Dance Real Slow (9 page)

Her voice broke slightly on the word “half,” but then she was fine. I told her that yes, children, especially at Calvin's age, do grow a lot in a year and a half.

“You think,” she said and then stopped, and I heard her fumbling with the telephone receiver. “Do you think he misses me? I mean, does he ever talk about me or anything?”

I did not answer right away, because I was not really sure what she wanted to hear. No, Calvin did not speak of her, specifically. But that wasn't because he did not miss her; he just didn't know her.

“Kate, do you miss him?”

“That's a funny thing,” she said, filling her lungs. “Sometimes I miss him so much it's blinding. Debilitating. I mean, I can't think of anything else—not eating, sleeping, breathing, nothing. So I write him. Jesus, I have two shoe boxes full of letters to Calvin that maybe I'll give him someday. But they're letters to an older Calvin, a grownup Calvin. I don't know how to talk to him now. What to say?” She paused. “But then, other times, it's like it doesn't matter at all that I have a son out there, living his own life, away from me. Away from his mother. That I'm just some woman he doesn't know—who he'll never know. And that's okay. There's no sense of loss, no sorrow at all. Do you know about that, Gordon? Do you ever feel like that?”

“No,” I said, looking out the kitchen window at Calvin as he took a mighty, loopy swing at the bottom of one of Mrs. Grafton's Persian rugs. A tiny puff of dust
exploded onto him and he stepped back, coughing. Mrs. Grafton leaned down and said something, but I was too far away to hear. Calvin was smiling. “No, I never feel like that.”

Kate said she would try to call from New York, before Bali. She really did want to talk to Calvin, even only to hear his voice and how it sounded. I told her that would be fine and then we hung up, Kate first.

There were times, obviously, when I thought Kate would make a marvelous parent. But the same unpredictability in her character to which I was attracted also made her reckless, dangerous. Once, I remember she wrapped herself in Christmas-tree lights and stood teetering on Calvin's miniature rocking horse while reciting Rimbaud. Calvin waddled near her side, flexing his little fingers to the rhythm of the blinking lights. Green, red, and white. Then he was babbling something in his own, new voice—sounds that meant nothing to anyone but him. The only thing keeping Kate here, I recall thinking, is the extension cord. By here, though, I meant in the living room; she could easily have unplugged herself and wandered, dark, into the bedroom or kitchen.

Some nights, when I'm depressed, I hold tight to these moments. They carry me through the loneliness once Calvin has gone to sleep. My ex-wife, a woman I had loved, speaking in rhyming couplets while dressed in a suit of holiday lights. It could happen again, for me, for Calvin. It could happen with somebody else.

Joyce Ives stands with her feet together, insteps touching, the red 7s on her heels perfectly even. She
takes a step, slowly, and then another, and suddenly she is in full motion, her stance spread with its weight on her front leg. The dark ball swings heavy behind her right calf, releasing as it passes her knee, hitting the slick wooden floor with a muted thump. The sound of the ball spinning down the alley resembles a low, sustained cough, like someone trying to bring up a clot of phlegm. The ball collides with three pins, pushing them back into three more and then knocking over a final three. She has left only the rear right pin standing.

“Shit,” she says, walking back to the ball return and placing her hand over a circular arrangement of holes blowing out cold air. She misses the spare and then sits down at our lighted table, marking a 9 into her box.

“I haven't bowled in a while,” she says. She removes her cigarette from the ashtray and takes several long drags, leaving the filtered end close to her chin.

Rob is lounging on a shiny plastic bench behind Joyce and me, drinking coffee and eating Cheez Curls. His tan work boots are untied, the laces frayed, forming humps over their stiff tongues. This is the only place Joyce would agree to meet with him.

“Listen,” I say, moving my arm over the top of the chair, so that I am facing both of them. “If you two are thinking divorce, that's one thing. But it doesn't concern this whole business at Gooland's. I know I've talked to you about this, Joyce.”

She nods, pressing out her cigarette.

“All I want is what's fair for everybody. This case going any further than it already has won't do anyone any good. Especially me.”

“You said that before,” says Joyce. “But what about
me?
What do I get out of this? Except for a dishonest, sonofabitch husband, a fucked-up car, and a whole mess of bills.” She glares at Rob, her lower lip quivering slightly.

“Things would be different if you hadn't driven through Gooland's,” I say. “That changed everything. I mean, you're lucky someone didn't press charges.”

“Can I press charges?” asks Rob, smiling.

Joyce huffs and walks back to the alley to throw her next ball. She is the only one of us who is bowling.

“Come on, Rob. You've gotta think about what can be done to try and clean this up. I mean, somehow the front of Gooland's has to get paid for. And we've both gotta find a way to call off Joyce.”

Rob wipes bright orange Cheez Curl powder off his face, using the arm of his shirt.

“Are the two of you thinking divorce?”

Joyce rolls a strike.

“Mr. Nash, I'm not thinking about getting a divorce. Not yet.”

“Well, I sure am,” says Joyce, drawing a large X on her paper. “What else am I supposed to think? Goddam you, Rob.” She turns to face him. “Were you just going to keep on fuckin' her, hoping I'd never find out? Doesn't six years of marriage mean squat to you?” Joyce picks up the ball again, her sweaty palms sticking against its even marbled surface. “What about now? You're no different. Living in her apartment on Labells Street. I know. You think I don't hear things, but I know.”

“I'm not staying with her anymore,” says Rob softly
into his shoulder. “I'm over at Kurt's place. Sleeping on his couch.”

Joyce shrugs, but as she moves up the alley the corner of her mouth lifts and I can see she is pleased. Pleased that Rob is no longer living with his waitress. As she starts her motion, she murmurs under her breath, and it sounds to me like she said, “That's something, anyway.”

Later, the three of us are standing at the counter waiting for a high-school-age boy to ring up Joyce's bill. She is in her stocking feet, the rental shoes resting on the glass tabletop. It costs $2.85 and Rob sets down three singles.

“I've got money,” Joyce says, although she does not reach for it.

“I know. I know you do.”

In the parking lot, Joyce sits on the hood of Rob's Camaro, slipping on her sneakers. Rob unlocks her car, which he is driving, and climbs in, leaving the door open while he starts it.

“You probably don't have to lock it,” she says, chuckling. “I don't think there's anything to worry about.”

Rob shrugs and then slams closed the door, flipping his fingers in a small wave before backing out. She nods and then looks at me, saying she has to meet a friend for dinner, but she will call me in a day or so.

Carl Miller says he has a great admiration for my father and that is why he suggested me for the job. He figured something must have rubbed off. Carl Miller is
Tarent High's basketball coach. He is lying on a narrow wooden plank positioned over the left side of his bed, his head pushed forward with pillows.

“It's a herniated disk,” he says, placing his thumb against his lower back. “They're not sure if I'm going to need surgery or not.”

I nod, taking a saucer and teacup from Carl's wife, Dora. I had never met the Millers before this evening, but there was a message from Harper telling me to come here, that Carl had some business to discuss.

“They want me to stay in bed for a month, see how it goes. A month, can you beat that?”

“That's a long time,” I say.

Dora smiles, lowering a plate of butter cookies.

“You're not kidding.” Carl reaches back and folds over the top pillow for height, so he can see me more directly. I'm sitting at the foot of his bed on a collapsible card chair.

“They think maybe, God willing, I'll be up and around sometime after Thanksgiving.”

Carl wants me to fill in for him, to coach Tarent High's basketball team until he recovers.

“Harper tells me you played?”

“I wasn't very good,” I say. “For three years I mostly sat on the bench at a small college back East. I also played some intramural ball in law school. But I hardly think either of those things qualifies me for a position as head coach. Really, Mr. Miller, I think there must be better-suited candidates out there. Don't you have an assistant?”

“Well”—he clasps his hands over his belt buckle—
“I did have one, but he moved. Down to Key West in June to help his brother out with a charter fishing business. Didn't know jack about fishing, but said his brother would help him with that—teach him everything he needed.”

The telephone rings and Mrs. Miller gets up and points to the open doorway, as if to say she'll answer it in the other room. She leaves and after two more rings it stops and we can hear the muffled up and down tone of her voice through the wall.

“Harper also told me you did some coaching. A women's team?”

“I wouldn't exactly call that coaching. It was more like damage control. I helped out with my ex-wife's sorority team. Again, it's not something I would put on a résumé.”

“Mr. Nash, how well do you know Tarent?”

I shrug and lean back in my chair. “We've been here for close to a year now. I guess I know it pretty well. It's a small town.”

“Right. It's a small town. You've been down at the high school, you know what the basketball games are like. Sure, people want to see 'em win—but mostly, folks want to have fun. To have a hot dog or two, a soda, and maybe see their boy or their neighbor's boy score a few points—”

“That's another thing,” I say. “I've got a son of my own. I'm at work all day and I need to be with him in the afternoons and evenings. It's just the two of us.”

“You can bring him to practice and to the games.
He'd have a great time. And the boys will love him. They're good kids, Mr. Nash.”

Carl Miller goes on about the character of his players and I pretend to listen, nodding occasionally while trying to make out what Mrs. Miller is talking about in the adjoining room. When he finishes, I thank him for the offer and tell him I'll give it some thought but, truly, I think he should continue looking. I fail to mention, however, that near the end of my father's life I had formed an emotional wall; I had written him off as simply nothing more than the man who provided my mother with the sperm that helped to create me. A lucky tumbler in the hay. That and a basketball coach. At this moment, the thought of following in his footsteps—in any form—leaves me nauseated, suffocated by the irony. Grief of men who were here before us, of men like my father, furnishes the diagrams to our own lives.

To be sure, I have no genuine explanation of why I have become the type of man I am today, the type of father I am with Calvin. There are times, however, when my mind drifts and I become acutely aware of the fact that I'm overcompensating. Perhaps it's because my own father failed to show much emotion toward me that I so openly heap affection on Calvin. Already, as a small boy, he is often permitted to stay awake past his bedtime or dig messy holes in the yard simply because he wants to see them flood with rainwater. Part of his little life is filled with wonder and silver sparklers and as much love as one parent can provide. He will not always have such freedom, though, because the world is not so generous.

Gripping the banister, I wave to Mrs. Miller on my way out and she smiles, mouthing the words “Nice meeting you.” In the kitchen, a tin of butter cookies sits open on the table and I take a few before leaving. I tell myself they are for Calvin, but I know I'll eat them on the car ride home.

At a stop sign, my mind tumbles to a day when Kate and I were still in school. We had taken a break from our studies to shoot baskets on the asphalt court behind one of the dorms. While playing, she began to cover me tight on defense; she used her hands to check me, along the hips; she positioned herself for rebounds with her butt. She was not frantic, crazed, like some women who haven't participated in many team sports. Her footwork was also advanced, like someone who had been playing the game all her life (though she had not). And she was competitive, more competitive than me: keeping score aloud, announcing it after every bucket. Sometimes when I was squaring my body to shoot, she would yell obscenities into my ear in the hopes it would distract me.

Later that afternoon, I was again mesmerized by her footwork. This time it came as she sidestepped a lunatic ranting near the student union, his forehead bloodied, his cheeks spotted with dirt. He was wielding a deformed six-iron, buckled slightly along the end of the shaft. He swang furiously, close. Kate grabbed my hand and yanked me to her side. Then, without stopping, she said, “Keep your head down, man. You're developing a wicked hook.”

Nothing will take this woman by surprise, I said to myself, even nearly getting clocked by a golf-club-brandishing nut. And now, much later, she would not be fazed upon learning that someone—some
school—wants
her ex-husband to coach its basketball team. The same guy whose most insightful advice to her sorority sisters was “Wear two pairs of athletic socks during games.”

Near sundown, the house is dark except for a subdued, low-watt light coming from atop the staircase, coming from inside the bathroom. I have sent Mrs. Grafton home and have called out to Calvin several times, but he hasn't answered. Making my way upstairs, deliberately, I can hear short, high-pitched grunts followed by the whiny intake of breath. The noises sound caustic, banking off the porcelain and tile. As I reach the fourth step from the top, my eyeline becomes even with the bathroom and I can see Calvin's lower torso sprouting from within the toilet. His legs are awkwardly flailing, kicking out, the toes of his sneakers trying desperately to grab onto something. The rug has been flipped back against itself and both the trash pail and the hamper have been knocked over, spilling wads of Kleenex, disposable razors, used Q-Tips, and dirty underwear across the floor. Standing at the door, I watch as the toilet seat bangs softly down on Calvin. His left hand is submerged in toilet water and he is pushing the seat back up with his right hand, only to have it clunk down again, striking his shoulder and neck.