Blood Orange (15 page)

The Birch Aquarium, part of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography north of La Jolla, is a strikingly handsome building perched
on a bluff overlooking the northern portion of La Jolla Shores
Beach. On a Wednesday in early October the crowd was thin, just a
few tourists enjoying the hot fall weather, nannies and mothers
pushing strollers the size of whales, a noisy school of preadolescents
led and lectured to by a teacher wearing shorts and a tank top.

Dana and Bailey had visited the library the day before; and as
they had done prior to Bailey’s disappearance, they spread the fish
books on the table open to the full-color pictures. Dana had turned
the Technicolor pages slowly, pointing out fish she knew anything
about, commenting on all the colors, hoping for some sign of interest, waiting for a smile.

In the first days after her return, Dana had not been deeply troubled by Bailey’s lack of speech and her flat-line emotions. The shock to the little girl’s system had been seismic, and Dana reasoned it
would take time for her happy nature to recover itself. But Bailey
had been home more than three weeks now, and there had been no
improvement. She still watched Dana and David with disconcerting
intensity. Her lethargy was pervasive; even pictures of predatory
eels failed to kindle a response from her. Gone entirely was the
mania that had once singed Dana’s nerve endings. Bailey no longer
airplaned from room to room caroling her favorite words: smelly-
bellyjelly, stinkypinky. These days she clung to Dana or sat pressed
against her or lay on her bed or in front of a video sucking her
thumb. And never spoke.

In the aquarium they stood before a vast glass tank where sequoias of kelp grew up from the bottom and swayed in the artificially created swells. In and out, like birds through a forest, the
popeyed fish glided, kissing the water. Dana recognized the groupers,
fat brown gentlemen and ladies of substance and propriety, and their
gaudy cousins, the golden Garibaldi damselfish. But the small fish
she could not name were her favorites, the darters and jerkers that
flashed by in a blaze of electric blue, yellow, and scarlet.

Dana crouched beside Bailey and told her about the time she
and David snorkeled in Hawaii and schools of tiny fish nibbled
frozen peas from between her fingers.

At the end of the story, Bailey held up her arms. Carry me, her
eyes said.

“Ask me, Bay. Say the words.”

Bailey stood on tiptoe, her slender arms outstretched, making
soft animal noises at the back of her throat.

Dana wanted to sob with frustration. She did not know who irritated her more, the other visitors to the aquarium watching them
with sideways glances, or herself for having thought the excursion
could be anything other than an ordeal. She was sick of Bailey’s silence and her neediness. Instantly, she cut off the thought. She
would not allow herself to be upset with her daughter. To do so
would be to risk losing her again. David called this magical thinking, but she believed it anyway.

Dana suggested they leave the aquarium and drive down to the
beach. “I brought our swimming suits.”

No response.

There was nothing wrong with Bailey’s hearing. She came when
she was called, she turned at sudden noises. But in reaction to her
abduction some part of her had shut down, and now that she was
home she would not or could not turn it back on. As Dana read
books on voluntary mutism, she told herself that eventually her
daughter would speak again; they must all be patient. Lieutenant
Gary admired her tolerance but still urged her to send Bailey to a
child psychologist. David had begun to think it was a good idea as
well, and Lexy had given him the name of a psychiatrist experienced with traumatized children. Everyone had an opinion of what
was right for Bailey.

Dana pulled into a parking place at La Jolla Shores and unloaded the car. She handed Bailey a towel, bucket, and shovel to
carry.

“Mommy’s got lunch and the chairs.” Plus the umbrella and a
backpack full of beach miscellany.

These days David was much too busy for the beach. He claimed
he missed family time, but Dana knew he thrived on the demands of
his work. The pressure of a coming trial made him feel alive, as he
had on game days.

The reporter from People wanted to do a happy ending followup to his earlier abduction article that had focused as much on the
Filmore case and the perils of being a defense attorney as on Bailey
herself. Dana had been against the interview, but David said it would be good for business. To coax a smile from Bailey the photographer had clowned and courted her. But she would not satisfy
the public hunger for simple solutions, and Dana felt perversely
proud of her daughter showing the world that for a stolen child and
her family there was no such thing as happily ever after.

Having given up on Bailey, the reporter spoke mostly to David,
who had said all the right things, remembered to thank the Bailey
Committee, the police, all the kind folks who had come forward to
offer their good services. Dana had been too numb to do more than
nod through the interview. Obviously the reporter had expected
her to bubble with relief and joy, as if three months of terror could
be cast aside like a frumpy coat.

Later she wished she had just told the reporter the truth.
Perhaps he would have printed it, and then people might have understood what it meant to lose and regain a child, how it changed
everything. David’s hair was grayer. Dana’s body had become stiff
and awkward. She could no longer run without feeling as if her
arms and legs might fly out in opposite directions unless she exerted
extreme control. She felt conspicuous in public; and even if people
in line at the bank, the grocery store, at Bella Luna, and the Birch
Aquarium did not recognize her or Bailey, it was enough that she
imagined they did. On the beach in La Jolla she thought the bikiniclad girls and the couples walking hand in hand along the waterline
must know and would later speak of having seen that poor child and
her mother. She felt as if guilt had become the most obvious thing
about her, what people would remember if they were introduced.
That beautiful child. Her mother should have taken better care of her.

Dana had always been awkward in her skin. Time and experience had built her confidence; but since Bailey’s return the old insecurity had reasserted itself. There was nowhere safe anymore. Moby had been run down in front of their home, a rock had shattered
their front window. Bailey had been stolen from her own front yard.

What kind of a mother lets that happen?

They stopped at the showers to put on bathing suits. A few feet
above the rickrack of seaweed that marked the waterline, Dana set
up her beach chair, laid out Bailey’s towel, and drove the base of the
umbrella deep into the sand. She unbuckled Bailey’s sandals and
put them in the backpack. In a pink and green one-piece suit, her
long legs stretched out before her, Bailey sat with her back to the
surf, digging her heels into the hot sand. She had been suntanned to
a golden brown when Dana discovered her sitting on the front
porch. She still looked as if she had just returned from a tropical
holiday. Gary said she had probably been taken to Mexico.

It made Dana physically ill to think of it. The murkiest corner of
her nightmare had been that Bailey was taken out of the country
into whatever hell awaited beautiful little girls with no one to protect them.

Dana unpacked a lunch of sandwiches and fruit and laid it out
on a towel. “Want to get your feet wet before lunch?” Bailey was
fearful in the water, but she liked to feel the tide suck the sand from
under her feet. “Bailey?”

Dana looked toward the parking lot to see what had captured
Bailey’s attention. On that warm weekday in early October the
beach was not crowded, so Dana had a clear view twenty meters to
the low cement wall that divided the beach from the boardwalk and
parking lot. In the lot, double-parked, was a white van.

You’re paranoid. The city’s full of white vans. But this was the
one. Lurching to her feet, she ran toward the wall, barefoot across
the scorching sand. On the wall a bronzed young man with a head
of thick curly brown hair watched her run toward him.

The van pulled away. No bumper sticker and, she saw now, lettering across the back: MOBILE LOCKSMITH. And a number to call.

“Shit.”

The young man laughed.

She stared at him.

“Sorry,” she said.

He spoke to her. At first she thought his language was Italian,
but then she realized he spoke Spanish. She felt like an idiot for running across the sand to stare at a van when there were thousands of
them in the city. Swearing aloud. Talking to strangers. Leaving
Bailey alone.

Dana held Bailey’s hand as they waded through the curling
foam. The breakers were low and easy, and the hot Indian summer
weather had kept the ocean warm enough for swimming. Bailey
stopped, planted her feet, and watched the retreating tide suck the
sand away from her feet. She fell over, got up, and did it again.
When they had waded out to where the water reached Bailey’s
waist, Dana tried to lift her up, but Bailey pushed her away and
went a few steps farther, into deeper water. She turned her back to
the waves, glanced over her shoulder, and then, at the perfect moment, raised her arms in front of her, lifted her feet, and rode the little wave a few feet to shore. Dana ran to her, expecting tears. Instead
Bailey broke past her and ran back into the waves, lifting her knees
high and clapping her hands.

Someone had taught her to bodysurf.

omeone taught her to bodysurf?” Lexy asked. “What kind of
kidnapper does that?”

It was later the same day, and Dana and Bailey had met Lexy at
Bella Luna. They sat at one of the round metal tables at the edge of
the outdoor terrace but mostly hidden from the sidewalk and busy
street by a hedge of red cape honeysuckle. The sky was a flawless
Della Robbia blue, and Lexy’s red hair flashed like polished copper.

At the other tables, the late-afternoon crowd getting its coffee fix
was mostly men and women from the offices and shops up and
down Goldfinch Street. Dana recognized the owner of the Avignon
Shop giggling with a man wearing a backward baseball cap; and a
few moments after they sat down, Rochelle dashed across from Arts
and Letters, pausing at their table only long enough to say, “Watch
the shop, darlings. The loo’s out again.”

The baristas at Bella Luna had made a fuss when they saw Bailey
and concocted for her a chocolate drink topped with enough
whipped cream to ski on. They invited her to stand on a stool behind the counter and help them serve customers. As Dana was
about to thank them for the kind offer and make apologies for Bailey, her daughter astonished her by nodding her head. Yes, she
wanted to help. As Dana talked to Lexy, she watched her daughter
perched near the cash register. The barista handed Bailey the customer’s receipt, and she handed it to the customer.

“This is the first time she’s left me.” Dana had a light, leafy feeling that was almost giddy. “Being at the beach helped her.”

Every few moments Bailey came out from behind the counter as
if to make sure Dana was still there, as if she did not trust her eyes
alone but had to touch her mother’s hands and stroke her hair before running off again.

On one of these occasions Lexy reached across the little table
and lifted a lock of Bailey’s sun-streaked, salt-stiff hair off her forehead. “You know how to swim, don’t you?”

Bailey looked from Lexy to Dana and back. She nodded.

“Do you like swimming?”

Another affirmative nod accompanied by a wide smile. This was
more communication from Bailey than since the kidnapping. Dana
wished she were a ballerina. She would pirouette down Goldfinch
Street.

“You had a good swimming teacher,” Lexy said.

Bailey licked whipped cream off her upper lip.

“Can you remember your teacher’s name?”

She looked at Dana and at Lexy, then ran back to the counter.
Dana watched the barista lift her onto the stool and lay her hand on
her head affectionately.