Step-Ball-Change (8 page)

“Thank God Stamp didn’t bite you. At least I can still work with a couple of holes in my leg.”

“You’d sacrifice your leg for mine?”

“Any day.”

It was the sign of a good man. “Call me when you’re ready to come home.”

Tom shook his head. “Kay can give me a ride.”

I leaned over and kissed him. I tried to make it count. A person had to be diligent about kissing. Kissing was the affirmation of the
union, the secret handshake that identified its members. And even knowing how important it was, it was easy to let it slide altogether, and suddenly one day you wake up and realize that it has been weeks since you’ve kissed your husband while you’ve had any clothes on. Worse still were the kisses that became mere gestures of kissing, those hard little pecks like the kind you got from a great-aunt when you were five, kisses that weren’t kisses at all but said instead, I used to kiss you and this is the symbol that now stands in its place. It was the difference between eating a great meal and looking at a picture of food in a magazine: One made you feel full and the other only reminded you that you were hungry.

“I should get bitten by dogs more often,” Tom said softly.

I kissed him again.

“What if the district attorney sees me making out in front of the courthouse?”

“He’ll know he doesn’t have a chance,” I said.

Tom got out of the car, waved to me, and limped up the stone stairs, the bottom of his pants leg fluttering open in the afternoon breeze.

I felt a little guilty, using what had happened to Taffy to remind me that I was lucky for what I had, but I did it anyway.

T
HE SECOND
I opened the door of the house, Stamp fired off like a handgun. It was a barking all out of proportion to the size of the dog. He sounded like a pack of police-trained Dobermans charging up the hall. You had to wonder where such a little dog was storing so much hostility. Taffy had wall-to-wall carpet in her house, and so when Stamp barreled up the oak floor to my front door doing ninety-five, he couldn’t hold on to the turn and so skidded
into the door of the coat closet, stunning himself for a second. Once he got on his feet again and saw that it was only me, he came over, sniffed my ankles benignly, and headed back to the kitchen.

“Is Tom all right?” Taffy said.

“I think he’s fine.” I dropped my purse on the kitchen table. I was still dressed from dance class this morning, which would save me having to change, since I had an afternoon class to teach in an hour.

“I think he overreacted a little. Neddy never goes to the hospital.”

“He hadn’t had a tetanus shot in years.”

“Oh,” Taffy said. “Then he needed to go anyway.”

“He went because Stamp bit him.”

“But Stamp really doesn’t bite.”

At the mention of his name, Stamp came over and sat on Taffy’s feet with endearing loyalty. He looked like he wouldn’t have bitten a squirrel if it was handed to him on a plate. The dog was more convincing than Brando. “The dog bites. The dog has bitten. You need to be more careful with the dog.”

“Then it’s just our husbands he bites. Nobody else.”

“It isn’t a decision you can make.”

“You said yourself Stamp was a good dog for biting Neddy. How can he be good for biting my husband and bad for biting yours?”

“Because I love my husband.” I didn’t know if it was cruel of me to say, but it was true. “You may feel comforted by the fact that Stamp bit Neddy, but I don’t want him biting Tom or anybody else around here. We’ve got the workmen to think of, and George will be home later.”

“Stamp would never bite George.”

George was a great favorite of Taffy’s, even if she perceived him as teetering on the brink of homosexuality. “Listen, Taffy. I have a class to teach at three. I should get back over to the school pretty soon. Can we talk about this later?”

“What kind of class is it?”

“Mother-daughter tap.”

Taffy looked wistful for a minute. “I should have taken tap with Holden.”

“Were you ever able to find her?”

Taffy nodded. “I got her at four o’clock this morning. I forget what time it was in Cannes. Her secretary found her for me. She said she’d come home, but I told her not to. What could she do, really?”

“Maybe she could make you feel better.”

“That’s what you’re doing. Or that’s what you’re supposed to be doing.” She slapped her hands down flat on the table. “I’m going to come and take your class. I need to move around.” As soon as she mentioned leaving, Stamp jumped into her lap and started to shiver like he’d been dropped into an ice bucket.

“My tap class?”

“Why not? I take Pilates and step aerobics. I should be able to tap.”

Taffy in my classroom, taking my instructions? Taffy in a line of thirty-year-old mothers with their six-year-old daughters? “That wouldn’t be any fun for you.”

Taffy smiled. It was the first time she had smiled since she arrived. “What would be fun for me, exactly?”

Stamp began to whine and lick Taffy’s neck. In truth, it would be good for her to come. There was nothing like concentrating on complicated footwork to take one’s mind off of one’s problems.
Physical exhaustion was a good thing, and the thunder of tap shoes made it impossible to think. “Do you want to borrow something to wear?”

Taffy, whose combined suitcases contained more cubic feet of space than my entire closet, said she had everything she needed with her.

“You don’t have tap shoes. Please, tell me you didn’t pack a pair of tap shoes.”

“Those I forgot.”

“I’ll get you a pair.”

“Your feet are bigger than mine.”

“Our feet are exactly the same size, you just wear smaller shoes than I do.”

“You always stretched out my shoes.”

“What? Forty-five years ago I stretched out a pair of your shoes? I’m going to get you some of my tap shoes. You’ll see. They’ll be fine.”

“I can wear an extra pair of socks.”

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if my feet were bigger or our feet were the same size and she needed to believe that my feet were bigger. It made no difference in the world, and still I had to swallow my overwhelming desire to tell her to take off her shoes, right here, right now, we were going to have a look. My sister’s husband had left her. She was so lost that she was forced to turn up on my doorstep. I could find it within myself to keep my mouth shut. “I’ll bring you an extra pair of socks.”

“That would help.” Taffy put Stamp on the floor and got up to go to her room to change. The dog kept leaping up and throwing himself against her as if he were still trying to sit in her lap even though the lap was no longer available.

“What about Stamp?” I said finally.

“I thought we could take him with us to the dance school.” At the mention of this plan the little stub where I imagine there had once been a tail began to wag madly. There were certain concepts of language the dog had down cold.

“There is no way Stamp can come. The place is going to be full of children.”

“Stamp likes children.”

“I don’t have insurance that covers dog-based liability. Don’t you leave him alone in Atlanta?”

“We’re not in Atlanta.”

“Stamp can’t come.”

Taffy crouched down on the floor and took the dog’s wiry muzzle between her hands. “She says you can’t come, baby.”

And with that devastating piece of information the dog slunk off and went under the bed.

“By the way, did you get your suitcases in?” It had just occurred to me that there was no longer a hulking piece of baggage in the front hallway.

“I asked the men outside. They said if I’d lock Stamp in the bathroom, they’d bring in all of the luggage for me. The tall one, Mr. Woodrow? He said not to put all the bags on the same side of the room. He said your foundation is caving in.”

G
EORGE HAD HELD
down the fort at the dance school all afternoon, but I didn’t want him to miss criminal law. George loved criminal law. For someone who had never even thought of going to law school herself, what I knew about law school was not insignificant. Over the course of four children I had proofread papers,
typed papers (but only in a real pinch—I wasn’t much for typing), helped choose classes, and was endlessly asked to ask questions. “
San Antonio Independent School District
v.
Rodriguez
,” I said while making pancakes. “Charlie, get out the syrup. I’ll get you started here, Supreme Court, 1973.” And off they went. “
Kansas
v.
Hendricks
. Come on, this is such an easy one. Five-to-four vote upholding what lower-court decision? Think
Kansas.
” I prepped them, drilled them, and along the way I memorized a good part of it myself. And it wasn’t just classroom experience I had, there were all the closing arguments I went through with Tom, too, all the heartfelt pleas for justice that I choreographed. For the thirty-odd years he’d been a public defender, Tom had stood at the foot of our bed in his pajamas, practicing what he would say the next morning. I told him when to look at the defendant and when to make an abrupt turn toward the jury box. Whenever I could manage it, I would go down to the courthouse to watch him. I loved to watch Tom in court. I always said he could have been a dancer. He said I could have been a lawyer.

Of all of my children, George seemed to be having the least problem with law school. I was never sure if he was smarter than the rest of us or if it was just that he had spent his entire childhood in an advanced prep class, always in the backseat of the car while the people in the front seat spoke in legalese. Other first-year law students complained of having to learn another language, but George was born fluent. He didn’t ask me to drill him the way the others had, though from time to time we had conversations about cases. I think that they were more for my benefit than they were for his. I think that he just wanted to keep me up to speed.

When Taffy and I came into the studio, George was teaching three girls who had a private lesson on Wednesdays. In the wake of
everything else that had happened, I had forgotten about them completely.

“Listen to the floor, ladies!” he called out. “It sounds like the elephants are landing! You could hear that landing in the six-dollar seats. I want this light, light, light.” I was touched. It was the same speech I had been giving for years. George jumped straight up, did a brilliant full rotation in the air, and landed on the floor like a leaf on the lawn.

“Do you want to tell me it’s completely normal for a boy to be able to do that?” Taffy said.

“I don’t think it’s normal,” I said. “I think it’s exceptional.”

“
Port de bras
, ladies. You have arms and I want to see you use them. A little grace, please, a little extension.” George stretched out his arm, turned his head, and saw us. He smiled, his face flushed and damp. He left the girls in arabesque and came over with his arms stretched out to Taffy. “My favorite aunt.”

“Your only aunt,” Taffy reminded him. It was true. Tom had no sisters.

“I’m sorry,” George said before going in for the hug. “I smell like a sheep. But you, you look wonderful. You always look wonderful.”

Taffy wore a black long-sleeved leotard, black tights, and my tap shoes with a pair of socks she didn’t need. She had tied a jewel blue sarong around her waist that made the whole thing look smart, like maybe she was going to a dance class and maybe she was going out to dinner. “Now I know why I came here. All the McSwains know how to lie.”

The three girls from the class slumped against the barre as soon as George turned his back on them. “On the floor, stretch it out,” I said. “We’ve got another group coming in.” The three of
them sank down to the floor in full splits and pressed their bony chests toward the wood. Little ballerinas can be sullen, but they are endlessly obedient.

“That Katrina is a real swayback. You could set a cup of tea down on that girl’s ass. You have to watch her every minute.”

“I’ll watch her,” I said.

“Do you want me to do the tap?” George asked. “You don’t have to stay.”

“No,” Taffy said.

“I’m sorry I left you here all afternoon. Taffy came in and then Stamp bit your father and we had to go to the hospital.”

“Stamp doesn’t bite,” Taffy said, seeming to imply that perhaps I had bitten Tom and was trying to pin it on the dog.

“The hospital?”

“He’s fine. He just needed a tetanus shot.”

“Never a dull moment.” George looked at the clock.

“Go to class,” I said.

“Change clothes,” Taffy said.

“There isn’t time. If I run now I’ll just make it.” George gave us both a quick kiss and went flying for the door.

“You can’t go to law school dressed like that!” Taffy said.

“They’ve already seen it all! We’ll talk tonight,” he called back to Taffy. “I want to hear everything.”

But Taffy only waved. I don’t think she particularly felt like telling everything to any of us.

chapter six