Blood Orange. Drusilla Campbell
him about me,” Micah said.
Not yet.
“Waiting won’t make it easier on him.”
It was Saturday. Her flight home was on Monday morning.
“It’s not one of those things I can just say.”
“What can’t you say? That you love me?” He held her face in his hands. His palms were hot and dry, and she imagined she felt his lifeline mark her cheeks, making her his forever. “You do love me. You know you do. Say, ‘I love you, Micah.’”
She whispered it.
“Tell him.”
“Let me do it my own way.”
“You want to leave me? You want to go back to that?”
That.
She would starve without Micah, dry up and blow away like sculptor’s dust.
She thought of a painting she had seen yesterday or the day before. Her days streamed together like watercolors. Or maybe it was a story she had read, or maybe she was making it up right now to explain how she felt, because only metaphor could make her emotions comprehensible. A maiden wandered into a dark and beautiful wood. She danced with a satyr and fell into a swoon. When he bent over her and asked for her will, she gave it to him.
Before they fell asleep that night Micah said, “Say it.”
“I love you.”
“Louder.”
She laughed.
“I mean it. I want to hear you yell it out.”
“I’ll wake up the princess.”
“Get up and go over to the window. Stand there and yell it across the river.”
She sat up and stared at him.
“Do it and I won’t ask you again.”
She was tired, too tired to argue. She got out of bed and fumbled for her nightgown that had fallen off the end of the bed.
“Go like you are. Don’t put anything on.” He folded his arms beneath his head. “There’s moonlight.”
“What if someone sees me?”
“You have a beautiful body. Don’t be ashamed of it.”
“Micah, I’m not ashamed. I just don’t like to make a public—”
“I’d like to put you on display in the piazza.”
The gooseflesh rose on her arms.
“The women would envy you and the men would all want to fuck you. They’d offer me money.”
She got back into bed. Pulling the blanket around her shoulders, she said, “I don’t want to do this.”
“Do what?” He bit her earlobe gently. “What don’t you want to do?”
“Stand in the window.”
He poked her gently in the ribs. “I was only kidding.”
For years Micah had sold his drawings in the Piazza del Duomo marketplace on Sundays. These drawings were much less fine than those for sale in shops around the Old City but still better than most. If the weather was good he might make several hundred Euros selling his pictures. While he was doing that Dana would have the palazzo to herself. She could not talk to David with Micah in the room listening, feeding her lines, fluttering his tongue up her inner thigh.
She thought of the house in Mission Hills, the rooms she had lovingly painted and decorated, the hardwood floors she had stripped and sanded and buffed. She allowed herself to feel a pinch of regret for what she was abandoning.
She had not used that word before.
“Mommymommymommy.”
The impulse to hang up was like a hand jerking her out the door and down the stairs.
Mommymommymommy.
She did not know what to say to Bailey. She had planned the words for David, scripted their conversation like a phone volunteer asking for campaign money. She had no spiel laid down for Bailey. “I love you” was all she could think to say that wasn’t a lie she would choke on.
“Talk, Mommy.”
She tried to swallow, but something had been added to her anatomy. At the base of her tongue there was a growth the size of a walnut.
“Dana.” David at last. “Why didn’t you call? I’ve been worried. Did you get my messages?”
“I’m fine.”
“I called the hotel, but you were never there. Even in the middle of the night.”
“I’ve been exhausted.”
“Have you been sick? What’s wrong with your voice?”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine.”
“It’s been an incredible week.”
“You weren’t even there early in the morning.”
“Don’t be silly, of course I was there.”
She had anticipated this line of questioning.
“It’s a crazy place, David. The desk clerks are technological idiots. They probably rang an empty room.”
“I thought it was a good hotel. Didn’t you tell me it cost three-fifty a night?”
She had forgotten that digging out the truth was what David did best.
“It is a good hotel. Great breakfasts every day.” She was winging it now. “But there was a mixup with the rooms when I got there. The clerks never did get it straight in their heads.”
“I was worried.” He sounded petulant. He wanted her to tell him he had been a good husband to whom apologies were owed. He had stayed home with a difficult child while she had a good time.
Fun.
“Dana?”
“I’ve been frantic to see everything. A week isn’t long. In Florence it’s no time at all.”
“You sound like you’ve got a sore throat.”
“Yeah. A little one.”
The line buzzed in her ear.
“So,” David said, “you’ve had a good time?”
“Better than I dreamed.”
He laughed. “Gracie said I should watch out, you’d fall in love with Italy. Little old San Diego’s gonna seem pretty boring.”
“There’s so much here, David.” She wanted him to understand. “History and art. Just taking a walk, there’s so much . . . beauty. You can be in a seemingly wretched neighborhood and there’ll be an arrangement of pots or some tile or a wisteria vine . . .” Her thoughts spun forward through all she might tell him; but the effort seemed pointless. David would try to understand, but to him a picture was a picture and not much else.
She heard Bailey’s voice in the background.
“How’s she been?” She was far off her script now.
“Every day she asks me if this is the day we go to the airport to get you.”
Bailey did not understand the concept of anywhere that was too far away to drive to. David had brought home a travel video of Tuscany. “That was a mistake. She got hysterical. I guess before then she thought you were staying at the airport for some reason. I didn’t know what to do, so I called Miss Judy. She was great. The next day she taught a lesson about vacations. She’s a bloody genius, that woman, and I think Bay gets it now, that