Marlene looked over at her, her round face clouding. “It’s just that…well, I have this feeling about you, Rachel.”
“What? What feeling?”
“I don’t know. You’re putting me on the spot—I can’t explain it”
They were on the off-ramp now, heading for home. The traffic was starting to thicken. It was after four in the afternoon. Rachel heard a car horn honking, but it was back on the freeway somewhere. At the end of the off-ramp they had to wait for a signal, one of those endless, ubiquitous lights. Rachel switched on the radio and pushed the tuning button, catching snatches of music, most of it rock or country. One station was playing “You Light Up My Life.” The young singer belted out the refrains with a haunting, heart-tugging pathos that stirred Rachel’s own pain, but she left it on anyway.
“Almost home,” said Marlene, a surface brightness to her voice. Then, softly, “How’s Brian taking all of this?”
The inquiry hit a vulnerable spot. Rachel winced in spite of herself. “Brian’s terribly upset,” she answered, turning down the radio. “He doesn’t say much, but I know he doesn’t understand what’s happening. He never used to be close to his dad, really, but lately they were hitting it off well together. I have this feeling, Marlene, that Brian resents me now—maybe David and me both. I don’t know.”
“It’s bound to be hard on him, Rachel.”
“Well, what about me?” Rachel countered. It was as if a great torrent of outrage had suddenly burst upon her, spilling its juices over all the sane and proper emotions she thought were expected of her.
“What about me, anyway?” she repeated, her voice shrill. “I have prayed for years, Marlene, you know that. For years I’ve prayed that David would come to Christ and that we’d finally have some unity in our family. For years I’ve gone to church alone and tried to bring up Brian in the church, in spite of his father’s influence. Do you think David has ever for one moment bent my way? I kept on and took it all—the loneliness and the lack of communication—because I thought someday David would share my faith and things would be different. But now, now he’s seeing some girl, some ditsy secretary from work. Maybe he’s in love with her, I don’t know. So what’s left, Marlene? What’s left of anything?”
“You said David wants to try again.”
“Oh, I know,” said Rachel, raking her fingers through her long, silken hair. She felt the futility tighten her lips. Anger was making her face feel unnatural, her very features distorted. She could only imagine what the bitterness was doing to her heart. “I know David said we could try again, but I can’t see what good it would do. What’s going to make things any better as long as he has feelings for that girl?”
“Doesn’t it say in the Bible that if a woman has an unbelieving husband and he wishes to stay with her, she shouldn’t make him go?” asked Marlene evenly. “Doesn’t it say she should stay with him, Rachel?”
“I never read that.” Rachel replied, frowning. “I never saw that passage anywhere as far as I can remember.” She snapped off the radio with a decisive flick of the wrist, suddenly having no desire at all to hear the final verse of “You Light Up My Life.”
“That’s about it,” David said with a note of finality. “That’s how things stand between Rachel and me right now. Not too pretty, huh? I guess I’ve made a real mess of things.”
Kit sat beside him in his sleek sports car, her fingers playing with the strap of her black leather purse. She was wearing a lime green crocheted sweater and stylish denim jeans. He watched her and felt the knot of guilt and frustration in his gut relax a bit. No matter how awful he felt, Kit had a way of picking up his spirits. She had a smooth, polished attractiveness, a certain subtle aura of worldliness about her, although she was only twenty-five. Kit was smaller and blonder than Rachel and wore more makeup—always a glossy, magazine sort of look to her face—but if David thought about it at all, he realized that Kit was probably no prettier than Rachel, who somehow managed to appear both natural and elegant without all the makeup.
David looked more closely at Kit Her expression was clouded. He couldn’t read it. What was she thinking now that she knew the whole story?
“I’m sorry, David,” she said at last. “I’m really sorry.”
He had driven her up to Signal Hill to talk. It was one of the few places in Long Beach where there was still a semblance of privacy. The hill was a jutting protuberance of land laced with narrow, weaving roads, its landscape blemished by oil pumps and drilling rigs. The hill was considered by some to be a lovers’ lane, and no doubt police cars patrolled the area periodically to encourage reluctant drivers on the road again.
David wasn’t bothered by the hill’s reputation, because here he could look out and see the dazzling lights of the Los Angeles basin spread out before him. For David, there was no real darkness in this place where all cities joined together to create one huge metropolis. In this place, this city of cities, there were only sweeping galaxies of lights, like an ocean of stars.
“I didn’t tell you all of this for you to be sorry, Kit,” he said, swinging his thoughts back to their conversation. “Listen, Kit,” he said gently, “I’m not trying to cry on your shoulder. I just want to be straight with you. Let you know how things are with me.”
“I understand, David, really I do.”
He chuckled. “Really? Then you’re doing better than I am.”
Kit’s voice was soft, tentative. “David, just one thing. I wonder…”
“Yeah?”
“Well, Rachel and the baby and all this—how does it…how is it going to affect us?”
“What do you mean?”
“I guess I mean, where do we go from here?”
“I honestly don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “I never thought Rachel would give me my walking papers, just like that,” he admitted, aware of the pained tone his voice could not hide. “Then again, I never thought I’d blurt out my feelings for you like I did. I just don’t know what’s going to happen now.”
“We never planned for this to happen between us, David. It just did.”
David stared out the window, the tendon along his jaw tightening. “I know, Kit. But the truth is, I really don’t know what I should do. When I think about throwing my marriage away, I feel sick inside. I care about Rachel. Even when we lost that close feeling we once had, I never stopped caring. But it looks like Rachel’s taken any decision about our marriage out of my hands. Now that she knows I have feelings for you, even though its only been really a friendship so far, she doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“Then maybe you just have to accept that, David.”
He looked back at Kit, his brow furrowed. “No matter what, I can’t just walk away from her, Kit. Especially now, with a baby coming. I just can’t get the idea of the baby out of my mind.”
“You sound almost…happy about the baby.”
“Happy? I suppose I am. I was shocked at first. Rachel and I never considered having another child. I’ve been so busy with work, and she’s always leading a drama group at her church or taking classes for some degree she hopes to get someday. But it’s my baby, as much a part of me as it is of her. It’s just like when Brian was coming; I love the little tyke already, sight unseen. I don’t want to be a part-time father to my child. Nor to Brian. He’s a teenager. He needs me now, too.”
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