An Emergence of Green (2 page)

The swimming stroke Val Hunter performed was misnamed, Carolyn thought—totally unlike a butterfly, a delicate, fluttering creature…At the end of the pool, with a sudden compacting of her body, Val Hunter performed a flip-turn, glided, then resumed her dramatic stroke. Impressed, entertained, Carolyn watched for some time before she dropped the drape back into place.

She switched on the stereo radio and as Irene Cara began “What a Feeling,” she turned the volume control up to seven. The music pulsed into the room, filling it to the corners. She felt charged by the music’s energy, the heavy beat bouncing off the walls. Fishing a paperback historical romance from under the cushions, she curled up in her favorite corner and in a blissful cocoon of velvet sofa and vibrant music and cold tangy drink, skim-read her novel, lingering only over the love scenes.

At five o’clock the phone rang. She turned down the music, knowing the caller would be Paul. Even before her hours changed he always called at this time to explain why he would be late, refusing to concede after almost a year that eighty-thirty to six o’clock was now his normal working day. She murmured sympathetically, as she always did. At six o’clock she went out to the backyard and dropped her novel into a trashcan, pausing to breathe the coolness beginning to invade the Valley heat. The pool was aquamarine stillness, its surface slightly riffled. The deck was dry, pristine. She made a salad and prepared the steaks for the barbecue, the task performed with leisurely and profound enjoyment; usually weekday dinner was a flurry of frenetic activity. At six-thirty-five she poured enough chilled vodka for three martinis, one for her and two for him, and made a bucket of crushed ice. She carried all this into the living room to the bar, switched off the stereo and turned on the channel seven news.
Maybe when he sees how everything’s ready now before he gets home, he’ll stop being so angry about my new hours.

Val Hunter showered, and briefly toweled and brushed the short dark hair which would be dry in less than ten minutes in the heat of her house. Still nude, she tossed her wet shorts and T-shirt over the line behind the house, and came back into the cluttered living room thinking without enthusiasm that she should tidy.

She donned fresh clothing, another pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and tended to her paintbrushes. With her usual patience she rinsed each brush in mineral spirits, soaking them all in warm water, then rubbing the bristles of each on an Ivory soap bar, using her palm to lather, the soap turning into the bright hues of the paint. After rinsing the brushes in warm water she repeated the operation until the lather was color free. Delicately, lightly, she squeezed the damp, clean brushes to reshape the bristles, and laid them out to dry.

With dissatisfaction she contemplated the painting propped against the box on her worktable; there was nothing more she could do for several days until the paint dried. She studied the gray mists of the composition from different angles, bothered by the false light of the late afternoon falling on the paint—wan and pale citron compared to pure strong morning light.

When she next glanced at the clock she was shocked by the time. Neal was due home. She propped the painting against a wall where it would receive light but be out of her line of sight, and dispiritedly visualized the contents of her refrigerator. Frozen enchiladas would be fast but unappetizing in this heat…Maybe hamburgers. Neal could help decide.

“Guess who’s the next Pete Rose,” her son said from the doorway. “I got three hits today.”

In two strides she was to him, roughly gripping him. His body, small for his ten years, was sturdy and tanned to dark mahogany. She pressed her lips to brown hair streaked copper and blond from the sun, and inhaled his earthy smell. She knew not to comment; he never needed to be told he should shower. “You’re beautiful,” she said. “That’s just great.”

“Nah.” Neal extricated himself and straightened his shirt and running shorts. “My average’s up to only two-seventy-six.”

She nodded without comprehension. “I’m proud of you.”

He waved a self-deprecating hand. “What’s for dinner, oh great and powerful Oz?”

Ignoring his habitual reference to his favorite movie, she answered, “Crab legs mornay.”

His sneakers squeaked on the cracked tile of the kitchen floor. “Hey, we got lettuce,” he called, his head in the refrigerator. “How about a salad? And cheese and salami and crackers? That’s a good balanced meal.”

“Fine with me.”

“I’ll shower off and cut up the other stuff if you make the salad. Hey, Ma?” His voice was pleading. “If I clean up the living room could I maybe watch the ball game? The Dodgers are on the road, Fernando’s pitching.”

She said grudgingly: “It won’t kill me not seeing the news for once.”

Neal’s glance traveled the room. His tone was aggravated: “How do you get this place so messed up in just one day?” She grinned at the retreating back of her son as he went to shower. She dropped more ice cubes into her glass of water and settled herself on the sofa, unfolding the morning
Times
that Jerry Robinson as usual had left at her door after he was finished with it.

Much later that evening she thought of Carolyn Blake. She flipped open a sketch pad. Her drawing was incomplete—a rough pencil out-line of details impressed in her memory: a mantle of smooth polished hair—sand-colored, she remembered—reaching not quite to the shoulder, a few strands stirred by the hot dry breeze, and the almond shape of eyes she remembered as green coming out of gray.

Shortly after six-thirty, Paul Blake drove down Heather Avenue looking at his house from the moment he turned the corner. As always, in his mind was a corresponding image of another house: frame like this one, but with dirty white paint peeling from its sagging gray timbers, and a yard sparse from neglect and sere from merciless Chicago winters. This house, his own house, was an immaculate beige frame trimmed in dark brown, landscaped with perfect grass and luxuriant green foliage, used brick generously enhancing the foundation and enclosing a tiny circular garden on the front lawn. He loved the used brick; its richness distinguished his house from all others on the block and more than compensated for the minute front lawn. And that other house, the house of his boyhood, had never had a single proud feature, much less the largest swimming pool in the neighborhood. He pulled into his driveway.

Moments later he was further gratified by the soothing colors of his living room, virginal white sofa and armchair, thick blue-gray carpeting, cool accents of dark blue and emerald combining in carefully placed pillows, vases, paintings. The heavy white drapes covering the glass door to the backyard were closed—odd that Carolyn had not opened them as she usually did. He welcomed the sight of a martini shaker on the bar only in the instant before he remembered why it was there.

Carolyn came out to him from the kitchen, into his embrace. Her perfume was at its most tantalizing—almost worn off over the day and mingling with the personal odor of her skin that he knew intimately. He was pleased by the dress she wore, and pierced by his love for her.

“Princess, you look gorgeous.” He always remembered to express his pleasure when she wore dresses, in the continuing hope of permanently discouraging her from her usual pants or shorts. Tonight, he realized bitterly, she wore the Chinese print not to please but to mollify. Her arms tightened around his shoulders and she raised her face. He kissed her lightly; he would not allow himself to be mollified, even slightly.

“How was your day, honey?” she asked.

“Fine. Routine. And yours?”

“It was okay. For the first day.”

Annoyed by the caution in her voice, he released her and moved to make drinks, his attention diverted to the television and a discussion of rising interest rates. He had to think for a moment when she asked about the woman next door. “You mean the artist?”

“Artist? Artist? Why didn’t you tell me she’s an artist?”

He frowned at her tone. “Oh hell, big deal. What do we know about art? Everybody paints. Or writes, or sculpts. What do you care about her?”

“I…curiosity, that’s all. I…saw her today.”

He shrugged disinterest. “I’ve never laid eyes on her. From what Jerry says she’s humongous. An Amazon.”

“She is tall,” she said mildly, taking the drink he offered her. “Taller than you.”

He did not respond. He had never admitted to anyone that his five foot-ten-and-a-quarter height—which he called five eleven if it had to be mentioned at all—bothered him. He watched her walk to the kitchen wishing again that she were just an inch or two shorter, no more than five five, the same as his first wife. Whatever her faults, Rita had looked good with him. Picking up his drink, he went into the bedroom to change clothes.

They went outside into a balmy evening. He ran the skimmer over the pool, grumbling about the rising Valley wind. Each day of this June week had been hotter, the evenings cooling only gradually in the unusual humidity.

Gauging the steaks on the fire, he said, “Ten minutes at least. Think I’ll take a swim.”

She watched her husband pull off his polo shirt and cotton pants, his shorts. With only sporadic exercise—a little tennis, golf two or three times a month with a customer, an occasional swim—his body was well proportioned and trim, only a suggestion of softness in the belly. His one physical problem, a nonthreatening congenital heart murmur, had been sufficient to keep him out of Vietnam. In the natural light of evening his pubic hair was much darker than the hair on his head, which was full and thick but salted with gray, lighter gray at the temples. “A young Cary Grant,” one of the wives had sighed to her at a company picnic. She was proud of his looks.

“Like what you see?” He leered at her playfully. “Woman, take the steaks off the fire for a while.”

With an involuntary glance at the fence she laughed and waved at him. “Oh, go swim.” As she adjusted the steaks over the charcoal she watched him, his aggressive path through the water, his choppy strokes less efficient than the smooth power of Val Hunter.

His nakedness brought memories of buying the house and her enchantment with the privacy of this fenced-in, shrubbery-enshrouded yard. The first evening in the house Paul had coaxed her into the pool and untied her bikini. The warm water against her nakedness had filled her with unbearable sensuality—a sensuality almost spiritual. In a corner of the pool he had lifted her willing legs around him. But as her hips beat against the cool hard tiles, the water churning in turbulent eddies around her, water had been pumped painfully into her, the pressure on her tissues agonizing. She gasped for him to stop, but he would not or could not. Smothering screams—how could she scream out here for everyone to hear?—she pounded on his chest and shoulders, and when he did stop she wrenched herself from him and stumbled into the house, crying, and again pounded on his chest when he followed. “Why didn’t you stop! Why didn’t you!”

He caught her wrists, held them away from him, his eyes brimming with tears, his face distorted into gray agony. “I thought…you liked it at first, then I thought…you’d start to like it…”He broke away and left the house, returning after several hours incoherently drunk. That week flowers were delivered every day to her office, and a pearl necklace had appeared among her jewelry on their dresser. The steaks were almost done. “Paul!” she called.

With an odd feeling of detachment she watched him again as he sawed the towel roughly back and forth over his back, muscles working in the lightly tanned arms. As he turned away to towel his hair she studied the flat curve of his spine, the molded buttocks symbolic to her of the simple efficient beauty of the male body. He pulled on a short terry cloth robe, tying the belt into a neat square knot as he came over to her, smiling, his pale blue eyes calm even after the vigor of his swim.

He kissed her forehead. “The steaks look perfect, Princess.”

Again she looked at him as she took the steaks off the fire. After eight years, she concluded dismally, the difference in their ages was more, not less, apparent. She had not grown as he had—this confident, handsomely graying man who seemed more attractive now than ever. At twenty-six she was by comparison still a child.

***

Freshly showered and shaved, he lay propped on pillows. Carolyn sat at the mirrored table in the dressing area brushing her hair, wearing the peach gown he loved, her body backlighted, the slight swell of her breasts accentuated by the silken cling of the gown. If only her breasts were larger—like Rita’s. Rita’s had been lovely to pillow his head on, especially after lovemaking. But in all honesty they had been otherwise too pendulous. And Carolyn’s legs were lovely—not the long slim fashion model legs, but far superior to Rita’s short plump ones.

His gaze strayed over the rich colors of the bedroom; expensive cherry woods and plush gold carpet, bright clown prints on either side of heavy gold drapes. He was pleased.

Who could ask for more, he thought a few minutes later as he stroked her, his hands light on her throat and shoulders. Her mouth was tender, responsive, and tasted of mint toothpaste. He held her on him to run his hands down her back. Her hair, heavy textured silk, lay over his neck and shoulders. He turned her.

Afterward he lay with his face buried in her hair, breathing the sensual fragrance. Her breathing was shallow, rapid; she was stroking his hair, kissing his face, murmuring indecipherably. He raised his head and looked at her. As always after this ultimate intimacy she gazed back out of veiled, impenetrable eyes, maddening in their privacy.