Wildwood (40 page)
Authors: Drusilla Campbell
Chapter 2
Lexy held the door open, and Dana passed through, ahead of the priest but aware of the businesslike click of her high heels on the cement stairs as they both stepped into the bright September heat. Without speaking they walked across the tree-shaded parking lot separating the church from the remodeled single-story house of no distinction that held the church offices. Their feet crunched on the litter of curled oak leaves. Though the September days were still hot in San Diego, the nighttime temperatures had begun to drop into the sixties; and in front of the office the leaves on a pair of large liquidambar trees were changing from bright green to orange and glossy red. The shrubs and flowers had spent too many long, warm days madly manufacturing chlorophyll. In the planters lining the path the marigolds, zinnias, and pink cosmos nodded on their leggy stems and looked fevered, on the verge of breakdown, as exhausted as Dana.
In the heat Dana’s white polo shirt stuck to her back, and she felt dumpy beside Lexy, who always managed to look stylish in priestly garb and collar and ankle-breaking high heels. Like many at St. Tom’s, Dana had been confused and vaguely put out when the search committee called a redheaded former model, a divorced woman and recovering alcoholic, to replace St. Tom’s retiring priest. Some parishioners had drifted off to churches with more conventional clergy. Those who remained praised the wisdom of the search committee and fell in love with Lexy’s humor and plain speaking, the goodness she carried within her.
Before Bailey disappeared, Dana and Lexy had made progress in overcoming the inhibitions imposed by Lexy’s clerical collar. The first time they met for coffee at Bella Luna, Lexy had told her, “Hardly anyone speaks to me like a real human being anymore, and even my brothers have stopped giving me a bad time. They don’t know how much I long to be silly.” She was not a Bible-quoting priest. “I refuse to act like I’m holy. I’m as big a sinner as anyone.”
Gradually, Dana and Lexy had worked through their histories to what Dana thought of as the “deep stuff”: God and family and feelings, and though there was much she believed she would never talk about to Lexy or anyone, their friendship had been a revelation of freedom to Dana.
But Bailey’s disappearance had set a wall of awkwardness between them. Lexy was God’s representative at St. Tom’s, and Dana was angry with God.
Lexy’s office occupied what had once been the master bedroom of the bungalow. Across from a large corner window open to the street, a wall of bookcases was packed tight with books that Dana had at first assumed were seminary texts. Looking closer she saw Buddhist titles as well as psychology, biology, and physics, Sufi poetry, the enneagram, and even astrology.
“I don’t mean to be rude, Lexy, but can we cut to the chase here?” Dana perched on the edge of a worn leather couch. “I’ve got a lot to do today.”
Lying had always come easily.
Lexy sat behind her desk. “I’ve been missing you.”
Dana had not been in church the past two Sundays. If it weren’t for the Bailey Committee, she would have stopped attending altogether.
“I always like to watch you during my sermons. Your face is so responsive.”
“I’m not even sure what that means.” What she did understand was that Lexy wanted to control this conversation and move at her own pace. Short of walking out, Dana was stuck. She slipped down off the arm of the couch and onto a cracked, overstuffed cushion. She used to love this couch and the long talks with Lexy, both of them stretched out, their heads propped on the padded arms at either end. Lexy and David were the only people Dana had ever completely trusted.
Lexy said, “The first time I remember seeing you, you were wearing a green sweater—it must have been around Christmastime. . . . That would be right. It was the first Sunday of Advent, and I’d only been at St. Tom’s for a couple of weeks. Very insecure.”
Dana did not believe a woman six feet tall ever felt insecure.
“I talked about ‘keeping’ Advent, and you just sat there shaking your head.” Lexy’s laugh was deep-throated and hearty. She was the fifth child of six and the only girl. Dana imagined her learning to laugh with her brothers. “I thought about stopping right there and asking if you wanted to preach for me. Or we could do one of those point-counterpoint things like on TV.”
“You seemed so out of touch. How was I supposed to keep Bailey content with an Advent calendar and a wreath? The day after Thanksgiving she started nagging for a tree.” Dana strangled on the words.
“You took me on right after the service. You can be tough, Dana.” Lexy removed her plain gold earrings, hoops the size of quarters, and laid them on the blotter in front of her. She massaged her earlobes. “Like right now, what you want to do is punch me out.”
Dana smiled.
“Am I right?”
“Do you blame me?”
“You’re mad at God and that makes you mad at me. Yeah, I blame you. It’s not fair to me.” She played with the earrings. “I’m more than a priest, Dana. I’m your friend.”
Dana focused on the earrings—circles—and refused to be drawn in.
“I don’t think it matters to God that you don’t believe right now. I mean He’d probably rather you did, but under the circumstances . . .” Lexy tipped back. Over the years the back of her office chair had rubbed a raw swipe on the woodwork behind her desk. “Dana, humans are the ones who want our faith to hold steady under all conditions. And I don’t think it’s about God most of the time. I think we want a steady faith because it makes our lives more pleasant. It’s a control thing. Doubt equals discomfort in most people’s lives. Belief means security and every question has an answer, the more simplistic and concrete the better.”
“You’re saying God doesn’t care one way or the other?” Dana fiddled with the frayed cording around the leather cushion. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“I’m saying if you lose faith for a while when your daughter’s abducted, God understands.”
“That’s big of Him.”
“None of this means we aren’t still friends, Dana.”
But don’t count on me for a Christmas present this year
. Dana was becoming as bad-tempered as her grandmother, Imogene.
. Dana was becoming as bad-tempered as her grandmother, Imogene.
Imogene had rained on every parade Dana ever took part in, squatted on every float she ever built, and slept through every song she ever marched to. To get out of Imogene’s house Dana had learned to shape reality by focusing on her goals and depending on only herself. Emotions like anger and disappointment undermined her determination, so she taught herself not to feel them, to bury them deep. Since Bailey’s disappearance this had become harder to do.
Lexy said, “What if He’s a She? Do you hate her, too?”
“A female god wouldn’t let children be hurt.”
“It’s the big question, isn’t it?” Lexy examined her red acrylic nails. “If God is good, how can He, She, or It let such awful things happen in the world?” She grinned, looking beautiful. “Maybe you’d be happier as a fundamentalist, Dana. They always have answers for situations like this.”
“And all you have is questions. Don’t you even have an opinion, Lexy, a theory?”
“Sure I do, but you’re not going to like it.”
Dana smiled. “When has that ever stopped you?”
“Maybe some lessons are so hard, the only teacher is pain.”
Dana rolled her eyes. “I was hoping for something more original.”
“The truth is just the truth, Dana. It doesn’t have to be original or startling. It just is.”
“That sounds like an excuse for not having any answer at all.”
The skin over Lexy’s high cheekbones turned a bright pink.
“Shit.” Dana laid her head against the back of the couch and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I know I’m being a jerk. I’m not . . . myself.”
“Sure you are.” Lexy’s eyes were neon green. “You’re probably more yourself right now than you’ve ever been. Grieving, bitching, and angry: this is Dana Cabot without the high-gloss enamel.” Lexy held up her nails. “Under this plastic or whatever it is, you should see my nails. Pitiful. But they’re me. This other stuff is just cover-up. I accept that.”
Dana’s brain was too battered to come up with a response.
Remember me when I was funny and resilient and determined—not taking razor swipes at the people who love me,
she thought.
Remember me when I was funny and resilient and determined—not taking razor swipes at the people who love me,
she thought.
In the office the only sound was the low whir of the air-conditioning. Dana pressed her fingertips against her eyelids. How hard would she have to push to blind herself? On the other side of the door a phone rang. She looked at Lexy and saw stars.
“What did you want to speak to me about?”
Lexy put her earrings back on. “A hitch in the facilities. Nothing serious, but we have to move the Bailey office. We’re in a constant space crunch around here, you know that. Too many people need that big room in the undercroft. So I’m going to put you guys in the room at the back of the offices.” She pointed behind Dana. “It’s not huge, but you can leave everything out. Lock the door and come back, no one’ll disturb your stuff.”
Dana thought of taking down the smiling Bailey posters, the maps and blowups of flyers, of rolling them up, of carrying the computers across the parking lot, of running yards and yards of new extension cords. Though no one would say so out loud, the move looked like a demotion. What had been an active cause would seem less so in a small back room. She wanted to kick Lexy’s desk. She wanted to kick Lexy.
“I have a selfish reason for doing this, Dana.” Lexy waited, and finally Dana looked at her. “I miss seeing you. I don’t have many friends, not real friends, and I thought . . .”
“I can’t be anyone’s friend.”
Not even her husband’s. David and Dana slept in a bed that felt at once cramped and too vastly wide. They ate silent meals at the dining room table and occasionally, when David was not working late, watched television together with the room completely dark so they could not see each other’s faces.
“I know you mean well, but there’s no way you or anyone else can understand.” Even the people in the support group: their love and loss had seemed inferior to Dana’s. “I think about her all day, and at night I dream about her. I can’t get away from her. In my mind I see her in the most horrible situations and I can’t turn off the pictures. It’s like I’m being tortured, my eyelids are pinned back and I have to watch the awful . . .”
Sometimes she hoped Bailey was dead. Better dead than suffering as in those imagined scenes.
“Oh, Dana. Poor Dana.”
She did not want Lexy’s sympathy, nor her empathy, and definitely not her Christian charity. Nor did she want others to share her feelings. Not even David. She was just as happy he had found distraction in the Filmore case and left her in sole possession of the black and bottomless grief and guilt. If she could not have her daughter back, she would have these.
“I have to go.” Dana stepped toward the door quickly to avoid Lexy’s hug. Her hand on the knob, she said, “Beth knew about the move out of the undercroft?”
Lexy nodded.
“And she didn’t want to tell me, right?” Dana stared at the toes of her tennis shoes. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate . . . I don’t mean to be so hard to get along with. I just . . . am.”
Lexy stood beside her. Dana smelled the green-grass and citrus fragrance she wore.
“Listen to me, Dana.”
“No.”
“The only way through this—”
Dana shook her head. The last thing she wanted to hear now was a religious cliché.
“I’m your best friend,” Lexy said. “You’re mine.”
“If that’s true, then you’ll leave me alone.” Dana’s eyes burned. She clenched her jaw and turned for the door. With her hand on the knob she added, “I can’t be anyone’s friend.”
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
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119 West 40th Street
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Copyright © 2003 by Trudar Productions, Inc.
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-7235-5
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