Under the Light

  He loosened his hold. My toe shoes pressed into the carpet, different from the dance floor at the studio. I lifted into an arabesque. Bent my knee—attitude. Billy was better at this than I expected. Maybe skateboarding or bicycling gave him a strong center of gravity.

  “I’m going to spin,” I told him. I lifted my knee and did a single pirouette, my arm bumping into his shoulder. “Sorry.”

  He watched me in the mirror, his face still and serious with concentration.

  The phone rang, but I didn’t care—it was almost never for me. Billy didn’t seem to notice. But on the third ring the machine picked up. There was a three-second pause while the outgoing message played, and then the sound of my father’s voice froze my heart. I dropped to flat feet and Billy let go of my waist. As if he didn’t know what to do with his hands, he put them in his pockets.

  My father’s voice rumbled through the halls, indistinct, like those recordings of spirits and demons that ghost chasers on TV claim to capture.

  “You need to get that?” Billy asked.

  I held my breath and tried to make out the words, but I couldn’t. Goose bumps ran up my neck and into my scalp. “No,” I said. It was not fair that all my father had to do was speak into a machine and my mood was ruined.

  “It’s okay,” I said, smiling at Billy’s reflection. “Hold me up while I lean.”

  Billy is here, I told myself. My father is not.

  I lifted into an arabesque and tilted to the right, knowing Billy wouldn’t let me fall. He held me hard under the ribs, widening his stance to keep me from slipping. I was not as limber as I used to be, but when I was far enough over, I lifted my other leg until it was fully extended. Billy shifted to counterbalance me.

  “Okay, center again,” I said, and he pulled me back. Then I tapped his right leg. “Bend this knee. I’m going to sort of dive toward the floor and you hold me up.”

  “You’re gonna do what now?” He looked nervous, but he bent his leg and gripped me tight as I went into a bluebird over his thigh and hooked my crossed feet behind his back. He was trembling a little, but I could extend my arms and throw back my head and he didn’t drop me. I didn’t want to look at myself in the mirror—it might mess up the fantasy that I looked like I belonged in a ballet company. But out of the corner of my eye I saw the shape of us—my arms extended as if I were flying—and something about that felt great and sad at the same time.

  I dropped one foot down, and as I stood up he let go of me. Still we stood facing the mirror. Billy watched my mouth in the reflection as if he were reading my lips when I spoke.

  “That’s what I can’t do by myself,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s your turn. What do you want?” I asked him.

  In the reflection, I was also the backwards me. My father’s voice had faded out of the air long ago. I couldn’t blame it on him when I felt out of place again.

  Billy put his hands in his pockets and thought for a moment, his eyes focused on some place in the distance or maybe in the future.

  “I want to walk into my mom’s room and have her be awake,” he said. “And not sick or anything. Just happy.”

  My throat tightened. I didn’t know what to say. I remembered his brother said their mother had been in the hospital for a long time, but I was afraid to ask about her.

  He shook off the idea. “Sorry, you meant what do I want to do with a partner.”

  The phone rang again and the sound buzzed up my bones like a Taser. I had to clench my fists to keep myself from covering my ears. Billy watched me in the reflection as it rang a second time. He put his hand on my shoulder and I was embarrassed that I was shaking. I just didn’t want to hear my father’s voice again. Especially not with Billy there. Another ring. Had it always been so loud? Billy was holding both my shoulders now. He began slowly to rub my neck. Not like someone who knows what they’re doing—more like someone who has seen movies of people giving back rubs—but it was sweet. And then the next ring cut off and the voice machine never answered. I was relieved—whoever it was had hung up.

  I don’t think Billy decided to kiss me exactly. But when I turned around we were face-to-face and for half a second our lips touched. So short, like lovers who are just saying hello in a lifetime full of kisses. It caught me by surprise—a soft, warm tease of a touch. His mouth tasted like cinnamon gum, but for some reason I thought, He should taste like rain.

  “Sorry,” said Billy. “I should have asked.”

  I didn’t know what to say or what to do with my hands.

  “It’s okay.” It wasn’t like we had never done that before, but it was the first one I remembered.

  I sat down on the bed to untie my toe shoes, not looking at him looking at me, when I heard a sound that was familiar and terrible. The kitchen door into the garage had a certain rattle and clunk to it when it opened and closed. Now I turned to him—he seemed like he hadn’t heard it. I whispered, “There’s a back door in the family room.”

  One look at my face and he was out of the bedroom in a silent rush. In the hall he turned toward the back of the house and I tried to head my mother off at the dining room.

  “Hi,” I said, leaning lazily on the corner of the table.

  She looked exhausted as she set her purse on a chair, but the next moment her eyes were sharp and she grabbed my arm with an iron grip, hushing me with a finger to her lips. A thumping from the family room had frozen her with fear—a home invader about to break in. Of course I knew it was Billy trying to break out. I’d forgotten to tell him about the wooden dowel that my parents always kept lying in the grooves of the sliding glass door.

  Her terror shifted to confusion as she glanced down at my feet. “What is going on here?” she whispered. “Who is in the family room?”

  The thumping stopped.

  She released my arm. “Go to your room.”

  And at first I obeyed. I went into my bedroom and closed the door, staying near the crack, listening, but all I heard was my mother on her cell phone speaking quietly—I couldn’t make out the words.

  And I couldn’t stand the suspense—I sneaked out and followed her down the hall. She stopped in the doorway of the family room and I looked around her shoulder to see if Billy had managed to escape or if he was hiding. But no, he was sitting on the sofa, reading our family Bible.

  Billy stood up and smiled at her. “Hi.”

  “Sit down,” my mother ordered, so he did. She stood over him. “Reading Scriptures?”

  “Sure.”

  “You came over to read the Bible with my daughter?”

  “Would that be okay?” he asked.

  She paused but didn’t bother answering him. “What do you think of it?”

  “What?”

  She took the Bible from his hands and folded her arms around it, pressing it to her chest. “What do you think of the Bible?”

  He shrugged. “Best book ever written?” He just wanted to please her.

  “What part were you reading just now?”

  Why was she toying with him? Why didn’t she just send him home?

  “What part?” said Billy.

  “What book of the Bible?” she asked.

  “I think it was the third.” He looked so lost. “The third part.”

  “Which Testament?” she asked him.

  Billy tilted his head slightly as he tried to read the Bible’s cover, half visible in her arms. “American Revised—”

  “Do you know how many lies you’ve told in the last minute?” she asked. “You didn’t come here for a Bible study.”

  “No, I came to see Jenny,” he told her. “I like her.”

  She looked him up and down. “Your shirt is inside out.”

  “It’s not what you think,” said Billy.

  “Tell me the truth for a change,” said my mother.

  “Okay.” Billy looked her straight in the eye. “I used to like my shirts, but now I think the pictures and jokes are mostly st
upid and we don’t have money to buy new ones . . . so . . .” He pulled the material away from his chest and let it snap back. “I turn them inside out.”

  I heard a car in the drive and the sounds of two doors slamming.

  “Ask me anything,” Billy offered.

  “I’ll let the police ask the questions from now on,” she said. And then the doorbell rang. She had called 911 before cornering Billy in the family room. I ran, beating her to the front door.

  “It’s a mistake,” I blurted out before they could say anything. “I invited a boy from school over and my mom didn’t know.”

  I recognized one of the policemen from church. Officer Redman.

  “Everything okay, Jennifer?”

  “Yes, yes.” I sighed. “I had a friend from school over when Mom was out of the house. We were just talking.” If they let me I would have repeated myself for hours.

  On his way down the hall toward the family room, Officer Redman spoke into the crackling walkie-talkie on his shoulder strap.

  The other officer, whose name was Davis, rocked on his heels, his belt full of weapons clinking and swaying.

  “We’ll sort it out,” he reassured me.

  I could hear voices from the back room but couldn’t make out what was being said.

  “We were just talking,” I said again. “I have no idea why she called the police. This is really embarrassing.”

  Officer Davis nodded without judgment.

  “Don’t you think I should tell my side of the story?” I asked.

  “Everything will be okay,” he said. “Just relax.”

  I couldn’t stand not knowing what was being said down the hall. But before I could think of a way to get Officer Davis to let me go to them, Billy came toward us followed by Officer Redman and then my mother. Billy looked ashamed and slinked past me.

  “Don’t arrest him,” I begged.

  My mother stayed at the open door with Officer Redman, exchanging a few quiet words as Officer Davis put Billy into the back seat of the waiting police car.

  The back window was rolled up and Billy wouldn’t look at me. “He was my guest,” I said. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “He’s not under arrest, honey,” said Officer Redman as he went to the driver’s door. “We’re just taking him home.”

  And they drove off. My mother watched them until they turned the corner at the end of the block.

  “Why did you do that?” I followed her inside. “Why would you call the police on him?”

  She waited until the front door was closed tight. “He’s been arrested before, you know.” Her face was dark and serious as she looked down at my feet again. “Jennifer, did you dance for him?”

  I realized then I was still walking around in my toe shoes. “Nothing happened,” I told her.

  “It’s over,” she said. “Not another word about it.”

  Did she mean the argument was over? Or my friendship with Billy?

  “And change out of those shoes.” She closed herself in the study.

  I wanted to slam a door in her face. The rooms in my house felt like prison cells—my bedroom was a coffin. There was not even one corner of space in my house that I felt at home in. I unlaced my toe shoes and left them in piles of ribbon on my floor beside the bed. I went to the family room and lifted the dowel out of the tracks in the sliding glass door. I slid it open as silently as I could and closed it again after me. The sun had hid itself and the sky was pale gray. The breeze was cold, but I needed air. I took deep breaths and remembered Billy talking about lying out on his lawn like a confused animal. I watched how the blades of grass in my own yard curved all in the same direction and fluttered in the wind.

  I walked out into the lawn barefoot and sat down before stretching out on my back. The breeze danced my hair around, tickling my face. The sky was a watercolor of grays and whites and lavenders.

  Somewhere, I thought, there’s a place where this sky touches down to the ground in every direction instead of going behind houses and trees and power lines. And somewhere the grass grows long with no lawn mowers cutting it and it gets dry and brown without sprinklers, and the land is so flat, you can almost see the curve of the earth if you try.

  I had the strongest feeling that someone should be lying next to me. I turned my head to the side, but there was empty air. There used to someone there, though, I thought. I looked back into the gray.

  A drop of rain, invisible until just before it hit my throat, startled me. I have no idea why, but I thought it should have passed through me instead of tapping a wet spot on my skin. As another drop struck my cheek and another my wrist, I lifted my arms and stretched my fingers toward the sky. I tried to move that gray cloud out of the way, but I had no power over it. Of course. If I’d ever had powers, I’d lost them. Another drop hit the corner of my eye like a cold tear.

  CHAPTER 13

  Helen

  SILENT UPON THE GRASS, she had gazed to her right and to her left in the light rain like Ophelia waiting for a flood. I sat beside her and, in hopes of lifting her spirit, recited poems my first host had written—“The Hearth Cat,” “Even Apples Remember,” “Below This Leaf.”

  Below this leaf there lies its brother;

  Beneath this root one finds another.

  And so the layers of time press deep,

  Make mud of us all as down we seep.

  But do not read your graveyard stone;

  You are more than blood and bone.

  Up your soul like a fairy flies

  And paints its Heaven on the skies.

  I hoped that she had heard me with her inner mind the way my hosts sometimes listened to me while they slept, but it may have been simple chance that when I came to the last line Jenny got herself up and went inside. She took off her wet clothes, showered, dressed herself. She and her mother spoke hardly a word all afternoon and into the evening.

  Cathy closed herself in the study or the bedroom and talked on the phone, trying to hide her pain, but the muffled sounds of her tears and anger could be heard through closed doors. I found it disturbing that Cathy abandoned her child for so many hours.

  I stayed close to Jenny, told her George MacDonald stories of Curdie, the princess, and the goblins as she brushed out her wet hair, set the table, even as she sat with her mother for an awkward dinner and later helped fold laundry. But I couldn’t tell if my poems or stories were truly heard—I sensed no reaction. Frustrated, I swatted at the laundry basket, but neither of them saw it rock.

  When her mother left her that evening, retired to the master bedroom to shower, when Jenny was alone and the phone line was free, she stood in the darkened kitchen and called Billy. They spoke but half a minute.

  “What did the police do to you?” she asked. She listened, trying with her fingers to rub out a stain on the doorjamb, but it was actually a place where the white paint had chipped away and the dark wood showed through. Then she whispered, “Okay.” And, “Monday at ten.” She looked down the hall as the sound of the shower shut off. “Don’t you have to be at school?” she asked him. Jenny stepped back away from the doorway and hid in the shadows. “The main branch?” Then she laughed, stifled the sound with her hand, and hung up.

  She crept back into the living room, where Cathy joined her, wearing pajamas under a long sweater and her hair wet around the edges. It was rare to see the woman dressed so informally. And without makeup she looked young and lost.

  They watched television, a concert of Christian music that Cathy said Jenny could stay up for if she wanted to; a baritone sang a gospel song older even than I was, a full choir performed an arrangement of “God Bless America,” a boy’s chorus sang “This Little Light of Mine.” Cathy held a cup of tea she never drank—her eyes were focused not on the television screen but at the floor below it. Jenny didn’t seem to be watching the program either, except that one of the advertisements made her sit up straight.

  It was a commercial for a credit card that would, it was impl
ied, be accepted anywhere on the planet. A montage of famous places was accompanied by romantic strains of cellos and oboes. The Great Sphynix in Egypt, a white beach and blue lagoon in Greece, the Lincoln Memorial, the Taj Mahal, the Golden Gate Bridge, Big Ben, the Great Wall of China, the Eiffel Tower.

  Jenny stood up. “I’m going to bed.” Perhaps on other nights she might have asked permission to go to her room, but this evening she turned without saying good night to her mother and walked out of the room and down the hall. Cathy seemed not to notice.

  I followed Jenny into her room, where she closed the door. She walked to her bed, but instead of sitting or lying down, she crouched beside it on the floor and began to cry as if her heart had been shattered. She reached up and took one of the pillows off her bed, holding it to her face.

  I sat on the rug beside her and tried to stroke her hair or rub her back, but I was having trouble keeping my spectral body together. I felt nervous and vaporous. With each of Jenny’s sobs I shifted in the air, a little closer, now away, like a cloud of gnats.

  “Hush,” I whispered. “Poor thing.”

  She cried into the pillow until I thought she might become ill.

  “Get into bed now,” I told her.

  After a few moments she took a hitching breath and crawled up onto her mattress, still clutching the pillow.

  “Rest your head and I’ll sing you a song,” I whispered. I was relieved that she seemed to be sensing my message—by and by she stretched out and put the pillow under her head, wiped her eyes on her sleeves, and gave a heavy sigh.

  I sang a folk song I’d sung to my own little girl a hundred times—the one about the rolling river. Soon Jenny’s eyes were closed and her breaths came smooth and far between. Tears had dried on her face in delicate salt lines. Her hair fanned out on one side of the pillow.

  “Why are you sad?” I asked her.

  I didn’t expect her to answer, but from her throat came the faintest sound of question, as if she hadn’t understood me properly. It gave me a thrill to think she might have actually heard my question in her sleep.