Blood Orange

by Drusilla Campbell

  They walked on. “What if she’s really … an okay person?”

  “Didn’t you tell me David likes her?”

  “Oh, yeah, he thinks she’s funny and eccentric, but, then, she didn’t raise him. And did I tell you? The latest? He’s conned me into letting Marsha Filmore move into the apartment over the garage, and Grandma says I’m an idiot and I shouldn’t let her near Bailey. What do you think?”

  Pausing between question and response was something else Lexy had been trained to do.

  Bailey came back into sight, kicking the spindrift as she ran in and out of the shallows and then up the hard sand, her arms out at her sides, wheeling and careening after the gulls.

  I think Dana’s right. She’s getting better on her own.

  “Maybe I’m just paranoid.”

  Lexy said, “You’re not paranoid.”

  Lexy did not say what she most deeply felt, that Dana should worry less, stop trying to manage life down to the last detail. Unlikely as it almost always seemed, God was in his Heaven and all was right with the world. Seen from God’s eyes, even Bailey’s abduction made sense.

  Now was not the time to open that philosophical door. Dana had just gotten over being mad at God.

  “And I haven’t told David about the note in the car. I know I should, but these days I just don’t feel like telling him anything.”

  Dana stopped at the edge of the water and looked at Lexy with an expression of fierce pain in her eyes. “I love David, but something’s changed between us.” Behind her the horizon was scarved in fog. “It’s my fault, too. I know it is, but even so he does nothing to help the situation. He works all the time. And when he’s home he’s thinking about work. That horrible case. I don’t think he really sees me anymore.

  “What about you? Do you see him?”

  Dana started to answer but stopped, and Lexy wondered what she wasn’t saying.

  We all have secrets.

  “Shit, I don’t know what I see.”

  It seemed to Lexy that in marriage, daring to look at the other with clear and open eyes was an act of faith. What happened when what you saw displeased or disgusted or disappointed you? Of all the demands set down by God, Lexy thought the requirement to forgive and love others as ourselves was the most challenging.

  Dana said, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I’m not even sure I care anymore.”

  Lexy put her arm around her shoulder. “Oh, you care, Dana, you care big time.”

  Despite its unhappy outcome, Lexy did not regret her marriage to William Parker Trent III. Because of her time with Billy she knew something of what it took to make marriage work, of the great effort required to sustain love and respect over a stretch of decades.

  When Lexy walked out on William Parker Trent III before they’d been married a year, it had been with a sense of personal failure that only deepened with time. Their mutual friends had expressed astonishment and asked how it could happen to such beautiful people with successful careers and so much in common: sailing and riding and gourmet cooking, cocaine and wine-lots of wine and martinis and champagne whenever possible. The New York Times Magazine had featured the kitchen in their Amagansett house the same month Lexy walked out, taking with her only what filled one suitcase small enough to lodge in an overhead compartment. She had left Billy Trent, their friends, her appointment book, and shoots scheduled months in advance to move into the St. Ann retreat house in Warrenton, Virginia. She had remained there for seven months, leaving only to attend AA meetings in town. Years later, when she sought permission to pursue ordination, her bishop asked her why she had chosen to end her marriage without trying to make it work. She gave him the only answer she had ever managed to come up with. She had thought Billy Trent was her great love. It took less than six months to realize he was just a lifestyle.

  But Dana and David had more than a lifestyle.

  “There’s something good and strong and very special between you and David. You can’t neglect it, and you can’t give up on it.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “It takes work, Dana. I don’t have to tell you that. Suppose you were growing a plant, a tree, and it cost you a lot of money, and it’s very rare, and you did all your landscaping around it.” It was the best metaphor Lexy could come manage in the middle of the beach on a foggy morning. “You wouldn’t give up if it didn’t thrive. You’d take care of it, wouldn’t you? You’d help it through the bad time.”

  Dana laughed. “Bad metaphor. If we were really talking about a tree David would lend me a hand occasionally. I thought the modern marriage was a partnership. How come I’ve got to do all the heavy lifting while he does nothing?”

  “Living with you isn’t nothing.” Dana could be prickly and hypersensitive. She wanted things her own way, and she wanted life organized according to her master plan. She did not like surprises.

  Dana said dryly, “Maybe I should pay David a reward for just sticking around.”

  A few yards ahead of them Bailey had stopped running and stood waiting for them to catch up. Her overalls were wet to the knees and covered with sand. Dana sighed and seemed to sag.

  “If you knew how tired I get…. All my life, Lexy, I’ve done what I had to so I’d get what I wanted. I keep waiting for someone to say, `Relax, you’ve made it; here’s your reward.’ 11

  “You don’t really believe life works that way.”

  “Then why have I tried so hard for so long? Why have I always done the right thing? Always.” Dana paused, and in the silence Lexy imagined she heard the murmur of another conversation, one they would never have.

  “You think I’m a monster?”

  “Am I the Dalai Lama?”

  “When I look ahead … “

  “Well, there’s your first mistake. Focus on today, this day.” Lexy took the leash from Dana, called Moby Doby to her, and hooked the lead on his collar. “Take it from an old alcoholic, Dana. You can move through the deepest ca-ca if you do it one step at a time.”

  Lexy had appointments scheduled until midafternoon. At three a couple brimming with good looks and hope came in for premarital counseling. Lexy said to them what she had wanted to tell Dana. God, knowing that his children would be lonely without partners, blessed and encouraged all loving unions: friendship, parents and children, lover and lover, husband and wife.

  She told the couple, “The thing you must never forget is that a marriage is a fragile organism, and it takes more than love to keep it alive. It requires forgiveness and trust and forbearance. Lots of forbearance.”

  She wished she’d said that to Dana.

  The monthly meeting of St. Tom’s vestry was held in the undercroft and was always a potluck to which Lexy was expected to contribute only her smiling, upbeat self. When everyone was seated and their plastic plates were heavy with Konnie’s Mexican casserole and Beth’s green salad, Lexy blessed the food, the vestry, and the work it did, and the meeting began. There were the usual matters of money and mission to discuss. Someone asked Lexy if she could schedule noontime Masses during Advent, and she said she would, though she had no idea how she’d manage. Beth reported on plans for the upcoming Day of the Dead, All Saints’ Day celebration. The building committee reported on the estimated cost of wheelchair ramps. By the time Lexy returned to her office it was after nine, but she worked on a grant proposal until almost eleven, when the figures on the spreadsheet became a blur. She made herself a cup of drip coffee and dialed Micah’s number, barely hoping he would pick up. When he did, she was momentarily tongue-tied.

  “You answered. Hi. It’s me.”

  “Yo, Me. It’s eleven o’clock at night. Why aren’t you in bed with someone? “

  He laughed, and she guessed that he was stoned. Micah was not a laugher by nature.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “How are you?”

  “Oh. Working. Same old.”

  “You need to get a life.”

  “That’s what Dana says.”r />
  “How is Dana?”

  “I think she’s hit one of those bumpy spots.”

  He laughed again, and she wondered why.

  “You sure you’re okay?” she asked as she wondered Are you stoned? Depressed? You sound depressed. Or: Are you taking your meds? You must take your medicine, Micah.

  I’m not depressed. Of course I’m taking them. Or: They make me sleepy. Or: I’m too young to abandon my libido.

  “I thought maybe the black dog had you,” she added.

  “Actually I’m feeling pretty good,” he said.

  “How ‘bout I come over tomorrow after work, take you to dinner? Sound good?”

  “Thing is, I won’t be here. I’ve got this gallery in LA interested in my Florentine scenes. I want to see you, but-“

  “Cra ” p•

  “Reverend Mother!”

  “You want me to believe you?”

  “Hey, you’re not the only busy person in this family.”

  “You’re selling?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you, Alexandra, it’s not about selling.” He added with mocking pretentiousness, “It’s about the art, darling.”

  “I can’t help it if I’m my mother’s daughter.”

  “Omigod, wash your mouth out with soap.”

  Lexy’s grip on the phone relaxed. “So are you selling?”

  “Enough.” Neither spoke for a moment. “How’s business with you? Saving lots of souls?”

  “I’d like to have a go at yours.”

  “Yeah, well, you can pray at my funeral.”

  “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “Lex, give it a break, will you? You know the way I am, up one day, down the next. Tonight I’m cool.”

  “You’re stoned.”

  “Shit, what a nag.”

  “I think about you all the time.”

  “Well, now, that’s your first mistake.”

  “Love’s never a waste of time, Micah.”

  He snorted. “Oh, yeah? What about Mr. William Parker Trent the Third?”

  “I learned a lot from my time with Billy.”

  “And I learned a lot from Edie Parkhurst in the back of her grandmother’s Rambler.”

  He was pushing her away. She was wise to all his tricks.

  “Anyway,” he said, “you didn’t answer my question. Why aren’t you in bed with someone? What happened to that guy you were dating last year? What was his name?”

  “Isaac.”

  “And?”

  “I haven’t seen him.”

  “Why not? You liked him, you told me you did.”

  For a few months Isaac Slotkin had made her laugh and feel desirable. He was fun to go to movies with and baseball games; from the first they had talked like old friends. He wanted more than friendship, but she had neither time nor energy to complicate her life with sex. That’s what she told herself and mostly believed. Dana said the collar was protection. If so, the protection was not from the world but from herself.

  “Like all women, you’re a heartbreaker, Lexy.”

  “I’m not. Why would you say that?”

  “You married Billy and then you left him, and now there’s this guy Isaac.”

  “Billy’s getting along fine. He sent me an e-mail to tell me he’s getting married again.” Why was her brother talking about love and heartbreak?

  “Micah, are you seeing someone?”

  “No.”

  She waited.

  “I was, but it’s over.”

  Her heart sank. She had been his protector forever. His truest friend. “Tell me who she is. I’ll bust her chops.”

  “That would be an interesting scene.”

  “Does it help if I say it takes time to get over someone? But it’ll happen, Micah. Time’ll pass and you’ll stop hurting so much.”

  “No. I won’t. Love is for a lifetime. It’s old-fashioned, but that’s what I believe.”

  Love and marriage, it was all she’d talked and thought about that day.

  Micah said, “Go find yourself a nice man, Lexy. A guy who turns you on and makes you laugh. And promise me you’ll be nice to him. Cross your heart and hope to die.”

  “Micah, I can’t stand it when you hurt. Tell me what’s going on with you. Is it this woman?”

  “I need to know someone loves you, Alexandra.”

  aturday morning. Early Saturday morning. Bailey was pulling the blankets off the bed and tickling Dana’s toes. She groaned and turned her head to read the clock. Small hands on her ankles tugged.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute.” Dana sat up and, catching her daughter in her arms, she turned her onto her back and blew into the hollow of her neck. “What’s happening here? Is it Christmas? Is it Easter?”

  Bailey squirmed off the bed and pulled Dana to the window overlooking the side yard and garage. Larry McFarland was lumbering up the stairs to the apartment with a long aluminum ladder stuck under his arm, threatening to unbalance him. Three steps behind, Gracie carried a gallon paint can in each hand. Behind her came Allison, looking like Santa, with a pair of huge plastic bags from Home Depot hanging over her shoulders.

  David called from downstairs, “Rise and shine, Number One.” From the kitchen came the sound of the Wynton Marsalis CD Dana had given him on his birthday.

  This is lovely, she thought. This is how it’s meant to be.

  Afterward she would remember what she wore that day-Levi’s and a Miami University T-shirt that had faded to pink-the breakfast of eggs and sausage David made for the work crew, the sound of Wynton’s willowy clarinet. Most of all she would remember how much fun they all had fixing up the garage apartment so Marsha Filmore could move into their lives.

  The apartment was only one room and a bath, but the previous owners of the house had partitioned off a section to create a kitchen nook with a small refrigerator and microwave, a space comfortable for one person temporarily. The paintwork was straightforward, no crown moldings or eight-inch baseboards; and David and the team had the holes puttied and everything painted twice by midafternoon. Geoff rented a carpet cleaner, and the job was done by the time David put the steaks on the grill. Throughout the day Bailey had watched and sometimes helped. Once, hearing her laugh, David looked at Dana, his face alight with happiness, and she felt the old lightness, the familiar carbonated lift his smile prompted in her. They stepped toward each other and kissed, ignoring everyone around them.

  Afterward, she would remember the kiss.

  Dana and Geoff set out plates and cutlery and kept an eye on David’s filets while the crew cleaned up. The sun had dipped below the eucalyptus in the canyon behind the house, and the deck was in shade. Dana brought out a pile of sweaters and shawls. Across the yard Bailey swept the stairs to the apartment.

  “Be careful,” Dana said and then to Geoff, “I wish those stairs had a banister.”

  “Quit worrying so much.” Geoff opened a plastic container of Greek olives and shot one into his mouth. “She seems way better. What do the cops say?”

  “About what?”

  He stopped folding paper napkins and looked at her over the top of his glasses.

  “I don’t talk to them. She’s been through enough.” The muscles of her jaw tightened as she prepared for Geoff’s response.

  “I’m with you,” he said.

  “You are?”

  “Well, sure. The way I see it, she’s here, she’s healthy, and obviously she’s not depressed.” He tapped his temple where his red hair had begun to turn gold and gray. “Believe me, I know from depressed.”

  The meal was like old times with a gang of friends and plenty of good food and beer. Dana and David shared the wicker love seat, and she was conscious of their bodies touching at thigh and hip and shoulder.

  They talked about the hate mail that arrived at the office two or three times a week. Some letters were typed, some printed out in pencil, and some bore messages written in cutout letters stuck to paper.

  I have to
tell him eventually. Why not now, in a crowd.

  “I got a note the other day.” She did not look at David.

  He asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You’ve been so busy. I spoke to Gary.”

  The team looked from Dana to David and back to Dana.

  “There wasn’t much he could do.” She drew a deep breath. “I’d thrown it away.”

  No one said anything. Then Geoff cried, “Right on, sister! Garbage in, garbage out.”

  “What were you thinking?” David asked.

  “I wasn’t thinking, David.”

  “Give her a break, Boss,” Gracie said. “She was in shock.”

  Geoff said, “I’d ‘a done the same thing, Dana.”

  David did not seem to have heard anyone. “That was evidence. There might have been fingerprints.”

  “Look, I’m sorry I did it, but it’s done and-“

  “What about that message?” Geoff shuddered. “I love you both? Is that bizarre? Omigod.”

  “You might want to rethink what we were talking about,” Larry said to David.

  “Rethink what?” Dana asked.

  David answered, “Dana, do you want a bodyguard? Larry knows a woman, an ex-Navy type.”

  “What a crazy idea.” For one thing, she knew the firm could not afford a personal guard for Bailey and her; for another, she did not want David to think she was afraid. She wasn’t, exactly. Whoever had written the note had taken Bailey-Gary said this was so-and returned her strong and healthy, traumatized but undamaged. If he had wanted to hurt her-or Dana-he would have acted by now.

  Allison said, “We’re going to trial in a few weeks. Once the case is finished, the mail’ll stop.”

  David laced his fingers together and twirled his thumbs, looking from Dana to the members of the defense team as if weighing whether to debate, concede, or negotiate. His colleagues had taken her side, and she sensed that he felt in some way betrayed. She saw the anger and the effort it took to conceal it. As Dana’s good mood faltered, she made a quick decision. There was nothing she could do about the lost evidence, so, to pacify him, rather than argue, she would agree to the bodyguard if he insisted. But he surprised her by changing the subject. The conversation turned to Frank Filmore, to trial strategy, and to Marsha Filmore.