Angels All Over Town Read online

  “So, what does that mean? We’re attracted to each other. This is our vacation—we’ll probably never see each other when we get back to New York.”

  I must have been carrying the naive act a bit far, because Matt threw me a fishy look. “Tell me that in a month and I might believe you. I predict big things for you and Mr. Chamberlain.”

  I smiled at him, noticing the way he said “Mister,” as if he were not quite used to having any sort of authority, as if he wanted to ally himself to someone older. “We’ll see,” I said to him, then walked upstairs.

  Sam and Margo stood by the window, where I had left them, training binoculars on something. “Margo thinks she saw a spout,” Sam said.

  “It was rain hitting the water,” I said, staring at Sam’s back. He wore the same rumpled blue shirt he had worn our first night in the turret room.

  “No, it could be a whale,” he said. “It’s possibly a migrating humpback.”

  “Like a robin heading south for the winter,” Margo said.

  “Guess what? I’m going to Europe next week, and I leave for New York tomorrow!”

  Both of them whirled around. Margo let the glasses dangle on a cord around her neck. She looked stricken, but Sam grinned his loose, wide smile and opened his arms. “That’s great! Your public overseas will—” Spotting my expression, he came toward me. We hugged. “What’s wrong?”

  If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you, I thought angrily.

  “You have to leave?” Margo asked.

  “Yeah, but Europe. That’s great,” Sam said.

  “This is really lousy,” Margo said and walked out of the room.

  I pressed my cheek against his chest. I wasn’t crying; I felt more like sleeping. Cradled in his arms, breathing his familiar odor, listening to the rain, I thought I might take a snooze on my feet, right in his arms. But that sleepy feeling dueled with one of being very pissed off. He should not be so happy for me, I thought. This confirms my suspicions—all we’re having is a fling. He straight-armed me away from him. “What gives?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” Sullen. A child. If you knew me at all, you wouldn’t have to ask.

  “Okay, fine. I thought you were excited about going to Europe.” Walking away from me, taking up the binoculars. Scanning the drenched horizon.

  I sat on the unmade bed and looked through yesterday’s New York Times. Matt picked up one for me every day at the store. I turned straight to the arts section. There it was, the big ad for Hester’s Sister…“Starring Susan Russell, Broadway’s newest light. A witchy moonbeam glimmering with light, sensitivity, and truth. Takes her audience straight to the play’s dark heart.” I turned to the classified ads and started looking for a new apartment. I love doing that. All those little ads seemed to promise wonderful new things. Bigger windows, better kitchens, tons more closets, exposed brick walls, huge terraces, working brick fireplaces, more space, more space, more space. Lower maintenance payments. A superintendent on the premises. More tax credits. I threw the paper across the bed and waited for Sam to turn around.

  He took his sweet time. During the time he didn’t turn around I could have read the editorial page. “Well, I didn’t see any whales,” he said. “Margo must have been mistaken. If there’s a whale in the area, you usually see more than one sign.”

  “I’d better pack my stuff,” I said. “I have to leave on a very early train tomorrow.”

  Sam stretched across the bed and kissed me. “Do you think I’m not going to miss you? Is that what’s wrong?”

  “I guess.” It must be, because I’m starting to cry, you goon squad.

  “I thought you could tell how I feel,” he said. “This is different for me. I’m falling in love with you.”

  I racked my mazed brain. Wasn’t it supposed to be better if the man said “I love you” instead of “I’m falling in love with you”? A boy I had gone out with on the Vineyard had closed a letter to me with “I love you,” then edited it to “I love being with you.” Growing up with two sisters meant that our house was always full of Seventeen, Mademoiselle, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and Vogue. How often had we read each other articles on the dynamics of love? On the Best Words to Tell Him What You Mean, How to Read Between the Lines, and What Is He Really Trying to Say? “What are you really trying to say?” I asked Sam.

  “That I will miss you like crazy. That I wish we had more time together, but I’m happy for you. That I love you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because I love you too. And I’ll miss you like crazy. Too.”

  “See, I knew that. It’s pretty obvious.”

  All through my life I’ve been hot to communicate without words. With a look, with a gesture. I could do it with Margo, Lily, and Susan. But how long had I known them? It took time to develop a secret language, one that didn’t need words. I had to learn these things.

  “You’ll go to Europe,” Sam said slowly, “but you’ll be back soon. By then I’ll be in New York, and we’ll see a lot of each other. I’m planning on it. This doesn’t change things—we’ve both known that you’d have to leave for Europe. All this does is move up the clock a little. Right? You’ll go to Europe and you’ll come back. That’s all.”

  “Yes, that makes sense,” I said slowly.

  “You know, I never thought I’d get to thirty without being married,” Sam said, lying on his back and moving me next to him, with one arm around my neck. We stared at the conical ceiling. “I grew up with great parents. We were really happy. They were always going off on research trips, but we had a great life. I thought marriage was really terrific. Really the tops. I figured I’d go to college, meet someone, marry her, and bango.”

  My parents hadn’t had quite so idyllic a love life, but I had had vaguely the same idea. Bango.

  “But then I never met anyone,” Sam continued. “I had a few long relationships, but they weren’t right. Didn’t feel right. And then I went to graduate school and started thinking about spending nine months out of every year on board a research vessel. I stopped thinking about…marriage.”

  He paused before saying “marriage” because he didn’t want to give me the idea that he was proposing. I knew that much. I mean, we were just lying on a bed having a discussion. Telling each other a few intimate facts. It was my turn.

  “Well, I’ve had my share of romances too. But I’ve never been engaged. Acting is very important to me, and it takes up a lot of time. It doesn’t give me much chance to meet anyone. Not that I’ve been wanting to get…married. That’s been far from my mind at all times. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready for that.”

  Sam cocked his head. His eyes looked amused. “What is ‘ready’?”

  I thought about it, feeling embarrassed. Actually, I was just blowing off hot air. I felt so relieved to be having this talk, I wanted it to continue. I thought fast. “Ready for marriage? I guess I mean deeply in love and ready to sacrifice acting. Not all of acting, but some of it.” Then I thought of Susan, blissfully married to Louis. What of acting was she sacrificing? Nothing.

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  “Well…say I fell in love with a man in New York and got a movie part with Emile Balfour. I mean, what if I had to work in France?” Tiptoeing around reality.

  “Well, movies don’t go on forever. You’d come back eventually.”

  “Even if I kept working on Beyond the Bridge. There are mall appearances all over the place and even overseas. I mean, like next week.”

  “For a couple of weeks. Not forever.”

  “This is true.” Outside the turret the storm was really heating up. Sheets of rain smashed against our windows. A lightning bolt zigzagged to earth mere yards away. It scared me into a clutching hold on Sam. He wrapped his arms around me and held me tight. We kissed; it felt like hot rain drenching both of us. Another lightning bolt flashed by, the kind Zeus would hurl from Olympus, the kind artists draw in comic strips.

  Sam stopped kissing me
and we watched the storm. Thunder cracked all around us. “That last lightning was a close call,” I said.

  “This place is grounded,” Sam said with confidence. “Didn’t you notice the lightning rods?”

  “No, but if you say so…” My eyes blinked with every flash. My breath came from the back of my throat.

  “Haven’t you always wanted to make love in the middle of a thunderstorm?” Sam asked, beginning to fiddle with my pants zipper. “Here we are in the turret, with a tempest raging outside.”

  “Raging,” I said, my eyes full of the latest flash. We could be killed, I thought. Sizzled in our very bed for merely thinking about sex. I had a friend who was asleep beside her boyfriend in a house on the Vineyard and was thrown from her bed, clear across the room, when lightning struck. Of course, the bed was metal. My hand reached back, behind my head, to check. It gripped a wooden post. But what about the box spring? Those metal coils. “Listen,” I said, hiking up on my elbows. “I don’t feel too safe here. I think we’d better go downstairs.”

  “We’re okay, I promise,” Sam said. He had unzipped my pants now and was pulling down my underpants at the same time. “I’m a scientist. I know about these things. Aren’t you going to trust me?”

  “Yes,” I said after a minute, and kissed him. I touched his zipper and started pulling it down. It’s metal, I thought, grasping the brass pull, but that thought slid from my mind. The thunder outside was growing distant, the storm was passing. A new storm was gathering.

  That night Margo and Matt threw me an early birthday dinner. Sitting on the front porch, we started with champagne and oysters (Margo and I said, “Dear little oyster from the bottom of the sea” in tribute to Lily, distant Lily). The rain had stopped, but the air was chilly and damp. We wore sweaters and wool jackets; the wind blew our candles’ flames, making thick waxy drizzles on the tabletop. I sat huddled against Sam’s warm chest on the metal glider, watching Margo get more and more excited as the time for me to open presents approached. I watched her fondly; she had always loved presents. Her own or anyone else’s. At birthday parties she always maneuvered to get right next to the birthday girl. She loved the sound of the paper tearing, the recipient’s shortness of breath, the squeals of delight. Watching her on the porch of the Ninigret Inn that night, I reminded myself to try to squeal with delight.

  “And now for the main course,” Matt said, raising one eyebrow at me. His expression was apologetic. Couldn’t they get fresh sole? I wondered, and then the waiter wheeled out a cart with four prime rib dinners.

  “Oh. Prime rib—great,” I said, staring at my center cut. I do enjoy a slab of beef now and then, but it was a far cry from filet of sole. Matt avoided my eyes as he dished out the crisp green beans.

  “What a meal,” Sam said. He held his knife in one hand, ready to get started as soon as politely possible. “In graduate school I spent a year aboard the Knorr in the Indian Ocean, and I didn’t taste beef that whole time.”

  “Beef is sacred over there,” Margo said, passing clean goblets around the table and filling them with red wine from a bottle whose label she ostentatiously allowed us to see: Chateau Margaux, premier cru, 1964.

  Sam laughed loudly and brushed his dark hair back. “You don’t say beef is sacred. You say cow.”

  Margo waved her hand and gave me a significant look. “They’re both bovine,” she said.

  “Great prime rib,” Sam said, chewing heartily. I sipped my Bordeaux and smiled at him. Between bites, when he put down his steak knife, he would rest his hand on my knee. I covered it with my own. For Matt and Margo’s sake, I made a mighty effort that night.

  Finally it was time for the presents. A waiter cleared the table and another waiter, surrounded by the inn’s entire staff, came out with my birthday cake. It blazed with thirty candles. Its white icing was decorated with gaudy pink and blue roses: my favorite kind of birthday cake. Everyone sang “Happy Birthday,” and I smiled modestly at my hands on the table, adoring the hoopla. No one enjoys their thirtieth birthday, but I did. Everyone was very concerned about my feeling sad, and I was the absolute center of attention. Sam kissed me before I had a chance to blow out my candles. Margo piled three bright packages on my lap. I blew hard, extinguishing every candle, and my entourage cheered.

  “Happy, happy birthday, baby,” Margo said, grabbing one package off the pile. “You have to open this one last.”

  “Okay, open mine first,” Sam said. In four seconds flat I had torn off the wrapping: three paperbacks by Rachel Carson. The Edge of the Sea, Silent Spring, and The Sea Around Us.

  “Oh, thank you. I love them,” I said. I did love them, but it has to be admitted, I had hoped for more. Holding the perfect little package, I had hoped it would contain something fabulous. A tiara? A diamond necklace? I never wear jewelry, but I had secretly hoped for Sam to give me some. Something that would sparkle and tell me secrets.

  “Next package,” Matt said, tapping a long thin one with his index finger. I opened it, more slowly than I had Sam’s. It contained a silk scarf: exactly the shade of the fish in my dream.

  “It’s exquisite,” I said, allowing Sam to drape it around my neck. “Did you pick it out, Matt?”

  “I cannot tell a lie,” he said, smiling at Margo.

  “Well, thank you. Both of you.”

  “Now, this one’s from Lily,” Margo said, handing me the small package. “She and Henk sent it, and she made me promise you’d open it last.” She placed it on the table, and all of us leaned over it, admiring the shiny silver paper and blue bow.

  “Looks expensive,” Sam said.

  “Here goes,” I said, placidly tugging on the ribbon. It came off easily. Then I undid each piece of tape, trying not to tear the paper. I finally gave up and ripped out a navy blue leather box stamped “Tiffany” in gold.

  “Holy crow,” Margo said.

  Lying on the puffy satin was a pair of dangling diamond earrings. They positively dripped with stones. Platinum settings glinted in the candlelight. I lifted them, allowing them to drape over my finger. They weighed heavily on my hand.

  “Put them on,” Sam said.

  I stared at them. Nothing about what I felt made sense. Two minutes ago I had been disappointed to get books instead of jewels from Sam, and now I felt like screaming at the sight of diamonds from my sister. Oh, contrary one! Thirty years old, and no accrued wisdom.

  “I can’t,” I said. “These are for pierced ears.” I did not have pierced ears. I had never had pierced ears. During our school-days, when all our friends were going crazy buying “fun studs” at the malls, I had proclaimed the practice of ear-piercing barbaric. Had Lily thought my lobes would spontaneously puncture?

  “This is glamorous stuff,” Sam said. “Just right for a movie star.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Margo kept saying. “I cannot believe that Lily bought you diamonds.” She pronounced it dye-ah-monds.

  I closed the box on them. “They’re really something.”

  For the first time all day the gravity of turning thirty struck me. What had I managed to accomplish in thirty years anyway? All that came to mind was the fact that I had once hitchhiked from Old Saybrook, Connecticut, to Princeton, New Jersey, and that I was a pretty good swimmer. Who cared about acting on a soap opera? Who cared that my mentor had bamboozled me into a movie audition? Balfour probably owed Chance money or something. At that instant I felt desolate, and tears filled my eyes.

  Sam did not notice, even though I kept my profile canted in his direction. “Come on, Matt,” he said. “We’ll clear the table and give the birthday girl a chance to enjoy her largesse.”

  “That’s why we have waiters,” Matt began, but he must have gotten a signal from Margo because he was soon following Sam into the kitchen with an armload of bloody plates.

  Margo stared at me. She was slouched in her chair, playing with a wax drip on one candle. I could feel her gaze, even though I was watching the wax.

  “What’s the mat
ter? Huh, Una?” she asked.

  “Nothing. It was a great party.” Then, more convincingly: “I’m thinking about my trip to Europe.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m not sure I’m ready for it.”

  “Huh. Did you like your presents?”

  (Laughing, wry shaking of the head.) “Of course. Can you believe diamonds from Lily?”

  “I think she’s showing off. How rich Henk is.” (Watching my reaction very carefully, trying to determine the source of my misery.)

  “It was very generous.”

  “And what about Sam’s books? Aren’t they nice? I mean, paperbacks, but still…I think they’re meant to remind you of the times you spent at that tidal pool. I wonder if they’re inscribed.” She began flipping open the covers. “Oh, this one is.” She passed The Sea Around Us across the table to me. I read “To Una, Watch Hill belongs to us. Love, Sam.” I felt terrible, even worse than I had opening the presents, at that moment. Sam had written a lovely inscription, and I hadn’t even bothered to look for it. How disappointed he must have felt, sitting at the table and waiting for me to read his words!

  “That’s so wonderful,” Margo said, reading his inscription.

  “It is.”

  “Hey, did you like dinner?”

  “Yes,” I said, finally meeting her eyes. “But why did you serve beef? I did love it, but I thought Matt said something about fish.”

  She leaned closer to the candle. Conspiratorial. Her eyes sparkled. “I was thinking about Sam, actually. I know you’re leaving tomorrow, and I wanted to help things along. A little snare—men love rare roast beef.”

  I grinned. Good old Margo. I kissed her and went to find Sam.

  Our last night together before I left. Sam and I lay on the bed in the turret room and touched each other naked. The sky had begun to clear; autumn constellations blazed in the night. I nuzzled his hairy chest. “That was a dear thing you wrote in my book,” I said, my voice muffled.

  “Yeah?”

  “I know I didn’t look for it right away…”