Don't Let Me Go (9 page)

“I can’t really wash it properly until I get these knots out,” Bella said, as though she hadn’t even been listening. She pulled out a long, sleek, pointy pair of scissors and held them, paused, over Grace’s head.

Bye-bye hair, Grace thought. But it was better than all that brushing and pulling.

“I’m surprised no one noticed at her school,” Rayleen said. “Wouldn’t you think her teacher would notice that nobody brushed her hair for weeks?”

“Maybe she did,” Bella said, still holding the scissors paused. “After all, you still don’t know who called the county.”

“Hmm,” Rayleen said. “Right. I hadn’t thought of that.”

• • •

Walking home with Rayleen, Grace couldn’t stop looking at her fingernails. She held them out in front of her, both hands at once, and admired them. It made her trip over a crack in the sidewalk twice. Well. Three times.

“You might want to look where you’re going.”

“But they’re so beautiful!”

After the haircut (which looked funny, in a way, probably just because it was something Grace wasn’t used to, but also kind of stylish and nice at the same time), Rayleen had given Grace nails. They were the kind you paste on, and they were a really pretty shade of pink, and they had sparkles and other little charm things pasted on. Like, one little paste-on charm was on her middle finger, and it was silver, and shaped like a tiny flying horse. She couldn’t stop looking at the flying horse.

“I’m glad you like them,” Rayleen said.

“I know how to speak Spanish,” Grace said, still looking at the nails.

“Since when?”

“Just since today.”

“You learned Spanish just today?”

“Some. I know
como
you
dice en Español
…dog. It’s
perro
. You
dice
‘dog’ in
Español
by saying ‘
perro
.’”

“OK, I stand corrected. That’s a lot of Spanish to learn in one day. I’m impressed. Oops. Look out, Grace. Look where you’re going.”

Grace looked up just in time to zig-zag around two young women walking toward them on the sidewalk.

“Sorry,” she said to them. Then, to Rayleen, “Maybe when we get home we can order a pizza.”

“Maybe,” Rayleen said. “But it’s not going to be like the last pizza. I could barely carry that thing into the house. I didn’t know a pizza could even cost that much. When the guy told me the bill, I thought he was kidding. Who orders pepperoni
and
sausage
and
Canadian bacon
and
meatballs all on one pizza?”

“Me.”

“And triple cheese? I mean, I’ve heard of double cheese, but…”

“I’m sorry if it was too much money. But you said to order what I wanted.”

“Right,” Rayleen said. “I did. So, live and learn. But this time I’m making the call. And this time I’m telling you in advance that you want cheese and pepperoni. Period.”

Grace smiled to herself. Because it was still pizza. And it was still a million times more pizza than she was about to get from anybody else besides Rayleen.

“Have you thought of what you like about me yet?”

“Yes,” Rayleen said. “As a matter of fact, I have. You’re a survivor. And you don’t complain. Now, that’s just off the top of my head, and it’s just so far. Like I said before, I’m sure when I get to know you better, there’ll be tons more.”

“It’s good for now,” Grace said, sneaking a quick look at her nails again. One had a little crescent moon charm stuck on — her right pinky one. “That and a pizza’s plenty good enough for today.”

Billy

Billy swung his apartment door wide and leaped out into the hallway, landing right in front of Rayleen and Grace.

“Why did you not tell me Grace wasn’t coming today?” he bellowed, alarmed by the sound of his own anger. “I was beside myself with worry. I mean it. I had a miserable afternoon. Absolutely abysmal. I thought something had happened to her. I was a mess. My fingernails are bitten right down to the quick. And beyond. Every single one of them. Look at this.”

But he didn’t literally offer them for inspection.

Rayleen stood a moment — her mouth open wide — while he spoke. Then she looked down at Grace.

“Grace,” she said. “You didn’t tell him. You promised you’d tell him.”

Grace looked up into Rayleen’s face. “Oooooops,” she said.

Then all Billy could do was stand there like a fool, all the passion and fire drained out of him, because you can’t very well stay mad at a kid Grace’s age for forgetting something.

“I’m sorry,” Rayleen said. “It’s all my fault. I take total responsibility. I shouldn’t have put it all on Grace. Next time I’ll tell you myself if we change the plan.”

“I’m sorry, too, Billy,” Grace said. “I didn’t mean to make you bite your quicks.”

Billy sighed deeply, pushing out a whole afternoon of abject panic.

“Can I still get a dancing lesson?” Grace asked.

“Oh, no. No, not today. I’m afraid not. That was just too exhausting an afternoon. I couldn’t—Oh, my God! Would you look at you! Look at your hair!”

“Do you like it?”

“
Like it?
Girlfriend, you are a changed woman! I mean, girl. You are a new girl. You are
styling
! I am
very
impressed!”

“And look at the nails.”

She held her fingers out, proudly, for Billy to see.

“Amazing,” he said. “Absolutely amazing. You have been reborn.”

She smiled up at him for a moment.

Then Billy’s spell broke, unexpectedly, like a bubble popping.

“Oh, my God, I’m out in the hall,” he said, and scrambled back inside.

“Yeah, and in your pajamas,” Grace said.

He closed the door most of the way, peering out through an inch of crack.

“We sort of figured you knew,” Grace said.

• • •

Grace said to Billy, “I’m still really sorry about yesterday.”

She was standing in his kitchen — because there was no place to
sit
in his kitchen — leaning her back against the washer-dryer, and trying to pull Billy’s special tap shoes over three pairs of socks without bunching up the socks.

“You don’t still have to be sorry about that.”

“But look at your poor nails. They’re so sad.”

“No, don’t look at my poor nails,” Billy said, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his old bathrobe. It hurt, because all of his fingers were still sore.

“Why not look at them?”

“Because they’re sad.”

“I just feel like it’s my fault,” she said, getting the first shoe in place at long last.

“Look. Baby girl. It’s not your fault if I’m such a freak that I can’t handle a little mild tension.”

“Don’t call yourself that,” she said, frowning as if for the cameras. Dramatically. A girl after Billy’s own heart. “I don’t like that.”

“Besides,” he said. “It was an honest mistake. The past is the past. It’s gone, thank God.”

“I thought you liked your past.”

“Some of it, yes. Some of it, no.”

“But you have all those pictures around to remind you of it.”

She set her one shod foot down on Billy’s kitchen linoleum. The tapping sound drove clean through every one of Billy’s defenses and found a feeling place. A little like bumping into an ex-lover, suddenly and without warning, someone who’d hurt you beyond repair, but whom you still loved.

How much of his life had he devoted to that tiny, but absolutely singular, sound?

“I like to remember the good parts and forget the rest.”

“I don’t think that works,” Grace said.

“You don’t think what works?”

She tested the sound of her taps once, on purpose, doing a slow flap step, remembered from her first lesson. Then she set about to pull on the other shoe.

“It’s like people who want to feel only happy but not sad,” she said. “It never works. You either feel things or you don’t. You don’t get to pick and choose. At least, I don’t think so.”

Billy didn’t answer straight off. He just stood, his shoulder leaned on the door frame, and watched her work on the second shoe, admiring her intense concentration.

After a few seconds, she looked up at him.

“You got quiet.”

“Kids your age shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Why? Was it stupid?”

“No. It was smart. Too smart.”

“No such thing as too smart. Aha! Got it!”

She laced up the second shoe and strode out into the middle of the kitchen floor, tapping her way through the time step routine Billy had taught her, and managing to get every single step in the wrong order. But it was danced with good feeling, at least in the lower half of her body.

The sound, though not perfect against kitchen linoleum, again filled Billy’s stunted gut with memories. They could not, he noticed, be sorted out into two groups, those to be kept and those to be discarded. They came as a package deal.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Billy said, focusing back on the dance performance itself. “You forgot a few things.”

“Well, I didn’t have a lesson yesterday.”

“Let’s not work on the time step right now.”

“But I want to learn it!”

“You will. I promise. But I want you to have arms. Remember when I told you I want you to have arms?”

“I have arms,” she said, holding them up as proof.

“I told you what that means. Remember? When I say I want you to have arms?”

“Oh! Yeah! Um. Let me think. Nope. Sorry. I don’t remember.”

“It means you’re concentrating so hard on getting the steps right that you’re only thinking about your feet. Which I understand, because the time step involves some remembering, especially after just one lesson. But I want you to get off on the right foot, no pun intended.”

“You did so intend that.”

“Actually, I really didn’t. Here’s what I’m saying. I don’t want you getting into a bad habit of moving your feet correctly but holding the rest of your body stiff, like a statue. This is not Riverdance, you know. Not that there’s anything wrong with Riverdance. Only that this isn’t it.”

“I don’t know what that river thing is.”

“Right. I might have predicted that. Let’s do something really basic with your feet. Let’s do a series of stamps and stomps, and when you get into a simple rhythm with that, you can start to focus on your torso and arms.”

“What’s a torso?”

“Upper body.”

“Oh. Why didn’t you just say so?”

“No talking. No giving the teacher a hard time. Especially not at these prices. Now. With your right foot. Stamp.”

Grace brought her right foot down with a satisfying sound, then raised it again, looking up at him and smiling.

“That’s not a stamp. That’s a stomp.”

“Darn it,” she said, smile fading. “I always get those two confused.”

“I told you how to remember the difference. Remember what I taught you about that?”

“Not really.”

“Like a stamp on a letter?”

“Right! I remember! When you stamp a letter, the stamp stays down. Right. So a stamp is when I stamp down, with both taps at the same time, heel tap and ball tap, and then I leave my weight on that foot.”

“Right. Stamp with your right, shift your weight right, lift up your left, stamp with your left, shift your weight left, repeat.”

“This is easy,” Grace said, after the third or fourth stamp cycle. “Too easy.”

“That’s why now you’re supposed to think about the rest of your body.”

“Oh, right. My arms,” she said, still stamping. “What should they do?”

“Ask them.”

“That’s dumb.”

“Try it before you say it’s dumb.”

Grace’s arms came up to about waist level and began to shift in rhythm with the stamps. Billy smiled inwardly.

“Good thing nobody lives downstairs except us,” Grace said.

“Indeed a good thing,” Billy replied.

Except, just at that moment, someone knocked on the door. All motion froze in the kitchen, and they waited there in silence for a beat or two, staring through the open kitchen entryway to Billy’s front door.

“Damn it to hell!” Billy said, under his breath. “Why do people keep knocking on my door? Nobody ever knocked on my door except delivery guys. For years. And now all of a sudden this is like a daily occurrence.”

“It’s my fault,” Grace said, in a surprisingly restrained whisper.

“Not really.”

“It started when you said you’d look after me, though.”

“True enough.” Then more loudly, Billy called out, “Who’s there?”

“It’s Eileen Ferguson. Your downstairs neighbor.”

Billy exchanged a look with Grace.

“Is she supposed to know you’re here?”

“I’m not sure.”

Billy took a deep breath, walked to the door, undid all of the locks except the safety chain, and opened the door several inches, hoping he was the only one able to hear the pounding of his heart.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Too loud?”

“Yeah, kind of. I’m trying to take a nap, and whatever you’re doing up here sounds like that dance company that does the stomp dancing with trash cans on their feet.”

“Sorry. Didn’t realize anybody would be trying to sleep at this hour.”

If she caught the mild dig, she chose not to let on.

She looked bad. Billy knew he was a fine one to judge, yet he couldn’t surgically remove the judging from his nature. It was simply too much a part of him now. Sure, he probably looked like hell, too. Then again, he hadn’t gone out to knock on a neighbor’s door. If he had, he would certainly have freshened up a bit first.