always glossy and expertly styled, and she wore just enough make-up to enhance her features: perfectly arched eyebrows, long dark lashes, pale pink lips. Joy couldn’t think how Mr Winters had managed to find a better version of Erin, but according to his ex-wife, the ‘bitch’ as she called her was the same age as her son, Darrell (who was twenty-three), and stunning to boot.

  ‘An underwear model,’ Erin had told her. ‘Talk about my husband being a cliché. There’ll be war if that bitch comes to our kids’ wedding!’

  Being around Erin always made Joy feel frumpy. Joy had good days and bad days, but any day she saw Erin was always one of the worst. She would have a pimple on her nose, or her hair would have tangled itself into knots, or she’d be unable to squeeze into her best jeans.

  Nothing she possessed was smart enough, or classic enough. Erin always looked immaculate in her high heels and skirt suits, and tonight Joy couldn’t wear jeans, her fail-safe staple, because all the other women would be dressed up in silky wrap dresses like cast members of Dynasty. In the end she put on the dress her father had liked the best: a simple, short-sleeved jersey dress with a pattern of red roses on it. She tried to arrange her hair, piling it on top of her head, but gave up and let it fall loose. She did attempt some make-up though, painting her lips the same shade as her dress.