Blood Orange (3 page)

In the heat Dana’s white polo shirt stuck to her back, and she felt
dumpy beside Lexy, who always managed to look stylish in priestly
garb and collar and ankle-breaking high heels. Like many at St.
Tom’s, Dana had been confused and vaguely put out when the search committee called a redheaded former model, a divorced
woman and recovering alcoholic, to replace St. Tom’s retiring
priest. Some parishioners had drifted off to churches with more
conventional clergy. Those who remained praised the wisdom of the
search committee and fell in love with Lexy’s humor and plain
speaking, the goodness she carried within her.

Before Bailey disappeared, Dana and Lexy had made progress in
overcoming the inhibitions imposed by Lexy’s clerical collar. The
first time they met for coffee at Bella Luna, Lexy had told her,
“Hardly anyone speaks to me like a real human being anymore, and
even my brothers have stopped giving me a bad time. They don’t
know how much I long to be silly.” She was not a Bible-quoting
priest. “I refuse to act like I’m holy. I’m as big a sinner as anyone.”

Gradually, Dana and Lexy had worked through their histories to
what Dana thought of as the “deep stuff”: God and family and feelings, and though there was much she believed she would never talk
about to Lexy or anyone, their friendship had been a revelation of
freedom to Dana.

But Bailey’s disappearance had set a wall of awkwardness between them. Lexy was God’s representative at St. Tom’s, and Dana
was angry with God.

Lexy’s office occupied what had once been the master bedroom
of the bungalow. Across from a large corner window open to the
street, a wall of bookcases was packed tight with books that Dana
had at first assumed were seminary texts. Looking closer she saw
Buddhist titles as well as psychology, biology, and physics, Sufi poetry, the enneagram, and even astrology.

“I don’t mean to be rude, Lexy, but can we cut to the chase
here?” Dana perched on the edge of a worn leather couch. “I’ve got
a lot to do today.”

Lying had always come easily.

Lexy sat behind her desk. “I’ve been missing you.”

Dana had not been in church the past two Sundays. If it weren’t
for the Bailey Committee, she would have stopped attending altogether.

“I always like to watch you during my sermons. Your face is so
responsive.

“I’m not even sure what that means.” What she did understand
was that Lexy wanted to control this conversation and move at her
own pace. Short of walking out, Dana was stuck. She slipped down
off the arm of the couch and onto a cracked, overstuffed cushion.
She used to love this couch and the long talks with Lexy, both of
them stretched out, their heads propped on the padded arms at either end. Lexy and David were the only people Dana had ever completely trusted.

Lexy said, “The first time I remember seeing you, you were
wearing a green sweater-it must have been around Christmastime…. That would be right. It was the first Sunday of Advent,
and I’d only been at St. Tom’s for a couple of weeks. Very insecure.”

Dana did not believe a woman six feet tall ever felt insecure.

“I talked about `keeping’ Advent, and you just sat there shaking
your head.” Lexy’s laugh was deep-throated and hearty. She was the
fifth child of six and the only girl. Dana imagined her learning to
laugh with her brothers. “I thought about stopping right there and
asking if you wanted to preach for me. Or we could do one of those
point-counterpoint things like on TV.”

“You seemed so out of touch. How was I supposed to keep
Bailey content with an Advent calendar and a wreath? The day after
Thanksgiving she started nagging for a tree.” Dana strangled on the
words.

“You took me on right after the service. You can be tough,
Dana.” Lexy removed her plain gold earrings, hoops the size of quarters, and laid them on the blotter in front of her. She massaged
her earlobes. “Like right now, what you want to do is punch me
out.”

Dana smiled.

“Am I right?”

“Do you blame me?”

“You’re mad at God and that makes you mad at me. Yeah, I
blame you. It’s not fair to me.” She played with the earrings. “I’m
more than a priest, Dana. I’m your friend.”

Dana focused on the earrings-circles-and refused to be
drawn in.

“I don’t think it matters to God that you don’t believe right now.
I mean He’d probably rather you did, but under the circumstances … ” Lexy tipped back. Over the years the back of her office
chair had rubbed a raw swipe on the woodwork behind her desk.
“Dana, humans are the ones who want our faith to hold steady
under all conditions. And I don’t think it’s about God most of the
time. I think we want a steady faith because it makes our lives more
pleasant. It’s a control thing. Doubt equals discomfort in most people’s lives. Belief means security and every question has an answer,
the more simplistic and concrete the better.”

“You’re saying God doesn’t care one way or the other?” Dana
fiddled with the frayed cording around the leather cushion. “That’s
supposed to make me feel better?”

“I’m saying if you lose faith for a while when your daughter’s abducted, God understands.”

“That’s big of Him.”

“None of this means we aren’t still friends, Dana.”

But don’t count on me for a Christmas present this year. Dana was
becoming as bad-tempered as her grandmother, Imogene.

Imogene had rained on every parade Dana ever took part in, squatted on every float she ever built, and slept through every song
she ever marched to. To get out of Imogene’s house Dana had
learned to shape reality by focusing on her goals and depending on
only herself. Emotions like anger and disappointment undermined
her determination, so she taught herself not to feel them, to bury
them deep. Since Bailey’s disappearance this had become harder
to do.

Lexy said, “What if He’s a She? Do you hate her, too?”

“A female god wouldn’t let children be hurt.”

“It’s the big question, isn’t it?” Lexy examined her red acrylic
nails. “If God is good, how can He, She, or It let such awful things
happen in the world?” She grinned, looking beautiful. “Maybe
you’d be happier as a fundamentalist, Dana. They always have answers for situations like this.”

“And all you have is questions. Don’t you even have an opinion,
Lexy, a theory?”

“Sure I do, but you’re not going to like it.”

Dana smiled. “When has that ever stopped you?”

“Maybe some lessons are so hard, the only teacher is pain.”

Dana rolled her eyes. “I was hoping for something more original.”

“The truth is just the truth, Dana. It doesn’t have to be original
or startling. It just is.”

“That sounds like an excuse for not having any answer at all.”

The skin over Lexy’s high cheekbones turned a bright pink.

“Shit.” Dana laid her head against the back of the couch and
closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I know I’m being a jerk. I’m not … myself.”

“Sure you are.” Lexy’s eyes were neon green. “You’re probably
more yourself right now than you’ve ever been. Grieving, bitching,
and angry: this is Dana Cabot without the high-gloss enamel.” Lexy held up her nails. “Under this plastic or whatever it is, you should
see my nails. Pitiful. But they’re me. This other stuff is just cover-up.
I accept that.”

Dana’s brain was too battered to come up with a response.
Remember me when I was funny and resilient and determined-not
taking razor swipes at the people who love me, she thought.

In the office the only sound was the low whir of the airconditioning. Dana pressed her fingertips against her eyelids. How
hard would she have to push to blind herself? On the other side of
the door a phone rang. She looked at Lexy and saw stars.

“What did you want to speak to me about?”

Lexy put her earrings back on. “A hitch in the facilities. Nothing
serious, but we have to move the Bailey office. We’re in a constant
space crunch around here, you know that. Too many people need
that big room in the undercroft. So I’m going to put you guys in the
room at the back of the offices.” She pointed behind Dana. “It’s not
huge, but you can leave everything out. Lock the door and come
back, no one’ll disturb your stuff.”

Dana thought of taking down the smiling Bailey posters, the
maps and blowups of flyers, of rolling them up, of carrying the computers across the parking lot, of running yards and yards of new extension cords. Though no one would say so out loud, the move
looked like a demotion. What had been an active cause would seem
less so in a small back room. She wanted to kick Lexy’s desk. She
wanted to kick Lexy.

“I have a selfish reason for doing this, Dana.” Lexy waited, and
finally Dana looked at her. “I miss seeing you. I don’t have many
friends, not real friends, and I thought …”

“I can’t be anyone’s friend.”

Not even her husband’s. David and Dana slept in a bed that felt
at once cramped and too vastly wide. They ate silent meals at the dining room table and occasionally, when David was not working
late, watched television together with the room completely dark so
they could not see each other’s faces.

“I know you mean well, but there’s no way you or anyone else
can understand.” Even the people in the support group: their love
and loss had seemed inferior to Dana’s. “I think about her all day,
and at night I dream about her. I can’t get away from her. In my
mind I see her in the most horrible situations and I can’t turn off the
pictures. It’s like I’m being tortured, my eyelids are pinned back
and I have to watch the awful … “

Sometimes she hoped Bailey was dead. Better dead than suffering as in those imagined scenes.

“Oh, Dana. Poor Dana.”

She did not want Lexy’s sympathy, nor her empathy, and definitely not her Christian charity. Nor did she want others to share her
feelings. Not even David. She was just as happy he had found distraction in the Filmore case and left her in sole possession of the
black and bottomless grief and guilt. If she could not have her
daughter back, she would have these.

“I have to go.” Dana stepped toward the door quickly to avoid
Lexy’s hug. Her hand on the knob, she said, “Beth knew about the
move out of the undercroft?”

Lexy nodded.

“And she didn’t want to tell me, right?” Dana stared at the toes
of her tennis shoes. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate … I don’t mean
to be so hard to get along with. I just … am.”

Lexy stood beside her. Dana smelled the green-grass and citrus
fragrance she wore.

“Listen to me, Dana.”

“No.”

“The only way through this-“

Dana shook her head. The last thing she wanted to hear now was
a religious cliche.

“I’m your best friend,” Lexy said. “You’re mine.”

“If that’s true, then you’ll leave me alone.” Dana’s eyes burned.
She clenched her jaw and turned for the door. With her hand on the
knob she added, “I can’t be anyone’s friend.”

very afternoon at two-thirty Dana Cabot’s cell phone rang. Five
idays a week the driver of the Phillips Academy minibus said
more or less the same thing: “I’m at the corner of Goldfinch and
Washington. Two minutes, Mrs. Cabot.”

The staff at Phillips Academy said Bailey needed structure if she
was to learn to manage life. And after three years, the routines, the
very basic classes, and the constant positive reinforcement had paid
off. Bailey was learning her letters, knew the names and values of
coins, and recognized the numbers on an old-fashioned clock facealthough eleven was likely to be called one-one and twelve, one-two.
Since December she had become amusingly pedantic on the subject
of community services. Police, firefighters: she knew what all of
them did and shared her knowledge with everyone, including the
housekeeper-and-babysitter, Guadalupe, who spoke no English at
all. At Christmas she had insisted on baking cookies for the drivers
of the recycling and garbage trucks who called out hello to her
when they made their Thursday pickups.