Coast Road

by Barbara Delinsky

  The rolls remained in the tray table. Jack was eyeing them and wondering what to do about dinner when a new face appeared. This latest visitor was male but effeminate, Harlan by name, one of Katherine’s operators. He hugged the girls and kissed Rachel, chatted with each for a short time, then left. Jack had barely begun to get over the feeling that he was the outsider here when Faye arrived with another zippered bag.

  “Brisket,” she told him. “Noodles and veggies included. Just heat and serve.” She didn’t stay much longer than it took to tell Rachel about the abysmal game of golf she had played that day, her surprise enjoyment of the book group’s next book, and her three-year-old granddaughter’s preschool play. Then she, too, was gone.

  Half an hour later, when Charlie Avalon arrived with an earful of beaded hoops and a cedar-scented candle, Jack waved Katherine into the hall. “Tell me the truth,” he said when she joined him. “These visitors dovetail too neatly. Someone orchestrated this. Was it you?”

  “Definitely. They wanted to come, but it won’t do Rachel any good to have them all here at once.”

  “Did you tell each one what to bring?”

  “I didn’t have to. They knew what to bring.” She frowned. “Do you have a problem with this?”

  He did. But he wasn’t sure what it was.

  Yes, he did. It was the outsider thing. He was feeling usurped.

  “The girls have CD players,” he said. “I gave them each one last Christmas. They might have wanted to bring Rachel their own.”

  “If they want to, that’s great. They can also bring CDs from home. And books.” She studied him. “Are you jealous?”

  “Jealous of what?”

  “Of my bringing a CD? Of Rachel’s friends bringing other things? Of Rachel’s friends, period?”

  “No. No. I’m just surprised. She used to be more of a loner. I had no idea she had so many friends, and good friends. They’ve gone out of their way to help out.”

  “Don’t you have friends who would do the same if the situation was reversed?”

  Jack had many, many friends. But good friends? Jill would come, for sure. David? He … couldn’t quite picture it.

  “Do Rachel’s friends make you feel left out?” Katherine asked.

  “Of course not. Why do you say that?”

  “It’s just how you look, standing over by the window. It’s like you’re realizing that you don’t know who Rachel is now and what she’s doing with her life, and even though you’re divorced, that bothers you. Is it a control thing?”

  He was astounded by her gall. “Are you serious?”

  “Uh-huh. From what Rachel says, you had the upper hand in the marriage. Your job, your needs came first. I’d call that controlling. Old habits die hard.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Freud,” he said, then added an annoyed “Is there some reason you’re telling me this?”

  “Uh-huh. Rachel would do it if she could, but she can’t.”

  “Rachel would not.” Not his Rachel. “She was never one to bicker and carp.”

  “But she thinks. She feels. She’s thought a lot about her marriage since it ended. She’s learned to express herself more than she did when she was married.”

  “She expressed herself plenty then.”

  Katherine just shrugged.

  “Okay, what didn’t she say?” Jack asked. When she shrugged again, he said, “I can take it. What didn’t she say?”

  “Important things. She felt that she let them go by the board. It goes back to control. If Rachel could see you in there with her friends, she’d probably say you were jealous. And insecure.”

  “I’m controlling. I’m jealous. I’m insecure.” Jack sputtered out a breath. “You’re tough.”

  As insults went, it was weak. Many women would have taken it as a compliment. Apparently not Katherine. It fired her up.

  “I’ve had to be tough, because I’ve depended on men like you and they’ve always let me down. That’s the first thing Rachel and I had in common.”

  “Ahhh. Fellow man-haters.”

  “Not man-haters. We have plenty of male friends.”

  He couldn’t resist. “Like Harlan?”

  She stared. “Harlan supports a significant other who has AIDS. He cooks, cleans, buys food, clothes, and medical care. He rushes home to make lunch and has passed up training seminars in New York that might have advanced his career, all to care for his partner. You could take a lesson from Harlan.”

  Forget Harlan. Forget even that young guy in the purple scrubs. Something else had stuck in his brain. “Rachel has plenty of male friends? Where are they? Is Ben the supposed significant other? Or is she dating lots of guys and playing the field—once-burned, twice-shy kind of thing?”

  “You’re a fine one to talk,” Katherine said. “There you are, holding on to favorite pictures of your ex-wife while you string Jill on for, what, two years now?”

  “Hah. Pot calling the kettle black. What’s with you and Bauer? He’s a good-looking guy, but whenever he shows up, you get all high-voiced and nervous, then turn tail and run.” He paused, frowned. “How do you know about Jill?”

  “Rachel told me.”

  “That’s interesting. Is she jealous?”

  “Not on your life. She’s been thriving since the divorce. You’ve seen her work. She couldn’t paint in the city. Now she can. Something stifled her back there. I wonder what it was.”

  Jack knew she was about to tell him—and he had suddenly had enough. He held up a hand. “Your clients may sit in your chair and talk their hearts out, but that’s their need, not mine. My life is not your business. I don’t have to discuss it with you.”

  “Wasn’t that one of the problems with your marriage? Lack of communication?”

  Both hands raised now, he stepped back. He was about to return to the room when Katherine said a more gentle “Run if you want, but it won’t go away.”

  “Rachel and I are divorced. That’s about as far away as it gets.”

  “Is that why you’ve been here every day for the past week? Is that why you kept those pictures? You care, Jack.”

  “Of course, I care. I was with Rachel for two years; we were married for ten. That doesn’t mean I need to analyze every little thing that’s happened since—including those pictures. She has pictures of me; why the hell shouldn’t I have pictures of her? You don’t negate twelve good years. You don’t just wipe them off the screen like they never happened, and that goes for the feelings involved. Rachel is seriously ill. I’m here for old times’ sake, because someone I was intimate with for years could die. And because she is the mother of my daughters, who happen to need tending.”

  “The girls could be staying with me, or with Eliza or Faye. We all know them well, and we have the room. We also live closer to the hospital than the house in Big Sur, but you’re driving them back and forth, back and forth, when you really want to be in the city.”

  “It’s what I think is best, and since I’m the next of kin, it’s my say.”

  “Isn’t it always?”

  “Actually,” he let out an exasperated breath, “no. I didn’t ask for the divorce. I didn’t move out. Rachel did.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “Why am I telling you this? My life is none of your business. Butt out, will you?”

  JACK was still feeling testy when he started the drive back to Big Sur, but the coast did its thing. By the time they passed Big Sur, a mist had risen to buffer him from the world, and he was more pensive than irate.

  He spent thirty minutes with his laptop hooked up to Rachel’s fax line, and another thirty with Faye’s brisket and the girls. There wasn’t much talking. Hope was teary eyed. Samantha kept looking at her. All Jack could do was to say the occasional “It’ll get better. Things like this take time.”

  Then the girls went to their rooms, leaving him to his own devices. He told himself to work. Or to paint. Instead, he dumped the bag of mail from his house on the kitchen table, and with barely a glance, threw out all bu
t the bills. That done, he looked around the kitchen. Idly, he opened drawers, thumbed through takeout menus from restaurants in Carmel—Italian, Mexican, Thai. Some had items circled. Others had food stains. All had clearly been used, which was a change. In San Francisco, Rachel had always cooked. She had said it was easy enough, since she worked at home. She still worked at home. Had he been the one who kept them in? He had always preferred home cooking after being away, so Rachel had cooked. He supposed that could be called controlling.

  He flipped through Rachel’s mail, tossing junk in the basket, putting bills next to his. Samantha had already taken a handful of catalogues. And the ones that were left, the ones addressed to Rachel? Most were for outdoor clothing. Several were for artists’ goods. The rest were for garden supplies. No surprise there. Nor in the CD collection in the living room. Oh, yes, she had a supply of James Taylor, Van Morrison, and the Eagles, but she had half again as many country discs. He supposed it went with outdoor clothing and garden supplies. He supposed it went with a country life. But he hadn’t even thought of Rachel as a romantic. Sweet, sentimental, and sensitive—but romantic?

  Actually, now that he thought of it, she was. He recalled returning from a business trip once to something very romantic. Rachel had picked him up at the airport, typically breathless but on time. It was dark out. The girls were in the backseat, in their pajamas, giggling behind their hands. Looking back, he guessed they had been six and four, or seven and five, which put the time at two to three years before the divorce. There had been tension at home surrounding this trip. Rachel had been quiet driving him to the airport. He was missing a school play in which both of the girls had parts.

  “If it was just me, I wouldn’t mind,” she had said the night before he left; but it was an important trip for him, and it had been productive.

  The girls giggled most of the way home from the airport. “What are you guys up to?” he asked more than once, to which they had only giggled more.

  What they were up to was a rerun of the play in the living room, with scenery taken right from the school—easily done, since Rachel was the chief set designer—and Rachel playing every part except the girls’ parts. Jack applauded roundly, then read good-night stories to each girl in turn. He had thought that the ongoing grins and giggles were simply because he was home.

  Then he reached his and Rachel’s room and found the place ablaze with daffodils in candlelight. Rachel had unpacked his bag and filled the bathtub with hot water and bubbles. There were daffodils and candles there, too. And fresh raspberries. And wine. Without eating a thing, he felt totally full.

  All the more empty by contrast now and needing more of Rachel, he went to her studio. His laptop was still plugged in, resting on a mound of Boca paperwork. The canvases he had placed against the wall the day before hadn’t moved. He sat down on the floor and studied them.

  After a bit, he began rummaging through her supplies. She had oils and acrylics in tubes, neatly arranged on a work desk. Watercolors were in tin boxes. Brushes of varying widths lay on a cloth with several palette knives. There were more tubes and tins in the storage closet, plus her traveling gear—a heavy-duty manual camera and film, a portable easel, a large canvas bag, a folding seat—plus a supply of sketch pads, pencils, and pens.

  There was also a metal file cabinet. He opened it to find her professional records—sales receipts, lists of what painting was at what gallery, expense receipts, tax forms, memos from her accountant. He closed it just shy of seeing how much money she made. He didn’t want to know that, didn’t want to know that.

  Instead, snooping idly, he pulled out a portfolio that was stashed between the file cabinet and the wall. It wasn’t a large portfolio, either in size or thickness. Squatting down, he set it against the front of the file cabinet, opened it, and found a sheaf of rag paper bound with a thin piece of blue yarn. He pulled it out, untied the yarn, and sat back, resting the sheaf against his thighs.

  The first page was blank, a title page without a title. He turned to the next page and saw something that looked like a baby in the very first stages of development. An embryo. He turned to the next and the next, watching the embryo develop into a fetus with features that grew more distinct and increasingly human. Then, in a moment of silent violence, the sac holding the fetus burst. Jack was shaken. He looked at it for the longest time, unable to turn forward or back. When the shock passed, he went on, and then it was as if the explosion hadn’t occurred. The fetus grew page by page into a baby, confined in its sac but in different positions.

  It was a little boy. As fingers and toes were delineated, so was a tiny penis.

  Again, Jack was shaken. He studied the infant, feeling the utter reality of the child, though it was drawn with nothing more than a blue pen. A blue pen, on high-quality, heavy ivory rag.

  Only three pages remained. On the first, the baby was simply larger and more detailed, tiny eyelashes, perfectly shaped ears, thumb in mouth. On the second, his little body was turned in preparation for birth, with only elbows and heels, head and bottom making bumps in the smooth egg shape. On the last, the child had his eyes open and was looking directly at Jack.

  So real. Jack felt a chill on the back of his neck. So real. So familiar.

  Turning back to the first page, he went through the sheaf again. He felt the familiarity begin soon after that silent violence. By the time he turned the last page, he had an eerie thought. He pushed it aside, gathered the pages together, retied the yarn, and returned the sheaf to the portfolio. Closing it tightly, he stashed it back between the file cabinet and the wall.

  Still, he saw that last picture. It haunted him through the night and woke him at dawn. He phoned Brynna in Buffalo and his client in Boca, but as soon as he hung up, that baby was back.

  Watching the girls in the car, he wondered if they knew anything about a baby, but he couldn’t ask. Whether he was wrong or right, mentioning it would open a can of worms.

  Rachel knew. But Rachel wasn’t saying. That left Katherine.

  chapter eleven

  NATURALLY, KATHERINE wasn’t at the hospital when he arrived, but that was fine. Jack had taken her phone number from Rachel’s address book—both numbers, work and home. Standing just outside Rachel’s room, he called the work number on his cell phone.

  “Color and Cut,” came a bubbly young voice.

  “Katherine Evans, please.”

  “I’m sorry. She’s with a client. Would you like to make an appointment?”

  “Not for my hair,” Jack remarked.

  “Oh. Uh. Then, can she return your call?”

  He gave the sweet young thing his number, pushed the phone in his pocket, and returned to Rachel. Drawing up a chair, he put his elbows on the bed rail.

  “So,” he said, feeling resentful. “She’s your unofficial spokeswoman. Make that spokesperson. Might as well be politically correct, here. It looks like I have to go through her to get to you.” He half expected a gloating smile. Of course, there was none, which, irrationally, annoyed him more. He rubbed his thumb over those immobile lips, found them dry, applied Vaseline. What excess there was, he rubbed into the back of his hand.

  “Remember when we used to ski?” They had done Aspen and Vail. They had done Snowmass and Telluride. The trips were gifts from Victoria, the only gifts from her that they had truly enjoyed. While the girls took lessons, Rachel and Jack skied together. One Chap Stick was all they ever brought, and they shared. “That was fun. This isn’t. Rachel? Are you there? Can you hear me? It’s been a week, Rachel, a whole week. You may be having a ball in there, but it’s getting harder on us out here. Hope needs you to help her with Guinevere’s death. She disappeared this morning—didn’t show up for breakfast and wasn’t in the house at all. I ran to Guinevere’s grave. No Hope. I was getting ready to panic when she came down from Duncan’s. That’s starting to make me nervous. I mean, he’s a big guy living alone. Could be he’s a pervert.” Rachel didn’t look upset. Neither had Hope when she returne
d from Duncan’s. Jack had watched her closely for signs of distress, but there were none. “She says she needs his faith. If that’s the extent of it, I still feel inadequate. We never talked about religion, you and me. Maybe we should have. Maybe the kids need a faith of their own for times like these.”

  He stood, bringing her arm up with him, and began to gently put it through its paces. “And Sam. She’s a trip. I have no idea what’s going on in her head. She vacillates between being an angel and a shrew. I’m never quite sure whether she’s listening to what I say or whether she’s only nodding while her mind is off somewhere else. Do you get through to her?”

  The ring of the phone was muffled by his jeans. Gently, he set her arm down. Less gently, he flipped the phone open as he walked to the door. “Yeah?”

  “It’s Katherine,” said a frightened voice. “What’s up?”

  “I need to talk with you.”

  There was a silent beat, then, “Rachel’s the same?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. She’s the same.”

  Katherine swore softly. “Can I ask a favor? Next time you call, please tell them it isn’t an emergency.”

  “But it is,” he said, looking back at his wife. “I found a pack of drawings in Rachel’s studio. Of a baby. A baby boy.”

  The silence this time was for more than one beat.

  “I need to know what those drawings meant, Katherine. That baby had my eyes.”

  There was more silence. Finally, she murmured something to someone on her end, then said, “I’ll be over in forty-five minutes.”