The Distant Shore (Stone Trilogy)

by Mariam Kobras

  The nurse came, and Jon rose to make place for her.

  “You don’t seem to need me at all, my dear. You have a whole posse of people here to look after you. You will be spoiled and pampered so much you will get used to it and never want to rise again from your lair. But up you go, and some exercise, please.”

  She was extremely wobbly, but Naomi made herself walk around the patio once, guided by Jon, his strong hands holding her up as she moved slowly to the balustrade to look out at the sea.

  “I want to be on the beach,” she said querulously, “and in the garden.”

  “You will,” he promised. “Just have a little patience.”

  “I want shrimp, too. Real food.”

  “Shrimp, no.” The nurse laughed at her. “But it’s good to hear you ask for them. How about some chicken?”

  Naomi grumbled. Anything, as long as it wasn’t tea or broth.

  When they had settled her down again, she wanted clothes and not a nightgown, or at least something that felt a little more like clothes.

  Jon promised he would see to it, and left her to drive downtown to Jamal’s store and ask him to come along later in the day and bring her some comfortable, light things that would make her feel good and dressed at the same time.

  Christi and Andrea, unaccustomed to the balmy climate of California, sat perched side-by-side on one of the benches and watched in wonderment how their old boss was treated like a queen by the people who came and went—Sal, Art and Sue, Harry, Sean, all of them staying only minutes, leaving again as soon as she showed signs of flagging. She slept often and was always demanding food, specifying what it was she wanted, and to their amusement, complaining bitterly when she did not get it. Everything at the house revolved around her and her health, and it was done with light hearts and a lot of laughter.

  This gave Jon the space to regain his own inner peace and find the time to ponder his own role in the dramatic events.

  He rose early in the mornings to wander along the beach, collecting debris and shells. The solitude cleared his head and allowed him to gather the strength he knew he would need once her attention turned outward again.

  He felt quite certain that he had done Sophie no wrong, feeling it was his right to end a relationship when it became senseless to him, with or without anyone else waiting behind the scenes. Sitting on the warm sand of the beach, he tried to recall the time when he had allowed her into a segment of his life, waiting, watching, judging, wondering if maybe she was the one who could fill the awful empty space in his heart.

  Many had come and gone from the little beach house, some for a few hours or a night of heated sex, but for none of them, not even Sophie, had he taken down the pictures of Naomi on his shelves.

  Tenacious, obsessive bastard, Sean had called him one day, as if Naomi’s pictures were an old battered mug or teddy from his childhood that he could not bear to part with, but he had hung on and looked at those photos every morning after coming down the stairs from his bedroom, often with someone else still asleep up there. And she had gazed at him from those silver frames, a question in those deep, dark eyes and an invitation in the shape of her mouth. Most often, seeing her image there, he had sent the girl upstairs on her way in a cab, because there was always something lacking and he felt ashamed of his own frenzy.

  There were moments when he thought his imagination and his memory had made a lot more of Naomi than there really had been, but then that instant by the lakeside came back to him and he knew with bleak certainty that it did not really matter whether it was fantasy or dreadful truth. It was what he lacked, what he needed.

  He had met Sophie at a party at her father’s house, a well-known movie director and friend of Harry’s. She had caught his interest because she had not—unlike all the others—tried to catch his attention but stood alone, seemingly unconcerned, disinterested in the great singer who had come into the room like a star falling from the sky. Jon was so used to having the attention turn to him wherever he went that this piqued him, and he had gone over to her and talked to her, only to find out why she had not looked his way.

  The reason had been funny and eased his suspicious mind: she had been wondering if she had turned off her stove, and she had been worried. On the spur of the moment he had offered to drive her over to her apartment to check, and they had ended up, of course, in her bed.

  To this day he had never found out whether it had been an extremely clever plot on her part or not, but that was immaterial.

  Sal had warned him at some point, warning him about his wild life and ever-changing partners.

  “You’ll catch something,” he had said, “You’ll come down with AIDS if you keep messing with everything in a skirt.”

  But he had always been so careful. He didn’t want to get any of them pregnant because maybe, some day—and he was not too old yet to stop hoping—she might come back. Somewhere in the world, on one of his tours, in one of the strange cities, she might be there. So in the end, and without a second thought, he had placed that brief call from the airport.

  “Listen,” had been his words, “I’m going away. I won’t be back, either. The things you left at my house, my housekeeper will pack them up and deliver them to you. We had a good time, but I need to move on.”

  It had been rather rough. There had been tears and pleas on the other side of the phone, and he had, couched in well-rehearsed and slick words, said some soothing things, but in the end he had hung up on her.

  Over. Just like that, he had decided it was over. Time to say goodbye, and not a moment of emotion wasted.

  Jamal brought her a stack of flowing silk kaftans in a rainbow of colors, comfortable, cool things she could easily wear over her bandages, with shawls woven from the finest cashmere, lined in velvet or fur to keep her warm.

  “You are all treating me like I’m an old queen,” she said. “But don’t bet your money on a fast demise. I want to live a good while longer yet.”

  In addition to her new clothes, Jamal brought a huge assortment of Lebanese dishes from his favorite restaurant and was about to spread them out on the table when Kevin came out onto the patio. “Oh no! No foreign food, for heaven’s sake! You’ll kill her!”

  “He won’t,” Naomi lamented. “I want to eat that!” For good measure she slapped her blanket in a show of frustration, which had them all laughing.

  “Darling,” Kevin cautioned, “Garlic, olive oil, spices, and onions? You poor liver will do somersaults. Please, none of that.”

  But in the end he let her take a few bites, glad to see her with a good appetite.

  Joshua came for a week. He had convinced his teachers to let him go and made Helen buy him a ticket, and he showed up at the house unannounced. Happily he sat on the end of Naomi’s bed, his legs crossed, stealing food from her plate until Jon slapped his wrist and then went down to the kitchen to get him something.

  Jon was glad he had come. When Joshua had walked out onto the patio, Naomi’s face lit up in a way he had not seen since before the shooting, and it gave him hope.

  For a few days life felt nearly normal again, and when Harry’s kids dropped by to pick Joshua up for a day on the beach his heart lifted, and he could almost envision a happy future. Their young laughter seemed to echo through the house when they drove off, leaving a trail of sand left behind in the hall, and the fridge well raided.

  At night, when they were alone, Jon held her when the pain came and breathing was hard, and he was with her when the nightmares started, when she woke from sleep sweaty and crying, disoriented, clinging to him in fear.

  It had taken eight weeks for the traumatic impact to finally come to the surface. Her mind had waited until her body was nearly healed before it opened the door to that dark abyss, but then it came with a vengeance.

  She could not talk about it.

  She tried to explain, lying in his arms, but the words just would not come. Instead, tears streamed down her face and bitter sobs wracked her body, and Jon, helpless ag
ainst her torment, tried to soothe her as best as he could. He tried to figure out if it was her own injury that troubled her or whether she was beginning to think about the others who had been hurt that day, or even if the struggle with her father depressed her now, but she was unable to articulate her turmoil, answering only that she was sad and afraid.

  “Of course she is,” Kevin explained when he talked to him about it. “Jon, she nearly died, not once but a number of times. She has looked over that wall, been halfway across it even, and she has not returned from there completely yet. There’s a shadow on her soul. No person endures what she endured and remains unscathed.”

  Solveigh made her walk around the roof garden every day, but the spirit she had shown in the beginning had changed to listlessness.

  Sean, lugging his portable keyboard up the two flights of stairs to play for her, was greeted with no more than a silent glance, and when Jon came with his guitar to join him, she closed her eyes to listen but turned her head away.

  Strangely, when she found it in her to talk at last, it was Art she turned to.

  Sean and Sal, with her when she was attacked, she avoided, not even looking at them when they came to see her, almost as if she were ashamed they had seen her prostrate on the red carpet, bleeding. Toward Jon she was completely silent.

  “I was dead,” Naomi said suddenly one afternoon when she and Art were alone.

  Art raised his head to look at her. She looked like a fairy in the shimmering robe she was wearing, stretched out under the canopy of the daybed, frailer and paler than she had ever been, her movements languid and passive.

  “You are alive. You can’t have been dead.”

  “No. I was dead.” Wincing, she tried to sit up straighter. “I remember everything, Art. I remember Sean kneeling beside me, his shirt stained all red, and Sal talking to me, and then it suddenly all stopped. It was so peaceful, Art.”

  Shocked, he put his coffee cup on the table and folded his hands between his knees.

  “In the ambulance, I heard the paramedics giving their report to the hospital, saying they didn’t think I would still be alive when they got there. I heard the sound of the defibrillator before I drifted off.” She fell silent, picking the skin off a fresh fig before she nibbled the red, seedy flesh. “I was aware and yet not, and there were many moments when I never wanted to return to this life. It was so much easier to just let go, just drift off, not feel, not think, not see Jon’s distress or my parents’ anger.”

  Float, silently and softly, and then dissolve into oblivion and forgetting.

  “I heard him cry, Artie. In the deep of the night, when no one else was around, I heard him cry and talk to me, and I didn’t want to return because it hurt so much. I wanted him to go away and take his sorrow elsewhere.”

  Art thought she looked exhausted in an alarming way, as if she had given up the fight. “Maybe you need some distance,” he suggested carefully. “Maybe your father was not so wrong, Naomi. Maybe you would heal better somewhere else.”

  But she shook her head. “No, Artie, I need to be here. If I run away from my nightmares again, I fear I would never find the strength to return.”

  “She was a lunatic, Naomi. There’s no other way to put it. Millions of people separate every day all over the world, but only very few go out and shoot someone because of it. Sure, it’s heartbreak and pain, but Baby Girl, you can’t make anyone stay if they don’t want to.” Even softer, he added, “Least of all him, the Jonman. He is single-minded and obsessive, and he always wanted that true love thing, stupid romantic that he is.”

  Art moved away so he could light a cigarette without bothering her.

  “You shouldn’t think about his former girlfriends, Naomi, not for a moment. He’s just not that kind of guy. Where girls are concerned, he’s as old-fashioned as you can get. Single-minded, I tell you. Don’t worry.”

  She toyed with the tassels on her cushion, her eyes lowered.

  “I feel guilty, Artie. Guilty as hell that she had to die. And Stewart. God, Stewart. He died because of me. He died because it was his job to protect me.”

  When she struggled to rise from her couch, Art tossed his cigarette over the balustrade mindlessly and rushed to help her up, holding her around the waist until she stood on her feet. He was shocked by the way he could feel her bones under his hands, so different from the lush, glowing woman they had all admired at the Oscars. Now she seemed like a wounded little animal.

  “You need to get back into shape, Baby Girl,” he said. “So you will have the stamina for the tour.”

  Together they strolled to the other side of the patio where they could look out toward the hills.

  “I don’t know that I will go, Art.”

  The girls were looking after her very well. Her hair was glossy and groomed, her skin soft, her hands and nails perfectly manicured, but the spark had gone out of her.

  “Of course you’ll go! He won’t do it without you, and you know it. Hell, they’re only doing it because you wanted to see them on stage again.”

  They could hear Jon’s voice from inside, and Sal’s, both of them laughing at something, Sal nearly crowing with delight, and then they stepped out into the sunshine.

  “Baby, you’re up!” Jon called happily, “Why don’t you come downstairs. We can all sit on the terrace and have coffee together.”

  Naomi turned toward him slowly. “I want to go out, Jon. I want you and Sal to take me out.”

  They all stared at her in surprise when she told them she wanted to see Stewart’s family. She wanted to tell them how sorry she was, and how bad she felt about his death, maybe take something, anything, to emphasize how terrible she felt. No press, no uproar, just a very private, quiet, brief visit.

  “Naomi,” Art interrupted, “everything has been done. We were there at his funeral, Jon was there to see them himself, and of course they received compensation. You should know your husband better, dear.”

  “There is no compensation for a lost life.”

  “Well, of course there isn’t,” Sal agreed. “But at least his family won’t have to worry about money in the future.”

  She hardly dared to ask. “Did he have a family of his own? Children? A wife?”

  Jon shook his head without looking at her. “Of course not, Naomi. We don’t hire guards who have kids. I don’t. And believe me, they’re paid well. They know what they’re getting into. Baby, they are bodyguards. They are supposed to save your life, even at the cost of their own if necessary.”

  “We know you feel guilty,” Sal added, “and it’s a very fine trait, darling. But in the end, their job is a lot like a policeman’s, or a firefighter’s. They protect and save people, only they get a much better salary.”

  “How much?” she wanted to know. It did feel a little twisted, but she wanted to know how much her life was worth in terms of security.

  Sal shook his head at her with a small, ironic smile.

  “I won’t tell you, because I don’t want to weigh your life in coin. Rest assured, Stewart could afford a very nice house in the hills and a couple of pretty expensive cars. His bank account was quite feisty, and with the millions Jon put on top of it, his relatives are now among the wealthy.”

  “But he’s dead, because of me.”

  Jon rushed to help her when she swayed on her feet. He led her back to her bed.

  “I want to do it. I want to do it myself, Jon. I need to apologize to them, need to…”

  “Yes, love, I understand. But it’s been weeks now, and you would be tearing open the wound again. He’s buried and everything is over, everything. I will take you if you insist, but you would only rip it open again, for his parents, and for yourself, too.” He hesitated, then added softly, “I went to see his mother myself. If it means anything to you, I felt the need to ask for forgiveness too. She was very bitter, and she told me it was his own fault; he had chosen this profession, after all. Please don’t do this to them, and us.”

  Her finge
rs tightened on his briefly.

  They were still without their rings. The hospital had returned them to him, washed and in a little plastic bag, but when he had taken them out he had seen the residue of blood among the stones. The dress he had refused. He had even refused to look at it, too afraid of seeing the huge blood stains on the cream satin, too scared to relive those terrible moments. He had requested a video tape of the shooting and had watched it over and over again at night when she was asleep, torturing himself with the pictures and the deep guilt of having left her there, turning away after that kiss without looking back before getting into the waiting car. Sophie, Sal said after sitting with him through one of those viewings, had been out to get Naomi, that much was clear. She must have been in that crowd of guests even when Jon walked past, and she had let him go by unharmed.

  “But the hate that girl must have cultivated,” Sal had said in an almost admiring tone. “Just think of it! A year later, and she’s still out for vengeance!”

  “And how…” Jon hardly had dared to voice it. “How could she get a gun in there? I know it was a small and she had it in her dress, but Sal, that place is supposed to be safe. They have the tightest security you can imagine.”

  But he knew, of course. No one spoke about it because it was a shameful fact, but everyone knew, and Jon pitied her father more than he could say. She had come with him, and everyone knew his face. No one had bothered to check the lovely daughter of the celebrated Hollywood director for a weapon.

  “You could visit his grave, if you want,” Art suggested to Naomi. “Would that help you?”

  She shook her head. “Your suit,” she said to Sal. “I remember you knelt beside me. Your suit must be ruined. And Sean’s.”

  They stared at her.

  “Yes,” Sal found the courage to answer. “I threw it away. I’m sure Sean did the same.” A lot more than a pair of trousers had been ruined that night, he thought ruefully, so much more, seeing her there, pale and thin, her eyes dull, listening to Jon’s careful half-truths and side-stepping.