Chapter Eight

Eleanor hung her beach towel on a hook near the slate-tiled hot tub and slipped into the water. The sun had set a little while earlier, and the sky to the east above the sliver of lagoon visible from the hillside still bore traces of pink against the dark gray clouds that hung low over the island. Sighing, she sat down on the smooth stone ledge that lined the tub’s interior and leaned her head against a conveniently placed pillow. In the dying light, she could just make out the pale strip of sand at the bottom of the hill seeming to undulate as the ocean rose and fell with a rhythmic pounding she could hear from where she sat immersed in the gently humming hot tub, steam rising about her.

This was her third night on Kauai, and already she’d fallen in love with Mele Honu’ala, Tessa’s island getaway. The name meant “Song of the Sea Turtle,” according to her host, and though Eleanor had yet to encounter a sea turtle, which like the humpbacks were “in danger” in Laya’s terminology, she could easily imagine the giant gentle creatures skimming through the clear waters off the coast. The Flanagans’ slice of Kauai was jasmine-scented heaven. She wasn’t sure why anyone would ever want to leave.

Tessa’s estate consisted of four buildings—a cottage with attached garage near the gate where Robert lived, a studio off the garden, the main house and a yurt. Except for Robert’s cottage, the buildings occupied the hillside above a private, crescent-shaped lagoon. The studio, which Tessa used as an office, was the first building off the driveway, and resembled a Japanese single-story pagoda with exposed wooden beams and a tiled roof.

The two-story main house also had Asian accents. With only three rooms downstairs (kitchen, dining room and living room) and three bedrooms upstairs, it boasted just half the square footage of Tessa’s Hollywood home. A local artist had finished the exterior with tasteful ceramic tiles of native plants interspersed with tan, dark gray and maroon slate stonework, while the wood-frame living room walls had been built on sliders and could be rolled away so that the house opened to the hillside and a view of the lagoon on one side, the back garden with terraced rock walls and colorful native plants on the other. Years before, the previous owner had rented out the house as a wedding site. Sometimes, Tessa said, wedding planners still called to see if she might be interested in renting the space out. She wasn’t. She prized her privacy too much to open her house to the public.

The hot tub where Eleanor was currently relaxing was accessible from the yurt’s deck. It wasn’t your average yurt, of course, but rather a deluxe brown and green canvas structure with separate partitions inside for changing rooms that flanked a living space, and a wide platform deck outside. Tessa kept all of her beach and other outdoor gear here, even though the actual beach was a hike down the long hillside. The previous day, Eleanor and Laya had spent the afternoon on the private beach, building castles and animals in the sand and dozing in the sun, while Tessa “took care of a few things” from her studio office. Despite the 45 SPF sunscreen Eleanor applied liberally all over her body, she still returned to the house more freckled than she wanted. Meanwhile Laya, who was half-Filipino (Tessa had mentioned that she’d selected a sperm donor who, like her, was both Filipino and Irish), toasted a light brown beneath her sunscreen.

Today had been more active with a visit to the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge they’d seen from the helicopter along with a tour of the nearby Na Aina Kai Botanical Gardens. Again Tessa had spent the afternoon in her studio office, leaving Eleanor to explore the local sights with Laya. After admiring the picturesque white lighthouse and the cliffs at Kilauea Point, they drove the short distance to the botanical gardens, where Judy, a friendly middle-aged woman, led them on a prearranged private tour of the grounds. The tour started in the gardens and included a stop at a waterfall-fed lagoon where Eleanor and Laya fed by hand the iridescent Koi fish who lived there, followed by an hour of play in the Under the Rainbow Children’s Garden.

After a box lunch and some cooling-off time in the wading pool, Judy led them away from the gardens toward the rocky Kaluakai Beach. As they crossed the Makai Meadow on the way down to the beach, Judy pointed out several Laysan albatross chicks, identifiable by their darker feathers. In the next month, she told them, the chicks would finish fledging and join their parents at sea, where they would remain for three to five years until they were ready to take a mate. Laysan albatrosses mated for life, and returned to land from November to July each year to hatch and fledge their young. The rest of the time they were at sea.

Eleanor was still pondering the notion of seabirds who mated for life when Judy clapped her hands and pointed to the path behind them—not twenty feet away, a wild boar was crossing from one set of trees to another, followed closely by several of her young. At Laya’s urging, Eleanor snapped a few quick shots with Tessa’s digital camera.

Later, at dinner, Laya had used the digital pictures to frame her narrative as she told Tessa about their day. Eleanor found herself once again admiring the girl’s intelligence. Not many six-year-olds would think to tell a story in chronological order, let alone devise a system of keeping the narrative on track. Or mostly on track.

“I’m sorry I missed it,” Tessa had said when Laya finished relating the events of the day.

Eleanor heard the genuine regret in her voice. “Did you get your work done?” she asked.

“I think so.” Tessa glanced at her daughter obediently finishing the milk in her plastic cup. “But even if I didn’t, it can wait. We’re on vacation, right, Mahal?”

“Right, Mom.”

“From now on, no more work,” Tessa declared.

“Really?” Laya’s eyes were wide. “You promise?”

“Yes,” her mother said. “I promise.”

Now, as Eleanor luxuriated in the hot water that eased the aches from her joints (the bed in the guest bedroom was a bit firmer than she was used to), she hoped Tessa would keep her word. For Laya’s sake.

“Mind if I join you?”

She started at the now-familiar voice. Tessa was walking along the lamp-lit stone pathway that led from the main house, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, a short robe tied loosely at her waist. Eleanor gulped. “Of course not,” she said, and started to rise. “I can give you some privacy, if you’d like.”

“Don’t go,” Tessa said as she pulled a baby monitor (tuned, no doubt, to Laya’s room) from her robe and set it on a nearby patio table. “Unless you’d rather go inside.”

“No, I just thought you might want some time to yourself.”

“I’ve had plenty of that lately,” Tessa said, pausing to hang up her towel and shed her robe. “Anyway, what’s the point of paradise if you don’t have anyone to share it with?” She turned, smiling down at Eleanor from the deck.

Afterward, Eleanor hoped her sudden intake of breath hadn’t been audible. Over the past couple of weeks, she’d become accustomed to Tessa in tailored business suits, casual outfits, even in pajamas on a few occasions. But unclothed, her lovely breasts only just restrained by a skimpy black bikini top, a tiny triangle of cloth clinging to the apex of her thighs, Tessa was stunning. Her light brown skin was supple and smooth, her body curvy in all the right places. Eleanor’s girlfriends had been attractive, certainly, but none of them could compare to the woman descending into the hot tub before her. And then Tessa was dropping down next to her on the stone seat, closing her eyes as the water rose to her chest. The sigh she gave was definitely audible.

Eleanor forced her gaze away and looked out over the lagoon. In the ten minutes since she’d arrived, the sky had darkened even more so that now she could pick out a few stars that had begun to appear overhead, including the easily recognizable Big Dipper. Maybe if she concentrated on constellations, she would stop drooling over the gorgeous woman whose silken thigh, she was pretty sure, had just brushed against hers. Then again, even the sight of the Milky Way stretching away above her into the depths of space couldn’t have taken away from the fact that she was sitting in a hot tub on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean with a woman she hadn’t been able to get out of her mind since the moment Tessa had walked into her classroom.

She swallowed hard again. “Is she asleep?” When she left the house, Tessa had been upstairs reading Laya her bedtime story.

“Sound asleep. Just to warn you, I turned the alarm on before I came out.”

Sometimes Tessa seemed overly obsessed with security, but Eleanor didn’t doubt she had her reasons. “What story did she ask for tonight?”

“She wanted me to make one up.”

“Let me guess—something with a talking animal?” Laya, Eleanor had learned in the past month, highly prized homespun stories that featured anthropomorphized protagonists. Usually mammals.

Tessa inclined her head. “In honor of your wildlife experiences today, a wild boar.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t mention their omnivorous diet. Probably wouldn’t want to paint a picture of Mama Boar chomping on a baby rabbit right before bedtime, would you?”

Tessa laughed, her eyes dark, the light from the yurt a halo behind her head. “You didn’t tell your students the truth about polar bears in the global warming unit, did you?”

“What, that they eat penguins and baby seals? No, that didn’t come up.” She shifted on the stone bench, stretching her legs out in front of her. “Ideology targeting the kindergarten set tends to be uniformly nonviolent. Not to mention, vegetarian-positive.”

“I know. Have you ever noticed that films for kids are usually pro-environment and anti-business?” Tessa asked.

“Anti-hunting, too. I have a theory that children’s movies are actually liberal propaganda. Like environmentalists realized, hey, if we get the next generation when they’re young and vulnerable, then there won’t be as much of a battle later about saving wetlands or protecting owls. Or, say, abolishing the meat industry.”

Tessa was staring at her, and Eleanor wondered if she’d crossed some invisible Hollywood insider-outsider boundary. Did she not get to say critical things about movies? This idea didn’t thrill her. On the other hand, Tessa was currently within arm’s reach nearly naked, and ideals were such a small thing to sacrifice.

“I didn’t mean that in a negative way,” she added. “I’m all for instilling an environmental ethic in the next generation.”

“That’s not it.” Tessa paused. “It’s just, I said almost the exact same thing in an interview with Entertainment magazine a few years ago. Pixar and DreamWorks were so pissed that Michael, my agent, convinced me I had to work on their next project as a show of good faith.”

“Really? Maybe I should start reading Entertainment. You know, for the articles.”

“Ha, ha.” Tessa shook her head, but she was smiling at Eleanor through the steam rising between them.

Eleanor sat back in the tub, telling herself it was just the hot water making her feel flushed. Right. She looked away from Tessa’s eyes, out at the black sky now playing host to several dozen stars. Maybe they would see the Milky Way tonight, after all.

“Nice, isn’t it?” Tessa asked.

“I can’t imagine living in L.A. knowing this is here waiting for you.”

“Whenever I’m here I wonder how I’ll ever be able to leave. But this is where we come for a vacation. It isn’t real life.”

“I guess not.”

Eleanor glanced at Tessa. Was this real? The actress was watching her through half-lidded eyes with a look that Eleanor felt resonate in her own body. Then Tessa turned her head away. Eleanor blinked. She must have imagined the look. There was no way that Tessa Flanagan could be attracted to her, a skinny, freckly nobody from Vermont who had been mistaken for a teenage boy more than once during her radical days at Smith when she buzzed her hair and tromped around in men’s boots. Tessa Flanagan dated fellow celebrities. Male celebrities.

Too bad—all Eleanor wanted to do right now was slide between Tessa’s parted legs, push her back against the side of the tub, and meld their lips in a long kiss. What would their bodies feel like pressed together in the warm water, separated only by a few strips of thin material? She imagined running her hand along the string bikini bottom, cupping Tessa’s hip and the curve of her ass, releasing her breasts from the swimsuit top. Her breath quickened, and she felt heat rising in her chest. Not to mention certain other places.

Wow, she thought. Maybe now would be a good time to get out of the hot tub.

Shivering slightly, she rose and made her way across the hot tub, conscious of her body exposed in the lamplight as she climbed the steps to the deck. Her new swimsuit was a two-piece but covered her body almost as thoroughly as her favorite racing suit. Sasha had insisted she replace her old one-piece. She’d also insisted that Eleanor splurge some of her newfound cash on a professional bikini wax before the trip. As she reached for her towel, she was glad she’d listened to her roommate.

“Where are you going?” Tessa asked.

“It was getting a little hot in there.”

“Ah.” Tessa lifted an eyebrow, a gesture Eleanor had watched her make on the big screen more than once, usually in a romantic comedy when Tessa’s character was trying to appear wry and vulnerable at the same time.

For a moment, she tried to figure out what her own role was as she wrapped the beach towel around her waist. Then she remembered that this wasn’t a movie, and Tessa was a real person, just like her. Well, maybe not just like her.

“I think I’ll head in,” she said, staring down at the deck.

There was a moment of silence. Then Tessa said, “Okay. Goodnight, Eleanor.”

“Goodnight.”

Back in her room a little while later, she lay in bed in the dark remembering the sound of her name on Tessa’s lips, the fleeting touch of Tessa’s thigh against her own. What had she gotten herself into? And how exactly was she going to make it through two more weeks in Hawaii, let alone two more months in L.A., without giving herself away?

Whenever they came to Kauai, Tessa slept with the curtains open in her bedroom so that the light of the rising sun would wake her. From her king-sized bed in summertime, she could look out through the sliding glass doors at the sun emerging from the ocean at the start of its trek across the sky. Then she would slip from bed and do a little yoga until Laya heard her moving and came running in to tackle her.

This trip was different, though. Normally she slept soundly on the island, lulled by the scent of sampaguita and plumeria and the nearby sound of the ocean. But this time her sleep was fitful, interrupted often by the sound of nocturnal animals or the house shifting on its foundation. Four days in, and she had yet to sleep a full night through.

The previous evening she’d followed Eleanor out into the hot tub. For a few minutes, Tessa had enjoyed her proximity, knowing that her bare skin was tantalizingly close. But Eleanor had fled after only a short time. As she’d drifted past on her way out of the tub, Tessa had nearly given in to the urge to pull her close. Would Eleanor have struggled, or acquiesced readily? She’d imagined peeling Eleanor’s swimsuit down over her narrow hips, across her long thighs, over her lean calves. But instead she’d watched Eleanor slip out of the hot tub, dark hair falling over one side of her face, the other side in shadow. Hidden in plain sight, impossible to read.

All night Tessa had started awake every few hours from dreams that were detailed, lucid. Not to mention, lurid. After one dream too many, she lay awake waiting for first light. In her dreams, Eleanor had been simultaneously firm and yielding, hot and cool, wet and—well, wet. As Tessa was now, imagining her legs entwined with Eleanor’s in the hot water beneath the starlit sky.

Lusting after the hired help was a Hollywood cliché. But it wasn’t as if she were some middle-aged star acting out his midlife crisis, and Eleanor was no nubile teen looking to explore daddy issues. Who would it hurt if their relationship turned personal? Laya, she thought immediately, picturing the worshipful gaze her daughter regularly leveled at Eleanor. But no matter what, Eleanor was Wisconsin-bound come fall. Either way, Laya would lose her newfound hero.

Wisconsin bordered Chicago’s northern suburbs, but Tessa wasn’t sure she’d ever ventured that far north. In her old life, she’d been more of a South Side girl. On the rare occasions she willingly channeled thoughts of Chicago, she saw the same fleeting images over and over again—the brick row house near the El that shook each time a train went by; a group of Filipino women in the oval living room with its shag carpet and plaid wool couch, laughing loudly over a game of Mah Jong; her mother tending the potted herbs and flowers on their back porch in the summer, teaching her the plant names in English first, Tagalog second; her mother shrieking at her father, whose temper always ratcheted up quickly to match his wife’s, Tessa creeping away unnoticed to hide in the front closet in among the shoes that smelled comfortingly of leather; warm, sunny afternoons spent in a park near their house, the scent of cut grass and spring flowers in the air, her father pushing her on a swing, urging her to jump at the top of the arc, catching her in his strong arms as she fell toward earth; her mother tucking her into bed at night with noisy kisses and laughter; and on the last good day, the police officer at the door of her fourth-grade classroom, waiting for her.

After that her memories revolved around an endless succession of schools and foster homes, some memorable for the “siblings” she had to fight off, some for the “fathers” whose eyes and hands lingered too long on her leg, belly, breast. Until finally the bus to L.A., where her Filipina features and high school Spanish landed her a job waiting tables at a Mexican restaurant. She hadn’t wanted to be an actor then, not yet. That first year of freedom, she’d luxuriated in the tiny studio apartment she rented in the shadow of the 101. Noisy, but no worse than some of the apartments she’d been forced to inhabit in Chicago. And all hers.

Sometimes now she thought she actually missed the Midwest. Missed seasons, and practical, no-nonsense people who withstood winter temperatures tens of degrees below zero with a philosophical shrug of the shoulders and the sincere assertion that no matter how bad things got, they could always be worse. California in general and L.A. in particular were full of whiners, weather wusses who complained when the temperature edged below sixty, who wore wetsuits to swim in ocean waters that Chicagoans would have considered balmy. Sometimes she hated the idea of raising Laya without snow in a desert city where the passing of seasons was barely noticeable. Of allowing her daughter to grow up in a city whose residents cared more about mani-pedis and plastic surgery than the environment.

In a way, she envied Eleanor. At the end of the summer, she would pack up her car and head to the center of the country—the flyover states, as Californians and New Yorkers referred to the Midwest. What would Madison be like? Other than butt-ass cold in the winter, of course. Tessa had Google Earthed it, wandering the small city’s neighborhoods and landmarks via satellite. Madison had a reputation as a liberal college town, a mecca for Midwestern gays and lesbians. Was that why Eleanor had picked it? Was she a lesbian?

Tessa closed her eyes against the light flooding her room and pictured Eleanor as she must look right that second, sleeping down the hall in the bedroom that overlooked the garden. She imagined herself pushing open the guest room door and stealing quietly across the room, pulling back the covers and slipping into bed beside her daughter’s nanny… So this was what it felt like to want to stalk someone. The temptation to let herself into Eleanor’s room—she was so close, after all—was nearly irresistible.

Fortunately, the Hawaiian sun had its usual effect on her daughter. Even though it was barely six, Laya soon bounded through the door, Moo in tow, and launched herself onto the bed, effectively squashing any and all stalkerish urges.

“What’s on tap today?” Eleanor asked at breakfast a little while later, munching a bowl of cereal across the kitchen table.

“No work allowed,” Laya declared, staring hard at Tessa.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said, even though there was a conference call that Jane Byerly had asked her to sit in on. But while there would always be a conference call or an important meeting, Laya wouldn’t be six for long. And Eleanor—well, their time together had a definite expiration date. For now, they were on vacation. High time she acted like it.

“How about a hike on the Na Pali Coast?” she suggested.

Laya dropped her toast and clapped her hands. “Really? Can we go to Hanalei too?”

“You betcha,” Tessa said. “What about you, Eleanor? Do you like to hike?”

“I’m from Vermont,” she said, as if this answered the question.

Tessa’s gaydar pinged. As she watched Eleanor add cream to a giant mug of coffee, she added up the clues—Smith alum, unmarried, no reference to a boyfriend, hot in an androgynous, natural beauty way. And, now, a fan of hiking, that all-American West (and apparently East) Coast lesbian pastime.

Remembering her own decidedly Sapphic dreams, Tessa drained her orange juice. Perhaps her subconscious was trying to tell her something. Namely, that she hadn’t had sex in way too long. Damn Ama for convincing her to invite this intriguing woman into their lives. Or should she thank her? Tessa had yet to decide.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 646