Dance Real Slow (25 page)

When I open the door, Calvin is no longer collecting raindrops. He is sitting near Zoe inside the cab of her truck and I can see them both looking at pictures in a magazine. He comes to my side when I call him.

“Your mother is leaving,” I say.

“When are
we
leavin'?”

“Soon. But she wants to say goodbye. You won't see her for a little while.”

He flashes a quizzical look. “We're going riding.”

“Later,” I say. “In the spring or summer, when it gets warm.”

The motel room seems darker now and the sober twang of slide guitar rises from a radio on the nightstand. Kate holds open her arms and beckons Calvin in a voice as fragile as a reed. He walks over and touches her, tenderly, on the damaged line of her cheek.

“Hold me,” she says, grabbing him beneath his spiky shoulder blades.

She rocks him from side to side in time to the music. Then she raises his shirt and places her face flush against the skin of his chest.

“Will you dance with me?” she asks.

Calvin does not know how to dance, except for a lame, spastic rendition of the jitterbug that I taught him about a year ago. He looks to me for help.

“He doesn't really know how,” I say.

“Nonsense,” says Kate. “It's easy.”

She lifts Calvin onto a chair so his head nearly reaches her collarbone. Together they move to Kate's music, Calvin kicking his feet awkwardly to a rhythm of his own.

“No, honey,” says Kate into his ear. “Slower.”

When Calvin still doesn't get it, she just holds him, tight this time.

“Slower,” she says, again, almost to herself. “Dance real slow.”

She wants to make these final, fleeting moments of motherhood last. Soon, Calvin has had enough and he pulls away.

“Okay,” she says, kissing him on the mouth and nose before letting go. “That's all.”

Then she gathers his belongings and places them
into a satchel. She kisses him, again, and escorts us to the door. “Next time I see you, we'll go riding,” she says.

Calvin nods.

“Good.”

And that's the last thing Kate says before closing the door behind Calvin and me.

“She doesn't have ice cream,” whispers Calvin, randomly, as he tugs at the hem of my jacket.

In the shining headlights of Zoe's truck, the concrete walk has turned as white as the powdery undersides of scrub-oak leaves. Before Calvin climbs onto the seat, beside Zoe, he bends down and makes a funny face at the truck's silvery grillwork. There is no one close enough to see this except me.

First published in Great Britain 1996

This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Copyright © 1996 by Michael Grant Jaffe

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from
Rock Springs
by Richard Ford, with permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Copyright © 1987. ‘Lonely Ol' Night,' words and music by John Mellencamp, with permission of Warner Brothers. Copyright © 1985 Windswept Pacific Entertainment Co. d/b/a Full Keel Music Co. ‘You Can Close Your Eyes,' words and music by James Taylor, with permission of EMI Blackwood Music Inc. Copyright © 1971 EMI Blackwood Music Inc. and Country Road Music Inc.

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eISBN: 978-1-4088-5748-9

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