The Edge Of The Sky

by Drusilla Campbell

  “Okay.”

  “So.” Micki held the phone away from her, took a deep breath and forced herself to expel it slowly.

  He was talking. “. . . know you.”

  She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry?”

  “I said, I want to get to know you.”

  Her heart beat so hard now she thought she might have a stroke. “Okay.”

  “But I don’t want to make your mom unhappy.”

  “She’s jealous,” Micki said, and felt inexplicably guilty. She added, “You know.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Makes sense.”

  When he said it, Micki saw how her mother’s reaction, the secrecy and the jealousy, did make sense in a mean kind of way. But not the dishonesty. Micki would not forgive her that.

  “So how do you want to do this?” he asked.

  She took another breath. “Well, I was thinking you could maybe come down here. Stay at our house.”

  “Really?” he sounded surprised. “Your mom doesn’t mind?”

  “No,” Micki said. “She thinks it’s a great idea.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “He’s coming Saturday.” Micki’s voice and posture dared Lana to deny her this. “And I told him he could stay overnight so he didn’t have to drive all the way back to LA.”

  Heartsick, Lana said, “No, Micki. We don’t know him. You’ve invited a stranger to sleep in our house.” It was as if she patrolled a rampart and the lives of everyone depended on her keeping the enemy out.

  “He’s my father.”

  Lana turned from the anger in Micki’s eyes. The sun had fallen into the sea but still burned beneath the blue-black waters.

  “Don’t you care?”

  Jack, poor Jack—so quickly disposed of, so lightly dismissed.

  “Let’s go outside.” Lana held the back door open.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Please.” Lana led the way and sat on the back stairs.

  “It’s cold,” Micki complained as she sat beside her. “Can I at least go get a sweater?”

  Lana took one arm out of the baggy, mended-at-the-elbow, blue wool cardigan that had warmed her through a dozen winters. It had been her first knitting project and was full of mistakes. She stretched it around Micki’s shoulders.

  At their feet, Buster lay on his side on the cement, his cloudy eyes open, watching them. The porch light made a pool of warm yellow in the darkness of the garden. No crickets in the cold weather, no birds. Lana heard something skitter across the garage roof—probably a wood rat—and music from across the alley.

  She said, “Before we talk about Eddie French—”

  “Don’t apologize because it won’t do any good. I’m not going to forgive you so don’t bother asking.” Micki wrenched herself away, taking the sweater with her.

  “I did . . . a bad thing,” Lana said. “Worse than I ever realized.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “I’m not asking you to forgive me—”

  “I never will.”

  “At least try to understand. While you were in your room, I was thinking over and over, trying to figure out what I might have done differently—”

  “You mean, like, just tell me the truth?”

  Truth. The way Micki used the word only proved how young and inexperienced she was. She had no idea how complicated the truth could be, mixed up as it always was with motive and fear and equivocation, so many variables that actually finding the truth in any situation required a piercing vision. To a child like Micki it sounded easy—just tell the truth—but at that moment, sitting beside her angry daughter, it came to Lana that telling the truth was the greatest challenge of love.

  “I admit, I wasn’t thinking about you. I mean, I thought I was, but really . . . Micki, my heart hurts—”

  “What about me?” Her voice rose. “What do you think my heart feels like?”

  Gala ran to the corner of the yard, barking at something, probably the wood rat’s cousin, and Buster rose and loped awkwardly after her.

  “I’m afraid for our family,” Lana said quietly. “I feel us pulling apart from each other.”

  “So you lied to me? How much sense does that make?”

  I didn’t lie, Lana thought. At the time it had seemed like the right thing to do, and if you had asked me outright who Eddie French was, I would have told you. Was this a small point in her favor? She remembered reading there were two kinds of sins, those of omission and commission. Either way, she was guilty. Zero points.

  “Well, he’s coming to dinner,” Micki said, “If you don’t want to be here, you can just go away and I’ll do the cooking.”

  Lana wanted to prepare Micki for disappointment, for Eddie French being a tease who would make her love him, and when the novelty of parenthood wore off, vanish into cyberspace. Lana did not think he was a bad man—she didn’t think he was a man at all; he was a boy living a boy’s video game life. It did not matter that Mars routinely had sex with men his age. He was young—that’s how Lana saw him. How could he function in any way even vaguely approximating the father of a fifteen-year-old girl, a girl as temperamentally sensitive as Micki? She wanted to tell her daughter about all the casual cruelty there was in the world, the evil and the ignorance, and that she must protect herself against anything that brought her too much joy because in the blink of an eye, the beat of a heart, in no more time than it took for a truck to scream through an intersection, it could all end.

  But she could preach until she was hoarse and get nowhere because Micki was like every other human being—she had to learn about life for herself. Eventually she would even understand how slippery truth could be.

  “All right,” she said, resigning. “I won’t make you cook. He can come.”

  Micki grunted, stood up, and went inside, dropping the old sweater beside Lana, who stuck her arms through the sleeves and wrapped it around her as she sat a little longer, staring at her garden.

  The next day, late in the afternoon, Wendy surprised Lana at Urban Greenery. One look at her friend’s Halloween hair and Lana’s spirits perked up. Wendy wore corduroy slacks and a cotton shirt; a constellation of white paint speckles bloomed on her forearm and more on her neck just above the button-down collar of her shirt. She slung her heavy purse over the corner of the couch and sat down with an expansive sigh.

  “I have come to tempt you out of your den. I left messages on your machine.”

  “I haven’t cleared it in days. Sorry.” Lana gave a quick summary of events. “He’s coming to dinner on Saturday.”

  Wendy blinked several times.

  “Spending the night.”

  “Holy shit.”

  Lana passed a hand over her face as if she could wipe something away. “I just gave up,” she admitted. “I got tired of being the enemy and fighting her on everything.”

  “Did you tell her about his drug history and all?”

  “She heard it over the phone.”

  “Well, maybe it’s a good thing. Get it all out in the open? Honesty the best policy. The truth never hurt—”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “You should have called me.”

  “She’s so full of will. I mean, put hers against mine and she’ll beat me every time. Remember that time we took her to the zoo and she got mad and said she’d walk home alone? How old was she? Five? Jesus, she was all the way across the parking lot to the stoplight before I caught up to her.”

  “This is way too heavy to handle without alcohol.” Wendy stood up. “Leave your car here and we’ll go tie one on at the Bay Club.”

  “I can’t. The girls are expecting me.”

  “I’ll get you home at a decent hour.”

  Lana said she couldn’t, she had too much to do, but as she made excuses she was clearing her desk, putting papers in her in-basket. Yes, it would be a relief to relax in the company of an adult, bliss to let gin manage her thinking for a while. She found Carmino helping a customer in statuary and called him
aside, apologizing to the woman who could not decide between trios of copper or zinc planters. She gave Carmino her keys, and he promised to drive the car up to her the next morning.

  In Wendy’s black BMW, Lana sank back into the satiny burgundy leather upholstery and closed her eyes. She would have liked it fine if Wendy had turned the car and driven due east, on and on until they reached a place where accidents never happened, children behaved themselves, and the natives had no word that meant disaster.

  “Damn,” Lana said, “I forgot my phone. It’s in my car.”

  “Use mine.” Wendy leaned behind her seat and dug into her purse.

  The phone on Triesta Way rang three and then four times. Before the fifth ring, she heard her own voice on the answering machine. She waited and then said, “I’m going to have a drink with Wendy. Eat up the cold salmon in the refrigerator. You can make salads. I won’t be late.”

  Wendy cocked an eyebrow at her. “Will they actually do that? Make salmon salads?”

  “Oh, probably not. It just makes me feel like a better mother if I make the suggestion. There’s frozen pizza.”

  “Do you ever wonder what kids ate before pizza?”

  “God knows. Nuts? Berries?”

  “Grubs.”

  Wendy swung the car into a parking space at the Bay Club and turned off the ignition. She held out a comb. “Drag this through the rat’s nest.”

  Laughter lived near the core of their friendship. Bless Wendy; she had a vein of spontaneous and irreverent lunacy that could almost always lift Lana out of whatever bog she had fallen into.

  The Bay Club was an old—which in San Diego meant seventy years—and shabbily elegant establishment perched on a spit of land between the submarine base and the airport. Though primarily a sailing club, it had racquetball courts, exercise facilities, and a small dining room and bar that extended out over the water. Membership was expensive and limited by the size of the marina. Wendy and Michael did not sail, but her family had belonged to the club when she was young and membership had passed on to her at an irresistible price.

  A chill westerly was gusting, kicking up whitecaps as they entered the bar. The sail and power boats tossed in their moorings, flags flying. Wendy and Lana found a quiet corner inside, near a window. At the bar, three men in chinos, cotton sweaters, and topsiders drank beer while a basketball game played on the television behind the bar.

  Wendy ordered gin martinis with double olives. “Who’s the sports guy you’d most like to have sex with?” It was a game they had played for years.

  “Michael Jordan,” Lana said. “No question.”

  “Rock singer?” Wendy asked.

  “Sting.”

  Wendy looked disgusted. “You are so boring. You’ve been giving the same answers for ten years. Why don’t you choose someone young?”

  “Young guys don’t tempt me. I like a guy with seasoning. Besides,” Lana said, taking her drink from the waiter, “I’m faithful, like a dog.”

  “How would you like to be Sting’s dog?”

  Outside, the late-afternoon sun flashed on the wavelets, off the white of the boats and metal masts and cleats. In a pale blue sky, clouds ran east before the wind, their tails lit with gold.

  “I’ll sip,” Wendy said. “You guzzle.”

  “Since when are you my pusher?”

  “Since you started avoiding me.”

  “I told you, I haven’t had a chance to clear the machine.” The astringent gin bit and iced Lana’s throat, the fragrant juniper berries buzzed the inside of her nose; together they sent a rush to Lana’s brain. Jack always said she was a cheap drunk.

  “Talk,” Wendy said.

  “I told you everything.”

  “Shit, girl, you barely touched it. You’re having him to dinner, but what are you feeling? And what does Beth think of all this?”

  Lana slipped the green olive off the toothpick with her teeth and bought a little time chewing it. Wendy’s snake-eyed look meant she would not give up until Lana answered her questions.

  “I’m so tired of analyzing everything, Wendy. Half the time I don’t know what I feel . . . except I miss Jack and I’m sick of pretending I don’t.”

  “Then stop pretending.”

  “You were the one who told me—”

  “I didn’t mean for you to make it a twenty-four/seven way of life. I didn’t mean for you to hide—”

  “If I fall apart, the girls will, too.”

  “Maybe that’d be a good thing.”

  Lana shook her head. People always knew what was good for her.

  “What about them—what are they feeling?”

  Lana started to answer an automatic fine . . . okay . . . no problem, then stopped herself. “I honestly don’t know. I think they’re okay. Beth’s being more teenage, getting a little mouthy, but basically she’s steady. And Micki hates me and she’s planning her new life around Eddie French.”

  “Has she told you that?”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t have a clue what I’d do.”

  Lana lifted her shoulders and let them drop. “What can I say then?”

  “She’s over The Fives thing?”

  “She’s still bugging me about going to Balboa.” Feeling pleasantly buzzed and talkative, Lana sipped the fresh drink that had miraculously appeared before her. “Over my dead and decaying body.” She went off on a rant about Grace Mamoulian.

  Wendy said. “If you dislike La Mamoulian so much, why not take Micki out of Arcadia? Give her what she wants?”

  “I worry what’d happen to her in public school.”

  “She might be happy, Lana. What about the birth mother?”

  “Vanished, but he’s looking for her. No doubt she’ll show up on the doorstep one of these days.”

  “And when that happens?”

  Lana held up her glass and peered into it like a crystal ball. “I’ll kill her.”

  A cheer went up from the bar and the men dug in their pockets for their wallets and began handing bills around. The bartender switched the channel to another game in progress.

  “You have no faith in yourself,” Wendy said. “Micki loves you. No one can replace you.”

  “It’s so unfair to Jack. It’s like one night of hot teenage sex is somehow equivalent to fourteen years spent raising the most turbulent, the most challenging—”

  “Would he say they were equivalent?”

  “Who? Jack?”

  “No. Eddie French.” Wendy looked at her. “He wouldn’t, would he? This is you, making it all up when you don’t even know the guy.”

  Lana pushed her drink away; she was through. “You’ve brought me here to lecture me and now you’ve done it and I’ve had two martinis and I’m not even slightly high.”

  Wendy laughed.

  “I want to go home and go to bed.” Lana stood and the room rocked like a sailboat.

  “Don’t be angry with me, Lana.”

  “What do you expect?”

  “Just do what I said. Relax about Eddie French. Trust in Micki’s good sense. You don’t have to fear this guy.” Wendy leaned forward and the waves of her persimmon hair swung out, quoting her face. “Promise me you’ll think about it, okay?”

  “Oh,” Lana said. “Yeah. Ceaselessly.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “Constantly, ceaselessly.” Lana slammed the door of Wendy’s BMW and walked up the steps to the porch, calling back over her shoulder, “Neverendingly, interminably, endlessly.”

  At the sound of her key in the lock, Gala bounded and slid to the door, barking wildly. She danced and spun around as if Lana had been gone for weeks. Lana pushed aside the tennis shoes and folded laundry waiting to be taken upstairs, and sat on the bottom stair. While Gala licked her and nuzzled her face, Buster emerged from the kitchen, head lowered in submission and uncertainty. He retreated to the far side of the entry and lay down with his head on his paws, watching her.

  Micki spoke to
her from the second floor landing. “Tiff’s here.”

  Lana looked up, grabbing the newel post for balance. Tiff. Tiffany. The name made a few circles through Lana’s brain before it attached to any feeling. Brat. “Nice to see you, Tiff.” Not a hint of sarcasm.

  Tiff hung her streaky blond head over the rail. “Isn’t it cool about Mick? About her dad? He used to go out with that really cute actress on Mistique.” Tiff paused, apparently expecting a reaction. “You know that show about the witch coven? They go to this high school in L.A. and they’re at war with another coven, only it’s all adults and really bad?”

  Lana had no idea what Tiff was talking about. She also felt dizzy.

  “What’s the matter, Ma?” Micki came down the stairs and peered at her. “Omigod, are you drunk?” She looked up at Tiff and they began to giggle. “You are. You are totally blitzed.”

  She wasn’t blitzed, just slightly off center for the time being and a bit dizzy. Her daughter’s face was almost, but not quite, out of focus. She held onto the newel post and spoke carefully. “First, I am not drunk. I am just a little high. Second, even if I were—as you say—‘blitzed,’ it is none of your business. Third, I’m going to have a drink of water and then—fourth and finally—I’m going to take a shower and when I get out I want you to be in bed.” She focused on Tiff—traitorous, back-stabbing teen scum. “How are you getting home?” Oh denizen of septic tanks.

  “My mother said I could spend the night.”

  “We did our homework, Ma.”

  Lana thought she would sort out the turn and return of teenage friendship when she could think more clearly. “You have fifteen minutes to get into bed. Turn off the video and go to bed. Go to bed.”

  Tiffany and Micki held each other and collapsed in laughter.

  Buster stood at the kitchen door and watched Lana pour a glass of water from the cooler on the back porch. She took one swallow and felt ill. It was years since she had drunk martinis . . . and on an empty stomach. What had she been thinking?

  She went outdoors and took a deep breath of the bracing air. The sky was blue-black and cloudless and even in Mission Hills a few stars were visible, a handful of salt scattered across the night. No moon. She thought she might throw up.