The Dance

by Suzie Carr

  “I don’t care.” Jacky picked up the speed a little, but not enough to stop the beeping idiot behind them. “Let’s talk about her.”

  Sophie feared the car would rear-end them. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Just drive normal.”

  Jacky sighed, then pulled over and stopped the car. The other car passed her and honked the horn. She exhaled and bowed her head. “I miss her too.”

  Sophie chewed on the idea of not telling her what she saw. But instead, Sophie decided to act more like a bee. “I saw you.”

  Jacky swallowed hard, the kind where Sophie could see a small lump roll down the front of her throat. “You saw what exactly?”

  “I saw you and Brooke in the kitchen. I was out back, and I saw you.”

  Jacky looked away, trying to hide the look of shame creeping on her face. She took a few out-of-control breaths, then bit her lip. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “She likes you.”

  Pain stretched across Jacky’s face.

  Sophie felt bad for her. She liked her better happy. “I think it’s really cool,” Sophie said.

  Jacky’s pain smoothed instantly like someone pulled the string of a mini blind and pulled them up. “Really?”

  “Like I said before, she makes you happy.”

  Jacky’s eyebrows furrowed. “I still love your mom.”

  Sophie bit her lip and nodded, afraid the tears would come if she spoke.

  An awkward pause ensued.

  “We just danced,” Jacky said so low Sophie barely heard her. “Nothing else happened.”

  Their roles reversed and now Sophie took the helm, listening as Jacky defended herself. Brooke was a good person, and Sophie really enjoyed how lighthearted she felt when around them together. But she still pitied her mother. She’d never have that second chance to fall in love again. “It’s okay. It really is.”

  “We didn’t even kiss. I couldn’t bring myself to cross that line.”

  Sophie grappled with conflicting emotions. One part of her wanted Jacky happy and in love, the other feared how that would hit her whenever her mother came to mind in that context. “Even I kiss,” Sophie said, staring straight out the front window.

  “You kiss? Who do you kiss?”

  Sophie laughed. “Boys.”

  “A lot of them?”

  She shrugged. She had to have some secrets in life. Time to change the subject. “Are you ever afraid you’ll forget Mom?”

  “I could never forget her, kiddo.”

  “Sometimes I get scared because I can’t remember what Mom looks like.” She twirled a piece of her hair, seeking comfort in its constant presence in her life. “I can’t remember the exact color of her eyes or how she smelled.”

  Jacky twisted her jaw. She did that often when uncomfortable. “We should talk about her more.”

  “I just wish she was here,” Sophie said. “That’s all I meant.”

  “What do you say we go visit your mom at the urn garden?”

  Sophie massaged the memory bead Jacky had gotten both of them after the cremation. She hadn’t gone to the urn garden in a while. Jacky invited her often, but she didn’t want her staring over her shoulder as she talked to her mom. But in that moment, she needed her mother, and her mom needed them. It was a beautiful day, and the sun would be setting just enough to cast a golden light on her memory stone. She wanted to see that light. “If you want to, sure.”

  “She would like it.”

  “Yeah,” Sophie said, easing into a careful smile. “I think she would too.”

  ~ ~

  Jacky pulled into Swan Cemetery and into her usual parking spot, alongside the small stucco chapel. She visited Drew every week since her death. She sat at her memory stone and told her everything that happened during the week. Well, everything except for her times with Brooke. She never brought her up except for the one time she talked about Sophie’s new apiary and nursery job. Some things didn’t belong in those moments, and a growing affinity toward a beautiful woman definitely topped that list.

  “Isn’t her spot farther away from here?” Sophie asked.

  “It is, but the way they carved these narrow roads, I prefer parking here and walking. I always get in the way of a funeral procession.”

  “Alright.” Sophie climbed out of the passenger seat and stretched.

  They walked the narrow road in silence, Sophie likely uncomfortable and Jacky, well, contemplating the softness of Brooke’s cheek against hers. Those flutters, very familiar to her now, were taking up flight in places they shouldn’t. Especially when visiting the memory stone of her beloved spouse.

  Jacky attempted to clear her mind so she could focus on Drew. She always liked to talk with her about a memory they shared. Reminiscing brought her back to the present moment, keeping her in her heart.

  As they walked, Jacky remembered back to the day Drew baked her a birthday cake and dropped it as she walked over to the table. The cake glowed with thirty-five candles at the time. Drew was terrified of fire, so her eyes were glued to the flames. She didn’t see the present from Marie and Hazel on the floor as she closed in on the table of friends. She smacked right into it and toppled over, landing right on top of the cake and extinguishing its flames. Do you remember the icing smeared all over your face, sweetheart?

  Jacky continued to walk, hanging on to the lightness of Drew. As they got closer, Jacky noticed someone with a hat bent over at Drew’s stone. She squinted to get a closer look at the person. Was she sobbing?

  Did the woman have the correct spot? Did Jacky?

  She stopped, spun around to catch her bearings. Everything always looked the same in a cemetery; same arched-shaped headstones, flowers, trees. Of course she had the right location. She knew the site like she knew her own home.

  Who was that woman and why was she sobbing?

  Sophie walked and texted, already ten paces ahead, unaware of the sobbing woman.

  Jacky jogged to catch up, and suddenly, the woman looked up to the sky. Jacky recognized her profile. “Is that Ashley’s Mom?”

  Sophie stopped and looked up. “What is she doing here?”

  “I’m as confused as you.”

  Kate looked up to the sky, face strained, hands folded in prayer, as if pleading with God. She sobbed, choked, and begged with the expansive cloudless sky.

  “I guess she misses Mom, too?” Sophie asked in a strange little echo of a voice.

  Kate entered heavily into Drew’s life about six months before she died. They became quick friends and spent most every night together at the dojo. Her blood ran cold as they stood under the bright, blue sky and watched her fall apart. Jealousy corked its way through her sensibility.

  Kate and her husband ended up divorced. Did Drew talk Kate into getting a divorce? Did Kate ever encourage Drew to divorce her? Did they talk about such intimate things? By the looks of her sorrow, Kate likely pulled Drew down the road of intimate revelations and tough decisions.

  A friend who sobbed like her would’ve been privy to the inner folds of their marriage. Did Drew confide in her about everyday irritations like when Jacky left the toothbrush off the charger? Did she run to her every time they argued, telling her every last detail of her side and little of Jacky’s? That’s what best friends did. They whispered to each other in the corner of a dark room late into the night, venting about spilled juice and snoring. Did she know about the dishwasher argument when she yelled at Drew for piling everything on top of each other? Or what about the time Jacky wouldn’t talk to her for three days because of a fight they had over how she folded her socks inside out and stretched them to the point they fell off her feet.

  They could talk for years over Jacky’s terrible habits and quirks. No wonder they grew close enough to merit sobs.

  Kate’s crying annoyed Jacky, suddenly. Her bowed head and jerking shoulders stunk of undeserved rights. What right did she have to mourn her after two and a half years? Did she hug Drew on those nights when she worried when her mam
mogram showed a suspicious spot? Did she cook her chicken soup when she got a cold? Did she place a heating pad on her tummy each month when her menstrual cramps proved too painful? Jacky earned that sobbing spot, not her friend.

  Jacky panted and huffed air like Bee did in her front window perch. “I didn’t realize she suffered over your mom like this.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Does Ms. Kate ever talk about her?” The irritation curled up around her words.

  Sophie blinked. “Sort of, I guess.”

  Jacky looked around, unsettled. What was it? Shame? Bitterness? Guilt? Perhaps a culmination of all three. How did she not know her wife had a best friend who would sob at her urn two and a half years later? How did a wife not know that? Drew would never be surprised to find Marie or Hazel at her site sobbing. Drew knew every nook and cranny of Jacky’s life. She knew before Jacky sneezed. She knew when Jacky craved chocolate, when she needed a foot rub, hell even when she needed to be left alone. Drew only had to take one look at her and she knew.

  Jacky screwed up in the feelings and perception department.

  Was she not enough for Drew? Did Drew need more, more than Jacky had in her? Did Drew not view her as her best friend?

  Did Kate know more of her secrets than even Jacky?

  “Should we give her privacy? Let her finish up?” Sophie asked. She arched her eyebrow, still watching Kate’s over-the-top mourning.

  Jacky shrugged. “Probably.” A gritty sadness rubbed itself all over her insides. “What should we do?” Jacky couldn’t decide for them. “Should we get back in the car?”

  Just then, Kate turned toward them. She jumped to her feet and wiped her eyes, fumbling for composure. “Oh, hello you two,” she called out, waving a tissue at them. It flew out of her hand and floated to the ground. She chased it, attempting to stomp on it. It kept getting away from her, and she kept stomping. Finally, she succeeded and bent down to pick it up. She once again waved it at them. “I guess I got my exercise for the day.” A strange guttural laugh followed her words.

  Jacky walked toward her. “I didn’t think anyone else visited Drew’s site anymore.”

  Tears smudged her mascara. “I try and come once in a while.” She sniffled and blew her nose on the tissue she just saved from blowing away, the same tissue that her shoe just stomped. Even with red swollen eyes, she was pretty. Her freckles dotted her cheeks, giving her face an innocent, youthful glow. She had perfect hair, too. It hung in long waves past her shoulders and flipped in all the right places.

  “I knew you both spent a lot of time at the dojo together,” Jacky said. “I guess I didn’t realize that you were so close.”

  “We grew to be good friends as we punched and kicked each other at the dojo.” Her eyes still sparkled despite the tears and smeared mascara. “I miss her punches and kicks.”

  “I can see that.” Jacky wrapped her arm around Sophie’s shoulder, staking claim to the only thing she could, her daughter.

  Sophie leaned into Jacky as if sensing her fall down the hill of despair and regret. That little action might’ve gone unnoticed by many, but for Jacky, it saved her in that moment, like a life raft coming into view in an unforgiving, landless ocean.

  “It’s weird,” Sophie said in a small voice. “You never told me you come to visit with her.”

  Kate placed her hand to her chest and collected herself. “I didn’t want to add to the sadness.”

  “Even I don’t cry like you were,” Sophie said. “She meant a lot to you, I guess.”

  “No other friend cared about me like she did. She always knew how to turn a tough situation around. You know?”

  “Like with your divorce?” Sophie stared her down.

  The question rocked Kate off her feet. She braced against the memory bench of a Mrs. Camille Garner, a mother and wife who died thirty-two years ago.

  Sophie’s stare could cut holes in metal if the right answers didn’t come out. Sophie protected her mother, and would mow anyone down who messed with her legacy. Just last month, a girl’s mom from her soccer team commented about how Drew loved to gossip, and Sophie stepped up to that woman’s shocked face, pointing her little finger at her and barked out a warning. When it came to her mother, Sophie was just as much a scrapper as Drew had been.

  “Your mother told me to stick it out,” Kate said, then looked to Jacky. “She told me to stay loyal to my commitment and work on my marriage.”

  Jacky blinked and looked down at her wife’s stone. Of course you did, Drew. “That’s the kind of person Drew was.”

  The three of them stared at the stone and bowed their heads, each caught up in their silence.

  A wave of refreshing relief passed through Jacky, relief for putting to rest a silly knocking in the back of her mind hinting the unthinkable had transpired beneath her very nose. They were friends. Great friends. Drew talked her out of divorce, not into it. They weren’t lovers. They were friends.

  Everyone needed such a friend, the kind Jacky used to be for Drew before life took over and responsibilities bore down on their daily life.

  Outsiders were lucky because they had a certain freedom with Drew that Jacky didn’t have. They weren’t the ones pressing on her to be home by five, to get the right apples at the grocery store, and to fold the clothes correctly. Friends like Kate came lint free, looking fresh and not reeking of the foulness that routine often put into a married couple’s life.

  Jacky imagined them having long talks over cinnamon tea, Drew’s favorite, in the quiet corners of a café as their daughters practiced cheerleading moves in a nearby park. Drew knew how to carry on an interesting conversation, and she passed out great advice. Mainly to others. She rarely advised Jacky on anything because it always ended in a fight, usually by Jacky’s doing. She hated being attacked or criticized, and dove into defense mode. How many intimate talks had she missed out on over cinnamon tea cups? How many had Kate gained as a result?

  She gulped back a bit of jealousy and regret. More questions poked at Jacky as they stood around her stone. What secrets did the two of them share in those final months? Did she know Drew feared the dark and preferred sleeping with a nightlight? Did Drew tell her about the time she babysat and saw a ghost?

  She regretted allowing life to cut away beautiful intimate conversations about philosophical things like love and marriage and commitments. Jacky unknowingly pushed Drew into those conversations with strangers, who later became friends, because Jacky lacked the confidence to accept the volley and return it.

  “Well, I don’t want to infringe on your time here. I should get going.” Kate spun around to check the spot, like she’d forgotten something. “Okay then. I’ll be on my way.” She brushed past them, sniffling. “Oh, Hey, Sophie,” she said, stopping and placing her hand on Sophie’s arm. “Do you want hamburgers tomorrow after debate practice?”

  “Sure,” Sophie said with more reservation than usual. “That’d be nice.”

  “Great.” Kate nodded to them and walked away, leaving Jacky alone to face the wave of jealousy pounding at her, threatening to topple her right there at the entrance to Drew’s sacred memory.

  A series of sobs convulsed somewhere deep inside of Jacky. She didn’t want to lose it in front of Sophie, to let her see the regret for how she failed to appreciate her mother toward the end.

  Sophie looked at her with pity, masked as sorrow. Pity sucked. It meant hope had long ago flown away and left her without any mechanism to set things right. Sophie had heard so many of their stupid quarrels about things that, in the grand scheme of life, didn’t matter one bit.

  Jacky caused this nightmare. If Jacky had kept her mouth shut that morning and acted like a normal human being instead of some rabid wild animal always trying to be the right one in the argument, maybe they’d be sharing a delicious pizza at their favorite restaurant and laughing about something simple and jovial that happened in Sophie’s day. Something precious and undeniably refreshing.

  In life and
in death, she failed her wife.

  She kneeled in front of the stone consumed with regret for being foolish enough to forget all the pain she had caused as she carried on with life. Drew was dead. She was alive. That notion reeked of absurdity.

  She pictured Drew viewing her dance with Brooke, and saw sadness. Her heart ached. I’m sorry I shunned you today.

  She began to cry. The tears rolled steadily down her cheeks faster than she could catch them.

  “I wish I had been a better friend to your mom,” Jacky managed to say in between sobs.

  Sophie placed her hand on Jacky’s shoulder. “You were always Mom’s best friend. Don’t ever forget that.”

  Sophie’s maturity poked another hole in Jacky’s strength, causing her to topple over on herself in a wave of hysteric bucks. “It’s so unfair.” Drew didn’t deserve the cruelty of death while Jacky enjoyed soulful afternoons dancing to the beat of someone else’s heart, someone as beautiful as Brooke.

  Sophie wrapped her arm around Jacky and remained the stronger of the two, offering Jacky much more than she deserved.

  Jacky placed her hand on Drew’s stone. “I didn’t mean to let you go, sweetheart.”

  Sophie cradled her shoulder. “She knows.”

  Did she?

  Sophie continued to console her, standing in as the temporary adult.

  ~ ~

  When they returned home, Sophie sat in her bedroom, staring at the letter again. It didn’t mean anything to her anymore. The words sat lifeless, evoking no sharp blows as they once had. Instead of filling her with resolve, they hung about like meaningless dust.

  Jacky was innocent. Her mother was the guilty one. Sophie had seen that with her own eyes. Over the years, Sophie denied that to herself, but the truth blinded her now. How dare Ms. Kate show up at her mother’s urn garden? She didn’t belong there, just as surely as her lips hadn’t belonged on her mother’s that night she caught them kissing.

  Should she tell Jacky? Did she have the right to know? Would it do her any good to hear that truth now, after all this time? Would she turn into even more of a moral obligation?