Pretending to Dance (21 page)

Tomorrow, Daddy and Russell and I were heading out of town for the book tour. That meant no hope at all of seeing or talking to Chris. Not that he was exactly getting in touch with me as it was, but at least with me being at home there was hope.

I was deep into
Forever
when I heard a car coming up our road. Because of all the trees, we always heard a car long before we could see it, and I peered through the woods, curious to know who was coming. Dani's little green car appeared after a moment, turning into our driveway.

I tensed. In spite of everything Amalia had told me about Dani being my father's princess before I came along, I disliked her even more than before now that I'd seen the mess she and her parents had left for Amalia to clean up. Dani's room had been especially disgusting, with plates of hardened food on the dresser and clothes knee-deep on the floor.

Dani parked her car near our porch steps. She got out, opened the rear door, and reached into the backseat for a stack of cookie sheets I knew Mom wanted to borrow from Aunt Claudia. She needed them to make appetizers for the midsummer party.

I stood up, tucking
Forever
upside down in the corner of the glider. I didn't want Dani to see what I was reading.

“Hi,” I said, as she climbed the porch steps. “Do you need any help?”

She didn't answer, and when she'd reached the porch, she stood looking at me, holding the stack of cookie sheets in her arms like a pile of giant books. She had on sunglasses and when she moved them to the top of her head, her black-rimmed eyes came into view. “So,” she said, “what's going on with you and Chris Turner?”

Wow. How did she know anything? Yet I felt a thrill that my one brief encounter with Chris had been enough to start rumors.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I said.

“Don't give me that innocent look. I know you hooked up with him.”

“How can you know anything?”

“He told me. I saw him at the mall.”

I hated the thought of him talking to her.
Hated
it! I tried to keep my voice calm. “What did he say?” I asked.

She shifted the cookie sheets in her arms. “Wouldn't you like to know,” she said.

My cheeks burned, and I walked back to the glider and sat down. “Whatever,” I said to her, as if I didn't care. To be honest, I was afraid to know what he'd said.

She sat down on one of the rockers near the glider, laying the cookie sheets flat on her lap. “Listen, Molly,” she said. “Chris hooks up with everybody, so don't get hung up on him. He doesn't think you're anyone special, okay? I don't want you to get hurt.”

I tried to laugh, but I thought I sounded as though I was being strangled. “Oh,” I said, “for the first time in my life, you're looking out for me.”

“Come on,” she said, her blue eyes intent on mine. “We're cousins. When it comes right down to it, we have to take care of each other, so of course I'd look out for you.” She sounded so sincere, I almost believed her. “And he's bad news for you,” she continued. “He'll take advantage of you because you're a baby and he knows you don't know anything.”

“I can take care of myself, thank you,” I said. And thanks to
Forever,
I thought, knew a whole lot more than I had hours earlier.

Dani sighed and stood up. “There's a cooler in the backseat of my car,” she said. “Can you get it? Aunt Nora wants to borrow it.”

I tromped down the steps, my cheeks still burning over the thought of Chris talking to her about me. Did he make fun of my kissing, or my flat chest, or how easily I got stoned, or … something? I lugged the cooler out of the backseat and carried it up the steps and into the house, where the smell of shit instantly stung my nostrils, and I knew Daddy'd had an accident. Danielle had set the cookie sheets on the kitchen counter and now had her hand over her mouth as though she might get sick.

“Oh my God,” she said, “I've got to get out of here.”

She swept past me toward the living room and the front door, and I felt embarrassed for my father. This was happening more often these days, at least once a month, and it seemed to happen with no rhyme or reason that I could tell. I could hear my mother and Russell talking with him in the bedroom.

I walked back outside where Dani stood on the porch, gulping fresh air. She looked at me.

“That is so gross,” she said.

“It's not his fault.”

She looked toward the front door. “His life really sucks,” she said.

“No it doesn't,” I snapped. “You have no right to say that.”

“He's so trapped,” she said. “He must feel like his life is totally worthless.”

My hands formed fists at my sides, I was so angry. “Worthless?” I shouted. “His life is a hundred times more”—I hunted for a word that would counter her
worthless
—“more valuable than
your
father's,” I said. “
My
father helps people every single day. What does your father do? He's either hauling junk or sitting around killing himself smoking or making beer, which is so incredibly stupid and … plus, it stinks!”

She stared at me. “Wow, you're turning into an incredible bitch.” She laughed an ugly laugh and pointed toward the house. “And you say
my
father stinks?”

I lunged for her, filled with an explosive hatred I'd never felt before. Knocking her to the floor of the porch, I straddled her and smashed my fist into her face. I felt momentarily out of my mind as I felt my knuckles connect with her cheek. She howled with pain, and that sound snapped me back to reality. What was I
doing
?

I leaped to my feet quickly, locking my hands behind my back, suddenly afraid of my anger. Dani slowly sat up, her hand on her red cheek, tears burning in her eyes. “You spoiled little bitch!” she shouted. “You don't even belong here. You and your twisted family. Aunt Nora should have just said no when your whore mother dumped you here. We all would have been better off without the two of you.”

“She didn't ‘dump' me,” I said. “She offered me to them. Mom couldn't have children, and—”

“
Offered
you?” Dani laughed. She opened and closed her mouth, her hand on her cheek, as if testing how badly I'd hurt her. The skin over her cheekbone was already bruising. “Who told you that fairy tale?” she asked.

I knew I had it wrong. I knew that wasn't exactly how my father had described the situation to me, but it was close enough.

“It's not a fairy tale.” I rubbed the hand I'd hit her with. My knuckles had a buzzing feeling. “Amalia couldn't take good care of a baby, so she brought me to my father, and that's when—”

“You weren't a
baby.
” Dani got to her feet, slowly, holding on to the arm of the rocker, and I took a step back from her. “You were two years old.”

“No,” I corrected her. “I was a baby.”

“No, you were
two.
” She dusted the seat of her black jeans with her hands. “I should know,” she said. “I was five and I remember everyone saying how you could be my playmate and I'm, like, rolling my eyes because you were just
two.
Amalia's social worker dragged her here and they dumped you on Uncle Graham and poor Aunt Nora. Aunt Nora had to take you in to hold on to Uncle Graham. You probably aren't even his.”

The image I'd had of Amalia standing on our doorstep, holding me—a tiny infant swaddled in a soft blanket—and presenting me to my father, began to break apart.

Dani leaned against the porch railing. “You had sores on you,” she said. “Some neighbor of Amalia's turned her in for neglect. She was crazy. You know she was a patient at that loony bin where your father worked before they hired her as a so-called dance teacher, right? Nobody wanted her to live here, but Uncle Graham insisted and he always got whatever he wanted.” She looked toward the house again, where I imagined Mom and Russell were changing my father into clean clothing. I thought I saw a flash of sincere sympathy cross my cousin's face. “Now I guess he's paying for it,” she said.

“I don't believe any of this,” I said. I pulled open the door and stomped into the house, slamming the door behind me. The air was filled now with the citrusy scent of air freshener. I stood with my back against the door and breathed it in, doing my best to clear my head of the last miserable thirty minutes.

 

28

 

An hour later, I was once again reading on the glider when Russell pushed Daddy onto the porch. I was only
trying
to read, actually, because everything Dani had said to me was running backward and forward through my head, not leaving much room for anything else. The air on the porch still felt tainted by her ugly words.

“Here you are,” Daddy said, as if he'd been searching the house for me. “Can you take a break from your book to do some typing for me? I want to jot down a few notes for tomorrow's radio interview.”

“Okay,” I said, closing my book and getting slowly to my feet.

“Such enthusiasm!” Daddy teased. “Would you rather do it later tonight?”

“No, now's fine.” I looked at Russell. “I can push him inside,” I said. I thought it was the first time I'd looked squarely at Russell since the big mess at Stacy's, and I was relieved when he smiled at me.

“Give a shout if you need me, Graham,” Russell said, walking back inside the house.

I struggled a bit getting the wheelchair over the threshold into the house. I didn't have a good grip on the handles, thanks to the paperback book in my hand, but once we were inside it was smooth sailing. I felt emotional as I pushed him down the hallway. I remembered a stomach virus that came on me at school when I was nine years old. I would never forget the embarrassment of not making it to the bathroom in time. Was there anything more humiliating? And I'd only been a kid. He was a grown man who needed diapers. Who couldn't wipe his own bottom. I looked down at the top of his head where the gray strands were beginning to crowd out the black at his temples, and at his hands where they rested on the arms of his chair like curled white shells. I was so overcome with love for him that I stopped the chair in the middle of the hallway and leaned over to hug him, my cheek pressed against his temple.

“Hey,” he said, his voice soft. “What's that for?”

“I love you,” I said, holding on to him for so long that it must have seemed weird to him.

“What's going on, Moll?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said, getting a grip on myself, and I stood up straight and started pushing him again.

*   *   *

In his office, I took my usual place in front of his computer. I set my book on the desk and held my hands above the keys.

“So, what are you reading now?” he asked. I could see he was trying to check out the title, but even though Russell had replaced Daddy's headrest with his old one, he still couldn't crane his neck well enough to see the cover of the book.

“Oh, just this story,” I said. “It's called
Forever
.”

“Judy Blume's
Forever
?” he asked.

I felt my cheeks go hot. Was there any book I could safely read without him knowing about it?

“Uh-huh,” I said easily, as if we were talking about Nancy Drew or
Little Women.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“It's all right.” I sounded as though
Forever
was the most boring thing I'd ever read. I risked looking at him. “You sound like you've read it or something,” I said.

He made a little motion with his head that I knew was his attempt at a shrug. “Well, it's been around a long time and I work with teenagers,” he said, which still didn't tell me if he'd read it. I hoped not. “Do you know it was banned in some places?”

“That's stupid,” I said. I was afraid he was about to ban it right here in my house.

“I agree completely,” he said. “I'm not big on banning books. So,” he said, smiling, “what have you learned from reading it?”

“I'm not very far into it,” I lied, then added in mock exasperation, “and we're supposed to be
working,
here, aren't we?”

“You're right,” he said, letting me off the hook.

He began spouting off ideas he wanted to cover in his interviews and I typed them in a list with bullet points. Then we rearranged them into an order he liked, and I printed the list for him.

“Are we all done?” I asked, once the paper had come out of the printer. I set it on a corner of the desk where he'd be able to read it from his chair.

“Almost,” he said. “But I wanted to talk to you about something.”

Oh no.
Chris? Stacy? Judy Blume? I braced myself. “What about?” I asked.

“Mom said she overheard you and Dani having some sort of … altercation earlier.”

“Oh,” I said. “Dani hates me.”

“I doubt that.”

“Yes she does.”

“Well, just remember there's a fine line between love and hate,” he said. He tipped his head and I felt him searching my face. “So is everything okay with you two?”

I shrugged. “It's fine,” I said. “Though I sort of … beat her up.”

His eyes flew open. “Is she all right?”

“Yes, but I bruised her cheek, I think.”

“Molly! Are you kidding me?”

“She really pissed me off!”

“What about?”

I wasn't going to get into Dani's reaction to his accident, but there were plenty of other issues in our conversation that I'd love to get his reaction to. And so I poured it all out. How, according to Dani, Amalia hadn't shown up alone on our doorstep but rather with a social worker, and how I'd been two years old, not a baby, and how I'd had sores on my body, and how Amalia had been a patient at the hospital before she was a dance teacher, and—finally—how I'd actually been dumped on him and my mother rather than offered to them like a precious gift. I watched his face as I ticked off each hurtful thing Dani had told me, wishing he would shake his head
no
at each new revelation. Instead, he only nodded, not uttering a word, his face sober, frown lines between his eyebrows.