There Your Heart Lies

by Mary Gordon

  —

  “I’m going to be gone for ten days, Meme,” Amelia says. “Josh said he’ll call you every day, and I have ten days’ worth of soup and stews in containers in the freezer. Josh will bring the rest. And Rachel will provide bread and muffins.”

  “She won’t bring them herself. She’ll find someone to do it for her.”

  Amelia kisses her grandmother’s papery forehead. Her lips notice that the surface is moist, as it has never been, as if her grandmother were in a constant state of exertion, as if the ordinary business of living were a strain, an effort, an event.

  “You’re a pretty sharp cookie, Meme,” she says, “although I know you don’t like cookies. So what should I say: you’re a pretty sharp leaf of arugula?”

  They both laugh more than Amelia’s comment deserves, because they are both worried that while Amelia is away, something terrible might happen.

  —

  Amelia’s other trips abroad have always been with her mother. Naomi was much in demand by the governing bodies of the cities of the world; they got to fly first or business class, and someone always made their hotel reservations. This is the first time Amelia has flown economy, and the first time she has had the job of finding a hotel. She always felt uneasy not flying economy as all her friends did, and the discomfort of crushing her long legs is a small price to pay for the freedom from guilt she has always had when observing her less fortunate fellow passengers. But she hadn’t understood how much more difficult it would be to sleep, and she arrives in the Madrid airport, which seems to her the size of the whole town of Avondale, cramped and groggy, exactly as all her friends always say they are when they land in Europe.

  She makes her connections with no trouble, and the cabdriver in Benidorm drives her to her hotel at what she considers a breakneck speed.

  The idea of being in the place where her grandmother was young, where her grandmother gave birth, was victimized, then rescued, and then escaped makes her feel she is on a pilgrimage, and every stone seems sacred. The houses are white; the dome of the cathedral is indigo blue; but most of what her grandmother said about the town does not apply. There is no hint of starvation; there are tourist menus everywhere; signs are in several languages, including Asian characters and Arab script. This is not a place of bare survival; it is a place devoted to the perhaps questionable pleasures of strangers.

  —

  She found the hotel on the internet, or Rachel did. The room itself is unremarkable. The hotel is a chain, and the room could have been anywhere in the world. She’s surprised that it really is close to the sea, that her room really has a view of the Mediterranean, surprised that the Mediterranean is actually there, that it isn’t something in old books that no longer exists, like the library at Alexandria, surprised that the Mediterranean looks like the Mediterranean. Bluer than any water she could have imagined. It seems to have no coldness in it; the blue is uninflected by grey or green or silver…it is simply blue. She thinks of her grandmother standing at the Atlantic, and she remembers her childhood fascination with messages that were sent in bottles. She would like to send her grandmother a message in a bottle. “Dear Meme, I love you, and I don’t want you to die feeling that anything important has been left unresolved.” And then she realizes that she has forgotten to pack a bathing suit.

  She walks on the esplanade and almost immediately sees a sign, painted in yellow on a white stucco wall. “Bikini Heaven. Everything for the beach.”

  She doesn’t want a bikini. She has always worn a one-piece. Not out of modesty, but because she loves to swim and one-pieces are more comfortable. She wore a bikini once; she bought it in Westerly the summer after her junior year in high school. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t swim in LA, but Rhode Island is the place where she swims—the grey, calmer waters draw her as the wild waves of Malibu do not. She bought a bikini, fuchsia colored, perhaps cerise. She put it on and wore it under an old work shirt of Meme’s. It was the first time she’d ever seen Meme’s eye fall on her with anything but the purest pleasure, the purest approval. Meme didn’t like the bikini, she didn’t like Amelia in it. She didn’t say anything, but Amelia knew.

  And so she hopes there’s something in Bikini Heaven other than bikinis. She doesn’t want to be wearing a bikini, which is a frivolous garment, wrong for what she’s doing here: something serious, really a matter of life and death. But the sign said, “Everything for the beach.” There’s hope in that, she tells herself, it said everything.

  She walks up the steep street. She imagines women carrying jugs on their heads; she imagines donkeys, their dainty hooves gracefully negotiating the stone paths. She had always wanted a donkey; she imagined that in their patience, in their slowness, they’d be very comforting.

  The minute she enters Bikini Heaven, a voice in her head shouts: Everything you will see from now on will be dreadful.

  The store is large and dark. No attempt has been made at decoration; bathing suits hang on metal racks, separated by sizes indicated by plastic discs with numbers written on them in black marker. The saleswoman, who Amelia guesses is younger than she, doesn’t look up at Amelia; she seems absorbed in studying her fingernails—long, and painted navy blue. Amelia makes her way to the area that indicates her size. How distressing it all is, this display of bad fabric, bad design. Why, she wonders, do they think everything has to look like something else? They’re bathing suits; why do they have to have gold rings or clear plastic brooches in the shape of daisies, or sequined letters, or even animal-print trim? And they all seem so small; they make the bikini she bought in Westerly, the one her grandmother didn’t like, seem positively puritanical.

  She doesn’t know the Spanish word for a one-piece bathing suit. The salesgirl’s lack of interest discourages her. She riffles through the suits, trying to find something that doesn’t lower her spirits more than she can bear. She tells herself: It doesn’t matter, you don’t know anyone here, and if this is the standard, no one will judge you. But she would judge herself. The look of things matters to her; it always has. Not that she cares for fashion, but ugliness hurts her.

  A middle-aged woman with glasses on a string around her neck (Amelia feels reassured by the maternal or librarian-like accessory) smiles encouragingly at Amelia, as the younger woman did not. She asks, in English, if she can help. Amelia replies, in Spanish, that she wants something that’s not a bikini.

  “One-piece?” the woman says. “But why? You have such a lovely figure.”

  “I’m just used to a one-piece.”

  The woman’s ankles look painful in her wedge espadrilles. She sighs, disappointed that her expertise—after all, it is her field—is being ignored. She indicates a section in the back of the dim room. She points to a small rack of bathing suits that all seem to be made of fur or foil.

  Amelia will have to try them on. Only two are even possible: dark brown velour with gold appliqué, and a silvery one that reminds her of the containers her juice came in when she was in grade school. She takes both into the dressing room, hoping for a miracle when she tries them on. But there is no miracle. She decides on the velour: it will draw less attention.

  Miserably, she pays from her stash of euros. Miserably, she walks down the hill, her eye falling on nothing that seems desirable or even acceptable. She wonders if anything in the town has been made anywhere near it. There seems to be an endless succession of stores selling flimsy, Indian-looking skirts and blouses, giving off a smell she decides is a mix of fish and motor oil.

  She’s too dispirited to think of lunch. She goes back to her hotel and lies on her bed. Outside the window, the water seems too blue to think of swimming in; she thinks that if she dives in her skin might be stained or bleached. She closes her eyes and tells herself that these reactions are a common by-product of jet lag.

  When she wakes, she puts on her bearskin bathing suit; it makes her feel hot. Her jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt are too warm; she hadn’t reckoned on the heat at this time in October.
She has no lighter pants; her T-shirts are all long-sleeved; and she can’t bear the idea of buying anything in the stores she’s seen.

  She makes her way to the beach. Why hadn’t she noticed that the beach was rocky, rather than sandy? She slips her sandals off; the rocks hurt her feet. She notices people going into the water wearing special shoes. The prospect of exposing herself in her ugly suit and exposing her tender feet to the sharp rocks seems overwhelming. She must get herself lunch. She tells herself that she’s probably overreacting because she’s hungry. Possibly, she thinks, I will never swim in the Mediterranean.

  The esplanade, which Amelia guesses is a relatively recent development, is made up almost exclusively of restaurants and cafés. Amelia chooses the one that doesn’t have its menu translated into English, that isn’t advertising mojitos or cheeseburgers or English cream teas. The café’s sign pleases her; it suggests the playfulness of Miró: a red sun superimposed on stylized black script with the name of the café, l’Espril. She doesn’t know what that means, and she tries not to let that disturb her.

  Her waitress greets her with an unfamiliar term—Salve—but Amelia can see that her intentions are friendly. She orders a tortilla español, a café con leche, and a mineral water. It’s one o’clock, but no one else seems to be eating lunch.

  She hadn’t realized how hungry she was. With the first delicious mouthful, the soothing egg and potatoes and onions, she allows herself to acknowledge her disappointment. She wanted the town to be as it was when her grandmother left it sixty years ago. She wanted to swim in the Mediterranean. She looks out at the sea, the unmixed blue, the palm trees swaying almost theatrically in the light breeze. She must take herself in hand. How ungrateful, how wasteful: she is lucky to be where she is. The bubbles in the mineral water seem comical and friendly, and the waitress, asking if she’d like another coffee, seems to be genuinely concerned, if not for her larger welfare, then at least for her temporary pleasure. She says yes to a second coffee.

  As she is finishing it, a young man wheels an old woman to the front table of the café. The woman in the wheelchair doesn’t look frail; her hands are twisted, gripping the armrests, but her expression is lively and she is far from thin. Meme is much thinner, she thinks. Meme looks frailer. But Meme is dying.

  The waitress kisses the young man and the old woman. The young man orders pastries and orange juice. He sits across from the old woman; they seem to be enjoying themselves, though Amelia can’t hear what they’re saying. His cell phone rings; he apologizes to the old woman and walks up the esplanade, where he paces up and down in animated, pleased conversation.

  A sudden wind blows the napkins off Amelia’s table and then takes the white cotton sun hat of the old woman in the wheelchair. The hat blows down the esplanade. The young man is walking in the opposite direction of the hat; he doesn’t see it. The old woman seems distressed, and makes gestures of anxiety and loss. Amelia springs to her feet and runs down the esplanade. The hat, playful, taunting, keeps escaping her, but finally she steps on it to stop it, then picks it up and dusts it off with her fingertips. Her sandals, she is pleased to see, have not made a dirty print on the white cotton of the hat.

  She makes her way to the old woman’s table, triumphant. She can’t seem to modulate her smile. And she is greeted by a smile as unmodulated as her own. The old woman sees her and says, “I know it’s foolish, it’s a very old hat, not really expensive, but I’m fond of it. I’m very grateful to you.”

  And then the young man is at the table. He takes Amelia’s hand and kisses it. “You must join us,” he says. “Allow us to buy you a coffee.”

  She’s had two coffees and knows that a third will make her jittery, but she has no impulse to refuse. The young man is exceptionally handsome. He is handsome in such a predictable way for a Spanish town—as the Mediterranean is predictably blue and the palm trees are predictable in their regular swaying—that she wonders if she’s in a dream, but a dream that disappoints because of its excessive clarity.

  “My name is José,” he says, in heavily accented English. “I am called Pepe. But nearly every man in this town is named José and called Pepe. So you can’t make a mistake. Or maybe you are always liable to make mistakes.”

  “We can speak Spanish,” she says in Spanish.

  “But I like to practice my English. Only, maybe you like to practice your Spanish. So why don’t I speak to you in English, and you can speak to me in Spanish?”

  “Pepe, you are a clown,” the old woman says. “You see, my dear, my grandson is a clown. Which means that I always have something to laugh about—not such a small thing at my age. I am seventy-six last April. Let us speak Spanish, as my English is pathetic.”

  So she’s much younger than Meme, Amelia thinks, proud of her grandmother’s youthfulness and vitality.

  “I am Amelia. Thank you for the coffee.”

  She feels like she’s saying sentences from an elementary Spanish textbook, but she doesn’t know how to make her speech more natural. She doesn’t know what to call the old woman, and she doesn’t know how she’ll explain what she’s doing in the town. She will have to lie. In the last month, she has lied more than she has in the twenty-four years she’s been alive.

  “I hope you’ve had a swim,” Pepe says. “It’s exceptionally warm for October.”

  “Well, I’m afraid I couldn’t cope with the stones on the beach.”

  “You need bathing shoes. Give me your foot.” He falls to his knees and grabs her foot. He pulls her sandal off.

  “Stay here,” he says, holding her sandal in his hand. “Well, I guess you have to stay here. I have your shoe. You see, it’s a good way of keeping you here so we can spend more time together.”

  He runs down the esplanade, her sandal in his hand.

  The grandmother laughs. It is clear that everything her grandson does delights her. Amelia recognizes the brand of delight.

  The inevitable question arrives: “What are you doing in Altea?”

  Amelia is prepared with a version of the lie: the lie of the friend’s wedding. She thinks it’s best not to add an entirely new lie, but thriftily to tailor the old one. She doesn’t think lies are precious, or even fragile, but they aren’t trivial, and she doesn’t like to be careless with them. She has two versions of the lie: the Rachel version and the Meme version. It seems right to present the Meme version, otherwise she would have to come up with a local bride and groom.

  “A friend of mine is getting married in Madrid. And another friend spent time here, quite a while ago, and said it was wonderful and I should come here to rest from my flight, rest from my work, rest before the festivities in Madrid.”

  “And what is your work?”

  It occurs to Amelia that her work might be something to be embarrassed by. Embarrassing to a certain kind of person, a different embarrassment from her mother’s and her mother’s friends, whom she is used to embarrassing, but to a hardworking person who had wanted education for the next generation and would find someone with a college education baking fancy cupcakes an incomprehensible failure. So she decides to lie again.

  “A friend and I own a restaurant.”

  “Oh, that is very hard work. My son and his wife and his wife’s parents own a restaurant in England. In Brighton. It was too hectic for Pepe, that’s why he came back here.”

  “And what is his work?”

  “He has a little shop. He’ll take you there very soon, I’m sure. He’s very proud of it. Everyone who goes in there leaves happy: that, he says, is his goal.”

  Pepe runs up the esplanade holding what Amelia thinks are two huge, pink marshmallows. But they are plastic bathing shoes; he holds them over his head. He twirls, a victory dance.

  “The last in your size. Such a quiet color for a quiet girl. You are a quiet girl, I know. But perhaps you will find another side of yourself in Altea.”

  He waves to the waitress and dramatically pantomimes wiping his sweaty brow. She brings him a glass of m
ineral water, which he swallows in a gulp.

  “Now, abuelita, what will we do with our guest, whose name I do not even know?”

  “She told you, but you weren’t listening. Amelia.”

  “Yes, Amelia. What will we do with Amelia for the rest of the day?”

  “You will take me home for my siesta, and then you will swim in the sea.”

  He kisses his grandmother and straightens the shawl around her shoulder. “And you will look at us from the balcony, my duenna.”

  “Heaven forbid. Duenna. No. And you know perfectly well I’ve never thought I had to forbid you anything since the day you were born.”

  Amelia feels her tiredness and worry fall away. But perhaps, free of them, she realizes for the first time how ill-considered her errand is. How did she think she would find Ignacio? She realizes now that there were ways she could have learned about him, ways that anyone of her generation would have gone to right away. She suspects that she didn’t want information, didn’t want to know anything that might have stalled her determination. She realizes now that she had thought nothing out, that she had acted purely on impulse. Now she would pay for that. What would she say to him? She assumed that the right thing would come to her. She wonders if Pepe will be able to help her. She wonders how she’ll explain what she’s up to, or if it will require another lie.

  —

  He says he will come by for her in half an hour. Her only thought is: I think I can get a new bathing suit in that time. It is all right to wear the bearskin one-piece when she is by herself or among strangers. But with Pepe, Pepe of the beautiful skin and shining hair and light, light step—she can’t wear something that ugly. There has to be something in Bikini Heaven that’s just plain. She hadn’t looked at the tiny suits. But there has to be something…black or blue or red…something simple, something not pretending to be something else.