Last Dance

  As crowds do, this one shifted.

  The quiz-oriented group around Pammy and Caitlin moved toward the piano and ferns that hid Molly. Gary, trying to convince Beth Rose to go with him on an All Night Hike, decided four might be fun and began looking for a couple with more get-up-and-go than Beth Rose. The dedicated dancers were really warmed up now and swinging all over the place. Sharp elbows and whirling skirts took up space the rest had to avoid.

  Anne said, “Just take me home, okay?”

  Con said, “Anne, I did not push you, okay?”

  Gary said, “Just a walk, that’s all, Beth Rose, and nobody’s going to fall over the cliff edge, okay?”

  Kip said loudly, “Maybe we should all get out our quizzes and work a little harder to find some of these answers.”

  Molly said, “Kip, nobody cares, okay?”

  And Con said, “Hey, what are you up to, Gary? Did you say a walk up to Two Cliffs? That would be neat. In the dark? I love it! Let’s go. Come on, Anne, let’s go with them.”

  “Great,” Anne said. “First you shove me in the pool, now you want to shove me off the cliff. It’s called love.”

  Chapter 7

  KIP HURT SO MUCH she wanted to double over and hold her side.

  Nobody cares, Molly had said.

  And nobody did.

  Because nobody argued, nobody turned to comfort Kip, nobody put his arm around her.

  Nobody even noticed.

  She meant to find the bathroom—that ever-perfect place for a girl to run when she had problems, emotional or physical. A double hiding place—the room itself, and the cubicle if you really needed solitude.

  But she turned down the wrong hall once outside the ballroom and when she flung open the door she thought would take her to the women’s room, she found herself in a sort of kitchen. Nobody was cooking anything there; it seemed to be more of a storage area. Its stainless steel counter-tops gleamed, and its refrigerators were spotless. The tiles were tiny beige octagons, and the windows were high above the shelves.

  And Lee Hamilton was pouring potato chips from enormous yellow cellophane bags into enormous wicker serving baskets.

  He was glad to see her.

  And Kip stayed for one reason only: there didn’t seem to be anybody else at the Last Dance who was glad to see her.

  Molly did not want Con hanging around Gary.

  Gary had an amazing ability to calm people: Gary could hand out peace of mind the way a waiter could hand out pieces of chocolate cake. Somehow he would say the right thing to Anne, and Anne would laugh and the tension would lessen. Then Gary would say the right thing to Con, and Con would grin, and exchange a glance with Anne…and Con and Anne just might make up.

  Well, Molly would not have that happen.

  Molly would separate them somehow.

  She listened to the crowd, and circled, and tried to come up with a solution.

  Beth Rose said to Gary and Con, “But it’s against the rules. We’re not supposed to be anywhere but the ballroom, the terrace, and the screened verandah.”

  Gary grinned and chucked Beth Rose under the chin. “Yeah, but I’m bored with the ballroom, the terrace, and the screened verandah. I want to see the world, and I’m going to start with Two Cliffs at night.”

  “We don’t have shoes for that kind of thing,” Beth Rose said weakly.

  Gary could not have been less interested in what sort of flimsy dance slippers the girls had on. He and Con just laughed and pressed through the dancers toward the glass doors and the mountain trails.

  Oooh, good, Molly thought. Con’s leaving without Anne!

  Gary had a firm grip on Beth Rose, who would not, if Molly knew that wimpy girl, protest a second time. Con strode after Gary. Delight rose like carbonated bubbles inside Molly.

  Con paused.

  No, Molly thought, no, don’t, Con, come on, don’t.

  Con Winters stretched out a hand Anne could not reach unless she took a step toward him. “Come on,” he said pleadingly, as if he really wanted her. Con did not look at Gary, nor at the dancers, nor at Molly. He looked only at Anne, with little boys’ eyes, wanting her company on his walk.

  Molly grit her teeth. She had to stop this now, or they’d melt back into each other’s arms.

  Pammy unexpectedly said, “It’s gotten chilly out. The wind is cool now. You need a jacket, Anne.”

  Good idea!

  Molly slithered out of the crowd like a snake through rocks. She passed the ferns and the piano and found the chair where most of the girls had tossed their sweaters earlier when it was so hot they were gasping for breath. Anne, whose mother and grandmother dressed her as if she were a tall Barbie doll—eleven hundred matching outfits—didn’t have just any old cotton sweater. Oh, no. A beautiful shawl with dark wintry colors, that nobody else would think of wearing in June, but that set off Anne’s golden hair perfectly, and turned her from a blonde angel to a sultry princess.

  Molly swept the shawl behind her back, knotting it, and slid past the ferns again. One potted fern—a great tall tropical thing that reminded Molly of a hotel lobby in New York City—sat in a tub of dark earth. Molly tucked the shawl in back of the fern, draped a few fronds over it, and the shawl was invisible.

  There.

  Now Anne would whine that she couldn’t find her wrap. Con would be patient for—oh, maybe a minute—and then Con would go on without her and that would be that.

  Lee perched on the stainless steel rim of a vast center preparation table. He had very, very long legs and the minute he sat down he seemed slightly out of proportion. But Kip wasn’t sure. She kind of wanted to stand next to him and see where his waist and each knee and elbow folded; see if he was just very long, or really out of whack. Lee said, “I need your opinion.” Kip loved being asked for her opinion. And this kid was serious, she could tell. A deep wrinkle furrowed a brow that obviously had never wrinkled before. The wrinkle had a hard time staying there in such unfamiliar territory. Lee’s face kept going back to a smooth cheery one and he had to struggle to force the frown to stay. She also had this truly weird desire to run her finger across the wrinkle. Especially in that little dip a little left of center. His forehead wrinkle was shaped exactly like a bracket you made to attach different paragraphs together: rounded at the ends, peaked in the middle.

  Lee said, “See, this is unfamiliar territory to me.”

  Kip liked standing in front of him now. Their eyes were even. She had always thought that was the neatest thing about Anne and Con: their eyes were always even. It put them, literally, on the same wave length. Kip had always thought a boyfriend precisely her own height would be perfect. Well, she was wrong. Mike was her height and he was gone.

  The L word.

  He’d said it enough back in the winter.

  Now he appeared to have forgotten even how to spell it, let alone use it.

  “What territory?” Kip asked. She liked to know exactly what was happening; she could give him a better opinion if he gave her all the facts.

  “Falling in love.”

  Kip tried looking at the boy from several angles to see if he was being a jerk, or pulling her leg, or entertaining himself at her expense or what. All she could see was that funny little frown. “Okay,” she said cautiously. “Go on.”

  “What’s it feel like?” Lee asked intensely, leaning way forward. He leaned almost into her face. If Kip had leaned forward the same number of inches, they would be kissing. She restrained herself, but it wasn’t easy.

  She said, even more cautiously, “Well, tell me how you feel, and I’ll tell you what I think.”

  “I’m obsessed,” Lee said. “I can’t even sweep a floor without thinking about her.”

  Kip nodded, letting out a lungful of air in a very controlled fashion, as if she could control Mike that way, or The L Word, or at least herself. “Yup,” she said, “that’s part of it.”

  “You have fantasies that would make the girl abandon you before you’ve even met,”
Lee said.

  “Oh, absolutely. Definitely. You’re getting warm now.”

  “Warm!” Lee Hamilton said. “I’m burning up.”

  “I think you’ve got it,” Kip said. “Sounds like love to me.”

  The big white station wagon made the familiar turn into Emily’s own street. There was the red house on the corner, where even in the dark, the three boys were throwing a baseball. And then the two identical ranch houses. The tiny Cape Cod where Emily used to babysit. The empty lot. And then the next-door neighbors, where Mrs. James drove them all crazy practicing her piano, which even after years of lessons she could not play without a zillion errors—and then her own house.

  The forsythia bushes her father had planted when they bought the house new—Emily’d been in nursery school—had grown into two immense balls of green. The weeping willow was forever dropping its thin whiplike branches all over the grass, so that the Edmundson household had a permanently littered look to it. The narrow porch, only three steps up and running the width of the house, had a row of hanging pots: impatiens mostly, flowering hot pink and orange in the shade of the porch.

  I’m home, Emily thought, oh, I’m home!

  She jumped out of the car and ran up the steps, so glad that her mother’s car was still there, and her father’s truck, so glad to know that it was going to be okay, they could—

  Her mother stormed out of the house, flinging the screen door so hard that it actually snapped off the bottom hinge. A little piece of metal flew like shrapnel across the porch and into Emily’s bare leg. “What are you doing here?” Emily’s mother shouted. Emily shrank back.

  Mr. Edmundson flung the screen door to hurl a duffel bag, a suitcase, and a lamp out past the porch and onto the grass. Matt, following Emily, stood dumbfounded when a lamp landed at his feet. He picked it up and tried to straighten out the squashed shade.

  “Mother,” Emily began, “this terrible thing happened. Or didn’t happen, actually. You see—”

  Mrs. Edmundson never even looked at her. “And furthermore,” she yelled at her husband, “if you think I am putting up with the kind of servitude you expect—bring this, bring that, heat this, put ice cubes in that, wash this, mend that—well, you’re wrong! I’m leaving!”

  Mr. Edmundson threw a cardboard box after his wife. It was taped shut and didn’t fall apart when it hit the grass slightly to the left of the lamp, but it made an ominous cracking sound.

  “Get out of my sight, Emily,” her mother said. “I am through with this whole family. You didn’t want to come with me to start with, fine. I don’t want anybody anyway.” She began slinging the lamp, suitcase, and duffel into her car. Matt felt peculiar not helping, but he would have felt even more peculiar if he did help, so he just stood there, trying to blend in with the forsythia bushes.

  Mr. Edmundson slammed the screen door shut, and now it hung sideways by its only remaining hinge. Then he slammed the solid wooden door and audibly locked it. Mrs. Edmundson flung herself into her car and switched on the motor.

  She was much too angry to notice that Matt had parked behind her. Matt leaped back into his wagon and reversed out of Mrs. Edmundson’s way. She backed out violently and left a bigger patch of rubber in the road.

  She had forgotten the cardboard box.

  Emily on the porch and Matt on the grass stared at it, as if perhaps it contained some answers.

  Mrs. Edmundson had evidently forgotten something else, too, because Mr. Edmundson opened the door and hurled a large black plastic garbage bag full of something soft and squashy out into the yard next to the box. Matt jumped out of the way, but he needn’t have. What landed on his foot was almost weightless, as if perhaps it were a down sleeping bag.

  Well, if it was, Matt thought, they won’t be sharing it again in this lifetime!

  “Daddy?” Emily said nervously, taking a step toward the door.

  Her father said, “You made your choice, girl. Live with it.”

  He slammed the door and inside the house, he threw the lock.

  Emily walked up to the door as if to knock, but instead of knocking she lay her cheek against the wood and cried softly.

  The broken screen door was caught in the wind and knocked rhythmically against her heels.

  The door was not opened again.

  “Now the real test question is, are you the only one feeling this way?” Kip asked. She was beginning to enjoy this weird conversation. “That’s a very common problem with love. And, of course, you get to throw in heartache, heartburn, heartsickness, and insomnia.”

  Lee nodded several times. Kip found herself nodding with him, so that they formed a little duet, bobbing up and down. She forced herself to quit. Lee said, “This Mike is worth all that?”

  “I don’t think he’s worth anything at this point,” Kip said. “But that’s the thing with true love. It doesn’t matter whether the guy is worth it. You’re stuck with it anyway.”

  “That doesn’t sound very reasonable,” Lee objected. “I like to think of you as a very reasonable person.”

  “Too reasonable,” Kip said glumly. She had no idea what this kid Lee’s purpose was and no idea why he had picked her to talk to, except that she was there. But Kip felt blue, and obviously Lee was frowning for the first time in his young life, so they might as well commiserate. She’d tell him her sad story, and he’d tell her his. They could shed a few tears together and maybe share that extra bag of potato chips.

  Romance in a hotel kitchen.

  Well, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  Kip said, “So who is it you are obsessed with, and how long have you felt this way, and precisely what are her feelings about it?” How Mike would hate a sentence like that. I am not a list! he would storm at her. Don’t make lists when you’re talking to me!

  Last year Kip had read at least ten books from the adult section of the library on how to improve yourself. She had read books which helped you develop a good attitude, or be tough, or be powerful, or wear the right colors, or find your own parachute.

  She had found that the effect of each book was to make her feel wonderful the night she read it.

  In the morning, of course, she would find out again, that she was still herself, Katharine “Kip” Elliott. What did those books really expect you to do? Turn yourself in for a new model?

  Oh, sure, the books could tell you your life was very satisfying, your life was what you made of it, and your life and happiness did not depend on a boy, and it was true. Totally true.

  But a boy was wonderful.

  And those short weeks when Mike had loved her so much—oh, those weeks were perfect.

  And gone.

  Kip flirted with Lee because it was better than going back to the dance and admitting that this really, truly was her last dance with Mike.

  But this guy Lee, he immediately put up three fingers to tick off as he answered each of her points.

  He said, “One. You.”

  Kip nearly fell off the table.

  “Two. Half an hour.”

  Kip’s jaw sagged.

  “Three. I don’t know her feelings.”

  Anne Stephens had forgotten that she had even brought the paisley shawl. It was a typical clothing purchase in her family: her mother had seen it in an expensive shop, bought it for Anne, put it over her shoulders and said, “You’ll wear this, you look perfect.” Anne’s mother was happy. And since Anne didn’t much care, Anne took it along to the dance.

  The only clothing Anne had picked out for herself was maternity clothing. Her mother and grandmother had not gone along on those little trips.

  You thought I could come to this dance, and sort of dance off everything that had happened. I guess I thought so myself. I thought I would hop back into this life, the way Alice hopped through The Looking Glass into Wonderland.

  I’ve hopped in. But I’m not there. I’m still partly with my baby.

  Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think, Anne cried silently. After all, wh
en you were running around with Con making love in empty rooms, you got pretty darn good at not thinking. Not thinking was what you did best, Anne Stephens. So don’t think now, either.

  Con held out his hand to her. “Please,” he said. “Please come.”

  Oh, his voice! Soft and deep and little boy. She had always submitted to that voice. Now suddenly Anne thought, Why do I want a little boy? Why don’t I yearn for a grownup? What flaw is in me that I want a little boy like Con?

  She said, “All right, Con. I’m coming. Just let me run to the girls’ room first.”

  Con was used to that anyhow. “Okay,” he said, sighing, resigned.

  Anne slipped past the crush of girls; ignored anybody asking her if she was the answer to any of the quiz questions; pretended not to see Molly, with Molly’s hot eyes and Molly’s bright jealous stare; and burst out of the crowded ballroom into a wide quiet hall with maroon carpeting and prints of Audubon birds on the walls. The women’s room was lovely, with a sitting room in the front, complete with lounge in case you felt faint, a wash room, a lavatory room, and a place to change babies’ diapers. The wallpaper was flocked, maroon against silver, patterns of weeping willows and dancing tropical birds, whose long tails drifted against the leaves of the weeping willows making a tapestry of curves.

  Anne felt peaceful.

  She looked at herself in the mirror.

  She looked perfect.

  It was amazing, she thought, how she who was so imperfect had come into the world equipped with a perfect face, figure, and complexion. Even the gold hair that had been soaked and blown dry by some strange boy who laughed like a nut while drying it, now lay glossy and lovely, with its special swing, as if Anne moved only in slow motion.

  The mirrors covered one wall. Behind her, the door opened and into the ladies’ room came the back of a woman. How odd that she’s coming in backward, Anne thought, starting to smile, and then she saw that the woman was pushing open the door with her back because with both arms, she was cradling a tiny child.