The Gravity of Love

by Noelle Harrison

  The pages Joy lingered over were the pictures of the crashing sea. They bewitched her, seduced her, driving her wild with longing.

  She had never seen the sea.

  As a little girl she used to have daydreams about sitting on a beach and looking at the water – not even having to be in it, just listening and looking at the waves crashing onto the shore. She didn’t need to make sandcastles or collect shells. All she wanted was to sit on the sand, sift it through her fingers and count the waves as they lapped further up the beach, inching their way towards her toes.

  Yet at the age of thirty-eight Joy had still never seen the sea. Her parents had never been travellers. Her mother was afraid of flying and hated long car journeys. She had claimed that travelling from New York to Arizona was an experience she never wanted to repeat. During the summer months the heat in Scottsdale rarely dipped below 100 degrees, day or night, and with her pale skin, Joy had struggled. She had begged her parents to drive to California, to the coast, or to the Sea of Cortez, but her mother had been afraid of venturing even the few hundred miles to Mexico. Thus every year they went to the same place on their summer holidays, driving up through Prescott (which was only slightly cooler) and beyond to Flagstaff and into southern Utah, where she and her parents would camp by Navajo Lake.

  Her father had loved this landscape, with its high pine and aspen forests. Joy had seen snow for the first time at Navajo Lake when one June they had arrived and there was still snow under some of the trees. Her father had told her it was because they were so high up. It had been a moment of utter magic. She had never forgotten the sensation of that icy powder on her hot skin. In years to come she and her father had always managed to hunt out snow. The last time had been in January 1987 when they had visited the Santa Catalina Mountains just after a snowstorm. The image of snow upon cacti had been both incongruous and beautiful. For a man who had loved snow, romanticised about the Northern Lights and the wilderness of Alaska, Joy had found it surprising that Jack Porter had settled in Arizona. She suspected that her parents had stayed in Scottsdale all these years because it was her mother’s preference.

  When Joy had married Eddie, already six months pregnant with Ray, she had still believed that they would leave Scottsdale one day. After all, it had been Eddie’s adventurous pioneer spirit she had fallen in love with in the first place. She’d had hopes. Not only of travelling all around America but of seeing further afield. Yet things hadn’t turned out like that. The arrival of a baby had forced them to settle, and then she had become pregnant again. They’d needed the support of their families, and so before she knew it they had been ensconced in their mint-green house on 2nd Street, a stone’s throw from her own parents. So young they had had to deal with the responsibilities of raising and providing for two children. But Eddie really had stepped up to the task, setting himself up as a realtor and working night and day to support them. There had been no time or money for holidays.

  And then as the children got older Eddie was so tired whenever he took a break that he just wanted to hang out at home by the pool, have friends over for barbeques or play golf in one of the local resorts with his buddies.

  She’d asked Eddie to take her to the sea one day. He had promised her he would, but it had never happened. Now that the kids were both grown up and they had more money, she’d hoped that they would finally get to travel, but every time she mentioned it Eddie told her he was too busy.

  ‘There are plenty of lakes and rivers in Arizona,’ he’d said to her. ‘It’s just the same. Water.’

  But Joy knew that Salt River, the Verde River, Apache Lake, Roosevelt Lake, even the mighty Colorado River were not the same as an ocean. She wanted to smell that salty tang in the air and look out at a horizon that she knew she wouldn’t reach for an eternity.

  She turned her attention back to the book. The image before her was a sweeping seascape in a place called Sligo. Right on the edge of the ocean was the profile of a mountain. It looked as if its peak had been chopped off, like a hammerhead. Below, the sea raged against the coast filtering between dark, seaweed-strewn rocks. She read the text below:

  ‘Come away, O human child!

  To the waters and the wild

  With a faery, hand in hand,

  For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.’

  The poem had been written years ago by the Irish writer W.B. Yeats, but still it felt as if the words were just for her. She felt for the child inside her. The baby who had been abandoned and yet found. The wild and watery part of her that scratched away inside, refusing to be silenced. It was more than a desire; it was a need to see this country and look into its dark corners so she could understand the other side of herself. It was a place so different from Arizona with its vast, flat desert plains, weighted by the big hot sky. She could sense it. All the twists and turns of Ireland, the hidden rolls and dips, the nooks and crannies. She wanted to search them all. Somewhere there was her mother.

  A shadow fell, and Joy heard a voice, that crisp English accent.

  ‘Hello.’

  She jolted in surprise and looked up. There he was again. Lewis Bell. He was wearing a red shirt that offset his dark hair and brown eyes. She found herself smiling in greeting while wondering if there was such a thing as coincidence. What kept bringing her and Lewis together in the same place at the same time?

  *

  Lewis watched Joy’s eyelids flicker the moment she felt his shadow fall over her. She looked up, her eyes hazy, as if he had woken her up from a deep sleep.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  He watched a faint blush creep across her cheeks, making the rest of her skin look even more porcelain, as she registered who he was and woke up fully.

  ‘Hi,’ Joy said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Good.’ He leaned forward and tapped the book on her lap. ‘What are you reading?’

  ‘Well, I’m looking at it rather than reading.’

  She held the book up to him and he read the title: Ireland in Pictures and Verse. How strange that she should be perusing a book on Ireland.

  ‘Can I take a look?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ she said, handing it to him.

  The images were the same Ireland he had seen twenty-odd years ago. He stopped on a photograph of Rosses Point. It was a more picturesque view than he had experienced in the driving wind and rain all those years ago. A rainbow arched above the beach and into the churning waves below; the grass on the top of the cliffs was lush and verdant.

  ‘God, it’s so beautiful,’ he said. ‘And so different from Arizona.’

  ‘Have you been to Ireland?’ she asked him.

  He felt as if her blue eyes were boring into him. As if she knew his story.

  ‘Yes, years ago,’ he said. ‘I had a girlfriend who was Irish. I went with her.’

  He kept turning the pages, seduced by the expansive sea, the green fields.

  ‘And what about you?’ he asked, looking down at her again. ‘I have to say you look quite Irish. Do you have family there?’

  She bowed her head, uncurling herself from the chair.

  ‘You think I look Irish?’ she asked, still looking down at the floor. ‘I thought that the typical Irish look was red hair and green eyes?’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘It’s the black hair, pale skin and the blue eyes that are so typically Irish. Just like you.’

  ‘Really?’ She looked up at him, smiling shyly.

  ‘Yes, you’re a real colleen. So you do have Irish blood, right?’

  She looked away again. She had on her blue cowboy boots. He couldn’t believe she was wearing boots when it was so hot outside.

  ‘Sort of,’ she mumbled.

  ‘On your father or your mother’s side?’

  ‘Both,’ she murmured, glancing up again. ‘It’s a long story.’

  She looked more embarrassed than ever, and suddenly he felt rude for asking her such personal questions.

  ‘Well,’ he said,
changing the subject hastily, ‘was your daughter pleased with the wedding invitations?’

  ‘Shush! Can you be quiet please?’ a testy voice called out from one of the stacks behind him and they smiled at each other conspiratorially.

  ‘Very,’ she whispered as he handed her back the book and she replaced it on the shelf. ‘Did you not meet her when she came in to collect them?’

  ‘No, I was out getting supplies.’

  They walked together towards the library exit. On the steps outside he found himself stopping, turning to her.

  ‘We seem to keep bumping into each other all the time; maybe that’s a sign we should have a coffee together.’

  ‘I’m married,’ she said, her voice tense.

  ‘Oh goodness, no, I didn’t mean a date.’ He held up his hand; showed her his wedding band. ‘I’m married too. Twenty-one years actually.’

  ‘Me too,’ she said, gentler now.

  ‘I meant just a cup of coffee and a chat. I’m on my holidays, so if you’re not too busy . . .’ He trailed off. He felt foolish, but more than anything he didn’t want to go home quite yet. The image of Marnie Piper circa 1968 was still burning in his head. He needed distraction.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, squinting at him in the sun.

  They stood for a long pause and he was just about to apologise and be on his way when all of a sudden she spoke.

  ‘Can you tell me a little more about Ireland?’

  ‘Haven’t you been?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nope, but I really want to.’

  ‘I was only there once, years and years ago, but sure we can talk about Ireland.’

  ‘We could go for an ice cream at the Sugar Bowl. Do you like ice cream?’

  ‘Sure.’

  They began to walk through the civic-centre gardens, past the new performance space. It felt strange to be walking in step with a woman other than Samantha. She was so much shorter than his wife, who was nearly the same height as him. Joy made him feel tall, substantial in a way Samantha never had.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’ve not only never been to Ireland but I’ve never seen the sea.’

  He stopped in his tracks, stunned. He had met people before in the mid-western states who had never seen the sea, but not someone like Joy. She looked as if she belonged by the sea.

  ‘You’ve never seen the sea anywhere – not even California or Mexico?’ He couldn’t keep the shock out of his voice, although he could see she was looking embarrassed again.

  ‘I’ve been to Chicago. We’ve friends who have a place right on Lake Michigan. Eddie says it’s like being by the sea.’

  ‘It’s a big lake,’ Lewis said, ‘but still a completely different experience because it’s ultimately enclosed by land.’

  ‘It’s shameful that I’ve never seen the sea,’ she said with an air of apology. ‘I always dreamed of going, right from when I was a girl.’

  ‘Then you must go, you absolutely must,’ he declared. ‘You must put it at the top of your list of things to do.’

  ‘It’s not that easy.’ She dropped her head and looked so sad that he had the urge to hold her hand.

  ‘You have to make it happen.’

  He heard himself encouraging her – but what right had he to lecture her when he had given up on his dream years ago?

  But deep down Lewis had never given up. These postcards had been a small miracle in his life. He knew he was still bound to Samantha. He couldn’t actually leave his wife. Yet just to accept that Marnie was still thinking of him, maybe even wanting him, made him feel as if he was worth something again.

  Rosses Point, Sligo, Ireland,Easter Monday, 27 March 1967

  The car was being buffeted by wind and rain, the smell of cow dung in the air as the two of them steamed up her father’s Ford Cortina. Yet it was so enticing to sit next to him as he drove the car down the bumpy, twisted lanes, over the crest of little hills snaking up the western coast. Today more than ever Marnie felt inspired by the rare, raw energy of the sea. She took in the leap and shriek of the waves as they slapped against the shoreline, sending a thrill through her then turned to look at Lewis. She wanted to run her hands through his hair, crush his cheeks with kisses, yet she held back. She knew that if she showed him how she really felt she would drive him away.

  Marnie pinched herself. She couldn’t believe that Lewis Bell was here, with her, in Ireland, becoming part of her life. This man, who was so elusive, so desirable because of his unavailability, had accepted her invitation to spend Easter with her family. Marnie knew full well she was naive to fall in love with Lewis, to expect him to want only her, and yet she just couldn’t help herself. He was intoxicating.

  They had only been seeing each other since Christmas. Not even three months. Yet right from the beginning the sparks had flown. She had always promised herself that love wouldn’t get in the way of her ambition. Yet wasn’t Lewis part of her ambition? One day they were going to be partners in their own design agency. Maybe even partners in love and life? The thought made her dizzy with hope.

  He was so English in his ways, but still Lewis fitted right in with her family. She was proud of him, chatting away to her mammy in the kitchen as she fed him slices of her home-made brown bread.

  ‘Are you a Catholic, Lewis?’ was one of the first questions Mammy had asked him. She had chastised her mother, told her not to be so rude, but much to her surprise Lewis hadn’t been cross at all.

  ‘Actually I was raised a Catholic. My mother is Irish.’

  ‘Grand so.’ Her mother had nodded in approval.

  Marnie had been surprised by Lewis’s openness. In London he had refused to talk about his childhood, mentioning only once a mother he never saw and a demanding younger sister.

  Lewis was different here. As the days passed she realised it was because he was relaxed, away from London, and Studio M and its constant pressure.

  Her father was out most of the time on the farm, and when he was about he didn’t say much, but she knew he liked Lewis too when he took him to the pub to meet his pals.

  As they sat ensconced in the snug, sipping on glasses of Guinness, Lewis told her he loved listening to her voice in her homeland.

  ‘You sound different here,’ he said. ‘Your voice is so lyrical, almost singing.’

  She laughed with delight at his compliment, not caring if she looked silly or unsophisticated.

  He touched her constantly, stroking her hair, her arm, catching a secret kiss off her when her parents weren’t looking.

  They were in separate bedrooms, and she didn’t dare break the rule that separated them, but that made it so much more seductive a weekend. It was Easter and so they went to Mass nearly every day: Maundy Thursday and the Last Supper, Stations of the Cross on Good Friday and then the big Mass on Easter Sunday. Sitting next to Lewis on the pew, feeling his body pressed against hers and smelling his aroma, she found it impossible to focus on Christ’s suffering or the resurrection. Even to ask to be forgiven for her temptation, the sin of unmarried sex. She couldn’t be sorry, no matter how sinful it made her. All she wanted was to be in Lewis’s arms, and to feel him inside her.

  It was their last afternoon and they were driving from Strandhill along the coastline towards Rosses Point. Ireland felt even emptier now than when she had left two years ago. There were more sheep than people, although every now and again they passed a farmer pal of her daddy’s chugging along in his tractor, as well as a determined Maureen Farrelly, a friend of her mam’s, battling against the wind on her pushbike, her headscarf flapping like a demented seagull upon her head.

  At the edge of the cliff on Rosses Point they held on to each other and let the sea wind sweep through them, taking their breath away.

  It felt like the happiest moment of her life. To be in Lewis’s arms, the two of them clinging on to each other, facing the elements together.

  The rain descended and they ran along the deserted beach, taking shelter inside a tiny cave between the rocks. T
hey held each other in their wet clothes, kissing in a frenzy. Lewis filled her so perfectly. He didn’t know it, but he was the only man she had ever made love to. Her first time after the Christmas party she had been so drunk she barely remembered it, but she knew she had wanted him. She had not woken up regretful despite the fact that she was now damaged goods. If her mammy knew . . . But she didn’t. It was all worth it. Her and Lewis’s passion inspired her designs. Lewis was part of her, and she was part of him. Their bodies, their minds, their talents, and she wanted this fusion to last forever.

  Scottsdale, 23 March 1989

  Why the hell had she suggested the Sugar Bowl? What if someone saw them and told Eddie? His office was only a few blocks away. Moreover she had offered to take Lewis to the very place she and Eddie had first met. How stupid was that?

  Joy brought her arm across her chest to grip the strap of her bag on her other shoulder, instinctively protecting herself while trying to look relaxed. She was being paranoid. Where was the harm in having an ice cream with this man? He wasn’t a complete stranger. He had printed the invites for her daughter’s wedding. They had spent an hour together in the Botanical Garden, accidental though it was. She had been clear right from the start that she was married, and so had he. But she had to admit she was intrigued by Lewis Bell and how he had ended up in Arizona. He didn’t seem to belong here at all.

  But how she wished she hadn’t told him that she’d never seen the sea. He would have deduced that she had never in fact left the States. He must think she was real hillbilly.

  The Sugar Bowl had not changed a bit since that day Eddie had sat down with her and Mary Lynn Baxter. The pink furnishings were a little faded, but it was nice to feel she was stepping back in time. It was still the best place in town to eat ice cream.

  Joy and Lewis were at a round table by the window overlooking busy Scottsdale Road. To her discomfort a familiar face approached their table to take their order. Looking like a wildcat in a tutu in her pink uniform was Heather’s friend, Carla. Joy felt her cheeks grow hot. Would Carla tell Heather that she was eating ice cream with a strange man? She was almost grateful for the fact that Carla and Heather didn’t seem to be speaking at the moment.