Eight

JUNE 21, SUMMER SOLSTICE

Dear Diary,

All right, okay—I called Newman Zender. And what did he say? “Lindsey, you’re feeling better now?” Like we’d just talked the day before, and he was expecting me. (Megan swears she didn’t make the threatened call to him.)

He chuckled when I told him I didn’t recognize him in the hospital basement, thought at first he might have been an escapee from the Psych Ward. (Did I really tell him that?? He seemed to get a kick out of it.)

Then he asked if I wanted to come over to his place on the lake today. “Don’t we have an unfinished conversation to… not finish?” (Did he mean from this winter, or from almost three decades ago? Egads.)

So what popped out of my mouth? “Is that a Zen question?”

He laughed again. “No, Zender. A Zender question.”

Lindsey’s heart is beating fast on the drive over to Emerald Lake (which used to be Toad Lake back in her high school skinny-dipping days, but a few years ago the trendy developers decided the old name wasn’t dignified). She wipes her damp palms down the thighs of her jeans, tells herself she’s acting like a ridiculous teenager. Then, just to remind her how really ridiculous that is, a massive hot flash roars through her, and she has to pull over to the side of the road, yank off her fleece zip and fan herself with it.

It’s another typical June day in the Northwest—anywhere else the height of summer, the longest day of the year, and here it’s cloudy and sixty-five degrees. At least the cool air calms her prickly heat. She tilts the rear-view mirror and blots her damp face, starts to twist the mirror back into position, then halts.

She’s startled by the face looking back at her: green eyes wide, their color amped by the flush in her cheeks; long hair fluffed with its natural waves coming out in the dampness. It could almost be her twenty-three-year-old face looking out of a shadowy time-tunnel.

“Right. Just means I’m ready for bifocals.” She snorts as she briskly puts the mirror straight. Maybe Newman will be seeing her in soft focus, too.

Her heart is fluttering too fast, feeling like it’s up in her throat as she pulls off the gravel lake road into a grassy drive. It leads past a wooden dock and a shed surrounded by willows leaning over the banked shore, toward an old farmhouse set among lichened fruit trees. She parks, gets out, and listens to the silence for a moment. Not seeing anyone in the yard, she opens the back door of the Subaru and bends over to retrieve the pickle jar with a rhododendron bouquet from her garden.

“Ah!” She startles as she straightens and turns.

Newman’s standing there, holding pruning loppers, a wide white smile on his tanned face.

Lindsey blinks, tilting off balance and caught in one more disorienting trip back through that time-tunnel.

“Sorry.” He drops the loppers and reaches out a big hand to take her arm and steady her. “Guess I better stop spooking you.”

She shakes her head, thrusts the flowers toward him. “From my garden.”

“Thanks.” He glances down at them, then back at her face, and that glimmer of humor is still in his eyes. “Good to see you again, Lindsey. Again,” he says.

Lindsey can feel the heat rising in her face, imagining the picture her snug jeans must have presented as she leaned over into the backseat. Oh well, at least according to Nick, that portion of her anatomy offers viewing pleasure. So, “Likewise, Newman. Again.”

When he laughs she can tell he’s doing it with enjoyment, and she takes the moment to enjoy her own view. He’s aging well, Newman, wavy hair gone gray but still plenty of it, square-jawed face and blunt nose like a lion, thick eyebrows lowering over clear blue eyes. It isn’t fair that men get to look stronger, more defined, with the age lines setting in, while every media message hammers home to women that they’re turning into dried-up rejects. But to hell with that, she’s not going there today. Looking up at Newman, she lets herself appreciate his height and solid masculine presence. He’s gotten thicker with the years, but not paunchy like so many men their age. He looks way too good, in fact, barefoot in cutoff jeans, a worn flannel shirt hanging open over a faded blue tee.

Then he sobers, and their glances catch. A palpable jolt of recognition crackles through Lindsey. Raw attraction, and they both clearly feel it. She hastily looks down, her face flushing again.

“Let me show you the garden. I finally got my beehives moved over here from the old house.” He seems unruffled, ushering her toward a path around the side of the house. He sets the bouquet on the porch and leads the way to the back, where raised vegetable beds are sprouting lush greens. Beneath more arthritic fruit trees, bees dart and buzz around the white boxes of stacked hives. A steep hill backs the property, dense with fir, alder, and cedars climbing toward the ridge.

“This is a beautiful spot.” Lindsey turns to take in the gnarled clematis vine engulfing a tilting trellis on the back porch of the house. “I can’t believe the developers haven’t hacked away at the ridge yet.”

“They’d like to.” He moves over to the raised beds and picks some strawberries, hands her a few, and pops one into his mouth. “It’s a standoff right now. Some environmental groups have managed to get a moratorium on more building until they study impacts on the lake. That one outfit—Green Life—they do a good job.”

“They do,” Lindsey admits, then has to add, “Nick, my ex, he’s a wildlife biologist with them.” She looks toward the lake, again appreciating the quiet Sunday morning. “Thank goodness they never allowed motorboats here, it’s so small. How on earth did you luck onto a place like this? Was it in your family?” She pops a strawberry into her mouth, savoring the sweetness.

“I’m just renting from a friend. Since the divorce. My daughter Melani loves it here, too, I’m hoping I can talk Ron into selling. We’re working on a deal.” He leads the way back around the house, through the overgrown grass and past a stand of big purple poppies busy with bees. “I’ve got business contacts in China, and Ron wants to get an import trade going, something like my own handicrafts wholesale line. So maybe we can work something out.”

“I hope you can.” Lindsey finishes the last strawberry. “Is your daughter here?”

“It’s her weekend with her mother. Then I get her back for a couple days this week, before I fly off to Bali.”

“Bali? On vacation?”

“I wish.” He leans over to pick up the jar with the rhodie blossoms, ushers her ahead up the wooden porch steps. “Though I might get to do some snorkeling while I’m there.” He opens the screen door and stands back to let her through. “There’s a group I consult with there, helping them set up community cottage industries.”

“Oh, that’s right, Megan told me that’s what you were doing now. I guess you get to travel a lot?”

“More than I want to right now.” He puts the flowers on a scuffed, round oak table with a pedestal base, set on a faded rag rug over the hardwood floor. “Maybe Kimberly was right, might have been one reason for the divorce.” He shrugs. “I’m trying to shift things around so I can spend more time with Melani. Before I know it, she’ll be graduating.” He turns to look at Lindsey. “You never had kids?”

She shakes her head. “Never seemed like the right time. I was traveling a lot, too, when I was younger. Did a Peace Corps stint in Honduras, then I was working as a river-rafting guide. Then, when Nick and I got married, it wasn’t—” She raises her palms, lowers them. “Long story.”

He nods. “Well. Why don’t you sit a minute?” He tilts his head toward a couch with an afghan. “I’ll make us some herbal tea. You have to taste my honey.” He heads through a doorway into the kitchen, runs some water.

Lindsey wanders across the pleasantly shabby Craftsman-style front room, admiring the thick wood trim and tiled fireplace with its flanking built-in bookshelves. She wishes her own little bungalow had one just like it. Browsing the shelves, she sees several titles about India, some paperback novels, a pile of maps, foreign-language dictionaries, and a shelf of poetry. She pulls out Rumi: Poems of Spiritual Love, and takes it over to the couch.

The book falls open to a marked page:

Birds write freedom in the air.

Who teaches them?

They fall, and falling,

they grow wings.

Lindsey’s sitting transfixed, staring at the words, when Newman comes back with two mugs. He sits and leans over to see what she’s reading. “My favorite poet.”

Lindsey takes a breath. “This is beautiful.” She amends, “More than beautiful.”

“You’ve never read Rumi?”

She shakes her head, touches the verses. “I’ll have to get a copy of this.”

“Borrow mine for now.” He hands her a steaming mug, clicks his against it in a toast. “To summer solstice.” He takes a sip, then chuckles. “I guess hot tea is better than a cold beer today.”

“Thank you.” Lindsey sets the book aside and sips. The gingery tea is thick with sweet honey, perfect for the cool day.

“You want to sit on the porch where we can look out at the lake?” Newman rises, and over by the bookshelves a musical cell phone starts chiming.

“Shoot, I forgot Melani was going to call. Do you mind? It’ll be quick, then I’ll turn the damned thing off.”

“No problem.”

Lindsey heads out to the front porch, can hear him answer, “Hi, sweetheart, how’s that math homework going?” Then he’s gone into a back room. She settles onto a padded bench swing on the front porch with its overhanging roof and square columns, enjoying the tea and the wispy mists rising from the lake. It’s another of the county’s overgrown ponds, nestled among steep encircling trees and ringed by aging summer cottages and docks. A couple of kayaks pass beyond the willows, stirring a brief commotion among the ducks browsing the shore grasses.

“Okay.” Newman comes out and sits beside her on the swing.

“Everything all right?”

“Fine. She just got a little behind. We’re all still feeling the divorce fallout. And then her knee surgery this spring, all the physical therapy and missing her riding competitions. Sometimes she needs a pep talk from Dad to stick with the program and the makeup assignments.”

They sit quietly sipping the tea for a few moments. Lindsey is surprisingly relaxed, gazing out over the lake as Newman tucks one knee under him and pushes with the other foot to rock them gently. She looks over to see him watching her.

He smiles. “This is peaceful. I don’t get to slow down much these days.”

“Don’t you meditate?”

He leans back, looking up. “Not as much as I’d like to. Somehow I’ve turned into one of those multi-taskers. Like juggling a dozen raw eggs, waiting for one big splatter.”

Lindsey blinks. “I was just thinking that exact thing myself, dealing with my parents on top of everything else. It doesn’t seem like life used to be so hectic for everybody.”

“Guess I didn’t realize how lucky I was to have those years in the ashram. Simplicity. Devotion to one path.” A little shrug. “I tell myself now the challenge is to hold onto that peace. Practice detachment when things get intense….” He sips his tea. “And of course when you need to meditate the most, that’s when you tend to be ‘too busy.’ Let it slip.”

“But you seem so calm. That’s what I remembered most about you, what I….” Lindsey gives her own shrug. “I guess I envied that, even way back when.”

“Well, it is a practice. You can learn it. I’ll teach you a mantra, if you like.”

“I’d like that. I tried a meditation class, but they kicked me out because my energy was too distracting. Too much whirling brain, I guess.”

“Whoa, that teacher needs a talking to. But I get what you’re saying—the monkey-mind syndrome.”

“You?” She glances over at him. “I guess this is silly, but I figured you were somehow past that. I mean, when Megan said you were a Buddhist monk, I thought….” She’s flustered now. “Well, you know, that day we went for the bike ride to the pond all those years ago, and we were lying there in the mud, and I was trying to meditate. I didn’t know what….” She’s digging herself deeper, floundering. “Well, maybe you don’t remember.” She waves a hand. “I figured it was all about transcending base desires or something.” She’s staring down into her mug.

He chuckles.

She looks up quickly, embarrassed. Why did she burst out with all that nonsense? He probably doesn’t even remember that day.

“I remember well enough.” He touches her hand briefly. “Especially the part about not transcending desire.”

She can’t help laughing at his wry expression. “Oh.”

“And another thing Megan got totally wrong—I was never a Buddhist. I was studying with a Hindu spiritual teacher in the ashram. I did take a vow of celibacy for a few years….”

“Really?” Lindsey turns toward him again. “How did you do it? I mean, isn’t it sort of like starving yourself? It’s been two and a half years since I split up with Nick, and sometimes it seems like forever since—” She snaps her mouth shut, biting her lip.

But he’s just nodding, considering. “It wasn’t easy, especially when I was in my twenties. But it was about spiritual discipline, the path I was on at the time. I guess all that practice ended up helping, with my marriage. It wasn’t….” He looks down at his hands cupping the mug. He starts to take another sip, sees it’s empty, and sets it on the porch boards. “I didn’t want to be a monk in my marriage, but it sort of ended up that way with Kimberly and me.”

“Oh.”

He turns to look at her. “Sounds like we’re both still healing from some pretty deep heart wounds, Lindsey. What happened in your marriage?”

Lindsey hesitates, starts to give him the politely edited version, then finds herself confiding the nightmare and the slow waking back to life. And how hard it still is to let herself feel sometimes. Be in the moment. Newman listens quietly, gazing out at the lake, nodding as he rocks them on the swing.

“I got so tied up in knots, I started wondering if I was going crazy when Nick would tell me he never did those violent things. That I was making them up. I mean, if Nick was mentally ill, I wanted to be a loyal wife and help him. But then it got so bad, I was putting myself in danger by staying.” She takes a deep breath. “Living in fear, till it soaked into my whole life. And then I started to hate him. That was the worst part. I’d never felt that way before.” Lindsey shudders, thinking she is crazy to dump all this on him. But he has this aura of taking things in and not judging.

She shrugs then, tries to laugh it off. “So. Here I am, another statistic, right down to the two cats. Every cliché I never figured I’d be.”

He straightens abruptly to face her. “Don’t say that! Don’t put yourself in that kind of box.” His voice is emphatic, gaze snapping onto hers, and again Lindsey feels a jolt. This time it’s a bit daunting, a glimpse of some powerful energy held beneath the calm surface.

He blows out a breath and leans back into the swing, gaze returning to the lake. “It’s a trap, Lindsey. Those definitions and expectations we get drilled with from when we’re kids. I should have known better, but I let it happen in my marriage, too. Trying to fit what you’re ‘supposed’ to be. What other people define you as. Then we become our own worst enemies because we’re starving our souls. Living on illusions.”

Silence hangs over them as Lindsey thinks about it. “You’re right. Of course,” she says slowly. “But that’s all kind of… abstract, isn’t it? I always considered myself a pretty free spirit, but where I get stuck is in the practical details.” She blows out a breath. “I mean, things just roll along, and where do you say, ‘I’m getting off’?”

He glances sideways at her. “I guess we both did that in a big way. But I don’t want to let things go that far off center again. I won’t.” For a second he looks surprisingly grim, then he shakes his head. “Hey, let’s lighten up.” He rocks quickly forward and stands. “What do you say we take a sauna? I built one into the old boathouse, put a little wood stove in there. It’s great for opening the pores, purifying, then I take a dive into the lake. You up for it?”

She blinks at the sudden shift, but responds with her old reactions to a chilly gray day. “Sounds perfect.” Right, her menopausal self inserts, the perfect way to trigger a world-record hot flash. Then she realizes that even in her fleece jacket she’s felt blessedly calm and cool since she arrived at the lake.

“All right. Sit tight, and I’ll go fire up the stove. It heats up quick.” He strides off across the grass toward the dock.

Then Lindsey remembers she didn’t bring her swimsuit.

Her heart is beating fast again as she follows Newman over the damp grass toward the boathouse. She feels lightheaded, not quite sure where her feet are landing as she walks.

He’s got a couple of towels over his arm, and that somehow comforts her. She’ll just leave her underwear on. Her sports bra is close enough to a swimsuit top.

“Ron was letting things kind of fall down around the previous renters, so I’m chipping away at repairs when I have time.” Newman stops to lift a hanging blackberry vine aside so Lindsey can duck past the corner of the plank boathouse. “I boarded off half of the boathouse and lined it with cedar, put in a little stove. When I can, I get up early to meditate, then come down for a sauna and a swim. Starts the day out clean.”

He pauses on the mossy wood deck by the boathouse doorway. Native willows and wild roses overhang a ramp that leads down to an old dock, grass sprouting from its gray boards.

“After you.” He gestures toward the doorway.

Inside it’s a cramped space, blocked off by the new inner wall and door that looks like a hobbit-hole entrance with its curved top and round brass-rimmed porthole from a boat. A dim jumble of faded life vests, fraying line, and tools take up part of the floor beneath the one small window that filters shadowy daylight through cobwebs.

Newman hands her a towel and pulls off his tee, matter-of-factly shucks his shorts to stand naked as Lindsey bites her lip and averts her gaze. He opens the inner door and starts to go in, then stops.

“Better get some water so we don’t get too dried out.” He picks up a wooden bucket with a rope handle and heads out onto the dock, where he squats to scoop water from the lake.

The way he moves at ease in his nakedness reassures Lindsey. It’s the way she always felt uninhibited and free of clothes in the wilderness, out camping, where the civilized trappings didn’t matter. And on backpacking trips with Nick and the neo-hippie “green” crowd, nudity was simply a given. A way to reset, everyone meeting at ground zero.

Lindsey’s not quite sure that applies to the current situation, and it was certainly easier not to be self-conscious when she was younger. But she’s sick of overthinking everything. She hastily strips off her jeans, fleece, and underwear, hoping to get into the dark sauna where she can hide her disfigured breast. Then she can’t resist sneaking a peek out the doorway toward the dock.

Newman’s heading back with the full bucket, moving with an easy swing up the ramp. Again she’s surprised by what a big man he is—she hadn’t  remembered that from all those years ago—broad across the shoulders, with a thickness and heft to his torso, smoothly packed and very different from Nick’s wiry musculature. She feels an odd sliding dislocation—simultaneously transported back in time to Mosquito Lake with her younger self and a leaner, tanned Newman, his long blond hair and beard lit up with sunlight, while standing rooted here with this gray-haired, handsome naked man striding toward her, smiling.

She takes a quick breath, fumbling with her loose hair to cover her breasts. Too late, she moves toward the dimness of the sauna as he comes in beside her with the sloshing bucket.

She takes a hasty step back in the cramped space, hair swinging aside to reveal the misshapen lumpectomy breast.

Newman stops short, gaze fixing on it, then darting to her eyes. He slowly lowers the bucket, face stricken.

Lindsey, mortified, hunches and turns away, bringing the folded towel up over her breasts.

“No, please.” His voice is gentle, a hand on her shoulder halting her, turning her back toward him. She can’t look up as he eases her clenched hands open, lowers the shielding towel. He touches her damaged breast very carefully. His fingers are surprisingly warm, a soft heat penetrating her chilled skin, spreading deeper.

She blinks, looks up into his face.

He meets her gaze. “I’m sorry, Lindsey. It’s just… my mother. She died of breast cancer. Are you okay now?”

She nods, eyes stinging but held in his gaze. And that’s it. All her fears of how disgusting she’d appear to him are just smoke, vanished. There’s some kind of glow enfolding them both, palpable.

It seems like they stand that way for a long time, but it may be only a few seconds. He smiles then and nods, tilts his head toward the sauna door, gestures her in. “Careful, don’t touch the metal on the porthole.”

He bends down for the bucket and follows her into the tiny space where dry heat and the fragrance of cedar close around her. Newman shuts the door as Lindsey climbs up onto a short bench built into the wall opposite the wood stove, puts her towel down, and sits on it. He sits on the other end, placing the bucket between them on the floor. He glances up at her. She can barely make out his face in the dimness, but thinks he’s smiling still as he reaches into the bucket, scoops out a handful, and flicks cool drops over her.

Startled at the shock of cold through the enclosing heat, she laughs. She leans over to scoop up her own handful and fling it at him, stray drops hissing over the hot stove.

“Ahhh. That feels good.” He leans back against the wall, facing her on the bench, raising one leg to cock his knee. His foot rests against hers on the bench.

The contact is warm, comfortable. Lindsey feels tenseness in her body she didn’t even know was there begin to uncoil, release, as she sinks back against the wall, sinks into the heat and quiet. Only the popping of wood in the stove. Dancing flickers of firelight through the vent grating. A sigh rises from deep inside her.

Silence reigns, then, and Lindsey’s glad he’s not the type to have to fill it up with talk. She can listen to her heartbeat slow down, feel her pores opening as her skin turns slick with sweat. She closes her eyes. She’s here. Now.

Finally she rakes back her damp hair and takes a deep breath. “I’m about cooked through. You ready for a swim?”

He sits up, rubbing his eyes. “Either that, or I’m off to dreamland.” He stands and leads the way out, so Lindsey doesn’t have to feel awkward again in the daylight. “Watch the ramp for splinters.” He pauses on the dock.

Lindsey reaches the bottom of the ramp, skin a tingling interface between internal stoked heat and the cool air. She takes a deep breath, savoring the unruffled gray surface of the lake shimmering like quicksilver. A crazy exhilaration she barely recognizes fills her suddenly, and her legs are launching her past Newman’s startled face as she runs down the dock and plunges into the lake.

The shock of cold to her overheated body is almost orgasmicly intense. She strokes underwater through murky green dimness, past waving weed fronds, then bursts back up into the air. “Eee-yah!” She grins, sucks in some air, and strokes fast across the surface.

A splash behind her as Newman follows. She circles around, past him, and he matches strokes with her for a bit before he turns back. She dives under again, savoring the cool caress over her body, reveling in weightlessness. Finally, the cold penetrating into her deeper layers, she heads back to the dock.

Newman is sitting watching her. As she reaches the dock, he stands, and before she can brace her arms to heave herself out of the water, he’s lifted under her armpits to pluck her up beside him as if she weighed feathers.

She’s face to face with him, close and dripping. “Thanks.”

He tilts his head. “You’re welcome.”

They both laugh, for no reason.

She shakes her head. “I keep getting these time displacements. Here we are, back in our birthday suits.”

“Lindsey, maybe we’re just fated to get naked together.” Still chuckling, he spreads his palms. “You ready for more heat?”

“Definitely.” She slaps water off, goosebumps shivering her skin.

Back in the fragrant dimness of the sauna, she sighs and loosens to the welcome heat, leaning back against the wall. “This is perfect.”

Newman puts another stick of wood in the stove, then climbs up to face her on the bench. He pulls his feet up, again touching hers. They sit in silence as they soak up the warmth, but this time the contact of his foot against hers is electric, alive. She can almost hear a hum swelling, growing between them.

She opens her eyes to see he’s watching her in the flickering firelight. She meets his gaze, and suddenly her heart is pounding again.

He sits up, reaches to touch her hand where it’s resting palm up on the bench. Slowly he draws a fingertip along the lines of her palm, and she shivers. One more flashback to their younger days, the long-haired stranger dropping his bike and stepping over to her blanket to take her hand and study her life lines.

Newman takes a deep breath, raises his hand to run his palm down her shoulder and arm, tracing a tingling connection everywhere he touches. Lindsey can see in the flickering light his penis swelling, rising toward her, and something inside her wrenches, then springs open, heat flooding her. He lifts and shifts her effortlessly so they’re sitting closer, facing each other with her legs over his.

He touches her face, gently, leans closer to brush his lips over hers. She catches a quick breath, pulls him closer, and then they’re kissing madly, deeply, as waves of velvet-black shadow and red-tinged firelight wash through them.

He eases back from the contact. They’re both breathing hard, and he looks almost startled.

He takes another deep breath, touches her breasts as the nipples rise hard to his palms. He leans forward to kiss the damaged breast, licks his tongue down over the puckered scarring, takes the nipple into his mouth. It responds to his touch, alive, and suddenly Lindsey is weeping, a crazy mix of grief and joy.

He straightens, touches her face and smooths the trail of tears over her cheeks. “We can stop now, Lindsey, if you want. Just touching you like this is enough for me.” A glimmer of humor then. “Though I guess you know what my body wants.” As if to second this, his penis throbs between them, brushing against her.

Lindsey’s flooded with an uprush of arousal so intense it makes her feel faint. She moves closer against him, feeling his hard penis now against her moistness. She rocks, and he slides against her. He groans, reaches to her hips and starts to lift her, then halts.

“Phew.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“What?” She blinks. “Believe me, you do.”

He chuckles, but he’s still out of breath, and that crazy charge is zinging between them. “Lindsey, it’s been over twenty years with one woman, and in the last years sex wasn’t really happening. So what kind of conversation are we supposed to have first, these days?” He looks chagrined, glances down. “I mean, besides that one we’re having.”

Lindsey has to laugh, the wild bubbling joy bursting up as her voice shakes. “You’re asking the wrong gal, Newman. It’s been two and a half years since I so much as kissed a man. But I did get tested after Nick’s affair, so looks like clear sailing to me.”

“But… birth control?”

“That’s the least of my worries these days.”

“Oh.” He looks taken aback, then laughs, too. “Looks like we’re making ourselves a new way here. That’s good.” He sobers, gaze holding hers, and again she glimpses that powerful charge held beneath his surface.

“It’s good.” Her voice is still shaky, but the words ring true.

He pulls her close then, kisses her to banish words and bring back the deep, pulsing tidal heat. Everywhere they touch, her skin is electric, lit up. When he lifts her by the hips and slides her up and then slowly down onto him, there’s no more separation. Only something new, two currents merging in an endless wave rolling toward shore but never breaking.