Slow Dancing

by Suzanne Jenkins

  “Don’t let that get around,” Cate said.

  “What do you mean by the small town mentality?” Alan asked. He didn’t really care, but was trying to be polite. He was back at Seymour. That name would haunt him.

  “Entitlement,” Miss Logan said. “The old timers think they should be making the decisions for everyone.” A look came over her face, and she looked at Alan out of the corner of her eye.

  “If you ever go there, watch out for the single-women,” Miss Logan said. Cate gasped.

  “Oh my God yes, he’d be a huge hit,” she said. Alan frowned, but he was secretly pleased.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, playing dumb.

  “No single men in town,” Miss Logan said, hinting.

  “Unless you count the baggers at the grocery store,” Cate replied.

  “You mean the unwashed bearded fellows?” Miss Logan asked. “They don’t count, unless you’re Mary.” Cate gasped again.

  “I don’t think even Mary would be hard up enough to go on a date with a bagger, Miss Logan!”

  “Who’s Mary?” Alan asked.

  “If you stick around long enough, you’ll meet her,” Cate said. “She’s a regular here in town, goes to the clubs and bars. There’s no place to hang out in Seymour, not for young single women.”

  “Mary is not young,” Miss Logan said, sniffing. “She’s well into her thirties.” They looked at Alan, inquiringly.

  “Forty-five,” he answered, laughing. “Is that too old?”

  “No, it’s perfect,” Cate said, nodding toward Miss Logan. “You’ll have a huge range of pickins if you don’t mind ladies a few years older than you are.”

  “Geez, thanks a lot! Besides, he might be married,” Miss Logan said. Both sets of eyes riveted on his face, hopeful the answer would be no. Alan was a rogue, always on the lookout for another pretty face, but he had a mission there along the river, and he wanted to try to put his best foot forward. People might be more willing to help him locate Margaret and her daughter if they thought they’d been married.

  “Yes, I’m married,” he said. “But we’re separated.” Hopeful stares turned to compassionate.

  “Oh, we’re sorry,” Cate said.

  “Don’t be,” Alan said. “It was amicable and happened a long time ago. I’d like to move on with my life, maybe find a job here.” He flushed, angry that he’d said so much. Because of his big mouth, someday he might have to admit that he hadn’t seen his child in years. With his lie about being married, he opened another can of worms. What kind of a father was he that he’d let his child out of his sight? He quickly changed the subject.

  “So tell me about you both?” he said, not caring at all. He took a sip of tea and it had grown cold and tasteless. He put the cup back down.

  “Cate you go first,” Miss Logan prompted. “He’s already heard about me.”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” she said smiling. “I spend my days making repairs on this place and cleaning the rooms.”

  “You must meet a lot of interesting people,” Alan said, smiling. “And serve them tea in the afternoon.” Cate’s looks were growing on him. She was attractive in a plain, athletic way. He was guessing her age to be closer to forty now that he was talking to her. She’d be a good one to have in his cache if it rolled around to that. If he grew desperate again.

  “Yes, I guess I do,” Cate replied. Miss Logan smiled a broad, happy smile. She’d love a romance right under her nose if it couldn’t happen for her.

  “If you’re looking for work, you must be planning on staying here for a while,” Miss Logan said. The subject thrown back on him, he kept backing himself into a corner. Not really wanting a job, he just needed to keep looking to keep the unemployment check coming. But this wasn’t information he wanted the world to know. His old ways of wanting to be front of center were not working for him this afternoon.

  “We’ll see how things go.” He stood up and extended his hand, eager to get away from teatime before he said something too revealing again. “Thank you both for a fascinating afternoon. I think I’ll go to my room and prepare for the evening.” Miss Logan gave him her hand first.

  “How long are you staying?” she asked.

  “He paid for a week,” Cate said. “We have seven days to drill him for more information.” But she said it teasingly.

  “I’ll go back to my car and get my bags,” he said. Noelle popped into his mind. He wasn’t going to go back to Saint Augustine, but he wasn’t going to let her know.

  Chapter 11

  After sunset, Alan Johnson left the boarding house to walk along the riverfront. Restaurants and shops stayed open late, and the streets outside of pubs and cafés were crowded with bistro tables and chairs. Those lucky enough to get seating after an hour’s wait were eating and drinking outdoors, people watching. Alan was in a quandary. He knew all he had to do was ask and someone was bound to know where Margaret was. It was while he was strolling along, that the name Ellen Fisher hit him. Ellen Marie. Ellen Marie Fisher. Ellen Fisher and her stepfather; the newspaper at the Overlook Drive-in. Ellen Fisher and her stepfather, Frank McPherson, dance partners at Longbow Middle School Ninth Grade Graduation. His heart was thumping in his chest.

  Pushing his way through the crowded streets, he stopped at an open drug store and went inside, asking for a phone. It was at the back of the store, and he went in, shutting the folding door behind him. It was hot in the booth, but he didn’t mind it, the sweat beading on his upper lip as he thumbed through the Clarke County phone book. He came to McPherson, grateful his memory didn’t fail him. He pointed to the first names and went down the list; Albert, Cosmos, Benjamin, David, Enid, Frank. Step-father, Frank McPherson. He saw the address and tried to memorize it. Putting down the book, he opened up the folding door.

  “You gotta map of the area?” he asked the pharmacist. The man dug around behind the counter and came up with a tattered map.

  “You can go in the back room if you need to spread that out,” the man said. Alan thanked him, nervous about being so conspicuous. Checking the index of towns, he found Seymour, the address smack dab on the river. It looked easy enough to get to from Beauregard if he just went upriver ten miles. He’d have to figure out how to get through that wood; Comstock Forest, a green area that extended from the address to a large tan area called Hallowsbrook.

  “What’s Hallowsbrook?” he asked, bringing the map back to the pharmacist.

  “Why it’s the state hospital,” he said. “One of the few left in the country. For the criminally insane.”

  “Is that right?” Alan asked, intrigued. “Thanks for the use of the map.”

  “My pleasure.” Alan walked back to the boarding house, and when he got there, he decided he was going to go to Seymour and find Ellen. He might not approach her, but he wanted to know where she was. He didn’t want to call, either. What would he say?

  At Towering Pines, he didn’t go inside. Cate wouldn’t know he’d come back unless she looked out and saw that his car was gone. He remembered the way to the edge of town and the state hospital according to the map. It was a winding road through what appeared to be a lovely, although poorly lit neighborhood. Reaching the hospital, he parked his car outside the gates at the river. He was going to creep along the banks past the forest. Dark woods didn’t bother him, but river creatures did, so in the places where fallen logs obstructed his path or marshy areas ruined his shoes he cursed, sorry he hadn’t changed them to a pair of sneakers. After an hour of bushwhacking through the black woods, he reached a clearing.

  He saw her right away. The house was modest; a small cottage in the clearing and a young girl on the porch with her feet up on the step, her head resting on her knees. He watched her for at least ten minutes, and then suddenly she sprung up and ran into the house, yelling “Frank.”

  Alan turned back and trudged as quickly as he could back to his car, covering the miles in less than an hour this time. He drove to Cate’s, happy there wasn’t
anyone to see his return, just in case trespassing was a crime. His shoes were dry by the time he’d arrived, and he took them off and slapped them together to rid them of the sand that clung to the soles. He tiptoed up to his room and it wasn’t until he shut the door and leaned against it that he realized he was breathing hard, frightened. He’d seen his daughter. Ellen Fisher.

  The next morning, he woke up as soon as he smelled coffee. Miss Logan and a rangy looking character by the name of Emil Magda were sitting at the large rectangular table, having coffee and scrambled eggs and toast.

  “We help ourselves for breakfast,” Miss Logan said. “Scrambled egg casserole with bacon and toast this mornin’. Cate does good by us in the food department.” Alan nodded and went to the sideboard. There was a stainless steel pan with a can of Sterno under it. Seemed like overkill for so few people, but he supposed it kept her from having to serve everyone separately. Next to a bowl of fruit salad stood a toaster and a loaf of white bread. He decided the more he could eat at the house, the less money he’d have to spend on food, so he put two pieces of bread in the toaster and heaped up the eggs and fruit. He pulled a chair out next to Miss Logan.

  “Emil Magda, meet Alan,” Miss Logan said. “Emil here works maintenance down at the state mental hospital.” Alan looked over at the man; was he a man? It was difficult to tell, he was very slender, and appeared to be tall, with shoulder length, thick wavy hair and brown eyes with long eyelashes, like a cow. Alan looked at the man’s chest; he might have small breasts under his clothes. Wearing a standard khaki short-sleeved work shirt with a pocket protector in the pocket, he also had dark-rimmed glasses and dirty fingernails. His hands confirmed his gender for Alan; no woman would go around with fingernails like that, even if she were a grease monkey. It made him sick to watch the man eat, scooping up eggs with a knife and toast instead of using a fork. He nodded in Emil’s direction after the introduction but didn’t try to engage him and he didn’t seem interested in Alan, either, thank God.

  Alan anxiously waited for the man to finish and go to work if that’s where he was headed, so he could find a way to get Miss Logan to talk about Seymour. Surely if she was a hairdresser in the town of Seymour, she’d know of the Fisher women. Or was it Margaret McPherson?

  Miss Logan took a carafe of coffee off a trivet in front of her and poured a cup. “You want coffee, Emil?” He shook his head.

  “Gotta get going to work,” he said, pushing his chair from the table. He put his plate and napkin in a bin for dirty dishes and left without saying goodbye. Alan slowly exhaled. The guy gave him the creeps.

  “Coffee for you?” she asked Alan and he nodded, pushing his cup toward her.

  “Do you work today?” he asked. She nodded her head.

  “Yep, goin’ in a moment. Sleepy old Seymour, the women there need to get their hair done just like the big city dwellers do.” She had no way of knowing that a sheriff’s car would zoom through town on its way to Frank’s that morning, looking at footprints in the sand at the river’s edge and that she was talking to the very culprit.

  “What do the women in town do for a livin’?” he asked. “Doesn’t seem like much industry there.”

  “No, that’s true. But we have the café’ and they hire two waitresses who’ve been there twenty years. Mary and June. And of course, the grocery; they got two women workin’ the cash registers. Over at the clinic, Margo is the nurse practitioner. And that leaves the Post Office and Jessie the postmistress. No one else hiring but me, and my beauticians come from other places, just like I do.” She smiled at Alan. “And you know what? They’re all single. Not a married one among em’, not a one. What do you suppose that stems from?”

  “You must have a lot of bachelors,” he said, amused.

  “Well, we got the baggers at the grocery; most of them homeless, too, or live in a trailer home down in Mobile and take the bus in everyday, and then of course, there’s Frank. But I doubt if Frank will give any of the gals in Seymour the time of day. He never did before his wife showed up and now she’s gone, it don’t look like he’s much interested again.” Margaret was gone? Alan’s heart skipped a beat. He wondered before why the picture didn’t mention a mother. And the little girl yelled for “Frank,” not Mom when he frightened her last night.

  “What happened to his wife?” Alan tried not to seem too interested, or too eager, but it made no difference to Miss Logan because she launched right in.

  “Oh, that’s such a sad story. I remember the day Margaret came to Seymour. She had the kind of looks that make everyone; man, woman and dog stop and take notice. The car she was drivin, an old beat up thing, died right in front of Frank’s garage.”

  “Why’d she come to Seymour?” Alan interrupted.

  “Evidently, she was on her way to some place in Texas and got lost. Travelers make a wrong turn back in Mobile and end up in Seymour, but Margaret was the first I knew of that stayed. Anyway, she had a little one with her, so Frank had her to wait over in the café across the street from his garage. If you ever visit the town, you best try the pie at the café. Any kind is delicious. My favorite is the cherry.” She sipped her coffee and Alan waited.

  “I will definitely try the pie,” Alan replied patiently. “What happened next?”

  “Frank needed a part for her car so he couldn’t get it fixed for a few days. Mary, the waitress I told you about at the café, also rents rooms in her house and arranged for Margaret and the little girl to stay there. Over that weekend she and Frank fell in love and she never left Seymour.”

  Hearing this, Alan became livid. It took one weekend for that whore of a woman to hook the only single guy in town. He struggled to slow his breathing down so Miss Logan would keep talking; he wanted to yell at her but knew he wouldn’t get much more out of her if he did.

  “When did they get married?” Alan asked softly, his pulse pounding in his throat.

  “They waited a month. The town talked regardless. Frank was a bachelor and didn’t date much at all that we could see after high school.” She leaned closer and whispered. “There was even talk that he might be, you know, sweet.” Disgusted Alan ignored her. Getting her to talk about what was happening in Frank and Margaret’s lives now might anger Miss Logan once the truth about him came out, but it was a risk he was willing to take.

  “Their marriage has lasted all these years, so that mustn’t be an issue,” he stated, trying to get down to business.

  “Oh yes, that’s true. They were happily married until she took sick. Spent the last ten years of her life in the mental hospital, right up until she died last March.” The wind sucked out of Alan’s lungs when he gasped, Miss Logan didn’t notice and continued talking. “They were only together those few years and then the judge committed her to Hallowsbrook. Me and the rest of the people thought it was premature; it didn’t seem like they’d given her much time to clean up her act. But the judge threatened Frank, or so the story goes. Either allow the commitment to stay in place or lose the girl.” Alan thought of what it would mean for a man to have to care for a small child all those years. He remembered Ellen’s scream for Frank in the dark. He was her source of protection when Alan didn’t even know she existed. Strange feelings of jealousy were trying to work to the surface, but he wasn’t going to pretend he was something he wasn’t. He might not have been involved in the kid’s life even if he’d known about her when she was an infant, thinking back to a time when it was so easy to take the woman’s money and skip out on her. She’d pleaded with him and he wondered now if it was because she knew she was pregnant. The janitor back in Saint Augustine said she’d lost her job; she must have felt desperate. At the time, if he was honest with himself it wouldn’t have mattered.

  He felt differently now. Margaret was dead and the kid was his flesh and blood, maybe. He had to know. If she wasn’t his, he’d be fine with it. But she might be. There were new tests, blood tests that could determine almost one hundred percent if a child was a man’s own. He read the pap
er, he knew about such things. Getting to the point of demanding such a test had to be navigated with finesse. It would mean approaching Frank McPherson. Miss Logan could fill in the blanks and make it possible for him to sound like he knew what he was looking for when the time came.

  “How’d Margaret act that got her into trouble? Was it something Frank knew from the get-go? Or did it take him by surprise?”

  “Oh no, no one knew about it. She was insane. Mary said she saw right away, but it wasn’t her business. Now Mary is a busy body, so you can’t be sure to trust what she says. I myself didn’t see anything untoward. Right after the wedding, they stayed isolated out at Frank’s place. He did all the shopping and what have you, Margaret stayed home with the child and did the garden. The garden is fabulous, by the way; you need a treat for the eye, go out to Frank and Ellen’s and see it for yerself.” Alan stifled a yawn; he’d have to keep steering Miss Logan back to the story.

  “So when could Frank tell she was sick?” Miss Logan looked at him strangely.

  “She was mental, not sick. If I remember correctly, she kept takin’ off. He’d have to enlist the aid of the sheriff’s office from time to time and they usually found her within an hour. But the last time she was gone over a period of days and the judge thought that was enough reason to lock her away for good. She’d already had thirty day stints and they’d give her drugs and electric shock.” Alan reeled and this time she noticed. “Yep, you heard me. Even that wasn’t enough.” As much as his curiosity was peeked, he’d heard all he could bear. He was a man, not a monster. He did have feelings of a sort for the woman at one time. Imagining her being kooky enough to have to be electrocuted made him feel awful. But he had one more question.

  “How’d she die?” He was almost afraid to ask, but his curiosity got the best of him.

  “No one knows,” Miss Logan said. But then she leaned in and whispered. “Mary, Miss Busy Body, visited Margaret every week. She was the only one allowed to go in. She said she took her own life.”