Natalie shrugged off her backpack, laughing, because Tallie never changed; she was still the same; no matter what happened, Tallie would always be indescribable. She ran to her and hugged her, and they held each other for a long time.
10
THEY HAD TALKED and talked.
"Natalie," Tallie said at last, "even though you're certain that you want to—that you have to—make this search, you're frightened. Don't be. You can handle whatever you find. And of course one must find out everything. It's exactly what I would do myself. I've spent my life finding out everything I possibly can."
They were sitting, after supper, in the living room of Tallie's tiny, eighteenth-century farmhouse. It was, Natalie thought, her favorite room in the whole world. The past was in it, in the ancient pine boards of the floor, and in the small-paned windows with their interior shutters that had once been used to keep out unfriendly Indians, or, more often, the bitter winter wind. But the past was layered over by the present, and by Tallie's presence, in the form of the brilliant white paint with which she had painted the plaster walls, and over which she had hung vivid and abstract paintings. The hanging plants. The shaggy Danish rug in earth shades of brown and gray on the floor. The thick pottery ashtrays and bowls on the low tables. The bright woven pillows strewn at random on the low white couch. Everywhere, the books. And the music. Tallie's life was always filled with music. She had put a recording of noisy, quick Russian dances on her stereo; there were clapping and stamping combined with the abrupt and discordant melodies. Tallie had served tea on a tray: a murky tea to which she had added herbs that she had collected on the island and dried herself. She poured it from a rounded earthen pot into deep gold glazed-clay mugs. Natalie blew ripples into the surface of hers, and tested it with the tip of her tongue.
"But you know, Tallie," she said slowly, "Mom and Dad say they understand why I'm doing it, but they don't really. They're very hurt. And I'm not sure I understand myself, why I'm doing it."
"You have incredibly lovely feet, Natalie. You should always go barefoot. Of course they're hurt. Sometimes we have to hurt people, in order to keep ourselves whole. We must just do it with love, that's all."
"That doesn't make much sense to me," admitted Natalie.
"Where is it written that anything has to make sense? All I mean is that when you have to hurt someone you love, do it honestly. And you're doing that. You could have sneaked around and done what you're doing. It would have been more difficult, of course, but you could have done it, Natalie. And you didn't. You told them exactly what you were doing. And it hurt, but they know you love them."
"I bet you never hurt anyone, Tallie."
Tallie hooted with laughter, and reached for the pot to pour more tea. Her rings glittered in the soft light, and made small noises as the silver touched the thick pottery. "How do you think I learned? Of course I've hurt people. I ran away from my first husband in order to go off with your grandfather. You look shocked, Natalie. Didn't your mother ever tell you that?"
Natalie shook her head.
"Well, it's true. I lived in sin for quite a while before my first husband finally divorced me on grounds of adultery.
"Actually—" Tallie sipped her tea. "I lived in Italy." She chuckled. "Technically, it was in sin, at least according to my family and to the New York newspapers. But geographically, it was in Italy. That seemed the more important thing, since I couldn't speak a word of the language at first. Goodness; I wonder if there is a language for people who live in sin."
The music had ended, and the old farmhouse was very quiet. A pale moth fluttered close to the small flame of the candle; the woman and the girl watched with vague amusement as the translucent wings drew it again and again to the potential danger. Finally Tallie caught the moth lightly with her quick hand, opened the window behind her, and released it to the night.
"They're so terribly fragile," she said. "I hope I didn't damage the wings. One tries so hard to save something, and sometimes things are injured in the saving."
She sighed. "It's the same thing we were talking about. I hurt people, by trying to save myself. Perhaps that was a brutal example. But there I was, twenty years old, madly in love with the most exciting man I'd ever met ... have still ever met ... and I was married to someone else. So what was I to do? Stay in New York the rest of my life, as the wife of a stockbroker who tucked his pajama tops carefully into the bottoms and wound his watch four times exactly every night before he went to bed?"
Natalie giggled.
"Or run off to Florence with an incredibly fine painter? Did I ever tell you how I met Stefan, Natalie? That he came over to my table in a New York restaurant and said, 'I want to paint you'? It sounds so trite, now; but nothing about Stefan was trite. Oh, Natalie, it was so exciting. And so painful.
"But there simply isn't any choice when you know you have to do something. So you inflict the hurt, and you smoothe it as much as you can by saying 'This is my fault, not yours—' Your face is brightening. You said that, did you?"
Natalie nodded. "More or less."
"And it works out. You get through the pain, and it works out. In my case, I found incredible happiness. And my first husband married again, to a woman who was perfectly suited to him, who gave elegant dinner parties using the china he had inherited from his mother." She grimaced. "It was hideous, Natalie. Big green birds of paradise in the center of each plate; can you imagine? And they lived happily ever after. His obituary in the New York Times was twelve inches long, which surely would have pleased him; and it never mentioned that once, long ago, he had announced that he was going to jump out of his office window if I left. He did, Natalie, he said that as I was packing my bags, and all I could think of, even though I knew he would never really do it, was that he had always abhorred anything messy."
Natalie sipped more of her tea and smiled. "Well, Mom and Dad aren't that upset."
"Of course not. Your parents are sensible people. I'm being silly, dredging up my own insane past as an example. They'll get through it, and so will you, and you'll find your own past. If you like what you find, embrace it. If you don't, shrug it away."
Natalie curled into the corner of the wide couch, against the pile of bright cushions.