The Truth About Delilah Blue

by Tish Cohen

  “Thanks.”

  “Bye, Adam.”

  “Bye, Nik. Good to see you. No, awesome to see you!” As the couple walked back toward the sidewalk, unhurried, he called out, “Goodbye, Bruce.”

  As soon as they were gone, Adam crumpled to the ground and buried his face in his hands. “Did you hear me? I think I used the word ‘groin.’ In my whole life I’ve never used the word ‘groin.’ I babbled like a total idiot.”

  “Not an idiot.” She crawled nearer. “A fool maybe. Or a dork. But not an idiot.”

  “What she must think of me. She must be congratulating herself on the breakup.”

  Lila pushed hair from his face. “She looked hungry. She’s probably just thinking of a big garden salad with some crusty bread.”

  “I thought I’d be cool when I first saw her, but then she took off the sunglasses and those eyes.” He sat up. “Those are incredible eyes—are they not incredible eyes?”

  “They are.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “But incredible eyes are everywhere. Show me a sensual mouth, then we’ll talk striking beauty.”

  He started nodding, slightly at first, then more emphatically. “Yes. You’re right. The mouth is where it’s at. And her mouth is really nothing special, is it? Just a mouth. Two lips.”

  “A garage for her teeth. That’s all.”

  “Right. A garage.” He picked at the grass, rolled it in his hands, and tossed it on her boots. “Thanks. Do you want me to get naked now?”

  “No.” She climbed to her feet. “I think we’re done for today.”

  Twenty-Three

  Lichty’s back was to the door. He was arguing with someone on the phone, leaning against the plateglass window while staring down at his shoes. “Yes. Yes. We’ve been through all this. Those dates don’t work for me. I’ll be in Chicago at the end of January.”

  Lila stood in the hall clutching her portfolio, uncertain what to do. Today was the day to turn in her scholarship application. October was an odd time of year to be considered. Then again, Lichty was an odd guy. He likely made his own rules. But he’d been firm when he told her October 16. By five o’clock. One minute later, he’d said, and her application would be nullified.

  “No. Impossible,” he said into the phone. “You’ll have to change the dates on your end.”

  It was five to five.

  “I can’t leave Chicago early; the event is in my honor. You know, this is exactly what happened last year when I let your people make the arrangements.”

  She cleared her throat, hoping to get his attention. He stood up taller, but now stared out the window. In vain, she glanced around the room as if she might come upon a large box labeled OFF-SEASON SCHOLARSHIP SUBMISSIONS HERE. Of course there was no such bin.

  Four minutes to five.

  “No. I’m immovable on this. You’ll have to get dates from my assistant.” There was a long pause, followed by Lichty thumping his fist on the glass. “No. No. No. No. I don’t think you’re hearing what I’m saying. End of January is out. Period. Do I have to repeat my entire three-week itinerary to you?”

  No. Please don’t, thought Lila. Repeating your entire three-week itinerary will blow my entire education.

  Three minutes to five.

  This was ridiculous. He never said anything about handing it in to him in person. She tiptoed in and went to place her portfolio and the envelope containing her application papers on his desk. But she knocked his lamp as she leaned close and Lichty spun around. With a dour expression on his face, he covered the receiver. “Office hours ended at four, Miss Mack.”

  She set the materials on top of the papers on his desk and whispered, “My scholarship application. And portfolio.”

  Into the phone, he barked, “Well then put Lionel on the phone. I don’t have time to deal with this nonsense.” Crooking the telephone between ear and shoulder, he peeked inside her portfolio, pulled out each of her five pieces and looked at them, one by one. With no change in expression, he slipped them back in and shouted, “Don’t think they won’t be hearing about this from me! I plan to head over there the moment I leave.”

  When Lila didn’t move, he covered the phone again. “Are you waiting for some sort of gold star, Miss Mack?”

  “No, I—”

  “Off you go then.”

  Twenty-Four

  His exwife was on her way over. Of course Victor’s actions would lead to this day. He wasn’t so far gone he couldn’t see that. On this Wednesday, this twenty-second day of October, whatever remained of Victor’s reign as Noble Father would end. He could never compete with Long Lost Mother. Ravishing Mother. Left-behind Mother.

  It was the start of the finish. After working so hard to prevent it, after running his daughter to the farthest edge of the continent and hiding her away, he was finally going to lose his girl. He knew how it looked. Elisabeth appeared wholly good. Victor appeared wholly bad. It didn’t take a genius to know whom the child would choose. Anyway, you take away a parent and the child’s going to idealize her. Simple as that. Then tell that child the other parent manufactured the loss. Well.

  There was another time, nine years back, when he’d almost lost her. Lila, about eleven or twelve, had been invited to camp on Lake Havasu in Arizona with a new girl from school and her parents. They were to sleep in a popup trailer and cook hot dogs over an open fire, maybe even water-ski behind the family’s speedboat. As much as Victor wanted Lila to have a friend, it was out of the question. Lila and this other girl, tucked in sleeping bags on a tiny bunk, would stare through the overhead screen at a sky filled with the kind of stars you cannot see in Los Angeles where, with the exception of a complete power failure, the lights never really go out. It was a charged atmosphere that would create imagined intimacy. Turn a casual friend into a trusted confidante.

  Secrets could be told.

  Victor couldn’t risk it. He’d told Lila no.

  Maybe it was the strain of a tough school year. Maybe it was because Mother’s Day had just passed. But Lila had taken it hard. She’d refused to speak to her father for three days. Then, on a Thursday morning, after the camping weekend had already passed, Victor had padded into her room to wake her up for school and found her bed empty.

  A quick search of the cabin, shed, and property revealed Lila was gone. He’d been unable to breathe, his entire being consumed with panic. Had to sit down with a paper bag pressed over his mouth to stop the tingling in his fingertips. It was the one and only time since the move that he lost his composure and did the unthinkable:

  Victor Mack called the police.

  The LAPD scoured the neighborhood. Informed train stations, bus stations, LAX. All of this while Victor tried not to die of fright for his daughter. Never, not once in the five hours she was gone, did Victor fear for his own freedom. It was quite possibly the most unselfish three hundred minutes of his life.

  Just before noon, he got a phone call. A red-haired, bigeyed, eleven-year-old girl wearing scribbled Converse running shoes was sitting on a Greyhound bus destined for Toronto via Las Vegas, Chicago, and Detroit. She refused to give the police officers her name. Refused to get off the bus, the police officer on the phone said, so could Victor please hurry? Schedules were being disrupted. By the time Victor arrived to find Lila in the very back seat of the bus, she was fast asleep, her arms wrapped around the tiny plush Snoopy Elisabeth picked up in the gift shop at the Hospital for Sick Children back home.

  Trust Elisabeth to know best how to soothe her child after an injury. Trust Elisabeth to come out of any catastrophe smelling like the sweeter parent.

  Now he sat on his bed in fresh boxers and a T-shirt, the sleeves of which no longer strained against his biceps. Lost in his own underwear. Either the shirt had stretched or he had shrunk—didn’t really matter which. Meant the same damned thing: He didn’t fill out his own life anymore. There was no growing bigger, no building himself up, not at his age. He didn’t have the testosterone; he di
dn’t have the energy. He didn’t have the presence of mind some days to even remember if he’d exercised or just crawled out of bed. He supposed he could ask his daughter to help him keep track, but that seemed a bit much, given the circumstances. He would have to be content with innards that rattled around loose, like leftovers in a paper bag.

  In a way, his current condition of broken man, or man breaking apart before his own eyes, made him feel better. He still felt guilty, no mistaking it, but offering himself up to Elisabeth as a weathered replica of his former self was proof of justice partially served, was it not? It wasn’t prison, and wouldn’t likely bring about forgiveness, but if you took your neighbor’s lawn mower and kept it for a few years, the neighbor would be quicker to forgive if the blades had sliced off a few of your toes.

  So if Elisabeth felt vindicated, it was a good thing. If she was thrilled to see him looking wasted and useless, well, she deserved that one small pleasure. She would chalk it up to karma, if she still believed in that sort of thing.

  He stood up and put his body through its morning stretches, almost certain he had not yet indulged in them today, while something pattered on the roof. Rain? Squirrels? Once his regimen was complete, he padded into the bathroom to shower and shave, taking extra care with himself. Toothbrush, Q-tip, Listerine, deodorant.

  He poked through his medicine cabinet and pulled out a dusty bottle of Paco Rabanne. Ancient, maybe even from the days before Lila was born. He cracked open the lid and dabbed the thickened cologne on his neck, and, for good measure, under his arms.

  Satisfied with his toilette, he padded into his room to dress. From inside his closet he heard the muffled rap on the front door. The squeaky hellos. The silence of an uncomfortable hug followed by the expected comments about the clouds that had darkened an hour or so earlier. Victor could imagine the vague tension in the hallway. Elisabeth’s eyes darting nervously about. Looking for Victor. Looking for a kitchen knife. Not necessarily in that order.

  The sounds trailed off as the ladies moved toward the living room.

  He turned his attention back to his closet. His frail body aside, vanity dictated he look his best. Choose something unfrayed and crisp. His fingers wandered across the hangers and stopped on his leading-man suit. Victor smiled as he pulled it out and laid it on the bed. He slipped on a light blue shirt and climbed into the suit.

  Silver was his color. Gen had always said so.

  He zipped the pants, but when he tried to fasten the waistband, he realized they weren’t going to button. Clearly, what he’d lost in his upper body, he’d gained in the middle. He slipped on a belt to keep them from opening up and dropping to his ankles, then pulled on his jacket.

  From the kitchen came the sounds of the fridge opening and closing, glass clunking down on the table. Such a good girl, that Lila. Playing hostess. Poor kid must feel sick.

  There had been very little conversation between them in recent days. Other than “Well?” and “I’m sorry, Mouse,” communication had been limited to grocery lists and laundry instructions and banal observations about the level of canine vocalizations next door.

  It had never been his intention to hurt his daughter so. His singleminded goal of keeping Lila alive had nudged all other concerns into the ditch. Making sure her soul remained uncrushed had, wrongly, been as low on his list of priorities as what brand of conditioner might best prevent split ends. Yet crushing her was precisely what he had done.

  And he’d had no bloody choice.

  Staring at himself in the mirror, he smoothed his shirt over his belly. Satisfied he looked if not physically fit, at least mentally fit, he took a deep breath and entered the hallway. The voices grew louder as he approached. Not ten steps ahead of him lay the confrontation of a lifetime.

  He felt his breathing grow shallow again. He slowed his step, leaned against the wall, his heart pounding so fast he thought it might come through his shirt. And the hall—why was it so shadowy? Ever since his mind had begun acting up, shadows seemed to follow him. Why was it so dim? Was it not daytime? And if not, why was the light not on? And, more important, how did one turn on this particular light? The fixture was all the way up on the ceiling. “Shitcrap place for a light!” he roared.

  “Dad? We’re in here.”

  Peering into the dim living room, he saw the back of a stranger’s head. Darkish hair. Hands that fluttered as she spoke. Could it be Gen?

  No. Not here. She wasn’t in his home, just like she wasn’t in his neighbors’ yard.

  Still. Smoothing his beard, he started toward the room. God, how he’d missed her. It had been…too damned long was what it had been. He tried to stop his grin from taking over his entire face.

  It couldn’t be.

  The dark hair turned and he caught sight of the profile. The upturned nose and small chin. This wasn’t Gen at all. It appeared to be—impossible—his ex-wife. Elisabeth. He felt his heart race again and crept back into the hall.

  He couldn’t think right away why Elisabeth was to be feared. Only that he feared her.

  He reached for the keys and slipped out the front door. As he thrust the car into reverse, he looked back at the house to see his daughter’s face at the kitchen window, sweet and shocked and, yes, crushed.

  SEPTEMBER 19, 1996

  Victor threw the covers off his shoulders and glanced at the digital clock perched on top of a stack of magazines beside his bed. Four o’clock. It was no use trying to sleep now. Renovations on the house next door had continued until well after dark, and the incessant hammering, sawing, and shouting continued to reverberate in Victor’s head. After swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he paused to let his blood pressure adjust. He’d once heard about a man who stood up too quickly getting out of bed; the quick change in altitude caused his blood pressure to drop, bringing on a temporary blackout that resulted in him hitting his head on the iron bedpost on the way down. The fellow suffered countless complications and his mind was never the same afterward.

  Victor couldn’t afford to lose his mind just now.

  After a quick trip to the bathroom in sleep-rumpled linen pajamas, then to his closet to wrap himself in a terry-cloth robe, he wandered into the living room and turned on the television, flicking from one infomercial to the next. Eventually he settled on a black-and-white movie, pulled a small quilt over his legs and leaned back on the sofa. With any luck, the film would force his mind to focus and settle. Maybe enough so that he could catch an hour of sleep.

  He sunk deeper into the cushions and stared at the television. A commercial came on showing a couple strapping their toddler into the backseat of a car, then buckling up themselves. As the father pulled into traffic, they both lit up cigarettes while the child stared out the window. Billows of smoke morphed into animated hands, snaking into the backseat, wrapping long, hazy fingerlike tendrils around the child’s body. Then an antismoking logo and a phone number flashed against a black screen.

  He tried to stop the image before it crystallized—if he allowed the picture of the Cabbagetown rooftop to form, even for a fraction of a second, he’d be forced to get in the car and drive downtown to convince himself that Elisabeth or one of her stoner friends hadn’t fallen asleep with a lit cigarette or joint. Counting backward from one hundred, he managed to fight it off. A small triumph; one only he and his therapist would appreciate. He lowered the volume of the TV, pleased with his resolve, and let his eyes fall shut.

  Then, somewhere outside, a chorus of muffled wails pierced the night. Sharp and close at first, unmistakably the siren of fire engines. Ambulances. He sat up and listened. As the wails grew more and more faint, it became clear they were traveling southbound on Bayview. They could be headed anywhere, of course, and would probably turn off the extension long before they reached the deep bowl of a park at River Street, turned right on Gerrard. Wound their way through the one-way streets of Cabbagetown to the sleepy windows of Sackville Street.

  But when it came to his daughter, probably was
n’t good enough. Fully aware he was behaving irrationally, Victor pulled himself upright, slipped his feet into shoes, and reached for his keys.

  Twenty-Five

  The walk from kitchen window back to living room—where her mother waited—was a long one. If, after learning what Victor did to her, Lila had had a moment of believing that her father had kidnapped her out of some sort of misguided sense of necessity, it vanished along with the rear chrome bumper of the Datsun as it careened away from the cabin. Agreeing to meet with Elisabeth, then bolting, was truly her father’s most despicable act. Showed zero compassion, even less remorse, and an absolute lack of understanding of the gravity of what he’d done.

  She followed the brick road back to the living room, back to where Elisabeth sat on the sofa, her shaking hands wrapped around a clay mug Lila had made in fourth-grade art class. When Lila had pulled it from the kitchen cupboard, Elisabeth had teared up, turned it over in her hands, asked if she could keep it. She’d insisted upon drinking chilled Zinfandel in it while she waited for Victor to emerge. She looked up as Lila entered the room. “I was just staring out at the hill here. It’s just like the psychic said. That you were facing directly into a mountain. That there was one big window, but other rooms had little natural light. Like an animal’s lair.” She looked around the room. “It’s all here, everything she said. The stone fireplace, the uneven floors, all this wood. Spooky to think how accurate she was.”

  “I’ve got something to—”

  “She also said I’d had a tough life. That I would have to work harder than most people to have what I was meant to have.”

  “You mean me? And Kieran?”

  “Not really. I think Amelia meant nice things. That I was meant to have them, but circumstances—like your father—got in the way. Not that I mind about material objects.” She laughed into her mug. “No. Now that I have you, I’m the richest woman in the world. Now if your father would just get in here, we can get this thing over with. I’m not sure my stomach will hold out; I’m so nervous.”