Pretending to Dance

  Could I have stopped my mother from taking my father’s life?

  56

  For the most part, everyone left me alone over the next few days, although. Nora came up to my room at least twice a day. She brought me food I barely touched and I froze her out, ignoring anything she said to me. I stopped calling her “Mom” during those few days. She would forever after be “Nora” to me and I’d say her name in a cold voice designed to distance myself from her. It was my way of hurting her, the only weapon I had.

  On the third day after Daddy’s death, she told me his ashes were now buried in our family graveyard, and it was all I could do to wait until she left the room before I broke down. I wanted to open my window and scream, “No!” at the top of my lungs. He was nothing but ashes now. I couldn’t imagine it. I couldn’t bear it.

  I tried to wrap my mind around the reality that he was gone. If I went downstairs, he wouldn’t be there. I would never hear him call me “darling” again. I walked aimlessly around my room whispering to myself, “I want my daddy back,” the words coming out in a child’s voice, because I suddenly felt very much like a child. I didn’t know who that girl was who snuck out of her grandmother’s house to have sex with a boy. I didn’t know how she could have been so reckless. So selfish. So wrong. The two things—sneaking out to be with Chris and Daddy’s death—were twisted together so firmly in my mind now that I would never be able to untwist them. If I hadn’t been with Chris, I could have saved my father. Logically, I knew it didn’t make sense, but logic was no longer my friend.

  Amalia came to see me, but she said she wouldn’t talk to me if I insisted on believing that Nora had anything to do with Daddy’s death. I felt as though I’d lost her, too.

  * * *

  On the fourth day, Nora set a grilled-cheese sandwich on my desk, then sat down on the edge of my bed where I had burrowed myself beneath the covers.

  “There’s going to be a memorial service for Daddy tomorrow night at the pavilion,” she said. “I’d like you to come.”

  “No.” I kept my eyes closed, the covers up to my nose. I wasn’t sure what a memorial service was, exactly, but I didn’t want to be there and see her fake her grief in public.

  “It’s a way to remember him, honey,” she said. When I didn’t respond, she sighed. “I’m so afraid you’ll regret it later if you don’t come.” She rubbed my shoulder through the quilt and I yanked the covers over my head and stayed that way until she gave up and left my room.

  * * *

  I waited until the very last second before deciding to go to the memorial service, which was why I was still dressed in the shorts and T-shirt I’d been sleeping in for days. I’d looked at myself in the mirror that afternoon for the first time since it happened. My hair was dirty and my eyes were so swollen, the lids looked like little pink sausages, but I needed to go to the service. I kept thinking that Daddy’s spirit might be there, and if he was there, I wanted to be there, too.

  Nora drove the two of us to the pavilion. I smelled disgustingly sweaty to myself and wondered if she’d say anything about it, but she just gave me a sad smile and said she was glad I’d decided to go. I said nothing in response. I was done talking to her.

  Once we got to the pavilion, I wished I hadn’t come. The platform was crowded with our family and Daddy’s friends. Chairs had been set up facing a microphone at one end of the pavilion, and about half the people were seated. They balanced little plates of food on their laps as they smiled and talked to one another, and I thought, How can they smile? Someone had set up a stereo and music rang out from the speakers near the back of the pavilion. I felt sick when I recognized the music as one of the mix tapes Daddy and I had put together for the midsummer party. It was wrong, playing that music now. Elvis followed by the Beatles followed by the Four Tops followed by Bing Crosby. It was all wrong. I picked up one of the chairs and moved it to a corner of the pavilion as far from the speakers as I could get and I sat there alone, out of the way, away from the crowd, trying to feel my father in the air around me.

  Dani was sitting on the other side of the pavilion, and when she spotted me, she got up and started walking toward me. I didn’t want to talk to her. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, but soon she was standing next to me.

  “Why don’t you come sit with me and my parents?” she asked.

  I didn’t look at her. “I just want to sit alone,” I said.

  She was quiet for a moment. “Mom told me you think Aunt Nora had something to do with Uncle Graham dying,” she said.

  “She killed him.”

  “Molly…” I could see her shaking her head from the corner of my eye. “That’s so crazy. Are you cracking up?”

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  “You know,” she said, her voice breaking, “I loved him, too.”

  I looked up at her. She wore no makeup today. No lip ring. I remembered her at my father’s side the night he fell from the pavilion. She’s not your enemy, I thought. “I know,” I said, contrite.

  “Come sit with us?” she tried again, but I shook my head.

  “No, thanks.”

  She walked away and I went back to sitting alone and cursing the music. After a while, I noticed that Peter and Helen were sitting at the edge of the crowd, not far from me. They sat next to Janet and her Viking boyfriend. Peter spotted me and I groaned as I saw him leave his seat and walk toward mine. I lowered my gaze to my lap as he crouched down next to me. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Molly,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I muttered.

  “He was an inspirational man,” he said and I felt my lower lip begin to tremble.

  “Let me know if I can help you in any way, all right?” Peter stood up again, resting his hand on my shoulder. “If you need to talk, I’m there for you.”

  With your stupid Freudian therapy? I thought. No, thank you. I wondered if he was the slightest bit happy now that his professional rival was gone.

  “Okay,” I said. I was relieved when he walked back to his seat.

  Soon, everyone was sitting down and someone turned off the music. Then people took turns at the microphone. Uncle Trevor and Aunt Claudia. Russell. Peter. They all talked about how wonderful my father was, but I hardly heard them. My arms were folded across my chest like armor.

  Finally, Nora went up to the microphone, but instead of talking about Daddy, she lifted an envelope into the air. “Graham left this behind to be opened after his death.” She smiled. Her ever-present pallor had lifted; there was color in her cheeks and the faint purple-smudged skin beneath her eyes was gone. Your mom looks like Grace Kelly, don’t you think? My eyes filled at the memory. “Graham didn’t want us to spend a lot of time grieving,” Nora said, “so on the outside of this envelope, it says we should play that Kenny Loggins song ‘Footloose.’” She pulled a sheet of paper from the envelope. “And on the piece of paper inside, he says ‘pretend to dance.’”

  I caught my breath. Everyone laughed. Everyone except me. I saw Janet shake her head, smiling, and heard her say to the Viking, “Typical Graham.”

  I gripped the seat of my chair with both hands. He’d known what he was doing when he told me to type those words weeks ago. I’d unwittingly had a part in this horrible charade. Had he asked Nora to give him those pills? I felt duped, suddenly angry with both Nora and my father.

  “So, my dear friends and family,” Nora said, waving the envelope in the air, “let’s do him proud.”

  Someone turned the stereo on again, and “Footloose” came over the loudspeakers. People obediently stood up, pushing their chairs to the sides of the pavilion as they began to dance. They looked awkward at first and I knew none of them felt like dancing. But as my father had most likely predicted, pretending made it so, and soon they were dancing with abandon, arms in the air, laughter rising into the sky above the pavilion. Maybe there were tears behind the laughter; I didn’t know. I didn’t stay long enough to find out. I stood up from my chair, jumped from the pavilion, and
ran across the lawn, headed for home, my hands flattened over my ears. I ran past Nanny’s house, across her circular drive and out to the loop road, and I kept running, running, running, putting distance between me and everyone I knew—everyone I’d loved—until I felt certain we’d be separated forever.

  57

  San Diego

  “Do you still believe your father asked Nora to … help him end his life?” Aidan asks me. He’s being careful with the euphemism. We’d been in the living room on the sectional when I started telling him about Morrison Ridge. Sometime during the telling, though, when I needed him to hold me, we’d moved to our bed.

  “Yes,” I say. “At least I think so. I think he and Nora had probably already planned it out when he had me type ‘pretend to dance’ on that sheet of paper. But it’s still murder that she would be charged with if I’d ever turned her in. If I could have gotten anyone to believe me, of course.”

  “Would you actually have done that?”

  “Well, I didn’t. I…” My eyes burn. “When I’d bring it up to anyone—Amalia or Russell or my aunt Claudia—they’d get angry with me. They felt sorry for Nora and thought I was making things harder for her. I knew if I turned her in, everyone would hate me. And also…”

  “Also?”

  “Deep down, I guess I still loved her.”

  “Of course you did,” he says. “She raised you.”

  I press my forehead against his shoulder. Tighten my arm across his waist.

  “Here’s what I don’t get.” He rubs my neck as he speaks, and his voice is soft and a bit hesitant. “I know you believe people have a right to die. I mean, we’ve talked about it and we agree about it, don’t we?”

  “Yes,” I say, “but we don’t have the right to kill someone.”

  “Well, it sounds to me like your father had no alternative but to get someone else to help him.”

  I sigh. “I know, but … Maybe if she’d told me the truth, I could have dealt with it better,” I say.

  “From what you’ve told me, I don’t think so,” Aidan says. “You loved your father and you had mixed feelings about Nora. And you were only fourteen. I’m not sure what she could have said or done to make things right for you.”

  “I know,” I say again.

  “Do you think Amalia knew the truth? Or the aide? Russell?”

  “I think they wanted to believe he died of natural causes so badly that when I told them about the pencil case with the pills, they just shut me out,” I say. “I tried to talk to Dani about it once. She was a senior when I started at the boarding school and she took me under her wing. I brought it up early on; I was desperate to talk to someone about it. But she refused. She said it made me sound crazy and she wouldn’t hang around me if I was going to talk that way.”

  “So you were really alone with it.” He hugs me to him and my eyes fill again.

  I was. I feel so sad for the fourteen-year-old girl I used to be.

  “You have to go back there,” Aidan says. “You can see that, can’t you?”

  I shake my head. “Amalia’s gone,” I say. “I feel guilty that I never got in touch with her. That I cut her out along with everyone else. But I don’t see the point in going back now.” I don’t want to go back, ever. What I would really like is to erase my past. I’ve been trying to do that for most of my life.

  “You have to see Nora,” he says.

  “I don’t want to see her.”

  “Yes,” he says. “You have to go.”

  “Why are you pushing me?” I’m annoyed by his persistence.

  “Because it’s in the way, babe,” he says. He strokes my cheek. “You can’t run away from your past any more than I can run away from mine. Yours has been chasing you for a long time and now it’s finally caught up to you.”

  “The timing’s terrible,” I say. “Sienna—”

  “She’s not due for another month,” he interrupts me. Then he kisses me, and though the room has grown dark, I can see his eyes as he pulls away. “We’re going to have a baby.” I hear the smile in his voice. “A family. And there’s going to be a birth mother and you’re going to be an adoptive mother. You’ve got to go to lay those demons to rest, Molly. You can’t let your past get in the way of your future any longer.”

  I sigh. He’s right.

  “All right,” I say, my head on his shoulder again. “I’ll go.”

  Still, I think, Aidan doesn’t really understand what he’s asking. I’m not sure I understand it myself.

  58

  Asheville, North Carolina

  I try to read on the long red-eye flight between Los Angeles and Charlotte, but I can’t concentrate. The night is crystal clear and I have an awe-inspiring view of the illuminated earth during the entire trip. I search in vain for landmarks in the dark. Are we over Texas now? Arkansas? Tennessee? The closer we fly to North Carolina the harder my heart pounds. I feel overcome with a crushing sense of nostalgia. I’ve fought that nostalgia for two decades, but suddenly I can hear the cicadas and smell the summer scent of the mountains. I feel the wind on my face as I ride the zip line.

  I have so many memories of Morrison Ridge, but the one that plays over and over in my mind as we near our destination is that last talk with Daddy on our screened porch. He’d needed a hug from me that day and I’d been too angry to give it to him as I plotted my time with Chris Turner in the springhouse. I get it, Daddy, I think now. I understand now. But I am way too late. I wish I had that day to do over. I would do it so differently. I’d give him that hug he’d needed.

  I remember how happy he’d looked when I told him I might want to be a pretend therapist when I grew up. There had been such joy in his eyes when he heard that—on what he most likely knew was the last day of his life—his daughter wanted to follow in his footsteps. After everything that happened, though, a pretend therapist had been the last profession I’d aspired to. I picked law because it seemed as far from pretending as I could get. Law was all about harsh reality, I thought. All about facts and truth and justice. I was wrong. Practicing law lifts pretense to an art form. I pretend every day that my clients are in the right, that I am not twisting the truth to win their cases. I’ve loved the challenge and I love when I can help good people triumph, but I know the truth about myself and my work: I am a pretender of the first order. And I’m a little tired of it.

  * * *

  We arrive on time in Charlotte. After that long flight, I’d like to change out of my jeans and the red shirt I’ve been wearing all night, but I’m anxious to get to Asheville. I brush my teeth in the restroom of the rental car agency, then pick up my car and a map and head west.

  A couple of hours later, I drive into Asheville for the first time since my teens. I’ve heard that the city has changed dramatically in the twenty years I’ve been away, and I quickly see that rumor is correct. The sleepy town is alive and vibrant now and I absorb it all, driving slowly, putting off my arrival at Amalia and Russell’s house for as long as I can. I have her address, but I’d visited her only once before leaving Morrison Ridge and all I recall from that visit is my anger. Amalia had never bought into my contention that Nora had killed my father. Even though Nora did nothing to stop the family from kicking Amalia out of Morrison Ridge, Amalia defended her. I didn’t understand her. I still don’t.

  * * *

  The little Craftsman cottage is on a tree-lined street close to downtown Asheville, and it’s unfamiliar to me after so long. I stay in my car as I check the address in my phone. Yes, this is it. So different from the contemporary glass house that had once been her home. I wonder if she was happy here.

  I walk up the round pavers to the front porch. The doorbell consists of bells hanging on a cord. So like Amalia, I think. I give the cord a shake, wincing at the playful sound that rings through the air. I’m not in a playful mood. Not at all.

  Although I can’t hear footsteps or feel their vibration beneath my feet, I have a sense that someone is walking through the house. In a
moment, the door opens and Russell stands in front of me. His hair is cropped short, the black dulled by a spattering of gray, but the cocker spaniel eyes haven’t lost their warmth and the years have done little to change his tight, athletic physique. He’s wearing jeans and a long-sleeved blue jersey, and he still looks like he could lift my father from his wheelchair with ease.

  His face registers surprise. “Molly,” he says.

  My throat locks up so tightly I can’t speak. I read so many things into his expression. Gratitude that I have come at all. Sadness that I’ve come way too late. And something else: I don’t know if it’s blame or forgiveness or simply a deep sorrow. I don’t know if they’re his emotions I’m seeing or my own.

  He opens his arms wide and I surprise myself by stepping into them. “I’m so sorry, Russell,” I say.

  “Come in.” He lets go of me, standing back to usher me inside.

  I walk into a small Arts and Crafts–style living room. It seems the antithesis of Amalia’s sunny, glass-walled living room at Morrison Ridge. Yet, the rich, dark wood molding and cabinetry and the numerous paintings on the walls give the room an inviting warmth. I can imagine Amalia in this room.

  “Sit.” Russell motions toward a heavy blue sofa on one side of the room and I sink into the deep, fluffy cushions. “Can I get you something to drink?” he asks.

  “Water?” I ask. I need something to hold on to.

  He disappears from the room and returns a moment later to hand me a cold bottle of water. I watch as he sits down in an upholstered chair across the room from me. I take a sip of water, then wrap my hands around the bottle while I search for something to say. My mind goes to the weather. To Asheville’s rebirth. To the charm of the house. I open my mouth, but Russell holds up his hand as though he knows I’m about to say something banal and he plans to save me from it.

  “She talked about you nearly every day,” he says.

  Oh God.