Lemon Reef (25 page)

“I don't know. Scholarships. We'll take out loans. We'll work. We'll do whatever we have to do.”

Del smiled a little, but her tone was sad. “Are we going to college together, now?”

“I hope so.” She looked away. “What is it, Del? Why are you against that idea?”

“I'm not against it. I just don't think it's gonna happen.” She paused to collect her thoughts. “I think you're gonna get into a really good college, Jen. And I don't want to hold you back.”

I didn't respond. When we talked about the future, we fought. Any school that accepted me would also have accepted Del. And even if I had gotten in someplace she didn't, she knew I cared more about her than going to some stupid Ivy League. She knew I'd be perfectly happy at a state school if it meant we could go together. She knew I wanted to be with her—out in the open and forever. But for Del, no matter how close we felt or how in love we were, there was always this sense that what we had together was different than, outside of, what our real lives were and would be.

She took my face in her hands and said, before we fell asleep, that I was the air she breathed; she loved me more than anything; she couldn't stand the thought of her life without me in it. She said being with me was all she wanted, all she cared about, but she denied us any fidelity or future. I let it go at that because I was scared. I had already begun in some small way to realize it wasn't her desire for me she was calling into question—it was her desire to live at all.

“Andrew scares me,” Del said, changing the subject away from the future she wouldn't commit to. “He comes on so strong. I don't know what to do when he's like that. I just go along with it, until I can figure out something else.” My hardened expression told her I wasn't buying it. “I like the attention, Jenna, I admit that.” This statement seemed at the time like the greater truth. I've since come to realize that what rage is to me, sexual feelings were to Del: a circuit breaker for terror.

*

“I am glad I came,” I said resolutely.

Katie nodded acceptingly, her breathing becoming more audible. Some distance later, Katie began to pick up speed. I increased my speed as well. She was running harder and breathing harder than I was; sweat soaked her shirt and streamed down her face.

“Damn cigarettes,” she said, without a hint of slowing down. Her strong arms pumped, her long legs carried her along in powerful, graceful strides. We kept it up for about forty minutes, running in a five-mile loop.

Toward the end, approaching the block Gail lived on, Katie stopped running.

“Shit, you're in good shape.” She fell out onto the grass and began to stretch. I joined her, falling on the side of the road into a small patch of prickly crabgrass and shoots of volunteer milkweed. Exhaust fumes from passing cars left an oily residue in the air. “You've changed a lot,” Katie said. “You're happier. What's she like?” She paused, then, “Madison?”

I noticed the tiny orangish-yellow flowers, reached out and touched one. “She's smart and beautiful. I feel lucky.” I noticed Katie's age then, the lines near her eyes when she squinted, the early specks of gray floating in her blond hair. She was looking at me, too. “What about you, are you with anyone?” I began to sift through the patch of clover beside me, looking for one with four leaves.

“He's married,” she said. “I know it's really masochistic, but I can't help it. I keep going back.”

“Probably you go back a little less every time.” I could tell the comment surprised her; she was trying to decide if it was true. “Patterns are deceptive.”

Clouds moved in to block the sun, and a pigeon hopped along the sidewalk in front of us. I didn't notice it had only one leg until it had passed. After a long silence I asked, “Do you remember the day we beat Key Biscayne for the state championship?”

Emphatically, as if she'd been anticipating it, Katie said, “I don't want to reminisce about the soccer team.” The force of her rejection startled me. I felt quickly and deeply ashamed of my own need to talk about something that had happened over fifteen years before. Katie looked away. “It makes me feel pathetic, like there's been nothing to speak of since. You've done things with your life, Jen. You have a lover and a good job. Me”—she dropped her chin—“I peaked in the tenth grade.”

I understood then that we both felt ashamed of the extent to which those things we had gone through so many years ago continued to plague and please us. “Just let me say this, okay?” I was staring at the patch of clover, running my hand through it. “It's been on my mind for a long time.” She permitted it with her silence. “That day, that game, it was the three of us together who scored the winning point. Gail floated the ball half a field, I trapped it, dribbled, pushed it through, and you were there, right where I knew you would be. You faked and shot—what, fifteen yards, maybe?—to the high corner and scored. It was truly magnificent.”

“I do remember that.”

A scout from Florida State University who was present at the game had expressed an interest in recruiting her, made reference to the likelihood of a full scholarship—something that was just starting to be possible for girls in soccer. Katie had been only a sophomore.

“I remember feeling, that day, like the three of us together could do anything.” I kicked the ground, toed the dirt, looked away. “Right after that, my parents found out about my relationship with Del. Gail's mother sent her to live with her father in New York, and you”—she knew where I was going, began crying before I got there—“Jason Schwartz raped you.” Heat from rage permeated my arms and the back of my legs, and rose from my neck to my face. I bit down to contain it, and in my well-practiced way, quieted my voice to appear calm. “Life just crushed us, Katie.”

“Not
you
.” She wiped at her tears defiantly. “How did you know about that?”

“I could tell. I knew something bad happened to you beyond what you were saying. I put that together with the timing of the abortion and—”

“How? What was it about me that made you think that?”

“You were vacant.” I left out the part about how she couldn't walk right for a week.

Quietly, and with just a hint of suspicion, she asked, “You knew when it happened?”

“Pretty much. I think I figured it out when I went with you to the clinic. We were on the bus going home and you were holding my hand really tight, and you just seemed so sad.”

Her face was drenched. “I never told anyone. I mean, I didn't even…You know, for the longest time, I just thought we were fooling around and I told him I didn't want it to go any further but he did, so he took it further. I didn't think about it as rape until I was in my twenties. It was rape.” She nodded. “I tried to get away but he held me down.”

She didn't say it, but after it happened, soccer never held the same interest for her. Nothing did. She just became more and more promiscuous, as though she could disappear the non-choice under a mountain of bad choices.

Back to thinking about Del, I said, “That story about the Thomas kid is pretty bad. All of it—the videotapes, framing Sid, being an accomplice in a murder. Del got in way over her head with this guy.”

“The part about Sid bothers me more than anything else,” Katie said. “It wasn't like Del. She was so protective of her family.”

“I think,” recalling what Sid had said, “it may be that both Del and Sid were protecting Khila.”

Now Katie laughed a little. “Del used to bug me, you know?” She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “I hated what happened to you. I don't think I ever told you this, but I thought she was cruel to you. And, to be honest,” Katie said, “there was the sex thing. I was always hearing how good she was at it from the guys who dated me next. And Del and me competed for Andrew Torie and she won.”

“Andrew Torie?” I cut her off, bitterness silting my voice. “Did you
thank
her?” Katie seemed thrown by my instant rage. “Such a creep,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief of his outrageousness. “Where is he now?” I didn't give her a chance to answer. “Probably a gynecologist at some preppy Ivy League college campus health center, where he has a captive caseload.”

With a look of disgust, Katie laughed. “Why do you hate him so much? Oh”—her head tilted in my direction—“isn't he the one who told everyone Del fucked him in the back of his daddy's Mercedes station wagon?”

I shrugged as if I didn't know, but I did—and he was, and she had.

“Some first time that must have been. Almost as bad as mine.”

It was a kick in the stomach.

“Katie.” My chin fell to my chest. My voice was slow and stern, and I was desperately trying to hold on to the idea that it's not malicious, this relentless disavowal of same-sex love. “When Del fucked Andrew in the back of his father's station wagon, it was not her first time.” I took a breath, saw her eyes search and her face fall. I knew she was struggling now with the realization of how she had injured me. “I know he told everyone it was, and I know she didn't correct him. But it wasn't.”

“Oh my God,” Katie said. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

“It's okay,” I looked at my watch. It was already ten a.m. “I want to go and get that box from Del's house.”

Katie nodded. “I figured you would.”

“Look, you don't have to go with me. I'll understand if it's too weird, or too dangerous, or too whatever. Gail kept me up half the night lecturing me on how I should let the police handle it from here.” I imitated Gail. “‘I called you because you're a judge and I figured Child Protective Services would listen to you. I didn't think you'd turn this into your own private murder investigation.'”

Katie laughed at my mimicry. “She knew
exactly
what you would do.”

Just then, I noticed a black Jeep with tinted windows, and my heart jumped. It slowed down a little, then sped up and turned a corner quickly in the direction of Gail's house. I was able to make out two letters—S and E—on the license plate before it was fully out of sight.

Katie tossed the clover she was twirling between her fingers and moved to stand. “So you think he killed her?”

I nodded, watching for the Jeep to return. “I just don't know how.” I wondered if I was starting to lose my mind, reminded myself there must be a million of those cars.

“Take Nicole,” Katie said. “She's good at break-ins.”

Back at Gail's, I left a message for Nicole on Pascale's answering machine. Then I returned Bea's call.

“Things are settling down in Baxter and Flint,” Bea said. “It's helped a lot that Carlos Robles is the minor's attorney. He supports your decision, and he's managed to calm Margaret Todd down a bit. Apparently the baby is doing fine, and the mother is seeing her every day. So it was a good call. It took a lot of guts.” I was relieved. I had been expecting to return to a battle and was glad not to. “How's it going there? Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I said, consciously omitting any mention of the box and my intention to go and get it. I thought about asking Bea if she'd sent the fax, but I knew she wouldn't be able to tell me if she had. I doubted it was Bea who'd sent it anyway, since the last thing she would have wanted to do was get me more worked up.

Bea didn't believe I was fine, but it was not her nature to pry. She just asked if there was anything she could do. I said there wasn't, that I would see her in a few days. Then we warmly ended the call.

*

I poured myself a glass of water and went to sit on the lounge chair on the patio. The sun on my skin made me sleepy, and I lay back and closed my eyes. I thought about the Jeep and whether Talon knew we were looking into Del's death. I didn't want to believe Ida had told him, but how else would he know? Ida's love-hate relationship with Del made it hard to know how to be with her. She'd given me important information, but I wasn't sure I could trust it. Still, the conversation I'd had with her the day before had stayed with me, left me wondering how to measure how much damage I'd done. Especially when so much else contributed to the harm at the same time. The law has formulas for apportioning blame; the human psyche doesn't.

Before I told Gail about Del and me, before things really spun out of control, I knew we were in trouble, and I wanted to get help. It's no excuse, but it seemed to me at the time like the worse things got, the more adamant Del became about not asking for help and the more worried I became about both of us. In the end, by the time I talked to Gail about what was happening, it was as if Del and I had been in a bad accident. On impact, I was hurled from the car, and although it would be a very long time—years—before I hit the ground, my landing would be far softer than the crash itself had been for Del.

*

There was one time I came close to asking a teacher to help us. It was early November, just after the Stevie Nicks concert. I was sitting alone in Elaine Fernandez's classroom, upset about having just learned our tenth-grade class was doing
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
for the Christmas play. Del breezed in. I hadn't seen her yet that day, and she surprised me with how beautiful she looked. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail. She was wearing a sleeveless button-down linen blouse, a short beige denim skirt, and sandals. Her cheeks were rouged and her lips lightly glossed, making her seem older than her fifteen years.

“What's wrong?” She stopped a few feet away. “Gail told me you're upset.” I told Del about
Grinch
. She stared at me blankly. “Yeah, so? Big deal.” I glared at her for not understanding. Del widened her eyes and raised her brows. “Jenna.” She spoke slowly as if trying to get through to me once and for all. “You can't expect the school to do
Metamorphosis
for the Christmas play.” She was trying not to laugh.