For a long time after she left, Jon found it difficult to concentrate.
They were trying to find a new pastry chef, and had four interviews scheduled for this morning. Naomi sat with Solveigh and Andrea, trying to keep her mind on the task at hand.
“I want to know what you are up to,” Solveigh murmured as the third applicant left. “And don’t even dream of disappearing like that again. You are so telling.”
Naomi smiled vaguely at her. “He’s Joshua’s father,” she whispered.
Solveigh spilled her coffee.
It was entertaining to watch her after this revelation. She could not go on asking because the door had opened again as the last candidate entered the room.
They cornered her in the kitchen.
Solveigh was scandalized. “You are joking, of course.”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
“Naomi, do you know who that is? You should not be joking.” Solveigh tried hard to maintain her composure.
Naomi was enjoying herself. “He’s a musician. A very, very good musician, true, but in the end, only that. And I’m not lying. “
“What are you talking about?” Andrea was nearly shrieking by now. “What’s going on here?”
Solveigh solemnly repeated what Naomi had told her.
“Only a musician?” Andrea cried, “Are you out of your mind? Don’t you know he fills concert halls with twenty-thousand people? Do you know how many women out there would die just to meet him? And you call him a musician?”
Naomi took a muffin from the tray behind her and bit into it. “It’s what he does. I’ve seen him at it only this morning. And I’ve been to his concerts. They are very nice.”
“So how come…” Solveigh pushed, and she told them her tale at last, though she left out the gruesome details of the drug bust on that ill-fated day so long ago. As it was, the story was fascinating enough for them. They sat for quite a while, drinking coffee, nibbling tea cakes, and talking about the music star Naomi was hiding in her apartment.
“But how will this go, Naomi?” Solveigh said. “He walks in here out of the blue, and you let him? You let him push aside your life like that? Have you thought what Joshua will say if he shows up now and wants to play father?”
These were words she did not want to hear. She got up and brushed crumbs from her skirt. “Jon will be here for a while. I guess for a quite a while.”
I remember when that picture was taken.” Jon was sitting on the couch, his feet up on the coffee table, papers all around him. Naomi glanced at the photo.
What a wonderful estate. A wilderness with dark, cool arbors and winding paths leading to the beach, and a lone stone bench, standing in the shadow of some tall jasmine bushes. They had often sat there on balmy California nights, listening to the far-off sounds of life.
“You saved me from myself that day,” he said. “You saved me just by sitting with me and touching my hand. I was ready to give up. You were the only real thing in my life, the only thing that had any true meaning. And I wasted it. In the end, when it mattered, I didn’t keep you safe. I left you all alone. I failed you.”
Naomi was wordless, stunned.
“You were always there for me. I should have asked you to marry me, and I didn’t. It never occurred to me, even though I loved you more than anything. This is a shameful, terrible thing to admit. What happened was my fault.” He was still looking at the photograph. “It never crossed my mind you could have been lonely or unhappy. I failed you.” At last he looked at her. “I’m trying so hard to find the right words to say to you. I’ve been sitting here watching the ships come and go. Reading your lyrics—I haven’t made it through even half of them—they’re all so sad and broken-hearted. They’ve shown me how much I hurt you. I’m so stupid, Naomi. After you left I wondered and wondered why you had gone away. I just couldn’t figure it out. How can you ever forgive me for all that wasted time?”
“You are here,” she said. “What more is there to say or do? You came as soon as you knew where to find me. After all, I was the one who ran away. Who knows, we might have been divorced by now. Driven apart after a bitter struggle, used up by your fame and the crazy life we would have been living. You, always surrounded by adoring females, trying to resist the temptation, and me, laboring to find myself in the turmoil that surrounds you, failing. And Joshua? Unraveled by life in Los Angeles and by us. All of us, a psychiatrist’s dream.”
“But here we are.” Jon pulled her into a tight embrace. “Not divorced. Not tired and disgusted with each other, but full of sorrow for what we think we lost. It seems to me, put like that, we are better off this way. At least we have a future to look forward to.”
“We also have a past. We have Joshua. We have the time we spent together, that’s not wasted. And you came, and we’ve just spent the most glorious night together.” Fear fluttered in her stomach like a moth. “Or is this your way of telling me that you’re leaving, Jon?”
His kiss was tender and lingering. “No, my love. It’s my way of telling you that even in the light of day I’ve made up my mind. I’m not letting go of you ever again.”
His hands moved on her back, cradling her firmly against him.
“I’m going to ask you to marry me, Naomi. Not today, not yet, I don’t want you to think I’m acting on an impulse or pushing you. But I will, soon. This needs to be forever. Everything else will work out somehow. But this, you, I’m not letting go.”
“I won’t live in Los Angeles again. Ever.”
Jon nodded, gazing at their surroundings, as he had done all morning. “Then I’ll stay here. I can write music here at your piano just as well as anywhere else, and at least I’ll have the certainty that you’ll come to me when your job upstairs is done. It’s that easy, Baby.”
He waved his hand at the space around them. “I’ve been going through your work and messed up the place. You’ll have to live with that from now on. I’m going to invade you, good and proper.”
His eyes sparkled at the double meaning and Naomi drew a deep breath, steadying herself, so intense was her longing.
She changed into her regular work clothes and returned to find him bent over her lyrics once more, murmuring, humming, tapping a rhythm with a pencil, totally oblivious to the spectacle of the mail ship right outside the window. It passed so close to the deck he might have merely stretched out his hand to touch it, but he did not seem to notice. She had been wrong.
“You know, the weirdest things happen in this place. I’ve been watching the bay while I was reading your stuff.” He indicated the small pier that lay around the corner from the hotel. “There’s this depot or storage thing over there, with the parking lot in front, and all the time cars drive up, stop for a little while with their motors running, and then turn around and leave again. I can’t figure out what they’re doing.”
“Those are the women who wait for their men to return.” His observation moved her inexplicably. “They are fishermen’s wives. The men are gone for weeks on end, and after a while, when they are expected back, the wives drive by to look for them. There’s always the great fear they might not return. So…” It seemed so poignant suddenly, even though she had been witnessing it for years. “So they wait and hope and get into their cars and come here.”
He watched her patiently.
“They are afraid as they drive through town, because they’ll only find out if their husbands are safe when the boat returns. Everyone who watches them go by knows what they are doing, and yet no one talks to them. It’s just so hard. While the boats are at sea, they listen to every weather report. When there’s a storm warning, the wives meet in a café down by the fishing sheds, full of fear…”
There were goose bumps on his arms. He had missed this almost as terribly as their love. This was Naomi, writing, even though she did not know it, the story unfolding as she told it, and through her telling the melody grew in him, following the rhythm of her words.
She drew a deep breath. “It�
��s just the way life is here. It’s a hard life.”
Lyrical, even when she was only explaining daily life. This was the thing that had first caught his attention. It was just the way she put things, speaking directly to him, hitting a nerve or touching the pulse of music that was always in him.
Or, he thought, maybe the two could not even be separated. Maybe it was this web they wove again and again, creating a time and place made of love, music, and poetry. It was a spark of insight; something he felt should not be seen or understood except in rare, transcendent moments like this one.
The ship had begun its stately, spectacular turning maneuver in the narrow harbor basin, its shadow casting a gloom on the room.
Naomi glanced toward it. “Let’s go up for lunch. Andrea will burst if we don’t show up. Those girls are nearly out of their minds with curiosity about you.”
“Tell me,” she asked over the broiled cod, “How much did you pay for your solitary flight across the Atlantic?”
He shrugged. “No more than it was worth.”
The wine was excellent, the service unobtrusive, the restaurant a very pleasant, restrained place. All in all, this hotel was a surprise, a lesson in good taste and restfulness. Jon liked it.
“I wasn’t going to miss one hour more than I absolutely had to. I wasn’t going to miss last night for anything.” He took her hand, and she did not pull back.
On their way back to her apartment, he laid his hand on her waist. “I can hardly wait to pluck those silly ribbons from your tight little bodice. What happens once they come off?”
To his disappointment her dress did not fall from her when he loosened the lacing, and he watched as she very unromantically unzipped it from the back, laughing at him.
They lay on the bed, talking for a while in hushed voices as the sinking sun pouring in through the windows, touching each other’s bodies with gentle fingertips, rediscovering their closeness. He made love to her in a slow, leisurely way, savoring her sighs and the way her body moved against his.
“I love to make love to you,” Jon said afterward. “You have a way of giving yourself over so completely, it’s so enticing and sensual, but it’s also such a deep expression of trust. I love to see your hair spill all over the pillow, the way you say my name, the way you touch me. I love you. That’s all, really. Always have.”
She lay beside him and looked at him with large, luminous eyes.
“The boy,” Jon began, and here it was, the subject they had both avoided so carefully.
“Yes.”
“Where is he, Naomi? Why isn’t he here with you?”
He was in Oxford, Naomi said, he had been admitted to a special education program for highly talented young musicians. She went to see him whenever she could, but he was doing fine. In fact, he was doing exceedingly well.
“He’s your son, Jon. Music is in his blood. Leaving you was the most terrible thing that ever happened to me. But coming here, running this hotel, has given me such a peaceful life. Joshua grew up here. There was time, and space, to write and think. When Joshua was very small, he used to sing along when I played your music. He started on the piano when he was four, and he loved his lessons. I could hardly tear him away from the stupid thing.” She gave him such a sweet smile that his heart turned over. “I sometimes imagined it was you as a small boy, he was so intense in his music. When he was ten he wanted to learn to play the guitar too. If it hadn’t been such a joy to watch, it would have broken me.”
He saw the brief hesitation.
“I nearly gave in, then. I could see how much you would have loved to know him. To have him around.” She drew another deep breath. “When he was twelve I sent him to school in Geneva. It was very, very hard, but there was nothing more I could give him here. He needed to go to a school that specialized in music education, and he was with my parents. He had his first audition when he was thirteen, and last year he got the scholarship offer from Oxford. He’s a real prodigy, you see. I’m insanely proud of him.”
“As you should be, as I am, too. I can hardly wait to meet him. We’ll have to go to England soon. But not yet. First, it’s about you and me. When we go to see Joshua I want it to be us, together, not just father and mother, but truly us. I told you before, I want you back. I mean it, Naomi.”
Her shoulders tensed. He knew he was pushing her again, but he could not help himself. Those words he needed to hear could not come soon enough for him. Outside, a large sailboat slowly glided like a huge white swan on its way to the open sea. The unfurling lengths of sail made snapping sounds in the wind. Happy shouts could be heard from the deck, and Jon, sitting up from his comfortable position, marveled at the hardiness of those sailors going out in the deep of winter.
Naomi did not reply.
In a lighter tone, Jon asked, “So what did Joshua say when you told him? What do you think he will say when we meet?”
“Oh, he’s seen you. We were at your concert in London. We had really good seats. Third row, right in the center. You looked down often enough.”
It took a long while to digest this. He had not seen her, but he felt as if he should have sensed her closeness, even amid the many thousands of others.
“And what did Joshua say?”
There was laughter in her eyes. “He said you were a chick’s man and no self-respecting teenager should be forced to listen to you. He thought your shirt was disgusting. I didn’t think it was that hot, either. And the tickets were incredibly expensive. You should be ashamed of yourself. Sean was good, though. I love his bone-dry rendition of The River. It’s really sexy. And he looks sexy playing it.”
“You little beast. You were truly there and never tried to see me? You were just sitting there, watching me bawl out my heart, and never did anything? And then you talk to me about how sexy Sean is? I’ll fire him immediately!”
The sun had long set behind the mountains by the time they picked up their conversation again.
“It was so unreal, seeing you up there. You were a stranger, yet so very familiar. I had the memory of you deep in my heart, but I never thought there would be a second chance for us.”
At last he could let go. “I longed for you all the time.” Her head rested on his chest, her hair tickling his throat. “When you walked into my life that day in Geneva, everything seemed to fall into place for me. It all made sense suddenly, the struggle to express myself, I finally knew why it was like that for me. You gave a meaning to it all, a sense of connection. You gave sincerity to my music. There was never any room for shallowness with you.”
She kissed him softly on the corner of his mouth. “The shirts were the worst. I hated those shirts.”
They arranged their new life in Naomi’s corner apartment as if it were a slow dance, watching the ships and the wharf life, waiting for the arrival of the mail ship every other day. Jon still counted the cars that came and went to the depot, fascinated by their sad regularity, and started to watch for the fishing boats to return as well. The weather took a turn for the worse, bringing higher temperatures and rain, accompanied by ugly winds from the sea and a dark, brooding sky that hung low over the bay, blurring the landscape into bizarre images. But much more than the snow that had come before, it drove Jon to work. He had shifted the baby grand so he could look toward the ocean while he composed, his back to the room, and he spent hours sitting there, deep in thought. This cold, stark atmosphere fascinated him. It seemed to express the feelings in Naomi’s lyrics so much better than the pristine snow had done.
They spent their days in a simple pattern that laid itself around his shoulders like a fine, warm blanket, giving him space to find his inner harmony again, making it a delight to compose tunes to go with Naomi’s words.
Naomi reclined on the couch, most often wrapped in a quilt, her laptop on her knees, her thoughts far away, her eyes sometimes looking right through him, which amused him. Jon marveled at the repose in her, the simple acceptance of him, no discussion, no turmoil, no questions, as if
she had been waiting for him all her life, ready to take him back.
For a brief time, they did not talk about it, but lived only in the present and celebrated every moment.
Solveigh never called. They were left alone, a fact he noted with gratitude. Naomi checked on the hotel routine daily but was sent away again with the advice to enjoy herself as long as it lasted.
“You’re walking in a dream, Naomi,” Solveigh said at one point. “You should know it will not last. He will return to his old life, he has to, and you will break. That’s not just any man you’re hiding down there. He belongs to the world. Be careful.”
Naomi went away with a shrug.
They went to Bergen. The colorful houses around the harbor seemed to gleam in the early morning light, even the fish market looked scrubbed and new. Jon, who had been all over the world, had very rarely taken the time to actually see the places. Here, he had plenty of time to enjoy the atmosphere of a foreign country. They strolled through the town, hand in hand. Naomi showed him the old wooden houses along the waterfront and the few elegant shops Bergen had to offer where he bought more clothes and everything else he needed.
He was hesitant at first, walking among the many tourists, but they were not approached which surprised, and then irritated him a little until he began to enjoy the freedom of being in the open without security or camera flashes going off in his face.
At the market Naomi made him eat a fish burger, which she called fiske boller, and boiled shrimp directly from the vat. No one took notice of them. They enjoyed total privacy sitting on the wooden bench beside the stall, their fingers greasy, the table littered with prawn shells. It was such a rare luxury for him, he reveled in it despite the uncomfortable wind blowing over the cobbled plaza.
On their flight back, Jon said: “Next week we’ll go to England. I think it’s time. We need to make this whole now. We’ll spend a couple of days in London, on our own, and then we’ll go see Joshua.”
The Distant Shore (Stone Trilogy) Page 5
