Lemon Reef (12 page)

Nicole appeared from the hallway. Blondish-brown hair lightly brushed her shoulders, and slight features and light eyes gave her an appearance of innocence and serenity that contrasted with the message the rest of her sent. Multiple silver studs outlined the rim of her right ear, a silver chain choked her lean neck, and she wore blue jeans and a tight-fitting zip-down black leather vest with nothing underneath. A leather purse hung at her hip from a thin strap across her chest.

Focused as I was on her attire, I didn't see Nicole's fist until it struck the bone under my right eye. My head lunged backward, and pain ricocheted through my ears and eyes and down my neck. My hands were fists, even before I felt overtaken with rage. White noise buzzed in my ears; I saw double as I forced myself to my senses quickly enough to protect myself from an anticipated second blow.

But as she came into focus, I saw Nicole standing calmly, arms folded neatly, waiting for me to join her. Then I noticed her fingers twitching and her mouth tightening and releasing. She twisted her neck slightly, jutted her chin, then dropped it to her chest. Neurological symptoms. I recalled what Gail had said earlier about Nicole having been in and out of psych wards, and I recognized the movements as side effects of antipsychotics, telltale signs of her life since I'd last seen her. My rage dissipated as quickly as it had flashed, replaced by a sadness so heavy it made a canyon of my heart.

“Where the hell have you been?” she demanded.

Calmer now, I knew the slug was Nicole's way of saying how desperately she had needed me these past years and how much I had let her down by disappearing.

“I missed you, too,” I said, feeling the side of my face, slowly sliding my jaw from side to side. “Still the wild child, I see.”

Katie, barely in the door, looked stunned. She ran her fingers through her fine white hair, blew out a breath. Gail, by the dining room table, glared at me, conveying an “I told you so.”

Shaking her head with disgust, Pascale said, “I told you not to do that, Nicole.” Then, while looking at me, she added, “How can we ask Jen to help us now? I told you, I can't afford a fucking lawyer.” She turned the bottle of beer she was holding upside down and sucked from it. Her comment was not exactly comforting, but it did confirm my suspicion that I had been summoned.

Nicole ignored Pascale. She tightened her lips, squinted and shook her head. “Talon is
not
gonna get away with this. He killed her. I know he did. He did it for some fucking insurance money.”

Katie walked over and nervously offered me a cigarette, which I considered and then declined. She put one in her own mouth and lit it with a shaky hand. “Okay,” she stammered, “let's just everyone calm down.”

Still cloudy from the punch, I wasn't sure I'd heard Nicole right. “What are you talking about?”

“He
killed
her. And now he's taking her kid to butt-fuck Texas.”

Nicole's fists clenched, then released, and she shuffled from foot to foot, irritably. Her head jerked and her eyes rolled up in her head, then back. Muscle spasms and facial tics marked the ways she'd aged more than time did.

Gail's disbelieving expression said these were the rantings of a lunatic. Gail had rested her hand on the dining room table. Now her face was bent with disgust, and she was frantically trying to remove from that hand some substance it had come into contact with. It looked to me like chicken shit, but I didn't dare say.

“Well”—wiping her hand against her shorts—“
is
there insurance money?” She checked, wiped, checked, wiped. With Gail's germ phobia, I was just glad the chickens were outside, or we'd have been dealing with a catastrophic health crisis for the next week. Katie sat down on the forest-green couch, the cigarette tilted between her fingers. She too was watching Gail and trying not to laugh.

“Two hundred thousand dollars,” Nicole blurted out.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Del told Ida about it.”

Pascale nodded along emphatically from where she was perched on the arm of the couch near Katie. Her body framed by the large picture window behind her, she gestured unenthusiastically toward an open envelope sitting on the table. “Says she had a heart attack and drowned.” Pascale muttered on about how impossible it was for Del to have died the way the medical examiner said she did. Her anger exaggerating her accent. “They don't know what they're doing. I told those kike doctors I don't understand half of what is written there. No one will explain anything.” She got more and more worked up until she was yelling and hurling insults in different languages at no one in particular.

I removed the document from the envelope and studied it.

“This is a preliminary autopsy report.”

Pascale nodded.

“Already?”

Gail stepped in closer and read over my shoulder. “I've heard that drowning deaths in Miami get some kind of priority. It has something to do with encouraging tourism—or maybe not discouraging tourism. Something about tourism.”

I laughed. “Reassurance Miami style—guaranteed a quick autopsy if you or a loved one drowns?”

Now Gail was staring at me.

“What?”

Smugly, she said, “Your cheek's a little swollen.”

I could feel the tenderness in my cheekbone. I glared at Nicole as I left Pascale with her escalating and increasingly nonsensical ranting to go to the bathroom to see the damage for myself. On the way, I noticed the door to what had once been Del's bedroom was ajar. I pushed it open, half expecting to find Del there. When I didn't, it was crushing, like abruptly awakening from a dream in which I'm holding her, only to realize I'm hugging air.

I entered and looked around. The furniture was different. The room smelled of cigarette smoke and stale beer. It was smaller even than I'd remembered it, crowded further by an unmade double bed with stained sheets. The tired antique-white paint was peeling; the faded linoleum floor was torn in places and curling upward around the edges. Curtains yellowed from humidity, dust, and sun covered the jalousie windows from which one or two slats were missing. An insect screen provided a false impression of security. A small dresser held a framed photograph of Del from more recent years. She was holding a little girl—the near likeness of her—securely on her lap, smiling, her eyes looking to something beyond the camera.

From the window behind me, I heard Spanish music and kids talking and laughing. I looked out to the lawn across the street where a group of adolescent boys and girls faced each other in two lines, boys in one, girls in the other. A woman was instructing them in a dance routine. The kids were silly but mostly paying attention, some of the girls much taller than the boys. I heard someone say the word
cumpleaños
, so I assumed this was a rehearsal for a
quinceañera
. Del had been planning hers when I met her, but by the time she did turn fifteen, her parents' marriage had deteriorated and Pascale's drinking had become a daily event. Del's father Andre gave Del a silver-link necklace for her birthday, and Pascale did bake a cake on the day itself, which we had with dinner. But it was Norma, at that time still immensely fond of Del, who decided to throw her a party.

*

We celebrated Del's fifteenth birthday at the Sand Dollar Motel. Norma and Mel provided all the food and drinks and a big cake, and we invited a bunch of friends to a night party on the pool deck. It was January 1983, and
Thriller
was hitting the top of the charts. Michael Jackson's voice amplified from a bulky portable cassette player while a bunch of people did the moonwalk off the diving board into the heated pool. Katie was off on the beach with Jason Schwartz, a football player she was dating. Andrew Torie and John Mason sat on opposite sides of Del vying for her attention. I watched Del flirting in two directions at once. Upset and jealous, I left to take a walk on the beach with Gail and our other soccer friends, Edie and Susan. We put rum in our Cokes and drank as we walked.

“Brent was hilarious.” Susan was laughing and talking at the same time. “Did you see him on his hands on the diving board?”

“I saw you seeing him,” Edie teased.

They had been best friends since kindergarten.

“Yeah, and? Maybe I think he's cute,” Susan said.

“You're being quiet, Jen Jen.” Gail tilted her cup to her mouth and took a swig.

Mostly, I didn't like getting high or drunk, because even back then I worried about feeling out of control, but I was quiet about all that. I'd developed strategies for looking the part—holding a drink in my hand, passing a joint nonchalantly without ever really having hit on it. As was typical, I had taken a sip of the drink I was holding and then surreptitiously tossed the rest some distance back. Now, with images of Del squeezed between John and Andrew making my gut twist, I regretted it.

“Pour me some of yours.”

“You finished that whole cup?” Gail shook her head and poured. “Be careful or your parents'll catch you.”

The air was cold, but mild. The sand was soft and almost white, reflecting the moonlight. I noticed couples we knew disappearing into or emerging out of the sea grape caves that outlined the beach—shirts being rebuttoned, zippers being zipped. Katie and Jason were one such couple, and I watched them giggle and cling as they made their way into the dense, leafy caverns. It would never be like that for Del and me, I thought. We would never be that public or that unself-conscious about our feelings for each other. We would never be admired and envied for how cute we were together. We made out, fondled each other in her room at night, but it didn't seem to register as anything. Del, I was convinced, would cut me off physically the minute a guy got her attention. In fact, Del hadn't been on a date since our first kiss that past November. She hadn't had a boyfriend since the summer when we started spending all our time together. Recently she had told me she didn't want to date anyone, she felt better about herself now than she ever had. In that moment, with Del on the pool deck flanked by Andrew and John, these details seemed purely coincidental to how close she and I had become.

On our way back to the motel, we ran into Del walking with John on the beach. She had his jacket on for warmth. He had his hand on the lower part of her back, and she was leaning into him and laughing at something he had said. When I heard her laughter, I shrank inwardly, felt myself fragment into tiny pieces. The conversation started in my head. I began preparing to let her go, began telling myself it was bound to happen. A moment later I was angry that she would do this to me—just trash us like that.

When she saw us, Del stiffened and pulled away from John. “Hey,” she said, mostly looking at me.

I jutted my chin at her, uttered an effortful
hey
. Bombs were exploding all around us, but no one else could hear them.

“We're just going for a walk,” Del said. To me, “Do you wanna come?”

I continued past her, just her eyes following me. “We just got back.” Someone announced from the pool deck that Norma wanted to cut the cake.

Del shrugged at John and said, “Oh well.”

Norma lit the candles and Del stood over the cake, surrounded by my parents and maybe twenty of her high school friends who now sang “Happy Birthday” to her. John was next to her, holding her drink. I stood quietly off to the side watching her face in the candlelight, the slope of her nose, the fullness of her lips, the soft angles of her cheekbones. I was wearing a sweater she had loaned me and it had her scent. I tucked my nose inside the collar and breathed in a mixture of her detergent, her faded cologne, her soap, her bed sheets. When the song ended, someone said to make a wish. Del waited and seemed momentarily disoriented and dismayed, her eyes searching the crowd. When she found me her face softened. I smiled at her. She pulled her hair out of the way and blew out the candles.

It was after midnight when the last people left. Norma had arranged for a room for us to have a sleepover after the party. She and Mel took the room next to ours. Katie and Gail shared one double bed; Del and I shared the other. Katie was already crashed out on booze and pot. Gail, also drunk, was facedown next to her. Del and I lay awake staring at the ceiling, not saying anything.

Del sat up and whispered, “Come outside with me. I need to talk to you.”

I was scared of what she was going to tell me, thought for sure she was going to confide in me about her feelings for John. My role as a placeholder was about to become obsolete. I pulled on sweats and reluctantly followed her out. We walked to the edge of the deck and stood side by side, leaning on the banister and looking at the ocean. The waves crashed on the shore; the air was soaked with salt and mild fish scents. The moon was a perfect crescent, a hint at something brighter to come.

“So, whad'ya wanna talk about?”

“This was the best birthday party.” Del lifted her face and it brightened in the squinting moonlight. “Nobody's ever done anything like this for me before.” She gingerly fingered the silver-link necklace her father had given her. “I thought it was gonna be such a sad birthday. But it wasn't. It was the best birthday, and I feel really happy.” She waited for me to respond.

“Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

“Yeah, why?”

She was
thanking
me. Hadn't she known I'd been twisted in knots for hours, traveled all over the map? I'd gone from rage at her and wanting to be rid of her, to frightened of losing her, to missing her so desperately I couldn't breathe right. I had planned a breakup speech and a reconciliation speech simultaneously. I had lived through apocalyptic visions of my life without her in it. And there she was, not angry, not leaving, not talking about someone else she could conspicuously disappear into the sea grapes with. Just thanking me.

“John,” I said.