The Edge Of The Sky

by Drusilla Campbell

  “I went into Betty Ford, stayed a month, came out and joined AA.”

  “How long have you . . .” Lana asked.

  “Three years, five months, fourteen days and,” he looked at his watch, “about nine hours.”

  Most people would have been mortified by the questions and the silences, but Micki’s birth father seemed unfazed.

  “Look,” he said, resting his elbows on the table, “I don’t mind talking about it. Everyone makes mistakes, I figure, and what counts is if you catch yourself in time. Before you get in too deep to get out. And then if you learn something in the process.”

  “So young and yet so wise,” Aunty Mars said, halfway joking.

  “Everything I know that’s any good comes right out of AA, believe me. I didn’t know jackshit before I got sober.”

  Jack. The silence around the table got heavy and Micki felt the sweat under her arms.

  Aunty Mars to the rescue.

  “Did you have a famous roommate at Betty Ford?”

  “A car salesman from Gardena.”

  The conversation moved on to famous people who had drug and alcohol problems and Aunty Mars talked about some of her students. Then she asked Eddie French to tell them about his new company.

  “I got sick of making games. After I got sober, I looked at my life and I didn’t think it amounted to much more than a bank account. I figured video games could be used for education as well as fun if I could just get the right gimmick going.” He speared a cherry tomato and put it in his mouth. As he chewed, his eyes crinkled again and disappeared, becoming reflections of the candles on the table.

  “You did?” Lana asked. “Get a gimmick?”

  He nodded. “I think so. I’m going to Europe in a couple of weeks to talk to some folks.”

  “How long will you be gone?” Micki asked, struck by a spasm of dismay. It was the first thing she had said directly to him that night. As soon as she spoke she felt shy, afraid her alarm showed, afraid he would think she cared.

  “Couple of months, maybe three. After that I’m going to Japan to talk to some design guys I know. Thought I’d go around the long way. Stop in India. I’ve never been to India.”

  “Must be nice,” Lana said dryly. “All that time and money.”

  Micki stifled a groan of mortification. What was wrong with her mother anyway? Why couldn’t she just be nice?

  They ate dessert in the kitchen, at the round table. Beth said she did not want any and went upstairs while the rest of them sat at the table eating and talking, beginning to sound like friends. Micki sat next to Eddie French and a couple of times his shoulder touched hers. She jerked away and then wanted to dig a hole for herself. What kind of idiot was she? They talked about all kinds of things—video games and traveling and even Lana relaxed and told a funny story about the time she and Jack drove down Baja to Cabo and camped on the sand.

  “My dad and I used to camp,” Eddie French said.

  Omigod, thought Micki. I have grandparents. Not just Stella. She hadn’t thought of this.

  “They live up in Modesto. Dad runs the Ace Hardware up there and they’ve got a little fruit ranch.”

  Do they know about me, Micki wanted to ask.

  “I was an only child. The folks would have liked a whole basketball team, but I’m all they got.”

  They like children—they might like me.

  He turned to Micki, “Are you always so quiet?”

  She looked away and then back at him, ducked her head, looked up and smiled, shook her head.

  “Well, I’m gonna be here tomorrow. If you think of something you want to say.” He was teasing her.

  She blurted, “Can you come back next weekend?”

  “Micki . . .”

  Aunty Mars said, “He’s got a trip to plan, Micki.”

  “Actually,” he said with a lazy smile, “I don’t have a thing to do.” He lifted his hands from his coffee cup and spread them before her. “Not a thing.”

  Micki looked at her mother and her mother looked at Aunty Mars and her face looked hard and the muscles in her neck were like ropes.

  “Sure,” she said. “Why not?”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  As Lana walked Mars to her car that night, they talked about Stella and decided to wait another week or two before confronting her with the impossibility of moving to Bird Rock. They both hoped a sane Realtor would give her a dose of reality. It was a strange, still January night. Lana could have stood barefoot, wearing shorts, and not been chilled. Overhead the sky was blue-black and bright with stars like bramble roses in the spring. From the north a plane approached, blinking its warning.

  “You were not what I’d call the soul and spirit of graciousness tonight.” Mars unlocked the door of her cinnamon-red Mercedes coupe and tossed her bag and shawl across to the passenger seat.

  “I said he could come, didn’t I? What more do you expect of me?” And next week, too. What else could she say with all of them looking at her?

  Mars slipped into the driver’s seat and attached her seat belt. “You’re brave and I’m proud of you.” She put her key in the ignition but did not turn it on. “He’s a nice guy, don’t you think?”

  Lana could not disagree. And obviously Micki felt the same, though Lana had noted that she rarely looked at him directly, but from the corner of her eye as if out of shyness or some distrust. It was good, Lana thought, that she was being cautious.

  “We’ll see,” she said. “It’s not too hard to make a good impression at dinner.”

  Mars said, “I feel sorry for Beth.”

  “You should feel sorry for me.”

  “Micki has a father now and Beth doesn’t,” Mars said, “When I went to the bathroom—”

  “I was doing the dishes, as I seem to recall.” Micki and Eddie French had gone into the kids’ living room to watch a video, leaving Lana marooned and morose amidst the remains of dinner.

  “—I went upstairs. Beth was in the playroom watching television.”

  “And let me guess.” Lana looked up at the stars as if words were written there. The plane was overhead now, its engine noise a low backdrop to the night’s silence. “She told you what a terrible mother I am. How I’m dishonest and a liar and no one understands her anymore. How alone she feels and she only has one place she likes to be and that’s with her friend Kimmie but now I—”

  “She talked about that scene at school.”

  The turbulence of the day had put a great distance between Lana and the meeting at Arcadia School, so great that at first she did not know what scene Mars was talking about.

  “Oh. That. I told you all about it. I wanted to meet Kimmie. Before Beth started hanging out with her she played basketball and she didn’t smoke pot.”

  “As far as you knew.”

  “I knew.”

  Lana took a deep breath of the mild night air, fragrant with jasmine and, from the Tillmans’, mock orange. Somewhere someone had a mesquite fire burning. “Did she tell you what I did with Jack’s ashes?”

  Mars nodded.

  “And did she tell you I admitted it was wrong?”

  Mars nodded again and gently tapped her leather steering wheel cover. “I always wondered what happened. Why we never had a ceremony—”

  “You blame me, too?”

  Mars’s expression was tender. “Lana, one thing I know is you always do the best you can. I don’t blame you for anything.”

  Lana watched the lights go out in the Andersons’ house. First the porch light, then the living room, then the upstairs front spare bedroom where old Mrs. Anderson did her needlework every night. Down the street in the big pine the neighborhood owl hooted twice.

  “Give Beth some space—she’ll come around.”

  “Too much space and she’ll get lost,” Lana said. “That’s what happens with adolescent girls. Especially those who have no father.”

  “You didn’t have a father. Neither did I.”

  “Beth isn’t us, Mars.�
��

  “Maybe not. But she’s also not who you think she is.”

  “And I suppose you do?”

  “Don’t get huffy, little girl. I’m saying maybe no one knows who Beth is anymore, least of all Beth.”

  “All the more reason for me to hold her close.”

  Mars sighed and turned on the ignition. “I’m outta here. Thanks for dinner.” She started to put the car in gear and stopped. “I like him, Lana.”

  “Yeah, so I gather.”

  The neon-green numerals on the bedside clock swam before her in the darkness like a species of strange fish. Four A.M. and all hope of sleep had gone south. Lana pushed back the covers and got out of bed. From her spot at the top of the stairs, Gala thumped her tail. Lana pulled on sweat pants and shirt, picked up her trainers and socks, and tiptoed out of the room. At the top of the stairs she sat and pulled on her shoes and socks, then went downstairs, Gala following. In the kitchen she encountered Eddie French just coming out of the guest room.

  “Oh.”

  He was barefooted and wore a pair of abbreviated boxer shorts. The stove light cast shadows on the contours of his broad shoulders and narrow waist, the sculpted pecs and stomach, the long, powerful muscles in his thighs.

  “Can’t sleep,” he said, and walked over to the sink.

  Don’t bother being embarrassed, Lana thought. Don’t bother putting on clothes. I’m just the mother of your daughter. The adoptive mother. And what if I’d been Micki? What if she’d walked down here and seen you in your underwear?

  Looking at him from behind, she was more conscious of his wedge-shaped torso and his butt like a soccer ball. Such a slim waist. She remembered what Mars had told her, how a young man’s body is hard but warm, that the flesh gives beneath the fingers but just a little. She wanted to touch him, to feel the tone of him, the warmth of his skin against her palm.

  “I’m making coffee,” she said, and got busy.

  “You always up so early?”

  His voice was low, clouded and drowsy. Lana thought of Jack bending over her in the dark bedroom to say that he was off early, he’d see her at work, the way his voice filtered in through the lattice of her dreams.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said, tapping her nails on the stovetop as she watched the blue flame lap around the bottom of the kettle. “I’m taking the dogs for a walk.”

  “Want company?”

  “Not really.” Just now he frightened her a little. He was young and she was old and tired. “I’m sorry, that was rude. Please come along.”

  “I don’t want—”

  “Forget it. My social skills aren’t so good before dawn.” She poured water through a single-cup filter cone. “Shall I make you one?”

  He thought a minute. “Yeah. Thanks. I’ll go put something on.”

  Do that.

  She watched him walk into the guest room. Even in the dimly lit kitchen, she saw the definition of the long muscle that ran down the back of his thighs and the teardrop shape of his calves. Wendy said she liked having sons because there were always young male bodies around the house to admire. Yes.

  He came out of the room wearing Levi’s and a loose sweater.

  “This is the coldest time of the night,” she told him. “Look in the hall closet. There should be an old jacket of Jack’s.”

  As he came back into the kitchen a moment later, he was pulling on a dust-colored windbreaker with a tear in the sleeve just below the elbow. Jack had caught it on some barbed wire and she said she’d mend it but never had. She kept it because it smelled like Jack where the lining rubbed against the back of his neck. Now the smell would be spoiled.

  She made Eddie French a cup of filtered coffee in a thermal mug and they went out the back door, Gala eagerly following to where Buster lay on the cement slab beside the house, eyes open, head on his paws. Lana clipped the leash to his collar and he seemed happy to come along so long as they didn’t move too fast.

  Near the eastern horizon the sky was blue, filtered through gold, but overhead it was still dark, the color of Micki’s eyes, and Venus, the morning star, shone like a miracle. The temperature had dipped slightly from earlier when she stood beside Mars’s car, but it was still unseasonably warm for a midwinter night. There was hope of rain for another few weeks but soon the scarlet and gold ranunculus bulbs would sprout their frilly leaves and on the liquid ambar tree the buds would grow plump and ripe. If she had been alone, Lana would have stopped and leaned against the neighbors’ wall and cried, she missed Jack so. This would be her second spring without him and as she cast her thoughts ahead, she thought she could not bear to face the season alone. She looked sideways at Eddie French and felt a surge of dislike for him.

  Under the Lexus parked in front of the Wilsons’ house, their old gray tom crouched and watched. Gala saw him, stopped and pointed, her tail quivering. Buster walked on by, unimpressed by cats. Gala barked once, the Wilsons’ sound-activated porch light went on, and the cat flew out and up the carob tree in their front yard.

  “Gala,” Lana called softly. “Get over here.” Reluctantly the setter obeyed. Lana pulled a leash out of her jacket pocket and attached it to the dog’s collar. “You can’t be trusted.”

  In silence she and Eddie French walked across Fort Stockton toward the Miranda Street Park. Lights were on in a few houses. A few cars were on the streets.

  Eddie French said, “I want to thank you, Lana, for your kindness. For letting me get to know Micki.” He laughed softly. “The name suits her, better than Michelle.”

  “We always liked that Beatles song.”

  “She seems like a terrific girl.” After a pause he added. “I want to thank you for that, too.”

  Don’t think by showing me your good manners and your gratitude I’m going to let you into our life. You don’t automatically get a part of Micki because you know when to say thank you. Her brain was gummy from worry and lack of sleep. It wasn’t the time to talk.

  “I finally got in touch with Barbara,” he said.

  “Barbara?”

  “Micki’s birth mother?”

  Here it comes. First Eddie French and next the mother, the woman who did not want Micki but now feels she has a right to her. She clamped her jaw shut.

  “She lives in Texas. Some little place you never heard of.” His tone was derisive. “She didn’t want to talk to me on the phone so I flew down there. I went to her house. Not right off—I didn’t want to cause her trouble.”

  So you stalked her? Like Micki?

  His voice grew distant and thoughtful and she understood that he had been saving up this story; it had taken restraint for him to wait until the right time to tell it. She was interested, of course. How could she fail to be? But angry, too. Lately everything seemed to make her either teary or mad.

  “Her house was okay. Neat and all, and there was a big red truck in the driveway. One morning I saw a man come out the front door and get in it, drive away, and then a couple of kids—a boy and girl—leave. For school, I guess. After that, nothing happened so I figured she was alone. I didn’t want to get her in trouble.”

  He had said this before, and Lana felt he wanted a response from her but if he wanted reassurance that he was a good boy he could go home and ask his mother. His mother. My god, Lana thought. Am I old enough to be his mother? She did the math and was relieved. Though he seemed a boy to her, he was only ten years her junior.

  “Man, I thought she’d slam the door in my face, the way she looked at me like when we were kids and she was after me to do things for her and I wouldn’t.”

  In Texas, Barbara had grown plump but her face was still pretty and her hair still as fair and thick as Micki’s. “Her maiden name was Aandahl. Norwegian. I remember her mother was called Gunhild and I always thought that was such a great name, like a Norse goddess or something.” He looked at Lana. “You ever play ‘Ghost?’ ”

  For a moment Lana did not know what he meant. “The video game,” she said, catching on. “N
o. Never.”

  “Well, I named one of the Viking queens Gunhild.”

  “A Viking ghost?”

  “Yeah, right. In the game there’s this world where all the great mythic and historic figures live in ghost form and when you play it you’re trying to populate the world with humans and you have to learn to do it without offending the ghosts. Of course, most of them want to kill you but a few can be allies and they have special powers and strengths and you can earn these to give you a better chance against the bad guys.”

  “That’s a video game?”

  “Yeah. ‘Ghost’.”

  He told her more about the game and she listened because she was grateful not to have to hear about Barbara for a few minutes. His friend from community college had done the hard programming for “Ghost” because in those days Eddie French had known very little about computer languages. He had come up with the patterns, the strategies, the intricate interplay of power, ambition, and violence. She guessed that as much as he wanted to talk about Barbara, “Ghost” was a diversion they both welcomed.

  At the Miranda Street Park, Lana let Gala off her lead, and she raced away toward the trees while Buster, the guardian, stayed close by, pressed against Lana’s leg.

  Eddie French got to the end of his explanation about “Ghost” and there was a long silence.

  “What happened when she opened the door?”

  Barbara would not invite him into the house but finally, after he had begged her, she agreed to meet him that afternoon in a nearby town where there was a mall. They could appear to meet by accident.

  “I was sitting on a bench in front of The Gap and she came by. Didn’t even sit down. I never saw anyone so nervous.” She had dressed up and applied makeup, and she was not as pretty as that morning when her face was plain and scrubbed. But he could tell from the way she outlined her eyes, the blue mascara, and precisely drawn lips that appearances were important to Barbara.

  His tender observation puzzled Lana and made her watch his face more closely in the half-light. Did he feel empathy for Barbara? Lana would not have guessed this was within his repertoire, did not quite believe her perception; and yet—she kept coming back to this thought as he spoke—he sounded as if something in his old girlfriend’s efforts touched him.