Blood Orange (32 page)

Could they be more dreadful than her own? Not unless Marsha
Filmore was sitting before a mirror, seeing herself as she truly was
for the first time.

Lexy had held the mirror up to Dana.

Fog; blanketed the streets and homes of Mission Hills, ghostly
vines of it twisting through the trees in the park and drawing scarves
of gray across the faces of the houses along Miranda Street and
Arboles and Felicita. Near the corner of Arboles and Descanso she ran past a house with all the windows alight, a man in the driveway
loading suitcases into a minivan. He turned his head as Dana ran by
and lifted his arm in a friendly gesture. She did the same. A normal
family, going on a trip.

All her life she had wanted the safety and assurance of a normal
life. How could she have guessed there was a corner of her that did
not want these things at all, that craved risk and sensation.

In her thoughts the fog parted, and she glimpsed her future. If
David never learned about Micah, and if Dana could forget Micah
and Florence, and if Bailey talked again, and if she never spoke the
name of the man who had kidnapped her daughter … Dana had
tried to create a safe and predictable life for herself, but now here
she was, the days and weeks ahead littered with contingencies, the
hours held in place by “ifs.”

Turning down Ramona, she cut up through an alley toward the
lights of Fort Stockton. The footing was insecure there, a mixture of
gravel and broken pavement, and she slowed her pace. Then a dog
barked suddenly and loudly from behind a redwood fence, jolting
her nerves. Before she recovered from the surprise, something leapt
out from behind a pile of garbage cans, startling her afresh. There
was a screech and a cackle, and a female face loomed so close she
could see the lined, leathery skin, the pale, watery eyes, and smell
the reek of urine and sour wine.

Jumping back, she tripped and fell. As she scrambled to her feet,
the woman hung over her, snorting and laughing from the black
cave of her mouth. Dana thrashed out with her arms, touched the
woman’s filthy clothes, and recoiled. Gaining her feet, she sprinted
toward the lights of the boulevard.

She needed light; she needed people. At that hour the only place
open in the neighborhood was the Jack in the Box on Washington Street. Speeding up, she moved out into the broad street and ran
from streetlight to streetlight, counting her breaths and flexing her
hands to dispel the tension in her arms.

One word had flashed through her mind when the woman
jumped out at her. Mother. Her mother might have ended up like
that derelict. She had certainly been on her way to that destiny the
night she left Dana shivering on Imogene’s porch.

Dana welcomed the sterile fluorescence of the Jack in the Box.
She ordered a cup of coffee and a sweet roll from the sleepy-looking
Hispanic girl whose fate it was to be taking orders in the middle of
the night, paid with the five-dollar bill she kept in her shoe, and
took her order to a corner table facing the wide street. Like bizarre
golden-eyed fish, the headlights of the predawn traffic emerged
from the fog and vanished in flashes of piercing crimson. At the
stoplight a sedan screeched to a halt. The woman driving banged
the heel of her hand on the steering wheel.

Any angry woman anywhere might be Dana’s mother.

What did Lexy know, finally, of what it meant to be Dana? Tell
David, she had said. But Lexy had not been abandoned like a stray
dog, just another consequence of her mother’s mistakes. Lexy had
not spent her life waiting to be found again, and she would never
understand that it was this that bound her to David. He had found
her. Tell David, Lexy had said with the certainty of one who has
read the rules but never played the game.

Dana got home just before five. She showered in the downstairs
bathroom so as not to wake David. Afterward, she returned to their
bed, clean and warm, smelling of flower fields. David turned over
and put his arms around her, nuzzling her neck where the hair was
still damp. She kissed his ear, his neck, and the hollow of his throat
where his pulse leapt. He was her quarterback and hero. It was he who had found her, and if God would only let her escape disaster
one more time, she would never hurt him, never give him reason to
wonder why, or if, he loved her.

He drew her to him, and they made love with their eyes closed,
wrapped in the musky warmth of half-sleep. Vision seemed an inferior sense to smell and touch. With her hands she explored the familiar territory of his body, the landmarks: a break in his collarbone
that had healed poorly, the long, powerful thigh muscles, and the
ridge of an appendix scar on his flat belly. She drew him deep inside
her, wanting nothing more than to dissolve the boundaries between
them and merge into one indissoluble being.

After they made love they lay in each other’s arms, talking sleepily.

David ran his palm along the curve of her hip. “I was thinking
about what you said the other day about not taking any more cases
like this one.” Although David had other clients, they both knew he
meant the Filmore case.

“You shouldn’t listen to a crazy woman.”

“Not so crazy. It’s a head thing. This kind of case, it’s different
than a regular murder, because it’s a kid. And the repercussions …”
He stroked her hair back from her forehead. “I can’t stand that
Bailey got taken because of me. It doesn’t matter if it all works out
and she’s okay. I’ll never forgive myself for putting her in harm’s
way.

Dana put her fingertips on his mouth. He kissed them, and she
changed the subject.

“We need a vacation. We need to put all this behind us.”

“How’s Hawaii sound?”

“I was talking to this woman at church, Nova Harris? She lives
in that big house on Paloma?” Dana propped herself on one elbow. “She and her husband went to Fiji, and she said it was fabulous. No
huge crowds, great service, and gorgeous beaches.”

“Isn’t that where they have cannibals?”

“Idiot. You’re thinking of Papua, New Guinea, and there aren’t
even cannibals there anymore. Fiji’s on the way to Australia.”

David closed his eyes, smiling. “What about Alaska? We could
fly into one of those fishing camps-“

She punched his shoulder. “Grizzlies, with fangs!”

He chuckled and nuzzled her neck. “But think of the fish and
the firelight.”

“Think of me cooking the fish.” Laughing, she got out of bed
and in one swing pulled the covers off the bed.

Later, when they were sharing the electric toothbrush and the
vanity mirror, Dana caught the scent of cigarette smoke and stepped
to the bedroom window. She pulled the blinds back, letting in the
morning sun.

“She’s out there, on the steps, with a blanket around her.”

David stood behind Dana, his arms wrapped around her waist.
Already the warmth and intimacy had begun to dissipate. Reality
was back, making a space between them.

“I told her I’d get her mink coat out of storage.”

“She’s one peculiar female. I just can’t get a read on her.”

“Oh, I can,” Dana said, sighing. “She’s hiding something.”

Trust me. I have a sixth sense for deceit.

orothy Wilkerson looked tiny and peaceful in her high, oldfashioned bed. Pretty. In a room downstairs Lexy had seen a
picture of her on her wedding day; and now, as she slept, and the
lines and wrinkles relaxed, the girl emerged from the face of the old
woman. Lexy thought of the dreams and ambitions and disappointments of Dorothy Wilkerson’s long life; and when occasionally a
pulse jumped in her eyelid and she groaned or murmured something too softly for Lexy to make out the words, she wondered what
thoughts and memories streamed through her sleeping mind. One
hundred and two years was a long time to live.

Someone had brought in branches of lavender and arranged
them in a tall glass vase. Set before the window, which was open just
a crack, their fragrance filled the room. From the other side of the
door the radio played softly. Lexy recognized Mahler’s transcendent
Planet Suite.

She wanted to know Micah’s thoughts in the moments before he
shot himself. Had it even occurred to him to write her a note of
good-bye, she who loved him most, his Irish twin? She snuffed the uncomfortable feeling of anger toward him. He had been too sick at
heart to serve her needs. Lexy hoped he regretted stealing Bailey
and had prayed to be forgiven. Maybe he was just glad he’d made
Dana suffer.

There was meanness in him, too.

Lexy held her prayer book on her lap unopened, though the
need to offer up her anger and pain was a raw second skin burning
beneath the surface.

For many years prayer had been a joy and a continuing conversation Lexy could pick up at any time. In the car, and while she
cooked or cleaned, she talked aloud to God. She lost herself to God
in meditation. At night she knelt beside her bed like a child and offered pup the wins and losses of her day. Some seminarians had spoken of doubt and being blocked in prayer, but it had never
happened to Lexy until now.

Estranged from God and Dana, she had never felt lonelier. Not
only could she not pray, she now had no one to talk to. No more
coffee-saturated conversations with Dana at Bella Luna. No more
midnight phone calls and trips to Nordstrom for shoes with threeinch heels. Where would she go after church on Super Bowl Sunday?
Who would make her a Christmas stocking and leave it on the front
seat of her car to find after Midnight Mass?

Mass.

We confess that we have sinned against You in thought, word and
deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We
have not loved You with our whole heart; we have not loved our
neighbors as ourselves; we are heartily sorry and humbly repent….

Loving God meant loving Dana, and Lexy could not do that. We
are heartily sorry and humbly repent….

She did not repent. Not a word, not a thought.

Dorothy Wilkerson stirred and moaned. Lexy wondered if she
dreamed of visitors in plumed hats. Or was she thinking of her
daughter, chewing over the old argument that had divided them.

Maybe I’ll regret all this when I’m old. God, standing at the gate
of Heaven, might turn Lexy away because she had not loved Dana
as she loved herself, as her ministry called her to love all the fallen
and broken of the world.

I should forgive her.

Never.

I should atone for the pleasure I took in being cruel.

Dorothy moaned and muttered in her sleep.

We are heartily sorry for these our misdoings. The burden of them
is intolerable.

Lexy remembered the day of her ordination, the end of a long
and difficult journey of self-examination and questioning by others
as she sought to understand her call.

The bishop had asked her, Will you endeavor so to minister the
Word of God and the sacraments of the New Covenant, that the reconciling love of Christ may be known and received? … Will you undertake to be a faithful pastor to all whom you are called to serve? …

She had answered yes to these questions and more. Yes without
qualification. Yes with enthusiastic confidence. She should have
said, “Yes, I will keep my vows until my best friend kills my brother
by loving him.” Then she would turn her back on her promises and
love herself and her rage first, God and His Son second, Dana last.

She bent forward and laid her head on her knees, borne down by
the weight of what she knew now that she had not known when she
entered Dorothy Wilkerson’s bedroom. She still believed in God; it
would be easier to lose her faith in oxygen than in God. But she
could not follow God’s law.

I can’t be a priest anymore.