JAKE RUNYON
H
e 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?”
She made a soft, anguished sound. “Oh, God. Bobby.”
“No,” he said, “you wouldn’t.”
“I miss him,” she said, “I miss him so much. Two weekends a month … it’s so damn unfair.”
Her visitation privileges, she meant. The ex-husband was a lawyer, the self-righteous, conniving type. He’d not only found a self-serving excuse to abandon Bryn when he learned her paralysis was likely to be permanent, he’d sued for custody of the boy and convinced a sympathetic judge to rule in his favor. He had another woman now; Bryn thought he might’ve had her even before the stroke. The plan was for the boy to have a stepmother sometime this summer.
Runyon had met Robert Jr. once, on one of Bryn’s weekends with him last month. Nice kid, nine years old;
smart, shy, liked computers and video games and football. No question that he loved his mother, but he seemed a little uneasy around her. Wouldn’t look at her directly, as if the covered half of her face frightened him or made him nervous.
Runyon said, “You’ll have more time with him as he gets older.”
“Will I? You didn’t have any time with your son.”
“Different situation. My first wife was a vindictive alcoholic—I think I told you that. She poisoned Joshua against me. After twenty years, there’s no antidote. Don’t let your ex do that to Bobby.”
“He hasn’t. I don’t think he will. Robert can be a prick, but he cares about Bobby. And doesn’t care enough about me to hurt me any more than he already has.”
“What about the new woman he’s with?”
“I’ve never met her and I’m not sure I want to.”
“Know much about her?”
“No, except that she sells real estate. She’s been good to Bobby—he likes her.”
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Yes.”
“Have you talked to Bobby about the paralysis?”
“Mother to son? Yes, as much as you can to a nine-year-old about a thing like that.”
“Let him see your face, without the scarf?”
Nothing for a few seconds. Then, “No.”
“Might help him understand better.”
“It would be cruel to subject him to that. He’s just a child.”
“Afraid of his reaction?”
“I don’t … What do you mean?”
“That he won’t be able to deal with it. Pull away from you.”
“You’ve seen my face,” she said. “Half a Halloween mask.”
Runyon had seen it only once, the first time their lives intersected, when he’d chased away a couple of smart-ass kids after one of them yanked off her scarf in a Safeway parking lot. Dim light, but it hadn’t seemed so bad to him. He said, “Eye of the beholder. It didn’t scare me away.”
“You’re an adult.”
“And you’re Bobby’s mother. He needs you.”
“And he can have me,” she said bitterly, “two weekends every month.”
“I only saw you together once, but you were tentative around him.”
“What the hell does that mean? Tentative?”
“No hugs, no kisses. You didn’t even touch him.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. That’s not true.”
“It’s true, Bryn. I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“You’re a fine one to dispense parental advice. How many times did you hug
your
son when he was growing up?”
“I didn’t have a choice. You do.”
“That’s enough! I don’t like being told how to deal with my son!”
He’d pushed it too hard, made her angry. A fine one to dispense parental advice.
“All right,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
“You should be.”
“I was out of line. I won’t do it again.”
“Better not if you want to keep this friendship.”
Quiet again until they were approaching Devil’s Slide on the way back. But she’d been thinking about his perceptions, weighing them; she broke the silence by saying, “Jake? About what you said earlier …”
“I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Just being honest—I know. You were right, I don’t touch Bobby. I’m afraid to touch him, afraid he’ll draw away from me. He’s all I have left. I couldn’t stand to lose him, too.”
“You won’t.”
“It’s just so hard,” she said. “So hard.”
“Don’t let him feel you’re rejecting him and he won’t reject you. I think I’m right about that. Loving close is always better than loving at a distance.”
I
t was after nine by the time they got back to the city. The coffee shop at Taraval and Nineteenth Avenue stayed open until midnight; they had dinner there, in a rear booth. A stranger sitting across from them couldn’t keep his fat eyes off Bryn. The third time he glanced over, Runyon caught his gaze and held it, impaled him until the man shifted both his gaze and his body and kept his attention on his plate, where it belonged. Damn people, anyway.
He took Bryn home afterward, walked her to the door. Before she unlocked it and went in, she said, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Putting up with me. Being honest. I’m such a screwedup mess.”
“Not any more than me and a whole lot of others.”
“I almost cancelled tonight. So depressed after I saw the doctor.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“So am I.”
“Better now?”
“Better,” she said. “What you said, about Bobby, about loving close … it makes sense.”
“When can we get together again?”
“Not tomorrow. My mother’s night to call.”
Her mother lived in Denver, she’d told him, and was the only other person she could talk to about personal issues. But only for short periods; the mother tended to become weepy and critical.
“Wednesday, then?”
“Yes, Wednesday. Good night, Jake.”
“Good night.”
It was a short drive from Moraga Street to his apartment building on Ortega. On the way he turned his cell phone back on. He’d taken to switching it off when he was with Bryn; urgent calls were a rarity in the evening and their time together had become too important to let routine business intrude.
One voice-mail message, from Cliff Henderson in Los Alegres: “I looked through the trunk in Damon’s garage like you asked. The only thing missing I’m sure about is one of the photo albums. Mostly old pictures taken on hunting and fishing trips—Damon and me, my father,
some of his hunting buddies. No damn idea why that crazy bugger would steal it.”
Too late to call Henderson back now. He’d talk to him about the missing album in the morning, in person.
Coming in late to the apartment, facing the emptiness, wasn’t so bad on the nights he was with Bryn. He turned on the TV for noise, booted up his laptop to check his e-mail. All he ever got were occasional business messages and spam, but he always checked it before he went to bed. One e-mail from Tamara tonight, sent after five o’clock, with some more background information on the Henderson brothers, their father, and their remarried mother. Didn’t seem to be much there, but you never knew what might prove to be important until you got deeper into an investigation.