Pretending to Dance

by Diane Chamberlain

  I sat down on the chair and rested my elbows on the table. “What do you mean, they don’t pay you?” I’d always thought that cleaning houses was Amalia’s job.

  “Well, they don’t pay me in money, anyway,” she said as she pulled on yellow rubber gloves and began washing the dishes that had been left in the sink. “But I get a place to live, and that’s a lot, so I’m not complaining.”

  “But … how do you buy food and clothes or other things you need?” I thought of how her long hair always had that honeysuckle scent. “How do you buy shampoo and things?”

  I couldn’t tell if she didn’t answer right away because she was busy scrubbing a frying pan or if she was reluctant to tell me. “Your father,” she said finally. “He gives me money each month. Not a lot, but enough.”

  “Does Mom know?” I nearly whispered the question.

  “Oh, of course!” She rinsed the frying pan under the faucet. “He wouldn’t do something like that behind her back.”

  I shook my head. “I have a really crazy family,” I said with a laugh.

  “Please don’t use that word,” she said, setting the pan in the dish drainer. “I hate it so much.”

  “Crazy?” I wasn’t sure whether she was reacting to crazy or family.

  “Yes. I hate that word.” Her shoulders scrunched up. Then she turned to look at me. “Are you excited about the book tour?” she asked, in one of her abrupt changes of topic.

  “Yes,” I said, going along with the new subject. I remembered Amalia had taught dance at that mental hospital where Daddy’d worked. I guessed that had made her sensitive to the word crazy. “They’ve added a couple of radio interviews, too,” I said. “Isn’t that cool?” Daddy’s publicist had called that morning to give us addresses to radio stations in Charlotte and Raleigh. The publicist seemed to have forgotten his handicap, though, and for a couple of hours everything was on hold while she verified that the studios were accessible.

  “Very cool,” Amalia agreed.

  “But I’m nervous, too,” I admitted. “I want the tour to be really good for Daddy.” The tour was another chance to show my father how appreciated he was and I wanted him to have a good time.

  Amalia slipped off her gloves and rested them on the edge of the dish drainer, then smiled at me. “God, I love you,” she said. “You’re such a good daughter, Molly.”

  I looked down at my hands where they rested on the table. I didn’t feel like a good daughter. There was one giant negative about the book tour and I was having trouble thinking about much else: if Chris had the guts to call me after what happened the day before, I wouldn’t be around to talk to him.

  Amalia picked up a sponge and began wiping down the counter. “So,” she said without looking at me, “I hear there might be a guy in your life.”

  My chin dropped. How did she know I was thinking about him right that minute? Plus, I couldn’t believe Daddy had already told her. It had been less than twenty-four hours since the whole van-breakdown episode at Stacy’s. When had he had time?

  “Is Daddy as furious as I think he is?” I asked.

  She looked at me in surprise. “When have you ever seen him furious?”

  “You know what I mean,” I said.

  “Concerned, perhaps,” she said. That didn’t sound too bad. “So, what is he like?” Amalia asked. “The new guy?”

  I felt my cheeks turn red and couldn’t stop a smile. “Cute,” I said. “And really nice.”

  “Sexy?” Amalia glanced at me.

  “Amalia.” My cheeks were blazing hot. “I don’t know! I guess so. He looks like Jon Bon Jovi. Do you know who that is?”

  “Of course.” She moved the toaster to clean the counter beneath it.

  “But I think Daddy might have messed it up giving him the third degree. He was upset because Chris is three years older than me.”

  Amalia laughed. “He’s a fine one to talk,” she said, and I’d forgotten that he’d been nine years older than Amalia when they were together.

  “Exactly!” I said. “He’s a hypocrite!” I felt like Amalia and I were suddenly on the same team. “So,” I said, “did you have a boyfriend when you were my age?”

  Amalia laughed. “Oh,” she said, “we’re not going there!” She turned to face me, her face suddenly flushed. “You know what would be a huge help to me?” she asked. “You could pick up things. Bring me any dirty dishes you find and put things away as much as you can so I can dust and vacuum. Okay?”

  “Sure,” I said, reluctantly getting to my feet, and I knew that was the end of any meaningful conversation we might have had today.

  27

  I sat on the glider on our front porch the following evening, reading Forever, the book Stacy had loaned me. What an eye opener! It made me want to be with Chris in the worst way. I wanted to kiss him again. I wanted to have the sort of intense and loving relationship with him that Katherine had with Michael in the book. The only thing I didn’t like was that Michael called his penis “Ralph.” I really hoped Chris didn’t have a name for his, or if he did, that it wasn’t that idiotic.

  Tomorrow, Daddy and Russell and I were heading out of town for the book tour. That meant no hope at all of seeing or talking to Chris. Not that he was exactly getting in touch with me as it was, but at least with me being at home there was hope.

  I was deep into Forever when I heard a car coming up our road. Because of all the trees, we always heard a car long before we could see it, and I peered through the woods, curious to know who was coming. Dani’s little green car appeared after a moment, turning into our driveway.

  I tensed. In spite of everything Amalia had told me about Dani being my father’s princess before I came along, I disliked her even more than before now that I’d seen the mess she and her parents had left for Amalia to clean up. Dani’s room had been especially disgusting, with plates of hardened food on the dresser and clothes knee-deep on the floor.

  Dani parked her car near our porch steps. She got out, opened the rear door, and reached into the backseat for a stack of cookie sheets I knew Mom wanted to borrow from Aunt Claudia. She needed them to make appetizers for the midsummer party.

  I stood up, tucking Forever upside down in the corner of the glider. I didn’t want Dani to see what I was reading.

  “Hi,” I said, as she climbed the porch steps. “Do you need any help?”

  She didn’t answer, and when she’d reached the porch, she stood looking at me, holding the stack of cookie sheets in her arms like a pile of giant books. She had on sunglasses and when she moved them to the top of her head, her black-rimmed eyes came into view. “So,” she said, “what’s going on with you and Chris Turner?”

  Wow. How did she know anything? Yet I felt a thrill that my one brief encounter with Chris had been enough to start rumors.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “Don’t give me that innocent look. I know you hooked up with him.”

  “How can you know anything?”

  “He told me. I saw him at the mall.”

  I hated the thought of him talking to her. Hated it! I tried to keep my voice calm. “What did he say?” I asked.

  She shifted the cookie sheets in her arms. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” she said.

  My cheeks burned, and I walked back to the glider and sat down. “Whatever,” I said to her, as if I didn’t care. To be honest, I was afraid to know what he’d said.

  She sat down on one of the rockers near the glider, laying the cookie sheets flat on her lap. “Listen, Molly,” she said. “Chris hooks up with everybody, so don’t get hung up on him. He doesn’t think you’re anyone special, okay? I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  I tried to laugh, but I thought I sounded as though I was being strangled. “Oh,” I said, “for the first time in my life, you’re looking out for me.”

  “Come on,” she said, her blue eyes intent on mine. “We’re cousins. When it comes right down to it, we have to take care
of each other, so of course I’d look out for you.” She sounded so sincere, I almost believed her. “And he’s bad news for you,” she continued. “He’ll take advantage of you because you’re a baby and he knows you don’t know anything.”

  “I can take care of myself, thank you,” I said. And thanks to Forever, I thought, knew a whole lot more than I had hours earlier.

  Dani sighed and stood up. “There’s a cooler in the backseat of my car,” she said. “Can you get it? Aunt Nora wants to borrow it.”

  I tromped down the steps, my cheeks still burning over the thought of Chris talking to her about me. Did he make fun of my kissing, or my flat chest, or how easily I got stoned, or … something? I lugged the cooler out of the backseat and carried it up the steps and into the house, where the smell of shit instantly stung my nostrils, and I knew Daddy’d had an accident. Danielle had set the cookie sheets on the kitchen counter and now had her hand over her mouth as though she might get sick.

  “Oh my God,” she said, “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  She swept past me toward the living room and the front door, and I felt embarrassed for my father. This was happening more often these days, at least once a month, and it seemed to happen with no rhyme or reason that I could tell. I could hear my mother and Russell talking with him in the bedroom.

  I walked back outside where Dani stood on the porch, gulping fresh air. She looked at me.

  “That is so gross,” she said.

  “It’s not his fault.”

  She looked toward the front door. “His life really sucks,” she said.

  “No it doesn’t,” I snapped. “You have no right to say that.”

  “He’s so trapped,” she said. “He must feel like his life is totally worthless.”

  My hands formed fists at my sides, I was so angry. “Worthless?” I shouted. “His life is a hundred times more”—I hunted for a word that would counter her worthless—“more valuable than your father’s,” I said. “My father helps people every single day. What does your father do? He’s either hauling junk or sitting around killing himself smoking or making beer, which is so incredibly stupid and … plus, it stinks!”

  She stared at me. “Wow, you’re turning into an incredible bitch.” She laughed an ugly laugh and pointed toward the house. “And you say my father stinks?”

  I lunged for her, filled with an explosive hatred I’d never felt before. Knocking her to the floor of the porch, I straddled her and smashed my fist into her face. I felt momentarily out of my mind as I felt my knuckles connect with her cheek. She howled with pain, and that sound snapped me back to reality. What was I doing?

  I leaped to my feet quickly, locking my hands behind my back, suddenly afraid of my anger. Dani slowly sat up, her hand on her red cheek, tears burning in her eyes. “You spoiled little bitch!” she shouted. “You don’t even belong here. You and your twisted family. Aunt Nora should have just said no when your whore mother dumped you here. We all would have been better off without the two of you.”

  “She didn’t ‘dump’ me,” I said. “She offered me to them. Mom couldn’t have children, and—”

  “Offered you?” Dani laughed. She opened and closed her mouth, her hand on her cheek, as if testing how badly I’d hurt her. The skin over her cheekbone was already bruising. “Who told you that fairy tale?” she asked.

  I knew I had it wrong. I knew that wasn’t exactly how my father had described the situation to me, but it was close enough.

  “It’s not a fairy tale.” I rubbed the hand I’d hit her with. My knuckles had a buzzing feeling. “Amalia couldn’t take good care of a baby, so she brought me to my father, and that’s when—”

  “You weren’t a baby.” Dani got to her feet, slowly, holding on to the arm of the rocker, and I took a step back from her. “You were two years old.”

  “No,” I corrected her. “I was a baby.”

  “No, you were two.” She dusted the seat of her black jeans with her hands. “I should know,” she said. “I was five and I remember everyone saying how you could be my playmate and I’m, like, rolling my eyes because you were just two. Amalia’s social worker dragged her here and they dumped you on Uncle Graham and poor Aunt Nora. Aunt Nora had to take you in to hold on to Uncle Graham. You probably aren’t even his.”

  The image I’d had of Amalia standing on our doorstep, holding me—a tiny infant swaddled in a soft blanket—and presenting me to my father, began to break apart.

  Dani leaned against the porch railing. “You had sores on you,” she said. “Some neighbor of Amalia’s turned her in for neglect. She was crazy. You know she was a patient at that loony bin where your father worked before they hired her as a so-called dance teacher, right? Nobody wanted her to live here, but Uncle Graham insisted and he always got whatever he wanted.” She looked toward the house again, where I imagined Mom and Russell were changing my father into clean clothing. I thought I saw a flash of sincere sympathy cross my cousin’s face. “Now I guess he’s paying for it,” she said.

  “I don’t believe any of this,” I said. I pulled open the door and stomped into the house, slamming the door behind me. The air was filled now with the citrusy scent of air freshener. I stood with my back against the door and breathed it in, doing my best to clear my head of the last miserable thirty minutes.

  28

  An hour later, I was once again reading on the glider when Russell pushed Daddy onto the porch. I was only trying to read, actually, because everything Dani had said to me was running backward and forward through my head, not leaving much room for anything else. The air on the porch still felt tainted by her ugly words.

  “Here you are,” Daddy said, as if he’d been searching the house for me. “Can you take a break from your book to do some typing for me? I want to jot down a few notes for tomorrow’s radio interview.”

  “Okay,” I said, closing my book and getting slowly to my feet.

  “Such enthusiasm!” Daddy teased. “Would you rather do it later tonight?”

  “No, now’s fine.” I looked at Russell. “I can push him inside,” I said. I thought it was the first time I’d looked squarely at Russell since the big mess at Stacy’s, and I was relieved when he smiled at me.

  “Give a shout if you need me, Graham,” Russell said, walking back inside the house.

  I struggled a bit getting the wheelchair over the threshold into the house. I didn’t have a good grip on the handles, thanks to the paperback book in my hand, but once we were inside it was smooth sailing. I felt emotional as I pushed him down the hallway. I remembered a stomach virus that came on me at school when I was nine years old. I would never forget the embarrassment of not making it to the bathroom in time. Was there anything more humiliating? And I’d only been a kid. He was a grown man who needed diapers. Who couldn’t wipe his own bottom. I looked down at the top of his head where the gray strands were beginning to crowd out the black at his temples, and at his hands where they rested on the arms of his chair like curled white shells. I was so overcome with love for him that I stopped the chair in the middle of the hallway and leaned over to hug him, my cheek pressed against his temple.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice soft. “What’s that for?”

  “I love you,” I said, holding on to him for so long that it must have seemed weird to him.

  “What’s going on, Moll?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, getting a grip on myself, and I stood up straight and started pushing him again.

  * * *

  In his office, I took my usual place in front of his computer. I set my book on the desk and held my hands above the keys.

  “So, what are you reading now?” he asked. I could see he was trying to check out the title, but even though Russell had replaced Daddy’s headrest with his old one, he still couldn’t crane his neck well enough to see the cover of the book.

  “Oh, just this story,” I said. “It’s called Forever.”

  “Judy Blume’s Forever?” he asked
.

  I felt my cheeks go hot. Was there any book I could safely read without him knowing about it?

  “Uh-huh,” I said easily, as if we were talking about Nancy Drew or Little Women.

  “Do you like it?” he asked.

  “It’s all right.” I sounded as though Forever was the most boring thing I’d ever read. I risked looking at him. “You sound like you’ve read it or something,” I said.

  He made a little motion with his head that I knew was his attempt at a shrug. “Well, it’s been around a long time and I work with teenagers,” he said, which still didn’t tell me if he’d read it. I hoped not. “Do you know it was banned in some places?”

  “That’s stupid,” I said. I was afraid he was about to ban it right here in my house.

  “I agree completely,” he said. “I’m not big on banning books. So,” he said, smiling, “what have you learned from reading it?”

  “I’m not very far into it,” I lied, then added in mock exasperation, “and we’re supposed to be working, here, aren’t we?”

  “You’re right,” he said, letting me off the hook.

  He began spouting off ideas he wanted to cover in his interviews and I typed them in a list with bullet points. Then we rearranged them into an order he liked, and I printed the list for him.

  “Are we all done?” I asked, once the paper had come out of the printer. I set it on a corner of the desk where he’d be able to read it from his chair.

  “Almost,” he said. “But I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  Oh no. Chris? Stacy? Judy Blume? I braced myself. “What about?” I asked.

  “Mom said she overheard you and Dani having some sort of … altercation earlier.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Dani hates me.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Yes she does.”

  “Well, just remember there’s a fine line between love and hate,” he said. He tipped his head and I felt him searching my face. “So is everything okay with you two?”

  I shrugged. “It’s fine,” I said. “Though I sort of … beat her up.”