The Truth About Delilah Blue (8 page)

The house was too still. Lila knew he wasn’t home the moment she stepped inside and stood blinking in the darkness. She wandered back out and down the gravel path behind the house, past the overgrown bushes, to check the wild and weedy area that led down to the street below theirs, then climbed back uphill around the north side of the property, past the miniature pool, to where the old green shed leaned for dear life against the hillside. She tugged open the squeaking door and blinked stupidly into the dark. “Dad?”

Slashes of sunlight from splintered planks made dust particles dance and bob. A long shredded cobweb swung down from the door frame, and when something brown and hairy scurried across the dirt floor, Lila backed outside and slammed the door shut.

Next door the dog started braying. Not bored staccato cries. More like inside out, scare-away-the-old-man cries. She looked toward the heavily treed south side of the property, where their lot abutted the new neighbors’. It was dense with half-dead underbrush and had no fence. She marched across the dirt and scrambled up the stony rise toward the property line, staying low when she heard snuffling and scraping. On her hands and knees, she crawled closer and peered through some piney branches, shrinking down again fast. The dog wasn’t braying at her dad. There was a coyote in the yard. Slash.

She looked up again. The foxlike Basenji, red with a white blaze that stretched from muzzle down to chest and belly, was dancing around the intruder, stamping white feet and furrowing its wrinkled brow in an effort to drive the coyote away. Not the most brilliant move, perhaps, but a valiant effort. Lila willed the dog to back off before Slash became fed up.

It seemed the coyote had no interest in the pert little dog. He had his snout rammed deep in a food dish and was so transfixed on eating, he was propelling the dog bowl clear across the deck. Once the dish flipped over onto the grass, empty, the animal inspected the ground for remnants and, finally, turned his attention toward Anaïs.

Lila stood up and charged into the yard, waving her hands and growling like a lunatic. Slash looked up, then bolted, gliding off into the brush with his black-tipped tail tucked low against his hocks.

T
HE
D
ATSUN WOUND
down a narrow bend in the road and sped through a shaggy and tangled tunnel of leafy trees. This stretch of road looked like a back alley, with weathered
garages and faded fences and ancient homes opening right onto the road on both sides, many of them looking as if they’d grown there, sprouting up from the ground along with the thistles and periwinkle and feathery, soot-covered grasses.

Normally she wouldn’t put this much effort into chasing down her father. If the man wanted to take a walk, let him take a walk. Today was different. Could have been the encounter with the coyote, or the shock of seeing Elisabeth, but Lila had a bad feeling sitting in her lower spine. Probably meant nothing, but it seemed Victor had been gone for a while, and she would never forgive herself if something had happened and she’d sat at home eating a bowl of Cap’n Crunch. She had been combing the neighborhood for forty minutes and had just pulled to the side of the road so she could think about what to do next, when she saw a well-dressed man clutching a travel mug.

Victor.

Lila turned off the engine and watched for a moment. Victor was staring across the road at a mother and daughter coming out of the painted clapboard store that stocked fresh salmon, radicchio, and organic cleaning products for canyon residents who preferred not to make the trek down into town. The mother, a young woman in peasant dress and leather sandals, and a girl with long sandy hair, a floral shift, and flip-flops, lifted a few bags into the wicker baskets on their bicycles and stooped to unlock the chain that linked their tires.

Still staring, unaware that his daughter had pulled up behind him in his beloved brown car, Victor stood and watched the child, smiling. He took a step toward the road. A black Ferrari raced past him, shooting dust up his pant
legs. Undaunted, he waved his arms to get the little girl’s attention, then stepped onto the hot pavement.

“Dad!” Lila was out of the driver’s seat and running toward him. She caught his elbow just as a navy SUV swerved around him, horn blaring. Lila guided her father back to the safety of the shoulder. Confused, he allowed himself to be led, but glanced from his daughter to the girl across the road.

“What were you thinking? You walked right out onto the road!”

“That bike. She shouldn’t be getting on it.”

“What are you talking about? You don’t even know her.”

“It’s just…I don’t know.” Victor watched as the mother and daughter pedaled away. He reached up and rubbed his jawline, looked at his daughter as if she’d just arrived. “I’m not sure what happened. The light was in my eyes, I think.”

“Why did you wander so far, anyway? You must be starving.” She took the stainless steel cup from his hand.

“I could use a sandwich. Bacon, lettuce, and tomato might be nice.”

She led him to the car and debated telling him about Elisabeth. After all, to whom did she really owe her allegiance—to the woman who couldn’t be bothered to make a phone call for over a decade or the man who’d been there for every scraped knee, every nightmare, every Christmas morning? It seemed traitorous to keep quiet.

But then he did it. Stiffened when she handed him the keys. As she made her way to the passenger-side door, he stood at the rear bumper, holding them as if they’d been dipped in acid. “You drive, Mouse.”

“Me?”

He climbed into the car. “Why so shocked? You have a perfectly good license.”

It was an unwritten rule in their household. As long as Victor had a pulse, he drove. Period. It had taken Lila two full years of begging before Victor had allowed her to drive the car, and the experience had been so fraught with warnings of devaluing a pricey car and hard-to-find vintage parts it had nearly turned her off driving for good. She could thank the city of Los Angeles for her perseverance. Had she lived in a city more conducive to walking, she’d have given up. “I don’t get it. Are you sick?”

“No.”

“Then what’s going on? You never want me to drive.”

“Just tired.”

She went around the other side and climbed in. There was no telling him about Elisabeth now, not with him behaving so oddly. “Okay, Mister. But no snide comments about my driving. Promise?”

He didn’t answer.

“You make me nervous and then I make mistakes.”

“Siniwick fired me this morning.”

“What?”

He nodded.

“From your job?”

“Yes, from my job.”

“Why? You were salesman of the year all those times.”

“Who knows?” His hair had slipped away from his spreading bald spot, over which he carefully gelled it each morning, and fallen over his eyebrows like overgrown bangs. With eyes large, troubled, he gathered the
strands off his face and hunched his shoulders. It killed her when he did this. He looked like a young boy. “The reps they bring in keep getting younger and younger. I don’t suppose they like having an old toad like me around.”

“But that’s ageism. We can sue.”

“No one’s suing anyone. I’ll find another job.”

It wasn’t a good time of life to be unemployed. Victor was far too young to retire and far too old to stand much chance of landing a decent job somewhere else. “Well, they must have given you some kind of severance.”

“Surprisingly decent, since they said they had ‘cause.’”

“What does that mean? You did something to justify it?”

“It’s just some term they use so they don’t have to compensate when they weed out the over-fifties.”

She knew what being fired meant for a man like Victor. Being ousted from his station of provider of authority; donor of electricity, salad dressing, and Q-tips—even if he sent his semi-loyal subject skittering down the street to get them; king of decreeing the lawn to be mown or the trash to be banished. To take away his power was to crush such a monarch. All he had left was his easily distracted shaggy-haired serf and his splintering citadel.

“Age isn’t cause, Dad. Maybe if we call a lawyer…”

His face grew pink as he stared at her. “No lawyers. I don’t need some pompous prick who thinks he’s better than me digging into my affairs.”

“What affairs? You were fired.”

“And you can bet he’ll charge me three hundred fifty dollars an hour to do it!”

“Okay, Dad. Settle down. You’ll get another job. A better
job. We’ll do up your résumé. We’ll put you through practice interviews. Everything will be okay. You’ll see.”

It was barely perceptible. As she shifted the car into gear and pulled onto the road, Victor’s hand, ever so slowly, reached for the door handle and gripped it hard as if bracing for impact. “Dad!”

Morning took years to come. Anaïs’s yowling had begun around two
A
.
M
., and a chorus of overexcited and probably unneutered males joined in just before four o’clock. When the commotion didn’t stop, when the dogs didn’t pipe down after Lila’s countless pleas through her bedroom window, when she realized Anaïs was likely not spayed and was in heat, maybe even in danger as she was significantly outnumbered by her frenzied group of suitors, Lila had finally tugged on a pair of rain boots and marched outside in the dark, barreled into the neighbors’ yard to chase the males up and onto the road.

There was no sleep after this, especially with thoughts of Elisabeth swirling around her brain and butting heads with worry about Victor’s state of mind and sudden lack of a job, so Lila had parked herself in the darkened living
room, wrapped herself in an old afghan, and curled into a ball.

Lila had left Toronto unexpectedly, with plans to stay with Victor for just one night. Eighteen hours, twenty if Victor brought her home late, which was his pattern. As such, she’d brought none of her favorite things: not the unfinished paint-by-number of the smiling dolphin, not the well-laundered teddy bear her grandmother had given her when she graduated from kindergarten, not the photo album she kept under her bed with class photos, Christmas photos, photos of ants from her pithy stint as an entomologist—a career path that ended abruptly when Lila held a magnifying glass over a worker ant on the sidewalk to get a look at his antennae and accidentally fried him to death.

As a result of her hasty overnight packing, the only photos she had from her other life, the only photos she had of Elisabeth, were in an old album of Victor’s, stashed on a bookshelf in the living room.

She’d flicked on a light, pulled out the book, and flipped to the second-to-last page to the photo she loved most. Five by seven, glossy, with a thin white border all around. Lila was about five or six—all giraffe limbs and bony joints in her sleeveless dress—nothing soft or cuddly about her. But Elisabeth, propping her daughter up in front of a canvas, encouraging her young child to paint for the camera, snuggled her around the middle as if she were the most huggable child on earth.

This photo used to taunt her. Look at what she’d had, then lost. But now the photo angered her. Who might she be now, had she grown up with such adoration and confirmation of her worth? This seemingly good mother who later
turned around and abandoned any interest she had in her child. Did she really have it at all?

Now maybe the lingering questions would be answered. If nothing else, life would finally make sense.

L
ILA LEANED INTO
the wind on Sunset and marched toward the awning of Le Petit Four with hair whipping and snapping in her wake. The morning’s nebulous mixture of stratus and fog had worked itself into an irritable tempest that sent sidewalk debris skittering up her legs. Not only that, but the temperature had plunged. Felt more like January. Los Angeles January.

Lila didn’t mind the cooler air today. It had given her reason to pull on an oversize navy turtleneck, one that Victor had tired of a few years back, and fraying Levi’s cutoffs. For the occasion, she’d dressed up her feet. She’d pulled on the cowboy boots she’d found at Goodwill for $32.75 a few days prior. They were nearly new. Soft and sandy suede and full of the new person she promised herself she’d become: a proper person who draws on paper rather than self.

She came upon Book Soup and its plein air bookshelves, magazine covers flapping in the wind. Not wanting to arrive at the café before Elizabeth, she paused and pretended to flip through a copy of
National Geographic
. She studied an ad for an animal rights group without really seeing it. Another two, three minutes and she would be sitting in front of her mother. Her stomach lurched and she regretted the extra cup of black coffee.

She’d made a decision on the way over. This was not going to be an ooey-gooey, you’re-back-in-my-life meeting with her mother. First of all, Elisabeth could take off at any minute, not to resurface again for another twelve years. So it
was best not to get too close. Second, she had already proven herself to be reprehensible as a parent—the most untrustworthy person in Lila’s life, really. So what this brunch was about was getting answers, ingesting a little protein, and protecting herself from further hurt. But not necessarily in that order.

It was time. Lila left the safety of the magazine rack and continued along the sidewalk in a fog, crossing side streets without looking, barely noticing the car that screeched to a halt when she stepped out in front of it.

Answers, caloric sustenance, emotional distance.
Lila repeated it silently as she marched.

Then there she was, right where she said she’d be, at the far end of the patio, all expectant and glowing under the canopy of dazzling yellow umbrellas that sheltered the outdoor tables. She could have been anyone, glancing up the street, flicking cigarette ashes onto the sidewalk: a recently jilted woman wondering if her blind date would ever show; an empty nester waiting to meet her girlfriends for baby green salads after yoga class; an aspiring screenwriter with 110 pages of hope trapped in a rubber band, waiting to slip it to a B-list actor on his way to the restroom.

With her curls gathered into a loose knot, with lips glossed pink but a face otherwise free of makeup, in a flamboyant, beaded turquoise jacket and an ankle-length, snug white skirt, Elisabeth looked up and waved, then clapped her hands over her mouth in excitement. Lila snaked through the tables to her mother, unsure what to do when she got there. No need to worry, Elisabeth was already up and gathering her close. Lila had to work to soften her body—stiffened from years of distance—and allow herself to be hugged by the woman who birthed her.

It overwhelmed Lila, the sensation of being held so close. It seemed a lifetime since she’d felt it. Victor had never been a hugger and, other than the odd coworker of Victor’s who reached over his desk to muss her hair on days she accompanied him into the office, she’d grown up with very little human touch. Now, with the strength of her mother’s hand cupping the back of her head, Lila stared down at Elisabeth’s flowered mules and tried to lose herself in the strange sensation of closeness.

There was a show she’d seen recently on TV about newborn panda bears and how zoologists in Japan don’t name the impossibly tiny cub until she reaches six months of age in case the cub doesn’t make it. All too often the mother inadvertently flattens her offspring. In order to ensure the blind, hairless, squalling, and bawling infant has the best possible chance, the cub might spend up to half her time in an incubator. But not swaddled in receiving blankets like a human. They slip her into a large pocket made of panda fur. Right away, the panda stops screaming because she believes she is being pressed against her mother’s chest.

Lila too was silent.

Elisabeth’s hair smelled like Alfred Sung perfume—her old standby. Breath mints. Cigarette smoke. Lila gulped it in as if she might take back her entire childhood in Toronto. It was a good smell, a sweet and dirty smell, and brought her back to her old green daisy comforter and sheets, her Holly Hobbie doll, tramping through the ferns and mossy logs in the Rosedale woods to spy on people who had cushioned patio furniture and gardeners and pools, the sofa in her mother’s painting studio from where she used to watch Elisabeth—paint brush in one hand, cigarette in the other. It brought back sliding down the thinly carpeted stairs in
a sleeping bag, and getting her head stuck in the painted metal banister while spying on Elisabeth’s friends. Watching
Degrassi Junior High
reruns way too young and drinking milk from a bag rather than a carton. But most of all, her mother.

Answers, caloric sustenance, emotional distance.

Lila pulled away from the hug. It hurt her mother, she could see in Elisabeth’s curled lip. Hurriedly, Lila said, “It’s so good to see you.”

Elisabeth’s eyes were moist. “I was sure I’d dreamed you into being yesterday.” She stood back and stared hard, as if to keep her daughter from vanishing once again. “I still can’t get over you. So lovely. All grown up and tall and strong. I was thinking last night that, if I’d passed you on the street, I would have known you, I’m sure of it.”

“Me too,” said Lila. “I’d know you too.” It was true. Elisabeth hadn’t aged a day. Same wild hair, same round green eyes, same delicate jawline and wide mouth. Same year-round caramel skin, faintly dusted with freckles, that suggested she’d spent a year somewhere exotic and beachy. The lines at the corners of her eyes might have deepened but only enough to make her smile hit you harder in the gut.

Mumbling awkward observations about the weather and the traffic, they lowered themselves into the slatted wooden chairs and Lila realized, for the first time, there was a small girl at the table with eyes so blue they could have been snipped from the sky. Long, white-blond hair whipped around her face like blanched snakes, clearly a source of irritation as she kept reaching up to try to tame it. Near-black eyebrows and lashes seemed to belong to another person entirely. She wore what appeared to be a
private school uniform: carefully pressed white blouse, gray cardigan, and pleated navy skirt. In between selfconsciously rearranging her silverware, and attempts to force her hair behind her ears, the child stole awestruck glances across the table at Lila.

Lila waited in silence for an introduction that didn’t come.

“I just can’t believe I’m here with you again,” said Elisabeth, pulling a package of Tylenol from her purse. She took two tablets and washed them down with ice water. “I think my whole system’s in shock. Delilah, sweetie, you look a little pale. You want a painkiller?”

“That’s how I always look: washed out and in need of ibuprofen.”

Elisabeth threw back her head and laughed. “You’re so funny.” She looked at the girl. “Kiki, didn’t I tell you Delilah was funny?” The girl appeared to be suppressing a smile and nodded.

Lila started to ask who she was, but Elisabeth interrupted. “It’s a lot to take in, I know. Did you say anything to your father?”

“No. But I will today. Dad and I don’t keep secrets from each other.” Except, of course, those pertaining to standing naked in front of strangers. Jesus, she thought, what a hypocrite I’ve become.

“You can tell him after breakfast. I just wanted a little time with you first.”

Lila nodded.

“We have so much to catch up on. It’s going to feel strange for a while, and that’s okay.”

“Yeah.”

“I worried about the coyotes all night. Can’t somebody get rid of them? It doesn’t seem safe to have them right in your yard like that.”

“You get used to them, living in the hills. And anyway, they were there first, right?”

“Still. I’m your mother. It’s been my job to worry since the day you were born.”

Lila stared at the tablecloth and willed herself not to comment about Elisabeth’s lengthy hiatus from said job description.

There were many times, in recent years, especially, when she had sat in front of the computer, heart thumping, went to Google, and dared herself to type in Elisabeth Lovett. It wasn’t a terribly uncommon name, and, not surprisingly, a good many matches came up. There was the realtor in Florida—she held the coveted www.elisabeth lovett.com URL, where she showcased glorious estates on the waterways in Fort Lauderdale and Hallandale. There was a musician, a self-published parenting author with an Amazon listing and shabby-looking Web site, and some swim meet stats for some Elisabeth Lovett from Ireland. On the first page of Elisabeth Lovetts, these were the regulars, though sometimes the order of their placement differed.

In all honesty, Lila really didn’t want to know what it was that had proven more worthy of her mother’s time and energy. It might hurt too much to learn her mother was hawking her sculptures and paintings to investors from Dubai. Or that she’d given up art entirely to raise her brood of quintuplets and was blogging her way through the toddler years. It was like Victor always said:
Never ask a question unless you’re prepared to hear the answer.

Every time, she signed off before clicking through to page two.

Lila looked up at her mother, determined to say something innocuous. “You know what they say about worry. Not healthy. Good thing you took a decade off.”

Elisabeth took a moment to adjust her blowing hair and smiled brightly. Too brightly. Her eyes filled with tears she blinked away.

Lila couldn’t have felt worse.
Answers, caloric sustenance, emotional distance.
A waiter, in his late twenties and so striking he could only be an aspiring actor, came by to take their orders.
RYAN
, said his name tag. Elisabeth composed herself quickly, ordered hot chocolate for the girl and mimosas for the two of them. Ryan looked up from his pad and smiled at Lila. “I hate to be a drag, but I need to ask you for ID.”

Lila wrinkled her nose. “Don’t have it with me. Sorry.”

“She’s twenty-one,” said Elisabeth, reaching out to squeeze his forearm. “I’ll vouch for her. I am her mother.”

Ryan blushed, laughing. “Yeah, that might not meet California code…”

Elisabeth’s tongue darted out to wet her lips and she tilted her head, allowing her curls to fall forward and blow against her cheek. It was as if she’d turned up the charm factor to full. “It’s a very special occasion.”

“It’s okay, Mum. I’ll have orange juice.”

“Not so fast. Ryan looks like he’s the kind of guy who breaks a few rules now and then.”

“Argh…you’re killing me,” he said.

She was rubbing his wrist now, her dimples peeking in
and out from behind her hair. “Come on, honey. It’s a quiet morning. Your boss will never know.”

“All right. But I’ll bring her OJ and if anyone asks, both mimosas were for you.”

One thing was certain, the woman knew how to get what she wanted. A gene that skipped over her daughter completely.

“You’re a darling,” she called after him.

As Ryan walked off, grinning like a man smitten, the little girl turned her face to the sky to analyze a growing bright spot in the clouds, where the sun was attempting to push its way through. With a determined brow, she set about undoing the buttons of her cardigan, pulled it off, folded it carefully, and draped it over the back of her chair. She tested the sweater’s stability and, once confident it wouldn’t slip to the ground, she turned around. The wind had fortuitously switched direction, which offered her busy hands a reprieve from hair taming. They sat, clasped but ready, on the edge of the table.