by Audrey Braun
I feel the usual hint of instability, as if I’ve just entered a familiar room only to find someone has rearranged all the furniture without telling me.
Several more blocks of whipping corners and the cabdriver says, “This is it!” He turns and stops abruptly, throwing me toward Oliver in the seat. Oliver glares with embarrassment, as if I’m making a fool of myself on purpose. The car stops on a hill outside a white two-story complex with terra cotta tiles on the roof. Coconut palms tower above the thick grass. I rise from the car and glance up. Large balconies jut out with clear views of the ocean. Most have small tables and chairs, and when I imagine having breakfast up there with the blue ocean spread out before me, I feel a warm affection for Jonathon.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, as Jonathon translates dollars into pesos. “Oopsy,” he says, “that’s not right.” Oopsy? Since when does Jonathon say oopsy? Oliver helps the driver pull the luggage from the trunk. A green-and-yellow bird flies overhead and lands on the branch of a tree covered in pink fuzzy blossoms. The air has the distinct tropical smell I know from Florida and the Bahamas. A lush, moist green mixed with sand and salt, and as the breeze picks up there’s the smell of smoke and meat and garlic on a grill.
It’s far more arresting, more alluring and peaceful than the picture Jonathon showed me on the computer. It’s easy to imagine a place like this transforming one’s apocalyptic stress, to borrow a phrase from Joella Lundstrum. The ocean breeze picks up, and I’m taken by surprise when the caress of linen against my skin makes me think of sex. Not the kind where a touch leaves me feeling more alone, but the greedy kind I experienced during the affair I had with Seth Reilly. For years I boarded up the wonder of that affair into a hidden corner of my mind. For the sake of my marriage I repressed memories too painful and dangerous to release. But as I begin to unwind, the memories escape—breathless chases up the stairs to his apartment above his bookstore; deep kisses inside the door; one by one, the shoes, scarf, jeans, blouse, bra, dropping across the floor; the final pull of panties down my freshly shaven legs. I can nearly feel myself standing there reading the spines on his bookshelves while he gazes at my naked body, his fingers twirling the tips of my long hair, his lips warming my cold, rain-soaked wrist. Anna Karenina, Les Miserables, Moby Dick, aphrodisiacs in my mouth and in my eyes.
“We’re heading upstairs,” Jonathon calls out. “Are you coming?”
The cab has already pulled away.
Jonathon slowly emerges into focus, fumbling with the luggage in his arms, a gentle wind lifting his fine, thinning hair.
“Yes,” I say, taking a step toward him, and then another, as my linen clothes stir in the breeze.
2
The only thing I notice about the condo is the clean, white-tiled floors and the modern wicker furniture. I’m too busy rummaging for my swimsuit, leaving the rest of my clothes in a heap next to my luggage on the bedroom floor. I slip into the red bikini I bought for the trip, and over that, the silky, chocolate-colored cover-up. I pass Jonathon looking through cupboards in the kitchen, and Oliver in the living room inspecting wires on the television for video games.
I reach for the door and turn. “You sure you don’t want to go for a swim, Ollie?” I cringe. Why did I call him that? He’s hated it since he was twelve.
Oliver surprises me with a laugh.
“I know. I forgot,” I say.
“It’s no big deal,” Oliver says with his dimpled smile, and my heart dissolves into a bowl of steam. It’s no big deal. He may as well have said he loves me.
“I’ll join you in a second,” Jonathon says without looking up.
I close the door.
I’m in Mexico, clattering down a stone path in my flip-flops on the way to a pool. It’s eighty-five degrees. Sunny. It feels good to lay out the facts in my mind. I’m starting to breathe clearly again after months of sucking air through what has felt like cotton-filled lungs.
Then I think of the BlackBerry and Jonathon’s smile in the cab. The other day I happened to walk into the bedroom just as he was throwing his BlackBerry across the room, which is something I’d do but is so unlike Jonathon in every way that for a second I felt frightened. He pinched his temples and shook his head at the floor, and then he apparently realized I was standing there and quickly composed himself. “I’m sorry,” he said. “The thing keeps losing calls. I’m president of a bank. It looks bad.” He walked over and retrieved the BlackBerry from the floor. It had left a black mark on the glossy white floorboard. “These things cost a fortune. There’s no excuse for them not to work.”
I wonder if it really was the bank he was texting in the car or if it had something to do with one of his investments. Jonathon loves playing the market more than my mother did. I always know when he’s “riding the Dow Jones,” as I like to tease him, because little beads of sweat break out on his lip while his fingers creep like cautious spiders across the keyboard of his laptop. It occurs to me that he might be having an affair. I imagine scrolling through his messages while he showers. Room 120. I cannot wait to be inside you. All the waiting and sneaking around is killing me. Deep down I suspect I wouldn’t find a single thing of interest, and for a moment I’m not sure which bothers me more.
The pool is a long, rectangular design of small lapis-colored tiles giving the water the artificial blue of toilet bowl cleaner, and yet it’s undeniably gorgeous and inviting. An elderly, pear-shaped woman in a black-and-white polka-dot one-piece is reading a paperback through dark sunglasses that nearly cover her face. A palapa shades the rest of her. Several chairs down, a deeply tanned middle-aged man is sunning himself in a blue Speedo while reading a copy of Le Monde and sipping a can of Jumex through a straw. The sound of laughter, and then a man in the garden twenty yards away catches my eye. He’s Mexican, early to mid-thirties, dark blue T-shirt, khaki shorts, and work boots. He’s watering the potted plants and picking up the pink fuzzy blossoms, which continue to fall like snow. But he’s also maneuvering in and out of the affections of a small blond dog. I guess the dog belongs to the woman the way she’s smiling and shaking her head at the two of them. It’s clearly a game, and the man simultaneously works and teases the dog with the swift movements of a matador. He’s striking. A look of elegance is clear from a distance in the strong lines of his jaw and nose, and in his lean, muscular arms and chest.
He steps clear of the Chinese windmill palms and grins. “Buenos días,” he says to me, with an upward nod as if we already know one another. The dog licks his bare leg, and the man laughs and jumps back. “You cheat, Pepe,” he says to the dog in perfect English. “I was distracted. But all right. One point for you.”
“Buenos días,” I say, feeling silly and, strangely, a little high-spirited at once.
He glances up again with the same friendly grin.
The sun penetrates my skin. It sinks into my bones, relaxing me in a way I haven’t felt in who knows how long. I choose a lounge chair off to myself with the most direct sun, plop my things down, and peel off my cover up. I lather my skin in SPF 30 cocoa butter, knowing instinctively that the matador is watching. I lounge back, open an old Joella Lundstrum novel, and lose myself in someone else’s troubles.
I also fall asleep.
When I wake, everyone’s gone and the breeze has picked up, scattering more pink blossoms in and around the pool. I check my watch. Nearly an hour has passed. My face feels warm and tight. I roll onto my stomach and adjust the crotch of my bottoms. My finger is still hooked inside when the gate opens and the matador nods hello.
I jerk my finger free and smile, conscious of the fact that we’re alone. I fold my hands beneath my cheek and close my eyes. Why do I expect him to walk right up to me? I brace for the sound of his work boots on the concrete. When they never come, my eyes spring open to find him across the pool, his back to me as he winds the hose against the building. It’s my first look from this angle, and my heart gives a single pound against my chest. He removes his gloves and drops them into a
white bucket, which he bends over and picks up. This is such a cliché. Even as I steady my breath, it feels like something straight out of Wicked and Wanting, pool boys specializing in the pleasuring of women. It’s just the memories of Seth making me feel this way. I should have never allowed myself to go there. I swallow, badly in need of a drink.
He strolls toward me with a small rake he now uses to gather dead leaves and tree debris beneath the red hibiscus no more than four feet away. “What are you reading?” he asks without turning.
Blood pumps into the tips of my fingers. My book lies on the ground next to me. “Joella Lundstrum?” I say as if I’m unsure.
He nods, still raking. “Lundstrum. She’s big here in Mexico. I assume she’s big everywhere.”
He has virtually no accent.
“You’ve read her?”
He stops and leans on his rake, suddenly looking right at me. “My favorite is Road to the Open Sea.”
I sit up. “Really? I liked that one, too, but if I had to choose a favorite I’d pick The Feast.”
“Haven’t read that one yet.”
“Oh, you should!” I say in a voice too eager for conversation with a stranger. “I think it’s her best work.”
He meets my eyes and smiles. “Then I’ll be sure to pick it up.”
My hands begin to sweat. We’re only talking about books, and yet it feels as if I’m laying myself bare.
“I’m Benicio,” he says.
“Nice to meet you,” I say, but I’m cut short by the gate opening.
Jonathon, legs as white as concrete. He has on the leather sandals I bought him for this trip, which in the store seemed perfect, but on his feet, and especially here at the pool, they’ve taken on an effeminate flair. Mandals, Oliver calls them.
A look exchanges between Jonathon and Benicio. Is it jealousy? That would be a first.
Jonathon isn’t wearing a shirt, and his white belly protrudes slightly over the waist of his brown swim shorts. The fresh, happy look he sported when we left the house this morning has disappeared. He seems pensive, completely out of place. He belongs in a bank.
“Nice talking to you,” the man says and ducks away from Jonathon’s glare. In the last second he turns at the gate and smiles as if he knows I’m watching. I squeeze my sweaty hands into fists.
Then the gate clicks behind him and he’s gone.
I stand and begin to gather my things. I feel Jonathon’s eyes on me.
“What?” I say.
“I had no idea you looked like that beneath all those layers of clothes you wear back home.”
I glance down at my oily body, already browning from the sun. All the time at the gym has carved my muscles into lean, taut flesh. I haven’t worked so hard for the purpose of looking good, but there it is. I think of Benicio’s eyes on me moments before.
“What took you so long?” I ask. “I’ve already had quite a bit of sun for the first day.”
“I was just putting things away,” he says.
“Strange how Oliver was nice when I was leaving,” I say.
Jonathon laughs as he shuffles over in his stiff sandals and drops his towel and small beach bag on the chair next to mine. The corner of his BlackBerry pokes out. “Don’t worry. It didn’t last.” He puts his hands on his hips and surveys the pool.
“He hates it here already, doesn’t he?” I say. “He hasn’t even seen anything yet, but I know he’s made up his mind.”
“He’s sixteen, Cee. Have you forgotten what it’s like to be sixteen?”
I recall my high school years and want to laugh. The self-doubt and loathing had been overwhelming. Worse than that was the longing, and not even knowing for what. “No,” I say. “In fact, some days I think I’m still sixteen myself.”
“Well, you still look it. That’s for sure.”
This sounds strangely lewd coming from my husband.
“My head is starting to hurt,” I say. “I think I’ll go inside and lie down.”
A hard expression crosses his face. His eyes fix on something in the distance. An empty road up the hill, and just below that, two men talking and laughing against a white car in an adjacent driveway.
I turn back to Jonathon. He meets my eyes, and his expression quickly shapes up.
“Aren’t you going to take a swim with me?” he asks.
I search his features for a trace of what I’ve just seen. Some days I feel as if I’m losing my mind.
“I promise to swim with you later,” I say.
He kisses my forehead. “Go ahead,” he whispers against my skin. “Get some rest.”
When I enter the condo Oliver is crouched on the edge of the sofa, texting. He doesn’t even look up when I’m four feet away.
“That’s costing us a fortune,” I say. “Can you cut it to a minimum?”
“What?” Suddenly the headphones keep him from hearing.
“Can you cut it to a minimum?” I repeat loudly enough for someone on the street to hear.
“Whatever,” he says.
“Don’t whatever me! Cut it short or I’m taking the phone.”
There are moments, like this, when we fall back into to the role of toddler and exasperated mother. Those early days come rushing in with razor-sharp clarity, the way I lived for the noon hour when Oliver went down for a nap and I could stare out the bay window at the Japanese maple and get my mind to think. Think. Sometimes I just made up metaphors for things in the yard, imagining the way Joella Lundstrum might liken the maple’s canopy of crimson leaves against the sun. Stained glass? Or something more, what was the word, crepey—a canopy of bloodred crepe? But too often, metaphors dangled just beyond my reach. My brain cells were saturated in hormones meant to shrink the world down to the size of my three-foot son. My vocabulary had consisted almost entirely of the plural—we don’t do that, do we want a cookie? we don’t scream inside, we finish our food first, no we don’t do that, should we go to the park? we say please, we use our words, didn’t we talk about using our words? The exception was the daily crack through which the seething “I’s” and “you’s” would appear like tiny wire cutters snipping the chains that bound us—you do that again and I’m taking it away and if I take it away you will never see it again do you understand me if you understand me you need to say yes or at the very least nod your stubborn little head—but always, always, holding back just before you little shit cut through. It was around this time that I began sleeping with Seth.
Oliver shuts his phone and tosses it across the sofa with a flourish.
“Thank you. I’m going to lie down for a minute,” I say.
He shakes his head as if that’s the single most idiotic sentence ever uttered in the English language.
“I’m hungry,” he says.
I roll my eyes and go into the bedroom, and the first thing I notice is my clothes in the heap where I left them. Next to that is Jonathon’s stuffed suitcase with everything still inside. What exactly had he been “putting away”? I peel back several layers inside his suitcase and discover a number of cold weather things—sweaters, socks, and pants. At the very bottom is his down winter jacket. The only place I’ve ever seen him wear it is on Mount Hood, in the snow.
3
I’m determined to enjoy myself. Mexico. Sunny. Eighty-five degrees. I just want to relax, to be free of whatever has grabbed hold of me lately. I’m sure Jonathon has a very good reason for bringing winter clothes. He can be a little eccentric. The kind of man who brings two blankets, extra napkins, and real silverware to what is meant to be a quick picnic. He’s a carefully detailed planner, a cautious man with a tendency to prepare for the worst. But none of that matters anyway because by the time I wake and shower, Oliver’s rollercoaster mood is on an upswing and Jonathon has picked up chicken and beans takeout and has made margaritas, and the three of us have been playing poker and laughing for hours on the balcony beneath the midnight-blue sky. I’m so relieved to be having a good time with my family that when I’m finally alone
in bed with Jonathon, I kiss his cheek and within seconds fall asleep against him, drifting away to the pulse of cicadas and somewhere in the distance a woman singing to a guitar.
The next morning I get up before everyone else to go for a run on the beach. On my way through the kitchen I lift Jonathon’s BlackBerry from the counter. The screen is locked. He’s put in a pass code. Has he always had a pass code? He’s president of a bank. Of course he’d have a pass code. I type in combinations of birthdays and anniversaries. Nothing puts me through. The sun and beach are waiting. I’m wearing my swimsuit beneath my shorts and tank top so I can stop for a quick swim in the ocean on the way back from my run. I promised to make orange juice and omelets for breakfast. Oliver might still end up in a sour mood no matter what I do, but I’m his mother, and seeing him well fed has a way of satisfying some primordial drive in the deepest trenches of my brain.
Outside a whistle blows and a man yells, “Agua!” as if he’s dying of thirst. I peek over the balcony to see a pickup rambling down the hill, its bed loaded with jugs of sloshing water for the coolers like the one inside our condo. A woman across the street waves from her window, and the driver blows his whistle once more and stops and gets out and hauls a jug to her door.
The air fills with the sweet perfume of a tuberose blooming in a large glazed pot on the balcony. I gaze into the open blue sky. After months of hunkering down beneath a blanket of gray, it feels as if someone has yanked the cover off my head to reveal the true colors of the world. Indigo, cherry, lime. So warm, so intense, they seem to vibrate.
I place the BlackBerry back where I found it and hurry out the door.
The sand gives softly beneath my running shoes. Vendors are already lugging their colorful bowls and handmade lace down the glaring white beach. “Something for you, señora?” they call out. Restaurant employees have finished raking the trampled sand into smooth lines beneath the tiki bar palapas. Others haul red and blue umbrellas close to the shore, and then go back for the yellow tables and chairs to put beneath them.
