Blood Orange Read online

  Dana crouched beside Bailey and told her about the time she and David snorkeled in Hawaii and schools of tiny fish nibbled frozen peas from between her fingers.

  At the end of the story, Bailey held up her arms. Carry me, her eyes said.

  “Ask me, Bay. Say the words.”

  Bailey stood on tiptoe, her slender arms outstretched, making soft animal noises at the back of her throat.

  Dana wanted to sob with frustration. She did not know who irritated her more, the other visitors to the aquarium watching them with sideways glances, or herself for having thought the excursion could be anything other than an ordeal. She was sick of Bailey’s silence and her neediness. Instantly, she cut off the thought. She would not allow herself to be upset with her daughter. To do so would be to risk losing her again. David called this magical thinking, but she believed it anyway.

  Dana suggested they leave the aquarium and drive down to the beach. “I brought our swimming suits.”

  No response.

  There was nothing wrong with Bailey’s hearing. She came when she was called, she turned at sudden noises. But in reaction to her abduction some part of her had shut down, and now that she was home she would not or could not turn it back on. As Dana read books on voluntary mutism, she told herself that eventually her daughter would speak again; they must all be patient. Lieutenant Gary admired her tolerance but still urged her to send Bailey to a child psychologist. David had begun to think it was a good idea as well, and Lexy had given him the name of a psychiatrist experienced with traumatized children. Everyone had an opinion of what was right for Bailey.

  Dana pulled into a parking place at La Jolla Shores and unloaded the car. She handed Bailey a towel, bucket, and shovel to carry.

  “Mommy’s got lunch and the chairs.” Plus the umbrella and a backpack full of beach miscellany.

  These days David was much too busy for the beach. He claimed he missed family time, but Dana knew he thrived on the demands of his work. The pressure of a coming trial made him feel alive, as he had on game days.

  The reporter from People wanted to do a happy ending followup to his earlier abduction article that had focused as much on the Filmore case and the perils of being a defense attorney as on Bailey herself. Dana had been against the interview, but David said it would be good for business. To coax a smile from Bailey the photographer had clowned and courted her. But she would not satisfy the public hunger for simple solutions, and Dana felt perversely proud of her daughter showing the world that for a stolen child and her family there was no such thing as happily ever after.

  Having given up on Bailey, the reporter spoke mostly to David, who had said all the right things, remembered to thank the Bailey Committee, the police, all the kind folks who had come forward to offer their good services. Dana had been too numb to do more than nod through the interview. Obviously the reporter had expected her to bubble with relief and joy, as if three months of terror could be cast aside like a frumpy coat.

  Later she wished she had just told the reporter the truth. Perhaps he would have printed it, and then people might have understood what it meant to lose and regain a child, how it changed everything. David’s hair was grayer. Dana’s body had become stiff and awkward. She could no longer run without feeling as if her arms and legs might fly out in opposite directions unless she exerted extreme control. She felt conspicuous in public; and even if people in line at the bank, the grocery store, at Bella Luna, and the Birch Aquarium did not recognize her or Bailey, it was enough that she imagined they did. On the beach in La Jolla she thought the bikiniclad girls and the couples walking hand in hand along the waterline must know and would later speak of having seen that poor child and her mother. She felt as if guilt had become the most obvious thing about her, what people would remember if they were introduced. That beautiful child. Her mother should have taken better care of her.

  Dana had always been awkward in her skin. Time and experience had built her confidence; but since Bailey’s return the old insecurity had reasserted itself. There was nowhere safe anymore. Moby had been run down in front of their home, a rock had shattered their front window. Bailey had been stolen from her own front yard.

  What kind of a mother lets that happen?

  They stopped at the showers to put on bathing suits. A few feet above the rickrack of seaweed that marked the waterline, Dana set up her beach chair, laid out Bailey’s towel, and drove the base of the umbrella deep into the sand. She unbuckled Bailey’s sandals and put them in the backpack. In a pink and green one-piece suit, her long legs stretched out before her, Bailey sat with her back to the surf, digging her heels into the hot sand. She had been suntanned to a golden brown when Dana discovered her sitting on the front porch. She still looked as if she had just returned from a tropical holiday. Gary said she had probably been taken to Mexico.

  It made Dana physically ill to think of it. The murkiest corner of her nightmare had been that Bailey was taken out of the country into whatever hell awaited beautiful little girls with no one to protect them.

  Dana unpacked a lunch of sandwiches and fruit and laid it out on a towel. “Want to get your feet wet before lunch?” Bailey was fearful in the water, but she liked to feel the tide suck the sand from under her feet. “Bailey?”

  Dana looked toward the parking lot to see what had captured Bailey’s attention. On that warm weekday in early October the beach was not crowded, so Dana had a clear view twenty meters to the low cement wall that divided the beach from the boardwalk and parking lot. In the lot, double-parked, was a white van.

  You’re paranoid. The city’s full of white vans. But this was the one. Lurching to her feet, she ran toward the wall, barefoot across the scorching sand. On the wall a bronzed young man with a head of thick curly brown hair watched her run toward him.

  The van pulled away. No bumper sticker and, she saw now, lettering across the back: MOBILE LOCKSMITH. And a number to call.

  “Shit.”

  The young man laughed.

  She stared at him.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  He spoke to her. At first she thought his language was Italian, but then she realized he spoke Spanish. She felt like an idiot for running across the sand to stare at a van when there were thousands of them in the city. Swearing aloud. Talking to strangers. Leaving Bailey alone.

  Dana held Bailey’s hand as they waded through the curling foam. The breakers were low and easy, and the hot Indian summer weather had kept the ocean warm enough for swimming. Bailey stopped, planted her feet, and watched the retreating tide suck the sand away from her feet. She fell over, got up, and did it again. When they had waded out to where the water reached Bailey’s waist, Dana tried to lift her up, but Bailey pushed her away and went a few steps farther, into deeper water. She turned her back to the waves, glanced over her shoulder, and then, at the perfect moment, raised her arms in front of her, lifted her feet, and rode the little wave a few feet to shore. Dana ran to her, expecting tears. Instead Bailey broke past her and ran back into the waves, lifting her knees high and clapping her hands.

  Someone had taught her to bodysurf.

  omeone taught her to bodysurf?” Lexy asked. “What kind of kidnapper does that?”

  It was later the same day, and Dana and Bailey had met Lexy at Bella Luna. They sat at one of the round metal tables at the edge of the outdoor terrace but mostly hidden from the sidewalk and busy street by a hedge of red cape honeysuckle. The sky was a flawless Della Robbia blue, and Lexy’s red hair flashed like polished copper.

  At the other tables, the late-afternoon crowd getting its coffee fix was mostly men and women from the offices and shops up and down Goldfinch Street. Dana recognized the owner of the Avignon Shop giggling with a man wearing a backward baseball cap; and a few moments after they sat down, Rochelle dashed across from Arts and Letters, pausing at their table only long enough to say, “Watch the shop, darlings. The loo’s out again.”

  The baristas at Bella Luna had made a fuss
when they saw Bailey and concocted for her a chocolate drink topped with enough whipped cream to ski on. They invited her to stand on a stool behind the counter and help them serve customers. As Dana was about to thank them for the kind offer and make apologies for Bailey, her daughter astonished her by nodding her head. Yes, she wanted to help. As Dana talked to Lexy, she watched her daughter perched near the cash register. The barista handed Bailey the customer’s receipt, and she handed it to the customer.

  “This is the first time she’s left me.” Dana had a light, leafy feeling that was almost giddy. “Being at the beach helped her.”

  Every few moments Bailey came out from behind the counter as if to make sure Dana was still there, as if she did not trust her eyes alone but had to touch her mother’s hands and stroke her hair before running off again.

  On one of these occasions Lexy reached across the little table and lifted a lock of Bailey’s sun-streaked, salt-stiff hair off her forehead. “You know how to swim, don’t you?”

  Bailey looked from Lexy to Dana and back. She nodded.

  “Do you like swimming?”

  Another affirmative nod accompanied by a wide smile. This was more communication from Bailey than since the kidnapping. Dana wished she were a ballerina. She would pirouette down Goldfinch Street.

  “You had a good swimming teacher,” Lexy said.

  Bailey licked whipped cream off her upper lip.

  “Can you remember your teacher’s name?”

  She looked at Dana and at Lexy, then ran back to the counter. Dana watched the barista lift her onto the stool and lay her hand on her head affectionately.

  Lexy said, “One of these days I believe she’s just going to open her mouth and start talking.”

  “The surf jarred her memory some way. It’s like she’s got this combination lock inside and today something clicked.”

  Lexy nodded. “If he taught her to swim, don’t you think she must have trusted him?”

  It hadn’t occurred to Dana that Bailey might have had a relationship with her kidnapper.

  “How could she trust a man who’d steal her?”

  “Three months is a long time in a little kid’s life, Dana. And maybe it was a woman. Someone who wanted a daughter.”

  “Lieutenant Gary doesn’t think so.”

  “Well, you know what I think, and you don’t want to hear me say it again. But. She’s got to see someone who knows how to question kids. She’s ready to talk.”

  “I won’t push her. She’s been through enough.”

  “But if she’s been sex-“

  “I told you, that didn’t happen.”

  “A professional-“

  “She doesn’t need a professional.” Dana waved at Bailey and blew her a kiss. “You and Detective Gary are on the same side.”

  “It’s not about taking sides.” Lexy looked tired. “But don’t you wonder who did it? Doesn’t it alarm you that he’s still out there?”

  “Why do you think my pulse jumps every time I see a white van? Look, there’s one at the end of the street. And it happened at the beach today. I got up and left Bailey alone-alone on the beach, for God’s sake!-and it was just some locksmith.”

  “Oh, Dana.”

  Time to change the subject. Time to pretend we’re normal people leading normal lives.

  Normal was all Dana had ever wanted, to be like everyone else, like the cliques of blond girls at Bishop’s School. She had believed when she was fifteen that such girls knew a secret she did not. It was a class thing, she finally decided. If your father had the right kind of job, if your mother only worked because she wanted to, if you took vacations in Hawaii and your grandmother took you to Europe the summer before high school, and if you got a convert ible for graduation, then you knew the secret of feeling normal in your skin.

  “What’s up with you, Lexy? Let’s talk about your life for a change.”

  “Well, mostly the same old stuff, but I did have dinner with Micah last night.”

  Dana had been telling herself that he had gone back to Italy.

  “Mind you, I had to go over there and drag him out of his apartment. He was in one of his moods.”

  After Italy she had let Lexy think she and Micah did not like each other. She buried the truth in silence not because Lexy was a priest but because her friend’s feelings about her brother were so possessive and protective.

  “I told him he had to keep me company or I was going to go wacko.” Lexy groaned, “I think I’m in burnout. I used to have enough energy for two women, but now I fall into bed and sleep like the dead and wake up just as tired as I was when I lay down. I tell my therapist I haven’t got time for coffee breaks. She says I have to make time.”

  “Since when are you in therapy?”

  “She’s a clergy member up in Orange County. Lutheran, actually. Eleanor.”

  “How could I not know that?” Dana asked, feeling as if she had let Lexy down. “Why are you in therapy?”

  Bailey appeared at Dana’s elbow and rested her head against her shoulder for a moment. “Are you having a good time?” Dana asked her. “Do you want to sit on my lap now?”

  She darted off, back to her friends behind the coffee bar.

  “She’s so beautiful,” Lexy said, watching her. “But I worry …”

  “We’re talking about you. I know your problem. You don’t have a life except St. Tom’s. You’ve got to stop hiding behind that collar; it’s not big enough.”

  Lexy sighed, tilting her head to the sun, letting her hair drop back like falling fire. “It’s work, and it’s Micah. And it’s me. Mostly, lately, it’s Micah.”

  Dana stared over Lexy’s shoulder at the street where a white van with darkened windows was stopped at the light.

  Lexy said, “When we were kids he’d have these spells…. He’d set his tent up out in the yard and sleep there, eat out there for days and days. No one ever told him to come inside. I think our folks forgot about him. Sometimes I’d go out and try to make him come inside and he wouldn’t even talk to me. He loved me better than anyone, but he wouldn’t say a word.”

  “You can’t be responsible for everyone, Lexy. He’s a grown man.”

  Lexy smiled. “Sometimes I forget you met him.”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish you two had gotten along.”

  Bailey scrambled onto Dana’s lap, and she was grateful for something to hold on to.

  “Maybe when he’s feeling better I’ll have you all to dinner. Try again, huh? You and David and Micah.” She sighed and stood up. “Sometime when we have a whole afternoon I’d like to talk more about this. It’d do me good, but now’s a bad time. I’ve got an appointment at ECS in fifteen minutes.” She straightened the lines of her forest green moleskin jumper. “And after Evening Prayer I’ve got to go by and see Dorothy Wilkerson. Do you know her?”

  Dana remembered an upright little woman with a formidable jaw sitting rigid as a bookend in a back pew.

  “She’s a hundred and two years old, but she walked to church twice a week until five years ago. Last Easter she gave me her power of attorney, went to bed, and said she was finished, ready to die.” Lexy swung her leather bag over her shoulder. “I expect every night to be her last, but come the dawn she wakes up and drinks a cup of black coffee, calls me on the phone, and says she’s still alive. I’m never sure if she’s glad or disappointed.”

  Dana would not live to be one hundred. Sometimes it was a stretch making it to the end of a conversation.

  Dana sat with Bailey for another half hour, watching the traffic through the red flowers of the cape honeysuckle. At least six white vans went by. She tried not to think about Micah.

  When David learned that Bailey could bodysurf he would say it was time she saw a psychiatrist. They would argue and go to bed angry again. He did not need to know. She would tell Lieutenant Gary instead.

  She thought of the ways she continually failed people, those she loved the most, like David and Bailey and Lexy. Th
ere had never been a time when she had not been trying to be good. She had believed if she pleased people her reward would be a normal life. But the older she became the less sure she was that she would recognize normal if she ever got a chance to live it.

  Micah had been strange from their first meeting, the furthest thing from the normal she admired. He was waiting in the little Florence air terminal when she staggered off the plane, jet-lagged and stiff as a cheap shoe. He waved and called out, and the sign he held with her name written in huge Old English letters was like a dozen fingers pointing at her. If it weren’t for Lexy she would have walked right by him. No one else had such an ostentatious greeter. She did not like the way other travelers smiled at his enthusiasm. He drove a car the size of a telephone booth, a Mercedes of a variety never dreamed of in Mission Hills. With her two bags jammed behind the front seat, they flew through the outskirts of Florence, creating three lanes of traffic on streets only wide enough for two. In gridlocked intersections Micah laid on his horn and stuck his head out the window, yelling in flamboyant Italian.

  When the sun inched around to their little table on the terrace at Bella Luna, she and Bailey got up and walked to the 4Runner parked around the corner. They held hands; Dana thought she detected the hint of a skip in Bailey’s step.

  She was getting better.

  Dana had left the car windows down a few inches, and the interior was cool when she opened the rear door and fastened Bailey into her car seat. When she opened her own door she saw a rock on the driver’s seat with a piece of paper around it, held in place with a rubber band.

  She jerked back as if she’d seen a snake. For a moment she stared at it, not quite able to believe what she was looking at. She had thought with Bailey’s return the trouble was over. David and Gary had said she couldn’t count on that, but she had.