The Edge Of The Sky

by Drusilla Campbell

  “You can’t do anything. My life is over.” The sound of soft sniffles came from the silken carapace. “Just leave me alone—I don’t want to talk anymore.”

  In her deepest heart Micki believed that her life was done up for good. Lana longed for permission to say that all this would pass, that eventually Micki would look back and realize how little The Fives mattered. She wanted to tell her that what she felt was a pain like any other, cousin to the pain of losing Jack. Micki had survived that. Just a day ago she had been laughing and lip-synching with MTV. It would take time, maybe a long time, but she would feel happy again. She would laugh as if The Fives never existed. The pain felt urgent and permanent because that was the only way it made sense. When the pain was no longer fresh, she would point out to Micki how time heals all wounds. And wounds all heels, as Jack had been fond of saying. Glory be, if there was a God, one day The Fives would get a taste of what they had coming. Later she and Micki would talk about all this.

  They really would.

  Lana stood at the foot of the stairs holding the tray and staring down at the whorls in the hardwood floor, trying to think why she and the girls had never really grieved together. Had they wanted to, her girls? Had she shut them out rather than let their pain be added to her own?

  She remembered driving up to Garnet Peak with Jack’s ashes in an urn on the passenger seat beside her. She did not want the girls with her. Casting Jack away, giving him to the wind and sun and sky, had hurt too much to share with anyone.

  In the kitchen Lana watched the water run from the faucet across her hands and into the ceramic soup cup and down the drain. She did not want to hear The Fives mentioned again in her house. Ever.

  Over the water sounds of the tap and dishwasher and the rain against the kitchen windows, from the kids’ living room came the sound of television, a sitcom; there was no missing that canned laughter. When the doorbell rang a few minutes later and she took the huge pizza box from the delivery man’s red insulated carrier, the smell of cheese and sausage and double anchovies gagged her and she knew she would eat nothing that night, no matter how much she craved the comfort of cheese and bread.

  She heard Beth’s laugh mixed with the laugh track.

  “Shall I make a salad?” she asked, standing in the archway into the kids’ living room where Beth lay on the floor doing leg lifts and watching a Seinfeld rerun. “We don’t need a salad, do we?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Come into the kitchen.”

  “Can’t I eat in here? Mistique’ll be on in a minute.”

  In the old days the family almost always ate the evening meal in the dining room with the table set just so. Dinner in the kitchen was a rarity. Now she let the girls eat anywhere in the house.

  “At least come in and get your plate,” Lana said, walking toward the back of the house.

  I’m not your damn servant.

  She put two huge slices of pizza on a blue ceramic plate for Beth and poured her a glass of milk, but she nibbled her own right out of the box with another glass of wine and left most of it sitting in its own oil. Later she ground the leftovers in the garbage disposal, then dropped a lemon in to take away the smell. Beth went up to bed at ten and Lana followed soon after.

  She went along the hall and knocked on Micki’s door. When there was no answer, she opened it. The room was empty but the balcony door stood open.

  Lana sniffed. At least she wasn’t smoking.

  “Time for bed, honey.” She removed a folded sheet of lined school paper from Micki’s pillow and placed it on the bedside table weighted down with a pencil tin. She gave the blue duvet a shake and let it fall to rest, hillocks and valleys of softness. “You don’t have to go to school tomorrow. We’ll see if there’s a good movie playing somewhere. I’ll ditch, too.”

  Lana waited for a response. There was none. She walked to the balcony door.

  The chair was as it had been—the ashtray, too. The watch cap sat beside it on the little metal table. But Micki was gone.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lana stared at the sheet of folded paper on Micki’s bedside table and considered her options. Close the door and pretend . . . what? How far back did she have to go to reach what she remembered as the normal time before notes left on beds? The time when they were the Perfect Porters and assumed they would go on that way forever. Way back would be better, back when the girls were small and she knew how to be a good mother and the only problems that didn’t go away were getting enough sleep and having two little girls so close together.

  She didn’t know it, but she had been pregnant almost three months on the day they signed Micki’s adoption papers. It was like having twins, and she could not wait for them to be old enough to take care of themselves so she could have some adult time. She had longed to spend more time at the job but at the same time enjoyed caring for the girls. How simple it had been to teach them how to cross the street and to use a knife by practicing with plastic. Even toilet training had been a breeze. I’ve got motherhood nailed, she thought once.

  Forgive me, she thought, addressing the universe. For pride and stupidity. For not appreciating what she had. For being good with babies and shitty with big girls. Don’t let Micki pay the price. Better solid, bounce-back Beth, who could handle anything.

  With shaking hands she lifted the sheet of notebook paper from where she had put it under the pencil tin, opened it, and read the words scrawled in red marker pen in Micki’s jerky, backhanded script. Don’t blame me, Ma. I can’t help it. I know I’m awful. Lana stood still beside the bed.

  I can’t help it.

  Help what? What was she planning?

  I know I’m awful.

  Had all Lana and Jack’s praise and encouragement been for nothing? This couldn’t be happening, not to Micki Porter, not to her Micki.

  Lana didn’t want to think about exactly what it was that could not be happening. She flung open the door to Micki’s walk-in closet, saw the usual mess of Levi’s and tee shirts and underwear, more clothes on the floor than hanging up, and swallowed back a bubble of irritation. In such a mess it was impossible to tell if she had taken anything with her when she left. Where was her backpack? She ran downstairs to see if it was still hanging on the hook by the door. Gone.

  That meant she put something in it. Back upstairs, Lana searched for the Lucite piggy bank Micki had been filling with quarters for the last year. Also gone.

  She had taken her backpack and her piggy bank.

  I can’t help it.

  Can’t help what? Lana went through the girls’ shared bathroom into Beth’s room. The sound of Beth’s steady breathing filled the silent room like the regular in and out of waves on a cobbled shore. Wherever Micki had gone she had not wakened her sister to tell her. Lana was sure of it. She closed the bathroom door carefully and walked across Micki’s bedroom to the desk. On Micki’s phone she pressed in Wendy’s number. The answering machine clicked on. Lana clutched the handset, twisting her body from side to side. Finally the beep.

  “Wendy. Are you there? Pick up if you are. Please. This is an emergency.” She paused, praying for the sound of her friend’s voice. “It’s about Micki—”

  “What about Micki?”

  At the sound of Michael’s voice, Lana began to cry.

  The friendship between Jack Porter and Michael Cooper went back to high school years. Following Jack’s stint with the Air Force, they lived in the same apartment complex in San Diego, dated in the same crowd, surfed and played pick-up basketball together. Michael said on the day Jack died, “Whatever you need, Lana, just ask.”

  And she was asking now.

  Twenty minutes later, Michael and Wendy were sitting at the table in Lana’s kitchen. Wendy’s scrubbed face, clear of makeup, looked tight with worry around the eyes. Michael’s hair was wet from the rain and she noticed that he was not wearing his watch.

  “You guys were in bed. I got you up.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Wendy
said.

  Lana looked at the concern in their expressions and she could hardly speak for the gratitude that filled her. “I didn’t know what else to do.” She managed to explain what had happened, beginning with Micki’s rejection by The Fives.

  “Last week I would have said she’d be at Tiff’s, but now that Tiff’s a Five—”

  Michael took a small notebook and silver pen from his pocket and jotted a few notes. “She has other friends, doesn’t she?” He held the pen poised above the paper.

  “After I talked to you I called the ones I know.” And swallowed her pride and tried to hide her fear as she admitted to the girls’ mothers or fathers that she did not know where Micki was at almost midnight.

  “What about Kathryn or Mars?” Michael tapped the pen point on the paper. “Could she be with them or your mom?”

  Lana wanted to cry that this was a waste of time; she had tried all of the obvious possibilities. Her mother had gone to LA for the weekend and Mars had said she was being melodramatic but if Lana needed her she would come. She even called Kathryn, though she knew that was the last place Micki would go. Tinera had answered and Lana told her she should be in bed.

  “I’m waiting up for Dad. He’s at a meeting.”

  “Have you seen Micki?”

  “Here? At the house?”

  “Did she call?”

  “You’re the only call tonight. Except Dad. He checks in.”

  “Let me speak to your mom.”

  “She’s asleep.”

  And you’re up, Lana thought. The little wife.

  “Can I take a message, Aunt Lana?”

  “Never mind, Tinera.”

  “You want Daddy to call you?”

  Lana wanted that least of all.

  Wendy told Michael about the man called Eddie in Bella Luna.

  “Shit.” Michael threw down his pen and sat back, rubbing the nape of his neck.

  “You think she’s with him now?” Lana asked. “Do you think they might have arranged this?”

  “Of course not,” Wendy said. “I told you, Lana, I don’t think—”

  “Damn it, Wendy, she’s gone. I don’t care about your intuition.”

  Michael said, “Ease up, Lana. Anger isn’t going to help us here.” He sounded impatient.

  Lana felt the salt burn of tears at the back of her eyes. At the kitchen sink she ran cold water and splashed it on her face. Looking down, the stainless steel sink reflected back a blurry vision of herself.

  Michael stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders. “It’s going to be okay, Lana. Micki’s a good girl.”

  Those words: Micki’s a good girl....

  “Damn Jack, damn him.” She turned into Michael’s arms and wept against his crisp, white shirt. She did not care if he thought less of her for crying and cursing Jack. “I want Beth,” she cried, pushing him away, starting for the hall. “Beth should be here. I want my daughter.”

  “Let her sleep,” Wendy put a restraining hand on Lana’s arm. “There’s nothing she can do.”

  The kettle whistled.

  “Fix us some coffee,” Wendy said.

  Lana felt as if the hinges and bolts that held her together were vibrating and she might fly apart at any moment. Better to let Beth sleep, yes; Wendy was right. Lana did not want her daughter to see her so close to undone.

  She put coffee cones over three cups, scooped French Roast into each, and added boiling water. Immediately the kitchen filled with the slightly skunky smell of the coffee; gradually the dailiness of coffee preparation, of opening up a package of ginger snaps and putting them on a plate, combined with Michael and Wendy’s reassuring calm, eased Lana’s anxiety enough so she could sit and listen as Michael spoke to her.

  “There’s no sense calling the police, Lana. Not at this point. I know that’s what you want to do but believe it or not, it’s not against the law for a kid to take off. Run away.”

  “Shouldn’t the black-and-whites know to be looking for her?” Wendy asked. “How long does she have to be gone before—”

  “If she’s not home by tomorrow morning, I’ll call a friend downtown. Someone’ll come over and get her picture and—”

  “But she’ll be home by then, Lana. She’s just gone somewhere to lick her wounds, and when she gets to feeling hungry—”

  “She took money.”

  “—and grubby and wants a nice, hot bath and a soft bed, she’ll come home.”

  Michael nodded. He had written almost nothing on his notepad. He had covered the page with dots and crosshatched lines.

  “Do you want us to stay with you?” Wendy asked. She nodded toward the guest room off the kitchen. “I can make up the bed in there.”

  “No, you should go home. I’ll be all right now.” She needed to lie on the couch and close her eyes and wait out the dawn like a death watcher by a hospital bed.

  As they prepared to go back into the rain, Michael said, “You call me if she’s not home by noon tomorrow.”

  That was almost twelve hours away.

  “Call me earlier,” Wendy said, hugging her swiftly. “As soon as you wake up. You have something to help you sleep, don’t you? I can go home and get something. You need to sleep, Lana. And it does no good to sit up, making yourself sick.”

  Michael held her at arm’s length and spoke to her slowly and carefully, as if she were a child. “Wendy’s right. You need the rest and she will be back. She’s not the kind of kid who goes on the street. Believe me, Lana. She’s not.”

  “But this guy, this Eddie . . .”

  “She’s got good sense. She’s temperamental but she’s not stupid.”

  Lana sagged in the middle. “That’s what she says. She’s not stupid.”

  “Well, there you are.”

  When she was alone again, Lana turned off the kitchen lights and those in the hall, and she went upstairs to make sure Beth was still safely asleep. She stood at the door of the bedroom, her hand on the knob, her mind full of a crazy fear that she would open the door and the bed would be empty. But when she looked in she saw Beth had turned on her side, her back to the light shining in from the hall. Her hair lay in a silken sheet across her pillow. Lana stepped softly to her bedside and leaned forward—careful not to touch the bed—and laid her hand on Beth’s hair to assure herself that it was real.

  In the grownups’ living room Lana stretched out on the couch. She covered herself with the many-colored afghan she had spent one whole winter knitting from scraps and bits and closed her eyes and fell asleep suddenly and deeply for almost an hour. Rainwater rushing from the roof gutters woke her and she sat up, stiff and chilly. Micki was gone. The thought knocked her dizzy all over again. She needed fresh air. She walked slowly to the front door, unlocked it, and stepped out onto the porch.

  The blue-green Jaguar convertible was parked across the street.

  What happened next Lana would remember for the rest of her life. She screamed. Not a high-pitched cry of fear or surprise, but a roar that rose from her insides as if she were giving birth to a monster. Deep in its suburban slumber, the neighborhood’s only response was the bark of a dog several houses away. Lana ran down the front steps. On the bottom step she tripped and fell forward on the path, dropped to her knees, and scraped her palms on the rough concrete. She ignored the sting and scrambled to her feet and ran across the wet street and slammed the bleeding heels of her hands against the window on the driver’s side and her fists, too, and she kicked the door and she did not stop screaming.

  A light went on in the Andersons’.

  She screamed at the driver of the car. “Give her back, give her to me.”

  From his front porch, Jim Anderson called, “Lana, is that you?” The man in the Jaguar’s driver’s seat, a young man, handsome in a faintly dissolute way, a young man with close-cropped hair and bruised circles of fatigue owling his eyes, a young man who stared at her hysterics without speaking, put his head on the steering wheel and wept.

  Chapter Fourt
een

  “Can I help you out here, Lana?” Jim Anderson stood on the sidewalk by the Jaguar’s taillight holding a tent of newspaper over his head. He wore his pajamas and dressing gown and the kind of slippers called scuffs.

  She stared at her neighbor, her mind a sudden blank. And then, “Oh, Jim, no. Did I wake you?”

  “I was just going upstairs. Is this man . . .”

  The tear-streaked face of the man called Eddie shone in the glow of the streetlight. What the hell did he have to cry about?

  “I’m okay, really I am.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “You’re getting soaked, Jim. Please go inside. I’m fine out here.”

  He turned back to his house, growling over his shoulder, “You holler if you need me.”

  Lana looked at Eddie, pointed back at the house, and when he did not immediately open the car door, she gestured again and walked up the stairs to the front door without looking back, without wondering if she had lost her mind, inviting a weeping stranger into her house in the middle of the night. This particular stranger.

  She heard the car door close—the warm, crisp click of an expensive car. His steps sloshed behind her. On the other side of the screen door, Gala watched with her auburn head atilt and her tail wagging. Anyone coming in the door with Lana had to be a friend, right? At the door Lana pointed to the stranger’s feet. He unlaced his wet athletic shoes and left them beside hers on the porch.

  Lana realized she had been holding her breath.

  Inside she draped her wet coat and scarf over the coat rack by the front door and silently indicated he should do the same with his leather jacket. He followed her down the central hall to the kitchen with Gala tagging along, sniffing at his damp cuffs and stocking feet. Lana turned and said without looking at him directly, “Sit down.” She pointed to a chair at the oak table. He sat and looked at her and she made herself look back.

  She saw a man somewhere between twenty and forty with an unscarred, Marine Corps, All-American face. In the car he had looked vaguely threatening and used-up but this must have been the trick of shadows. In her kitchen he looked as young and harmless as one of Mars’s adorable postdocs. Fear had addled her thinking. How else to understand bringing this man into the house and analyzing his appearance as if he were somebody’s boyfriend?