Kimmie’s mother had taken the living room furniture except for a vinyl-covered beanbag chair, a futon, and a television as big as the wall. The walls were bare and smudgy-looking and in the kitchen there was just a stainless steel refrigerator that hardly ever had anything but ice in it—it seemed like the ice maker was always going—a microwave, and a stack of plastic-covered, throwaway plates. Kimmie’s room had a big bed covered with stuffed animals that smelled like cigarette smoke, a dresser, and some of the vertical blinds on the windows overlooking the street were broken.
The condo was the kind of place her father would never even want to go. And there, where no sign or scent of him intruded, where there was only Kimmie chattering like false teeth about her boobs and sex and partying, only there Beth could forget about her father. But then, back home, when she realized she hadn’t thought of him for three or four hours, then she panicked. She was almost fifteen and might live to be ninety. When she was an old lady with a walker and a hearing aid would she remember how his hair got long and curled over his shirt collar? How he laughed all the time? Would she forget what was special about Tuesday nights?
Beth tried to think of more war words. Panic. Shatter. Smashed. Bloody. Battered. Battered brown battalions.
“Wake up, Bozo.” Kimmie stood across the table. She was petite and skinny with small, regular features and long, dark brown hair which she wore in an intentionally lank style because she said it was very uncool to let on you messed with your hair. Her constant obsession was her breasts and the augmentation surgery she was saving for. Her mother had told her if she came up with half the cash needed, she would pay the balance. Beth thought if she would just eat a few regular meals she might get breasts that way.
“Put your stuff away. Let’s book.”
Five-fifteen. Beth had fallen asleep.
“I can’t now. It’s too late.”
Kimmie looked at the wall clock. “I’m only fifteen—”
“You said four.”
“I did?” Kimmie shrugged. “Whoops.”
Beth stood up and began to cram books and papers into her backpack.
“I gotta go home,” she said, feeling cross.
“What’s your problem?”
“Why didn’t you come when you said?”
Kimmie lowered her eyes, affecting an insinuating smirk. “A girl’s gotta do . . .”
“Whatever.”
“So, can you get out tonight? I promise,” Kimmie crossed her heart elaborately, “we won’t be late. Eight o’clock? At the corner?”
Beth felt torn. The condo was virtually guaranteed to get her mind off her misery; if she was careful, her mom would never know. But she also might get stuck down there. Kimmie and Strider smoked dope and took pills and often disappeared into one of the empty bedrooms, leaving Beth alone with the television. If Kimmie and Strider got too high or started doing it she would have to get a bus home and buses at night were creepy.
“Strider’s buddy wants to meet you,” Kimmie said as they left the library. “He’s cute.”
“It’s not me, I just have these family things.”
“That’s punk.”
They stood on the sidewalk and the wind twisted and tugged at their hair.
Kimmie said, “I am just so thankful, like on a daily basis, that my folks know when to leave me alone. Your mother is such a drag.”
Beth wanted to say she wasn’t a drag at all. That Kimmie might know all about sex but she was totally feeble when it came to mothers. But she could not be bothered. She might as well explain something to the television.
Kimmie looked down the block and waved in the direction of a battered Mustang. “You could just come with us now, call your mom from the condo, tell her you have to study.”
Maybe Kimmie’s mother was some kind of moron and that’s why her husband dumped her.
“I gotta do my report. On the war.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Kimmie clicked her tongue ring. “When’s it due?”
For a fraction of a minute Beth had an urge to scream. The instant passed and she said nothing, walked off toward home.
“Eight o’clock?” Kimmie called.
“Yeah. I’ll try.”
Chapter Eleven
Lana could not face going home. After leaving the Hollywood Cafe she dropped Mars off at her house and went back to the job. She knew single mothers. A father and husband were not essential to make a family, so why did she feel so disconnected from her daughters that she avoided going home?
Urban Greenery occupied a little over twenty-five acres edged with pampas grass next to the I-5 and beside the railroad tracks connecting San Diego and Los Angeles. In a few years there would be a parallel trolley line; Jack had wanted glassy-eyed commuters to be enticed to visit the nursery that looked less like a business than a big garden where visitors were encouraged to wander and browse as they wished. That’s why he wanted to buy up the land next door, go into hock to do it. If he had persisted Lana probably would have given in eventually. The idea of a garden nursery in the middle of the city was irresistible. Jack had set up a couple of picnic tables beside a California pepper and almost every day a few employees from the warehouses and factory showrooms in the neighborhood ate their lunches there. Eventually almost everyone bought something. Browsers who lived in apartments with eighteen-inch balconies found a reason to buy a multicolor windsock made of parachute silk or a bit of iron statuary—an angel, or a bird dipping its head into a seashell. The idea, Lana told her eighteen full-time employees, was to make visitors to Urban Greenery believe that the same wonderful effects created there could be recreated at home. And most of them could: beds of succulents, herbs and annuals, stunning perennial displays that required only water, light, and nourishment. The trick was getting people to remember to provide these things with regularity; for some reason, this was difficult and customers tended to come back again and again, often purchasing the same plant two or three times in the hope that this year their neglect would pay off. Without Jack, some days it seemed all Lana did was give customers advice and support.
From the beginning they had made a decision not to try to compete with the huge plant retailers in their area and carved a niche apart by cultivating many of their own seedlings. Their plant stock included all the basic petunias, impatiens, and ivy geraniums, but they also sold many specimens that were rare or hard to find. If they didn’t sell, Lana took them home and put them in her own garden or carried a care package out to Kathryn at the ranch. Urban Greenery also sold quality tools and equipment, much of it crafted in England and Germany. Five years earlier, Jack suggested they expand into statuary and lawn furniture and Lana had doubted they would ever sell the expensive art, tables, and chairs. The wicker was beautiful, but the price! No little boys pissing through cast-concrete penises, no mass-produced statues of St. Francis. What a pleasant surprise it had been to discover that there was a market for expensive, hand-hammered copper mailboxes, zinc pots, and six-foot steel étagères. The higher the price, the faster the merchandise seemed to leave the showroom.
In seventeen years Urban Greenery had gone from being a funky little plant-and-pot shop to a sophisticated home-and-garden store. Lana’s office was in the fishbowl, a cube-shaped kiosk at the center of things with one-way glass on all sides that allowed her to work at her desk while keeping an eye on the premises. Wendy had redecorated it for her after Jack’s death. Now her desk and computer occupied half the room and the rest was filled with a comfortable, overstuffed couch and a chair with an immense ottoman, bookcases crammed with landscaping books, and a long worktable. On the strips of wall dividing the windows, Lana had hung framed reproductions of some of Kate Sessions’s original designs for parks and gardens in San Diego. Gifts from Jack.
On her desk Lana kept a photo of Jack taken when they had just bought the nursery and were living in the cottage on the property. Ponytailed, he stands over a hibachi grill, grinning from behind granny glasses as he turns hamburgers. Outside the
picture’s lens, Wendy and Michael and a half-dozen other friends were sprawled on plastic lawn furniture passing a doobie and trying to remember all the words to some Bob Dylan song. Sometimes when Lana looked at the picture she barely believed it was real, that she had not dreamed it up. At other times it was all so real and close she wanted to reach into the picture and tug her sweet, young husband’s long hair.
In the office she lost herself in the black-and-white mathematics of bookkeeping and ordering and inventory. She was even getting good at handling personnel problems, an area of the business she had stayed away from until a year ago. Moises needed time off for the dentist. The Saturday cashier felt devalued by the full-timers and wanted all the perks: medical insurance, dental, her very own IRA. In your dreams, Lana thought.
Lana was engrossed when Wendy appeared in the door of her office. She stood up and they embraced as they always did.
“You smell like paint.”
“Don’t worry, I’m dry.” Wendy pulled a straight-backed chair up to Lana’s desk and sighed dramatically as she sat down. “I’m almost finished with that Victorian over in North Park. Gray with pink-and-white gingerbread. It’s beautiful, but I think I’ll have to sleep in the Jacuzzi tonight.”
“I’ll drive by tomorrow, take a look.” Lana told herself to relax. Wendy was her best friend and drop-in visits were nothing unusual.
“I saw Micki.”
Lana’s stomach tightened a notch.
“At Bella Luna.” Wendy made an I’m-sorry-to-tell-you-this face. “Cutting school again.”
“Shit.” Lana tossed a pencil across the room. It hit the fishbowl glass and bounced back onto the couch. “I bet it was last period. She hates her phys ed teacher.”
“Lana, she was talking to that guy. Actually, that’s not right. He was talking to her.”
Breathe.
“His name’s Eddie.”
Lana waited. “That’s it? What good is ‘Eddie’?”
She walked over to the couch and retrieved her pencil. Without thinking, she shoved it into the electric pencil sharpener so hard it broke in two. She threw it into the basket beside her desk and sat down again. “What’s that mean? He was talking to her, she wasn’t talking, what?”
Wendy cringed dramatically. “Don’t kill the messenger, Lana.”
“Just tell me what happened.”
“Nothing happened.” She raised her voice. “I just walked in the back way at Bella Luna and I saw her looking down at her feet and him saying something. That’s all.”
“How did you know it was him?”
“That is one gorgeous car.”
“Fuck the car. Did you ask him why he’s following a fifteen-year-old girl?” Lana heard her voice grow strident.
“He offered her a ride home.”
“In front of you?”
Wendy nodded and leaned forward, her elbows resting on the paint-spattered knees of her overalls. Lana caught a whiff of turpentine.
“You know how intuitive I am. If he were a bad guy I’d have picked up something, but I honestly did not get bad vibes off him. He just seemed like an ordinary—”
“You have sons,” Lana said, angry with Wendy for dismissing her worry so easily. “You don’t know. Girls are vulnerable.”
“Hey, I get that,” Wendy said, angry back. “I’m a girl myself, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“You should’ve told him to stop or we’d call the cops. You didn’t even find out his last name. Eddie. What good is knowing his first name’s Eddie? Plus he might be lying. What am I saying? Of course he was lying. Perverts don’t go around telling people their real names.” Lana made herself stop. She pressed her feet hard against the ground. “Should I call the police?”
“There’s nothing to hang on him, Lana.” Wendy was apologetic now, as if the limitations of the California Criminal Code were her fault. “There’s no law says a man can’t talk to a girl in a coffee bar. Even a fifteen-year-old.”
“He was also at our house. On New Year’s. Don’t forget that.”
“He was parked across the street. He could park there every night for a week and it wouldn’t be against the law. I’m sorry I didn’t find out more. I was just so stunned to see him right out in the open in Bella Luna talking to her. So blatant.”
“Did you get his license number at least?”
Wendy opened her mouth and closed it.
“If we had that, Michael could talk to one of the guys he knows downtown. We could at least find out the guy’s last name.” Lana put her face in her hands.
Wendy touched her wrist. “I think all you can do is put the fear of God into Micki. It’s the real world, Lana, and she’s got to learn to watch her back.”
“Oh. Great. Thank you so much for that advice.”
Wendy’s sons were in college, and it seemed she had already forgotten that two parallel universes existed: one for adults and another for teenagers. In the teen’s real world the perimeters of behavior were fluid and relative. Rules hard and fast on one day might be less so the next, depending on variables, the subtleties of which could escape an adult altogether. It was not enough to forbid behavior once or twice; it had to be continually referred back to and elaborated on, adapted to conditions, and tested for weaknesses. And even then there was no guarantee. With teenagers, nothing but uncertainty was sure.
“I can read her the riot act but if he’s going to walk right up to her in broad daylight, the only way I can guarantee—”
“Comes a point, you have to trust her, Lana. Mostly.”
“And I do. Sort of. If it were Beth, no problem. But Micki—you know Micki.”
They sat in silence for a few moments.
Wendy said, “I don’t think a stranger in a hot car would be able to compete with The Fives.”
“Ha!”
“They’re taking their sweet time with the list, aren’t they?”
“Tell me about it.” Lana stared over Wendy’s shoulder. Through the window she saw Feliz with the leaf blower. He turned it on and the angry-giant-wasp sound of the thing drilled through to her brain. She got up and closed the office door. “I can’t seem to move forward, Wendy. I thought, before New Year’s, that things were getting better but now everything’s a crisis. I know what I should do about Micki—lecture her on kidnappers and sex slaves and chauffeur her around until this guy gets sick of . . . whatever it is he’s doing. Call the cops and at least go on record so if something does happen . . .” She waved the thought away. “I can’t even go there.” She reached into a desk drawer and withdrew a bottle of aspirin, wrestled the top open and knocked two tablets onto her palm, considered a moment and added two more. She washed them down with a swallow from the water bottle on her desk. “If I tell you something, will you promise not to think I’m awful?”
The corners of Wendy’s mouth turned up a little. “You’re the worst person in the world—we both know that.”
“There’s part of me that would just like to pack a bag and take off. Never come back.” She thought of Kathryn riding her horse as far as he could go, hiding out in a lonesome town somewhere beloved by cactus and ocotillo. Lana wanted to walk away from her daughters and Urban Greenery to a new town, take a new name, scrub her memory until it was as bland as a death mask. Her mother had operated the Hollywood Cafe. Lana could do something like that and do an even better job than Stella had. She heard herself saying all this aloud and stopped, too embarrassed to go on. “It’s the wind. It always fucks with my head.”
Wendy said, “What you need is sex.”
Lana snorted.
“I mean it. You need to get taken out to dinner and movies and then home to bed.”
“I can barely handle the life I’ve got without adding a man. Think of the complications.”
“That’s the whole point. It would get your mind off your family. You’re perseverating.”
“Uh-oh, fancy shrinky word.”
“It means—”
“I know what it m
eans.” Lana ran her fingers up through her hair and tugged on it as if she had picked up Micki’s habit. “You think I should forget about Micki and this Eddie person. Think about something else.”
“I never said that. What kind of a friend would say that?”
“You said I should get my mind off my family.”
“I never said that either. What I do think is that you should stop going over and over the same stuff, wearing a groove in your brain.” Wendy bit her lower lip and Lana waited for whatever she would say next. “Lana, I don’t think this guy is dangerous. I don’t know what this Eddie wants with Mick but I don’t think he’s dangerous.”
“So what do you suggest? I have sex and forget—”
“Stop being so rigid and just listen to me. Maybe you don’t need sex, maybe no one needs it. . . .”
Lana grinned. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“I’m so sorry I dropped the ball about the license plate. That was really dumb but—”
“I know what you’re going to say, Wendy. I know I can’t be with her every moment, protect her every time she takes a breath, but she’s so vulnerable.”
“Maybe not. Maybe she’s smarter and tougher than you think.”
Lana’s widened and burned. “Yeah, but what if she’s not?”
Chapter Twelve
“Wendy saw you at Bella Luna,” Lana said, trying to sound merely conversational as she and Micki loaded the dishwasher after dinner that night. Beth had gone to study at the library. “Were you going to tell me about the guy? Eddie?”
“My god, what is this? A police state?” Judging from her outrage, nothing in Micki’s life experience had prepared her for the perfidy of adults. “What did she do, just go rushing to you, couldn’t wait?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Lana said as she rinsed a plate and set it upright in the bottom of the dishwasher.
“This is so embarrassing.” Micki threw herself into a chair and covered her face with a dishtowel. Groaning.
Good, she wants to talk. She would have left the room otherwise. Lana leaned back against the sink, her arms folded across her chest. Uncrossed them. Now if she could just keep from sounding confrontational. . . .
The Edge Of The Sky Page 10
