Dance Real Slow (19 page)

“That's not what's important, Cal. What matters, what
really
matters, is that she wants to come be with you.”

“For how long?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe a few days—a week.”

His legs are short and do not reach the ground, so when he leans back, his feet stick straight up toward the ceiling.

“I like Zoe.”

“I like her, too. She's not going anywhere; it's just that Kate—your mother—is going to be around for a few days also.”

Still, he does not fully understand what this means and, truthfully, neither do I. He watches as a girl drops change into a soda machine and he blinks big when her
can of Diet Coke makes a thunk as it hits bottom. When he turns back to me I remove Kate's postcard of the Bali lizard from my shirt pocket.

“She sent you this.”

“Oooh. It's a dinosaur.”

“No, it's a lizard. They're only about this size,” I say, holding my thumb and forefinger several inches apart.

“Lizard,” he repeats. “Does she have lizards?”

“No. But she took a trip far away, to Bali, and they had lizards there.”

“She coulda brought some back.”

“She didn't. But she did send you the postcard. That was nice.”

He holds the postcard close to his face, lizard to lips. “I guess she could come,” he says.

Later, as I sit alone at the kitchen table drinking three muddy cups of decaf in a row, this vision is what finally allows my stubbornness to crumble and chance letting Kate back in: it is the image of Calvin's breath warming the postcard that causes me to remember something small, something nearly insignificant about Kate. Once, when we were all together, Calvin had crawled into a laundry closet and ripped open a large box of washing-machine detergent. We found him sprinkled white, spitting powder in clumps on his little hands. Quickly, Kate ran and got her camera, taking several pictures of Calvin before cleaning him off. In the months to follow, I would occasionally catch her staring at one of these photographs, holding it up close to her mouth, as Calvin did with the postcard. I don't know why she
did this, because, after all, she had the real Calvin in the next room. Perhaps she simply wanted to be reminded of another time, of an instant, a moment when she was happy and anything, everything was still possible.

When I pull into the driveway, after basketball practice, the house is shrouded in a damp, wispy mist. Calvin is chasing Argos around the yard while Zoe sits on the porch, watching. She is wearing a black-and-red-plaid jacket zipped to her neck, and as she stands to greet me, Moonie darts out from behind the swing. Zoe takes my hand, stroking it briefly before kissing me on the wrist. Today, her brother got into a fistfight at school and was required to sit in study hall for most of the afternoon. I do not tell her this, though.

“There is something for you and Calvin in the freezer,” she says. “It came a few minutes ago.”

“What do you mean,
it came?”

“Delivery. I had to sign for it.”

Calvin knows about the package and he follows me into the kitchen, asking if he should get the scissors.

“This is what we do,” I say, looking at Zoe. “Work, play, and open packages from my mother.”

Inside the cardboard box, stenciled on all sides with the words
Refrigerate immediately
, is a Styrofoam cooler packed with dry ice and two cartons of automobile-shaped Popsicles.

“The middle of November,” I say. “People in Kansas do not eat Popsicles in the middle of November.”

Calvin's hand is outstretched and I give him one, placing the rest back in the freezer.

“Before dinner?” Zoe asks.

I wave her off.

“It's mushy,” says Calvin. He takes a bite and his purple Pontiac slides from the stick onto the floor. Instantly, Argos tramps over and licks it up. Calvin tries to push him away, but is not strong enough.

“He's eating my pop,” he says, shaking his arms.
“Ahh
, my pop!”

“That's all right, it wasn't frozen enough. We'll wait until after dinner when the rest have had a chance to get harder.”

I am convinced Calvin is going to complain, but he does not. He simply walks into the other room, jacket hanging from his waist like a furry tail.

“Tomorrow I'm going to Oklahoma,” says Zoe, lifting a dish of chicken parts that have been soaking in the sink. “A group of us are spending a few days on this guy's ranch studying his cattle. It's for a lab.”

“No ranches around here?”

“His livestock is diseased. We're going with one of the professors.”

“What's wrong with them?”

“Don't know.”

Lying in the darkness, after Calvin has been put to sleep, Zoe asks me to tell her something good.

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know, just tell me something good.”

“Let's see,” I say, rubbing the stubble on my chin.

“Well, Joyce and Rob Ives made their first payment to Gooland's. This morning they walked in together and laid a check right down next to the register.”

“No, not like that. Something
good.”

Argos ambles into the doorway and pauses before dropping in a heap beside the closet.

“How about this: my roommate in college used to put ketchup on his spaghetti when we'd run out of tomato sauce.”

“Yuck.”

“Yeah, yuck. So, is that good?”

“It wasn't what I was hoping for—but it's good.”

“What were you hoping for?”

“I don't know.”

“Why don't
you
tell
me
something good.”

She combs her fingers through the shaggy hair that has spilled onto her forehead.

“Okay.” She exhales with force, so that near the end, just as she is about to curl her lips to speak, she lets out a short whistle. “This afternoon, while you were at work or basketball, Calvin and Meg were standing over on the end of the porch holding on to the railing, up near their heads. Really, I almost walked right past them until I noticed that both their pants were pulled down to their knees. Calvin was pissing over the side, into the flower beds. Meg was watching, and after a minute or two, she turned to him and said, ‘Well, you can't do this,' and she reached down and removed a nickel from her vagina.”

“Nooo.”

“Yep.”

“What'd you say?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

Turning on my back, I let out a chuckle and then say, “You're right, that's good.”

Deep into the night, with Zoe sleeping soundly, I turn on the light so I can write the incident down on a piece of notepaper on the bedstand. This is something I want to remember, something I want to tell Calvin about when he is old enough to understand.

Once there is stillness again, it occurs to me how nice it feels to share stories with someone in bed. How pleasant it is to hear someone else breathing, to hear the unique rasp of Zoe's breath as it drags through the tunnel of her windpipe and nose. With my vision still adjusting to the darkness, I stare at her bare shoulders until my eyes can tell the difference between her freckles and the burning, black splotches of light against my pupils.

From where I am lying in bed, facing the doorway, I can see the back of Zoe's body as she leans over the sink in the bathroom to wash her hair. She has just finished and she twists her damp locks into a towel and then wraps the towel turban-like above her head. When she comes back into the bedroom she is quiet, careful, thinking I am still asleep. She slips on one of my sweatshirts, her blue jeans, and then sits down beside the window to pull on her boots.

“When are you coming back?” I ask.

“I didn't know you were awake.”

“Mmm.”

“It should only take a few days—maybe Saturday or Sunday. We'll have to go back again, though.”

Sitting up, I realize how little I know about what interests Zoe, about her classes, her work. It is not because I do not care, but rather because I have not had the time to care. While I was hacking out a breathing hole from beneath my studies at law school, Kate showed patience, too.

“Are you excited about this? About going?”

First, she shrugs and then, before reaching for her coat, she says, “No one wants to see animals suffer, to see them suffer and die.”

When she comes to the side of the bed and kisses me, I can taste toothpaste on her lips.

“Gordon,” she says, removing the towel from her head and draping it flat over the back of a chair. “I want you to do something for me.”

“Anything.”

“I'm taking the truck. I'm not sure, but Noah may need a ride home from practice today or tomorrow. Will you give him one?”

“Don't you think he'd rather have one of the other players take him?”

“Probably, but I'd like it if you'd ask him—just in case.”

I nod.

There is nothing else and I stay in bed for some time, listening to Zoe speaking to Calvin downstairs, and then the sounds of her leaving: the slamming of the screen door, her footsteps in the loose stones of the
driveway, the starting of her truck, and finally the cool, quiet of silence. Closing my eyes, I think of doing something nice for her, taking her away, only the two of us, leaving Calvin at Charlotte's house for a few days. Perhaps someplace warm where we can watch our white, doughy skin turn the color of cinnamon.

About three miles or so north of the Tarent city limits, beyond a low-hanging concrete overpass leading to the Interstate, is a narrow, poorly kept stretch of road that serves as the driveway to Noah's girlfriend's house. For a while there is nothing but night, broken only by the faded yellow of my headlights. Finally, suddenly, we pull around a short, sharp corner and can see the glowing twin orbs of streetlamps. After we straighten out, Noah points into the windshield at a figure standing beside a rusted, stone-colored tractor.

“That's Ann,” he says.

She takes a long, smoky drag from a cigarette and then taps off the ashes into the top of a soda can. Noah pauses for a moment before getting out of the car, and I'm not sure if it's because he wants to say something. He does not, only closing the door lightly behind. Before I back out I roll down the window, halfway, and ask, “It's okay for you to be here?”

They glance at each other and then Noah nods. Of
course, I know he's lying, but I leave them alone. It is difficult to grow up with only one parent, I tell myself, switching on the brights for the drive back into town. “Some people have not had it so easy,” I remember my mother saying to me when I was younger as she packed up used clothing and flatware for the Salvation Army. “We need to give them every advantage we can.” Then who will provide living utensils, worn with age, for Calvin? I wonder. Where will they come from? Who will know that he has not had it so easy?

Today the air feels warmer and Calvin is sitting on the back stairs dressed only in jeans and a cotton sweater. In between bites, he pushes his Ferrari Popsicle precariously close to the ground, leaving behind a green juice trail of exhaust. He is making a motoring sound with his tongue. This morning Zoe returned, bringing with her red-and-white Oklahoma Sooner baseball caps for Calvin and me. I'm wearing my cap backwards, catcher-style, while Calvin carries his by its adjustable strap, like a purse. Rocking in the swing, I do the Sunday crossword puzzle, occasionally looking up at Zoe, who is repairing the muffler on her truck. The telephone sounds and I wait for three rings before rising to answer it. At first there is silence on the other end, but just before I prepare to hang up, Kate speaks.

“Gordon? I wasn't sure if I dialed the right number. It didn't sound like you.”

“It's me.”

“Well”—she makes noises as if she is unwrapping something, cellophane. “I'm here.”

The other day, before I picked Calvin up from Charlotte's house, I called Kate and told her it was all right to come, although I did not expect her to arrive so quickly.

“Where are you staying?”

“Amis Motor Lodge. Do you know where that is?”

She is in the southeast section of town, near the high school, not ten minutes from our house.

“Yes,” I say.

“I flew into Lawrence and rented a car. The drive was easy, like the man at the Hertz counter said it would be.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So … well.” She pauses, and then, “What should I do?”

The directions are simple, but I let her repeat them, to be safe. She wants to take a quick shower, clean up from the trip, and then she'll come over. She waits, taking a breath before telling me she is excited, excited to see us both.

Outside, Calvin has finished his Popsicle and is now using its stick to dig a trough in the moist earth. Lying on her back, Zoe asks me to kick her an alien wrench. From above, only her legs are left unobscured, mysteriously twitching from beneath the truck's corrugated metal bed.

“It was Kate,” I say, talking to Zoe's boots.

“What was Kate?”

“On the phone. It was Kate. She's here.”

“Where?”

“Here. In Tarent. She's staying at Amis Motor Lodge.”

“I didn't even know you told her she could come,” says Zoe, reaching blindly for a roll of copper wire.

“Yeah,” I say, running my hands along the smooth steel siding of the truck. “I told her while you were away.”

“She sure got here fast.”

I nod, but Zoe cannot see me. Some time passes and then she slides out from underneath. She stands and brushes the dirt from her ass and the backs of her thighs and calves.

“C'mon, Argos,” she says, opening the door on the passenger side of the truck and patting the seat.

“Where're you going?”

“Home.”

“Why?”

“I shouldn't be here when Kate arrives. Besides, you three need some time alone.”