Reunion by Andrea Goldsmith Page A

ago, perhaps his only chance of breaking his love for her. But the fact that he didn’t walk away proves he has always wanted to hold on to his love more than he has wanted anything else, perhaps more than he really wanted her.
    He does not turn away, he does not leave. He makes himself watch as she picks up a third pot. It is terracotta and heavy, it contains a tall glossy-leafed plant. The pot is wet, it slips from her hands and crashes to the concrete below. Soil and leaf, root and stones litter the cracked cement. He steps down into the mess. The shards of terracotta are sharp on his feet, the gritty earth is nasty between his toes; he feels the stretch of his exposed buttocks as he squats down and sorts through the mess. He finds nine of his stones. He straightens up, the stones are clasped in his fist, and it is then he might have chosen not to love her. The opportunity lasts no longer than a second as he stands naked in the grey air in front of the woman who has treated him and his gift so brutally. And then she moves towards him, opening her coat and pulling him against her. She folds the coat around them both.
    â€˜We have to move on,’ she says. ‘We have to move on.’
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    Ava would always regret what she had done with the history stones, but she thought it would save him, that it would drive his love away. That Jack was never a suitable candidate as a lover she should have seen from the beginning. His beliefs wouldalways condemn real experience as second-rate. No one could ever live up to his standards of perfection. And no matter how many his disappointments or how painful they were, he would cling to his standards like a miser with his stash. If Jack had been any less interesting, any less well read, if that morning on the beach he had not played music which beat so deeply into herself, she would not have so misjudged. For all the reasons she valued him, she should never have made him her lover.
    Over the four weeks they were together she was to acquire other more pragmatic reasons. Clean would never be clean enough for Jack, tidy would never be tidy enough, well groomed would never be well groomed enough. Initially she interpreted his peccadillos as a manifestation of an entrenched hostility towards others: setting such high standards that people were bound to fall short. But soon she realised that aspiring to perfection was Jack’s clumsy attempt to control an uncontrollable world and that his behaviour was directed entirely at himself. His socks were lined up on a shelf with military precision; his pens and pencils were arranged according to size, colour and type; his filing cabinet was as neat and accessible as a library. And making love – well, there were simply too many variables to accommodate, so, with the exception of that first time on the beach when she had taken him by surprise, their love-making was a disaster.
    What Jack lacked, Ava realised later, was that quality of being sexually ardent. For despite his grand passion for her, he skirted the edges of love in much the same way as he would skirt the edges of life. Loving sex would never be his strong suit, but sex without love would see him as something of a maestro. His letters would often include a short polite paragraph, like a biography note, of the latest woman to share hisbed. By the time Ava had received the next letter, the woman had usually been replaced.
    In the presence of love, however, Jack was a stickler for getting it right, and his idea of right was drawn from Donne, Rilke, Keats and a large part of Greek mythology. This notion of sex, Ava told him one night during their month together, was as likely as Byron coming back from the dead to grade his performance.
    â€˜Orpheus. If anyone were to judge me, I’d prefer Orpheus.’
    She and Jack were sitting in her bed sharing a pre-coital cigarette. It was a night like several others when there would only be pre-coital connection.
    â€˜Orpheus was