“Just hold off, okay? Don’t take a loan from him, okay?” Lana waited for her mother to makes some sign of agreement. “Promise, Ma?”
“But I want to move.” She sounded like a disappointed four-year-old. “I’m tired of this old place.”
“You’re bored. Take a class in something or go on a trip. Just don’t sell this house or the Hollywood.”
“I don’t know why you’re so fond of that place.”
“Those were happy years for Mars and me.”
“Is that so?”
“Meaning?”
“Well, it just seems to me that if it was all that wonderful living in a two-room cottage next door to a diner, you would have bothered to make contact with your father. Norman Coates.” The weather anchor came on and Stella unmuted the television.
Lana expelled a long breath and sat back, feeling an ache between her shoulder blades.
“Just wait a little longer, Ma. Please.”
“Well, look at that. No rain for a while.”
Lana left her mother’s and drove to Mission Bay Park, where she parked near the visitors’ center. She went inside and changed into the running clothes and shoes she kept in the back of the 4Runner. On the path beside the bay she ran south toward the Hilton Hotel, the water to her right. The path was full of other twilight runners in shorts and skimpy tops. First she heard their shoes hitting the cement path behind her and then their breathing. She drifted to one side to let them pass her. She was in no hurry and had not run in ten days so her quads felt puny and sent messages to her brain that she should sit down, go home, do anything other than pound along the pavement in the half light.
As she ran she thought about her sisters and her mother, her daughters. This was her family and she wanted to hold them all close to her, protect them and nurture them. Why did it have to be so complicated to do that simple thing that mothers probably did when they lived in caves? And what about Eddie French? How did he fit into all of this?
He did not fit in, she thought later as she stood in the kitchen, staring out the greenhouse window. Absently she deadheaded the glazed pots of pink and white impatiens, dropping the limp, brown, slightly sticky flowers into the mouth of the garbage disposal. She raised her arms above her head and bent to the side, first left and then right. The run had made her ache all over but she didn’t have a backache anymore.
At the back of the yard behind the olive tree, the yellow Carolina jasmine had begun its two weeks of vivid bloom. By the garden lights she could see that the brick back wall appeared to be draped in a bright shawl. On the slab of cement by the gate out to the driveway, Buster slept in the pool of porch light. Lana had provided him with a comfortable cushion on the porch but he seemed to prefer the kind of hard bed he had always known.
He had adapted to domestic life with surprising ease although most of the time he preferred the backyard to being in the house. He and Gala ignored each other. At night he moved through the pet door inside and out and back inside. Lana heard the click of his nails on the hard floors as he patrolled. He was more feeble now than on the day Carmino brought him home from the vet’s, and two nights earlier he had left a puddle on the kitchen floor. Every day he moved more slowly. Lana had seen this before in dogs—the slow, stoic decline. She would wait for his eyes to tell her it was time to go.
The house felt empty without the girls, the sound of their voices and music and footsteps pounding along the hall overhead. They were so often gone these days. She would surprise them with a treat when they got home. Where had she put the recipe for the lemon pudding cake they both loved?
Maybe I am getting used to being alone, she thought. At least I’m cooking again. Occasionally.
In the midst of grief so much had slipped through the gaps and not been retrieved. Lana had bought the girls bus passes so she wouldn’t have to drive them whenever they wanted to go to a mall or sports events. And to avoid cash hassles—which Jack had always managed, of course—she had given them their own charge cards with monthly spending limits. What had changed the most was their mealtimes. They no longer ate in the dining room. Once it had been important to Lana and Jack that the family eat together in a rather old-fashioned and traditional way—china plates, cloth napkins, an all-food-groups meal, homemade desserts like lemon pudding cake—and that there be conversation at these meals, that they share the daily up-and-down of their lives. For more than a year now she and the girls had eaten meals at the table in the kitchen. Paper napkins, pizza, take out Thai or Chinese, occasional spaghetti or tuna casserole. And what passed for conversation at these meals just barely qualified. Dialogue with teenagers was not easy, not if it mattered what was heard and said, and Lana rarely had the stamina to make a real effort. Sometimes she sent them up to the playhouse with their meals, let them eat while they watched Jeopardy. That first year she had so little appetite she dropped fifteen pounds without thinking about it. Some nights she could barely swallow what she set before herself.
She stepped onto the back porch and called Buster. He hobbled slowly to her. She sat on the stone steps and ignored the cold percolating through her Levi’s to her thighs and buttocks as she rubbed his head and neck and talked to him about the day, the weather, the garden, and asked him how he felt. Did his hind quarters ache, or his spine? She had a few aches and pains herself, he might like to know. Gala padded out of the house and onto the stoop and hung her head over Lana’s shoulder.
The tears came before she could stop them.
The ringing of the phone brought her back to herself, and she jumped up to answer, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. She recognized Eddie French’s voice immediately.
“You said you’d call me. How is she?”
“She’s fine.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I’ve been so worried—”
She knew she should say she was sorry but she could not make herself do it.
“Look,” he said, “I’m scheduled to go to Europe in a few weeks and I’m going to be there for a while and I was hoping . . . You said you’d think about it.”
“And that’s what I’m doing. Thinking.”
“Mrs. Porter, I don’t know what you think of me—”
“I think you’re a young man who made too much money too fast and got in trouble. With drugs. And the law.”
Of all the reactions Lana expected, she did not anticipate his low, soft laughter.
“You’ve been doing your research,” Eddie French said. “Good.”
Condescending bastard. “What do you mean, good?”
“I mean I’d do the same thing. Did do it.”
“You didn’t find out Jack and I had been in trouble with the police. And neither of us had or ever did have a problem with drugs. Or alcohol, either.”
“And I did. I admit it.”
What did he want? A medal? Full access to Micki just because he didn’t bother to deny the truth?
“Would you have told me if I hadn’t found out for myself?”
“Absolutely.”
“Easy to say now.” She looked at the clock over the back door. She expected Micki home soon and she did not want to be caught on the phone talking to Eddie French. “Why don’t you just tell me what you want?”
“To spend time with my daughter. To get to know her.”
From the second floor of the house came a wail, a scream, a cry from the heart. Gala began to bark.
“Oh, Christ—oh, God, no.” Lana dropped the phone and ran along the hall and bounded up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Micki stood in the door of the playhouse holding a phone. Her mouth was open and her eyes wide as she stared at Lana.
“Was that my father? It was. That was him, wasn’t it? The guy in the Jag?” She threw the phone down; it clattered on its edge, almost hitting Gala, who had followed Lana up the stairs and now slunk away with her tail between her legs. “I hate you,” Micki screamed. “I’ll hate you forever for this.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Micki looked at the card in her hand and then at her cell phone lying a hand-stretch away on the bed. Her mother had given her Eddie French’s business card as if she could ever make up for not telling her the truth.
How much she hated her mother came over her like nausea, like when she and Tiff got stoned and ate a super-sized pizza and a whole half-gallon of Rocky Road ice cream. Micki got off the bed and went into her bathroom and stuck her finger down her throat as she had done that night. Nothing came up now.
Back on the bed, she lay on the small mountain of pillows piled at the headboard—florals, plaids, and polka dots in shades of pink. Did she really love pink or had her mother shoved the color down her throat? She threw the pillows off the bed, scattering them across the blue carpet. She stared at the ceiling and thought about ways to hurt her mother, ways to teach her a lesson.
Had she actually believed she could get away with such a huge lie? Just pretend Eddie French didn’t exist? All her talk about honesty and being trustworthy had been bullshit, every word of it. While she was upstairs, before the phone call came, Micki had been thinking about telling her mom that Beth was getting into trouble, smoking dope at Kimmie’s and maybe worse stuff, too. Now she wouldn’t say anything. Let her find out how much it hurt when people hid the truth. And so what if Beth did get in trouble? Why should her life always be easy? It wasn’t like they were real sisters.
She tried to remember what Eddie French looked like and she realized she did not even know the color of his hair. He was her father and she did not know if his eyes were blue or brown or gray. She remembered a pair of good-looking wraparound glasses and expensive clothes but his actual face was a blur.
Her own father. How bad was that?
She spoke aloud to the ceiling. “Eddie French is my father.” She looked at the card in her hand. “Edward French, President and CEO, French Electronics.” She should feel excited or nervous or something but she didn’t. Except for being angry with her mother, she felt hollow.
“I hate you,” she said.
Her father—her adoptive father, Jack—used to say that hating took energy away from the good part of life. Why bother hating anyone, he would say. “Save your hate for something that counts.” Didn’t her mother count? After what she’d done, didn’t she deserve to be hated?
In the direction of her bedroom door Micki yelled as loudly as she could. “I hate you.”
She rolled over on her stomach and began to pick at the stitches on her duvet. It was getting old and if she wanted to she could probably shred it with her fingernails. But it was silky and warm and she liked it. Eddie French was rich. She might go to live with him and he would buy her a whole new bed. She could have all new bedding and pillows instead of the dorky-looking pink things her mother had made. It excited her to think of starting new. She imagined walking out the door with only the clothes on her back, stepping into the blue-green Jaguar and a fresh life; she got as far as opening the door and sitting down, closing the door, and doing up her seat belt, but after that it all got vague and sort of scary. How would she have a conversation with the stranger driving the car and what would it be like to wake up in the morning and walk into his kitchen looking for breakfast? She would have to tell him that her favorite cereal was oatmeal with butter and milk and brown sugar. Or maybe he slept late and she would be alone opening cupboards, looking for something good. Did he live in one of those apartments a mile up in the sky—no pets allowed, no garden possible? Would they eat dinner together? What would they talk about?
It would be like a first date.
It was easy to talk to Jack. Sometimes he walked into the house and the first thing he said was, “If it isn’t good news, I don’t want to hear about it,” but that was only if he’d had a bad day himself. Mostly he listened to everything and if she wanted advice, he gave it. So different from her mother, who was too busy to sit down and listen, who had to be doing stuff all the time, knocking items off her list.
Eddie French might expect her to dress and act a certain way. What if he were a born-again something with a list of rules and he made her go to church with him and study the Bible. This did not seem likely but anything was possible.
An hour ago he had been a mysterious man in a Jaguar and now he was her father.
Did she want to go and live with a stranger?
She got up from the bed and opened her bedroom door a crack. Gala lay just outside, looking sorrowful, and Micki quietly urged her in and up onto the bed. She lay down beside her and pressed her face against Gala’s warm stomach, inhaled the comforting funky dog smell, felt the tiny bumps of her nipples against her cheek.
If she went with Eddie French she would never see Gala again.
Micki wouldn’t miss Beth much but there would be times, like Christmas morning and getting ready for school, borrowing each other’s clothes. It was good to have someone to talk to at night. And Beth was smart. Micki would have flunked Spanish every term if not for her. And she had been right when she said not to trust The Fives.
God, The Fives. They seemed like nothing now.
Right this minute, Beth was down at Kimmie Taylor’s somewhere in the Gaslamp District, probably smoking weed. Why was she hanging out with such a weak link? Micki felt uneasy about her, like she was in some kind of danger. But, hey, smoking a little mj might do her some good, loosen her up a little.
Maybe he wouldn’t even want her with him. He might get to know her and not like her. Judging from her history, that seemed to be something she could expect. She should prepare herself, at least.
One thing about her mom. She might be a deceitful bitch but Micki knew she loved her. Was it possible she really meant it when she said she knew she had made a mistake not telling the truth? How much did being sorry count for? How much sorry was sorry enough?
Another thing Micki’s father—Jack—used to say: love is the most powerful force in the world.
Gala groaned and rolled onto her back, wanting Micki to rub her tummy. She sat up and did this for a few minutes. The velvet softness of her skin was so familiar beneath Micki’s fingertips, almost as familiar as her own skin. She smelled her fingers and tears sprang to her eyes.
She could not just suddenly get up and go away from Gala. She imagined her dog wandering the house, puzzling out her absence. Sniffing in the corners, whimpering outside her bedroom door, and maybe, when she got a chance, lying on the bed. Her mother would turn the room into a sitting room for herself so that if Micki decided she wanted to come home there would be nowhere for her except the guest room off the kitchen. Her mother had always wished for her own little room to make a mess of—well, if Micki left she’d have one for sure; Gala would walk around it, looking for the bed, wanting to climb up and nestle on the pillows and whimpering because she couldn’t. Someday she would die and Micki might never know.
Micki could not stop crying. She had the saddest and most disappointing life. This day should have been exciting, learning the identity of her birth father. Instead it was a maze and she did not know how to get out of it.
An hour or so later she heard a noise outside the door and a gentle knock.
“I’ve left you some supper,” her mother said.
“I hate you,” Micki yelled. “I don’t want your food.”
Gala hopped off the bed and pointed her Irish setter nose at the doorknob. When Micki did not immediately let her out, she bumped the knob with her nose.
“All right, all right,” Micki said, and got off the bed. She felt stiff and hungry and miserable as a homeless girl living in a rescue mission. She was exhausted and ached all over and she could not think clearly.
But she was still madder than she had ever been in her life.
She opened the door for Gala, then picked up the tray and carried it into her room, slamming the door with her foot. Hard enough to make the the pictures on her wall rattle.
Besides baked potato and hamburger, which Mickie loved, her mother had made the best dessert in t
he world, lemon pudding cake, and she had given her an extra-large serving.
Which was bribery and she wasn’t going to fall for it.
You can cook anything you want, Micki thought, but I’ll never forgive you.
She put the tray on her desk. She was not going to actually sit down—that was too much like capitulation. She walked around her room, looking at things. She walked onto the balcony and back inside. If she went to live with Eddie French, would she take the trophy she won in track and field last year? What about the stuffed porcupine her father, her adoptive father, gave her and the little suede bag he brought home from New Mexico filled with interesting rocks and a coyote tooth? From time to time she paused at the desk to eat a mouthful. Almost immediately, she felt better. With something in her stomach, she plotted her next move.
Obviously, she was not going to leave home with Eddie French. Not right away, when she did not even know his hair color. But she was going to call him and invite him to come down to San Diego to sleep over. She wasn’t going to ask permission, either. She wanted to try out what it was like to eat meals with him, find out if he liked dogs and get used to the way he looked. But she wanted to do it on her own turf where she knew she could go to her own bedroom and shut the door and not come out. Unless she wanted to.
Micki finished eating and moved back onto the bed and picked up her cell phone.
This was crazy—her hand was shaking. She took a deep breath and dialed the number her mother had written on the business card.
It rang twice before he picked it up.
Micki swallowed and wanted to change her mind. “Is this Eddie French?” Whose voice was speaking? It sure didn’t sound like her own.
“Micki?”
“Oh,” she said. “Yeah. Hi.”
“Hi.”
The pause on the line was like a long, straight road across the desert. “I got your number from my mother.” Adoptive mother.
The Edge Of The Sky Page 20