Blood Orange Read online

  David said, “Let’s go back over what happened the day Lolly disappeared.”

  “What do you want me to say?” Her face brightened suddenly, and her hands dropped to the mound of her stomach. “She’s kicking.” She smiled for an instant, then just as quickly seemed to collapse in on herself. David expected her to cry, but she didn’t.

  “Frank said I was too old to have another baby, and he doesn’t think I’m a good mother, anyway, because of Shawna. He was angry when I told him I was pregnant. Now he acts like he’s happy, but I thought he’d kill me when I showed him the test result. It’s the only time he ever hit me.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “The trouble with me is I don’t have a really strong mind. Not like Frank. He says when they were handing out character, I stood in the line for waffles.” She covered her mouth with her hand and giggled. “It’s true. I don’t know what I want half the time. Sometimes I wish I’d never conceived this baby, and I think if she were to die I wouldn’t care a bit. Other times I can’t wait to see her and hold her. I have fantasies about what she’ll be like when she grows up. Like maybe she can be a dancer; I always wanted to be one.” Her shoulders dropped, and, angrily, she swept her wineglass off the table and onto the carpet. “What: do I know? There probably aren’t any ballet teachers in Idaho. Frank says I’m a wimp and I haven’t got backbone and that’s why he has to be in charge. Sometimes I think he’s right; sometimes …” She raked her hands through her hair. “Have you ever been where you don’t know anything for sure? These days everything’s just mush in my head.”

  David realized he had been holding his breath.

  “I don’t think you’re a wimp, Marsha. I think you’ve been under huge pressure.”

  “Really?” As if this had not occurred to her.

  “Tell me the story of Lolly, Marsha. Maybe I can help you sort things out.”

  She shook her head.

  “You don’t have to be afraid. He won’t hurt you.”

  “You don’t know. Frank looks like an ordinary man, but he’s not.”

  “Where did you change cars?”

  She sighed and laid her hands flat on the table before her. “He called me. Then I drove over to Ralph’s parking lot, the one underground. We switched there. He told me he needed my help. He said there’d been an accident.”

  “Did you ask him what kind?”

  “He just said some trouble with Lolly but he was going to fix it. He told me not to worry because worrying would make my baby sick and maybe retarded.”

  In the Miranda Street Park a couple spread what looked like an old chenille bedspread on the grass. Even at a distance the girl’s hair was so blond it looked like sunlight. The breeze kept making a mess of it, and she kept smoothing it back. He remembered fall in Ohio, the roar of the Miami fans, and the crisp cut of the air against the back of his throat when he took a deep breath and ran out onto the field. He wanted to be young again, with nothing more complicated on his mind than the black-and-white of a football game and whether he’d get laid afterward. A loathing for the work he did and the people he did it with rose within him. He felt Frank Filmore’s evil suffocating him.

  “You’re sweating,” she said. “Frank hardly ever does, but his face was all shiny when we changed cars, and he was excited in a way I didn’t like; he spooked me. Plus I could smell the chloroform.” She smiled at David. “It has a nice smell.”

  “Did you see Lolly?”

  “No. He said she was in the trunk. In a plastic bag. Frank’s very fastidious.”

  “Did he tell you she was dead?”

  “She wasn’t.”

  “He told you she was alive?”

  “He said so. Yes.”

  “And you believed him.”

  She looked surprised. “Of course I did. What happened was an accident. He only meant to frighten her so she’d learn her lesson and stop whining.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “What was I supposed to do? If I called the police and something happened so he didn’t go to prison, he’d come after me. Frank can be very mean. I suppose he’s got all of you charmed, but if you knew him … “

  “I’m not charmed.”

  “He said your partner, the black woman, she was hitting on him. The blonde, too.”

  “He’s lying, Marsha.”

  “No. He can tell about people. Sometimes he knows things they don’t know about themselves.”

  “There’s nothing personal in any of our relationships with your husband, believe me.”

  “Don’t underestimate Frank, Mr. Cabot.”

  He watched Dana come out of the house and crouch to pet Moby. As she did, she looked up at the apartment window, and David sent her a telepathic message to look away, to go inside and lock the door. The evil he felt around him was strong enough to hurt them all.

  Marsha asked him if he was finished with questions.

  “Did he tell you what he did?”

  “When Sandra went into the house he went in through the alley gate and grabbed Lolly and made her breathe chloroform. He said it worked fast on such a little kid, and she didn’t make a fuss at all. Shawna did. She bit his hand. He told me if she hadn’t done that, he would have only hung her over the side of the well to give her a good scare. He only meant to teach her a lesson. Same with Lolly.”

  David nodded, not trusting himself to make a comment.

  “Then he took her in the garden shed and double-bagged her in two of those big green garden bags, only not tight, because he didn’t want her to die. That’s what he said. He was going to take her somewhere and leave her. He said the Calhouns didn’t know how to discipline her, and what she needed was the scare of her life.”

  This made no sense at all. The girl had been three years old. “What about afterward? She’d be able to identify him.”

  Marsha looked at him, blinking.

  “Anyway,” she said, “it was when he got to the mountain and he undid the bag and she started screaming…. The thing people don’t understand about Frank is how sensitive he is. He can’t take a lot of noise. That’s another reason why we’re going to move to Idaho.”

  When Frank’s hotshot lawyer gets him off.

  “What did he do?”

  “Got upset, I guess. Bashed her head.”

  He stood up. “Mind if I open the door?”

  “It’s cold,” Marsha said.

  He opened it anyway.

  “Why did you get pregnant again? If he can’t stand the whining, how will this baby be any different?”

  “Oh, she will be. Frank’s taught me about discipline.” She lowered her eyes. “In a way, you see, it was my fault Shawna was such a bad little girl. If I’d been a better mother-“

  David walked onto the landing at the top of the stairs and took a deep breath.

  She said, “You’re not going to tell him what I said, are you?”

  “No.”

  “And promise you won’t tell Mr. Peluso.”

  Through the window David saw Dana’s back. He didn’t need to see her face. Every line and the curve of each feature were familiar to him, imprinted on his heart and mind forever. All that he loved and believed in was in the house across the yard.

  “I’m Frank’s lawyer, Marsha. Your secrets are safe with me.”

  avid came into the house, and Dana saw at once that he was /deeply troubled.

  “Tell me,” she said, resting her palms against his chest.

  Without looking at her he moved away.

  “You’ll feel better … “

  “And you’ll feel worse, so just don’t ask me again.” He went upstairs, and she heard the shower running. When he came back downstairs his hair lay damp across his forehead. He had changed his shirt and put on a new tie.

  “It’s after four. Do you have to go back?”

  “I don’t know when I’ll be home.”

  “David-“

  “I need to work, Dana.” At the back door he stopped, came back, and held her. “I’m sorry I snapped. It’s the case…
.” His body vibrated with tension.

  “Come home early, then. Let’s go to the movies. Why not, huh? It’s Saturday.” She recalled their sweet early morning together, the hope she had felt that despite everything their love for each other could be salvaged. “Guadalupe can stay with Bay. Let’s eat at the Cat and see something mindless.”

  “We can’t keep paying a babysitter-“

  “This is for us, David.” She pressed her index finger to his lips. “Now isn’t the time to economize.”

  He pulled back, abruptly angry. “If I lose this trial no one’s going to hire me.”

  “You’re exaggerating. Of course-“

  “Not the clients we need. You know, Dana, it takes money to live the way we do.”

  She did not remind him that it was she who paid the bills and stroked their creditors with minimum payments.

  “babysitters all the time, housekeeper, private school. And you don’t work-“

  She would not be drawn into an argument and away from what mattered. “Tell me what Marsha said to you. You don’t have to carry this by yourself.”

  He bent his head and rested his forehead against hers.

  “Mind meld,” she whispered. It was an old joke between them.

  “You’re right. A movie’d be good. Great. And dinner at the Cat.”

  They ate in silence, listening to oldies chosen by the disk jockey seated in a glass booth over the bar.

  “Hear that?” she asked. “`A Whiter Shade of Pale.”’ It had been her mother’s favorite song. “And The Doors. Oh, God, she played `Riders of the Storm’ until I was dreaming the lyrics.”

  David nodded vaguely. Obviously his thoughts were somewhere else. With Marsha Filmore, Dana thought, and wondered what had transpired between them that morning. At another time in their lives she would have nagged a little, and eventually he would have told her. But she had her own secrets. What Dana wanted was happy talk-conversation, not interrogation.

  “What kind of music did your folks listen to?”

  “My mom and the judge-I don’t think they listened to anything much, but my uncle liked Patsy Cline and Merle Haggard, all that country stuff.” David looked up when a man paused beside their table.

  Dana recognized a local television reporter and saw the camera.

  “Mel Gorson, Channel Seven News.”

  David groaned.

  “I went by your house, and your maid told me you were here.”

  “Our house is off limits, Mr. Gorson.” Dana spoke as sweetly as possible, but it was hard to be pleasant when she remembered the days following Bailey’s kidnapping and Gorson and the other reporters’ persistent questions. None of them had cared that Dana was dying inside. “My husband will be happy to talk to you at the office on Monday.”

  Gorson ignored her. “I knocked on the door of the apartment, but no one answered. Marsha Filmore’s staying with you, isn’t she? What do you think she does in her spare time? Can you tell me why you decided to have her live with you?”

  “She doesn’t live with us,” Dana said.

  “My wife’s right.” The tone of David’s voice brought her to the edge of her chair. “I’ll talk to you on Monday.”

  “Just three questions. Thirty seconds each.” Gorson had a wide, white, television smile. “Your food’ll still be warm.”

  “I. Said. No.”

  Dana put her hand on her husband’s forearm and felt his pulse jump.

  Gorson said, “I’m sure you agree it looks kind of strange, her living at your place.”

  David stood up, knocking back his chair. He towered over the reporter. From the corner of the room Dana saw the manager come across the dining room fast. Diners around them had paused in their meals and conversations to watch the scene. A red light flashed on the video camera.

  “David, stop.” She walked around to his side of the table and stood beside him. “Why not answer a couple of questions?” She squeezed his hand.

  Was it true that Marsha Filmore was living with them? Why was she living there? And, finally, “Mrs. Cabot, don’t you worry about your little girl, living with the wife of a killer?”

  It seemed to Dana that all her life she had been smiling when she felt like screaming, smiling to make people like her, to look normal. Her face ached with the memory of false smiles, but she forced another for Mel Gorson. “First of all, it is not a crime to have terrible taste in husbands. If it were, your wife would probably be in jail.” She laughed and patted Gorson’s wrist lightly, as if to say she did not mean it. “Second, this city has dealt very harshly with Marsha Filmore. The press has made her a pariah. I’d just remind your viewers that this woman has not been accused of anything. And as for Frank Filmore, in the United States we have something called the presumption of innocence. He will be guilty only when and if a jury decides he is.”

  Later, as they waited in the dark theater for the feature to begin, David took up her hand and kissed the palm. “You were great, Number One. Saved my bacon.”

  “It felt like the old days.” Standing beside him after good games and bad.

  “Yeah.” He smiled at her. “Those were happy days.”

  “They’ll come again.”

  David laughed curtly. “You mean Frank Filmore isn’t going to be around for the rest of our lives?”

  The theater lights went down. Dana pressed her lips to his ear. “Promise we’ll be happy again.”

  St. Tom’s had a bronze plaque on its oak door declaring the church a San Diego historical site. It had been one of the earliest of the mission churches, built in the late nineteenth century from redwood cut in northern California and carried by coastal barge to San Diego. The fifteen stained-glass windows depicting the lives of the saints had come around the Cape in boxes packed with sawdust, each box filled with hundreds of pieces of colored glass precisely designed and cut and labeled for assembly in San Diego. The floors were of intricate oak parquetry, and the ironwork had come from Mexico in a wagon someone had tried to hold up but been outrun by. Everything in St. Tom’s had a sense of history about it, a story to go with it.

  The next morning, when Dana and David stood for the processional, St. Tom’s was three quarters full. She knew the names and histories of most of the people standing around her; others were nameless, yet later they would “exchange the peace,” hand to hand, a company of believers.

  Dana felt connected to God when she was in St. Tom’s waiting for the service to start, and even more so when she and the people around her recited the Episcopal liturgy in unison. At such times it came to her that whatever God was or was not, the presence of the congregation proved God was powerful enough to bring together people of all varieties in a common declaration of love and belief. That alone was astonishing.

  In the moment before opening prayers, she knelt and vowed not to lie or bend the truth anymore, to be loving to David, more patient with Bailey. She would have to figure out what to do about her thesis, but she did not expect God to help her with that. She begged forgiveness for her sins and strength to follow through on her promises. If God would just preserve her family …

  Jason Gordon was St. Tom’s crucifer that morning. He carried a cross of cypress cut more than three hundred years before in the Holy Land. The figure on it wore robes and a crown and was called Christ Victorious. Dana dipped her head as it passed. Next the choir and then Father Bartholomew, his grizzled old head high, a smile tickling the corners of his mouth. Last, Dana knew without looking, was Lexy. She did not turn her head; she never did. In church Lexy was the High Priest, not her best friend-and now, not her ex-best friend.

  Before church Dana had expected that everyone would be talking about Micah’s death and planning ways to make this time easier on Lexy. When no one said anything, she surmised that Lexy had decided to keep the news to herself for the time being. The massed condolences of St. Tom’s would be hard to bear. She thought about Micah lying in his own blood; she remembered how it felt to love him.

  “Why
’re you crying?” David handed her his clean handkerchief. “You never cry.”

  She made herself think of Micah stealing Bailey from her home, terrifying her. She stopped crying.

  During the “prayers for the people,” the Sunday school director, Laura, eased into the pew beside Dana and whispered, “Bailey needs you.”

  Dana heard Bailey’s screams before she opened the kindergarten door and saw her standing in the middle of the room with her arms pressed rigidly against her side, hands in fists. The other children huddled against the walls gawking, one or two looking ready to scream themselves.

  “What happened?”

  The director shook her head. “As far as I can tell, she just started, no reason.”

  “Baby, baby,” Dana soothed as Bailey fell into her arms, hot and sweaty and coiled with tension. “Never mind, Bay, Mommy’s here. Nothing’s going to happen.”

  Laura said, “Last week I thought she was improving.”

  “She is, every day.” She kissed Bailey’s forehead. “But some days are better than others.”

  “Sounds like a description of normal life, doesn’t it?”

  Laura left them alone, and Dana settled into the soft cushions of the storybook chair with Bailey nestled beside her. She glanced at her watch and saw there were twenty minutes until the end of the service. They would stay put.

  Later, Beth Gordon’s voice broke into Dana’s thoughts. “You two make a beautiful picture. I wish I had my camera.”

  Jason stood beside her, still robed as the crucifer. “I got one of those disposables in the van.” He brushed the top of Bailey’s head with his hand. “Hi, there, Bailey.”

  “Jason, you’re huge.” Dana got a crick in her neck looking up at him. “You must have grown since last week.”

  “Nothing fits him, of course.” Beth smiled at her grandson with such unabashed devotion Dana thought it must embarrass the boy. “Run get that camera, will you?” As he took off Beth said, “We’ll put you two on the front page of next month’s newsletter.”