A Theory of Love

by Margaret Bradham Thornton

  * * *

  Still on European time, Christopher awakened before dawn. As the darkness was beginning to disappear, he decided to go for a run. The storm had crossed during the night. The air was cool and clean, and as he ran down the high cliff of Casa Tortuga, he breathed in the early morning scents of coconut palms and lush vegetation he knew only by scent and color and not by name. He ran north past the long beach of Bermeja to Playa Rosa, a small beach given its name by the broken pieces of pink coral that colored its sand. It was the beginning of one of those beautiful, wild, middle-of-summer days. The high pressure following the storm had transformed the chaotic energy of the surf into clean, powerful waves that came one after another in steady, rhythmic sets. He dove into the cool water and swam out to where the waves were breaking. Flattening his torso and stretching his arms overhead, he used his hands as a plane to traverse the wave and ride it to shore. He felt as if he were dancing with an old friend. Days spent in that ocean, he reacquainted himself with its moods and movement.

  An early morning mist had begun to roll in, and as he swam out once more, he felt a riptide pulling him away from shore. He knew not to resist, and he let it take him out. He swam parallel to the shore to release himself from its hold, but he could not find its edge. The current was now taking him far outside the breakers and pulling him fast down to the cliffs. If he could get to the rocks, he could use them to anchor himself and edge around to shore. The waves were building as the tide was dropping. With so much water moving, what was risky half an hour ago was not even possible now. Body surfing back was too dangerous because he could get smashed onto the exposed reef.

  He reached the base of the cliff, steadied himself, and assessed his options. The sets were coming harder now, and he would have to guard against being pounded against the rough and jagged rocks. He was about two thirds the length of a football field away from the beach. He could move shoreward with the swells, but once he was farther inside where the waves were breaking, he would have to wait for a lull and move as fast as he could around the rocks.

  He anchored himself by finding grip holds in the barnacle-encrusted rocks, first bracing and then holding on so as not to get ripped off as the water sucked back. The hoped-for lulls did not come. He had to move forward in the few seconds between waves, working fast in the small space before another wave crashed onto him. He managed to move only one to two arms’ lengths at a time. Half the length of a football field felt like an eternity. His hands and feet were bleeding and his arms were heavy. He had another thirty feet to go—just three or four more waves, if he could find fissures to hold himself. He saw a short lull and he scrambled fast. A massive wave doubled up without warning. He heard its roar, he looked over his shoulder, but he could not see the sky. It came down on him, slamming him hard and snatching him off the base of the cliff. He was churned and tumbled and held down. There was nothing to grasp. Like a boxer taking punches, he used his arms to protect his head. The world was spinning with no sense of up or down. Color was his only guide. He gasped for air in the white froth. He pushed and clawed and scrambled his way toward the light green glow before another dark blue wall blotted out the sun and sucked him back into the muffled turbulence.

  His mind began to blink.

  He could not remember how he got to shore.

  For a long time after, he sat on the beach, listening to the wind and the gulls and the sound of his breathing, slowly picking the bits of rock and sea urchin needles and barnacle shards from the cuts in his side and hands.

  * * *

  They sped west as if racing the sun. The land was dry, and by midmorning, her face and bare arms and the back of her neck were covered in the fine red powder of the volcanic soil. Remembering the design she had seen hennaed on the hand of a woman in Tangier, she dotted and dashed a pattern on her hand and forearm with the tip of a pencil she had in her satchel, as if recording the seagulls’ cries she had heard when she and Christopher were lying on the beach in Majorca. God, if she could only go back to that time and bring the way they had been with each other forward. But they weren’t playing a game, and the past could not be shaken loose. She remembered the day Nick had written his number on the inside of her wrist. She was rattled to think how easily she could have betrayed Christopher.

  At some point before noon, she gave herself over to the day. She no longer felt the ridged and jagged tears in the plastic seats on the back of her legs, no longer felt the grime of the heat, or the way her long hair whipped in the wind and stuck to her face, no longer felt the hum and vibration of the truck that moved up her spine and into her teeth and then back down again.

  At noon they stopped for gas and lunch thirty miles east of Guadalajara. Helen felt too hot and dirty to eat, she looked around the small shop while José ate a bowl of chicken and rice and drank a beer. She bought a bottle of water and a bandanna for her hair. As he shifted gears back onto the highway, Helen collected her handful of Spanish words and mimed her offer to drive if he got tired. He nodded but did not understand. She tried again. He thought she was urging him to go faster. “Solo el cincuenta.” He pointed to the speedometer—the needle wobbled just shy of fifty—and then to the floor, where his foot was pushing the pedal flat. She nodded, she understood, he was going as fast as he could. She tried again, this time offering in French. “No entiendo.”

  Bypassing Guadalajara, they veered onto the toll road 54D. They passed through acres and acres of spiky blue agave plants. Tequila, she thought but did not speak aloud. She checked her phone for service but there was none. The sun was beginning to descend in front of them, and she offered José her sunglasses. Each coming hour of travel would bring him closer and closer to staring straight into the sun. He raised his hand to acknowledge her offer but shook his head.

  Soon after they passed the town of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, she began to doubt the day. Her decision would not lie flat, it kept buckling up, and now, no matter how strong her effort, it would not stay down. Was it some sense of migration that had brought her back? She didn’t even know for certain where Christopher was. She replayed the conversation in her head multiple times, he had said he was going to Bermeja, but he hadn’t said when. She had assumed he was on his way, he seemed to be in a hurry to get everything sorted, but he could still be in France. She could arrive and find Casa Tortuga empty.

  At the rate they were traveling, she would be lucky to arrive much before nine o’clock. After she paid José and gave him a tip, she would have very little money left. And if Christopher was there, what if he were with someone? He had asked that question of her. Was that because it applied to him? She could no longer have claims on him—she was the one who had left. Christopher was practiced at looking forward and never backward. He had been so clear and formal when he called her. He was calling for an answer to a specific question, he hadn’t been interested in anything else. His week-old emails, which she had read and reread, had corroborated this. She had hoped to find meaning or a message where there was none.

  She fought with her mind to keep it in the present and not let it race ahead of where she was. In the course of her work at the paper, she had traveled many places to meet a man she did not know. She had never doubted her ability to handle the situation—from aging aesthetes to rugged mountain guides. And now she was being driven to the man who was still her husband, and she was nervous and anxious about what she would find and how she would act. She looked at her phone to consider calling him. Still no service. She would have to wait. The heat of the afternoon helped calm the day.

  * * *

  Alfonso spent the first part of the day shopping for supplies. Christopher had told him not to get much, he would take his meals at the hotel. “They could use a few more customers,” Christopher said, reassuring Alfonso it was fine to leave. By midafternoon, Alfonso was off to his son’s wedding in Puerto Vallarta.

  At eight, Christopher walked down to the hotel and ordered the grilled fish. An attractive man and woman were having dinner tog
ether. He guessed they were both in their fifties. He overheard bits of the conversation, they spoke Swiss German. He couldn’t tell how long they had been together—they seemed familiar with one another, and yet they still wanted to please each other. He had always assumed he and Helen would be like them. He left the restaurant before they did, and as he was walking up the cliff, they passed him in a jeep and asked if he wanted a lift. At any other time he would have said yes, out of curiosity to find out more about them, but he said no because he wanted to be free from any connections, from any entanglement.

  Back at Casa Tortuga, he picked up his book, a biography of Alexander von Humboldt, and the cold beer Alfonso had left in the kitchen and sat down under the palapa.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Bermeja

  Seventeen pages later, he heard a truck pull up, a door slam, then voices. Christopher walked to the front of the house. A young woman and a crumpled man were standing by the side of a beaten-up pickup truck.

  “My God, Helen.”

  She turned to look at him. Both Helen and the man looked as if they had been working in fields all day.

  “I thought you were in Havana.”

  “I was.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to see you.”

  “How did you get here? Not in that truck?”

  She nodded. “Just from Mexico City.”

  “That’s over nine hundred kilometers. Are you mad? Do you know how dangerous that is?”

  She slid her bandanna off and wiped the sweat and grime from her face. “Please don’t say anything about danger to me right now.” She was too exhausted, and he was too concerned, for either one to be wary of the other.

  “God, sorry, Helen.” He clasped her shoulders as if to keep her from falling down. She nodded and turned to the driver, who was lifting her duffel bag from the back of the truck. She pulled money out of her jeans and counted it for him and then added a tip. She shook hands with him and thanked him.

  “My flight was canceled so I had to improvise.”

  “Improvise?”

  “There was no other way.”

  “No other way?”

  “Why are you repeating everything I say?”

  “He’s not driving back tonight?” Christopher asked looking back at the truck.

  “No, he has a brother who lives in Manzanillo.”

  “Here, give me that,” he said, as she bent down to take the strap of her duffel bag. They walked inside.

  “Helen, are you okay? When was the last time you slept? Can I get you anything to drink? Do you want something to eat?”

  “No, thanks, just some water.”

  He came back with a large bottle and a glass.

  He put his hand on her arm. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  She nodded as she took a sip of water. “It’s just all of a sudden, I feel frightened to come back here.”

  “Here?”

  “To see you.” She sank down on the sofa as if miming a water skier who had just released the rope. “I know what I did was stupid—I realized it halfway. I didn’t know what was more stupid, coming to see you or driving across Mexico in a fifteen-year-old pickup truck with a man I didn’t know and couldn’t understand. All I could think about was if I had just waited after my flight was canceled, I would probably have understood the lunacy of coming here to see you, and I would have turned around.

  “But when you called me in Havana, I realized that my trip to Cuba to research an article on John Glenroy—it wasn’t him I was searching for, I was searching for you. Trying to understand his flatness, his evenness, his lack of emotion, I was trying to understand you. Find you. I thought I could find you. No matter what I said—I could never get you to react to anything. I was looking for some emotion—even if it was only anger. At times I felt I didn’t exist for you, as if you couldn’t see me. I wanted you to recognize me, I wanted you to acknowledge my existence—something. When I told you I was leaving, I would have given anything for you to have said, ‘No, don’t go,’ and then I thought if I did manage to get to Bermeja, would you be here? What if you weren’t? I used up all my money to pay the driver. And then if you were here, what if you were with someone—?”

  “Helen, slow down. First of all, I’m very happy you’re here, and I’m not with anyone.”

  She nodded understanding. She wanted to ask him how things were with him, but she had used all her energy and emotion to make it this far. She looked out over the dark ocean, but shut her eyes because she did not want to remember how happy she had been here with him. She needed memory to stay in its hiding place. “Seeing you after being in a pickup truck for almost sixteen hours feels disorienting. I think I really need some sleep.”

  “You do,” he said, standing up first. “And maybe a shower. We can talk in the morning.”

  He picked up her duffel bag and led the way along a dimly lit path to the small house overlooking the cliff. He gave her the room next to his. He turned on the light and looked around. He checked the bathroom. “Remember to look out for scorpions,” he said.

  “You haven’t seen any here, have you?”

  “No, but just look around and check your shoes. No one has been in the house for a while.” The beds were mattresses placed on solid rectangular mounds built into the floor. Helen remembered their being designed that way to ensure nothing could hide under them. Both bedrooms had windows open to the ocean.

  She closed her eyes and let the hot water run down her back, trying to feel all the different rivulets of water. Her journey from Havana, filled with small curves and hooks and deflections, had felt like one of those paths. She turned and faced the hot stream of water as if to wash away all doubts and misgivings, but her conviction seemed to swirl away with the dirt and sweat of the hot journey. After she washed her hair, she said good night to him, put a towel on the pillow, and turned the light off. She stretched down deep into the cool sheets. Compared with the truck that had shaken and jolted and jarred the six hundred miles from Mexico City, the stillness of her bed felt wondrous. She listened to the sound of the waves on the rocks below. She tried to time her breathing with their push and pull as a way of slowing down her mind.

  He walked back to the palapa and picked up his book. His back and side ached, and it hurt to breathe. He thought about what she had said. He hadn’t completely followed her explanation of why she had come. She had always moved with emotion, rarely reason. She had put herself in danger driving across Mexico to see him. It was not the first time she had risked things for him—he understood that, too. He had kept facts and feelings back from her. She had filled in what she thought was missing, making assumptions, borrowing from her own life, but she was not a code breaker, and he had never tried to help her or put things back together. When she walked out, he had believed he could outrun everything, but he had come to understand that nothing protects you—neither speed nor ambition. It was not a matter of pushing ahead as fast as he could. He tried to read, but his mind kept slipping off the page. He closed his book.

  Helen was awakened by the sounds of beating wings and a thud. More fast beating and a thud. Silence. She sat up and turned on the light. It flew across the room again. A small dark spot, half the size of a mango, in the corner of the room, several feet below the ceiling. She called for him. He appeared in jeans and a T-shirt. He hadn’t gone to sleep yet.

  “Look.” She pointed high to the dark spot.

  “It’s a bat. It’s okay, it won’t hurt you. I’ll get him.” Christopher reached behind him and pulled his T-shirt off. A large dark bruise glittering with red claw marks curved across much of his rib cage and back.

  “God, Christopher, what did you do?”

  “I mistimed trying to swim back to shore.”

  “Mistimed?”

  “I lost my footing at the base of a cliff and got crashed against the rocks by a wave.”

  “When?”

  “This morning.”

  “Does
it hurt?”

  “A bit.”

  “You didn’t break any ribs?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  He took his shirt in his hands and walked slowly toward the corner. He reached up and covered the bat.

  “Can you open the door for me? I want to let it go at the edge of the cliffs. To minimize the chances of it flying back in.”

  Five minutes later he returned. “Hopefully, that’s the last you will see of him.”

  “Hopefully?”

  “You just drove across drug-cartel–infested territory in a rattletrap truck, and you’re going to tell me you’re afraid of one little bat?”

  “Yes. And its friends and relatives, too. What are the chances it will come back?”

  “Do you want to sleep in my room?”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Bermeja

  Christopher was stretched out by the pool. As the day had brightened, it had calmed. Now all that had not been blazed away was silent and still.

  “Good morning,” he said when he saw her.

  “I feel a lot better.”

  “You look a lot better.”

  “How is your side?”

  He squinted up at the sun and looked over the water. The line of the sea wavered in the haze. He looked back at her, smiled, and eased into his answer, “Better.”

  “Where did you learn to catch bats?”