Blood Orange (25 page)

“He doesn’t deserve you. He leaves you alone. He stays away
most nights.”

“He works.”

“If you were mine I’d never let you out of my sight.”

“That’s it,” she said, backing away. “I’m done. I’m going for my
run now, and if you’re not gone when I get back, I’m calling the police. I will do it, Micah, I promise you. I’m going to say you’re stalking me.

He touched her shoulder and she flinched. As he ran his fingertips down her upper arm, she thought of a sculptor stroking the clay
beneath his hands, warming it into life.

“You’re so strong, Dana. You look delicate, but you’re not. You’re
tough. I always forget that about you.”

Move, she thought. Run. She didn’t know why she was still
standing there, mesmerized by his hands caressing her shoulders
and up her neck into her hair.

“If you came to Mexico sometimes no one would have to know
except us. And I’d be satisfied with that, Dana. It’s not much, but
I’d be okay, I wouldn’t ask for more than four or five times a month.
I’d be able to work then. See, that’s the deal, I can’t work now. It’s
like I’m flat all the time, but just knowing I’d see you would give me
something to hope for.”

It was pointless to argue. She had nothing to say to him that she
hadn’t said before. Micah was a creature of whim and emotion, a man
inured to logical arguments, one who reveled in the life of his senses.

Hopelessly, she covered her face with her hands.

He pulled them away, and his large dark blue eyes peered into
her face. In the heat of his gaze what was hardened against him
melted and spilled. Sensing this, he put his arms around her, and
she did not resist but took a deep breath and, letting it out, came to
rest against the familiar lines of his angular body.

He was hard against her, and without thought her hips moved
toward him. His arms tightened around her. She saw the future.
Saw herself lying on the damp grass within view of the house and
yet as lost as if she were both blind and deaf, abandoned in a dark
land beyond rescue.

She jerked away and stumbled backward, regaining her balance
against the trunk of the eucalyptus. “I can’t be your hope, don’t
make me your hope. You have to let me go.”

“Never. As long as I live-“

The crisp lemon scent of the tree sharpened her senses.

“You need help. Not hope. You need to go back on your meds
and see a doctor, talk to someone. Not me,” she whispered. “Not
me.

s Dana retreated from the park and crossed the street she
sensed him watching her, hoping she would weaken, turn back
and return to him. She tried not to run or reveal in any way how
frightened she was. He might call out, and she was not sure what
the sound of his voice might do to her.

As she came around the corner of the garage she saw Marsha
Filmore sitting on the top of the steps to the apartment, smoking a
cigarette. She wore a huge sweatshirt and black leggings. Even
pregnant, she looked thin, with skinny legs and arms and shoulders
rounded like a dowager’s. In contrast, her stomach bulged as enormously as if an exercise ball had been stuck to the front of her.

Dana stood in the shadows, watching and waiting for her body
to stop shaking. Marsha lit a fresh cigarette off the burning stub of
the first. Dana felt a flash of outrage on behalf of the fetus but then
saw the script of despair on Marsha Filmore’s face and her disapproval became pity. It was not Marsha’s fault Frank Filmore was a
monster. And in the old days plenty of women smoked during pregnancy, and their children mostly turned out fine. Dana’s own
mother had used tobacco and only God knew what else.

She opened the gate to the yard and said good morning. Then,
“I’m just making coffee. Would you like a cup?” Any distraction
would help break the spell of Micah.

As she measured grounds into a filter Dana realized she was beginning something David had known she would not be able to resist. He never said he wanted her to pump this woman for information.
He wouldn’t dare. But to Dana his motive was clear.

Since when was Dana supposed to do David’s work for him?
Didn’t he pay an investigator to dig up the dirt? Resentment distracted her further and burned like chronic indigestion. It seemed
like she was always resentful of something these days.

Through one of the large kitchen windows Dana watched as
Marsha settled onto the redwood chaise, tilted her head back, and
closed her eyes. Dana imagined Marsha had once loved Frank
Filmore and perhaps had held on to that love as long as she could,
but now it was gone, yet she was stuck with him. That seemed like a
pretty good reason for smoking. Or maybe she loved him in spite of
what he was. Maybe she couldn’t help loving him.

Having filled the kettle, Dana had begun slicing strawberries for
Bailey’s breakfast when David came downstairs. Although it was
Sunday, he was dressed for work in chinos and a cotton sweater. His
eyes were bruised with fatigue.

“Did you run?” he asked.

“It was chilly. Very fallish.”

“Uh huh.”

“You’re going to work?”

“Uh huh.”

Dana ticked her head toward the deck. “And leaving me alone
with her?”

“I’ll be back around three-thirty. The game’s at four.”

“You’re going because you’re mad at me?”

His expression said she had just asked a question too profoundly
stupid to be acknowledged.

A sharp retort was on her lips, but she remembered her vow to
be agreeable and forced a smile instead. “I don’t know what happened to me last night.” She hated making apologies. “I just lost it.”
She wondered how long he had stayed up drinking with Larry and
the others. Once the sleeping pill took effect, Dana had slept
through the night without waking. “First there was the stuff about
the press and her moving right in, and then …” She shrugged and
hoped he understood.

“It doesn’t matter.” Translation: he was pissed.

“David, please. Don’t be mean.” She whispered so that Marsha
would not hear her through the open back door.

Bailey wandered into the kitchen wearing only her underpants
and a pair of bunny slippers.

“Look at her hand,” David said. Gloved in bandage and gauze it
was twice its normal size.

“It wasn’t my fault. She hit the bottles against the sink.”

“Why’d you make a big-“

“Lower your voice, David. We can talk later.”

“-deal of it? When you were a kid didn’t you ever put beer bottles on your fingers?”

Imogene drank beer from cans.

“Why can’t you try just a little harder, Dana? I know it’s not easy,
but what the hell else do you do?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I
didn’t mean that.”

But of course he had. Her job description was simple: wife,
mother, and team player. And right now she was failing in all three.

He looked as if he wanted to say something else, but instead he
lifted his shoulders and smiled a little-sheepishly, she thought. A
smile she had once found irresistible. A man who smiled that way, she could forgive him almost anything and for a long time. Not forever, but for a long time.

“The game’s at four,” he said.

At four o’clock the house would be full of David’s buddies and
some of their wives, women Dana knew only from Sundays in the
fall. Beer, California sushi, chips and salsa; someone would bring
lasagna or pizza or nachos. Football food.

“Did you forget it’s our Sunday to host? I wrote you a note.” He
gestured toward the refrigerator, where Dana saw the pink Post-it note.
It had been there ten days at least, and she had stopped seeing it.

On the deck he paused to lay his hand on Marsha’s shoulder and
say something. Words of consolation and encouragement, Dana
supposed. He was good at that when he wanted to be.

She wondered if Micah still stood in the park watching the house
and how many times had he done it before tonight. She could look
out the living room window, but she really did not want to know.
Feeling the way she did right now, she could not trust herself.

“Shit,” she said, aiming the word at life in general.

Bailey tugged on the sash of Dana’s dressing gown.

“What?”

Bailey patted her lips with her index finger and shook her tangled head. Beautiful silent angel.

“I’m sorry,” Dana said. “That was a bad word.” She lifted Bailey
into her arms and kissed her bandaged fingers one by one.

Bad wife. Bad mommy.

Eventually Dana carried the coffee to the deck. “Sorry I took so
long.” She laid the tray on the table. Marsha had stubbed out her
cigarettes in a pot of geraniums. Dana handed her an ashtray.

Bad mommy. Bad wife. Great hostess.

“I never sleep anymore,” Marsha said. “And there wasn’t any
coffee in the apartment.”

Dana wondered if she imagined criticism. Had Marsha been expecting a full larder? Ten-dollar-a-pound coffee and deli packs from
Real Food?

“I hate to go out,” Marsha said. “People look at me.”

Common ground at last.

“It was the same for me when Bailey was gone. After the first article in People. “

“Ghouls,” Marsha said. “Where is your little girl?”

“Eating breakfast. She’s nervous around strangers.”

“Ha! Me too.”

Dana flinched as a hummingbird whirred by her ear. It hovered,
piercing the blossoms of the leggy pink buddleia that grew in a pot
at the edge of the deck. Down the street someone was using a leaf
blower, and there were children in the park playing soccer. It was a
normal Sunday for everyone but the Cabot family. It would take the
fingers of both hands to enumerate how off-kilter their individual
and communal lives had become.

“I saw you,” Marsha said, looking at Dana over the rim of her
coffee cup, “in the park.”

Dana swallowed sand.

“It doesn’t matter, you know.” Marsha regarded her steadily.
“Who you meet, who you talk to, it’s none of my business. I won’t
tell your husband.”

Dana’s cheeks reddened as much with anger as embarrassment.
“You can tell him what you like. A lot of people around here run.”
Dana’s voice did not want to cooperate. “Early runners. We know
each other.”

Marsha smiled and took another sip of coffee. “You want to be
careful, out on the streets so early.”

Dana stared. Who was this woman to tell her anything? She
blurted, “You shouldn’t be smoking.”

Marsha looked surprised and then dismissive and amused.
“Considering everything, cigarettes are the least this little girl’s got
to worry about.”

“It’s a girl?”

“Yeah. Poor little cunt.”

Fingers and toes tingling, Dana stood up. She took Marsha’s cup
from her even though she hadn’t finished it. “I’m going shopping.
I’ll buy you groceries. Leave the list on the tray.”

She walked into the kitchen and locked the door behind her.

n Sunday Lexy taught an adult Bible class following the ten
‘thirty service and afterward enjoyed a three-mile run on the
beach. She stopped by El Cholo for carryout and now lay on the
couch in her gray sweats, the remains of a beef burrito on a plate on
the floor beside her. There was no question she had earned this day
of rest, but it was the same on Sunday as on the other six days of the
week-when she stopped moving, doing, acting, and working, she
felt the disapproving eyes of God upon her. Or were they her
mother’s eyes? She couldn’t always tell the difference.