Dance Real Slow (13 page)

“I like her hair,” he says. “It's like berries.”

“Berries? You mean like blueberries?”

“No,” he answers, laughing because he knows I'm being silly. “The other kind.”

“Raaathaberries?” I ask, in my best Elmer Fudd voice.

He shakes his head and turns away, mimicking my pronunciation of the word “raspberries” several times into the seat cushion.

“Huh? Is that it?”

“No. The other, other kind. You know, with the dots on them.”

“Oh, strawberries.”

“Yeah, strawberries. But like the inside part—the pink part.”

And he is right. Zoe's hair is like the inner layer of a strawberry before its nearly white center.

“What else did you like about her?”

He shrugs because he is not sure. He knows he likes the fact that she has a horse, and a dog named Argos. Had I pointed them out, he would also have liked the sneakers hanging from her rearview mirror. But he doesn't know what, if anything, he likes about Zoe herself. It is times like these I wish, momentarily, Calvin were older. That I could talk to him, man to man, about
the intangible things that attract me to a woman and he would know what I meant. That there is something in the way she smiles, pulling her upper lip tight across the row of straight, fine teeth, turning her head slightly to the left every time. The way she unconsciously twists her ankle to the side, kicking out the heel of her boot and drawing a tiny line in the gravel with its edge while she talks. That when I got close enough, once while leaning over to grab another trash bag, I could see the clean, white down on her cheeks as it caught the light. Mostly, that I haven't had this fluttery feeling about a woman in a long, long time and I just want it to last a few days more. Until I find out she is married or moving to Wyoming or simply not interested in me, a single father and his son.

Later, after we have unpacked the groceries and eaten dinner and Calvin has gone upstairs to prepare for bed, I recall the first time I had these feelings about Kate. It was a late-summer night in Ann Arbor and I had gone to meet a couple of friends on the patio of a bar we frequented. There were a lot of people, and after fighting my way through the crowd, I stood against the front staircase and decided to wait a brief while longer before giving up and heading home. After a few minutes two women drifted to the edge of the stairs and began talking. They were loud and I was kind of half paying attention to their conversation, something about the grooming habits of an art-history professor they both had—the way his square-shaped beard flipped up at the corners, like a Viking's. Then one of them, Kate, turned to me and asked if guys thought that facial hair was a
good look, if we thought most women liked it. But before I could answer, before I actually realized they were talking to me, they both started laughing, and Kate gave her friend a small shove.

“Really,” said Kate, “my friend here thinks you're cute.”

The friend, Bonnie Atler, socked Kate in the arm and then, with a long, throaty hiss, turned and walked away.

“Jesus,” said Kate, adjusting a brown leather book bag she had slung at an angle across her shoulder, chest, and back like an archer's tube of arrows. “Well …”

“Well.”

“This isn't how it was supposed to work out.”

“How exactly was it supposed to work out?” I asked, suddenly intrigued.

“Bonnie—that's my friend—she was supposed to stay and I was supposed to leave.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

The music was louder and they were playing a song I liked. Midway through, as if on command, Kate sang out one of the lines:
She calls me baby, she calls everybody baby
. Although it doesn't really mean anything, the line has always been one of my favorites, one that I might have sung myself. I can't really explain it, but at that exact moment I knew Kate and I would become close. That there was something about her I liked, and after I bought her two Budweisers and a bag of honeyroasted peanuts, I told her so. Though she wasn't sure
there was anything about me she was particularly fond of, she accepted a dinner invitation for the following Thursday, and I spent that week—in fact, most of the next twenty-eight months—in a thick, sticky swoon.

Beside me, Calvin has left an unopened package of bubble gum on the end table touching our couch. He knows that he is not allowed to chew gum without my permission, and I'm glad to see him following this rule. I take a piece, blowing several large, loud bubbles before sitting down to work. The Iveses have agreed to settle out of court, to split the cost for repairs at Gooland's. Still, they aren't sure whether or not they want to end their separation. Last week, Rob moved back in with Joyce, but it only lasted two days. She was fixing him a bologna sandwich and he, absent-mindedly, asked for mayonnaise. She told him that she had been making him bologna sandwiches since before they were married, since when he was still in high school and living with his folks on Kraymar Street, and never in all those years had he ever asked for mayonnaise. Joyce said “his little waitress” must have made them that way. Then she threw the jar across the kitchen at him and it broke open against a cupboard, leaving gooey curls of mayonnaise she ignored until they turned tan and firm.

Perhaps Joyce was too analytical—just let Rob have his mayonnaise. At times, things were like that for me: it was difficult to separate the literal language of the law from common conversation, especially with Kate. The exoskeleton of attorneys still remains; I wring myself for
answers, for anything that might help me understand why our relationship failed.

Since meeting Zoe, Calvin has been quiet and well behaved. After basketball practice or dinner, he will leave me alone, laying himself stomach-down on the living-room floor and coloring in his books or drawing pictures. It is a horse, he will announce suddenly, holding up a stick figure that more closely resembles a piece of furniture than a four-legged animal. Then he is quiet again. He will usually do this two or three times in an evening and finally, after the last one, he will climb on my lap and make a gift of the pictures. I will act surprised, as if he hasn't done this before, as if I cannot believe someone with my blood coursing through his meandering veins could possibly draw anything so artistic. He will laugh and then kiss me good night. There are seven horses—three blue, two purple, and two brown—scribbled onto manila paper stacked neatly on the corner of my dresser. Last night, when I was tucking Calvin into bed, he asked me what kind of sounds horses make. First I whinnied into his neck, which made him laugh. Then I made a clucking noise with my tongue against the roof of my mouth while I trotted four fingers across the hump that his knees formed underneath the blanket. Calvin was enthralled, his eyes locked to my hand as I moved it back and forth, until I lifted it into the air and made a whooshing sound, like a plane, which brought him out of his trance, shaking his head.

This I have learned: children, much like adults, will fasten on some event, no matter how small or seemingly
meaningless, drifting in their futures, and allow it to carry them through the rigors of daily life. Oftentimes, they have no idea they are even doing this, as with Calvin and the horse ride. Or, if he were older and wiser, he might hypothesize the same of me with Zoe.

Russell Johns is dribbling past the half-court circle, holding two fingers up in a peace sign to signal our number 2 play. Eric Shaw slides into position, on the left wing beyond the free-throw line. He is being guarded by Noah Ward, and as good as Noah is, he is not quick enough to stay with Eric. Russell passes the ball to Eric, who pump-fakes Noah off his feet and then drives past him for an easy lay-up.

“Okay,” I say, waving them to a halt. “There, you've got to keep your feet, Noah. And, Chris, you've got to come over with weak-side help. You can't allow an uncontested lay-up.” I grab Chris Rayles and move him in front of Eric. Then I push Ned Morrow into position on Chris's man. “Everyone's got to be aware of what his responsibilities are—not just with his own man, but with the other guys out on the floor.” I point to Pat Booth standing alone near the three-point arc. “If we play smart defense they're going to have to kick the ball back out for a longer shot. Then we rotate back into position.” I roll my hand and each player walks back to his original man. “Good. Okay, foul shots.”

Most days, we end practice with ten minutes or so of free-throw shooting, several players at each basket. When Calvin hears this, he climbs down from the bleachers and stands next to Peter Sawyer, his favorite player.
Peter lets Calvin rebound and chase loose balls for him. When Peter's finished shooting, he always stays to play a little longer with Calvin. Usually, he lets Calvin try to dribble or, more likely, carry the ball past him and throw it toward the rim. Before I lock up the balls, Calvin usually yells “Dunk” to Peter and Peter lifts Calvin onto his shoulders so that he can slam the ball through the hoop. It is Saturday morning and midway through the free-throw shooting Calvin comes up and asks me if it is time yet, time to go horseback riding at Zoe's farm.

“No dunking today, Cal?” Peter says.

I give Calvin a little pat and he tepidly shuffles over to Peter, allowing himself to be lifted and then, without his usual zeal, dropping the ball down through the rim. Almost immediately, he runs back to my side and tells me to hurry with the balls.

“You know who this is?” I ask Calvin as I grab Noah before he heads into the locker room.

“Kinda,” he answers, shrugging.

“Who?”

“One of the team.”

“Yeah, but who?”

He doesn't know and he bobs his head, sucking on the underside of his lip.

“This is Noah. He is Zoe's brother.”

“Her brother?”

“Uh-huh.”

Calvin steps closer to Noah, reaching out as if he is going to touch him, but then leaving his small hand in the air for a moment before dropping it back down to his side.

“Do you have a horse, too?”

“No.”

“Your sister does.”

Noah nods.

“She's letting me ride it today.”

Noah nods again and then, almost uncomfortably, says, “It's a great horse.”

“I got these boots,” says Calvin, sticking out his left foot to reveal a new, tan Timberland lace-up.

“Those are cool. I used to have a pair like that.”

“I used to have a manna-war but we had to throw it out. It got rotten.”

A slightly troubled look crosses Noah's face as he tries to interpret what my son has said. But then he smiles and says he once had a pet starfish that he kept in the bathtub for a week, until it died. Me, too, I want to tell him. But I don't, for he will not care. And in another few seconds he excuses himself.

There are days when Noah seems such a lost soul. And maybe because of the feelings I have for his sister, or because of my own slightly peculiar childhood, I will ignore his indiscretions. He will be allowed to bend a team rule, extend my patience. To him, discipline, any discipline, is the enemy. Other days, though, the flavor is different: he just seems like a punk kid. And I don't care who his sister is or that he has traveled a difficult road. Logic evaporates. Nothing good can come from pretending I did not hear him insult Cy Connell or letting him arrive ten minutes late to practice. There's a certain desperation to his behavior, as if it's the only way he
knows, the life he's been handed: a sweater at Christmas instead of a locomotive-train set.

The drive to Zoe's farm is a long, rambling journey through clean, flat acres of freshly tilled prairie land. For much of the time Calvin and I are in a no-passing zone behind an enormous John Deere tractor with red-and-yellow hazard flags flapping at both sides. The tractor is a newer model with an enclosed driver's seat that allows for air-conditioning on hot days. Also, many of the new tractors have tape players, and as I watch the driver through my windshield I cannot tell if his head is bobbing with the movements of the vehicle or to music.

The entrance to Zoe's stable is supposed to be a half mile beyond the crossing of Route 36 and Farland Road, but when we get to the flashing red light that marks the intersection there's a small fork and I don't know which road is Farland. Zoe never mentioned an auxiliary street and I turn back, stopping a mile or so up at a gas station for directions. Calvin and I split a root beer and a package of cheese-and-peanut-butter crackers before we continue, taking the left side of the fork, which is Farland.

The driveway is wooded and long and at its entrance marked by a hollow tree stump painted orange. Calvin sits scout and calls out when he sees the orange tree. As we drive slowly toward the stable, the car pitching unevenly as it sinks into divots and pits along the dirt path, I point at the horizon, where someone is riding a gray-colored horse.

“That's her? That's her horse?”

“I'm not sure, Cal. I can't tell from here.”

I hit the horn and Calvin waves, but the person continues riding toward the roll of the earth. Calvin looks perplexed, until I pull around back, beside Zoe's truck, and he sees Zoe bending in front of a wooden fence, a sledgehammer at her side. She has both hands cupped around the base of one of the fence posts and she is rocking it into the soft dirt. Calvin jumps from the car, running to where Zoe is crouched, and throwing both his arms into the sky, as if to say, “Here I am.” She stands and touches Calvin on the shoulder.

“And how are you?” she asks, brushing soil from her knees and chest.

“Fine. We just saw a horse over there,” Calvin says, looking to his left. “Is it yours?”

“No. That's my friend Jane and her horse.”

“Oh.”

“My horse is over here.” Zoe points to a patch of grass behind the fence she is repairing at a chestnut filly with a white diamond on her nose and white socks on her two hind legs. “This is Willa.”