Lemon Reef

by Robin Silverman

  His voice deep and creamy smooth, Talon said, “I’ll put my fingers where I want to put them.”

  Del let out a cry of pain and he laughed over her. There was silence except for more muted, ruffling sounds and a single sharp inhale.

  “Do it then,” Del said. “Choke me. If you have the guts. Usually you send somebody else to do it for you. Or set people up, like you did my brother.”

  Del’s composure somehow returned, and her voice steadied. As with the journal, it was clear now that she was addressing an outside listener. This was all for the tape recorder, and she was artful at incitement, the way she had been when she was a kid and she was provoking her mother.

  “You threaten to kill yourself. When that doesn’t work, you threaten to kill me. You fuck me whether I want you to or not. You make me suck dicks just to prove your power over me. If I don’t do what you want, you threaten to take Khila away from me.” First sign of tears. “You made me frame my own brother. I fucking hate you.” A loud thump followed.

  Talon screamed, “You trying to hit me? You fucking stupid bitch. You try to hit me? Now,” he taunted, “you could have really hurt me.” There was scuffling, struggling, muffled cries, Del resisting.

  “Get off, get your knee off my ba—” A loud cry before her voice was stifled for a moment. She screamed, “Get the fuck off me. I’m sick of you hurting me.”

  I stared at a spot on the wall darkened from mold, believing momentarily it was a bruise. My body stiffened to stone, the slightest muscle movement threatening to crack me in half.

  Nicole was on her feet, walking in a circle and rocking her head back and forth, like a robot whose circuits were overloading. “He’s hurting her. He’s hurting her.”

  Ida hit the stop and the rewind. “Shut up, Nicole, I can’t hear the tape.” She pushed play.

  “You hit me first,” Talon said, sounding like a four-year-old. Then he yelled, “You’re no victim, you cunt.”

  Talon’s voice strained oddly, and I realized that at the same time as he was yelling, he was also crying, or trying not to. Beneath his rage was a desperate plea.

  “You think I don’t know you’re fucking somebody else? You bring it on yourself. I go to work every day to support you and Khila, and you wait until I leave to fuck some other man. Do you honestly believe I would let another man raise my daughter?” He cried and screamed, “You leave me, you fuck with me, and you will be sorry.”

  “It’s none of your business who I sleep with. I want a divorce.”

  We all winced and braced ourselves, hearing her say it.

  “None of my business? None of my business?”

  There were struggling sounds, blows and crying, incomprehensible words. Del began pleading for him to stop, to get off her. She was crying. He was cursing. Something crashed.

  Talon yelled, “You’ll never get Khila.” More slams. “You hear me? You’ll never get her. You’re nothing but a cunt whore, and I know you’re fucking someone else.”

  There was silence except for Del’s crying. Talon said in a chillingly calm way, “You know what, forget about it. You want to go, go. Get out, but you’re not taking Khila. You’re a worthless piece of shit.” Del cried harder. “You’re nothing but a parasite, just sucking the life out of me.” A few moments passed with Del sobbing, and then Talon said, “Khila’s not gonna grow up like you. I’ll be remarried in a year, and Khila will have a different mother. So you’re doing us all a favor. Get the fuck out.”

  There were more words that were hard to understand—Del screaming something about Talon taking Khila from her—cut off by a slamming door. Then there was sobbing and the jolting sound of the recorder clicking off. She was gone.

  Katie uncrossed and then recrossed her legs, shifted in her chair. Gail lay motionless on the couch. Nicole stared hatefully at Ida.

  Ida cried. “I didn’t know, Nicole. I swear. I didn’t know it was this bad.”

  Del’s pleas still ringing in my ears, my breathing felt shallow and incomplete. The recorder clicking off had submerged her yet again. I moved away from the others, found my way to Del’s old room, closed the door, and fell back against it. I folded in half, gasping and sobbing. My limbs shook and I felt sick, my stomach turning in on itself again and again. My abdomen cramped. I slid down the door to the floor and buried my head in my arms, waiting for the cramp to pass. I twisted to my feet, stood in the middle of this room in which I had spent so much time, in which such intimate parts of myself had taken form and expression. I felt her there, saw her face, heard her voice, caught the scent of her hair as it brushed over my face. What happened? What happened? How’d I miss this? Why didn’t I know how much trouble she was in?

  I did the only thing I could imagine doing in that moment. I lay down on the bed and called Madison. She was at the airport in New Haven waiting for her plane back to California. She listened to the whole story, which I might have told her twice. She just kept saying how sorry she was. Comforted by her voice, I longed to crawl through the phone and into her lap. I longed for my house in San Francisco, the scent of lemon blossoms, the sight of the Bay Bridge in the sparkling light.

  Now I looked at the photograph of Del and Khila sitting on the dresser. I picked it up and touched Del’s face. It made me start to cry again.

  “She went on that boat to get those videotapes, knowing he might kill her. Why did she agree to do those things in the first place? To frame her own brother?”

  Madison’s tone was matter-of-fact but poignant. “She agreed to sort pennies, didn’t she?” There was a moment of silence, and then Madison added, “Del had a baby with somebody who was a lot sicker than she realized.” She paused. “She’s spent the last ten years running interference and navigating around Talon to keep her kid safe. And maybe she loved him, too.”

  “He thinks he’s so clever, this guy. He thinks he’s so clever because he keeps getting away with brutalizing people who can’t defend themselves.”

  “Jenna,” Madison said. “Do you want me to come there? I can take the next plane to Miami right now.”

  “No.” I missed Madison and I did want her with me, but I was afraid to expose my life with her to this horror. “I’m fine. Really. I’ll call you later.”

  “Don’t do anything, Jen…” I heard as I closed my phone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I lay in Del’s old bedroom, staring at shadows on the ceiling, trying to assess whether with the tape there was enough evidence to open an investigation. The sheets reeked of cigarette smoke, which had attached to my skin and clothes and remained with me after I sat up. Without giving it much thought, I headed into the tiny bathroom, closed the door, and stripped. The bathroom was the same as I’d remembered it, except for the sink, which had been replaced after Nicole yanked the last one out of the wall during one of her fits. The medication she was on must be working, I thought.

  Water sprayed from the showerhead. It was too hot, but I didn’t adjust it. I sat naked on the shower floor embracing my legs, resting my chin on my knees. I tried to think of what to do next. The steam rose around me, left me momentarily confused about the law of gravity. My mind a sift of images: the yellow Post-its, the stacked pennies, the bleached sidewalk, the manicured lawn, the organized Tupperware, the roach appendages, Sid’s eyes, Talon’s falcon tattoo, Del’s face, Del’s face, Del’s face.

  It is uncanny, I thought, the extent to which only the names and faces change. Over and over, women who have never met, have never had cause or occasion to cross paths, stand in court telling the same harrowing story. There are some variations. I’d recently heard from a woman whose husband had taken to hitting her in the back of the head because it was more difficult to detect bruises there. Nevertheless, woman after woman describes a life of increasing isolation from friends and family, no control of finances, diminishing work options, more restrictive clothing requirements, increasingly outrageous allegations of promiscuity, forced religious practices, fewer and fewer degrees of freedo
m of movement in the outside world, surveillance. Before long, diet, hygiene, and toileting practices are being orchestrated.

  I thought again about the videotapes, about Del sacrificing Sid, and I wondered when Del had become so confused. It was before Talon. It was before Ben Reed. I recalled the night that Del had sex with Andrew Torie in the back of his father’s station wagon.

  *

  For six weeks since the night we had talked outside her house, Del had been showing up with Andrew everywhere and avoiding me. Now she came to my window and woke me up. She felt mortified about having had sex with Andrew earlier that night, kept saying she didn’t know why she had done it. She dreaded going back to school and facing the gossip. With no place to go, we walked the streets together, our hands tucked into our jacket pockets trying to keep warm.

  Underlying her disgust over having slept with Andrew was her rage at me for telling Gail about us and her sadness over our coming apart. Her father was engaged to someone else, and Pascale was on a rampage. Del said she felt like dying. I tried to hold her, and finally when she did let me, she molded to me and collapsed into sonorous, wrenching sobs. Then she rested quietly, allowed me to comfort her, stroke her hair.

  We began walking again and finally ended up back at her house as the sun was rising. She kissed me on the lips when we said good-bye, her hand falling from my cheek to fondle the necklace she had given me.

  “Do you want it back?” I asked, dreading her answer. I wanted to keep it.

  She shook her head indicating that she didn’t.

  I watched her go inside.

  When I called to check on her the next morning, she was more distant than ever; I had to say my name twice before she recognized me. I was left to wonder if the entire encounter had been a dream. The mascara stains on my jacket from having held her while she sobbed were the only evidence I had of being with her the night before.

  *

  After that night, Del was hardly at school. I heard from Ida she’d failed all of her classes that semester. There were rumors about her having sex with different guys. I never knew if they were true. Katie thought they were because apparently she dated the same guys next. None of us tried out for the soccer team the summer before eleventh grade. Gail’s mother had decided she needed private time with her new husband, and she sent Gail kicking and screaming to New York to live with her father for her last two years of high school. Katie was too involved in dating and drugs. I didn’t see her at all that summer.

  I did manage to maintain my grades the last semester of tenth grade, but by the summer I was crying constantly and refusing to leave my room. My parents took me to a psychiatrist, an elderly guy with bushy, gray hair and round spectacles. He was nice enough. He advised my parents to forget about the gay thing, said it was a phase and it would pass, and he prescribed me Elavil for depression. It was one of those old-fashioned antidepressants with a side effect of weight gain. By the time eleventh grade started, I was thirty pounds heavier.

  On the first day of eleventh grade, I ran into Del. I was walking into the building and she was walking out with Ben Reed. He had graduated a few years before and had a business selling flowers from street carts.

  Ben saw me first and said, “Holy shit, Jenna, lay off the cake!”

  Del noticed me and in what seemed to be a reflexively protective impulse glared at Ben. Ben quickly apologized and slithered by, leaving Del and me alone face-to-face for the first time in six months, the first time since we’d walked all night.

  “What are you doing with him?” I asked. “He’s a scumbag.”

  “I need a job. He’s hiring.” She looked away then back, as if thinking twice. Then she asked matter-of-factly, “What is up with your weight?”

  “I don’t know.” I felt hideous and ashamed to my core. The weight hadn’t bothered me that much until that moment, until I was standing next to Del, loving her, missing her, remembering myself when I had been with her. “I’m taking some medicine.”

  “What kind of medicine?”

  “For depression.”

  “How’s gaining weight supposed to make you less depressed?” Without waiting for an answer, she started past me.

  “Del.”

  She stopped, turned, her expression implacable. She swept her hair away from her face, exposing large, gold hoop earrings and heavy makeup. She stood firmly on serious heels, the inverted V of her tight jeans cutting high into her crotch. Skinnier now even than before, her breasts looked larger, pushed up and in for a cleavage effect. There was no sign of her silliness or vulnerability. I thought of the honey-haired girl who pinned me to the bed and gave me my first real kiss, giggled when I came undone; the serious girl who fretted over her younger siblings and preferred reading to socializing; the earnest lover, whose mouth had touched me everywhere; the sweet friend with toothpaste-tinged breath and her face near mine as we talked all night. I thought of us on the first day of tenth grade—just one year before—when we’d believed we’d have each other forever. We were tanned and strong and confident and ready. Now she was jaded, impermeable, unforgiving, and I was desolate and bereft. I miss you. “Nothing.” I clamped my teeth in an effort not to cry.

  Del noticed the silver necklace. “You still wear it?”

  “Always.”

  She smiled.

  “Do you want it back?”

  “No. You keep it.”

  “I’ll keep it for you. Okay?”

  She nodded and then walked away.

  Del lasted a month into the eleventh-grade year before she formally dropped out and moved in with Ben Reed. I quit soon after her. Our paths rarely crossed after that.

  *

  When I think back on the phone call the morning after we’d walked all night—how eerily unfamiliar I was to Del just hours after we’d had such an intimate talk—I can see Del was fragmenting. I might see familiar pieces of her from time to time, like on the night we talked, or in the way she glared at Ben for saying something hurtful to me, but I would never again know her whole. Nobody would. Because minds do blow and hearts do break. Those are not just sayings. And wolves and roaches are not the only creatures that chew off their legs to get out of traps—human beings do that, too.

  The steam in the shower absorbed me, heat rising, carrying my anger upward with it. My rage looking down at me, a naked body, curled in a ball, skin red from hot rain. What to do now? We knew Talon had lied about where Del went into the water, and we could provide evidence of that. Maybe Beasley would consider it, and maybe she wouldn’t. We now knew there was a long and extreme history of domestic violence evidenced by police reports, photos, and a log of abuses. In addition, we had the tape of her telling Talon she wanted to leave him and of him threatening her life. It was likely all admissible in this post-OJ era. So maybe we did have enough to at least get the prosecutor involved in an inquiry, to hold up Talon’s move to Texas, keep Khila here for a while. Maybe with a thorough investigation they would find more—the more they needed to prove murder. Or maybe Child Protective Services would listen to the tape and decide Talon wasn’t the best person to place Khila with.

  I got out of the shower to answer my cell phone. It was Doug Andrews, and he dove right in. “My guy from the lab said something’s not right. Twenty percent carboxyhemoglobin in her blood is low for a carbon monoxide fatality and it’s high for a smoker. Maybe we’re seeing numbers that are well past her peak, so it may have been much higher at some point. Anemia might affect it, certainly, but again, twenty percent is low to bring on a heart attack. It’s possible. Anything is possible with diving, you know, it’s like flying, we’re not meant to do it.” There was a momentary pause, and then he said, “I guess what the ME’s office is saying is between the COHb and the anemia, the compressed air just put too much stress on her heart. But we think they’re wrong. We’re guessing cyanide. You don’t see it very often.”

  “Cyanide? But the autopsy, I mean, wouldn’t they know, wouldn’t it be apparent in a basic blood ana
lysis?”

  “No, it won’t even show up in the comprehensive toxicology report, unless they’re testing for it specifically. It’s not a common form of murder. And he’s smart for putting it together with diving. It’s just commonly believed that divers increase their risk of heart attack when they smoke before they dive. Carbon monoxide poisoning, cyanide poisoning—easily mistaken.”

  He continued, “No indication of an almond smell, or at least none detected. That’s not conclusive—some people can smell it and some people can’t.” Thinking aloud, “Well, and that may explain why he sank her rather than just pull her to shore. He was hoping the body would disappear and there would be no evidence of poisoning, or she would be submerged and her body saturated for several hours, and any smell would be diluted.” I heard him shuffling papers.

  I took a deep breath, my first one in nearly an hour. “So, what now? It’s one thing to know this, it’s another thing to prove it. What’s the half-life? Do I tell the lab to run special tests?” I imagined the journal and the tapes would be enough to get Beasley to agree to further testing.

  “Cyanide is tricky,” Doug said. “Tell them to test for cyanide specifically. They’ll know what to do. And keep in mind, once they embalm, any signs of cyanide may be destroyed. There’s always urine. It’s not a great way to test for cyanide, but it could work, although there may not have been any in her body.”

  I said jokingly, “Porta-Potty on the boat?” He laughed.

  Porta-Potty. As I put my still stale-smelling clothes back on, I realized I had already decided I was going to the boat for the videotapes. I couldn’t fix the ways I’d let Del down fifteen years ago, but I could do my best now to retrieve the evidence that could exonerate Sid and, in the process, destroy the sex tapes for her.

  *

  The way the heat held constant in Miami, even at night, was something I’d forgotten. As we left Pascale’s house to go to the boat, I braced myself for a chill. But the air I stepped out into was warm and heavy and moist—disarming. Smells lingered from the day: roof tar, gasoline from a neighbor’s lawn mower. And kids’ voices carried from the corner, where a group of them had gathered to fight or flirt, it was hard to tell.