Besides, Pechter was an unwitting accomplice, he owes him. Her adventure with him, and its legal consequences, provided the entrée he needed. He has never counted on luck, but neither has he spurned its opportunities. The first episode with Pechter had confused her, softened her up, opened her up in a way he never could have anticipated. The sook is ready for her jimmy. The rush is on.
It’s all about redemption, darling, all about redemption: yours and mine.
He always knew this part would be hard, but he also knew that waiting was his own peculiar talent. Now is the time to pull back, and not only because his picture is out there, floating around. Clean-shaven, his hair color altered, he is not that recognizable. But the point is to see if she can do it on her own. She has to negotiate the final part of the maze alone. He is not sure yet how she will do it, which is part of the joy. But he knows she will find her way. He has chosen well. At last.
He pulls his patchwork pillow to his face, inhales deeply, and thinks about Becca. What would she have been without him? Did she ever ask herself the same question? He likes to think she understood in the end, that she recognized her debt to him even as she reneged on it. She was young and, for all her seeming sophistication, not yet ready to accept the gifts he brought her. If only they had had more time. She would have understood how rare his love was, that it was a once-in-a-lifetime gift.
Funny, he always thought the only person capable of understanding his love for Becca was her father: Harry Harrison, mildly alcoholic, bumbling through the island, offending everyone and never knowing it. Becca’s senses were more acute, she was not fooled by the bland smiles of the Notting Islanders. But neither was she cowed. The locals came to respect her, if not accept her. Harrison was the perennial outsider, so outside he didn’t pick up on the mockery beneath the polite faces.
Once, when she was late coming back from her voice lesson, he had been desperate enough to go to her house. Harry Harrison, drink in his hand, met him at the door and insisted he come in for a little chat. He feared the father would demand to know just what he did with his daughter, all those times they went off on the bay. Worse, he feared he would tell him. He loved Becca so much that he yearned to speak of it to someone, someone who would understand.
Of course, you couldn’t tell your girlfriend’s father how it felt to make love to her. But Harry Harrison struck him as someone worldly, someone who had loved and lost. He would know that it wasn’t about the heat, inside and out, that it wasn’t the mere physical sensation. It was Becca. She was extraordinary, otherworldly. Her voice proved that. No earthbound woman could produce those sounds. When he was-with her, joined to her, he sometimes thought he might reach the source of that voice.
He also found himself wishing there was a switch, a way to turn it off, so it belonged only to him. Because he knew, he knew without knowing, that her talent was his enemy. As much as he loved her and worshiped everything that came out of her, the voice would take her away from him one day.
So he had gone to her house, seeking a different kind of kindred spirit.
“You miss her, don’t you?”
“Sir?”
“Call me Harry. You miss Becca, when she’s away for even a day, don’t you? I do too. She’s all the company I have.”
“Well, we had a date, that’s all. Nothing special.” He pretended to a coolness he didn’t feel. If Becca hadn’t missed the boat, they would be heading out now, in his skiff. He would have his hand in hers, and soon she would have him in her. He had never been with anyone before Becca, but he knows this is as good as it’s going to get. He sees the people around him, the grown-ups. The dried-ups, as he thinks of them. Even his parents, as much as he loves them-what’s the point? How could you settle for such day-in, day-out ordinariness if you’ve known the thrill of loving someone like this? He’d rather die than be without Becca. He really would.
But all he said to Mr. Harrison was, “Is that your computer? Is that what you’re writing your book on?”
Almost no one had computers then and this one was huge, a clunky beast that took up much of the dining room table.
“Yes. It’s a pretty good machine, but the power outages on the island seem to have fried something inside. You wouldn’t believe how much work I’ve lost. I have to back up my files practically every five minutes, and it’s still not good enough. I should go back to a typewriter. They were truly portable. I had one typewriter that went with me from Italy to Cuernavaca to Vermont. But I bought the computer when I decided to live here.”
“Why did you go to all those places?”
“Because I wanted to. I’m a writer. And I make just enough money to live where I please and do as I please-as long as I don’t get too extravagant. I wanted to try island life because I remembered visiting Tangier when I was a boy. I didn’t count on Becca suddenly deciding she wanted to be an opera singer. If she gets much more serious, I suppose we’ll have to move again.”
His heart lurched, even as his mind raced through the calculation. He is a junior, seventeen. Becca is a year ahead of him in school. He knew she would go to the mainland at the end of this school year, that he would have to wait a year to follow her. But he counted on their having the next year. He’s not sure he could survive two years without her.
“And you could do that? Just pick up and go anywhere you want to go?”
“As long as it’s reasonable. New York is too expensive. Of course, Becca has her heart set on Juilliard. I keep telling her there are other good music schools. Peabody in Baltimore, for example. She’s got New York fever.”
No, she doesn’t, he wanted to say. She yearned to sing, yes. But she wanted to be with him too. They had spoken of it endlessly. She wouldn’t go to New York, not without him.
“And when I tell her I don’t think New York is going to work out, she says maybe she’ll run away, go to Italy or somewhere else in Europe.” Harry Harrison shook his head, sad and bewildered. “She’s always threatening to leave me if she doesn’t get her way. It’s hard for a man alone to raise a daughter. She seems to think it’s my fault her mother is dead. As if, having divorced her mother, I didn’t care when she died. But I did. And I didn’t want to be a single dad. Taking a four-year-old girl into my life wasn’t what I had planned, either. She says I drink too much. But alcohol is just… the lubricant. A writer has to shed his inhibitions, get naked. I have to enter a place where I don’t care what people think.”
He thought, Well, you’ve ended up in a place where people don’t care about you at all. If you knew what they thought of you, you’d probably never get a word on the page.
“I heard,” he said instead, “that you’re writing a book about us.”
“Who told you that?” Harrison’s voice wasn’t loud, but it was harder, and the sudden change scared him.
“I… I don’t know.” Big-mouth Aggie Winslip. “It’s just something I heard. Becca must have mentioned it.”
Harrison switched back to genial host. “She did? I didn’t even know Becca listened when I spoke about my work. She seems to find it boring. She calls me a cut-rate Michener. Becca’s a terrible snob, if you want to know the truth. Keeps talking about ”high art‘ and “low art.” With high art being whatever she likes-opera-and low art being everything else. I’ll tell you something about Becca.“ He leaned in to share his confidence, his breath sour with gin. ”She’s got the diva temperament, but I don’t think she’s got the acting chops to be a great singer of any range. She’ll have to play parts that are close enough to her own personality to get by. She’ll never sing Mimi, she’ll always be Musetta.“
“I… I’m not sure who they are.” This was true, despite Becca’s endless chatter about what she did and what she sang and what she was learning. When she spoke, it was often as if she were still singing in a foreign language. He was so caught up in joy he couldn’t hear the distinct sounds.