A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [92]
After a silence Quinn said, “Jesus, you can’t even hold a private thought with this crowd. I don’t want to sound like a freaking martyr who made sacrifices for you. The joy of my life has come to fruition at this moment. The happiness and well-being of the three of you outweighed any ambitions I might have had. Well, now you’ve grown up, and I believe you can bear the public crucifixions that go with public office. I’ve come under a lot of pressure from the party lately. They are bound and determined to have me run for governor in two thousand and two.”
“Shit, man, that’s great!” Duncan erupted.
“Cool!” noted Rae.
“Let’s tickle the governor,” Rita said, grabbing his ankles while Duncan bear-hugged him and Rae shoved him off the hearth.
“You people know how ticklish I am, so cease! I say, cease! Seriously! And get that bloody dog out of my face. Defend your master or you’re raccoon meat!” Semper Fi decided the best way to defend his master was to lick his lips, nose, and eyes.
“Dessert!” Quinn cried, howling. “What do we have for dessert?”
“Well, there is apple pie, pumpkin pie, brownies, carrot cake, and Häagen-Dazs…”
When it was midnight, they held hands, cried a little, and wished one another well. They talked until the fire died, then wearily crept up to the sleeping lofts. Rae and Duncan had nice thick featherbeds beneath them and comforters to cover them.
Mom and Dad, on the other side of the Shanty, tucked into a double sleeping bag.
Quiet lovemaking so no sounds would reach the children. Slow dancing, passionately slow, skilled. It took two hours to play it out.
They held onto each other as they arose and flew into space and over the millennium bridge. The star show seemed to move down to earth. Each star became a flake of snow as it drifted down to the bubble.
“Can’t you sleep?” Quinn asked.
“No. There’s never been a night like this.”
She breathed hard and wiggled a bit, signs that Quinn read well. “Something is weighing on you. You can talk about Carlos,” he said.
It had been nearly twenty years since she had returned to Quinn. Ten years had gone by since Carlos disappeared on a chartered jet in the Caribbean. When his body floated ashore, the autopsy showed a gun wound to the back of his head and severe bone shattering. He had obviously been thrown out of the plane over water.
Quinn brought Carlos’s body home and set him down in the Troublesome Mesa Cemetery.
“When I was in Houston, hovering between sanity and madness,” she began, “I knew even then that the key to my recovery was in the pages of the Venice book. My guilt about my affair with Carlos, be it before our marriage or not, eroded me. God strike me down if I ever harbor another secret like that…well, I’m building a case for myself,” she said suddenly, and stopped talking.
“Please let go of it,” said Quinn.
“Some kind of a miracle took place. One day in Houston I picked up the hundred and fifty pages of Venice that I had given to you to read. The first time I had heard your comments I went into a rage, but I did not realize then that I was literally forcing you to reject me.”
They were tight now, lying in the same direction with his arms about her. She was calm, and her voice sounded like fine wine.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I picked up my own pages and dared to read them. Suddenly, this vast mystery of writing began to fade like the sun burning off the morning fog. At least now I had some insight to comprehend my work. Through introspection I felt that any true dormant talent in me was emerging. I could clearly judge my own errors and understand your comments. The miracle came when I understood that a large part of the writer’s being, of his talent, could only emerge through hard, hard work. And maybe if I worked hard enough, I’d raise the talent level enough to succeed.”
“What did you learn?” he asked.
“I rewrote those hundred and fifty pages. Someday you’ll read them maybe, maybe not. I’m not afraid for you to read them anymore. Again,