“I know you didn’t.” She touched Micki’s hot cheek feeling on her skin the fire of her emotions, the burning coals ready to flare again.
“How’s Aunty Kay?”
Lana told her.
“Omigodomigodomigod.” As Micki’s voice climbed the scale, she tried to sit up but Lana pressed her gently back into the pillows. “I didn’t mean . . . I didn’t know. . . .”
“Micki, listen, listen to me.” Lana took a deep breath to keep from screaming the truth. “No one’s blaming you, Mick. It was an accident.”
“He’ll say I did it. Dom will. He hates me anyway.” She tossed her hips and legs from side to side, throwing off the bedcovers.
Lana held her shoulders. “He doesn’t hate you.”
Then again, maybe he did. He certainly disliked Micki, and had never made much effort to conceal it. In his last years Jack had only been civil to his brother-in-law because of Kathryn.
“Does this mean I’m a . . .” In the light of the bedside lamp Lana saw Micki’s eyes dart in panic. “. . . murderer?”
Lana’s stomach twisted.
“I started it, it was my fault.” Micki rolled into a fetal position facing the wall. Lana slipped off her shoes and got into bed beside her, holding her around the middle and spooning into her as she had when Micki was little and too upset to sleep.
“I love babies, Ma, I’d never—”
“It wasn’t a baby, Micki. It was a tiny thing smaller than your little finger.”
“Tiff says it doesn’t matter. She says even then they have souls.”
“Tiff doesn’t know that. No one knows.”
Micki turned in Lana’s arms; tears like moonlight danced in her deep-water eyes. “What do you think, Ma?”
Lana wanted to say that two A.M. on New Year’s Day 2000 was not the time to discuss life and death, babies, fetuses, embryos, and the soul. Or maybe it was the perfect time. A new century, a new beginning.
“Close your eyes and I’ll tell you.” Lana closed her own. She knew what she believed. She had talked to Mars about it, to Wendy, to her friends in the run-and-read club. “I believe that just like the soul mysteriously leaves the body when someone dies, it just as mysteriously enters when a baby is born. Before birth, the mother and the baby share one soul.”
“That’s what happens?” Micki looked at Lana over her shoulder. “You’re sure?”
Sure? She was barely sure of anything. “Yes.”
“You think I shared my birth mother’s soul?”
The knot in Lana’s stomach felt calcified. “I guess so, Micki.” She pressed her cheek against her daughter’s straight, silky hair smelling of sweet shampoo, and kissed the nape of her neck. “When it comes to the soul, Micki, no one knows for sure.”
“Do I have a soul now, Ma?” Such a small, uncertain voice.
Lana wanted to weep for the child who could ask this question.
It did not matter how much Lana and Jack had wanted Micki or how welcome they made her, a part of her would always be poor, colicky, cranky Micki, born like a coiled spring, a constant scratch along the blackboard, a girl whose mother had given her away to strangers because she did not want her. Trash-can Baby.
“Sometimes I think . . . I feel like I’m such a . . . such a fuck-up.”
“You’re a kid, Micki. A teenager. Every teenager screws up. It’s a requirement.” Lana slipped out of bed and tucked the blankets around Micki. “And you have a soul, no question.”
Micki rolled onto her back and looked up at her. “Are you sure?”
Lana did not pause. “Absolutely. One hundred percent.”
Before dawn a westerly kicked up, waking Lana from a tossing sleep. The window sheers billowed into the room, abloom with air that smelled of the garden; and on the balcony along the back of the house the bamboo chimes clacked and clattered. The touch of air on her bare shoulder, a tickle of hair at the back of her neck, thirst woke Lana suddenly, and for a moment in the gray light she was disoriented. She turned on her side to look at Jack....
The blue-green numbers on the digital clock beside the bed told her it was almost five. She had slept less than two hours but it was pointless to stay in bed any longer. Jack had often awakened before dawn and taken Gala for a walk. Lately this had become Lana’s habit as well. She occasionally wondered if Jack’s spirit were urging her to get up and walk, live.
She rose and dressed quickly in jeans and a work shirt of pale blue cotton, softened by many washings. In the bathroom she brushed her teeth with the electric toothbrush, patted cream into her skin, and quickly combed her hair back and fastened it with a clip. Plain gold hoop earrings, and she was dressed for the day that had not yet dawned. Holding her athletic shoes by their laces, she tiptoed to the head of the stairs. From her customary place on the landing, Gala thumped her feathered tail but did not raise her pretty head. Lana crouched beside her and rubbed the long, silky red ears.
“No-good hound.”
As she went down the stairs, Lana heard the dog stretch to her feet with a groan and then the click of her ID tags and her nails on the hardwood floor.
In the kitchen Lana tore a banana from a bunch hanging on a hook over the counter, and as she stood at the sink eating it and a handful of almonds, the dog finagled her wet nose under her hand. Lana opened the pantry and rummaged for a dog biscuit.
Lana believed Gala missed Jack. For many weeks after he died she was slow to settle down at night. The clickity-clack of her nails as she paced seemed amplified in the silent house. Once Lana left the closet door open and found Gala inside, resting her head on a pile of Jack’s clothes collected for the thrift shop.
On the first day of the new century the gusty wind blew through the house and whistled around the corners and stirred up the old sounds and smells—laughter and little-girl squeals, popcorn and Toll House cookies just out of the oven. Lana hurried to escape.
From the hall closet she took a light down jacket and slipped it on, not bothering to zip the front. Gala heard the jangle of her leash and held her head and neck still while her back end went crazy with eagerness. A moment later, perched at the top of the veranda steps, she strained forward, tense, peering into the gloom for a glimpse of cat.
Up and down the street Lana saw only cars she recognized. No blue-green Jaguar convertible. Nevertheless she walked back to the front door and locked it.
Overhead the sky was creamy black, light enough to see the street and sidewalk, the familiar old homes on either side of Triesta Way. The palms in the Andersons’ front yard bent in the wind, their fronds brushing each other with a sweet sound like rain falling. Lana thought about her neighbors peacefully sleeping, couples and families she had known for years; the Tillmans and Obregons had been at the party the night before. She assured herself there was nothing to fear on this street. The neighborhood owl hooted twice and lifted from its branch in the big pine two houses down. She glimpsed its wild-winged shape against the paling sky. Two blocks beyond the house, as she was about to turn left on Cabrillo, she stopped and stared ahead into the gloom.
A convertible was parked in front of the last house on the block. She exhaled. Not a Jaguar. A Buick.
Gala tugged on her lead. Lana let her off the tether. “Stay away from skunks.”
Cabrillo ended in a cul-de-sac, a steep-sided canyon, and a trail down into darkness. From where she stood on the hillside, Lana glimpsed far below the long, straight line of I-8 running east to west through Mission Valley. The traffic sounds were as gentle and soothing as the pull and push of surf. A mile across the valley, silhouetted against the starless sky, the line of houses and condominiums were like a paper cutout. Perhaps over there another sleepless woman stood on a cul-de-sac overlooking the valley, another woman who appeared normal and even fairly happy on the outside but was really frozen dead inside.
In the canyon a coyote yipped. Coyotes were clever beasts who feasted on neighborhood cats and were said to lure domesticated dogs into their ring where the
poor kibbled creatures were no match for their wild cousins. Lana was not sure this was true, but she whistled for Gala anyway.
As she turned back onto Triesta, Lana glanced up Cabrillo, wanting to reassure herself that the car she had seen was indeed a safe, Republican Buick. It was gone. Had she been mistaken? Had it been a Jaguar and had the driver taken off when he saw her? Or was she paranoid? She knew the difference between a Buick and a Jaguar. Even in the predawn twilight.
Lana thought about Micki’s tantrum and Beth rushing in, Kathryn lying still on the sidewalk and Stella flying down the steps. The miscarriage.
Well, she had wanted fireworks, and now she had to pay for them.
She and the girls would have to go out to the ranch. Today.
Chapter Six
Above the stream of traffic on the Martin Luther King Highway, the sky was vivid blue as if God had given it a fresh coat of enamel to celebrate the first day of the New Year. Ahead, Lana saw a line of red brake lights, slowed, and after a moment came to a dead stop, boxed between a Honda van and a primered muscle car, a U-Haul truck to the right, and a red Porsche to the left. Her anxiety rose, her nerves winding tighter and tighter.
Throughout southern California the stores in all the malls were open for business on New Year’s Day, offering unsold Christmas merchandise at hugely knocked-down prices. It was a big day for movie premieres, too, and at the College Park Multiplex the entrance ramp was backed up a quarter of a mile. She thought of all the city’s ramps and highways and parking lots choked with drivers and passengers, half of them hung over and sleep-deprived; and she wondered what lemming instinct made people spend the first day of a new year trapped in their vehicles or crowded against each other in stores and movie theaters.
Beside her in the 4Runner’s passenger seat Micki sat in a slouch, headphones affixed, most of her face concealed behind the fall of her long, white-gold hair, thick and glossy except for the broad streak of magenta down the right side. The nervous jerks of her tapping foot attested to the fact that she was awake and, like Lana, dreading what lay ahead. In the back, Beth appeared to be asleep, scrunched against the seatback and the window, using her jacket as a pillow, headphones in place.
Lana turned on the radio, pressed three or four buttons, heard nothing that pleased or interested her, and turned it off. At times like this she wished she still smoked. Twenty cars ahead she saw the blinking lights of cop cars and paramedics and for an instant, as she thought of the body that might be lying on the asphalt, she felt herself sinking into the marshy land that surrounded her life, that wove itself in and out of every hour of her day.
Jack.
She jabbed Micki gently in the ribs.
“What?”
“Look out your side. How bad is it?”
“Ma-a.” Micki managed to give the word two syllables.
“Please.”
With a dramatic show of effort, Micki put down the window and craned her neck to see what was happening up ahead. Five lanes of traffic had come to a complete standstill.
“We’ll never get there,” she wailed, falling back onto the seat. “There’s cops and two para—”
“What?” Beth asked from the back seat.
“We’re trapped in the middle of a—”
Lana’s cell phone rang and she shushed the girls, who retreated to their audio caves, grumbling about all the things they would rather be doing.
“Hi, Ma.” Lana forced a lilt into her voice even as it occurred to her that she almost never got good news by cell phone.
Stella said, “Have you talked to your sister this morning?”
“Happy Y2K to you, too.”
“Where are you?”
“On the MLK, headed for the ranch.”
“I wouldn’t go if I were you. You won’t be welcome.” Stella took an audible breath and then started in on Micki. Lana held the phone away from her ear so she could hear the sound of her mother’s voice but not the words. She knew the rant by now: no impulse control, irresponsible. Lana had learned long ago not to argue when her mother was on a bombing run.
Stella paused to breathe and Lana said, “I don’t want to hear this, Ma. I’m going to hang up if you don’t stop.” She glanced over at Micki and in the rearview mirror at Beth. Both were oblivious in their insulated worlds of music. “You’re not allowed to talk this way, not about my girls.”
She had been saying this to her mother for fifteen years but it made no difference. Being a mother and grandmother gave Stella permission to say anything she wanted about anyone related to her, as many times as she wanted.
“And what was that girl doing? Talking to a total stranger? A man she didn’t know from . . . Who was he? Has she told you yet?”
“This isn’t a good time, Ma.”
“She hasn’t. Have you even asked her?”
“She didn’t know him. He asked directions.”
“You trust her?”
“Of course I do.” Pretend, pretend, pretend. It was a way of life.
At Rancho San Diego the King highway became the old 94, a narrow, twisting road that wound first through expansive upscale “country” developments and after a few miles into the dry and rugged hills between California and Mexico. Homes were few and often no more than metal-sided trailers sitting beside a cistern with a few cows and a horse or two milling nearby. Overhead, the red-tailed hawks glided on the currents of air above the canyons, their fantails glowing amber in the sunlight.
The Firenzi ranch, Tres Palomas, was located in a small valley a few miles from the Mexican border off Snake Willow Road at the end of a graveled driveway cut through fifty acres of scrub-covered hills. A precious year-round spring fed a ribbon of creek edged with sycamores and silver-leafed cottonwoods that caught the light like coins. There had been a quarter-inch of rain in December, enough to whisker the dry hills with washes of lime green down the slopes and in the hollows. If the late winter rains came, for a few weeks in March and April the valley and hills would look like English countryside. A green so vibrant it was juicy.
At the top of a rise, Lana stopped the 4Runner and rolled down the window. The girls did not ask her why she stopped. Perhaps they knew she needed a moment to prepare herself. On a fence post ten meters from the car a mockingbird sang with its beak uplifted. Lana watched its throat ripple as the music poured out.
Micki groaned.
“What?” Lana asked.
“Can we just get this over with?”
Below them in the shallow valley, rough-barked and rag-branched cottonwoods surrounded the long ranch house of redwood and stucco set in the midst of lawn and garden. The scene was pristine and peaceful: graceful house, red-painted barns, white-fenced corrals and paddocks, and horses grazing.
At the bottom of the hill an elaborate ironwork gate ornamented with three doves in flight kept strangers out. Lana keyed in the electronic code and the gates swung open. Reluctantly, Lana thought.
She parked the 4Runner at the side of the house and got out. Beth and Micki trailed her to the front door. She knocked and after a moment, Tinera opened it.
“Oh,” she said. “Hi.” She wore an apron and looked distressed. “Come in.”
“Happy New Year, honey.” Lana kissed her niece’s slightly flour-dusted cheek. “What’re you making?”
“Daddy said I should try to use the pasta machine. I’m making fettuccine.” Tinera rolled her round shoulders and squinted.
“Where are Colette and Nichole?”
“At their friend’s house.”
“What about your dad?”
“He’s with Mom.”
“How is she?”
Tinera rolled her shoulders again.
“I’ll go back and see her.” Lana looked at Micki and Beth lagging on the threshold, still wearing their headsets. She gestured for them to take them off. “You two go with Tinera but come when I call you, okay?”
Lana walked back to the master suite at the far end of the silent house. For Lana’s
taste the house was overdecorated. She did not care for glossy ceramics, paintings of Gypsy girls—even very good paintings of Gypsy girls, as these undoubtedly were; and she thought dark, velvet-covered couches were ludicrously impractical in a family home in a desert climate, but maybe not, since hardly anyone ever sat on them. The living room was more for show than for living. Her boot heels rang on the copper-colored slate tiles.
She saw Dom at the end of the hall just closing the bedroom door. He looked exhausted. Above the blue-black stubble of his beard, triangles of shadow hollowed his cheeks.
“How is she?”
He put a thick finger to his lips. “Weak. She’s been asleep all day.”
Tears sprang to Lana’s eyes and she hugged her brother-in-law. “I’m so sorry, Dom. What an awful—”
He pushed her away, barely contained anger bolting from his hands into her body, and jerked his head toward the little room, adjacent to the bedroom, which Kathryn called her study. They went in with an elaborate care for silence, as if they were spies on the edge of occupied territory—except Kathryn was the territory in question and Lana knew she wasn’t the enemy agent.
“She’s weak,” Dom said again, brushing his hand across his brow, pushing back the thick wave of salt-and-pepper hair. “Bad night.” Fleshy semicircles of fatigue cupped his large, moist eyes making him look more than usually saturnine. He smelled of sweat and Lana realized he still wore the slacks and shirt he’d had on the night before. “God, Lana, I love her so much and she was so brave. Her strength . . .”
When it suited Dom’s purposes he made women the stronger sex, attributing to them extraordinary powers of endurance and suffering, but Lana had been present in the delivery room the night Colette was born. She had watched him and seen that the pain of childbirth carried an erotic charge for him.
Lana sank into one of two overstuffed chairs on either side of a bay window. The view was across the lawn to the white-fenced corral closest to the barn. Here in her sister’s room Lana felt she could relax and get comfortable. She liked the old-fashioned striped wallpaper, the deep, very ladylike cushioned chairs, and tables covered with books—photo albums, cookbooks, picture books of horses and gardens. There were always roses in this room, even today, though they had begun to droop and fallen petals lay on the polished wood surface of the dresser like a scattering of tiny satin pillows. The petals would grow old and sticky and mark the dresser-top waiting for Kathryn to dust them up.
The Edge Of The Sky Page 5