IT FELT STRANGE TO give Chris a key to the adobe, and Carmen did it in an off-handed way, leaving it in an envelope with his mail on the steps of his cottage. She didn’t want to humiliate him, didn’t want to make a show of the fact that the house was hers and not his. Chris was suffering enough these days, although she’d once thought that all the suffering in the world was less than he deserved. Nevertheless, the way the media was tearing him apart distressed her. He’d asked for it, though, when he hired Cabrio. Perhaps now that she had regained her sanity, he was losing his.
Her suggestion that he do some work in the adobe had been impulsive, and she regretted making it when he so readily accepted. She wasn’t certain how it would feel to allow him back into the house when she had so ferociously banished him from it. He loved that house. When they were first dating, he’d take her for long afternoon drives through the sprawling reaches of Valle Rosa, always going out of his way to pass Sugarbush and the run-down adobe at its core, always telling her his dream of owning it one day. He told her so often that the dream began to seem like her own. Now the property he had longed for was hers alone, but only in her weakest moments did she feel she had been cruel in keeping Sugarbush for herself.
He had said he would work in the house when she wasn’t there, and so she didn’t realize he’d started until one morning when she was dressing for a doctor’s appointment and noticed the spackle on the walls of the bedroom. She walked around the house, and discovered he’d spackled the walls in the living room as well, and that the windows in the kitchen no longer protested when she tried to open them. The evidence of his presence warmed her one minute and gave her a chill the next, and she couldn’t stop thinking about it until she’d pulled into the parking lot of the medical building in La Jolla.
There were two other women in the apricot-colored waiting room. They looked up from their magazines as Carmen walked in, and she saw the light of recognition in their eyes and heard the slight intake of breath. They quickly lowered their faces back to their magazines, smiles spreading, as they thought about the calls they would make later that day to their friends: Guess who I saw at the plastic surgeon’s this morning?
She knew it was the streak of silver in her hair that gave her away. It began at her left temple and carved a sleek path through the jet-black of her long hair. She’d had the streak since her teens, when it had been a novelty, and through her twenties and early thirties, when it became a symbol of caricature. Once a political cartoonist had drawn a sketch of her after her rigorous Sunrise interview of former governor Jerry Brown, and there was that streak in the cartoon, as distinctive as ever. She cursed it now. It seemed to have doubled its width, like a testimony to the wretchedness of the last few years. She had thought of dyeing it, but then people would talk even more.
After signing in with the receptionist, Carmen took a seat on the opposite side of the room from the other women and pretended to lose herself in a magazine. She glanced at the women from time to time, trying to discern why they were there. One was small-breasted, although in any other setting she wouldn’t have noticed. Was that the reason for her visit, or was it the slight knob on the bridge of her nose or the sagging line of her jaw?
God, was she really going to go through with this? She’d always looked at women who resorted to plastic surgery with disdain, thinking that she would graciously accept her own aging. She had been confident that her intelligence and skill would be enough to carry her through.
Yesterday, Tom Forrest, a retired reporter and a man she had long considered her mentor, visited her on the set of News Nine. Tom had taken her under his wing many years earlier, when she was a twenty-four-year-old intern at the station. She was too sweet, he’d told her then. Too soft, and entirely too subjective. He’d taught her how to mask her softness with a tough facade, how to keep her emotional distance when a story threatened to pull her too deeply under its spell. She had mastered everything he’d taught her, and then some.
She was surprised to see Tom, surprised by the sober, business-like way he greeted her. He had put on weight since the last time she’d seen him, and his teddy-bear frumpiness now had an unhealthy air to it. He took her out for a cup of coffee, since there was no place at the station where they could talk privately. And it was obvious that privacy was what he wanted.
“I’ve always given it to you straight, Carmen, and I’m not going to mince words with you now,” he said, once they were seated in the restaurant. “I’m not going to tell you my sources, either, so don’t ask.”
“What are you talking about?”
He leaned forward, hands resting flat on the table. “Rumor has it that they were going to can you after the fires were out. No one saw much point to keeping you around.”
She didn’t let the shock register on her face. She studied the shape of his eyes, his graying eyebrows—something he had taught her to do a lifetime ago—to reduce the chance of her crying. Tom Forrest wouldn’t respect her tears.
“It seems they’re changing their minds, though,” he continued. “At least they’re holding off on making a decision.”
“Why?” Her voice was barely audible.
“Because of the bits of info you’re passing on about Jeff Cabrio. They’re waiting to see how that story develops. They want to see what you’ll do with it.” He shook his head. “You’ve been away too long, Carmen. It shows, honey. I think Cabrio’s your only chance.”
Carmen had leaned back in her chair, trying to absorb his words. He had never, in all the years she’d known him, called her ‘honey.’ She must seem very small and powerless to him.
What else could she say about Jeff Cabrio? She had little to offer in the way of facts, but she had always excelled at embellishment. The night before, she’d shown a short film of Jeff and Rick unloading two large vats from a truck and rolling them into the warehouse, and she’d speculated over what possible use they might make of them in their avowed quest for rain.
“Milk the Cabrio story for all its worth, Carmen,” Tom said, as they left the restaurant, but she had already made up her mind to do exactly that.
There were two doctors seeing patients, and so Carmen’s wait wasn’t very long. Lynn Sulley called her into a small office, the gently curving walls again a pale apricot, the carpet thick and deep green. Pictures of beautiful women lined the walls. Carmen wanted to look at them, but kept her eyes on Lynn’s face instead, wondering which of them was older. Lynn Sulley looked no more than thirty-five.
Lynn offered her a warm smile, which Carmen tried to return, but the sensation felt unnatural to her face. She sat down in one of the black leather armchairs, while Lynn sat in the other.
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Ms. Perez,” the doctor said. “I’ve been an admirer of yours for a long time. I’m so happy to see you back on the news.”
“Thank you.” Carmen folded her hands in her lap. “That’s why I’m here, though. When I see myself on TV these days, I’m shocked to see… well, I’m just shocked.” For a terrible moment, she thought she might cry.
Lynn Sulley rescued her. “You’re an extraordinary-looking woman,” she said, her voice calm. “What specifically are you here for?”
“Well, I thought… a face-lift.” She touched her hands to her cheeks. “Just to… lose a few years.”
Lynn sat back in her chair. She was still smiling, but Carmen suddenly read condescension into the curve of her lips. She rested her damp palms flat on her skirt, waiting.
“You’ve had a very difficult few years, haven’t you,” she said.
“Yes. And every one of them shows on my face.”
“Let me go over a little history with you, just to be sure I have it straight from a medical standpoint. You had a couple of miscarriages and then gave birth to a child who suffered some sort of sudden illness, which resulted in severe brain damage. Is that right?”
My God, was this woman going to make her go through it all? Here? Now?
“Dr. Sulley,” she said, striving for coolness in her voice. “I don’t see what that has to do with getting a face-lift. I don’t see why my history should matter more than anyone else’s.”
“It doesn’t. I would want to know these things about any patient I’m considering treating because they factor into how good a candidate you are for plastic surgery.”
She would go someplace else. She could stand up now and walk out of the office while her dignity was still intact. But she couldn’t move. Her arms and legs were leaden.
“For example,” Lynn continued, “I know you suffered a major depression after your son’s birth. You were hospitalized for quite a while, right?”
“The injustice,” Carmen leaned forward, “is that you already know my history. Everyone does. The women in the waiting room, who are free to tell you what they choose about the past few years—even they know what’s happened to me. Why can’t you let me tell it?”
“Fine,” she said. “Please go ahead.”
Carmen looked down at her hands and felt some alarm to see she was clutching the fabric of her skirt in her fists. “Yes, I gave birth to a sick child, and I had severe postpartum depression that required a period of time in the hospital. Then I was divorced from my husband, and of course that was quite difficult. I took some time off from work to deal with all of that.
Anyone would have had some trouble coping under those circumstances, don’t you agree?”
“Of course. I’m not saying—”
“And now that I’m healthy and back on the job, I’m aware that I’ve aged during… the ordeal. So I want to do something about it.”
“Forgive me.” Lynn Sulley sat forward. “You’re a public figure, and therefore I can’t simply accept what you’re telling me when I know there’s more to it than that. I know you tried to kill yourself, and that you were addicted to pain medication. I know it’s taken you four full years to be able to work again. I’m not saying this to upset you, but to help you see my position here. The addiction would rule out your being able to take any pain killers, and most women find them necessary after facial surgery.”
“I can do without them.”
She shook her head. “I believe this is the wrong time for you to make a decision about this type of surgery. I think your expectations may be too high. And you’ve just gotten back to work. Give yourself six months. You’ll be less fragile then and—”
“I am not fragile.” Carmen stood up. “What do I have to do to make people see that?”
Lynn Sulley stood up too and rested her hand on Carmen’s arm. “You know,” she said, “the first time I ever saw you on TV was after the plane crash back in ‘78. You were there just minutes after the plane went down, and I’ll never forget how cool and calm you were with all that chaos going on around you. I remember saying to myself, ‘That is one strong woman. How can she do it?’ I wondered then if there was any softness in you at all. But there’s a lot in there, isn’t there? It’s buried, but it’s there. And that’s okay. That’s good.”
Carmen withdrew her arm and picked up her purse from the floor. “Thank you for seeing me,” she said.
“Go easy on yourself,” Lynn said. “Give yourself a little more time.”
She wanted a drink, a beer or two, something to numb her, but she hadn’t given in to that urge in four years, and she wouldn’t give in to it today. She forced herself to drive past the 7-Eleven without stopping on her way to the freeway. She could go home, get into bed and pull the covers over her head. That thought terrified her more than the temptation of a drink. She’d done that many times before—escaped into sleep—but not since she’d been well.
Traffic on the freeway was light and gave her time to think. She remembered back to the plane crash. A commercial jet and a small private plane had collided over North Park and dropped onto the houses below in a ball of fire. She had been one of the first reporters at the scene, and she hadn’t been prepared for what she found. No one had. No caring human being could possibly have been prepared for that nightmare. When she’d stepped out of the van, she’d stepped directly on something that cracked beneath her foot. She’d looked down to see the severed hand of a child. And that had been only the beginning. She was surrounded by smoky carnage. Bodies had been torn apart, arms and legs caught in the limbs of trees above her head. Leaning against a nearby house was an airplane seat, the headless torso of a man still strapped securely to it by the seat belt. Already the stench of death was mixing with the smoke in the hot summer air.
The camera was on her in mere seconds, and she focused on it, on her job. She could do that easily back then; Tom Forrest had taught her well. That ability to shut down her feelings long enough to do what needed to be done, no matter how grisly the task, had been her finest skill. It wasn’t until she got home that night that she allowed herself to fall apart, and it was Chris who pieced her back together again, Chris who held cool towels to the back of her neck while she battled nausea on the bathroom floor, Chris who comforted her when she couldn’t sleep, when she woke up with nightmares. It was the knowledge that she would be going home to him after work that got her through those terrible few days.
Shortly before the crash, she had come up with the idea for San Diego Sunrise, but she hadn’t been able to convince anyone at News Ninethat she had the strength and guts it would take to pull off a show like that. Her coverage of the crash erased their doubts, and she was given the go-ahead within days. News Nine had been the beneficiary of her foresight and talent. Now, though, they were ready—anxious, it seemed—to get rid of her.
Carmen deliberately missed the exit that would take her out to Sugarbush. Instead she drove down Jacaranda, heading for the block-long “heart” of Valle Rosa. She turned onto Verde and parked across the street from the mayor’s office. Chris’s car was there. She opened her window and sat, keeping her eyes on the small, run-down building, feeling safe from the beer in the market, safe from the seductive lure of her bed and the sleep of a coward. She wouldn’t go into the office. She wasn’t about to let Chris know she still needed him. She wasn’t even ready to admit it to herself.