Pretending to Dance (20 page)

“Oh, Molly!” she said. “Oh my God, baby, I completely forgot we moved our lesson to today! It's my day to clean Claudia and Jim's house.”

I straddled my bike next to the tree stump shaped like a chair. A dragonfly lit on the rim of my bike basket, wings fluttering. “Oh,” I said, disappointed. I wanted time with her. Time away from my house. At home, I felt like everyone was staring at me when I walked in a room, upset with me over what had happened at Stacy's yesterday. Daddy, Russell, my mother. I felt all their eyes on me. Yet I had the feeling neither Daddy nor Russell had said anything to my mother. Surely she would have said something to me about it if they had.

I was obsessed. In the less than twenty-four hours since I'd met Chris, he'd become all I could think about. I felt the gazes of the New Kids and Johnny Depp following me around the springhouse, silently chiding me for leaving them behind. In my room the night before, I literally jumped each time the phone rang, hoping it was Chris or, at the very least, Stacy, but no one called me all evening and when I tried to reach Stacy around ten o'clock, there was no answer. I needed to talk to her to find out what had happened after I left. I worried my father's attempt to scare Chris off had worked.

“Do you want to come with me?” Amalia asked now. “It's not much fun, but we could chat while I clean.”

“I could help you,” I said, getting off my bike and leaning it against the tree stump.

“Hop in,” she said, and I got into the passenger seat and directed the vent for the air conditioner toward my face.

“So,” Amalia said as she turned onto the loop road through Morrison Ridge. “I believe I have you to thank for an invitation to the midsummer party.”

“Oh good!” I said. “Did Nanny leave you a note?”

“She called,” Amalia said. “Chilly, as usual, but she said she couldn't deny you anything.” She turned to smile at me. “Thank you.” She reached over to smooth the back of her warm fingers down my cheek. “I truly do want to be there. Morrison Ridge has been my home for a long time, too.”

I felt angry. “I don't think it's fair how people treat you here,” I said.

“It doesn't matter.” She shrugged. “I get to be close to you and that's what counts.”

“But you didn't do anything more wrong than what Daddy did,” I said. She was quiet and I thought she was going to change the subject again the way she had during our dance lesson the week before, so I kept talking before she had the chance. “I never really knew about you showing up with me the way you did,” I said. “I didn't know if you were married to Daddy when I was born or what.”

She smiled. “You never asked, and we decided we'd wait until you did rather than dump a lot of information on you before you were ready to hear it.”

We drove past Nanny's house and in a moment I could see the zip line platform poking out of the trees. Our rides on the zip line seemed like months ago rather than a few days. I had to come up with another adventure that would be fun for my father. One that wasn't quite so labor intensive. I worried the whole fiasco the day before—the problems with the van and the problems with
me
—had undone any positive feelings sailing through the air might have given him.

I turned back to Amalia after we passed the zip line. “Did you ever think of keeping me?” I asked.

She hesitated. “I'm not good mother material, Molly,” she said finally.

I felt a little stab in my chest. There were plenty of women who were crappy mother material, but they still mothered. Had she been thrilled she could give me away? Somehow, her forgetting about our dance lesson seemed to fit with her turning me over to my father. It must have been a relief to her to be able to do that.

I felt her glance at me. “I loved you so much,” she assured me. “But I thought it was best for you to be with your father and Nora rather than with a single mother … and a flaky single mother at that.” She shrugged. Smiled. “Nora rose to the occasion beautifully, didn't she? She put your needs above everything else, which was what I'd hoped for. I'm sure it wasn't easy for her to share her neighborhood with her husband's former lover.”

The word
lover
made me cringe. I didn't want to imagine my father as
anyone's
lover, yet lately it seemed I was being forced to think about it whether I wanted to or not.

Amalia turned onto the road leading to Aunt Claudia and Uncle Jim's house. “She's not Miss Warmth, Nora, but she's very practical, and when you came along, she embraced you as her own. You ended up with two wonderful parents, don't you think?”

I nodded. “I'm lucky I get to have all three of you,” I said, but that little niggling new hurt wasn't going away any time soon.

*   *   *

Of the five houses on Morrison Ridge, Aunt Claudia and Uncle Jim's looked the worst. I guessed it had been pretty when it was first built. It was two stories tall and a taupe color with black trim, but it was hard to really notice the house because of the three old cars and one old pickup in the clearing around it, plus the shrubbery was a mess, growing up one side of the house, and ivy nearly blocked the front steps with long green leafy tendrils.

It had been a while since I'd been inside their house. I thought back. Dani had a big birthday party when she was thirteen and that must have been the last time. She'd still looked like a typical young girl back then, with hair the same boring brown as mine and skin bare of makeup. I would have been ten. All I remembered about that day was that Aunt Claudia told Dani to share her jewelry-making kit with me, and rather than let me play with it, Dani flushed the beads and strings down the toilet. I really couldn't stand her. Mom once told me we'd like each other as we got older but I couldn't picture that ever happening.

As soon as Amalia and I walked inside the house, I remembered the smell. I'd never smelled anything like it anywhere else. It reminded me of the aroma of baking bread, warm and yeasty.

“Jim's beer,” Amalia said. “That smell is in every corner of this house.”

“I think I like it,” I said, trying to decide. It was a good smell, but it had a strange, sour edge to it.

“In small doses, I do, too,” she said, setting her cleaning basket on the kitchen table. “At least it covers up the smell of their cigarettes. By the time I'm done cleaning this house, though, all I can think about is taking a shower and washing that smell out of my hair.”

“Sh,” I said, worried that someone might be home.

“Oh, they're not here.” Amalia reached into the cabinet beneath the sink and pulled out a bottle of dish detergent. “Jim's out hauling trash and today is Claudia's stitching circle, or something like that, and I don't remember what Dani's doing, but something.”

“Probably at the mall buying some more black clothes.”

Amalia smiled. “Don't be so rough on her,” she said, squeezing the detergent under running water in the sink. “Back when I showed up at Morrison Ridge with you, she had a harder time with it than anyone. With the exception of Nora, of course.”

“
Dani
did? Why? She was just a little kid.”

“Your father doted on her, that's why,” Amalia said, holding her fingertips beneath the water as she adjusted the temperature. “She was the little princess and then you came along and sucked up all his attention. Have some compassion for her.”

That surprised me, although when I thought about it, my father
was
always really nice to Dani. When someone in the family made fun of her makeup or how weird she'd become, he'd defend her, saying something about her “testing her wings.”

Dani's house, though, was undeniably filthy, at least judging from the kitchen and what I could see of the living room. My own house was always “picked up,” as Nora would say.

“I can clean Bess's—your grandmother's—house or Trevor and Toni's house in two hours.” Amalia turned off the faucet and dried her hands on a dish towel. “This house, a minimum of four. Toni straightens up before I get to their place, but Claudia … look at this mess. This is for me, trust me.”

“What do you mean, it's for you?”

“Claudia adored Nora, so when I showed up … well, she was against me living at Morrison Ridge. She thought I'd be a home wrecker.” She smiled. “I'd never do that to Nora.” She pulled out one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “Why don't you sit here and keep me company while I work?” she asked.

“Want me to clean one of the other rooms?” I offered.

“Oh, you don't have to help, Molly. If they paid me something, that would be one thing and I could split it with you, but since they don't, I don't think you should help. You can put on the radio and dance, or just chat with me.”

I sat down on the chair and rested my elbows on the table. “What do you mean, they don't pay you?” I'd always thought that cleaning houses was Amalia's job.

“Well, they don't pay me in money, anyway,” she said as she pulled on yellow rubber gloves and began washing the dishes that had been left in the sink. “But I get a place to live, and that's a lot, so I'm not complaining.”

“But … how do you buy food and clothes or other things you need?” I thought of how her long hair always had that honeysuckle scent. “How do you buy shampoo and things?”

I couldn't tell if she didn't answer right away because she was busy scrubbing a frying pan or if she was reluctant to tell me. “Your father,” she said finally. “He gives me money each month. Not a lot, but enough.”

“Does Mom know?” I nearly whispered the question.

“Oh, of course!” She rinsed the frying pan under the faucet. “He wouldn't do something like that behind her back.”

I shook my head. “I have a really crazy family,” I said with a laugh.

“Please don't use that word,” she said, setting the pan in the dish drainer. “I hate it so much.”

“Crazy?” I wasn't sure whether she was reacting to
crazy
or
family
.

“Yes. I hate that word.” Her shoulders scrunched up. Then she turned to look at me. “Are you excited about the book tour?” she asked, in one of her abrupt changes of topic.

“Yes,” I said, going along with the new subject. I remembered Amalia had taught dance at that mental hospital where Daddy'd worked. I guessed that had made her sensitive to the word
crazy
. “They've added a couple of radio interviews, too,” I said. “Isn't that cool?” Daddy's publicist had called that morning to give us addresses to radio stations in Charlotte and Raleigh. The publicist seemed to have forgotten his handicap, though, and for a couple of hours everything was on hold while she verified that the studios were accessible.

“Very cool,” Amalia agreed.

“But I'm nervous, too,” I admitted. “I want the tour to be really good for Daddy.” The tour was another chance to show my father how appreciated he was and I wanted him to have a good time.

Amalia slipped off her gloves and rested them on the edge of the dish drainer, then smiled at me. “God, I love you,” she said. “You're such a good daughter, Molly.”

I looked down at my hands where they rested on the table. I didn't feel like a good daughter. There was one giant negative about the book tour and I was having trouble thinking about much else: if Chris had the guts to call me after what happened the day before, I wouldn't be around to talk to him.

Amalia picked up a sponge and began wiping down the counter. “So,” she said without looking at me, “I hear there might be a guy in your life.”

My chin dropped. How did she know I was thinking about him right that minute? Plus, I couldn't believe Daddy had already told her. It had been less than twenty-four hours since the whole van-breakdown episode at Stacy's. When had he had time?

“Is Daddy as furious as I think he is?” I asked.

She looked at me in surprise. “When have you ever seen him furious?”

“You know what I mean,” I said.

“Concerned, perhaps,” she said. That didn't sound too bad. “So, what is he like?” Amalia asked. “The new guy?”

I felt my cheeks turn red and couldn't stop a smile. “Cute,” I said. “And really nice.”

“Sexy?” Amalia glanced at me.

“Amalia.”
My cheeks were blazing hot. “I don't know! I guess so. He looks like Jon Bon Jovi. Do you know who that is?”

“Of course.” She moved the toaster to clean the counter beneath it.

“But I think Daddy might have messed it up giving him the third degree. He was upset because Chris is three years older than me.”

Amalia laughed. “He's a fine one to talk,” she said, and I'd forgotten that he'd been
nine
years older than Amalia when they were together.

“Exactly!” I said. “He's a hypocrite!” I felt like Amalia and I were suddenly on the same team. “So,” I said, “did you have a boyfriend when you were my age?”

Amalia laughed. “Oh,” she said, “we're not going
there
!” She turned to face me, her face suddenly flushed. “You know what would be a huge help to me?” she asked. “You could pick up things. Bring me any dirty dishes you find and put things away as much as you can so I can dust and vacuum. Okay?”

“Sure,” I said, reluctantly getting to my feet, and I knew that was the end of any meaningful conversation we might have had today.

 

27

 

I sat on the glider on our front porch the following evening, reading
Forever,
the book Stacy had loaned me. What an eye opener! It made me want to be with Chris in the worst way. I wanted to kiss him again. I wanted to have the sort of intense and loving relationship with him that Katherine had with Michael in the book. The only thing I didn't like was that Michael called his penis “Ralph.” I really hoped Chris didn't have a name for his, or if he did, that it wasn't that idiotic.