“They’re bitches.”
Micki’s eyes narrowed. “You think Tiff’s a bitch?”
“Honey, I wasn’t talking about her.”
“Well, you better because she’s one of them now.” Micki sat up, grabbed a pillow, and hugged it against her stomach. “And Tiff doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“But you’ve been friends for so long. I can’t believe . . . It’ll take more than The Fives to break you up.” As Lana said the words, she knew they were dishonest. But the truth—Lana did not want to look at it, forget saying it aloud. “I think after a few weeks—”
“God, Ma, you are so out of it. Listen, from tenth grade on, there’s like two groups of people, you know?” Micki jumped off the bed and moved around the room in jerks and starts, picking up knickknacks and putting them down, tugging at her hair. “There’s The Fives and they’re in everything and give all the cool parties and like that. Then there’s everyone else and what they all want is to be . . . Fives. Only they aren’t. They’re second best. I don’t want to be second best at that crappy school. I’d rather be at Balboa High with the tweakers.”
Micki fell backwards onto the bed again and cried to the ceiling, “How come nothing ever goes right for me? I feel just like that kid who shot up his high school.”
Lana said quickly, “That boy had no friends, his father was an idiot about guns, and his mother was—”
“They have an honors program at Balboa. It’s a big deal, Ma.” Pleading.
“Micki, I won’t consider it. Your dad and I—”
“What the fuck does he care? He’s dead.”
Lana caught her breath.
Micki threw her pillow across the room. It banged against her desk chair, knocking it over. “I should just go kill myself.”
Lana grabbed Micki’s arms and pulled her up, her voice quivering with fear and fury. “I don’t want to hear this kind of talk, Micki. About shooting people or killing yourself. You’re not allowed to say that kind of stuff.”
“If I killed myself all The Fives would come to my funeral and act like I was some kind of celebrity. Tiff’d be so happy, her mom’d finally let her buy a black dress.”
“Stop it!” Lana shook her, felt her fingertips press hard into Micki’s arm and her head wobble. If she had to, Lana would hurt her back to sanity.
Micki collapsed against her, sobbing. “I want to die. I wish I were dead.”
Lana went limp with relief as she smelled cigarette smoke in her hair and she remembered Eddie French tapping the tobacco end of a Marlboro on the oak table. If she told Micki about him now, The Fives would instantly shrink to zero units. She could do it.
But the risk was huge, too great by far. There was only so much room for grownups in a teenage girl’s life. To make room for Eddie, someone would be shouldered out. She felt a surge of loyalty to Jack. If the tables were reversed—if Jack, not she, were alive and if Barbara the birth mother waltzed out of nowhere—Lana knew he would protect her memory no matter what it took.
“Listen to me.” She held Micki before her at arm’s length, tried to meet her gaze, but Micki cut her eyes away. “I don’t want to hear any more talk about killing or dying, do you understand? Look at me, Mick. Now.
“You’re going to school today and it may feel like the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do, but you can do it. Because you have to. You’ve got more brains and class than any of those Fives and when you go back to school and hold your head up and show them you will not be humiliated—they can’t humiliate you unless you let them do it, Micki—they’re going to be sorry they didn’t give you a bid. But if you just pick up your skirts and mouse off to Balboa, it’s like telling them they’re as important as they think they are.” She bent her head to get a look in Micki’s eyes, smudgy and still shimmering though she had stopped crying. “You don’t want them to gloat, do you?”
Micki sighed and Lana hugged her again. “You’re stronger than you know you are. And I have faith in you, Mick, more faith than you have in yourself.”
Micki snuffled and leaned away from Lana to get a tissue from the box beside her bed. “I wish Daddy were alive. He’d know what to do.”
Later in the morning, when she finally got to Urban Greenery, Lana found Carmino in her office perusing the ledger spread out across the worktable, an intent expression on his dark face.
“Ola,” she said without enthusiasm and tossed her bag and umbrella on the couch where the scrunched and tumbled pillows indicated Micki had spent the night. “So, we broke?”
Sarcasm and irony were not Carmino’s humor. “Oh, no, no,” he rushed to assure her. “Everything looks good. Real good.” He gestured to the ledger in front of him. “You want to see?”
“I know what they say.” She sank onto the couch and wrapped her arms around a fat cushion covered in nubby, gold-and-green tapestry fabric. “Micki slept down here last night.”
“That explains why the coffee was made.” He smiled uncertainly. “Like Jack, huh?”
Carmino was too gallant to say a beautiful teenage girl had no business sleeping on the office couch. He was one of nature’s gentlemen in whom tact and discretion were qualities bestowed by grace. The work staff at Urban Greenery—most of them Mexicans who crossed the border every morning and rode the trolley from San Ysidro—respected him and when Lana recalled the year since Jack’s accident, she knew Carmino was one of the reasons she had survived.
“Micki says there’s something wrong with Buster.”
Carmino thought a minute. “He was here when I started working. Gives him eight, nine years maybe. Getting old for a dog.”
“I think I’d better take a look at him.” She stood up. “Come with me. We can talk about where we’re going to put all those new seedlings. Maybe we should buy out Toys R Us and extend the garden.” Carmino’s expression made her smile. “I’m teasing,” she said and patted his arm.
The three Dobermans spent their days in a chain-linked kennel at the back of the native plant garden, in a generous space around a pepper tree and several ten-foot clumps of pampas grass, well away from customers. In the breezy morning full of shadow and light, as the last of the clouds passed overhead, the grasses were noisy with tiny finches and their white fronds moved like fans of ostrich feathers.
Two dogs—Freya and Boz—leapt up from their slumbers in the watery sunlight as Lana and Carmino approached. They were ugly dogs, oversized and deformed by inbreeding, with massive shoulders and blunted, bullish heads; the ears of each had been mutilated by kitchen-table crop-jobs done with scissors and knives. Their salvo of barks stopped when they heard voices they recognized. Still, they approached the fence cautiously, their ears half up, half down. Lana stuck her hand through the fence, knuckles first. Taking one whiff of her, the dogs whined and twisted, and Carmino opened the gate and he and Lana stepped into the kennel.
Jack had brought these dogs home from a Doberman rescue shelter north of Los Angeles. All three had been guard dogs at a factory somewhere in the barren wastes east of the I-5/210 interchange. The business went bust and the dogs went to the pound and had been on the death list when the rescue worker found them. They had been fierce and terrifying in those days; Jack had worked with them for weeks before giving them the nighttime run of the nursery. Over years the family had grown fond of the animals, and in a restrained way the affection was reciprocated. As little girls, Beth and Micki insisted on bundling up packets of kibble and biscuits for them every Christmas. Micki had designated Memorial Day their joint birthday.
Buster stayed inside the shed and did not come to greet Lana. She crouched in the doorway and called him out of the shadowy interior. He staggered to his feet and walked unsteadily to her, his head hanging inches from the ground. Sorrow swelled in Lana’s throat as she rubbed his poor ears. She couldn’t bear to think of the pain he must have suffered as a puppy, and a part of her wished for revenge against those who had abused him. An ear for an ear.
She looked up a
t Carmino. “Can you take him to the vet today?”
“Sure.”
“Call ahead and talk to the receptionist. Her name’s Tobyn. She knows us.”
“What do you want me to do if he says he’s sick?”
“Get him whatever he needs and then drop him by the house. Moises can manage here for a couple of hours.” She stood up. “We’re going to have to think about getting another dog. I’ll call rescue in a day or two.”
Carmino’s swarthy Indian face looked sorrowful. “All this time, he’s been doing good work. Protected the property good.” As they walked back toward the shop, he asked, “You think they’ll have to . . . you know, put him down?”
Maybe it was the accumulated worry of the last month. Maybe it was the pain of the last year and a half. But now the life and death of a dog she barely knew, a dog she regarded as an employee and not at all a pet, was important to Lana. It occurred to her that if in some way she had handled Jack’s death badly, she might make up for it by being good to Buster.
Back in the office she called Wendy and Michael to tell them Micki had come home.
“So that’s it?” Wendy said.
“No,” Lana admitted, reluctant to go into details yet. “I’ll tell you the rest but not now.” Eddie French and Lana had talked about so much the night before; she needed time to rethink the conversation before she shared it with anyone. This was what she told herself.
She worked for a while and then ran errands, checked a half-dozen items off her list, then drove up into Mission Hills. She still hadn’t called Stella about her intention to sell the Hollywood Cafe, but now a nap was all she could think of. Micki and Beth wouldn’t be home for a couple of hours; if she got lucky, she might sleep for an hour or more. She parked the car in the driveway and was surprised to find the back door unlocked. She knew right then that whatever happened next, it would not be a nap.
Chapter Sixteen
“Micki?” Lana entered the kitchen and dropped her purse on the table. She walked down the hall and called up the stairs. “You home, Mick?”
“It’s me.”
She turned at the sound of Beth’s voice. She stood in the arch between the two big front rooms.
“You’re early. What happened to basketball practice?”
Beth walked across the hall into the second living room and dropped onto the couch. She pressed her mouth into an angry line and glared at Lana.
She wants me to ask what’s the matter. She wants me to drag the latest teenage misery out of her. And I can’t do it. I’m too fucking tired of teenage angst.
“I’m going upstairs—to take a nap. If I don’t sleep, I’m going to pass out.” Lana started up the stairs. “If you need to talk to me, you can do it later.”
Beth followed her. “You shouldn’t stay up all night if you don’t like being tired.”
Lana stopped on the stairs, resting her palm on the satiny oak banister. Sighing—she could sigh forever and the tightness in her chest, the lump halfway up her throat, would not budge—she sat. “Out with it.”
Six steps down, there was no missing the anger on Beth’s face as she pulled a hank of hair over her shoulder and began to braid it.
Both her daughters played and fiddled with their hair. Was there some significance in that?
“I heard you.”
Lana didn’t know what she was talking about.
“You know what I mean.”
Beth grated on Lana’s already raw nerves. “Sorry to disappoint, but I do not know.” And whatever she wanted to say, Lana was not going to help her.
“That guy. Eddie French. Micki’s father.”
Suddenly, the part of Lana’s mind where thoughts connected up logically stopped working, and she said the only thing that came to her. “Where’s Micki?”
“Why are you always asking that? You’ve got more than one daughter, you know.”
“Did you tell her?”
“No way.”
“Well, that’s something.” Lana stood and climbed to the top of the stairs.
“But you’re going to, right?”
“This isn’t your business, Beth.”
“She’s my sister.”
“Just let me handle it.”
“Great.” Beth spoke with ragged bitterness. “That’s reassuring.”
Lana turned and stared at her. When had Beth become insolent? “I’ll decide when I decide.”
“Shit.”
Maybe Lana should just give up the fight against cursing. Everyone said these words now—fuck and shit and pussy and even cunt had begun to crop up in fairly polite conversation. And every night on network television couples made love, women took off their blouses, men put hands on them right there with the camera ogling. Was it worth the energy it took, all this no-saying? And did it accomplish anything?
She walked into her bedroom, closed the door behind her, and fell on the quilted bedspread, facedown. It smelled of washdays and sunshine, but she was not so easily comforted. Walking away in the middle of a confrontation wasn’t good parenting, but what was she supposed to do when she didn’t have a clue, not a clue, how to handle the situation? She thought of Jack with a rage that tied her up inside. He had abandoned her. He had left her with more than she could ever handle well. She turned enough to see the photo of him on the bedside table, framed in pewter. Jack stood beside the rustic entrance to their favorite little hotel in Baja. The print was black-and-white but she remembered the screaming bougainvillea colors, the hot purple against scarlet and orange. In any other context it would have been too garish but there it had been perfect.
With a swipe of her hand she knocked the picture off the table. It hit the carpet with a gentle thump and the back fell open. She picked the photo up off the carpet, stared at it for a moment, and then tore it in half. And then quarters, eighths, pieces so small she couldn’t make them any smaller.
She hated Jack for not going home the usual way. Through Old Town and up the Juan Street Hill—that was the safe route. She would never forgive him for changing his pattern and leaving her to do a job that confounded her. And what the hell was a father anyway? She had never really had one herself so how was she to understand? In Micki’s case, Jack hadn’t even provided the sperm. That honor belonged to a game maker in wraparound shades. So what precisely had been Jack’s function in the family, what had he provided that she and her girls found so particularly difficult to do without?
She heard the bedroom door open. Beth stood in the opening, her hands shoved into the pockets of her Levi’s.
“Yes?” Lana said.
“Don’t you think it’s weird? That she’s his daughter?” Definitely there was a goading note in Beth’s voice.
“She’s my daughter,” Lana said calmly. “And Jack’s.”
“Yeah, but you know.”
No, she did not know. And this was the problem. What did it mean that Eddie French had given her his genes? Did this biological fact mean they were spiritually connected or were people like plants and regardless of the stock, what they needed most was nourishing soil and water and sunlight? Had she and Jack been the soil and water and sunshine in Micki’s life? And more to the point, could Lana now be those things by herself? This was what frightened her. That she wasn’t sufficient. Jack had provided the secret ingredient without which the family was rotting at the roots.
“I can tell you what Daddy’d say.” Beth, the All-wise, All-knowing, Valkyrie Teen Queen of Justice and Retribution. “He’d say you have to tell the truth.”
Lana sat on the edge of the bed. “Well, Beth, your father’s not here right now. But I am and you can just stop talking long enough to listen to me. We both know how Micki is. This is the kind of thing that could potentially—”
“Big deal, Eddie French is her father.”
“Jack is her father. Same as you.”
“Her blood father.”
“Keep your voice down.”
“Why? You act like this is something shameful.
Or dangerous.”
“You’re right. It is dangerous.”
“I think you’re afraid of this guy,” Beth said. “You never knew your own father. Mars doesn’t even know who hers is. You’re all weird on the subject.” Beth spoke to Lana as if she were a feebleminded toddler. “There’s nothing wrong with him. I sat on the stairs and listened to you guys talk and he’s a regular guy.” A smile pinched the corner of her mouth. “She’ll like him, too. Is that what scares you? He’ll take her away?”
The words made the skin at Lana’s jawline tingle. “It might happen.”
“You’re serious?” Beth laughed. “Get over it, Ma. There’s no way Micki’s gonna leave us. This is the only place she feels safe.”
How could that be true when Lana felt threatened on every side?
“You think he was telling the truth,” she said. “Well, suppose he was. But what did he leave out? Maybe he’s a drug addict.”
“You’re only saying that because he designs video games and you think they’re a waste of time.” Beth slouched against the doorjamb, braiding her hair again. “If he wore a suit and tie you’d invite him to live with us.”
“I’m going to have Michael run an information check on him.”
“If you don’t tell her, I will.”
“This is for me to do. I forbid you.”
“Forbid all you want, Ma.” Beth turned away with a cocky toss of her head.
“I’ll punish you. I’ll ground you. I’ll make you sorry.” An idea flashed into Lana’s mind. She stood up, her hands clenched into fists at her side. “I won’t let you get your license. I won’t sign for it.”
Beth turned and gawked at her and then, unexpectedly, laughed. “That is so lame, Ma. We’re talking Micki’s birthright and you say I can’t get my license?” Her mouth dropped open in an exaggerated show of disbelief. “I can’t believe you said that.”
“Believe it.” Lana’s jaw ached from clenching her teeth, but if she relaxed she would say all the thoughts pricking at the edge of her mind. I hate being a mother. I don’t want to be a mother. I wish you and Micki would both go away and leave me alone. “I will do what I must and none of it is up to you.”
The Edge Of The Sky Page 14
