Enjoy the Dance

by Heidi Cullinan

  In fact, most of the time, Mr. Harris was doing it. Spenser was dancing.

  When the song ended, the students clapped, and so did Laurie, beaming at him. “Well done. And did you have fun, Mr. Harris?”

  Spenser grinned back. “I did.”

  The bell rang for recess, and Spenser herded the students to the yellow line after they got their coats. The aide came to take the children outside, and as they departed, Laurie leaned in and spoke quietly to Spenser.

  “That’s lesson one in your dance instruction. I think you did quite well.” He patted Spenser on the shoulder, gathered his things, and walked out of the classroom with a wink.

  Spenser stood in the empty space, heart pounding, his body still bubbling with the energy dancing with Laurie had spurred. Acting before he could second-guess himself, he fished his phone from his desk drawer and texted Tomás.

  I danced. With Laurie, in front of all my kids.

  Tomás’s reply came immediately. That’s great! Did you have fun? Were you nervous?

  Yes, I had fun. I was nervous, but it was good.

  Do you want to do it again?

  Why did that question make Spenser flutter so? He let out a breath in a huff, pushing out the fear. I do.

  Will you dance with me someday?

  This time the flutter wasn’t fear. Yes. I will.

  Tomás wanted another date with Spenser, but first he had to have an evening or part of an afternoon free to romance the man.

  It didn’t help that he’d added taking dance lessons to his list of things he had to do. Laurie didn’t give Tomás and Duon pointe instruction each night, but they were expected to practice every day before closing, once the students had gone home. They didn’t have on pointe shoes yet, but they did several of what Laurie named key pointe exercises. And while it wasn’t high on Tomás’s list of thing to do, learning pointe, it was absolutely Duon’s top priority, and it was clear he expected them to learn together. So that’s what Tomás did.

  “We have it easier than the girls,” Duon boasted one night as they did an exercise at the barre. “I watched the beginning pointe class the other day, and they were all whining about how much their ankles hurt. Mine feel fine.” He raised his voice in a pointed way. “Would be nice to put some shoes on and do these exercises for real.”

  Laurie, seated behind the receptionist desk, didn’t look up as he replied. “You are indeed doing the exercises for real. You’re creating muscle memory and mapping brain patterns of what it feels like to hold your body in these positions. If you put on pointe shoes before you’re ready, you will learn bad habits, perform poorly, and injure yourself.”

  “That white chick who started last week boasted about how she got on pointe shoes her first damn lesson at her old studio.”

  “Yes. And that’s why she’s not in my pointe class, because she’s unwilling to go back to pre-pointe and learn her basics.”

  Tomás sighed. “If you think you’re going to get through this intro period faster by complaining, you’re not half as smart as I thought you were.”

  Duon rolled his eyes. “I know that. I’m bored with this stuff is all. If I gotta stand here and do this for an hour, he’s gonna be miserable along with me.”

  Laurie rose then and came over to the barre. “And he is going to be miserable with you tonight, because I’m sending Tomás out with Ed, who will be here soon.” When Tomás turned to him in surprise, Laurie gave him a pointed look. “Marcus is in town, and he’s going to talk to you about that legal matter.”

  “He is? Right now?” Nerves threatened to bowl Tomás over. “I’ve got to change.” He remembered he was Duon’s ride and opened his mouth.

  Laurie shooed him away. “I’ll take Duon home. Possibly via Dairy Queen if he can keep the complaints to a minimum. You go on.” He touched Tomás’s arm briefly. “And good luck.”

  Ed was indeed waiting outside the studio when Tomás finished getting dressed, and he drove him straight to an old-school steak house on West Seventh. “I’ve been coming here since forever. My whole life, whenever my parents wanted to celebrate, they took the family here. Normally my sister and I would fight and fidget when we went out to eat, but at Mancini’s we were too busy feeling rich to pick at each other.” He grinned sheepishly. “Obviously since meeting Laurie I’ve been to a hell of a lot fancier. But I still have a soft spot for the old place.”

  Tomás had never been to Mancini’s, and he was mostly concerned about what Marcus had to say. “Is your friend meeting us there? Is he bringing the lawyer?”

  “It’s just Marcus for now, and yeah, he’s meeting us there. He was in town to get the last of his things. He’s moving to Logan permanently.”

  “Good God, why?”

  “His father passed away unexpectedly of a heart attack shortly after the holidays. And his mother isn’t doing well either. Alzheimer’s, I think.” He nodded at a pickup truck at the edge of the parking lot, the topper on and flatbed filled to the gills. “I think that’s him.”

  They parked and got out of the car, and it was indeed Marcus who met them on the other side of the pickup. Tomás shook his hand, and Ed gave him a hug. Then Ed nodded at the overflowing vehicle. “So. This is it, huh?”

  Marcus nodded. “Sold or donated all the furniture, which helped me out. Not sure where I’m going to put all this, though. Arthur’s cabin doesn’t have much in the way of storage.” He smiled politely at Tomás. “Let’s go inside.”

  The hostess led them to a seating area near the bar. Tomás lingered at his chair, taking in the space around them. “Wow. This isn’t retro-revival. It’s the real deal, uninterested in the passage of time.”

  “It’s my favorite time capsule.” Ed sighed as he sat in a vinyl booth with super-slick varnished wood edges. Marcus sat too as a waiter appeared, smiling as he gave them the specials before depositing a fragrant basket of bread on the table between them. Ed placed his order while Marcus finished perusing the menu. Once they were alone, Ed drew them back to the discussion of Marcus’s move home prompted by the unexpected death of his father. “Everything going okay up in Logan?”

  Marcus shrugged and focused on pulling apart his dinner roll. “It’s weird, mostly. We finished clearing out the house last weekend. Arthur and Paul are helping me do some repairs and repainting before we put it on the market.”

  “You’re not going to stay at your folks’ place?”

  “Too many memories.” Marcus twirled the bread in his hands in sad distraction. “I still expect to see Dad come around the corner. It was okay until we moved Mom into the care center, even though she wasn’t exactly her old self, especially these past six months. I could pretend, with her there. Like she was having an off day and she’d be in the kitchen grumbling about how much she hated cooking until Dad goosed her out of her mood.” He shrugged, as if maybe the sadness would slough away with the gestures. “I’m going to live with Arthur and Paul and work at the mill, as a logger. Same as I did out of high school.”

  Ed shook his head in disbelief. “Dude, I couldn’t. Ever. Not for a short afternoon.”

  Marcus reached for a second roll and gestured at Ed with it. “Your turn. Tell me how you’re doing. How’s the PT going? Pain manageable?”

  Ed rubbed his neck. “It’s not worse.”

  “Is it still keeping you from working?” Marcus pursed his lips. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so blunt.”

  Tomás regarded Ed with concern. “I didn’t realize you were hurting. I’m sorry for not noticing.”

  Ed twirled the knife idly on top of his place mat. “Yeah. It’s keeping me from working much at all. I had to quit coaching because I couldn’t be reliably counted on to come to practice, let alone the games. I’m at home, mostly. Probably permanently. It’s going to be me and a whole lot of disability payments, forever.”

  Marcus frowned. “What about stem cell therapy? Is it too expensive?”

  “It doesn’t really apply, as far as I understand it. Well, not
yet anyway. The biggest change they’ve made is giving me some steroid injections, which are great for pain, but they make me moody and come with big-time side effects. They could do another surgery, but every time they go in there they risk making it worse instead of better.” Ed shrugged, doing his best to appear as if he’d made peace with this. “Do I like it? No. But it beats being dead.”

  Tomás worried Ed’s remark would strike too close to home for Marcus, but he only scratched his beard, appearing thoughtful, not offended. “Maybe I’m too caught up in my own experiences right now, so take this with a deer lick’s worth of salt. But I’m a big advocate of demanding more than simply being alive as a return on investment. It might be a while before you can find the thing that keeps you from hurting yourself but still matters. Your bliss, as Joseph Campbell always said. I think keeping the searchlights on is worth it, if they help you find the thing that makes your life hum.”

  Their waiter arrived with salads, disrupting the moment, and by unspoken agreement, they ended that conversation—and Marcus turned to Tomás. “Tell me about your family. About their situation, about what you’ve done and what you haven’t done. Give me all the information you can, so I know how to help best.”

  Tomás glanced around, uneasy about doing this in a public place, but they were in a deserted section of the restaurant, and no one was paying them any attention. He cleared his throat and dove in. “My parents first came to the US in 1983. I never got the full story as to why—I think there was some kind of trouble with a drug cartel. They lived in Chilapa, both of them working pretty good jobs. Mom was a bank teller, and dad was an accountant or something like that. But I guess someone Dad knew joined the cartel and tried to pressure him to join also. Basically it got to the point they had to leave the country. I don’t know if they were really in danger or if they were simply afraid. They don’t talk about it much. I mean, they might have had romantic ideas about the US too. They were barely twenty. But whatever the reason, they went to Arizona and picked fruit and vegetables.” He rubbed his jaw, remembering his mother telling the stories, always bits and fragments, and never much detail. “I know it was hard work, and when a company man told them they could make more work at a meat packing plant in Iowa, they left. But then that plant closed, and they moved to Minneapolis. I was six at the time. I was born in Arizona, but I only remember Minnesota.”

  Marcus nodded, listening. When Tomás drifted into quiet, he said, “Talk to me about your sister and how you’ve ended up working so many jobs.”

  God, where to start. “Alisa fell into the wrong crowd early. Junior high, I think. She left high school to run off with a boyfriend—tenth grade. She came back pregnant and penniless when I was a sophomore, which was when I got a job on the weekends to help out. But Alisa ran off before the end of that year, leaving Sabrina. Mom had to quit work to care for the baby, so I changed my school schedule to take an extra job. When Dad got injured, I had to finish school through an alternative system so I could work more.” He flattened his lips. “Then Alisa came home with not one but two babies. She eventually got an apartment and took the kids, but they live more at our place than their own home. And lately we’ve thought she’s drinking and using again.

  “And how have immigration enforcement agencies and DHS been involved?”

  “We did our best to take the kids from Alisa when she got dark, but once a neighbor called DHS before we could get them out. We ended up taking them anyway because we were the nearest kin, but having us in the system started raising flags. Someone somewhere reported that my parents aren’t legal immigrants. They haven’t actually come to confront my parents yet, but one of the social workers who liked us tipped us off, let us know it was a danger.”

  “So no one has taken custody from Alisa?”

  “Not formally. She’s good at cleaning her act up enough to pass inspection. And meanwhile the kids keep going back and forth because the judge in her case believes in keeping kids with parents.”

  “You know you could argue your case against her,” Marcus pointed out.

  “Yes—and risk exposing my parents.” Tomás ran a hand through his hair. “I’d apply to be their guardians myself, but the state won’t give me any money, or not much, and I can’t do it without my mom as a babysitter. And my parents as support. But right now I’m supporting all of them—my parents, the kids, my sister—and yet I can only claim myself on my taxes.”

  Ed frowned. “Why can’t you claim them if you’re clearly supporting them?”

  Marcus snorted. “Because his parents are illegal and therefore don’t exist in the eyes of the government. The kids are his sister’s deduction if she keeps them more than half the year under her custody, and since his sister doesn’t live with them, he can’t claim her.” He shook his head. “It’s a rough situation, that’s for sure. And I hate to tell you, Tomás, though I’m sure you’re not surprised to hear, you’re not the only person with a story like this. In fact, I know plenty much worse.”

  The waiter appeared with their orders, but Tomás wasn’t hungry anymore. As soon as the waiter was out of earshot, he turned to Marcus. “Do you really know someone who could help us? Is there any way my parents could become citizens?”

  “Oh, there are ways, but most of them are going to be a hard sell in this political environment. It’s going to come down to who you know who can vouch for you.”

  Tomás wanted to be sick, because he didn’t know anyone with influence, but Ed lifted his chin. “I’ll get Laurie’s godfather Oliver on board. He’s probably good for covering these costs Marcus mentioned too.” When Tomás began to object, Ed overrode him. “Don’t fight us on bringing in the big guns. This is your family. It’s too important.”

  “It’s important to every family in this situation. But the law isn’t the law, not the way people think. It’s malleable, interpretable. So much of how these things go down depends on who speaks for you, how much they know, and yes, sometimes who they know. If Oliver Thompson suggests another lawyer for this, take his advice. He’s ten thousand times more influential and connected than me.” Marcus turned to Tomás, in full lawyer mode. “The magic bullet is proving your parents need to be here. Probably that’s going to be about the kids—and you’re going to hate this part, but it’s going to involve throwing your sister under the bus, most likely.”

  Tomás recoiled. “I can’t do that. She makes me furious yes, but she’s still family. I can’t betray her.”

  “You might have to if you want to keep your parents here. There’s a mild case to be made for amnesty because of the cartel, though by this time the evidence may be weak at best. Your easiest route is to argue it’s in the best interest of the children—legal US citizens—to have your parents remain. Which means arguing your sister isn’t fit to be their parent. It would go smoother if you could get her to voluntarily surrender rights. And it means getting the most experienced immigration lawyer you can get your hands on. That part I can help you with.”

  He put a business card on the table, but Tomás couldn’t touch it. Alisa. Oh, he hated her, but he didn’t hate her this much.

  Marcus put a hand on his shoulder, his expression sad. “Take the card. You might well find yourself quickly deciding which is worse, denouncing your sister or having to travel fifteen hundred miles to see your parents. And to be blunt, if Alisa is pulling this kind of stuff, the kids would absolutely be a lot better out of her care.”

  Tomás didn’t have much to say after that, and Ed and Marcus politely steered the conversation away again, allowing him to marinate in his thoughts for the rest of the meal.

  He considered what Marcus said all the way home and late into the night as he lay unsleeping on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Not about choosing his parents over his sister—he couldn’t go there. But he did think a lot about demanding more from life than simply being alive. Following his bliss.

  Tomás certainly wasn’t following his bliss. He was too busy, too focused on keeping his famil
y in one piece. But he did want bliss. He didn’t let himself think about that normally, but it was getting more and more difficult not to. Especially since all his thoughts of bliss were tied up in one thing and one person. And it was impossible to pretend it didn’t hurt to watch his sister fuck them all over so hard Tomás didn’t have the time or energy for a simple date.

  CHAPTER TEN

  As the Minnesota winter rolled on, Spenser did get more dates. Of course, with Tomás’s schedule, these events happened weekly at best, though often they went every two weeks. They saw each other nearly daily still, and those meetings were full of smiles and stolen kisses once Duon returned to his room. Several of their official dates had happened between Tomás’s work shifts, which had picked up in intensity. There seemed to be something going on, something bothering him, but when Spenser asked if he was okay, “Sorry, I have something I’m saving up for,” was all Tomás would say.

  They didn’t have another night alone, though, because the two times they had dates when Tomás didn’t have to go to bed early or rush off to another job, Laurie and Ed were busy and couldn’t take Duon. Spenser would have been down for turning on a box fan in the hallway and making love to Tomás quietly, but he couldn’t quite get the courage up to mention this as an option, in case Tomás felt they shouldn’t have hanky-panky with Duon present. So they were, once more, resigned to heavy petting in the dark corner of the kitchen.

  Not that the petting was bad. Though to be honest, any touching at all was wonderful to Spenser.

  Thanks to therapy, he’d acknowledged long ago that his relationship to touch was unusual due to his disjointed upbringing. His mother hadn’t been cruel, only absent, though when she was around she did hug them and promise them ridiculous things even Spenser had known couldn’t ever happen. Next summer we’ll go to Disney World. Maybe next month we can go to that water park. They were lucky if they went to a city park, and it only happened if Spenser agreed to babysit the younger ones while his mother napped on a blanket. But he’d had physical contact with his sisters all the time—helping them out of the gap in the fence to the huge drainpipe they loved to dance in, getting them dressed, bathing them, snuggling on the couch watching TV and movies from the library. Most of his youth was fuzzy in his mind, but he remembered that touching.