Secrets of the Apple Page 33

  My fingers tingled with nervous energy as I went through my supplies, extracting my sketchbook, charcoal and gum eraser before going back to the bed and plumping the pillows into an upright position.

  I wanted to draw my husband as I had first seen him, handsome, educated, charming, positively glowing with ambition. I hesitated at the initial stroke, wanting it to be good, if only to prove my value. The charcoal slipped on the first pass and I reached for my eraser, but stopped myself, almost hearing my teachers in my ear, “Loosen up,” “Don’t let it get too precious,” “Look at the edges.” I let the slip stand and moved on, little by little, letting go of my natural impulse for perfection, my hand moving quick and fearless as the lines thinned and thickened, shadows darkening and lightening as I rubbed with my fingers and eraser. Without thinking I put my hand on the coverlet, leaving a nasty black smear on the creamy fabric. In irritation I kicked the coverlet to the end of the bed and kept on drawing.

  When the portrait was finished I examined it under the bedside lamp. There it was, the hope I first saw in my husband’s eyes, the promise of a bright future. It was beautiful, perfect, the best work I had ever done. I could put it in a frame and send it to his mother, enchanting her on Christmas morning.

  My fingers still itched. Hastily, I pulled the sheet from my sketchbook and let it float to the floor where my husband landed face up, looking at me with so much love in his face. I began to draw him again, smaller this time, the same expression, the same desire. But this time he clung desperately to his possessions, arms spread wide to protect them as the smudgy, indistinct figure of his wife stood in the shadows off to the side, a tiny point of light on her left ring finger picked out with the twisted point of my gum eraser. This time I recognized the drawing as art, something I could sell in a gallery. Tonight my fingers were magic. Again I tore off the sheet and let it float to the floor, overlapping the first.

  I drew our house with the rosebushes just before summer’s first bloom, then dropped it to the floor. I drew three children playing in the sprinklers, curly hair and vague features. I copied the room where I sat, focusing on the interplay between light and shadow. Then I thought about Virginia Woolf who said that to write a woman needed a room of her own. So I designed one for myself, different from the tailored navy and gray room I’d decorated to share with my husband, though he preferred to sleep in the den. I drew a big four poster bed and comfy chairs with good reading light, a bookcase with leaded glass doors and a big roaring fireplace. In my mind I could see the colors clearly: dark, rich mahogany for earth, green walls for growth, cream for breath. I held up my drawing. The room looked so free and fertile, a place where I could breathe, but it didn’t look finished. I put the sketchbook back on my lap and added my treasured kimono on the wall opposite the bed. Satisfied, I ripped the drawing from the pad and let it slip among the others.

  I put my charcoal back in its case and pulled out a brush and a bottle of black ink, special leak-proof packaging, perfect for travel. Brush and ink were a singular pleasure, a sense of risk, the dangerous drippiness that could ruin everything at the last moment. I painted rapidly, curvy free-flowing lines, mostly fashion poses in fanciful dresses, the faces blank except for large, audacious lips. I couldn’t let these slip to the floor, but carefully laid them flat on every hard surface where they could dry without jeopardizing the carpet.

  Dawn began to lighten the sky and I closed my sketchbook, corking the ink and putting my brush in the glass of water my grandmother had left beside my bed. I went around the room gathering my drawings and laid them neatly side by side in three rows before picking out the best and lining them up together. These were good, I knew it. I could hang them on the walls of my living room and when colleagues came over, my husband could say, “My wife’s an artist moonlighting as a receptionist until her career takes off.” When he tired of that, I could commission a private recording of my voice he could play as background for dinner parties: “My wife’s a singer moonlighting as a receptionist.” Maybe in a year or two we would own a piano.

  I sat cross-legged on the floor, leaning against the end of the bed as I studied my drawings for long moments, considering them carefully and thinking of all the adults who had pulled my pigtails and chucked my chin, seeing some unknown value before I’d ever had the chance to accomplish a thing.

  Eventually I gathered the drawings into the order they’d been produced and padded out to the family room, my nightgown badly streaked with charcoal and ink. Even the housekeeper was still in bed and the house was silent and chilly. I put two split logs in the fireplace, building a teepee with scraps of kindling and a wad of newspaper. The newspaper lit with the first match and I watched as the flame licked along the edges, traveled to the middle, and began to die down without igniting the kindling. Slowly I lifted the first drawing from the pile, crumpled it without looking and stuffed it next to the newspaper. The flame flared up hungry for the easy kill. I crumpled a second drawing, then a third.

  Halfway through the pile Grandma came in, shrugging on her robe and sitting in an easy chair near the fireplace. “I haven’t seen you up this early of a mornin’ since you were a little bit and sneakin’ candy.” Her accent was always less polished before her morning Postum; she sounded more like her mother, who grew up almost wild in the mountains before she came to Charleston and married a banker.

  Grandma watched me feed another drawing to the fire. I could see her weighing a decision, gauging the moment. Finally she said, “Speak up honey, this is the time. You weren’t ready last night, but you are now.”

  “My husband wants a divorce.”

  “Do you?” Grandma’s clear green eyes held me steadily.

  The question hung in the air as the fire ate through a mermaid evening gown.

  “Things can’t stay as they are,” I said without looking up. “That’s no good for anyone.”

  “Do you want your freedom?” she asked, making no move to stop the destruction.

  “I already have my freedom; I think I always did,” I said, rubbing the heel of my hand briefly over my heart, as though scratching an itch. “I got charcoal on that bedspread.”

  “My mother smeared blood on it when she gave birth to me. It’s hardy.”

  Neither of us spoke as the last drawing went into the fire. The biggest log had already caught, popping and crackling, warming the room.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Once, in passing, Kate had told Ryoki the single piece of advice her father had given her over hot fudge sundaes the day before her marriage, “Judge yourself first, always judge yourself first.” At the time Ryoki had slid over the comment, making some fortune cookie joke. Now, reading between the lines, he guessed her husband had checked out of the marriage early, turned progressively meaner, too cowardly to leave, despising his wife for not leaving him. He couldn’t help but wonder whether Kate’s father would have had the courage to give such a gift had he known what was coming. Ryoki himself would have put a big bow around a sword and a shield, and supplied plenty of steel armor to wear under her wedding dress. But Kate had apparently taken her father’s advice, never relinquishing her sense of personal responsibility.

  Lucky Kate, less than two years divorced and already she’s recording events with the eye of a scientist hoping to avoid future disaster, performing a marital autopsy, a clinical study of the mysterious symbiosis between true love and simple, hard-bitten commitment.

  Ryoki slowly slid the pages back into place and shut the binder. Leaning his head on his hand, he wove his fingers into his hair, inky black and curly. Genetic possibilities. So much to take in.

  The doorknob rattled and he heard Kate’s voice as she entered the cottage, “That’s strange. I’m sure I locked that door. The maids are so careless.”

  The door clicked shut and Ryoki was about to get up and show himself when Kate spoke again, her voice edged with false cheer. “So, this is my place. What do you think? I told you I have a separate house.”

&nbs
p; “It’s nice. He certainly spared no expense,” Montgomery said flatly.

  Ryoki froze, his eyes strafing left to right. Thinking it unwise on all fronts to let Montgomery catch him exiting Kate’s bedroom, he determined to escape through the bathroom’s french doors and scale the garden wall. He had placed his feet and hands to stealthily lever himself out of the chair, when he remembered those infernal garden wind chimes, so sweet in theory, but in reality loud enough to call forth the dead. It was the reason Kate seldom opened those doors. He looked back at the bedroom door—halfway open, shielding him from view. Might be best to keep silent and wait for the opportune moment. Worse case, Montgomery could breech the keep and find him feigning sleep with the reading lamp burning and the binder open in his lap. Admittedly not a great solution, but Montgomery had no business in Kate’s bedroom anyway. He settled back, an embarrassed and reluctant eavesdropper, hoping with all his heart they did not begin to kiss.

  Kate spoke again, her tension breaking through. “So are you going to tell me what upset you, or are we going to keep pretending everything’s great and dinner with that woman was fun?”

  “‘That woman’ is my boss,” Montgomery said, openly irritated. “I don’t know why you had to be so cold to her.”

  “I just can’t get past that forked tongue,” Kate said.

  “Oh really? Are you going to keep her from getting the Tanaka account because you don’t like her? I only ask because when I heard Jackson Browning had been replaced, I couldn’t help remembering how much you disliked him.”

  “I’m only an assistant, for crying out loud,” she said with an exasperated groan.

  “You’ve certainly got Tanaka’s ear, or at least his hands.”

  Kate answered slowly as though hanging onto a perilous calm. “So this is about last night. We were dancing, I’ve already told you that three times. What more can I say?”

  Silence, a heavy pause.

  “What are you wearing, Kate?” Montgomery asked coolly.

  “What? A pantsuit.”

  “Do you remember what Amanda said about your pantsuit?”

  “She said it was nice.”

  “She said it was nice you dress like an executive.”

  Kate remained silent.

  “She said Tanaka must pay very well if you can afford to dress like that. Then it occurred to me, you dress a lot better than you did in school. In fact, everything I’ve seen you wear since you came here looks way above your pay scale.”

  Ryoki smirked. Took Monty ages to put that together, did it?

  “You have no idea how much I make.”

  “Who buys your clothes, Kate?”

  Kate answered so quietly that Ryoki could barely hear. “Before we came, Ryoki asked me to dress in a specific way to fit the image he needed to project. I wasn’t willing to spend that kind of money on a temp job, so, as part of the deal, he sent me to a corporate shopper who outfitted me. It was a perk.”

  Ryoki appreciated her neutral spin, but Montgomery wasn’t buying it.

  “Doesn’t that seem like a big, unnecessary expense? I mean, in light of how much he touches you, doesn’t that seem suspicious? You’re a great observer, Kate. Look at where you live. Look at your lifestyle. You can’t afford this, even in Brazil, and by the way, where’s the kitchen in this place? Do you even eat in here? Or do you share your meals with him?”

  “Are you actually jealous of my boss?”

  “Jealous? Kate, he’s every boyfriend’s nightmare. The only thing that keeps me from wringing his neck is that I don’t think you’re sleeping with him.” Montgomery huffed with irritation, adding under his breath, “I sure hope not, because you won’t even sleep with me.”

  “Because I’m liberated from AIDS, STDs and single motherhood,” Kate said with a joking lilt to her voice, as though trying to diffuse the tension. Montgomery only grunted.

  “Kate, it’s this whole—can’t you see, you’re not just his assistant, you’re more like his de-pend-ent.” He elongated the word, injecting it with venom.

  “Funny, you make it sound like ‘mistress,’” she said quietly.

  “Well, we went through his house to get out here.”

  “Because that’s by far the shortest—”

  “Last night all he had to do was touch your arm to keep you from walking away. Don’t think I don’t notice things like that.”

  “I think you’ve misunder—”

  “A touch, that’s all. Most dogs aren’t that well trained. It’s like he’s put you in a cage that he can lock whenever he feels like it.”

  Ryoki put his hand on the lump of keys in his pocket, knowing Kate carried an identical set in her purse.

  “I think you’re blowing this all out of proportion,” she said.

  “Isn’t that essentially what your husband did after you got married, locked you in? Isn’t he the reason you left school and wasted two years working dead-end jobs, so his precious career wouldn’t be interrupted?”

  “Would you want to date a person who refused to invest in her marriage?” she asked, but Montgomery was on a roll and stormed on as if he hadn’t heard her.

  “I felt bad you had to go through that, but now I see the cycle starting all over again.”

  “Remember, my job here ends in a couple of months. So this all seems a little unnecessary,” she pointed out reasonably.

  Ryoki heard a heavy thump as Montgomery dropped onto the sofa, followed by a lighter, primmer sound as Kate sat as well. He wished he could see how close.

  “Why did you follow him to Brazil, Kate?” he asked her gently. “I’d have asked you, if I thought you’d come.”

  “Ryoki offered me an interesting opportunity. I’ve learned a lot, and it’s been very good for my resumé. Isn’t that why you’re in South America, to beef up your resumé? And by the way, aren’t you glad I came?”

  “And what happened to your writing? You could have used this time to get published or start your doctorate. You could have been making a name for yourself in your own field. Instead you’re down here playing house. You even picked up a kid like a stray dog.”

  “Lucas spends most of his time with the staff. Sometimes I don’t even get home from work until after he’s in bed.”

  “Kate, you need to pull away from Tanaka. You could move in with me. I mean, I have an extra bedroom if that’d make you feel more comfortable.”

  “Are you objecting to my job or my boss?”

  “Come on Kate, it’s obvious he’s become more than a day job to you.”

  “He is my job. He brought me here to help him personally.”

  “This is not a good job for you, honey. You have a tendency to give too much and he’ll—” There was a pause and Ryoki could envision Kate’s quizzical expression. “It’s like the night we had that argument about Lucas. Do you remember?”

  “We agreed to disagree, why bring it up now?” Her voice sounded scratched, wearied by the subject.

  “You were already so busy, and I warned you that a kid would absorb all you had to give and he’d still demand more. If you keep giving and giving, one day there will be nothing left, like some kind of dried-up breeder.”

  “I find that term incredibly offensive. Don’t use it again,” Kate said, her words clipped and clear. Montgomery was talking himself straight into a noose and Ryoki felt the empathy of a man who has been there himself. “Besides,” she added, “my contribution to Lucas’s life is largely sentimental, and Ryoki is the sugar daddy. It’s Cecelia who’s really taken on the job of mother.”

  “You spend plenty of evenings with him, reading stories, teaching him the piano. It’s really sweet in theory, but you already work such long hours, I worry you’re just spreading yourself too thin,” Montgomery said, dripping honey into his voice, trying to sneak back across the line without backing off his argument. “Is it a guilt thing? Your mother died early, so you’re romanticizing her life and following in her footsteps. I can’t imagine that’s what she’d really
want for you.”

  There was a short silence and Kate shifted on the couch. “This isn’t about Lucas or Ryoki, it’s about us,” she said. “I’m worried we’re at cross purposes. Like we both want to do the right thing, but we’re having trouble striking a balance.” Her tone was grainy with sugar, but Ryoki recognized the peculiar quiet strain in her voice, a well-bred aggravation that he’d last heard when she talked to Browning.

  “You know, sometimes grand ideals like Noble Sacrifice can cloud simple realities,” Montgomery said, equally sweet.

  There was a long silence before Kate started to speak, slowly, choosing her words.

  “I get what you’re saying. I truly do, because of my mom. She wasn’t naturally motherly, but she was smart and educated and she valued order and accomplishment. Instead she had a bunch of screaming, ungrateful little kids who followed her around, messing up everything she did. Sometimes she was so frustrated I actually remember thinking ‘I don’t want to end up like her.’ I worried about it for years because I wanted a happy family, but I also wanted to go out in the world and do things. I didn’t want to spend my life frustrated.

  “Then came the day that her lower back trouble turned out to be cancer, already spread to the lymph nodes. Nothing they could do. After all that frustration, she turned to my dad first thing there in the doctor’s office and said, ‘I’m so glad I didn’t work.’ Three weeks later her heart stopped and she was dead.” Kate’s voice caught and she cleared her throat, swallowing back a bubble of tell-tale emotion. There was an awkward pause and Ryoki heard movement, as though Montgomery had reached for her.

  “I’m really sorry about your mother,” he said with genuine sympathy. “These things aren’t fair, but you need to be careful about romanticizing her death. My grandmother’s life was cut short too. She took a whole bottle of pills a year after her last child moved out. Left a note saying she’d ‘never been anything but a breeder’—those were her words—and now it was too late to be anything else.” Montgomery paused and continued in still kinder tones, “She’d been so stunted by her life, she actually believed there was nothing else out there for her. That’s what I find offensive. I love you too much to stand by and let that happen to you.”