Blood Orange (22 page)

Instead she went to the phone and called Lieutenant Gary. She
was surprised when the operator put her through to him.

“Don’t you ever go home?”

“Occasionally.” She heard the squeak of his desk chair. “What’s
up, Mrs. Cabot?”

Dana cleared her throat. All at once she realized that it had been
two days since she took Bailey to the beach. Gary would think it peculiar she had not called him immediately. And it was peculiar. She could not really explain why she had delayed. Or why she wanted to
slam the phone down right now.

“Has something happened?”

“Yes.” She told him everything. As she spoke she ended every
sentence with “and” so she would be forced to continue, so she
would not stop until the full story of the day was told.

When she finished he asked, “What did the note say?”

She told him.

“Why didn’t you come right to the station with it?”

She couldn’t think of anything to say except the truth. “I don’t
know.”

More silence. “Right. Well, how soon can you get the note to
me-the rock, too? You want me to send someone over?”

Suddenly light-headed, she leaned against the kitchen counter.
“I don’t have it.”

“What do you mean?”

Icy perspiration beaded the back of her neck.

“What the hell do you expect me to do if you don’t have the
note?”

It had felt like filth in her hand. How could he expect her to hold
on to it one moment longer than she had to?

She heard his chair squeak again and then a slamming sound as
if he had kicked his desk. Eventually he spoke to her.

“You sure there even was a note, Mrs. Cabot?”

“Why would I lie?”

“That’s a really good question, and I don’t know the answer.” He
had an edgy, sarcastic laugh. “Like I also don’t know why you
wouldn’t call me first thing and bring over the evidence.”

“I’m telling you the truth.” She had been rash, throwing the note
away, and she regretted it. She wasn’t used to feeling stupid and ir responsible. She had spent her whole life proving to everyone that
she was just the opposite. She wanted him to understand.

“This whole thing-I’m not myself. Since Bailey disappeared it’s
like my life has fallen apart and I can’t seem to put it together.” She
was crying for the first time in many years, more years than she
could number for certain. Even when Bailey vanished, her eyes had
burned but stayed dry. Now she could not stop herself. “I know I’m
acting crazy. I know it’s not normal, but I can’t help it. I know what
I should have done, but the note, it was like … shit. In my hand. I
felt so dirty from touching-“

“Okay, okay. It’s done, we can’t change history.”

“I’d never lie about something like this. You believe me, don’t
you?”

“I just wish I could see that note.”

“I’m not a liar, Lieutenant Gary. I swear to you.”

“Yeah, yeah. I believe you.” He sounded very tired. “You just
got to promise me if anything else shows up you won’t toss it.”

“I do promise,” she said. “I do.”

struggling congregation like St. Tom’s could not afford to pay
.an assistant priest, so it depended on retired clergy to fill in or
take over as needed. Lexy’s assistant was old Father Bartholomew, a
retired priest from the Channel Islands, beloved by the congregation and so blind now he said the Eucharist by memory, frequently
jumbling the order of things. Lexy could not leave St. Tom’s in his
loving, unsteady hands. In January the retired dean of the cathedral
was coming to take over for a month, and she had already bought a
ticket to Hawaii. Until then an early-morning walk on Pacific Beach
with Dana felt like a mini-holiday.

Before seven A.M. neither wind nor surf disturbed the chill mist
that lay close to the water and sand in a silvery froth. Unless the
animal-control cops drove their jeeps down to the water’s edge,
they would see neither Moby Doby joyously breaking the city leash
law nor Bailey chasing the birds with him.

That morning, as always, Dana was a good listener. She let Lexy
ramble on about her work, and she didn’t judge.

“It’s not that it’s a hard job. I don’t care if it’s hard and the hours
are long. It’s the work I love, the work I chose. But there are times …” It was difficult to say aloud what she hardly permitted herself to
think. “I wonder what made me think I’d be a good priest.”

“Oh, Lexy … “

“No, listen, this is what I’m talking about. Yesterday I stopped
in Target on the way home and saw Beth Gordon with Jason and I
had to turn my back on them. I went out of my way to avoid them.
That woman … How many times can I say thank you for what she
does at St. Tom’s? And the kid …”

“He was great when Bailey was gone.”

“It gave him something to do. Better than robbing banks.” She
choked on the words. “Do you hear the way I talk? I’m supposed to
love him as Christ would love him. I’m supposed to see him as a
child of God, but I’d be happy if I never had to look at his pimply
face again.”

“You’re a priest, Lexy. Not a saint.”

“I know that. But I believe-” She stopped and stared out toward the horizon. On a foggy morning, the world seemed mysteriously small and empty. Without visual distraction, Lexy’s inadequacies
multiplied and crowded in on all sides, trapping her in a tense, tight
world. “I know I don’t have to be a saint, but I’m a Christian because of Christ, and I think the most important thing I’m asked to
do is see His face in every person I meet. That means deadheads like
Jason. I promised to do that when I became a priest. It’s the kind of
job where the harder you work at it, the more you realize how inadequate you are. So much of the time I’m just going through the motions, acting as if I’m a real priest. You wouldn’t believe how
dishonest I feel.” Disgusted, she kicked the toe of her Nike into the
damp sand. “If you could listen in on my thoughts you’d know I’m
not worthy to be a priest.”

“Name me one person anywhere who’s really, really good.”

“What about the Dalai Lama?”

“Don’t count on it. Jesus was the only perfect person, Lexy. And
sometimes I have my doubts about Him.”

It was good to laugh and change the subject. Dana turned the
conversation to a movie she wanted to see and for a while they talked
about movies and television. It was what Dana called airhead conversation and perfect for the moment. When their talk became personal
again, Dana told the story of her visit with Imogene. She tried to
make it an amusing anecdote, but the effort did not come off.

Lexy had learned that people rarely came right out with what was
bothering them. Even at AA meetings most speakers talked circles
around their troubles before getting to what was on their minds. She
had been trained to nod and listen and wait for the truth.

Dana said, “It freaks me out to think my grandmother might
have this rich personal life and I know diddly about it.” She stopped
to watch Bailey drawing scrawls in the wet sand with a stick of driftwood. Lexy saw how avidly Dana observed her daughter, almost as
if she were expecting her to write a message. “What if I’ve been
wrong about my grandmother? What does that say about me?”

They walked on. “What if she’s really … an okay person?”

“Didn’t you tell me David likes her?”

“Oh, yeah, he thinks she’s funny and eccentric, but, then, she
didn’t raise him. And did I tell you? The latest? He’s conned me into
letting Marsha Filmore move into the apartment over the garage,
and Grandma says I’m an idiot and I shouldn’t let her near Bailey.
What do you think?”

Pausing between question and response was something else
Lexy had been trained to do.

Bailey came back into sight, kicking the spindrift as she ran in
and out of the shallows and then up the hard sand, her arms out at
her sides, wheeling and careening after the gulls.

I think Dana’s right. She’s getting better on her own.

“Maybe I’m just paranoid.”

Lexy said, “You’re not paranoid.”

Lexy did not say what she most deeply felt, that Dana should
worry less, stop trying to manage life down to the last detail.
Unlikely as it almost always seemed, God was in his Heaven and all
was right with the world. Seen from God’s eyes, even Bailey’s abduction made sense.

Now was not the time to open that philosophical door. Dana had
just gotten over being mad at God.

“And I haven’t told David about the note in the car. I know I
should, but these days I just don’t feel like telling him anything.”

Dana stopped at the edge of the water and looked at Lexy with
an expression of fierce pain in her eyes. “I love David, but something’s changed between us.” Behind her the horizon was scarved in
fog. “It’s my fault, too. I know it is, but even so he does nothing to
help the situation. He works all the time. And when he’s home he’s
thinking about work. That horrible case. I don’t think he really sees
me anymore.

“What about you? Do you see him?”

Dana started to answer but stopped, and Lexy wondered what
she wasn’t saying.

We all have secrets.

“Shit, I don’t know what I see.”

It seemed to Lexy that in marriage, daring to look at the other
with clear and open eyes was an act of faith. What happened when
what you saw displeased or disgusted or disappointed you? Of all
the demands set down by God, Lexy thought the requirement to
forgive and love others as ourselves was the most challenging.

Dana said, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I’m not even
sure I care anymore.”

Lexy put her arm around her shoulder. “Oh, you care, Dana,
you care big time.”

Despite its unhappy outcome, Lexy did not regret her marriage
to William Parker Trent III. Because of her time with Billy she knew
something of what it took to make marriage work, of the great effort
required to sustain love and respect over a stretch of decades.

When Lexy walked out on William Parker Trent III before
they’d been married a year, it had been with a sense of personal failure that only deepened with time. Their mutual friends had expressed astonishment and asked how it could happen to such
beautiful people with successful careers and so much in common:
sailing and riding and gourmet cooking, cocaine and wine-lots of
wine and martinis and champagne whenever possible. The New
York Times Magazine had featured the kitchen in their Amagansett
house the same month Lexy walked out, taking with her only what
filled one suitcase small enough to lodge in an overhead compartment. She had left Billy Trent, their friends, her appointment book,
and shoots scheduled months in advance to move into the St. Ann
retreat house in Warrenton, Virginia. She had remained there for
seven months, leaving only to attend AA meetings in town. Years
later, when she sought permission to pursue ordination, her bishop
asked her why she had chosen to end her marriage without trying to
make it work. She gave him the only answer she had ever managed
to come up with. She had thought Billy Trent was her great love. It
took less than six months to realize he was just a lifestyle.

But Dana and David had more than a lifestyle.

“There’s something good and strong and very special between
you and David. You can’t neglect it, and you can’t give up on it.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“It takes work, Dana. I don’t have to tell you that. Suppose you
were growing a plant, a tree, and it cost you a lot of money, and it’s very rare, and you did all your landscaping around it.” It was the
best metaphor Lexy could come manage in the middle of the beach
on a foggy morning. “You wouldn’t give up if it didn’t thrive. You’d
take care of it, wouldn’t you? You’d help it through the bad time.”

Dana laughed. “Bad metaphor. If we were really talking about a
tree David would lend me a hand occasionally. I thought the modern marriage was a partnership. How come I’ve got to do all the
heavy lifting while he does nothing?”

“Living with you isn’t nothing.” Dana could be prickly and
hypersensitive. She wanted things her own way, and she wanted
life organized according to her master plan. She did not like surprises.