The Longest Ride

you recall who we met that first day?” she asks.

“Elaine,” I say automatically. I may not have understood art, but people and faces were within my grasp. “And, of course, we met her husband, too, though we didn’t know then that he would later teach at the college. And then later in the afternoon, we met Ken and Ray and Robert. They were students – or, in Robert’s case, later would be – but you spent a lot of time with them as well.”

By her expression, I know she’s pleased. “They taught me many things that day. I was much better able to understand their primary influences after speaking with them, and it helped me to understand much more about where art would be headed in the future.”

“But you liked them as people, too.”

“Of course. They were fascinating. And each of them was a genius in his own right.”

“Which is why we continued to go back, day after day, until the exhibition closed.”

“I could not let this remarkable opportunity pass. I felt lucky to be in their presence.”

In hindsight, I see that she was right, but at the time all that mattered to me was that her honeymoon be as memorable and fulfilling as I could make it.

“You were very popular with them as well,” I point out. “Elaine and her husband enjoyed having dinner with us. And on the final night of the show, we were invited to that private cocktail party at the lake.”

Ruth, replaying these treasured memories, says nothing for a moment. Her gaze is earnest when she finally meets my eyes.

“It was the best week of my life,” she says.

“Because of the artists?”

“No,” she answers with a tiny shake of her head. “Because of you.”
     

     
    On the fifth and final day of the exhibition, Ruth and I spent little time together. Not because of any tension between us, but because Ruth was eager to meet even more faculty members, while I was content to wander among the works and chat with the artists we’d already had the chance to get to know.

And then it was over. With the exhibition closed, we devoted the next few days to activities more typical of newlyweds. In the mornings we walked the nature trails, and in the afternoons we read by the pool and went swimming. We ate in different restaurants every evening, and on our last day, after I made a phone call and loaded our suitcases in the trunk, Ruth and I got into the car, both of us feeling more relaxed than we had in years.

Our return trip would bring us past Black Mountain one last time, and as we approached the turnoff on the highway, I glanced over at Ruth. I could sense her desire to return. Deliberately, I took the exit, heading toward the college. Ruth looked at me, her eyebrows raised, obviously wondering what I was doing.

“Just a quick stop,” I said. “I want to show you something.”

I wound through the town and again made a turn she recognized. And just as she’d done back then, Ruth begins to smile.

“You were bringing me back to the lake by the main building,” she says. “Where we attended the cocktail party on the last night of the exhibition. Lake Eden.”

“The view was so pretty. I wanted to see it again.”

“Yes.” She nods. “That is what you said to me back then, and I believed you. But you were not telling the truth.”

“You didn’t like the view?” I ask innocently.

“We were not going there for the view,” she says. “We were going there because of what you had done for me.”

At this, it is my turn to smile.

When we arrived at the college, I instructed Ruth to close her eyes. Reluctantly she agreed, and I took her gently by the arm and walked her down the gravel path that led to the lookout. The morning was cloudy and cool, and the view had been better at the cocktail party, but it really didn’t matter. Once I settled Ruth in exactly the right spot, I told her to open her eyes.

There, on easels, were six paintings, by those artists whose work Ruth had admired most. They were also the artists with whom she’d spent the most time – work by Ken, Ray, Elaine, Robert, and two by Elaine’s husband.

“For a moment,” Ruth says to me, “I did not understand. I did not know why you had set them up for me.”

“Because,” I said, “I wanted you to see the work in the natural light of day.”

“You mean the art that you had bought.”

That was, of course, what I had been doing while Ruth met with the faculty; the phone call that morning had been to make sure the paintings would be