Rachel's Hope

“He called a while go. I told him you were out shopping. He said he had to work late. Said he’d grab a bite on the way home.”

“Great.” She sighed. There goes my porterhouse-steaks-and-candlelight plan, she thought She knew she should have called David at the office to see if he’d be home at his usual time, but she’d had no chance.

“We still gotta eat,” Brian reminded her.

Rachel felt deflated. Her energy had vanished. “How about a hamburger?”

“Rad. How about the Hamburger House, where Dad takes us sometimes? They have great shakes.”

She was too tired to argue. “All right, if you get the food to go. I don’t feel like going in.”

Dutifully, her spirits ebbing, Rachel drove Brian to the Hamburger House and waited in the car while he went in for hamburgers, shakes and fries. She sat with the window rolled partly down, her polished fingernails lightly tapping the leather-wrapped steering wheel, her eyes momentarily catching a glimpse of passing strangers. She focused briefly on a gas station being torn down across the street, then turned her gaze to the restaurant’s neatly lettered window signs advertising the special of the week: Fudge Sundae Delight, with whipped cream and nuts.

The sky had remained the same. Dusky gray clouds ready to burst into drenching rain hovered overhead, swollen and heavy like a great woman in waiting, as she herself would be in time. Why didn’t it just rain and get it over with? Why did things have to stand still, horribly, oppressively still?

Rachel’s mind was somewhere else, her thoughts wandering, so she might have missed David and the girl entirely. At first she only vaguely realized it was David coming out the door, David and a young girl who looked familiar and yet was a stranger.

Rachel’s first impulse was to call out to her husband, to say, “Here I am, David. Funny to run into you here.” The impulse was squelched immediately by something else, a dread, a terrible feeling of being trapped in a bad dream. David was walking with some girl—a pretty, stylishly dressed blonde. Who was she? Why were they together? He was supposed to be at the office, working late.

Could Rachel be wrong? Could the man be someone who only looked like David? No. She watched as they strolled to a vehicle and climbed in. It was David’s fiery red sports car with the auto club sticker on the bumper. No doubt about it. The man was David. The way they had walked, the two of them, with a close, companionable air, her cheek nearly brushing his shoulder, and the way his hand touched her waist as he helped her into the car suggested there was something between them. They looked comfortable together, more than friendly; totally focused on each other in an intense way that filled Rachel’s heart with cold dread.

Rachel could feel it like a shock. They were more than acquaintances. Maybe even more than friends. There was something heavy going on, and the knowledge of it shot through Rachel’s body like hot gunfire, leaving her wrists and ankles weak. Without a word, with only an unintended glimpse, her worst suspicions had been confirmed and the plain facts made her numb. Her husband had strayed. Had found someone else. And while Rachel’s world reeled and spun around her, David and the girl simply got into his car and drove away without once seeing Rachel there at all.

Chapter Four

“Are you hungry, David?” Rachel asked, watching her husband with cool, careful eyes.

“No,” he said. He was loosening his tie, pulling it off from around his neck. He looked weary but unruffled, his charcoal gray suit impeccable, his handsome features as boyishly appealing as ever. There was nothing to suggest this night wasn’t the same as every other night. “Where’s Brian?”

“In his room, studying.”

“Is there any cold soda in the fridge?”

“I don’t know. You can check.”

“How about you? You check, okay? I’m bushed.”

“All right.” Rachel went to the kitchen and returned to the living room with an open can of cola. David took it, drank and set the can on a coaster on the coffee table. He unbuttoned his shirt, found the evening newspaper, the Press-Telegram, and sat down in his chair, the nubby, adobe-brown recliner that was adjustable to several positions. Rachel hated that chair. It was an eyesore amid her elegant Queen Anne chairs and velvet sofa. But David didn’t care. He seemed to take a perverse delight in keeping his recliner in a prominent place in the living room. Even now, he tilted back expansively and opened his paper with a self-satisfied flourish.

“I heard the stock market went down again today, more than a hundred points,” he said from behind the paper, his voice sounding as if he weren’t really talking to anyone in particular and didn’t care whether he got a reply.

“Really?” she murmured distractedly.

“Of course, the economists are saying it’s a normal market correction,” he mused. “But one of these days it’s going to plunge again and take us all to the cleaners. Maybe we should be pumping more of my 401K savings into bonds instead of stocks. What do you think?”

When Rachel didn’t reply, he went on, as if talking to himself. “It’s not like things have completely recovered in aerospace. The bottom could fall out again, you know, and where would we be?” He took another drink, then set the can back into the coaster. “They laid off three guys in manufacturing last week, three of them, and I mean they were top guys, right up there. Trouble is, there’s not enough work. We’ve lost out on several big contracts lately. I say management’s to blame. We’ve got clients beating a path to the competition. I tell you, if I were running the show, I’d make some real changes.”

For a moment he became absorbed in an item in the paper. When he spoke again, he picked up the same thread of conversation. “Of course, no one’s asking me what I think. I guess I should just be grateful no one’s taken a hatchet to my job.”

Sitting silently on the sofa, her legs crossed comfortably, listening to David ramble on amiably, Rachel wondered if her mind might be playing tricks on her. This was just like any other night, like every night. David in his chair, having a soda, reading the paper, talking about work and the economy and what was happening to whom. It was all very natural, very right. Only it wasn’t right, not when she forced her mind to remember the afternoon, the crazy, mixed-up afternoon.

Surely she hadn’t seen David today with another woman, some mysterious girl, someone he seemed to know so well, whom she, Rachel, didn’t know at all. Certainly nothing existed except tonight, this moment, everything orderly, quiet and in its place. Should she shatter this peace? Should she force the issue, the issues—David and the girl, the baby, the whole vague, uncertain direction of their lives? Was she really up to all that? She could keep her mouth shut and go to bed. Shut up and sleep and sleep and sleep. But then things would be no different tomorrow.

“David,” she began tentatively. Her face felt strained, her mouth screwed up too tight to speak. “David,” she said again, “how come if things are so bad with the company they have you working overtime so much?”

He set the paper down and gave her a blank look. “What do you mean by that?”

“I just wondered, that’s all.”

“I have a lot to do. They give me work the other guys used to do, the guys they laid off.”

“I see.” Her voice was the size of a pinprick, light, airy.

David gave her a second look, close, scrutinizing. “Is something wrong, Rae?” He called her that sometimes. “Are you all right?”

“Sure. I had a bad day, I guess.” Might as well plunge ahead, might as well. “Something funny happened, David,” she said. “I can’t figure it. I saw you today, David, but you didn’t see me.”

David’s expression stayed the same, his eyes watching her, but something in his face seemed to change, shift. “You did? Where?”

“At the Hamburger House. We—Brian and I—went there for dinner. We took food out. We came home and ate.”

“The Hamburger House?” A light came on in David’s eyes, a dazed brightness, as if his mind were weighing many things at once, so that he could not yet speak. Finally he said, “What were you doing at the Hamburger House?”

Rachel looked at him, surprised. “I just told you; Brian and I—”

“Oh, yes, I know that, but I mean…well, why didn’t you say something if you saw me?”

“You were busy, David. You were with someone.”

As if light had dawned, David broke into an extravagant laugh. “Oh, you mean Kit. You saw me with Kit Kincaid.” He settled back and picked up his paper again, as if by such a gesture he was dismissing a topic too insignificant to pursue. From behind the paper his voice flowed evenly, nonchalant. “Kit is the secretary in our department. Her car wasn’t running so I gave her a ride home. Neither of us had eaten, and it was getting late, so we picked up a sandwich. You should have called us, Rachel. You should have said something.”

She shrugged uncertainly. “You looked so engrossed, so close somehow, I felt like an outsider. I felt—” Rachel was aware of her voice growing quivery all of a sudden. She thought she might cry. Was it relief? What? “I didn’t mean to sound stupid, David, like a suspicious wife or something. It’s just that I had a big dinner planned, and then there you were—”

“I called and said I had to work, baby.”

“I know you did.” She felt suddenly stupid, tongue-tied. “But it seems like you have to work so much lately, and I had this idea about tonight being special.” On impulse, she got up and went over to David, slipping onto the arm of his chair, letting her arm circle his shoulder, resting lightly, carefully. “I guess I couldn’t stand seeing you look so happy with that girl. I mean, you really looked…happy.”

“Rachel, will you stop it! Stop hounding me. I told you what happened. I’m sorry you were upset.”

Rachel eased her body off the chair arm, going down on her knees, sitting like a silly, foolish schoolgirl. She was looking at her husband as if she might be begging, as if she might be screaming for something inside, screaming against the complete silence of her mouth, her lips.

David’s hand, large and manly, came to rest on Rachel’s shoulder, found the back of her neck and rubbed gently, soothingly. “I didn’t mean to shout, Rae. Really, I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t like you going on like this about Kit.”

“Are you…in love with her?” This a whisper, hardly spoken, this from Rachel who could not believe she had asked it.

The directness of the question took David by surprise. He said unthinkingly, “I don’t know.”

The two of them had been sitting in a calm, orderly room surrounded by handsomely elegant, well-placed furniture, with soft light emanating from quiet lamps and everything proper, in its place, where it belonged. This room, one segment of their condo, was fine, and she and David had been fine until this moment, having a serious but comprehensible discussion.

Now nothing was right at all, and nothing Rachel could do would make it right. In a moment, less than a moment, neither the room nor David nor Rachel made any sense at all.

It was bizarre, this conversation. It was idiotic, the whole thing. What was she doing asking David about being in love with another woman?

“Well, you asked me,” David said defensively, seeing the look on her face. “You asked me, so I figured you knew. You asked if I love her, and I told you the truth. I don’t know. You want me to play it straight with you, don’t you, Rae?”

“I didn’t know anything!” she railed, the very breath snatched from her lungs. “I don’t know why I said that, why I asked if you love her. I d-didn’t know—” She was drowning in a welter of confusion and could only stammer that she really didn’t know anything at all.

He stared at her. “You mean, you really didn’t have any idea about Kit? Then why in the world did you bring it up? Why did you have to push me, Rachel? Why couldn’t you leave things alone?”

Her head spun, the lamplight blinding her. “I don’t know…”

David put a tentative hand on her shoulder, then removed it. “I didn’t want to hurt you, Rachel. I could have lied. I started to! You know I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I know,” she said, not looking at him, not seeing anything, still dazed, groping with a blizzard of conflicting thoughts whirling in her own head.

“Hang it all anyway,” David said, his brows knitting over dark flashing eyes. “This whole world is going down the drain, you know that? I’m going down the drain, and the whole world, too. What’s the use of anything?”

Hearing this new torment in David’s voice, Rachel snapped out of her own preoccupation. Her mind was clearing fast. “David,” she said, “talk to me. We’ve got to talk about this. I have to understand what’s happening.”

“What’s the use? I mean, really, what’s the use of anything?”

“I have to understand this, David.” She felt a sudden urge to reach out and touch him but she held back. Instead, she got up from the floor and went over to the sofa and sat down. It was a lovely sofa, the color of spring roses, but there were crumbs from potato chips on it, and she brushed them off. Certainly, she thought, some of these things that had happened could be undone, brushed aside like crumbs, forgotten. She had to find out where she and David stood. “David,” she said, forcing her voice to remain calm, “tell me what’s going on.”

He had the newspaper again, rolling it up, twisting and turning it, unaware that he was destroying it with his very hands. “I don’t know what to say, Rachel,” he said, his hands busy with the paper. “What can I say? I mean, Kit and I have gotten to be good friends. We didn’t plan anything. We just hit it off, you know. Things sort of clicked…”

“When was this?”

“A couple of months ago, I guess. Late in the summer.”

Rachel forced herself to ask the question that seared her heart. “Are you having an affair, David?”

A flash of surprise and indignation crossed David’s face. “No. No, Rachel. Believe me, it hasn’t gone that far. I wouldn’t. We’re friends. Special friends, I guess. We see each other now and then, for lunch. This was the first time we’ve ever met after work, but I guess you won’t believe that.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” Rachel replied in a flat tone.

Suddenly he slammed the paper down on the table, jarring a crystal dish that sat on its polished surface. “I shouldn’t be telling you this,” he said. “I must be crazy saying anything at all. I must be crazy.”

Rachel’s heart hammered. She felt the pressure of tears behind her eyes. “I need to know, David,” said Rachel. “Everything. It’s only fair…”

Her husband grew quiet, apparently gathering his thoughts. He leaned forward in his chair, his shoulders slumping, round and heavy, his eyes focused somewhere in space. He massaged his knuckles. “You know yourself, Rachel,” he said in a small, tight voice, “things haven’t been good between us for a long time. You know that.”

Tears glazed her eyes. “We’ve had our problems, yes…”

He looked at her, his eyes glinting with fire. “Problems? Problems? You bet we’ve had problems. I’m not excusing myself, believe me, I’m not, but…I guess it seemed like an escape to be interested in someone else for a while. It was harmless, Rachel, really.”

“But you said—” Her tongue felt thick, pasty, her voice a whisper. “You said you don’t know if you love this girl, this Kit. You said you don’t know.”

He shook his head. “I—I don’t know.”

Rachel inhaled sharply. She couldn’t hear her own voice over her thundering heart. “But you might…you might love her?”

David stared hard at his hands. “I just don’t know,” he said.

Chapter Five

“Hey, Dad, when did you get home?”

It was Brian, bounding into the living room full of a boy’s endless energy, grinning broadly at his dad, his enthusiasm noisy. Lately, it seemed Brian was often this way around his dad, almost joyous, sharing something private, something Rachel couldn’t quite touch. But why did he have to come in now?

Dear God, why now?

“Hey, man! How’s it going?” David responded brightly, obviously glad to be off the hook with Rachel for a moment. “I got home a while ago. How about you? What’s the word?”

“Nothing, Dad. Hitting the books is all. Doing some research on the Internet. History report. No big deal.”

“School’s always a big deal.”

“Sure, if you say so.”

David chuckled. “You’ll change your tune one of these days.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But, hey, how about you? Mom tell you the news?”

Rachel saw David flinch slightly. His smile froze on his lips. “What do you mean, Brian? Tell me what?”

The words burst from Brian’s lips. “About the baby. You told him, Mom, didn’t you?”

Rachel scarcely breathed. “No, Brian.” She was losing the modicum of control she had over this situation. She didn’t want it to be like this. Everything was collapsing around her. “I haven’t had a chance, Brian. I was going to—”

David pulled himself out of his recliner and stood in the middle of the room as if he were not sure what he should do next. “What is this?” he said. “Rachel, tell me what’s going on.”

She glared at her son. “Brian, go to your room and let me talk to Daddy, would you please?”

“Okay, Mom.” He looked at both of them apologetically. “I’m sorry if I spoiled the surprise. I mean, I figured you already told him.”

As Brian left the room, Rachel steeled herself. It was her trump card, this baby, but she didn’t want to play it now. She didn’t want to hold on to David this way, if there was anything left of their marriage to hold together.

David stood across from her, his body steeled, too, and minced no words. “Rachel, are you pregnant?”

“Yes.”

“In the name of heaven, why didn’t you tell me? What kind of game are you playing?”

“You’re a good one to talk about playing games,” she countered, wishing immediately she hadn’t retaliated.

“Oh, we’re back to that, are we?” David made a helpless gesture with his hands and sat down. “Rachel,” he said solemnly, “what do you want me to do?”

Rachel stared down at her hands. “I don’t know, David. You tell me. What do you want to do?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do, what to think. I suppose we have to go on from here, from this moment. We’ve got to pull things together, you and I. Especially now.”

She spoke with a bitter irony. “You mean, for the baby?”

“Yes, I mean for the baby. For Brian, too. For all of us.”

It was not in Rachel now to respond coolly, to debate and discuss their lives with objectivity. She resented David’s attempt to settle their lives by logic. Didn’t he understand, couldn’t he see, that she was coming apart inside? He wanted to talk about tangible things, about plans, about doing this or that. Rachel was concerned with only one intangible, terribly important fact: David evidently no longer loved her, and he might love—actually might love—somebody else.

“Are you listening to me, Rachel? Didn’t you hear anything I said?”

“Yes, David, I heard you, but it’s too late!” Didn’t everything inside tell her it was too late? All the terrible particles of herself coming apart—the torn bits and pieces of her logical mind, whatever that was, if she’d ever possessed such a thing. Everything inside her was ready to revolt, and she thought she might vomit. She stood as if to head for the bathroom.

“Are you all right?” David asked. “Are you sick, Rachel?”

“I don’t know—no, I’m all right. I’m a little dizzy, that’s all.”

“You should go to bed. Rae, let me help you.” David made a gesture toward her, which she rejected as quickly as it was made. He withdrew, letting her pass by him.

“I’m all right,” she said, waving her hand, dismissing him. “I have to be alone, David. I’ve got to think. I just can’t think tonight.”

He shook his head, his voice heavy with regret. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I really am. I’m sorry for this whole mess.”

She turned and stared at him. The urge to cry was on her again, washing over her like warm water, like wonderfully warm rivers that might drown her. But she held back the tears, the desire to let herself weep in David’s arms. Instead, she asked, “What about her—this girl?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to break it off,” David answered.

“But your feelings. You said you don’t know how you feel.”

“I’ll work it out, Rachel. It’ll be okay.”

She didn’t want to hear this. It wasn’t the answer she needed. “Don’t bother, David,” Rachel said, her voice suddenly high and strangled. “Don’t bother with charity. I don’t want any of it. I just want you out of here. Get out of here—please!” She held the sobs inside herself, the pressure building like a stone in her throat.

David’s mouth tightened as a dazed, incredulous expression settled in his eyes. He was obviously shaken. Could he go so easily, without a fight? For a moment she thought he would argue with her, refuse to leave, even plead with her to let him stay. But she knew he was too proud and hated to appear weak, no matter what. “All right, Rachel,” he said, already moving heavily, dispiritedly toward their room. “I’ll pack a bag and get out. I’ll go, if that’s what you want.”

“Yes,” she said, turning away, going to the window, hugging herself protectively. She was trembling like a rosebud in a tempest.

It was raining finally. The rain poured down and hit the window outrageously, like torrents of tears, like the sudden furious tears in her own eyes.

Chapter Six

Three days after David had gone striding out of their apartment, suitcase in hand and jaw set, Rachel broke out of her self-imposed mourning. It was a balmy, sun-washed day, and she needed to get out.

Not that she could escape the scorching recriminations, the self-pity, blaming herself one moment for her impulsiveness, resenting David the next for actually walking out at her insistence. As if that’s what she wanted, his going. Was it? Who knew? All she knew at the moment, on this breezy, clear day in early November, was that she had to get out of herself, out of the house, away. So she and Marlene drove to Laguna Beach to spend the day.

Laguna was one of their favorite places. Somehow the endless clusters of quaint, colorful buildings perched on the hillsides and the little network of streets had managed to escape that steely, glazed look that had become the characteristic of so much of Southern California. Rachel was tired of the endless stark, cold ribbons of freeway twisting and turning, jutting in and out, stripping the landscape of any natural grace.

Laguna Beach was different. The buildings were clever and original. They looked as if they had a history to them, as if many people had given parts of their personalities to these structures. The colorful little shops were crowded with artists’ paintings—lovely seascapes, beautiful landscapes, portraits and still lifes.

Many artists came here hoping to sell their work, the trained and untrained alike. Rachel adored their paintings, the meticulous portraits of old men from the sea, children in soft, airy dresses, and the tiny, finely crafted canvases of fruit—a single apple or a pear, stark against an ebony background.

Throughout the afternoon, Rachel knew Marlene was bursting with unasked questions. Marlene said nothing but cast frequent sidelong glances at Rachel, no doubt to determine the state of her emotions. Marlene was too kind to bombard her with probing queries about David’s sudden move out of their condo. On the phone the morning after David left, Rachel had spilled out the story in brief choked snatches, leaving it to Marlene to fill in the blanks.

“He’s gone and that’s all there is to it, Marlene,” Rachel had told her friend that morning. “And I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I just can’t.”