by Jill Barnett
“Good. You’re mad at Dad, too.”
“Actually, I’m working hard not to give him that much power over me.”
Pat interrupted them with a fax still warm from the machine. “Good news from Jack Colson. I thought you’d want to read this.”
Laurel read the fax in disbelief “They’re checking our references.” She looked from Pat to Annalisa. “Jack says Del Mar called him about our work. They are actually considering us for the Camino Cliff project. My God.”
“Of course they are. We do the best work,” Annalisa said with all the creamy assurance of youth.
Laurel expected the contract to go to one of the larger, older firms. Camino Cliff was pie-in-the-sky, like buying a lotto ticket for a megajackpot. “I don’t believe this.”
“You can’t keep thinking so small, Mom.”
“I’m realistic. Makes for a safer existence.”
“Safe, maybe. But I’d rather win and you can’t win without taking a risk. Makes life more interesting.” Annalisa stood up. “I have to leave early. Dinner plans tonight.”
Laurel continued to study the fax. Jack implied it was a done deal, that Del Mar would take their bid, but Laurel didn’t want to believe it was possible and was afraid to want it. She had stopped dreaming a long time ago.
“Mom?”
Laurel looked up.
Annalisa stood in the doorway. “Daddy is never realistic.”
24
For the last three, post-stroke decades, Victor Banning went to every mainland opening of Kathryn Peyton’s work. First in a wheelchair pushed by Harlan, later with a walker, and eventually, like tonight, leaning on an intricately carved silver cane some might consider a work of art. A phalanx of people flanked each lit niche, examining the twisted glazed pots that were actually clay sculptures, some close to life-sized. The collection was titled Dark Places, with individual names like Night Sky, Jungles, Closet Time, and The Heart.
Victor thumbed through the brochure before reading the artist’s statement.
Artists live twice. Once in real time and again in each work they create. I’ve been an artist for over four decades. I use the pain of life to create works with meaning. Art isn’t art without meaning, and meaning can come only from human experience.
K. PEYTON
She stood outside the crowd, wearing something bohemian. Music piped through corner speakers was the Irish folk kind played in three-hour movies, and the bar served only wine. She said nothing when he walked up to her, and looked resigned. He used his cane to gesture around the room. “You’re trying too hard, Kathryn.”
Her next breath was long. “I disliked you less when you couldn’t speak.” She always crossed her arms when they faced each other. Protective gestures, he noticed.
Their conversation had grown into an artistic endeavor, perfected over the years, its silent seeds beginning with his first appearance, when his mouth was numb, his arm and leg cursedly limp, and coherent speech impossible. But for years now their short exchanges had more meaning than any work of art. “I can’t get a scotch,” he said.
“You don’t need a scotch.”
“Alcohol makes people put aside their inhibitions. Cocktails will make people spend money.”
“It’s sold out, Victor.”
He didn’t try to feign surprise and held up the brochure. “I read your statement.”
“It’s new.”
“I know. It takes a long passage of years to see the world clearly. This sounds as if you want to live in a garret.”
Small frown lines creased her face and golden skin. She wasn’t an easy woman to read, but she looked thoughtful and didn’t respond. No comeback.
“The classic image of pain and the artist. I knew someone once whose art could only come from scandal.” For one brief moment Victor felt something close to sorrow. He nodded at the nearest piece, then at the room in general. “This collection is impressive. You’ve grown, Kathryn.”
She looked him straight in the eye. “Am I supposed to thank you?”
“No, but looking at your work makes one wonder how tortured your life is.”
Her laugh had a humorless sound. “I think you know all about torture.”
He could look in the mirror every single day—had for most of his life—and see no cure for unhappiness. “I know the dark places of the heart.”
“I imagine you do, Victor. Excuse me. I’m sure you’ll want to go where they serve scotch. Alcohol is supposed to soothe a tortured soul, and I need to mix.” She left him standing there, and tonight, like all the other nights, she never asked why he was there.
The only photo in the room was of a woman who would never grow old. She stood on a sandy beach with her sons, caught laughing in a clear blue instant of her slim lifetime. The picture anchored the corner of Cale’s desk, there to jog his memory. So much of the time now he stumbled through his days like someone hit in the head and unable to remember the past.
He washed down a couple of naproxen with some cold decaf coffee—possibly the worst drink in existence—and studied the King woman’s history a second time, making notes until the ink ran out on his Mont Blanc, a gift from Robyn. He slammed drawers and told himself it was because he couldn’t find an ink cartridge. Finally he dropped the pen on his desk and rubbed a hand over his face.
His wife was diagnosed with cancer early, a small, pea-sized tumor. No chemo. Lucky lady, Robyn only needed radiation. Until another tumor appeared, then another and another. In the end, they fed her enough chemo to kill the cancer, or what little was left of her. After she was gone, he would glance up from the newspaper and speak to her out of habit. He’d catch a flash of a bright color from the corner of his eye and look up, sure she was coming into the room. In the middle of the night he’d turn over and reach for her as he had for so many years, only to find himself alone with pillows that smelled like laundry soap instead of the tropical scent of her shampoo.
Soon death and all those percentages and statistics associated with it became a weight on his back every time he examined a patient or walked into the OR. His desire to tackle any high-risk surgery was shot, gone. Surgeons might take a lot of flak for their arrogance, but only an enormous ego had the confidence to believe you could beat death.
“Hey, Pop.” His younger son, Dane, strolled through the door as if he owned the office, and maybe the world. A gift of youth.
“You’re going to make one hell of a surgeon,” Cale told him.
“Probably, if I can ever grasp the technique for a central line. I blew it again this morning. I wouldn’t want to be my patient.”
“You’ll get it.”
“So they tell me whenever I hit bone.”
“Go deeper under the clavicle. I couldn’t tie a suture knot for the life of me. Keep trying. Medicine is more practice than talent.”
“Thank God, else I’d be drummed out of the brotherhood.”
That wasn’t true. His golden son was one of the gifted ones who had an instinct for medicine, a mind for diagnosis, and usually grasped complex skills with ease.
Dane picked up the photograph. “I remember this day. Mom was mad at you because you were trying to get the right camera angle and stepped on our sandwiches.”
Cale laughed, but only because his son did. He had forgotten about his heel prints in the bread, and his wife’s reaction. Only their perfect moments ever seemed to come to mind.
Dane set down the photo and studied the film display. “What’s this?”
“Here are the records.” Cale stood and gave Dane his chair. “You tell me.”
While his son read over the patient history, Cale sat on the corner of his desk, where bright spring sunshine shone in from the south window, turning everything the color of old newspaper. He adjusted the photograph away from the light.
“Looks like she’s had aortic valve replacement.” Dane thumbed through the records. “Seven years ago. Possible arrhythmia just discovered during a routine check.”
“Here’s the video of the latest echocardiogram.” Cale explained the results.
“I don’t know how you face this kind of challenge day in and day out.”
He didn’t admit to his son that his hands sometimes shook, that he didn’t know when he had stopped needing to hold a frail and damaged heart, or how one day the OR suddenly felt like a Roman arena.
“What are you going to do?”
“I need more tests.”
His office manager came in. “Matt called. He’s changed your lunch to Tommy Bahama’s.”
Cale checked his watch. “Did he change the time?”
“No. You’re going to be late.”
“Damn.” He shrugged out of his lab coat, while Dane turned off the video. Cale handed the office manager the files. “Call Dr. Collins’s office and have them schedule a TEE. I’m not sure what we’re looking at.” He grabbed his keys. “Let’s go, son.”
Forty-five minutes later they walked into Tommy Bahama’s, a trendy Newport Beach restaurant off Pacific Coast Highway, the kind of hip young place that served fruit-sodden fish and reggae chicken.
Dane groaned, looking around. “Palm trees and parrots? All I wanted was a good hamburger that doesn’t scream I-was-made-in-a-hospital-cafeteria, an icy Coors, and a little ESPN.”
Matt was in the back of the restaurant, talking to a man in a tropical shirt. Cale nudged Dane. “There’s your brother.”
“Who’s that with him? Gilligan?”
They didn’t stop laughing until they were in a booth with Matt and had ordered. Dane slapped a palm frond out of his way and swore.
Matt looked at him. “What’s wrong with you?”
“If they put a paper umbrella in my beer, I’m leaving.”
“Change your order to a martini, little brother, and maybe they’ll skewer the olives with a plastic monkey.”
“You’re living in a time warp. I stopped collecting swizzle sticks when I was ten. What are we doing here? I wanted a pound of sirloin and a pile of fries. If anyone I know sees me here I’ll have to hide behind this menu. Wait—” Dane turned to Matt—“I know what this is. You’re going to tell us you’re gay. I always thought you were too pretty.”
“Funny,” Matt said, then paused as the waiter brought their food. “We’re looking at bids for work on the Cliff project. One of the commercial design companies is local. This kitchen is one of their projects. I wanted to take a look at it.”
“Has Jud seen this place?” Dane scanned the room. “I’d like to be here when he does.”
“I’m overseeing the project and have to pick the subs. I’m interested in the kitchen design, not the restaurant design. I’m leaning toward giving the contract to a smaller company.”
“Jud had a reason for giving you control.” Cale knew his brother didn’t do anything lightly. “And you wanted your own project.”
“A baptism by fire,” Matt said, but Cale knew this was a big deal to his son.
Dane laughed. “You told me you hated feeling like a yes-man.”
“I did. When he gave me carte blanche, he said I wouldn’t have anyone to blame but myself when all hell broke loose, which it would, weekly, maybe daily.”
“Be thankful he’s your boss, son. Jud learned the business from Victor. You’re luckier than he was.”
“Speaking of our illustrious patriarch”—Dane scraped tropical fruit relish off his hamburger—“a hundred bucks says Uncle Jud’s date to Victor’s birthday bash is under twenty-five.”
Matt laughed. “Another sweet young thing for you to steal away, Dad.”
“She was thirty and I didn’t steal her away.”
“Once she heard about Mom she spent most of the evening talking with you.” Dane stuck the paper umbrella garnish from his lunch in Matt’s sandwich. “Here. I hate pineapple.”
“It had only been a year since she’d lost her husband. I understood what she was going through.” Cale hated that he sounded defensive.
“Yeah, but Uncle Jud was pissed,” Dane said.
“He was a bear at work for a week,” Matt added. “I couldn’t blame him. He walked in with this drop-dead knockout of a woman, someone every man there would have given their left nut for, and she spent the entire night talking with you in a dark corner. While he spent most of the evening pacing at the bar and trying to pretend he didn’t care.”
“He took her out to dinner once. There was nothing between them.” Cale signaled for the check, then caught a look his sons exchanged. “And there was nothing between us, either.”
“Too bad,” Dane said. “You just might have to get a life, Pop.”
Cale had a life. He just didn’t know how to survive it. When his sons finished their food, he said, “I need to get back to the office.”
Matt put his hand on the bill. “I’ll get the check, Dad. And I’ll take that bet, little brother. A hundred bucks. On Jud’s date.”
“You’re on.” Dane stood.
Matt slid his arm around him, laughing. “Jud’s been back with Kelly for a while. You want to pay up now?”
“Screw you, Matt.”
Outside was too warm, the Southern California heat baking in waves above the asphalt; it aged skin, bleached hair, faded paint and photographs on office desks. Cale put on his sunglasses and headed for his car, his sons walking ahead of him, tall, grown, and on their own. For a moment he felt old just looking at them, until they started a mock fight, socking each other in the upper arm, laughing and egging each other on as they’d done when they were young teens with big feet and long thin bodies they hadn’t grown into yet.
Though men now, they still liked each other. Cale made a mental note to call Jud, then leaned on his car, watching his sons horse around in the parking lot. Everything about the moment seemed wrong without Robyn there to rest his arm around. He played the mental game of those left behind: the memory test. What would she have said if she were next to him? With the deepest of sorrows, he realized he didn’t have a clue.
Jud Banning only heard half of what she was saying, something about buying a condo. Kelly was a leggy brunette, a magazine editor with one failed marriage and no kids. They’d met years before through Robyn, dated, broken up, met again six months ago, and fallen back into an easy, comfortable relationship. With his work so demanding, Jud preferred easy. What he had wished for in his youth didn’t feel like much of a gift at middle age, when in a single week he’d been in Alaska, Nevada, and Louisiana, and had come home only to have to put out a corporate fire in Santa Barbara that morning. The term “bone-tired” had meaning now.
Through the restaurant window came shades of pink and gold from a Pacific sunset, highlighting engraved silver, thin crystal, and Kelly’s precise, classic beauty. Surrounding him were all the trappings of a romantic dinner, the kind they’d had more and more of in the last month. He took a deep drink of whiskey.
“The condo I’m considering is in your building.”
“Why do you want to move?” He set down his glass and the waiter brought a salad he didn’t touch.
“Change is good.” Her voice was overly bright and gave him a heavy, sinking premonition.
“You’re in a great house. Great neighborhood,” he said. “You’ve lived there how many years?”
“Ten.”
“It’s home for you, Kel. You’re there every night. You have those kids next door you take everywhere. I barely know my neighbors. The condo works for me. The only yard I want is my dock.”
She wasn’t eating either and stared down into her champagne glass, the lemon twist curling on a delicate crystal rim, the kind that sang under your finger and could break from a harsh sound.
“You like your neighbors, your space, your lawn, the flowers.”
“Flowers can grow just as well in pots on a balcony.” Running through his head were a hundred reasons why her plan was a really bad idea.
“This isn’t about growing flowers,” she said finally. “And it’s not about buying a condo.” He fin
ished off the scotch.
To her credit, she didn’t flinch, but shook her head. “You’d think I would have learned the first time around.”
A car horn honked in the distance, laughter came from a nearby table. The clink of silver on bone china. He heard the piano music from the bar, a Billy Joel song. “I like you in my life, Kel.”
“I know you do. But I want more. I’m in love with you.”
He reached across the table and took her hand, genuinely sorry. He’d never reacted well when cornered. “You know I care. We have time. Is something wrong at work? Maybe I can help.”
She only looked at him, a little startled, then laughed as if he were a lost cause. “Robyn warned me. I thought you were only a workaholic who made no time for anyone else.”
“I run the family business.”
“I’d hardly call BanCo a family business, Jud.”
“The company has always been demanding. I don’t understand why Robyn would warn you.”
“She didn’t warn me about your work. She told me you couldn’t commit to a relationship, any relationship. She called you a classic Jack Nicholson.”
He hated being called a classic anything, even by the dead sister-in-law he had adored.
“I had hoped it would be different with us.” Kelly stood up and dropped her napkin on her plate. “I want commitment and a life spent with someone who loves me as much as I love them. I deserve that, Jud.”
He stood up, too. “Kelly, wait. Let’s talk about this.”
“Do you want to marry me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Someday.”
“Jud, please. I deserve the truth.”
It was a few seconds before he answered her. “The truth is, I don’t want to marry anyone right now.”
“I know.” She picked up her purse. “Don’t worry. I won’t buy the condo. But please don’t call me again.”
He watched her walk away from him, tall and elegant, her slim spine and square shoulders bare in a black cocktail dress, her dark hair glossy. He knew it smelled like Hawaiian flowers and her skin like baby powder. Kelly slept on the right side of the bed. She used his athletic socks to keep her feet warm and drank milk with Pepsi. She loved him, but for the life of him, he couldn’t go after her.