“You think I don’t know that?”
How do you rebuild a family? If she could slow her mind down and take each item one at a time, turn it over in her thoughts and examine it from every side, then she could make some kind of orderly list. When she could do that, she would have the answer.
The rest of the week passed without incident. Stella called daily to lecture her about real estate and Realtors. Lana promised to have a friend in the business call her. “Someone you can trust, Ma.” Kathryn called to talk and then had nothing to say though Lana was sure something was going on at Tres Palomas. Beth sulked, stayed out of Lana’s way, and spoke to her only when she could not avoid it. Micki was cool like a card player holding onto her trump as long as possible. The dogs liked Lana just fine but she figured they’d go for her throat if she stopped feeding them. On Friday night Tiff invited Micki to spend the night. Beth snarled that Kimmie would be over later.
Lana remembered Kathryn’s idea about escaping on horseback and imagined how far she and her sister could get away together.
The run-and-read club met at Lana’s on Friday night. She filled two vacuum pumps with regular and decaf coffee and mixed a batch of toffee brownies as her contribution to the refreshments, ran the vacuum quickly through the front rooms, and checked the little downstairs powder room tucked in under the stairs. As usual, a pile of teen magazines crowded the cramped counter space. The magazine lying open on the top of the mess caught Lana’s attention. She sat on the toilet seat cover and looked at the article about Eddie French and the witchy teen idol on Mistique. She gathered the magazines in her arms and carried them onto the back porch.
By the time the run-and-read group had arrived, Kimmie had also appeared dressed in black, eyes outlined in charcoal, her lipstick the color of blood. She and Beth were enclosed in the playhouse upstairs. Planning new ways to make me suffer, Lana thought, and surprised herself by smiling.
The run-and-read club had begun as an informal group of friends. Gradually its numbers had increased and now there were eight in the club though they were rarely all present at the same time. They ran occasional Five and Ten Ks, met at the bay or out on Harbor Island to run, and every month they got together to talk about the books they were reading and to exchange copies. They were an odd mixture. Joan Lang was a one hundred percent Republican Catholic; Jessie Ward supported every liberal cause that came her way and marched in the annual MLK parade with the members of the Blue Sky Commune to which she once belonged; Jilly Pepper worked for the Union-Tribune, and Lorna McCoy was a CPA to her marrow.
That night’s leader would be Susan Weinstein, a high school principal. She was a tall woman in her early fifties with a springy cap of salt-and-pepper hair, a nervous manner, and a determined sense of humor that amused and exhausted Lana.
With glasses of wine and cups of coffee, they settled into the couch and chairs in the grownup living room and for more than an hour talked about the novels they were reading. Around nine they moved to the kitchen for refreshments.
Beth and Kimmie came through the back door, laughing, just as the break began. Their cheeks were a healthy pink.
“Where have you been?” Conversation around the table stopped.
Beth shrugged. “Out back, with Buster.” She picked up a toffee brownie. “Can I have one of these?”
“I made cheese crisps,” Wendy said. “The kind you like.”
“Cool,” Beth said. She and Kimmie began to load their plates.
Something itched at the corner of Lana’s mind.
Joan said, “Leave some for the rest of us.”
Kimmie laughed, “You would not believe how hungry I am.”
“Mmm, I think I would,” Jessie said. “I think I would.”
Lana watched as the girls said good night over their shoulders and went upstairs. She heard the sound of their giggles as they climbed the stairs and felt her friends looking at her. She looked back at them.
Susan said, “Every night I go down on my knees and thank God I don’t have teenagers anymore.”
“Even Beth,” Joan shook her head in disbelief. “I never thought it would happen.”
Jessie said, “Once upon a time, even you were obnoxious and ill-mannered, Joanie.”
Obnoxious and ill-mannered. This was how Lana’s friends saw her daughter. Lana wanted to defend her, except that the description fit. And Jessie, a psychologist, said it was normal and nothing to worry about by itself. “Humans are programmed to rebel,” she said. “If we don’t do it when we’re young, we do it when we’re old.”
“I never rebelled,” Joan Lang said. “I never had anything to rebel against.”
Jessie looked at her over her half frames. “You’re the kind who runs off with a TV repairman when she’s sixty years old.”
Having spilled everything to Wendy at the Bay Club, it was not so difficult for Lana to tell her friends about bringing Eddie French into the house, about Micki inviting him to dinner and overnight. Even the slap. As she spoke they drew up chairs and stools, poured more wine and coffee for themselves. When Lana finished the story there was a moment of silence.
“Wow,” Lorna said. “You must feel awful.”
Lana blinked back tears. Was she so starved for understanding?
“Oh, honey,” cried Elsie Diaz, wrapping her fat arms around Lana, “you’ve been having a time.”
For a few moments everyone commiserated with Lana and then they started talking more or less all at once, every woman with a different take on the situation.
“I don’t think you should have invited him to come,” Susan said. “Next thing, you’re going to meet the mother. When she shows up, there’s going to be big trouble. I don’t think you’re ready for that.”
“Forget the mother,” Joan said. “What about him? My God, my boys would spend all day playing Ghost if I let them. It’s the most incredible video game. This Eddie’s like a . . . star.”
“Plus, you say he dates the black-haired witch from Mistique?” said Jilly Pepper, the youngest of the group and noted for her lack of tact. “Shit, Lana, you got big trouble.”
Elsie glared at her.
Jilly held up her hands defensively. “Well, it’s true. She can’t compete with him. He comes in carrying a ton of baggage and all of it glamorous.”
“I’m not trying to compete,” Lana said forlornly.
Joan laughed. “Of course you are. He’s a frontal assault on your authority, not to mention Jack’s memory and your role in Mick’s life.”
“I have this friend,” Jilly said. “I went to school with her—she went off with her birth mother, never looked back.”
“Shut up, Jilly,” Wendy said.
“You know, there’s a tremendous psychic wound in every adopted child, even the happiest,” Jilly said. “My friend’s still in heavy-duty therapy. Whatever happens with this guy, all kinds of deep and serious shit is going to get stirred up in Micki. ”
“I know that, Jilly, but I didn’t have any choice.” Lana was glad now she had not mentioned Eddie French’s two trips to rehab and his scrapes with the law. “There wasn’t anything else I could do.”
“You could have told him to stay out of your lives, and forbidden Micki—”
Susan, the mother of three, laughed.
Wendy said, “Jilly, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You can’t forbid teenagers. You do that and you’re asking for trouble. Personally,” Wendy looked at the women around the table, “I think Lana did the right thing, the only thing she could. She invited him and now she can set the terms.”
“Plus,” Susan said, “you can keep an eye on them.”
“And you better do that,” Joan said, wagging her head. “How old did you say he is?”
“Thirty-one or two, I think.”
“Oh, my dear, an undomesticated male.” Susan said, laying her hand on her heart. “Be still, be still.”
“Is he good-looking?” Joan asked.
Lana thought a minute. “
In a young kind of way.”
Lorna said portentously, “He’s a young man and you have two very pretty and innocent daughters.”
Lana laughed. “He’s her father, Lorna.”
Across the room, Susan groaned.
“What?” Lana asked her. “What?”
“Sex, Lana. Sex. You’ve heard of it?”
Lana put down her coffee cup. “What is this, a gang bang?”
“You think incest only happens in novels?”
“Why is he so interested in her?” Jilly wanted to know. “What’s in it for him?”
“Hey, fathers love their children. Just as much as mothers,” Wendy said. “And I think its totally fabulous this guy has always wanted to know Micki, that he’s never forgotten her.”
“I think it’s kinda creepy,” Jilly said.
“Jesus Christ,” Wendy said. “What kind of family did you grow up in?”
Jessie said, “I hate to say it, Lana, but I think you’ve got another problem.”
“Great. Birth mothers, runaways, incest—what could be worse?”
“Beth’s smoking dope.”
“No.” Lana shook her head so hard she felt her earrings swing and hit her jawline.
Wendy said, “You’re kidding, Jessie. You’re crazy.”
Out of all of them, only Lana knew Jessie was right. It was this that had been itching at the edge of her thoughts the last week or two; this explained the vaguely dusty smell, the peculiarities of appetite, the sleepiness. “That’s why they were outside.”
Jessie nodded. “Sorry to be the one to tell you, kiddo.”
No one said anything for a moment or two. Outside, the wind had risen. The wind chimes clanged against the side of the house and the Tillmans’ Newfoundland howled mournfully.
When her friends had left and Lana had cleaned the kitchen, she went upstairs to say good night to Beth. She knocked on the door to the playhouse and when there was no response, she opened it, not trying to be quiet. The television was on and they were asleep on the floor, covered by a pair of old blankets. They looked as if they had fallen asleep in midsentence, still in their shoes and socks, the crumbs of toffee brownies scattered around them. In their sleep all hint of resentment and deceit vanished from their faces. Beth’s mouth was open slightly; the sweet rosebud of her inner lip glistened in the television’s flickering light. She lay slightly on her side, exposing the small of her back where her skinny tee shirt had ridden up. Between it and the top of her sweat pants, her skin was a lovely, warm pinkish caramel and Lana’s palms tingled with the longing to lay her hand there. Motherhood’s sublime cruelty was deprivation. She had gone from having permission to touch and know this other body as well as her own, to being forbidden to touch without permission—and half the time being laughed at for wanting to. And so it seemed Lana’s life grew narrower with every day. She could no longer touch Jack, she was not allowed to touch either Beth or Micki. Motherhood, of all the roles she might have chosen, seemed the most thankless and bitter.
Later in the night she lay in bed, unable to sleep. The events of the last two days, capped by Jessie’s revelation that evening, replayed in her mind and demanded that she do something.
Aloud she said, “I will but I’ve got to sleep.” She had to rest for what lay ahead.
She got out of bed and opened the old cedar chest in her closet in which she kept extra blankets and all the family’s photo albums. She checked the date on the spine—1989—and carried it back to bed with her, then sat propped in her pillows until after three, her eyes burning with fatigue. There were photos of the cottage on the grounds of Urban Greenery, of Wendy and Michael and all the children at Sea World and the zoo, on camping trips and at La Bufadora down in Baja. On one page all the shots were of Jack and the girls when they were two and three. Their little faces shining with hopeful potential broke through Lana’s self control. She pressed her face into the pillows and let her heart break. Alone except for Gala, who stood with her chin resting on the edge of the bed, dark copper eyes never leaving Lana’s face, she wept until she no longer felt any pity for herself. Exhausted, she felt nothing and closed her eyes without troubling to reach up and turn off the light. Sleep opened its door and as she was about to step through, she paused on the threshold and had two clear thoughts.
She would not give up. She would confront Beth tomorrow. She would keep on being a pain in the ass to her girls, a nag and a burden, and someday they would thank her for being steadfast.
And she would invite Mars to have dinner with the family and Eddie French. Mars knew about young men. She would make it easier.
Chapter Twenty-five
On Saturday morning the sky was a flat, dimensionless ceiling of high clouds the color of pancake batter, and there was static in the air as if someone were trying to send a message along old, stripped lines. The garden was full of the noise of birds when Lana awoke; she listened to them for some moments, isolating the species. The mockingbird, of course, loud and clear, probably up on the roof. The dither of the pink-breasted finches drawn to the feeders in the olive trees, the mourning doves. She felt good. Glad that book club was over and she would not have to host for another eight months, glad it had gone well and there were not too many delicious leftovers to tempt her. Then she remembered the conversation around the table and her mood sank like the barometer.
She had to confront Beth about the marijuana.
But not immediately. Not while Kimmie was still here.
She dressed and went downstairs and looked around the untidy kitchen. She had refused Wendy’s offer to help clean up. She had wanted to be alone.
She called Mars and invited her to dinner.
“You mean you trust me with him?”
“Don’t be a wise ass,” Lana said. “I need your moral support.”
“I’ll be there. You better believe I will.”
Next she made a cup of coffee and while it dripped through, she went upstairs and into the playroom where Beth and Kimmie still lay, zonked to the world. The room smelled sourly female. Lana opened the room’s one small window and roused them, trying not to sound too abrasive.
“Good morning, ladies, time to rise and shine.”
Kimmie groaned and rolled onto her stomach. She lifted herself onto her forearms and squinted at Lana. Blurred mascara made misery of her eyes.
Fifteen-year-olds aren’t supposed to look like this, Lana thought.
Beth lay curled into the beanbag chair, her face half covered by a blanket. Lana nudged her shoulder gently to get her moving. “I know it’s early, but I have a ton of stuff to do today and I need your help.
“I’ll be happy to drive you home first, Kimmie.”
Beth groaned.
“It’s half past eight now. I want to be in the car by ten. That gives you plenty of time for a shower and something to eat.”
“Can’t Mick help you? It’s her—”
“She’ll help, but I need you, too.”
Groans of protest and complaint followed Lana downstairs. While she drank her coffee she loaded the dishwasher and cleaned up the kitchen.
Marijuana, marijuana, marijuana. The pretty word sang through her thoughts, and when she shoved it aside, back it bounced. She had to talk to Beth, but first there was the dinner with Micki’s birth father to think about.
What a cheery life she was having. Any more laughs and she’d be forced to shoot up a post office.
She made another cup of coffee, peeled a banana and ate it as she thumbed through her favorite stained and dog-eared book of family recipes, deciding finally to fix a party lasagna using the last jar of marinara sauce. She made a shopping list: ricotta and mozzarella cheese, parmesan, mushrooms, roasted red peppers, raisins, and walnuts. Maybe Eddie French was allergic to walnuts. Maybe he’d keel over and solve half her problems. The makings of a Caesar salad, a long loaf of French bread, and a couple of bottles of good red wine. Fair red wine. There was no reason to blow the budget on this event; she did not
want Eddie French to think she had tried too hard.
Good red wine. She did not want him to think she was cheap. She sat back and warmed her hands on her coffee cup, staring at the lazy Susan in the middle of the table, cluttered as always with notes and pencils and bills. Gala came through the pet door and put her nose under Lana’s elbow. Absently, she petted the silky, auburn head.
Jack said she was a contradiction. A disorganized woman who made lists compulsively and lived amidst islands of clutter while longing for order. She worried about time and yet she was always late. A good cook who rarely cooked. A loving mother whose daughters smoked dope and ran away from home at night.
As much as she wanted Eddie French to be a jerk Micki could not wait to be rid of, Lana hoped he was special.
Had she ever thought this before? She actually hoped he would be a nice guy and that Micki would feel better-connected to the world because of him. She sat back in her chair, slightly breathless with the realization that something in her had changed over the last weeks. After scrambling up a cliff for the last month, after skinning her knees and cutting her hands on every rocky obstacle, she seemed to have reached a plateau of sorts, a level place.
A little before ten, Beth and Kimmie dragged themselves into the kitchen, both still looking exhausted. They had taken showers; their damp hair clung to their hairlines and dripped down the back of their little black tee shirts. They made a mess where Lana had just cleaned—cereal bits on the oak tabletop, sugar and drops of milk. The only bread in the house was an unsliced loaf. Beth cut two irregular slices more than an inch wide but Lana said nothing. Kimmie smiled excessively and made sit-com conversation. Beth moped with her shoulders slumped and her feet shuffling on the floor like an old woman’s.
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