The Corn Husk Experiment

by Andrea Cale

  Just as Caroline kept secret her unraveling of the truths about Santa Claus and her mother’s drinking problem, she kept this much darker one buried inside her. Caroline was too embarrassed to tell anyone about what Jeremy was doing to her. She wondered if she had done something wrong. She knew that if her good father found out about Jeremy’s abuse, the information would completely destroy the man’s already broken heart.

  The single bright spot of Caroline’s childhood began shortly after her father’s promotion.

  “Guess what?” Kenny had beamed as he locked up their apartment and walked with his little girl toward St. Matthew’s for Sunday Mass.

  “What?”

  “Is there something you’ve been wanting to do after school these days?”

  “Uh-huh,” the little girl had said with exaggerated, increasing interest. Her eyes grew wider as though they enhanced her ability to listen. She unknowingly made her clip-clopping Sunday shoes less noisy.

  “And what would that be, do you suppose?”

  “Da-yance?”

  “That’s it. With my new job, I’m able to get you started with a class! I called a local studio. We’ll start ya off in a couple weeks with a jazz class. How does that sound?”

  Ken had the old soul of a man who loved jazz music. He hadn’t a clue that modern jazz dance included a wide range of music and styles. Caroline didn’t know a thing about either the music or the dance, but she thought that it all sounded wonderful.

  As she knelt with her father that morning in the pews before Mass, she had thought about how he once told her to pray to God for anything she was troubled about. He had also said she could pray for anything she really needed. Caroline had always wondered why her prayers to bring her mother back went unanswered. She had wondered why her prayers to make Jeremy disappear never came to fruition. On this morning, she realized that jazz dance class was possibly a start.

  The girl glanced at her praying father. Kenny had a relaxed look on his face as he always did—and only did—at church. Maybe he felt closest to his late wife on those mornings. Maybe he took just a little pride in the fact that he thought he was raising a little girl, by himself, in the best way he knew how. Maybe it was both.

  And so began the bright spot of dance in Caroline’s otherwise troubled life.

  To the studio staff’s surprise, the little girl was blessed with grace beyond her years on the dance floor. She got lost in the movement. She poured all of her pent-up feelings—her anger, hurt, frustration, resentment, sadness, depression, and trouble—into the moves that her dance teachers laid out for her. There were no unanswered questions whirling inside her head when she was twirling or sashaying on the dance floor. There was no confusion. Just as church brought comfort to her father, the studio served as Caroline’s safe place of peace.

  She had quickly begun advancing to older groups’ jazz classes until one sunny fall afternoon when the studio’s director had pulled her aside. Caroline had always admired the woman’s impeccably smooth gray bun of hair from afar. Their meeting was magically intense.

  “You have a natural gift, you know. Do you love to dance?”

  “Oh yes, it is my most favorite thing in the whole entire universe!”

  “I thought so,” the director had said. “The instructors can see; I can see; that is the case. You should be taking ballet, you know.”

  Caroline wasn’t sure how to digest the comment. Her silence prompted the director to continue. “Ballet is the foundation work for gifted and serious dancers just as the natural sciences are for, say—medical students.”

  Caroline had thought of the older ballet dancers in the studio who had recently graduated to pointe class. Earlier in the week, she had watched them excitedly put on wooden shoes that were shorter than the length of their own feet before class and just as excitedly compare blisters and bloody bandages after it.

  She was beginning to realize that for young dancers, earning that first pair of pointe shoes was on par with a first leg shave, bra experience, or tampon purchase. Caroline had often closed her eyes and pictured herself drumming across the floor with the tips of her own fancy pair. She looked down at her dowdy black jazz shoes with worn white spots over her big toes.

  “We’d also like to get you started in tap and modern, and maybe get you into some competitions,” the director had added.

  Knowing there wouldn’t be enough money to pay for more classes, not to mention shoes or costumes for the shows, Caroline had smiled a pained smile, just as her father had when he learned he had gotten a promotion but for a position at night.

  The director couldn’t help but notice Caroline’s discomfort. She looked her deeply in the eyes.

  “What’s wrong? Do these other styles not interest you?”

  Caroline peered around the studio to make sure the others, especially the older girls with the fancier shoes, were out of earshot.

  “It’s just that my dad and I are on our own.”

  It was an expression Caroline had heard her father say when he declined Saturday poker over the phone with one of the guys from work. She had continued with another one of the phrases she overheard. “Money is tight. Maybe next year I can take ballet instead of jazz,” Caroline had said in an attempt to appease the powerful woman with the perfect gray bun.

  But the director couldn’t let a year slip by. By the time Caroline had gotten home from the studio, there was a message waiting on the answering machine for Kenny containing a proposition. The director got straight to the point.

  “Your daughter is perhaps the most raw, natural talent we’ve had walk through our doors. It would be our privilege to have her take more classes here. Your girl says she enjoys dance. If it’s fine with you, let’s give her more of a shot. I’d like to personally offer Caroline a scholarship to dance here.”

  Kenny had eventually agreed on a payment system in which he covered the price of one class for the sum of all of Caroline’s dance studies. As the girl grew in her adolescent and teenage years, she had become better and better—turning her talent from raw to polished—winning competitions and the admiration of both the girls her age and boys who couldn’t help but notice the fine shape and easy movement of her dancer’s body.

  The director had saved Caroline in more ways than the woman ever could’ve guessed, and Caroline felt forever in her debt. She had wondered how she would ever pay her back.

  In Caroline’s freshman year of high school, the answer had come in the form of a tap on the shoulder in the same fateful spot in the dance studio where the director had first pulled her aside years before. It was the director’s daughter who needed a word this time, along with a favor.

  “Excuse me, Caroline?”

  “Me? Oh, um, sorry. Hi.”

  “My mom mentioned you attend Cranston High. Anyway, I coach cheerleading there, and I wondered if you might be interested in auditioning for the team? We could desperately use talent like yours this year.”

  Cheerleading was much more structured than dance. Caroline could appreciate the sport, but she wasn’t as interested in it. She needed dance to let loose and forget about everything. But Caroline wasn’t one to put herself first. She viewed auditioning for the director’s daughter’s team only as a step toward paying off a little piece of her father’s debt at the studio.

  She happily agreed to try out.

  It was without much surprise that Caroline excelled at cheerleading as well, because she was naturally able to do the lifts, flips, and basket tosses. Her moves were both delicate and powerful. Her red hair came alive in the wind like fire on the sidelines. Just as her mother would have, Caroline stole the attention of the fans in the bleachers, including the adults who secretly picked a favorite cheerleader in between football plays as innocently as they would a favorite contestant in network television beauty pageants.

  Caroline was everyone’s favorite.

  Even though her heart wasn’t into cheerleading as it was dancing, it was the sport, not the art, th
at would deliver her great opportunity. In Caroline’s senior year at Cranston High, as her friends had anxiously awaited notification letters from their out-of-state universities of choice, she had received a letter of acceptance from her own “reach” school, the University of Boston, to study psychology there. When the letter had arrived, she had run with it up the apartment stairs toward her bedroom with the quick, rabbit-like moves she hadn’t used in years. As she sat in her room that held so many memories, she had read the words of acceptance over and over and studied the gorgeous campus pictures in the packet. It all seemed like an unaffordable dream. The images collectively served as an escape from the very place she sat, the very place she had grown to loathe.

  Caroline knew she couldn’t attend UB. The local Community College of Rhode Island would cost her father $40,000 less a year. She was nearly ready to mail out her own acceptance letter to CCRI when for the second time in her life, a family of women other than her own showed Caroline they believed in her.

  As she had paged through the smiling faces of UB students one last time, she heard the phone shrill downstairs.

  “I took the liberty of researchin’ cheerleading tryouts at UB for you,” announced her coach. “They’re tomorrow. Can I drive you?”

  “Um, well, huh.”

  Caroline had intended to once again explain that money was tight. She had wanted to explain that trying out for UB would be a waste of time. But she was finding difficulty in turning down this family, as well as the offer.

  “Are you sure?” Caroline had asked. “I mean, it’s not too much trouble to take me?”

  “Let’s do it. So you’ll need your acceptance letter at tryouts. Put it in your gym bag tonight. Make sure you stretch extra minutes in the mornin’. They’re gonna want to see a standing back handspring and full twist cradles. For attire, you’ll want to wear white tennis shoes. Your shorts and top should both be black and tight. Collegiate cheerleaders wear their hair curly. You should tie half of it up in a bow. No tight buns like the kind my mother makes you wear in ballet class,” the woman had said before finally taking a breath and smiling through the phone. “Got it?”

  “I hope so,” Caroline had said.

  The girl’s stomach suddenly felt like she was doing a round-off back handspring.

  “Listen, Caroline, you’ve got this. Just, well, do what you do best. Smile. Light up the heavens just like ya always do.”

  And so she did. As a matter of fact, she had done it well enough to be the only cheerleader among 260 University of Boston student athletes to secure a McArthur Fund scholarship at the UB for the 2012-2013 school year.

  Caroline sat alone in her packed-up room with her father still at work on the eve of her first trip to attend the University of Boston as a freshman student athlete. As she tugged away at her necklace, she recognized the moment as yet another time in life when she could’ve desperately used her mother’s advice.

  A medley of questions swirled around her troubled mind. What if she didn’t like her roommate? Or worse, what if Caroline’s roommate didn’t like her? What if her coach regretted giving the scholarship to Caroline instead of another girl? What if she couldn’t pull off her sales-rack clothes in Boston as she attempted to do in her smaller town? Would she be able to take a shower or a nap in the dorm without worrying about someone barging in and touching her?

  Unfortunately, based on Caroline’s past experience, each worry seemed as probable as the next. She pondered calling the two women who had stepped in to guide her over the years, but keying others into her trouble hadn’t exactly been Caroline’s strong point.

  She lugged the oversized boxes and bags downstairs with loud, resounding steps and lined them neatly by the front door. She didn’t want her father to worsen an already bad back in the morning. The heavier sound of her feet made the delicate girl feel even more mature and in charge. She breathed in the smell of the new perfume that her coach had given her as a going-away gift. The scent from the star-shaped, $100 purple glass bottle made Caroline feel nothing short of luxurious. She tucked her locket beneath the neck of her pajamas and decided it was time to get excited about her new life.

  CHAPTER 8

  DEVIN

  The Gifted One

  Devin took a couple of long sips from a pint of Sam Adams brew before showing off the cool, handsome smile of a popular Atlantic Coast Conference starting quarterback.

  He sat crouched on a stool in the center of a handful of underclassmen teammates at a tavern off Commonwealth Avenue. Earlier in the day, Devin had offered to show his new teammates Boston’s Allston-Brighton neighborhood nightlife. Always comfortable in the spotlight, he was flying high now from all their attention and admiration—two sensations of which the twenty-two-year-old senior star of the University of Boston never tired.

  The rookies, collaboratively weighing well more than a ton, looked more like adoring fans than down-and-dirty players responsible for crushing others on the field. They leaned in to catch each of Devin’s words over bar chatter and classic rock. They laughed at all his jokes and awkwardly chuckled at comments that weren’t intended to be funny. They were happy to be with him and secretly couldn’t wait to call their fathers, uncles, and godfathers to pass along the golden boy’s stories.

  “Why’d you choose UB to play at instead of headin’ to a school closer to your home in Virginia?” asked one of the new backup linebackers on the team.

  Devin felt the spotlight grow hotter.

  “Have you ever heard of a club called the Coconut Grove?”

  The players from New England hometowns nodded while the ones who grew up outside of the region shook their heads. All of them sat on the edge of their stools just as Devin had done atop his youthful bed nearly a dozen years ago when his father revealed the story of his grandfather’s worst game at Boston, a loss that ironically and literally saved the man’s life.

  Devin retold the story nearly word for word before adding his own ending.

  “And so I grew up wanting to attend UB. I agreed to red-shirt here my freshman year and passed up opportunities at schools like Virginia Tech and Texas A&M, where I could’ve played straightaway. I wanted to fulfill my grandfather’s dream of winning a major bowl game for this school. I still do. And this is the year to do it, boys,” Devin shouted. “It’s my last shot to do it.”

  The senior raised a glass with his teammates quickly following suit, clinking and chugging until they were all dry.

  “Who’s got next round?” Devin asked.

  As one of Devin’s new offensive linemen jumped up from his stool as though he were following his quarterback’s play call, Devin let himself enjoy the buzz from the last beer for a moment before revving up his performance again. The bubbles evaporated down his throat and radiated through his body before he turned himself back on.

  “How about the Chicken Soup Comeback? Has anyone heard of that one?”

  Because Devin’s audience included successful students of the game, each player was familiar with the legendary comeback and replied with comments including “Hells yeah,” “Sure man,” and “The great Joe Montana.” They weren’t aware of Devin’s father’s connection though. The Hustler would’ve preferred to keep it that way, but Devin retold the story of his father’s failed acceleration with defiance. Despite his love for the game of football, Devin had grown distant from his father over the years. Perhaps the Hustler had pushed him too hard at practice or had sung his praises too little after triumphant games.

  The roughness had pushed Devin to depend on outside sources for attention over the years. He found it in fans of his football team, rookie teammates, and young ladies who fell in love with him too easily either for his status or movie-star features, including his golden locks and disarming smile. The girls often told Devin he resembled any number of blond movie stars. He liked the comparisons but always thought he was even better looking.

  “To freakin’ chicken soup,” the golden boy shouted as the guys laughed, clinked gla
sses, and happily guzzled another round.

  The carbonation hit Devin funny this time. The bubbles evaporated along the rear sides of his tongue.

  He slid his empty glass along the bar and fetched his cell from his jeans to see which girl had texted him to get lucky. The Boston campus wouldn’t come fully alive for another couple of weeks, but there were a few admirers from the city who were always ready for after-hours with him. The young ladies failed to interest him these days as much as they once did, however, so Devin closed his eyes and, in eeny-meany-miney-mo fashion, let his finger land on the scrolling cell screen in selection of the night’s winning number.

  Devin and his teammates had arrived on campus in July, when fall football camp had kicked off. The quarterback had been annoyed by the camp’s name, because the session really began in the summer. He still regretted giving up his break while others had their fun.

  He took a deep breath and smelled a sour, overworked bar rag nearby. It was enough to make his mood turn. As he dialed the chosen number from his cell with a look of regret, he had an overwhelming desire to meet some new girls—maybe a freshman, maybe a cheerleader, maybe someone who was both a freshman and a cheerleader. The thought brought him to his last toast of the night.

  “To freshmen cheerleaders,” Devin shouted before the rookies whooped it up and completed their last down of the evening.

  CHAPTER 9

  MAXINE

  The Lonely One

  Maxine sat stiffly in the newsroom on a darkening Friday evening and passed quickly through her photography from the day’s assignments. Even though digital imaging upped her already high level of productivity in the dozen years since her work at the newspaper, she wasn’t spending any less time working.

  She drummed her delicate fingers atop her desk with her left hand as she deleted and saved pictures on her camera with the other. The thirty-seven-year-old was still single, married only to taking pictures. She still turned heads. And she still pulled off her signature short haircut with a feminine grace.