by Jill Barnett
“Victor never talked about my parents. The subject was changed immediately.” Cale turned to her. “But I can remember them.” He spoke of his mother there on that flowered hillside and made her sound bigger than life. He talked about his father in a way that made Laurel long for a single memory, just one, a memory that was hers rather than those of the people who knew her dad.
When the sun began to drop, they ate food from a basket, drank beer iced in a cooler, and let the late afternoon sun loll them into each other’s arms. He seemed contented to lie there without saying much, just drawing his finger over her bare back exposed by the halter top. “It’s good to know you aren’t perfect,” he said. “You have a wart here.”
Laurel twisted to look over her shoulder. “Where?”
He bent closer. “Here.” His mouth closed over hers and they lay on their sides with little between them but thin clothing, anticipation, and sexual energy. She placed his roaming hand on her hip and held it there, until he pulled away with a sexual groan. Wanting more, she linked her arms around his neck and they were all tongues and mouths and raging blood. After a few minutes he slid his hands down under her clothes and it felt so good she couldn’t stop him.
“Oh, baby, you’re so sweet, so soft.”
“Cale,” she whispered. She didn’t recognize the hunger and sexuality in her own voice.
He guided her hand over him and slowly moved it up and down, then touched her again, and they finished together, wet and throbbing, flushed and still clinging to each other. He pulled back. “Pretty girl. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“It’s too fast.” She felt confused, guilty. “I’m not like this.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
He looked hurt, questioning, and unsure.
“We barely know each other.”
“You think I’m going to try to get in your pants and then dump you?”
“It’s crossed my mind.”
“Look. I want to see you every day and every night this week. I want to see you, Laurel. I don’t have someone else tucked away in LA. I want you.”
“This week,” she repeated the words bitterly and watched for the lie in his eyes.
“I said that wrong.” He looked as uncomfortable as she felt. “Not just for this week. We can see each other on weekends and weeknights. You’re in Westwood. I’m not that far away. Twenty minutes.”
“I don’t have a car.”
“I have three cars.”
She laughed. “No one has three cars.”
“I do,” he said seriously. “Three cars and a pickup. You want to use one?”
“No.” She studied him and paused at the truth she saw. I’m quite the catch. His first words to her. “Oh, God,” she said. “Are you rich?”
“I’m not rich.”
He was lying.
“My grandfather is.”
Her mind began to put it all together. “Cale Banning? Like the gas stations? Like Banning Oil?”
He nodded.
“Your family owns all those pumps along Pacific Coast Highway.”
“The company’s mostly moved on to petroleum products. Plastics and some shipping. We’re down to only two refineries. It’s not only Banning Oil anymore. A few years back, Victor, my grandfather, merged everything into BanCo.”
“See? Oh, God . . . that just proves I don’t know you at all.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I keep letting you touch me. What does that make me?”
“I hope it makes you my girl.”
“I’ve never done this with anyone before.”
“I don’t care. Wait, that’s not true. I care that you only do it with me.” He took a large school ring off his finger and put it in her palm, then closed her hand around it. “Okay?”
Laurel looked down at the ring in her hand. This was how all of her girlish dreams had ended. To belong to a boy. The Gidget ending. But the ring felt heavy in a way she couldn’t explain and never expected. And even as she said, “Okay,” she wondered why dreams were so different from the real thing.
Kathryn stood back from the front window when a tall boy with his arm slung possessively around her daughter reached up to unscrew the porch light bulb. Motherhood kept her rooted where she was. What she saw outside was difficult to watch, her daughter in the boy’s arms, their bodies pressed together like lovers’, their hands all over each other. She’d dreaded this. Laurel was so young and inexperienced, but growing up terribly needy in a time of free love and a doing-what-feels-good attitude.
It wasn’t virtue that worried her. She wanted Laurel to love and be loved. She wanted her to have great sex and babies and a happy life. But at seventeen everything was all fire and no substance. Her Laurel wanted love madly and had lived her life without male attention, thriving only on the dreamlike stories Kathryn had recounted about Jimmy and her. Now, when Laurel was just beginning to skirt womanhood, so needy for a man, and lonely to boot? Kathryn saw only a portent of something so frighteningly dangerous she had to step away from the window.
She was leaning against the counter with a glass of milk when Laurel came in, flustered, and said absolutely nothing, just stood there with her face flushed and her lips swollen from hours of kissing, wearing that tousled look and emanating a wild sexual energy the young could never hide.
“Where were you tonight?”
“Just hanging out.”
The lies were starting, and Kathryn wanted to flinch at Laurel’s words. No, Mommy, I don’t have my hand in the cookie jar. “You’re dating someone.” Despite her best intentions, it came out like an accusation.
Laurel stiffened. “Were you watching us?”
“I was in the living room when the front light went out.” She stopped. She had nothing to explain. “I think I should meet this boy.”
Laurel didn’t say anything at first and Kathryn wished she could read her mind. “I’m your mother, Laurel. If for no other reason than out of respect.”
“He’s nice, Mom. He really is.”
Kathryn nodded. “Okay. That’s good.”
Laurel seemed to hesitate, then relaxed with a long sigh. “I’ll bring him by the shop tomorrow.” She turned to leave.
“Good night.”
The words “Good night, Mom,” echoed back from the hallway and she heard Laurel’s bedroom door close. Now what? Everything was starting. She needed to talk it out. She needed to know what to do. It was too late to call Evie. But after a hellish night, she did call her sister the first thing the next morning and said, “She’s so young, Evie. Laurel wants love for all the wrong reasons. What do I do when she wants to fall in love so badly?”
“You let her, Kay. You just let her.”
12
The sea around Catalina was a myriad of abalone-shell blues, from aquamarine shallows near the island beaches to a deep ink blue along the distant mainland coast. Still as the morning air, the water glistened with sunlight, blindingly bright, as if reflected from a freshly cleaned mirror. The only motion visible was a subtle ripple of current, until a classic, mahogany runabout shot out from around an outcropping and cut diamond-like across the glassy water, heading toward the Banning home on a sleepy, private cove.
Jud powered down the boat as he approached their pier. Usually he could take the boat out and find peace in the blue solitude of the ocean. It never failed to remind him of his place—one man alone on the largest ocean in the world, like an ant staring down a herd of elephants. There, in the smallness of who he was, he could work things through. He could see with less clutter, and the insurmountable wouldn’t appear so impossible. The ant had options. He could crawl onto the elephant’s back and it would take him someplace else.
But today he came back to the house with no answers except the feeling—the reality—that his confidence was badly shaken. It stayed with him like a relentless headache that no medication could relieve. His grandfather had taught him the inflexible reality of life: either you
won or you lost. There was no middle ground. You headed down a path that would lead you to one or the other.
At the dock, Jud jumped off, wrapped the towline around a cleat, and secured the other line. The hot, weathered boards burned the soles of his bare feet. Sweat dripped into his eyes and matted the overlong hair under his cap, as if it were July instead of April. Tooling around in this boat he loved appealed to him. Not just its leather interior, teak decking, and rebuilt V-8, though he’d spent time and sweat and money restoring it.
He and Cale bought the boat as a joint project a few years back. But Cale had trouble finding time to work, always living in the next moment. Cale worried about life passing him by. He saw everything in wholes—the whole world was speeding away from him, the whole world was against him, the whole world lay before him—while Jud was a detail man. He could sit patiently and wait for the perfect timing. It took cautious, thoughtful steps to get where you wanted to go. You couldn’t just leap ahead without tripping.
That was part of what frustrated him so much about the Marvetti deal. He’d thought he’d done it all right, all the pieces there for the perfect deal—the best way to impress Victor.
Jud knew what Victor was really saying to him on Friday: he was a loser. His failure took physical form, a tautness invading his body that he couldn’t shake even in the peace of a lonely sea. He arched his back and stretched in the sun, then grabbed a beer from the cooler. When he straightened, Cale was walking toward him from the house.
This was new. His brother had been avoiding him, the easiest way to make him out as the bad guy. Don’t confront someone if you’re ticked off. Avoid them and make them feel guilty. Jud jumped back on board and began to wipe down the boat. When he glanced up, his brother stood next to the boat guzzling orange juice from a carton. Jud dropped a large sponge into a water bucket. “Has anyone called?”
“No. But I just got up.” Cale paused, then asked, “Who’d call this early?”
“Early?” Jud looked up. Cale was serious. “How are you going to get through those long hours as an intern?”
“That’s why I’m resting up. Logging in sleep for the next few years.” His voice was flip and screw-you. “Who’s calling here?”
“I’m expecting some calls from the board members.” Jud picked up his beer. “I left this number.”
Cale looked around him, squinting a little at the sun. “How long have you been up?”
“I woke up about four with the Z Channel blaring on the TV. Couldn’t sleep, so I took her out around sunrise.”
Cale finished off the orange juice and tossed the carton in a trash can. He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. “You’re drinking a beer. It’s ten in the morning.”
“Call it breakfast.”
“Beer for breakfast from the king of the kitchen?” The words dripped with sarcasm.
Jud kept wiping down the deck. “It’s hot. I felt like a beer.”
His younger brother didn’t say anything more, perhaps aware he’d crossed a line, or that he couldn’t egg him into a fight. Jud wrung out the sponge, annoyed at the grudge Cale carried. Hell, he was steamed too.
“Your face looks better,” Cale said. “The swelling’s gone.”
“Yeah. I can shave without flinching.”
“I guess I haven’t been around much.”
“No.”
Cale was looking out at the mainland instead of at him. “I met a girl Saturday night.”
“I just figured you were still pissed off because I kicked your ass at your own game.”
“Ha! I let you win.”
Jud started to argue.
Cale cut him off “And if I were pissed, I’d bully you into a rematch.”
“Bully me?” Jud laughed at him. “Right.”
“Well.” Cale half grinned. “Tempt you. All it took before was to shoot a few baskets alone. That’s all it ever takes with you. Face it, Jud. You’re easy.”
“I didn’t see you standing outside with the ball the next morning clamoring for a rematch.” Jud remembered that Cale had slept until almost noon that day, then showered and left without a word.
Cale lowered himself into the boat. “Give me a rag. I’ll help.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“No.” Jud said distinctly and sat back on his heels. “You don’t.”
“I want to use the boat later.”
“Then here.” Jud tossed him a rag.
“I thought I’d take Laurel out in it this afternoon. Great girl.”
“And she looks like Barbie Benton.”
“No, but she has brown hair. Great legs, small waist.” Cale stopped listing assets. “She’s a knockout, but that’s not what I like about her.”
“Yeah, sure.” Jud laughed out loud.
“Okay, okay . . . it helps. But you’d like her. She’s really easy to talk to.”
“I like my conversations in words that are more than one syllable.”
“You’re an ass, Jud. You know that?”
“Then why are you laughing?”
“Because you’re a funny ass.”
“You never laughed when I made cracks about the last one.”
“Corkie? Once you’ve been made a fool of, it’s easier to laugh at yourself.”
“Good, then don’t forget that, now that you’ve met a new one.”
“You’re warning me off and you haven’t even met her.”
“I’m not warning you off. Just reminding you to keep your head on straight this time.”
“You’re my brother, not my father, Jud.”
“You were the one who was whining about med school.”
“You sound like Victor again.”
“If I were Victor, I’d make you feel as if you were worth about two cents. I just don’t want you to screw up again. Okay?”
“Look. I know I made a mistake. Am I going to have to hear about it until I die?”
“It’s not just that last girl, Corkie. Although she was the worst of the bunch. There’s a pattern here. If it weren’t for basketball, you might not have gotten into Loyola. Remember your senior year of high school? Wasn’t exactly stellar. What was that cheerleader’s name?”
“Sierra.”
“Good God, how could I forget that?”
Cale’s expression thinned. “I don’t see you in any great relationship.”
“We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. Now you find it easy to admit your mistake. A year from now this Lauren might be an easy-to-admit-mistake, too.”
“Laurel, not Lauren. And she’s different.”
Jud just looked at him.
“She’s a cooking student.”
“What? Like home ec?”
“She wants to be a professional chef.”
“You want med school.”
“I know. I know.” Cale shoved his hands in his pockets. “Trust me to make a better choice this time.”
The boat was clean, so Jud stood and emptied the bucket over the side.
“You should meet her. You’ll see she’s different.”
For some reason Cale wanted his approval of this girl. That was unusual, so Jud faced him. “Bring her to dinner. We’ll barbecue something.”
“Tonight?”
“Sure.”
Cale seemed to think about that, then said, “We’re taking the boat out and I want to buzz over to the Isthmus. I’ll make sure we’re back before six.”
“Here.” Jud put the boat keys in Cale’s hand. “The tank’s half full.” He headed for the house.
“This girl’s the right one this time, Jud.”
Cale followed him closely, reminding him of when they were kids and Cale shadowed him everywhere. This sudden need for approval was a different side of his brother. Jud studied him for a minute, and all of his anger dissipated. He had a hard time himself wringing a single drop of approval from Victor. But here was Cale, who needed some kind of victory—needed his older
brother not to be Victor, something Jud understood. “Maybe she is the right one, little brother. Maybe she is.”
Cale walked alongside him. “Tonight. You’ll see I’m right.”
“Okay. I’ll hold back my judgment.” Jud knuckled him in the arm. “Hell, Cale, even a blind monkey can find a peanut once in a while.”
Kathryn Peyton pumped the pedals on the pottery wheel and a few pounds of clay coned up through her hands. Her movements were practiced and the only part of her life that had any rhythm. Last night she tossed and turned as she had so often lately, caught in the angst about her decision to pack up and move here, about Laurel’s desperate need to be loved and her longing for some kind of male attention in her life, roles she couldn’t fill. By 4 A.M., each piece she’d created that week flitted through her head. She was counting artwork instead of sheep.
The shelves along the studio walls held tall, elliptical vases and deeply curved bowls, abstract urns, and large platters waiting for glaze and firing. All the pieces had a single, jagged line dividing them in half, a common thread. At 5 A.M. she knew the title of the collection, A Mother’s Mind, and decided to glaze each side with deep contrasting color, then name each of the pieces for a different emotion. Fear. Confusion. Need. Protection. Hesitancy. Every piece would be numbered seventeen, Laurel’s age.
When Laurel had come to work that morning with Kathryn the first thing out of her mouth had been, “Look at your studio. All those pieces? You’ve been working too hard, Mom.” Her daughter wouldn’t remember the last time Kathryn had filled a room with pottery, all abstract, most of it too tormented in design for easy sale, especially in the fifties, when people wanted Bauer bowls or Franciscan Ware, pieces you used, the days when “art” could never be thrown on a wheel.
In the years since, the oddly formed pieces she’d used to purge her grief had became seminal to her career and often sold at auction for more than her newer work. That collection had been titled Jimmy.
Now, she concentrated on finishing the newest piece, a huge open bowl with a waved rim and an unusual looped cut that twisted in and out of itself in a confused line. Once done, she sliced the piece from the wheel and added it to the shelf.