“We have the other children to consider,” the principal warned.
“Meaning what?” Eve asked herself again and again as she sorted laundry, cut up potatoes, swept the kitchen, pulled weeds.
So when Leon finally went back to school, Eve signed him up for tap-dancing lessons in the gym with Miss Foley, an older town lady who’d spent a year in Denver in her youth, where she’d acquired, as Al put it, “all manners of airs.” But since there was no choice—since no one was going to take her side; since, whatever happened next, Leon was going to end up shouldering the blame; and since there’d be no possible harm in it—Eve figured dancing lessons might be just the thing, might help Leon learn to control his long limbs, help him understand where his physical body ended and other objects, sometimes objects to be avoided, began.
And, it turned out, Leon loved dancing. He loved the music, the patterns of the exercises, the challenge of matching his body to the bright, changing rhythms. Plus, since he was the only boy, the girls were nice to him.
But when Al was home, he wouldn’t even pretend to look up from behind his newspaper as Leon showed off a new flap-turn or a tricky jump; nor would he offer the slightest comment when Leon silently moved away to practice his double buffalo out of sight, by himself in the kitchen. He wasn’t interested in what he insisted to Eve was “nonsense, pure and simple,” and he certainly wasn’t going to encourage it.
“That’s just a big excuse for you not paying one bit of attention to him. Same as usual,” Eve said. Because Al also wasn’t interested in helping Leon prepare for the town parade, when all the boys rode their bikes behind the VFW float. Nor did he make a single effort to come to any of Leon’s Little League games, even though Leon had won the coveted position of pitcher, which should have been enough to make Al proud. On game days Eve could count on being all by herself, up on the bleachers alongside the fathers of the other boys, and when Leon needed batting practice, it would be her standing in the open field across the road, tossing the ball.
So, on the day of Leon’s first dance recital, it wasn’t really a surprise that Al got up early and left town, but neither did it go unnoted. Not by Eve.
“You’d think your own father could be here for your special day,” she fumed as Leon gathered his tap shoes and silver-sequin-striped pants. “You’d think that wouldn’t be too much to ask.” She went on from there.
By the time they were ready to leave, Leon looked stricken.
“Don’t be nervous,” Eve told him, but Leon stayed quiet, holding on to his stomach, and when they got to the auditorium, he vaulted out of the car and ran inside.
* * *
—
René was captured by Leon’s dazzling jumps and spins and complicated time steps just as much as she was by his heading out the door to school each morning, taking off on his bike in the afternoons, and roaming the fields at will until dinnertime. She campaigned to go to dance class with him, but when that didn’t work, she started simply standing behind him, following along as he rehearsed his steps.
“Hey!” Leon would warn, turning to take a swipe at her. Then Eve would call out, “Leave your brother alone. He’s trying to practice.”
But if Al was there, he’d stop whatever he was doing to watch her. He’d fold his newspaper or set the wrench he was using down on the kitchen counter to take a break. He’d get to laughing and say things like “Well, aren’t you just the best little dancer” and “Oh, my. I think they’re going to have to put you on TV.”
To which, Eve would snort and humph.
“What is it, Eve? You seem to have something to say.”
“Oh, I have plenty to say. You know I do.”
“No need holding back. We’re listening. Why not just say what you mean?”
“I mean you’re something, Al. You’re something else.”
“You don’t think René’s a good dancer?” Al would wink at René.
“That’s not what I said.”
“Well, what did you say? You didn’t say anything at all, not so far as I can tell. Zippo.” He’d laugh like he and René were sharing a joke.
“Of course she’s a good dancer, of course she is.”
As Eve stretched a hard smile at her, René would freeze, trying to figure a way to leave the room. Leon would have flown outside and hopped on his bike at the first word, but she’d have missed that exit. She’d back away slowly, then casually turn the corner and jet out through the kitchen door. Still, she could hear them.
“That’s all I was saying, Eve. I don’t know what you think I was trying—”
“Damn right, that’s all you were saying. Can’t think of anything else that might need saying, can you? When Leon’s the one who’s taking lessons and really improving. Your son! Can’t say a nice word to your own son. Why not? Probably because your mother—!”
“Now, wait just a minute. That’s got—”
“You’re a grown man, Al. Get over it and say something nice to your son!”
“Don’t tell me—! And let’s get to the real problem while we’re at it. How about how you’re raising that boy—with the sequins and the sparkles. For crying out loud, Eve. What good’s that going to do him? None. No good! Nothing, just nothing! And I do say nice things.”
“Sure, to René. Sure you do. But not to Leon. Not once. And what do you know? You’re never around, and you barely give him so much as a look. He likes his dancing. It gives him confidence. Ever think of that? He likes it! You and your mother—there’s a mama’s boy for you, if that’s what you’re implying. That’s right, Al. Might as well say it. You’re the biggest mama’s boy I ever laid eyes on, hands down.”
Then silence.
“You just have to go running your big—”
“Oh, go to hell.”
“There it is, Eve. A true feeling and a mouth like a sailor. Have it your way.”
“It’ll never be my way. Never! That’s been clear for a long time. It’s your way or else. Isn’t that right? Your way or the highway.”
René would be sitting around the foundation of the house they’d made so nice, or lying spread-eagle on the grass in their beautiful backyard, or poking around in the garden, but wherever she went, she could hear them. Al would go into the bedroom to pack his suitcase while Eve slammed doors and Jayne started to wail.
“So that’s how you’re going to take care of it.”
“That’s right. You’re always right.” Al would laugh his false, cruel laugh and be out the door without another word.
René would listen as his car pulled away, down the dirt road, and she’d wait, still as stone for a good long time, before she went back inside.
* * *
—
When Al finally came home again, René would be the first to greet him, grabbing his hands, forcing him to put down his suitcase, then balancing on the tops of his cowboy boots and making him dance her around the room. They’d tip back and forth to whatever was on the radio, laughing, crooning along, spinning like a Tilt-A-Whirl.
But soon enough, he and Eve would be back to where they’d left off. So sometimes he’d stay around for a few days, but mostly he’d just empty and repack his bag, slam the front door, and be gone all over again, this time for a week or two.
And gradually, steadily, René was learning.
First, it wasn’t like Eve said: she wasn’t trying to “steal the spotlight” from Leon. She didn’t want to decorate her bike and ride in the town parade; she didn’t want to play baseball or scout around the open fields, pitching rocks and pretending to shoot guns; but she did want to dance. And second, Al was right: she could do it. Even without lessons, she was a good dancer. But third, everything was connected like a game of Mousetrap: somehow, whatever it was she wanted would get the ball rolling, and right away Eve and Al would be at each other’s throats, their pitched wrangling r
unning ahead, dropping, weaving, setting off all kinds of bells, felling planks and turning levers until the basket came straight down on Leon.
So you might say she was a spoiled, selfish child, ready to take for herself what rightfully belonged to her brother, regardless of his lost hopes or dashed feelings, his trouble or despair. Or you might say she was just a girl who wanted to learn to dance, or maybe even a girl who’d found a way to hear her father’s laughter and see his eyes light up and was determined not to let that go.
Either way, you wouldn’t be saying anything that hadn’t already been argued—“ad infinitum,” as Eve said.
Either way, it was a problem.
5
Flesh and Blood
Philip had one dirt road. It went from the school, on the far side of the western gulch, straight down, then up past the single block of houses, took a sharp right, then ran down again into the southern gulch, to downtown, where it intersected with the town’s one paved street, which had a bank, a bar, a drugstore, a diner, a movie theater, and the old-time Philip Hotel.
In René’s dreams there were torrential downpours that turned all the gullies into deep pools. The neighbor kids, including Leon, would jump in, but when René tried to join them, the water would rage and churn, chopping itself into white tips and swirling over the banks. Then there’d be a skip—she’d be submerged, pounded by rain, deafened by the water’s roar, overpowered by the current and swept out into the flooded gorge, far away from the others. Sometimes Leon would appear and reach his hand to pull her out, but mostly she’d just startle awake.
It happened again and again, the dream running night after night like a looped film reel.
Drifting off to sleep in her bunk above Leon, anticipating the jump into stormy water, René would imagine gripping the bank more firmly this time or treading more powerfully against the pull of the current, as if the dream were a military drill. She hadn’t even turned six yet, but already she knew that whatever came her way, nighttime or not, she was going to have to be brave, she was going to have to buck up and handle it. To start with, she had to figure out how to keep herself out of the riptide in the first place, and dream-drowning in flooded ravines seemed like good practice.
So did sticking her tongue to the aluminum screen doors up and down the block when it was below zero, which she did under the pale light of day. Just as the “wormy Jessup kids” Eve didn’t like from next door had promised, her tongue stuck. She had to peel it off slowly, making tight fists in her pockets to endure the burning. But when Leon saw her going from one screen door to the next and ran home to tell, Eve marched out to get her, looking furious, then spread Mercurochrome on her raw tongue and sent her to bed with a hot water bottle and a lecture about not doing the first stupid thing some “goddamn dumb kid” tells you to do.
* * *
—
Then one scorching day in the middle of summer, when all the moms and kids were cooped up in one of the neighbor houses—fans whirring, curtains drawn—and the moms were far too hot to play Wahoo anyway, they came up with a plan. They’d all get into one car and head down to the diner. There’d be air-conditioning, and the moms could have iced tea while the kids got pop.
“Might as well spend some of this Wahoo money,” Benny’s mom conceded, using the damp from her forehead to slick her hair back out of her eyes.
So they all squeezed in—René making Benny scoot over and sit on Frankie’s lap so she could sit next to an open window—and they headed down the road, into the gully, to the town diner.
“This was a good idee,” Hap said, as everyone piled out.
“You could fry an egg,” Frankie’s mom noted. Then, as Frankie hot-footed it across the burning pavement: “Frankie, why in the hell didn’t you wear your shoes? Jee-zus Criminy!”
The overhead air conditioner rattled the hanging fluorescent lights and blew a gale through the empty restaurant. Just when they’d all finally settled down—moms at one end of the steel tables they’d pulled together, kids at the other—the diner door blew open and, in a tunnel of shimmering, unwelcome heat, a scraggly old man appeared, bent nearly in half, covered in dirt as though he’d stepped straight out of a cyclone. He wore busted-through cowboy boots, a lopsided hat with a chewed-up brim, and, under his moth-eaten duster, dirt-crusted jeans secured by a rope around his waist. He limped up to the counter, sat on one of the stools, and, keeping his hat and coat on, spun around to take a look.
No one but René seemed to notice him, so he looked straight at her, then chuckled and touched his hat. The few teeth he had left hung like jagged, broken arrowheads from his gum line. Plus, he was missing some fingers. He waved his mangled hand at her table as if casting a spell, then turned back around and took ahold of the cup of hot coffee the waitress had left him. He sipped, spilling on himself, turning every so often to shake his head at her and grin.
At first, René hunkered down in her chair. But after a while, she decided she might as well just sit up and look straight back at him. And it was then that it hit her, right out of the hazy, colorless sky: just like she was looking out from inside herself, that old man was looking out from inside himself.
She let the thought meander in her head, wondering what it would be like to be that old man. She imagined exchanging all her parts with his parts, coming to believe that he might just as soon be sitting at her table in her pink shortie overalls, and she might just as well be at the counter in his dirty jeans and boots, wearing a heavy coat and drinking coffee in the pressing heat, holding her cup with just three fingers. It was possible. It was more than possible. It had come to life in front of her. Just like there was a whole world from her side, there was a whole world from his side; but somehow, at the beginning and end of it all, the two of them were the same: just flesh and blood and feelings.
The old man turned and smiled at her, flashing his ragged teeth like a werewolf, and she tightened her belly and smiled right back. When he’d finished his coffee, he stood up and started past her table. Then, stopping abruptly, digging around in his coat pockets like a mixed-up rodeo clown, he produced a dull nickel, balanced it on his thumbnail, gave her a wink, and flicked it high into the air. The nickel landed in the middle of the table, whirling in tight circles until the arcs widened and it slowed, ringing. The old man laughed and waggled a finger at her, then headed out the door, back into the heat.
After a battle royal over the nickel—with René shrieking even louder than all the rest that it was her nickel, the man had pointed at her, thrown it to her; and with the moms having to jump up and pull their kids off the tabletop, and Eve having to rush to unlock René’s grip from Frankie’s curls and set her firmly on the ground, saying, “Sorry, sorry. Oh, sorry. What in the sam hell?” as she gave René a couple of good, hard swats she wouldn’t forget and the other moms dug through their coin purses so that everybody would get a nickel and stop their crying—René went out into the blazing heat and sat by herself on the curb.
The other kids passed her, giving her dirty looks on their way to the drugstore, as she sat staring at the road, sucking on the open scratch on her hand, tasting her blood. At least she had the nickel. She looked up and down the deserted street. Wherever that old man had come from and wherever he’d disappeared to, he hadn’t left a trace. It was like he’d risen straight out of the dirt.
Leon came out and sat beside her without saying a word. Then he said, “Don’t w-worry.”
He’d seen the man smile at her, seen him wink and point his finger as he tossed the nickel.
“It was j-just like you s-said,” Leon told her.
And hot as it was, he put his arm around her.
They sat together until the other kids came clambering out of the drugstore with their treats. Then they stood up and headed for the car, where everyone was pressing in, all the kids hollering about who got to sit next to a rolled-down window. What did it m
atter? Once they got started, the wind was going to be blowing on all of them, just like a heater.
6
Sounding the Bell
Whenever they went to visit her in Fort Pierre, Emma would quickly smooth Leon’s hair and turn down his collar, then lunge to deliver a dozen tickling kisses in a single breath to René’s cheek and neck. She’d hug René close, laughing as the two of them stumbled ahead into the house, leaving Leon, Al, and Eve, lugging Jayne, to follow.
René would sleep with Emma in her big bed, where they’d be awake long after the rest of the house had gone quiet. She’d let René comb and fix her hair or go through her jewelry box piece by piece. She’d tell René stories of how Grandpa, “now sadly departed,” had bought this broach when they’d visited Minneapolis, or how that ivory bracelet with the Chinese carving was something they’d got on a cruise. René had never known her grandpa; he’d had a heart attack and died in a cow pasture, under a burning sun, some years before she was born. “Oh, he’d have loved you,” Emma would say in a dreamy voice as René dug through scented storage boxes full of colorful chiffon scarves, or pulled open dresser drawers to get to lace gloves and rhinestone sunglasses.
Emma had been a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse, giving lessons on a single slate no bigger than a picture frame. She’d even potty-trained a second grader, a retarded Indian boy she was happy to have come along to school with all the rest. “And whenever a bat or some creature found its way into our classroom,” she’d tell René, “why, I’d simply ask one of the boys to go fetch me the broom.” Though she was supposed to be getting into her nightgown, Emma would pretend to strike at the windows and walls, performing a circus-like reenactment in her tension-weary girdle and bra, stopping only to catch her breath from jumping around, laughing. When she’d finally climbed into bed, she’d say, “Now, bats are our friends. They eat mosquitoes and other insects. But sometimes they carry disease.”
The Distance Home Page 3