Fourteen

JULY 7

Dear Diary,

SOS! Take me away from this insane family! Reformat my genetic code! Now would be a good time for an alien spaceship abduction….

Flashback: I’m four or five and hunkered in the sort of musty greenery-cave the shrubs made in the back yard, my arm around Ginger our golden lab, sending out pleas to the fairies to come and get me. I’m convinced they’ve abandoned me with this crazy human family, and I’m ready to go back to my real home. Not so much has changed since then….

“Crap.” Lindsey pushes her journal aside, shaking her head. “This was supposed to be funny, HighJinks.”

Prince-of-the-household, enthroned on her lap overseeing the writing process, yowls his opinion, then jumps up and sits on the page to make a more definitive statement.

“Critics,” Lindsey mutters.

Sombra winds her usual circuitous path into the spare bedroom Lindsey has turned into her writing/library/”stuff” room. She makes a furry turn around Lindsey’s ankles, then jumps onto her lap, kneading and giving a soft cry.

“Okay, lunchtime.”

Both cats streak off toward the kitchen, Lindsey following. The phone rings.

“Lindsey. Hi.” It’s Newman.

“Oh.” She grips the phone as lightheadedness ripples through her. “Newman?”

All she can hear is static on the line now.

“Newman?”

“—and I’m…. Oh.” Something clunking, clattering, then, “Oops! Lindsey, you there? I think I’m in the clear now.”

Lindsey’s anything but. Just the sound of his voice is sending her into the spins.

“Lindsey? Did I lose you?”

She clears her throat. “Newman, where are you? Still in Bali?” How long has it been since that other phone call? A week?

“No, just got out of SeaTac, I’m heading north. Man, every time I leave the country it’s a jolt to get back on the freeway here, see all these cars with only one person instead of packed to the max.”

She takes a steadying breath. “I felt the same way after Honduras.”

“Listen, Lindsey.” His voice sounds oddly rushed. “I’m kind of up against it, what with the trip running over with the moonsoon and all. I’ve got to get some orders together, they’re overdue already, everybody wants a piece of me, including Kimberly, she’s out for blood again. I need to pick up Melani this afternoon, but….” A gusting breath, and Lindsey can feel the reset. “Could I stop by to see you first? Before it all hits?”

A smile spreads over her face. “Of course. I mean, I’m here.”

“Lindsey, I….” There’s some kind of static again. But it’s not coming over the phone line, it’s more a feeling. “Lindsey, when I finally got a replacement cell phone, I wasn’t going to listen to your message, since you asked me not to. But… I gave in to temptation. I want to—”

More of that odd static, then a jolt of eagerness knifing straight through it that sets Lindsey’s heart racing. But there’s something else that blocks it, some kind of push/pull going on in his voice. “Lindsey, when you said you felt like Rumi’s ‘Guest House,’ all those emotions running wild, you’re not the only one. But I don’t know if I can—” He cuts out again.

“Newman?”

“…timing. Damn! I’m losing reception. Listen, I’ll be there in about an hour. Okay?”

“Oh. Yes.” She’s feeling lightheaded again, off balance.

“Okay.” His voice settles, gentles. “See you soon.”

Lindsey stands holding the receiver until the disconnect message starts nagging. She hangs up slowly, shaking her head. Her heart is pounding, and she can taste him, his kisses, the feel of his hands on her…. But what was that in his voice? What’s going on? Why did she leave that ridiculous message, so needy?

“Damn!” A hot flash ignites, blossoming out from her core like a prickling rash. She rips off her shirt, then her sports bra. Lifts her hair off the back of her neck and heads to the bathroom for a cool washcloth. She blots her back and chest, her face, then stands braced over the sink, eyes closed and taking deep breaths, until the heat subsides. Her ears are ringing. Maybe that’s where the static is coming from.

She looks at her watch. Heading for the bedroom, she halts, looks at the mess of scattered tea mugs, books, and magazines in the living room, rugs crying out for the vacuum, dust bunnies breeding with a deplorable lack of restraint under the couch. Not to mention that sink full of dishes in the kitchen. She starts forward, stalls, turns toward the kitchen, looks down at her bare breasts. Right. First: What to wear?

She opens the built-in closet in her bedroom, built for a simpler age—or midgets—and surveys the hangers jammed in. That soft olive-green silk blouse she treated herself to for her birthday, the one that sets off her eyes so nicely? Too fancy for an at-home day. A sundress? Skirt? She doesn’t want to look like she’s primped for a date.

She slams the cupboard closed and pulls open one of the drawers beneath it. Her favorite worn-smooth jeans she just managed to put a toe through when she was yanking them on, so now they’re stylishly ripped in the knee? Just throw on a T-shirt like she’d ordinarily wear slopping around the house? But she doesn’t want to look like she couldn’t be bothered to make an effort. And, hey, why not wear something a little form-fitting? Show off her bod a bit?

Lindsey glances at her watch again. “Shit!” She opens the closet and yanks out a skimpy sundress she wears as a swimsuit coverup, pulls it on, makes a turn in front of the clouded old mirror mounted on the back of the door. Nice, but she really needs to wear a bra with it. She pulls open the underwear drawer, realizes most of her bras are outside drying on the backyard clothesline, gives up on the idea of the sundress and lets it drop around her feet. She pulls out an exercise tank with built-in shelf bra. Tugs it on and then remembers she has to fill out this one on the lumpectomy side, imagines Newman sexily sliding off her top only to have a piece of foam padding fall out. Not good.

She rips off the tank, rummages for one of the bras she’s sewn pads into, but there’s only older ones at the bottom of the drawer. “Damn.”

She throws on a T-shirt at random, grabs a pair of running shorts from the other drawer, wads up the discarded selections and crams them into the bottom of the closet, slamming the doors once more. She heads for the back door to see if anything’s dry on the line, but by this time she’s worked up a sweat again, so she makes another dash into the bathroom to blot her face and chest. A glance in the mirror confirms the worst: hair straggling out of a loose braid, and to top off the hot flashes, this week her face has decided to break out in what looks like teenage acne. Thank you, berserk hormones.

Another glance at the watch. “Shit. Shit.” More deep breaths.

Lindsey makes herself slow down, wash her face and brush her hair out. It doesn’t look so bad after all, nice waves from the braid. Then she dabs on some spot concealer and a touch of eye shadow. She can’t stand goopy makeup, and after all she doesn’t want to scare the poor man, for heaven’s sake.

Back on track for the backyard clothesline, cats picking up on her agitation and trailing her, darting around her ankles and tripping her. HighJinks nips at her bare toes.

“Please! Not today!” She resolutely ignores the dirty dishes and checks the old-fashioned line threaded between wheels on the garage and the porch. The bras are still damp, but one of them is almost dry. She grabs it off the line, hooks it around her waist and pulls it on under the tee.

Time check: “Damn.” He’ll be here any minute. What on earth is she wearing, anyway? She squints at some upside-down printing on the mud-brown shirt, something about the “Clamfest Fun Run” years ago, at least she can find a better shirt than this. So she dashes back through the kitchen, but the cats are really anxious by this time, mewing, and Sombra darts forward just in time to get accidentally kicked. She cries out and shoots away for the living room.

“Sombra, I’m sorry! I’m acting like a hormonally-deranged teenager.” Is this love? Or “this is your brain on menopause”? She slows down, heads quietly into the living room to crouch next to the alarmed cat, who’s backed against the armchair. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, sweetie.”

Lindsey takes slow, deep breaths, stroking gently down Sombra’s back, finally lifting her against her chest.

Sombra starts to purr, then heaves and upchucks a messy fur ball and slimy grass down the front of Lindsey’s shirt. Outside, a car pulls into the drive.

Great. Lindsey sets down the cat, darts back into the bedroom to yank open a drawer and blindly grab another T-shirt. She rips off the slimy one and drops it at her feet, pulls on a turquoise one with a dolphin and something she hopes is innocuous printed across the front.

A knock on the door.

Lindsey’s ears are ringing again, jolts of eagerness and trepidation alternating through her. She takes one last deep breath and opens the door. The static roar in her ears peaks, then falls away.

Newman stands on the porch, hair rumpled, looking jet-lagged in a faded blue T-shirt with ripped-off sleeves, but all tanned and somehow glowing in the sunlight. He looks terrific.

“Lindsey. You look terrific.”

He starts forward, hands raising, then stalls, pulling back. Lindsey is caught between that forward and backward movement, her own outstretched hand left hanging. She drops it. He’s looking at her, something clouded in his eyes, conflicted.

Then, “Damn,” he says, and takes a stride forward, wraps his arms around her, pulls her in close, her head against his chest. She can feel his heart thudding. His lips brush the top of her head.

Time melts into warm honey. He rocks, arms tightening around her as her own encircle his waist and they’re moving together in a slow rooted dance. The heat pools where they’re pressed together, rises up and outward, and he’s hard, rubbing in a side-to-side rocking against her pelvis. She’s flowing, she’s the honey, he is, the warmth and taste of it as he’s kissing her so deeply she’s faint, losing her footing.

She pulls back to catch a breath, steady herself against his chest, and he strokes her hair, his hand oddly trembling.

“Lindsey, I’m dying to make love with you. But I don’t know if it’s fair. I don’t know if I can be there for you, be the lover you need—”

She raises her fingers to his lips. “I want you. Now. It’s okay.”

He picks her up then, wraps her legs around his hips, carries her through the open doorway into the bedroom and lays her on top of the bed. He lowers himself slowly over her, hips still pulsing against hers, and now the honey’s dissolving into those rolling blue waves from her dream. They surge, cresting and ebbing and cresting again, ocean deep power flowing through them. They are nothing in that immensity, just part of the tides and the salty currents.

Newman sighs, kisses her once more, then pulls back to reach down, loosen her clothes, finding entrances, palm sliding over her skin. Her hands are gliding, too, burrowing, and she’s finding him, his broad warm chest and then lower to free his penis to her touch as he groans.

Footsteps outside, slapping up the porch steps.

Lindsey startles, realizes they left the front door open.

The footsteps clatter onto the wooden porch, and there’s a rustle of papers. A pause then. A cough, a sharp rattle and clunk of the metal mailbox mounted against the outside wall, and then footsteps hastily retreating. Lindsey cranes her head to look out the open bedroom window toward the porch, looks back into Newman’s eyes. They burst out laughing.

“Hoo, boy.” Lindsey struggles upright, shaking her head to clear it. She staggers out into the living room to shut the front door. When she returns to the bedroom, Newman is pulling the gauzy curtains to soften the light to a pale suffusion of green.

He turns, smiles into her eyes, reaches out to tug at her shirt. He pauses and tilts his head to read from it: “Divers do it deeper?”

Lindsey looks down at what she now remembers was a souvenir from a long-ago Caribbean trip. She raises her palms. They both laugh.

Newman sobers, holding her gaze. He eases the shirt off her, reaches around to unhook her bra, runs his palms slowly over her breasts. “You are beautiful.” He kneels to tug her shorts down, leans in to press his face against her belly, breathing her in, kissing her.

Somehow she gets his clothes off him and they’re back on the bed, back in those salty waves, and diving is nothing to this immersion. They’re sliding and rolling dolphin-slippery over and around each other, he’s inside her, and she’s gone, she’s completely here, she’s the ocean taking him in, he’s taking her deeper, and when she can’t contain any more she cries out and dissolves.

She’s drifting away, but he’s still there. Inside her, pushing down to another layer through the soft darkness, carrying her along. He’s unfolding her, unwrapping her core, unwinding long ribbons of undulating touch and she doesn’t know if she can do this, open so far into annihilation and yet be filling simultaneously with so much. But her body knows better, and it leads now—down so far, it’s up. Streams of light are swirling around them, shimmering and twining and floating them up and down in a new kind of pulsing rhythm as they’re weightless and flying into the heart of this flesh mandala.

They reach the center of unbearable intensity, and he cries out, shattering the glowing web. She echoes him, reverberating. They sink back into themselves, rocking slowly down into two joined bodies on the bed.

“Oh, my….” Newman touches her face, draws his fingers down over her contours as if to restore her to herself. He’s still pulsing gently against her, within her, as they lie there cradled in their joining. His lips softly brush hers, and he breathes into her, takes in her breaths, kisses her lightly, their lips barely touching as they share this breathing. Suddenly, lancing between them, a bittersweet longing—strange, with their bodies still entwined.

Newman rolls onto his back and pulls Lindsey to lie with her head on his shoulder, his arms around her. “Mmmm….”

He slides into deeper breathing, into sleep, as she lies there floating just above it, basking in this peace. An uprush of delight fills her, fountaining over them. She settles into him, smiling.

Newman’s heartbeat, beneath Lindsey’s ear, has settled into a slow, even rhythm. He begins to snore quietly, and she smiles, wondering when he last slept. He twitches then, arms tightening around her, and he wakes up with a funny little snort, to blink into her eyes.

He smiles. “I can’t remember when I’ve felt this… completely relaxed.”

She touches his chest, over his heart. “Feels like this is how it should be.” Another uprush of emotion fills her, and her vision blurs.

“Lindsey.” His voice is gentle, his hand stroking her hair. “This is….” His hands lift like wings, then settle again. “I am so drawn to you. Seems like we hardly have a choice but to make love if we so much as look at each other. But… I’m mixed up. I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”

A cold stab in her gut. This is what was in his voice on the phone. “Oh.” She starts to pull away, brushing her fingers over her damp eyes.

“No, stay here. Please.” He urges her back down to rest on his shoulder. “Lindsey, I’m not a talker, seems like words don’t always communicate the best way for me. But I want to tell you about being in Bali this time. Maybe it was sharing with you, being with you, before I left, but….”

He takes a deep breath, blows it out. “Being there, with the monsoon hitting and hunkering down with the villagers, and going out to see the temple we’d built years ago. It was exciting again. Being alive. I guess I didn’t realize how those last years of my marriage had sort of shut me down, and then the divorce was so bad. Still is, dealing with Kimberly…. But I reconnected in Bali. I remembered how life used to be an adventure. How the work I was doing then meant something, building the temples, passing on my teacher’s wisdom, and I was living fully in the moment.” He shakes his head. “This isn’t coming out right.”

She nods into his shoulder. “Keep going.”

“I was thinking about you. A lot. Wanting to feel you again, make love to you, open you up like a gift to both of us and find out all about you.” He sighs. “And I just don’t know… It was taking me away from that being back in the moment, that coming back to myself.” A little shrugging movement. “Maybe finding healing.”

“But….” Lindsey doesn’t know what he’s trying to say. “You think this is bad? I’m hurting you?” She touches his chest again, hesitantly this time.

“No. No, that’s not it.” His arms tighten around her for a moment, then loosen. “It’s just… when I heard your message, talking about the ‘Guest House’ poem, and I heard all that in your voice, too—so much turmoil like I’ve been going through over the divorce, and way before. I felt overwhelmed, Lindsey. Like this is too much, too fast.”

Lindsey pulls away from him, sitting up to take a deep breath, stabbed by the ice again. “But—how can this be bad, Newman? What we just…. Don’t tell me you didn’t feel that! It’s so… right. That’s how it’s supposed to be between lovers.” She can’t start doubting her perceptions again, the way she did with Nick, letting him drive her to questioning her own sanity.

He reaches for her hand, squeezes it. “I’m not denying that connection, Lindsey. It’s what I’m going to do about it.”

She shakes her head. “So what about that Rumi poetry you gave me? What he says about the true lover being a lunatic… How can we really be in this life unless we surrender to the mystery, maybe the chaos? Stop trying to control it? I’ve been tight for so long, guarding myself against being hurt, the way being with Nick was hurting me. But I can’t live that way any more. I think I’d rather be dead than go back to that.”

“Don’t, Lindsey. Don’t go back to that.” He tugs on her hand, so she meets his gaze, intent on her. “Don’t close your heart. Just maybe… guard it a little.” He sighs and looks up at the ceiling. “You know, with Rumi, he’s talking about spiritual love.”

She nods. “Like the way John Donne wrote those love sonnets to God. But there’s a reason for the sexual metaphors. It’s the same in the end, isn’t that the point? It’s loving that matters.”

Silence for a moment. Then he swallows. “I don’t know. I never had this… chemistry in my marriage. I got hurt by those years. Sleeping beside a beautiful woman who’d taunt me, then deny me, so I sort of shut off sexually.”

“Newman! What a fool she was, doing that to you. Throwing away such delight for both of you. You’re a wonderful lover.”

“Thank you.” He kisses Lindsey’s palm. “You are beyond wonderful.”

“But how could you go on like that?”

“The marriage actually got easier once she finally shut me out of her bedroom. We were living in opposite ends of the house, but I thought we could stay a family, for Melani. By that time, I’d pretty much accepted that I just wasn’t a man who could be a proper lover to a woman, and I got used to living like I was a single parent, not needing that other kind of intimacy. I figured since I have such deep connections in spirit with my teacher and my own… students, I guess I’d call them, maybe that’s enough? And now I have to be honest and tell you I’m confused. I don’t know if all this passion with you is what I want to get swept up in. At least right now. I don’t know if I can afford to.”

Lindsey sits back, staring at him. The cold has spread into a sick heaviness inside her. After what they just shared, he can say this? Didn’t that connection mean something? She looks at him, and suddenly he is the stranger her rational self has been warning her about.

“Lindsey, please.” He’s looking her in the eyes again. “It’s not that I don’t feel tempted to dive right in. Just now, that was….” He shakes his head, lifts and spreads his hands. “But my life now is so complicated, I’m juggling like mad to hold it all together after the divorce.” He takes another deep breath. “Kimberly really went after me when I finally had to get out, she got these hardcore lawyers and maybe I gave in too much, but I needed it to be over with. Anyway, the settlement, buying her out of the business, pretty much wiped out my credit line for my wholesale trade. I’m scrambling to get back on decent footing, making these extra consulting trips to get some cash flow, had to sell some of my land where I’d been hoping someday I could build another temple, a place where people here could come to meditate….”

He sighs. “And Melani needs a lot right now, she’s in a rough stretch, still doing P.T. and counseling. She and Kimberly fight all the time, and I need to be there for her, need to be calm….” He closes his eyes, lets out a breath.

“Newman.” Lindsey puts out a hand to touch his. “I didn’t realize how hard it’s been for you, too. You seem so serene most of the time.”

He opens his eyes to meet hers, and his lips quirk into a wry smile. “Sometimes I’m on autopilot. I mean, maybe I’m better than most at letting things flow over me—it’s my training, learning not to be attached. I call on my teacher when I get all tangled up, and he’s there with me in spirit. So when I ask him for guidance with all this, now, of course he says to listen to my heart. And it says I need to put Melani first, take care of her, keep it together for her until things settle down.”

Lindsey tilts her head, considering what’s behind the words. He did try to warn her, and she plunged ahead anyway. She gives him her own wry smile. “Newman, I’m not asking you to throw your life aside, for heaven’s sake. Of course you have to take care of Melani first.”

His face lights up. “Lindsey, someday you have to meet her! She is incredible. Just looking at her sometimes, I feel so full, I’m ready to burst.”

Lindsey eyes are prickling again. She’ll never know that feeling.

He blows out a breath. “Then other times I think I’ll never survive having a teenager.” He reaches to stroke Lindsey’s arm, tug her gently down to rest on his shoulder. “After I gave in and listened to your message—I can’t believe I was that weak, that’s another thing I….”

He starts over, “Lindsey, I realized things were moving so fast between us, I was building all kinds of scenarios in my mind, putting us both in those boxes we’re just crawling out of. We’re still healing, we need to find out who we are now without a bunch of expectations getting put on us. I decided I had to tell you I couldn’t do this. I decided I was going to be celibate again until my life settled down.”

He tilts his head to look at her face, and raises his eyebrows. “Well, that resolution lasted a whole day.”

He chuckles. “The minute I saw you, felt you, that was out the door.” Then he sobers. “Lindsey, what I was trying to say when I got here is I don’t know if I can give you what you want. You deserve a man who’s really there for you. I can’t give you that right now. Maybe it’s not in me.”

“I don’t believe that. I can feel your heart, Newman.”

“Then can you be with me, when we get time to be together, and not expect the standard package? Some pre-set definition of what lovers are supposed to be? Can we just be with it?”

Lindsey thinks about it and has to admit, chagrined, that in the whirl of infatuation she’s been plugging Newman and herself into the old scenarios, painting pictures of him as her new life partner. If she’s honest with herself, she also has to admit she’s been indulging in every fairy-tale cliché right down to the tinkle of wedding bells. (Maybe that’s the ringing in her ears?) And after Nick, the last thing she needs is another husband. She certainly has enough on her own plate to deal with these days.

One more chill at the thought of always being on her own—cold comfort being a liberated woman all alone—but maybe that’s the point. She can’t be the lover she wants to be if she isn’t strong, first, in herself.

She shrugs, lifting her palms. “Somewhere along the line, somebody told me, ‘Expectations are what kill you daily.’ But it’s not so easy to live without some kind of plans.” She leans down to inhale the delicious scent of his skin that’s teasing at her attention. “Like maybe what I want to do with you next time I get your clothes off….” Her lips wander down over the curly hair on his chest, then lower across his belly.

He chuckles and catches her hand, pulls it to his lips and kisses her palm. Then admits, “Parts of me are saying, ‘Enough with all this philosophy, pal—we’re ready for some good old attachment, right now.’“

Lindsey pulls her hand free, sliding her tongue down over his belly to find his erect penis. “And this part would be Livingston, I presume?” She licks its salty length, and it pulses to her touch. “Mmmm.”

“Oh, boy. That does it.” He grips her shoulders, pulls her up over his chest and presses her pelvis tight against him, kissing her, sliding his palms down over her buttocks and thighs. The electric pulsation crackles between them, Lindsey’s breath catching in her throat.

Newman rolls her over onto her back, starts to lower himself onto her, then pauses. “I have to warn you, Lindsey. I’m… maybe I’m dangerous these days, if you’re not careful. You may be opening up Pandora’s box.”

Lindsey laughs, feeling suddenly wild, reckless, the taste and touch of his skin on hers driving her crazy, and she just wants him, needs him, inside her again. “Newman,” she manages, “the only thing dangerous here was the mailman spying on us.”

He doesn’t laugh, just kisses her again, fiercely, and they’re off and flying once more.

Finally they lie there, catching their breaths. “Phew. So much for being all sane and mature past fifty,” she manages.

“If I have a heart attack, I’ll die happy,” he responds.

They laugh, shaking together. Lindsey cranes back to see his face, and he’s looking a bit shell-shocked, the same way she’s feeling.

The phone rings.

“Damn. What time it is, anyway?” Newman’s making untangling motions among their sprawled limbs.

“Just ignore it,” Lindsey mumbles.

“It’s my cell phone. Must be Melani, I’m probably late.” He heaves himself upright, drops to his knees among their pile of discarded clothes. He gropes, finally coming up with his phone as it stops ringing. “Damn. It’s her, I am late.”

He rises to lean over the bed, runs a hand down Lindsey’s side, gives her one last, deep kiss. He sits on the edge of the bed. “I hate to do this, but I’ve got to go. I promised Melani I’d pick her up and take her to a horse show this evening. She can’t compete again yet, with the knee, but she wants to cheer on her friends.” He leans over to gather up his clothes.

Lindsey groans.

“Welcome to my life.” He turns to meet her eyes. “I won’t be able to see you again until next week. You sure you want to do this?”

She answers honestly, “Do I have a choice?”

“Always.”

“Then, yes.” Like Scarlett O’Hara, she’ll think about it tomorrow.

“Okay.” He smiles, jumps up. “I better rinse off and head out.” He motions her down as she starts to sit up. “Stay there. Take a nap so I can have one vicariously.”

He starts toward the doorway, then halts, lifting one foot to peer down as he’s balancing with his arms full of his clothes. “Uh, what did I just step in?”

Lindsey raises herself up to see the discarded brown T-shirt. “Oh! Sombra’s upchucked fur ball.” She snorts, fall back onto the bed. “Welcome to my world.”

He chuckles, and Lindsey subsides sleepily into the tangled sheets, drifting as she hears the shower spatter. It sounds like rain after a drought. She’s almost asleep when Newman comes back into the bedroom, starts toward the bed, then turns to pull the paisley silk shawl off the chair and drape it gently over her. He leans down to kiss her forehead. He’s here. He’s gone.