Say Goodnight, Gracie

by Julie Reece Deaver

  “Yeah,” I said smiling. “Maybe you’re right.”

  We were rolling around like that when it occurred to me that maybe a wish had been answered after all, that maybe I had a friend. Not a friend like Jimmy, maybe, but a friend anyway. It was nice.

  “Here,” Jody said. “Give me your garbage.” She held out the paper bag, and I stuffed our empty French fry and hamburger wrappers into it. She took it over to a green metal trash can and tossed it in. “Let’s see who can get highest on the swings,” she said. “We’ll make it like a contest, okay?”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Yes, I’m crazy and so are you. Come on. You’re going to be eighteen Sunday. An adult. Who knows when you’ll get another chance to be in a contest like this?”

  “Okay, Jody, all right, as long as you put it that way . . .”

  Side by side we swung, like little kids do, our legs pumping. My hat flew off and sailed to the ground like a straw Frisbee. We got so high on those swings, I had to hang on for dear life.

  “Hey, Jody!” I yelled. “This has really been a great afternoon!”

  “Yeah?” she hollered back. “Worth the detention?”

  “Absolutely!”

  “I’m glad you feel that way, Morgan! Guess who’s in charge of detention this month?”

  “Who?”

  “Mrs. Klein, that’s who!”

  I started laughing. I was getting back to my old self, where I could laugh easily. “Hey, Jody, guess what! Mrs. Klein’s okay! She tried to help me when I was having problems! She’s okay! She really is!”

  Jody looked at me wide-eyed. “You’re not only crazy,” she yelled, “you’re senile!”

  “Hey, what do you expect? I’m almost eighteen, remember?”

  I just couldn’t stop laughing. It was strange and wonderful, rediscovering the power of uncontrolled laughter. I pumped the swing as hard as I could. I threw my head back. I felt like maybe I could touch the trees. Inside I was ten years old again. I felt silly. Giddy.

  Free.

  29

  I wanted to do something for Jimmy, something private, something no one else knew about. Something that was just between him and me. I went down to the DuPage Trust and closed out my savings account. It wasn’t a lot of money, less than two hundred dollars, but it was enough to make a nice contribution to the scholarship fund at Jimmy’s dance school, which was what I’d decided to do.

  “I’m going into the city today,” I told my mother Saturday morning. “You know. Knock around. Go to Field’s. Do some shopping.”

  “Do you need any money?”

  “No, I’m okay,” I said. “I’ll be back around five.”

  “That jacket isn’t going to be enough,” my mother said. “You better take your coat and an umbrella; it’s supposed to rain—”

  “Are you kidding? There isn’t a cloud in the sky!”

  Mothers are always right. I got caught while I was crossing the bridge over the Chicago River, and believe me, I got caught good. The rain came fast and furious. Cabs got snatched up. People stopped ambling and started bustling. Me too. I ran the few blocks to Jimmy’s dance school, pulled open the glass double doors, and collapsed against the wall. I tried to catch my breath and shake off some of the wetness.

  “You picked a hell of a day to go out without a raincoat,” I heard someone say. “Didn’t you hear the weather report?”

  “Only from my mother,” I said. The person I was talking to was a young woman. A dancer, I was sure, because she was built tall and lean like Robin-the-toothpick and walked with the same kind of athletic grace.

  “Here,” she said. “Catch.” She took the towel that was draped around her neck and tossed it to me.

  “Thanks.” I started drying myself off. “Listen, maybe you can help me—I guess I’m looking for the registrar or someone who handles tuition.”

  “Most everyone’s out to lunch now. Did you want to sign up for classes?”

  “No. I was a friend of Jimmy Woolf’s, and I want to make a contribution to his scholarship fund.”

  “The scholarship’s closed,” the girl said. “They made the decision yesterday.”

  “Oh,” I said. I was really disappointed. “Who got it? Who did they give it to?”

  “One of the first-year students. Jimmy worked with him a lot; taught him all of the old movie stuff. The Fred Astaire stuff.”

  “Well,” I said, nodding, “I’m glad they gave it to someone who’s interested in the same kind of dancing Jimmy was.”

  “It was a nice thing for his parents to do. The scholarship, I mean. The boy who got it was going to have to drop out because he couldn’t afford the tuition.”

  “I’m glad they gave it to someone who knew Jimmy.”

  “You were a friend of Jimmy’s?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Everyone around here was really devastated when we heard about it—about what happened—”

  I started getting uncomfortable. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Hey, would you . . . do you want to meet the boy who won the scholarship? I think he’s rehearsing down the hall in one of the practice rooms.”

  “Oh,” I said. “No . . . no, I really have to be going.” I folded the towel and handed it back to her. “If I leave right now, I think I can probably catch the next train home.”

  “I have to get going too. I have an audition at three, and I want to rehearse for it. It was nice talking to someone who knew Jimmy—I wish we could have talked longer.”

  “Thanks. So do I.”

  “’Bye.”

  “Yeah, ’bye.” I watched her run up a flight of stairs. I turned around, pulled my collar up, pushed open the glass doors. I felt like the whole afternoon had been one huge wet waste of time. I was halfway out into the rain when I heard it: a song coming from one of the practice rooms. A song from the movie Swing Time. A song Jimmy and I had danced to a million times, the summer we were ten. The summer he discovered Fred Astaire and fell in love with dancing. The recording sounded old—the scratches were louder than the music; still, you could hear Fred Astaire, just barely:

  Nothing’s impossible I have found,

  for when my chin is on the ground,

  I pick myself up,

  dust myself off,

  start all over again.

  I came back inside and walked slowly down the hall toward the music. I peeked inside the practice room. It was a beautiful room: neat brown-brick walls, huge windows that faced skyscrapers and gave a spectacular view of the storm, a well-worn wooden floor, and those mirrors! Ceiling to floor, parallel to the windows, along the whole length of the room. I stood just inside the door and watched the boy who had won Jimmy’s scholarship. He was a young boy, maybe about fourteen, and he was totally wrapped up in his dancing, very serious about it. He was good. He was very good. Loose and relaxed and self-assured, just like Jimmy. I could see in his dance the signature of Jimmy’s style. It was like this kid was signing his name with Jimmy’s handwriting. It bothered me, sort of.

  “Hi,” the kid said, whirling by me. He stopped dancing and put his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath. “I’m having a little trouble with the turns. . . .”

  “No, it looks good. Do you . . . you don’t mind if I watch, do you? This is one of my favorite routines.”

  “I like an audience,” the boy said. He did some bending and stretching, the same loosening-up exercises I’d seen Jimmy do hundreds of times. “Are you a dancer?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Just a Fred Astaire fan.”

  “Me too. I love this song. It’s classic Astaire, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah. . . . I haven’t heard this song since I was about ten—a friend and I spent the entire summer doing the dances from Swing Time, only I think he made a much better Fred Astaire than I did a Ginger Rogers.”

  “Swing Time’s my all-time favorite movie,” the boy said. He tilted his head to the side and listened to the music, like he was waiting
for just the right place to start dancing again. “Here comes the chorus,” he said, holding out his hand in a matter-of-fact way. “Remember this part? Want to give it a try?”

  I just automatically took his hand. He put his arm around my back. It felt good. Sometimes I think that was what I missed most about Jimmy: good old-fashioned body heat. The boy started whirling me around and around the room. I shut my eyes. Partly because I was dizzy, mostly because I wanted to be back in Jimmy’s arms again, even if it was only a big fake.

  Don’t lose your confidence if you slip,

  be grateful for a pleasant trip,

  And pick yourself up,

  dust yourself off,

  start all over again.

  I could almost pretend I was safe again. I could almost pretend Jimmy was whirling me around and around his front porch like he used to. I could almost pretend he had never been killed. Almost. But not quite.

  “I have to go,” I said suddenly. I pushed away from the boy and headed for the door.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing. I just have to go.” I ran down the hall. I banged into a couple dancers coming back from lunch, but I just kept on going.

  It is not natural, I thought, for seventeen-year-olds to get killed. It is not normal. It is not the way things were meant to be.

  Never mind the rain. Never mind the wind. The important thing was to stay calm and not give in, not give in to the panic. After I had walked a couple of blocks, my heart started pounding. Another block and I was unable to breathe. My hands started shaking. I ducked into an office building and called my aunt from a pay phone in the lobby. I had to go through her damn answering service. I finally reached her at some restaurant.

  “I thought I had everything worked out,” I said. It was hard for me to talk; my throat muscles felt paralyzed. “I don’t know what’s happening to me; I need to see you.”

  “Where are you?” my aunt asked. “Are you in the city?”

  “I’m in some office building on Wacker. I have to see you.”

  “I’ll meet you at the hospital. Can you make it over there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m leaving right now, and I want you to do the same thing, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  What it boiled down to was this: I was alone, truly alone. There wasn’t anyone, anywhere, who could take Jimmy’s place. Maybe the school could replace him with another dancer, but what was I supposed to do? The world could go on very nicely without him, maybe, but I couldn’t. No matter how many new people I met, no matter how many new friends I made, I wouldn’t ever have the same kind of relationship I’d had with Jimmy. That part of my life was gone forever. Why had it taken me so long to figure this out?

  Why had I been so dumb?

  30

  By the time I got to the hospital, I was shaking so hard people turned and looked at me. The harder I tried not to shake, the worse it got. I took the elevator up to the psych floor. When I got off, I walked right past the nurses’ station without bothering to check in with anyone. I walked down the hall to my aunt’s office. I tried the door. It was locked.

  “She’s on her way, Morgan.”

  I turned around. Mrs. Getz was standing there.

  “I talked to her a few minutes ago,” Mrs. Getz said. “She asked me to look after you until she got here—”

  “I don’t need looking after. I don’t. I’ll just sit over here and wait for her.” I walked a little way down the hall and sat on an upholstered bench. I couldn’t stop shaking, so I tried to hide it by jamming my fists down into my jacket pockets. It was the exact same thing I’d done the night Jimmy was killed.

  “Are you going to be okay until she gets here?” Mrs. Getz asked. “Why don’t you let me have one of the other doctors take a look at you?”

  “No, I want my aunt. I just want to wait here for my aunt.”

  “All right, Morgan, it’s okay. I’ll be at the nurses’ station if you want anything. Try to hang on; I’m sure she’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  It was at least fifteen more minutes before my aunt came. I was sitting there hunched over my toes when I heard her say quietly to Mrs. Getz: “How’s she doing, Betty?”

  “Not too good,” Mrs. Getz said. “She’s over there.”

  I looked up. I was torn between wanting my aunt’s help and not wanting her to see me like this. She walked over and put her hand on my face. There was no smile. Her eyes were penetrating. “Hello, love . . . what’s the trouble?”

  I wanted to explain things to her. I tried to. I couldn’t.

  “I know you’re uncomfortable, honey—can you talk?”

  “I need something,” I whispered. “A tranquilizer or something. I don’t feel very good.”

  My aunt didn’t say anything. She sat down beside me and unzipped my jacket. “Let’s get you out of this; it’s soaking wet. Betty?” She looked over her shoulder at Mrs. Getz. “Get me a blanket, will you?”

  “You’ll give me something, won’t you? A tranquilizer or something? I can’t stand feeling this way—”

  “I want you to try to slow your breathing down.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Try.”

  I just sat there while she tugged off my jacket. She grasped my wrist and looked at her watch. It occurred to me that maybe she had no intention of giving me anything, that maybe she had missed the point.

  “My heart’s racing—”

  “It sure is,” my aunt said. Mrs. Getz came over and put a heavy blanket across my shoulders, and I clutched the edges of it tight against me.

  “Let’s go into my office,” my aunt said quietly. She folded up my wet jacket and went over and unlocked the door to her office. “Come on,” she said. “I want to talk to you.” I stood up slowly and followed her. My legs felt funny. Weak. Like I hadn’t used them in a long time.

  As soon as we were in her office, as soon as she shut the door, I said, “I really think I need something. Something like a tranquilizer.”

  “I don’t want to give you any tranquilizers, honey,” my aunt said. “Why don’t you sit down, okay? I want to get some of these lights on. . . .”

  I sat down on the couch. I couldn’t believe how calmly she was acting. Here I was, cracking up, and she was walking around the office, turning on lights, hanging up my jacket, taking off her raincoat.

  “You gave me something the night Jimmy was killed,” I said. “You gave me a shot that night, remember?”

  “That was different.”

  “I can’t stand feeling this way. I really think I’m starting to lose it.”

  “Lose what?”

  “I’m afraid I’m going crazy.”

  My aunt came over and sat down on the coffee table facing the couch. She pushed her sweater sleeves up to her elbows. “You’re not afraid of going crazy. You’re afraid of losing control.”

  “I don’t like not being in control.”

  “I know you don’t. Tell me what happened. What kicked all this off, hmm?”

  “I went by Jimmy’s dance school. I wanted to—I was going to make a contribution to his scholarship fund.”

  “Why do you think that set off an anxiety attack?”

  I pulled the blanket tight around me. I wanted to hide inside it. “This isn’t an anxiety attack. It’s more than that. It’s like a breakdown or something.”

  “I don’t think you’re having a breakdown,” my aunt said gently. “What exactly happened at Jimmy’s dance school?”

  I looked at her. “I guess I’m afraid if I start talking about it, I’ll fall apart.”

  “Would it really be so terrible if you lost control a little? What would happen if you gave in to what you’re feeling?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it would push me right over the edge.”

  “Maybe it would help you start healing.”

  “Maybe it would hurt.”

  My aunt nodded. “All the times I gave you shots, took out splint
ers, patched you up? I always told you when it was going to hurt, didn’t I?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “This is going to hurt too. Before you can start to heal, you’ll have to let Jimmy go. And it’s going to hurt.”

  I let out a shaky breath. I was going to cry, no two ways about it. I could feel the tears collect in my eyes and start to spill down my face. “I went by the school,” I said. I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “I went by the school and I met the kid who’s taking Jimmy’s place.”

  “What do you mean, ‘taking Jimmy’s place’?” my aunt asked softly. “Are those his words or yours?”

  “Jimmy and I had something, something special, and I just realized this afternoon that I’ll never have that with someone again.”

  “Maybe not the exact same thing, no.”

  “Nobody understands me like he did, and it’s like I’m all alone now.”

  My aunt smiled. She took my hand. “Well. Not entirely alone.”

  “It never would have happened if I hadn’t been along that night. He only took North Wells because he had to drop me off.”

  “The only person who should feel any guilt over Jimmy’s death is that bastard who killed him, do you understand? You don’t know what street Jimmy would have taken if he’d been alone that night. No one does.”

  I could see myself waiting on North Wells that night. Watching the street and waiting for Jimmy. Jimmy, who never came.

  “My heart,” I whispered. “I can feel my heart.”

  “Your heart is very strong,” my aunt said.

  “Please just give me something.”

  “No.” She leaned forward and looked at me. “You can handle this. Just let it come, honey.”

  I could feel all the sadness I’d kept locked inside me rise and catch in my throat. I could feel it coming: everything I’d avoided, pushed away, wouldn’t look at. I knew it was going to hit. My aunt must have known too, because she moved over onto the couch and put her arms around me. I buried my face in her sweater and cried. I was crying for Jimmy and all that he meant to me, for our shattered friendship, for those two ten-year-olds who were once again whirling around and around a porch one hot summer day, those two kids who had the world and didn’t even know it. I hung on to my aunt’s sweater and cried until I was all cried out, until my head hurt and my eyes were swollen, until I was bone tired. No one told me letting go of someone you love is just damn hard work.