Last Dance

by Renee Fowler

  There were a whole bunch of them from when she was pregnant, all the same pose, her standing in front of the closet doors with her belly bared, growing bigger week by week.

  There was another bunch of the house’s progress. We got this place for next to nothing, and it was a wreck. The two of us did a lot of the work ourselves over the course of a few years, but we had family and friends help too.

  There were way more pictures of me than her. She liked to catch me unaware, yell “Surprise!” and shove the camera in my face.

  On our wedding day Claire almost didn’t look like herself, with straightened hair and perfectly applied makeup thanks to Jamie.

  Back and back it goes. I choke out a thick laugh. I’ll be damned. She did wear a pink dress once. I don’t know if it’s prom or homecoming. We went to a few of each.

  By the time I’ve poured through everything, I’m queasy drunk and it’s close to five in the morning. I shuffle the pictures into a jumbled pile, stagger to my feet, and collapse belly first on the bed stripped bare to the mattress. I’m out like a light.

  And then all around me it’s bright daylight. The sun is warm on the back of my neck. Claire is dangling above me in khaki shorts, a blue tank top, and her well worn, boots. Lines of cording cut in at the back of her thighs.

  My arms and legs are so much longer. I should be able to keep up with her, but she’s nimble and quick. Her eyes search out all those little nooks and jutting shelves of rock to hoist herself up by.

  “Claire, wait up.”

  “I’ll meet you at the top.”

  At the top of the summit, she’s climbing again, this time up a shoddy ladder, and she’s not wearing her boots. She’s in flip flops, and cut off jean shorts with frayed edges. I know exactly where that ladder leads. I’ve climbed it so many times. We both have for years, and when I get to the top, it’s fourteen year old Claire kneeling back on her heels so her head doesn’t scrape the ceiling. I kiss her for the first time. My first kiss ever. Her first kiss ever. My eyes drift closed as I taste cherry chapstick and Dr Pepper on her tongue.

  The wet warmth of her mouth is gone, and I open my eyes. Claire is in one of my old shirts at the bottom of our staircase, beckoning me with a crooked finger. When I get to the top, she’s not there, but I know right where to find her. She’s in our room, posed seductively along a sleeping bag on the floor. It’s the very first night in our very first house. She’s not wearing a thing except a little smirk, and the candle light bathes her skin in a beautiful glow. I stretch out beside her. Kissing her lips that taste like pizza sauce and beer, I let my eyes drift closed.

  When they open again, we’re still in our bedroom, this time in our bed. Early morning light filters through the sheet Claire has pulled over both our heads. Her eyes are puffy with sleep, and her blonde curls fall around my face like a veil. I want to stay cocooned in that nest of blankets, and her hair, and her scent, but she tugs on my hand, pulling me out of bed. “Come on. It’s time.”

  The hem of my shirt swishes around her knees, and her fingers twists between mine as she leads me out into the hall, but it’s not our hall anymore. Fluorescent lighting bounces off of overwaxed floors. As soon as I catch sight of where she’s leading me, I try to drag her back, but she’s too strong. My heels skid as Claire pulls me right up to the door.

  “Please don’t make me go in there.”

  Claire’s smile up at me is huge and radiant. “She’s almost here.”

  “I want to go back.”

  “Tough shit.”

  “I can’t do this again.”

  “It’s already done.”

  When I look up, I see she’s right. Claire is propped upright in bed, staring at nothing with vacant eyes. I see myself sitting on that little stool beside her hospital bed with Sarah in my arms. My face is a pale mask of shock.

  But Claire’s fingers are still warm and pressed against mine in the doorway. The Claire wearing my old shirt smiles up at me again, then back to the gruesome scene. “Look at what we made. She’s beautiful.”

  I don’t want to look because I know as soon as I take my eyes off the Claire beside me, she’ll be gone again.

  “Stop being a pussy and look, Jack.”

  I look, and it’s still me holding Sarah next to my dead wife, her dead mother. The Claire beside me gives my hand a gentle, reassuring squeeze, but when I turn to face her again, it’s Anna holding my hand. She’s wearing that red dress with the buttons, and those heels so we’re just about eye level. Her big, honey brown eyes are luminous with unshed tears.

  I twist around, looking for the Claire in my shirt, smiling Claire, living and breathing Claire, but she’s gone, and so is dead Claire, and Anna’s fingers slip through mine, and she’s gone too. It’s just me in the doorway, watching that other me crouched on the stool while I cradle my newborn daughter against my chest. But when I look close, I see I’m holding nothing but a balled up receiving blanket.

  Chapter 24

  Jack

  I wake up groggy, disoriented, suffering from an awful headache. My mouth is bone dry, and dust clings to the inside of my nostrils. I sneeze, and groan as it sets off a ricochet of pain through my throbbing skull. Squinting against the light pouring in through the partially opened blinds, I’m more than a little surprised to find myself in our old bedroom.

  I’m also surprised to see all the pictures I’d left scattered around the floor last night are stacked back inside those shoeboxes, and lying open on top of the dresser. There’s a small waste basket beside the bed lined with a plastic bag, which luckily I don’t feel the need for. Seeing that bottle of Jim Beam on the nightstand three fourths drained, it’s a miracle I don’t feel worse.

  As I slowly drag my sorry, hungover ass out of bed, bits and piece of that dream waft through my aching head. More trickle into my consciousness as I stand under the hot spray of the shower.

  Staring at my own haggard, bleary eyed reflection in the mirror as I brush my teeth, my thoughts shift to Jamie. My idiot sister has really gotten herself into a spot this time.

  I swallow back a few aspirin, wash them down with a cupped handful of tap water, and make my way downstairs. When I catch sight of Sarah playing quietly with her cat, I’m momentarily confused to see her in jeans and a sweater, then I look at the clock and groan. It’s almost three in the afternoon. She’s already been to church and back.

  I collapse on the couch beside her, and pull her up onto my lap.

  “Aunt Jamie said you were sick.”

  “I’m feeling a lot better,” I lie.

  “Are we still going climbing today?”

  I swallow back a groan.

  “We already talked about this. You can go another day, Sarah,” Jamie says, gliding into the living room. She thrusts a cup of coffee in my direction. “And I already called Anna, and told her you’d probably need to reschedule,” she informs me.

  “Thank you,” I say, but a simple thank you isn’t enough for everything Jamie does, and has done for me.

  Maybe this baby will be a good thing for her. My sister has always excelled at taking care of other people. Me, Sarah, that idiot she used to be married to. She doted on our father while he was still alive much the same way she does me that afternoon, bringing me water, peppermint tea, and an assortment of foods that she swears will cure a hangover.

  I call Anna to apologize, and she is nothing but understanding.

  How long is that understanding going to last? The therapist said there is no time limit on grief, but if she is a supposed expert, she should be able to at least give me a rough estimate, right?

  And there it is again, that punch of guilt to the gut. After all the years I knew Claire, everything she was to me, it seems wrong to try and rush through it.

  A few hours later, I start to feel almost human again, and I bundle Sarah up and we go out to grab a few things. Some photo albums to put those picture in, because Sarah should be able to look at them too, but I don’t trust her not to bend t
hem all up. She asks for an activity kit that includes colorful, beads and plastic floss. I’m quick to oblige since I didn’t take her rock climbing like I’d originally planned. As we’re heading back, I make one more quick stop to pick up some firewood and marshmallows for later.

  On a whim I text Anna and see if she’d want to come out for a boring evening out back. As I dig out the seldom used fire pit, preparing it for later, I pause to stare up at the two story brick. Claire painted the shutters that cerulean blue, and I hung them. We picked out the color together, and stained the deck together too, but it’s overdue for a fresh coat now.

  It’s too big for just Sarah and me, but Jamie’s here, and no matter what she says, I don’t expect her to leave so soon with a baby on the way. I don’t want her to. I couldn’t have done that last night without her.

  When Anna arrives, Jamie shows off her ultrasound picture with a proud grin, and the fact that my sister is going to be a mother starts to feel a little more real. Despite the less than ideal circumstances, Jamie seems so happy, and Sarah is ecstatic to learn she’s going to have a cousin.

  “That’s wonderful,” Anna says, with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, and somehow I know she’s thinking about the children she’ll never have thanks to that hit and run.

  How utterly and miserably unfair for her, and what I’m doing to her is unfair as well. We’re not just friends, but we’re not really together either. Thanks to me still needing to sort things out, we’re stuck in a quasi-relationship that I can’t even begin to explain out loud to anyone else.

  As far as everyone is concerned, we are together, and who could blame them for thinking it? My hand rests on the back of her neck while we stand in the kitchen, and her head falls against my shoulder briefly. Outside she stands close to me for warmth while we wait for the fire to catch, and my hand curls around her hip.

  Touching her like this feels natural. I’ve been drawn magnetically to her since the day we met, at first simply because she was beautiful, and she has grown only lovelier in my eyes the more I’ve gotten to know her.

  Sarah runs around excitedly, trips over her own feet, and pitches forward towards the recessed fire pit. I snag her up around her waist in the nick of time, and sit her on one of the benches I’ve dragged out into the yard. “Cool it, or you’re going to have to go inside with Aunt Jamie.”

  My sister had only lasted about ten minutes outside before declaring it too cold.

  Anna takes a spot beside her, and Sarah reaches up to run her fingers over Anna’s dark braid of hair dangling over one shoulder. “Can you fix my hair like this?”

  “Sure.” Anna prompts Sarah to stand in front of her. She combs her fingers through Sarah’s blonde hair, and separates it into three sections. Once she’s finished plaiting it neatly, she snags the elastic off the end of her own braid and twists it around the end of Sarah’s. “There you go.”

  Anna’s kindness and patience with Sarah tugs at something in my chest, and it makes me feel like utter shit all over again for the things I said to her that night. No, she would never be Sarah’s real mother, but the two have quickly built up a rapport. It is so blatantly obvious that Anna cares deeply for her, and Sarah adores Anna.

  Sarah beams, and climbs back up on the bench beside her, swinging her legs as she waits for me to strip the leaves off the slender switches I’ve collected from a bush near the back of the yard for the purpose of roasting marshmallows.

  “Is that safe?” Anna asks. At first I think she means Sarah standing close enough to the flame to dangle her marshmallow over the heat, then she continues. “It seems a little… unsanitary.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “I keep forgetting you’re a city girl. You’ve really never roasted marshmallows before?”

  Smiling, Anna shakes her head.

  “I have never heard of one person to get sick from it,” I say, and blow on the marshmallow I’ve just browned before handing it off to Anna.

  After a tiny pause, she pops it in her mouth, and moans lightly. “Why is it so much better that way?”

  “The fire makes it tasty.” Sarah waves her flaming marshmallow through the air like a torch, and I grab her wrist before she can burn herself.

  “Alright firebug. Enough of that.” I blow on her marshmallow to put out the flame, and continue blowing on it until it’s sufficiently cooled enough not to scorch her mouth.

  Sarah takes a tentative nibble, then makes a blech sound. “It tastes burnt.”

  “I wonder why.”

  She tosses the ruined marshmallow into the fire, and I help her roast the next one, and the next. Before long it’s full on dark, and she’s had her fill. She starts to get restless, and decides to go inside with Jamie.

  I take a spot on the padded bench beside Anna, and she lifts the fleece throw over both our legs. “Are you warm enough?” I ask, fitting my arm around her shoulders.

  Anna nods up at me. “Are you excited that you’re going to be an uncle?”

  “I think the news is still sinking in. I just found out last night.”

  “Sarah was thrilled. I thought she was going to break out into dance.”

  “Well, she does like to dance.” My smile quickly winks out. “Are you sad that you can’t have children?”

  Anna quirks her lips to the side while she considers. “A little. It’s so final now, but I had kind of already made my peace with it. Before Mikhail asked me to marry him, he was perfectly clear that we wouldn’t be having any.”

  “You were engaged?”

  She nods. “Briefly. Only for a few months, before the accident.”

  “And you were okay with that, just because he didn’t want to?”

  Anna shrugs. “I planned on dancing until I was thirty five, that’s what I hoped for anyways, and he would be sixty by then. It wouldn’t have been feasible.”

  Considering our current status as friends I don’t have much right to jealousy, but it still twists through my gut at the thought of Anna spending so much time with her former fiance in the near future. “You must have really loved him to sign up for all that. I mean, with the age difference, and giving up any chance of having a baby.”

  “I loved him,” she admits. “But that was a long time ago now, and after what a jerk he was, he made it pretty easy to stop loving him.” She laughs quietly, and shakes her head. “Why are we even talking about him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We should talk about you roasting me another marshmallow, because I’m really bad at it.”

  “It’s because you stick it right in the flame.” I whisk the blanket back, and prompt Anna to stand. She fits a marshmallow onto the end of the slender branch, and I stand behind her, guiding her hands. “You have to hold it just above the flames, and keep turning it.”

  The marshmallow ends up a bit overcooked because I’m distracted by her familiar, spicey vanilla scent mingling with woodsmoke. I think we’re both a little distracted as we settle back down on the bench, and snuggle up beneath the blanket.

  Anna gives a tiny, appreciative Mmm as the gooey, warm, sugar hits her tongue, and I have to make a conscious effort not to stare at her mouth as she chews slowly. My fingers find their way to her hair, unraveling that braid that is loose and nearly undone. She swallows, and wets her lips.

  “Jack, I’m so confused.”

  I don’t bother asking by what. I’m know exactly why she’s confused. I’m feeling very confused myself at the moment. “I’m sorry.”

  “I wish I understood how to help you, or… What are the rules here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  The firelight glows gold in her watery eyes. “You touch me, and look at me like… Sometimes I think you’re about to kiss me, and all I can do is… wait.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you, but I’m…”

  “You’re not ready,” Anna finishes for me.

  I nod my head slowly.

  “This is harder than I thought it would be. I’m not sure
if me being here is hurting, or helping you.” Anna sucks in a short, stuttering breath. “All I know is, it’s hurting me. Spending all this time together is hard because… Jack, I love you.”

  I open my mouth. I want to say it back to her, because I do love Anna, but suddenly I’m struck by the fact that we’re sitting beside a dwindling fire contained by a circle of creek rock that Claire and I gathered ourselves, and this was our thing. It almost feels like sacrilege to be sharing it with someone else.

  “I want to be here for you, but I have to protect myself too.” The tears welling up in her eyes spill over, and trail down her cheeks. “God, that sounds so selfish, but I need more than this.”

  “It’s not selfish, Anna. You deserve more than I can give you right now. You deserve everything, and I want to give that all to you, but…” I can’t. I’m stuck. I’m caught on a hamster wheel of grief that is endless and exhausting, and I don’t know how to stop. Sometimes I get so tired of running from it, I turn around and run straight to it. There’s almost a miserable comfort in living with Claire’s memory, which doesn’t make a bit of sense.

  “You just need more time.”

  Nodding, I blink at the moisture clouding my eyes, as I wipe away the tears on her face that I put there. I’m the one being selfish, and I refuse to say the words on the tip of my tongue, because they are nothing but pure selfishness.

  I need you.

  What I need is to keep seeing this shrink, because my head is a fucking mess. And I need to stop jerking Anna around, pulling her in, and pushing her away. I love her too much to keep hurting her. “I’m not ready, and I’m not sure when or if I ever will be ready. I’m not asking you to wait around on me, Anna. I won’t do that to you.”

  Her long, slender fingers circle warm around my wrists, and she pulls my hands off her face gently. “I’m going. Will you say goodbye to everyone for me?”

  I nod, and promise I will. Then I watch helplessly as she gets up and walks away.