Coast Road

by Barbara Delinsky

  She swore softly and came to the bed. “I was hoping … ”

  “So was I.”

  She leaned down and talked softly to Rachel for a minute, then straightened and sighed. It was another minute before she looked at him. “I wasn’t sure you’d still be here.”

  “Oh, I’m here,” he said, but he wasn’t in the mood for sparring. He was wondering about those flowers, wondering about the friends Rachel appeared to have made since she had left him. In San Francisco, she had been a loner—independent in that regard, focused solely on her art, the kids, and him. “Who are Dinah and Jan?”

  “Dinah Monroe and Jan O’Neal. They’re in our book group. You met them yesterday.”

  He had met lots of people yesterday. One face blended into the next. “Who are Nellie, Tom, and Bev?”

  “Bridge friends.”

  He had to have heard wrong. “Bridge? As in the game?”

  “Cards. That’s right.”

  He tried to picture it but couldn’t. “That’s a kicker.”

  “Why?”

  “The last thing Rachel would have done in the city was play bridge. It stood for everything her mother used to do while she was waiting to get rich and busy. So what’s Rachel doing playing it here?”

  Katherine scrubbed the back of Rachel’s hand. “Should I tell him?” she asked, looking amused. “The poor guy is mystified, absolutely mystified. Where’s his imagination?”

  “It’s there,” Jack assured her. “I’d never be where I am today if I didn’t have it. There are people who say I have too much.”

  “What people?”

  “Clients who want a house exactly like one that their neighbor’s brother has in Grosse Point, or a library to match a charming little one in upstate New York. I argue with them. I mean, hell, why are they hiring me? Any draftsperson can copy someone else’s work. I don’t want to give them what’s already done.”

  “But you do,” she said with a little too much certainty for his comfort.

  “Is that what Rachel said?”

  “Not exactly. What she said was that you’d gotten so far into big money that you’d lost your artistic integrity.”

  He felt offended—by Rachel for thinking it and speaking it, by Katherine for repeating it. “That’s not true. And how would she know, anyway? She doesn’t know what I’m doing now.”

  Quietly, smoothly, Katherine listed the six largest projects he had designed since the divorce.

  Jack had mixed feelings about several of those. His initial designs, the ones landing him each job, had been exciting. Not so after developers, contractors and consultants, financiers, regulatory boards, and politicians had chipped away at the plans. That was what happened, the bigger the money. You weren’t your own boss anymore. So maybe Rachel was right. Maybe he had lost his artistic integrity.

  If so, he wasn’t discussing it with Rachel’s friend. “What does my artistic integrity have to do with playing bridge?”

  Katherine smiled. “Spoken that way, not much. The subject was actually imagination. I’ve often wondered why men have so much trouble understanding how women’s minds work. You’re right. Rachel hated what bridge stood for in her mother’s life, but she had been taught to play, and soon after she moved down here, she met Bev, a bridge player who does the most incredible stuff with acrylics on rattlesnake skin, and somehow playing with her didn’t sound so bad.”

  Acrylics on snakeskin. It was a novel use of a medium. Rachel would have appreciated that. “Did she meet Nellie and Tom through Bev?”

  “No. She and Bev advertised in the local paper to complete the foursome. Tom owns the paper. Nellie answered the ad.”

  “Is Nellie an artist?” It would make sense. Charlie. Bev. Nellie.

  “Nope. She’s a Carmelite.”

  “A nun?”

  “A secular member of the order, but devout.”

  “Okay.” Rachel had never been terribly religious. But, hey. His parents had been devout. “And the Liebermans?”

  Katherine smiled with genuine warmth. “Faye and Bill. Faye’s in our book group. She’s one of the golfers. Jan is the other, and a young mother, to boot. She’ll be by later.”

  Jack was trying to picture Rachel in a group with golfers, but all he could see was the adamant way she had always shaken her head when Victoria suggested they take up the game. “You’re not going to tell me that Rachel plays golf now.”

  Katherine laughed. “No. I doubt either of us would go that far.”

  “Then how do you come to have golfers in your group?”

  “Golfers read,” she said, giving Rachel’s hand a conspiratorial squeeze.

  “Obviously. But what’s the connection? If you don’t golf, how do you know golfers?”

  “They come to my shop. I’ve been doing Faye’s hair for years, and we like talking books. Jan has her nails done every Thursday. She heard us talking once and joined in. When Rachel and I decided to form the group, they were both logical choices.”

  “What about Dinah?”

  “A travel agent in town. We’ve all used her one time or another.”

  There was one connection left to make. “And you and Rachel? How did you meet?”

  “In the gynecologist’s waiting room,” Katherine said. With a glance at her watch and a look of concern, she leaned over Rachel’s shoulder. “I have a nine o’clock, so I can’t stay long. I want to talk to you, Rachel. I miss that.” She made a little scrubbing motion on Rachel’s back, a casual movement, but the concern remained. “It’s Thursday. You’ve been sleeping since Monday. How about cracking an eye open for me?”

  Jack watched Rachel’s eyes. The lids were inert.

  “Looks like Jack’s brought in some of your nightgowns,” Katherine said. “I’ve cleared an hour midafternoon to come by and do your hair.” She asked Jack, “Shall I get the girls at school and bring them here?”

  Jack was feeling possessive again. “I’ll do it.”

  The corner of her mouth twitched. “I don’t think he trusts me,” she told Rachel.

  “The girls are my responsibility.”

  She straightened, suddenly sober. “Then can I make a suggestion? Buy a new car. Rachel’s is totaled, so she’s going to need another anyway, and you can’t keep driving around with Hope stuck in that itty-bitty thing you call a backseat. If you want to risk your own life in a car that size, that’s your choice, but I don’t think you should take chances with the girls.”

  Jack was startled by the intrusion. “Is this your business?”

  “You bet. Rachel can’t say it, so I’ll say it for her.”

  “Good morning!” Steve Bauer said, crossing the threshold and approaching the bed.

  Katherine pushed off. “Bye,” she said in a lighter voice, with an open-hand wave to no one in particular.

  The doctor watched her exit. “Don’t leave on my account.”

  But she was already out the door before Jack could wonder why the sudden rush.

  JACK needed to work. His laptop was full of messages each time he booted it up. There were more on Rachel’s answering machine, and papers piling up by her fax. He had driven north from Big Sur that morning intending, in logical geographical order, to drop the girls at school in Carmel, visit Rachel in Monterey, and continue up to San Francisco. Now that he was with Rachel, the urgency had left.

  Bracing his elbows on the bed rail, he studied her face. Even with the vision of fading purple on the left side, he thought it a beautiful face. Always had. He used to tell her so all the time. They were art students then, sitting hip to hip in life drawing class, which he had taken solely to be with Rachel, since it had little to do with architecture. He had used whatever clout he had as a graduate student to wangle credit for it, but it was far from a gut course for him. He had to struggle far more than Rachel to reproduce, in the most minute detail, the face of the model.

  “She’s the beauty,” Rachel used to whisper, pink-cheeked and pleased, if adamant. “Widespread eyes, stron
g cheekbones, clear skin, no freckles.”

  But Jack had always loved Rachel’s freckles. His father, who had a negative take on almost everything, condemned them as the excess of spirit in a highly spirited person. Rachel had always been highly spirited, all right. Jack took pride in that. When he first met her, freckles had danced unchecked over the bridge of her nose to her cheeks. She was twenty-one then. After the children were born, the freckles faded, then faded more when she entered her thirties.

  They were more noticeable now than they had been in years. His father, God rest his soul, would have declared with disdain that a highly spirited person could be restrained for only so long. So, had marriage restrained Rachel?

  The sun might be bringing them out. She was spending more time outdoors, said her work. He had seen several recent pieces in a SOMA gallery. She painted wildlife in its natural habitat.

  Or did the freckles show more because her face was so pale?

  He ran his thumb over the smooth, unbruised cheek. “Something’s agreeing with you here. You’re painting again. And you have friends.” Suddenly that annoyed him. “What was the problem, Rachel? You could have had a slew of friends in the city. If you wanted them, why didn’t you? You went off and did what you wanted in just about everything else. Why not that?” He felt the full weight of a confusion that had been hovering just out of reach. “And those pictures in your drawer—why are they there? I’d have thought you’d have cut them up and made them into a papier-mahé statement. That would have been poetic. Kind of like the shower quilt. Are the pictures facedown because you can’t bear to see them? Or because you’re angry? What do you have to be angry about? Looks to me like you’re doing better without me than with me.”

  Sadness lurked under his anger. “What happened to us, Rachel? I never did understand. Never did figure it out.” He paused. “Can you hear me? Do you know I’m here?”

  Her skin smelled of lilies from the lotion he had spread. It taunted him with memories of a love that was supposed to have lasted forever. “I think you hear. I think you know. I think you’re lying in there waiting and watching and wondering what’s going to happen. Is this payback time for the traveling I did? You want me to spend more time with the girls? Well, I gotta tell you, I’m spending time with them, and we’re doing just fine, so if you thought we’d fall apart, you were wrong. I love my daughters. I always did. Believe you me, when you packed them up and took them away from me, it was hard.” Pushing up, he stared at her, then paced to the window, muttering under his breath, “Damn hard. Empty house. No noise. No smiles.” He paced back to the bed. “You knew how I felt growing up, and how much I needed what we had. I relied on having family waiting when I got home from work. You took that away.”

  He put his face in close and spoke softly, under his breath. “Fine. It’s over. We’re divorced. You got that done nice and fast and clean, thank you. But this coma is something else. One day or two, okay. But three days? Wake up, Rachel. I’m doing the best I can, but the girls need you. I’m just filling in. You’re the main attraction in their lives; always were.” After a minute, he said, “And I have to work. People are depending on me for their livelihood. I’m being paid to make certain things happen, and I can’t do it from down here. How long are you planning to let this go on?”

  She didn’t blink, didn’t flinch, didn’t answer.

  Okay, he wanted to say—because if she wasn’t cooperating, why the hell should he?—that’s it. I’m going back to the city. At least there I can accomplish something. At least there I’m appreciated. Ciao. Sayonara. See ya later.

  He didn’t know how long he stood scowling at her. But the scowl slowly faded, and in time, he pulled up a chair and sat down.

  KATHERINE’S one o’clock arrived twenty minutes late. She would have told the woman she had time only for a quick wash and blow dry, but the woman was a regular customer, flying out that night for a weekend wedding in Denver. So Katherine gave her the cut she needed and was late taking her one-forty-five, then had to deal with a minor uproar when a woman whose highlights had been done by Katherine’s newest colorist stormed in with hair that even Katherine had to admit was alarmingly red. In the process of mixing the correct color, she splattered dye on her blouse, so she had to take a fresh one from the small collection she deliberately kept there, and with the bathroom door closed and her back to the mirror, she quickly changed.

  She didn’t reach the hospital until four. Looking nowhere but straight ahead, she made a beeline for Rachel’s room. She felt a letdown the instant she reached it and saw that Rachel was still comatose.

  Hope was reading a book on the bed, inside the rail, legs folded, boots on the floor. Jack stood facing the window with one hand on his hip and the other tossing a cell phone in his hand. The tray table beside him was covered with papers.

  She gave Hope a hug. “How’s your Mom?”

  The child turned a longing look on Rachel. “Okay.”

  Katherine held her tighter. “What’re you reading?”

  Keeping her finger in her place, she closed the cover so that Katherine could see the title. It was an aged hard-cover, John Hersey’s A Bell for Adano.

  “Is this from a school list, or a Mom list?”

  Hope lifted a shoulder. “A Mom list.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Uh-huh. Mom said she did. Look.” She opened to the inside cover, where Rachel’s name was written in the precise hand of a schoolgirl who hadn’t yet found her individualism. The date was below it.

  “Wow,” Katherine said. “Twenty-seven years ago.”

  “She was my age then. I think that’s kinda neat.”

  “Me, too.”

  Jack turned around. “How’re you doing?” he asked, but headed off before she could answer. “I’ll be back.”

  Katherine watched him go, then turned questioning eyes on Hope.

  “They wouldn’t let him use the cell phone in here,” Hope explained. “It messes up the monitors.”

  “Ah. He seems distracted.”

  “It’s work. Look.” She pointed at a flower arrangement on the sill. It was the newest, tallest, most lavish one there. “From Grandma.”

  Katherine might have guessed it. She also guessed it wouldn’t be the last of Victoria’s gifts. “That was sweet of her.”

  “Uh-huh.” Hope refocused on Rachel, looking so sad this time that Katherine ached for her. “Do you think she knows I’m here?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Hope considered that, then said, “Sam’s down the hall.”

  “I know. I passed her on my way in.” She had been tucked up in a phone booth with an algebra book in her lap, a pencil in her hand, and a huge wad of gum in her mouth. The sudden cessation of talk and the too-wide grin she gave Katherine suggested that she wasn’t doing math.

  “She was in here with Mom for a long time,” Hope said in quick defense of her sister, “but she wanted to use Dad’s phone, and he had to make his own calls. She’ll be back. I called Duncan’s. Guinevere’s sleeping. She’s been doing that a lot.”

  “What is it they say—that cats sleep eighteen hours a day?”

  “She’s been doing it more. Sometimes I think she isn’t really sleeping, just doesn’t have the energy to move. Like she’s in a coma. Like Mom’s.”

  “Uh-uh-uh,” Katherine scolded gently. “Not like Mom’s. Guinevere has a tumor. Your mom does not.”

  “Then why doesn’t she wake up? How can she hear me and know that I’m here, without waking up to let me know? Doesn’t she want to?”

  “More than anything, I’d bet,” Katherine said. “She’s probably trying her best and annoyed that she can’t … can’t break out of whatever it is that’s holding her there. We have to be patient. We have to let her know we’ll be here until she does wake up.”

  Hope glanced cautiously back toward the hall, then whispered an urgent “Sam is scaring me.”

&n
bsp; Katherine leaned closer and whispered back, “Scaring you how?” She imagined Sam was talking gloom and doom about Rachel, trying to act old and wise, trying to get a rise out of Jack. But it wasn’t that.

  “The prom,” Hope whispered. “I think they’re planning something. I can’t say anything to Daddy, because he’ll get angry at her and then she’ll get angry at me. And it’s not like I know anything. I just feel it.” She hunched her shoulders, which made the rest of her look even smaller. “She’ll kill me if she knows I told you this. But I don’t want anything else to happen.”

  “Tell you what,” Katherine suggested. “How about I drop a few hints to your dad? No one needs to know you said anything. I’d only be doing what your mom would be doing.”

  “Mom would be talking to the other mothers. But Sam knows Daddy won’t do that. That’s what scares me most.”

  Katherine figured it would scare Rachel, too. “I can handle this,” she said for the benefit of mother and daughter both. “Trust me?” she asked Hope, just as Jack returned. When Hope gave her a wide-eyed nod, she smiled and pulled a $5 bill from her pocket. “I’m desperate for tea. Would you run down and get me an Earl Grey? Maybe your dad would like coffee?”

  Jack asked Hope for anything strong and black. Katherine waited until she had left before eyeing the work on the table. “Rachel said you were a workaholic.”

  “Not always. What you see here is my conscience. I’m holding people up because I’m not doing what I’ve committed to do. Except for picking up the girls, I’ve been here all day.”

  Katherine hadn’t expected that. “I thought you were driving up to the city.”

  He tossed the phone on the table. “So did I. I changed my mind.”

  “Why?”

  “Beats me.” He pushed his hands through his hair. It looked like he’d done it more than once. Katherine had to admit that he seemed tired, and felt a trace of sympathy. He had a lot more on his mind this week than last week. She hated to add to it but had no choice. “Hope seems worried, but I think she’ll be okay. How’s Sam?”

  “Actually,” he said, sounding surprised, “she was pretty sweet this afternoon.”