Comfort and Joy Read online

  “Be my guest.”

  She turned into the dimly lit lot and cruised around the building to the back. Her headlights cut through the slanting rain to illuminate the mangled wreckage of Jesse’s Honda, which had been left at the edge of the asphalt lot. The rear end of the car was smashed in on one side, with the bumper and taillight missing. The entire front end of the car had accordioned inward from the impact of its skid into the electrical pole, and the windshield was a spider web of cracks.

  Robin let out a cry at the gruesome sight. The image of Jesse’s body trapped inside that heap of twisted metal and broken glass, the comprehension of what the car had undergone to have wound up so demolished... “I don’t care what you say,” she declared. “It was a miracle. Simply surviving would have been a miracle. But to walk away from a mess like that—”

  “It was a seatbelt,” Jesse tersely refuted her.

  Tension emanated from him as he stared through the downpour at the wreck. Robin suspected that looking at it was forcing him to relive the accident in his mind. She quickly shifted into gear and sped around the building, fleeing from the ghastly sight.

  Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. Robin drove north toward her house, wondering exactly where on the road the accident had occurred. Would there be skid marks etched into the pavement? Shards of glass lying around? The missing Honda bumper? She hoped that the scene had been cleaned up; she didn’t want Jesse to have to view it. For that matter, she didn’t want to view it herself.

  Near the turnoff leading to her house, she slowed. “Come home with me,” she suggested. “I’ll fix you a drink—some brandy, soup, whatever—and you can unwind.”

  “No.” His resolute gaze seemed to penetrate her, seeping beneath her skin as he studied her from across the front seat. “I appreciate the invitation, Robin, but... I think I need some time alone.”

  “Okay.” She wasn’t sure how wise it was to leave him all by himself after what he’d just been through, but he must know his own needs. She had no right to question his decision.

  Bypassing her turnoff, she continued up the road to the neighborhood she and Joanna had dubbed “Mondo Condo.” Eventually, Jesse directed her to turn left, and at the bottom of a hill they entered his condominium complex. “That’s my house,” he said, pointing to a spacious-looking townhouse at the bottom of a rolling hill of grass, and then to a staircase leading down the hill from the road. “You can park anywhere near the stairs.”

  Robin shut off the engine and scrutinized the stairs. They appeared slick with rainwater and residual ice. Recalling how stiffly Jesse had moved in the emergency room, she climbed out of car and around to his side. “I’m walking you to the door,” she announced before he could ask what she was doing. “You’re creaky and sore; I don’t want you taking a spill on those steps.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he complied, grinning reluctantly. He refused to let her carry his briefcase, however. As creaky and sore as he was, he clearly wasn’t going to allow Robin to treat him like an invalid.

  The steps were as slippery as they looked, and Robin gripped Jesse’s elbow to steady herself as much as him. When they reached the bottom, he led her along a winding walk to his front porch, which was protected from the rain by an overhang. He set down his briefcase, dug into his pocket for his keys, then paused and turned to Robin. “Thank you for bringing me home,” he said.

  “It was the least I could do.”

  “Sure. After I stood you up.” He offered a lopsided smile, then cupped his hands over her shoulders. He seemed momentarily at a loss, and then his eyes came into focus on her upturned face, on the raindrops trapped in her eyelashes and skittering down her cheeks. “Thank you,” he whispered, his tone freighted with a meaning Robin was unable to interpret.

  She silenced herself before protesting once more that she hadn’t done anything particularly wonderful, that picking him up at the hospital hadn’t been such an onerous task, that she cared about him and acted accordingly. Jesse’s gaze seemed to impale her, numbing her ability to think, let alone speak.

  His mouth descended to hers, and their lips met cautiously, tenderly. Remembering that he’d bitten his lip deeply enough to bleed from it, Robin didn’t dare to lean toward him or press her mouth too eagerly to his. She didn’t want to hurt him.

  The pressure came from him. He seemed oblivious to his wound, his mouth moving with surprising force against hers, his arms winding tightly around her and his fingers digging possessively into her wet hair. His tongue thrust past her teeth and deep into her mouth, filling it, consuming, shocking her with the sudden throbbing desire it aroused within her.

  It wasn’t just that she hadn’t been kissed like this since her divorce—since long before her divorce, if she wanted to be honest about it. Her response to Jesse’s kiss defied logic, just as the kiss itself did. Reeling with sensations that had lain dormant inside her for so long she’d all but forgotten about them, she slid her hands beneath the flaps of his coat, circling his waist and holding him close, absorbing the warmth and hardness of his body, feeling the shift of his muscles, his hips, the tension in his thighs as they met hers.

  When he finally drew back, he was gasping for breath. “Oh, Robin...Robin.” He cradled her head in his hands, twining his fingers through her hair. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “You’re kissing me,” she whispered.

  “Yes.” His lips brushed over her forehead. “I’m kissing you.” His arms pinned her to him for a moment, then relented. He drew his hands forward to frame her face, tilting it up so their eyes met. “I want to ask you in,” he whispered. “But I can’t.”

  “I know,” she murmured. She knew that he wanted to ask her in, and that he couldn’t, but she didn’t know why. Nor did she know whether, if he had asked her in, she would have said yes or no. In fact, she wasn’t sure what she knew, beyond the fact that Jesse was about to go inside by himself and she was about to get back into her car and drive home. His kiss had left her with the disturbing notion that she didn’t know anything at all.

  “Can I see you tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow,” she echoed, scrambling to resurrect her sanity. “I’ve got to be at Woodleigh’s till three, and I promised Phil I’d take him to the Milford Mall afterwards to do some Christmas shopping.”

  “I could come with you,” Jesse said.

  “Christmas shopping?” She laughed at the idea that a diehard atheist like Jesse would want to go Christmas shopping.

  “I’ve got to meet with the insurance adjuster tomorrow morning and make arrangements for a rental car until I can buy a replacement,” he explained. “But I should be done by three o’clock.”

  “Do you really want to go to the mall?” she asked. “With all those Christmas decorations? And Philip?”

  “I want...” He sighed, his fingers raveling through her hair again. “I want to be with you. It doesn’t matter where.”

  The extravagance of his claim disconcerted her. She realized that he hadn’t said it simply to compliment her. It had been an expression of need, and she wouldn’t deny him what he needed. She didn’t want to. “Come by around three-thirty,” she said. “We’ll be ready to storm the mall by then.”

  He nodded slightly, then bowed and touched his lips to hers one last time. Then he released her, unlocked the front door and stepped inside. “Tomorrow,” he murmured. He remained in the open doorway, watching until she returned to her car, backed out of the parking space, driven down the road and away.

  ***

  PEOPLE OFTEN SAID that, at such times, your life passed before your eyes. Jesse had never before had the opportunity to test that hypothesis, but he now knew that it was true.

  It hadn’t been what he might have expected, though. He would have guessed that a person viewed his life as if it were a chronological film, from birth to the present, running in fast-forward. In his case, it had been quite different: a series of strobe-like images, out of sequence, defying order or rationality. In
those few agonizing seconds, from the first sickening thud and lurch of the car, through the nauseating spin and into the final, horrifying crunch of metal against solid wood, he’d seen instants, tasted memories, experienced split-second slices of personal history.

  Martha Selby’s face, that was the first. Her worn, demoralized expression as she’d sat across his desk that very afternoon, moaning, “You got to help me, Mr. Lawson! I want my boy home for Christmas!” Then his own mother’s face, her distant half-smile as she benignly announced, “Marybeth’s gone.” His father’s voice, floating to Jesse from another room, crowing, “It’s mine, they’ve chosen me, but they want me to change my name.” Anne, her lush auburn waves tumbling about her lovely face, muttering, “If you don’t want to follow the party line, then you don’t belong here.” A crystal star shooting rainbow lights into his eyes, temporarily blinding him. A towering palm tree casting a shadow across the swimming pool behind his parents’ house. And then another swimming pool, a huge public one, seemingly miles below an eight-year-old Jesse as he stood on the high diving board. Mickey Santangelo had dared Jesse to jump off, and he’d been petrified. But he’d filled his lungs with air, bounced on the springy end of the board, and heard Mickey behind him, shouting, “Cross yourself, Jesse, cross yourself!”

  And then the jump, the breathless, endless, shapeless fall, the deafening roar of water in his ears, water below him, above him, around him, the disorientation, the certainty that he was sinking, that he would never see the sky again...and then the triumphant burst to the surface, to light, to life.

  To the sight of his car’s front end molded around an electrical pole, to the deflated canvas of the airbag wilting over the steering wheel, to the sound of sleet drilling against the roof of the car, to the throbbing of his pulse in his temples, the fierce ache in his wrist and on his cheek.

  To the melodic whisper of a woman’s voice: Something so wonderful. A home, a job, a son... That sweet, mantric whisper, a vision of truth, stability, morality. A glorious woman with blond hair and steadfast eyes and the most genuine smile Jesse had ever viewed, whispering: Other things happen, wonderful things. Miracles.

  Gradually, he came to grips with what had occurred. He returned to full consciousness, to the fact that his car was demolished and he himself wasn’t, that he was really alive, more or less unscathed. As his mind clarified itself, he realized that that whisper, that chant had been with him throughout the entire nauseating collision, a counterpoint to all the other images, an affirming continuum, a guide to lead him out of the nightmare.

  The time he had plunged off the high board at Mickey Santangelo’s goading, Jesse had been certain he was going to die until the moment he opened his eyes and saw the rippling surface of the water just inches above him and, beyond the surface, the sun. This time, as he’d fought his way to that glittering surface separating death from life, it hadn’t been the sun directing him upward to life. It had been Robin, her face, her voice, her strength, her golden hair and her smile.

  “Guardian angel,” he mumbled, trudging up the stairs to his bedroom. He dropped onto the bed and stared at the ceiling, utterly drained. He ought to remove his clothing, take a hot shower—or maybe a bath. He ought to soak his traumatized body until it felt whole again. Then he ought to fix himself a drink. He didn’t have anything as strong as brandy in the house, but he supposed a glass of wine would do. Or a bowl of soup, wasn’t that what Robin had offered him? A bowl of hot soup, a couple of ibuprofen tablets, a night of uninterrupted sleep.

  But he couldn’t do that as long as the concept of a guardian angel was lodged inside his skull. Jesse didn’t believe in angels, guardian or otherwise. He didn’t believe in miracles. He believed in seatbelts and airbags.

  Then why was it that, when he reviewed the accident in his mind, he kept coming to the conclusion that what had saved him wasn’t his seatbelt and airbag but a beautiful woman with a halo of yellow hair, murmuring, Something so wonderful...

  When he finally heaved himself up to sit, he discovered that he’d been lying on the bed for over an hour. He was exhausted. He barely had the energy to peel off his clothes. The suit could be dry-cleaned, and the shirt—maybe blood stains were washable, but he wasn’t going to bother. He tossed the shirt into the garbage pail and stepped into the bathroom to take a shower.

  The hot water pounding down on his aching body felt excruciating at first, but eventually it began to affect his knotted muscles and joints, loosening them, washing away the aches. He remained beneath the spray until the water began to cool off, then wrapped himself in his robe and went downstairs for a drink. He didn’t have a bottle of wine open, and he opted for hot chocolate instead.

  He carried his mug into the living room and sank onto the leather sofa, which was positioned across the room from a bent-wood rocker, a pedestal table, a lamp and a blank wall. The room looked stark, lacking any of the intimate touches that would make it a real home. Jesse wasn’t good at decorating. It hadn’t mattered out in Los Angeles; once he and Anne had gotten together, he’d wound up spending more time at her apartment than at his. She knew how to fix a place up, how to select pictures for hanging, how to arrange objets d’art. Her apartment hadn’t been nearly as warm and lived-in as Robin’s house, but it had been nicer than Jesse’s cliché of a characterless bachelor pad.

  They’d both been earning huge incomes, but one of the differences between Anne and Jesse was that she knew how to spend money on herself and Jesse didn’t. Anne had helped him to pick out his leather sofa, and his leather jacket. “Being rich and living well isn’t a sin,” she used to say.

  To that, Jesse would silently reply, Then why are we living in sin?

  Not that Anne wanted him to marry her. “It doesn’t matter, as long as we’re discreet,” she would insist. “Let’s face it, Jesse, you and your father have different last names. Nobody has to put two and two together. You aren’t going embarrass him. I like things the way they are now. If we decide to get married down the road, then we have that option.”

  What she hadn’t predicted was that Jesse had another option: leaving. Turning his back on the hypocrisy of it all.

  The cocoa felt good going down. Jesse wondered whether Robin ever made cocoa for Philip. Of course she did. If Philip had a rough day, Jesse imagined that Robin would give him cocoa, cuddle him to her, sing him lullabies. Even if the kid protested that only girls and wimps enjoyed lullabies, Robin would continue to croon to him—and Philip would secretly love being crooned to.

  Jesse hadn’t meant to kiss her.

  He hadn’t even expected to see her that night—the cop had been hanging around the emergency room for hours, taking Jesse’s statement between sessions with an x-ray technician and then taking more statements from the doctors. Jesse was sure the officer would give him a lift back to Belleford. Robin hadn’t had to come and get him.

  But even if Jesse had expected to see her, he hadn’t meant to kiss her. Not like that.

  Yet he hadn’t been able to help himself. It had started as a kiss of thanks and then escalated until he was drinking her in like a drug, savoring her sweetness, her womanly warmth and power. Until he’d felt all over again as if she were beckoning him back to life, to triumph, to the miracle of his own survival.

  “It wasn’t a miracle,” he muttered, setting down his empty mug. A physicist, a highway safety expert, anyone with a bit of knowledge about momentum and resistance, centrifugal force or whatever it was that had buffeted Jesse could provide a perfectly reasonable, unmiraculous explanation for his having been able to walk away from such an accident.

  If it had been a miracle, that would imply divine intervention. And God didn’t exist.

  After all, if God did exist, why would he be putting a religious woman like Martha Selby through the wringer? Why, on top of the threat of losing her home, had God decided to screw up her son Gerald’s Christmas leave so the poor woman had to drag herself all the way to Jesse’s office that afternoon, sobbing abou
t how if Gerald couldn’t be home for Christmas she might as well just die, and please, please, couldn’t Jesse do anything to get the Navy to see its way clear to send Gerald home for Christmas, because he had nothing to do with the outbreak of violence on board his ship and he shouldn’t have to be sequestered, along with the rest of the crew, for the term of the investigation.

  Jesse had explained to Mrs. Selby that taking on the United States Navy was a tall order, and he doubted that much would come of any effort made on her behalf to get her son released in time for the holiday. But she’d been so plaintive, so desperate, that he’d promised to make some inquiries. And she, in turn, had promised that she’d go home and pray to God to bring Gerald home for Christmas.

  If God existed, he shouldn’t have arranged to have Gerald and his shipmates sequestered in Newport over the holiday. And if God existed, he shouldn’t have given drivers the ability to tailgate other drivers on sleety, dusk-lit evenings. For that matter, God should never have invented sleet.

  But then...then there were other things. Wonderful things. Miracles. Sunshine, and air, and life.

  And women like Robin Greer.

  Chapter Five

  ROBIN LAY AWAKE for hours, shifting beneath the comforter, punching her pillows, tangling her feet in the hem of her nightgown and listening to the rain hammer against the roof that sloped above her head. She lay awake, picturing Jesse as he’d hovered in his open doorway watching her departure. Then she pictured him before her departure, when they’d stood together on his porch. She could still feel his arms around her, his hands stroking through her hair, his body, despite its injuries, strong and firm against hers. She could still taste his lips on hers, his tongue, his breath filling her. Hours after she’d left him, his presence was still with her.

  His kiss hadn’t been romantic, she realized in retrospect. It had been passionate—no question about that—and her passionate reaction to it had been understandable. She could accept the possibility that Jesse desired her, but desire hadn’t been his motivation when he’d kissed her so forcefully outside his door. What she’d sensed in Jesse’s kiss was raw, desperate need.