“Too soon to tell,” I reply to David with a shrug.
We’ve spent the better part of the morning driving the Pacific Coast Highway, stopping first at the University of Santa Barbara so David could drop off some files to a colleague, then on to Solvang, a quaint, touristy Danish village. It’s very pretty here, even if it seems contrived to me, with its architecture and gardens. After parking and walking around a little, we’ve come to the Bit O’ Denmark for lunch. Over the smorgasbord and beer talk turned to work.
His work is philosophy, something beyond my scope at the moment, something he isn’t ready to press on me.
My work is Alex, something I can’t seem to let go of, no matter how I try.
“I think you should,” David offers. “This housekeeping position of yours is much, much more than simply keeping house, so it would seem. Perhaps if you see your, your employer in his native environment it might shed more light on his situation.”
“I’ve thought about that. I’ve also thought that a lot of his ‘situation’ is none of my business.” I look into David’s hazel eyes, trying to read them, trying to see what he sees. “I don’t want to pry.”
“It sounds more as if he’s inviting you to do just that, though, doesn’t it?”
This is exactly what I didn’t want to hear. In fact, my intention was to have no talk of Alex or of anything to do with Alex. Apparently I can’t help myself. But I didn’t want to have David agreeing with some of my unsaid thoughts. I actually wanted him to refute them. That’s not happening. He’s reinforcing them.
“Yes,” I agree with some reluctance, and I take a bite of the smoked fish on my plate. It’s very good. Everything is very good, from the food to the weather. It’s a glorious day, holding hints of summer warmth in the air. We’re sitting outside at a table under an umbrella, watching the other tourists as they line up to get inside the shops, bakeries, and restaurants.
“Do you not want to go?”
“You know something? I do not want to talk about Alex. I spend a lot of my time thinking about him and wrapped up in his business, and, well, it’s the weekend and I’d prefer to...”
“What would you prefer?” David asks me with a smile.
“I’d prefer another beer.”
“Easy enough,” he says, and beckons the waitress over to place my order.
“This job is taking over my life,” I say, and for the first time I’m saying what I’ve been feeling about it out loud.
“Is that so terrible?” David asks.
“I don’t know, it just seems that it’s too easy to get drawn into it farther than I want to be. I thought it would be cooking and cleaning and running errands, but I’m beginning to feel as if I’m responsible for a lot more than that.”
“From what you’ve told me, you are. But I must say, I don’t think you’d approach the job any other way. You seem very intense about it, and dedicated. Which is admirable no matter what the job. I’d tell you not to fret about it so, but I don’t think it’s in your nature to ignore a problem. Unless I’m all wrong about you.” He smiles again. The smile is charming, his words are unnerving.
“I wish you were,” I tell him.
“I wish that some of my students had your kind of tenacity and dedication. I wish they had a fraction of it. I don’t know, perhaps it’s the weather out here, the constant sunshine, it seems to distract them. You, though, don’t seem distractible.”
“Try me,” I say, and it comes out sounding ALL wrong, I can tell just from the expression on David’s face, the curve of his lip, the arch of his eyebrow. I feel my face go red, but I keep my gaze steady.
“We’ll do our best, then,” he says. “Now, tell me about the places you’ve lived here in the states.”
“Ha! There’s too many.”
“Start with the first, then.”
“Oh my, well, I don’t really remember it, I was so little. I was born in Texas and we didn’t stay there long after. The military moved us around a lot. After that it was a few places in the mid-west that I don’t remember too much about, either. Dusty. It was dusty, though, all the time,” I tell him, only just recalling that myself. I see myself as being very small, sucking on the edge of a table and having my mother gently pull me off, saying, ‘no, no, honey, it’s dirty, it’s all dusty’. The memory sends a little shudder through my body, and I shake it off. “Then we started to hit the coastal areas. New Jersey for a long time, almost two years. Long Beach, right here. A few months back to Texas, too, my sister was born there.”
“You have a sister?”
“Had. She died before she was one. We left right after that. Hunh,” I say, with a little snort, something like a laugh, but not.
“What?”
“I only just realized something. My father died there, too, he moved back to Texas after he retired. I never made the connection. My mother died in South Carolina. You’d think he’d have moved there.” I shrug, but the thought of that is disturbing to me, as disturbing to be reminded that my family is dead, that I’m an orphan of sorts. It’s disturbing to think that my father is buried nowhere near my mother, who I know he loved, but near my sister, who was nothing more than a fleeting moment in all our lives. A ghost girl that none of us knew, but who colored us with sadness from the moment she left us.
“You did move quite a bit then?” David asks. It’s not really a question, it’s more of a reiteration of what I’ve said, a summary of my life. “That must have been very lonely living.”
“Yes.” It was lonely. It was terrible for me, but I say nothing about that and concentrate on the less emotional aspect of this conversation. “We moved all the time. When I met my ex-husband I thought that we would settle down. He seemed like that kind of person, a very settled person. I was wrong. We just kept on moving.” I’ve been staring at a spot on the ground and now I look up into David’s eyes. They’re almost green in this light. Green, and kind. I don’t think I’m much younger than him, maybe not younger than him at all, but at the moment, he seems much, much older to me. Wiser. There’s some kind of understanding in there, but an understanding of what I’m not sure. It makes me flustered, and not much makes me flustered. I begin to babble a little, grasping for another line of discussion within the original topic. Places I have lived. Too many for my tastes, David. Too many. “I think I liked living in San Diego the best. It was warm, pretty...”
“Would you like to go down that way again one day?” he asks, either not noticing my discomfort, which I find hard to believe, or choosing to ignore it.
“I don’t know, I thought that I’d take Tish there before she leaves for camp this summer. Show her the San Diego Zoo, Sea World, heck, see them myself, I never went when we lived there.”
“That sounds like fun. I’ve heard it’s very beautiful there.”
“It is.”
“Did you live outside of the states as well?”
“Germany. Sweden. That’s it. Not too long in either place. This reminds me of there, of Germany,” I say, gesturing to the village that’s outside the walled patio where we’re sitting.
“Yes, it’s very similar,” he agrees. “Does your daughter, Tish, does she like it here in California?”
“Very much. She has friends. She has a good school that she enjoys. She likes the sun, the beach, when we get to it. Funny, we live right above it and see the beach every day, but we don’t go there all that often. I guess the pool being right there makes it less convenient.”
“Absolutely. I don’t get to the beach much, myself, but I do hang about the pool at the school because it’s right there.” He grins. “Just plain lazy, actually.”
“I thought you’d be too busy,” I say.
“That, too.”
“Finals over?”
“Technically, yes. In actuality, they last for approximately a month, and then there’s the grading process and chasing down those student who are late in taking them. All very standard. All very dull.”
“I don’t know, I think it must be something to teach.”
“Feel free to come audit a class whenever you like. In fact, I’d quite like it if you did,” he says.
“Why?” I ask.
“Oh, just a hunch that you’d enjoy it, really, Siobhan, one doesn’t stumble on non-academics hanging about a University library every day. I find it quite extraordinary that you’ve not been to University, what with your natural curiosity about it.”
“Curiosity?”
“Isn’t it curiosity that brings you to a library in the first place?”
“I just like to read.”
“And you read Psychology texts for pure amusement?” he asks with a deep laugh that I think I should find condescending but comes across as anything but.
“I never thought about it like that. I just like to read, and I like libraries, and Payson was the closest one. I never could afford to buy books, not even too many used ones, but libraries are free, well, most of them are. I guess it’s a case of economics and habit that’s fed my love of libraries. I never thought about it in terms of curiosity.”
“Siobhan, you do make a person wonder,” he says, and there’s that low, deep laugh from the back of his throat again.
“Wonder? Wonder about what?”
“Wonder about what make you tick. You’re extraordinary, do you know that?”
“I don’t think so,” I say, and I feel the heat in my face from blushing.
“Well, I think otherwise. As do others, I’m sure.”
He stares at me, right into me, and I can’t look away. Normally, if someone was laying on compliments this thick I’d be more suspicious than I am at the moment. Maybe it’s the way David says these things, that matter-of fact air about him. Or perhaps it’s his phrasing, or merely his accent, but his words have been touching something in me that’s starved. Starved for a compliment and an ounce of appreciation, with no strings attached, without having to ask for it, without having to have to DO anything to get it other than just be.
David doesn’t know a thing about me other than what I’ve told him, or maybe some little tidbits that Nyle might have passed on, and what that might be I have no idea. But he keeps hitting nerves inside of me, striking chords that make me remember things about myself that I’d forgotten. Like my curiosity. My wanting to ‘know’. I don’t know how I lost that, or if I really did lose it. Maybe it’s something that’s just lain dormant for so long that I didn’t know if it was still there or gone. Or maybe it’s so much a part of myself that I don’t need to acknowledge it; it just is.
I don’t know, but I know that my blushing, my disconcertion, isn’t so much from David’s obvious flirting. I can see how obvious it is and laugh at myself for ever questioning it. But it’s not the flirting that makes me feel as if I’m being put off balance, it’s the probing, the polite probing into me that he’s doing, and that he seems to have his own sense of me already.
His hand on mine breaks me free from my thoughts.
“I’m a complete ass at times, I hope you can forgive me my shortcomings,” he says. “There’s an impetuous streak in me that I never have been able to control, and I’m guilty once again, of pressing too far, aren’t I?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. I shake my head, shake off my mood with the gesture. I smile at him. It’s all right. And he smiles back, still holding my hand in his. It’s a warm hand, slightly rougher than I would have thought; I’ve never held it long enough to feel the hardness of his fingertips, or the softness of his palm. I like his hand. It’s strong.
“Have you had enough to eat? Would you like to walk around the village a bit? I was told that there’s a very good bakery here. The macaroons are supposedly legendary. Do you fancy a sweet?” He squeezes my hand again.
“Yes, I would,” I say. Yes. Fancy. Sweet. As long as you keep holding my hand.
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© 2003 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2003 (*> Baby Bird Productions
