Taste of Honey (40 page)

From the depths of her being, she summoned the necessary reassurance. “I won’t be hearing any such talk. You’ve made it this far. And boy or girl, that’s one hell of a kid. If it’s anything like you, it’ll be too stubborn to give up.” She felt Sam’s fingers loosen, and watched her slump back. “The only bad news is, it looks like I’ll be your coach after all. And if you think I’m cutting you any slack, forget it. Just try wimping out on me. I’ll come down on you so hard you won’t know what hit you.”

The sky above, in all its magnificent sprawl, seemed to mock her, the thought of Aubrey swooping down like a falling star: his pregnant wife crushed to death in a car wreck. For the first time she truly understood what it must have been like for him.

The thought was driven from her head by the crunch of tires, and headlights panning in an arc overhead. As if on another plane she heard the slam of car doors, followed by the babble of voices—Andie’s among them, high and anxious. Light from the ambulance’s pulsing dome washed down the slope, tingeing the foliage around her a lurid red, and now she could make out a pair of jumpsuit-clad figures expertly picking their way down the slope, a travois bobbing between them.

She smiled at Sam. “Relax, kiddo. The marines have landed.”

Andie waited anxiously for her mother. She could hear the receding voices of the paramedics as they made their way down the slope, along with the faint crackle of their walkie-talkies. A short distance away, Justin squatted before the guardrail like a faithful dog, peering over the edge into the ravine. In the pale gold shaft from the headlights, flying insects darted and spun like fireflies in a jar. Except for the occasional whisper of cars, they were the only things stirring. Even her grandmother sat stoically in the car, though it had to be killing her. It was one of the things Andie loved best about Grandma: She knew when she’d only be in the way.

“See anything?” she hissed at her brother.

Justin turned to glance at her, his baseball cap casting a wedge of shadow over his face. “I think so. Yeah, someone’s on the stretcher.”

“Who?”

“I can’t tell. Aunt Sam, I think.”

Andie prayed she’d be okay. The baby, too.

Her mouth filled with a taste like curdled milk. Tonight she’d planned on telling her mother about her period being late. Now this …

She suddenly thought of Aubrey’s wife dying in that car wreck—she’d been pregnant, too.
Why wasn’t I nicer to him?
Remembering the CD he’d given her made her feel twice as bad. Even though she hadn’t meant what happened at the wedding, wasn’t it partly
her
fault he was leaving?

Andie looked down, almost surprised to see that she was still holding her mother’s cell phone. Before she knew it, she was punching in Aubrey’s name. Her mom had all her important numbers on speed dial; one of them had to be his. She heard a series of beeps, followed by a faint ringing.

“Aubrey here.”

Her heart began to race, and for a moment she was tongue-tied. “Mr. Roellinger? This is Andie … Andie Bayliss. Sorry to bother you, but there’s been an accident.”

“Is it your mother? Is she all right?” His voice seemed to float up from the bottom of a well, so eerily calm that it was a moment before Andie recognized it for what it was: the flip side of panic.

“She’s fine. It’s … it’s Sam and Ian. Their car went off the road. I … I don’t know how bad it is. The ambulance just got here.” She drew in a shuddery breath. “My mom can’t come to the phone right now. But I … I thought she’d want you to know.”

“Thank you, Andie. You did the right thing.”

She knew there was nothing he could do. He was on his way to the airport, after all. Her father wouldn’t have turned back; he’d have phoned later on to see if everything was okay. But if that was all Aubrey could do, it’d be better than nothing.

Just then the paramedics—one burly and long-haired, the other wiry with a crew cut—loomed into view hoisting the travois. Andie’s heart nearly stopped when she saw Aunt Sam. She was white as a sheet, cradling her belly as if the canvas straps holding her in place weren’t enough to protect it. Andie wanted to run to her, but found she couldn’t move. Then Aunt Sam disappeared into the back of the ambulance.

The paramedics headed back down the slope. Hours seemed to go by—though Andie’s watch showed that only minutes had passed—before they reappeared carrying Ian. His face was contorted in agony, and the blanket covering him from the chest down was stained with blood. When the travois tipped sideways and he cried out in pain, the burly man squeezed his shoulder and said, “Sorry, buddy. I know it hurts like hell.” Minutes later the ambulance was tearing off down the road, dome light flashing and siren wailing.

It wasn’t until her mother surfaced at last, pale and disheveled with a scratch on one cheek, that Andie came unglued. She threw herself into her mother’s arms, and Gerry clutched her as if she, too, would have drowned otherwise.

“Is Aunt Sam going to be okay?”

“She’ll be fine.” But her mom didn’t sound convinced.

“Ian, too?” Justin wanted to know.

Gerry drew back with a smile that looked carved into her face. “Nothing a little plaster won’t fix.” Justin trotted over, and she pulled him into a three-way embrace.

“Come on, guys, let’s get going. We have a long night ahead of us.”

A moment later they were in the car, racing toward the hospital.

Aubrey settled back, staring out the window at the gray river of the freeway rushing past while he seemed to sit motionless, a rock amid the swirling eddies of light. He felt a stillness come over him, a kind of clarity he hadn’t felt in years.
All this time I’ve been running,
he thought,
I’ve only been going in circles.

Now he collided with the memory full force.

She’d been wearing a yellow dress that day, the one he’d brought her from New York. It had tiny polka dots and a ruffled neckline, which had made Isabelle laugh when she tried it on.

“I look like I belong in a Henry James novel,” she’d said, twirling this way and that in front of the mirror.

“You look like you.”

He’d caught her and pulled her against him. She smelled faintly of perfume, something light and floral, and even more faintly of the Gauloises she’d been after him to stop smoking, though he indulged only on occasion. It had been only a few days, but he’d missed her.
No more out-of-town dates until the baby comes.
It was the same promise he made every time; then there was always one more he couldn’t get out of, and another after that. Tonight’s concert, at least, was at the Music Center.

“Does it make me look pregnant?” she’d asked.

“Darling, nothing could disguise the fact that you’re pregnant.” She was seven months along, and gloriously in bloom. With her blond hair coiled loosely in back, she made him think of a ripe peach—a particularly juicy one. He nibbled on her neck.

“You know what I mean.” Did it make her look fat and ugly? As if anything ever could. She swiveled about in his arms as lightly as a ballerina. “Aubrey, let’s go out tonight. I have a sudden craving for escargots swimming in butter.”

“We can’t. I have the Music Center tonight,” he reminded her. They were doing Haydn’s Symphony no. 88 in G, a particularly buoyant piece of work, too cheerful for his taste. Give him the melancholy of Beethoven’s Fifth any day.

She’d looked bereft. Not so much because they wouldn’t be going out, or because she’d be spending yet another evening alone, but because she wanted to be onstage, too. Poor Isabelle. She missed performing the way a race horse cooped in its stall misses the track. If her doctor hadn’t insisted that the rigors of a tour would be too much at this stage in what had been a rocky pregnancy, nothing would have stopped her. She eyed her music stand in the corner as longingly as she might have a lover.

“I’ll go with you then,” she said.

Aubrey glanced out the window. It was pouring—the kind of deluge rarely seen in Southern California, and a reminder that mother nature always had the last laugh. Don’t get too complacent, or an earthquake will come along, knocking you and your neighbors down like so many bowling pins; grow cocky and the Santa Ana winds will whip up a brush fire and send its flames racing across your path.

“You’ll catch cold,” he said.

Isabelle laughed. She knew he didn’t take her little ailments seriously. Hadn’t he said so time and again? “I’ll wear a slicker. I’ll look like Pancho Villa.”

He shook his head, partly in amusement, pulling her close once more and burying his face in her hair. Had he sensed then, in some deep part of him, that he would need to take in as much of her while he could, store her scent like a madman stockpiling for the imminent destruction of the world?

“I’ll have Gordon take you.” He’d send his driver back to pick her up.

“If there’s traffic, he’ll be hours.” She tilted her head, her smile that of a beautiful woman used to getting her way who could afford to give in once in a while. “You win. I’ll stay home.”

He loved the curve of her neck. Her skin was like pearls; it shimmered, giving off a soft light all its own. All the years they’d tried for a baby, he’d wondered if the gods were denying them for the simple reason that they had too much already. Wasn’t it greedy to want more? Not until later would he know it was the gods who were greedy; they’d wanted her all to themselves.

His baton had come down on the final chords of Schubert’s
Unfinished,
the second of the two orchestral works on the program that night, and, in retrospect, a particularly rich piece of irony, when he received the call backstage. He remembered only snatches of it. Isabelle hurt … car totaled. If Gordon hadn’t been at the wheel, he’d have ended up in the hospital himself … or at the bottom of the cliff. On the other hand, if he’d insisted on sending his driver back to pick her up, if she hadn’t been foolhardy enough to drive herself none of this would have happened.

She was dead by the time he got there; he was told she’d died at the scene. Why, he wondered, do messengers of death feel the need to forestall such news? Could they possibly imagine that receiving it in bits and pieces, like shrapnel, was better than being blown up all at once?

In the elevator, on the way down to the morgue, a blessed numbness had come over him. What got him through the ordeal was knowing it wasn’t really happening, in the morning he would wake up to find it had all been a terrible dream. How could that cold, blue thing on the table be Isabelle, who’d shone brighter than the sun? He’d touched her hair. It was long and fine, the color of ale. He wound it about his fingers. It seemed alive, clutching at him, cutting off his circulation until he was forced to let it slip from his grasp.

He calmly asked the medical examiner, a far too hearty-looking older man, for a pair of scissors. The man looked at Aubrey pityingly, as if suspecting he’d gone mad. Aubrey wished it were so, for insanity would have been a welcome reprieve from the torment he was soon to face. Scissors in hand, he snipped several strands and carefully coiled them before tucking them in his pocket. The man asked kindly if he wanted to see his baby. He declined. For him to do so, even in death, when Isabelle had been denied that joy, would have been grossly unfair. He tried to imagine her in heaven with their child— a son, he’d been told—but found he no longer believed in heaven. In fact, he no longer believed in God.

Days later, as he knelt at her grave, it wasn’t to God he spoke, but to Isabelle. They were the last words he would ever speak aloud to his wife.
Je t’aime.
I love you. Now and forever. There will never be another to take your place.

And there hadn’t been, until now. Were Gerry anything at all like Isabelle, he’d have guarded against her fiercely. Yet gradually, almost without his being aware of it, she had crept past his defenses. Until one day he’d realized he was in love with her. The thought terrified him. How could he love this woman without letting go of Isabelle? Gerry wasn’t the type to take a backseat. Gerry, with her animated gestures and bawdy laugh, who filled a room merely by walking into it. By her very nature she cast a shadow in which his wife’s memory would wilt like a plant robbed of sunlight. It wasn’t until tonight, when he’d kissed Gerry good-bye, that he’d realized he was killing any chance with the one woman since Isabelle who’d made him feel alive.

Stirring as if from a deep sleep, Aubrey brought a hand to his cheek and found that it was wet. He found himself remembering a letter Debussy had penned while composing
La Mer.
He’d written of the sea,
I have an endless store of memories, and to my mind, they are worth more than reality, whose beauty often deadens the thought.

That’s what he’d done—prized his memories over life itself. Like the music with which Debussy had captured the essence of the sea, he’d transformed something fluid into a beautiful score of fixed notes and measured tempo.

Aubrey tapped on the glass divider, and waited what seemed an eternity for it to slide open. “Take the next exit,” he ordered. All he could see of the driver was the neatly clipped hair on the back of his head and a pair of mildly curious eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Sir?”

“We’re going back to Carson Springs.”

They arrived at the hospital without running any red lights, where the woman at the desk in the ER informed them that Mrs. Kiley was upstairs in Maternity. As they rode the elevator up, it occurred to Gerry that she hadn’t been to that floor since Andie and Justin were born. She glanced at them now, Justin with an arm about his grandmother, and Andie with hers crossed over her chest. Gerry couldn’t think of any two adults who’d have been more coolheaded in the face of such an ordeal, and had never been prouder.

The doors thumped open, and Gerry strode over to the nurses’ station. “I’m looking for Mrs. Kiley,” she said to an older gray-haired nurse built like the USS
Constitution.

The woman consulted a chart. “Mrs. Kiley? I see here that she’s on her way into Delivery. Why don’t you take a seat? I’ll keep you posted.” She smiled pleasantly, waving in the direction of the lounge just down the hall.