“The important thing is what your oncologist thinks. I don’t have to remind you what he said about too much stress…”
“No, you don’t. I know my limitations, don’t worry.”
“It’s my nature to worry, especially where you’re concerned.”
She patted my cheek and leaned up to kiss me. “You’re sweet,” she said. Then she said, “You’re staring at me again.”
“Am I?”
“I catch you doing that a lot lately. I must really look different, huh?”
“Beautiful. Gorgeous.”
“Ten years younger?” she asked, pleased.
“At least.”
She’d had a face-lift a few weeks ago. Her treat to herself after the breast cancer ordeal. I’d been leery of it at first, all that slicing and dicing, and when I first saw her after the surgery, all bandaged and bruised and swollen like the victim of a bad accident, I’d been more than a little anxious. (Not Emily, though; nothing much bothered that kid of ours anymore.) Kerry had spent two and a half weeks holed up in the condo, going out only for post-op visits to her plastic surgeon, doing her ad agency work by home computer as she had during the cancer radiation treatments. When the last of the bandages came off and the scars finally healed, good-bye, anxiety, hello, happy surprise. The minor age wrinkles and eye bags and mouth lines that had bothered her, if not me, were gone and she truly did look ten years younger. More beautiful than ever. No wonder I kept staring at her.
“Where’s Emily?” I asked.
“It’s her choral group night, remember?”
“That’s right. Our daughter, the budding chanteuse. So how about you and I celebrate the promotion?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Oh, something Tamara told me this afternoon, about stamina.”
“And that is?”
I told her. Then I told her, juicily, what I had in mind. She actually blushed a little.
Face-lifts do wonders, all right. For a woman’s selfimage and morale. And for a man’s libido.
7
JAKE RUNYON
He picked Bryn up at six thirty. She was ready; she never kept him waiting. The scarf covering the frozen left side of her face was midnight blue with some kind of gold design. When he’d first met her four months ago, she wore dark-colored or paisley scarves with her plain sweaters, skirts, slacks. The outfits were still the same, but now the scarves had color in them. Her way of dressing up for him.
Subdued tonight. She had periodic bouts of depression, she’d told him, and when she was depressed she was even quieter than usual. “I’m not very hungry,” she said. “Do you mind if we drive for a while before we eat?”
“Where would you like to go?”
“I don’t care. Anywhere.”
“Down the coast? Highway One?”
“Yes, all right.”
He’d told her that he liked to drive, even on those days when the job required him to log in a lot of miles. She understood his restlessness, his need not to be trapped by stationary walls. She preferred the confines of her brown-shingled house-familiar, the place where she’d been happy before the stroke that had left her with partial facial paresis. But sometimes a restlessness seized her, too. At night, for the most part. Days, she had her watercolors and charcoal sketches and the graphics design business she was trying to build up.
He was seeing her three or four times a week now. Mostly at night, even on weekends. She didn’t like to go out much in the daylight hours. They had dinner usually, at one of the same two coffee shops on Taraval. In other restaurants, places where she wasn’t known, people had a tendency to stare at her or to cluck their stupid tongues because of the scarf and the way she was forced to eat, twisting open the good side of her mouth to take the food, chewing and swallowing in awkward movements with her head down over her plate because no matter how careful she was, pieces of food or dribbles of liquid sometimes leaked out. If there was one thing she hated more than anything else, it was pity-a stranger’s pity worst of all.
Now and then they took in a movie; she was comfortable in darkened theaters. In good weather they went for walks on Ocean Beach or Land’s End, away from people. Or sat in the car somewhere and talked. He’d been inside the brown-shingled house only twice, once to see her paintings and graphic designs, once for a glass of wine.
He had not touched her except to take her arm when they went up or down stairs, or to help her on and off with her coat. And yet a closeness had developed between them, a slow-developing bond of trust. Different by far from his relationships with the other two women in his life, the caretaker role he’d had to assume with half-crazy, alcoholic Andrea, the fire and passion and soul-deep love he’d shared with Colleen. If it ever moved to another level with Bryn… all right. Now, what they had was enough. They’d never discussed it, but he thought she felt the same way.
Most people would find their relationship odd, he supposed. If he’d had to explain it to somebody else, he couldn’t have found the right words. The closest he could come was that before they met, they’d been like a couple of turtles hiding in their shells. Hers fashioned by the stroke and a shit of a husband who couldn’t deal with her affliction and losing custody of her nine-year-old son to his father; his made from the loss of Colleen and the six months death watch he’d had to endure while the cancer ate at her from within. Now the turtles’ heads were out, only partway but still out. A couple of lonely, damaged creatures, blinking in the light, finding understanding and acceptance in each other and taking solace from it.
He drove them down through Pacifica, over Devil’s Slide, to Half Moon Bay. Nice night, clear, the stars cold and nail-head bright in a black sky. Bryn had very little to say, focused inward. He didn’t try to make conversation. The silences between them were comfortable now.
At one of the stoplights in Half Moon Bay he said, “Go on a little farther, or head back?”
“A little farther.”
She didn’t speak again until they were approaching the beach at San Gregorio. Then, “I saw my doctor today.”
“What did he say?”
“No change. He’s honest, he doesn’t give out false hope. It’s almost certain now that I’ll have the paralysis for the rest of my life.”
“He could still be wrong.”
“He’s not wrong. Sometimes…”
When she didn’t go on right away, Runyon glanced over at her. She was staring straight ahead, back stiff, knees together, hands cupped together in her lap-the sitting posture of a young girl.
“Sometimes,” she said finally, “I feel like I’m going crazy.”
“I know the feeling.” Mourning Colleen in the allconsuming way he had, Joshua lost to him, work his only sanctuary… he’d been close to the edge himself, closer than he’d let himself believe. “But you won’t let it happen.”
“Won’t I? I still have nights when I just want to… give up.”
“I know how that is, too.”
“No, I mean…”
“I know what you mean.”
“Did you ever feel that way? After your wife died?”
“Yes.”
“Ever… you know, come close to ending it all?”
“A couple of times.”
“How close?”
“Close enough.” He wouldn’t give her the details-metallic taste of the. 357 Magnum muzzle in his mouth, finger tight on the trigger, sweat pouring off him, the sudden fevered shaking that once made him drop the gun into his lap. No, that was a piece of his own private hell he’d never share with anyone.
“What stopped you?” she asked.
“I wanted to live more than I wanted to die.”
“I… I’m not sure I feel the same way.”
“If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here.”
“That’s not necessarily true. I think I’m a coward.”
“You’re not a coward,” he said. “Cowards go through with it, leave the mess for somebody else to clean up.”
“I wouldn’t do it that way, the bloody way.”
“There’re other kinds of messes. The people you leave behind. You wouldn’t do that to your son, would you? Leave him that kind of legacy?”