The Galisteo Escarpment. Douglas Atwill
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was virtually empty all day, with only a short incursion by a group of boys cascading over the end rocks into the still waters, splashing, yelling, and laughing.
Carrie was a strong swimmer and went far out on her own, while Neil and Sam watched from their beach towels. She turned and waved back several times as she swam. Neil looked at Sam and asked, “Could you live a life here? Days and nights on Mare Nostrum? I think I could be very happy here.”
“I don’t think I could. I’m the city boy who understands subways and skyscrapers. New York. High-end galleries. Art museums. The world of art and artists that we’ve always talked about.”
“But what about in our off-time? Summers and holidays?”
“Maybe, but for a while there won’t be much off-time and no holidays. I grant you, it should appeal to me more since I’m Italian, and they all like the Mediterranean, but somehow it doesn’t. Maybe I’m not really Italian, a spawn from my mother’s Polish lover.”
“Sam, I want you in my life always.”
Sam turned and looked at Neil, aware that Neil’s talk had gone to deeper waters.
“Me, too. Why won’t I be there? You’re just as interested in New York as I am, maybe more so. What’s this suddenly about the Mediterranean?”
Neil didn’t respond directly, but said, “I can see you getting married, having a family. The famous artist with an adoring wife, flotilla of kids, news cameras flashing at the household artistic, the envy of every East Coast male. There wouldn’t be a place for me.”
“That is not even in the near future, much more like years down the line. We have the New York world of art to conquer, bud. Besides, even though you’re not big with the ladies, you could find a wife and have kids, too.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen, Sam.”
“Maybe so.” He rolled over and put his hand on Neil’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, you’ll always be mine, Neil.” Sam knew what Neil wanted to hear, however faint the chances were.
The week inched along through days of water and sun, dinners on the harbor front and occasional meals at home in the garden of salad and fish in Nicole’s cottage. Neil started to paint a few hours each day, setting up his easel on the rocks above their beach. Sam and Carrie fell into the complete torpor of summer heat with long naps in the afternoon, late awakenings in the morning. If Neil got up and out early, the two others gave into the languor of the ancient coast.
4
Thirty-Two Thousand
In the rocks above the beach, if there were still alive a few of the provincial Roman gods, the ones who could grant a cloudless day and still waters for a shallow promise and a handful of wildflowers, they made themselves known that week. Each day broke with a golden peach light and progressed unsullied, cloudless and perfect until the sun, pomegranate red, dipped back into night behind the pines and villas on the far promontory. The exquisite torpor of a Mediterranean summer had trapped them entirely.
It was four in the afternoon in the middle of their second week at Cabasson. The days on the beach and evenings at the harbor cafes were too full for them, too touching on perfection to consider even so much as short venture along the coast to other beaches, other harbor villages. The two men became deeply tanned, but Carrie, despite her love of swimming, stayed out of the sun mostly, in the shade of an umbrella next her supine men.
Carrie noticed how deeply tactile Sam was. He made a point in conversation with Carrie by stroking her arm or pulling his knees against her side. She watched as he lay in the sun with arm over Neil’s chest or back. His favorite position was face-down on the towel, his head in an opposite direction from the others with one hand on Neil’s right foot and the other on Carrie’s left foot. If she moved ever so slightly, Sam would grip tighter. Did he think they would disappear from his life if he did not hold on and hold on tightly?
The warm feel of Neil’s hand on her shoulder or the brush of his cheek against her face was what she really wanted, but Neil was not as quick to touch. She thought how amused the Gods must be with the three of them, how omnipresent the Olympians seemed to be here in their home waters. She loved Neil, Neil loved Sam and Sam loved her. It was summer dance only the Old Ones could have arranged, gleeful at the sharp corners of the triangle, corners that could smart when brushed against.
The silence was broken by the sound of a car coming to a stop on the gravel above the bluff. An older woman in a red blouse and white slacks, and large-brimmed straw hat of matching red, got out of the car and started uneasily down the uneven steps. Carrie wondered if the woman would fall off the steps, but she made it, racing down the last steps to the bottom with arms outstretched for balance. She walked directly towards them. Neil and Sam were asleep as she approached.
“May I share your beach umbrella?” she whispered to Carrie.
“Yes, of course.”
The woman sat down gracefully in the umbrella’s shade and took off the large hat. Her hair was a well-tended blonde, once natural but now with salon assistance, pulled back into a sizeable chignon. Not a single golden strand escaped this fashionable stricture. In the red straw bag that matched her hat, she found a cigarette, lit it and inserted it expertly into a tortoise-shell holder.
“I’m Margaret, Neil’s mother.”
Carrie said, “What a surprise. How did you find us?”
“The young girl at the café thought you would be down here, after I gave her a large tip. Also, your friend Nicole provided me with excellent directions out of Gordes. I like her, by the way. A stylish, smart woman.”
“Yes, of course.”
“My son has been avoiding me, so I’ve rather taken matters in hand, come over to France to settle things. A woman needs the mind of a spy, especially a mother.”
“I’d better wake him.”
Neil, hearing their conversation, awoke on his own, turned over slowly and when he saw his mother, jolted upright.
“Margaret, good god.” He stood up, brushed the sand off his chest and leaned down to kiss her on the offered cheek.
“The strength of mother-love has no bounds.” She drew a long puff on her cigarette.
“I’m sorry, Margaret. Events pressed in, and we got too busy to answer your call. I was going to telephone when we got back to Gordes.” But he knew her sudden appearance was not just about his avoidance of returned telephone calls. Something else loomed.
“It couldn’t wait that long, my dear.”
“So, what is it?”
“Now that I’ve found you, I’m going to make you wait until tonight. Nicole told me that you made a joke of my urgency, as if ‘trés important’ had no meaning. Mother doesn’t like being made fun of. I assume that is Sam sleeping over there and you must be Carrie.” Carrie nodded.
Neil asked, “Is it about Dad? Is he okay?”
“No, he’s fine. I’ll buy dinner for the three of you at my hotel tonight, the Eden Roc down the coast. Come at eight.” She got up and walked slowly back up to the car. With a screech of gravel, she was off down the road.
Carrie looked at Neil expectantly. “What do you think has happened?”
“Margaret has a keen sense of the dramatic. It could be anything, even something insignificant, but I have a feeling it’s something significant.”
The calm pattern of their day had been shattered. Much as they hoped to mend it, after a desultory swim they gave in and went to the cottage to get ready for the dinner at Eden Roc.
The hotel was ten miles to the east on a long promontory, a faux Moroccan village of white-washed domes, cottages, palm trees and a staff with curled-toe shoes. Pulling into the long entrance drive, they allowed