She turned the 4Runner left and down into the deserted parking lot facing the estuary, parked the car, and sat. The late-January day was cold and bright with sharp, reflected light that tossed coins in the water and heated up the car’s interior and made Lana sleepy. She pushed her seat back as far as it would go and propped her feet up to one side of the steering wheel against the instrument panel. A pair of snowy herons flew across her line of sight and came to rest on a muddy islet just up the estuary. She sat up and watched them poke in the muck with their pointed beaks, thinking of what they found in the tarry goop, the worms and crabs and minute creatures that may not have evolved much since the dawn of life. In the parking lot she was sandwiched between the traffic on Torrey Pines Road and the interstate a mile east. Overhead a contrail zippered the sky above the bluffs of the Torrey Pine Preserve. Her mind could not stretch the distance between the creatures in the mud and those with intelligence to design cars and planes and all the other necessities of the year 2000. The immense differences in life forms that managed to coexist in the world astonished her. If Jack were in the seat beside her they would have a conversation about this.
She dialed Kathryn’s number on her cell phone and after a few minutes her sister answered.
Lana asked, “How are you?”
“I believe all my limbs are intact. I am consuming sufficient calories—”
“You sound sleepy.”
“I’ve been halfway watching TV and dozing.” Kathryn yawned. “What’s up?”
“Are you still pregnant?”
“Mmm.”
“Do you know for sure?”
“If you’re asking have I been to the doctor, no, I haven’t.” Nor had she taken a home pregnancy test. She did not need to; she knew. She always knew immediately. Lana believed she did not want to take a chance of being wrong because when she was pregnant Dom treated her like a Belleek cup too precious and delicate to do more than look at. She might not want any more children, she might be sick of being pregnant and not care if her baby was a pony or a platypus, but she did like to be pampered.
Across the estuary, the Torrey Pines grade wound through the preserve’s beautifully sculpted, eroding sandstone cliffs the color of gold. Lana and Jack, each with a baby in a kid-carry, had often hiked and picnicked in the preserve. She shut her eyes and let Kathryn talk.
Dom wanted no risk of another miscarriage so Kathryn was to stay in bed all day like a Victorian heroine, and he had enlisted Tinera to cook and clean. He would never hire anyone to help in the house, would not have his privacy invaded. And in a family of females, Mars had once said, who needs a maid?
“It’s not fair to Tinera,” Lana said.
“She doesn’t mind,” Kathryn said. “She likes to work around the house. Plus we spend a lot of time together. Anyway, it’s only until the end of the first trimester.”
“That’s three months you’re taking her away from school and her friends.” Sometimes Lana actively disliked Kathryn. “To a kid Tinera’s age, three months is a long time.”
“Well, what do you want me to do?”
“Tell him she has to be in school. Hire a maid.”
“She goes to school.”
“How often?”
“Lana, Dom goes by her class every Friday and picks up her work. He makes her study where he can see her doing it. I work with her, too. She’s practically getting home-schooled, for God’s sake. She’s doing well. And even if she weren’t, do you really think I could change Dom’s mind? You know how he is,” she whined. “Why do you always fuss at me?”
“After our conversations—”
“I exaggerated.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Lana, you have to forget what I told you. We never had that conversation.”
A gull settled on the parking sign a foot from the front of the Toyota and peered at the windshield. Lana peered back, making a face.
She said, “Lying around isn’t good for you or the baby. If there is a baby, which I sincerely doubt.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Then why won’t you take a test? What are you afraid you’ll find out?”
“I know when I’m with. I always know.”
“Kay, you told me you wanted to leave him. What happened to that?”
“I was depressed. You know the way I get.”
“Are you taking your meds now?”
“I don’t know why you call me if all you can do is nag.”
Another gull settled on the parking sign a few feet away, lifted one clawed foot, and scratched like a dog.
Lana said, “It’s a gorgeous day. I’ll come and get you. We’ll go for a walk.”
“Tinera’s here.”
“So?”
“I’ll get up, I promise.”
“I’ll come for tea, then.”
“She’ll tell him you were here.”
“I’m your sister, Kathryn, and even if I weren’t, you have a right to do whatever you want.”
A gust of wind rocked the car. The gulls fluffed their wings.
“I know.” That peaked, little-girl’s voice. “It’s so complicated, Lanny.”
Lana bit her lip and told herself what Jack had always said: She’s a grown woman. She has to take care of herself. Silence stretched for so long, Lana was able to follow several bits of the television conversation playing in the background. A cook talking about Cajun spices.
“I’m okay,” Kathryn said, finally. “Honest to God, I am. I’m thinking about stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“I’m figuring things out.”
“What’s to figure? You either stand up for yourself and get a life or you don’t. You either grow up or you don’t.” Lana spoke through clenched teeth. “I want you to know there is so much I am not saying right now.”
“That makes two of us.”
Another silence.
Lana broke it. “He’s sick, you know. This obsession with keeping you barefoot and pregnant like some Sicilian peasant. It’s not the goddamn tenth century.”
Kathryn laughed. “Tell Dom. I dare you.”
Lana knew that without Jack’s support she would never confront Dom. He frightened her. Not by what he did—he had never hurt anyone physically as far as she knew—but by the sense Lana had that there was inside Dom Firenzi someone none of them knew, a person contented enough to stay hidden so long as he got what he wanted. She had never seen him really angry and never wanted to. Her horseback conversation with Kathryn had only increased her wariness.
“Kathryn, I’m not going to be around to care take of you for the rest of your life. One of these days you’re going to need me and I might not be available. It’s not like my own life is so easy right now.”
“Have you told Micki about her father?”
Jack is her father, Lana thought. Jack. Jack. Jack.
“Michael’s still investigating.”
“What about The Fives thing?”
“She seems to be adjusting.”
“You hardly mention Beth these days.”
“What do you mean?” Lana felt her hackles rise.
“Just what I said. It’s always about Micki.”
Lana took her feet off the dashboard and lifted the lever that brought the driver’s seat forward. “They’re both doing okay.”
A few moments later, they said good-bye; Lana put her phone back in her purse. As she watched the gulls lift and bank, turning toward the long, open beach, she thought about the lie she had told her sister. Okay was not a word she could honestly apply to either Micki or Beth. The previous week Micki had cut school, walked right out of music class, and gone down to Balboa High School. It seemed this desire to change schools was more than a passing whim and Lana would have to put her foot down. Meanwhile, Beth stalked the house, her anger palpable. Lana felt like a criminal under surveillance when Beth was in the house and just as glad when she was out.
“What shall we have for dinner?” Lana asked Mi
cki, who sat at the kitchen table that evening with her school books around her. “Spag with white sauce or red?”
“Whatever.”
“I’ll make red. With sausage.” She watched Micki for a response. “Honey?”
“I’m not really hungry, Ma.”
Lana walked into the pantry and pushed jars and cans around until she found a sixteen-ounce jar of spaghetti sauce she had canned the summer before when Big Boys overran her garden. She came out of the pantry with the sauce and a large kettle.
She said, “Tell me about your day.”
“You know.”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”
“Same old same old.”
“What does that mean, Micki?”
“It means it was okay. O. K.”
Under the circumstances Lana had no more idea what okay meant than she had understood you know and same old same old. Someone could make a bundle publishing a dictionary that clarified the vagaries of teenage responses. All Lana knew for sure was that Micki wanted her to shut up. Well, she wasn’t going to do it.
“Beth’s having dinner at Kimmie’s.” Lana looked up in time to see the corners of Micki’s mouth turn up and quickly down. “What? Why were you smiling?”
“I wasn’t smiling.”
“Micki, I saw—”
“Jesus, Ma, if I’m moody, you worry, if I smile . . . Get a grip, will you?”
“And will you stop using that tone with me? This family isn’t a TV show, Micki. We’re polite to one another.”
Not wanting to see Micki’s reaction to this, Lana turned to the counter and sliced the sausage into bite-sized pieces that would brown quickly in the oven. She focused on pressing the balls of her feet into the floor. When she turned around, calm as the Sargasso, Micki’s fair head was bent over her books.
Lana thought of interrupting her with the story of how when she and Mars got out of school they had spread their books on a table at the Hollywood Cafe. Just months ago Micki would have wanted to hear how the waitresses brought them toasted cheese sandwiches with French fries and milk shakes. Lana always got butterscotch and Mars had chocolate and they’d sit there and whoever was in the Hollywood would shove up next to them and try to help with their spelling or arithmetic.
There had been a waitress who could add up whole columns of numbers in her head and knew the times tables through nineteen. When they got good grades the dentist down the street gave them quarters, and Lana was read to by a ragged man whose shoes made a sound on the linoleum like steel wool on the grill. She was only seven and read better than he but he loved doing it, she could tell.
Lana said to the top of Micki’s head, “How would you like to go shopping on Saturday?” She laid the chunks of sausage in a roasting pan. “We could have lunch at the Cheesecake Factory.”
“I don’t care.”
“Does that mean yes or no?”
“It means I don’t care if we go shopping or not.”
“Damn it, Micki, look at me. Your life isn’t over.”
“Too bad, huh?”
Lana sank into a chair opposite her and laid her head on her arms.
“Ma-a.”
Lana felt marooned, the last in her platoon, tossed up on the sands of Iwo Jima and told to defeat the entire Japanese army.
“You can’t mourn The Fives for the rest of the school year. You’re giving them power over your life. They rule you. You have other friends. You’ve always had friends.”
“I did something stupid,” Micki said. Buster lay on the floor near her. She bent and stroked his ears. “Yesterday, I went over to Tiff’s.”
Lana waited a moment and then asked softly, “Why was that stupid?”
“I don’t know.... I was thinking, like, maybe she’d want to do something. Those music awards were on TV—last year she stayed over so we could watch them.”
Micki looked up. Micki’s flawless skin and innocent eyes—a shiver of amazed joy went through Lana to see such beauty.
“I almost didn’t and then I thought what the shit . . . sorry, Ma.”
“Never mind.”
“It was like we hardly even knew each other. She acted like I was a stranger.” Micki began to imitate Tiff in a high, airily affected voice, “‘Oh. It’s you. Hi. I can’t invite you in because I’m really busy now doing important things. Me and my important friends . . .’ ”
Micki picked up her pencil and broke it in half.
Lana said, “I can’t understand. . . .” Don’t lie to this girl. You do understand. Every girl who had ever passed through school understood what Micki was going through. “Girls can be the meanest creatures on earth.” No advice, no solution, just the truth. “They’ll tear your heart out if it suits them.”
Micki put her head down on the table and sobbed and Lana crouched beside her chair, stroking her hair and gently patting her back.
No advice, no solution, just strokes and pats. Lana had never felt more inadequate.
The phone rang.
Lana heard Michael’s voice over the speaker and she hurried to pick it up before he could say too much. She took the phone out into the yard. In the half-light, the olive trees along the back wall were twisted and spidery shapes. Like swarms of white stars, the jasmine climbed their trunks and their boozy fragrance filled and thickened the twilight air.
“I’m sorry this has taken so long, Lana. The guy I had do it’s real busy. The attorney sends his regrets. He’d like to share the adoption file with you but it’s an attorney-client thing. Locked up tight.”
Lana looked back into the kitchen through the greenhouse window. Micki stood at the stove stirring the spaghetti sauce. “Did you tell him about Eddie French?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“Lana, he wouldn’t say anything for sure.”
“Did he say anything for not sure?”
“He said you should talk to the guy. That’s all.”
“That means he is who he says.” Not that she had ever really doubted it but she had hoped....
“Seems probable.” Michael paused. “My investigator ran the name Eddie French through the Internet—”
Damn it, I could have done that, Lana thought. It had not occurred to her.
“If this is the real Eddie French, he’s a big deal.”
“Shit.”
“He’s got hundreds of sites.”
“He really invented that game?”
“ ‘Ghost.’ Yeah. But that’s not all. He’s supposed to be working on some hot new game idea that’s going to revolutionize computer learning.”
“Great. That’s what I really need, a fucking genius saint.”
Michael chuckled softly. “He’s not quite that. My guy expanded his search to Lexus and that’s when it got interesting. Whole slew of newspaper articles about Eddie French. He’s been in and out of rehab a couple of times, had a few tangles with the cops. A couple of years ago he punched one out and tossed his camera.”
Lana felt a surge of validation and relief, followed almost instantly by another emotion she could not identify. She disconnected the call and took several deep breaths to dislodge the congested feeling trapped above her lungs. When this did not make it go away she crouched and tugged several spears of nut sedge that had poked up around her favorite Mr. Lincoln rose. It was a tenacious weed, sending out its invasive runners even in the wintertime and was virtually impossible to kill. Buster wandered over and looked at her, teetering a little on his weak hindquarters. She shoved the weeds into the pocket of her apron and perched on the edge of a landscape boulder and stroked his head.
The question she had been asking for weeks had taken a new slant. What would it do for Micki’s spirits to learn she was Eddie French’s daughter? Lift them, no doubt, no doubt at all, at least for a while. The guy was somebody and when the word got out, being his daughter would carry cachet at Arcadia. But he’d been in trouble with the law and had drug problems. Wasn’t a man like that almost ce
rtain to hurt Micki? Wasn’t it begging trouble to bring him into their life?
Lana went back inside and put the phone back on the wall.
“Who was that?” Micki asked as she gathered up her school things.
“Michael.”
“What’d he want? Looked like big secrets.”
“Oh, yeah,” Lana said. “He wants to plan something special for Wendy.”
“Cool,” Micki said. “I’m glad somebody’s having a happy life.”
In the upstairs hall an oversized utility closet with a window had been designated as the girls’ playhouse when they were small. There was a television there, one that Dom had found too small-screened for his family, and Jack had built a wall of shelves on which were stacked games and art supplies, books, and the essential junk of young lives dating back several years. Lana would put it on her list to clean the place out, send a bunch of stuff to Goodwill. Beth and Micki had decorated the walls with posters of rock and television stars; the furniture was old pillows and an orange beanbag chair one of them had dragged home from a junk store. The room gave Lana claustrophobia but the girls and their friends loved it. Micki retreated there right after dinner while her mother sat at her kitchen desk writing bills, listening to the jazz station from City College.
When Beth came in the back door just after ten, Lana said, “You’re late.”
Beth looked at the wall clock. “Five minutes.” She slung her book bag onto the oak table where it slid off and onto the floor. She stared at it a moment.
The Edge Of The Sky Page 18
