“You couldn’t do it as a short-term thing,” she said. “I can see that.” There was a silence in which they regarded one another with mutual thoughtfulness, and he knew she was saying goodbye to Hawaii and the carefree little grandchildren with slanty eyes.

“I promised you frangipani,” he said guiltily.

“Ah, Spurgeon,” she said. “How would I have known it when I saw it?” She began to laugh and in a moment he was laughing with her, loving her fiercely.

“Are you afraid?” she said.

“Yeah. Are you?”

“Scared stiff.” She came into his arms for comfort and he closed his eyes and buried his face in the nappy black wool. The two little girls on the sidewalk watched them through the window.

When he had finished kissing her he went to the Ace High and borrowed a broom from the bartender and she swept the floor for him. While he evicted the spider and the moths from the darkroom she wet her handkerchief and shredded it washing the coupling figures from the sidewalk, and then she gave the little girls an art lesson. When he came out the sun had dried the concrete clean and the sidewalk was covered with chalk flowers, a field of lilies.

17: Adam Silverstone

17

Adam Silverstone

When April came it was as if a clock within Gaby had begun to need just a little winding. She panted a bit more as she climbed the hill, she was slightly less ready for love-making, she began taking leaden naps in the afternoon. A year before, she would have gone sleepless with worry and then raced for the doctor. Now she told herself firmly that all that was behind her, she was a hypochondriac no longer.

She believed she had had too much winter, that she was gripped by spring fever. She said nothing to Adam or to the nice young psychiatrist at the Beth Israel who listened to her once a week and was now hearing the interesting story of her parents’ marriage, occasionally asking a question in a sleepy, almost disinterested voice; sometimes a single answer took weeks and hurt unbelievably as it cut through scar tissue she hadn’t even known about. She began to hate her parents less and pity them more. She cut a few classes and waited for the softer weather to change the Public Gardens and the little private courtyards on the hill, to bring green strength to the shrubs and the flowers and to her. Within the apartment the avocado plant began to turn yellow, and she fed it fertilizer and water and worried about it. Making the bed, she bumped her shin and won a bruise like a hickey; it wouldn’t go away even though she kneaded it with cold cream.

“Are you all right?” Adam asked her one morning.

“Do you hear me complaining?”

“No.”

“Of course I’m all right. Are you?”

“I’ve never had it better.”