Dance with Me

by Luanne Rice

  Sylvie shrugged. “Mom’s car is fine. It gets us around. The convertible wasn’t practical anyway.”

  Jane dried the last dish. She had been surprised to know that Sylvie had bought such an amazing vehicle: British, extravagant, unexpected, and impractical. Jane had been so happy to see Sylvie treating herself to such a romantic car, and right now she felt pierced to learn that she had sold it.

  “So, do you mind if I borrow the station wagon?” Jane asked again.

  Sylvie stacked the plates in the cupboard. Her lips were tight, as if she was trying to think of another reason why Jane shouldn’t drive the car. Jane leaned on the counter, waiting.

  “No. It’s your first night home . . . I thought you might be tired. But go ahead.”

  Jane palmed the keys and headed for the door. She grabbed her leather jacket from the oak coat tree, slipped it on. Her chest was tight, and she knew Sylvie was waiting to be asked if she wanted to come along.

  “Where are you going, anyway?” Sylvie asked. “It’s getting dark. . . .”

  “Just for a ride. Just to look around,” Jane said, hand on the brass doorknob. If she turned around, met Sylvie’s eyes, she would have to invite her to come. Her heart began to pound. She could feel Sylvie wanting to ask something more, or to warn. But she didn’t glance back, and before Sylvie could say another word, Jane slipped out the door.

  The full moon was rising, a silver disk shining through the tree branches. Dylan was working late, wanting to get as much done as he could before the sap started flowing again. He had spent the day pruning out dead and diseased limbs, removing branches crowding out others, cutting branches growing straight up, others pointing straight down.

  Even in the dark, he could look up and see by the light of the moon that the tree he’d just finished working on was well shaped, with no dense clusters of branches anywhere in the canopy.

  Restoring an apple orchard was a lot like restoring order to the universe. In that way, it reminded him of the idealism of law enforcement. Shape the wild and overgrown and tangled and dangerous into something resembling goodness. Dylan could actually remember when he had had those ideals. Kind of a cosmic mingling of hope and stupidity.

  Folding up his ladder, slinging his saws over his shoulder, he began to walk home. The ground was still hard, and stepping on ruts sent a sharp pain all the way up the back of his bad leg. Sometimes he could actually feel the bullet—fragments of metal still lodged in the femur. He told himself to knock off the complaining and think of Isabel. Didn’t that put everything in perspective? His mind was racing, overactive after another day of solitude on the ladder. If he had someone to talk to, would he still have to have these lousy talks with himself?

  He thought about stopping by his brother’s house. They lived on the same road, just about half a mile apart. They were a close family, and Dylan had always taken his place as older brother seriously. It was past their dinnertime; Eli would probably be finishing up the dishes, Sharon would be helping Chloe with her homework.

  And that was the part that made him flinch, made him realize he wasn’t in the mood, tonight, for a visit. Seeing Chloe, all excited about her history test or mastery scores or whatever was going on in her life, hearing her practice her violin with that exuberant, breathless, “Uncle Dylan! Listen to this! Mozart!” was sometimes more than Dylan could handle. Tonight, with spring and Isabel in the air, was one of those times.

  At the sound of footsteps, Dylan slowed down. He peered around, wondering who was in his orchard. Every fall kids sneaked in to steal apples; in the summer, they sometimes camped out, used it as a sort of Lovers’ Lane; in April, when the snow was gone for good, the dirt bikers would roar through, tearing the place up. But it was only March. Still too cold.

  The moon rose higher, clearing the crowns of the trees, and Dylan spotted the buck. White-tailed deer and black bears roamed his acres. They ate fruit right off the trees in warm weather, dug through the snow for frozen windfalls all winter. Now, watching the big buck, Dylan held his breath.

  Usually they traveled in groups, but the buck was alone. Where was his family? Dylan counted the points on his antlers: ten. He was big and mature. He stood proudly, silhouetted by the moon, staring directly into Dylan’s eyes. Two males meeting face to face. Whose territory was it, anyway?

  The brush rustled again, and a doe and two young deer emerged. The buck circled protectively back, herding them into cover. Dylan’s leg seared, and his shoulder ached from the weight of the saws. He stared after the deer family for a long time, till his vision blurred and he wondered whether he had seen it at all, or whether the moonlight had just played tricks with his eyes.

  The moon was hard and white now, sharper as it rose in the clear black sky. His mother had always called the March moon “the Full Crow Moon.” She loved it, because the cawing of crows signaled winter’s end, and because she had a fondness for crows. A high school biology teacher, she had been a rarity, blending a respect for science with a love of legend.

  “Crow language is complex,” she taught. “Each caw has a separate meaning, and signifies the birds’ deep intelligence. Crows are loyal, and devoted to their families. They honor their ancestors, move freely in the world, work best in a tribe—or council. They are carriers of souls from darkness into light.”

  Standing still, gazing at the hard Crow Moon, Dylan narrowed his eyes and listened. He heard new tree frogs screeching all around him; in the distance, he heard crows calling. He wanted it to be true, to think that souls were carried . . .

  Suddenly he heard a car. His land bordered a country road, with not much going on nearby. Maybe it was Chloe being driven home by her friend Mona’s mother or something. Walking toward the clearing, he saw headlights.

  The car was moving slowly. He stared through the darkness, catching a glimpse of blue, the shape of a small station wagon. The windows were open; he could hear music playing. Emmylou Harris. He glimpsed a woman at the wheel, dark hair covering her profile, one arm slung out the window, black-leathered elbow sleek in the moonlight.

  For one split second, her hair blew back and she seemed to turn her head and see him. He froze, just like the buck. Her eyes locked with his, and then she hit the gas and drove faster. Although he had never seen her before, he thought she looked familiar.

  Continuing home through the orchard, he kept picturing her elbow sticking out the window. It was cool and shiny, blue-black, sharp and ready to spring into flight: just like a crow’s wing.

  Jane found the house.

  She hadn’t driven past in years, so she’d printed out directions from MapQuest, off the Internet. All she had had to do was type in the last name and the town and state, “Chadwick, Crofton, Rhode Island,” and her computer spit out a perfect map, along with driving directions. By hitting another button, she was able to call up an aerial view.

  Through the years, on many visits home to Rhode Island, she had looked the name up in the phone book. She had bought a map of the Twin Rivers Valley, located the street on the edge of much green area—apple orchards and a state forest. And she had driven by. That was just before she’d moved to New York. She’d been away for so long—fourteen years—that she had almost forgotten her way to this spot.

  MapQuest had been the true pot of gold: an actual aerial photo of the house, so snug at the end of its driveway, located on the very edge of a huge orchard, with streams and ponds and about a million overgrown apple trees. The browser had gotten confused by the name “Chadwick”; there seemed to be several in Crofton, including the science teacher, Mrs. Virginia Chadwick. Also, as well as Eli and Sharon, someone named Dylan, who lived on the same street.

  But it was Eli and Sharon’s house that Jane sought tonight, as she drove along the deserted road. Her hands trembled on the wheel. The scent of apples filled the air—blossoms about to pop on the branches, silver-pink in the cool moonlight, winter’s fallen apples fermenting on the ground. The scent was spicy, hot and alcoholic as hard cider. S
he felt intoxicated by the sense of returning to a place she never should have been in the first place.

  She glanced into the orchard at all those gnarled and beautiful old apple trees, their roots sinking deep into the earth, as if she hoped and prayed that all those trees could ground her.

  A man stood looking out at her.

  Her heart almost stopped at the sight of him. He was tall, bearded, very slim with broad shoulders; he was weighted down with a ladder and a saw, both glinting in the moonlight. His eyes looked out, unblinking, as if he were the guardian of the orchard.

  Jane’s mouth was dry, and she felt as if she’d just been caught trespassing. The man’s face had been impassive, but she imagined his heart full of the same disapproval she knew Sylvie or her mother would feel.

  Pressing on the gas, she sped away, passing a ramshackle, apparently abandoned farm stand. By the time she reached the address, the house she’d visited so often in her mind, viewed so often on MapQuest, her heart was beating so fast, she had to pull over. Her car running, she parked in front of 114 Barn Swallow Way, and stared.

  The house was still small and white. It still had dark green shutters. Something new: a briar wreath hanging on the front door. The mailbox was now painted blue, with “The Chadwick Family” in pretty white script. The lights were on downstairs. One window upstairs was illuminated; it had pink curtains. Jane gazed for a long time; the house looked as if nice people lived there. Her breathing went almost back to normal.

  Or as normal as Jane’s breath could be; she always felt a hitch, somewhere between her mouth and her heart, as if something had cracked inside and couldn’t be fixed. She thought of a clock that had fallen off the shelf, with hands that seemed to move and keep time, but with a rattle—as if an unnecessary part had broken off and gotten trapped inside.

  She felt that little click right now, more pronounced than ever. It hurt to breathe in, and it hurt to breathe out. She knew that something inside her had cracked, a long, long time ago. Humpty Dumpty had always been her least favorite nursery rhyme; she hadn’t wanted to believe that things couldn’t be put back together.

  Things looked very together here.

  Jane’s presence wouldn’t help anyone. She was being selfish—she could hear her mother’s voice, asking: “Do you want to be selfish? Do you want to ruin everyone’s life?”

  No. The answer was no, she didn’t. She never had. That’s why she had become a baker, to make people’s lives sweet and happy. To bake wedding cakes and Thanksgiving pies and cupcakes for children’s first days of school and coffee cakes for get-togethers, but especially birthday cakes. Gorgeous, wonderful, dreamy birthday cakes of Amazon rain forests and fairy-tale castles and ocean liners and three eggs in a bird’s nest. . . .

  Those were Jane’s specialty.

  Pulling into the driveway, she turned around. She paused for a moment, looking up at the pink curtains. She wondered what kind of birthday cakes they had for Chloe—that was her name.

  She took a deep breath, thinking of that man in the apple orchard. She wondered whether he was Eli or Dylan. Either way, she felt comforted by seeing him. She had the feeling he was watching out. . . .

  People needed to be watched out for.

  Driving slowly down the street, she found herself scanning the moonlit clearing where she had seen him. She would have given him a smile. But he wasn’t there. So she drove a little faster, wanting to get to the Now-Mart before it closed.

  She wanted to buy a doll for her mother. To take the place of the one she had lost. . . .

  CHAPTER 3

  Every spring, the wild cats had kittens. It was, in Chloe Chadwick’s opinion, one of the best things about living on the edge of an orchard. The cats came out at night to dance in the moonlight; her parents, when she told them, would correct her and say that the cats were just hunting, stalking prey. But Chloe knew her parents were wrong. She would watch the cats out her window and know she was seeing a mad, magical, romantic feline ball.

  Over the years, Chloe had coexisted with many of the cats. She couldn’t call them her pets—if anything, it was the other way around. The cats had taught her how to climb trees, watch the birds, pounce when hungry, and sit quietly, no matter what was going on around her and what she might be feeling inside.

  Just home from school, she filled a large baking pan with dry cat food. The sound attracted many cats, and they darted out from the tall grass, holly bushes, under the car, and behind the barn to swarm around her ankles.

  “Hello, everyone,” she said, setting the pan down on the ground. The cats meowed loudly, bumping each other out of the way. She watched them intently, hoping they would go for it. Some gobbled hungrily, others slunk away.

  “You can’t expect cats to quit eating meat just because you have,” her mother said, planting pansies in the garden.

  “Why can’t I?”

  “Chloe, cats are carnivores. Lions? Tigers?”

  Chloe had recently switched their food, from the regular grocery store variety to something special she’d started buying at the health food co-op. It was expensive, but worth it: vegetarian cat food.

  “I have to stand on my principles,” she said stubbornly.

  “In the meantime, do you want the cats to starve?”

  “They won’t starve. They’re wild orchard cats, Mom. When they’re done dancing, they’ll hunt.”

  “And you don’t have a problem with them catching mice?” Her mother asked, ignoring the dance comment.

  “Hunting is their nature, not mine,” Chloe said. “What I have a problem with is serving them cat food made from bone meal and pork products. Do you know that pigs are just about as intelligent as dolphins?”

  “I know, you’ve told us,” her mother said, patting down the earth.

  Chloe stared at her mother. Kneeling by the front walk, she wore a wide-brimmed straw hat with a pretty blue ribbon. She wore green garden clogs and flowered deerskin gloves. She carried her tools in a curved basket—she called it a “panier”—with a handle that looped graciously over her arm. The pansy plants were perfectly evenly spaced, as if she used an imaginary gardening ruler. She liked everything to look nice and orderly.

  “Pigs spend their whole lives in stalls,” Chloe said dangerously, “so cramped, that if their hind legs itch, they can’t even turn around to scratch.”

  “Enough, Chloe.”

  “What are we having for dinner tonight?”

  No answer. Just more digging—making the garden beautiful, which it was. Daffodils, jonquils, scillas blooming everywhere. In a week or so, the apple blossoms and lilacs would burst out.

  “Mom?”

  “Chicken breasts,” her mother said.

  “Do you know that most chickens live their entire life—”

  “Enough!” her mother said. “You can have a salad and a baked potato. Okay?”

  “I have to go to work,” Chloe said. “I’ll hit the salad bar there.”

  “I thought you had Tuesdays off.”

  Were they speaking the same language? Did they sleep under the same roof? Was her mother okay? Chloe had switched days with Marty Ford on Saturday, and she clearly remembered telling her mother. She had heard about older people losing it—getting forgetful, not being able to keep track of things, like their schedules and their shoes. Her mother was fifty-two, older than some of her friends’ moms, but still too young for that—right?

  “Usually I have today off, but Marty asked me to trade with her,” Chloe said slowly. She stared at her mother, looking for signs of a problem. She had always worried that her mother or father would get sick—just stop breathing and disappear. When she was very little, she used to stand by the edge of her parents’ bed, watching their chests rise and fall, making sure they were still breathing. Their fights were always behind closed doors, but very intense, and she worried that one of them would drop dead while whispering in that angry, urgent way.

  “That’s right,” her mother said suddenly, glanci
ng up. “You told me. I forgot. Hang on, and I’ll give you a ride.”

  “I’ll ride my bike,” Chloe offered.

  “No, honey,” her mother said. “It’ll be dark before you come home again, and you know I don’t want you riding then.”

  “Soon I’ll have my license.”

  “Well, we’re not going to rush that.”

  “Yes, we are . . .”

  “We’ll see. You’re barely fifteen—first you’ll need a learner’s permit.” She smiled, reaching up as Chloe gave her a hand, pulled her up from the garden.

  “Looks nice,” Chloe said, nodding down at the tiny purple pansy plants.

  “Thank you,” her mother said, brushing the dirt off her gloves.

  “Why do you plant them?” Chloe asked. “When we have all the wildflowers? And when all the apple trees are about to bloom? The wild things are so pretty, you don’t have to do anything at all. . . .”

  “Uncultivated isn’t necessarily pretty. The orchard isn’t what it used to be,” her mother said, frowning over at the tangled trees. “And it doesn’t belong to us, anyway. Your uncle’s doing his best to bring it back, but that’s a losing battle. It’s been neglected for too long.”

  Chloe peered at the trees. She had heard her parents talking, saying that Uncle Dylan refused to let go of the family orchard, of something that should just be allowed to die. They had wanted it bulldozed for expensive new houses. They would have made more money that way.

  Chloe’s chest hurt, thinking of it; she knew that Uncle Dylan nurturing the orchard back to life had something to do with losing Aunt Amanda and Isabel. Her heart expanded, taking in the idea of all the gnarled old apple trees, the birds that lived in them, the wild cats that hunted down the rows, the deaths of her aunt and cousin.

  Isabel; the closest Chloe had ever come to having a sister. Isabel had lived in New York City, but she had come to Rhode Island on holidays, to see their grandmother, and for a week every summer. Their grandfather had still been alive then; he had owned the orchard, and he had had a lot of people working for him—picking apples, making cider, selling everything at the stand.