Dance with Me

by Luanne Rice

  “Think you can run away?” Zeke asked.

  “Bitch,” his friend said.

  Chloe faced them both, back up against the wall. Zeke’s hair looked dirty and long; how had she ever seen beauty in his cruel face? His friend leered—he had a shaved head and barbed wire tattooed around his neck. Chloe shuddered, but she kept her eyes steady and vowed not to let them see she was afraid.

  “You can’t—” Zeke said, walking over, tangling his hand in her hair. Chloe could smell his beer breath. His friend stood beside him, panting. “—run away. You never could.”

  Just then they heard a gun being cocked: che-che.

  “She doesn’t have to run away,” Uncle Dylan said, pointing a shotgun right at Zeke’s head. “She’s home.”

  “Fuck,” the friend said, backing away.

  “I’d like to shoot you,” Uncle Dylan said to the friend, though still aiming at Zeke. “So keep talking. You—” he prodded Zeke in the head with the gun, “let Chloe go.”

  Zeke released her hair, and Chloe stepped away and went to stand beside her uncle.

  “See how it feels to be humiliated?” Uncle Dylan asked, still aiming the gun. “You like that?”

  “No,” Zeke said in a high voice.

  “No one does,” Uncle Dylan said, his voice very reasonable, belying the fact he was holding his Winchester firearm with every muscle in his body cocked and ready.

  “Uncle Dylan,” Chloe said, nervously. She’d never seen his eyes look this way before.

  “Can we go?” the friend asked. “Please let us go?”

  Chloe’s uncle didn’t move or speak. He just held that gun so tight, she could feel him wanting to pull the trigger. It was scaring her, and she knew the fear came not just from the boys and the gun and the feeling of danger, but from the knowledge—and Chloe had it herself—that this was how far a broken heart could push a person.

  It had pushed Chloe into the orchard with nothing but a pair of scissors to defend herself. And it had pushed Uncle Dylan all the way from Isabel to Jane to this moment with the shotgun and a crazy desire to shoot.

  “Uncle Dyl,” she whispered.

  “Take your wallets out of your pockets,” he said. “Slowly.”

  “Are you going to shoot us?” Zeke asked. Overhead a few thin clouds had drifted into the sky, and the meteors flashed behind them.

  “You have ID in those wallets?” her uncle asked.

  “Yeah,” Zeke said.

  “You?” Uncle Dylan asked the friend.

  “Yes—my license.”

  “Throw ’em on the ground. You’re never gonna ride on my land again,” Uncle Dylan said with cold intensity. “And you’re never, never going to mess with my niece again.”

  “She told me you’re a marshal,” Zeke said. “Way back . . . I shoulda listened. I’m sorry!”

  “He’s shooting us dead,” the friend wailed.

  “Please, Uncle Dylan,” Chloe begged, because she believed the friend was right. “Isabel, Isabel . . .”

  His eyes flickered. That was all: just a touch of light, then nothing.

  “Say you’re sorry to Chloe,” her uncle said.

  “I’m sorry,” the boys said at once.

  “Now run!” Uncle Dylan said, and he shot into the air.

  The boys took off across the field, twice as fast as they’d run before. Chloe watched them go, and then she watched her uncle pick up their wallets. She tried to smile at him, but his face seemed broken. He couldn’t smile, he couldn’t frown. “I need these,” he said. “Because those two are going down hard. I’m calling the cops as soon as we get inside. You okay?”

  Chloe tried to nod. “Are you?”

  He tried to nod.

  Chloe hugged him. “Thank you,” she said.

  He didn’t reply, and he couldn’t let go. “They wanted to hurt you, Chloe,” he said. “Do you know what I’d have done if they did? I can’t bear to lose you, too . . .”

  “I know,” she said, her chest aching hard.

  “I don’t know what you think you were doing, running around in the orchard this late at night—”

  “I was standing up for myself,” she said defiantly. “I was taking care of what’s important.”

  “It doesn’t always work that way,” he said harshly. “I was standing up for Isabel and Amanda, taking care of what was important—and look what good I did.”

  “You were with them,” Chloe whispered. “You were trying. You got to hold Isabel’s hand, while she died. Imagine how it would have been for her if you weren’t there . . . you were with her, Uncle Dylan.”

  “But what good does that do?” he asked, and through the hard lines in his face, through the anger in his eyes, she saw sharp, shining tears. “When the bad thing happened anyway?”

  Chloe closed her eyes. She saw Jane’s face. She saw her black hair and blue eyes, her wonderful wide smile, the way she’d always seemed to know the exact right things to say. She saw the way Jane had come into their lives with pies, the way she had held the hand of Chloe’s brokenhearted uncle and made him smile again, the way she had gone with Chloe to get the pregnancy tests, just sitting there so quietly, without any judgment, waiting with her . . .

  It had to do with knowing that Jane had stayed away for Chloe’s whole life. She had loved her enough to give her a name, and she had come to the orchard this summer, but she had forced herself to stay away for all that middle time. And even though she was away, she had worn Chloe’s picture in her locket—every day, every night.

  Although miles away, Jane had been right there with Chloe, every step of the way. Her parents and Uncle Dylan had loved her day in and day out, had raised her with more love than any child Chloe knew, but Jane had loved her, too. . . .

  “There’s something I don’t understand yet,” Chloe said. “But it has to do with being there.”

  “Being there?”

  “Like you with Isabel.”

  Uncle Dylan just listened. “You were with her—at the beginning of her life, and at the end. You’re with her now, right?”

  “I think she’s with me . . . yes.”

  “Same thing,” Chloe said. “People do their best.”

  “And sometimes it’s not good enough.”

  “See,” Chloe said. “I think it is. I think it is good enough. . . . Look at Jane.”

  “Come on now,” her uncle said, checking the action on his gun, resting it on his shoulder, starting to walk away. “Enough of this. Let’s get you home.”

  “I want to see her,” Chloe said, feet planted on the ground. She thought of her collage. She hoped this wouldn’t hurt her mother and father; somehow, she didn’t think that it would upset her mother.

  In fact, lately, she had started getting the idea that her mother thought she should call Jane. Chloe had gone down to breakfast the other day and found a copy of the New York Times open on the table—her mother subscribed, for the food and house and garden sections on Wednesday and Thursday—to a very small article titled “Calamity Jane Rides Back Into Town.”

  There was a photo of Jane in a white baker’s hat, standing outside her bakery on a tree-lined street. Chloe had stared for a long time. Jane wasn’t smiling in the picture. She was trying, but she just couldn’t seem to make it real. The article said she’d be baking a lot of apple tarts for fall. Chloe’s mother had left it there without a word.

  “You’re not going to see her,” her uncle said.

  “I say I am.”

  “That’s a bad idea, Chloe.”

  “She’s not your mother.”

  “I’m aware of that. She didn’t raise you—my brother and Sharon did. They love you.”

  Chloe stifled something that was half sob, half laugh. Could her uncle really be so dense? She looked around. The meadow was alive with tall, beautiful grasses, crickets, and foxes. Deer grazed the far edges. An owl lived in the hayloft and feasted on mice. Apple trees were everywhere, laden with fruit. The moon was starting to rise in the eas
t, illuminating the orchard. The cats danced.

  “What’s so funny?” Uncle Dylan asked.

  “Just check it out,” Chloe said, holding out her hand, taking it all in.

  “Chloe, what are you talking about?”

  “Remember the barn dance? We had it for Mom and Dad’s anniversary?”

  “Yeah, I remember. What about it?”

  “We need another one, Uncle Dylan. And fast. Before you fade away.”

  “I’m not fading away. I’m taking you home, and then I’m calling the cops to report those two—”

  “You said Mom and Dad love me,” Chloe said, grabbing her uncle’s rough hand.

  “They do.”

  “I know they do,” she said. “They’ve given me so much love, I have that much left over . . .”

  “Chloe,” he said.

  “For you, for Isabel, for Mona, for the cats . . . for my real mother.”

  He didn’t speak. He stood so still, holding his gun, frozen like a statue in the light of the rising moon.

  “Jane,” he said, after a moment.

  “Admit it, Uncle Dylan—you love her, too.”

  Once again, he turned into a statue. The moon rose higher, making his eyes glow darkly. Chloe could see him thinking about Jane.

  “I miss her pies,” he said.

  “The ones we’re selling at the stand,” Chloe said, “are garbage.”

  “I know.”

  “She’s bakin’ in New York,” Chloe said. “I saw an article in the paper. Mom left it for me to see. I’m going to go find her. I’m heading into New York, and I’m going to find Jane.”

  Uncle Dylan stared at Chloe, trying to give her his really-tough-guy look. He had the eyebrows right, and the jaw. But his sneer was off—it was looking remarkably like a smile.

  “I can’t let you do that,” he said.

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “Then I’m going to have to drive you. I can’t let you go in alone,” he said. “If your parents agree, that is.”

  “They will.”

  He laughed, shaking his head. “Knowing you, Ms. Chadwick, I think you’re right.”

  “We’ll bring back pies,” Chloe said, linking arms with her uncle as they began to make their way through the orchard behind the barn, down the rise to her house. “And we’ll bring Jane an invitation.”

  “To what?” he asked.

  “To the barn dance. Don’t worry—Mona and I will plan it.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said, limping.

  Chloe looked up at the moon. It was a bright silver disk, its edges blurred by the last of summer’s heat. She reached out, as if she could hold it in her hand. At that moment, she believed that she could. She would carry it in her pocket, give it to Jane as if it were a silver apple.

  “I just hope we can arrange one of those for the barn dance,” she said, gazing up at the magical sky. “All we need is a silvery moon.”

  Her uncle laughed. He didn’t say anything, but he laughed. And when they got to Chloe’s yard, her parents were standing out in the driveway, waiting for the police to arrive. They had heard the gunshot and called them. At the sight of Chloe, her mother let out a cry. She opened her arms, and Chloe ran into them.

  CHAPTER 29

  The order was for a wedding cake, but as Jane mixed the batter, she found herself holding back. She stirred and measured, measured and stirred. She made sure that all the ingredients were present, and in the right proportions. The cake would be delicious and beautiful, unaffected by her emotional restraint.

  But she reflected, big mixing bowl in one hand and oversized wooden spoon in the other, that things had changed. She felt very flat these days, like a one-dimensional baker. Before, whenever she had a wedding cake—or a birthday cake, or opening night cupcakes, or a Thanksgiving pie, or bat mitzvah cookies—to make, she would enter into the spirit of the occasion and add an ingredient uncalled for in the recipe.

  She would call forth all the love she had—often by thinking of Chloe, wherever she was, whatever she was doing—and put it right into the cake. You’d never find this instruction in any cookbook, but Jane believed it was her secret weapon as a baker. It was what made her cakes so sought-after. As the New York Times had said, “Cakes from Calamity Jane are baked with the skill of a professional and the heart of your mom.”

  But right now, Jane was coasting a little. No secret ingredient this week. She hoped her clients wouldn’t notice, but she was phoning her work in—treating her kitchen as a lab, following the measurements to a T, afraid of slipping up and adding too much or too little to the mix.

  That seemed to be the problem in other areas of her life, too. Too much or too little, all at the wrong times. She poured the batter into three round pans, then had to start over—she had forgotten to butter and flour the cooking surfaces.

  Once she got the cake into the oven, she was ready for a break. She wore a baseball cap backward, to keep the hair out of her eyes, but she used the back of her hand to brush some stray strands away from her face. She poured herself a glass of juice and sat down at the table. The commercial oven kept her kitchen hot, and Jane was glad. Because she felt so cold.

  Her assistant was on the road, delivering baked goods around the city. This was a new person, someone Jane was breaking in after advertising for help in the Village Voice. So far, so good. Her last assistant had left, of course, when Jane took her prolonged leave—although Jane had liked her, she understood that that was just a price she had to pay for her spring in Rhode Island.

  Spring and part of the summer . . .

  She had a calendar on the wall, a panoramic reminder of her home state with photos of Newport and Providence; she took it down, laid it on the table, and did something kind of crazy: she counted the days.

  Sixteen days in March, thirty in April, thirty-one in May, fourteen in June. She added them up: Ninety-one days altogether.

  The Ninety-one days of Chloe . . .

  Jane put her hand on the calendar, as if she could take those days right in through her skin, her pores, into her blood and bones, hold them forever. But time didn’t work that way. Time was all about the present. It was where you were and what you were doing, in any given moment, that gave life its meaning. It was August now, and weeks had passed since that sacred time in the orchard. . . .

  Right now, Jane forced herself to breathe. Every breath hurt, a little, because it was taking her farther from her time with Chloe. At first, the fact of being apart from her hurt almost as much as the days right after her birth. All Jane had been able to see was the shock and hurt in Chloe’s eyes, mixed with the fear that she might be pregnant, and the confusion of being a young teenager and having someone she’d thought was a friend tell her she was instead her mother.

  Jane had handled it badly. There were probably a hundred ways she could have done it better. What if she had been honest right off the bat? Driven up to Chloe at the stand and said, “Hi. I know this is going to sound strange, but I’m your mother.” Or, if she had shaken Dylan’s hand that first night at the Educators’ Potluck and said, “You don’t know me, but I’m your niece’s real mother, and I need your help . . .”

  Oh, Dylan . . .

  She couldn’t even begin to think about him yet. The sight of his cold, cop’s eyes, regarding her as if she were the criminal to end all criminals, was like an icicle to her heart. She had dreamed of him—possibly every night since they had lain together and made love and overwhelmed each other with wholeness. That was the word she couldn’t get out of her mind: wholeness. Because with Dylan, she had felt she had a chance of feeling whole, instead of like just a halfway woman.

  Love made a person whole. Jane knew that now. Not the helpless longing kind of love she’d felt most of her life—not that. Not the aching yearning, the middle-of-the-night-feeling-of-falling-off-the-edge-of-the-world variety of love. Not the wondering kind of love: Where’s Daddy, when’s he coming home? And not the chasing-after-someone,
doesn’t-he-love-me brand of love that she’d had, after all, with her father, and with Chloe’s father.

  Jeffrey Hayden.

  After returning to New York—leaving her mother to Sylvie and John, slipping out on that responsibility because it was, after all, just one agony too many for one baker—Jane had gone on-line to the Brown University Web site. She had looked up Jeffrey’s name—something she hadn’t done in a couple of years.

  He had started his career, she knew, as a teaching assistant at Brown. And then he had become a full-fledged instructor in the English Department. All this was pre-Internet, and she had learned it from the Class Notes section of the Brown alumni magazine, each sighting of his name causing a slight case of the cold sweats.

  Then, with the Web site, she had kept track for a while. He had gone to Harvard. He had become a professor. He was on the academic fast track, publishing in journals, The New Yorker, Harper’s, and the Atlantic. He wrote a series of books, including one that broke out of the university bookstores and hit national best-seller lists: The Literature of the Heart. It was, according to the review, a hybrid of the postmodern and the romantic, analyzing the way literature takes the writer more deeply into his own heart by the unflinching examination of his own losses.

  Jane had been unable to read the book. And for several years, she’d stopped looking Jeffrey up on the Internet. Till this summer.

  One day in late July, when New York was deep into an air-conditioning-overload-induced brownout, covered with sweat and trying to stay cool by rubbing her face with melting ice cubes, Jane logged on to the Brown Web site, found Jeffrey’s pertinent information.

  His office was at Harvard. He lived, according to the listing, on Trapelo Road, in Belmont. Jane called his office number, although it was after hours. Her heart pounding, she listened to his voice—same inflections, same gentle humor behind the words. Okay, she was ready. She called his home.

  A child answered.

  “Is your daddy there?” Jane asked.

  “Daddy!” the child called.

  And then Jeffrey came on. “Hello?”

  Jane bit her lip as the ice cube slipped from her fingers. “Hi, Jeffrey,” she said. “It’s Jane.” She left out her last name.