Coast Road (33 page)

In Eunice, he saw a woman he had often wished wasn't his mother �and though he kept expecting God to strike him dead for thinking it, the thought still came. It might have been nice to have felt loved, might have been nice to have a mother who showed feelings and shared her thoughts.

Rachel did those things. He had fallen in love with her, in part, because when they were together, they were the antithesis of their parents.

At least, he had always thought it. Suddenly he wondered.

IN A STROKE of luck, Katherine arrived soon after the mothers returned.

Jack immediately enlisted her to stay while he went for the girls.

"I can't leave her alone with those two, " he whispered at the door.

"Let her know you're there. She needs someone sane at her side. " Having met Victoria before, Katherine stayed.

DRIVING from the hospital to the school, he savored the silence. The return trip was louder. Between Hope telling him that the drinks were the best part of the picnic after the ooey-gooey peanut butter brownies that one of the mothers had made, and Samantha telling him that she had aced a biology test, gotten an A-minus on an English paper, and had the neatest lunch with Pam and Heather, there wasn't time to tell them about the grandmothers until they were at the hospital.

They grew quiet then. They flanked Jack in the elevator, watching the lights above the door, and walked beside him down the hall. They offered their cheeks to their grandmothers for the kind of mutant kisses that came, in Victoria's case, from not wanting her skin disturbed, and in Eunice's, from being awkward with physical gestures.

They weathered Victoria's seamless chatter and Eunice's evaluative scrutiny from positions close to Jack and were visibly relieved when, with profuse apologies and another round of those barely-there kisses, the two women left.

Jack felt so many things in the aftermath of their visit that he couldn't begin to sort them out, except for one. Just because his mother would choke on a compliment didn't mean he had to. Looking from one daughter to the other, he said, "Y'know, I'm really proud of you guys."

"Why? " Samantha asked.

"For being kind. And respectful. They aren't easy women, either of them, but they are your grandmothers."

"I hope I look the way Gram Victoria looks when I'm her age." Hope, who was using the electric controls to raise Rachel's head, asked, "Why does she talk so much? " Nervousness? Jack thought. SeMshness?

Gntrol? "It's just her way.

" "Thank God Mom doesn't do that, " Samantha said. "I'd lose my mind.

" Hope adjusted the pillows to support Rachel's head. "If Mom was like that, I wouldn't ever talk. I'd just get tired of trying."

"That's pretty much what your mom did, " Jack said, watching Hope pull a fistful of something from her pocket. "She was a quiet lady when I met her. What have you got there? " "Unshelled peanuts." She put several in Rachel's hand and very carefully folded her fingers around them. "There was a whole bag of them at the picnic. Mom loves peanuts." She started cracking one.

Samantha screwed up her face. "You'll get crumbs all over the sheets.

" To Jack, she said, "So if Mom was quiet because her mother wouldn't shut up, did you talk a lot because yours didn't? " Jack thought back.

"No. No one talked much in my house."

"Why not? " "My parents didn't want it. They didn't think we had anything to offer."

"They told you that? " "Not as politely. But that was the gist of it.

" "Wow. Amazing that you and Mom talked at all! " IT WAS AMAZING, Jack realized. Driving back on the coast road that night, he thought about what he had felt meeting Rachel in that laundromat in Tucson, nearly eighteen years before. She had opened him up with a combination of quiet, sweetness, curiosity, and chemistry, and she had opened up herself. They told each other things they hadn't told anyone else, and because that felt so good, it became self-perpetuating.

They shared feelings and fears. It was quality communication, interspersed with silences that were made special by that exchange of honest thought.

At some point they had stopped talking. He tried to look back and figure out when�it was surely before the piano incident�but then he reached the River Inn, where he had promised to take the girls to dinner, and by the time they got home, he wanted to paint, and then he was lost.

THE NIGHT"S subject was quail. Rachel had painted a covey roosting low in a sycamore tree. Her work was detailed and exact�the male with his larger, curved plume and blue-gray feathers, the female with her reduced features and scaled belly. Using acrylics and a palette knife, she had re-created the exact texture of the feathers. Even before Jack studied the photographs affixed to the back of the canvas, he knew that the background had to be the duller tans and browns of winter, against which the birds would be simultaneously camouflaged and crisp.

He hadn't been in the Santa Lucias during that cool, rainy season, and wondered if he could do it justice. Then he realized that the justice had been done in Rachel's rendition of the quails. He was like a male dancer in the ballet, boosting the prima ballerina into the air, supporting her in her landing.

Several years ago, that might have bothered him. But he had a name in his own right. Supporting Rachel this way, being background, feIt good.

He worked with care, but it flowed. He used brushes exclusively, wanting nothing as crisp as the palette knife would carve, but there were wide brushes and narrow brushes. He used umbers, ochers, siennas, and grays, mixing and matching until he had the right feel for a background that would highlight the quails.

By the time he was done, the adrenaline was flowing fast and hard.

Tired as he was, it was a while before he fell asleep.

HOPE was the first one awake on Saturday morning. She stood for a time watching her sister sleep, then stood for a time watching Jack sleep.

Slipping a fleece jacket over her nightshirt and her boots on her feet, she let herself out of the house, picked a handful of newly blue lupine from the roadside, and ran through the forest to Guinevere's grave.

She brushed the dirt with her hand until it looked artful, and carefully arranged the flowers in a way she hoped Guinevere would like.

Then, sitting on her heels, she wrapped her arms around her knees and rocked slowly, back and forth, back and forth, until worrisome images of her grandmothers faded and worrisome images of Samantha faded.

Closing her eyes, she focused on Rachel and Jack and the safety she had felt when she was little.

She wanted that again.

SAMANTHA had planned to sleep her usual Saturday-morning late, but she woke up when Hope left her room and couldn't fall back to sleep. Her head was a battlefield of emotions. The prom came first, she was totally excited. But she was angry at Jack for making her feel guilty about Lydia, andfurious at the grandmothers for giving her an empty kind of feeling. That empty feeling made her worry more about Rachel.

She missed her. They disagreed on lots of things, but at least Rachel cared. Samantha wasn't sure Jack did, and she knew the grandmothers didn't. There was always Katherine. But Katherine wasn't family.

Samantha wished she were twenty-one. If she were, she wouldn't be worrying about a prom. She wouldn't be worrying about whether or not to wear a bra, whether or not to wear nylons, whether or not to wear the three-inch heels Heather had lent her. If she were twenty one, she wouldn't be worrying about a zit on her forehead. Or about what to drink. Or about what to do when Teague kissed her.

Rachel would have told her what to do. But Rachel wasn't there, only Jack, and that annoyed her.

JACK set off early with Hope. Samantha had pleaded exhaustion and stayed home, and a part of him wished he could, too. That part was tired of the drive to Montery, tired of sterile corridors, hushed silences, smells of sickness. That part felt the monotony of visiting a comatose Rachel.

But not visiting her would be worse. Besides, the day's visit would be short. He had promised Samantha to be back by noon with food.

They stopped at Eliza's for hot coffee and brought it along, moving the cup under Rachel's nose in the hope that the smell would reach her.

They put on a T-shirt that Eliza had sent, it had Rachel's name spelled in large, hand-painted letters. While Hope used a tiny scissors to cut exquisitely detailed snowflakes from white paper she had brought, they talked about the weather, about the grandmothers, about Samantha's prom.

Then Hope hung the snowflakes from the IV pole and whispered, "Tell her about the quails." Jack hesitated. He hadn't told Rachel about doing any painting. Hope loved what he had done, but Samantha refused even to look. If he viewed his daughters as the two sides of his wife�Hope the commonsense Rachel, Samantha the emotional one�he feared that on this issue, Rachel might side with Samantha.

Suddenly it struck him that that might be good. If there were psychological reasons for her continuing coma, angering her might shock her out of it. If she didn't want him finishing her paintings� didn't want it bad enough�she would wake up and tell him.

So he told her about the loons he had done Wednesday night, the deer he had done Thursday night, and the quails he had done Friday night. He gained momentum talking about the colors he had used and the effects he had sought, got caught up in excitement and satisfaction. His face was no more than a foot from Rachel's the whole time, but he saw no movement.

They left when Faye arrived, and stopped again at Eliza's, this time for a big bag of sandwiches, and yes, Jack was impatient standing in line. He took a deep breath, told himself that he wasn't in a rush to get anywhere, smiled at Hope, and wasn't as frayed as he thought he would be when they reached the front of the line. He was actually in the middle of paying when he had a thought. "Pecan rolls for Duncan and Faith? " Hope's surprised smile was all the answer he needed. He bought a dozen.

JACK had initially thought he might do schematic drawings for the Hillsborough job, and there was more of Rachel's work to do, but he barely lasted in the studio for twenty minutes. For one thing, there was another fax from David, the follow-up to a phone message, neither of which he wanted to answer. For another, it didn't seem right closeting himself there and leaving the girls alone.

Samantha had gone back to her room after lunch, so it was just Hope, curling beside him on the living room sofa with a book. Her presence was a lulling warmth. He sprawled lower, put his head back, and slept for an hour. When he woke up, he stretched, then had a distinct urge to move.

"Is Samantha still in her room? " he asked, sitting up.

sso r s YeS.

"On the phone? " "No. She's making herself beautiful." It was said with enough sarcasm that he chided, "You'll be doing it, too, before long. Want to go for a walk? " She nodded and closed her book.

Jack knocked on Samantha's closed door. "Sam? Come for a walk with us? " "I just washed my hair, " she called out.

"You could still come."

"Take Hope. I'll stay here." Jack stood at her door for another minute. As difficult as she was at times, he really did want her along. There was something about the three of them being together that seemed more important after the grandmothers' visit. He wanted family, damn it, he did. He liked being with his daughters. They filled up the emptiness of childhood memories, made his life morefull.

There was also something about Samantha's prom being that night. It was a milestone. He wanted to do something to mark it, wanted to somehow make up for Rachel missing it.

"Are you sure? " he called a final time.

"Positive, " she yelled.

Fearing he would make things worse if he pushed, he let it go.

HE HAD BROUGHT his hiking boots from the city the Thursday before. He hadn't worn them since the divorce, but they felt good on his feet. He put water and snacks in a backpack, slipped it on, and left with Hope.

She had temporarily traded her lucky boots for hiking boots of her own, and a good thing it was. The winding trek she led him on, between spreading redwood trunks, aspens, and fir, was arduous. At times they climbed, at others they walked straight. Where the sun broke through the overhead boughs, it touched them, but the air remained cool, particularly as they approached the stream. Jack felt the anticipation of it, heard the crescendoing rush of water. When it came into sight, he discovered it was as much waterfall as stream, spewing over a rocky bed in tiered cascades.

They stopped and knelt by its side, saying nothing, just watching the bubbling play and listening to the flow.

When they stood, Hope said, "It's loudest this time of year. By fall, it's only a trickle." She led him across a rough-planked bridge and on through a fragrant eucalyptus grove to open meadow, and the temperature jumped. "See Duncan's sheep? " she asked.

They grazed in random clusters in the sun. It was a bucolic bouquet of color, with the deep green of live oaks in the distance blanching to the newer green of the spring grass, interspersed with patches of red poppy and yellow iris and the sheep, with their gray-white coats and their brown eyes and muzzles, paying them scant heed as they crossed the top of the meadow.

They continued on through oak and madrone on no path Jack could see, but Hope seemed to know where to go, and she went at a clip. By the time the land tipped and chaparral took over, a path emerged. It was even warmer here. As they walked, Jack pulled off his sweatshirt and tied it around his waist. They moved higher, into a stand of pines, and beyond those, the world suddenly gaped open.