Pretending to Dance

  I saw my mother take a bowl from the cabinet next to the stove and could see the stained-glass pencil case still tucked away on the middle shelf. I’d looked inside that case when I was alone in the kitchen the night before, curious to know what she’d dropped inside it from the pocket of her pharmacy coat. White pills. There were tons of them in there. For some reason, those pills were being kept separate from Daddy’s other medications. I wondered if they were for a study. Maybe she was getting him into a study on the sly? I wouldn’t blame her. Whatever she was doing, I hoped it worked.

  Mom and my aunts had been talking about all sorts of things while they worked—recipes, the perfect weather predicted for this evening, Uncle Jim’s beer tasting, who was coming to the party tonight—and I wasn’t paying much attention to them until I became aware that they were whispering. I stopped threading the crepe paper through the spokes, keeping my hands still as I tried to listen. They huddled together at the counter near the sink, their backs to me, their hands busy, and I caught only a few words.

  “Will the doctor be there?” Aunt Claudia asked.

  My mother said something I couldn’t hear, then added, “… a friend of Amalia’s.”

  “Oh Lord,” Aunt Claudia said. “No doubt a quack, then.”

  “Doesn’t really matter, does it?” My mother sounded tired all of a sudden. She glanced over her shoulder at me, and I quickly busied myself with the crepe paper. When she started talking again, her voice was a whisper and I couldn’t understand a word. I probably wouldn’t have cared if they hadn’t been so secretive about their conversation. So, some doctor was coming to the party tonight? Amalia’s friend? Maybe Amalia finally had a boyfriend. So what if she brought someone? Why were they being so hush-hush about it? I supposed this was the way they usually gossiped about Amalia, and it was not meant for my ears.

  I ran the red streamer up the back of the wheelchair and wrapped it around the support for the headrest, then glanced at the clock on the microwave. It was a little after four and Stacy’s mom would be dropping her off any minute. I couldn’t wait to see her—it had been ages. We had to make our plans for Tuesday night. Mom had verified that Stacy’s mother would be home and Bryan and Chris were definitely coming over. Stacy was annoyed that her mother had to be there, but maybe it was a good thing as long as she gave us some privacy. I didn’t trust myself to be able to stop Chris when he started kissing me the way he had that day we got together. His kisses were too amazing. Katherine and Michael went all the way in Forever, but they were three years older than me. Plus, Katherine had birth control pills. If I got pregnant … Oh my God. I didn’t even want to think about it!

  Uncle Trevor came into the kitchen through the back door and he instantly seemed to take up all the air in the room. He didn’t seem to notice me as he walked over to the counter where Mom and Aunt Toni were now frosting a big tray of cupcakes. He stood between them, a beefy arm around each of their waists, a beer in his right hand. “Look at these two lovelies,” he said. His empty hand slid from my mother’s waist to the seat of her jeans, and I watched her calmly reach behind her to brush his arm away.

  “Trevor,” she said without looking at him, “do we have enough charcoal? Have you checked?”

  “Plenty of charcoal, Nora,” he said, taking a step away to lean against the counter. “Everything’s ready at the pavilion. Jim and I are setting up the fireworks. Going to be the best show ever.” I could see the definition of every muscle in his bulging thighs and calves. The mounds of his biceps. I thought of Daddy’s body, wasting away, and felt angry over the unfairness of it all.

  “How many beers have you had already?” Aunt Toni turned to him, the spatula in her hand slathered with chocolate frosting. He didn’t answer her but I knew he was pretty well loaded. I didn’t think he’d touch my mother the way he had unless he was well on his way to getting drunk.

  “Molly”—Mom turned to look at me—“Stacy will be here soon. Why don’t you take the wheelchair onto the porch? It’s already crowded enough in here.”

  She was right. I piled the tape and scissors and the rest of the crepe paper onto the seat of the chair and pushed it out of the kitchen, through the living room and onto the porch just as Stacy was getting out of her mother’s van in our driveway. Stacy slung her backpack over her shoulder and waved to me.

  “Hi, Molly!” she called as she ran up our driveway. Her mother drove off, tooting her horn, and the van had disappeared behind the trees by the time Stacy reached the porch. She ran up the steps and gave me a hug. “I’ve missed you so much!” she said. “And where’s your dad? I need to give him a hug, too. I can’t believe he got us those tickets!”

  “He’s lying down,” I said. “He wants to have some energy for the party tonight.”

  “This is going to be so amazing!” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I brought a little bag of you-know-what,” she said.

  It took me a moment to understand. I was so dense. “Cool,” I said, though I wasn’t sure where we could smoke it. I’d have to figure it out. I wanted to feel that buzz again. “I’m not sure where we can do it, though.”

  “Maybe in the woods?” she suggested, then seemed to notice the wheelchair for the first time even though it was sitting right there between us. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Decorating it. What do you think?”

  “Cute!” she said. “It looks like the Fourth of July.”

  That worried me. “It does,” I said, realizing she was right. “I should add some green or something.”

  “No, it looks great.” She leaned over to straighten a strand of crepe paper where it sagged on one of the wheels.

  “Hi, Stacy.” My mother appeared in the doorway, drying her hands with a dish towel. “Nice to see you again.”

  “Hi, Mrs.… Nora.” Stacy smiled at her, and I noticed the total innocence in her face. She could be an actress. I still didn’t know if my father or Russell ever told my mother exactly what happened at Stacy’s house. She’d never said a word to me about it, but since she was so adamant that Stacy’s mom be home when I went over there on Tuesday, I figured she and my father must have talked. How much detail he went into—how much he knew, for that matter, since it was Russell who had been inside to get a whiff of the weed—I had no idea.

  “Why don’t you girls get ready for the party and then you can help us load all the food into Trevor’s truck to take to the pavilion?” Mom asked.

  “Okay.” I looked at Stacy. “I’ll take the chair to my father and meet you in my bedroom.”

  * * *

  In my room, we helped each other with our makeup, which felt kind of stupid since there’d be nobody at the party for us to impress, plus the sun would soon be going down and it would be dark, but it was still fun. I showed her Chris’s picture, which I’d started carrying around with me in my pocket, and she told me she was seriously considering going all the way with Bryan. I was torn between excitement and flat out fear when she talked like that.

  “What about … you know, getting pregnant?” I asked.

  “He’ll use a condom.” She shrugged. “No big deal.”

  “Katherine took birth control pills.” We talked about Katherine from Forever as though she truly existed.

  “Like I could tell my mother I wanted the pill!” Stacy said.

  We changed into our short skirts and tank tops and she squealed with envy when I put on my Doc Martens. “You are so lucky,” she said, and I realized this was not the first time she’d said those words to me. She might have been beautiful, but I had the parents with a happy marriage and a nice house and the hundred acres that would always be in my family. I looked down at my beautiful purple boots with their bright yellow stitching. “Do you want to wear them tonight?” I offered.

  Her dark eyes widened. “Are you kidding?” she asked. “I’d love to! I’m size six and a half, though. What are they?”

  “Nine,” I said. “Do you want to try?”

  She sh
ook her head sadly. “I’d swim in them,” she said, looking down at her sandals. “I don’t know how I got such puny feet. It’s amazing I don’t fall over. Thank you, though.” She hugged me again. Her hair smelled like peaches. “They look awesome on you.”

  Stacy pulled a joint and a book of matches from a plastic bag in her purse and tucked them inside her tank top, working them into the side of her bra.

  “Can you tell?” she asked me. Her tank top was skintight—same as mine—but as long as her arm was down, the bumps beneath the fabric were undetectable.

  “No problem,” I said. Then I reached for the bottle of insect repellent I kept on my dresser. “One more thing we need to do before we go downstairs,” I said, holding up the bottle.

  “Ugh, you’re kidding.”

  “I wish,” I said, spraying my legs. I handed the bottle to her and she gave her own legs a spritz.

  “Oh my God, we stink!” She laughed.

  We did, but I imagined nearly everyone on the pavilion would be wearing the same scent tonight.

  Downstairs, Mom and my aunts were loading trays of food and ice chests into the bed of Uncle Trevor’s truck and we got to work helping them. We rode to the pavilion in my mother’s car with her, following behind the truck. Mom talked about the college students she’d hired to help pass trays of food tonight and I told Stacy about the mix tapes Daddy and I had put together. Stacy kept touching the side of her breast where she’d hidden the joint. Not too obvious, I thought. When we got out of the car, I’d have to tell her to leave it alone. I still wasn’t sure we should try to smoke that joint here tonight.

  When we arrived at the pavilion, we helped my mother and aunts spread the trays out on the tables that were scattered around the perimeter. Uncle Jim was setting up a portable bar with his varieties of beer. Someone had placed a bunch of chairs on both the pavilion and the lawn and someone else had raised the giant floodlights. I loved seeing those lights. It always felt magical to me, late at night, when all the people were illuminated. One of my favorite things to do was to walk out on the lawn during a party and look back at the pavilion. The chatter of the crowd would be a little muffled, the music hard to make out, and the whole party would be a small luminous rectangle of joy. I couldn’t wait for tonight.

  * * *

  It was amazing how quickly the pavilion and the scruffy lawn around it filled with people that evening. The Morrison Ridge families were there, of course, and each family had invited their friends, so that by the time daylight had faded and the floodlights came on, there had to be over a hundred people milling around the food tables and drinking bottles of beer and plastic glasses of wine. Uncle Trevor had a beer in his hand every time I saw him, and he was spending a lot of time at Uncle Jim’s bar. I overheard Aunt Claudia tell him to slow down and knew he was already loaded.

  Dani and a friend—a guy with a white Mohawk—sat on the edge of the pavilion smoking cigarettes. I pointed her out to Stacy from where we stood by one of the appetizer tables. “There’s my cousin Dani,” I said.

  Stacy nodded. “Who’s the guy she’s with?” She reached for another tortilla chip. We’d been gorging on them for the last ten minutes.

  “No clue,” I said.

  “Bryan remembers her from when she was in public school,” Stacy said, dipping the chip into a bowl of salsa. “He says she’s really weird.”

  “She is,” I said, but I remembered that she’d defended me to Chris and I didn’t feel all that good about dissing her just then.

  Someone suddenly turned the music up loud and the party kicked into high gear as people started dancing to the mix tapes Daddy and I’d put together. We’d created a mishmash—Sinatra followed by Michael Jackson followed by the Electric Slide followed by Eric Clapton followed by Patsy Cline followed by some big band music for Nanny and on and on like that. It was my idea to throw all that different music together so no one would have any idea what was coming up next. Daddy said the mixture was “nauseating,” but he went along with it anyway.

  Stacy and I danced like crazy, teaching some of the adults the electric slide and a few other dances we knew. I watched for Amalia, thinking it would be fun to dance with her, but I didn’t see her. Everyone seemed to like being surprised by the music, waiting after each song to hear what would come next, sometimes laughing when the music started, sometimes groaning, but nearly everyone was on their feet.

  After a while, Stacy and I piled little plates with cheese and crackers and sat scrunched together on one of the big speakers in the corner of the pavilion to people-watch while we ate. Most people danced on the wooden floor, but some of them spilled onto the lawn, which was only one big step down from the platform. Many of the women danced in their bare feet. I watched them move around on the rough grass and leaned over to shout in Stacy’s ear, “They’ll have chigger bites in the morning!”

  “Along with their hangovers!” Stacy laughed.

  There were so many people, a lot of them strangers to me, that Nanny’s initial refusal to invite Amalia seemed particularly mean and ridiculous. Amalia and my mother could both be here and not even see each other, not that I thought either one of them would care one little bit.

  Janet and Peter and Peter’s wife, Helen, had all arrived together, and Janet had a man with her, so there went my idea of fixing her up with Russell. The man she was with was tall and blond and I thought he looked like a Viking. She had on her Whitney Houston wig and she and the Viking looked amazing together, especially when they danced. By comparison, Peter and Helen seemed subdued, keeping to themselves in one little spot on the pavilion. They nibbled things from a shared plate and talked to each other as if they were socially inept, which I knew they were not. At one point Russell pushed Daddy over to them and left him there for a while. The three of them talked, but there were no smiles or party faces, although my father had his back to me so I couldn’t see his expression. It made me wonder about Peter’s so-called professional jealousy and if that was what was behind his serious look tonight. When Russell came back to wheel Daddy away, Helen bent over and hugged my father, holding on to him for a long time, her cleavage practically in his face. It was sort of bizarre.

  Stacy leaned over to speak in my ear. “No one would miss us if we went into the woods and smoked a J,” she said, nodding toward the woods at the side of the pavilion. I still hadn’t decided if we should try to sneak away or not. I saw Nanny walking toward us at that moment and knew that we wouldn’t be sneaking anywhere quite yet.

  “Hi, Nanny!” I shouted over the music.

  “Hi, dear!” she shouted back. She wore a loose red blouse over a long white skirt and lots of gold jewelry, and her hair was in some sort of updo. I wasn’t used to seeing her dressed up. “Didn’t we pick a perfect night for this?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I agreed, as though we had something to do with the weather.

  Nanny leaned over to get a good look at Stacy. “The girl on the bike, right?” she asked.

  “Right.” Stacy smiled her beauty queen smile. “I’m Stacy.”

  “Welcome, dear,” Nanny said. Then she frowned as a new song poured out of the speakers. “What the heck kind of music is this?” she asked.

  I laughed. “Michael Jackson, Nanny,” I said. “It’s called ‘Thriller.’”

  Just then, Janet and her Viking lookalike boyfriend danced past us on the pavilion floor, the Viking doing a decent moonwalk. Stacy and I laughed, but Nanny shook her head.

  “It’s called moonwalking, Nanny,” I said, though I wasn’t sure if she was reacting to the dance or to seeing a black woman and white man dancing together. I thought Russell was the first black person Nanny’d ever really gotten to know.

  I saw Russell now as he pushed Daddy toward us across the pavilion.

  “Hey, girls. Hey, Mom,” Daddy said, when Russell parked him between us and Nanny. He was facing the dance floor. “Great shindig, don’t you think?” I couldn’t tell if he was talking to Nanny or to Stacy and me.


  “It’s wonderful,” Nanny said, her voice suddenly thick. She reached down and lifted my father’s hand into both of hers. Gently, she kneaded his useless fingers and I felt my eyes burn. What was it like, watching your grown child being taken inch by inch by such a cruel disease? I wished Stacy wasn’t sitting between me and my father and Nanny right then. I wanted to be a part of them at that moment.

  Russell sat down in the white plastic chair next to me. “Feels good to sit,” he said. His voice was loud above the music. “Crazy mix tape you came up with,” he added, and I laughed.

  Next to me, Stacy suddenly caught her breath. She tipped her head toward mine and whispered in my ear, “Isn’t that woman your…” She nodded toward the dancers and I spotted the woman she was looking at: Amalia. The music had changed to Eric Clapton’s “Layla,” and Amalia was on the dance floor—where else would she be?—dressed in a gauzy turquoise skirt and a tank top the same color, her thick hair spilling over her shoulders.

  I whispered back, “Yes,” I said. “Amalia.”

  Amalia was dancing with an older man I didn’t know, and I wondered if it was the doctor my mother had mentioned in the kitchen that afternoon. But she only danced with him a moment before moving on to another partner, and then on to the Viking, and the sea of dancers parted a little to let them have the floor. Maybe this was why Nanny hadn’t wanted Amalia here. She was like a magnet, attracting everyone’s attention. It was impossible for her to simply disappear into the crowd. My mother, wherever she was, could hardly avoid seeing her. Amalia spun around the floor with the Viking for a moment, then turned him loose and headed for Peter, who held up his hands to ward her off. Peter was smiling but immovable, and everyone laughed as she gave up, twirling in a circle as she looked for her next partner. I saw her zero in on Russell and knew she was about to be turned down again. But she grabbed Russell by the hand and pulled him out of his chair and onto the dance floor before he could protest. Next to Stacy, Daddy laughed.