Step-Ball-Change: A Novel

by Jeanne Ray

  “I think everything’s on ice while Kay recovers from her mysterious imaginary virus. She can only hold them off for so long. She’s not even being very careful. Tom said he caught her sneaking into the office. Trey called me yesterday to see how she was really feeling. She told him not to come over, she says she doesn’t want to give him anything.”

  “My, that’s certainly metaphoric.”

  “He’s probably been trying to call again today and just can’t get through, in which case I thank you for tying up the line. I don’t like to lie to Trey. He seems like someone who has no concept of lying.” I looked at my watch. “Isn’t it time for you to go to school, or do you want me to take your class?”

  Taffy sighed and pushed herself up from her chair. “No, it will do me good to go and boss the short people around. I can pretend I’m their mother and make them do everything I say.”

  “The nice thing about dance students: They do everything you say, they go home at the end of the hour, and they pay you.”

  GEORGE WAS THERE when I came in from the grocery store. I had almost forgotten he still lived at home. Taffy had taken over his classes at the studio. Not only did I never see him, I never seemed to have time to think about him anymore. Because he had no messy, demanding problems, I had all but forgotten about him, my youngest son. When he took the grocery bags from me, I put my arms around him. “George!” I said. “My life! Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been in the library and I’ve been in love.”

  I took a step back and looked up at him. George was tall. “Love?”

  “Erica Woodrow, Erica Woodrow. How many times can I say it?”

  “As many times as you want, I guess.”

  “I may be the surprise winner in this race. No one would suspect it, George coming up fast from behind.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Kay’s marriage, Taffy’s divorce. I could beat them both.”

  “You want to marry Erica?”

  “Like you can’t believe.”

  “George, don’t be ridiculous. You’re twelve.”

  He was teasing me. I thought he was teasing me. He reached in the bag and took out a carrot, which he polished off (unwashed) in three bites. “I’m twenty-five, oh you who were married at twenty.”

  “God, I regret telling any of you that story. I am glad you’re so happy. It’s a relief to have someone happy around here.”

  “Well, Kay’s happy, isn’t she?”

  “Boy, you are in love. You used to have your fingers on the pulse of this place. Jack the D.A. ran off to Rome with your cousin Holden.”

  George sat down in his chair. He set the leafy end of the carrot on the table and stroked it with his fingers thoughtfully. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Nobody could make that up.”

  He shook his head. “That bastard.”

  I was rooting through the bags for frozen food. I had a tendency to get sidetracked while putting the groceries away, only to come back an hour later to a puddle of ice cream. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he snowed me. He made a big play to enlist me in his campaign to win back Kay. He said he was so in love with her that they were meant to be together. He thought Trey was all wrong for the part, and he needed me to help him. I liked the guy. I think I helped him.”

  “Maybe you should tell that to Kay. She’s about as miserably confused as one person can be.”

  “I’ll stop by her place on my way back to school. I think I was wrong about Trey, anyway. He’s just such an easy target. He’s too rich, he’s too good looking, he’s too nice. What’s there to like? But when we went to his house to watch movies the other night, I started thinking I should have cut him a break. He made us popcorn, he got everybody a pillow. I don’t know. He was so nice to Erica. I’m starting to suspect that underneath all that wealth and privilege there beats the heart of a really decent guy. I think I better go talk to Kay.” George stood up and kissed me. “It was good to see you.”

  “Wait a minute, I don’t know anything about you.”

  “I told you I’m in love. You know everything about me.”

  “Well, then, I don’t know everything about Erica. Is she in love with you?”

  George looked puzzled by my question, almost offended. “Of course she’s in love with me.”

  “I know you’re lovable, but sometimes these things are unevenly felt. I was just asking.”

  “You can’t be in love like this unless the other person loves you.”

  “It certainly is more fun.”

  George looked in the bag and pulled out three cans of soup, which he took to the pantry. “Do you believe that for every person there’s one person?” he asked over his shoulder.

  His voice was so earnest it broke my heart. “Like a missing half? No, I guess I don’t.”

  “I didn’t, either.” He came out of the pantry.

  “And now you do?” There was a time I had been so good at reading my children, but now I was missing everything. Looking at George standing in front of me in the kitchen, really focusing on him for the first time since I don’t know when, I could see a sheen of happiness covering his skin, the warm, pink happiness of a heart that beat more joyfully, more gratefully.

  “I do, completely. Maybe there isn’t one for everybody. I wouldn’t know about that, but for me, yes.”

  “And you’d sign your name on the dotted line tomorrow, and she would, too?”

  “Right here in this kitchen. This is the person I’m going to be looking at when I die.”

  My eyes filled up with tears and I had a sudden tightness in my throat. I never would have expected it. “How can you be sure?”

  “There’s no law, you just are. But you were sure, right? You and Dad were sure?”

  I ripped off a paper towel and wiped my eyes. “I’m sure now, but back then? No, we were just young. We loved each other and we jumped in and swam like hell.” I sat down in a kitchen chair. I felt like Kay. I felt as though I wanted to cry the Mississippi, cry until every bit of it had washed out of me. I took a deep breath and waited for the feeling to pass. “This is so funny, but I had almost the same conversation with your sister that night you brought Jack over. She asked me if I had been sure and I couldn’t tell her the truth. I couldn’t tell her because she wasn’t sure. But for you it’s different.”

  “Mom, certainly you know by now that where Kay and I are concerned, it’s always different.”

  I laughed. “You’re a very lucky man.”

  “I’ll tell you something. I love the law, and I love dancing. I feel like I’m comfortable with both, that I’m good at both. Either one would have been possible, but neither one was exactly a perfect fit, something I stepped into and said, Yes, this is who I am. But when I’m with Erica I know, this is who I am.”

  I nodded. That was the way I felt about dance. That was the thing that had been completely natural in my life. Once I strapped on my shoes, I felt completed, whole. I loved my marriage, my children, but I had had to work at those. Maybe George was right, maybe we each get one thing, our missing half, but maybe it isn’t always a person.

  “You’ve got to bring Erica over more. I want to see her when there aren’t so many other people in the room.”

  “She’d like that.”

  “What about Woodrow? Does Woodrow know?”

  George shrugged. “I think he gets it, I’m not really sure. He’s building a garage outside of Chapel Hill right now. The commute is really wearing him out. I saw a lot more of Woodrow when I was hanging out at my house than I do when I hang out at his house.”

  “Well, I’m really happy for you. Whatever happens, I’m happy that you’ve had this experience.”

  George leaned over and kissed the top of my head. It was something I used to do to him when he was in his high chair and I was spooning creamed peas into his mouth. “You’re not listening,” he said quietly. “I already know what’s going to happen.”

 
Maybe love was in the ground, a colorless, odorless gas that lived in the bedrock and every now and then managed to dislodge itself from the earth and seep up through the soil, through the basement and the floorboards to fill up the house. Maybe we were infected, intoxicated, a whole house held under the invisible sway of love we could not see. Or maybe love was a virus that one person brought in from the cold, and then it passed from person to person until suddenly everyone was swaying to the low, jazzy beat they didn’t know they heard. I should put a sign on the door that said WARNING! MARRIAGE WITHIN! ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.

  Or maybe I should put a sign on the door that said COME INSIDE.

  Taffy couldn’t find Holden or Neddy, though she didn’t stop trying. She taught her classes. A couple of times I caught her talking on the phone to Woodrow.

  Kay nursed her mysterious illness. She said she was starting to feel better. Trey was bringing her cupcakes that he had made himself. Anyone who knew Kay knew that she was a fool for cupcakes.

  THE NEXT MORNING when Tom and I came into the kitchen for breakfast, the coffee was already made, and Woodrow was there reading the paper. Stamp was asleep in his lap.

  “You’re back!” I said.

  “Hey,” Tom said. “I thought the rule was no dogs on the furniture.”

  “Do I look like furniture?” Woodrow said. He had one hand on Stamp’s back and ran his thumb back and forth between the narrow shoulder blades.

  “I thought you were building a garage?” I poured coffee for Tom and myself and then I refilled Woodrow’s cup.

  “I’m trying to spread myself around, make everybody a little bit happy instead of making anybody completely happy.”

  “I’d settle for that,” Tom said.

  “So did you know that our children are hopelessly in love with each other?” I asked.

  “I hear about very little else.” Woodrow leaned forward to get the milk, and Stamp shifted, sighed, and put his muzzle back down on Woodrow’s knees.

  “How do you feel about it?” Tom was asking him, one father to another. I was surprised, because I knew what he was saying, and somehow I thought it would be one of those things that, in our progressive household, would always be left unsaid.

  “I never particularly liked the idea of my girls dating white men. It happened with the older girls once or twice. I never said anything about it, but in the end it always blew over and I was relieved. My three older girls married black men. I don’t need to tell you, that’s easier. In a hundred different ways it’s easier. When you think about your children, you think life is going to be hard enough in ways you can’t predict. There’s no sense setting a tougher course for yourself right from the start.”

  It was true. Everything he said was true, but I thought he would have said, What are you talking about? I never even noticed.

  “What Erica and George are doing now, they would have been killed for it in North Carolina, both of them. And not so long ago. We think we’re such a progressive country. We take such a high moral ground with everybody else. But this isn’t the Dark Ages I’m talking about. This was fifty years ago, maybe even forty years ago. Back then if they didn’t kill you, they wouldn’t hire you or rent to you or speak to you in church. Someone chooses that life, they’re choosing something awfully hard.”

  “Aren’t you the guy who asked my sister out?” I said.

  He shrugged. “I’m sixty-three years old. Nobody gives a damn what I do. Anyway, I like your sister.”

  “And you like George,” I said. How could Woodrow care? He couldn’t possibly care. What was true for the rest of the world was not true for our families, for our children.

  “Well, that’s what makes it all okay. If Erica had come home with a white boy, I would have been worried for her, I can’t deny that. But I don’t think of George as a white boy. I think of George as George. I think of him as a friend of mine. I wish Erica hadn’t fallen in love with a white boy, but I’m glad she’s fallen in love with George, if that makes any sense.”

  “I think that makes all the sense in the world,” Tom said. “Do you want scrambled eggs? I think today is the day I risk my heart on some eggs.”

  “Eggs wouldn’t be bad,” Woodrow said.

  And that was that, the entire conversation about the racial lines that we’d spent our lives living inside of and fighting our way out of. A two-minute conversation punctuated by an egg.

  Taffy walked into the kitchen in her bathrobe and slippers. For the first few weeks she was with us, she came to the breakfast table looking like she was on her way to Saks. But now her face was bare, her hair pushed back behind her ears. She looked up and saw Woodrow. You could tell she was thinking about turning around, but she was already too far into the room to back out gracefully.

  “Couldn’t you emit some sort of high-pitched noise when you enter the house?” she said.

  “I can, but it bothers the dog’s ears.”

  “Well, so much for being mysterious.” She padded over to the coffeepot and poured herself a cup. “Every woman dreads the moment a man sees her for the first time without makeup. At least we got it out of the way before the first date.”

  “Speaking of which—”

  “If you back out at this particular moment, it will be very ungentlemanly of you.”

  “I was going to ask what night was good for you.”

  “I’ll need to check my calendar,” Taffy said with great seriousness. “But right off the top of my head? Let’s see. Tonight, tomorrow night, any night this week or next week.”

  “Good. How about tonight?”

  “Would you guys like a little privacy?” I said.

  “No,” they answered in unison.

  “Tonight is good,” Taffy said. “But now I really do need to take my coffee back into my room and close the door.”

  “Any word from Holden?”

  “You know about that?”

  “Erica told me.”

  Taffy shook her head. “I’m still working on it. So I guess I’ll see you later.”

  “Seven?”

  “Seven is good.” She walked out of the room and then stuck her head back around the door. “This isn’t some complicated plot about you wanting to get my dog away from me, is it?”

  Stamp raised his head at the word dog and wagged his tail. “Yes,” Woodrow said.

  “As long as I know where I stand.”

  chapter fourteen

  USUALLY I DANCE ALONG WITH MY GIRLS, BUT TODAY my hip was killing me. I remember some of the dance teachers I had when I was a child. They might have worn leotards, but they always just stood on the side of the room counting. One of them, Mrs. Leominster, used to smoke while she called out the steps. If they wanted to show us something, they only moved one foot, as if the foot was a separate thing with its own little piece of information to impart. I never thought it was right. I thought, One of these days I’m going to have a dance studio and I’m going to dance all day, I’ll dance for every class I teach. I had, and I did, but today it was rainy and cold and everything in me was screaming out for a set of new plastic joints. It made me mad as hell when I couldn’t get my body to go along with the program.

  When I got home the house was bright and the smell of garlic and oregano rushed out into the night when I opened the door. Taffy was at the stove with a dish towel tied around her waist.

  “Don’t you have an apron?” she said.

  I dropped my bag on the floor and came over to the stove. “I never use them.”

  “Now I know what to get you for Christmas.”

  “I thought you were going out to dinner?”

  “I am going out to dinner but you’re not. Here, taste this.”

  I took the spoon from her hand and tasted. It was rich and deep, tiny bits of carrot and zucchini and onion swimming in a dark broth. “I didn’t know you could cook like this.”

  “Face it, you didn’t know anything about me.”

  “What is it?”

  She shrugged. “
Chicken soup, chicken stew depending on how thick it gets.”

  “God, this is nice of you. Why don’t you forget about going back to Atlanta? Send for the rest of your stuff, if you have any other stuff there, and move in. You can cook and teach.”

  “Are you offering me a role as an indentured servant?”

  “I am.”

  Taffy took off the dish towel, and for the first time I noticed that she was wearing the same camel outfit she had on the day she showed up here. It struck me that she wanted to make a good impression on Woodrow, and that she must have wanted to make a good impression on us at the end of her long drive. “You look beautiful,” I said.

  She looked down at herself as if to see what I was talking about. “Really? Do you think so? I was wondering if I should wear a skirt.”

  “You’re perfect.”

  Tom walked in carrying a scotch. “Can you believe this?” he said. “A gourmet meal, and she fixed me a drink, too.” He kissed me and then he kissed Taffy. “It’s like being married to sisters.”

  “I’m in a very low-grade good mood,” Taffy said. “Don’t get used to it.”

  The doorbell rang and immediately Taffy touched her hair.

  “You’re perfect,” I told her again.

  “The man who is sitting in my kitchen every morning reading the newspaper before I even get up is now ringing the doorbell. What is happening to the world?” Tom went to answer the door. “Good evening, sir,” he said to Woodrow.

  Woodrow came into the kitchen. He had on a red bow tie tonight with a blue shirt and a navy jacket. I thought he should run for president.

  “Now before you start in,” Taffy said to Tom and me, “let me tell you, there will be no jokes about ‘Where are you taking our little girl?’ or ‘You better have her in by eleven’ or ‘You kids have fun.’ Understood?”

  “I had actually planned on making those jokes,” I said. “Maybe not all of them, but at least one.”

  “There, I saved you the trouble.”

  “Can I get you a drink?” Tom asked Woodrow.

  Woodrow shook his head. “I’m pretty much a one-drink man, so I’d just as soon have it in a restaurant if it’s all the same to you.”