Burning Time

29

Jason was right next door. Emma knew it because she heard the door open and close on a patient at five-thirty. Then at six-fifteen there were two sets of openings and closings, one immediately following the other. She wanted to look through the keyhole to see who it was, but was too far away to make it there in time. Finally she could restrain herself no longer. She moved swiftly into the bedroom and started going through Jason’s drawers.

“What are you looking for?”

“Aaah.” Emma jumped.

It wasn’t a patient going in. It was Jason coming out. He was standing in the doorway watching her.

“Jesus, you scared me,” she gasped. “What are you doing here?” He had his suit jacket on, and looked like he was on his way out. Why had she waited all day to start looking?

He frowned, peering past her at the open drawers. “I wanted to tell you I have to go out of town unexpectedly.”

“Why?” She rammed a drawer shut guiltily.

“I have to speak at the medical school in San Diego day after tomorrow.” He colored as he said it.

She stared at him, stunned. “Why?” she said again.

“What are you doing with my things?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She rammed the drawers closed one after another. “Just putting your clothes away.”

He didn’t move. He was able to stay absolutely still for long periods of time, as if in suspension while his patients talked. Emma hated it when he did it with her. She shook her head impatiently. His lecture arrangements were made months in advance. She studied his face.

“Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on with you and get it over with?” she said. “I know you’re not going out to San Diego to speak.”

“Yes,” he said testily, “I am. I was going to go later in the summer, but now is a better time. I’ll go see your parents. Would you like that?”

Emma closed the last drawer and headed out of the bedroom. No, she wouldn’t like that. She didn’t think for a minute he was going to San Diego. Why would he go there?

“Why don’t I come with you?” she said lightly. “I haven’t been home in ages.”

He followed her down the hall. “What were you doing in my things?” he asked again.

She turned, trying to catch him off guard. “Looking for those letters. What did you do with them?”

“I told you, I gave them to Charles.” His face didn’t say a thing. He had spent years learning how to appear invulnerable. He looked hard as nails now.

“Why?” Emma shook her head at him and moved into the living room.

It had been the dining room when the apartment was much larger. Although it was the living room now, it was lined with books and looked like a study. The former living room had been made into a separate office and waiting room for Jason years before she met him, during his first marriage. The letters were probably in there, she thought. She wasn’t allowed to go into his office unless she was specifically invited. He was a doctor; everything there was confidential.

She looked out of the window. She had wanted to live somewhere else when they got married. Jason didn’t like hearing her voice lessons, or seeing her around during office hours. He said patients got distracted easily and asked intrusive questions about his life that didn’t help their therapy. He wanted anonymity. It made her feel like she was in hiding all the time. She shook her head at the old wound. Why did he marry an actress, then?

It was raining again. She shivered and glanced at a clock. In the living room alone there were nine of them, evidence of Jason’s passion for the keeping of time. Two skeleton clocks, a regulator, a grandfather clock, a mantel clock, a desk clock, and two carriage clocks. They were all at least a hundred years old. All chimed on the hour, and half-hour, though none exactly at the same time. Jason kept them in working order, but they were old and unpredictable and sometimes did what they wanted.

“Why?” she said again. It was almost six forty-five.

“Why what?” Jason asked. He was poised by the door.

“Why did you give Charles the letters?” Emma demanded. The typed words kept going through her head, even when she was sleeping. Dear Emma: You were my white spirit. You were my purity. You make me think of poetry. Funny drawing at the bottom. Not so very different from the tattoo in the movie. She didn’t know what to make of it.

The first letter was a list of weres. You were all the good things Faith Hope and Charity. He called her “California Dreamin’,” like the song. The second letter was a list of whys. Why did you do it? Why don’t you want me to love you? Why do you want to hurt me? It’s not Right what you did.

The blood rushed to her cheeks. There was something about Jason in the suit, now studying her face. He was looking at her in a way that always made her feel she was some kind of inferior being for not having gone to medical school and knowing the meaning of everything as he did.

“I gave the letters to Charles because they worried me,” he said, with his shrink mask still firmly in place.

“Please don’t start trying to scare me again.” Emma looked away. Didn’t he have to go back to his office and tend to somebody? All these years he was too busy to stop for a minute and be with her, and now he was spending hours on those stupid letters. Why? Were they really so menacing?

He reached out to take her hand, his brow furrowed. “I don’t want to scare you, Emma, but I want you to be careful while I’m gone. Really careful.”

She looked down at his hand holding hers, and her eyes filled with tears. “Why don’t I go with you, Jason? We’re never together.” Her voice trailed off. “And I haven’t been home in a long time. I wouldn’t mind seeing my mother.”

He put his arms around her and frowned over her shoulder. “Wouldn’t that be stressful?”

“Not as stressful as this. What are you hiding?”

He stroked her hair. “It’s only for a couple of days.”

They moved to the sofa and sat in an uneasy silence. Emma thought of her mother.

“Did I ever tell you my mother used to shake her finger at me and say, ‘You’ve made your bed, you lie in it,’ every time we picked up and moved to another base? I thought it was my fault she married him and chose to be a navy wife.”

“I know,” Jason murmured. “Did you ever go out with anyone in the navy?” he asked suddenly, as if the question just occurred to him. All day he had been trying to figure out where tattoos fit in the picture. Now he remembered they were a navy thing. Emma was a navy child. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

“I was too young in Virginia and Hawaii. But I did in Alaska, when I was sixteen. Did I tell you I worked the night shift in a crab plant because I hated being called a spoiled officer’s kid?”

She put her head on his shoulder. “He was the lowest-ranking officer, and we had no money. None. How could someone be spoiled who never had more possessions than could fit in a knapsack?” She looked down at her wedding ring. She still didn’t have much jewelry, and no offspring. Jason’s family had been poor, too, and he couldn’t help saving for the future. It was true what the shrinks said about background being everything. Nobody ever got over where they came from, or what happened to them when they were kids.

“I know.” Jason put his arm around her. It was very quiet. He could hear the soft chime of the first clock in the room to herald the hour.

“The only bike I ever had came from the dump. I painted it myself, and then I had to put it back when we moved,” Emma said. “People went crazy in the navy, but no one ever complained. Every time I went to a new place I thought the old one ended.”

“We’re not so very different,” Jason murmured. “I was lonely, too. I worked nights in a gas station. My mother thought if I knew what it was like to work with my hands I’d choose to work with my head.” He laughed. “I still hate the smell of gas.”

“I was covered with crab slime in twenty-below temperatures at three in the morning,” Emma said. “And had to go to school the next day. I don’t like fish of any kind.”

“We’re not in competition for who struggled most.” Jason smiled tenderly.

“My parents were mortified. I hung the rubber suit by the back door so everyone could see it.”

“I guess you like mortifying people,” he remarked. “Goes back a long way.” The bitterness crept back in his voice.

“Well, I never liked people telling me what I can or can’t do.” She pulled away from him, her face tense again. Shouldn’t have married an actress. Did he secretly think she’d fail and never be seen by anybody, just be a voice behind somebody else’s body for the rest of her career?

He changed the subject. “But what about California? Did you date anyone from the navy there?”

“What difference does it make?” Emma sighed. “I only lived in California one year, my senior year in high school. We didn’t live on the base then. It was my first house in a regular neighborhood. I thought I was in heaven. There was no way in the world I would have gone out with a navy man then. I wouldn’t even go to the club.”

“The club?” Jason murmured, confused. She’d said they were poor.

“Officers’ Club.”

“Oh. Did you have a boyfriend that year?”

She frowned and shook her head. “Not really. Why are we talking about this?”

He shrugged. “You said you wanted to go back.”

“What’s going on, Jason? Why won’t you tell me?”

“Nothing to tell. I’m going out for a couple of days. You have a movie deal pending. You have to stay here and negotiate a good deal.”

“I thought you didn’t want me to do it,” Emma said in surprise.

“Well, I was wrong. You have to do what feels right to you.” He leaned forward and put his face in her hair.

There was the slight aroma of brass cleaner on him. She thought he must have been polishing the insides of a clock during a break earlier in the day.

He put his fingers under her chin and turned her head to make her look at him. “Look, I might have been angry at you for not telling me what you did. But you’re all I have. I love you, Emma, and I’m here for you. Don’t forget it.” He held her face between his hands and bent to kiss her.

She shivered at his touch. He’d been avoiding her ever since the film opened and the letters started coming. But even before that, he had been withdrawn from her. He’d been married before. Sometimes she thought he had someone else. She didn’t know how long she could endure marriage without a physical life. The kiss went on for a long time. Maybe he really did love her. The clocks were bonging now, one after another, striking the hour, each in its own rhythm.