Dance with Me

by Luanne Rice

  Mona seemed surprised by that. Or maybe she was just surprised by the fact Chloe hadn’t rushed to call her, and by the cool, quiet way Chloe said the words: as if she didn’t really care.

  Because Chloe was known for caring. She was the kind of girl who, when she liked a boy (the way she had liked Gilbert Albert for the last ten years) she knew his schedule by heart. She saved the straw he drank his Coke with. She wore a Red Sox cap because that was his favorite team. Stuff like that.

  So, Mona was probably a little weirded-out by Chloe’s nonchalance. Perhaps she mistook it for maturity. Yes, it had been a big year for young Chloe Chadwick; enough to breed maturity, if nothing else. Chloe gave the time line some thought: She had gotten fired from the SaveRite for writing antimeat notes, she had single-handedly brought the family apple stand back from the brink of destruction, she had lost her virginity, and she had very calmly decided she didn’t actually like the boy she’d been madly in love with only moments before.

  Only that was a lie.

  She wasn’t very calm at all.

  Outside she appeared very serene and mature. Inside, she was hamburger. She felt like a broken watch. She felt smashed and wrecked. She felt like a cow who had been corralled and slaughtered and all ground up.

  That was why everything made her so tired. Because all her energy seemed to have left the building. She faked being sick for two days, and then could barely stay awake in school and couldn’t wait to get home and take a nap. She barely spoke to Mona. She yawned when her mother told her to do her homework, when her father wanted to discuss her SATs. Oh, are we boring you? her father had asked at dinner last night.

  No, she wanted to cry. I’m not bored. Something happened to me. I’m not sure what it was. Her heart didn’t match her head.

  Her thoughts were in a jumble. The air conditioner hummed softly, making her feel as if she was sealed up in a refrigerator. Nothing could get in or out. Her house was hermetically sealed. She fell asleep, fully dressed, on her bed right after school.

  Her dreams were scary.

  In one, she was a star. She twinkled in the sky. People looked up at night to make wishes upon her. Suddenly she was falling. Streaking through the darkness, hurtling through space. She fell to earth. Chloe was a dead star, lying in the sand like a shell, while boys surfed off the shore. A woman was beachcombing. The woman picked her up and carried her home. She put Chloe in tissue paper and packed her into a box. Placing the box in the attic, the woman whispered, “You are my child.” Chloe cried in her sleep, knowing that woman was her real mother.

  Another dream: Chloe was swimming in a vat of gel. There were fins everywhere. She grabbed for one, thinking it was a dolphin, and it was a shark instead. Then she reached for another, and it was a dolphin, but it had huge teeth and was going to eat her. Crying out, Chloe thought she was going to die. She went under, gulping gel. Fins were everywhere, bumping her between the legs.

  When she came up for air, she heard someone calling her name. It was a lady in a boat. Only when the boat got closer, it wasn’t a boat at all: it was a pie. The lady leaned over, to pull Chloe out of the fluid. Chloe was crying, squalling like a baby who had just been born. The lady hauled Chloe into the boat, saving her life. Chloe just wept, feeling so happy to be alive and not just a star in the attic.

  When she woke up, she had to tell herself it was just a dream. She wished she had someone to haul her out of these gunky feelings. Her mother was downstairs, putting groceries away. Chloe pushed herself up off the bed. She padded down the hallway, down the stairs. She found her mother placing vegetables in the refrigerator.

  “Hi, honey,” her mother said.

  “Mom . . .” Chloe began, standing in the doorway, feeling panicked.

  Her mother met her gaze. She seemed to take in Chloe’s rumpled clothes and messy hair, and she shook her head.

  “Mom . . .” Chloe said again.

  “Chloe, you know I’m not thrilled about you working at the stand, but even that’s better than you coming home and sleeping all day. Doesn’t Uncle Dylan need you today? Because I drove by his house on the way home, and I saw his baking friend’s car there.”

  “Jane,” Chloe said softly, realizing that she was the woman in her dream, the woman in the pie.

  Her mother nodded and smiled. “I want to meet her. Do you think something’s going on? They seem to be spending a lot of time together . . .”

  “I don’t know,” Chloe said, yawning again and rubbing her eyes. She had something to ask her mother, or tell her, but suddenly she was losing her nerve.

  “I think it would be wonderful. He’s been so shut down since—”

  Chloe froze. She didn’t want to hear her mother talk about Isabel and Aunt Amanda. Somehow that would be too much. Chloe was sure that talking about them would just crack her open like a walnut and leave her open for the crows to peck to death.

  “Well, I just hope she’s nice,” her mother concluded, packing the lettuce into the drawer. “Because he deserves it.”

  “She is,” Chloe said quietly.

  “She certainly knows how to bake apple pies,” her mother said.

  Chloe nodded. She looked out the window. The backyard was all green, with darker gray green shadows. She thought about walking over to Uncle Dylan’s to see him and Jane. She could work an extra day, even though the stand was officially open only on weekends until school got out.

  But she decided against it. Things were bothering her, and she needed to deal with them. As much as she would prefer going back upstairs to lie down, there was somewhere she had to go.

  “Okay, I’m going,” Chloe said, leaving her mother to think she meant she was going to Uncle Dylan’s. “I might stop by Mona’s afterward.”

  “Fine. Why not take some books, so you can do homework together?”

  “Great idea,” Chloe said, grabbing her knapsack and stuffing books inside. Anything to throw her mother off the track of where she was really going.

  “Counting down till the end of school,” her mother said, smiling.

  “And then the long hot summer,” Chloe said, hoping the words didn’t sound as ominous as they felt.

  Dylan stood at the sink, filling the coffeepot. Jane leaned against the counter. He felt her nearness all through his body, like an electric current. She had come by to drop off pies—the first time he’d seen her since last Friday night—and he’d asked her to stay for coffee.

  “You drink yours black, right?” he asked, remembering from dinner.

  “Yes, thank you,” she said.

  He nodded, taking down mugs from the cupboard. Everything seemed so outwardly casual, but every muscle in his body was tense, feeling their kiss. They had talked once on the phone—Jane thanking him for dinner and Dylan placing the pie order. And when he’d opened the door to her today, he’d looked into her eyes and wondered whether she felt the same way he did, whether she’d lost sleep thinking about it, whether she’d mind if he took her in his arms and kissed her again. Again, their quick and sudden ease of connection surprised him; shocked him with happiness.

  “I should have brought an extra tart or something,” she said. “To have with our coffee.”

  “We could have one of these,” he said, gesturing to the large box she’d brought, “but Chloe made the order, and I know she’ll be expecting them all to be there.”

  Jane smiled. “Then we can’t disappoint her. She’s doing a good job at the stand?”

  “Very. School’s out next week, and she’ll be working full-time,” Dylan said, pleased that Jane seemed so interested in his niece.

  “That’s great,” she said.

  Dylan nodded. His chest felt hot. His heart was working hard. It was a big country kitchen, and they were standing a good twelve feet apart, but he could feel energy pouring off her. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt—the pants fit her really well, and the shirt was too big. The shape of her taut body was visible under the fabric, and he just wanted to hold her, and feel her
against him.

  He hadn’t felt this way in so long; it had been years. Not just since Amanda’s death—even before. Their relationship had been strained for a long time, and Dylan had shut down. He had thrown himself into his work, and that was easy enough to do. He’d had a work log as big as he wanted it to be: plenty of criminals to catch, witnesses to protect in New York City.

  And then the shooting happened, and then he was in the hospital, and when he came out he was still in shock. That’s how he had to look at it now: He was going through the motions of life, feeling nothing. Just a man imitating being a man. He blocked out his family, his feelings, his memories. Everything.

  Emotions could be overwhelming, and when they were, he did what he’d started doing recently: lit a cigarette. He saw Jane watching him.

  “Does it bother you?” he asked.

  She shook her head, not very convincingly.

  “It does,” he said.

  “Just,” she said, “that it’s not good for you.”

  “I know.” He exhaled a long stream of smoke, looking at the picture of Isabel on the refrigerator. He remembered when she was nine, and she’d begged him to quit. “My daughter used to tell me that,” he said.

  “What did she say?”

  “Oh, she’d learned about smoking in school,” he said. “I was working long hours that year, and I wasn’t home too much. When I was, there was—” He wanted to tell Jane about the tension, wanted to explain that he’d been a good husband, had loved his wife, hadn’t been loved in return. But he hated self-pity, and he didn’t want to be disloyal to Amanda, even now, so he skipped that part. “Anyway, I was smoking too much. We came to Rhode Island for the summer, and Isabel and Chloe ganged up on me and told me to quit.”

  “Good for them,” Jane said.

  Dylan nodded, tried to smile. He couldn’t quite tell her that he’d stopped caring about his health, about his own life. Bringing the orchard back to health and life had run parallel with his own feelings of being like a zombie. Who cared if he died? Isabel was the only one who ever really had.

  “Did you stay right here, in this house?”

  Dylan must have looked confused, because she went on: “That summer? When the girls were nine?”

  “Oh,” he said. “No. We stayed in Newport. At Amanda’s family’s house.”

  “She was from there?”

  “Summers. She grew up on Fifth Avenue. But they had a pretty great place on Bellevue Avenue.”

  “One of the mansions?” Jane asked.

  He nodded. Everyone in Rhode Island knew Newport, had spent time there. But most, even those who had lived in the state their entire lives, visited as tourists. They would walk along Cliff Walk, or drive down Bellevue Avenue, or bicycle Ocean Drive; they would have drinks at the Candy Store and the Black Pearl, dinner at The Pier, brunch at the Inn at Castle Hill. They would imagine how it felt to own a yacht, live in a limestone palace, attend a party at Harbor Court.

  “What was it like?” Jane asked.

  “The house? It was marble and—” Dylan began.

  “No,” Jane said. “I mean, what was living there like?”

  Dylan thought of the black-tie dinners, her father’s Hinckley Bermuda 40, her mother’s charity ball, their memberships at Bailey’s Beach and the Reading Room. “It was tiring,” he said.

  “Really?” She smiled.

  “Yeah. There was always an invitation to something. Isabel and I just wanted to go swimming and play on the beach, but we always had to get dressed up for one party or another.”

  “Amanda came from a society family?”

  “You could put it that way,” he said, remembering how he had once said that the family didn’t have a Bible—they had the Social Register.

  Jane gazed at him, as if trying to figure out how he had fit into such a life. He caught a glimpse of himself in the window glass—beard, frayed old shirt—and had a hard time understanding it himself.

  “They were low-key, in their way,” he said. “Her father drove a Bentley—he thought a Rolls-Royce was too flashy, because of the hood ornament. And he had his driver wash it himself, in the back courtyard, with the hose, instead of wasting ten bucks at a professional car wash.”

  Jane laughed. “Sounds like people I bake for, in the city. I’ll send my assistant to deliver a big beautiful cake to Park Avenue, and the hostess gives her a dollar tip.”

  “That’s how they stay rich, I was told,” Dylan said. “Amanda’s parents thought tipping was an affront to free enterprise. They thought if businesspeople paid proper salaries to their employees, then tipping would become obsolete, and the poor employees wouldn’t have to rely on the whims of consumers.”

  “Oh,” Jane said, still laughing. “I get it now. They were just doing their part to check whims and further free enterprise. I’ll have to tell my next assistant.”

  “They used to tell Isabel that they were keeping her inheritance safe.”

  Jane’s smile went away.

  Dylan hadn’t meant to destroy the lighthearted mood, but that’s what happened. Isabel was here—she was always here. And the fact that her inheritance was safer than she was, that was just the true and incontrovertible way of the world. Dylan put out his cigarette.

  The coffee was ready. Dylan poured it, handed Jane a mug. She took the mug he offered her. Then she took the other one, and placed them both on the counter. His hands were now empty. Jane was staring at him. He felt his heart beating so hard, through his chest, and it felt so outrageous—it made him feel both so alive and as if he might die.

  “Tell me about her,” Jane said.

  “She was amazing,” he said.

  Amazing: the word shimmered in the air. Jane just closed her eyes; her mouth was open just slightly, as if she could taste the word.

  “She was so funny—she loved to laugh. We were always playing jokes on each other. She knew I was a cop, sort of, so she used to make up mysteries for me to solve. She was always leaving me clues . . .”

  “Creative,” Jane said.

  “Very. And so smart. I’d leave her clues, too. I’d come out with really complicated scenarios, and she’d always figure them out.”

  Jane drifted over to the refrigerator, where Isabel and Chloe’s picture was stuck up with magnets. Dylan took it down and handed it to her, so she could have a closer look. His daughter was so soft, with round cheeks and light curls—so smiling and relaxed. Beside her, Chloe looked like a dark-haired waif, sharp-edged, with worry behind her smile.

  “Beautiful girls,” she whispered.

  “They look so different,” Dylan said. “But they were very close.”

  “You told me that Chloe and you talked . . .”

  “Yes,” Dylan said. “When I came back to Rhode Island for the first time after the shooting. Chloe had stopped talking.”

  Jane lowered the picture to stare at him. Dylan took it from her, looked at it more carefully himself. “She’s such a sensitive little girl. Isabel’s death hit her very hard. She knew how it would affect me . . . and she mourned—so deeply for her cousin.”

  “She was only eleven,” Jane said.

  “Yes,” Dylan said. “But she knows loss. I would never tell my brother and sister-in-law, but Chloe has felt a lot of grief in her young life.”

  “Well, they must know,” Jane said. “I’m sure they mourned for your daughter as well . . .”

  Dylan shook his head. He stared at the picture again, this time focused on his niece and not his daughter. “Chloe’s greatest grief is for her mother. Her ‘real mother,’ as she calls her.”

  Jane didn’t speak. She just stood there, very silently, staring at him.

  Dylan put the picture back on the refrigerator. He lined it up, so its edges were straight. When he turned around, he saw that Jane was waiting for him to speak.

  “I don’t think she’ll ever get over it,” he said. “Being given up.”

  Jane nodded. A telephone rang. It wasn’t Dylan’s—it m
ust have been Jane’s cell phone. But she ignored it, and it rang and rang. She was gazing up at him, her expression charged, as if, somehow, she felt as lost as he did. She obviously had a great capacity for caring, and he could see her taking in Chloe’s pain like a thunderbolt to her own heart.

  “What is it?” he asked her, taking a step closer. As he did, he saw that her eyes were filling with tears.

  “I’m just so glad,” she said. “That Chloe has you.”

  “Me? I’m just her uncle,” he said. “I always feel I don’t do enough for her.”

  “I’m just glad for her,” she said. “That she can talk to you. It’s very caring, for you to know those things about her, and to carry them around—someone else might just have set them aside.”

  “I don’t forget,” he said, standing right beside her. He wanted to dry her tears. If she’d let him, he’d hold her close for the rest of the night. “It’s one of the things I know about myself; I don’t forget things,” he said, staring into her blue eyes. His own voice caught, and he had to clear his throat.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  He nodded but still couldn’t speak.

  “No, you’re not,” she said, touching his cheek, resting her hand on his bearded face. “How could you be?”

  “Time’s gone by,” he said. “I feel as if I should.”

  “‘Should’ is a terrible word,” she said. “You don’t deserve to do that to yourself.”

  “Thank you for understanding,” he said, barely able to get the words out.

  She smiled, and she looked so grateful—as if he had just handed her a gift—that he loved her for it. He stared at her straight hair, her fresh, freckled skin, the simple silver locket she wore around her neck. He had noticed it at the apple stand, and at dinner the other night. It seemed she never took it off.

  Dylan couldn’t help remembering another time he couldn’t quite speak, in Newport, just before the deaths; he was so unhappy at home, so overwhelmed by thoughts of what he should do, concern over what would become of Isabel if he left the marriage. Amanda hadn’t yet announced her decision to separate, but he was having his own ideas about it.