Hug Dancing

by Shelby Hearon

  “Nice of you to come over, Theo,” he said, remembering they’d met at the PTA. “I don’t know what she would have done, my Cile, here by herself. I thought I was going to go into cardiac arrest seeing that news item and wondering if she’d seen it, too. We owe you. We owe you, both of us do.”

  “She’s my prize student, Mr.—Shorty. I’d have come anytime. I just wish she’d picked up that phone sooner. But it makes me feel real good that it was me she turned to.”

  The rest was pretty obvious: they were thanking each other and hugging each other and before long they were doing whatever it was that fat people did together under the covers, and then one day, what seemed to me like about two weeks, Miss Moore announced to me (actually they’d discreetly waited until I was out of high school) that she and my daddy were going to tie the knot. I think she honestly thought I’d be tickled pink. I was anything but. I thought him fickle and faithless and callous, interested only in his gut and what nice meals he was going to have. I thought her calculating and pushy and looking to get herself a man even though she was already on the other side of thirty-five. I hated them both, sobbing myself to sleep the night she broke the news.

  Then, when I dried my eyes, took note of the clear skies, when I could read that a big hurricane with a name that began with B was squalling out in the Gulf without coming unglued, I looked around for Andy. But he was gone. I called his daddy’s office: disconnected. I thought maybe his parents had divorced, so I went by his house: a FOR SALE sign was in the yard. Then he seemed to get enclosed in the other loss, wrapped up in it, as if the driving rain had dashed all my past against a brick wall.

  All of which old stuff meant that I couldn’t land over there in Birdville while the Trinity and now the Brazos were wreaking havoc. I didn’t want to see that it didn’t remind them of anything; that they weren’t still tender on the nerve endings every time a flash flood washed away a car.

  The deejay on the Best Country in the City was dredging up all his rain songs (“Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” “Singin’ in the Rain”), and my girls, when they came by to see if I was surviving, since I couldn’t move furniture or remove siding in all this extravagant weather, showed a rare flash of humor by both appearing in SAVE THE WETLANDS T-shirts.

  It hadn’t dawned on me, not once, wrapped up as I was in reminiscence of a mournful kind, what the fact of Dallas County’s being underwater meant for Drew. And it was days before he got word to me.

  I checked with Theo—to say that the flooding was messing up my move and to hear that it was messing up Shorty’s fishing—and she said, “That boy’s been trying to reach you. Wait a minute, I’ve got a number here. Hang on. You’re hard to get hold of. We were thinking about you.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “You been avoiding us because of that woman drowned on the two-lane up there south of West.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No need. You have a right to take care of old business your way.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “No need for that, girl. I know what you’re feeling. The way things are doesn’t change the way things were.”

  “That’s deep.”

  “I’m practicing up for the Academy students.”

  “I’ll come by to use your phone, mine isn’t in, if that’s okay.”

  “Too late for lunch. How about supper? Your daddy’s sitting in there staring out the window, telling himself every hour on the hour that in the long run this is a big help. That when the water’s high, baby fish that would usually be eaten by big fish can hide out in the grass and weeds underwater, bass and stripers. That five years from now he’ll be fishing rivers of plenty.”

  “Sounds like he’s in bad shape.”

  “He saw the story about the drowning, too.”

  “I forget sometimes he doesn’t have a heart of fish bones.”

  “You forget a man never gets over his wife dying on her way to meet another man.”

  I looked out at the weather. “I forget a lot of things, I guess. Including that you were a big help.”

  “Tell your young man to come have supper, too. Shorty’d like to see him again.”

  “We’ll see. He may be at the farm.”

  The number I got for Drew, which I didn’t wait to use from their house, but called from a pay phone, since it was local, was his house, what I thought of, had always thought of, as Mary Virginia’s house. I wouldn’t have called him there in half a million years, but if he’d gone to the trouble to track me down, then I guessed I better use it fast. Maybe she was standing by his side and had to hear him say in my ear that he was sticking by his wife and wished I’d leave him alone.

  “Williams residence.” It was the Swedish contingent. Lord, what was I supposed to do?

  “I have a call for Andrew Williams.” I tried to sound like a telephone operator.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Long silence.

  “Hello.” He sounded as if he’d like to bite nails in two.

  “This is the party you’ve been trying to reach, sir.”

  “Cile? Goddammit, where are you? I tried the parsonage and that Dr. Song answered so I hung up on her. Then I checked your name with information, no listing. I couldn’t remember your dad’s first name—or if he had one—but I knew Guest, since that was you, and I knew Birdville, so I looked in the book and there were Edgar and Theo on Nightingale. I said it’s got to be them. When I got your dad and asked him ‘Where’s Cile?’ he said, ‘Who wants to know?’ ‘Andy Williams,’ I said, thinking that’s how he’d remember me, and he said, ‘You the boyfriend?’ I said, ‘I’m the boyfriend.’ ‘She’s not here,’ he said, which he could have told me right off. I asked him, polite, ‘How can I reach her?’ ‘You got two arms, used to have.’ He hasn’t changed a bit.”

  I could imagine the conversation. “Why are you at home calling? What’s the matter?”

  “My in-laws had to get out of Dallas. They’re at the farm, waiting for the waters of the Trinity to go back down so they can go home and reclaim their Park Cities’ Georgian Colonial Second Empire Queen Anne homes.”

  I laughed, thinking of his boys: architects in training. “You ever seen their houses?”

  “More than once. One style piled on the other. You’d have to see to believe. Quarter of a million they were running when we got married.”

  “Trey and Jock must have visited up there.”

  “What is this? What’s going on? I’m trying to tell you that the locusts have descended on Granddad’s property, and you’re getting wet thinking about Romanesque English Tudor mansard mansions in Dallas.”

  “I’m getting wet because I’m standing in a phone booth at the corner of Lago Lake Drive and the Fairgrounds.”

  “There’s a phone booth there? I can’t picture it. Which corner?”

  “While you’re dry and snug and Olga the milkmaid serves you coffee from a silver service.”

  “Sorry. Look, don’t get in a huff.”

  “Snit. I’m getting in a snit, trying to get some news.”

  “They’re up there, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Mary Virginia’s mother, her sister, her sister’s husband, who is crying in his Beefeaters because he’s lost more than the rest of us ever see in a lifetime. He’s lost his—don’t those phone booths have a door, honey, did you pull it shut?—mallard duck collection. Doesn’t that sock it to you right here? Plus he and his partner, they’re both named John, everyone in Dallas is named John, the women are named Bitsy. That’s what Emvee’s sister’s named, Bitsy. That’s what they call her, Emvee. Anyway, the Johns have lost their drawers on ParkGate for sure in the flood.”

  “Drew, wet feet here on Lago Lake. The South Bosque is over the tops of the banks and running down the street.”

  “Don’t you hear me? I’m saying we can’t meet up at the farm. We can’t go up to the farm and everything is on hold, on account of the land in question being more or less under the waters of the Trinity at this
point. I wonder if the supercollider people have budgeted in Flash Flood of the Decade costs.”

  “So Mary Virginia is there?”

  “That’s right, playing den mother.”

  “So you’re here.”

  “I’m here. You’re talking to me.”

  “I’m here, too. Why aren’t we here together?”

  “Where? Where can we go?” He was almost shouting at me.

  “I have a house, Drew.”

  “It’s for the berries, ha, ha.”

  “It’s old; I thought you liked old.”

  “There’s old and there’s old. It’s old, but not old.”

  “My consulting architects say it’s vintage.”

  “I can’t remember if I put the bikes where they can’t get to them.”

  “I’m going to hang up. I hate phone sex.”

  “God, honey, wait. I’m going nuts. I don’t know what’s going on. Them up there at the farm, trashing it, probably. Me down here baby-sitting these preppies.”

  “How’s Lila Beth taking all this?”

  “Has the flu. Can’t come to the phone.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I’ll have to bring the boys with me Saturday, if I can locate them in this acre of mowed carpet.”

  “What’s Saturday?”

  “Cinco de Mayo. I guess you’ve been leading too busy a social life to remember.”

  “I am not dating. I am not dating anyone including you.” I took a breath, inhaled, exhaled. “Sorry about your eardrum.”

  “I get out of my mind, everything being nuts like this, them up there and me down here.”

  “I’ll have my girls with me, too, now that you mention it. Weekend visitation has begun.”

  “If it’s still raining, they’re holding it in the Shrine Temple Hall.”

  “If not—?”

  “Heart of Texas Fairgrounds. I thought you said you used to go, looking for me. You forget?” His voice had an injured tone.

  “I remember. That’s in walking distance of my house on Huckleberry, my new old house.” Mine did, too.

  “We’ll just meet there, okay? I’m not going to be able to call you. This took two days.”

  “We’ll meet there.”

  “Where?”

  “Rosa’s Chalupas,” I said.

  “How do you know there’s a Rosa’s Chalupas?”

  “I made it up.”

  “Nearest thing, then.”

  “Nearest thing.” I didn’t care if we were in the Shrine hall, or under a tent, or in a windowless beer joint or in the kitchen at the farm. I just wanted us dancing again, holding tight, moving to music.

  “Oh, God, Cile, I’m steaming up this bedroom with its half acre of manicured broadloom.”

  “Visibility in this phone booth is one inch. So’s the water in my shoes.”

  “I wish things would get back to normal.”

  “What time Saturday?” I asked.

  “Let’s go early, so we’re not pushing through ten thousand people, but late enough so we can afford to feed the kids until the band starts.”

  “Five o’clock?”

  “Five’s good. I don’t suppose the preppies will be having a tennis match in this weather.”

  “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “We had the four of them along at Czech Fest. That won’t be bad, having them along again.”

  “Yeah.”

  It WASN’T THAT I forgot when Cinco de Mayo was—the Fifth of May—because that was Drew’s birthday. The big Four-Oh that he’d feared enduring at Mary Virginia’s hands—doing something outrageous, something extravagant being an obligatory celebration in her crowd. Fly your original wedding party to Acapulco, have all the furniture moved to a new house, have an entire rodeo catered in the hill country. I knew because the younger Mrs. Dr. Croft, who had already crossed that bridge, used to talk about it, and because the papers there and here always carried features on the most novel parties.

  What a relief that we were going to be together and out in public with all our kids instead. That was enough of a present, it seemed to me, although I tucked what I’d got him, courtesy of the girls, in a cotton shoulder bag. I was as excited as a girl on her first date, or at least her first date with both sets of children invited along.

  Mine were at my house, which we’d christened the Gingerbread, the name pleasing the three of us. That probably came automatically to us, giving it a name, our having lived all their lives (and a lot of mine) in a house called the parsonage. We’d got used to that. The Gingerbread was coming along. I’d managed to go through Theo’s storage unit, with her blessing and key but not her presence, taking out twin beds, which she’d used in Austin so that her mother could come for her two-week annual visit (no wonder Shorty had looked good!), a love seat and two matching chairs with stuffed backs, wooden arms and legs. The kind of furniture that had parlor written all over it, in a ruby plush that was going to be right in keeping with the exterior colors of the house. The sort of furniture that Drew would doubtless label “old but not old.” No dining table. Theo had kept her small dropleaf (Mother hadn’t been much of an eater), was using it in their bedroom in Birdville. A couple of shaggy-shaded lamps, which were a help. That was about it, but it meant the girls could sleep in.

  From the parsonage, I’d taken the blue willow pitchers and the stool where I always sat while Eben massaged his feet at night. It was used to me and I to it, and I put it in my bedroom until I got a chair. That and the desk and chair from the private room, aka computer center, that had been mine in school. I also took both cow pictures, the stand of black and white Holstein with the soulful eyes and doglike ears, and the nineteenth-century primitive from Lila Beth of the orangy Guernsey with both jutting horn and sagging udders. And because it was my house, I hung them both at once, not giving a thought to the nail holes left for future generations, the larger one by the local artist in the dining room, the smaller one, painted on wood, over the mantel of the closed-up fireplace. I’d need a rug to cover where the potbellied stove once sat.

  The girls seemed excited also. Ruth had put the rose bows she’d worn Easter on her hair and had a long skirt of the same shade and a plain white T-shirt on her ample bosoms. She looked so grown-up, her deep-eyed beauty reminding me more and more of my mother. Martha had again braided the wide green ribbon into her hair and had put on a sleeveless green T and long baggy cotton pants. Her milk-fed cheeks were deep pink, whether from artifice or blush I couldn’t tell.

  Would they be spending the summer here with me? That had not been decided. Were we closer or less close than we’d been under the same roof? That hadn’t, either.

  “Soap, Momma,” Ruth called from upstairs, wanting to wash her hands before we left.

  “Look in the tub.”

  “Can I have some lemonade, Momma?” Martha asked, in the doorway to the kitchen, looking about, wondering where to find a glass.

  “I made it for you.”

  Tomorrow I ought to make a pot of potato soup, a pan of corn bread. I’d have to return them for church, get them in the afternoon. We hadn’t worked out the schedule. They’d forgot toothbrushes. Could they keep some here?

  “How come Drew isn’t picking us up, Momma?” Martha had asked about a dozen questions already.

  We were pacing around, ready to go, having run out of anything else to do. The sun had come out, in a dazed way, the rains were gone, the air had a very light white feel to it, as if it had been bleached by all the recent activity.

  “We won’t all fit in the truck,” I said.

  That was true. It was also true, which I didn’t mention, that he had yet to see my house, or even acknowledge it with anything but anger. This was building a storm center in my mind, but one I was resolved to keep banked on the horizon for tonight: his birthday, and our first appearance as a couple out with the kids, hers and his.

  I admit I was eager for them to see us together, to see Drew as someon
e other than Lila Beth’s grown son, to see him as someone dear to their momma. I’d let them help me get ready. I wore a skirt long to the ankles—I wanted a full circle for dancing—and a silk shirt, both a dusty lavender. Martha had tied a spare green ribbon around my waist, knotting it and tucking the ends in, and had smiled at the effect. They had such great amounts of nice thick hair, I think they’d have liked to do something more with mine, but I’d washed it and given it a rinse in steeped tea, and had finger-combed it dry. Plus I painted up a little, and they seemed pleased with that.

  “We could walk,” Ruth said, standing outside while I locked up, looking at the washed-out blue sky.

  “Let’s not. We’ll be fresher if we take the Firebird.” I didn’t know how late it would be when we started back, how tired we’d be. Hoping, maybe, that Drew would follow us home, come in and have a cup of coffee, all of us together in the Gingerbread.

  We could hear music and crowd noise as soon as we turned onto Mulberry; by the time we were driving down Hackberry, the streets were filled with people hurrying to the Fairgrounds. We parked a block away, so that I didn’t have to maneuver the Pontiac into a line of cars going into the already-jammed parking lots.

  “Where are we going to meet him?” Martha asked. She seemed to be holding her breath; her anticipation floated from her, like perfume.

  “At Rosa’s Chalupas.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “I don’t know. I made it up; we were trying to pick a place.”

  “You mean you’re just going to look around for him?” Martha looked crushed. “Maybe we won’t find him.”

  “We’re going to meet at the nearest thing.”

  “That is so dumb, Momma. That is really dumb.” Ruth scowled.

  “It is?” We stepped onto the Fairgrounds, which had been transformed into a Mexican marketplace, with maybe a hundred booths selling food, every fifth one selling beer, every tenth, iced tea and cold drinks. Hundreds of people were in costume, looking like exhibition dancers, and maybe they were, with sombreros, serapes, gathered many-colored skirts, ruffled blouses. Clothes you never saw anymore on anyone in Texas, most of all not on Cen-Tex Latinos Incorporated. All the signs were in Spanish, the only English translations being BEER and RESTROOMS. I looked around, liking the smell of corn and chilis, liking the very loud canned polka music that was coming from a dozen loudspeakers high in the air. Here and there we saw strolling mariachi players, carrying their fiddles, having a cold draft beer, waiting for their turn. We were early, despite the mob; the place had the air of a carnival before the rides really get going, before the barkers start shouting you in, before the lights go on on the Ferris wheel, when there isn’t much to do but eat cotton candy and throw hoops over small-time prizes.