Blood Orange (31 page)

Since seminary her morning ritual had been a comforting discipline. The words of Morning Prayer and the day’s Collect and lessons
calmed the waters of her mind in all weather. But on the first day of
a world without her brother, Lexy could not pray. The gears of faith
did not engage. She sat in her easy chair by the window and thought
about life without faith, spinning out of control into a place where
nothing mattered. Not God. Not sobriety.

Call someone. Go to a meeting.

She got to work late. With laypeople reading the Morning
Office, she told herself there was no reason to be prompt. The
members of the stewardship committee filled up the chairs in the waiting room, eyes on the clock as she came in fifteen minutes late
for their appointment. That was the kind of day it was.

She had only glanced in the mirror when she left home and must
have looked a wreck. The head of the committee asked her if she
felt okay.

“I had a bad night.” She wasn’t ready yet to talk about Micah.
“You have to be nice to me today. No surprises.”

The committee smiled and chuckled, reassured.

After the meeting she sat in her chair with her feet on the windowsill and waited for the phone to ring. Maybe it was true that
Micah had told Dana to come by for one of his Florence pictures,
but she didn’t believe they had met on the street. It was too unlikely.
Lexy knew Dana had trouble with the truth. This had never been an
impediment to their friendship, but Lexy had known her to lie to
protect herself and those she cared for, to simplify, to dismiss the
truth when it was inconvenient.

Lexy called Alana, Dorothy Wilkerson’s nurse. At the sound of
her calm, kind voice, she told her about Micah.

“I grieve for you, Lexy. A brother is a precious thing.”

“He was on antidepressants. Stopped taking them.”

“Oh dear,” Alana said. “You blame yourself?”

“Of course I do. I should have tried harder-“

Alana cleared her throat. “May I speak honestly, Lexy?”

Why not? Be my guest. Lexy gave silent assent.

“It was your brother’s choice, made between him and God.
Beyond that, we can know nothing.”

Lexy was crying, and Alana kindly changed the subject.

“Her Ladyship has been asking for you. Half the time she thinks
she’s done something wrong, the rest she says you don’t deserve
what she pays you.”

It was possible to laugh and cry at the same time.

“What about pain?”

“You know she’s not a complainer. Stoic or stubborn, I don’t
know which. There’s pain in those old joints, of course. And her
legs are swollen big. But mostly she just lies there, hasn’t opened her
eyes in two days. She said to me this morning, `Ellen left me. Lexy
left me too.’ I told her you’re coming back….”

Lexy dreaded sitting at Dorothy Wilkerson’s bedside in the company of her present thoughts. On fashion shoots there was always
confusion and contradictory directions, and she could go from
morning until day’s end without concentrating on anything more
pressing than a visit to the bathroom. And then Billy would arrive
and whisk her away in his black Mercedes. First home for a bath
and a few drinks, then to dinner with a noisy crowd, most of whom
would not know a serious thought if it handed them a calling card.
In her old life it was possible to go for a week without thinking
about much of anything.

On her desk she kept a photo of Micah with a mostly empty
beach in the background. He had sent it from Mexico back in July.
He stood beside a fruit stand piled high with mangoes and papayas
blushing like schoolgirls. His dark hair curled untidily around his
shirt collar; his eyes, the windows to his soul, were hidden behind
wraparound sunglasses.

For the rest of Lexy’s day, nothing went right.

The evening meeting with the church school committee
stretched a tedious thirty-seven minutes beyond its allotted hour.
Lloyd Beecham, chair of the adult learning subcommittee, was saying that what St. Tom’s needed was a book group. “For lovers of
fine books …”

Lovers of fine books. Lexy doodled the words in the margin of
her notebook.

Lovers of fine books.

Lovers.

In a blink she understood.

She stood and excused herself to the committee, claiming an
emergency. She ignored the curious faces as she walked to her
closet, got her purse and jacket, and left without further explanation. Overhead the sky was a deep navy blue against which the
scudding clouds were startlingly white. A sliver of moon hid in the
branches of an oak. Lexy closed her eyes and took a long, deep
breath of air. Across the street the palm trees in the sidewalk strip in
front of the nursery bent and rustled. She held her hand before her,
astonished by how calm she suddenly felt.

From the street Dana’s house was dark, but when Lexy walked
around the back, the lighted kitchen looked welcoming. She saw
Dana at the counter with a magazine open in front of her. As Lexy
stepped onto the deck, Moby rushed out of the shadows and
barked ferociously until he recognized her; then he wagged his
stubby tail and butted his nose against her thigh.

Dana said through the screen, “I’ve been expecting you.” She
opened the door, and Lexy stepped inside. She had been in Dana’s
kitchen dozens of times, but this night she felt like a stranger.

She walked past Dana into the living room and sat in one of the
padded chairs set off to the side of the fireplace. She knew how she
looked: prim and unnatural with her knees pressed together and her
hands folded around the strap of her handbag. Dana sat across the
room on the couch. She had never regained the weight lost during
Bailey’s absence. Her cheekbones and small chin had an unfamiliar
sharpness, and she was pale as the wind. Dana was a careful and
tidy woman. Lexy had never seen her when her hair wasn’t smooth
and shiny. Except for during Bailey’s absence, she could number the
times before this when she had seen her without lipstick and blush.

“Where’s Bay?”

“Bed.”

“David?”

“At work.”

“Tell me,” Lexy said. “I need to know. Everything.”

“It’s too … complicated. You deserve an explanation, I know
that. But when I tell you …”

“I knew there was something strange when you came back and
didn’t talk about him. Before you went, I would have bet anything
you’d really like each other.”

Dana nodded. “We did.”

“You could have told me,” Lexy said. “I wouldn’t have condemned you. You’re married, but these things happen. I know
that.”

A deep blue-green cashmere throw lay across the arm of the
couch. Dana pulled it across her legs. “It didn’t end well between
us. He wanted me to stay, and when I wouldn’t-I couldn’t, Lexy,
you see that, I know you do. But not him. He became very angry
and … hostile. I was afraid of him.”

“You knew what he was like. I told you about the mood swings-“

“Yes, yes, but once I met him, I forgot about everything except
him.”

“But it must have been obvious he wasn’t-“

“Like other people?” Dana’s expression held a strange bright
glow. “Lexy, I loved that he was so different. Not like any man I’d
ever met. It was like I’d been climbing a ladder all my life, one foot
in front of the other, never looking down, terrified that if I so much
as paused, I’d fall off. And then I met Micah and he showed me
there was a trapeze, and he said to grab it. He told me all I had to do
was step off the ladder and I’d fly. And I did.”

Lexy saw that Dana wanted to be understood and forgiven.

“I flew so high I barely breathed.”

But Lexy did not want to understand. The white collar tightened
around her throat.

“And he was always happy when we were together, Lexy. He
told me he didn’t get depressed anymore. I believed him.”

“Because you wanted to. Because it suited your purposes.”

“It was like I wasn’t myself anymore. I know that’s not a good
reason, but it’s the only way I can explain it. Not just to you, Lexy.
To me, too.”

Lexy didn’t care if Dana believed her own words. They were just
an excuse. “You broke my brother. You broke his spirit, the stuff
that held him together.”

“But I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to. Yes, it was a dangerous affair, but I was the person with something to lose. I thought if anyone
got hurt it would be me.”

Lexy ran her finger between her collar and throat. “I trusted you
with him. If I thought you might seduce-“

Dana jerked back. “I didn’t seduce him.”

“You took one look at that beautiful face and thought you’d
have a fling, one week, and you’d toss off all the traces, do anything
you pleased and then go home and back to being the quarterback’s
wife, `the team player.’” Dana recoiled from her sarcasm, and Lexy
felt a jolt of satisfaction. Land a good punch and it’s like whiskey
straight from the bottle.

“And you know what, Dana? I believe you when you say you
couldn’t help yourself.” Out of her anger she felt an old cruelty rising, a cruelty she’d believed vanquished by prayer and sobriety.

“Does David know?”

Dana looked surprised. “Of course not. I won’t tell him for the
same reason I wouldn’t stay with Micah. I love him, and I love
Bailey-“

“That’s why you fucked my brother? Because you love Bailey
and David? How stupid of me. Now it all makes perfect sense.”

Lexy took off her collar and folded her hands around it as she
held her purse.

“So who’ve you got in your sights now? Why not Beth Gordon’s
grandson? Or you could pick up a boy at the beach-“

“Micah wasn’t a boy. He was a man, and he made choices, and I
was one of his choices, and now that you know, I’m glad.”

She did not look glad; she looked trapped and battered.

“We both loved him, Lexy. But neither of us could have helped
him.”

“My brother is dead and it’s your fault. You can’t make that go away
with words. You’re going to have to live with it the rest of your life.”

“There are things you don’t know, Lexy.”

“What I’m going to do is walk out of your house, and we’re not
going to be friends anymore.” Lexy’s voice broke. “You know, in
the church hardly anyone tells me the whole truth about things unless they’re making a confession. Mostly people want me to like
them; they want the priest to be their friend, like it gives them some
cachet. So they say what they think I want to hear, or they try to impress me with how saintly they are. I thought you were different. I
thought you were a real friend.”

Lexy walked to the front door and stood there. “You can’t wrap
yourself up in a lie like it’s that little green blanket and expect to
stay warm and cozy for the rest of your life. This is all going to catch
up to you, Dana. You better make sure you tell David the truth, because if you don’t, someone else will.”

Lexy opened the door, and Dana batted it shut with the palm of
her hand. “Don’t threaten me,” she said.

Lexy’s laugh scoured her throat. If she didn’t get out of Dana’s
house she would be sick.

“If I have to face the truth, Lexy, then so do you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Micah killed himself because he couldn’t live with what he’d
done. He killed himself because he couldn’t live with his guilt. He
kidnapped Bailey. I have a note to prove it.”

ana stumbled upstairs and swallowed two sleeping pills. She
did not have to pretend sleep when David got home after another late night. But just after four the next morning the sound of
sprinklers going on in the park awoke her. She heard Lexy’s terrible
words in her head, and she knew she would not sleep again. She
slipped out of bed and into her running clothes. In the cold, gray
dawn a heavy fog lay over everything. As she crossed the deck and
lawn she looked up and saw the flickering white light of the television in the apartment window. She felt, reluctantly, a bond with
Marsha as she imagined her sleepless as well, lighting cigarette after
cigarette and thinking only God knew what terrible thoughts.