Runner (16 page)

They drove back to the city. On the way they stopped at a grocery store and replenished the supply of staples and picked up lots of extra food that Linda particularly liked. Jane used a plastic bag from the store to hold the partridgeberry leaves, then loaded the car trunk with groceries. While they were driving back toward the apartment, Linda said, "You're getting ready to leave, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"When everything I can do here is done."

The next morning Linda had her first dose of partridgeberry tea, and her last day of morning sickness. Over the next few days they filled the cupboards with canned and preserved food. They went to bookstores and bought pregnancy and child-care books, magazines and novels. The health insurance card in the name Linda Welles arrived, and they went to the doctor for Linda's next checkup.

One morning, when Linda woke, Jane was sitting in the living room with her suitcase packed. "It's today?"

"I think it's time," Jane said. "You're Linda Welles now. Your identity has held up, and you've been out of sight for a couple of weeks. You're in a safe place with just about everything you'll need, and you've got a car with Minnesota plates. Your neighbors are used to you already. It's up to you now."

"I'm scared to do this without you."

"Don't be. All you have to do is live quietly, take care of yourself, and let the time go by. Do exactly what your doctor says. And don't worry. I'll be back near the end of the summer to help you get everything ready for the baby."

Linda looked relieved. She put her arms around Jane and hugged her, holding on for a few seconds before she let go. She wiped her tears with the back of her hand. "Thank you, Jane. I'll see you then."

Jane went out, and looked carefully at everything she could see, trying to sense anything that might be out of order. She got into the rental car, then drove around the apartment complex once before she went up the long drive to the main street and turned right to find the entrance to the long highway.

Richard Beale had lived in San Diego all his life, but he didn't like the Pacific Ocean. His father had been wasting money on boats since before Richard was born, and this was just the latest boat, maybe the fifth one named after his mother. This one was fifty-eight feet long, all gleaming white hull and deck. The steps and rails and benches and roofs were all outlandish molded fiberglass in soft streamlined shapes, so it looked as though they had melted in the sun and begun to smear. The sun was another thing. Where the hell was the June gloom—the cloud cover that was supposed to make this time of the year dark? The sunlight this morning was the cruel, sharp kind that usually came during full summer. It seemed to always be at the worst angle for the whole day, so no matter where you looked it was in your eyes or bouncing back into them from something like the glass and steel on this big white boat. Even the surface chop of the ocean was full of mirror surfaces that popped up and were swallowed again in their millions, throwing a dancing glare into his eyes.

The monotonous thrum of the two enormous engines below the deck made him feel tired and irritated, and the repeated rise and fall
of the boat on the long Pacific swells brought back dozens of episodes of motion sickness. Each time was exacerbated by his expert nonseaman's knowledge of every aspect of seasickness—exactly how bad it was so far, how long it would take to get worse under these specific conditions, at what point he would begin to fear the nausea would lead to vomiting, and how long after that he would accept his fate, surrender to it, and finally welcome it. He stood near the stern and stared back at the harbor.

"Richie."

Ruby Beale's voice was still high and a little screechy when she was straining it, but it had a gravelly unevenness that a lot of old smokers got. Richard turned and looked up the steps toward the flying bridge. That was what they called it: flying. When the ocean was choppy it felt up there as though the boat were trying to fling everyone off it. She was holding on to both railings at the top, her cigarette hanging at the corner of her lip. She was wearing a brightly flowered orange one-piece bathing suit with a voluminous pair of shorts over it, leaving the flabby white flesh of her arms and calves a feast for the sun.

"What, Ma?"

"Come up here."

"Why don't you come down? I like it down here." It wasn't true. He hated it down here, but at least he didn't feel as though he was about to be catapulted into the sea.

"Your father wants to talk to you."

He muttered, "Oh, shit." That was what he had been dreading. When he had arrived at the marina this morning, he had seen that flinty look in his father's blue-gray eyes. He had hoped the expression was just because it was a bit after six in the morning and the old man was still gruff from being up so early, but even then he had known it wasn't. The old man had told Richard to be there by five-thirty. It had
always struck Richard as insane that people always went fishing at that hour. He could understand if they had been on their way to a tiny trout stream in the mountains, but how could anybody think the sort of fish that swam in the Pacific Ocean—half of them a mile below the surface and as big as a truck—would be so picky they cared what time it was?

But Andrew Beale was the sort of man who attached moral values to his own preferences. Men who were worth anything were on deck before the sun's rays touched it, their goddamned gear stowed and ready to cast off the lines. When Richard had roared into the marina parking lot in his Porsche Carrera at six-twenty-five, he had known his father would be less than cordial. As he was stepping cautiously along the little gangplank, he had heard his father saying something to his mother about leaving him on the dock.

Richard tested the lowest step to the bridge, and felt slightly relieved. The darker strip on each step was a substance like sandpaper that kept his foot from slipping, and the double railings on this boat were thicker and more substantial than they'd been on the last one. He fought the rocking of the boat by gripping the rails hard as he climbed, so by the time he was aloft and taking his first step onto the bridge, he felt as though he'd been lifting weights.

His father was at the wheel, staring through the huge windshield at the featureless, changeless ocean as though he could see something ahead that was invisible to Richard. At least the sound of the engines was quieter up here. Andy Beale was a man who looked as though he were made of blocks—big head with a neck invisible from behind, square shoulders in his starched white shirt with epaulets, short khaki pants. He was wearing his old navy blue USS
Constance Kerr
cap. He glared over his shoulder at Richard to see that he had arrived, but he let him wait.

After a couple of long minutes, Richard said, "What's up, Dad?"

"Want to take the helm?"

"No, thanks."

"Suit yourself." The old man throttled back a bit, so the big yacht slowed, and the side-to-side motion became more pronounced. "I've been thinking of talking to you for some time now."

"What about?"

"I'm sure you're smart enough to know that your mother and I keep an eye on you. Just because we might not be actively in your business at any given time doesn't mean we don't know what it is."

"What is it?"

"For months we've been wondering why you haven't seen fit to mention to us that your girlfriend was pregnant."

"What girlfriend?"

"All right. Your secretary, then. Whatever the hell she is to you. Christine. She's sort of a cute little thing, and people tell me she isn't stupid. A bit on the young side for a thirty-eight-year-old man, but that could pay off later. When you're my age, you'd have a woman who was still on the young side for you. Your mother has been trying to think of a way to do a party for you, complete with presents and so on. But she couldn't get very far with that, because you haven't told us. So I'm forced to ask."

Richard Beale felt even sicker. He could see that his father had reverted to his military personality again. His father was still a marvel to him. At various points in Richard's life he had been prompted to ask himself what the hell the navy did to people in four short years to change them so much. His father had been an Oklahoma farm boy until he went in the navy, and he had come out like this, and stayed this way for forty years. Richard knew he had to say something. "Oh, I don't know. I guess I didn't feel ready to start all
of that in motion. I don't want any parties or fuss, at least until I know if this is going to work out."

"Seems a little late for that kind of wondering, doesn't it? If you weren't prepared to make a decision about her, maybe you should have kept it in your pants."

"I don't mean that."

"Not that we weren't pleased. Your mother has been running around with a pen and a special notebook writing down things for the wedding. She hasn't even finished figuring out the lists for the engagement party yet, but she has to make some moves to streamline this whole process so the bride won't be too obviously far along at the wedding. I haven't seen her this happy in twenty years."

Was the boat just drifting and rolling with the swells? Richard kept feeling worse. "Look, Dad. I've been trying to protect Mother from getting all excited and then being disappointed later, and you, too. I don't know how you found out Christine was pregnant. She didn't actually come out and tell even me."

"That's not good," said Andy Beale.

"How
did
you find out?"

"If I had wanted you to know that, I'd have told you. And for weeks, the mistake I thought you were making was trying to keep this to yourself and then springing it on your mother too late. But I guess you were making a different kind of mistake. With you, it's always some kind of mistake."

"That's not fair."

"Pah!" Andy Beale spat out something that was almost a laugh, but carried no happiness. "What I told you four years ago hasn't changed, Richard. I was the one who started this life with nothing but a pair of calloused hands and a reasonably serviceable brain. When the navy sent me here, they sent a million other guys here,
too. I was one of the ones who had his eyes and ears open. I could see that lots of those guys were from cold, hard, barren places. Once they'd been here, they were going to come back. Hell, that's been going on since World War Two. That's why there is a San Diego. Some of us were willing to take risks and work hard. I bought my first duplex apartment by working two jobs before your mother and I were even married. I saved the rent on that one to put a down payment on another, and used your mother's savings from her nurse job to buy the third. I never looked back. We both worked for other people until we were over fifty while we were doing real estate deals at night and showing rentals to prospective tenants on our lunch hours. You get to be a big shot and tool around in a Porsche at twice the speed limit and live in a house like a palace and make milliondollar deals all day. But you'd do well to remember that none of it is yours. I let you get used to all of it because I'm not going to live forever, and I need somebody who knows how to run it after I can't. I didn't want you to inherit it at the age of fifty or sixty and know so little that you let somebody take it away from you."

"I know, Dad, and I'm grateful. I've always been grateful. I don't say it often, because I know you wouldn't think much of me if I followed you around all day saying how grateful I am."

"No, I wouldn't. But there are certain things that you are required to do, and you've known that from the beginning. Your mother wants grandchildren. Sometimes I think that's all that keeps her interested in staying alive. She's waiting to see them and spoil them. I want grandchildren, too. All the work and sacrifice and agony I went through to make something of this family is going to be thrown away and wasted if there are no more Beales to make use of it. I didn't do all that—work eighteen or nineteen hours a day, leveraging everything I had on each new deal over and over again—just so you can
live this bachelor existence, screwing around until you're eighty, and then die and have everything I built confiscated by the fucking State of California. I want heirs, and I want the first one this year."

"Dad, if you know about Christine, you must realize that I'm trying to do what you expect of me."

"It's about time. I was pretty much convinced that you were gay, and she was just around to type and pick up your clothes at the cleaner's."

"So now you know I'm not gay."

"Yeah, yeah. You like girls. It's an enormous accomplishment. Now I want you to see something." He reached into the rack where the nautical maps were stowed, and pulled out a long white envelope with a string-tie closing at one end.

"If that's your will, you showed it to me when we talked about this four years ago. If I don't have a child before you die, then the money goes to the cousins. How could I forget?"

"I changed it again. This is a new one, and there are copies with people I trust all over the country, so don't even think about waiting until I die and tearing it up. It can't happen." He held out the white envelope.

Richard Beale had been up on the bridge too long. He was in a bad state of seasickness brought on by the slower speed, which had permitted some of the diesel exhaust to find its way up here. He waved the envelope away. "Why don't you just tell me what it says?"

His father shook his head in a gesture of disdain for people who had no sea legs. "All right. It says that when your first child is born, you get a one-tenth share of everything—the business, the property holdings, the bank balances." He lifted his eyes from the will and glared at Richard. "That was going to be the first of your presents that we had intended to reveal at the engagement party. I can see
you know there's more coming. You're waiting for that. You're right. We waited and waited for you to share your news with us, until I got a bad feeling about it, so I added something. You've got until the end of this year."

"What do you mean?"

"We figure this baby, our grandchild, is going to be born around September or October. Is that right?"