The Catswold Portal

In the village, they worked in front of the wine shop, the amber and red bottles reflected around her. He caught the quick reflection of a passing woman against her shoulder, and of a boy on a bike. Then in front of the little grocery she was mirrored against the yellows and reds and greens of the produce bins, distorted to jagged abstractions by the glass. He worked intently, feeling Melissa’s response to him in her glances, in her languorous poses. They seemed caught together in a separate place, set apart from the pedestrians and occasional gawkers. Drawing the light along her cheek was like caressing her; drawing the line of her throat made him warm with desire.

As the afternoon dimmed they worked in front of the library, her image captured among reflections of the dark forest. But this sketch disturbed him. She looked, among the heavy shadows, not caught in reflections but caught in an atmosphere that wanted to swallow her, that reached out to make her vanish.

And he wondered suddenly what Alice would think of this girl. Then guilt touched him, and pain came powerfully. He closed the drawing pad and cleaned up his pastels.

As they walked back into the village she made no move to leave him. She didn’t mention where she lived. At the corner by the Greyhound station, he asked her to have dinner with him. She said she would. They had walked for some minutes more beneath the street lights, heading back to the garden, when she asked him how his wife had died.

Chapter 35

The lights of the street lamps looked thin and insubstantial, as if they burned in another dimension. The evening air was chill. He told himself Melissa had asked the question casually, yet she seemed intense. She had turned pale when he had mentioned Alice. He watched her, frowning, not wanting to talk about Alice. He said shortly, “She was killed in a car accident. A truck went over the center line.”

“Where?” she said softly. “Where did it happen?” Her look was naked, hurt, and unguarded. The next instant her eyes were veiled.

“On the approach to Golden Gate Bridge. The truck hit her sideways, her car went over the cliff.” Her question had forced him to live it again: the phone call, then running to his car, barreling down Bayshore, running down the hill to her car, the fire truck hosing down the gas, men pulling at him to keep him from tearing at the rescue team.

He was sweating when they reached the garden. In the studio he left her looking at paintings while he made himself a drink and waited for the water to boil for her tea, stood in the kitchen trying to regain his composure. Why the hell had she asked about Alice? It wasn’t any of her business. He heard her go into the bathroom to wash, going directly there, not searching for it. Well, it was a small house.

When he took the tray in she was curled up on the model’s couch on the vermilion silk, her sandals off, looking comfortable and at home. She blushed under his intent stare, and looked down.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was seeing a painting.”

She looked up again and smiled, her eyes as green as sunlit sea. “Your wife was very young when she died.”

“Twenty-nine.” He fiddled with his drink, shaking the ice. Why did she keep asking? And yet now for some reason he wanted to tell her. “If she’d come home at a different time, hadn’t been in that particular spot when the truck went over, hadn’t stopped to get wine and lobster, hadn’t stopped to take her cat drawings to the museum—a few seconds one way or the other, and the truck wouldn’t have been there. All so useless, so damned useless.” He got up and stood at the window with his back to her. “And so damned pointless to imagine what might have been if she’d just skipped one appointment.”

“What—what were the cat drawings?”

He turned to look at her. “She’d done some drawings of a door with cat faces carved on it. It’s up in the garden.” He gestured toward the terraces. “The door in the side of the hill—the gardener keeps tools there. Alice wanted to see if anyone at the Museum of History might be interested in researching the door. It looks medieval, but of course it’s probably a copy.” He crossed the room abruptly and went to freshen his drink.

She sat looking after him, ashamed that she had upset him. But the pain was hers, too. Her memory of Alice was like pressing at a new, raw wound. Alice’s deceptively delicate face, her cheek always smudged with charcoal, her funny twisted grin. The pain held Melissa in a grip like huge hands crushing out her breath.