Don't Let Me Go

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “I could ask Felipe!”

  “Does he have a car?”

  “I don’t think so. But maybe he’d walk or take the bus.”

  “Big thing to carry home.”

  “I could ask him,” she said, already halfway to the door. “If he hasn’t left for work yet.”

  “The shoes,” Billy said. “My shoes.”

  Grace looked down at her feet, crestfallen. “But I have to hurry, though.”

  A tough pause.

  Then he said, “Right. Go. Hurry.”

  The minute she tapped out into the hall, he felt the deep pang of separation. As if he’d just let her leave the house wearing his dog, or his baby. That is, if he’d had one of either to lose. He stared at the rain for a few minutes, purposely breathing into the anxiety in his chest, trying to honor it without adding to it.

  Then Grace slipped back in. Literally. Came through the door, slipped on the rug, and landed on her butt again.

  “I’m getting tired of doing that,” she said, still down.

  “Maybe you better take the shoes off for today.”

  Grace sighed, and began to undo the laces.

  “He says he can’t. He says it’s miles and miles to the closest lumber place. And he must know, because he used to work doing construction. He says it’s way too far to carry something that big home. And it would be too big to go on the bus with it. He says Mr. Lafferty has a pickup truck. But he said he doesn’t talk to Mr. Lafferty, which I can sort of understand why, because Mr. Lafferty isn’t very nice to him. Felipe says it’s because he’s from Mexico. Do you think it’s because Felipe’s from Mexico?”

  “Probably so, yes.”

  “That’s not a very good reason.”

  “I agree.”

  She sat on the couch beside him, the tap shoes in her hand, and then set them down gently on the couch between them. As if she saw them as being like a baby or a dog, too.

  “So he says he won’t ask Mr. Lafferty, but I can ask Mr. Lafferty. If I want.”

  “Does Rayleen have a car?”

  “Yeah. Rayleen does.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  “But it’s broken, and she doesn’t have enough money to get it fixed.”

  “Oh. Bad.”

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “I think you should wait and talk to Rayleen before you do anything. Especially before you talk to Lafferty.”

  “K,” Grace said.

  And they stared at the rain for several minutes more.

  “This is really boring,” Grace said.

  “I would tend to agree.”

  “What do you do when I’m not here?”

  “Pretty much this.”

  “Let’s play a game,” Grace said.

  “I’m not sure I’ve got the energy.”

  “It could just be a talking game. You know, like a truth or dare sort of a game.”

  “Ooh,” Billy said. “I don’t know. Sounds dangerous.”

  “It’s just words. How can words be dangerous?”

  “You have a lot to learn about the world, baby girl. Nothing is more dangerous than words.”

  “That’s stupid. What about a gun? A gun can kill you dead.”

  “Only your body,” Billy said. “It can’t kill your soul. Words can kill your soul.”

  “Well, maybe we could just stay away from those words. You know. The dangerous kind.”

  “Which ones did you have in mind?”

  “I had a friend once. Well, I have a couple of friends, but not anybody I see outside school or anything. But I had a really good friend, Janelle was her name, but then when I was in first grade, she moved with her family to San Antonio. That’s in Texas.”

  “So I hear,” Billy said.

  “We used to play this game at sleepovers. Like she’d sleep over at my house or I’d sleep over at hers. This was when my mom was clean, and the house was clean, and there was food and everything, and it was OK to have people over. So we’d be in bed, under the covers. We’d pull the covers up over our heads like a tent, like this tent that we could both fit into—”

  “We’re not doing that part,” Billy said.

  “Right, I know, stop talking. Don’t interrupt.”

  “Sorry.”

  “So then the game was just two questions. What do you want more than anything? And what do you not want more than anything? Like, what scares you really bad, worse than anything else?”

  Billy rose to object, but it felt like too much trouble.

  “You go first,” he said.

  “OK. What I want more than anything is for my mom to get better. And what scares me most is what Mr. Lafferty said, about how people almost never do. Because then I got to thinking that maybe she never will.”

  Silence. The rain fell harder, if such a thing were even possible. Like water falling from a chute, all at once and not even separated out into drops.

  “That was a fast turn,” he said.

  “Your turn.”

  “I know. That’s what I was just complaining about. OK. Here goes. What I want the most is…nothing. That’s the problem. Everything I ever cared about is behind me, and there’s nothing left to want. And, by the way, that’s also what scares me. No future. Nothing to want. That’s no way to live, let me tell you, baby girl.”

  They watched the rain in silence for a few minutes more.

  “Usually the game makes me feel better,” Grace said.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “This day sucks.”

  “No more so than usual, if you ask me.”

  “Next time I won’t, then,” Grace said.

  • • •

  It didn’t seem late enough for Rayleen to be home. But then he heard her knock. She had a special knock, Rayleen. With a rhythm to it. Four little taps. One, two three…pause…four. If it could go on long enough, you could almost dance to it. And the real beauty of the situation was that Billy hadn’t had to tell her that a special knock would do wonders for his anxiety disorder. She’d figured it out on her own.

  He tilted his head toward the still-silent Grace.

  “Did you lock it?”

  “Oh. No, I forgot. I slipped and fell, and then I had to take the shoes off, and then I forgot.”

  But that was a natural enough turn of events, Billy thought. The truly bizarre angle of the situation was that he’d forgotten, too.

  “It’s open,” he called. “Come in.”

  The door swung wide and Rayleen looked in at them, questioningly.

  “What the hell happened to you two?” she asked.

  Billy sighed. “Nobody thrives every day,” he said.

  “Rayleen,” Grace said. “Can I go ask Mr. Lafferty if he’ll go to the lumber store for us? I know you don’t like him, and I know you don’t really like for me to be around him, but it’s just this one favor. Just so we can get a big piece of wood. Please can I go ask him?”

  “A big piece of wood for what?”

  “For a dance floor for my tap dancing. So we can put it over the rug, and then it won’t wake up my mom, and so then she can’t come up here and yell at Billy.”

  “I don’t know, Grace. He’s such a rotten guy. I’d be surprised if he’d be willing to do you a favor.”

  “I could ask, though.”

  “Sure. You can ask.”

  Grace ran out the door, still in her sock feet.

  Billy looked up at Rayleen, who studied his face for a moment. Then he patted the couch beside his hip and she came over and sat with him.

  “Question,” he said. “Are we enabling Grace’s mom by taking care of her kid?”

  “Hmm,” Rayleen said. “Never thought about it.”

  “Too bad. I was hoping you’d say no. It’s just that she does nothing but sleep twenty-three hours a day, and it seems to me she wouldn’t be able to do that without us.”

  “Or she just would anyway, and Grace would pay for it.”

  “But this w
ay she can do it guilt-free, and with no consequences.”

  “What got you thinking about this?”

  “Something Lafferty said to the kid.”

  “Lafferty! That figures. Goddamn that man. I hate him so much. Maybe I should go after Grace before she even gets up there.”

  “Too late. I’m sure she’s talking to him by now.”

  Rayleen sighed. Sat back. Gazed out Billy’s big sliding-glass door. What was it about rain that made people want to gaze?

  “Sure is coming down out there,” she said.

  A long silence, during which Billy had no comment to offer about the rain. It simply rained. It wasn’t one of those things you talked much about, he felt. It was one of those things that just was.

  “OK,” Rayleen said. “Honest answer: maybe. I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to give that some thought.”

  “Don’t you hate it when a guy like that is right?”

  “On those rare occasions when it happens, yes.”

  Grace

  Grace stood in the hall in front of Mr. Lafferty’s door, balanced on one foot, and scratching the instep of her other foot through the three layers of socks. She’d put Billy’s wool ones on the inside, because they were the ones that bunched up the most when you tried to pull tap shoes over them. But, on the inside, they itched.

  The door opened, and Mr. Lafferty looked over her head, frowning, but then he looked down, and the frown disappeared.

  It seemed odd to Grace that he was ready with a frown for anybody tall. Only Grace didn’t seem to bring that out in him.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said, sounding like she was an OK person for it to be.

  “Yeah, it’s me, Mr. Lafferty. I came to ask you a favor.”

  “Are you OK? Are you in trouble?”

  “No, not really. It’s just that nobody else in the whole building has a car that works—”

  “You need a ride someplace? Where do you need to go?”

  “Just let me tell you,” she said, trying to hide her frustration.

  If it had been Billy, or Rayleen, she wouldn’t have tried to hide it. She would have just said, “Stop it! Stop interrupting!” But this was Mr. Lafferty, and you had to be a little more careful with him.

  “Sorry,” he said, which surprised her.

  “I need somebody to go to the lumber store and get a big piece of wood.”

  “What kind of wood?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “How big?”

  “Billy said five feet. Or six feet. Either one.”

  “That’s not quite all I need to know, though. Five or six feet in which direction?”

  “Hmm,” Grace said, probably because it’s what Rayleen always said at times like this.

  “I better go ask him.”

  “No!” Grace said. Well, she’d meant to say it, but ended up shouting it. “No, please don’t go knock on Billy’s door any more, please. He hates that.”

  She watched Mr. Lafferty’s eyes narrow, and she wasn’t sure what to make of that, but it seemed to have something to do with the look she’d seen on his face before he found out it was only somebody short knocking on his door.

  Why did everybody hate it when their door got knocked on? Grace thought she would like that. A new person, maybe, or a good surprise. She wondered if she would outgrow that openness when she got older, since it seemed everybody else had.

  Then Mr. Lafferty said, “Let’s try this. Why don’t you tell me what it’s going to be used for, and maybe that’ll help.”

  “Oh. Sure. It’s for a dance floor. Because I’m learning to tap dance.”

  “Ah,” Mr. Lafferty said. As if that explained a lot, as Billy would have put it. “So you need a sheet of wood. Like plywood. Like a big plywood square.”

  “Yeah!” Grace shouted, excited now. “That’s what he said! He said plywood, and he said either five feet square or six feet square!”

  “Sure,” Mr. Lafferty said. “I could do that.”

  “You could?”

  “Sure.”

  “Wow. I’m surprised.”

  “If you didn’t think I’d do it, why even come ask me?”

  “Well, it never hurts to ask.”

  “Where are your shoes?” he asked, with a little bit of an air of disapproving of things like that.

  “I left them down at Billy’s. I was wearing his tap shoes. I need to get my own tap shoes, though, because I can only use Billy’s when I’m at his place. I can’t take them home. And I really need to practice at home, and at Rayleen’s, because I’m not getting enough practice, and besides, they don’t really fit me right at all, but I don’t have the money for tap shoes, and I don’t think Billy or Rayleen do, either. And I know my mom doesn’t, so I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that, but if I had the wood, at least I could go back to practicing some. You know. Like, at all.”

  “Fine,” he said. As if that could be the end of the conversation.

  Grace just stood there. She wanted to ask, “When are you going to get the wood?” But it seemed rude. After all, he’d said he would, which was shocking enough, and it didn’t seem right to ask any more questions than that.

  “OK, thanks,” she said.

  Then she padded along the hall and down the stairs in her sock feet.

  She got down to the first floor just as Rayleen was leaving Billy’s. She ran into Rayleen out in the hall.

  “He said yes!” she screeched.

  “Really?”

  “Really! He said yes!”

  “Well, I’ll be damned. When is he going?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

  “Am I supposed to give him some money for it or something?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

  “What exactly did you ask?”

  “If he would do it. And he said yes!”

  Rayleen put a hand on Grace’s shoulder. She seemed to be feeling down, Grace noticed. She hadn’t seemed down when she came home, but now she was. Maybe she had caught it from Billy. And Billy had caught it from Grace. So maybe it was all her fault.

  “Come on inside,” Rayleen said to her. “I have to think of something to make us for dinner. I had a client cancel on me today, and another was a no-show, so we can’t afford to order out.”

  “Oh. That’s OK,” Grace said.

  “I’m not sure what we’ve got to eat.”

  “What about when Mr. Lafferty comes back with the wood? Do we have enough money for that?”

  “I have no idea,” Rayleen said. “I don’t even know what plywood costs.”

  But Grace could tell she was getting lower and more depressed.

  They went inside her apartment, and Rayleen rummaged around in the cupboard and the fridge.

  “I think it’s going to have to be cereal or eggs,” she said.

  “Oh. That’s OK,” Grace said.

  But it made her think again about this day sucking worse than most days, even if Billy didn’t think it sucked any more than any other. But then she reminded herself about the wood, and then she knew it wasn’t fair to think about it sucking, because it isn’t every day when somebody goes out and gets a dance floor for you.

  “Can we have both?” Grace asked.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Rayleen said it like she didn’t have any energy. Then she put crunchy oat cereal and an almost-empty carton of milk in front of Grace, and started breaking eggs into a bowl to scramble them, and she did all of it in that same way, like she didn’t have any energy.

  Grace poured a huge bowl of cereal, because there was lots, a whole box, but she only used a little milk, because she wanted to save some for Rayleen.

  Meanwhile Rayleen was standing at the stove, watching this over her shoulder.

  “You want more milk than that, don’t you?”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m just having scrambled eggs. But thank you. That was very nice.”

  “I can finish it? A
re you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” Rayleen said.

  And she didn’t say one other thing until quite a bit after she sat down at the table with two plates of scrambled eggs.

  “Is there any ketchup?” Grace asked.

  Rayleen got up and got her a bottle of ketchup out of the fridge.

  “Thanks,” Grace said, and started squeezing it over her eggs.

  And Rayleen said, “Whoa. That’s a lot of ketchup.”

  Then they just ate, and were quiet after that.

  • • •

  About fifteen minutes after they’d finished eating, right around the time Rayleen had the last of the dishes dried and put away, they heard a knock at the door.

  Grace ran and opened it, but there was nobody there.

  She stepped out into the hall, still in her three pairs of socks. She looked both ways, but the only thing she saw was a big piece of plywood. Very big. Taller than she was. It was leaning against the wall near Rayleen’s door.

  She turned to run inside, to tell Rayleen, but smacked right into her immediately.

  “Well, that was fast,” Rayleen said.

  “But a piece of wood can’t knock on the door,” Grace said.

  “I don’t think the wood knocked on the door. I think Mr. Lafferty knocked on the door and then left.”

  “Oh. Yeah. That does make more sense. What was I thinking, huh?”

  “I’m pretty sure you weren’t. You know what this means, don’t you?”

  Grace didn’t. But she knew by the tone of Rayleen’s voice that it wasn’t good. It seemed it must mean something very not good.

  “No. What does it mean?”

  “It means he did something nice for us. And so now we have to go tell him we appreciate it.”

  “Oh, is that all?”

  “Sounds bad enough to me.”

  “Want me to go alone?”

  “No. I’ll come. It won’t kill me to thank him, too. Besides, I probably need to pay him back for it.”

  “What if it’s more than you have?”

  “Cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “Right,” Grace said. “I still don’t know what that means.”