Under the Same Sun (Stone Trilogy)

by Mariam Kobras

  “Kiss me, Jon,” Naomi said, “and then throw away the sad songs.”

  They bought flowers for Solveigh, a huge bouquet of yellow and pink roses that, Jon thought, looked like the light on sunrise water; and he made the girl at the flower shop tie a big satin bow around them.

  “She’ll like that,” he explained when Naomi raised her brows at him. “It looks like Hollywood. Trust me. Solveigh is a true LA chick now.”

  He had laughed when Naomi had told him the baby’s name. “Spanish. How far away from Norway can that girl get?” had been his comment, “We’ll have a hard time convincing Russ to come to New York to work with us.”

  Inside the hospital lobby though, Jon became serious, and very quiet. “Here, Naomi?”

  She nodded, her head lowered.

  Slowly he looked around, taking in the stark, simple surroundings. There was not much more than a small reception, an elderly woman sitting behind it doing a crossword puzzle; a few chairs in a row along the white walls, a Munch painting over them. Gratefully Jon noted that at least it wasn’t The Scream but a Madonna. The image reminded him eerily of Naomi, with the long, black tresses and the shuttered, sad smile.

  “Please, Jon.” Naomi tugged him forward. “Please, don’t dwell.”

  He didn’t budge. She felt his hand clamp around hers, as if even now he wanted to protect her from being alone and scared that night when Joshua was born.

  “It wasn’t so bad,” she said softly. “They took good care of me, and it was an easy birth. Please, Jon.”

  Gradually, he relented. His arm came up around her shoulder and he pulled her into a tight embrace, his cheek on her hair.

  “He started screaming right away.” She wanted to stay in that embrace forever, safe and loved. “And he looked just like you. Raised his little hand and waved it in my face and yelled so loud the nurses came running.” A smile flitted across her face. “Just like his father. Wants the world to know who is master from moment one. And a killer voice.”

  “You shouldn’t have been alone. I should have been here for you. You should have called me, Naomi, love or not.” His grip around her tightened. “I feel bad about it even now.”

  “Yes, but you can stop. Joshua is seventeen, and we’re married. Snap out of it, Jon, and let’s go see Solveigh.”

  Up in the white, short hallway of the maternity ward, Naomi stopped in shock when the nurse told her the room number.

  “Here?” Jon asked again, and again she nodded. His hand on the doorknob, he waited until she had gathered herself enough to speak.

  “The same room,” Naomi whispered. “Jon, I did not mean this to happen. I’m sorry.”

  He pressed his lips together, hurt in his eyes, but opened the door and stepped in.

  Naomi, seeing the tableau that presented itself, sobbed softly and hid behind Jon’s back.

  This. She had always imagined it to be like this. She tired, happy, content in the bed, and Jon, their baby in his arms, standing by the window, counting his son’s fingers in wonder and gazing into his black eyes.

  Only it was not Jon now, with a child and the expression of rapture, but Russ; and it was Solveigh in the bed, eating breakfast and laughing at her new family.

  Silently, her heart breaking, Naomi fled back to the lobby.

  chapter 9

  Jon found her outside, on a bench in front of the hospital, where she sat looking out across the bay, nursing a cup of coffee and a cookie.

  He didn’t go over to her right away but stood in the shade of the entrance for a moment, watching her. She looked so young in the jeans, and he could have sworn the shirt she was wearing was the same one she had worn when they had met for the very first time. It almost seemed as if no time had passed, as if it was that summer day in Geneva and he again a young musician, naive and excited about his blossoming career, overwhelmed by his success and the fact that he was a girls’ magazine centerfold.

  Naomi, his one and only love, and here she sat, her head bowed, the paper cup between her hands like a candle meant as an offering.

  “You should have been here.” She made room for him when he sat down beside her. “You had a right to be here and see your son born, and I took that from you. It was my fault.”

  The old, well-known pain tugged at his soul. “Yes. Should have, could have. We’ve been over this a million times, Naomi. It’s over and past.” He thought for a moment before he went on. “When Solveigh told me she was pregnant, when she was on the point of leaving Russ because she was afraid of the future, I told her that it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t. You did what you thought was best when you ran from me in LA; you were scared by the life there and of what was to come. I told you I accept that. Please stop breaking your heart, and mine. I’m happy to have you and Joshua in my life now. It’s way better than not having you at all.”

  The wind ruffled his hair. Jon had almost forgotten how beautiful it was here in summer, how every ray of sun seemed like a gift, how the landscape seemed to bloom and blossom with a vengeance in the brief period of warmth. Even the cold waters of the bay looked inviting, frisky, the little white-capped waves like the curls on a baby’s head.

  “We could have another child.” He said it carefully, tasting the words on his lips.

  A small, sad laugh shook her shoulders. “It’s not as if we are trying to prevent having a baby. It isn’t from the lack of trying. I guess I’m just too old, and too hurt.” She turned his hand over in hers so she could see his narrow wedding band. “You have the right to see a child of yours grow up, Jon. You’re young enough to have another. Maybe…”

  “No!” He gripped her fingers hard. “No. Don’t even say it. Don’t you dare say that, Naomi!”

  A tear dropped from her cheek, landing on his thumb.

  “I will not set you aside for a younger, healthier woman just because she can give me children. There were many who would have loved to do just that, and you know it. Look at me, Naomi. Look at me!” Gently, he dried her face with his fingertips. “I have exactly what I want. I’m in the place I want to be, with the woman I love and my son—my wonderful, talented, and beloved son. I’m a happy man!” A grin pulled at the corners of his mouth. “And hell yeah, let’s try for another baby. If there isn’t one, at least I’ll have all the pleasure I can think of with you in our bed.”

  “Oh, Jon, you’re never serious.” It came out as a tired sigh, a joyless statement.

  Jon rose and dusted off his trousers, then held out his hand to her. “Yeah, I’m serious. Can’t you see? I rented a bloody jet, again, to come here to you. Sal had a fit, asked me why I couldn’t have gone with you in the first place and did I have so much money that I thought I could throw it around like that? And yeah, I do have that much money. But even if it had been the last dollar on my last credit card, I’d have spent it to be with you last night. So there. I’m that serious.”

  Slowly they walked down the hill toward the dock and the hotel, first along the gravel road that led to the hotel, meadows to the sides, and then when they reached the first houses of the little town, on the cobbled streets.

  “I’m so serious about you,” Jon went on, “I came here for these few hours with you before I have to go to Frankfurt and then Geneva. I’ll have to leave soon.”

  They stopped outside the little bookshop where Jon had always picked up his New York Times, imported especially for him while he lived here, generally two days late but nevertheless presented to him with pride, wrapped in a plastic cover. The owner greeted them with friendly surprise, asking if they had come back to stay, and even offered them a cup of coffee.

  Jon remembered enough of the Norwegian he had picked up to thank him and tell him they had to hurry, so no coffee but thanks.

  “And I want you to come with me.
” The entrance door to the hotel stood open, letting in the sun and the fresh air, but in the lobby it still smelled tantalizingly of Andrea’s cooking. Jon breathed in. “Ah. She’s making those meatballs in brown sauce. God, I think I’ll have to stay for lunch; I could kill for those things. Maybe if I ask nicely she’ll share the recipe. What do you think?” With a pat on her behind he left Naomi standing by the counter and walked into the kitchen, calling for Andrea, offering her diamond earrings for meatballs.

  Naomi smiled, the sad mood gradually leaving her.

  The place seemed strange and empty without Solveigh. It was just as well kept, that much was true, but it was no longer her home.

  She could see her own shadow standing in the dim spot by the elevator, right beside the stairs that led down to her apartment, holding that tray of plates, and Jon entering the lobby from the snow, come all the way from California to find her. Now she could smile at the spectacle of the crashing dishes, Solveigh’s outrage, and Jon looking on as if he had walked into a madhouse.

  She could hear his and Andrea’s voices from the kitchen, joking, debating, and finally Andrea shouting, “No, no, no, Mr. Jon Stone, you will not get that recipe. Out of my kitchen, now!”

  Without waiting for him, Naomi went to pack the few things she wanted to take along.

  Frankfurt greeted them with an overcast sky and a mugginess that reminded Jon a lot of Brooklyn in August. It made him regret for a moment that they were going to move there soon and endure those New York summers. Waiting for their few belongings to be transferred from the plane to the limo, he wondered if someone had thought to install central air in the old house or if they would have to live with the ugly, dripping boxes in every window. Absentmindedly, he stared out toward the runways where a 747 was getting ready for take-off, its wings shuddering with the power of flight. He wondered where it might be headed, homesick and tired of being on the road after only a few days.

  This was different from before; then, alone, he’d always been hungry for the stage, for the fans, for the cooing of the girls when he got off the tour bus or gave them three minutes before sound check, and, often enough, for a willing body in his bed after the show.

  “I’m failing you,” Naomi had said to him during the flight. “I feel as if I’m failing you. You deserve to have this, Jon, a baby, and I’m failing you.”

  He had to make her snap out of the depression he could see creeping up on her.

  The three weeks she had hidden herself away had been useless.

  She could have fooled him as she stood with Sal, chatting, pushing stray locks behind her ears, laughing at something he was saying.

  “Oh dear, no,” he heard her say when he came closer. “It’s not a place anyone ever needs to visit. There is really nothing here, nothing. Frankfurt is the most overstated village in the world, just an appendage of the airport. That’s all.”

  “How unkind,” Sal replied, holding the car door for her, “I have a friend who is a publisher; she loves to come here every October for the book fair. And I’ve heard the opera is really very good.”

  “Why would I want to come here if I can go to the Met?” Naomi said without even looking at him.

  “Will you listen to her, Jon? She’s got the Met on her mind. You’ll have to buy a box, I think.” Sal signaled the driver that they were ready to go.

  “I remember,” Jon said as the car pulled out onto the highway, “when we were here last time we had those amazing little marzipan thingies. The guy at the hotel told us they were a local specialty, and they really were to die for. And hey, we are in Germany! The beer is really good!”

  Naomi threw him a glance so loaded with disdain that he smirked and fell silent.

  “I used to go to the book fair with my mother.” She looked out at the cityscape as it drew nearer. There was a group of distinctive high-rise buildings, a cluster of them in the center of the town, shiny like icicles. “We came here while I lived with my parents in Geneva. My mother was crazy about the thing. It is open for visitors one weekend, and then everybody goes; it’s so crowded and exhausting. And very, very frustrating.”

  Both gazed at her in surprise, and she shrugged. “You couldn’t take any of the books home.”

  The car left the highway and took them into the city. For a while they drove along a broad road lined with elm trees, old houses on both sides, before office buildings took over.

  “The venue is right next to the fair,” Sal remarked. “We’ve been there before.”

  Naomi smiled at him. “I know. You were here before you came to Geneva, that first time. It was in the papers.”

  “But you said…” Jon started and then fell silent again.

  “I dreamed of being at the book fair during the week, when all the authors and publishers were there,” she went on. “And I wanted to be one of them. Not a gawker, not a tourist, but one of the authors. I wanted to sit in my publisher’s stall and watch those people walk by, stare at my book, and wonder if I maybe was the writer. It was the only thing I wanted, for a while.”

  “For a while?” Sal pointed at the hotel. They had arrived.

  “Yes, for a while, before I decided I wanted to study music. I couldn’t make up my mind. The only thing I knew for certain was that I didn’t want to take over my family’s hotel business. That I knew for sure.” The driver opened the door for her, and she got out.

  She had been here before, she told Jon as they were waiting in the lobby for Sal to check them in; it was one of the best places in Frankfurt and well situated for a walk downtown. Her uncle and father loved it, and she knew they had thought a couple of times about acquiring it; but it was too big for them—they didn’t like huge houses like this one, despite the history and the charm. There were so many buildings in this area, she said, that had been built from the red sandstone they seemed to favor here. It looked distinguished, made the city look aristocratic in a way; and yet it was a boring town in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t even any interesting food.

  “Except for those marzipan things and the beer,” Jon replied absentmindedly. His thoughts were on something else, something she had said without even noticing, and he was determined to dig deeper into it.

  Their room looked out onto a terrace where coffee was being served, and the street beyond it. There was a lot of traffic at this time of day, but she was right, it wasn’t like other big cities. Everything seemed smaller, provincial, in a way striving to be cosmopolitan but failing. He had never noticed before, never cared to notice; but with Naomi at his side, the world was a different place.

  “So you knew.” Jon watched her open the luggage that had been brought from London and pick out clean clothing. “You knew I was in Europe, even before we met. You never said.”

  Surprised, she let the skirt she was holding sink. “Of course, what made you think I didn’t? I sent you the lyrics, Jon. I knew who you were. I had a ticket for your show.”

  So strange, and he had always thought he had been as much of a surprise to her as she had been to him, and he found himself wishing it had been so. This gave her an advantage in a weird way, as if she had known what she was getting into and he not.

  “After I sent those lyrics to your office,” Naomi was saying, “I had this fantasy of you coming to me. I used to lie in bed at night and dream of you showing up out of nowhere at our door, just standing there and asking for me, because you wanted to know who had sent you these lyrics. One day…”—her eyes sparkled at him—“one day I was sick, lazing around on the couch with the flu and all alone in the apartment. My mother had made me tea and left me there to go to work, and I was feeling so sorry for myself. So bored. That was a couple of weeks after I had sent the lyrics. And I lay there in a doze, and imagined you getting out of a plane at the Geneva airport, taking a taxi, and coming to our hous
e. I saw you walking to the entrance, asking the doorman for our apartment, and him letting you in. You took the elevator, and then you stood outside our door. I was excited. I really had spun myself into that reverie. And then the bell rang.”

  “And?” It was silly, but he was entranced, could even see himself standing there; and now, so many years later, he wondered why he had not indeed done just that. He had wanted those lyrics as badly as anything, ever.

  “It was the cleaning woman. She had forgotten her key.” From the suitcase, she took a white cotton blouse, much like the one she was wearing just now, much like the one she had worn when they had first met; and for a minute he wondered if she had a secret stash of them, or a seamstress who made them especially for her.

  “And if it had been me, then what?” The fantasy was too delicious to drop.

  “Oh.” Naomi sat down on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know. I think it would have been very embarrassing. I was in jogging pants and a sweater, and I had a red nose from all the sniffling. You would have walked away, disappointed.”

  “Ah, no, I don’t think so.” She crept away, farther up on the bed, when he came closer. “I don’t think I’d have left, drippy nose or not. I think I’d have whisked you away despite the flu and the jogging pants. I think I’d have fallen in love with you anyway, no matter how red your nose was that day. I would have wanted you, sweatshirt and all, just like always.”

  “You’re getting maudlin again.” She giggled softly as he bent over her.

  “Nah, not maudlin, just seeing that picture all too well, my dove. I can see you wiping your nose and tugging at your silly pants, trying to collect yourself into a semblance of respectability, and me, staring at your navel, at your stomach because your sweater is really too short; it’s one you’ve been wearing since you were a kid, with Winnie the Pooh on it, in pink, too.”