51

Perhaps when we keep a journal we are claiming a future, pretending it already exists, the smoggy summer day, the bright late winter morning, our children grown. We let the fiction carry us forward, tomorrow, a causeway across what we know is true, the floodplain of hope, the days that have not yet happened.

Early the next evening we reached Carmel, following the highway at times, and then following the coastline, the ragged margin of white sand. My mother had loved this town, and we had once owned a cottage here, a peak-roofed hideaway with a climbing rose and a huge blue-stone fireplace.

The sand was so fine it squeaked under our shoes. Rebecca hesitated on the beach, but I led her along, and we walked hand in hand up Ocean Avenue. The look of pleasure in her eyes warmed me. There was a quality of “let’s pretend” about our stroll up the street. We acted like ordinary people, ordinary in the way love affairs are ordinary, life in flower, but normal, rooted life.

“We shouldn’t do this,” she said.

“This is where we should have come,” I laughed, “all this time.”

We could both smell them, taste them in the air, so many lives. She said, “But they can all look at us and tell.”

Restaurant doors swung open, and inside were dozens of faces, the voices lifted in laughter, lowered in conversation. Even a gas station was a marvel, a man rubbing a spot on the windshield of a Jaguar, first with a squeegee, then with a paper towel, then with his forefinger and spit. In a candle shop a woman used a long brass implement to snuff out candles one by one, and the scent of bees’ wax reached us between the glass, honey and paraffin.

“It’s dangerous,” she said, but there was no conviction in her voice.

We could not help window shopping, knowing all the while that the glass we gazed into did not reflect our images. We pretended it was otherwise, arm in arm, nodding mock-approval at the window displays, expensive leather suitcases, gold-edged china. A display of bridal accessories stopped us, the mannequin’s face behind the stiff fireworks of lace.

It was true that a man walking a dog stopped in mid-crosswalk to watch us, ignoring the understated beeping of horns. And sometimes someone across the street took a long look, not sure what he was seeing. A newspaper vending machine caught my eye with its black headlines. A photograph was half lost beneath the fold, but I could make out the top of my head, my eyes.

I could imagine Connie. or even Matilda, complying happily, sure I have a photo. Take your pick. I had never liked the black-and-white glossy that had been selected, hating the close-cropped haircut, the let’s party! grin on my face.

I drew her along, past floral displays and a real esate office. “I didn’t know hats looked like that,” she said. “Those floppy ones—”

“Berets,” I suggested. “Cashmere.”

The berets were displayed on Styrofoam heads, featureless, each egg-like head with a dainty prominence and a faint suggestion in place of nose and eyebrows. “I didn’t know hats came in so many colors—”

She protested, but I tugged her arm. Once inside a clerk put his head around a curtain and said, “I’m sorry—”

We’re closed he meant to say. The door had been locked, and I had forced it. I apologized for our mistake, but led Rebecca to a counter of scarfs, berets, gloves, so many colors. And purses, a scarlet patent leather clutch so vivid it hurt to look at it.

Drawers were pulled, and samples of silks and fine wool were poured out on the glass counter, the man eager now, delighted that we could stop in. “This one will look wonderful on you,” said the clerk, the owner, I realized, hungry, tired, forgetting everything but the two of us. “Take a look,” he said, tilting a mirror on the counter in Rebecca’s direction.

I was surprised at Rebecca’s presence of mind. She pretended, artfully, giving her empty reflection her best fashion model pout. The she turned the mirror aside. “Lovely,” she said. I could hear how she felt, what a painful, pointless charade this suddenly was.

“We’ll take it,” I said with a smile.

“No,” she said.

All of this is yours.

She gave me a steady look. “No, thank you,” she said.

Outside again, we enjoyed this game, this opportunity to imagine what it would be like to be another couple, that man and women speaking German, or this man in the tweed jacket, leather patches on the elbows, waiting for his bride—surely they were on a honeymoon—to adjust the strap on one of her shoes.

Although Rebecca’s gown looked strictly formal, there was nothing about her that looked dampened or faded by the punishment of the passing months. She had the highlights and coloring only the finest cinematography could offer, and anyone who saw her took in both the readily apparent, her eyes, her smile, and something else. The eye believed in her.

A man and a woman outside a restaurant paused to let us pass, and I could feel their mood change. The woman laughed, and the man looked up from the car he was unlocking.

Rebecca could not stop herself. “I want you to be careful,” she said, taking the woman’s hand.

“Whatever of,” said the woman, surprised but not taking any offense at this caution from a stranger.

“He’s not what you think,” said Rebecca. “He’s full of stories, but you know better.”

“He’s been lying to me,” the woman said, her tone surprised but not shocked.

“About everything,” said Rebecca.

“What’s going on?” said the man, his smile fading. He looked at me as people did when they were not quite persuaded, when they sensed something wrong. For an instant it was a struggle to deceive him.

“What was that about?” I said with a laugh.

“That man she was with. He’s married, or cheating his business partners. Something. She should stay away from him.” She put her hand out to a shop window. Behind the glass a marzipan alligator looked out at the passing street.

“You’re tired,” I said, not asking.

“No, I feel perfectly alright,” she insisted, leaning against me.

“Too much excitement,” I said.

We both pretended that was the problem.

We turned at last to enjoy the view. The main street sloped down to the Pacific, and the ocean loomed up, almost at an angle, an optical illusion that made the shops and the Monterey pines look festive and temporary, a town set out for a holiday, not made to last. Only the trees were permanent, fissured bark, roots buckling the sidewalk, bursting the stone planters.

A police car rolled down the other side of the street. Rebecca fell into a park bench. She said she was dizzy, and gave a little laugh of apology.

It would be dangerous to leave her here like this. Her hand was over her eyes, and I could see the heat fade from her. She shivered.

“It can happen suddenly,” I said. “The sounds go dim. You can hardly feel your hands, or your feet. You have to drag in each breath, like towing something heavy through water.”

“I’ll be okay,” she said. “Don’t leave me, Richard. Please stay—”

“You’d expect us to be able to keep thinking,” I said. “But that dies, too. You don’t know who you are, or what you’re doing. Forgetting is almost a pleasure, isn’t it?”

“Please don’t go anywhere,” she said. I knew what she really meant.

But I had no choice.