Pretending to Dance

  “He can still move his hand like that, can’t he, Molly?” Nanny asked.

  “Not really,” I said, which sounded better than “no way.” Nanny didn’t say anything and I bit my lip. I should have said he could move it “a little.” White lies were not all that terrible to tell.

  The camera filmed the session at an angle, so that we saw my father in profile but Dorianna from the front. I felt proud as I watched him talk to her. Proud and, to be honest, jealous. Dorianna—or whatever her name was—was a few years younger than me and I couldn’t help but feel some envy at how he was talking to her. I was used to being the only important child in his life. I could tell he was making Dorianna feel important, too.

  I quickly gathered that Dorianna’s problem was a crippling shyness. I knew kids like her. They were invisible to most people, but Daddy had taught me to see them. To be nice to them. They will surprise you with their value, he’d said.

  “Some of the most important and creative people in our history were shy,” Daddy said to the girl. “Abraham Lincoln, Elvis Presley, Albert Einstein, Johnny Depp.”

  I laughed. “He added Johnny Depp for me,” I said. I hadn’t realized I’d had a thing for Johnny Depp for that long.

  “Who’s that?” Nanny asked.

  “Tell you later.”

  Daddy also had lists of famous people who were dyslexic or had anger issues or were autistic like the Dustin Hoffman character in Rain Man. He had a list for anyone who walked in his office door.

  Dorianna looked heartened by my father’s list of names, but then she described how painful school was for her because of her shyness, and tears filled her eyes.

  “Oh, now he made her cry,” Nanny said.

  “Sometimes that’s a good thing,” I said. “It means she’s really into the session. She’s engaged.”

  “Where’d you learn so much?”

  I shrugged. “He teaches me things.”

  Nanny’s smile was sad. “Oh, Molly,” she said.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said, then added, “It just breaks my heart, how he suffers.”

  “He does okay,” I reassured her. I never heard my father complain.

  We watched the rest of the tape. Daddy set up exercises with Dorianna to help her pretend away her shyness, but the screen went black before we could see the results.

  “Oh no,” Nanny said. “Is that the end?”

  “There’s a part two,” I said, “and I’m sure it worked. He wouldn’t have picked a case that didn’t. That girl is probably homecoming queen by now.”

  “He can change someone that quickly?”

  I nibbled a piece of fudge, slouching on the sofa, my bare feet up on the coffee table, same as Nanny’s. “He wouldn’t say he’s changing them. He’d say they’re changing themselves.” I took another bite of fudge. “You know Peter?” I asked.

  “The other therapist he works with?”

  “Right. He says Daddy’s losing money because he works too fast. He says Daddy should treat the underlying cause of her shyness, which could take months or even years, but Daddy thinks the underlying cause usually doesn’t matter and that most problems can be treated quickly.”

  “Hm.” Nanny looked at the ceiling. “I’ve never understood his Pretend Therapy, really.”

  “You should read the book he wrote for kids, Nanny. It’s really simple.”

  “Are you calling me simple?” She smiled at me and I was relieved to see that her odd mood seemed to have lifted.

  “Never,” I said, getting to my feet. I hit the eject button on the VCR. “So what should we watch now?” I asked.

  Nanny hesitated a moment, her gaze moving to the bottom shelf of the TV stand. “Put the dance one in, Molly,” she said. “The one from your parents’ wedding. I want you to see it.”

  I was surprised. A few minutes ago, she was practically hiding it from me. I picked it up from the bottom shelf.

  “I had the old film made into a VHS tape,” Nanny said. “It’s a little blurry and only three or four minutes long. Plus there’s no sound. They didn’t have sound back in those days. But it’s good enough.”

  I put it into the machine, then went back and sat on the sofa next to her. I’d seen pictures from their wedding, of course. There was a beautiful photograph on the sideboard in our dining room. My mother in her long white wedding dress. Daddy standing behind her, his arms around her waist. Both of them smiling and looking so much younger than they did today. But those photographs didn’t prepare me for what I saw when the tape started to run. It didn’t prepare me to see my father dance.

  They moved to music I couldn’t hear. Unbelievable. I felt strangely wooden, watching them. In shock. The tape was just blurry enough that I could imagine it was not my father at all. Who was that man with the long dark hair that brushed his shoulders as he twirled my mother around? As he pulled her body tightly against his, then spun her away?

  I got up from the couch and sat down on the floor in front of the television to see them better. “What’s the music?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t remember,” Nanny said. “A shame there’s no sound.”

  They looked as though they danced together every day of their lives, their steps fluid, their eyes locked on one another, their smiles so, so genuine. I’d been wrong to worry that Daddy might have loved Amalia more than my mother.

  “Thank goodness he found Nora,” Nanny said as we watched. “So straight and steadfast. She grounded him, and if your daddy needed anything, it was grounding.” She chuckled. “He kept his strong family values when it came to choosing a wife.”

  Was that a dig at Amalia? I didn’t know. There was so much I didn’t know.

  The tape ended abruptly and I turned to look at Nanny. “It’s crazy how fast he got sick,” I said.

  “He was already sick then, when they got married,” Nanny said.

  “I know,” I said. “He told me. But he looked so good. So healthy.”

  “He had that one good dance in him at the reception,” she said. “I think he was so happy that day, his body forgot about being sick.” She stared at the TV screen as though the tape was still playing. “Nora knew, of course, but I don’t think any of us thought it would move so quickly and get so terrible. I look at that tape and weep, Molly,” she said, turning her gaze to me. “His life is so hard now and he’s so depressed.”

  Depressed? I thought of how much my father loved his work and writing his books. I thought of how much he loved me. “I don’t think he’s depressed, Nanny,” I said.

  “He’s very good at hiding his misery,” she said.

  “He’s not miserable,” I argued. “Ask him. I bet he’d laugh if he could hear you talk like that.”

  She waved a hand through the air as if dismissing the whole conversation. “Oh, I’m just talking like a mother, I suppose,” she said. “An old woman, worrying about her grown son.”

  “He never complains or anything,” I said.

  She gave me a long strange stare. “Molly, Molly, Molly,” she said finally, followed by a great sigh. “I think we should watch a movie, don’t you? Better than listening to me ramble. You pick out a movie or else I’ll do it and you know you’ll end up with Kate Hepburn again. How about Hitchcock?”

  As I stood up and walked over to the bookcase filled with her movies, I was suddenly filled with sadness myself. Was my father truly miserable? Was I so wrapped up in my own life that I didn’t even notice his unhappiness?

  18

  At eleven, Russell came to the door to pick me up. To “carry me home,” as he would say. I sat up front with him in the van.

  “What did you watch?” he asked when he turned onto the loop road in the darkness.

  “Rear Window,” I said. “Have you seen it?”

  “Jimmy Stewart, right? Hitchcock?”

  “Right.” Rear Window was one of my favorite movies, yet my concentration had been off tonight. I kept picturing my parents spinn
ing around on the dance floor. What had it been like for my father to lose the use of his body, bit by bit? I was still upset by what Nanny said about him being depressed. I felt like a cold, unfeeling girl to not even notice that he was that unhappy.

  The thin crescent moon was partially hidden behind thick clouds, and Russell put on his brights and drove slowly along the dirt loop road. I could see the turnoff to Amalia’s coming up on our left.

  “Russell,” I said, “does it bother you when we call Amalia’s house ‘the slave quarters’?”

  I could barely see his face in the dark interior of the van, but I thought I saw the white flash of his smile. “Since you ask,” he said, “yes it does. Your daddy never calls it that, you notice. Nor your mama. Nor Amalia herself.”

  “Where’d I learn to call it that?” I asked, perplexed, because I thought he was right. Mom and Daddy never did use those words.

  “Oh, I’m not one for naming names.” He chuckled.

  Nanny, I thought. My aunts and uncles and cousins.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I won’t call it that any longer.”

  “Appreciate it.” He turned to face me and this time I was sure of his smile. He looked at the road again. “I came up in some so-called slave quarters,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Log cabin outside of Hendersonville.”

  “That’s where your family is.” I’d heard him mention Hendersonville before.

  “Right. There weren’t a lot of slaves in western North Carolina because there wasn’t all that much farming,” he said, “but my great-great-great-granddaddy was one of six owned by a wealthy man in Hendersonville. They were mostly house and stable slaves, and he was the best treated.” He glanced at me. “Can you guess why?”

  “’Cause he was the best at his job?”

  Russell laughed. “I don’t think that was it.” He chuckled to himself another few seconds before speaking again. “Story has it,” he said finally, “he was the son of the master.”

  “Son of the…? Oh,” I said. “Wow.”

  “They taught him to read and write, which was against the law, actually, but was fortunate for those of us who came along after him, since we all understood the importance of getting an education. When my great-great-great-grandaddy was freed, the master turned the slave quarters and thirty acres over to him. So we have a home place there, just like you have here, only smaller. My mama and sisters and aunties and one uncle are all there. I came up in one of the cabins.” He glanced at me again. “We never called it the ‘slave quarters’ though,” he said. “We called it home.”

  I tried to picture Russell growing up on a Morrison Ridge–type place all his own. “Your great-great-great-grandfather was really lucky,” I said, wondering how the other slaves were treated.

  “Yes, he was,” Russell said, then added, “His mama, probably not so much.”

  It took me a minute to understand what he meant, and I didn’t know what to say when I finally figured it out. We’d come to the Hill from Hell, and Russell put the van in low gear. I waited until we reached the bottom to change the subject to the one that was weighing heavily on my mind.

  “Do you think my father is happy?” I asked.

  “Happy?” He sounded surprised by the question. “Why would you ask that?”

  “Something Nanny said made me think about it. She said he’s depressed and … I just never noticed that about him and I thought maybe he hides it from me or something.”

  Russell was quiet, his hands opening and closing on the steering wheel. I didn’t like his silence. I wanted him to tell me that my father was perfectly content with his life. Instead, for the longest time, he said nothing.

  I was about to ask the question again when he finally spoke. “Your daddy has a hard row to hoe, Molly,” he said as he pulled into our driveway and turned off the engine. “Let’s just do all we can to make his life enjoyable.” Then he looked over at me. “You’re the one person who brings him the most happiness, Molly,” he said. “Don’t you forget that.”

  * * *

  The meeting had been over for a while when Russell and I walked in the front door of the house. Everyone was gone and I could hear Daddy singing in his bedroom. He used to sing a lot, just random tunes as he wheeled around the house, but I realized it had been a long time since I’d heard him sing. He was belting out the Eagles’ “Take It to the Limit.” I looked at Russell who smiled at me.

  “He’s one of a kind,” he said.

  I heard Mom cleaning up in the kitchen as I headed for their bedroom. Daddy lay on the bed, his head propped up on a couple of pillows, his body still, as always. He stopped singing mid-sentence when I walked in the room.

  “Hey, Moll!” he said. He nodded toward the narrow space between his body and the edge of the mattress, and I sat down—carefully. Once, a couple of years ago, I’d sat right on his urine bag, creating a giant mess for Russell to clean up. “How’d you make out at Nanny’s?” he asked.

  “Good,” I said. “We watched the Dorianna tape and a movie.” I wouldn’t mention the tape of him dancing. “How’d things turn out with Dorianna?” I asked.

  “Brilliantly,” he said. “She was a skillful pretender. Shy kids often are, since they spend so much time inside their heads to begin with. What movie did you watch?”

  “Rear Window.”

  “Ah, great film! I’ve always liked that one because the Jimmy Stewart character is disabled. At least, partially. Yet his disability doesn’t render him helpless.”

  “Right,” I agreed.

  “Then there’s what Hitchcock is saying about marriage.” Daddy raised his eyebrows. “And of course, there’s the whole feminist perspective on the Grace Kelly character.”

  I groaned. “You have a way of picking things apart so much that you sap all the fun out of them,” I said.

  “Oh, I do, do I?” He laughed. “Your mom looks a bit like her, don’t you think?”

  “Like who? Like Grace Kelly?” I asked, incredulous, but I caught myself before I laughed. Stacy’d told me the biggest erogenous zone was the brain. Maybe that was the only place my father could have sex anymore—in his brain—and if he needed to see Grace Kelly when he looked at my mom, I wasn’t going to ruin his fantasy. “A little,” I agreed. I folded my hands in my lap. “So, how did the meeting go?” I asked.

  “The meeting was … rejuvenating.” He smiled. He did seem rejuvenated.

  “How come Janet and Peter and Helen were here?” I asked.

  “Oh, you know,” he said. “It can be good to have an outside brain or two in the room to mediate sometimes.”

  “So, Uncle Trevor changed his mind about selling the land?” I asked.

  “Well, Trevor is still basically being an asshole, but let’s not think about that right now. Lie down here and sing with me, all right?” He nodded toward Mom’s side of the bed. “Pick an Eagles song and you do the harmony.”

  It had been a long time since we sang together. We did it a lot when I was younger. I climbed over him and flopped down on my mother’s side of the bed. “‘Lyin’ Eyes,’” I said.

  “All those verses!” he said. “I bet you five bucks you won’t remember all the words.” He’d been doing this since I was a kid—betting me I couldn’t do something that he knew perfectly well I could do. It made me feel like I was about eight years old, but I wanted to please him tonight so I would go along with it.

  “You’re on,” I said, and I started us out with the first verse. We sang every verse and I waved my arms in the air each time the chorus came along. I messed up the words a few times, but so did he.

  “Good job,” he said when the song was over. “I’ll ask Mom to give you a five tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” I said, happily looking at the ceiling above us. He was in such a great mood that I knew Nanny was worrying about nothing. I wished she could see him right now. It would ease her mind.

  “What do you think of the woman in ‘Lyin’ Eyes?
???” Daddy asked. “She leaves her husband for her old boyfriend, but then she’s still not happy.”

  “She’s a slut,” I said simply.

  “Hm. A tad harsh, don’t you think? What motivates her?”

  I thought about the lyrics. “She’s married to a man with hands as cold as ice,” I said. Then I rolled onto my side and smacked him playfully on the shoulder. “You’re doing it again!” I said. “Picking something apart. It’s only a song. Can’t you just enjoy it for what it is?”

  He turned his head to look at me and his serious expression surprised me. “You’re right, Molly girl,” he said. “Life’s too short to pick it all apart. I’ll try to do better.”

  “Molly, what are you still doing up?” Mom said as she walked into the room carrying a stack of my father’s folded T-shirts.

  “We were singing,” I said.

  “So I heard.” She pulled open the top dresser drawer and lowered the T-shirts inside it. “But you need to go to bed, now,” she said. “It’s after midnight.”

  “After all these years, Nora, I finally figured out who you remind me of,” Daddy said.

  She shut the dresser drawer and turned to face him “Who?” she asked.

  “Grace Kelly,” Daddy said.

  Mom laughed. She hit his foot lightly through the blanket, then tucked a lock of her blond hair behind her ear and suddenly she did remind me a little of Grace Kelly. She smiled at my father and they exchanged a look that I was no part of. I shouldn’t even have witnessed that look.

  “I’m going to bed,” I said, rolling off her side of the bed. I stood up and headed past her toward the door.

  “Sleep tight,” she said, and she sounded a thousand miles away from me.

  “Night, darling,” Daddy said, but he never moved his gaze from my mother’s face.