Blood Orange (40 page)

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 enemy. 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 suddenly 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.”