Blood Orange Page 26

  Lexy whispered without thinking, “I promise.”

  “Mommy. Say … Mommy.”

  “I promise.” Lexy swallowed. “Mommy.”

  “The sixties … terrible times … but I never stopped …”

  “I forgive you, Mommy. I was a difficult child.” She did not think before she spoke. The words came from beyond her mind and were light and thin as wafers laid on her tongue by the priest. “I was as much to blame as you.”

  Dorothy sighed and released Lexy’s hands with a pat. Lexy thought she would go quickly after that, but she lingered at life’s edge. Lexy thought of a boat moving slowly toward the horizon. At any moment Dorothy would disappear over the curve of the earth.

  Later Alana brought her another cup of tea; and when she had drunk it, Lexy began reciting in a whisper all the Psalms she had memorized. It would take the rest of her life to memorize the entire Psalter, but if she made a greater effort she could do it. As she spoke the words their harmony uplifted and opened her like an intricately folded kite; and though she was speaking, it sounded more like singing to Lexy. A whoosh of air fluttered and filled and billowed the bedroom curtains, and she felt a rush of love so strong it almost lifted her out of her seat.

  Dorothy’s pale eyes were open and watching her. “Thank you, Lexy, my dear. For everything.”

  Dorothy died three and a half hours later at eleven-seventeen.

  Afterward Alana said, “Rest, Lexy. You deserve it. I’ll take care of things now.”

  There was a midnight AA meeting in National City in the South Bay. Too wired to sleep, Lexy drove there. In the basement of a Catholic church half a dozen men sat on folding chairs; two middleaged women and a teenage girl with gothic eyes were talking by the coffeepot. They stared at Lexy a moment before they smiled and asked her if she wanted coffee. She realized she was still wearing her clericals.

  The meeting began in the usual way, and since fewer than a dozen people were present, all were expected to share.

  Lexy told the room full of strangers, “I had the most extraordinary experience. I’d been full of doubt about my worth … as a priest … and I’d been planning to resign.” She dug her letter from her purse and held it up. “I was going to take this to the bishop’s office, but at the last minute I got called to sit with a woman who was dying….”

  She knew the people in the meeting would understand what happened at Dorothy’s bedside, because like all recovering alcoholics they were accustomed to miracles. Their own lives were proof of God’s astonishing reality. It didn’t matter if they under stood that she had lost her vision of God in the world. It did not matter if they were surprised by what she had done at Dorothy’sspeaking prayers she did not think she had a right to say until she heard herself saying them, pretending to be Ellen Brownlee. And at the same time not pretending.

  She told the alcoholics in the room that at Dorothy’s bedside she had felt God’s very touch. As she spoke through her tears the men and women nodded and smiled and murmured affirmations. When she finished speaking the meeting went on as if nothing extraordinary had happened.

  the van was again parked in Imogene’s driveway, and Dana had to circle the block twice to find a spot big enough for her 4Runner. She got Bailey out of her seat and they walked back to the bungalow.

  The violinist opened the door, smiling when he saw her, revealing big, square, yellow teeth. Imogene came up behind him.

  “Well,” she said with a snort of humor, “if it isn’t Agent Double”-Seven.”

  The man said, “I saw you sneakin’ around the house the other day. Looked right at you, only I couldn’t be sure. My eyes aren’t so good. “

  Dana wanted to crawl off and hide.

  “Come in if you’re staying.” Imogene looked down at Bailey. “Who’s this big girl, anyhow? What happened to my granddaughter? You’re way too big and strong to be her.”

  Bailey ducked her head and grabbed a handful of Dana’s skirt.

  “Don’t tease her, Grandma.”

  “Oh boy, I don’t recognize those feet,” Imogene said. “Those feet don’t belong to Bailey-Bobble. You must be Miss Bailey-Bibble.”

  Bailey grinned and shook her head.

  “My granddaughter, Miss Bailey-Bobble, likes to play the piano. Do you like to play the piano?”

  Bailey nodded enthusiastically and let go of Dana’s skirt.

  “Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t see so good these days.” Imogene squinted horribly and bent over almost to Bailey’s height. “Well, lordy, you are Miss Bailey-Bobble.”

  This affectionate playfulness was something new from Imogene, and it irritated Dana. She could not remember a single playful moment when she was growing up.

  Imogene said, “Sit down, Danita, and stop looking so badtempered. Tobias’ll get you some water. How ‘bout you, BaileyBobble, you want some water? Some juice maybe? I got the grapey kind, wine for kids.”

  “Don’t call it that, Grandma,” said Dana.

  “So what’ll it be? Water or grape-juice wine? Say the word and you got it.”

  Bailey opened her mouth and silently formed the word juice, which was a better response than Dana had gotten from her for a long time. Part of her wanted to whoop with pleasure, but she would not give her grandmother the satisfaction.

  Imogene said, “That the best you can do?”

  Bailey nodded.

  “Well, it’s good enough for me,” Tobias said. “Come on in the kitchen, Miss Bailey-Bird-Bobble.”

  Great. She’s got him playing the stupid game.

  “Stay here,” Dana said. Bailey’s mouth drew down into a scowl.

  “Aw, let her go with him, for the Lord’s sake. You came to talk to me, didn’t you?”

  As if Dana hadn’t objected at all, the kitchen door swung closed behind Bailey and Tobias. Dana threw her purse onto the couch and dropped onto a cushion. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

  Imogene harrumphed.

  “Why do you do that?”

  “What?”

  “Make that … noise. It’s so insulting.”

  “Well, I’m very sorry.” Imogene looked amused.

  “You do it just to get a rise out of me.”

  Imogene laughed aloud. “And that is so easy, my girl.”

  Dana stared at the carpet. “Is this new?”

  “‘I en years or so.”

  “It looks new.”

  “I take care of my stuff.”

  And I don’t? Was this an oblique reference to Bailey’s kidnapping? Or am I just paranoid where she’s concerned. Dana wasn’t sure of anything these days.

  Imogene sat in her recliner and tipped it back so Dana could see the eraser-colored, corrugated soles of her shoes. Abruptly, Imogene levered the chair upright again and sat forward, pointing her finger at Dana.

  “I know why you’re here. You came over because of what I said about your mother. You’ve been chewing on it, right? That’s why you were sneakin’ around the side of the house like a creeping Tom.” She shook her head. “You want to deny it, but for once in your life you should just go ahead and tell the truth. Surprise yourself.”

  “I’m not a liar.”

  “Your mother couldn’t tell the truth if it was a snake with its fangs in her face.”

  Dana started to cry but stopped almost immediately. She wiped her eyes on the hem of her T-shirt and then started up again.

  Imogene sighed. “It is a relief to see you cry. All your life I never saw you shed one tear. Even that time you fell off your bike and bled like a stuck pig. It’s like there was something wrong with you.”

  “With me?” Dana tossed her head back. “If I’d cried, you’d just have used it against me. You’d have made me feel small and stupid and weak.”

  “Not me, honey.” Imogene stuck out her lower lip and shook her head. “If you’d of broke down just one time, I might of had a chance to get near you. But you were dead sure I was the enemy. From day one.”

  Of course you were the ene
my. My mother called you the old bitch, and the battle-ax. “I was afraid of you.”

  “Maybe. Some. But mostly you were pissed off because you had to stay with me and not with your mom. You wanted her and you got me instead, and that made me the bad guy. Only you never would come right out and say it. If you’d just got mad, Danita, you’d of felt a whole lot better.”

  “Why are you telling me this now? Why couldn’t you have said it before?”

  “You tell me.”

  “And why did you say that the other day? About her being in the kitchen? “

  Imogene shrugged. “Pure orneriness.”

  Dana did not know how to respond.

  “You never had time for me, Danita, but I did what I could for you. I tried to make a home. If it seemed like I wasn’t too happy about it, well, you’re damn right. I never wanted to be a mother myself. Your mom was a big accident, believe me. And then just when I thought I was out of the woods, I had to go through the whole damn thing again with you.”

  “I never asked to be abandoned.”

  “You love that word, don’t you?”

  Dana stood up and grabbed her purse.

  Imogene waved her hands. “Sit down, will you? Seems like you can’t hear the truth any better’n you can speak it.”

  Dana sat, feeling angry and miserable, because for once she could not ignore Imogene’s opinions. She had used up her defenses protecting herself against Lexy and David.

  “Danita, I’m not saying it was so great for you being left with me. And I’m not saying I wanted you. But I did the best I could. That’s what you never have got in your head. All you can think about is how rough you had it, but let me tell you, it would have been a whole lot harder if she’d of kept you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Just believe what I say.”

  “She loved me.” Dana waited. “Didn’t she?”

  “She loved what she could shoot in her arm. That’s that.”

  She had always known this.

  “Maybe she quit.” Lexy had told her it could happen even to hard-core addicts.

  “Not that one.”

  “You’ve been in touch with her?”

  Imogene’s sigh fluttered in her throat. “Your mom’s dead. She died less than a year after she left you here.”

  Dana waited for the world to end, but after years of hungering for and fearing the truth, it turned out to be just words.

  “Why did you let me think she was alive?”

  “I just never could talk to you, nor her, either. You’re as hardheaded as she was. You got your brains from your father, thank God.”

  “You knew him?”

  “Met him once.” Imogene chuckled. “‘Bout as many times as she did. Good-looking except for that hair clear to the middle of his back and ratty as tumbleweed.”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  Imogene shook her head.

  Dana leaned into the couch and shut her eyes.

  “Cops called me a few months after she left you here. They found my name and phone number in her pocket. She ran that big old Chrysler off the road somewhere in New Mexico. They said she was so high she probably thought she was flying.”

  Dana saw how it happened. The girl behind the wheel of the old car, maybe singing loud with the radio, moving her shoulders in time to the music, her eyes half closed and lost in the words-a whiter shade of pale-lost in the music, a curve on a mountain road, and then all of a sudden the road wasn’t there anymore and she was sailing through the air, and probably it felt like fun, and maybe she was laughing when she hit the ground.

  “I hope she was too stoned to know what happened.”

  “Me too.”

  Bailey rushed in from the kitchen with Tobias behind her. She threw herself at Dana’s knees.

  “You have a grape-juice moustache,” Dana said.

  Bailey spread her arms and began to twirl, making circles around the little living room until she fell on her back on the floor and laughed.

  Dana watched in amazement.

  Imogene said softly, “She’s gonna be okay, Danita. Just give her the time she needs.”

  She did not know why she was crying. She had too many reasons. “I never wanted to be like my mother, but I guess I am.”

  “Don’t you believe it. Not for a minute.” A heavy rose fragrance gushed from the warm places of Imogene’s body as she stood and crossed to the big grand piano. She patted the bench and Bailey scrambled up beside her. To Dana she said, “You got all the selfdiscipline she never did, plus your own, and you got his brains. He told me he was studying to be a physicist or something like that. I remember it surprised me he wanted to spend time with my daughter. The only thing’s the same as her is you’re stubborn, and she never could stand to hear the truth any more’n you can.”

  Imogene played a few bars of “Heart and Soul.” Tobias sat on the other side of Bailey and played the treble melody.

  Maybe her grandmother was right. It was too noisy in the little room to think clearly.

  The piano stopped, and Imogene said, “Tobias, how ‘bout you go up to the ice cream store and get some Rocky Road? You like ice cream, Bailey Be-bop-a-lulu?”

  Bailey bounced on the piano bench, nodding her head like a floppy-necked doll. A moment later, as she and Tobias were going out the front door, Dana felt an instant of alarm. She didn’t know who this man was, and she was letting her daughter go walking away up the street with him. Imogene read her mind.

  “Don’t fret about Tobias. He’s good as gold and my oldest friend.”

  “Back when I was here?”

  “Oh yes. He was married then. His wife had MS and he tended her till she died. That was a couple years ago. He used up all his money, so I help him out from time to time.”

  “That’s why you ask for extra?”

  “I don’t want to hear a lecture, Danita.”

  She was too wrung out to argue about anything.

  “What’s the matter with you all of a sudden?” Imogene went back to her recliner. “Talkin’ about your mom. That why you come over here?”

  “I don’t know why I’m here. I just got in the car and this is where I ended up.”

  The recliner’s tired cushions wheezed as Imogene sat down again. “You got trouble?”

  It was pointless to pretend when she felt the misery on her face like a scar.

  “You want my opinion?” Imogene said.

  “How can you have an opinion when you don’t even know what happened?”

  “I know enough to know what I know.”

  Dana looked away.

  “You do what you have to do to keep that little girl with her momma and daddy both. You hear me? If you have to crawl to that man, you do it, because if you give up you’re as good as finishing Bailey off. If he did something bad, you just scrub it out of your mind. Your daughter needs the two of you together, and if you don’t believe that, you just look to your own life.”

  “David won’t even talk to me. I think he slept in his office last night.”

  “He got a girlfriend?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Don’t look so shocked.” Imogene’s mouth curled with amusement. “He’s a nice guy, but think about it-he’s no saint.”

  If Dana thought any more her brain would fry.

  “So what’d you do, anyway? Have sex with the UPS guy?”

  “Grandma!”

  Imogene chuckled. “I just want you to lighten up a little, Danita. What you have to do is go down to his office, and if you’re lucky he’ll be there, and you can tell him you’ve been an asshole and he’s too good for you and whatever you did wrong you’ll make it up to him.”

  Dana stared at her grandmother. Imogene laughed.

  “Guess you don’t have to say `asshole.’ It’s not quite your style. The important thing is to get him home, in the house with you and Bailey. “

  A gang of kids walked by on the sidewalk, their voices high and argumentative, then s
uddenly boisterously happy. She saw her life in this house like a book she’d written for herself, one long harangue of discontent and complaint. If it were a real book, she would toss it out and start a new one.

  Imogene said, “Tell you what, I’ll keep Bailey overnight, and soon as she and Tobias get back, you take your leave, go find your husband, and make it right with him.”

  Not once in seven years had Bailey spent the night with Imogene.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Danita. I’m not gonna harm the child. Lord, I’ve always thought she was a sweet thing.”

  “I thought you didn’t like her. I thought she irritated you.”

  Imogene swiped at the air irritably. “Honest to Jesus, Danita, I could be the Virgin Mary with spurs on and you wouldn’t give me the time of day.”

  ‘hen Dana looked up four stories and saw the light on in David’s office, she wasn’t sure if she felt relieved or just frightened. She knew what she had to tell him but had no idea of how to be honest and persuasive at the same time. She had no fine feelings for herself or important-sounding excuses for anything she had done. She felt as if, with all the tears and talk, she had spilled herself upon the ground and become nothing but a body with needs. Maybe an infant newly born, if it had adult consciousness, would describe itself the same way.

  The office was locked, but she had her own key and opened the door quietly. In the semidarkness the place looked a mess, crowded with cluttered desks and bookcases and untidy, disorganized desktops. Papers and file folders and boxes of documents were piled on the floor and on chairs. Cabot and Klinger could not keep an office manager for more than six months, and it showed. If David ever forgave her maybe she would sign on for the job. She no longer had any intention or desire to finish her Ph.D. She might win the lottery and buy Arts and Letters from Rochelle.

  She knocked on David’s office door and turned the knob. “May I come in?”

  He looked terrible, bone-weary and worn to the nub of himself. Dana knew she looked the same. The remains of a pizza sat in its oil-saturated box on the edge of his desk.

  “Don’t tell me to go away, David.”