I pushed the door open and went inside, looking around. I was still in my fugitive mode, suspicious, as I passed a group of tiny old women, all of them hunched over and white haired. They wore shiny Nike walking shoes with their skirts and sweaters. As I passed by them, my eyes averted, I heard one say in a quiet, musical voice, “What a beautiful, beautiful girl.”
I turned, trying to catch another glimpse, but they had vanished around a corner. I could hear the soles of their shoes brushing the floor and the sound of music just down the hallway. I kept walking, past rooms with walls of bright, happy colors like Easter eggs. In one a group of people were busy painting, each behind an easel. One man glanced over his shoulder at me as I passed, holding his paintbrush in midstroke. In front of him was a half-finished canvas showing a beach scene, the water a mix of a million different blues, the sky a blaze of oranges and reds. I passed a sunroom where a woman in a wheelchair was reading a book, the light slanting through a window just enough to make her almost transparent, and came to a large room with a high ceiling and a shiny floor. In one corner was a record player, and a man shuffling through albums, while in front of him about ten couples danced in slow, even time. A woman in a long blue dress had her eyes closed, her chin resting on the shoulder of her partner as he carefully twirled her. A man with a flower in his buttonhole was bowing to his partner as she smiled and took his hand for another dance. And in the far corner, by a table lined with cups and a punch bowl, I saw Sumner, his head thrown back in a laugh as he led a small, wiry woman with a crocheted shawl around their part of the dance floor. The woman was talking, her cheeks red, and Sumner listened, all the while spinning her slowly around, his feet moving smoothly across the shiny floor. He was in a red dress shirt with a blue tie and old black oxfords. His jeans were rolled into uneven cuffs, and his shirttail hung loose over the waist. When the music stopped, the couples broke up and applauded while the record guy picked out another song. Sumner bowed to his partner and she smiled, pulling her shawl closer around her.
People were milling around now, pairing off into new couples, and Sumner hung back by the punch bowl, waiting until the new song had begun. Then he crossed the room to a woman in a yellow pantsuit who was standing by the record player, arms crossed and watching the dancers with a half smile on her face. He came up to her grinning, extended his hand, and asked her to dance. She ran a hand through her short white hair, then nodded once before taking his hand and following him onto the floor. He slipped an arm around her waist, old-time style, and they began a neat box step, one-two-three-four. The music was cheerful and happy and everyone was smiling in this shiny room, where time could stop and you could forget about aching joints and old worries and let a young, handsome boy ask you to dance. I stood in the doorway and watched Sumner charm this woman as he had charmed me, and my sister, so many years ago. And I saw him through several more songs, each time waiting until everyone else was paired off and picking a woman who was standing alone watching the others. A wallflower wanting to join in but with something stopping her.
After a half hour the record man leaned into a microphone and said in a deep voice, “Last song, everyone. Last song.”
I waited for Sumner to repeat his ritual for this last dance on this summer afternoon. He skirted the edge of the dancers, flitting in and out of my sight, a red blur among the shifting shapes. Then he cut right through the crowd, past women with their eyes closed, lost in the music, and walked a slow, steady pace right to me. He held out his hand, palm up like expecting a high five, and said, “Come on, Haven. It’s the last dance.”
“I don’t dance,” I said, my face flushing when I noticed all the couples on the floor were looking at us with that proud, attentive look of grandparents and spinster aunts.
“I’ll show you,” he said, still grinning. “Come on, twinkletoes.”
I put my hand into his and felt his fingers fold over mine, gently leading me to the edge of the floor. I was about to make some joke about how I dwarfed him but he put his arm around my waist and pulled me closer and suddenly I didn’t feel like joking about anything. He held my hand and concentrated on the music before saying, “Okay. Just do what I do.”
So I did. I’ve never been a dancer, always too clumsy and flailing. Dancing was for tiny girls and ballerinas, girls the size to be hoisted and dipped, easily enclosed in an arm. But as Sumner led me around the floor, my feet slowly getting used to the curve and glide of the steps, I didn’t think about how tall I was, or how gawky, or how I stood so far over him, his head at my neck. I closed my eyes and listened to the music, feeling his arm around me. I was tired, after this long day and it suddenly seemed like I wouldn’t even be able to stand up without Sumner there supporting me, holding my hand. The music was soaring, all soprano and harps and sadness, mourning some lost boy away at war, but still I kept my eyes shut and tried to remember every detail of this dance, because even then I knew that it wouldn’t last. It was just a moment, a perfect moment, as time stood still and fleetingly everything fell back into its proper place. I let him lead me around the floor of the senior center and forgot everything but the feel of his shoulder beneath my hand and his voice, saying softly, “There you go, Haven. That’s great. Can you believe it? You’re dancing.”
When the music stopped and I opened my eyes, all those elderly couples were grouped around us, applauding and smiling and nodding at each other, a silent consensus that what I’d felt wasn’t just imagined. There was something special about Sumner, something that spread across rooms and years and memories, and for the length of a song I’d been part of it once again.
“So,” he said once we were in his car and pulling out of the parking lot, “tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing,” I said, holding my hand out and letting the warm air push through it as we went down the street, back to the boulevard.
“Come on, Haven.” We were at a stoplight now, and he turned to look at me. His eyes were so blue behind his glasses, which were lopsided. “I know what happened at the mall.”
I kept my eyes on the light, waiting for the green. “That was no big thing,” I said, trying to conjure up my bold self, to hear that whooshing again that made me rise above it all, immune. “I quit anyway.”
He was still looking at me. “Haven. Don’t bullshit me now. I know when something’s wrong.”
And still we sat, at what had to be the longest light in the world, with him staring at me until I finally said, “I’m just pissed off at Ashley, okay? And my mother and all this wedding crap.” I sat back in my seat, balancing my feet on the dashboard the way I’d seen Ashley do all those years ago. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”
The light changed and we turned right, heading towards the mall and my neighborhood. “Well,” he said slowly, shifting gears, “don’t be so hard on Ashley. Getting married must be kind of stressful. She probably doesn’t mean to take it out on you.”
“It’s not about the wedding,” I said, realizing how tired I was of repeating these words and this sentiment. “God, Ashley did exist before this wedding, you know, and she was my sister a long time before she became the bride, and we have problems going way back that have nothing to do with this goddamn wedding anyway.”
“I know she existed before this,” he said gently. “I knew her once too, remember?”
“Yeah, but when you knew her she was different,” I said. “God, Sumner, you made her different. You changed her.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “It was high school, Haven. It was a long time ago.”
“You made her happy,” I told him. “With you she was nice to me and she laughed; God, she laughed all the time. We all did.”
“It was a long time ago,” he said again. This wasn’t what I wanted from him; I’d expected sympathy, shared anger, something. Understanding and encouragement. I wanted him to rage with me against everything and everyone, but instead he just drove, saying nothing now.
We were getting closer to
my neighborhood, and I said, “If you’re planning to take me home you can just drop me off here. I’m not going.”
“Haven, come on.” He turned to look at me. Over his shoulder I suddenly noticed storm clouds, which seemed to have popped up from nowhere. They were long and flat, full of grays and blacks, and hadn’t yet reached the sun blazing above us. “Your mom is probably worried about you and it’s getting late. Just let me take you home.”
“I don’t want to go home,” I said again, louder. “And it’s only five-fifteen, Sumner. If you’re going to take me home to my mother like I’m still eight years old, just stop the car and I’ll get out here.”
He pulled over to the side of the road, right next to the mall. “Okay, Haven. I won’t take you home. But I’m not dumping you on the side of the road, either. So it’s up to you what we do now.”
We sat there, with cars passing and the sun beating down, while he watched me and I stared at my reflection in the side mirror. My face looked dirty and hot. “You don’t understand.” I wondered if I was going to start crying.
He cut off the engine and sat back in his seat, jiggling the keys in the ignition. “Understand what?” He sounded tired, fed up. This wasn’t going the way I’d thought it would. I wanted to be back on that dance floor with his arm around me, surrounded by all those old, crinkly, smiling faces, safe and perfect.
“Any of this,” I said. “You don’t understand what’s happened since you left.”
“Since I left?”
“Since Ashley sent you away,” I said, still focusing on my own face in the mirror, my own mouth talking. “That Halloween. A lot has changed.”
“Haven ... ,” he said, drawing in a breath as if preparing to say something a parent would say, something sensible that cuts you off with the wave of one hand.
“My father ran off with the weathergirl, Sumner,” I said, and suddenly the words were rushing out crazylike, jumbled and fast, “and Ashley didn’t like me and my mother was so sad, it just broke her heart. And then Lydia moved in with her Town Car and Ashley found Lewis at the Yogurt Paradise and nobody was who they’d been before, not even me. When you left—when she sent you away—it was like that started it all. When you were there, remember, everything was still good. We were all happy, and then Ashley was such a bitch and she sent you away and everything fell apart, just like that. God,” I said, realizing how loud my voice was, and how jagged I sounded, “it was just like that.”
All this time he was staring ahead, Ashley’s first love in a wrinkled red shirt and Buddy Holly glasses. He shook his head, gently, and said to the road ahead, “There’s a lot you don’t understand, Haven. Ashley—”
“I don’t want to hear about Ashley,” I snapped, tired of her name and her face and the way she took over everything, even this moment, controlling it all. “I hate Ashley.”
“Don’t say that,” he said. “You don’t know.” Now he sounded like everyone else, passing judgment, making assumptions. Not listening to me at this moment when it suddenly mattered so much.
“I know plenty,” I said, because this sounded final. I wanted him to agree with me. To believe me. But he only sat there and shook his head, his fingers on his keys, as if the very words I’d said disappointed him.
The storm clouds were moving fast, piling into a dark heap that was spreading across the sky. The wind picked up, a hot breeze blowing across us, and I could smell the dirt and the road and my own sweat.
“It was her fault,” I said quietly, seeing him again on the front lawn that Halloween, watching her window, “it was her fault you left. She sent you away.”
“Haven, I can’t deal with this,” he said, hitting his hands on the steering wheel, suddenly angry. “I don’t know what to say to you—”
“You don’t have to say anything,” I said, surprised to hear him raise his voice, lose patience with me. This wasn’t how I remembered him.
“Look, Haven,” he said, “what happened with me and Ashley ... well, it wasn’t like you remember it. There was a lot involved.”
There always is, I wanted to tell him. These were the same things my mother said to me after my father left, trying to convince me it wasn’t all the Weather Pet’s fault.
“I’ve got to take you home,” he said. The storm clouds were grouped high above us, black and foreboding with a blue sky peeking out behind. It was still sticky and hot, but the breeze was changing, now cooler and heavy, sending grass clipping swirling by the side of the road.
“I’m not going home,” I said again as the clouds slipped over the sun, amazed at how fast the weather can change, a front blowing in a matter of minutes.
He started the engine, ignoring me, and put the car in gear. We slid away from the curb just as big fat drops began to fall, splashing across the windshield and my face. The cars coming towards us were turning their lights on, all at once. I opened my door and jumped out, slamming it behind me as my feet hit ground.
“Haven!” Sumner yelled at me, stopping the car again as I cut across the side of the road to a path, the back way we’d always taken to the mall to buy candy and Slurpees when I was little. “It’s getting ready to pour; don’t be stupid. Come on, get back in the car.”
“No,” I said softly, knowing he couldn’t hear me. It was really raining now. I kept walking, hearing Sumner yell my name but knowing I couldn’t go back to him, that he wasn’t what I’d wanted him to be. Maybe he never had been.
As I got farther down the path I couldn’t hear the traffic anymore, just the rain and thunder. I cut across a small creek, on a plank stretched across it, and saw the first flash of lightning shining suddenly above and then disappearing. It was followed by a crack of thunder that seemed to come from right behind me, pushing me forwards. The path was different than I remembered it, twisting around trees and rocks I didn’t recognize, but then it had been a long time. Everything looks different when you’re older, not staring up at the world but down upon it. Another clap of thunder boomed over me. I was sure the path came out in my neighborhood somewhere.
I couldn’t see houses or lights, just trees followed by more trees, stretching into the distance. Suddenly I wasn’t even sure if I was still on the path at all, and that made me panic and start to run, brushing branches out of my face as the rain pelted my back and dripped into my eyes, slippery and cold. The sky was black above me now and I started to think about tornados, the world swirling around and me with nothing to hold on to but trees, and this pushed me to run faster, the sound of my breathing hoarse in my ears. I couldn’t see the path anymore in the rain and the dark, and everything was slippery beneath me as I ran harder, towards what had to be a clearing ahead. I thought of the houses on my street with their warm lights and the even, green lawns and all the landmarks, so familiar I could find them in my sleep. I ran to that clearing, sure that I could see it all in front of me—until I reached the last set of branches and pulled them aside to reveal more branches, and leaves dripping with rain, and pushed through with all my strength to burst out into open space, my heart racing in my chest, and kept running until I hit something, hard, something that moved and jumped back, its own breath hitting my face.
It was Gwendolyn.
She was sopping wet, her hair sticking to her forehead, in a white T-shirt with a red tank top showing through beneath and black running shorts. A pair of headphones hung around her neck, attached to a Walkman clipped to her waist. She was breathing hard, her face flushed and beaded with raindrops, and she was the first person I’d met in a long, long time who stood taller than me and looked down into my eyes. The thunder boomed around us, with another flash of white light, and Gwendolyn Rogers and I, breathing hard, stood still in that clearing, close enough that I could see the goose bumps on her flesh. She stared at me with her big, sad eyes as I stared right back, unflinching even when she raised her hand to my face and brushed her fingers across my cheek as if she wasn’t sure I was real.
It seemed like we stood there together fore
ver, Gwendolyn and I, two strangers in a clearing with the rain pounding down, inexplicably brought together in a summer storm. I wanted to talk to her, wanted words to come so I could say something that would make this all real. Something about what we had in common: a neighborhood, a summer, a revelation about a belief once considered sacred. But she only stared at me, her face wistful, a small smile creeping across it as if she knew me, had lost me along the way and only now found me again, here. I think she knew it too in that moment. She knew me.
Then I heard my sister’s voice.
“Haven!” A car door slammed, hard, and then again, “Haven! Are you there?”
“I’m here,” I said to Gwendolyn, and she pulled back from me, dropping her hand. I turned to look for my sister, who was still calling through the rain and the trees. “I’m here,” I said again.
Ashley was coming through the brush now. She was bare-legged, wearing a yellow raincoat like the Morton Salt Girl, pulled tight. The trees were bending overhead, wind whistling through as the rain blew across me. I turned back around: Gwendolyn was already running down the path the way I’d come, a blur of white and black.
“Haven?” Ashley was closer now and I turned to the sound of her voice. Her raincoat was dripping wet, shiny and bright among all the green. I could see the headlights of her car now, beaming into the clearing. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I got lost on this path.”
“We were so worried,” she said, coming to stand in front of me and wiping her hair out of her eyes. “Mom’s practically hysterical calling everyone, and then Sumner Lee shows up and says you went running off into the woods back here.”
“He talked to you?” I asked.
“He was worried too,” my sister said, so small and wet in front of me. “We all were. God, Haven,” she said softly, “what happened to you today?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and I was tired and wet, thinking only of crawling into my warm bed and putting this whole day behind me forever. But I had one more thing to say, to ask her, before I could do that. “Ashley.”