Chapter 18 Chapter Eighteen

Jeff came out of his room at the Peel Hotel at two-twenty, took the elevator down, turned left, and passed the gray Italian marble that marked the entrance to Peel's Coffee in brass letters.He sat down at a quiet table facing the back of the long, narrow bar, ordered a drink, and waited, staring nervously at the door.He's had so many memories in this hotel; he and Sharah watched several of the big 1963 World Series from his room here, shortly after his first rebirth; Been here a lot for ten years, usually with Pamela. She came in at five to three.Her straight blond hair was still the same as he remembered it, and her eyes hadn't changed.Her thick lips held the serious expression he was familiar with, but there was no longer the bitter, drooping tight line he had seen in his last years in Maryland.She wore dainty emerald earrings to match the color of her eyes, a white fox fur and a light gray maternity dress with a modern cut.Pamela was five or six months pregnant.

She went to the table, took Jeff's hand in both of hers, and held it for a long moment in silence.He lowered his head and saw the plain gold wedding ring on his hand. Welcome back.He said as she sat down in the chair opposite him. You look beautiful. Thanks.She said carefully, keeping her eyes on the table. A waiter stood at the table, and she ordered a glass of baijiu, and the silence ended when the wine was brought to her.She took a sip and began to rub a napkin around with her fingers. Jeff laughed, remembering her old problem.Are you going to tear it up?he asked softly. Pamela looked up at him and smiled too.maybe.she says.

When he opened his mouth to ask, he stopped. what time?When did I start this rebirth, or when did I give birth? I want to ask both.Depends on which one you prefer to answer first. I've been born again for two months, Jeff. I understand.This time it was he who looked away, gazing at the sconces that lit the satin drapes. Pamela's hand touched his arm across the table.I can't muster the courage to call you, do you understand?Not just because of our differences and conflicts in previous lives, but because of this.This was a big emotional shock for me. His attitude softened, and he looked up into her eyes too.Sorry, he said, I know it must be.

I was shopping for baby clothes at a children's clothing store in New York.My son Christopher is with me, he is three years old.Then I realized my waistline, I knew I was pregnant, and then I just couldn't hold it.I started sobbing, which of course freaked Christopher out.He cried and kept calling Mommy, Mommy Pamela's voice changed, and she gently wiped her eyes with a tissue in her hand.Jeff took her hand and stroked it gently until she regained her composure. I am now pregnant with Kimberly.She finally spoke softly. my daughter.She was going to be born in March, March 18, 1976, and it was a beautiful day, like the pleasant weather in late April and early May, really.Her name means from Royal Meadows, and I used to always say she brought the spring.

Pamela I never thought I'd see them again.You can't imagine, and even you can't imagine, what it's going to be like to me, then, now, and for the next eleven, almost twelve years.I love them more than anything in the world and know I'm going to lose them this time. She began to weep again, and Jeff understood that no words could soothe her feelings.He imagined if he could hold his daughter Gretchen in his arms again, or watch her play in the garden at the Dutchess County house, knowing at what hour and day she would disappear from his life again, What would that feel like.Incomparable happiness and unspeakable heartache, and nothing in this world can separate the two.Pamela was right; the torment of these two emotions was an unbearable long-term torment that even his keen empathy could not comprehend.

Pamela left the table after crying for a while, and went to the bathroom to clean up the tears on her face.When she came back, the tears had dried on her face, and she had put on a flawless light makeup again.Jeff ordered another drink for her, and another for himself. And you?she asked dispassionately.When did you come back this time? He hesitated, cleared his throat.I was in Miami, he said, and it was 1968. Pamela thought for a moment, then gave him a knowing look. With Linda.she says. Yes. What now? We are still together.Not married, not yet, but we live together. A knowingly sad smile appeared on her face, and her fingers drew circles along the rim of the cup.

are you happy? Yes, he admitted, we were both happy. I'm happy for you, said Pamela, and I mean it. This time it was different and he started telling her that I had a vasectomy so she didn't have to go through the troubles she had had with her pregnancies.We might adopt kids, and adopted kids aren't the same, you know what I mean.Jeff paused for a second, regretting bringing up the subject of the children again, and hurried on. Being financially secure has helped our relationship, he said. "I don't put all my energy into investing, but we're pretty comfortable.Live in a nice house by the sea and travel everywhere.I'm now writing, and it's a job that pays off a lot.It was a healing process for me, even more so than when I was alone by Montgomery Creek.

I know, she said, I've read your book and it's very moving.Help me let go of many of the knots we planted in our previous life, those painful past events. You are right, I forgot that you have been reborn for two months.Thank you for your compliment, glad you like it.The topic I am writing now is exile. I have already visited Solzhenitsyn, and I will send you a copy of the manuscript after Peron finishes writing it, so that you can have a sneak peek. She lowered her eyelashes and put one hand on her chin.I'm not sure if this is a good idea. It took Jeff a moment to catch what she meant.Are you talking about your husband?

Pamela nodded.Not because he was jealous, but oh my god, what should I say?If you keep in touch with me, write a letter, talk on the phone or meet in person, it takes a lot of explaining for me.You know how tricky this can be, right? Do you love him?Jeff swallowed the bitterness in his chest and asked. Not like you love Linda.she said in a steady but nonchalant voice.Steve is a gentleman and cares about me in his own way.My main focus, however, is on the children.Christopher was only three years old, and Kimberly was not yet born.There was no way I could take them away from their father before they had a chance to meet him.Anger flashed in her eyes, and then she extinguished it.Even if you ever wanted me to.She added.

Pamela I can't blame you for your feelings for Linda, she said, we've been apart for so long that I can no longer be possessive.And I understand how important it is to you to have a successful relationship now after it went awry in your first life. It doesn't change my feelings for you at all. I know, she said softly, this has nothing to do with us, but it happened, and now is the most important thing to you.As much as I have to spend my life with my kids, my family, I crave it so much. You are not angry anymore, about About everything that happened in the previous life and Lu Suo.Hedges?No, I'm not mad at you anymore.We are all responsible for how things started, and we did what we thought was right.There have been many times, especially in the last few months, when I have tried to reconcile with you and apologize for blaming you for everything but I have been so outrageous.I can't face my own guilt. I have to let someone else bear the guilt so I don't go crazy, but that person should be Hedges, not you.sorry.

I understand, he told her, I made mistakes too, even in difficult circumstances. Her eyes are a mixture of longing and deep regret, mirroring her own emotions. Things are more difficult now.she said, covering his hands with smooth palms.We have to be considerate of each other's situation. The gallery is located in the Tribeca district of Manhattan, New York, the triangle south of Canal Street, which has replaced Soho as Manhattan's premier artist habitat.Although since the mid-1980s, Tribeca has followed the same path as Soho, and artists have left one after another.On both sides of Hudson and Virrick Streets, trendy bars and restaurants have sprung up, and the prices of shops and art galleries have begun to reflect the spending power of customers from the upper city, and high-ceilinged spaces are especially popular.As a result, the young artists, sculptors, and performance artists who had started the prosperity of this once desolate city corner were quickly driven to the new bohemian district to find an unpopular but affordable place on the crowded island. Affordable zone. Jeff finds the discreet brass plaque that marks the location of the Hawthorne Gallery, and leads Linda into the converted building, which used to be tenements next to an industrial warehouse.They walked into the reception area, which was not much decorated but very elegant, with white walls and ceilings, and a low black sofa facing a curved black desk.The only ornament is a hanging iron work of art, exquisitely crafted, the swirls of long thin wires seem to be a refinement and extension of the fine wirework common to early New Orleans gates and balconies. Do you need help?asked the lean young woman behind the desk. We're here for the opening reception.Jeff handed her the embossed invitation card. Yes.She found their names on a photocopied list and crossed them out. please come in. Jeff and Linda pass the table and enter the main space of the gallery.The walls are still a pale white, but it's perfect for displaying delicate designs that would look like garbled images without special adjustments to the arrangement.This large room is divided into several pleasant small rooms, which allow people to quietly admire the contemplative works displayed in it, and the end area displays large works, and the open design of the space adds to the grandeur of the works. A 20-foot-high giant canvas painting dominates the visual space of the entire gallery. It is an underwater landscape that only exists in the artist's imagination.In the picture, a peaceful and quiet mountain towers high and deep under the waves. The artist painted the unique symmetrical beauty that is absolutely unrecognizable, and the snow on the mountain top that seems to be undisturbed by the surrounding sea water.A pod of dolphins swims through crevasses on a low-altitude hillside; a closer look, Jeff sees two of them with eternal eyes that belong to humans. It's amazing.Linda said.Look, look at that one over there. Jeff turned and looked in the direction she was pointing.It was a smaller painting, but it was no less impressive than the Sunken Mountain.The above painting is the landscape seen from the glider, and the picture extends to both sides, as if seen from a wide-angle lens, with a panoramic view of 180 degrees.In the foreground you can see the glider's rudder and struts, and through the window you can see another nearby glider. The two planes are soaring, but instead of the blue sky in the background, they are soaring in endless space, in a dark orange ring in orbit around the planet. Glad to have you here.Jeff heard a voice behind him.This time, the years are very kind to Pamela.Maryland and their first meeting with Stewart.The twisted, haggard emptiness that had haunted her face in New York after McGowan was gone.Although she was clearly a woman over thirty-five years old, her face still shone with a clear light of contentment. Linda, this is Pamela.Phillips.Pamela, this is my wife, Linda. Nice to meet you, Pamela said, taking Linda's hand, you are even more beautiful than Jeff told me. Thank you for your compliment.I really can't describe to you how impressed I am with your work.It's really amazing. Pamela smiled kindly.It is always a pleasure to hear such compliments.You should also look at the smaller pieces, not all of them are spectacular or serious.There are also some works that I think are quite humorous. I'm looking forward to seeing the whole exhibition, Linda said eagerly, it's very kind of you to have us. I'm so glad you all came all the way from Florida.I've been a fan of your husband's books for years, even before we met last month.So I thought you might be able to appreciate what I've created. Pamela turned to a small group of people standing nearby, sipping wine and sipping pasta salad in small plates of pine nut and basil dressing. Steve, she called, come here, I want you to meet some people. A friendly-looking man in glasses and a gray denim jacket stepped out of the crowd to join them.This is my husband, Steve.Robison, said Pamela, I use my maiden name Phillips at work and Robison in real life.Steve, this is Jeff.Winston and his wife Linda. Very happy to meet all of you.The man happily shakes Jeff's hand.Sincere.I think "The Harp on the Willows" is the best work I have ever read.It won the Pulitzer Prize, right? Yes, said Jeff, I'm relieved it struck a chord with so many people. Great book, said Robison, and your latest, about people returning to the land they grew up in, was pretty close to number one.Pamela and I have been huge fans of your books for a long time.I think some of your ideas even influenced her creations.I couldn't believe it when she told me she met you on the plane from Boston a few weeks ago.What a great coincidence. You must be quite proud of her.said Jeff, and he and Pamela made up an account of their acquaintance.She had written to her earlier this summer, hoping to invite him to the opening reception in late fall and meet briefly before then.Jeff didn't even go to Boston.Pamela flew there and back alone to lend more believability to their pre-made stories, while Jeff spent a week in Atlanta, walking the Emory campus, brooding on what had happened since he woke up in his dorm room. Everything I've been through since that morning. I am very proud of her.Steve.Robison said, putting his arm around his wife.She never likes me to praise her, she said it seems like she is not there.But I can't help but feel proud of what she has achieved in such a short period of time with two children. Pamela smiled as she spoke of the children, who were by the phoenix statue.Hope they look well behaved. Jeff looked across and saw the two kids.Christopher is a likable fourteen-year-old boy, clumsily on the verge of adulthood; Kimberly is eleven, already a young Pamela.Eleven years old, two years younger than Ge Liqian, when Ge Liqian was thirteen years old, he Jeff, said Pamela, there's a work I'd like you to see in particular.Steve, can you get Mrs Winston some refreshments and wine? Linda followed Robinson to the place where refreshments and wine were served, and Pamela led Jeff to a small cylindrical space, a room-in-a-room design, in the middle of the gallery.Several people stood outside and waited in line to enter, and a small card hung outside the cubicle required no more than four visitors in the room at the same time.Pamela turned the card over to reveal the words Temporarily closed for renovation.She apologized to those in line, telling them she had to adjust the equipment inside.They nodded in understanding and walked away to other exhibition areas.After a while, after the last group of four visitors emerged from the small room, Pamela took Jeff in and closed the door behind her. The video footage is being displayed in the room. Twelve large and small TV screens are embedded on the inner wall of the dark cylindrical space, with a round leather chair in the middle.The screen flickers from all directions, just an arm's length away from where the viewer turns.Jeff looked at the screens casually at first, and then gradually let his eyes focus and adapt.Then he began to understand what he was looking at. is the past.Their past, his and Pamela's past.The first thing he noticed were clips from the news: the Vietnam War, the Kennedy assassination, Apollo 11; then he realized there were clips from movies, TV shows, old music videos, too.Suddenly, he saw his cabin on Montgomery Creek on one screen and JudyA brief freeze-frame of a photo in Gordon's yearbook, followed by an image of her as an adult, waving at the camera with her son Shane, a boy who studied dolphins in another life for the sake of "Star Sea." Jeff's eyes flicked from screen to screen, eager to see the whole picture, not wanting to miss anything.He saw Shaddock winning the KFC Derby in 1963, his parents' house in Orlando, Sydney.The Parisian club where Bescher pierced his soul with clarinet music, the university bar where he watched Pamela begin to be reborn, and a screen in the courtyard of the nearby manor showing Mario from a distance. The village on the hills of Kaka.He saw the camera zooming in slowly, landing on the villa where Pamela died, and then suddenly switching to a blurry scene cut from a home video, which was filmed with her and her parents in Westport Township when she was fourteen years old. of. Oh My God.Jeff said that editing from footage related to their rebirth into an ever-changing montage left him speechless in amazement.Where did you find these things? Some are easy to come by, she said, like editing news archives.Most of the rest I shot myself, smiling in Paris, California, Atlanta, her face lit by the flickering screen.I have traveled a lot for this work.Some places I am familiar with, and some places I have only heard from you. A screen was showing images of the corridors and wards of a hospital, all of which had children in their beds.Jeff thought this must be the Chicago outpatient hospital where she had been a physician in her first rebirth.Another screen shows the boat they rented in Key West, anchored on the same deserted island, where they decided to start looking for other Reborn.The surrounding images are constantly playing, and the endless dynamic collages collage their many past lives, together or apart. It's unbelievable, he whispered, and I can't express how grateful I am for the opportunity to see these images. This is for you, for us.No one understands it except you.You're bound to find some of the critics' interpretations amused. With difficulty, he turned his eyes away from the screen and looked at her.all this whole exhibition Pamela nodded, looking back at him too.Do you think I've forgotten the past?Or do you think I don't care anymore? It's been so long. too long.And a month later, everything has to start all over again. Next time, next time belongs to us, as long as you want. She turned to look at a screen showing the ocean view from the Malibu restaurant when they had their first long conversation. Disagree with him. Maybe that's my last time, she said quietly, my rebirth time has been off by almost eight years this time, and I won't be back until the eighties next time.Are you going to wait for me?You can He pulled her into his arms, sealed her fearful words with his lips, and stroked her with his hands, as if reassuring her.They embraced in this silent cubicle, illuminated by reflections from images of their past lives, warmed by the finite promise of sharing the short lives they had left. What's going on, can't you hear me?Turn off that damn TV.And since when did you care about skating competitions? It was Linda's voice, but not the voice he had grown to know.No, the voice was strained with stress and sarcasm, a voice from long ago. She strode into the room and turned the TV off to silent.Jeff saw Dorothy on the silent screen.Hamill is leaping and twirling gracefully across the ice, and every time she ends a performance, her short hair always falls in the same spot. I just said, dinner is ready, come if you want.I may be the cook in the house, but I'm not an old lady. I'm okay.Jeff spoke as he struggled to adapt to the new environment, trying to recognize what was going on.I'm not very hungry. Linda had a mocking displeasure on her face.What you're trying to say is that you don't want to eat what I cook, right?Maybe you'd rather have lobster?How about some fresh asparagus?Another glass of champagne? Dorothy.Hamill was making one last accelerated twirl, her red skirt becoming a hazy circle of shadow on her thighs in the quick turn.When she finished her routine, she smiled and winked at the camera, and the TV replayed the expression in slow motion, and Jeff read the sweet joy on her face, her smile unfolding like the sun rising, The slow blink is both stately and flirtatious.In this deliberately prolonged moment, the girl becomes a symbol of youthful exuberance. Tell me, Linda interrupted his thoughts angrily, you don't want cannelloni, then tell me exactly what you want to eat tomorrow, and then tell me how we can afford it.Are you going to tell me? Dorothy.A freeze-frame of Hamill's smile fades into the darkness, followed by an episode of ABC's small-group trip to Innsbruck, Austria.He and Linda were in Philadelphia for the 1976 Winter Olympics.In fact, Camden, New Jersey is where they lived, and he was working for the WCAU broadcasting company on the other side. how's it going?she asked.Do you have any smart advice?If you don't have ground beef or chicken next week, where will you buy something else? Linda, please don't do this. How about it, Jeffrey? She knew how much he hated the long name.Every time she called him by that name, it was obvious that she was going to provoke him into a war. Let's not quarrel, Jeff said kindly, there's nothing to quarrel about, everything has changed. Oh really?like this?She spun around slowly with her hands on her hips, taking a dramatic look around the tiny apartment they lived in and the rented furniture.I can't see anything has changed.Unless you're going to tell me you got a better-paying job after all the years you've been yelling about. Forget about work, it doesn't matter.We don't need to worry about money anymore. What do you mean by that?Did you win the lottery? Jeff sighed and turned off the distracting TV with the remote.It doesn't matter, he told her, we'll never have financial problems again, and that's it.Now you have to take my word for it. It sounds nice.Pretty words are your specialty, aren't they?I've heard it from a long time ago now, you talk all the time about your broadcast journalism work, how you're going to become a half-red journalist, like a late Edward. R．Munro.God, you frightened me for a moment!The results of it?Going from one little station to another, traveling all over America just to live in crappy places like this.Jeffrey. L．Winston, I think you are afraid of success.You're afraid to go into television or a big company in that business because you're afraid you won't be able to handle it.And I'm starting to think you really can't. Stop, Linda, stop now.It's not good for either of us, and it doesn't make any sense. Of course, I will stop, I will shut up forever. She rushed into the kitchen.He heard her angrily helping him prepare dinner, slamming the cutlery before slamming the oven door.She resorted to her usual cold war tactics again.The habit started around this time, and as the years passed, the cold wars became longer and more frequent.The arguments between them are always about money, but money is only the most obvious reason for their rift.The real problem was deeper; the inability to communicate what was really bothering them, like Linda's ectopic pregnancy, was the root cause, and that made their troubles even deeper. Jeff glanced into the kitchen and saw Linda's bitter back hunched over dinner alone, and she didn't even look up at him.He closed his eyes and recalled the lovely look of her standing at the door of his house holding a large bouquet of daisies, and he imagined her on the deck of the French cruise ship facing the warm breeze in his mind.But he knew that it was a different person. Even though he didn't reveal the details of his many past lives, from the very beginning, he shared all the deepest emotions with that Linda.And now, keeping silent has become their only way of getting along. As long as they keep silent about important things, even all the money in the world won't be able to restore the deteriorated relationship. He found a coat in the small hall closet, put it on, and left the apartment.When he left, they didn't even say hello to each other. Outside the flat lay the dirty, scattered snowdrifts, which bore no resemblance to the pure white flakes of Innsbruck on the television set, any more than the woman in the kitchen had resembled Linda, whom he had loved for the past nineteen years. He decided that this time he wanted to make money quickly, and then make sure Linda had enough money to live comfortably for the rest of her life, but now, he couldn't force himself to stay.The only question was, whenever it would be, but until Pamela came back, what was he going to do alone?