Blood Orange Page 14

  “His wife’s going to live over our garage.” Dana knew this would outrage Imogene. “We’re going to fix the place up this weekend.”

  Gracie had called that morning to say that if Dana agreed, they should make a party of it. All Dana had to do was provide the beer. She had been looking forward to a whole day with David to herself and a task to keep them busy. Long firelit conversations and dawdly dinners had never been their style. But with a project and occupation for their hands and bodies, they never ran out of conversation. She had almost declined Gracie’s offer, but they rarely had company anymore, so she said it was a great idea, and now she was looking forward to it.

  Imogene said, “You don’t want to let that little angel girl around her.”

  “It’s the husband who’s on trial.”

  “Even so.”

  “She’s pregnant and the press is hounding her and she can’t even go to the supermarket without being accosted. Her doctor says if she gets more upset it’s bad for-“

  “That little Bailey, she’s a special one; you don’t want to take any chances.”

  It was an insult that Imogene felt she had to say that. As if Dana did not adore her daughter.

  “You watch out for her. Bad things happen fast.”

  Easy to give advice and lecture now. What about the haunted house? And Imogene had been a block away playing mah-jongg when Dana was eight and three junior high school boys chased her down the alley behind the house, shoved her to the ground, and tried to pull down her underpants. Mr. Valdez, the electrician who lived three doors from Imogene, came out his back door waving a .38 revolver. The boys ran off laughing and stumbling over themselves. The chivalrous old man had helped her to her feet, averted his eyes from her torn clothes, and walked her home.

  From the kitchen, a cupboard door slammed, and a tap ran and then shut off.

  “You do have company! Whose van is that?” As Dana opened the screen door and stepped onto the porch, a slightly disgusting possibility occurred to her. “Grandma, have you got a boyfriend?”

  Something sly crawled into her grandmother’s expression. “More like family.”

  “We don’t have any family.”

  “Oh no? What about your mother?”

  /ou’re a sick woman, Dana thought as she hurried up the sidewalk toward her car. She gripped the steering wheel until her hands hurt. The old bitch had only mentioned her mother to get a rise out of her. That was Imogene’s way, to goad and tease until she got some reaction. And Dana never learned. For a crazy moment she had actually believed her mother was in the kitchen. She had felt excited.

  On impulse, she made a screeching U-turn and drove back around the corner, passing the bungalow. There was a parking space across the street now. She pulled into it and turned off the ignition.

  Drumming her fingernails on the steering wheel, she stared at the van in the driveway and tried to see her drug-addled mother behind its wheel. How could Dana have been so stupid when she knew perfectly well the meaning of I don’t want you, gone forever, and never coming back. Nevertheless, she got out of the 4Runner and walked back across the street and peered in the van’s front passenger window. A yellow plastic rose rode in a plastic bud vase on the dash.

  So much for the boyfriend theory.

  And the interior was pristine.

  So much for the mother theory, too.

  Dana opened the side gate and closed it softly behind her. Dry leaves from the avocado tree in the next yard crumbled and crunched underfoot like bags of corn chips as she tiptoed along the cracked and buckled cement path that ran beside the house to the screened-in laundry room at the back. Something heavy like tennis shoes bounced around in the drum of the dryer. Her heart felt the same way.

  A movement in the kitchen caught her eye-a man had walked into her field of vision and opened the refrigerator. He wore his gray hair in a long, ragged ponytail and was so thin and tall he had to bend like a paperclip to look in the refrigerator. He pulled out two bottles of beer, holding them by the necks in one hand. As he turned to leave the kitchen, he stopped and peered at the window. Dana froze. He touched the top of his head and then patted the breast pocket of his denim shirt while he continued to stare long enough for her to see that he had a narrow, sharp-boned face like a martyred saint’s. At the sound of Imogene’s voice he turned from the window and walked out of Dana’s sight.

  She dropped to a crouch, breathing hard and shaking. What luck he appeared to be half-blind. As she hurried back down the path and out onto the driveway she heard Imogene laugh and then the notes of “Blue Room.” After several measures, a jazzy violin joined in with the piano. Dana dashed across the street and into her car. She locked the door and sat, hearing the music in her head.

  A man, duets: suddenly her grandmother’s life held worlds of mystery she could not guess at. She felt the pinch of guilt and dismissed it. Imogene had been at the heart of all her youthful misery, and Dana was not going to start feeling sentimental about her now.

  The feast Dana brought home from the Real Food deli did nothing to mollify David’s bad temper.

  “How long has she been sucking her thumb?” he asked, jerking his head toward Bailey while he twisted a corkscrew into a bottle of Chardonnay. “I told her to stop, but it’s like she’s deaf now. On top of everything else.”

  “Later, David.”

  Since Bailey’s return David had begun to talk about her in her presence, as if she were either deaf or invisible.

  Dana emptied clear plastic containers of crab cakes, marinated green beans, and grilled vegetables onto a large serving plate and set the kitchen counter for the three of them. Bailey tracked her steps with one finger hooked through a belt loop on Dana’s Levi’s, her thumb jammed in her mouth. She seemed to have lost ground since her outgoing day at Bella Luna.

  Dana handed David two chilled wineglasses, settled Bailey on a stool at the counter, and sat down herself. A large swallow of wine, followed quickly by another, and she began to relax. They ate in silence until Dana said, “My grandmother had a guest today. Very sneaky. She said it was my mother.”

  David looked up, appalled. “The bitch.”

  “Who? Grandma or my mother?”

  “Both.”

  Dana smiled. It was good to have someone on her side. She put ketchup on Bailey’s crab cake to make it more appealing. Sheepishly she confessed how she had sneaked around the house and narrowly missed being seen. David thought it was funny and said he’d hire her as an investigator. Bailey stopped eating and watched them.

  “So who was it?” He poured more wine.

  “A man. A violinist like that Hungarian-“

  “Menhuin?”

  “No. The jazz guy. We have a CD.”

  “Django Reinhart.”

  “Yeah, him. When I left they were playing “Blue Room.” She hummed a few bars of the old song. “Can you believe it?”

  “She’s a weird old coot.”

  A moment later Dana said, “There was a white van in her driveway. I guess it was Django’s.”

  “There are a million white vans.” He swallowed the rest of his wine. “They’re all over town. You don’t mean you suspect Imogene?”

  It was almost like he was trying to misinterpret.

  She wanted him to understand the pressure she was under; but she did not want to tell him. Better for him to realize it himself and speak the reassuring words of comfort. They were just platitudes if she had to prompt him.

  After the meal they were alone for a few minutes.

  “Look,” Dana said, “about the thumb-sucking, let her do it. It must be comforting.”

  “It’s going to ruin her teeth. We’ll pay thousands of dollars for braces.”

  “I sucked my thumb until I was seventeen and went away to college and met you.”

  “You did? You never told me that before.”

  “It never came up.”

  “What about germs?”

  “Just let her be, David. She needs
time, is all.”

  She told him Bailey had been enthusiastic and responsive during their visit to the Humane Society shelter that morning. “I almost let her choose a kitten. Sometimes kids with voluntary mutism get started talking again if they have an animal.”

  “She can talk to Moby. Cats make me sneeze.” He swallowed his wine as if drinking were an act of aggression.

  “You might at least think about it.”

  “Why?”

  “You act like you don’t want her to get better.”

  “I want her to see a shrink.”

  “Now you’re on Gary’s side? I thought we agreed to let her get well on her own.”

  “That was almost a month ago.”

  Dana thought about how good it would feel to throw her glass across the room.

  David said, “There’s a sick bastard out there; he had our daughter… If I didn’t know better, I’d think you didn’t want him brought to justice.”

  Maybe she would sweep her arm across the counter-send dishes, glasses, and all flying.

  David stared into his glass as he swirled the last of his wine. “I want to kill him. I don’t get how you can not care.”

  “I do care; you know I do.”

  “Then explain to me-“

  “I’ve done everything a specialist would do. I’ve had her draw pictures, I gave her special dolls to play with. I examined her, David. I touched her and she didn’t cringe.”

  “Maybe she got used to it.”

  She hated him.

  “I’m sorry, Dana. That was an awful thing to say.”

  She had been planning to tell him that Bailey could bodysurf, that she had enjoyed herself at Bella Luna, and that this definitively proved she was getting better. Now she couldn’t even make herself speak to him. She was like a closed oyster at the bottom of the sea, the pearl growing inside her black and deformed.

  “We fight all the time, Dana. It didn’t used to be like this. You’re always mad at me for something. Mostly I don’t know what the hell I’ve done.”

  It wasn’t fair that he accuse her of anger when she felt his anger as if it had hands to pin her shoulders back and pull her hair.

  “Just let Gary’s people …” The skin around his mouth was white. “I know you had a bad experience when you were a kid, but it won’t happen to Bailey.”

  “You guarantee that, do you?”

  “Gary says you can watch the whole interview through a mirror. If you don’t like what you see, you can run in screaming.” He ran his hands through his thick hair. “Just do it, Dana. Just fucking call the cops and set it up.”

  Dana stared at him. “You know what I’d like?” She stood and started banging the china and cutlery into the dishwasher. “Just once in a while I’d like to have a conversation that doesn’t involve me doing something I don’t want to.”

  As she spoke, he was walking out the back door.

  Predictably, as soon as he was gone she regretted her anger and would have liked to run behind the car, catch hold of the fender, and drag it to a stop so she could tell him that she loved him and hated what was happening between them.

  Instead she went to the phone and called Lieutenant Gary. She was surprised when the operator put her through to him.

  “Don’t you ever go home?”

  “Occasionally.” She heard the squeak of his desk chair. “What’s up, Mrs. Cabot?”

  Dana cleared her throat. All at once she realized that it had been two days since she took Bailey to the beach. Gary would think it peculiar she had not called him immediately. And it was peculiar. She could not really explain why she had delayed. Or why she wanted to slam the phone down right now.

  “Has something happened?”

  “Yes.” She told him everything. As she spoke she ended every sentence with “and” so she would be forced to continue, so she would not stop until the full story of the day was told.

  When she finished he asked, “What did the note say?”

  She told him.

  “Why didn’t you come right to the station with it?”

  She couldn’t think of anything to say except the truth. “I don’t know.”

  More silence. “Right. Well, how soon can you get the note to me-the rock, too? You want me to send someone over?”

  Suddenly light-headed, she leaned against the kitchen counter. “I don’t have it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Icy perspiration beaded the back of her neck.

  “What the hell do you expect me to do if you don’t have the note?”

  It had felt like filth in her hand. How could he expect her to hold on to it one moment longer than she had to?

  She heard his chair squeak again and then a slamming sound as if he had kicked his desk. Eventually he spoke to her.

  “You sure there even was a note, Mrs. Cabot?”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “That’s a really good question, and I don’t know the answer.” He had an edgy, sarcastic laugh. “Like I also don’t know why you wouldn’t call me first thing and bring over the evidence.”

  “I’m telling you the truth.” She had been rash, throwing the note away, and she regretted it. She wasn’t used to feeling stupid and ir responsible. She had spent her whole life proving to everyone that she was just the opposite. She wanted him to understand.

  “This whole thing-I’m not myself. Since Bailey disappeared it’s like my life has fallen apart and I can’t seem to put it together.” She was crying for the first time in many years, more years than she could number for certain. Even when Bailey vanished, her eyes had burned but stayed dry. Now she could not stop herself. “I know I’m acting crazy. I know it’s not normal, but I can’t help it. I know what I should have done, but the note, it was like … shit. In my hand. I felt so dirty from touching-“

  “Okay, okay. It’s done, we can’t change history.”

  “I’d never lie about something like this. You believe me, don’t you?”

  “I just wish I could see that note.”

  “I’m not a liar, Lieutenant Gary. I swear to you.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I believe you.” He sounded very tired. “You just got to promise me if anything else shows up you won’t toss it.”

  “I do promise,” she said. “I do.”

  struggling congregation like St. Tom’s could not afford to pay .an assistant priest, so it depended on retired clergy to fill in or take over as needed. Lexy’s assistant was old Father Bartholomew, a retired priest from the Channel Islands, beloved by the congregation and so blind now he said the Eucharist by memory, frequently jumbling the order of things. Lexy could not leave St. Tom’s in his loving, unsteady hands. In January the retired dean of the cathedral was coming to take over for a month, and she had already bought a ticket to Hawaii. Until then an early-morning walk on Pacific Beach with Dana felt like a mini-holiday.

  Before seven A.M. neither wind nor surf disturbed the chill mist that lay close to the water and sand in a silvery froth. Unless the animal-control cops drove their jeeps down to the water’s edge, they would see neither Moby Doby joyously breaking the city leash law nor Bailey chasing the birds with him.

  That morning, as always, Dana was a good listener. She let Lexy ramble on about her work, and she didn’t judge.

  “It’s not that it’s a hard job. I don’t care if it’s hard and the hours are long. It’s the work I love, the work I chose. But there are times …” It was difficult to say aloud what she hardly permitted herself to think. “I wonder what made me think I’d be a good priest.”

  “Oh, Lexy … “

  “No, listen, this is what I’m talking about. Yesterday I stopped in Target on the way home and saw Beth Gordon with Jason and I had to turn my back on them. I went out of my way to avoid them. That woman … How many times can I say thank you for what she does at St. Tom’s? And the kid …”

  “He was great when Bailey was gone.”

  “It gave him something to do. Better than rob
bing banks.” She choked on the words. “Do you hear the way I talk? I’m supposed to love him as Christ would love him. I’m supposed to see him as a child of God, but I’d be happy if I never had to look at his pimply face again.”

  “You’re a priest, Lexy. Not a saint.”

  “I know that. But I believe-” She stopped and stared out toward the horizon. On a foggy morning, the world seemed mysteriously small and empty. Without visual distraction, Lexy’s inadequacies multiplied and crowded in on all sides, trapping her in a tense, tight world. “I know I don’t have to be a saint, but I’m a Christian because of Christ, and I think the most important thing I’m asked to do is see His face in every person I meet. That means deadheads like Jason. I promised to do that when I became a priest. It’s the kind of job where the harder you work at it, the more you realize how inadequate you are. So much of the time I’m just going through the motions, acting as if I’m a real priest. You wouldn’t believe how dishonest I feel.” Disgusted, she kicked the toe of her Nike into the damp sand. “If you could listen in on my thoughts you’d know I’m not worthy to be a priest.”

  “Name me one person anywhere who’s really, really good.”

  “What about the Dalai Lama?”

  “Don’t count on it. Jesus was the only perfect person, Lexy. And sometimes I have my doubts about Him.”

  It was good to laugh and change the subject. Dana turned the conversation to a movie she wanted to see and for a while they talked about movies and television. It was what Dana called airhead conversation and perfect for the moment. When their talk became personal again, Dana told the story of her visit with Imogene. She tried to make it an amusing anecdote, but the effort did not come off.

  Lexy had learned that people rarely came right out with what was bothering them. Even at AA meetings most speakers talked circles around their troubles before getting to what was on their minds. She had been trained to nod and listen and wait for the truth.

  Dana said, “It freaks me out to think my grandmother might have this rich personal life and I know diddly about it.” She stopped to watch Bailey drawing scrawls in the wet sand with a stick of driftwood. Lexy saw how avidly Dana observed her daughter, almost as if she were expecting her to write a message. “What if I’ve been wrong about my grandmother? What does that say about me?”