Acts of Love

by Judith Michael

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  CTS of LOVE ~ 197

  I thought that would help her, too, since she was ill and would be better off not worrying about me. So, after a while, I.. . ."

  "Filled in the spaces," Luke said when her words trailed off. "Some shading, some coloring, a mosaic of small pieces."

  Her eyes were wide with surprise. "Yes, exactly. The empty spaces." She gave a small smile. "There were a lot of them; I really had so little to talk about. So I filled them in and pretty soon it was as if I were in a play about Jessica Fontaine that would convince her I was doing all those things she kept urging me to do."

  "And did that help fend off the past?"

  Again he had surprised her by using the word she would have used. "Sometimes."

  "But you said Constance wasn't convinced."

  "I think she wasn't sure. About a year ago, she wrote that I shouldn't cut myself off from the world that I know. She said it was my nourishment, my life and my being." Again she gave that small, bitter smile. "I thought I was writing those fantasies for both of us, but neither of us completely bought them."

  "You mean you weren't taken in by them."

  "Of course not. Did you think I was.i^ I liked writing them; it was fun to pretend a life, like Walter Mitty dreaming himself into a dozen heroic poses to deny the person he really was. But I never thought it was anything but a game."

  "There was something in the way you wrote about that life ... a kind of coolness. As if you were distancing yourself from it."

  "Is that true?" She frowned. "I thought I was being so careful. Maybe that's why she never fully believed it. Maybe she always wondered if it were just a game."

  "If so, she would have known it was a game you liked to play. It really was a fantasy for yourself as much as for her."

  Her eyes hardened. "Do you always have to beat people into admitting their weaknesses? Can't you let them keep just a few illusions if that seems important to them?"

  Luke's gaze turned inward, and there was a long silence. When he looked at her again, his face was bleak. "I think that's exactly what I do. I suppose I always have. No one has ever pointed it out so precisely. I'm very sorry, Jessica. I didn't mean to do that to you. I won't do it again."

  "Why do you do it at all?"

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  "I don't know. I detest pretense, the masks people wear . . . No one can be a great actor without first understanding himself or herself—you and Constance knew that better than anyone—and I suppose I've been pushing my actors for so many years, I do it with everyone. Maybe. Or maybe I just like to control people and I do it by pounding them into submission."

  "A little breast-beating there," Jessica said drily.

  He laughed, and the tension was broken. "Actually I was paraphrasing my grandmother. She thought I overdid the need to be in control. I assume she told you that, too."

  "Yes. But not maliciously. She worried about you."

  "It seems she worried about both of us."

  "Not all the time, but enough to talk about. She always wanted . . ."

  "What.?"

  "I'll tell you another time." She saw the quick line that appeared between his eyes. "No, I'm not doing that to get back at you for keeping things from me. We each have our reasons."

  Luke sat back and looked at her thoughtfully for a long time, and she did not turn away, though her hands were clenched tightly in her lap and she had to hold herself still to endure his scrutiny. She looked beyond him, at filaments of clouds trailing across the clear sky, and a sailboat tacking just beyond the bay, but all the time she was aware of his eyes on her.

  "I'd like to take you to dinner tonight," he said at last. "Can you recommend a good place on the island?"

  She met his quiet look. She knew the two of them were still springing back and forth, from tension to harmony, like bumper cars in a carnival, but she knew, too, that she did not want him to leave, at least not yet. She had been lonely for a long time and now the air was filled with a clamor of things to talk about, unresolved questions to settle, and the promise of companionship for dinner, and she was unwilling to let any of that slip through her fingers. "The Bay Cafe," she said, "if you don't mind something very casual. But I need to work this afternoon; is eight o'clock all right.?"

  "Fine. I'll pick you up."

  "No, I'll meet you there. It's in the village, very small, you even have to look hard for the name. But it's easy to find."

  After a moment, Luke nodded. "Eight o'clock. If you need me before

  then, I'll be at the inn." He stood up. "But I'll do the dishes before I go."

  She was about to refuse that, too; she wanted to be alone, to think about everything that had happened, and to work at her drafting table through the afternoon hours, with music in the background and no one to intrude. But he was already stacking plates, and she remembered the easy way they had worked together the day before, and she did not tell him to stop. She watched him clear the table and carry everything on a tray into the kitchen, and when she joined him there he was rolling up his sleeves. He smiled at her. "I can do this myself; there's not very much. And you did the cooking."

  She took a clean towel from the drawer. "We'll do it together," she said.

  CHAPTER 12

  Xhe Bay Cafe had no view of the bay, or indeed of anything but the wide, empty street that ran through the center of Lopez Village. The restaurant was small and spare, with a bare wood floor, simple wooden tables and chairs, white tied-back curtains in the windows, and a flowered curtain hanging in the kitchen doorway. It was not a place Luke would have chosen, had he glanced inside seeking dinner, but it was Jessica's choice, and he was waiting for her at a table in the back when she arrived.

  "I'm sorry I'm late," she said. She wore a blue denim dress with long sleeves, a skirt that came almost to her ankles, and a narrow leather belt, and for the first time since Luke had been there she wore jewelry: a necklace of embossed silver beads and silver figured earrings. She sat in the chair he held for her, at right angles to his own. "I wasn't paying attention to the time."

  "You shouldn't have to, when you're working."

  "Usually I don't." But she smiled as she said it, so that he would not think she was complaining about having nothing to do, night after night, but work as late as she wished.

  A few hours earlier they had said good-bye casually, like old friends who knew they would be together again soon, and Jessica had gone to her studio while Luke let himself out the front door. He drove back to the inn, thinking about the fierceness with which she challenged him to be honest. She did not want his sympathy; she did not seem to care about his understanding. What she wanted was the truth between them. He remembered

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  what she had said the day before, when they were talking about Mary Tyrone in O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night.

  Dependency is a curse and Mary used hers as a weapon.

  Was that what had driven her all these years? The fear of sinking into dependency and then finding what a devastating weapon it could be? She could not live with herself if she heard herself use those little tricks and stratagems that the dependent use. Yet another reason to withdraw from the temptation of others' sympathy and concern.

  At the inn, he took from his suitcase the copy of Kent's new script, expanded now to two acts and an outline of the third. At some time during breakfast that morning the idea had come to him that Jessica, even looking as she did, might be able to figure out a way to play the lead—in fact, might possibly play it better than anyone he knew. He had almost said it aloud, but caught himself in time. He was sure that she was not ready to hear that, and he had to be convinced that this was not one of those wild ideas that bloom in the warmth of good companionship, excellent food, and the sunlight of a golden October day, later to spiral away to nothingness.

  "You told Constance you miss the theater," he said in the restaurant
when they had ordered dinner.

  "That was a long time ago. This is a nice wine; I hadn't heard of it. Are you an expert in wine, in addition to all your other accomplishments?"

  "I know enough to order what I'm familiar with and leave the rest to the sommelier. I gather that no matter how often I introduce the subject of your life in the theater, you'll immediately find something else quite fascinating to talk about."

  A laugh escaped her. "Probably."

  "Well, you choose. I'll be glad to talk about anything you like."

  "Tell me more about The Magician. How you directed it."

  It was an easy subject for Luke, and a pleasant one, and he talked about it while they ate their appetizer of mussels brought from the sea just an hour earlier, and the salad and main course, describing the decisions he had made and what came of them, the ones that worked and the ones that did not. "I think, on balance, it was a mistake to cast Cort as Daniel. He was fine, eventually, but it took a long time to get there, through a lot of turmoil we could easily have avoided."

  "Why was he the wrong person?" she asked.

  Luke reflected for a moment. "He never liked Daniel. He kept that to

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  himself until he had the part—or maybe he only began feeling that way later—but once we were well into rehearsals it became almost an obsession and he kept insisting that Kent make changes in Daniel's character. A director should never cast an actor who doesn't make it clear from the beginning that he or she truly identifies or empathizes with a character, or—if the character is evil—at least understands him."

  "That seems obvious," she said.

  "It ought to. A lot of directors don't see it."

  She sat back as the waitress removed their dinner plates. "And how is Cort doing now?"

  "I haven't seen him since opening night, but I haven't had any anguished calls from New York, so I assume he's fme. You understand, he's not bad, he's just not. . ."

  "Daniel."

  "Yes, that's it. He's a skilled actor pretending to be Daniel."

  "Like a parent humoring a teenage son but not understanding a word he's saying."

  Luke laughed. "Not that bad, but close. That's very good; I'd like to use it when I need it. Would you mind?"

  "Of course not; it's hardly a line of immortal prose. And anyway, I wouldn't know about it if you did."

  "You would if you were there."

  Very deliberately, Jessica set her wineglass down and folded her hands on the table. "I could just change the subject again, but I'll say this instead. I am not going back to the theater, or back to New York. I thought that was very clear in my letters to Constance, which you seem not only to have read but to have memorized. God knows I wrote it often enough for anyone to be convinced, but I'll say it again. I am not going back. I have a life here, a good life, and there is no reason for me to try to recapitulate the past."

  "The reason is that that was your real life and your real identity and what you have now is Jessica Fontaine pretending to be whole on Lopez Island."

  She shoved her chair back. The wooden legs squeaked on the wooden floor and struck her cane, propped against the wall beside her, knocking it over. The clatter seemed thunderous in the small room and Jessica's face flamed with embarrassment. Luke leaped to his feet. He came around the

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  table and propped up the cane, then stood beside her, screening her from the other diners. "I'm sorry," he said, bending down so that he could speak softly. "I'd take that back if I could; it was rude and insensitive. Constance would say I'm still trying to control everything, events, people, conversation, the whole order of battle." He waited, but Jessica was looking at her clenched hands and did not look up or reply. "But this isn't a battle," he said. "I don't want one and I'm sure you don't; what we want is friendship. Jessica, I'm sorry. There are things I wanted to talk to you about, but they require a lead-in and if we can't do the lead-in, we won't talk about them at all. It will be enough for me just to be with you."

  She looked at him then. "Why?"

  "Because I like you. Because I'm having a very good time. Because I feel close to Constance when I'm with you."

  A small smile played on Jessica's lips. When he isn't saying the absolutely wrong thing, she thought, he's saying the absolutely right thing.

  "I'm sorry I made a spectacle of us," she murmured.

  "It's already forgotten; the food is so good that that's what everyone is thinking about. I like your recommendation. May I . . . ?"

  His hands were on her chair, and she stood slightly so that he could help her slide back to the table. "Thank you," she said.

  He returned to his chair. "I hope the desserts are as good as everything else."

  "I don't usually have any. You can give me a report."

  "Then I'll have to try more than one. You know, one of the best restaurants in New York has a dessert that's an arrangement of five different caramel concoctions—"

  "Bernardin," she said.

  He nodded. "One of my favorites. But there are some wonderful new places, Nobu, for one. . . ." He talked about restaurants, then went on to concerts and operas of the past season, and then the fashion shows in Bryant Square, held in huge tents and attracting as much attention as the Paris and Milan shows.

  "Did you go to all of them?" Jessica asked, amazed.

  "I would have if they hadn't run simultaneously. They're a fascinating form of theater, and I went with a friend who gave a private commentary that almost made sense of the most absurd parts."

  "Was she a designer?"

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  "No." Jessica could see that he was debating whether to tell her who it was. "Someone you don't approve of, Tricia Delacorte."

  "The gossip columnist." She fell silent, suddenly seeing him as a whole person with an entire life. Until now, so much had been going on between them that she had thought of him only as a director whose work she had admired; as Constance's grandson who had read letters not meant for him; and as an unwelcome messenger bringing New York and the theater into her quiet life. Now she looked at him and saw a man who had been married and divorced . . . and perhaps had married again? She did not know. He wore no ring, but that was not definitive. His behavior with her did not seem to be that of a married man, but that was never definitive. In any case, she knew that, as a director and as a young, vigorous man, he would be deeply involved in the many-layered social life of New York, and, if he were single, of course he would have women to share his evenings, and his bed. A sharp stab of jealousy shot through her and she drew in her breath with dismay. Why would she care about that.? She barely knew him and she had no intention of getting involved with him, or anyone else, ever again. Maybe it's New York, she thought. Maybe I'm jealous of his life there. Could that he? After all this time.'' Oh, when will that stop-f*

  "I've known her for a few months," Luke said as the silence stretched out. "I know she's capable of writing drivel, but she's created a life for herself and she's very good at what she does, within its limits, and I admire that."

  "Of course, you could say the same about a successful cat burglar."

  Luke's eyebrows rose and Jessica drew in her breath again. "But I think she must have had a hard life at one time," she went on quickly. "I don't think she could unerringly spot people's vulnerabilities unless she'd spent a lot of time putting patches on her own."

  Not much better. It's time to change the subject.

  But Luke did it first, as if to save her from being obvious. "The other kind of theater at the fashion shows were the audiences. More casual and spontaneous than in Europe, I think."

  "You mean they weren't stone-faced.? When I went to the shows in Milan and Paris I always thought the audiences had practiced for months to perfect those masks. By the last day of the shows, they all looked like effigies that had been dug up from a Mayan tomb."

  Luke burst out laughing. "They'd never go to another sh
ow if they heard you say that."

  Their voices were low and they leaned closer as they talked. Luke ordered three desserts and Jessica took a bite of each while he ate all of one and parts of the others, and then they ranked them. "There are some we didn't get to," Luke said. "We'll have to come back."

  They drank espresso and then ordered more, reluctant to leave, talking now about theaters in Europe, the Moscow circus, Fmnish acrobats ... until, finally, Jessica said, "We should go. It's very late."

  Once again he helped her with her chair. At the door, she held out her hand. "Thank you for dinner. I enjoyed it."

  Luke held her hand. "I'd like to see you tomorrow." And then Jessica asked the question that had hovered over them all evening. "Are you here indefinitely.'"

  He smiled. "Not that long; I do have to get back. But I don't want to leave yet."

  She nodded, as if she understood, though she had no idea what he was thinking or what he was waidng for. She slid her hand from his. "Would you like to ride again tomorrow morning.^'" "Very much." "The same time, then."

  They said another brief good-night in the parking area, and then Luke drove off in the direction of the inn and Jessica turned toward Watmough Bay. The moon was almost full, so blazingly white that most of the stars were invisible. The sky belonged to the moon, as did the waters lapping the island, holding on their surface a rippling ribbon of light, and the pine trees along the road, every needle gleaming like a thin, pure white blade. Jessica was amazed at the clarity of everything, the beauty of her island enhanced so that it seemed newly created, the softly rolling fields as bright and welcoming as lighted rooms seen from afar. She breathed deeply of the cold, crisp air. The nights were chilly harbingers of winter now, while the days grew warm as the sun rose, and the gardens still bloomed. And tomorrow we'll ride.

  The next day it seemed they had already fallen into a rounne, riding very early through cool forests still wet with dew, along ocean cliffs and around the periphery of open fields, coming back to Jessica's house for breakfast on the terrace and a long, leisurely conversation, then parting for