Blood Orange (30 page)

Later, he had lain in bed, his hands shaking, the back of his neck
and shoulders rigid. He hadn’t bothered to brush his teeth, just
dropped his clothes on the floor and got under the covers. Dana
slept on her side with her back to him. She had not moved since he
came into the room.

“Dana,” he whispered, fitting his body into the curve of her
back. “You ‘wake?”

Her breathing was regular and deep.

“I need to talk to you.” He laid his hand on the curve of her hip. Let me hear your voice in my head, not hers. “Wake up and talk to
me, Dana. Please.”

He remembered her sigh and how she stirred just enough to put
a little space between them. His hand had slipped from her hip, and
then he was asleep.

he next morning David came into the kitchen and saw exactly
what Dana wanted him to see: a sunny room, at his place on the
counter a cup of coffee, a glass of juice, and that day’s edition of The
San Diego Union Tribune. Bailey smiled when he kissed her and
went back to that morning’s fascination, picking blueberries out of
her pancakes and pyramiding them beside her plate like cannonballs.

“Hungry?” Dana asked brightly.

“Always.”

She heard the scrape of the stool on the Mexican tiles and the
rustle of the paper being unfolded.

The pancakes did not burn despite the sugary blueberries, and
the syrup came out of the microwave at the perfect temperature.
Moby barked at the garbage man, and Bailey jumped off her stool
and ran to the living room to wave at him from the big window.
Dana moved around the kitchen like an ordinary human being.

She put a short stack of pancakes on his plate.

“How ‘bout a little sour cream?”

As she opened the refrigerator she felt him looking at the back of
her head.

“What’s this all about?” he asked.

“It’s not like I’ve never cooked breakfast before.”

“Out with it, Number One.”

She leaned her hip against the stove and stared down at her bare
feet. She thought about making up something, but she was tired
from her sleepless night, and after yesterday she thought another lie
might break her back.

“You were awake?” he asked.

She nodded.

“How come you didn’t talk to me?”

Inadvertently a sheepish smile pinched the corner of her mouth,
and immediately she saw confusion cloud his eyes. He was always
surprised when people dealt with him unfairly. She thought of the
boy parceled off to his uncle in Texas because his mother couldn’t
cope without pills. Once he told Dana that though he loved his
uncle and aunt, a part of him used to wonder what terrible wrong
he had done that his three older siblings had not. There was an innocence in David that she treasured, but it made him vulnerable,
even to her.

He pushed his plate aside and dragged his hand across his face.
“I needed you.”

“You’d been drinking. With Marsha.”

“She was on the steps.”

“She’s always on the steps.”

“Is that why you’re mad at me?”

She sat at the counter and rested her head in her hands. “I’m not
mad at: you,” she said, glad to be able to tell the truth. “Not even a
little bit.”

His voice softened as he touched the inside of her wrist with his
fingertip. “Then why?”

“Did Marsha tell you she baby-sat?”

“Marsha? You said you’d never-“

“Lexy needed me.” She couldn’t go an hour without lying. “Her
brother shot himself.”

“Oh, Jesus, poor Lexy.” He pushed his plate away. “And you,
you knew him. You said he was kind of weird, but you spent time
with him, he showed you around. Honey, I’m so sorry.”

His straightforward sympathy screwed her guilt in tighter and
deeper. Her stomach contracted. She moved away, just a little.
Perhaps he would not notice. “I just needed to be … alone, I guess.
After you fell asleep I went for a run.”

“You could have woken me up; we could have talked.”

Once upon a time that was what they did when one of them was
troubled. Dana wondered when they had stopped and why and
might it be possible to turn back time in just this small way.

“I wish you wouldn’t run at night.”

“It’s safe enough. Isn’t that why we moved to Mission Hills?”

The subject changed. The morning went on.

As David was leaving for the office, he paused by the back door.
“I almost forgot. Last night I told Marsha you’d take her to see
Frank today.”

She looked at him. “Today? Oh, David, I can’t. Not today.”

David put his arms around her. “Look, honey, I know you liked
Lexy’s brother-what was his name? Michael?-but I really need
you to do this for me. If you sit around you’ll just feel miserable.”

“She can wait-“

“Dana, why can’t you for once just say okay?” His smile never
reached his eyes. “Just try it: `Sure, David, happy to help out.”’

“I don’t even want Bailey in the car with Marsha Filmore.”

“Yeah, but you let her babysit last night.” He sighed and patted
his mouth with his tightened fist. She almost heard him counting
down his temper. “Whatever happened to the Number One I could
go to, no matter what?”

She wasn’t a wide receiver; she was his wife, his lying and adulterous wife. She looked away, sensing that if he looked into her eyes
he would see the truth there.

“I don’t get what’s happening to us, Dana. I feel like I barely
know you anymore. I mean … are you in the game or not?”

She closed her eyes and whispered, “In.”

“Then start acting like it, okay?”

A moment later she heard the garage door groan as it went up
and the car backing down the driveway to the street. All at once it
seemed that if he went away angry it would be like the moment
when the razored edge of a steel trap slammed down on an animal.
There would be no going back. The wound would never heal. The
death would be a slow agony. She ran out to the driveway and
grabbed hold of the half-open window on his side.

He shifted into Neutral.

“David, I’ll take her, of course I’ll take her. I’ll do it this afternoon. But after this case is done, promise me you won’t take any
more like it. You could stick to personal injury and torts and stuff.
It’s this case that’s got me acting so weird.”

He shook his head. “Don’t blame the case, Dana, though it’s a
pisser, IT grant you. What’s going wrong with us is more than that.”
He twisted the plain gold band he wore on his left ring finger. “The
thing about you and me, Dana, was the way we used to work together. Only now we don’t. Now we can barely have a conversation
without one of us going off.” He stared at her.

“It’s my fault.”

“Did I say that? Didn’t I precisely say `us’?”

“But you meant me.”

David shifted into Reverse. “I got a big day ahead of me. If you
won’t take Marsha-“

“You weren’t listening to me. You never listen to me. I said I’d
do it.”

He closed his eyes and then opened them. “Why couldn’t you
just say that in the first place? Why did we have to go through all
this crap first?”

San Diego Central jail is a multistory sandstone-colored monolith that occupies most of a block near the courts. Dana dropped
Marsha at the visitors’ entrance and drove to Seaport Village, where
she and Bailey browsed the tourist shops, ate ice cream, and watched
the boats in San Diego Harbor. Though the sun was bright, the
weather had begun to change. The wind had shifted and carried a
bite of the north in its current now. Dana and Bailey, dressed in cotton slacks and long-sleeved T-shirts, were cold by the time they returned to the jail two hours later and found Marsha pacing the
sidewalk, smoking. Driving home, Marsha leaned her forehead against
the passenger-side window, leaving an oily smudge on the glass.

Dana parked the car in the driveway. “You’re shivering,” she
said to Marsha. “You need a heavier coat.”

“It’s in storage.”

The woman looked so beaten down Dana felt sympathy for her.
“I’ll get it out of storage for you.”

“It’s a mink. Full-length.”

“In San Diego?”

“Frank gave it to me.” She looked at Dana as if to size up her reaction to this. “I have a fox jacket, too. He gave it to me for my
birthday last year.”

“Generous.”

“He always gives expensive gifts.” She showed Dana her Rolex
in case she needed convincing.

“Unless you’d rather get it yourself….” Dana wished she hadn’t
volunteered.

Marsha’s eyes narrowed. “Why’re you being so nice all of a sudden?”

“You’re having a hard time.”

“I don’t want your pity.”

“I don’t pity you.” It was hard to say exactly what she did feel.
She disliked Marsha Filmore, yet at the same time she felt an inexplicit kinship with her. She was strangely reluctant to break the connection and send her back into isolation. She asked, “Why did you
go to see him?”

“You husband said I should.”

“He can be persuasive.”

“He’s okay, your husband. Better’n most.”

“If I were you, if … Frank were my husband, I’d never go near
him.” She carried so many lies around with her these days that she
had a powerful longing to speak her true mind. “You should file for
divorce.”

“He’s my husband.”

“But you don’t want to see him.”

“I never said that.”

“You said David told you-“

“I didn’t want to call a taxi, have the TV people follow after
me.

Dana’s face turned hot with embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I misunderstood.”

“And, by the way, I never told your husband about babysitting. I
could of said something last night, but I figured …”

In the backseat Bailey fussed and kicked.

“Is that the only sound she makes? Does she ever talk?”

“Not since she was taken.”

“Bet you’d like to see that guy hanging by the balls.”

“No.” Dana rested her head on the steering wheel, exhausted.
“Not really.”

She got out of the car and went around to open the door behind
Marsha. Bailey fiddled with the lock on her seat belt. Dana’s hands
shook as she pressed the button and opened it for her. Bailey grizzled and beat on the arms of the seat with her fists.

Marsha said, “How do you stand the noise? It’d freak me out.
That Lolly, she was a fusser, too, believe me.” She followed Dana
into the backyard. “We could hear her all the way inside our house,
yelling and crying and whining. It was hard for Frank especially.
One thing about that high IQ he’s got, he needs quiet to think. Did
you know his IQ is over one hundred and fifty? The mind of a genius, it’s sensitive. He couldn’t think with Lolly making a racket.”

Dana looked pointedly at Marsha’s belly.

“Yeah, I know. But like I told your husband, I’m going to train
this baby. She won’t make a peep unless I want her to.”

the morning after Micah’s suicide Lexy did not get up in time to
see the sun rise. She lay in bed with her eyes shut, playing a
game from her childhood. So long as she kept her eyes closed, nothing that had happened the day before was real. The game hadn’t
worked well when she was eight, and it was useless now. Scenes
from the night before pressed down on her eyelids until they
burned.