The Firefly Dance

by Sarah Addison Allen

  Chapter Two

  Soon after Tessa’s seventh birthday, her mother took her on an adventure. At least, that’s what Ursula called it, an adventure. She must have planned it carefully, which was unusual for her. Dennis, Tessa’s father, was out of town on business, and Ursula’s mother Lucy, who lived with them, was fast asleep when Ursula carried Tessa away in the middle of the night. Tessa remembered waking in the back seat of their car. Her mother had been cautious, belting her in carefully and tucking the blanket around her on all sides even though it was a warm night.

  For the first few moments after waking, Tessa said nothing, trying to get a sense of where they might be going and taking in her mother’s mood. Ursula had an unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth and was listening to an Oldie’s station. She was wearing a sleeveless lime-green dress, and her elbow rested on the open window. Her arms were firm and tanned, and she seemed happy as she hummed along to the music. The next time she looked in the rear view mirror, she saw that Tessa’s eyes were open.

  “You up, angel?” Ursula said. Tessa sat up and nodded. Ursula told her not to worry. “We’re going on an adventure.”

  What Tessa did not know, could not have known, was that their so-called adventure was precipitated by her father’s desperate threat to file for sole custody of Tessa and to have Ursula permanently hospitalized unless she promised to take her medication consistently.

  Ursula could not have known that it was an empty threat. Dennis would never have followed through even though he feared the worst, the very worst. He loved Ursula too much, and yet not enough.

  But that morning, Ursula was free. It was the summer, and everything was green and lazy. Ursula soon pulled over at a roadside diner. Before they got out of the car, Ursula helped Tessa change out of her pajamas and into shorts and a tee shirt. Ursula pulled everything, including socks and sneakers, from a big straw bag that was on the front seat. “I even brought your toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste. You can wash up in the bathroom before we have breakfast.” She tousled Tessa’s hair. “And Daddy says I’m not responsible.”

  Inside the diner, Ursula drank lots of black coffee and finally smoked her cigarette, taking one deep drag after another. She looked beautiful. Her hair was pushed out of her face and held back in a ponytail. Several of Tessa’s fancy bobby pins kept the loose hairs in place. Ursula must have grabbed a handful of the pins for Tessa and stuck them along the sides of her own head for safekeeping. After they ate, Ursula lifted Tessa onto the hood of their car and combed her fine hair, arranging the pins in neat rows on each side of her head, congratulating herself out loud for thinking of everything. “I can handle this. I’m fine. I have everything under control.”

  For the first time since she woke, Tessa was afraid. Her mother’s eyes were too bright, and her voice was too high.

  Ursula recognized Tessa’s apprehension and reassured her saying, “I’m fine. I just had one cup of coffee too many.” Then she kissed Tessa once on each cheek. “We’re going to see a friend of mine. She’s from the center where I go for my appointments. She’s nice. You’ll like her. I promise, Tess.” Appointments. That was the name they used for Ursula’s visits to the psychiatrist. Appointments.

  Minutes later they were off, driving up the New York State Thruway, passing villages and towns with names that Ursula said aloud, drawing out the syllables with exaggerated emphasis and making Tessa giggle. She was sitting up front now, and she kept checking the speedometer, just the way her father had taught her to do. If Mommy goes above fifty, you scream. Fifty-five is the absolute limit, Tess. Thirty-five on the local streets. Got it? Tessa breathed more easily when she saw they were cruising along at a safe speed.

  Ursula knew what Tessa was doing, and she laughed and said, “You shouldn’t spy on your mother like that.”

  But Ursula showed Tessa where to look on the map, and pretty soon they came up on the sign they were waiting for. Kingston. Route 28. Before long, they exited at Fleischmans, and Ursula followed some handwritten directions until she spotted the large, run-down house dotted with rickety fire escapes and said, “There it is!”

  She seemed amazed that she had actually found the place. Mrs. Margaret’s was a boarding house run by a stern local woman of the same name. Most of the guests were older women who escaped the sweltering heat of New York summers by buying a few weeks at Mrs. Margaret’s. The accommodations were sparse, but there was plenty of company, and the mornings and evenings were cool and redolent with the scent of lilacs.

  There were daisies growing along the dirt driveway, and a litter of new kittens trailed their mother. A large, white-haired woman came jauntily down the front steps, held out her arms to Ursula, and drew her into an embrace. “My dear, Ursula, I hoped you were really coming. And this must be your Tessa,” she said in a voice so heavily accented that Tessa thought the woman must be playing. Effortlessly, especially for her size and her age, the woman crouched down to make herself eye level with Tessa and shook hands with her. “I’m Amelia. Come. Everyone’s getting ready to prepare for lunch. We have our cooked meal in the afternoon, just like when we were in Europe.” She slapped her other hand over Tessa’s, and pulled her against her sturdy body. “Come. We can get to know each other while we cook.”

  Ursula and Tessa followed Amelia into the huge kitchen.

  There must have been ten women inside, all wearing aprons and chatting as they sliced and chopped and diced. There were multiple burners, and steam rose from the pots, while oil sizzled and hissed from frying pans.

  “It’s a communal kitchen,” Amelia explained. “Some of us share the cooking, but others make their own meals each day. I made some borscht yesterday. We’ll have it cold with boiled potatoes. We just have to fry the chicken cutlets. You can bread them, Tessa. I’ll show you how. I made the cucumber salad early this morning with cukes and dill fresh from the garden.”

  Ursula was fumbling in her purse, looking for a cigarette, which she found and rolled between her thumb and forefinger. With her free hand, she tapped Tessa on the shoulder and said, “Mind if I step out for a smoke?”

  Tessa shook her head, just a bit uncertainly.

  “You help Amelia,” Ursula said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Shouldn’t we call Daddy and Grandma?” Tessa said. “They might be worried.”

  Ursula’s voice had an edge when she answered, and she rolled the cigarette faster between her suddenly tense fingers.

  “You just worry about yourself,” she said.

  Amelia put her hands on Tessa’s shoulders and steered her in the direction of the sink where Tessa was instructed to wash her hands before she was placed at the big butcher block in the center of the busy kitchen. The other women were delighted to see a little girl, and they huddled around Tessa as if she were an exotic bird. One woman brought a stool over so Tessa could reach the butcher block more easily. Another woman draped an apron around Tessa’s neck and folded the starched fabric over several times at the waist, winding the strings around three times before finally tying them in a big bow.

  “My best apron,” the woman said proudly.

  “Thank you,” Tessa said shyly.

  All the attention was overwhelming. It was not long before Tessa forgot all about her father and her grandmother. She even forgot about her mother. The women had her buttering noodles, folding dough for pierogen, and frosting a cake. They called out warnings to watch her fingers and to keep the stool steady. Tessa nibbled on bread hot from the oven, savored bites of paprika laden goulash, chewed mouthfuls of freshly grated cabbage slaw and sipped refreshing berry soup with dollops of homemade whipped cream. Before it was time to sit down to their meal, Tessa was sated.

  She kept looking out the window for the swirls of smoke that she knew came from her mother’s cigarette. Ursula did not come back inside for a long while. Finally, Tessa saw Amelia step outside. The smoke
disappeared, and Ursula followed Amelia back into the kitchen. It might just have been Tessa’s imagination, but the kitchen grew quiet as soon as Ursula came back in. At first, the women eyed Ursula suspiciously, gauging her ability to care for their new little charge. And Ursula, who understood and appreciated their concern, smiled widely and genuinely at all of them before grasping a steaming potato dumpling between thumb and forefinger and taking a big bite. “This is incredible,” she said.

  Immediately, the bustle resumed. Ursula and Tessa were ushered into the dining hall and seated while platters of food passed before them as if they were visiting royalty. The day passed in a haze of wonderful food and endless stories about the countries the women had left behind.

  Ursula was different while they were there. By the next day, she hardly smoked at all, and she slept through the night. Perhaps it was the comfort of so many women gathered in one place, doing what women did best, taking care of each other, that made the difference. Perhaps it was all the good food and the clean air. Perhaps it was the absence of her history to haunt her. After night fell, Ursula and Tessa swam naked in the lake. They played with the kittens, whom Tessa named after the women she liked best--Amelia, Margaret, Dorothy, Sophie and Lily. She thought fleetingly about her father and her grandmother, but they seemed far away to her.

  One night, after she had been bathed by one woman, powdered with scented talc by another, dressed and combed by still a third and, finally, read to by her own mother, Tessa fell into a deep and immediate sleep. But sometime in the middle of the night, she awoke.

  Her father’s voice was detached with controlled rage. “How could you, Ursula? It’s no different from kidnapping.”

  Her grandmother was pleading with Ursula, trying to be conciliatory. “You should have phoned sooner. We were sick with worry, Ursula. You simply cannot stop taking your medication on your own and then just disappear.”

  When Tessa wandered in on them, rubbing her eyes, Dennis scooped her into his arms and pressed his face into her neck. “I’m sorry,” Daddy,” Tessa said. “I’m sorry you were worried.”

  Dennis could not hold back his tears. Lucy discreetly left the room.

  Dennis went into the bedroom and took the blanket off the double bed that Ursula and Tessa had cozily shared with the kittens all week.

  “I’m taking you home,” he finally said.

  Tessa cried. She wanted to stay. Her mother had been so calm and so happy all week. Tessa loved the kittens and Amelia and all the other women. And the food was so good, and so much fun to prepare.

  “Let me stay, Daddy,” she begged. “We’re fine.”

  Ursula joined them in the bedroom and kept her eyes to the floor as she spoke. “I should have called. I’m sorry,” she said. “I just didn’t want it to end, the good feelings. I just didn’t want them to end.” And then Dennis pulled her so close that Tessa, between them now, could no longer tell where her mother’s body began and her father’s ended.

  Chapter Three

  Tessa waited for Fran to appear again, shopping bag in hand and wearing the same agreeable outfit. But Fran did not appear on Tuesday, nor did she materialize on either Friday or Saturday. By Sunday, Tessa was so confused by her own reaction that she decided to tell Walter about the strange woman who had come into the salon.

  “I had the strangest client this week,” she said. “She seemed to appear out of nowhere.”

  “Who was she?” he asked as though Tessa was deliberately withholding this significant piece of information.

  As if on cue, Tessa sighed and said, “Never mind.”

  Walter narrowed his eyes and fixed his gaze on her with the sort of intentional restraint that comes from knowing someone well.

  “You give up on me too easily, Tess.”

  She studied him with the sort of resoluteness she generally reserved for a particularly trying conversation with Regina.

  “You need a haircut,” she said.

  “Ah,” he said. “Diversion tactics. “Very clever. I’m impressed.”

  He ran his hand through his almost completely grey hair. He was still handsome, still drew attention from women, both young and old. And while Tessa loved him, more than she had ever loved him, his pragmatism often infuriated her. No matter what they argued about, it always came back to these two issues: Walter’s predisposition for prudence and clarity, and Tessa’s reckless disregard for both, compounded by a lingering melancholy that left him with the feeling that he was in some way responsible.

  “Well, that’s something,” she said. “It’s not that easy to impress you.”

  When she had first identified Walter as the object of her love, everything had seemed possible. The world seemed renewed. But eventually she realized that no one, not even Walter, could change her past.

  “I’m listening,” he said. “Impress me some more.”

  “The woman who came into the salon,” Tessa said, measuring each word so that he would not misunderstand. “She seemed to know me… although I know I never met her before.”

  “How is that possible?”

  She knew exactly what he feared. Her premonitions had the potential to alter the shape of their lives. He worked too hard to stay within the lines to invite any opportunity for variance. Walter did not want to know the future before it was upon him.

  He had no investment in Tessa’s intuitiveness. Any time she told him something that she sensed, he accused her of violating people’s privacy. His response was not surprising. She had been groomed to hide her perceptions from everyone. Ursula knew better than anyone that it was an affliction to be out of the ordinary. She warned Tessa to keep her gift under her hat, often scribbling notes to her with “QT” in boldly exaggerated letters. It was advice that Tessa took to heart. She never allowed her presentiments to enter the forefront unless they were persistent, like the time she was having coffee with Janine, a neighbor, and an image of a pool and a toddler, floating face down in the water, began to hover near Janine’s head. Almost faint with apprehension, Tessa asked Janine if she was thinking of putting in a pool. Janine laughed and said that she thought about a lot of things, but that, no, they weren’t planning on it anytime soon. When Tessa asked if Janine knew anyone who had a pool, she said, yes, her sister-in-law had a pool. She was watching Janine’s kids that morning. One of them, Malcolm, was only two.

  “Call her,” Tessa had said, trying to hide her panic. “Call her right now. I think the gate is unlocked.”

  For whatever reason, Janine did not question Tessa’s urgency. Perhaps Janine was one of the few who understood and valued all ways of knowing, or perhaps she saw the fear in Tessa’s eyes and responded. As Janine dialed her sister-in-law’s number and began to speak, the images that had been floating above her head began to twirl. Tessa wanted to reach for them and contain them as if doing so would guarantee Malcom’s safety.

  “Mary? Is Malcom with you? He’s outside with Leo? I think the gate to the pool is open.” Janine had looked at Tessa. “I don’t know. I just had a feeling. Hurry, would you? I’ll hold on.” She’d pressed her phone against her chest and in a faltering voice said, “She’s gone to check.” Janine held the phone to her ear and said, “Yes? Mary? Thank goodness. Don’t cry. It’s okay. Is Malcolm okay? Leo? I’ll be there. Don’t cry. It’s okay.”

  Janine never asked Tessa how she knew though from now on Janine was mindful of Tessa in an almost reverential way. It seemed to Tessa that Janine could never do enough for her after that incident when all Tessa really wanted was to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Of course, it was too late for that.

  Later that evening, she had told Walter about the incident. He’d congratulated her and then said, “I thought you were going to put a stop to that.”

  Furious, Tessa asked him if he would have preferred that she let the little boy drown.

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sp; Walter had said, “Of course not,” but they both knew he would have preferred that Tessa was not the one to divine the future.

  It was a position to which he remained persistently loyal. Even now, the realization that Tessa felt something compelling about the strange woman worried Walter enough to make him take notice.

  “How is anything possible?” she said.

  She saw him bristle at this question. In some ways, Tessa knew, Walter was right to still distrust her. Though he insisted they were meant to be together, and that he had loved her from the start, she would never be certain if he would have loved her on his own, or if her crafty impositions on him had influenced their future.

  “Who would know that better than you?” Walter said.

  “No one, I guess,” Tessa said. “No one understands the impossible better than I do. Is that the answer you’re looking for?”

  “I stopped looking for answers long ago,” he said.

  “Well,” Tessa said, “maybe that was a mistake.”

  Tessa first saw Walter in a framed photograph on the piano in his parents’ music room and immediately dreamed of seeing her own photograph included in the Jordan family gallery. Her own family gallery was scant and unsatisfying—a few snapshots of herself or her grandmother taken by friends at holiday gatherings with “Guess who?” scrawled in assorted unfamiliar handwriting. No one had ever bothered to date these pictures, making it even more difficult to place them. And while photographs of Tessa’s smiling parents were displayed on the mantle in her grandmother’s house, they seemed frozen in a time she could barely remember.