Pretending to Dance

“How do they do that?” he asked, before taking the bite of enchilada from the fork.

  “Like, they’d tease me relentlessly and try to get me in trouble for things they’d do. They’re incorrigible.”

  “What’s the very worst thing they’ve ever done to you?” Daddy asked once he’d swallowed. He was good at questioning people, especially kids. Too good. It was his job. It could sound like an interrogation, though I had to admit, Stacy didn’t seem to mind. She talked about the time her brother told a boy she liked that she had lice, while I shoveled food into Daddy’s mouth more quickly to try to shut him up.

  “My father’s a therapist,” I explained to Stacy when she’d finished her lice story.

  “And sometimes he forgets he’s not at work,” Mom added, but she was smiling at my father. It was her “I love you” smile. Now that she had dinner on the table and they’d sung their little opera, she was more relaxed.

  “Oh,” Stacy said. “It’s okay.”

  “How about your parents?” Daddy asked. “What sort of work do they do?”

  “Well, my father does something with computers,” she said. “He still lives in D.C., actually. They’re divorced. That was the whole reason we moved. My family’s, like, totally dysfunctional.”

  “Most are.” Daddy gave her a sympathetic smile.

  Stacy poked at her enchilada with her fork. “My sisters and brother all stayed with him, but I wanted to be with my mother, so I came down here with her.”

  “What’s it been like for you?” Daddy asked. “The divorce?”

  “Intense,” Stacy said. “Like, our lives turned upside down overnight. He’s not being great about child support for me and all that stuff. Plus I never see him. And my mother’s working in her brother’s office. That’s why we moved here. Because her brother lives in Black Mountain and can help us out.” She continued poking at her enchilada, eyes downcast. “It’s really kind of a mess,” she said.

  Now I was definitely glad I’d invited her. In thirty minutes, she’d gone from being an exceptionally beautiful princess type to a girl who really needed a friend.

  “I’m sorry you’re going through all that,” Daddy said.

  “After dinner, why don’t you show Stacy around Morrison Ridge?” Mom suggested.

  “I’m planning on it,” I said. “Can she borrow your bike?”

  “Sure,” Mom said, and she sent her “I love you” smile down the table to me, and I felt lucky to have the family I did.

  6

  After we cleaned up the kitchen, I got my mother’s bike from the garage and we started pedaling up the loop road for our tour of Morrison Ridge. When we reached the Hill from Hell, we got off our bikes to walk them up.

  “It’s impossible to ride a bike up this hill,” I said. Then I told her about the time I flew down it and broke my arm.

  We were halfway to the top and breathing hard when she asked, “What’s wrong with your father?”

  “He has multiple sclerosis,” I said.

  “Can he move at all?”

  “Well, you could see he has no problem talking,” I said, and she laughed. “But no. He can move his head and neck, but that’s about all. Most people don’t get that disabled, but he just keeps getting worse.”

  “Wow,” she said. “He’s really nice. It’s sad he’s … like that.”

  I shrugged. “He still does everything he wants,” I said, though I knew that wasn’t the truth. It was just that he wasn’t a complainer. “He’s a ‘glass is half full’ kind of person.”

  We were both quiet for a minute. A couple of dragonflies darted across the road in front of us, and a bird tweeted from somewhere in the forest to our left. I could hear both of us breathing hard as we climbed the hill.

  “Must be weird living with a shrink,” Stacy said after a while. “Like, he knows what you’re thinking all the time.”

  “He’s a psychologist, not a psychic,” I said.

  “Still. You know what I mean.” She stopped to scratch her knee, then started pushing the bike again. “How can he do his job when he’s, you know, so handicapped?”

  “He can listen and talk and think. That’s all he needs to be able to do.”

  We were both too winded to talk by the time we reached the top of the hill, but we climbed on our bikes and began riding up the road. After a while, I pointed down the lane where my father and I had bumped into Amalia a few hours earlier. “So,” I said, “that little lane goes to my aunt Toni and uncle Trevor’s house.”

  “You can’t even see a house out there,” Stacy said, peering into the trees to our right. “I’m not used to all these woods.”

  I thought the forest was a wonderland and hoped she could appreciate it. I couldn’t tell by the tone of her voice.

  We rode a short distance farther and I pointed to the almost invisible path leading into the woods on our right. “Down that path is the springhouse where we’ll spend the night,” I said.

  “Way out here?” She sounded shocked. “Wow. It’s so cool your parents will let us do that. My mother probably thought it was, like, in your backyard.”

  “Would she still have said yes if she knew where it was?”

  “Oh yeah. She doesn’t care what I do.”

  I didn’t know if I was imagining the bitter edge to her words or not and decided to change the subject. “I have a cassette player there,” I said.

  “Oh cool! I brought a bunch of tapes, but I was afraid you might have a CD player.”

  “I’m saving up for one, but I don’t have it yet,” I said. “We probably have all the same tapes, anyhow.”

  “Do you have Step by Step?”

  “Of course! I got it the first day it came out.” We’d come to a short rise in the road and I had to stand up on the pedals to climb it. “I wish so much we could go to one of their concerts this summer,” I said, once we’d gotten over the hill.

  “The Magic Summer Tour,” Stacy said dreamily. “They’re not even coming close to us, though, and my mother could never afford a ticket for me.” She suddenly let out a groan. “Does this road only go uphill?” she asked.

  I laughed. My thighs were burning and I’m sure hers were, too. “Only a little while longer,” I said. Even though it was not yet seven o’clock, it was already starting to get a little dusky on the ridge because of all the trees. We’d make the rest of the loop through Morrison Ridge and then get our things and head to the springhouse before it was too dark to find our way.

  “The old slave quarters is down that road,” I said, pointing off to the right again, this time to a much narrower lane that looked like a tunnel, it was nestled so tightly among the trees.

  “Slave quarters!” Stacy said. “God, I’ll never get used to living in the South.”

  “Washington D.C. is the South,” I pointed out.

  “Not hardly.”

  “Well, anyway, that was long ago.” I felt a little defensive about Morrison Ridge all of a sudden. “Now this woman lives there—Amalia. She’s a dancer and an artist. She paints and does stained glass and gives me dance lessons.”

  “Like … ballet or what?”

  “Interpretive dance,” I said. “That’s where you just move however the music makes you feel.” We pedaled around a curve and the evening sunlight suddenly turned the road golden as the trees gave way to a clearing. “This house coming up on the right is the main house,” I said. “My grandmother lives here.” I stopped my bike and Stacy pulled up alongside me. “It’s one of the only old brick houses in these mountains,” I said, feeling like a tour guide. “It’s been here a hundred and forty years. The land’s been in our family all that time.”

  “So your family owned the slaves?” She was really stuck on that.

  “Well, a hundred and forty years ago, yes, but only a few,” I said, as though owning five slaves instead of fifty made it better somehow. I thought of Russell and wondered how he felt when someone talked about the slave quarters. Maybe we should start calling it something else
.

  Unlike the four other houses on Morrison Ridge that were each tucked into the trees, Nanny’s stood on a circular driveway surrounding the only real lawn in all of the Ridge. With its red brick and white pillars, it had a refined look about it, while the rest of our houses definitely belonged in the mountains. The front door to the house opened and Nanny stepped onto the porch, waving her hand high above her head. “Hello, Molly!” she called. She trotted down the steps in her denim jumper and pale blue tennis shoes, her gray hair in her usual short, swingy bob. “You have a friend with you?” She walked down the driveway toward us. She had a quick step. Even though she’d recently turned seventy, there was nothing old about Nanny. My mother said she was “spry.”

  “This is my friend Stacy,” I said when Nanny had nearly reached us. “And this is my grandmother, Nanny. I mean Miss Bess.” Nanny was Southern born and bred and she was appalled that my friends now called my parents by their first names.

  “Hi, Stacy,” Nanny said. “You’ll be joining us for our big midsummer party on the twenty-eighth, I hope?”

  “Um…” Stacy looked at me.

  “I didn’t tell her about it yet, Nanny,” I said. My grandmother was absolutely fixated on Morrison Ridge’s annual midsummer party. She’d been planning it all year.

  Nanny pointed toward the house, but I knew she was really pointing far behind the house to the pavilion where the party would be held. “There’ll be fireworks!” she said. “Music! Dancing!” She clapped her hands together. “Plenty to eat! You have to join us.”

  Stacy looked at me and I smiled.

  “Seriously,” I said. “You should come.”

  Nanny reached out and slapped me on the arm, and I looked at her, startled.

  “A skeeter,” she said, laughing. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  I suddenly felt them on my bare legs. The minute you stopped moving, they attacked. “We’d better get back on our bikes,” I said. “Bye, Nanny,” I called as we started to ride away. “Love you!”

  “Don’t forget the party!” she called after us.

  We rode a little ways, both of us relieved to be on a level road for a change.

  “I think it’s so cool, how your family has its own neighborhood,” Stacy said after a while.

  “It is,” I agreed. We were nearing one of my favorite spots in all of Morrison Ridge, and I stopped pedaling and straddled my bike.

  “Look up there,” I said, pointing to our right.

  She squinted into the dusky light. “I just see trees,” she said.

  “Can you see the wire up there?” I asked. “It’s a zip line.”

  “A zip line? You mean, the kind you ride?”

  “Exactly.” I pointed again. “Move over here and you can see the tower. The line goes from up here all the way down to a spot near my house.”

  “I see it now. It’s so high! It looks like it goes right through the treetops.”

  “It actually runs above them,” I said. “For a while, anyway.”

  “Awesome!” she said. “Can we ride it?”

  “Well, not tonight,” I said. “It’s kind of a major production. The harnesses are down at the bottom right now and they have to be brought up here, but maybe we can do it someday soon, if you want.”

  “Definitely!”

  We started riding our bikes again. I pointed to the right. “That’s the family graveyard,” I said.

  “What? You’re kidding.”

  “Too late to explore it tonight,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Pass,” Stacy said. “That would freak me out.”

  I liked the graveyard myself. It was small—the Morrison and Arnette families had never been large—and during the day, I liked reading the headstones and imagining the lives of my ancestors. I’d only been there once at night, though, and definitely not alone. On Halloween when I was eight years old, my cousin Cal dragged Dani and me there to try to terrify us. It worked. Everyone in our family—every single person who died after 1850 and their spouses, and in some cases, their children—was in that “hallowed earth,” as Nanny called it. There were three babies, one who was born and died on the same day. And there were several slaves buried there. Although their graves had smaller headstones and were tucked into a corner of the graveyard, they were still inside the low iron fence, as though they’d been part of the family. When I walked among those headstones and markers, I was filled with a sense of pride and curiosity. I wanted to know everything about my ancestors. I picked Nanny’s brain from time to time to see what she remembered, but I had the feeling she was making a lot of it up. Like most families, we were quickly losing our yesterdays.

  We were getting close to my aunt Claudia and uncle Jim’s house when I spotted Dani at the end of their driveway. She looked like a zombie walking out of the woods.

  “Oh my God.” Stacy slowed her bike. “Who the hell is that?”

  “It’s my cousin,” I said, slowing down myself. I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to Dani. “She looks like she just walked out of the graveyard herself, doesn’t she?” I said quietly. “I think she’s just getting the mail.” Sure enough, Dani glanced in our direction, then opened the mailbox on the post next to the street. As usual, she had her Goth thing going on. In spite of the heat, she was dressed in black jeans and a sleeveless black turtleneck. Her hair, which used to be the same brown as my own, had been jet black for years now. It was chin length and looked like it had been cut with a dull knife. She had the same unusual blue eyes that ran in our family but hers were outlined in smudged black pencil that made her look like she needed a good night’s sleep. Her lips were always a sort of reddish-black color, and she wore a lip ring decorated with a small, red-eyed snake.

  She took a few envelopes from the mailbox, then shut it and stood there waiting for us, so we really had no choice but to stop.

  I pressed my brakes. “Hi, Dani,” I said, coming to a stop. Stacy straddled her bike next to me.

  “Who’s this?” Dani asked, her smudged eyes on Stacy.

  “My friend Stacy. She’s staying overnight.” I wouldn’t tell her about our plan to sleep in the springhouse. I knew Danielle. She’d get some of her weird friends together and try to scare us in the middle of the night. Dani was seventeen and she’d been a thorn in my side my entire life. Two years ago, Aunt Claudia and Uncle Jim pulled her out of the local high school and shipped her off to Virginia Dare boarding school in High Point. I’d been happy to see her go. Of course, she was home now for the summer. I didn’t feel like I really knew her any longer, but that was okay with me. “I gave Stacy a tour of Morrison Ridge and now we’re headed home,” I said, for something to say.

  “Radical hair,” Dani said to Stacy. I could see how Stacy’s thick, straight shimmery black hair would appeal to Dani. Still, I was surprised that she said something nice to one of my friends. She’d never liked me any more than I liked her.

  “Thanks,” Stacy said.

  “Come on,” I said, starting to pedal again. “See you, Dani.”

  “Wow,” Stacy said when we were out of earshot. “She’s intense.”

  “She’s weird, is what she is,” I said. “And she’s my only cousin left in Morrison Ridge.”

  “So you have all this family living here but you two are the only kids?”

  “Right.”

  Stacy sighed. “Sounds like paradise to me,” she said, and I once again had the sense that my life was at least a little bit better than hers.

  7

  San Diego

  “How long do they predict the wait to be?” Aidan’s mother asks from the sofa in the James’s living room. She still holds a photograph album on her lap, although we’re finished looking through it.

  “The average wait is fourteen months,” Aidan says. Our nephew Oliver is on his lap, doing his best to unbuckle the strap of Aidan’s watch.

  “That’s a long time.” Aidan’s father sounds disappointed.

  “But worth it if you have a baby at th
e end of it,” Laurie says. Her gaze is on her son in Aidan’s lap and I can tell she’s debating whether or not to stop him from playing with the watch. I know Aidan could care less.

  We’ve had dinner and sorted through about a hundred photographs, looking for—and finding—good ones of Aidan and myself with Kai and Oliver that we can use in the portfolio. Now we’re relaxing over coffee and chatter in the living room. Kai is on my lap and I bend over to kiss the top of his head. I’m not sure if the boys gravitate to us or we gravitate to them, but Aidan and I always seem to end up holding them. I don’t look forward to the day the little boys no longer want to cuddle. By then, though, with any luck, we will have our own child to hold.

  Kai is nearly asleep. I love the heavy weight of him in my lap. His head rests against my breast and he still has a baby scent about him that I’m drinking in. There were moments early on when I could barely look at Kai and Oliver, much less hold them. They were born three months after I lost Sara and I had to fake much of my enthusiasm for the first few months of their lives. During that terrible time, it seemed every one of my friends was having a baby. Every magazine facing me in the grocery store checkout line had a cover article about pregnancy. And everywhere I went, women were pushing strollers or rubbing their hands over their swollen bellies. For a long time, I was filled with resentment and envy and anger. When it came to Laurie, though, I did my best to mask it. She was my sister-in-law and one of my favorite people in the world. She didn’t deserve my wrath, and with a husband who traveled constantly for his job, she needed Aidan’s and my help more than our grief and anger. Every time I saw her with those babies, though, I felt physically ill. Then, suddenly, something shifted in me and I couldn’t get enough of the twins. It was as though my hormones snapped back into balance and I was able to love again. I grew to adore those little boys and now I can’t wait to give them a cousin.

  “Is there any”—my mother-in-law hesitates, then chuckles—“quality control?” she asks.

  “Well, there wouldn’t be much quality control if it was our natural child,” Aidan says with a smirk.