There Your Heart Lies

by Mary Gordon

  The woman with the glasses on a string is behind the counter. “You’re back,” she says. “A change of heart.”

  “I guess, or maybe a little courage. It’s just that I thought my boyfriend in America would be upset if I wore a bikini without him, and then I thought, ‘He’ll never know.’ ” She acts a conspiratorial giggle, which the woman joins in with pleasure.

  What a liar I’ve become, Amelia thinks. But she knows it’s better to say she was worried what her boyfriend would think than that she was worried what her grandmother would think. On the other hand, she could have come in cold, imperious, answering with silence any possible question. But she didn’t have that in her. On the other hand, she hadn’t thought she had it in her to lie so easily.

  Her eye falls on a plain black bikini, claiming nothing for itself. She doesn’t try it on. “Must run,” she says, “meeting someone on the beach.”

  It’s likely, she thinks, that everyone in the town will know it’s Pepe, and she wonders what her status will be tomorrow. But she will not be coming back to Bikini Heaven. Three bathing suits in two days would just be too much.

  She stands in front of the mirror to try on the suit. It’s briefer than anything she’s ever worn, but, as she’s small breasted and boyish in the waist and hips, it’s far from scandalous. She tells herself that Meme would realize that in a world of no good choices, she has done her best.

  —

  “I hope the wind won’t make you shiver,” Pepe says. “I could never swim in England, never once. It was just too cold. This is pushing my limit.”

  “In Rhode Island, where I’m from, this would be considered ordinary.”

  “But we are never ordinary here. Come, we must run in not to prolong the misery. Of course, if it seems too cold for you, there’s no need to stay in. We can just lie here and chat.”

  “Oh, no, I always go in…I always make myself if I’m feeling reluctant. It’s something I promised my grandmother, that I’d never refuse a swim in the ocean if there was any chance for it at all. She says, ‘You never regret a swim in the ocean.’ She says all the time, ‘You don’t regret what you did, just what you didn’t do.’ ”

  “I would like to meet this grandmother. You didn’t tell me you have a grandmother too.”

  “Yes, I live with her now.”

  “Ah, so we are members of a small, select club. Grandchildren who are tenants of their grandparents. Tenants and caretakers. Only, I love my grandmother, sometimes I think more than anyone in the world.”

  “Me, too,” she says, and squeezes his hand, because it so pleases her that this handsome young man can say the sentence, “I love my grandmother, sometimes I think more than anyone in the world.”

  —

  She has already begun to lose her summer tan, and since she doesn’t usually wear a bikini, her midriff has been untouched by the sun. She’s embarrassed by the whiteness of her skin. Pepe doesn’t seem to be looking at her; he’s running to the water like a boy, his bathing shoes not slowing him down at all. She feels she must run in as he did, although usually she enters the water gradually.

  He is puffing and shouting. “It’s ice water. I am not a polar bear.” He splashes and turns over on his back and spits water into the air. She can tell that he has no intention of really swimming. She’d like to join him, to be his partner in this pantomime, in which the water itself plays only a minor role. But even more, she wants to experience this water, understand its difference from the Atlantic and the Pacific. She floats on her back, then lowers her head under the water just enough so she won’t hear Pepe’s noises and expostulations. Her eyes rest on a rocky formation—“a minor Gibraltar,” she would like to write in a postcard to her grandmother. But her grandmother mustn’t know she’s here. Not till her mission’s accomplished.

  There has been no outcropping like this in any water she has swum in before, and she wants to give it time to make a deep enough impression on her brain so she’ll be able to call it back with confidence that she hasn’t made it up.

  She tries to imagine Meme as a young woman here, older than she is, but not by much, a new mother, soaked in grief and almost paralyzed. Did her mother-in-law worry that, drugged as she was, it would be dangerous for her to swim? Or was it part of her plan that this troublesome girl would drown and be out of their lives for good? Her death an accident and good riddance? She wants to weep for Meme and weep in rage at the mother-in-law who made her life a living death, and then she remembers what Meme said, that possibly she was doing what she thought was best. “In a time of insanity, insanity is normal.”

  Did she swim here with Isabel and Tomas, Isabel, whom Amelia would have liked to know? And Tomas, a trouble to her. Despite the promise she made to her grandmother, she can only think of him in the terms she swore she wouldn’t use. Self-mutilating. Masochistic.

  Did she swim here with my grandfather, Amelia wonders, did she move through this water, thinking of his body, as I am thinking of Pepe’s?

  —

  Amelia sees that Pepe has taken himself out of the water; he’s speaking to a man in some kind of uniform. Some coins are exchanged, and the man produces two blue canvas chaise longues. This is the kind of thing Meme would never allow: she would insist that they lie on their towels, even though the beach is rocky.

  He holds a big beach towel for her. “You’ll freeze,” he says, rubbing her shoulders vigorously.

  “No, Pepe, you forget. I’m used to the cold.”

  “No one is ever used to the cold. They just pretend they are.”

  —

  In fact, though she was warm in the water, the breeze has begun to chill her. She puts on her jeans and shirt, but they’ll be uncomfortable soon on top of her wet suit. She’d like to leave and change, but Pepe has paid money for the chaise longues, and she feels she must lie there, not to seem ungrateful.

  “So will you tell me why you’re here?”

  “Not now,” she says. “I’ll tell you later.” She closes her eyes and pretends to drift off to sleep. She will tell him, she wants to, badly, but she will have to know him better to determine how the telling will be done.

  While she pretends to sleep, she looks at him through three-quarter-closed eyes. He is doing something with his complicated phone—iPhone, BlackBerry—Amelia doesn’t really know the difference. She takes her cue from Meme, who loathes all new technology, but she can’t afford to be so disconnected, and Meme needs her to have at least a little expertise. She thinks it’s funny the way people use their thumbs now on these new gadgets. Thumbs are such comical fingers, she thinks. And yet now everything seems to require a very specialized dexterity of thumbs. Thumbnal dexterity, she wonders; perhaps thumbnal, not thumbnail, will become a word.

  She sees that Pepe is getting restless. What would Meme say to that? She is critical of people who are incapable of stillness; she has no understanding that when she wants to be on the move, no one else’s stillness is taken into account.

  Amelia opens her eyes lazily: she is feeling lazy, so she’s glad that at least this gesture isn’t false. But she uses her eyelids to indicate that she is ready for sexual involvement. Or she intends this: she hopes he has understood.

  “I must go back to work. But I’m hoping you have no plans for the evening. It’s a cliché that Spaniards never invite you to their homes, but I’ve spent a lot of time in England. So I would like to invite you to my home. Actually, my grandmother’s.”

  “That would be so kind. May I bring something?”

  He kisses her hand. “Your pale and lovely self.”

  —

  She takes a very long shower in her ugly but convenient hotel room, guiltily pleased at the comfort of the unlimited hot water against her skin, which she failed to protect sufficiently from the strong sun. She has brought very few clothes with her, and so the decision of what to wear is painless. She will wear the gauzy turquoise skirt, the white T-shirt, the dark blue pashmina she bought for ten dollars on the street
s of New York. She hopes that both Pepe and his grandmother will like what she’s wearing, or at least find it acceptable. She’s always known that she is pretty, that her looks are the kind that people like and are drawn to; but she knows they are undramatic, and feels fortunate that people have never resented her looks, never have taken against her because of them. She is never threatening. This is one of the truest things about me, she thinks: I threaten no one.

  She thinks of her grandmother’s swans: exotic, dramatic, a danger to anyone who comes close. She is not a swan. Perhaps, she thinks, I’m one of those sandpipers who skitter along the shore. She is bothered by the comparison. Everyone likes sandpipers, but they barely make an impression on the sand. Perhaps she is too light, she makes too little impression on the surface of the earth. She doesn’t want to be a sandpiper, but what does she want to be? Nothing really heavy, nothing really slow moving. But is there such a thing as excessive lightness? Not settling in. She has done nothing so far about meeting her uncle Ignacio.

  Since she has met Pepe, the town seems to have transformed itself. Before, she was distressed by everything: the cheap Asian imports in the clothing stores, the cheap menus offered to unadventurous tourists. But now she concentrates on the whiteness of the houses, the vivid pink and purple flowers climbing up their walls. Bougainvillea, she remembers from California. A woman is watering a pot of blue-grey flowers, ones Amelia has never seen; she is attracted by their modesty in relation to the vivid others. She asks the woman what the flowers are called. Moonflowers, the woman says. The exchange pleases both of them, and they wish each other a very good afternoon.

  She wonders how the old or disabled cope with the endless flights of unforgiving stone stairs; there is no other way to get from the seashore to the main parts of the town except to climb and climb. A year ago, she’s sure, Meme would have had no problem. Now she wouldn’t be able to get around here very well. Meme is suddenly old. Meme is dying. But that, after all, is why Amelia is here.

  She passes a store that sells ceramics, and in deference to her father’s memory, she goes in. Her first response is distress at what is on the shelves. It isn’t a careless ugliness; it is considered. The woman behind the counter is the potter; a flyer on the counter makes that clear, and stresses that she is devoted to the idea of angels. Almost everything in the store has something to do with angels. There are pitchers with angels’ wings attached to their sides, mugs with angels hanging off their handles, bowls with images of angels pressed into their bottoms. The potter also invokes the sun: the walls are covered with nonfunctional sun shapes in yellow and orange with overexcited rays emanating from their centers. What is it about this place that makes people want to make something that looks like something else, something it has no right being? Bathing suits like animal skins or foil, pitchers with feathery spouts, mugs with wing handles that would be a problem when you tried to drink.

  She thinks of her father and the simple, useful things he’d made. His quiet glazes: blue greens, mauves, ochres. Everything with clarity of line and form. She wants to rush up and embrace the woman behind the counter, the potter. Thank you, thank you. Because of your vulgar work, you have given me back my father, or given him to me in a new way. She used to be embarrassed because not enough people loved her father’s work, passing it by for the work of others, for objects more loud-spoken, more daring. Now she loves her father with a sharp, invigorating love. A proud love with a new tint of aggression. She wants to say to the potter: My father was a real artist, and you are not. Because of her harsh thoughts, she feels it’s necessary to buy something from her. She buys a small bowl with the imprint of an angel on its base. At least its design doesn’t get in the way of its use. She’ll give it to Pepe’s grandmother.

  The grandmother’s house is halfway up a narrow, cobblestoned street. Some of the doors seem not to be doors but curtains made of metal chains. Some doors are heavy and ancient, suggesting the idea of fortifications. Number 17 is one of them. She is pleased to find a brass door knocker in the shape of what she believes is a pomegranate.

  Pepe is wearing light, loose trousers, grey blue, and a thin, semitransparent, white shirt. His feet are bare; she is aroused by his long, slender toes, which are the color of the crust on the bread Meme has made for as long as Amelia can remember.

  He indicates a small entry hall behind a green painted gate that stands in front of another large, fortified-looking wooden door. “When I was a child, there was no crime in Altea, but now, I’m afraid, this is not the case. Which is why we have this other door, which I keep locked all the time when my grandmother is alone. People seem to have no moral sense. I don’t think they’d stop at the idea of robbing an old crippled woman.”

  Pepe’s grandmother is sitting in a large, wooden chair in a small room that has, in addition to her chair, a love seat covered in a rough, dark orange fabric, a table, and three small chairs, intricately carved and rush-seated. On the white stucco walls are plates with scenes of farmers or hunters.

  “I love your plates,” Amelia says. “My father was a potter. And I’ve brought you a little bowl, which is not nearly so lovely as the things you have.”

  “Thank you,” she says, opening the package with her crippled fingers. “How delightful, this little dish, with an angel at the bottom. How wonderful to be able to think of angels when you finish your fruit.”

  Amelia worries that the grandmother might prefer this bowl to her father’s.

  “A potter,” she says. “What a fine thing to do with one’s time. I won’t rise to greet you because that is difficult for me now. Pepe will bring us some drinks. Does white wine suit you? I hope you’re not one of those Americans who never drink because all they think about is their waistline. But you don’t need to worry about that. You are slender and long-legged, with your lovely long white neck, like a swan.”

  Swans again! She wants to tell Pepe’s grandmother about Meme and the swans, but it would be too difficult to explain. And it might put her grandmother in an unflattering light.

  “I’ll get the drinks,” Pepe says, and she can hear the sound of his bare feet on the tiles, though she can’t see through the doorway.

  What will she speak to the grandmother about? Most old women are not like Meme and her friends. But she doesn’t know what this woman is like; she is much younger than Meme; Amelia can’t begin to guess her interests or what she would find disturbing.

  “I also live with my grandmother,” she says, knowing that would be reassuring to the old woman. “So, Pepe and I have that in common.”

  “Well, that is very unusual, a fortunate accident, you might say, because it is not, in fact, a common thing, two young people who live with their grandmothers. Where are your parents, then?”

  “My father is dead. My mother lives in California. In Los Angeles.”

  “That is where Hollywood is, isn’t it? When I was younger, I adored the movies. Now there is not so much I like to see, and it’s difficult for me to get out. But when I was younger, I was in the movies all the time. The movies were very important to us in Spain then. The country was very poor, and it was one thing everyone could go to for entertainment, and sometimes, in the winter, people would go just to get warm. The government was very strict about what we could see. Gone with the Wind, for example, we had heard about it, but we weren’t allowed to see it. And they would make cuts in movies of parts they thought were objectionable…I remember one film where an unmarried couple was living together, and the dubbing made it suggest that they were brother and sister, so the whole movie made no sense. Oh, I remember when Rita Hayworth came to Spain; we were all beside ourselves with excitement.”

  Amelia wonders what this means about the grandmother’s politics.

  Pepe comes into the room carrying an oval wooden tray. On it are three glasses, a bottle of wine, a dish of olives, a dish of almonds, a plate with small meatballs, and another with small, fried fish.

  She’s hungry; although the sky is still light,
it’s nearly nine o’clock. She eats the savory foods with great pleasure, enjoying the saltiness alongside the gentle sharpness of the wine. When Pepe offers her another glass, she takes it happily. Happiness is in the air, in the fabric of the love seat, the complicated carving of the chairs, the farmers and hunters on the plates, the terra cotta tiles. She feels happy and she feels safe. She will tell them the truth about what she’s doing here. She will ask for their help.

  “I’m really here,” she says, “because my grandmother lived here. A long time ago. The nineteen forties. She lived here for a dozen years. She’s American. I wonder if you knew her.”

  The grandmother’s expression that was so lively goes suddenly blank.

  “Those were bad times, very bad times. Dark times. We were very poor then. The accident caused so much heartache, so much suffering.”

  Amelia wonders what the accident might have been. Was there a fire, an explosion, a bus crash killing children?

  “My grandmother, though, do you remember an American woman who lived here? She was married to a young man of the town, he died in the war; she lived with his parents. His father owned an ironmonger’s; his mother was a pharmacist.”

  “I don’t remember those times. They were not good times. Pepe,” she says, rubbing her twisted hands, “I think I have gotten very tired. Will you help me to bed?

  “I’ll say good-night then, my dear,” she says, offering her cheek to be kissed, but not meeting Amelia’s eye, and not suggesting that they meet again.

  Amelia feels she’s done something wrong. But what else could she have done? Fear lodges in the place in her chest where the large bone halves. Perhaps this was not just an unwise but also a harmful journey. But harmful to whom? In America, everything had seemed possible. But that’s what people say about Americans, she thinks, those who like us like us for it, those who despise us condemn us as ignoramuses: only in America would people think anything is possible. And she isn’t in America now.