Pretending to Dance

  “Well, first of all,” I argued, “she’s the only girl around this summer, and second of all, I really like her. It’s not her fault if her mother is … irresponsible.” I was talking about Stacy, but my mind was back on Chris. I would see him somehow. I was sure of that.

  For a moment, she was quiet and I thought I’d won her over with that argument. Really, it wasn’t Stacy’s fault if her mother left her alone, was it? “What was she supposed to do?” I added. “Beg her mother to stay home with us?”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t your idea to invite those older boys over,” my mother said. “She’s playing with fire and I’m worried you’re the one who’ll get burned.”

  “That’s, like, so overly dramatic!”

  My mother groaned. “You’re even starting to talk like her,” she said.

  “Why don’t you trust me?” I asked, but knew right away that was the wrong direction to take my argument. I’d proven myself completely untrustworthy in the last few hours.

  “I’m not even going to honor that question with an answer,” she said, and I fell quiet.

  She was crying, softly, maybe trying to keep me from noticing. I couldn’t see her well and might have missed it in the darkness, but I could tell by her sniffling, by the liquid look of her eyes when we passed beneath a streetlight. My mother had been acting down and just plain weird since Daddy’s fall from the pavilion, and I knew I’d made things a whole lot worse tonight.

  I reached over to touch her hand on the steering wheel. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She turned her head away from me, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “I don’t want to argue with you, Molly,” she said. “I only want you to be safe and healthy. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You may not realize that you’re too young to make wise decisions, but you are. Daddy and I still have to make them for you.”

  No you don’t, I thought, but I kept my mouth shut.

  She let out a long sigh. “It’s just been a difficult night,” she said, and I suddenly remembered the family meeting had been tonight.

  “What did Uncle Trevor say about the land and the surveyors and everything?” I asked. He’d been so kind and apologetic when he talked to my father in his office the other day, I had the feeling he was ready to back down.

  Mom waved a hand through the air. “Oh, who knows what’s going to happen,” she said.

  She was so upset, I decided it was best if I asked no more questions. For a few minutes, I wondered what my father would have to say to me in the morning after Mom told him what happened tonight, but my mind soon wandered back to Chris and how extraordinary it had felt to be with him. I wouldn’t let my parents keep me from seeing him, but I had the feeling they might never let me out of the house again. I wondered if, somehow, some way, Chris could meet me at Morrison Ridge.

  42

  San Diego

  “What a beautiful neighborhood!” Sienna’s mother says when I open our front door. She and Sienna stand on our porch and Sienna holds a mixed bouquet of flowers in a vase. The sun is still blazing above the houses across the street and it lights her face with a peachy glow. She is beautiful.

  “Thank you,” I say, stepping aside to let them into the house. “Please come in.” I reach for Sienna’s mother’s hand. She’s my age at the very most, and I’m surprised. I’d expected her to be much older. “I’m Molly,” I say.

  Sienna introduces her mother. “This is Ginger. And these are for you.” She hands me the vase.

  “Thank you,” I say, setting the vase on the coffee table. “That’s so sweet of you.” It feels strange to take anything from someone who will, if all goes according to plan, be giving us the greatest gift I can imagine.

  Less than a week has passed since our lunch with Sienna, and I’ve spoken with her a couple of times on the phone since then. The first time was to invite her and her mother for dinner tonight. The second call was Sienna’s doing, though, and she just wanted to talk. “The girls at school are giving me a hard time again,” she said. “I thought it would help if I could just hear your voice.” Her call both touched and unsettled me. She is counting on us as much as we’re counting on her, I thought. I don’t know if that is good or bad, but it is what it is.

  “I love these older homes.” Ginger looks admiringly around our freshly vacuumed and dusted living room. The smell of lemony furniture polish is strong in this room and I wonder how obvious it is that Aidan and I spent the day scrubbing and polishing. The house hasn’t had such an extreme cleaning since the day Perky Patti visited us for our home study. I’ve been cooking as well and the scent of eggplant parmesan mixes with the lemon. I wasn’t sure if Sienna was a vegetarian after the quesadilla she’d ordered in Old Town, so I’d decided not to take any chances.

  “The house was built in nineteen-thirty,” I say, walking with them into the heart of the living room.

  “Beautiful!” Ginger says. “Except, I worry about lead paint?” She looks at me questioningly, and I’m so taken aback by the question—practically the first thing out of her mouth—that for a moment I don’t respond and Sienna looks embarrassed.

  “Mom,” she says. “They’re not going to let the baby eat lead.”

  “We actually had the house tested for lead paint when we first moved in,” I reassure them. It’s the truth. We had such hopes of filling the house with children back then. We hadn’t realized the wait would be this long.

  “Sorry,” Ginger says. “I’m a worrier.” She peers behind me. “This must be Aidan, right?”

  I turn to see Aidan walking toward us.

  “Right,” he says as he shakes Ginger’s hand. He smiles at Sienna. “Good to see you again, Sienna.”

  “We’re so happy you could both come,” I say. I’m very aware that Sienna is examining the room, taking everything in. The tiled fireplace. The arched doorways. It’s not a big house but it’s cozy and warm and aching to be filled. I hope she can see that.

  We give them a tour of the house, and it’s clear that Sienna’s favorite room is the nursery, even though it has a long way to go before it’s ready for a baby. Aidan and I have talked about our reluctance to fix it up. It boils down to fear. We’re afraid to buy more furniture. Afraid to buy baby clothes or bottles or diapers. We’d bought things far too early for Sara and the pain of giving everything away is still fresh in our minds. Waiting for a baby—any baby—feels like walking through land mines to us, and what happens with Sienna’s baby is so out of our control that we don’t dare to buy a thing for her yet. We can hope, but we can’t plan.

  Still, I feel as though I need to tell Sienna and Ginger how I want this room to look by the time the baby arrives. I want them to know we’ve at least thought about it.

  “We’re thinking of painting it yellow,” I say. “And I’ve seen some bedding I love. I can send you a picture of it, Sienna.” That slips out of my mouth so naturally that I hadn’t stopped to think it might be hard for her to see anything we buy for the baby. “Would you like that or would you rather I didn’t?”

  She smiles. “I’d like it,” she says. She’s discovered the small white bookcase and bends over to check out some of the titles. “I love that you have all these books,” she says.

  “Sienna could read a whole book by the time she was four,” Ginger says, nodding toward her daughter.

  Sienna turns from the bookcase to look at me. “Will you read to her every night?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I say. Oh yes.

  “Mom read to us every night, didn’t you, Mom?” Sienna asks her mother. “It’s so important.”

  We walk back to the living room, where Aidan is fiddling with the CD player. The flowers have overpowered the lemon scent in the room and the air now smells fresh and sweet.

  “Hey, Sienna.” Aidan looks up from the controls of the CD player. He’s holding a CD in his hand. “I made a compilation disc for you,” he says. He loves that Sienna’s i
nto music.

  “Cool,” Sienna says. She is nothing if not polite. She walks over to take the disc from his hand.

  “Want to help me with the salad?” I ask Ginger, and we head for the kitchen. Behind us, I hear Sienna add, “If I listen to your favorites, though, you’ll have to listen to mine one of these days.”

  “Deal,” Aidan says, and I smile to myself. I’d groaned when he told me he was making the CD. I’d wanted to say, “Aidan, sweetie, how would you have felt if some much older guy, like your father for instance, tried ramming his favorite music down your throat when you were seventeen?” And this from the guy who told me not to mention that I liked Mad Men. I said nothing to stop him, though. This is who Aidan is. Sienna already chose us. If she changes her mind because of Aidan’s musical taste as a teenager, there is little I can do about it.

  I hear Morrisey singing from the living room as Ginger and I chop vegetables for the salad. “You and your husband are just as sweet as Sienna said,” she says, tossing a handful of celery slices into the salad bowl.

  “We feel the same way about her,” I say. I’m making salad dressing and I measure the olive oil into the carafe.

  Ginger quietly slices a cucumber. “I’m so worried about everything, though,” she admits after a moment.

  I nod. “It’s uncharted territory for all of us, I guess.”

  “My first grandchild.” Ginger stops slicing to look pensively toward the ceiling. “I won’t be able to see her and hold her and tell her stories and…” She turns to me as though I can say something to ease her distress. “Our dreams don’t work out as planned sometimes, do they,” she says.

  Aidan and I haven’t talked about how an open adoption incorporates grandparents. We’ll have to figure that out. “We’ll be sharing pictures and information with Sienna,” I say. “You won’t be left behind.”

  She smiles. “Thank you,” she says, and she returns to her slicing.

  * * *

  Over dinner, we talk about the open adoption and Sienna’s request for pictures and the occasional visit. Aidan says he’ll put together a private Facebook page where we can share photographs, and Sienna and Ginger seem to love the idea. Sienna tells us that she’s already started working on the scrapbook about her family. I’m so touched by this girl.

  “Who gets to name the baby?” Ginger asks as she spears a piece of lettuce with her fork. Ginger, I’m discovering, gets right to the point.

  “We haven’t really thought about it,” I say, although that’s not quite the truth. Aidan and I have certainly pondered the question. Is it fair of us to name the baby without consulting Sienna? Should she have any say at all?

  “She’ll be your daughter,” Sienna says. “So I guess you should name her.” Her sadness is palpable.

  “Maybe we can come up with a name we all like,” Aidan suggests.

  “Or,” I say, “Aidan and I can give her a first name and Sienna can give her a middle name.”

  The four of us begin throwing names around and soon we’re making lists on sheets of paper and laughing, mostly at Sienna’s suggestions. She likes Ocean and Star and Echo and Tulip. She’s perfectly serious and I’m glad we haven’t given her carte blanche when it comes to naming the baby.

  “How about Natalie?” Aidan suggests. I look at him across the table. Natalie had been our second-choice name when Sara was born. I don’t think I want a name that reminds me of our lost child, but he raises his eyebrows at me. What do you think? he’s asking.

  “Natalie Echo!” Sienna says.

  Natalie Echo James. There is something so wonderful about that name that I can’t help but laugh. Is it just the heady feeling of this evening that makes me love it? I don’t dare agree to it tonight, when I feel drunk on the reality that Aidan and I are—almost certainly—going to be parents.

  “Let’s put it on the list,” I say.

  “At the top of the list,” Aidan adds. And I have the feeling we have just named our daughter.

  * * *

  It’s still light after dinner and Aidan shows Sienna around the backyard while Ginger and I clean up. We have the table cleared, the dishwasher turned on, and coffee brewing by the time Aidan walks into the kitchen a while later. He’s alone.

  “Where’s Sienna?” I ask.

  “I left her in the nursery,” he says. “She wanted to look through the books you bought.”

  I take the half-and-half from the refrigerator and set it on the counter. “How about you two slice the peach pie and I’ll let her know it’s time for dessert,” I say, heading for the hallway.

  I hear Sienna sniffling even before I reach the nursery. I walk into the room to find her sitting cross-legged on the floor, an open book in her lap. Tears stream down her cheeks and I feel a moment of panic. Her tears frighten me.

  “Sienna?” I sit down next to her on the floor, my hand light on her back.

  She makes a valiant effort to smile at me as she holds the book so I can see the cover. Love You Forever. Oh yes. It’s hard to read that book without a lump in your throat.

  “I had this book when I was a kid,” she says. “But honestly? I don’t think I understood it until right now.”

  I think about the story. It’s about a mother who holds her child every night, promising to love him through all stages of his life. She holds him as an infant and a mischievous toddler and a rebellious teenager and on into adulthood. That’s when the tables turn and it’s the adult who holds his frail mother in his arms, promising to love her forever.

  Sienna looks at me, her eyes big and round behind her red glasses. “Which one of us is our baby going to hold when she grows up?” she asks in a whisper, her eyes full of tears, and before I know what’s happening, I have my arms around her, hot tears running down my own cheeks. When I finally pull away from her, we both smile sheepishly, and I know right then that, scared as I am, I want Sienna to have a solid place in my child’s life. We will all be richer for it.

  43

  Morrison Ridge

  I got up at six the morning after the whole big mess at Stacy’s, long before anyone else in the house was up. Before I even brushed my teeth, I climbed the Hill from Hell to the springhouse, my hand wrapped around Chris’s picture in my shorts pocket. I was afraid to keep the picture in the house any longer, worried that if my mother found it, that would be the end of it. I’d stared at his picture half the night, remembering how he’d touched me, how he’d made my body go crazy, how he’d mouthed those words I love you to me as he headed out the door. It took me forever to fall asleep.

  In the springhouse, I stood on my bed and pulled the fake stone loose. Inside were the treasures that suddenly seemed silly. The shells and shark teeth. The glass bird and old corsage. The damp pack of cigarettes. So stupid. I put Chris’s picture inside, then fit the fake stone back in place and climbed down off my bed, barely glancing at the posters of the dark-haired boys who no longer meant that much to me.

  * * *

  Back in the house, I brushed my teeth and washed my face, then started toward the stairs. I dreaded seeing either of my parents at the breakfast table. I was on the top step when I heard my mother’s voice coming from the living room. I sat down on the step, listening, trying to gauge how angry she was. I hoped her anger from the night before had been tempered by a good night’s sleep. It didn’t sound like it.

  “It’s like you’re rewarding them for terrible behavior,” she said.

  “I already have the tickets,” Daddy said.

  The concert. I’d nearly forgotten about it.

  “What kind of lesson does that teach her?” Mom argued. “She disobeys us and you take her to a concert? Besides, I told her she can’t see Stacy anymore. That girl has no supervision.”

  “It’s not Stacy’s fault she has no supervision.” Daddy sounded like his usual calm self.

  “You sound just like Molly!” my mother said. “Stacy’s a terrible influence.”

  “Hon,” Daddy said, “Molly needs Stacy. S
he needs a good girlfriend right now.”

  “A good girlfriend would be one thing,” my mother said. “Stacy Bateman is another thing entirely.” Her voice was tired, and I knew she was winding down. Daddy was going to win this round.

  “Stacy needs some guidance,” Daddy said. “Maybe we can be that for her.”

  “Don’t you think we have enough on our plate right now?” Mom asked. “We can’t fix what’s wrong with that girl. She’s had a lifetime of shitty parenting. And I have to go to work,” she added. “I’m late already.”

  “Let’s table this,” Daddy said. “Let’s sing an opera before you go instead, okay?”

  “Oh, Graham.” I could actually hear her sigh from where I sat. “Sometimes I can’t believe you’re a shrink. You can be so simple. I don’t want to sing a damn opera. I don’t think we’ve resolved anything. I still think the concert is a terrible idea.”

  Neither of them spoke for several seconds and I held my breath, waiting. “Nora…” Daddy said finally. “Molly’s always going to remember this as the worst summer of her life. Let’s let there be something good in it.”

  44

  Sitting at the top of the stairs, I waited to hear my mother’s car pull out of the driveway, wondering how much she and Daddy knew about what had actually happened the night before. They couldn’t possibly know how far I’d gone with Chris, although Mom had no doubt found him in the bedroom and might have guessed. My cheeks grew hot at the memory. I would act as though nothing at all happened. She was overreacting, pure and simple.

  I wished today was an Amalia day. She’d know nothing about what happened last night and we could put on music and dance and I could feel free and happy. But tomorrow was my day with Amalia this week. Today was a long nothing day, and there was no way I could think of to avoid my father. I was grateful at least that my mother had to work.

  I heard her car leave the driveway and pull onto the dirt lane. I waited another minute, then went downstairs to the kitchen, where Russell sat at the table feeding Daddy a piece of blueberry pie.