I Carry Your Heart

Carole W.

Part 4

Chapter 11 ~ Off the Cliffs

The orchestra captured them for long minutes ... an hour. Catherine felt her heart take on the same strong and slow rhythm as Vincent’s and she began to lose some of the anxiety that had built within her, born of anticipation of the conversation she intended to have. The music moved from the Largo of the Concerto to the Allegro.

Vincent rested his head against the wall, one leg outstretched, the other drawn up in a manner that signaled repose, but she could feel the vibration of his thoughts. A few measures into the last movement, Vincent took her hand in his, for a moment pressing the back of it to his forehead. Then he turned her hand so that his fingers pressed into her palm, fingers she gently brushed with her thumb as his grip tightened.

“I will never escape my skin.” His voice was flat, without poetry. He dropped her hand and stood. “I cannot stay here.”

“Vincent! The concert’s not over. I want– Wait! Where are you going?”

He started down the passageway, stiffened to a halt and spoke over his shoulder, toneless, cold. “I need to walk. Come with me or stay. It is your decision.” He was a shadow in the shadows.

She jumped to her feet, out of habit bending to hide the cushions away, but with a yelp, she kicked them to the side and ran after him.

“Wait ... wait!”

She caught up with him, but he was a man possessed with a direction of foot and of thought that allowed no companionable conversation. She could only hurry to keep pace and puzzle the turn of events, so very counterpoint to her plans. The way Vincent took was familiar and then not, circuitous, darting through side passages she’d never before taken. Without him she would be lost.

Through strange doorways opening into the dark and down many cold, carved stone steps, Catherine followed a pace behind, not so much in distance as in understanding. When they emerged onto a ledge above the falls, she was disoriented. At a different vantage point than they had shared in the past, it was a familiar place but with an opposing view. Her heart pounded.

“Vincent, please! You’re scaring me. What's the matter? Where did you go?”

He paced to the edge of the cliff, back to the entrance and again to the scarp. She knew his thoughts without benefit of their bond and edged into his path to deter his swift exit. A scowl on his face, he slowed, then stopped, his back against stone, his eyes closed. With a groan, he dropped his chin to his chest.

“Where did I go?" he repeated. "I went as deeply as I could, deep and into the dark where there is an ancient river. I went there ... to see myself mirrored in the black waters. I held out my hands ... these ... and I clenched these hands into fists until I drew my own blood. I shed my clothes. I lay at the water’s edge. The eddy of the river washed over me. I hoped, I suppose, to be smoothed and rounded by its power.

“And were you?” Catherine asked. “Smoothed and rounded?”

"I was in time ... comforted. I appreciated the dark and the silence; it knew me. I felt ... my aloneness. There were moments when the melancholy was so strong that I believed I could give in to it, that my heart would slow and then cease to beat, that I might even will it so ...

"Do not feel responsible, Catherine,” Vincent said, his head snapping up, turning to her as if she'd spoken. “This is not the first time I’ve made this journey. I made it before I ever knew you. Several times. You’ve seen what prompts it, when I am reduced to this base nature that I cannot explain even to myself, let alone to you or to any other, but which I must use to protect what I love, to which I must submit to ... survive.

“Before you came into my life, I was one kind of creature. Do not protest the word; it is fitting. My heart had never been truly engaged. How could it have been? There was all the before and then ... the after. Your love has granted me not just one monumental change, but thousands of changes large and small in the days we’ve been together. With each wave of the last incoming tide, it was as if a layer were washed away and at the end of it all, I can only say ... this ... is what I am. It cannot possibly be enough and yet it is ... too much.”

“You were coming to me,” she said, choosing her words with great care. “Jamie told me you were, when Father called you back.”

Vincent avoided her eyes. “I felt your … concern for me. Even as far down as I was, I knew you called me upward. Then Father conscripted me to leave again, to teach Mouse the ways of life and love – or perhaps the ways of avoiding it – and so, you were spared. There are many words unsaid between us today, questions without answers ... or with answers I cannot bear to hear.” His shoulders sagged with fatigue.

"We have some time, time now to be together," she whispered, the air between them fragile, shatterable.

"Yes, Father told me of your ... vacation."

"This is not a vacation, Vincent."

He remained silent, his eyes cast downward, searching the mists.

"Vincent, you know, don’t you? You can ask me anything.”

He gave no reply.

__________

A peal of laughter carried across the pools, riding the mists of the falls. The distance was too great for Catherine to discern the participants, but she could see two figures running along a lower ledge. One climbed the bluff and pushed off, jack-knifing toward the water. Another at poolside cheered the jumper on, applauding when a sleek head broke the surface.

“Who is that?” Catherine asked, walking closer to the edge, squinting to see.

“It’s Jamie,” Vincent replied. "And Mouse."

For a while, they stood, tentative, side-by-side in their customary stance, grateful for the diversion of playful abandon.

“Who’s doing the jumping?”

"That would be Jamie. Mouse isn't much of a swimmer, more a paddler. He likes his feet touching bottom.”

“Jamie came to see me while you were gone with Mouse. She told me what happened.”

“Father overreacted.”

"I think he knows that now.” The old fart, she thought. “Tell me. What did the two of you do? Where did you go?”

“Mouse is good company.” As the squealing and laughter grew louder, his lips just curved in a smile. “In conversations his viewpoint ... is unique. We hiked and camped, visited a few residents who live more apart. We inspected an old channel cut centuries ago through a lower level, where there are broad expanses of flat sand. Mouse is determined to build a playground. There’s a natural maze, a safe one, and he wants to put in a volleyball court.”

“Volleyball!”

“Yes. You sound surprised.”

“I’d like to see that. I’d like to see you play volleyball.”

Vincent straightened in mock affront, “Why Catherine, I have a mean serve. Everyone is afraid of it.”

She laughed and then sobered, struggling to assess the mood. In a strange way, regardless of the words and events of this last hour, they seemed to be as always – reverential, enamored of each other, perhaps a bit formal with the unexpressed conspicuous between them. She hoped to move this stalemate off its center, but doing so would require tact and not a small amount of grace, even luck. Perhaps here in this magical place, her years of schooling – her logical, progressive thinking – would manifest in a spectacular closing argument.

“You must have jumped off those cliffs a thousand times.”

“Oh, yes. When we were children, we would run down here after our last class of the day. The air would be filled with our flying bodies and taunts and bets. Father and the other grownups would grouse and forbid, but we ignored them and they allowed us to ignore them.”

“Do you remember the first time you jumped?”

“The first time ... yes ... it was Devin who issued the dare. I was young, maybe seven or eight and ... hesitant. It seemed so very high, though I had not climbed very far. But Devin made clucking noises and called me a chicken baby, a double insult that I could not bear. I was secretly petrified and wanted only to cling to the rocks and scramble back down. So when I jumped – and I did jump – I flung my arms wide and yelled some jungle cry worthy of Burroughs and belly-flopped into the pool. Devin had to fish me out and pound my back to get the water out of my lungs.”

“How long before you tried again?” she asked, sure of his answer.

“About ten minutes.”

“So you faced your fears?”

“Yes.”

“And was it worth it?”

“It was.”

____________________

Chapter 12 ~ Closing Argument

“Jamie was afraid Mouse would be too embarrassed to speak to her,” Catherine offered. "For days, maybe."

“Mouse worried over the same thing. Apparently their fears have been overcome.”

“Vincent ... sit with me. I need to talk with you.”

With a wretched sigh, he complied. “I can sense in you such conflict. All the while I was away, I felt the clash of your emotions. At times, I believed I could hear your laughter ... and your tears. That you were so concerned for me brought me both pain and a strange comfort, an unbearable lightness of being. I am ... a burden to you.”

“Hush, Vincent. Look at me.” She bit her lip in concentration and reached to turn his face to hers, his chin in her grip. “Keep looking at me.”

He acquiesced with a slight inclination of his head. The joyous sounds from the lower pools receded.

She began again. “Not that long ago, here in this place, I asked if you believed we would ever truly be together. Do you remember your answer?”

“Yes.”

“When we understand the sacrifices and conquer the fears. That's what you said. I told you then I wasn't afraid. And I’m not ... stop! Stop resisting me, Vincent!” He was shaking his head, turning away. “You have a seriously stubborn streak. I need you to listen to me ... really listen.” Catherine turned his face to hers again.

“You said I was a woman of both worlds. You knew, you’ve always known, that I have a reason to be above. My work, yes, but more than that ... it’s what I can bring to you ... to us, to my family down here. But I’m not a woman of both worlds.

“Without you ... truly ... in my life, I’m ... fractured. It's more a half-life, either place. I want both. I’m sure. There can be no other for me. Ever. There is only you. And I know we are strong enough, tenacious and forcible enough – that we love enough – to make it work.”

“Catherine ... you make it sound as if ... as if we are just any man and woman, deciding whose home to live in and whose to sell. It is ... more than that.”

“We are something that has never been,” she replied.

He fought for words, his conflict undisguised, but the image of having swamped his overwhelming fears. In the vault of his brilliant, fruitless dreams, a fissure opened; the light slipped out, timorous and shy.

“We have certainly gone with care,” she murmured, riveted by the desire irrefutable, crystalline in his eyes. She touched his face, the tips of her fingers tracing a line from brow to jaw, and with her thumb, brushed his lips, a slow stroke of the bewitching cleft. He closed his hand over hers, pressing her palm to his cheek. A distant pinpoint of light flickered … steadied … strengthened … a fragile, ribbon bridge between them. But he blanched and shuddered and jerked his hand away, rocketing to his feet.

She scrambled after him, forcing him to pass her on his rutted path. “I’ve examined each sacrifice I might make for you," she said. "For nights and mornings and years with you. I’ve countered each in my mind and heart and what I receive from you, from being with you, far outweighs any loss. Each choice any of us ever makes takes us down one road and not another. Remember the lines ‘two roads diverged in a yellow wood?’ Ours is less traveled but it will make all the difference. I’ve searched for fears and, apart from losing you, I have none. So what remains between us then are your fears, your sacrifices.”

“You know what I fear. I told you ... Lisa ... these hands.” He spread them before her, palms up, nails flashing in the odd light.

“It’s unhealthy to obsess so about her. You mustforgive yourself, Vincent! It was simply an accident. And it was mean on her part ... don’t argue! Girls at that age begin to recognize the power they wield but aren’t necessarily aware of its consequence, and we are not always kind or merciful. Once a boy I liked was chasing me in the park. I let him catch me. I jerked out of his grasp laughing but he fell and broke his wrist. A park policeman called his mother and it was all very embarrassing. Oh, we both received lectures from our parents, but it ended there. I signed his cast with a big heart. He took another girl to the school dance. Would you have me berate myself still?”

“It is not the same.” He edged away from her but she followed, close on his heels.

“No, it isn’t the same, but it’s ... close. I don’t discount what you felt, how deeply scarred you were by the incident. You take all the transgressions, all the fault into your heart. But some of the regret belongs to Lisa. And some to Father.”

“You were not there,” he said, sagging against a rocky outcropping. His fingers worried a sharp, chiseled ridge.

“Yes, I was. You took me there. I felt what you felt. This connection, at least in some small way, runs both directions.”

“Her face ... the fear of me ...”

“I’m not so sure it was fear of you. She might have been worried about the trouble she was sure to be in. She understood some of what she was doing, but she didn’t care.”

“If I were ever to see that fear in you, it would destroy me,” he whispered, head bowed.

“I told you I wasn’t afraid. You will never hurt me, Vincent. I know that. I need you to know it. You must let this go. Now.”

“How can I?”

“By trusting me, if you won’t trust yourself.”

“That is but the surface of the darkness in me. You know, Catherine. You've seen me, seen what I am capable of doing.”

“Did you open the gift I left for you in your chamber? Did you read the note?”

He looked up at her. “A gift? No. I ... only dropped my pack at the doorway. After speaking with Father, I came straight to you.” After a brief flicker of surprise, his lips compressed and he frowned and turned away.

“Well then, I’ll tell you something about it. In the note ... I copied an e.e. cummings poem. You know it, I’m sure. ‘i carry your heart.’ There’s a line ... it applies to us ... anywhere i go, you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me, is your doing, my darling. I go into that darkness with you. I am part of it”

“NO!” he cried, balled fists knuckling his temples.

“Yes!” she countered. “I should never have left you alone ... after ... and in such pain. You’re right when you say no one can understand the shadow that overwhelms you, the instinct, the nature of the force you wield, but your ... impulse is only to protect, never to aggress. You don't lose control. You make a conscious choice to act each time. Yours are the actions of a warrior.”

He flinched at her words, but lowered his hands. Silent, gathering his cloak closer, he stepped to the edge of the bluff and stared into the distance. Jamie was in the water at the edge of the pool, coaxing Mouse to make a short jump. The currents of the chamber air carried her assurances to the ledge – that she would be close enough to keep him safe, that Mouse should just commit ... just jump.

“The way I see it,” she persisted, “I’ve answered your fears. All that remains is for you to accept those answers. But the issue of your sacrifice ... we have not begun to address. What must you give up for us to be together? Can you name it?

“You’ve become ... practiced in denying yourself pleasures. Whether Father planned it or not, he chose a path of emotional austerity and he taught you that same asceticism. His misery over Margaret and all that he lost colored what he taught you about your ... possibilities.

“He turned that self-denial into a majesty, a triumph – the creation and leadership of your world – and he sees you as his successor. As dedicated as he and as alone. So your sacrifice, one of them anyway, would be to choose against Father’s dream. Another would be ... to leave the safety of what you know and where you are comfortable, even if it is a lonely place. You would have to trade autonomy for a partnership. If there are others, tell me.”

Vincent whirled on her, close to the edge, his hands wild in the air. “My sacrifice? My sacrifice would be your happiness, Catherine. If I ...choose ... this life you suggest to be possible, then I sacrifice knowing you will have all you deserve! Choosing me means you hide from your friends, you are constricted in where you go, in what you do, in what you say. You will grow to resent me and I will have lost what I have ... perhaps only a dream, but a beautiful dream!”

“Don’t choose for me, Vincent! You can’t do that! You told Father ‘only Lin knows what is best for Lin!’ Don’t I have the same power? Choose for yourself, choose against us if you must, but don’tdecide what’s best for me!”

His breath came in great heaves, the only sound in the long, terrible silence between them. "I'll walk you back now."

In the distance, Mouse jumped.

_______________________

Chapter 13 ~ Dream World

Catherine repeated two words to herself. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.” Nothing was going as she had planned and she cursed the egotistical belief that what kept the two of them apart was hers alone to change. Still, she would not allow the word impossible to be uttered, not into the air between them, not even in her mind.

The way Vincent led was again new to her. There were narrow passages and more strange steps; the dust on the tunnel floor showed little disturbance. After some time, they emerged into a small atrium bathed in a mysterious light, two levels with a narrow gallery edging the upper floor.

It was not nearly as large as the Great Hall, but still impressive. Stacked stone pillars stood at intervals, flanking two arched openings. Two metal staircases, one circular, another sweeping in a long curve, rose from the ground floor toward seductive entrances to smaller chambers and shadowy corridors. The floors were etched in a pattern resembling intricate tile work and at one end of the room, a watercourse trickled rivulets down the wall collecting in a narrow trough. As they passed through, Catherine was startled by a flash of light. She had little time to look, none to explore, but she recognized her fleeting reflection in a massive mirror inside one of the arched doorways.

“Vincent, what is this place?”

He did not slow. “It is mine.”

“What do you mean? Where are we?”

Without response, he indicated ascent of the curved staircase, standing aside, courteous even now, even in what seemed like fury. She climbed several steps before he followed, his tread thunderous on the rungs. At the top of the staircase was an iron gate. He reached past her, pressuring a hidden lever to open it, and without a word, led her down a passageway. Through an opening, she could see the stained glass window of his chamber, a host of stately candles burning steadily, the constant illumination of the room on the other side. The hidden passage!

But his chamber was not their destination. He led her through another gate and another hidden portal to emerge near her guest chamber. The tunnels there were empty and quiet; even the pipe sound seemed muted. Certainly they were alone. She felt her own aloneness, huge in her throat.

“Vincent!” Catherine tugged his sleeve. “Please, this silence is too much. Whatever it is, we can talk it out. Please,” she repeated. “Or I can endure it,” she whispered, when he did not respond. She walked deep into the chamber and turned to him, where he hovered in the doorway. “You can come in." She tried a smile. “I know you’re there.”

His face was an impassive mask. With a measured, hoarse delivery, he asked, “Were you comfortable here, Catherine?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have everything you needed?”

“No, Vincent. I didn't.”

Without meeting her gaze, he moved to the little table, fingering the marbles in the bowl. He scooped them into his palm and let them trickle from his fist, a musical reverberation in the stillness. Then, spying the nightdress Catherine had chosen months and months ago, the nightdress draped over the mirror in the far corner of the room, he stepped closer to it, reflected in the glass as she had never before seen him.

The silky fabric in his hand was a watery rope of diamonds. He drew his hand along its length until it slipped from his grasp, fluttered and spread against the glass. In the mirror, she could see that his eyes were closed and yet the longing in his face was never more evident.

“A woman would wear this on her wedding night.” His voice wavered away.

“Yes.”

“Did you intend to wear this for me, Catherine? Did you intend to employ some of that girlish power you spoke of earlier?”

For the first time, she heard sarcasm in Vincent’s voice – a flame to the kindling of her frustration.

“Well, you’ve seen all my others, Vincent. Several times.”

“Yes. I suppose I have. I’ll leave you now. When you're ready, I will walk you home.”

“Home? I don’t want to go home!”

She tried to block his way through the door, and while he did not touch her, he moved roughly past her into the hallway. His cloak billowed with his swift stride away from her, but he spun on a heel and swept back. Standing close, so close that Catherine could see the thundering pulse in his neck, he took her hands in his, pressing both to his heart.

“Do you feel that, Catherine? Do you feel your power? You bring me life! This close to you ...” He drew her toward him. “I can come this close.”

His breath warmed her skin as he bent his head to hers; his lips brushed her ear as he whispered to her ...

“In my imagination, Catherine ... in my imagination ... it is the end of the day. Our work is done. I am waiting for you ... and you come to me. Warmth fills my chamber as you draw near. You bring light, an angel as you round the doorway ... and you smile. You smile for me.”

He removed one hand from hers, the other keeping her close. His forearm went against the rock wall to the side of her face. She could feel the length and power of his body almost as if he were pressed to her, yet as two repelling magnets, a charged distance remained between them. He stood over her, his weight born above her.

“In my imagination, you come to me with the scent of ice in your hair – needles of winter wind – captured there as you walk through city streets ... to be with me.

“In my imagination, it is summer and you come to me tasting of ripe berries. Always, there is a gentle perfume lingering in the movement of your clothing ...

“And in my imagination, Catherine ... you lie with me in my bed. I can scarcely breathe; my heart is so filled with wonder, with astonishment. I tuck you close. I feel the softness of your breasts, the curve of your hip under my hand ... I tuck you closer ... and you embrace me ... accept me ... invite me.

“But that is only in my imagination. We cannot ... for all the reasons I have given you and for all the reasons I haven’t the strength to name ... we cannot.”

He took one step away from her, then another and another until he leaned against the opposite wall. She winced at the wrenching, almost physical pain she felt as he distanced himself from her.

“Vincent ... we can ... I can ... I will!”

“It is impossible.”

He left her there, standing alone, hollowed, wanting. Her chest heaved with the effort of living on. Her ribs hurt. Her defense against the shock, against the defeat, was ... anger,red and roiling, and fromthe entry, she shouted ...

“Well, in your imagination then, hear this! I AM SLAMMING THIS DOOR!”

She ran to the bed and pitched onto the quilts, rolling to her back, pounding the bed with her fists.

“Damn it, DAMN IT!” She had no other words.

 

***

Next Part 5