Dances of the Heart

by Andrea Downing

  “Not a lot.”

  He heard a splash and pictured her pacing around a pool.

  “You should have joined the party. Why didn’t you come, too?”

  Jake started up the ignition to put the air conditioning back on. He tried to shake his arms free of his shirt to cool himself as snakes of sweat gathered and soaked through the fabric. “Someone had to mind the place. Dad’s so damn enamored of your mother now, it’s a wonder he can get anything done.” He waited a moment, considering the things he wanted to ask her. “You decide what to do about school? You definitely going back?”

  There was the chink of ice in a glass before she said, “Yes. I’m going back. Right after Labor Day. You?”

  “Haven’t decided. Don’t think so. Don’t think I can face studies any more, all those books and papers to write, and then the parties. It’ll be all kids so much younger than me. Anyway, I’m working here on the ranch and it’s fine. I think Dad needs me anyway. But I’m not sure. What you said last time, about maybe needing a business degree sometime in the future, it made me think.” Jake sat, feeling a stream of sweat creep down his side like a crawling ant. He fiddled with the air conditioning again before going on. “The other side of this is the money, of course. I don’t want to be saddled with more of a loan. We’re not wealthy New Yorkers, you know.”

  Paige didn’t answer.

  He figured perhaps he’d been rude to make the comparison and grimaced at himself before fiddling again for a moment. “I suppose I could get veteran’s…” he went on half to himself. Then he sat forward before slouching back into the seat. “Paige?”

  “Still here, Jake. You’re worrying me. You’re rambling and sound weird. I know that’s unusual for me. I’m not usually a worrier.”

  “Yeah.” He took a deep breath, wondering whether he should proceed.

  “So?”

  “So, you remember I told you ’bout Robbie? Well, I sort of told you about Robbie?”

  “He was in trouble of some kind. You told him to join the army to avoid it. Your father doesn’t know. That’s about what I gathered, as far as we got. So, spill the beans.”

  Perspiration began to dampen his face despite the air conditioning. There was wet in his hair, on his face, in his groin. He didn’t know if it was the heat or his anxiety, but bile rose in his throat. He opened the door and slipped out, leaning back against the car to try to clear his head. The heat of the vehicle forced him away again and he started to pace on the verge.

  “Robbie was a drug runner, Paige.” He spoke so quietly there might have been possible eavesdroppers nearby. “He was in business with Ty Sheldon for a couple of years. He used to bring the stuff, marijuana mostly, across the border, and Ty would do the dealing, but they’d been partners. When Robbie tried to pull out, Ty threatened him.”

  “Ummm,” she interrupted. “I sort of felt it had something to do with that creep. When I saw you and him at the ranch that day—”

  “So, Robbie took my advice and joined the army to get out of it, and Ty found someone else to donkey for him. A year after Robbie’s death, I enlisted so I was out of the picture. Until now.”

  “Until now? Oh, Jake, for goodness sake...”

  The disbelief in her voice hit him like a gavel.

  “Listen. Listen,” he repeated. “He threatened to tell my dad. He said if I didn’t do the run for him—”

  “Jake!”

  Paige’s tone brought him up short. It was adversarial, dictatorial.

  “And there’s this girl. Lucinda. Robbie and she—”

  “I don’t want to hear any more. I don’t care about any girl, and I don’t care about Robbie. Robbie is dead, Jake. If you want to be a complete idiot, don’t tell me about it. You’re a fool, Jake, a complete and utter fool.” When she went on, her voice was calmer. “What have you done? What have you done so far?”

  “I made one run. I’m making a second one right now.”

  “Going or coming?”

  “What?” Suddenly he was fighting the need to heave as he took in air, breathed harder.

  “Have you got the shit on you? Have you collected it as yet?”

  “No, no. I’m on my way. I—”

  “Do you know what kind of an idiot you are? Do you know what trouble you can get into?”

  “Of course I know what kind of dang trouble I can get into. I’m not that stupid!”

  “Well, it seems you are!” Paige let out a deep breath. “This is to protect Ray? You think Ray is going to care more about a dead son than a live one? You think Ray isn’t ‘man enough’ to hear the truth about Robbie in preference to seeing you in jail? You think Ray wants you mixing with or being threatened into this by that piece of crap, Ty Sheldon? Have you thought at all? Have you thought it through at all?”

  He could only offer silence for an answer.

  Jake stood watching the cars passing on the highway, sunlight glinting off their metal, the whoosh of tires on hot asphalt as they dwindled and wavered in the heat. He sighed at the truth of her words, at his stupidity. He had tried to do the right thing, and it had come out wrong. Or maybe he was just lying to himself.

  “This isn’t Iraq, Jake, where maybe, just maybe, you sort of had a license to do things not normally permitted by decent men. Oh, decent—I should think that’s more important to you than it is to me but, hell, what do I know? Listen to me and listen good. Turn the car around, Jake. Turn the F-ing car around and go tell Ray once and for all. Get the whole thing off your chest and start living normally again. Turn the car around!”

  ****

  To Carrie, it was as if someone had let her out of prison, the prison of her aging body, the prison of her demanding career, the prison of always having to be who people wanted her to be.

  And the prison of revenge against what she had suffered from her ex, David.

  She considered that if a reckoning had been the initial motivation, the other factors had egged her on, taken over, driven her ever onwards. She had been a hostage to her own success. Like a runner without water who would eventually have to stop, she had gone on without love, without a point of reference, without a reason for it all except the revenge, which was now so distant, so vague as to not be there at all. And why? Why had she lived this way? Perhaps she had always been waiting for Ray; perhaps she had known, her body had known something better than all the others, some life better than this one would come along.

  She counted her blessings of having this man in her life. He made no demands on her, wanted nothing from her except herself, her love. He cared nothing for what she looked like, loved her for her accomplishments, for what she was—not who she wasn’t—didn’t give a hoot about anything except her, and didn’t care if the whole circus stopped or slowed. He was there for her, one hundred percent. Ray.

  And yet, she knew she wouldn’t stop the circus that had become her life.

  As she thought it through, something was driving her on. Whether it was a sense of responsibility or she actually wanted this life or enjoyed it, she could no longer tell, but she couldn’t stop. And she knew it now; she wanted both worlds.

  As she listened to his message, that “I love you” over and over again, she felt like a teenager, a young girl in love, and she remembered his touch, his smile, his laugh, his kiss and suddenly nothing else mattered—or seemed to matter—anymore. She could grow old, fail, give up...give up everything, except Ray.

  ****

  Jake came in and threw a bunch of tack needing mending on the kitchen table. The rotund figure of Mabel, clad in her usual black dress with a white apron wrapped around her as it had been for the past eighteen years, stopped wiping the dish she held in her hand. She squinted round, black eyes at him, a face he remembered from his youth, as he sat his gangly frame on the edge of the table.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “You put that horse stuff on my clean kitchen table? Jake, you know better than that. You get that stuff outta here this minute. This ain’t no pla
ce for horses, where you all eat. I’m gonna have to scrub that down now.”

  “It’s the best place for mending, Mabel,” he answered rather dubiously. “I’ll scrub it down when I’m finished.”

  “You’ll scrub it down?” she repeated in a low, doubtful voice. “You get that outta here, Jake. Take it back out to the stable where it belongs. Between the horses and the dogs, I got my life’s work cut out for me.”

  He reluctantly started gathering up the tack again when the house phone rang. He grabbed the extension off the wall in the kitchen.

  “Rocking R,” he answered.

  “What the hell have you done?” came Ty’s angry voice.

  He kept his back to Mabel who slowly went on emptying the dishwasher. “I haven’t done anything. And I’m not going to. I don’t want you phoning here, and I don’t want you calling round. You get the message?”

  “Do I get the message? Do I get the message? You listen to me, and you listen good, Jake. You get in your car and you go and do that run or you’re going to be one sorry—”

  “I can’t speak now. And it’s no use anyway. I’m going to…clear the matter up.” His stomach lurched as he thought of facing his father.

  “You don’t have to speak. You just have to listen. If you don’t—”

  Jake hung up. He hit the wall, making Mabel jump before he started to gather the tack. The phone rang again. Slamming his load back on the table to the housekeeper’s gasp of frustration, he grabbed the phone off the wall and yelled down it, “Don’t you phone here again!”

  There was a split second of silence before Carrie’s voice caught him as he was about to hang up.

  “Jake?”

  “Oh, Carrie? Sorry, I thought it was someone else.”

  “Well, I’m certainly glad to hear that. What with Ray not picking up his phone and that answer from you, I was beginning to think I’d done something awful.”

  “No. No, not at all. Dad’s out with a hunting party, so his cell will be off. How are you?”

  “Well. If living off Subway sandwiches and sitting on endless folding chairs in drafty libraries and bookstores is fun, then I’m having a great time. On the other hand…”

  “You doin’ a book tour?”

  “How did you guess?” Her deep breath sounded down the line. “How are things at the ranch?”

  “Oh, okay. Fine. Dad misses you.” Jake caught Mabel eyeing him curiously. She put a stack of dishes away, untied her apron and shook it out. “So, if you want the best damn hushpuppies in the state of Texas,” he continued in an attempt to appease the housekeeper, “you best come on here.”

  He could hear the home-help mumble, “That’s all we need. A demanding houseguest. I heared about her.”

  Jake continued into the phone, “Where are you now?”

  “Rapid City, South Dakota.”

  “Well, at least it’s west. You could be in Maine.”

  “No, the tour was planned with some precision. I started two weeks ago in Maine, shortly after the party, and have worked my way here.”

  “You fixin’ to come on after, then? Dad would sure like that.” He tried to think what it would be like to have Carrie there, for him, for his father.

  “I know.” Her voice was subdued. “I’d like it, too, but…I don’t know if I can. Maybe at the end of the summer, Jake, when Paige finally goes back to school.”

  He played with the cord of the phone for a moment before offering, “Paige is a big girl, Carrie. She seems to look after herself real well.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Hang on, I think I hear Dad’s truck now.”

  Mabel grabbed her bag off a hook on the wall and waddled to the door, meeting him and the yapping dogs coming in. “Mr. Ray, you have guests in the house, I want a raise!” Her voice projected over the din of barking.

  “What?” There was confusion mixed with a smile on his face as Jake caught his eye. Mabel had been working there long enough for his father to know exactly how to deal with her. “What guests?”

  “I’m going now. I got my babies to see to. But you ask Jake. He seems to be invitin’ everyone ’round for hushpuppies these days.” And with that, she was out the door.

  “Hang on, Carrie, Dad’s just walked in.”

  A huge smile spread across the older face.

  Jake held out the phone to his father before gathering the tack, then dropped it back down. “Oh, the hell with it,” he muttered. The dogs came as one and appealed to him as if they, too, understood they would now be forgotten. He absently gave one a pat and headed for the dog food.

  “Carrie, honey?” his father said into the phone. “Where are you, darlin’?”

  ****

  Paige flicked the thermostat down to bring up the air conditioning, then ran her finger along the law books on her shelf. She stood musing on them, then turned to look outside as sun flickered through the trees of Central Park and glinted vehemently on passing cars. The heat forced a slow pace on women who had deferred to sandals while men sauntered, their jackets slung over shoulders.

  She’d have to get back to the grind.

  She had left the beach for a few days to collect her weighty tomes of advocacy before returning to enjoy the last weeks of summer—on her own. She appreciated her mother had to schedule a book tour according to the necessities of easy travel and promotion, but the solitude this had afforded her was not altogether welcome. Friends came out on weekends, of course, but sitting around the rest of the week with only Carmen with whom to exchange a few words proved outright boring. So, here she was, faced with advanced torts, federal procedure, contract law, civil law, animal law and ethics.

  “Animal Law and Ethics?” She remembered Steven laughing at her for opting to take that subject and how the two of them had bandied about the phrase “nonhuman animals” for several days. She recalled trying to get him to discuss whether animals were entitled to rights as property, but he had just gone back to asking her why she had taken the course in the first place. It wasn’t her, he had said; was she concerned for her former horses?

  Paige fanned through the book, almost in pristine condition, and a scrap of paper fell out. Written in Steven’s hand it read, The White Dog at 8pm—appropriate or what?

  Her fingers gripped it, and she slumped into her desk chair, her hand flapping the paper like a pennant in the wind.

  Who had she been? Who was she? Had she molded herself to please Steven without even realizing it?

  She let the paper slip from her hand, fluttering to her desk like a leaf from a tree, zigzagging in a strong breeze. Then she grasped the note once more and clutched it, crumpled the paper, and threw it in the bin. No use keeping that, she had enough keepsakes, enough memories, enough reminders of what could have been.

  ****

  Ray understood not to plead, beg or make any kind of entreaty. He had come to realize the more he moved forward with Carrie, the more he tried to get hold of her, the more she backed off. While it wasn’t a matter of pretending to be disinterested altogether, of not caring what she did, he had to let her set the pace. Going to New York was one thing; it showed her he cared. He had told her he wanted her to be with him; the rest was now up to her. He wasn’t going to worry about it; she would come when she was ready.

  But Jake was another matter. His son’s subdued manner over the last couple of weeks gave him cause for concern. Jake wasn’t going out, which was not like him, he played with his food and he appeared listless, lost.

  In the soft light of the living room, with the dogs quietly chewing bones or demanding rubs, Ray peered across at his son, beer in hand, head thrown back.

  “You want to watch some television? I think Top Shot might be on.” His voice cut the night subtly, without alarm.

  Jake sat up and took a sip. “No. It’s all right.” He eyed his father over the top of the can. “Dad?”

  “Yeah?” Then quiet. Jake did not go on, so to help, Ray continued. “You know how proud I am of you? Did I
ever tell you that? You and Robbie. You two were…are…the best damn sons a man could ask for. I want you to know, okay? I don’t know if I ever told Robbie. Sometimes it…it bothers me he maybe didn’t know how much I loved him. And you. So, I want you to know. You’ve made me real proud, Jake. Real proud.”

  His son downed the beer without saying anything. Then, staring at him, he held the can and crushed it in his hand before getting up and going into the kitchen.

  Ray could see him leaning on the table with both hands, head bowed. He shoved a dog away and stood to go in to Jake when his cell phone rang. Carrie’s name appeared on the screen.

  “Sweetheart, can I call you back?” he started.

  But it was too late; Jake walked past him and headed down the hall. The bedroom door clicked shut.

  “Well…” Carrie’s voice was uncertain.

  “Never mind.” He paced the room, a sudden feeling of loss washing over him, of being alone. “Where are you?” It was his usual question; the one he trusted would, one day, have a good answer.

  “Dallas—”

  “Dallas!”

  “Changing planes. Or supposedly changing planes. Back to New York.”

  “I like the ‘supposedly.’” He waited for her to continue.

  “I don’t cook, clean, or do laundry,” she recited. “I am and always will be a workaholic,” she rushed on. “I get up in the night sometimes when I have an idea, and my mind shuts everything else out at other times, even when you may think you have my full attention.”

  Ray paced and waited, hoping this was headed his way.

  “I don’t take much time off, although on occasion I can be persuaded to do so…but even then you may regret it because my mind will always go back to the book. Even making love, well… my attention might be elsewhere.”

  “I haven’t so far found that to be so,” he butted in.

  “Well. No, I guess not. Long may it continue—”

  “You gonna go on like this all night or you gonna tell me where I should pick you up?”

  “You’re going to pick me up? In Dallas? No. There’s a flight into Austin I can make, and I’ll get a rental from there. Stay put and be good.”