Acts of Love

by Judith Michael

  "Will it do.'" Luke asked when they met in the living room.

  "Yes, it's very pleasant," Jessica said, thinking that once again they were being very formal.

  He opened the front door for her. "And are you hungry.-^"

  "Very. Breakfast seems a long way back."

  "It was. And we didn't eat much. Nervous, I suppose. Are you now.'"

  They stood beside the car and she looked up at him. "No. Are you.'"

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  "No. I'm very glad to be here with you."

  She barely nodded, then sat in the car. A^b more formality. Maybe we won't need it again.

  Christina's was on the second floor, and Luke cursed when he saw the staircase. "No one told me."

  "It's all right." She moved one step at a time, self-conscious about her struggling pace. Luke tried to take her arm, but she shook her head and went up alone. By the time she reached the restaurant, her breath was coming faster.

  "I'm sorry," Luke said. "I should have asked."

  "So should I. Let's forget it, shall we?"

  The small room was almost as spare as their bedrooms at the inn, with a wooden floor and tables spaced far enough apart for privacy. An arrangement of copper molds covered part of one wall; a glassed-in porch and deck hung over the water of Eastsound. Jessica pretended to be intensely interested in the little there was to see, trying not to think of her cumbersome body, ready to cut off anything Luke said to try to make her feel better.

  But he surprised her. "I may ask Christina if I can copy this room for a set," he said. "There's practically nothing here; a perfect way to save money on design and construction."

  Jessica smiled. "Those copper molds are probably antiques. Very expensive."

  "Oh, I'd eliminate them. They clutter things up, don't you think.?"

  They laughed, and Jessica began to relax. Her cane stood against the wall beside her chair, but she forgot it; she forced herself to sit straight, her hands in her lap, and saw the two of them as if they were on a stage: a lady and a gentleman dining quietly in a simple restaurant. But they were not on stage; they were part of the real world, two people sitting among groups of other people, and when Luke ordered a Woodward Canyon Cabernet and they raised their glasses in a silent toast, smiling at each other, she knew they had crossed some imperceptible line and had become a couple.

  "I never told you some of my favorite Kent stories," Luke said when they had ordered. His voice was casual, backing away from the intimacy of their silent toast, and he sat back, drinking his wine and spinning stories about Kent Home and the weeks of rehearsal of The Magician. "One of the most amazing things," lie said as they finished their appetizers, "was the way he began to feel the presence of an audience even before

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  there was one. 'We have to make them breathe with us,' he said—it became his favorite hne—'if we hear them breathing with us, we'll know we have them.'"

  "How did he know that," Jessica asked, "if he hadn't ever seen his play performed?"

  "He said he felt it. Something about the collective mind on stage—director, producer, actors, stage manager—understanding better than anyone the collective mind responding in the audience. As if they breathe together."

  "He knows a lot for a young man. Is he really as young as you think.''"

  "Younger. You'd think so, too, if you'd seen him in action. That's why his play is something of a miracle. And his new one, too."

  "He's written another.?"

  "It's not quite finished."

  The waitress served their fish and refilled their wineglasses, and Luke talked about rehearsals for other plays, and then Jessica said, "Do you know Orlando D'Alba.?"

  "No. Good name, though."

  "It is good. I'm pretty sure he made it up, but why not, if it makes him happy-f* For eight years he sent my agent two plays a year, one in February and one in August, begging me to take them to Broadway and play the lead—always a woman who murdered various people and got away with it. I thought it was such an odd obsession; he never tried a different plot."

  "And the plays weren't good?"

  "They were quite dreadful, but he was so serious and determined that I wrote back every time with some suggestions, especially that he send the next one to someone else. But he didn't; they kept coming, always the same story set in different cities, with different names for the characters and different ways of murdering the victims. If you haven't heard of him, I guess he never made it to Broadway or anywhere else."

  "He must have quite a stack of plays by now."

  "Oh, I imagine he's sending them around; he didn't seem ready to sit on them. People usually don't cling to the past, you know; they let it go and find something new to hold on to."

  Luke started to say something, but just then the desserts arrived, and with them Christina Orchid, asking if they had enjoyed their dinner. "We did," Luke said. "It was excellent."

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  Christina looked at Jessica more closely. "Aren't you Jessica Fontaine? I mean, of course you are. I saw you in Anna Christie a long time ago; you were wonderful. I heard you were living on Lopez; a vacation.^"

  "No."

  "Oh. Well, I'm glad to see you. If you're living here, I hope you'll come back in spite of the stairs."

  "I hope so."

  "Enjoy your dessert." Experienced in the peculiarities of customers, Christina had learned long ago to recognize and end a dialogue that was not going anywhere, and with an amiable smile she moved to the next table.

  Luke met Jessica's eyes. "Does that happen often?"

  "Of course not. How could it?"

  "You mean no one could possibly recognize you?"

  She flushed. "I mean not many people up here have seen plays in New York and if they have they wouldn't remember who was in them after all these years."

  The waitress brought their espresso and Luke changed the subject. They sat until late, the last diners to leave, and when they fmally stood up and moved to the door, Luke stayed at the top of the stairs, letting Jessica maneuver down them by herself. In the car, she said, "It was a lovely evening," and he murmured, "As always," and then they were silent until they reached the inn.

  The tiny living room was dark, with only a few embers glowing in the fireplace. "Shall we sit here for a while?" Luke asked, and without waiting for an answer put two logs on the embers and watched the flames catch and flare up. He went to a small table in the corner where a decanter and glasses had been set out and poured each of them a sherry. "I want to tell you something. It's the answer to a question you asked me many days ago. I don't know if you remember it—"

  "I do." She sat on the love seat facing the fire and took the glass Luke brought her. "Thank you." A small table in front of the love seat was piled high with magazines and photography books of the islands, and she watched the reflection of the flames in their glossy covers as Luke sat beside her. They were closer together than they had been all week, but where once she would have pulled away, now she sat quietly, lulled by the flickering light, conscious of the solid feeling of Luke's body beside hers. She felt a little as if she had been running a race: tired but not ready to go to

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  sleep, no longer running but not yet at the finish line, not even sure what she would find when she reached it but filled with an odd anticipation.

  Luke set down his glass and turned to face her. "When I told you, the other day, that I was trying to understand you, you asked me what difference it made. You asked me why I cared."

  "And you said you'd answer that another time."

  "Because I wanted to be sure." Shadows danced over them from the swaying flames and the walls and ceiling seemed to dissolve, so that when Jessica saw Luke's hand move she thought it was a trick of the Hght. But then she felt his palm against hers, and saw him lean toward her, and she looked down to see their hands locked together. "A
t some point when I was reading your letters—I've told you this, but I want to tell you again— I started looking forward to coming home at the end of the day and spending time with you. You became part of my reality, one of the most important parts, and that was when I knew that I was in love with you."

  "No." It was a whisper. She tried to pull her hand away, but Luke was holding it too tightly. "I told you: it was fantasy. It—"

  "It was very real and I—"

  "—doesn't make sense."

  "—knew it when I'd been with you lor a few days."

  They broke into brief laughter at the tangle of their voices. "I knew it," Luke repeated. "I waited to tell you until I was sure. What I loved in your letters was very real. But it wasn't enough. That was why I had to find you and why I kept trying to understand what you wrote and what you are. Jessica, you're magnificent; what you've done with your life—"

  "No," she said again. She pulled away and gripped her hands in her lap. "I'm not magnificent. I was, once, but it's gone, all of it, and what's left is a ruin—an ugly woman, a cripple, someone very ordinary who paints pictures and keeps a garden. Why do you romanticize that? You've talked yourself into loving me because it's different from anything you've done before, and very dramatic. As if it's a play. But if it were, it would be a comedy: a man talking of love with a woman who—"

  "Stop it." He stood and began to prowl the small room. Jessica heard his footsteps as he crossed behind the love seat, saw his shadow stretch up the wall, bend across the ceiling, leap to the next wall as he turned to retrace his steps. "A terrible thing happened to you—no one would deny that—but you've pulled it around you like a shroud; you see everything

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  through it; you're smothering in it." He stopped beside the fireplace and when Jessica looked up at him, his face was shadowed and his voice was hard. "You've defined yourself as ugly and a cripple and ordinary, you've locked away everything that was part of your greatness, you've shut yourself up in a house without a poster or photograph from the past, without a single mirror."

  A log fell, sending up a plume of sparks. Luke sat on the edge of the love seat and took her clasped hands between his. "But my dearest Jessica, you live in a house of mirrors. You've surrounded yourself with mirages and illusions that keep reflecting back on themselves, and you've made them your reality. They're what you see from morning to night, and the rest of us, if you look at us at all, are without substance. You brush us away, like ghosts."

  "That's not true. This whole week, we've talked about so many things, and I've been open with you, and honest. I haven't brushed you aside."

  "But certain subjects were out of bounds. And you brushed me away just now, when I told you I love you. Why can't you accept that.''"

  "You know the answer to that," she said fiercely, keeping her voice low in the sleeping house. "You know everything about me; you knew most of it before you even got here. All those letters that were meant for Constance, that were the most open I've ever been . .. you read them, you should be able to understand them. And me. I'm the ghost! No one who ever knew me would look at me and see a whole person. They'd see a wreck, and they'd turn away. Oh, why did you have to bring this up? It's been a lovely week; why couldn't you leave it as it was? You would have gone back to New York and we would have been left with pleasant memories. Instead you keep pushing me to be someone I'm not: talking about going back to New York, talking about love ... I told you this is the life I want—I told Constance, too, and you read it, more than once—why can't you accept that?"

  "Because I don't want to."

  "Is it so important, what you want?"

  "It is to me. Look at you, doing whatyo« want, refusing to try—"

  "Doing what I can! This is all I can do!"

  "I don't believe that. I don't believe—"

  "Have you ever had anything happen to you that wrenched your life apart? That made you look at everything as if you were in a completely

  foreign place so that nothing looked the same, nothing felt the same? For two years I thought about this; I tried to see myself going back and putting together all the parts of my life that had once been familiar. But there was no way to do that."

  "You were afraid."

  "Is that so terrible? Of course I was afraid. I was terrified. I had no place anymore. There had always been a place for Jessica Fontaine; I knew it and so did everyone else. Doors opened, people welcomed me, everywhere I went / belonged. And then I didn't. I knew that the doors wouldn't open anymore, that no one would welcome me, and I'd be outside, where everything was foreign. Can't you try to understand that?"

  "I am trying. I've been trying since I read your letters. You're a courageous woman; why didn't you even make an attempt? You could always run away; why did you do it before you were sure of what would happen?"

  She shook her head. "You don't know anything about it."

  "That's possible. But I know that any woman who cares about the stage as you do, any woman who wrote as you did to Constance, about the power you felt on stage, about the—"

  "I don't want to hear myself quoted by you!"

  "You're right; I shouldn't do that. I'm sorry. I was trying to make you see how big the stakes are."

  "Good God, do you think I don't know that? My whole life is at stake! Years and years of building a life that protects me from—" She stopped.

  "Memories and pain," he said quietly. "I understand that. But are they so devastating that you won't even try to get back what made you great? When I said you'd locked it away, I meant that: what made you great is still there—"

  "That's another dream. You keep spinning fantasies, as if you could change me by talking long enough. What was in me is gone. Why won't you believe that when I say it over and over again? Once I knew exactly what my body would do, how to move across a stage, how to sit and open doors and pour a drink ... It was an instrument that told an audience almost as much as my face and my voice. But that body is gone. And so is my face. Everything is gone; nothing is locked away. Now, I've said it all; you've forced me to say it all. Are you satisfied?"

  He was silent for a moment. "I'm sorry. You're right; I shouldn't sit here and tell you what you want and what you don't want, or hold myself

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  up as some kind of savior come to rescue you and return you to society." He stood up. "It was important to me to tell you that I love you, and that this has been a wonderful week for me. I don't think I've ever lied to you; I never pretended that you still have the beauty and perfect body you once had. But the more I got to know you the less important any of that seemed. I cared about the way we talked together, the way you saw the world and shared it with me, the way your spirit soars and your face is transformed when you smile, and even more when you laugh. To me, you are magnificent, and I'm sorry you can't trust me enough to believe I mean that."

  He stood for a moment, a dark silhouette in the fading light of the fire. Then he bent down and kissed her, a light kiss, but not casual. "Good night, my dear," he said, and then he left, taking the stairs two at a time to his room.

  Jessica stayed in the corner of the couch, trembling, her thoughts in turmoil. The fire burned down again to a bed of glowing embers and the room grew chilly, but still she sat, her hands clasped as they had been when Luke held them. The inn slept and no sound was heard, but her thoughts were clamorous.

  How long had it been since a man had said he loved her? Oh, so long, so many years. . . . But that was not what had thrown her into confusion. Something else had done that.

  She was in love with him.

  No, she thought quickly. Not quite. But so close that she knew she would be, deeply and passionately, as she had never been before, if she allowed it.

  But she could not risk it. She had a life to protect.

  You've pulled it around you like a shroud; you're smothering in it.

  A shroud, she thought. What a terrible word. As if I were dead. Well, the
old Jessica Fontaine is dead—everyone knows that—but I'm not; I'm alive and busy and happy.

  You've surrounded yourself with mirages and illusions that J^eep reflecting bac on themselves, and you've made them your reality.

  Anger welled up in her. If that was her reality, it was her choice. Who was he to say it wasn't right for her? He had his own reality, his life in New York, and when he returned to it, there would be no reason for them to meet, ever again.

  She took her cane from its place against the arm of the couch and

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  crossed the hall to her room, telling herself to stop thinking, to put the evening out of her mind and go to sleep.

  "Did you sleep well?" Luke asked politely the next morning when they met in the dining room.

  "No."

  "Neither did I."

  Susan Fletcher came through the kitchen door. "It's rather mild today, and there's a sheltered place on the porch. Would you like to have breakfast out there.'"

  Luke looked at Jessica.

  "Fine," she said, thinking that breakfast would be uncomfortable anywhere, but since they had almost two hours before the plane would arrive, they might as well eat. "I'll get my sweater."

  "I'll do it," Luke said. "Is it in your room.?"

  "On the bed."

  While he was gone, Susan led Jessica through French doors to a small round table on the porch, set with a white cloth and two place settings, very close together. "I assumed you'd want to be here."

  Jessica let out her breath in a long sigh. "How lovely it is." The long, wide porch looked over a deep valley, still lush with tall grasses shining beneath the early-October sun, with the gentle rise of Turtleback Mountain across the way. The trees had passed the peak of their color and many were already bare, but on others clusters of red, bronze and gold leaves clung stubbornly, and the same colors were on the valley floor, strewn among pink wild roses, white yarrow and bushes with shiny red berries. To the left of the porch, through dense trees, a pond glimmered, and a man pushing a wheelbarrow followed a path through a clearing, then disappeared into another grove of trees. "It's so different from Lopez," Jessica murmured. "We don't have valleys. Or mountains, for that matter."