She lived in a boxy little house a block from the river. Estelle would never have lived in a house like that, with its tiny rooms and packrat furniture. The living room was a collage of colors and textures—every chair, every pillow in a different print. It was a soothing blend, though he never would have thought to put all that stuff together himself.
“Have a seat,” she said. “I’ll get some wine. Or would you prefer coffee?”
“Wine.” He sank into the sofa, the fattest and softest he’d ever seen. He took off his tie and undid the top buttons of his shirt.
She came into the room carrying the wine and two glasses and set them on the coffee table on top of a lace doily. Every surface in the room was covered by some kind of fabric. Even the arms of the chairs and the sofa had lacy things hanging over them.
“That was the best king crab I’ve ever had,” she said, pouring the wine.
“You hardly touched it.”
“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t wonderful. In certain situations, my appetite just disappears.” She smiled and looked away.
He took the glass she handed him. “You mean when you’re nervous?”
“Not nervous. When I’m excited.” She blushed. “I don’t mean excited. Just anticipatory.”
“What’s wrong with being excited?” He said it the same way she had. “I am.” An understatement. He couldn’t forget the way she’d looked at him across the table at dinner, the way she’d licked the butter off the strands of crabmeat, teasing him from the safety of her chair in a public restaurant.
“It’s heathen. Only the lower species give in to that primitive sort of feeling.” She laughed, embarrassed. She nearly knocked over the wine bottle as she set it on the coffee table. “I don’t know why I said that,” she added.
She really was nervous. He set his glass down and stood up. She was right next to him and she didn’t try to move away, not even when he put his hands on her waist. He kissed her, and her arms slid around his neck. The second kiss was her doing, longer and deeper, and suddenly he was the one who was nervous. It had been so long. She wasn’t Estelle. Her body was a stranger’s against him. What would she like? What would she need? He’d relished the routine of making love to Estelle. He’d never grown bored with it—her scent, the shape of her body, the predictability of her orgasms. How did you start all over?
“Can we go to your bedroom?” he said into her hair. He pictured a bed with plump blankets and dozens of lacy pillows stacked high.
She started to pull away from him. “No.”
He wanted to ask her why not, but stopped himself. He moved to the sofa, and she let him lower her into the downy cushions. He pulled off his shoes and lay next to her, kissing her and working at the buttons of her blouse, his heart pounding.
Damn. He thought miserably about birth control. He should have asked her what she was using. Something, surely. She wasn’t stupid.
When was the last time he’d kissed a woman for so long with all his clothes on? He stood up and switched off the lamp and began to pull his shirt from his pants.
“Cole,” she said. “Maybe we’d better not.”
The moonlight was soft on her face and breasts, still snug in her bra. He took off his shirt and sat on the sofa next to her, holding her hand. “You look so beautiful right now,” he said. She really did. Beautiful and worried. “Are you using something?”
“Diaphragm.”
“Is it in?”
She hesitated. “Yes.”
He felt a little guilty, making her admit she was ready for this, that she’d expected it.
He ran his fingers down her throat and over her breast and slipped his fingertips under the waistband of her skirt. He heard her draw in her breath. “Are you sure you don’t want to?” He stretched out next to her again and felt her hands on his back. He unhooked her bra and found her nipple with his mouth. Her breasts were as smooth as ivory against her tan. Her body began to move rhythmically next to him, and he held her hips tightly against him.
She pushed him gently from her so she could slip out of her blouse and bra. He helped her, and there was no hint of protest now. He knelt on the floor in front of her, slipping his hands beneath the fabric of her skirt, running his palms over the hot skin of her thighs. He pushed her skirt up to her waist and was kissing the inside of her thigh when she caught his chin in the palm of her hand.
“Please don’t do that, Cole.”
He looked up in surprise. “No?”
“I don’t like it.”
“Maybe you’ve never had it done well.”
“The thought makes me sick. I hate oral sex.”
He leaned back on his heels with a sigh, his erection fading. “Wow,” he said.
She pulled her blouse from the arm of the sofa and laid it over her breasts. “There’s a lot more to making love than going down on each other,” she said.
“Of course. Sorry. You just surprised me. I really like it.”
“And I really hate it.”
“Is there any room for compromise?”
“None.” Her mouth was set.
“Why are you so adamant?”
“By the time you’re twenty-nine you know what you like and what you don’t.”
“But let’s say that you and I were together for a long time. Let’s say we really cared about each other. Would you still be unwilling to compromise if you knew it meant a lot to me?” Why the hell was he making an issue out of this?
“I could lie to you so you’d stay.” There was the slightest quiver to her lower lip, and he leaned forward to erase it with a kiss.
“It’s not important,” he said. “Sorry I pushed.”
They made love on the sofa. She came quickly and it was just as well because he came only seconds later. Even with the wine. It had been a long time.
They lay in each other’s arms afterward, a sad tension between them. He stroked her hair and touched her face with his fingertips. “I don’t usually come that quickly,” he apologized.
“It’s all right. I got mine.”
“Yes, I noticed.”
She began to cry. “I’m sorry.” She wiped at her tears with her fingers. “I care for you more than I have for anyone in a long time.”
He didn’t feel like comforting her. He was thinking about getting out of this house, driving home with the car windows wide open. “That’s nothing to cry about,” he said.
“I’m afraid now that I’ll never see you again.”
“Men haven’t treated you very well, have they?”
“Not very.”
“Of course I want to see you again.” He was certain that he did, that he wasn’t lying. He had fantasies of permanence with this woman that he wasn’t ready to let go of. But he wanted her to be different next time, not crying, not so emotional. Not so uptight. He sat up, wondering if it would be bad etiquette to leave so soon. “I should get back,” he said. He stood and groped on the floor for his pants.
“Couldn’t you stay tonight?”
He shook his head, although that had certainly been his plan. “I should be there in the morning—I don’t want Rennie to think I stayed out all night.” A good, moral argument he was certain would appeal to her. “Plus I need an early start tomorrow; I have a few patients due.” You’re a real creep, Perelle, he thought to himself. “I’ll call you in the morning?”
She had curled herself into a corner of the sofa. “Please do.”
He leaned down to kiss her good night. “I’ll let myself out.” He turned to find the door, wondering what he had gotten himself into with Cynthia.
38.
Paddy cake, paddy cake, baker man, Bake me a cake as fast as you can, Roll it and knead it and mark it with B, And put it in the oven for Baby and me.
Was that the way it went? Kit rocked in the darkness of the nursery, stroking her baby through her robe.
So Cole was making love to Cynthia tonight.
She pulled her chair closer to the dormered window so
she could see the stars. The sky was alive with them. Had it only been a year since she’d sat on the beach with him listening to him describe the constellations? It was as though she’d known him all her life.
He’d been sure of himself tonight, excited as a little kid before a party.
“Aren’t you glad she’s made you wait?” she asked, feigning excitement for him. She was always faking. It would be the story of her life if she stayed in Mantoloking: Cole with a bright and beautiful woman, Kit in the background, encouraging him, pretending to be happy for him. Not sure enough of what she wanted to go after it herself. She was certain he had no idea of her deception. He knew her so well. He knew the parts of her she never let anyone see. Yet between them hung this major lie.
Earlier tonight she’d pulled out her portable typewriter and updated her resume. Tomorrow she’d have copies made and she’d send them to the medical centers with large PR departments. Nothing on the west coast, and nothing where the winters would be too cold for running. She’d enclose a simple cover letter, noncommittal, a little careless. An expression of her ambivalence.
A stupid time to think of moving, perhaps, but moving would be less stressful than lying awake at night thinking of Cole with Cynthia. She could handle this pregnancy without him. She would have to.
She spotted him through the sliding glass doors of the kitchen the next morning as she tied her shoes. He was sitting on the arm of one of John Chapel’s heavy beach chairs, his feet on the seat and his elbows on his knees. A long blade of beach heather dangled from his fingers. She hadn’t expected to see him at all this morning. She’d thought he would stay over at Cynthia’s.
He stood up with a grin when she walked into the yard. “You look awfully cute,” he said.
She smoothed her gray sweatshirt over her belly. “I can’t imagine getting bigger than this. My stretch marks have stretch marks.”
“You’ve got a long way to go yet.” He put his hand on her back as they walked toward the line of shells left by the high tide.
“When did you get home?” she asked.
“About one.”
“That early?”
“It wasn’t the greatest night of my life.”
She hated herself for taking pleasure in those words. “What went wrong?”
“Nothing actually went wrong. But the earth didn’t move, you know what I mean?”
She slipped her arm around his waist. “Cole, you’re thirty-five years old. Don’t you know by now that it takes time to get the earth moving? You have to work at it.”
“I need to know now if it’s possible. Otherwise I want to end it before she gets hooked on me.”
“Is she moving in that direction?”
“Rapidly. At the risk of sounding egotistical.”
“I can’t blame her for that. You’re probably the prettiest thing she’s seen in a long time.”
“Talk about pretty. God, she’s gorgeous.”
“Yes. She is.”
“And so bright. But the bottom line is, we don’t get along very well. We haven’t seriously talked politics but I’m sure we’re miles apart. She thinks my lifestyle is unhealthy and maybe a little immoral. And she hates oral sex.”
She bit her lip to keep from smiling. “Some women feel that’s just too intimate to do the first time they’re with a lover,” she said, proud of her generosity toward Cynthia.
He shook his head. “She said she’d never do it.”
“Did you talk to her about it? Try to find out what the problem is? Maybe she has false teeth.”
He laughed. “She won’t even allow herself to be the doee.”
“Oh. The woman’s nuts.” She said it before she could stop herself.
Cole smiled. “She’s not a glowing example of stability, and it worries me to get involved with another crazy lady.”
“Well, is it worth taking the chance? Do you like her?”
“Yes, I do. At least I think I do. I like her head—her intellect. And I admire her ambition. But I don’t know. Something’s not clicking.”
He sounded worn out, and she felt evil for wishing him anything other than good fortune with Cynthia. “Why not enjoy it one day at a time?”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not interested in settling down.”
It was odd to hear him say that. It wasn’t lack of interest so much as sheer terror. It would be like one long, never-ending asthma attack.
“You’re trying to fit ten years of intimacy into a few weeks,” she said.
He looked at the horizon, squinting, as though the pale morning sunlight hurt his eyes. “I wish I knew where Estelle was.”
So, he was still thinking about Estelle.
“You know what I hope?” she asked. “I hope Cynthia can make you not give a damn where Estelle is. I really do.” She knew as she said it that she meant every word.
39.
Cole sat next to her on the sofa in the den. “One-thirty over eighty,” he said as he took the cuff off her arm. “Do you know what those numbers mean?”
“No more walks on the beach?” she asked. That would be the final blow. Week by week he’d been reining her in, following her around the house with the blood pressure cuff.
“You’re not even going to walk from the living room to the kitchen. You’re staying upstairs. Your bed or this sofa. I’m talking bed rest.”
Bed rest. She stood up. “I just don’t feel sick.”
“Trust me, you’re sick. You’re not even thirty-one weeks. You’re spilling protein. And look at your ankles.”
She didn’t need to. She knew they were ballooning above her shoes.
She sat down again, defeated. “I’ll go crazy, Cole. I can’t spend the rest of this pregnancy lying flat on my back.”
“I don’t want you to lie flat on your back. Your left side is preferable.”
“God, you’re vicious.”
“And you’re stubborn.”
“You’re treating this so lightly, as though it’s a simple thing for me to suddenly stop living.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. Look.” He leaned forward. “This is serious. I wouldn’t be at all adverse to you going into the hospital right now. We’re looking at an early delivery unless we get this under control.”
Rennie took up a collection to buy her a few magazines and Kit spent the day reading in the den. It was an underused room. That seemed like a terrible waste to her now as she looked around her. It was a good room with an enormous blue and rust serape rug on the floor and a white Victorian mantel over the fireplace. It was next to Cole’s room and shared his view of the bay. The only TV in the house was in here. That said something about all of them, she mused, that they were strangers to the only room with a TV.
By early evening the small of her back was beginning to ache from lying in one spot for so long. Her housemates brought dinner upstairs and spread out in the den to eat. “We don’t want you to have to eat alone,” Janni said.
“We can eat with you every night,” said Rennie. “And I can buy you more magazines every week.”
Kit groaned. Every week. She could see her future mapped out in front of her. They’d come upstairs to have dinner with her each night and then they’d get up and leave. They’d go out to the beach and run, swim, play volleyball. And she would stay here, glued to the couch. Nine more weeks.
There was a dull pain creeping across her temple. She knew it. Bed rest was going to make her sick.
Two weeks later, Janni sat cross-legged on the end of Kit’s bed. She had on her traveling clothes—faded jeans and a T-shirt that read I wanted a NEW JERSEY but all I could afford was this T-shirt across her chest. She looked all of thirteen. “You’re sure you don’t mind if I go?” she asked.
Kit picked up the pillow cover she was stitching and poked the fat needle into the backing for the thousandth time that morning. “Of course I don’t mind. I’d feel terrible if you missed San Francisco to stay here and play nurse to me.” She’d give up her nin
e pairs of running shoes if Janni would skip the conference and stay home.
“I don’t know how you stand it, sweets. I think about you constantly. It must be awful to be stuck in one spot all day.”
“I know every square inch of this ceiling intimately,” Kit said, pointing to the ceiling with her needle. Two weeks in bed and she was ready to scream. One wrong move from anyone and it would come out. Shock the hell out of them. They thought she was doing all right. She pulled a piece of blue yarn out of her needle and replaced it with a long strand of brown. “Janni,” she said slowly, “what if I need a c-section?” She was getting scared. Things weren’t going the way she’d hoped.
“You need a section, you have a section.” Janni shrugged.
She poked the needle back into the flower design. She couldn’t tell Janni what a section would do to her. More time in bed, more time until she was running again. To Janni, it would be worth going through a dozen surgeries if the end result were a baby.
“I want to be there even if it’s a section,” Janni said.
“I’m counting on it. When I picture it, I’ve got you next to me, holding my hand.”
Janni grinned and jumped a little on the bed. “I can’t wait!” she said. “It’s so exciting!” They were jovial around her, as though she were lying here for their entertainment. Only Cole ever mentioned that she wasn’t improving.
She woke in the middle of the night, her right foot curved in on itself with a pain so intense she gasped. She reached around her belly to grab her foot, trying to pull back on the toes. They were locked in place. She pushed her foot against the footboard of her bed, frightened now. She had to walk on it. She jumped out of bed and switched on the light. The room seemed hazy, as if she were looking at it through plastic wrap. She wiped at her eyes but nothing changed.
“Cole!” She pressed her foot into the floor. Her breathing was choppy, her chest tight. “Cole.” There were parts of the room she couldn’t see. Blind spots that moved with her wherever she turned her head. She looked down at her foot and didn’t recognize it. Was it her blurred vision that made it look so enormous?
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