The Truth About Delilah Blue (3 page)

Lila marched up the winding road, her cutoffs doing little to shield her legs from the merciless afternoon sun. To make matters of roasted flesh worse, it was possible the sole of her left boot was worn clear through and her kneesock was all that protected her foot from the sizzling griddle that was Rykert Canyon Boulevard.

The city bus didn’t penetrate this area. It made the one stop at Rykert Canyon and Moreland Street, then chugged off in the opposite direction. Since her first day of high school, Lila had skidded up and down the dust-covered hills to and from 71 Palo Verde Pass in her slippery-soled boots, never once succumbing to mounting paternal pressure that she consider footwear with better traction.

She turned the corner, relieved to be shaded by a stretch of elegant and towering Eucalyptus trees, with their hairy
bark and leathery gray leaves. Vines weighed down the branches and tickled the pavement, and Lila slowed down to weave in and out of them as if they were beaded curtains. The hill, parched from a long summer, sloped straight up on this side of the street, so front doors and peeling wooden gates fronted directly onto the asphalt. Houses across the way—houses like her own—sat so low on the hillside they were mostly unseen, crouched beneath the road as if hiding from view.

Life hadn’t always looked like this. In 1996, she’d been another girl entirely. She was Delilah Blue Lovett, living with her charismatic, free-spirited mother in the gingerbread neighborhood of Cabbagetown in Toronto. Behind a vermillion front door that closed with a muffled thump that mimicked her mother’s faint French-Canadian accent. She had a curlicue-trimmed portico where a broom and a brass tub full of umbrellas stood ready to shelter her. She had Sunday-night dinners at her grandmother’s house in Mississauga. She had the asthmatic Russian son of the opera singer next door to spy on, and sleepovers with her best friend down the street.

Life hadn’t been perfect, but it had a certain ticktock. She could count on birthday parties with kids she’d known since kindergarten and cousins she’d despised since birth. The school was 793 footsteps there and back if you were careful not to step on any cracks—she was always vigilant about her mother that way.

Then her memory became a blur. Her parents stopped speaking and her life would never look the same. Her father buckled her into a lumpy seat on a 737 bound for Disneyland and said a long weekend on her own should give her
mother the quiet time she needed. Who was Lila to argue? She was eight years old and on her way to meet Cinderella.

Turned out a weekend away from her only child wasn’t enough. Elisabeth Lovett, and her long, russet, corkscrew curls, her caramel skin, and her laugh that sounded like tinkling bells, needed more. So Victor bought a ramshackle cabin in the Hollywood Hills, enrolled his daughter in the local public school, and said he’d never liked the name Delilah. It had been Elisabeth’s overly whimsical choice and it was too much for California. He announced it was time for a nickname and Lila would do just fine.

It was at this moment the freshly christened Lila had an idea. While they were on the subject of inappropriate names, the thought of enduring another year with the nickname “Shove It” (or Lovett’s oh-so-imaginative and quick-witted cousin, “Hate-It”) made her feel sick to her stomach. Victor’s smile had nearly split his face. He patted her small hand, and said it was the perfect time to tackle their problematic surname and he happened to have one standing at the ready: Mack. He said it would honor his Mackinnon ancestors from the Isle of Skye, off the west coast of Scotland. She thought about it. Short, snappy, easy to spell. Seemed it would do just as well as any.

Then there were twelve birthdays without phone calls, twelve Christmases without cards, too many missed bedtimes to count; it was as if having a mother never happened. As if Elisabeth, and the liquid click of her lighter, the sweaters and T-shirts that slipped off her shoulder when she giggled, the flirtatious uptilt in her voice that turned her sentences into questions, had never existed at all.

After a while Lila stopped waiting. After a while it sunk
in. Hope turned to numbness turned to disbelief—a coating that had grown so deep and crusty Lila could etch her name in it.

There was a game Lila used to play with herself: Had She Been Less of a Mother. Had Elisabeth been, say, a forensic accountant instead of an artist, would the absence of her clay-softened palm on Lila’s cheek have stung quite so much? If her voice hadn’t been rendered slightly rutted by cigarettes, would her bedtime lullabies have been quite so hypnotic? And what about her impossibly tiny ears? Had they been large and lumpy, would it have been less magical when she tucked that halo of hair behind them and leaned closer to hear what Lila had to say?

The answer was always the same. To have a mother like Elisabeth, and then lose her—not because she was struck by a car or swept out to sea by a dangerous current, but because she wasn’t sufficiently enamored by you to hang around—it left a hole in who you were. You became one of those people who radiated worthlessness. You became a living, breathing, walking—and in Lila’s case, drawing, painting, getting naked—tragedy.

But that didn’t mean Lichty, or anyone else, for that matter, was allowed to notice.

There was a flash of movement on a driveway up ahead. Lila slowed and feigned interest in her boots. Danica Seldin was climbing out of her Alfa Romeo convertible and gathering a few shopping bags from behind her seat, her glossy white ponytail falling forward. Typical Danica, all fit and beach ready in Lycra shorts, a tight white T-shirt, and flip-flops.

They’d started going to school together when Lila and Victor first moved in. Before her mother’s rejection had
wormed its way into her flesh, rendering her so broken that her cracks scared off the other children, Lila had looked to Dani as a possible replacement for her best friend back in Toronto. Dani had worn hand-knotted string bracelets on one tanned ankle and a faded navy T-shirt that read
CRAIG’S SURF SHACK
in cracked letters across the chest. Her teeth were so white they could have been made of sugar, and the other kids crowded around her on the first day of school because her dad, Craig Seldin, had won a skateboarding competition Labor Day weekend and had been interviewed on TV.

Even to the newcomer with the fledgling name, it was clear Dani was the school’s reigning goddess and all the other kids followed her into class with the aim of sitting as close to her as possible. But the teacher had other ideas and assigned Lila the coveted seat next to Dani, then asked her to stand up and tell the other students where she was from.

You’re not from Canada, Victor had informed her the night prior—the first of many “lessons” he would teach her. “Americans,” he explained, “love other Americans. They never fully accept northerners as one of them. If you really want to fit in, you’ll tell the kids you’re from Seattle.”

So, tugging on her freshly cut bangs, she did. Turned out Victor’s advice worked. At recess, Dani sidled up to her and told her there was a famous skate park in Seattle. Said she was lucky to come from such a place and wondered if Lila had a skateboard. When Lila told her no, Dani offered to teach her to long board on the weekend. Lila didn’t know or care what a long board was—she had a friend.

Or so she thought. On Saturday morning, when she was preparing to go to her new buddy’s by scrubbing her navy T-shirt against a rock so it would look as distressed as
Dani’s, Victor came out of the house, sat down beside her on the porch steps, and informed her it wasn’t safe to go off to the home of a strange family. Anything could happen. This wasn’t Toronto, he explained. This was America, and people had guns. In spite of his daughter’s insistence that Dani’s parents were neither armed nor dangerous, Victor said they couldn’t know for sure. He said it was best not to get too chummy because guns and molester-type habits wouldn’t be spread out on the dining-room table for her to examine. No, he said. She could see her new friends at school and that was enough.

Lila begged to be allowed at least to run to Dani’s house and explain lest the girl think she was being stood up. But Victor said there was no time. He was taking her to Universal Studios and wanted to get there before the lines got too long and the day grew too hot.

On Monday, she raced up to Dani at school to explain her father wouldn’t let her go, but the damage was already done. Dani, who had likely not experienced much in the way of rejection, refused to acknowledge Lila’s existence. And so, living in California became a never-ending string of paranoid declarations, arrested friendships, and conciliatory family outings.

Now, with arms full, Dani caught sight of Lila and bumped the car door shut with her hip. She glanced quickly, hopefully, toward the house, before conceding that escape was not an option and forcing a smile. “Hi, Lila.”

Lila wanted to slap her. “Hey. Haven’t seen you in, well, forever.” She felt herself square her shoulders in an effort to appear more substantial. Less flimsy.

“You look good,” said Dani.

Dani’s older brother, a surfer, had surfaced from the
house, wearing nothing but faded plaid shorts, blond chest hair, and a leather necklace. Kyle pulled a couple of heavy paper bags from the trunk. They chinked as if filled with booze. Grinning, he reprimanded his sister. “Lila doesn’t look good. She looks great.” He winked, then trotted back up to the house.

The compliment unnerved Lila and she chose to ignore it. “So what are you up to these days, Dani? Running your dad’s surf shop?”

“Nah, that’s more Kyle’s thing. I’m up at Pepperdine studying sports psychology.”

“Wow.” Of course Dani was in college. What kind of twenty-year-old wasn’t in college? “You’ll be Dr. Seldin.”

“It’ll be Dr. McAllister. Remember Mark McAllister from high school?” Dani held up one hand and flashed a modest diamond ring. “We just got engaged.”

Lila examined it. “Pretty.”

“Mark’s at Pepperdine too.”

“Nice.”

“What about you? Where do you go?”

Nowhere.

I go nowhere.

Correction—today I went somewhere. Didn’t work out because I’m too broken for my own good. So tomorrow I’ll get back to my intensive program of going nowhere.

“I’ve been taking a bit of time off to figure things out. Working on my painting and stuff.”

Dani’s discomfort was visible. How embarrassing to have asked such a nonachiever where she goes to school. It was the equivalent of asking the fat lady at the grocery store when she was due. Dani flashed a patronizing smile. “Good for you.”

Kyle was back. “We’re having a party.” He pulled two cases of beer from the trunk and turned to face Lila. She felt his glance roam over her legs. “You should come hang out.”

Dani laughed. “Lila Mack doesn’t lower herself to attend lame-o parties, Kyle. She’s the tormented artiste, right Lila?”

Lila didn’t answer, stuck, as always, between being offended and flattered by this reputation her peers had bestowed upon her.

“Come on, Lila,” said Kyle. “I’ll make sure you have a good time.”

Kyle was attractive. Not many women would argue. To imagine spending time anywhere near such a male was to have a tingle shoot from Achilles tendon straight up the center of your spine. Even Lila wasn’t immune to the chemical reaction. Yet she backed away. “Thanks. But I have this thing to go to. With my dad.”

Dani marched—rubber shoes slapping against her heels—toward the ivy-tangled wooden gate that led up to the brick cottage. “Okay. Good luck with…what you’re doing.” With a sorrowful look back at Lila’s legs, Kyle fell in line behind his sister.

I
F THE NEIGHBORING
Hollywood Hills homes, many of them suspended on stilts as thin as uncooked spaghettini, had ever taken notice of the wooden house squatting at their knees, they didn’t let on. Maybe the primitive carpentry unsettled them, reminded them that they too, but for the grace of a few million dollars, might have wound up with window frames that weren’t square, carpenter ants that gnawed on their tibias, and indoor paneling that reeked of
unwashed sheets. Or it could be that they kept their noses up to prove they actually do have a decent view of the Pacific. If the weather was clear and the air quality tolerable.

The Macks’ two-bedroom cabin had no such panorama. Whoever had built it, some eighty years prior, either required nothing more than a place to hang his rifle during hunting season, or had an aversion to glorious vistas, prompting him—or her—to position all the windows facing directly into the hilltop. The structure seemed convinced, like a young boy hiding behind his mother’s skirt, that by burying its face in dead grasses and exposed Eucalyptus roots, it was completely hidden from view.

Lila couldn’t have loved it more.

She tugged open the front door. “Dad?”

“Lila? That you?”

There he was in a kitchen chair in his blue suit, rapping his fist against the tabletop and staring out the window. In front of him was a box of donuts with greasy splotches on the lid. Lila flipped open the lid and pulled one out. “Soggy. Were they sitting in your car all day?”

He snapped the lid shut and sat back in his seat, obviously worked up about something. “You’re not going to believe it.”

“Believe what?”

Standing up, grim faced, Victor buttoned up his suit jacket, then smoothed his hair and motioned for her to follow him outside, his polished brogues lapping softly against the brick floor as he marched, toes pointed outward and knees slanted in.

“What? Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.” He started up the cement steps that led to the road.

“Why all the secrecy?”

“You’ll see.”

After trotting up the rest of the steps, he stomped across the gravel parking pad to where a white Prius sat tucked close to his beloved car. With eyes averted as if it were simply too painful to look, he waved toward the driver’sside door. “Did you ever?”

The parking pad was built too wide; an open invitation for neighbors and their visitors to squeeze their cars right next to her father’s 240Z. This car was his most beloved possession, and the tiniest ding or scratch inflicted by a careless driver drove him to madness. As long as she could remember, no matter what the weather, he’d parked in the very farthest corner of the lot at the mall, in the spot even the mall designers probably mocked. Not only that, but he always positioned the car on a diagonal, lest anyone intrepid enough to join them out in the badlands considered parking nearby.