Baker's Blues

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  I love driving my new car—actually a pre-owned Saab convertible. It suits me, in the same way the Volvo suited me. More like a companion than a utility. I turn down my street, filled with…not happiness exactly. More like contentment. Or comfort. More at peace with my life than I’ve been in…how long? When was it…the last time I didn’t have to think about breathing? Two years? Three? No, longer than that. It’s shocking to realize that it was probably sometime in the late nineties. Maybe since—

  That’s when I see it. Parked in front of my house, shimmering under the streetlight like a mirage. Elky 2.

  Mac’s at the wheel, window down, his arm resting on the door frame. A thin plume of smoke trails up into the night sky. I pull up next to him and put down my window.

  “I thought you quit smoking.”

  His grin still does funny things to my stomach. “New wheels?”

  “My birthday present to me. What are you doing here?”

  “I was just in the neighborhood and I thought I’d stop by and wish you Merry Christmas.”

  “Where’s Kristin?”

  “Melbourne.”

  “Australia?”

  He nods. “Working on a picture. Were you at your mom’s?”

  “I think I’ve just been insulted. For all you know, I could be coming home from a hot date.”

  “If you had a hot date, you wouldn’t be coming home. And your mother would cut you out of the will if you missed Christmas Eve dinner.”

  “True. You want some coffee? I also have some of Tyler’s amazing chocolate hazelnut torte.”

  “I wouldn’t say no to that. Since I gave up Scotch, chocolate’s my new vice of choice.”

  I hit my garage door opener and he pulls into the driveway behind me.

  I find my French press in the pantry and brew a pot of decaf while he walks around my house and Charles follows, nipping at his heels, trying to herd him back to the kitchen. Finally he bends down and picks up the dog.

  “Hey, Chuck, it’s Christmas. Take the rest of the day off.”

  He settles Charles on his cushion by the back door. “New couch?”

  I open the fridge and stare into it for a minute, then focus on the cream pitcher. “Slipcovers.”

  “Looks nice.” Back in the living room he studies the art on the walls as if he’s never seen it before. He flips through a book, picks up a tin box with a silver and turquoise concha on the top, looks inside and, finding it empty, turns it over to read the artisan’s signature.

  “This is cool. Where’d you get it?”

  “CM got it for me in Santa Fe.”

  “I always wanted to go there,” he says.

  “Really?”

  I don’t remember him ever saying a word about Santa Fe. Or anywhere, actually. I guess I always assumed that with all his wandering, he’d pretty much been everywhere he wanted to go.

  When we sit down across from each other at my table, the easy stream of conversation that’s carried us this far seems to dry up. I take a sip of coffee and burn my tongue.

  “Talked to Alex lately?” he asks and I look at him sharply.

  “Is this a trick question?”

  “Just wondered.” He takes a bite of the torte and pronounces it intense. “He emailed me a few weeks ago. He wants to go up to Whistler in March.”

  “Sounds like fun. Will you go?”

  “I don’t know yet.” He stirs a heaping teaspoonful of sugar into his cup. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Since you went skiing? Or since you saw Alex?”

  “Since I saw you,” he says. “What was it, October?”

  “At the Bean Tree.”

  “Right. You were with that asshole.”

  I laugh. “Greg’s a perfectly nice guy. Just a little OCD.”

  “Are you still with him?”

  I feel my face color. “I was never exactly with him. We had dinner a couple of times. Just friends.”

  Silence. Then we both start to talk at the same time.

  “Go ahead,” he says.

  “I was just going to ask how you are. How are things going? What are you working on?”

  “Things…” He sits back in his chair. “are going fine. I’m working on a book. Non-fiction.”

  “About…?”

  “Rock climbing at Yosemite. Sort of a history. Stories about Chouinard and Galen Rowell and some of the guys who pioneered clean climbing and free climbing.”

  “Guys? Were there no gals involved?”

  He laughs. “One or two. Liz Robbins. Sibylle Hechtel…”

  “What made you decide to do nonfiction?”

  “Kristin and I did some climbing up there last summer…beginner stuff, but it was scary. I just started wondering what it would have been like climbing those big granite walls when nobody’d really done it. At least not that way.”

  He sets down his fork. “I need to ask a favor.”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t say that till you know what it is.” He pauses. “I want you to be the executor of my estate.”

  I stare at him.

  “I decided to make a will—”

  “But you’re…not old.”

  “I’m also not young. It’s mainly because of Skye. I want to be sure if anything happens…she’s taken care of. Would you do that for me?”

  “Of course, but…I mean, why not just make her the executor? She’s an adult.”

  “Yes, but she’s not a U.S. citizen. Technically. I talked to my lawyer and apparently there’s some weird shit about me having to acknowledge paternity under oath before she was eighteen. When you start wrangling over those kinds of things, the lawyers end up with all the money. And it’s irrelevant anyway since she’s never expressed any interest in living here.”

  “What about Kristin?”

  “I’d like you to do it. If you’re willing.”

  I nod. “Okay. Of course.”

  He drinks some more coffee. “And there’s…one more thing.”

  I laugh. “I said I’d do one thing, not two.”

  He smiles, but his expression changes. “I want to be cremated—”

  “Mac…what are you talking about?”

  “And I want you to scatter my ashes up on Orcas. In the ocean.”

  Goosebumps rise on my arms. “Why are you doing this?”

  He reaches over to touch my hand. “It’s just something I want to get settled and then I can forget about it. Will you do it? The ashes. I want you to do it. Personally.”

  We sit looking at each other.

  “Will you?”

  I can hardly make words come out. “Yes, if that’s what you want…I just…are you sure nothing’s wrong? You’re not sick or anything?”

  “No.” He says it lightly. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “What if I die first?”

  “Then you’re excused.” He smiles. “Sorry to spring it on you like this. I just want to get it done. I’m meeting with the lawyer right after the first. I’ll send you copies of everything. Thanks for…doing that.”

  He finishes off the dessert in three bites. “Compliments to Tyler.”

  I smile. “Yeah, she’s damned good. It’s great having her back.”

  “She still hate me?”

  “She never hated you.”

  “Sure she did. Probably still does.” When he puts down his cup and looks directly at me, my heart contracts. “I don’t blame her; sometimes I hate me, too.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why not? It’s the truth. As I recall, you were always pretty big on truth.”

  There’s a sudden heaviness in the air like a drop in the atmospheric pressure before a storm.

  He says, “I hate what I did to you. To us.”

  “I don’t think of it as something you did. It was just something that happened. I was…I didn’t handle the…situation…very well either.”

  “Liv wasn’t there, you know.”

  “What are you talking about?”

 
“That night I came back from Santa Barbara. I knew she was in New York, but I knew where she kept a spare key. I just went over there to sleep.”

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference.”

  “I know. That’s why I never told you.”

  “So why are you telling me now?”

  He shrugs. “I guess I just wanted you to know.”

  “Well…” I get up and take my cup to the sink.

  I hear the scrape of his chair on the tile and then his hands are on my shoulders. It’s like brushing a live electric wire. How strange that after all this time and everything that’s been said and done, there’s a part of me that would still like to slip my arms around his waist and lay my face against his chest.

  Instead I turn around and take both his hands in mine for a second. I look straight into his eyes. “We can’t do this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I can’t. I wouldn’t survive another break up.”

  “What if—”

  “Mac, don’t. Please. It’s too complicated. It’s like some beautiful, intricate machine. You take it apart, some little piece gets lost, and when you try to put it back together, it never works like it did before.”

  He seems about to counter with some other point, but then he just smiles and kisses the top of my head. “Okay.”

  He lifts his jacket off the back of the chair and I walk him to the door.

  “See you next year,” he says.

  When he’s gone, I sit down at the table with his empty coffee cup and chocolate smeared plate. I think I would like to cry, but my reservoir of tears is empty. At the bottom there’s only a sadness that settles into my heart like a hard little stone.

  twenty-six

  Mac

  He hates March. Even in Southern California, it’s mostly ugly. Normally rain doesn’t bother him that much, but today it’s blowing in sheets across the patio, making the pool look like a gray pincushion. He’s been trying to write for the last hour, but his mood is ugly, too. When the door opens and Kristin comes in carrying two steaming cups, he gets this hollow feeling in his gut. Like when something’s about to happen in a movie.

  Don’t go in the basement!

  She puts down a cup of hot chocolate on the desk. “How’s it coming?”

  “Slow. Thanks.”

  “Why don’t you take a break and talk to me.”

  She’s wearing a new sweater, sort of a pale lavender that’s beautiful with her dark hair. She’s got earrings on and she smells great. From the looks of it, this isn’t going to be just another skirmish.

  She sits down facing him across the desk and studies him for a minute.

  “You know I’m turning forty next month.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I was thinking I’d like to do something special.”

  “We could go to Paris.” Nice try, McLeod.

  “I’d like to get married.”

  His heart sinks. Here it is again. The thing that won’t die and can’t be killed, ignored or even run away from. Like The Terminator. Where’s a good hydraulic stamping machine when you need one?

  He tries a smile. “What’s your second choice?”

  “There is no second choice.”

  He turns in the chair, and the pain in his back strikes like a snake. “I told you two years ago I was never getting married again. Didn’t you believe me?”

  “Yes, I know you told me. I did believe you. But things change, Mac. People change. I thought that if we lived together for a while and it was really good, you’d see that getting married wouldn’t be such a horrifying thing.”

  “It was never a horrifying thing. I’m just not wired for it.”

  “Do you love me?”

  “Of course. Apparently that’s not enough.”

  “Of course?” She laughs. “How incredibly romantic. You really know how to wow a girl.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought we had this all straightened out a long time ago, but I guess I was wrong. Kris, I don’t know what to tell you, except I don’t plan to ever get married again.”

  She takes a breathy sip of the hot cocoa and he notices her hand shaking as she sets it down. He feels like a shit.

  Her gaze is clear and very direct. It’s what makes her a good negotiator. She says,

  “You know what I think?”

  Answering those kinds of questions is rarely a good idea, so he waits her out.

  “Ever since I moved in here, there have been three people living in this house. You and me and Wyn. I think on some level you still believe she’s going to come back.”

  “This has nothing to do with her, except that I screwed that up so badly I have no desire to repeat the experience.”

  She ignores what he just said and proceeds with her own game plan. The mark of a pro. “You know I’d never ask you to break off all contact with her. I know you guys are close, and that’s truly okay—”

  “No, it’s not okay. And let’s don’t go there.”

  “I like Wyn. As ex-wives go, she’s great. She’s always been really nice to me and I think she genuinely cares about you, but I can tell you right now she’s not going to—“

  “Kris—” God, she’s like a pit bull.

  “If you want to have lunch with her once in a while or help her out with something at her house, I have no problem with that.”

  He hates himself for what he’s about to do, but she’s left him no choice.

  “What about sleeping with her? You have a problem with that?

  That stops the juggernaut. She frowns…puzzled but not yet panicked. “What?”

  “Because I have, you know. At Christmas when you were in Australia.”

  Check and mate. And yes, I’m a bastard.

  Her face is blank. She swallows. “No. You didn’t.”

  “Okay, I didn’t. But I wanted to. I tried to. She wouldn’t.”

  She looks at him for a long minute, clearly puzzled. “If you didn’t sleep with her, why did you say you did?”

  He looks away. “I don’t know. I just wanted you to forget about getting married. It’s not possible for me.”

  “Well, you get your wish.” She actually smiles. “And I guess what I’m giving myself for my fortieth is a new house.”

  He sits forward. “You don’t have to leave—”

  “Of course I do.” She stands up. “While I still have a few shreds of my self-respect left.”

  July

  The house is quiet.

  He’d gotten used to hearing Kristin, her voice low and clipped, punctuated with an occasional dry laugh, talking on the phone to New York or London or Sydney or Toronto nearly every Sunday morning. It was her time to catch up with various projects scattered around the globe. Even after four months, he sometimes still expects to hear her.

  He supposes it means he misses her or at least that he’s lonely, but he’s satisfied that the relationship reached its inevitable conclusion. He’s seen her once, at a restaurant with a group of people and he’d felt something…a sort of recognition, like driving past a house where you once lived. She smiled and waved at him then went back to her conversation. So like her.

  It’s only been a few weeks since her brother-in-law and his two sullen teenagers had finally come to collect the rest of her things, and he’s already forgotten what was in the empty spaces left scattered throughout the house.

  She’s a beautiful woman, no doubt about that. Intelligent, capable, funny. Lovely in bed. But even before the final face off in the dusty street at high noon, he’d suspected that things were drawing to a close. His regrets aren’t so much that it ended, more about the way it ended. He’d been honest with her from the start, but she seemed to feel betrayed, humiliated. Maybe that’s how women always felt about the end of an affair. Somehow you were responsible, not just for what you said, but also for how they heard it.

  Wyn, on the other hand, had been content to accept things as they were. She never seemed to care about making it legal…at lea
st at the beginning. Ironically, he then had decided he wanted to marry her. Muddy Waters nailed it.

  The blues is what happens between a man and a woman.

  He pulls on shorts and a T-shirt. Eight A.M. and already in the eighties. He makes himself an iced espresso and takes it out by the pool with the Sunday New York Times. He remembers all the Sundays he and Wyn spent out here with Brownie, him with the NY Times, her with the L.A. Times, which she loved passionately and defended hotly against his disparaging comments. He’s suddenly overcome with a nearly unbearable longing for her, the wild and willful hair, the scent of bread, the feel of her skin.

  He finishes his coffee, goes upstairs, drops his laptop into the computer bag, puts on his hiking shoes, throws a towel and flip flops into his gym bag and gets in the car heading northeast to the mountains. To a beautiful little lake where he can hike and swim and work and come back this afternoon before the worst of the traffic. On the way back he’ll call her. They can have dinner at that little French place she likes.

  They’ll talk. He won’t push. Not like Christmas. That was stupid. He’ll have to be more careful. It won’t be an easy sell; she can be incredibly stubborn. But he can be incredibly persistent.

  Ideally she would move back here. He never imagined he would feel so attached to a house or stay in one place for so long. But they could always sell it, buy something else. Maybe closer to the beach, farther from L.A. Or, if she insists, they can maintain separate places. They could still be together even if she doesn’t want to live with him. Given their history, maybe that’s the best idea. Friends with benefits. It doesn’t matter. Nothing really matters except being with her.

  There are only a few cars in the lot when he comes down off the trail. He’s winded, which pisses him off. He needs to start swimming every day again, get back in shape. Even considering the heat today he’s sweating too much. Well, a quick swim to cool off, then start back before the surge of returning weekenders clogs the freeways. He strips off his shirt and throws it in the trunk with his walking shoes. Then he grabs his towel and heads for the little wooden dock. He steps out of his flip flops and lays them carefully on the towel, zips the car keys into his pocket and stands for a moment looking down into the clear blue water.