“Where’s Jesse?” he asked.
“Helping Mrs. Hinman down the stairs. Then he’s going to bring the car around.”
“Mrs. Hinman’s coming? But she can’t…Wait. Car? Jesse has a car?”
“Sure. How’d you think he was getting back and forth to see his mother?”
“But he flew out here.”
“And then he bought a cheap used car to get around while he was here.”
Billy wanted to ask what Jesse’d do with the car when he flew home. But he didn’t want to introduce the idea of Jesse flying away. Not to Rayleen. Not to himself.
“There,” Rayleen said. “Not bad if I do say so myself. Here. Take a look at yourself in the mirror.”
Billy accepted the mirror, and, for the second time in three days, regarded his own face. She’d done a great job on the bruises. They had all but disappeared. Of course she couldn’t fix the swelling of his nose or the broken blood vessel in his eye. It was hard to focus off that, but he tried. He tried to just take in his face.
“Much less beaten-up-looking,” he said. “Still older.”
“None of us are getting younger.”
“But you got older one day at a time. I took on twelve years all in one sitting.”
• • •
Jesse held the door of the school open for him. Billy walked into the tiny hallway, his vision darkened by the loan of Jesse’s sunglasses. He felt Jesse’s shoulder pressed against his on the right, Felipe’s shoulder on the left. He felt their arms hooked through his, as if holding him up, transporting the wounded. In Jesse’s other hand Billy saw a single long-stemmed red rose. Billy assumed he’d brought it for Grace, but hadn’t asked. He glanced over his shoulder to be sure Rayleen and Mrs. Hinman were still back there. Rayleen pointed toward the office as if she knew exactly where to find it. Maybe she did.
“Everything is so tiny,” Billy whispered to Jesse.
“Is it freaking you out?”
“Very much so. It makes me claustrophobic. Like I’m in a doll house. It reminds me of my school days. And I really thought I’d managed to forget them.”
“Are you breathing?”
“Not very much, no.”
“I’d recommend it.”
Rayleen held the office door open, and they massed in. A young black woman with close-shaved hair looked up from behind a desk.
“We’re here to see Grace Ferguson’s dance performance,” Jesse said.
The woman looked baffled for a moment. She looked them over, stopping to pay particular attention to Billy. Or was that his imagination? No. He didn’t think it was.
“All five of you?”
“All five of us,” Jesse said, without missing a beat.
“And you would be…”
“Her neighbors.”
“Ah. I see. You know her mother is already here, and with a family friend.”
“Good,” Jesse said.
Billy admired Jesse’s ability to answer only the question in front of him, and not the subtext of the situation.
“Well, OK, then,” the woman said. She pulled open a drawer while sneaking another glance at Billy. “Five more visitor’s passes. That makes seven just for Grace. I think that’s a new record.”
“She’s an unusually popular girl,” Jesse said.
• • •
Billy struggled with the clip on his visitor’s pass as an excuse not to look at the lockers and water fountains and classroom doors. When he looked up, he saw the sign for the auditorium, and his heart jumped.
“Was it just me?” he asked. “Or was that office lady looking at me funny?”
“Oh, no,” Rayleen said. “It wasn’t just you. I think it was the sunglasses. And the fact that you look nervous. But it doesn’t matter now.”
They stopped in front of the auditorium. Billy could hear the din of hundreds of grade-schoolers inside. Jesse opened Billy’s hand and pressed something into his palm.
When he examined his hand, he saw two little foam cylinders.
“Earplugs,” Jesse said. “It’s going to be noisy in there.”
“It’s noisy out here.”
“Here, I’ll show you how to put them in.”
Jesse tugged gently on the outside of his ears, one at a time, and slid the compressed cylinders into place.
“They’ll expand,” he said. “You’ll still hear, but it should muffle things.”
Then he swung the door to the auditorium wide, and the sound of kids’ voices hit Billy, a solid wall of noise. He couldn’t imagine what it must sound like unmuffled. But the earplugs created a sense of distance, which felt almost like dreaminess. As if he were dreaming the sound. And maybe the herbs were making him just a tiny bit sleepy. So he decided to pretend he was dreaming about a grade-school auditorium.
They sat together in a roped-off area of seats, the first two rows in the center section. Billy glanced around briefly and found himself eye to eye with Grace’s mom. She was sitting with Yolanda, one row forward and five or six seats over. She glared at Billy and then made a point of looking away.
“Eileen is shooting daggers at me,” he whispered to Rayleen and Jesse, wondering if the earplugs made him talk too loudly without knowing it.
“Oh,” Rayleen said. “To be expected, I guess.”
Silence. If you could call the din of three hundred noisy kids silence.
Then Rayleen said, “Did I ever tell you that was my mother’s name? Eileen?”
Jesse said, “Yes,” and Billy said, “No,” at exactly the same time.
“I meant Billy, actually. And my dad’s name was Ray. Ray and Eileen.”
“Oh,” Billy said.
“So…”
“So…Oh! Right. Ray and Eileen. Rayleen.”
A grown-up took the stage and demanded quiet, so the show could begin. And, amazingly, the kids shut up. Not on a dime, but in a matter of tens of seconds. So it was a quieter dream after that.
• • •
“How long is this whole thing?” he whispered in Jesse’s ear. “Is this play part an hour all in itself?”
“The whole assembly is fifty minutes. Including Grace’s dance.”
“My God, it’s been more than fifty minutes already. Hasn’t it?”
Jesse peered at his watch.
“It’s been nine minutes,” he whispered.
“Oh, dear God.”
A moment later Billy glanced down to see Jesse’s hand close to, but not touching, his panicky gut. Billy breathed deeply and received all the healing he could gather.
• • •
When Grace walked out on the stage, all five of them applauded. And Billy could see Eileen and Yolanda clapping as well. He pulled out the earplugs and took off Jesse’s sunglasses, so he wouldn’t miss — or even muffle — a thing.
She was wearing the blue tunic Mrs. Hinman had made for her, over black tights. Billy hadn’t even known Grace owned black tights. Someone must have bought them for her for this occasion.
He leaned over Felipe and touched Mrs. Hinman on the shoulder.
“Told you she’d love it,” he whispered.
And Mrs. Hinman’s face lit up.
Grace took a position properly back from the edge of the stage, and the world stood still.
“Oh, my God, she looks so beautiful,” Billy breathed out loud.
Rayleen had wound flowers into Grace’s hair, and every ounce of Grace-spirit glowed from the inside out. If she was nervous, if she hadn’t slept, you’d never have known it.
“She’s a natural,” he breathed quietly. Reverently. “I was wrong about that.”
How could I have made that mistake? he wondered. Maybe because he’d never taught anyone before, never witnessed the first few months of anyone’s lessons except his own. And maybe everybody goes through an awkward stage, one that’s recognizable only from the outside.
She hadn’t even begun dancing yet. The music hadn’t even started. It didn’t matter. He’d seen her do the dance a h
undred times. That much he knew she could do. Now he was watching her take the stage. Take the audience.
“She’s a natural,” he said again.
The music started, the song Billy had picked out. Grace tilted her head ever so slightly, as if listening. And she smiled. And she danced.
And she was perfect.
Her time step was perfect. Her Buffalo turns were perfect. Her arms were perfect. Her upper body looked relaxed. She never once stopped smiling. And it was a real smile, too. Not a stage smile. Even her smile was a natural.
He counted out the treble hops with her, biting down hard on his own molars with tension, as if he could drive her motions. But he couldn’t, nor did she need him to.
The trebles were perfect.
Her finish was brilliant. Crisp and clean. She even threw her arms wide, as if inviting, receiving, the acclaim she so deserved, had worked so hard for.
One beat of silence. The audience needed a split second to catch up to the performer. Then the applause. Billy leapt to his feet to applaud. His four neighbors followed, Mrs. Hinman leaning on Felipe and struggling. Then Eileen and Yolanda jumped to their feet. Grace took a bow from the waist. The applause continued. Intensified, if anything. Other parents were standing now, and Grace’s smile had turned into a beam.
“She was born for this,” Billy said out loud.
Jesse cocked his arm back and sailed the red rose, end over end, on to the stage.
Grace ran to it, picked it up, and curtsied, cradling it in the crook of her arm. Curtsied! He had never taught her that. He had never told her how to hold a long-stemmed rose. Had she seen these things in a movie, or on TV? Or did they just spring from her in some natural way?
The din set in again as the kids behind him began to shuffle out of the auditorium, but Billy paid it no mind.
Grace trotted down the stairs from the stage and headed right for him, and he met her halfway. He didn’t even bother to look around and see if Jesse, or any other form of moral support, remained close by.
She stood at his feet, beaming up into his face, between the stage and the front row, asking a question with her eyes. Well, not a question. The question. And not even, “Are you proud of me?” Because that went without saying. More, “Exactly how proud of me?”
He took her face between his hands.
“I was good,” she said breathlessly.
“Oh, my God. Grace. You were…”
But he should have been faster. He should have spit it right out. Because, before he could even tell her what she was, what she had been, the face disappeared from between his hands. It was yanked away.
Eileen had Grace by the elbow and had taken her back.
“You see this?” Eileen said to Billy, all bluster and anger.
She held up a bright orange plastic disc, like a little key fob on a chain. It had some gold writing on it, but Billy couldn’t make it out.
“You know what this is?” she spat.
Billy shook his head blankly.
“It’s a thirty-day chip. It means I have thirty days clean. It means I have no drugs in my house, I have no drugs in my bloodstream, and it means that if any of you come near my daughter — and I mean within a hundred feet of my daughter — I’m going to call the police and have you arrested for kidnapping. That’s what it means.”
She pivoted abruptly and towed Grace down the aisle to the door. Grace looked back over her shoulder and offered a plaintive wave goodbye. Billy waved back.
“Sorry,” Yolanda said, startling him. “Sorry. She actually didn’t warn me she was about to do that. I’ll try to talk to her.”
And she trotted down the aisle to catch up.
Billy woke suddenly from his dream-turned-nightmare and found himself in public, in a school, in a tragedy. He spun around looking for Jesse, who, it turned out, had been standing just behind Billy’s left shoulder, and nearly knocked him down.
“I need to go home,” Billy said. “It’s an emergency. I’m totally panicking. I’m in over my head. You have to help me.”
Grace
“I wish you’d talk to me,” Grace’s mom said.
Grace was sitting on the floor about two feet from the TV, cross-legged, with her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists, staring at that cartoon show she didn’t much like. But it didn’t matter that she didn’t like it, because she wasn’t paying any attention to it anyway.
“Want to play a game of checkers?” Grace’s mom asked.
“No, thanks.”
“You used to love it when we played checkers.”
“I just don’t feel like it, is all.”
“Want to walk down to the boulevard and get an ice cream? Can’t very well say you’re not in the mood for that.”
“Yeah, I can. I’m not in the mood for that.”
Grace’s mom stepped between Grace and the TV set, and turned off the show. She stood looking down at Grace, and Grace had to crane her neck back painfully to even see her mom’s face hovering up there, high above her.
“I’m having a little trouble,” her mom said, “with how you haven’t even said you’re happy to be home. Or that you’re proud of me for my thirty days. I worked hard for those thirty days. And you’re so bent out of shape about some neighbors and a cat that you don’t even seem to have noticed. You haven’t even told me I did a good thing.”
Grace sighed.
“That part was good,” she said.
Her mom threw up her hands, literally, and stomped away.
• • •
Yolanda came by the following day after work. About six thirty. And she brought a pizza. Pepperoni and double cheese.
“Thanks,” Grace said, and took one slice.
“Whoa,” Yolanda said, more or less to Grace’s mom, because Grace had walked away by then. “She been like this ever since—”
“No,” Grace’s mom said. “Sometimes she’s even worse.”
“How ‘bout a family chat?”
“I don’t want to hear it again,” Grace’s mom said.
“I’ll chat,” Grace said.
Grace sat on one end of the couch with her pizza, and Yolanda sat at the other end. Grace’s mom stayed at the kitchen table, lit a cigarette, and looked the other way.
“I hate it when you smoke in the house,” Grace said.
“I know you do,” her mom said. “But you don’t always get your way.”
“I don’t ever get my way,” Grace said.
“Hey, hey, whoa,” Yolanda said. “Chatting, not bickering. Useful chatting. Eileen, Grace just told you how she felt about something, and you totally blew her off. You want to do that one over?”
Grace’s mom sighed.
“I know I used to smoke outside. And I know you liked that better. But now I feel like I have to watch you every minute. I feel like if I turn my back for even that long you’ll go running to see one of the neighbors.”
“So? Would that be such a terrible thing?”
“Whoa, whoa, Grace,” Yolanda said. “Useful chatting. If your mom promises to go back to smoking outside, do you promise not to go anywhere while she’s gone?”
Grace sighed. Sniffled.
“Yeah, OK.”
“Listen to her,” Grace’s mom said. “She sounds like a wrung-out dishrag. We used to be great together. We used to be all we needed, just me and Grace against the world. Now she’s moping around like a sick puppy because I won’t let her see those awful people.”
“They’re not awful people!” Grace shouted.
“Eileen! Foul!” Yolanda barked. “Do that one over.”
“OK. Fine. I’m sorry. Because I won’t let her see her friends. She used to be happy with me. Without all those other people. And now look at her. She looks like she just lost her best friend.”
“I did,” Grace said.
Grace’s mom turned her back and smoked more ferociously.
“Yeah, she looks bad,” Yolanda said. “She was really coming alive for a while there
. And now she looks like a plant you forgot to water. Every time I look over at her, I expect to see a dead leaf fall off. Don’t you want her to thrive?”
“I want her to thrive with me,” Grace’s mom said, her back still turned.
“That’s selfish.”
“F—. Screw you, Yolanda.”
“Oh, so that’s how it’s gonna be. Now listen here, little missy. Yeah. It used to be just the two of you, how lovely. But then you took a powder. And that wasn’t Grace’s fault. Now she has new people in her life, and it’s a damn good thing, because without them, she’d either be dead or in the system. You wouldn’t get her back for a year, minimum. She’s here because some people took over for you. You can’t undo that. She bonded with them, and you can’t subtract them no matter how hard you try.”
“Watch me,” Grace’s mom said, stamping out her cigarette on a plate left over from dinner.
“OK, let me put it another way. You can subtract them from Grace’s life, even though that sucks and it’s not fair in any way. And I can’t stop you. But you can’t subtract them from Grace.”
“She’ll get over it,” Grace’s mom said. Quietly. Almost as if she might be crying a little, but Grace couldn’t tell for sure.
“Well, let’s see,” Yolanda said. “Grace? Are you ever gonna get over it?”
“No.”
“She says she’s never gonna get over it, Eileen.”
“People always say that. But then they do.”
“You’re breaking your daughter’s heart. I strongly advise you to consider a compromise.”
“I don’t want to compromise.”
“Nobody ever does,” Yolanda said. She picked up another slice of pizza on her way out the door. “Call me if you need me, Grace.”
“She doesn’t need you!” Grace’s mom shouted. “She just needs me!”
Yolanda tilted her head a little, and raised one eyebrow in a funny way.
“Call me if you need me, Grace,” she said again.
“K,” Grace said.
Then Yolanda let herself out, and Grace snagged three more pieces of the pizza and locked herself in her room for the night.
• • •
When Grace woke in the morning, the sky was barely light. She lay still a minute on her back under the covers, watching the tiny bit of light bleed through the curtains over her bed. In her head, she replayed Monday’s dance, right up to the part where her mom grabbed her elbow and snatched her away.
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