Dancing Hours

by Jennifer Browning

  After hearing Nan’s story about Mrs. Merchant, I thought she might be upset if I took cooking lessons and spent so much time over at her house, but Nan was full of surprises.

  “You should never let my opinions be your opinions without giving someone a try. Some people just don’t get on and just because I think she’s a mean-spirited, small-minded, small town bully doesn’t mean she won’t be nice to you. You’re not me, Andrea, and don’t ever forget it.” She announced.

  “OK” I said, a little surprised.

  “Besides, that woman sure does know how to cook. It’d be nice if she taught you her peach cobbler recipe.” Nan said appearing to drift off into daydreaming about food.

  6

  The first time I met Noah was at a party towards the end of June. He had made friends easily in town – especially with some of the other girls. He spent a lot of time playing basketball with a group of guys on the high school court. I’d seen him there a few times and other places, but I never had the nerve to approach him and he’d never been at Mrs. Merchant’s house when I went for cooking lessons.

  The party was in full swing when I got there with Kate – who had convinced me to wear shorts a little shorter than I liked and a shirt that made me look more developed than I really was. Thankfully, I had a comfortable pair of wedge sandals that matched because my tennis shoes would have looked a little ridiculous. In spite of my outfit, I was comfortable. Part of the reason I wanted to go away to college… okay, the whole reason, was my too comfortable life. I’d walked the same streets and known the same kids my whole life. Sometimes new people moved to town or old friends left, but the landscape of my life remained largely unchanged. Both boys I’d kissed were at this party – all three if you counted Jeff Brooks who I kissed on a dare when I was 8. No one here was a danger to me or each other. The Seymour twins occasionally graffiti’d a building or mailbox out of boredom, but the harsh realities of big cities rarely touched my town. When they did, it was big news and the church folks and city council families watched the suspected offenders in the time honored small-town tradition of guilty until proven otherwise. It was a suffocating condition that Nan seemed to understand best. She’s the only one who encouraged my goal to explore outer space, so to speak; but even she didn’t want me to move away.

  I had a great desire to be uncomfortable and so the outfit felt like a good step. Meeting Noah was just another stone on the path. He was in the game room at the back of the house. After wandering through a sea of familiar faces, I gravitated to the room where I knew Shane’s mother kept a collection of postcards from foreign cities. I’d been there a hundred times it seemed, looking at faded photographs of cobblestone streets and enormous high rise buildings. Of all the pictures I’d seen of the Eiffel Tower, the one from her postcard collection was the most familiar. Someday I would see it for myself, from a different angle.

  Both Seymours, who I referred to in my head as Thing 1 and Thing 2, were there playing pool. Noah was in the corner waiting his turn with two girls from the other high school. They were smiling excessively at him and cradling half-empty wine coolers. Varying levels of interest were expressed at my presence and I muttered a general ‘Hey’ to the room before going to the bookshelf next to the bar and plucking my favorite album out.

  I felt overly conscious of him, like I could feel him across the room. He was behind me, but the little hairs on my neck felt like he was watching. Before long, it was his turn to shoot and the cue ball was on my side of the table. He walked behind me, a little too closely I hoped, to line up his shot. I faded off behind the bar where I knew I wouldn’t be considered in the way. I laid the album down and faced the room, looking at postcards from Rome, Italy. From somewhere on the edges of my consciousness, I could hear the girls congratulating Noah for cleaning the table and Thing 2 groaning. Maybe he’d lost a bet on that game. Kate appeared beside me, wrapped an arm through mine and chided “This is supposed to be a party Andy! Put away the books.” I blushed, thankful for the dark room. Noah was suddenly on the opposite side of the bar “Yeah, Andy, it’s a party.” I had no choice but to look him in the eye, but my thudding heart made it very difficult. I smiled and looked around “So it is.”

  “I finally meet the famous Andy.”

  “Not yet. Hey, I’m Andy. And you are?”

  “Noah.”

  “Well, Noah, now you’ve met the famous Andy.”

  I felt stupid for trying to be funny. I was a lot of things: smart, nice, maybe a little old fashioned… funny was not one of my things. Making jokes was great when it worked, but most of the time it didn’t and came off sounding like a middle class suburban kid using urban street slang. It just didn’t fit.

  Noah smiled charitably anyway. His smile was electric. I noticed the lines of his face, the light stubble, a dimple on his cheek. I could see a resemblance to David – his eyes and nose, the angles of his jaw; but he was shorter and more muscular. He had a strong, sexy presence. I’d never thought of anyone as sexy before. Boys my age were awkward, not fully grown into their own skin. I knew that Noah was only a year older, but something about him was different and set me on fire.

  “I’ve been at your house a lot lately. I wondered when I would meet you.”

  “It’s not my house.” The irritation was plain in his voice.

  “Oh, no, well I mean your grandmother’s house.” I stammered. “She’s been teaching me how to cook. You’re lucky to have a good cook in the family. My mom and Nan can’t heat a frozen pizza without calling the fire department.”

  A laugh, that was good. Maybe I wasn’t a complete dork.

  He asked what I was looking at and I showed him the postcards. To his credit, he feigned interest for at least 30 seconds. I felt a little embarrassed to have this outsider observing my secret fascination. I closed the album and pointed out that Thing 1 was racking the table again. When he looked away, I moved out from behind the bar and headed for the door. “Hey wait.” I felt his hand on my shoulder and it sent a shockwave through me. I turned to face Noah and he dropped his hand, to my disappointment. “My brother said you offered to babysit Jessica sometime.”

  “Yeah, of course, anytime.”

  “That’s really nice, thank you.” he sort of muttered.

  “No problem.” A pause. “Why… Did you have sometime in mind?”

  “No… he never takes a break. Me? I’m always taking breaks. My whole life is a party.” He gestured to the open space around us. He was both joking and serious.

  He played another game of pool while I talked about prom and graduation stories in the kitchen, then he was suddenly there next to me again. I imagined he was looking for some common ground to join the conversation, but didn’t find any and left. The next time I saw him, he was making out with the frizzy-haired brunette. He didn’t seem to notice me. My mood slumped, but I found myself watching the way he moved, the rhythm of his head and neck with hers and imagined what it felt like.

  Embarrassed again, I walked past to the pool outside where Kate and most of the football team and cheerleaders had congregated to drink and swim. Kate offered me a beer from the keg and I hesitated, as always. This time, though, I decided I might want a beer and I accepted. It tasted terrible, but that seemed appropriate considering how I felt. Within a few minutes, I felt warm. I was tall, but thin and lightweight in every sense of the word. Conversation was sparse out there. Most of the good old days of high school had been relived. Someone suggested playing spin the bottle – a time honored tradition amongst lubricated teenagers. Kate wanted to play, but even when I was in a good mood I thought it was a childish game. She prodded me with “What if I get Noah out here?” The girl knew me too well.

  “He’s already playing his own game inside.” I responded acidly.

  “That’s not what it looks like to me” she teased.

  I followed her eyes to the doorway where Noah stood leaning, looking strikingly like an underwear model with clothes on. He raised his drink to me when our
eyes met before gulping it down. He moved easily to set the glass on the patio table next to me, then sat the wrong direction on the lounger and faced me. I must have appeared startled.

  “Did I scare you?” He asked seriously. I laughed.

  “It takes a lot to scare me.” I said. He laughed too.

  “Is that so?”

  Feigning mysteriousness as well as I could manage, I told him that I had stared death in the eye and spit for good measure. He looked like he didn’t believe me, but he also looked truly curious. I told him the most dramatic childhood story I had – the story of how I missed 3 weeks of kindergarten thanks to meningitis. The way my mom tells it I woke up fine one morning then I threw up out of nowhere. I went from a regular temperature to 105 degrees in an hour and I kept throwing up. By the afternoon, I was complaining that my back and head hurt and the light was burning my eyes. Three hours later I was screaming bloody murder when they placed the IV at the hospital and then slumped over like a ragdoll. I saw a bright white light… but it was in the exam room when they did a spinal tap.

  Noah was listening, but he was also far away somewhere. I reflected on how grateful I was for my mom’s “overreaction” as my dad called it. In a competition between science and mother’s intuition, I’d go with intuition any day. Unfortunately, it meant repeating Kindergarten, but it rarely bothered me that I was the oldest kid in my class.

  I had stopped talking, but Noah didn’t seem to notice. I waited a respectable time before asking if he was still there. He said it was a good story, but he could do one better. He explained that he’d started being a troublemaker in early high school. He blamed his brother a little for always getting good grades and volunteering for projects. They were only 17 months apart in age and teachers remembered David and expected Noah to be responsible like him.

  “He’s a little like you; born at the age of 35. Never a kid, you know?”

  I didn’t and I was a little offended. How could he presume to know me so well already?

  So Noah rebelled and did things he shouldn’t have. He got into trouble when he was only fifteen. “You know what I’m talking about right?”

  “Yes.” I agreed, but I had no idea what he was talking about. I didn’t want to seem naïve about whatever it was he was talking about, but the most trouble I ever got into was when I forgot to call my parents to tell them I was sleeping at Kate’s house. They grounded me for a week and then got me a cellphone so they could always call me if they wanted to. Overall, it was a pretty weak punishment. So I could only speculate about Noah’s trouble. I made it a point not to judge people on past behavior and only on what I knew of them. Nan and I had that in common.

  He told me a story about when he first learned to drive. He and a buddy stole some motorcycles and drove up the coast of California. It was going great, but on the way back down the mountains on the winding 101 they became convinced an officer was following them. They raced down, but his friend lost control and crashed into the rocks. At first Noah didn’t stop. He figured his friend would have a nasty case of road rash and spend a few nights in juvie, but something made him go back. There was no cop, just Jimmy on the road in bad shape. Noah managed to keep him from getting hit. Some drivers stopped and called for an ambulance, got a blanket for Jimmy and waited until the EMTs arrived.

  Noah disappeared when the grown-ups seemed to have it under control. He ditched the bike, but got picked up later, he said. “And they threw me in with the murderers and stuff.”

  I knew my eyes were giving me away, but I had never heard such a story.

  “Jimmy had lost too much blood and his skull was fractured. He didn’t make it.”

  Noah did time for the theft and got branded. His mom started drinking again; his father stopped caring and took off and David started taking care of everything. He stopped talking after a long while.

  He said. “I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that story.”

  I felt a swirl of tipsy emotion – elated that he’d let me into a private world, sad that he’d gone through that, respect and admiration for David and an overwhelming contentment with my own small town life. When he was done talking, but before I could talk about much of anything else, frizzy haired girl plopped next to him. We had been talking for close to an hour. Noah sat up and I realized we had been leaning toward one another. Frizzy hair turned his face to kiss her and placed a hand aggressively on his thigh and demanded to go now. They both looked at me – one with clear disdain, the other with an unreadable expression. As they got up to go, I asked him if he was okay to drive. Noah’s model-smile spread as he beamed “Absolutely! This ain’t my first rodeo.” He slapped frizzy hair’s butt hard enough to hurt and they were off.

  “Nice to meet you.” I called politely after him.

  He turned, his arm still around frizzy hair. “I’ll see you soon, hot stuff.”

  7

  I felt flushed the next morning, thinking about my talk with Noah. I knew that I was infatuated from the moment I saw him drive into town. I was caught in the place where you like a guy and he’s clearly interested in someone else, but you convince yourself that you shared an intimate moment and that he must feel a deep emotional connection to you that he can’t possibly feel with her. This is very likely what all mistresses feel when they are told how the wife never understood him and he’s a very deep complex soul, but she berates him and tears him down and he’s going to leave her, he just can’t do it right now because of some lame excuse.

  The problem with this emotion is that it is so lacking in rationality that there’s no way to disprove it’s truth. I thought he might be my soulmate. I’d never had one before.

  Days went by and Noah didn’t call. Of course not, he didn’t have my number. I threw myself into work and volunteering for the next week. I covered three extra classes for Miss Celia and spent extra hours after class practicing the routines, trying new things. It was a welcome distraction. I’d forgotten how much I loved to dance. It was those hours dancing that helped me lose myself, forget where I was and who I was. Music could be a friend or a lover, could help me wallow or forget. There was a song for any mood.

  I visited Mrs. Merchant for cooking lessons in July; Noah wasn’t there. Maybe he was embarrassed about what he told me. David was always there on my visits. He was grateful about the tip on the indoor playground because he got a job as an assistant manager at one of the stores in the mall. Jessica was always happy to see me too. We learned together and we played together and we talked about how excited we both were to go to school next year. Sometimes David would let me take her to the studio after our cooking lesson. There were no classes that time of day, but I had a key and I gave Jessica her own lessons while David worked out across the street. She loved to dance too, but girls her age get bored with too much strict teaching so we did a lot of “pretend ballet.”

  Sometimes I looked at Jessica and wondered what her mother looked like. Was Jessica a miniature version of her? Jessica didn’t seem overly tall for her age, so I wondered if her mother was short. Did her mother have that smile, that laugh? I felt sad for her not to have that friendship with her mother. I tried to imagine Mrs. Merchant explaining the birds and bees or talking to her about boys and the image wouldn’t fully form. Then I remembered my talk with my own mother – embarrassing and awkward, sure, but better than nothing. Would I know her long enough to be like a big sister? No, I was sure that David would find someone – someone who loved him and Jessica – and maybe I wouldn’t be so much fun anymore. Or maybe her mother would come back. It was hard to imagine a mother leaving her child, but she must have had her reasons. Maybe this was one of those things I was too young to understand.

  At the playground, she was just like every other kid in town – whooping and hollering and acting like her hair was on fire half the time. I called her over when her cheeks got too pink and gave her some water.

  “You’re sweating up a storm.” I observed.

  “Why am I sweating up a
storm?”

  “Because you’re playing in the heat.”

  “No I’m not!” she laughed as though I said something silly. “I’m playing in the playground!” she jutted out her chin and made a funny face.

  “Fair enough” I conceded. “Play away.”

  Every minute I spent with Jessica, I admired David a little more. It was a tough task raising a child alone… far tougher when that child is as busy and willful as Jessica was.

  Jessica was registered for Kindergarten at the elementary school and I told her Mrs. Thomas had been my Kindergarten teacher too. She seemed astonished that her teacher would be as old as a dinosaur. I wondered how old she thought I was. I received my dorm assignment and roommate information. My scholarship, grants and loans were all set. Now all I had to do was wait.

  After David started working he relaxed a little bit. He joked and laughed and played with us sometimes.