The Distance Home

by Paula Saunders

  It made about as much sense as the pictures that flooded her mind whenever she thought of Leon: Leon was a stump with flailing arms, injured and immobile, his legs cut off at the knee; Leon had been flayed alive, his skin flapping around him in sheets as he faced into a merciless wind. Everything was too painful for Leon; he seemed too tender to be alive. Even when he’d been living at home, he hadn’t really been there, his presence like a riddle: How can someone not be there when he’s standing right in front of you? And now, shipped off to Saint Francis Boys’ School, who-knows-where in the middle of Colorado, it was as if the leaving he’d been practicing for so long was finally complete. He was simply and utterly gone.

  Without Leon around, René found herself more on her own, more adrift than ever. It was one thing to no longer have him in ballet class, to have lost his companionship in that, but to not have him in his room, or rummaging through the refrigerator late at night, or breezing out the door on his way to “no good”? And to know that he’d been sent away against his will, without a choice? There was something about the way Leon had been cast out that made the walls feel too close, as though they were holding her captive, just waiting for the right moment to come down on her.

  The music would roll, crest up the stairwell, and seem to sing: We are watching. We are here. We are with you. We are here. And René would stand very still at the top of the stairs, tilt her head just so in the deep of the night, and listen, comforted that, even though it was coming from somewhere far away, from some incorporeal other world, something, somewhere, cared enough to send her this ethereal music, to fill the silence and keep her company.

  Sometimes she’d lean over the upstairs railing to be closer to the source, and other times she’d keep her back pressed against the hall cupboard, repeatedly checking around the corner into Eve’s room to make sure she was still there, afraid that someone had broken into the house and, in some Twilight Zone perversion, was actually downstairs, playing the organ.

  * * *

  —

  Eve had rented the United Christian Fellowship Hall in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, a town that claimed—according to a plaque set high on a nearby barren hilltop—to be situated at “the geographical center of the U.S. of A.” She’d typed up a schedule of classes, then hauled René and Jayne along to put dance school brochures under all the windshield wipers in the Belle Fourche Livestock Auction’s dirt parking lot, to tape homemade posters into grimy downtown storefront windows, and to walk the few dusty residential blocks, sticking schedules and price lists into mailboxes.

  Meanwhile, Mrs. G had found a buyer for the Academy of Ballet. Deanne Johnson had tap-danced on Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour, so she seemed at least partially qualified. She was moving to Rapid City for her husband’s work, and she was young and eager to have her own school.

  “She’ll be a lot stronger in tap than ballet, Eve,” Mrs. G said, letting her head fall into her hands.

  “Oh, Helen. Maybe you just have to stay.”

  “If I stay, I’ll have to get a divorce.”

  “Sounds like a winner,” Eve said, and they laughed.

  Mrs. G asked Deanne to teach some of the Beginners classes, as a trial, and Miss Dea made it perfectly clear that she wouldn’t be needing René to demonstrate, and that she was happy to go ahead and take over Eve’s Pre-Ballet class right away.

  “Tell her to have at it,” Eve said.

  Eve got busy remodeling the big room in her new basement, turning it into a practice studio so she’d have her own place to go through combinations, to get herself ready to stand up in front of a class and pretend to know what in the hell she was doing.

  She used a trowel and wet plaster to resurface the ceiling and made two mirrored walls with stick-on tiles from the hardware store. Then Al drilled holes and put up the double barre Eve had sanded and finished by hand.

  “The floor’s the thing. You’re never going to have the floor you need down here, Eve,” Mrs. G told her. Mrs. G was a stickler for an elevated wood floor, but Eve’s home studio was going to stay just like it was—linoleum over poured cement.

  Mrs. G had come up with a name for the Belle Fourche school—Royal Arts Dance—and drawn a logo that looked like a medieval shield divided into thirds, because Eve would be teaching tap, jazz, and ballet.

  “Theoretically,” Eve said.

  “Don’t worry,” Mrs. G said. “René will help you. Right, René?”

  But René didn’t answer. She just buttoned her lip and tore upstairs.

  “Of course she will,” Mrs. G said. “Too bad Leon’s not here. He’d be so good at attracting boys.”

  “True,” Eve said.

  “What do you hear from him?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  Mrs. G had come over to help Eve with a new section of floor combinations, but Eve couldn’t locate her notes from the day before.

  “Gaw!” she bellowed. “I give up.” Then she said again, “Nothing. We haven’t heard from him yet.”

  The boys at Saint Francis were allowed to call home only one Sunday a month, for fifteen minutes—a privilege granted after an initial two-month residency period. It would be another few weeks before they could expect a call from Leon.

  “No news is good news,” Mrs. G ventured.

  “I hope so,” Eve said, digging distractedly through her pile of notebooks in the corner. “I really do.” Then she found what she was looking for. “Well, for crap’s sake. How in the hell!” And they got started, going through an adagio, a pirouette, a waltz.

  * * *

  —

  When Leon finally called, after the second month, he had only one thing to say: “I want to come home.”

  “Oh, Leon,” Eve sighed. “You haven’t even given it a chance.”

  “I want to come home,” Leon said again. “Please. Just let me come home. I hate it here. Brother Mulligan beat up my roommate real bad for nothin’. No reason at all.”

  “Well, I’m sure there must’ve been something,” Eve said. “Who knows? But you can’t just give up, Leon. You have to try. Just try your best and I’m sure—”

  “I want to come home,” Leon said. “Please.”

  A letter from the school had warned about this, about boys who didn’t like to follow the rules wanting to come back home. “Be patient and make a commitment to trust in the good works of The Lord,” the letter had said.

  “I know it’s a big adjustment,” Eve told him, trying to sound stoic.

  “Please, Mom,” Leon begged. “Please.”

  “We can’t always have what we want in this life, Leon. Lord knows. Just hang in there, honey. You can do it. I have faith in you.”

  After the first few phone calls, Leon didn’t mention wanting to come home anymore, but he also didn’t use the full fifteen minutes of allotted phone time.

  “Hi there, honey,” Eve would say, trying to keep it upbeat. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine,” Leon would answer, his voice a deep hollow.

  “How you feeling?”

  “Good.”

  “How’s school going?”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that, Leon,” Eve would say. “See? Look at you. You’re making the most of it already. I’m so happy it’s all working out.”

  And Leon would say, “Okay, Mom. I gotta go,” and hang up.

  * * *

  —

  Al came home with burr stickers lodged in the inside flesh of his eyelid. The wind had kicked up while he’d been branding and inoculating cattle and castrating bulls, he said, and the stickers had blown straight into his eye. He’d driven all the way from Wyoming trying to keep his eye closed, to stop the burrs from scratching up his cornea. When he walked through the door with a hand clasped over his bloodshot, swollen eye, Eve put a coat over her leotard, got him straig
ht back into the car, and drove him to the hospital. By the time René got home from school that day, Al was in bed, covers up to his chin, a black eye patch strapped over one eye.

  He had a table full of pills and ointments, which Eve made sure to give him on schedule. She changed his dressing, gently applying creams and drops, and brought him warm broths along with clear, bright-colored bowls of Jell-O.

  “Quiet,” she’d whisper to Jayne and René as she came out of Al’s room. She was suddenly light and gay, proprietary, like a kid with a new puppy. “Your dad’s sleeping.”

  Soon Al was propped up in bed reading True Detective with his good eye, and Eve was bringing him chicken dinners with mashed potatoes and intricate Jell-O salads, and ice cream sundaes with butterscotch sauce and chopped nuts for dessert.

  “Thank you, Eve. Love you, dearie,” Al would say, even when she’d brought him just a magazine or the mail. When she came upstairs, still in her leotard and tights, with a plate of freshly baked cookies or a warm slice of apple pie, he’d say, “You’re too good to me, Eve. You know that?” And he’d give her a sad nod to show just how much he appreciated it.

  “I can’t guarantee how it turned out.”

  “Looks like it turned out just right,” he’d laugh, digging in.

  With Leon gone, they didn’t fight anymore.

  Sometimes Eve would even sit with him in bed. “I don’t know, Al,” she’d start, and Al would sense right off what she was talking about and reach to pat her leg. “Let’s give it a chance,” he’d tell her. And she’d lay her head on his shoulder.

  Of course it’s all fine by him, she might think, somewhere far off, in a quiet, dimmed corner of her mind. He’s wanted to be rid of Leon all along. But she’d be still, holding her tongue, not letting even the slightest resentment come up for air. There was nowhere to go with it. Besides, she had more than enough to worry about with the Belle Fourche school just weeks from starting. She didn’t need to be going through the same old song-and-dance routines with Al.

  She’d head back down to the basement to find the music she’d been looking for, the track that was supposed to work with the combination Mrs. G had just given her. She was spending a lot of time digging around in her ballet music and dance notes, looking for instructions on steps and combinations that had been clear to her, or at least right in front of her, just a moment before.

  “It’s going to be the death of me,” she groaned one night, dragging herself up the stairs, her hair on end from yet another long day in the basement. “Thank God you’re going to be with me,” she added when she saw René in the kitchen. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  Indeed, René thought, willing her mind blank but sensing something like a lasso tightening around her.

  And likely due to the novelty of such an offering—an obscure and cultured activity for the girls, something that might lend them grace and poise—the Belle Fourche classes filled up.

  Eve kept a notebook by the telephone for registration. She’d have about ten students in each class and hold classes every Saturday from nine in the morning until four-thirty. René would have to teach the so-called Intermediate and Advanced Intermediate classes “for the older girls,” Eve said, and Eve would cover the Pre-Ballet and Beginners. They’d need to lug their record player with them, along with all their music, and leave Rapid early enough to have plenty of time for the hour-long drive to Belle Fourche, plus to get everything set up once they arrived.

  “Saturdays are going to be big,” Eve would say. “And we have to be professional. You ready?”

  René didn’t understand how she’d got signed up for all this in the first place, but at least she didn’t have to prepare anything. She could manage the whole day without the least effort, she figured, without giving Eve so much as an inch. Eve would have to review her notes the night before, make the lunch, load up the car. René only had to teach. And since barre and center-floor work were the same to her as breathing, she wouldn’t even have to give it a thought. When the time came, she could put the needle down on the record and come up with whatever steps she needed as quickly and easily as she could say her own name.

  29

  The Battle of Bear Butte

  The Belle Fourche United Christian Fellowship Hall smelled of damp rot and box elder bugs, which swarmed the moldy crevasses on the kitchen countertops and piled themselves into corners in the decrepit bathroom. Eve and René had to clear away the remnants of a bingo marathon from the day before—carrying stained, half-empty coffee cups into the kitchen, then collapsing the folding tables and stacking them, along with all the chairs, against a far wall. René took her place at the desk near the door and got out the attendance book and tuition pouch while Eve changed for her first class. When the little kids started to file in with their parents, René checked off names, took money, and made out receipts.

  After the initial commotion, it was boring. So as Eve gathered her first class into the middle of the room, René milled around—opening random cupboards in the stinky church kitchen, eating the sandwich Eve had packed for her, then coming back to sort and count the money they’d taken in so far, making slender stacks of fives, tens, ones, and quarters until Eve came over and told her not to do that in front of the parents.

  In René’s classes, most of the girls were two or three grades ahead of her, some of them already starting high school. They were heavy-set and had large, rounded shoulders and stocky middles, as if they’d been built specifically for milking cows and wearing homemade aprons as they rolled out dough on floured breadboards. She tucked their hips and straightened their spines. She gave them difficult combinations, demonstrating each one, happy to flaunt her superior knowledge and form, to lay out for them what might have been possible, if only they’d been born less bulky and cloddish, more slender and musical, and to bask in their easy, gawking admiration.

  When classes were finally over and everyone had gone, René and Eve gathered their stuff, repacked the car, and made a quick stop at Taco John’s, where Eve handed René twenty-three dollars.

  “A third of the take,” she said, like they were outlaws.

  René felt herself perk up. “Wow.”

  “Isn’t that the truth?” Eve said, smiling. “It’s nice to have some of your own money. That’s for sure. Thanks for your help today, honey.” She looked sincere and exhausted. “I mean it.”

  “Sure,” René said, unexpectedly overcome with sympathy for Eve, with admiration for her courage and persistence. And just like putting on a new jacket, René took on the feeling of being a partner.

  As they covered the miles for home, playing the radio and singing along, René found herself thinking that this new alliance, forced as it was, might end up being not so bad, after all. Maybe this was a fine way to spend her Saturdays; maybe she would like being a ballet teacher; and maybe, just maybe, being sent away from home would help Leon make a fresh start. How could she know? It might be a brand-new beginning.

  * * *

  —

  But soon every Saturday was the same: the long, early morning drive to Belle Fourche, followed by the grinding boredom of her classes, which René could quickly see were going nowhere, then Taco John’s, where Eve would throw her a few welcome bucks before they began the grueling drive back home. No more meeting up with pals behind the church, no more riding bikes to DQ with Jayne, no more strolling downtown to see what her money could buy, no more nothing. Every Saturday, all day long, René was Eve’s prisoner. And Eve couldn’t do it without her, so René was stuck.

  Week after week, they’d end up squabbling on the drive out—mainly about René’s bad attitude—and on the way back, they’d turn up the radio and try not to talk.

  “I can’t stand it, not one more time,” René started in one bitterly cold Saturday morning, flopping angrily into the passenger seat. She’d given up trying to hold her tongue. No
more zipping it. From now on, if Eve was going to force René to do this, she was just going to have to take it. “This is such bullshit.”

  Eve ignored her, giving the car a long minute to warm up. Then she pulled out of the driveway. “You’re making good money. I don’t know what you could possibly have to complain about.”

  “This isn’t even my job. It’s your job.”

  Eve took a deep breath. It was going to be a long day, and René was already fraying her last nerve. She looked straight ahead and drove.

  When they were finally on the highway, getting up to speed, Eve lit a cigarette.

  “Most people have to work, René. I don’t know where you got the idea that you’re going to be handed everything for free, like you’re never going to have to work for anything. There aren’t any kings and queens anymore, so you’d better plan on contributing. Just like everybody else. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

  “What are you talking about?” René said. “Kids my age aren’t even allowed to work. Jesus. It’s illegal!”

  “Guess you got lucky.” Eve smiled. She was trying to tease, to lighten things up.

  “Stop talking. Just stop talking! You never make any sense.”

  “Well, that’s something to say to your own mother.” Any teasing was suddenly finished. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “You should be ashamed of yourself,” René slammed right back at her. “Making this supposed ballet school that you don’t even know how to teach for!”

  “I think you’ve said enough.”

  “I know you’ve said enough.”

  “Aren’t you just like your dad. Think you know everything about everything.”

  “If I didn’t know a lot more than you do about dancing, I wouldn’t be stuck in this miserable, boring car having this stupid, idiotic conversation.”

  “We’ll see. We’ll see how it turns out for you. My mother always warned me I’d have a daughter who was twice as smart-mouthed as I was, and she was right. Here you are.”