The Hideaway(18)
I smiled—Mother would definitely not approve. I stopped rolling my hair that day. I let it fall around my shoulders, free and unruly. That night, I shoved my bobby pins, pearl necklace, and foam rollers into a side pocket of my suitcase. I went ahead and dropped my wedding ring down there with them. Lord, it was a sad, expensive little collection.
The days were long, with nothing concrete to mark the passage of time. Most mornings William and I sat among the other guests in the dining room, munching on croissants and idly reading the newspaper. No one had real jobs to hurry off to, so the mood in the house was one of utter relaxation. It wasn’t hard to slip into a routine of ease.
As the painters painted, the sculptors sculpted, and the yogis practiced their moves in the grass, I learned the routines of the house and became a part of them. Since I didn’t have a creative endeavor to take up my time like everyone else, I wanted a job to do—something to make me feel useful and productive.
Starla, the woman I’d seen in the kitchen the first night I arrived, asked me to help with food preparations. She just needed an extra hand to help pull meals together, but I took it a step further. I made a grocery list every few days with ingredients for each meal plus extra items for the house—toilet paper, matches, soap. I organized the pantry by food type and size. I scoured the oven and cleaned out the refrigerator. As a wedding gift, Mother had hired a woman to clean our house in Mobile twice a week, so I rarely had anything to clean or straighten at home. The hard work felt good, and I relished my sore muscles and dirty fingernails.
William and I spent most evenings sitting on the back porch, huddled together on the glider. He’d massage my feet and tell me stories of working in orange groves in Florida and selling his tables and benches from a roadside shack in Asheville. My privileged prior life was sedate and sheltered compared to William’s hard-earned wisdom and tales from the road. I soaked him up, every word, laugh, and touch.
He knocked on my door early one morning before the sun was up. He stuck his head in the room when I answered.
“Come with me,” he whispered, holding up a mug of coffee. “Outside, five minutes.”
Curious, I dressed quickly. Following the aroma of coffee outside, I found him waiting in his truck, the passenger door open for me.
“Where are we going? It’s still dark.”
“I know. You’ll see.”
He drove fast down Highway 55. When he turned onto a side street, I grew lost in a maze of dirt roads and creek beds. Finally, we went around a bend and the path opened into a cove overlooking Mobile Bay, isolated except for a blue heron standing on thin legs in the shallow water. It was still dark beneath the cover of trees, but directly in front of us, the sky had exploded in streaks of orange and pink, with violet clouds scattered like pebbles. Just above the waterline, the horizon remained a deep indigo blue. Seagulls gliding in the air provided the only movement other than the quiet waves creeping forward and back along the shore.
We watched the sky change colors without speaking. At some point during the show, we walked to the edge of the water and sat down, a blanket over our shoulders and our toes just touching the water. I leaned my head on his shoulder.
“What do you think?” he asked once the sky was a solid fluorescent orange.
“It’s breathtaking. How did you find this place?”
“It’s mine. I bought this plot of land from a buddy who moved to San Francisco. It had been in his family for generations, but he didn’t plan to come back and said he didn’t need ties here. I’ve done nothing but move around, and I guess ties are what I’m looking for—something to anchor me to a place I can call my own.”
We sat close and still, watching the gulls overhead and the water’s gentle movement. In the distance, the double masts of a shrimp boat interrupted the perfect line of the horizon. He took my hand in his and traced the skin on my palm and wrist, up to the crook of my elbow. The light touch sent chills up my arms and down my back. He laced his fingers between mine and I pressed myself into his side. It had been a little more than a month since we met, but already, I felt connected to him in a way I’d never felt with Robert.
“This thing that’s happening between us—it’s fast.” I was scared to say the words out loud, so I whispered them.
“Too fast?” He turned to face me.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t even know how this sort of thing works. I’ve never been with anyone other than Robert, and we’d known each other for years. Is it possible—rational—for us to feel so much so quickly?”