Passing Through Paradise

by Susan Wiggs

  Dancing conjured up all sorts of memories of fear and shame and yearning. Oh, how she had wanted to go to a dance when she was Mary Margaret’s age. But no one ever invited her, and wild horses couldn’t have dragged her there alone. She would have loved it if her father had taken her dancing. Of course, it never would have occurred to him. He wasn’t the type.

  But Victor—now, Victor had been the dancing type. He more than made up for the lack in her earlier years. He taught her all the social graces, and dancing was near the top of the list.

  Sandra hesitated. The music from the radio swelled to a crescendo, then echoed to a quiet finish. “Maybe you could use some pointers.”

  “You got any?”

  She hesitated again. Then asked herself, where was the harm? “I do,” she said.

  “So you’re a good dancer?”

  “I’ve had a lot of practice,” she said. “I was a politician’s wife.” Victor used to joke that his best move was the sidestep. All his moves had been good. She stepped a little closer to Malloy. Her stomach clenched, but she smiled up at him. “Are you up for a lesson?”

  He slowly unbuckled his tool belt. Holding her gaze with his, he let it drop onto the tailgate of the truck. “Let’s go for it.”

  The radio announcer was reading the weather: cloudy, small craft advisory in the coastal regions, winds up to twenty miles per hour. Cold.

  “Don’t worry about music for now,” she said. “I’ll show you the footwork. It’s really simple. You’re going to make a square, starting with your right foot.” Standing beside him, she demonstrated.

  He stepped forward.

  “Good. Bring your left foot up to meet the right.” Again, she showed him the move. “Now, half a step to the side—together. And the other side. Step—together. And back. See? It goes for eight counts.”

  Side by side, they practiced the footwork. The radio blared a song that worked all right for rhythm. His feet, in the well-worn boots, were huge. His hands were huge. Everything about him made her heartbeat speed up.

  “You’ve almost got it,” she said. “Just keep it up. Don’t think about what your feet are doing.”

  “You sound like my old football coach.”

  “I should have guessed you were a football player. What position did you play?”

  “It was so long ago, I barely remember.”

  “Quarterback, I bet.”

  When he said nothing, she knew she was right. There was something about him, something modest and circumspect, that made her want to ask him all sorts of things. “Where did you go to school?”

  “URL for a while. I didn’t finish.”

  Ah, she thought, catching a note of regret in his voice. “Why not?”

  “I can’t learn to dance and tell you my life story at the same time, ma’am.” He laughed, but the message was clear to Sandra. He didn’t want to take her to that part of his life—to dreams and regrets and missed chances.

  “Okay,” she said. “If the next song’s any good for dancing, we’ll do it as a couple. Same footwork, but you’ll have me blocking you.” She positioned herself in front of him.

  “Where do I put my hands?”

  Reaching out, she took his left hand and placed it at the inward curve of her waist. “Here. Like this.”

  As soon as they touched, she felt an unexpected shock of awareness. Body heat gathered under his palm, so in tense she wondered if he could feel it, too. The sensation of his hand circling her waist felt shamefully good. Flustered, she took his other hand in hers, cold fingers folding around his. “This is the general idea. Just relax—it should be a natural posture.”

  “Does this feel natural?”

  His question evoked a wealth of responses that ran through her like chain lightning. He was tall and broad, a solid wall filling her field of vision.

  “Y-you tell me,” she said, then bit her lip, shaken by the ominous hesitation in her voice.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, tugging her an inch closer. “It does.”

  “Um, maybe not so close. We’re going to need a little room to maneuver.”

  “Like this?” His thigh brushed against hers, and his grin was a little wicked. “This, I can manage.” The music changed again, this time to something old and bluesy.

  “So far so good,” she said. His hand was startlingly rough. A workingman’s hand. “Now. Listen for the beat. Then we’ll move off with you stepping forward on your left foot.”

  He looked down.

  “Don’t look down,” she said.

  “But—”

  “You know where your feet are, Malloy.”

  “Then where do I look?”

  Again, she hesitated. “At your partner.”

  His gaze settled on her, ocean-blue eyes filled with unspoken inquiries. The air between them seemed heated by a languid, tropical breeze from a far-off place. She had no idea how he did it, but he managed to make her feel that stare all the way to her toes.

  “Like this?” he asked again.

  Agitated, she took a half step back. “The idea is to hold your partner where you can talk to her. It’s a social thing.”

  “Sorry. They didn’t teach us this stuff in work skills class.”

  She bit her lip. Now that he’d revealed his college failure, she understood why he was sensitive about that. “I didn’t mean to sound condescending.”

  “But you were doing so well.”

  “Do you want to learn this or not, Malloy?”

  “I do.”

  For no particular reason, that struck her as funny. “Then let’s give it a try. Take one step forward.”

  His long stride nearly knocked her over.

  “Maybe half a step,” she amended, clutching him. His upper arm was solid iron.

  He tried again. On the next upbeat, his left foot crushed down on her right.

  Sandra emitted a yelp and jumped back. “Careful, Malloy. You don’t want to cripple your partner for life.”

  “Maybe we’d better quit while you’re still uninjured.”

  She gave her foot a shake. “I never pegged you for a quitter. Besides, better you make your mistakes on me, not Mary Margaret. Now, wait for the beat . . .”

  They pushed off, and this time it started to work. To the tune of “Night and Day,” they danced around the barren, windswept yard. The whole world felt different just for these few moments. The shadows lifted from her thoughts until she wasn’t really thinking at all. She became aware of an overwhelming fullness of heart, growing from the long-buried need deep inside her. Oh, she had missed this. Closeness. Human contact. The simple act of dancing in a man’s arms felt so good, and so right, and yet at the same time, it hurt and stung, like fingers thawing out after a long freeze. It had been ages since she’d actually been close to someone.

  She stared at a point past his shoulder, hoping her feelings were not written all over her face.

  “I thought you were supposed to look at your partner,” he reminded her. His voice was tender, intimate. Close to her ear.

  The song ended. She dropped her hands and pushed away from him, probably too quickly. “That’s all there is to it,” she said, flustered. “Eight counts, and you’re Fred Astaire.”

  “The realization of a lifelong dream.”

  “You need to practice. A lot.”

  “Thanks. I sure as hell don’t want to embarrass Mary Margaret.”

  “I think that starts with the teenage years,” she said. “Right now, she worships you.”

  He put his tool belt back on, then opened a large metal chest in the back of his truck. An array of round, steel-toothed saw blades gleamed from the box. “Yeah?”

  “Most twelve-year-old girls do.”

  “She’s almost thirteen. I better brace myself.” He selected a blade and fitted it in the big power saw his crew had set up at the rear of the house.

  Sandra felt relieved to see him going back to work—but a little bereft, too.

  “By the way,” he said over
his shoulder, “I gave her two of your books to read.”

  Sandra felt a funny twist inside her. “Really?”

  “Got them from the library. Beneath the Surface and Every Other Day. I had to ask the librarian for them. They weren’t on the shelf.”

  Sandra flushed. “A lot of children’s books get challenged at public libraries.” She shook her head. “Right here in New England, the cradle of liberty.” Though her editor often tried to console her, claiming she was in good company, with Mark Twain, Maya Angelou and Judy Blume, she hated the idea that her books weren’t immediately accessible to the readers she wrote them for.

  “So I imagine you howled good and loud when you learned they were banning your book.” Mike twirled a wing nut on the saw.

  She stared at his hands, his fingers. Large and capable, yet they’d felt so gentle when he’d held her. “I’m . . .I was a politician’s wife. My job was to smooth things over, not make waves.”

  “Wait a minute. Your husband was a Democrat. The ACLU endorsed him. You’re telling me he tolerated censorship of his wife’s books in his own backyard?”

  She let out a thin sigh and dropped her gaze. “Victor learned early on to pick his battles. He had to let go of a lot of things in order to get elected.”

  “Like the First Amendment?”

  “You don’t need to be sarcastic.” She felt a bitter defensiveness and realized she hadn’t even begun to deal with what happened to Victor.

  “I’m no politician,” Malloy said. “Still, I can’t believe you’d let some fascist fringe group get away with this. Doesn’t it make you crazy, knowing someone’s censoring your work?”

  She stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets. “Malloy, at this point in my life, pretty much everything makes me crazy. I ‘ve learned to pick my battles, too. Right now, book banning isn’t one of them. And by the way, the books were challenged by law-abiding citizens, not fascists.”

  As she spoke, he measured and marked lumber, pausing every few seconds to consult a computer-generated diagram.

  “I figured an author would make a priority of free speech and freedom of the press.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Malloy. I love my work. I love being an author. That means I have to protect myself. I don’t want my personal problems to cast a shadow on my publishing career. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m in a bit of trouble here. The last thing I need is for WRIQ to do a feature on my controversial books. Haven’t you ever had to go against your principles for the sake of being practical?”

  “Yeah,” he said, picking up a pair of safety glasses. “I guess.”

  “When Victor was alive, I kept the writing quiet for a totally different reason. Writing was my refuge, my safe and private place in a very public world. It worked for us, balancing his busy career with something that was mine alone.” She picked up a stray nail from the driveway. “At first, I worried that his folks would have a problem with my books. They’re—Ronald and Winifred Winslow — they’re pretty conservative.”

  “So did they have a problem?”

  She hunched her shoulders inside the jacket. “No. But only because they never read my work. To them, my writing was simply a little hobby, like doing needlework or collecting dessert plates. I think if they showed a deeper interest, they’d— “ She stopped herself just in time. “Anyway, they were very proud of Victor, and regarded me as an adjunct to him. A wife, not a writer.”

  She tossed the nail into the trash container parked at the side of the house. “I wanted my books to stand or fail on their own merits rather than always wondering if my work was published because people were curious about Victor Winslow’s wife. I didn’t want to be regarded as the Marilyn Quayle of children’s literature.” She stared at a spot beyond the dunes, surprised at herself for speaking so frankly. “I was a writer before I was Victor’s wife. Now I ‘m not his wife anymore, but I ‘m still a writer. To be honest, it’s the only part of my life that makes sense right now.”

  “I guess I can understand that,” he said.

  “So how did Mary Margaret like the books?”

  “I think she likes them a lot. I’ll ask her tonight when we talk on the phone.”

  He probably called his kids all the time. What must it be like, having kids but not being there to tuck them into bed each night? She wanted to ask, but the dance of uncertainty between them stopped her. They weren’t exactly friends. They were merely being cordial because they had a contract together.

  “She was pretty impressed when she realized she’d met you,” he commented.

  “I was impressed with her, too.” Sandra recognized a kindred soul in Mary Margaret Malloy—the lonely intelligence in the girl’s eyes, the serious set to her mouth, the watchful silence. The intensity of Mary Margaret’s stare had hinted that she was the sort of girl who was always probing for things that weren’t there. Not seeing the things that were. Oh, Mary Margaret, learn to look and see what is, Sandra thought. You’ll spare yourself a lot of pain.

  “If she has any questions about the books, or just wants to tell me what she thought, you could bring her by again. Or she could write me a note.”

  “She might like that.” He stacked the lumber to be cut alongside the saw. In the front yard, the crew finished their lunch and rumbled back into action. The radio started playing “Stairway to Heaven.”

  “So I guess I’d better get back to work,” Sandra said. “Holler if you need anything.”

  He lowered his safety goggles and bent from the waist, positioning a board in front of the saw blade, eyeballing it like a pool shark lining up a shot. “Will do. And thanks for the dancing lesson.”

  “Don’t forget to practice tonight.” She took a step backward, curiously reluctant to return to the house. “Every night.”

  “You got it.” Flashing a reckless grin, he tripped the switch of the saw, and with a powerful roar and the reek of hot wood, sliced the board in half as though it were butter.

  Chapter 16

  So I see you were getting pretty cozy with the client,” Phil said, ducking his head under the sloping attic roof. He didn’t look at Mike but concentrated on tracking an electrical cable and checking it against the diagram on his chart.

  “She was showing me how to dance,” Mike said. If only that was all that was going on between them. He tried to think of her like any other client; restoring someone’s house involved a certain level of intimacy that didn’t hap pen under ordinary circumstances. Until today, it had been a forced closeness, an accidental touch, two strangers on a bus. Now the chemistry was different with Sandra. In bringing Mike into her house, she brought him too close for comfort. He saw the way she lived, the things she ate, smelled the light, soapy perfume that hung in the air of her bedroom. Each day, he delved deeper into restoring the old Victorian beauty, and had to remind himself that this was about the house, not the owner. Yet he discovered layers and secrets within her, too.

  “Dancing, huh?” Phil poked around a crate of old books.

  Mike pried bits of ancient caulk from the ocean-view dormer windows. “Mary Margaret has a dance coming up and I don’t want to embarrass her.”

  Phil cast a look over his shoulder. “You definitely need more practice.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, pal.” He went back to work, but kept thinking about Sandra. She’d felt like heaven in his arms, soft and warm, smelling of fresh air and clean skin. And holding her, he’d remembered how much he liked holding a woman close. Furtively, he had leaned down to let her hair blow across his lips.

  After dancing with her, he’d been irritable and out of sorts, and work wasn’t helping much, either. She’d unknowingly delivered a searing reminder that some needs couldn’t be filled by work or by being a good father to his kids. She reminded him that there was only so much loneliness a person could bear. And there was only one way to scratch a certain itch.

  He drew a bead of caulk along the edge of the windowpane. Why her? he wondered. She was Victor’s wid
ow, for chrissake, and plagued by troubles he didn’t want to touch. She was the last woman in the world he should have the hots for.

  Finishing the window, he cleaned off his putty knife and decided to inspect the long, hand-hewn rafter beam for signs of rot. The unfinished room held the cobwebby chill of long neglect, a virtual welcome wagon for squirrels or raccoons, particularly in winter. Taking out a flashlight, he navigated a path through the cast-off belongings of several generations: crates and boxes with hand-lettered labels, broken furniture, abandoned toys, a rotted beach umbrella, old lamps and appliances collecting dust. In one corner lay the scattered twigs and swatches and empty seed hulls of an abandoned squirrel’s nest.

  At the end of the attic, near the top of the narrow stairs, was a stack of recent arrivals—he could tell from the newness of the boxes. Some were mystery cartons, their contents unknown; others were identified in a hasty scrawl: “Old manuscripts.” “Campaign ‘98.” “Wedding gifts.” “Personal corresp.” “Misc.”

  The crates and luggage concealed a row of rafters and possibly another critter habitat. He moved the boxes one by one, realizing with a lurch of his gut that these were the souvenirs of Sandra’s life. Her life with Victor.

  Most were sealed with wide brown tape, though the “Wedding gifts” box contained some sort of knickknack in the shape of a circus tent, and the flaps didn’t quite close over it. The box labeled “Misc.” was unsealed, and by shining his light, he discovered a collection of plaques and framed certificates. “To Sandra Winslow, in appreciation of service . . . ” Interesting. She had received commendations from Literacy International, the National AIDS Foundation, the Stuttering Foundation of America, Big Brothers and Sisters, a half-dozen others. He remembered, almost against his will, what Ronald Winslow had said about Sandra: “She’s hiding something. She’s always been secretive.”

  Restacking the boxes out of the way, Mike shook his head. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, pal.”

  “How’s that?” called Phil from the other end of the attic.

  “Nothi — shit.” As he lifted a large box marked “Old linens, etc.,” the bottom dropped out of it. A collection of miscellany spilled across the floor—a cigar box held shut with a rubber band, a tackle box spattered with paint, a bunch of pillowcases and doilies, and an empty wheeled suitcase, carry-on size. When he picked it up, the top of the case flopped open. It was empty, but he could hear something sliding around inside. He hoped he hadn’t broken anything.