Dance with Me

by Luanne Rice

  “What are you doing, walking on this road in the dark? You want to get hit by a car? Climb in.”

  She tossed her book bag in with the trees, stepped up, and looked out the back window. “Wow, new baby trees!” she said.

  “Yep.”

  “That is so great,” she said. “You’re making the orchard beautiful again.”

  “You think so, Chloe?”

  “I do. And it’s great for the cats—not to mention the birds, deer . . . even the coyotes and foxes.”

  “Wildlife have to forage,” he said. “I just hope they leave the seedlings alone till they have a chance to grow.”

  Chloe sighed. “If only everyone had your attitude,” she said.

  He laughed. He hadn’t been known lately—in the family or anywhere else—for having an attitude worth copying. “I don’t think your parents agree with you.”

  “No. They’re waiting for you to get tired of the orchard. Then you can all sell out and get rich from the developers. Money,” she said, shaking her head.

  “What’s that about, Chloe Chadwick?” he asked, smiling over at her.

  She paused, staring at him, seeming to weigh whether to talk to him or not.

  “You’ll tell my parents,” she said.

  “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. Try me.”

  “I got fired,” she said.

  “Yeah? What happened?”

  “I was standing on my principles—I swear, that’s all it was, Uncle Dylan. I was just exercising my right of free speech. Leaving little notes on a few packages of meat at SaveRite. You know, suggesting people try eating salad for a change. Giving the animals a chance. And Mr. Fontaine—took it the wrong way.”

  “Who is he? The store manager?” Dylan asked.

  Chloe nodded miserably.

  “Chloe, you’re a smart girl. The smartest girl I know. You couldn’t have thought he’d be pleased.”

  “No,” she said. “Because he’s a jerk and a creep. He wears these idiotic shirts, bright silky things with big sleeves—he looks like someone out of the sixties! And he has a stupid bristly mustache, and he is the most unenlightened person on earth.”

  Dylan hid a smile. “Because he eats meat or because he wears ugly shirts?”

  “For being so intolerant, firing me just like that . . .”

  “You can’t bite the hand that feeds and expect it to keep feeding.”

  “Because he hates me,” Chloe said. “You should have seen the way he looked at me today, just because I wrote a few notes and he had to give some people back their money. I should hate him!”

  Dylan listened to his niece, letting her rail, and then fall into deep, static silence. The breeze blew through the cab, and he sensed her staring across the bench seat, waiting for him to say something. He had such a special bond with her, and he was always touched—and a little thrown—by the way she seemed to expect him to be wise. He thought of Isabel: Chloe’s age. This could be Isabel, he thought. What would he say to her?

  “Hate . . . ‘A night devoid of stars . . .’ ” he said quietly.

  “What, Uncle Dylan?” Chloe asked, as if she wasn’t sure she’d heard right.

  Dylan drove silently. He had a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket, and his fingers were itching to reach for one.

  “Uncle Dylan?”

  He couldn’t tell his beloved niece that he’d made the last years of his life a study devoted to hate and how to get rid of it. A big deer stepped into the road, then loped across. Dylan stepped on the brake, and the young trees slid forward in the truck bed. Chloe was fixated on the road ahead. She’d grown up here; Dylan knew he didn’t have to tell her what would happen next.

  “Here they come,” she whispered.

  “The whole family,” Dylan said as the female followed with her yearling. They stood on the side of the road, eyes glittering, stars in the forest. Dylan stared at the three of them, his heart beating in his throat.

  “The whole family,” Chloe said, echoing her uncle as she gazed at the eyes in the woods.

  Dylan waited until he was sure that all the deer had crossed, that there weren’t any stragglers lagging behind, and then he slowly drove along.

  Back at home, Chloe went out back to feed the rest of the cats. Uncle Dylan had dropped her off at the door, and her mother had been standing right there, framed in the doorway and lit from behind like some mad, religious figure. Uncle Dylan had just chuckled, looked at Chloe, and said, “You’ll be fine. Your mother is a reasonable woman.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Chloe had said. Uncle Dylan didn’t know the whole story. The way anger built in her house, slowly, just like a family volcano.

  Her mother had just welcomed Chloe with a quizzical expression. Instead of lying, Chloe just went for it, telling the truth about the notes, and Mr. Fontaine calling her into his office, and getting fired.

  Her mother had listened, arms folded across her chest, nostrils starting to flare. Then she had called Chloe’s father in—from the den, where he was working on the computer, entering the insurance policies he had sold that day—so Chloe had to run through the whole story all over again.

  Why did her parents have to look so nice, so innocent, so crushed? They stood there so politely, listening to her with painful little squints in their eyes, as if she was announcing her plans to leave home and join the Shining Path, become a guerrilla. They stared at her, eyes watery and helpless, as if she had let them down in ways too deep to be discussed. The only signs of true anger were her mother’s nostril-flares and her father’s red face. Also, the deep snap in his voice as he said, “Ace Fontaine is in the Rotary with me.”

  And the way her mother tightened her lips and said, “You’ll have to get another job. You need to save for college, and if you think we’re going to give you the extra money to pay for that vegetarian cat food, you’re wrong. Life is expensive, Chloe. Protesting doesn’t put food on the table.”

  Chloe had apologized. She had walked away, at first feeling relieved; she hadn’t gotten yelled at or grounded. But, then, it always took time to build. As if too powerful to confront all at once, anger did a slow burn in her family. Her parents loved order, and anger threw everything out of whack. Like other messy things, it was officially banned from their house. Unofficially was another story. As Uncle Dylan had said, her mother was a reasonable woman. And her father a reasonable man. At least they tried to be.

  She stood in the backyard. Her bare arms were covered with goosebumps in the cool spring breeze. She shook the cat food bag, and the sound brought cats from all over. The night was alive with them. Jumping out of trees, slinking out from under bushes, crying and meowing their hellos. Their eyes sparked in the darkness, and she felt bowled over with love, like the mother of a huge family. She loved the cats so much, she couldn’t imagine giving any of them away.

  Back when she was younger, Chloe Chadwick used to wish on the stars. On warm evenings, she would go out behind her house, press the tall grass into a nest, and look up into the sky. In her memory, it wasn’t quite dark yet, just shimmering with the sun’s last glow. One by one, in order of brightness, the stars would appear, connected by a silken web.

  Chloe would name them: “Mommy. Daddy. Grandma. Uncle Dylan. Aunt Amanda. Isabel.” Every star was a chapter, and together they seemed to tell her family’s story. Sometimes she imagined them as golden apples hanging from the spreading branches of a tree. A family tree, up in the sky. There were always two stars far apart from the others: “Chloe” and her real mother. She would squint at them, trying to see her mother’s face.

  Now she was fifteen and much too old to be staring at the stars. Instead, she stood still until the cats had finished eating. The wind came through the orchard, bringing the scents of apple blossoms and cigarette smoke. It made her sad, because she knew Uncle Dylan had started smoking again.

  “A night devoid of stars,” she said out loud—for no real reason, except that he had used those words on the way home. What had he meant
by them? Chloe couldn’t resist: She looked up.

  There they were, off to the side, those two lonely stars she used to see. Chloe and her mother. Or maybe they were Uncle Dylan and Isabel. Parents and children who couldn’t be together. It didn’t really matter, anyway. It was just a story she used to tell herself. Stars were one thing; reality was another. She had spent hours on the Internet looking. And she had taken the bus into Providence, to sign up at the adoption reunion registry—only to be told she had to be twenty-one.

  What mattered now were the cats, and getting another job so she could feed them properly. Real life: not the myths and stories of the stars. Off in the distance, she heard the roar of a dirt bike. Sometimes high school kids rode through the orchard. It made Uncle Dylan mad, and she knew it scared the wildlife. Shivering in the night air, Chloe listened till the engine faded. Then she called good night to the cats, and ran back into her house.

  CHAPTER 5

  The girls gave their mother a bath in the old claw-foot tub upstairs. Clear gray light came through the window, unkind and obvious. Margaret hunched over, embarrassed at having her daughters lift and scrub her, wash her hair. Sylvie had the whole thing down pat: She had the soap, shampoo, and washcloth laid out. She went through the procedure like a surgeon, holding out her hand to Jane, barking, “Conditioner! Rinse!”

  “Dears, it’s a bit chilly,” Margaret said, her arms drawn around her knees. “Could you add more hot water?”

  Wordlessly, Sylvie turned on the taps. Jane noticed the tightness around her eyes and mouth. Leaning forward, Jane reached for the container of bubble bath, and squirted it into the stream of water.

  “Jane . . .” Sylvie breathed.

  “Oh, that’s lovely, dear,” Margaret said as the foam began to build. She patted the bubbles, scooping them into her hands. Holding them up to the window, she seemed delighted by their iridescence; she looked at her daughters, to make sure they both saw.

  “Pretty, Mom,” Jane said.

  “Let me see your feet,” Sylvie said sternly, bending over to examine them for infection.

  Margaret wanted to stay in the warm water till the bubbles evaporated, but Sylvie said she needed to get back to bed. The two sisters helped her out of the tub, and Sylvie dried her off with a big white towel. Jane stood ready with her Irish linen nightshirt. Together, they got her into bed.

  “Sylvie, she needs . . .” Jane began, as they started down the stairs.

  But Sylvie walked faster, rounding the corner, into the kitchen. There, she began making tea. Her blue T-shirt was soaking wet from the bath. Her thin arms were wiry and muscular, from all the lifting. Her golden hair fell to her shoulders, hiding her face.

  “I know what she needs,” Sylvie said, sounding tired. “We have a pretty good routine.”

  Jane stared. She wanted to be sensitive. There was a history of meddling under this roof. But Sylvie was her younger sister. These last months—knowing Sylvie had taken a leave from the job she loved, hearing the stress in her voice, and now viewing her daily routine—had made it hard for Jane to hold her tongue.

  “You’re wonderful to her, Sylvie,” Jane said.

  Sylvie shrugged, watching the kettle on the stove. The moisture on the sides began to hiss. “She liked the bubble bath,” Sylvie said. “She likes having you here.”

  “You know why I came, right?”

  Sylvie looked Jane straight in the eye. Jane swallowed, as if she’d gotten caught by the person who knew her better than anyone else in the world. Seconds ticked by, and Jane felt Sylvie looking straight into her heart.

  “I wish I didn’t,” Sylvie said. “But I do. It has to do with why you keep borrowing the car.”

  Jane blushed and looked down.

  “No, it has to do with Mom. And you. She needs more care than you can give her.”

  “We’re doing fine.”

  “You’re exhausted,” Jane said. “I don’t know how you lift her yourself, when I’m not here.”

  “You underestimate me,” Sylvie said, flexing her muscles. The kettle whistled, and she turned off the burner.

  “Meanwhile, you’re giving up your career.”

  “You should talk! Who’s running your bakery?”

  “I need a vacation,” Jane said quietly. “It’s been fifteen years since I’ve had one . . .”

  “Well, anyway. I’ve just taken a leave of absence. Everyone is very understanding. The whole school loved Mom—she was their principal.”

  “That rare combination of beloved and feared.” Jane smiled. “Just like she was here.”

  “She had to be both mother and father to us,” Sylvie said.

  Jane’s stomach clenched, hearing those words. Their mother used to remind them of it constantly. Their own father had drifted away a little at a time. A traveling paper salesman, his travels had started getting longer. Jane remembered kneeling by her bedroom window, watching for his car to come down the street. She got so she could recognize the headlights—of all the other cars passing by. She had loved him so much, she felt inside-out when he wasn’t home.

  “Do you ever wonder where he is?” Jane asked.

  “Never,” Sylvie said tensely.

  “Really?” Jane asked. She watched as Sylvie shook loose tea into the blue teapot and filled it with hot water. Their mother called from upstairs.

  “You do?”

  “All the time,” Jane said softly.

  “Then you must be haunted from both directions,” Sylvie said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know where you go in the car, Jane,” Sylvie said. “You go driving out to the orchards.”

  Jane stared at the steam rising from the teapot’s spout.

  The low whistle sounded, unleashing her private ghosts. They carried her burden of sorrow and guilt, and she had long since stopped trying to push them away.

  Her mother called again, and Jane’s pulse raced. Being home, hearing her mother’s voice rise, with Sylvie’s question hanging in the air, made Jane close her eyes and take hold of the counter to keep the room from spinning.

  Jane had wanted to keep her baby, and her mother had talked her out of it. She understood that her mother’s plans had been “for Jane’s and the baby’s own good.” She knew that the child had a good home, so much better than anything Jane could have provided.

  To Margaret, it was bad enough that Jane had had to leave school for an entire semester. She had to get on with her life . . . did she have any idea how hard it was to care for a baby?

  Her mother had wanted great things for her: She had been a sophomore at Brown, near the top of her class. She’d been on the tennis team, the number two singles player. She had been majoring in English. Her mother had said she had the intellectual rigor to become a college professor, although Jane had wanted to follow in her footsteps and teach high school.

  Jane hadn’t picked up a tennis racket since that last day. She had never taught anyone at any school—or college. All those young faces: What if one of them turned out to be her daughter, and Jane didn’t even know it?

  Baking had been such an easier solution. It was solitary. It required precise measurements and focus and concentration. It kept Jane to herself. And her kitchen was far away from here, so Jane wouldn’t be tempted to scan every face in the crowd, wondering, always wondering . . . She had always feared bumping into her daughter and not even knowing it.

  Jane had signed papers, promising to give up all parental rights. She wasn’t supposed to make contact with her daughter, but she had filed her name with the Rhode Island adoption registry and with a national “Find Your Birth Family” Web site, just in case the child ever wanted to find her. Fifteen and a half years had passed.

  The truth was, she knew exactly where her daughter lived. Jane’s mother had found the perfect family, the perfect home. A colleague’s son, whose wife was unable to conceive. Allowing them to adopt the baby would be helping everyone. A good family, a good home for the child; freedom and a ch
ance for Jane to live her own life.

  Jane’s identity would be kept secret—completely, one-hundred-percent secret—from everyone. Only Margaret and her colleague, by necessity, would know.

  “You’re not going to talk to her, are you? Because she’s only fifteen. It wouldn’t be fair to her, or to her family. The law is clear in Rhode Island—”

  “What law?”

  “You know. Family Court. The adoption registry . . . I know you know about it.”

  Jane knew. She could practically quote the rules and procedures by heart.

  “She has to be twenty-one, Jane,” Sylvie said. “Before she can look for you. And you have to let her do it; you can’t intrude on her life. She’s not even sixteen yet.”

  Jane looked around the kitchen. Every inch of it was so familiar. She had come home from the hospital, straight from being born, to this house. And later, straight from giving birth at St. Joseph’s, she had come home here.

  “Remember looking for Dad?” she asked.

  “Jane, stop.”

  “Remember after he left? How you and I tried to track him down? How we called his company, and pretended to be customers? And how we hitchhiked to Hartford, to intercept him at his sales call?”

  “Stop! What are you trying to do?” Sylvie asked. “There’s no comparison. We lived with Daddy. She doesn’t even know you. She has a perfectly nice family. Her father is a very successful insurance agent. Her mother is active in the Crofton garden club.”

  “You know them?” Jane said.

  “Mom kept track,” Sylvie said. “Through Virginia.”

  Virginia Chadwick, their mother’s friend, the science teacher who had set everything in motion.

  “What else did she find out?” Jane asked, glancing up at the ceiling, as if she could see into their mother’s room.

  “Nothing. Virginia had a stroke last year, and she hasn’t been well. Her son takes her out sometimes; we see them at the Educators’ Potluck dinners. Mom says it makes her too sad to talk to such a brilliant woman and hear only gibberish. That’s how I feel about Mom.”