Dance Real Slow (21 page)

The house shifts, settling ever so slightly into its brick base, and the walls respond with a creaky gasp.

“Weaverbirds,” I say, into the black night air.

“Huh?”

“Weaverbirds. Do you know about them?”

“No, Gordon, I sure don't.”

“They're indigenous to Africa—south of the Sahara, mostly. The male weavers build these enormous communal nests in the tops of trees or, sometimes, even telephone poles, using twigs and bark pieces and loose blades of grass. Then, as a way of courting, the males offer their nests to available females by hanging beak-down and flapping their yellow-and-green wings from the nests' short entry tubes. Often, the males fall and have to fly up again into the mouths of the nest.”

Zoe crosses her ankles beneath our quilt, puffy with eiderdown.

“If the males fail to attract a female, they destroy their section of the nest and move on, hoping next time they will be more successful.”

The bed dips as Zoe scoots closer to the middle, her hand groping for mine.

“And you're flapping your wings again,” she says. “I can almost feel the breeze.” She swallows, laboriously.

“If things don't work here, will you wreck this nest and move on?”

It is nearly two in the morning when the telephone rings and I lift it, instinctively, placing the receiver to my ear, saying nothing, simply letting my breath run across the perforated well of the mouthpiece. It is Sergeant Ray Lockwood of the Tarent Police Department and from what I can make out, in my semiconscious state, he is at the school with one of my basketball players. He wants me to come and take the boy home.

Standing at the foot of the bed, half dressed, I tell Zoe about school. “It shouldn't take long,” I say. She responds with a grunt.

In the gymnasium, lit only by two emergency flood-lamps above the door, Sergeant Lockwood is relaying information to someone on a hand-held walkie-talkie. Prone on the floor at his side is Noah, hands curled and cuffed and resting in the small of his back. There are six empty beer cans strewn atop a tattered army blanket.

“Is this really necessary?” I ask.

Sergeant Lockwood holds up his finger, signaling me to wait for a second. Then he says, “We can take the cuffs off now that you're here.”

“What happened?”

“We were driving by, nightly patrol, and saw lights on in here. He broke in, was drinking beer with his girlfriend.”

“I didn't break in,” says Noah, speaking into the hardwood floor.

“He didn't break in,” I add. “He was supposed to close up.”

Sergeant Lockwood grabs Noah through his armpits and lifts him to his feet. Using a small silver key, he unlocks the cuffs and places them back into a holster on his belt. Noah stretches his arms, massaging the redness from his wrists.

“Where's the girl?” I ask.

“Her father came to get her about twenty minutes ago.”

“Why didn't you call his father?”

“He asked us to call you.”

When Sergeant Lockwood says this, Noah looks away, searching for something to hold in his line of vision, something in a direction other than mine. Before Sergeant Lockwood leaves, he tells me there aren't any charges, this time, but in the future I should call the police station if someone is going to be in the gym after midnight.

“He's underage too,” says Sergeant Lockwood, kicking one of the beer cans on his way out.

The drive to Noah's house is nearly silent, the only noise being the gentle hiss of the car's tires against asphalt. Finally, as I stop at the end of his driveway so the headlights will not jump through the shutters and awaken his father, Noah turns to me.

“Listen—” he says, but before he can say anything else I slam my fist into the dashboard and he pulls back. Quiet.

“Cocksucker,” I say, if only to hear how the word
sounds coming from my mouth. I want to strike him hard, in the face and neck and stomach, bringing blood that he will taste across the wide, fishy tail of his tongue. I want to hit him hard for all the times I've wanted to hit him, for the times I've wanted to hit my own son. But when I raise my arm, Noah doesn't flinch. He has been hit before. Maybe many times—at once and over scattered, passing years. He inhales, scared, the breath breaking into small, manageable pockets to be parceled sparingly along the honeycomb ridges of his lungs.

Above the radio, the clock snip, snip, snips along. Is this the kind of boy who later, once he is married and has a family of his own, watches the teenage girl next door undress from the bushes below her illuminated window? Or leaves his wife spooning strained peaches to their child so he can sleep with a waitress? Or, worst of all, decides one day that he has simply had enough?

“What are you going to do?” he asks.

This is a difficult question, and for the first time, maybe the first time ever, I hear genuine concern in Noah's voice. My father would have suspended him, immediately, and so, probably, would have Coach Miller. This is also what I want to do, once the need to abuse him physically passes. But before, in the gym, as Noah lay face down with those big, shiny handcuffs blazing in the floodlights and Sergeant Lockwood's oily boots not three feet from his head, all I could think about was Calvin and how maybe, someday, this might be him.

Some people have not had it so easy.

“I don't know,” I say. “Why don't you get some sleep and we'll talk about it tomorrow.”

He steps out of the car, slowly, holding the roof to steady himself. “Thanks,” he says, so softly into his chest that for a moment I'm not sure if I imagined it. He said it, though, and then slammed the door, swiftly, to minimize the noise.

In the morning Zoe finds me sleeping on the couch, my overcoat pulled across my torso, my face poured into a crevice between two seat cushions. She is drinking milk from the carton, sitting on a ledge next to the fireplace, when I open my eyes.

“How come you're down here?”

“I was too tired to climb back upstairs. Besides,” I start, removing some lint from my tongue, “I didn't want to wake you.”

“That's sweet.” She runs a finger along the straight edge of the carton, pulling loose a droplet of milk. She touches it to her lower lip and says, “It was Noah.”

“What?”

“Last night, at school. It was Noah.”

I nod, pulling the collar of my coat closer to my neck.

“Is he in trouble?”

“Mmm.”

“Big trouble?”

“I don't know.”

She brushes past on her way back to the kitchen, tapping me on the head with the milk carton.

“It was nice of you to get him.”

I watch her standing over the kitchen sink, smoking a cigarette and thinking, about her brother, I presume.
Calvin walks in from behind, naked, holding his airplane beneath his right arm.

“Jesus,” I say, rolling from my side onto my back. “Put on some clothes.”

Zoe hands him a banana and he eats it in the doorway, facing me, his tiny penis winking with each bite.

“Why aren't you dressed?”

Still, he does not say anything; he is chewing, expressionless, as bewildered by me as I am by him. There is only the slappy, sucking sound of banana against inner cheek, like rubbers snapping loose from mud. When he is finished, Zoe stoops and whispers something into his ear and then he disappears.

“What'd you say?” I ask.

“I told him to get dressed.”

“He listens to you.” I feel lightheaded from sitting up too fast. “This is my life: an attorney stuck in the middle of—no, not an attorney: a marriage counselor in the middle of goddam Kansas whose son has taken to ignoring
him
and listening to his girlfriend …”

“So, now I'm your girlfriend?” asks Zoe, kneeling on the arm of the couch, smiling.

“Perhaps.”

Once she leaves and I have showered and shaved, Calvin and I stop by the office before meeting Kate at Gooland's. When we arrive she is already drinking coffee and leafing through the local newspaper at a side table. Behind the register there is an open window into the kitchen area and Frankie Larch is staring out, at the dining room, a cigarette angled southward in the corner of his mouth. He nods when our eyes meet and then
yells to me that Rob left his first payment the other day. Most of the front wall is repaired, except for some loose caulk seeping from underneath the windows and several exposed islands of cinderblock that will be hidden once the wooden panels are replaced.

“You look tired,” says Kate, as I slide into the booth across from her.

Calvin is not very hungry, but I make him eat some oatmeal and part of my blueberry muffin. He wants to play in the fresh snow with Meg, before it melts or gets “smooshy.” A man in blue coveralls is mixing plaster to spackle along the front wall, leveling the surface before they hang the paneling, and I tell Calvin he can go over and watch as long as he stands to the side and does not bother anyone.

“He's well behaved,” says Kate.

“Most of the time.”

She breaks off a corner of her muffin, bran, but does not eat it, instead flattening the loose crumbs with her index finger.

“When does he start school?”

“Next fall.”

“And he'll go around here?”

I nod.

“The schools are okay?”

“They're fine.”

The waitress comes over and pours us both more coffee, though my cup is half full.

“Well, I would imagine the classes are quite small. That's good.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you know any of the teachers? I mean, being that you're kind of like a member of the faculty—”

“It's totally different. The pre- and primary schools are at the opposite ends of town as the high school. I don't know any of those folks.”

“Oh. I just—”

“Look, Kate, I appreciate your concern. But when the time comes, we'll handle it.”

Using a paper napkin, she blots a spilled trail of coffee beneath her saucer.

“If you want me to apologize, I won't,” she says, suddenly, sternly. “You know, Gordon, I'm not sorry I left. I had to. For me. I
am
sorry I've missed two years of Calvin's life, and I
am
sorry if I caused you pain, but I'm not sorry I left.” She looks up, for the first time. “This isn't an easy thing for me, either, but I'm trying.”

“I can forgive you for leaving me, Kate. But Calvin …”

“I'm not asking for your forgiveness. All I want is a chance to have a relationship with my son. And I can tell you this,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest, “I
will
have that relationship, with or without your approval.”

“Shit,” I say, because I can think of nothing else besides spilling hot coffee down her lap.

The two of us do not say anything else until Calvin comes back, clutching something in his hand.

“What?” I ask, tapping his closed fist.

“He gave it to me,” says Calvin, peering over his shoulder at the workman.

“Lemme see.”

Calvin holds out his hand, revealing a wooden quarter-sized token with a buffalo painted on it. The token is good for one free drink at a bar in Wichita.

“It's a nice thing to have,” I say, sliding it into the back pocket of Calvin's pants. “In case you're on the road or something.”

Sometimes, when I'm alone, I will drive to a woodsy ridge about five miles from town and sit behind the wheel of my car, staring through the windshield at a narrow, twisted creek, watching the water split and reform as it collides with rocks and greasy bundles of sticks and leaves. Kate has taken Calvin and Meg to the movies for the afternoon. Earlier, at the office, Jess Thomas called me about last night. We have agreed to suspend Noah for two games, but I took much of the blame. From now on, I will be required to stay in the gym until the entire team has gone home.

The windows inside the car begin to cloud with moisture and when I turn, glancing across the passenger seat, I can see a crooked line of scrawl reappear above the door lock. At first, it does not seem like anything: the letters M and D, and maybe a Z. But upon closer examination, it may be that Calvin has written out the word Mom, as he did on the label of his man-o-war jar. Except for M, which for some reason he recognizes, the letters are only symbols to him; he can sing them but he doesn't really know how they fit together.

There are things he remembers about Kate, about her life with us before she departed, but he does not know he remembers them. They are simply passing
thoughts in his little head, like the time he wanted to name his man-o-war Mom. He knows that Charlotte is Meg's mother and that my mother, Tish, lives in Florida and sends him funny packages. But he has never asked about Kate and why she does not live with us, in Kansas, or why she left in the first place. Someday, either Kate or I will explain this. In fact, Kate may decide to tell him in the car on the ride home from the movies with his fingers slick from butter and bright, gooey candy lodged in the craggy divots of his teeth.

Later, while I am breaking apart a head of iceberg lettuce into a worn, wooden bowl, Calvin sits on the counter with his airplane lying against his lap. He takes a loose piece of lettuce and holds it like a blindfold across the black glass of the cockpit, before sticking it into his mouth.

“In Texas they have horses,” he says. “Lots of them.”

“I know they do.”

“Sometime, if we live there, I could have one.”

“Well, it isn't likely we'll ever live in Texas.”

He does not answer, instead reaching for my arm so that he can be lowered to the ground. Still, I do not know whether Kate told him the reasons she left us, but I'm quite certain she has promised him a horse. A large, bay colt of his own. In Texas.

After dinner I roam the living room, watering plants, while Zoe lies on the ground reading a textbook, her feet resting on the couch. She says this posture is good for her back, which aches from bending to shovel hay into
the stalls where Willa is kept. She does not seem concerned that soon, Calvin, too, may have a horse.