The Edge Of The Sky

by Drusilla Campbell

  “She told me her husband didn’t know she’d had a baby. None of her friends knew. They all attended the Four Square Baptist Church in that little town and if it ever got out about Micki—she put her hands over her ears when I said her name—she’d be ruined and her husband would never forgive her.”

  In the midst of relief, Lana felt a sink of grief for Micki.

  “I admit I was pissed at first. I think since Micki was born I must have thought about her at least once every day. Not like obsessing but just curious and worried for fear, you know, something might have gone wrong. I couldn’t understand how Barbara could live as if our baby never happened. Plus I felt sorry for Micki, you know? To have a mother like that?”

  “I’m her mother,” Lana said. “She has a mother like me.”

  “When I got to thinking about it, though, mostly what I felt was relieved. This way I get her for myself.”

  It was light enough to make out his features clearly and to see how Micki looked like him, and how she did not. “You don’t get her at all.”

  “I didn’t mean get like have. I meant—”

  “I know what you meant, Eddie. You meant that now you’re in her life. But you’re not. For as long as she is living in my house and dependent on me, you will be peripheral to her life.”

  She said the words and for an instant, as they were coming out of her mouth and filling up the cool morning, she believed them. Eddie French could go away now and their lives would return to normal. But the words were mist and all their power vanished in the air, leaving a familiar groaning emptiness inside her.

  She sat at a picnic table. There was no going back, no pulling back the ashes, no mending the urn that had held them. Part of the family, but not of the family. It sounded like the metaphysical jibberish philosophers debated. Well, she didn’t like to argue, never had. Pressed against her leg, she felt Buster’s labored breathing.

  “I don’t want to take her away from you,” Eddie French said softly. “If I could just make you believe that, Lana.”

  She gestured for him to sit down beside her. He straddled the bench.

  “I don’t think you understand—you don’t get what a family—” Something broke in her and before she could mend it, the words tumbled out. “I love her so much, Eddie. She and Beth, they mean everything to me.”

  “I know that, Lana. And I’m so grateful. I wish I could’ve known Jack, too.”

  She began to talk about Jack’s death and how when he was taken from them, an essential ingredient went with him and she didn’t know what it was. Eddie did not interrupt her even when she stopped long enough to wonder why she was revealing so much and so freely. His eyes never left her face.

  “I always thought Micki was the difficult one,” she said, “But now it’s Beth I’m frightened for. Love doesn’t seem to be enough anymore.”

  He said something in response but Lana did not listen. He played with a cigarette.

  “Go ahead. Smoke it.”

  He lit the cigarette and smoked for a moment, staring at the smoke rising from it. “Beth’s right—lots of kids smoke grass and they do fine in life. And if they mess up, sometimes that’s good, too. Lots of times we have to do the wrong thing in order to figure out—”

  His easy answer irritated her. He wasn’t really a father, not a parent. He didn’t know.

  “It’s not your problem, Eddie. Forget about it.” She stepped away from the picnic table and whistled for Gala. She felt him watching her, waiting for her to say more. She took a breath. “And about next weekend.”

  “Thanks for letting me come. Micki kind of put you on the spot, didn’t she?”

  “You are invited to dinner on Saturday night but you’ll have to go home afterwards. I don’t want you to stay overnight again.”

  He looked at the burning end of his cigarette.

  “I’ll do whatever you want, Lana. Just let me be Micki’s father.”

  “No. I won’t let you. Micki had a wonderful father. She doesn’t need you. She wants you but she doesn’t need you.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  At first Lana could not make out what Tinera was saying and twice she had to tell her to slow down. It was Monday evening after dinner, and she was wearing shorts, sitting on the front steps making a list for the week. In the wind the copper tube wind chimes had gone beyond music to cacophony.

  “You gotta come, Aunty Lana. Come now, right away, come nowcomenowcomenow.”

  Across the street Mr. Anderson had turned on his sprinklers and the water spread in a wide arc out onto the street. The winter evening felt oddly like summertime and put Lana’s nerves on edge.

  “Mama’s gonna kill my daddy. She says she will.”

  Lana’s hands began to sweat. “Let me speak to your father.”

  Tinera lowered her voice and Lana realized this was a secret phone call. And a rare act of initiative. “He’s in the closet. If he comes out she says she’ll kill him.”

  “Your mother would never—”

  “With a gun.”

  Lana remembered the .38 revolver she had seen in the drawer of Kathryn’s bedside table.

  “Okay,” Lana said stupidly since nothing was okay. “Can you get Kathryn for me? Can you take the phone to her?”

  “Oh, nononono,” Tinera cried, “she doesn’t know.... Please, come. I can’t talk anymore. Please just come.”

  “Tinera, I’ll tell Aunty Mars. She’ll—”

  “No, not her. Please you come, you’ve got to come.”

  “But, honey . . .” Dial tone.

  Lana keyed in Mars’s number and let the phone ring, tapping the point of her pencil into her bare knee as she waited. The answering machine clicked on and at the same moment she remembered her sister taught a three-hour seminar on Imagist poets on Monday nights.

  In the laundry room she pulled clean Levi’s out of the dryer and put them on. She called up the stairs to Micki and Beth and when they came to the kitchen she explained about Tinera’s call, omitting mention of guns and killing, making it out to be only a three-star emergency.

  Micki asked, suspiciously, “How come you’re going over there and you don’t even know what’s going on?”

  “You know Tinera, she never would have called me if it wasn’t important.” Lana opened the hall closet and grabbed her blue parka vest and had pulled it on and snapped the buttons down the front before she remembered how warm the night was. But the weather might change.

  “Can I study with Kimmie tomorrow night?”

  Lana looked at Beth, slouched against the doorjamb, dressed in black with raccoon rings of mascara around her eyes. “Is she all you can think about?”

  “It’s crazy here. You running off, Tiff and The Fives in and out—”

  “I said no, I meant no.”

  The gates to Tres Palomas were closed and for some reason the code to open them had dropped out of Lana’s mind, but as she rummaged through the papers in the 4-Runner’s glove box for the card on which it was written, she heard them creak and swing wide, and she imagined Tinera down the hill in the house watching from behind the curtains for her arrival. She let herself feel the apprehension that had been circling her like a buzzard ever since the call. Violence was so out of Kathryn’s character that Lana could not imagine what event or series of events had led her to threaten her husband. And with the three girls right there. She felt a vibration of fear in her ribcage, like a bird beating its wings.

  Instead of parking in front of the house, she stopped fifty feet away and got out, closing the door softly. In the paddock a pair of horses trotted to the fence and hung their heads over in curiosity. The leafless sycamores and cottonwoods groaned in the wind—the smell of horses and sage was strong and pleasant. The front door swung open when she touched it. The house was uncannily silent. She turned down the tiled corridor and walked toward the master bedroom. She heard crying from the first bedroom, Nichole’s. Lana tried the door but the big glass doorknob did not turn. The children’s
bedrooms did not have inside locks, which meant someone had locked Nichole in. Quickly Lana moved to Colette’s door and tried its knob. The same thing. She pressed her ear against the thick paneling but heard nothing. At eight and nine, Colette and Nichole were old enough to climb out their bedroom windows but too cowed and docile to try. Had Kathryn locked the girls in before she threatened Dom? Had she made Tinera do it? Or had Dom locked them in and started something with Kathryn? If so, why was Tinera at liberty?

  She opened the door to the master bedroom.

  Tinera sat cross-legged in the middle of the California king-sized bed wearing her nightgown—a blue paisley with spaghetti straps. Her hair was in tangles. She looked at Lana with large, frightened eyes. On one side of the bedroom, the drawers of Kathryn’s dresser hung open; articles of clothing were scattered on the floor. The television was on, volume off, two news anchors going on and on. Lana realized it must be after eleven. At the foot of the bed, Kathryn sat backwards on a straight chair with her feet in fuzzy, white slippers flat on the floor, her back to Tinera and facing the closed door of the big walk-in closet. Perfect posture. She held the .38 revolver in two hands, resting her wrists on the chair back.

  “Big sister to the rescue,” she said when Lana entered. “I wondered when you’d show up. Tinera said she had to go to the bathroom but she used the phone to call you. Covered up the noise with running water. Pretty smart, huh?”

  “Kay,” Lana said softly from the doorway. “What’s happened?”

  “Tinera? Tell your aunt what’s going on. Same as I told you.”

  Lana felt sick.

  Tinera began to cry.

  “She’s a little girl—don’t involve her in this. Send her out of the room.”

  Kathryn shook her head and sat up straighter. “Oh, no, she’s Daddy’s favorite, she’s the little mother so she has to know.” Her voice was as perfectly reasonable as if she were explaining some mundane matter at a parent-teacher conference. “Don’t worry, Lana, I’m not crazy. I haven’t had a breakdown.”

  That was a matter they could debate later.

  “Tell me what he did.”

  “Let’s see. Where to begin? How about this.” She yelled at the closet door. “I’m not pregnant. I had a miscarriage.”

  Lana saw a bullet hole in the wall above the closet.

  “Jesus, Kathryn, you fired—”

  Dom cried from the closet, “She tried to kill me, she’s crazy, Lana. Take the gun away from her.”

  “Shut up!” Kathryn grinned at Lana, apparently enjoying herself. “Don’t worry, he’s not hurt. I just did it to scare him, just to let him know I wasn’t kidding. He didn’t believe me, Lana. He thought it was just poor old Kathryn moaning and groaning, same old, same old.” She faced the closet again and adjusted her grip on the revolver. With the back of the chair supporting her wrists she could stay that way for hours. “I went out on Jacaranda and I did jumps and I galloped and trotted, we trotted a lot, and then we jumped some more and then I got a pain so I got off the horse and I squatted down in the dust. . . .”

  “Oh, Kathryn.” Love and sorrow flooded out on Lana’s words.

  There was a sudden pounding from inside the closet. “Grab the gun—she won’t shoot you, Lana.” Dom’s voice was muffled but she heard the rage and fear in it. “She won’t hurt you. Take the gun away.”

  “Don’t even try,” Kathryn said to Lana.

  “Trust me,” Lana held up her hands, palm out, “I won’t.”

  “She’s crazy,” Dom cried. “Make her tell what she did, see if she isn’t crazy.”

  Lana looked at her sister’s eyes. They were not wild with madness. She saw calm and a hint of amusement in her expression.

  For once she has the upper hand.

  “I had a miscarriage right there. In the dirt. And afterwards I found a stick and I dug a hole and I buried it.”

  On the bed Tinera began to wail, a frightening, primitive sound.

  Kathryn raised her voice sharply. “It was blood, Tinera, that’s all it was. Just a little blood. No tiny fingernails or beating heart. No soul.” Kathryn looked at Lana and went on as conversationally as if they were having lunch at the Harbor Inn. “You know what I’ve never understood about the right-to-lifers? The way they make out like an abortion actually damages a soul. It seems to me that if a soul doesn’t make it into the world one way, it’ll find another.”

  “Kathryn, that’s not the point now.”

  “I beg your pardon, but I think it is. I didn’t kill a soul, I killed,” she raised her voice, “a little male embryo.”

  “You bitch,” Dom yelled. “You fucking cunt bitch.”

  Lana darted across the bedroom and slammed the heel of her hand against the closet door. “Shut up, Dom. Your daughter’s here.”

  “Tinera, honey, go call the police, okay?” Even muffled by the thick door, his voice wooed and purred. “Call the sheriff’s number, baby girl. You know that number.”

  Lana shook her head at Tinera, who put her hands over her ears.

  “She’s not going to do it, Dom. We don’t need the police here.”

  “I came home,” Kathryn continued as if the interruption had not occurred, “and I told him and he began to cry. He cries as easily and effectively as a woman, did you know that, Lana? He can turn on the waterworks like a nineteenth-century heroine.”

  “Give me the gun.”

  “Don’t you want to hear?”

  “Yes, but give me the gun first.” Lana held out her hand.

  “Then he’ll come out of the closet. Then it’ll start all over again.” Lana dropped her hands and crouched beside the chair, whispering, “What d’you think? He’s never coming out? You’re going to let him starve in there? Think ahead, Kathryn. What have you gotten yourself into?”

  Kathryn rested her chin on the butt of the gun.

  “My god, be careful.” Lana reached for the gun and Kathryn jerked away.

  “I didn’t think, I couldn’t think.” Her eyes seemed lost in their sockets. “I just had to do something or I was going to explode.”

  Lana tried to swallow but her mouth and throat were dry. “So tell me then, what happened after he started to cry?”

  “He said he was going to sell all the horses. Except Jacaranda. He said he was going to go outside right then and shoot Jacaranda.” She looked down at the gun in her hand. “He got the gun out of the drawer and when he saw it wasn’t loaded he went into the closet to get his Luger.”

  “He’s got a Luger in the closet?”

  Kathryn giggled. “He forgot he took it to the gun shop to be cleaned. Too bad, huh? We’d all be dead.”

  Lana went to the bed and gathered Tinera into her arms. The girl was clammy-cold despite the warm wind blowing through the bedroom windows. She pulled a blanket up from the end of the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders.

  “He put my gun on the dresser and I picked it up and loaded it.” Kathryn smiled again. “You put the bullets in my drawer, remember?”

  “And you made him go in the closet?”

  “He was in there already, cussing because he couldn’t find the Luger. He started to come out and I kicked the door shut. He opened it and I shot. Over his head. Like . . .” she sighted down the revolver, “this.” She pulled the trigger.

  Tinera screamed. Dom yelled. Lana fell back against the bed, her heart drumming in her head.

  Dom screamed, “She’s insane, Lana. You can see—”

  “You’re both crazy. Shut up and let me think.”

  There was now a second bullet hole just above the closet door, inches from the first. She’s a good shot, Lana thought. If she weren’t, Dom might be dead now. She went to Tinera and held her, sobbing, and tried to think.

  The first thing was to get Tinera out of the bedroom.

  “I told you, she has to be here. She’s the little mother and she needs to understand everything. Him and me. Everything.”

  “She’s a child—”

 
; “No.”

  Lana whispered to Tinera, “I’ll get you out soon. Just try to hold on.” She kissed the girl’s damp forehead and went back to sit on the bed near her sister. “Listen,” she said, “I won’t let him kill your horse. It won’t happen, Kathryn, do you believe me?”

  “It wasn’t Jacaranda’s fault, Lana. It was me. I rode him hard because I wanted to miscarry. I’m tired of being depressed all the time, staying in bed and being an invalid. I want to have a life. I don’t want any more babies.” Kathryn eyes shone with tears. “I don’t even like babies. I never did.”

  Lana glanced at Tinera. She was lying down now with the pillows around her head. Perhaps she hadn’t heard.

  Lana said, “Is that right, Dom? You were going to kill the horse?”

  “Damn straight. And what does she mean, she doesn’t like babies?” His anger burned through the door. “She’s a woman, for crissakes.”

  “Fuck you!” Kathryn screamed. “I told you when we got married I didn’t want to have children and you said it was okay but you were lying. From the beginning you were lying. You made me have babies. You made me.” Kathryn turned toward the sound of Tinera’s sobs and pleaded to be understood. “I love you now, honey. I didn’t before when I was pregnant, when you were so small and all you did was cry and there was so much to do and this big house, but I love you now. I love you all now.”

  Tinera flew off the bed and dropped to the ground at her mother’s feet, hugging her legs. She spoke through streaming tears. “Put the gun away, Mama, try, please.” She lowered her voice. Lana barely heard her whisper, “Make a deal with him. Say you’ll do things and then he won’t be so mad. You know.”

  Kathryn shook her head. “I won’t do that anymore. I can’t.”

  Lana pulled Tinera up and into her arms. Her hair smelled sour and oily. Poor little girl, Lana thought. Neglected and abused and adored all at the same time.

  “Your mom’s through making deals, and your dad’s just going to have to get over being mad. She’s not making any more promises.” She looked at Kathryn. “Am I right?”