Willow

  "What's wrong?" Thatcher asked. "I don't know. I'm suddenly not very hungry. Maybe having so much to choose from overwhelms me. I'm beginning to believe there is such a thing as being too rich."

  "Not here." he said. The relative security, the enormous wealth, the magnificent weather, this city with streets that glitter and stores that look like they have a branch in heaven itself, create this sense of being above the world. Willow. It's not an altogether unpleasant high."

  "It's just as addicting as any terrible drug." "Is it so bad to be addicted to nice things?"

  "You confuse me. Thatcher. Sometimes you're so negative about this world, and yet..."

  "Yet I'm in it? I participate?" "Yes, exactly,"

  He nodded. "Walt Whitman wrote. Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself I am large. I contradict multitudes. We're all

  complicated. You're full of contradictions. too. Willow. And secrets," he added. "Right?"

  I looked away,

  "Just be careful," he said. "Secrets have a way of twisting themselves around your heart like a python and choking the joy out of vou."

  He started to eat again. The music grew louder. I nibbled on my food without any enthusiasm.

  "You want to go?" he said suddenly.

  "Where?"

  "Let's just walk on Worth Avenue or

  something."

  "You want to be here. Thatcher. There are people you want to see and talk to. I know."

  "I'm fine with it." he said. "Let's go. We can get ice cream sundaes or something."

  "We're going to go walking in the streets dressed like this and stop at an ice cream parlor?"

  "Here it's no big deal. We won't even attract a second look."

  "What about Hope Farris? Won't she be insulted if you and I run out this early?"

  "She won't even know we've left," he said, rising. "Come on." he urged.

  I smiled and got up. We made our way back through the boisterous crowd and hurried down the gangplank to his car. Shortly after. we were cruising down Worth Avenue, Maybe Thatcher's right, I thought. Maybe we are all full of contradictions, and maybe there's nothing strange about being

  complicated to each other and even to ourselves. It's even good. Who wants to be predictable?

  Yes, that's the thing about most of the people I've met so far, I thought, They're all so predictable.

  No wonder Thatcher was in love with Mai Stone. and no wonder he was heartbroken, no matter how he tried to hide it.

  .

  Once we were away from the rich and the famous, Thatcher seemed more relaxed and himself We parked and then walked the street holding hands, stopping at store windows. He pointed out what he called the doggie bar, a halfmoon-shaped tiled trough with a silver spigot that provided fresh water for the expensive dogs whose owners bought them Chanel collars and Gucci dog beds. He showed me one in a window. It sold for fifteen hundred dollars.

  "Most people don't treat their children as well." I said.

  To these people. the dogs are their children. Don't knock the pet industry. either. It's big

  everywhere. not just here."' Thatcher said. once again offering some defense to what I believed was indefensible.

  Eventually, we stopped at an ice cream parlor on Peruvian Avenue, and no matter what Thatcher had told me. I still thought people looked at us oddly, sitting there and ordering sundaes in our formal evening wear. However, somehow, I enjoyed this far more than I enjoyed or would have enjoyed anything at the yacht party. I told Thatcher so.

  "Maybe you're just anti--rich people," he said.

  "I'm neither poor nor angry at rich people." I told him. "I'm not on any social crusade here."

  "No. I don't imagine you are." he said. He stared at me a moment and then smiled and said. "When are you going to tell me why you are really here. Willow?"

  I nearly choked on my last spoonful. "What do you mean?"

  "I think you know what I mean, but that's all right. Whatever the reason. I'm grateful it brought you here." he said quickly.

  I felt like bursting out with the truth, but the waitress appeared and asked us if we wanted anything else. We said no, and he paid the check.

  Neither of us spoke as we walked back to the car. When he got in, he started to laugh,

  "What?"

  "I can just imagine Bunny if I tell her what we really did tonight and where her pearls were seen." he said.

  I laughed, too. It felt so good.

  Of course, his parents weren't home when we arrived. They had gone to an event of their own.

  "Tired?" he asked.

  "No."

  "You haven't been to my suite of rooms yet, have you?"

  "Inviting me up to see your etchings?"

  "I assure you," he said. "I have no kinetic art waiting. You're the only kinetic art I'm interested in." "Is that so?"

  "Yes," he said. "It's so."

  We ascended the stairs holding hands and went down the corridor to his room, where our lovemaking started slowly, almost indecisively, as if neither he nor I were sure what we wanted. He kissed me on the cheek while I looked at his art and his collection of Bosson heads from England. He caressed my neck, then rested his hands on my shoulders. I pressed my cheek to his right hand and then moved away to gaze at the framed photographs on his desk.

  "Is this Mai Stone?" I asked, lifting a picture of him on a sailboat with a beautiful, tall brunette, both of them in shorts and sailor's caps.

  "Yes," he said. "Early vintage, not long after we met. If I only knew then what I know now," he added, mostly for my benefit. I thought.

  "She's very pretty, beautiful in fact."

  "And no one exemplifies the adage 'Beauty is only skin deep' more than she does."

  He was determined to reduce her as a threat to me.

  "If you have so many unpleasant thoughts about her, why do you still have this picture out on your desk?" I asked.

  He shrugged and smiled. "It's a good picture of me, don't you think?"

  "Right," I said, putting it back.

  He spun me around roughly and held my shoulders firmly as he looked into my face.

  "Look, Willow, I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that you are the first woman I've ever been with or cared for. and I would tend to doubt I was the first man you have ever been intimate with or cared for, but if we hold our pasts over our heads like sins, we'll never see who we are now. The truth is, I was capable of having feeling for someone else, but I have more feeling for vou. Is that so terrible?"

  "No," I said softly.

  He smiled, "Then let's throw the baggage of bad memories overboard and sail on together with lighter hearts." he said, and kissed rue.

  The kiss was long, hard, and almost desperate. I wanted to hold back, to put on some brakes and slow Our momentum toward each other. I was too involved in what I had come to do here now. But Thatcher was a man for whom the word no didn't exist or, if it reared its ugly head, only made him try harder. I was swept under the tide of his passion. I couldn't help but want to ride the waves of his love.

  It carried us both to his bed, where we were soon entwined, naked, holding onto each other as tightly as two people being carried off in a hurricane. Afterward, like two exhausted swimmers who had reached the safety of the shore, we lay quietly beside each other. He fell asleep, and then I rose, got dressed quietly, and returned to my room.

  Suddenly, I felt guilty, and not because I had made love to him again. It was more of a selfchastisement over losing direction. purpose. It was the wrong time to fall in love. I was like a teenage girl passing notes in class to the boy on whom she had developed this great crush when the teacher notices and gets angry that she wasn't paying attention to the lesson... only I was the teacher.

  Nothing could have brought it home to me more than what I saw after I got undressed for bed and went to the balcony door to close the curtain.

  There she was again.

  My mother.

  On the dock, swinging
her lantern in the night.

  Looking for the dream she had been promised.

  14

  Painted into a Corner

  .

  Thatcher left a message for me in the morning

  that he had to go to a negotiation at an office in Jupiter Beach and would call me later in the day. Just like yesterday, after I had breakfast and came downstairs. I found the house empty and quiet. Bunny and Asher had apparently had another one of their late nights. How people could spend so much of their lives going from one party or recreational activity to another without ever doing very much that was substantial was a mystery to me. Weren't they ever tired of seeing the same people, saying the same things, eating the same food? I bet neither Asher nor Bunny had ever gone into the kitchen and made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. With service people everywhere, servants coming out of the woodwork, and business managers handling every single financial concern, what did they do for themselves beside seek ways to be entertained? It was not hard to see why one of the most feared things here was boredom,

  Still. I knew lots of people who would say. "Give me the chance to be frivolous. I'll risk fighting boredom as the biggest challenge of my life any day." Who knows. I wondered, maybe they were right and I was wrong. Maybe the rest of us were like the mythical Sisyphus, pushing boulders up a steep hill only to have them roll back down whenever we got too close to the top. We were cursed with endless ambition. The only ambition Bunny and Asher seemed to have was finding a new caterer for their upcoming weekend extravaganza.

  I was nervous this morning. I hadn't told Thatcher that I had agreed to go sailing with Linden to his private bay. I was sure he would have been upset enough not only to insist I didn't go but to speak to Linden as well, and that would only have made things terrible just when I was succeeding in entering our mother's world. I really had no choice if I wanted to continue to win his trust.

  He hadn't forgotten. He was waiting for me, and not in a pair of old jeans and a well-worn sweatshirt; he was actually wearing what looked like a relatively new sailing outfit, including a cap. I sensed that this wasn't something he did often. His smile of anticipation set off the wind chimes in my head, little alarms of panic.

  "Everything we need is already in the sailboat." he called as I started toward him. "And what a beautiful day. Perfect sailing wind. I brought along lunch. too. I thought you might enjoy doing

  something different," he said, nodding toward the house and adding. "different from that. It's just something simple,: he said when I didn't react. 'Good bread, cheeses, some wine. If you don't want to, it's all right,' he followed, practically leaping on my small hesitation. "I just thought you might like it."

  "No, no, it's fine. Linden. I just didn't want to dominate your day,'"

  "Dominate my day?" He laughed. "I don't think of days anymore, or weeks or months. Time just seems to run together for me. My mother usually has to remind me what day it is, sometimes even what month."

  We stopped on the dock.

  "Well, here she is my yacht." he said. It's nothing at all like the speedboat Thatcher was driving. This is just a twelve-foot, gaff-rigged wooden sailboat. All that's left of the Montgomery navy, I'm afraid."

  It didn't look all that much bigger than a rowboat to me. "Is it safe to go out far with it?" I asked,

  "The Vikings crossed the Atlantic in a boat not much more than twice the size of this. I'm a good sailor,: he added. "Better than Thatcher. I grew up here on this beach, on this ocean, while he was enjoying the high life, but if you don't feel as safe with me as you felt with him, that's fine. Forget it." he said abruptly.

  He was so explosive, like a decanter of nitroglycerin just waiting to be nudged off the table so it could hit the floor and blow up everything around it. One wrong word, one wrong expression, even a sigh in the wrong place, could send him pounding away, his head down, his arms flying up like some hermit charmed out of his cave rushing back to the safety of his silent darkness.

  "No, no," I said quickly. "I have no doubt you're a wonderful sailor. I was just curious. I don't know anything about sailing.'

  "If you don't know anything about sailing, then how do you know I'm wonderful at it?" he asked.

  I shook my head and smiled at him.

  "What?"

  "Let's just say I'm psychic and leave it alone. Linden."

  Even he had to smile at that. "Okay, okay." he said. "Let's go, then."

  I looked at the beach house. "Your mother knows I'm going along with you, doesn't she?"

  He gazed at the house. his eves darkening a bit and his forehead going into thoughtful folds.

  "Yes," he said. "Let's go." he repeated more sharply.

  He stepped into the boat and held his hand out to guide me.

  "You can sit right there," he said. nodding. "This is a simple, one-man operation. You can just enjoy the trip."

  "What did she say?"

  "Who?"

  "Your mother. I suppose you told her everything, then, my posing for the picture as well, right?"

  He was quiet as he untied the boat and then pushed off and hoisted the sail.

  My question hung in the air like a fallen leaf caught in the wind.

  "I didn't tell her about the painting, no." he finally replied. "She really took to you yesterday. I thought."

  "What do you mean, you thought? Did she or didn't she?"

  "I asked her about you right after you had spoken with her."

  "And?"

  "She smiled in a way I haven't seen her smile in a long time and said, 'She's very nice.' She even asked about you."

  "She did? Like what?"

  "How long you were staying with the Eatons. I told her I didn't know for sure. Then..."

  "Then what?"

  He sat at the rudder. "Then I mentioned I was taking you sailing today, and she became upset."

  "Really? Why was she upset?"

  "I don't know. I asked her if there was anything wrong, and she just shook her head and went to her room. She didn't talk about it anymore. so I didn't. I think she's just worried I'll get involved with someone and leave her," he offered. "I wouldn't." he added quickly. "I mean. I'd get involved with someone. but I wouldn't leave her.

  "Here we go." he cried as the wind filled the sail.

  Of course, it wasn't anywhere as fast as it was with Thatcher on the speedboat, but being this close to the water, getting the spray in my face, feeling the wind, and bouncing on the waves, it was just as exciting, if not more so.

  Linden did look at home on the sea. His whole demeanor changed. His face filled with a glow, and his eyes picked up the blue of the water and the sky. He no longer looked as fragile and no longer looked depressed or forlorn. He was energized and alive, and that change had a good effect on me.

  I never realized how beautiful it was to sail, to feel the water beneath us, the wind in my hair, the breeze caressing my face. I couldn't help but squeal with delight when he made a turn so sharply that the boat seemed ready to tip and just hung in the air for a few seconds before righting itself and bouncing on.

  He laughed at my reactions,

  "Give me a sailboat any day," he shouted. over a multimillion-dollar motorized yacht. This way, you're part of the process. You're connected. Understand?"

  "Yes," I said.

  He smiled, "I thought you would. I knew you would."

  He looked so pleased, as much with himself as with me. and I wondered when he had last felt this way. It wasn't a bad thing I was doing, being with him, giving him some companionship, helping him enjoy things he should have no problem enjoying every day, was it? I wasn't wrong. Silence, I told the chimes in my head. Stop the alarms,I'll be fine. We'll be fine. There's nothing wrong with this, no danger.

  I sat back and laughed. "Look," I cried, pointing to a pair of male waterskiers. They waved at us and turned to send the spray in our direction.

  "A couple of showoffs," Linden shouted in their direction, even though there was no way they cou
ld possibly hear him.

  We saw speedboats and dozens of other sailboats. He pointed out a luxury liner.

  "Probably going to the Fort Lauderdale pier," he said, raising his voice again. The wind played havoc with our voices, but settling back, feeling myself being swept along. I didn't want to hear anything but the wind and the boat on the water and the cry of terns. He pointed vigorously at a small inlet as he turned the sailboat in its direction. It was caught between two well-combed beaches but hidden by rocks and the way it was carved deeply out of the shoreline.

  "Linden Beach," he called, and laughed.

  Minutes later, we were at the shore. He hopped out, beached the boat, and reached up to take me at the waist. I had my shoes off and expected to wade in, but he showed remarkable strength in those lean arms and carried me to dry land instead, his lips practically grazing my cheek.

  "Isn't it beautiful here?" "Yes," I said.

  "We'll set up by those rocks there," he indicated, and returned to the boat to get his things.

  "Need any help?"

  "No, I'm fine. Relax. Just enjoy it."

  I liked the feel of the cool water and sand on my feet. Some curious terns swooped down to get a better look at us and then veered away, sounding as if they were laughing. I placed my sandals on the rocks and watched him set up his easel and then go back to the boat for the rest of his things. He handed me the paper bag holding the clothes I had worn for posing the day before.

  We both instantly realized there wasn't any place for me to have privacy, not for some distance.

  "Oh. Well. I'll keep my back to you," he said. As far as those people go," he said, gesturing toward the other boats in the sea. "they're too far away to make head or tail of it. Is that all right?"

  "Yes," I said.

  I unbuttoned my blouse and slipped it off. He knelt and leaned over his paints and brushes while I continued to change into the skirt and peasant blouse.

  "Ready," I said, and he turned, smiled, and explained where he wanted me to sit.

  "How can you paint me in two different places?" I asked.