GRACE UNDER PRESSURE
Chapter 9 Day of Atonement
Antonio stared at me, as well he might, and I could tell what was going through his mind. Desire, competing with the honorable impulse to obey my request and stay at a distance. I wasn't making it any easier for him. Even in its usual position my swimsuit showed a lot of cleavage, and at the moment I had to hang onto it desperately to avoid exposing a breast.
"Forgive me," he said eventually. "I--"
"It's not a matter of forgiveness!" I exclaimed. "I was leading you on -- but not on purpose. I don't know what got into me. I wanted it -- but now I know, it was a terrible idea." I had always thought it was silly of Joan to get in bed with Adam after that concert and then panic at the last minute. Now here I was in the same situation, with less excuse.
"Let's separate," I said, trying to shake the dreamy mood and plan things through. "Please, stay here about an hour. Do more swimming if you like. I'll ride down to your house, get a taxi to the train station in Florence."
"That will cost a lot of euro," he said, suddenly practical. "I--"
"NO! I can't accept money from you. I've got enough." With an effort I finally get my strap back where it belonged.
.
I dashed behind the grove of trees where my T-shirt and jeans were. I didn't dare remove my swimsuit, not with a frustrated male a few meters away. I donned my shirt and pants over it, telling myself I could fix the situation later, maybe in the ladies' room of a train station.
As I trudged through the woods I wondered what the hell had gotten into me. I had known Luke for more than two years before I took the plunge. What possessed me to throw myself at Antonio after less than a month? I didn't even know that much about him. What had happened to his parents? Why did he speak English so well? Where did the conscientious streak come from?
And I actually came up with a few explanations, none of them good.
That in spite of days studying, I hadn't shaken the carefree vacation mood. "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas". Reality was what happened in Arcadia. And the lovely mountain lake had been a vacation within a vacation, a second escape from responsibility.
That I had overcompensated for my initial reaction to Antonio. Having mistrusted him at first, I had been determined to be nice to him and accept any invitation
That he was the stereotypical good lover: tall-dark-handsome, strong from farm chores, and that he accepted the fact that I was far from being the stereotypical pretty girl.
That, fundamentally, I had been stupid.
I finally reached the clearing where the horses were grazing. I caught mine and hoisted myself up on its back. I had been riding for a year, but it felt odd, for two reasons. First, I was still wearing my bathing suit under my jeans, which made my butt feel awkward in the saddle. More importantly, I remembered that this wasn't my horse. It belonged to Antonio, whom I was anxious to get out of my life.
Before even starting downhill, I fished my cell phone and my phrase book out of the saddlebags to call a taxi. Get away from here as quick as possible.
And I had a peculiar literary flash, quite different from the Wordsworth poem I had remembered at the lake. Somewhere around this lovely Tuscan landscape, seven hundred years ago, Dante had supposedly found the gateway into hell--
When I got back to my flat in Rome I lay in my bed for almost two hours, staring at the phone. Luke HAD to know what happened, even if it ruined our relationship forever, and I ended up with nobody. My conscience was coming back, in spades, and I knew that I could not live a lie with Luke. Finally, as it darkened outside, I picked up the handset and punched in Luke's cell phone number. I couldn't have a personal conversation like this over something as impersonal as a computer.
"Hello?"
"It's me--"
"Grace.! How glad I am you called. Listen, I'm in Cambridge now, walking around the Harvard campus. Nothing new, but this time I feel that I belong here. The athletic fields are just ahead."
I had forgotten the difference in time zones. "That's nice. I--" I faltered.
"Is something wrong, Grace?"
"Yeah. Could you sit down somewhere private, where nobody can hear your side?"
"OK. There's a bench at the edge of the field, and nobody's practicing now. But this sounds scary." Already he sounded subdued.
"Yeah," I repeated helplessly. "Listen, Luke: there's a guy--"
"Is his name Antonio?" he asked coldly.
"What-- how --?"
"You aren't the only person in Europe who talks to me, Grace. Michel and I correspond too. A lot of it is "geek talk" about science and science fiction, but he did mention that you had a friend named Antonio."
"What did he say about us?"
"Nothing too shocking, in itself. That you and Antonio had gone horseback riding two weeks ago, and that you were going to visit him again today. But I thought it odd that your Emails never mentioned him at all, as if you were trying to cover up something." Luke sounded increasingly cold, like a computer solving a crime through logic.
"But -- Luke -- didn't you care?"
His voice suddenly took on passion. "Of course I cared! I love you, Grace. You don't know how often this month I've been tempted to chuck Harvard altogether, get a plane to Europe and see what you were doing."
"But why didn't you--?"
"Because of what you said to me at the very beginning. WE DON'T OWN EACH OTHER. If you've found a new guy to sleep with, well, that's your life. I just wish you'd waited more than a month after I left." He sounded miserable. All that enthusiasm about Harvard must have been an act, or a desperate attempt at distraction.
Suddenly I realized what hell Luke had been going through. Thinking I was cheating on him, lying about it -- yet keeping his own mouth shut because he respected something I had said to him two years ago. No wonder his own Emails had been so dull, all the trivia about selling my horse. He was keeping his real feelings hidden from me, out of respect for me. Under that geeky exterior was a great soul.
"It wasn't like that, Luke! I was lonely, Antonio was friendly. It was all Platonic until today. Then something happened, we were tempted, but I backed off when I remembered you. Then I called you because -- well, you don't own me and I don't own you. But we both belong to something, a bond -- please don't leave me, Luke! I love you." If by some miracle somebody had been watching me for the past three years, they might not recognize me now, pleading desperately on the phone. But I had never been more in earnest.
A long silence, during which I was afraid I had lost him. When he spoke he sounded oddly calm, and the subject was surprising. "I understand temptation. Last winter, there was a girl -- I'm not naming her because I don't want to get her in trouble. We got as far as a hug. Then we broke off because, as you put it, we each of us had a bond. I never had the nerve to tell you. You had the honesty to tell me in the end, and I respect that.."
Glynis, it had to be Glynis. Good Lord, last winter she was already married!. But I was in no position to judge Luke. "I don't care, Luke. The bond still held and that's the important thing."
"Yes. Let's put all this behind us, Grace. Two thousand miles apart, months on end, there are bound to be problems. I can forgive lapses if you can."
"I can't do just that. I have an idea. I'm going to write up everything that happened, and send it to you. Let you be the judge. Make up for all those stupid Emails where I never said anything."
"Well, if you like. But it won't change anything. I love you, Grace."
"Love you."
I hung up and meditated for almost an hour, trying to put last month's foolishness in some sort of perspective. Then I sat at my computer and opened an editor.
Amazing how quickly things can become prosaic. I never would have said so out loud -- it would completely ruin my image as Cynic Girl -- but Italy during the first two weeks had seemed like a wonderland--
THE END.
(Author's Note: the incident Luke is confessing to happened in an earlier story, LUKE LOOKS FOR ANSWERS)
(Author's Note: The Day of Atonement is the usual English name for Yom Kippur, the Jewish holy day on which a worshipper acknowledges his or her sins and prays for forgiveness)
(Author's Note: Dante was a native of Florence. At the beginning of the Divine Comedy he finds the Gateway to Hell with the famous inscription "All hope abandon, ye who enter here." Although of course his story is fictitious, Grace finds it symbolic that the Gateway might be in the neighborhood.
