by Tommy Hays
“Hey, Grover.”
“Emma Lee? Is that you?” She had her hair up and wore some old-fashioned-looking dangly earrings with purple stones that caught the light. She still had her coat on.
“You already forget me, Grover?”
“It’s just your hair and all is so …”
“Is so what?”
“How’d you get here?”
“Mama. She and Clay went Christmas shopping downtown.” She laid her hand on his sleeve. “I like your coat. You and Mira waltzed nice together.”
“The trick is to look into the person’s eyes,” Grover said. His and Emma Lee’s eyes met for a second. Then they turned back, watching the waltzers. Grover guessed most of the boys had discovered by now that dancing with girls was a lot better than dancing with sweaty boys in gym class. When the waltz was over, Ashley and Sam stopped right beside Grover and Emma Lee, as if Ashley had planned it that way.
“Hey, Emma Lee,” Sam said. “You made it! You look great!”
Ashley narrowed her eyes at Sam, then turned to Emma Lee. “How nice of you to come,” she said, like this was her house. “I love your hair up like that. Shows off your bone structure.” Grover couldn’t tell if Ashley meant it. From the way Emma Lee kept her eye on Ashley, Grover knew Emma Lee couldn’t tell either.
“Love the earrings too,” Ashley said, stepping up and slightly lifting one of them to see it better. “Are they costume?”
Emma Lee took a step back. “They’re my Nanna’s and they’re real amethysts,” she said, touching them protectively.
“Aren’t you burning up in that coat?” Ashley asked Emma Lee. “We’d like to see your dress.”
Emma Lee looked at the floor. “It’s just an old dress my Nanna gave me.”
“I’d love to see it,” Ashley said. “I love vintage.”
“Leave her alone, Ashley,” Sam said.
“I want to see her dress is all,” Ashley said. “Is that so terrible?”
“If she doesn’t want to take her coat off,” Sam said, “that’s her business. Come on, let’s waltz.”
“But …” Ashley began.
“I said let’s waltz!” Sam said in the firmest tone Grover’d heard him use. Even Ashley looked surprised. As the music started, he pulled Ashley onto the dance floor.
Emma Lee glared as they moved off into the crowd of dancers.
“Don’t pay her any attention,” Grover said. “She’s jealous.”
“Of what, Grover?” Emma Lee’s face flushed angrily. “Some redneck mountain girl who wears her grandma’s old dress to the school dance?”
“She’s jealous of the smartest, prettiest girl at the Isaac Claxton Elementary Christmas Waltz.” Grover rubbed his forehead. “I can’t believe I just said that.”
“You didn’t mean it?” Emma Lee asked, her mouth still set angrily.
“Oh, I meant it,” Grover said.
She studied him, then slowly smiled.
“Want to dance?” Grover asked.
“Okay,” she said. She hesitated as she started to unbutton her coat.
“You can dance with your coat on,” Grover said, “if you want.”
“It is hot as Hades,” she said, finishing unbuttoning her coat. “Would you help me off with this?”
Grover took her coat, draped it over one of the folding chairs against the wall.
She wore a wine-colored velvet dress that shimmered in the low light. Grover’d never known that a dress could be deep, but that’s what it was. It had a reddish luster the color of glowing coals. And the way Emma Lee had her hair up, her dark cheeks, her neck and the curve of her chest, all somehow picked up the luster of the dress, making her look lit from within. There was a word for being lit from within. They’d studied it earlier in the year. But he couldn’t remember it. All he knew was that the dress fit her in a way that made her more curved, like she’d grown ten years in the couple of weeks she’d been away.
Heads already turned. Grover and Emma Lee walked out onto the dance floor. Grover took her hand, and then put his other hand on the small of her back, like Mira had shown him. His hand sank into the soft velvet, and he could feel the hardness of her backbone beneath the tips of his fingers. He looked her in the eye.
“Daddy used to waltz with me when I was a little girl,” she said. “He used to put on this old song called ‘The Tennessee Waltz,’ and he’d waltz me around the front room with me standing on the tops of his feet. All I had to do was hang on.”
Grover began counting out loud to the music. “One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three.” Then they started, waltzing stiff at first. They stopped in the middle of the dance floor.
“I’m sorry,” Emma Lee said. “Daddy used to do all the work, I guess.”
“Look me in the eye.” Grover counted again and then they stepped off. They went slower than he and Mira had but it wasn’t long before the stiffness gave way to a floating feeling. The longer they danced, the more Grover could guide them around couples without looking away from her. It was strange how that worked. By looking deep into someone’s eyes, he could see the world around him.
The more they danced, the more Grover forgot the dancers on the dance floor, the musicians on stage, the parents and teachers serving food and drinks. As they circled and swayed, Grover felt alone with Emma Lee. They danced their way into a stillness Grover’d never known before.
It wasn’t till the waltz was over, and he looked around, that he realized people had stopped dancing to watch them. He saw Ashley and Sam on the edge of the crowd. Sam grinned. Ashley looked miserable. They’d hardly walked off the dance floor when Emma Lee was mobbed. It was Daniel Pevoe who she went back out onto the dance floor with.
Grover made his way through the crowd to the punch bowl.
“Emma Lee looks absolutely beautiful,” Miss Snyder said, ladling punch into a cup and handing it to him. “You two make a handsome couple, Grover.”
Grover couldn’t get near Emma Lee for the rest of the first half of the dance. At the break Emma Lee came up, grabbed his hand and started to lead him out through the gym door but stopped when Mrs. Dillingham came up.
“Emma Lee,” she said. “So good to see you! How’s school up in Bakersville?”
Emma Lee shrugged. “I miss Claxton.”
“Well, you’re welcome anytime,” she said, then she turned to Grover. “I had no idea you were such a Fred Astaire, Grover.”
When Mrs. Dillingham disappeared into the crowd, Emma Lee motioned Grover to follow her through the gym door and into the lobby. Checking to make sure no one saw them, they passed the one-room infirmary, Miss Snyder’s office and Mrs. Dillingham’s office. They hurried past the cafeteria, where they heard teachers and volunteer mothers preparing trays of food. They walked quickly up to the second floor, and then to the third. Their footsteps echoed down the hallway. They had the whole third floor to themselves.
“I don’t think we’re supposed to be up here,” Grover whispered.
Emma Lee tried Mrs. Caswell’s door and found it unlocked.
“What are we doing?” Grover asked.
She opened the door and went inside and, after a minute, he followed her. She turned on the lights, and they walked up and down the rows of empty desks. Emma Lee sat in her old desk, and he sat in his. The radiators knocked and hissed.
“Claxton feels different at night.” Emma Lee walked to the front of the room, tracing her finger across Mrs. Caswell’s desk. Heavy footsteps came down the hall.
Grover turned off the lights, and they crouched by the door, peeking through the window that looked out onto the hall. The footsteps were getting louder. Emma Lee pulled Grover down beside her, and they both crouched underneath the window, praying it wasn’t Mrs. Caswell. The footsteps passed, and they peeked through the window to see the back of Miss Shook. They heard her stomp into her classroom next door, rummage around, and then come back out and walk past them again. She carried a stapler. They crouched at the door until
they couldn’t hear her footsteps anymore.
“We ought to get out of here before somebody catches us,” he said.
Emma Lee had walked over to the row of windows that looked outside. “Nobody else will come,” she said. “Look.”
He got up and, glancing back toward the door, walked over to her. Out the window, they could see downtown laid out before them—the glowing streetlights, the warm squares of window light from apartments, stores and restaurants, and the winking Christmas lights the city had wound around and up into the trees.
“It’s like there’s light coming up from underneath the city,” Grover said, “leaking out from all the windows. It looks …”
“… incandescent,” Emma Lee said.
That was the word, Grover thought. Incandescent was the word he’d been trying to think of when he’d been thinking of how Emma Lee looked tonight in her dress.
“Who’s Fred Astaire?” Grover asked.
“A famous dancer,” Emma Lee said. “He’s in old movies my grandmother likes.”
They heard Mr. Godleski’s band start up somewhere down below.
“We better go,” Grover said.
“Just a minute more.” Emma Lee reached for his hand and turned back to the window. He stood there looking down on a place he’d lived all his life but, until tonight, had never really seen.
Emma Lee was mobbed by boys. Grover watched her waltz away with Morgan King, a stout, red-faced boy who could beat anybody in the hundred-yard dash. When the waltz was over, Grover climbed the steps to the stage and found Mr. Godleski tuning his bass.
“Mr. Godleski, can your band play ‘The Tennessee Waltz’?” he asked.
Mr. Godleski looked at the other men tuning their instruments. “What do you think, boys?”
“If I can remember how it goes,” said the bald fat man who played the fiddle. He scratched his head.
“Yeah, if we can remember how it goes,” said the long-faced piano player, who stroked his chin. They were fighting off smiles.
“We’ll save it for the last,” Mr. Godleski said. “That’ll be a good one to go out on.”
“If we can remember how it goes,” said the fiddle player.
The three men laughed as Grover headed back down.
For the rest of the evening, Grover couldn’t get near Emma Lee for everybody wanting to dance with her. Mira tapped his shoulder, smiling.
“You’ve caught on quick,” Mira said as they waltzed around the room.
“Dancing with girls is better than dancing with Chris Norris or Bill Parks.”
She threw back her head and laughed. When she did, he glimpsed the pink of her tongue and the red of her throat and it made something stir below. A stiffness that he’d been feeling more often. Luckily the waltzing helped it go back down.
Grover waltzed with a couple of other girls, but mostly he stood by the punch bowl, watching Emma Lee waltz. Sam came up to him.
“How’d you get away from Ashley?” Grover asked.
“Told her I was going to the bathroom,” he said, looking over his shoulder.
“Why don’t you dance with somebody else?” Grover asked.
“I don’t feel like it,” Sam said.
“You like Ashley,” Grover said accusingly.
“What if I do?”
“She is pretty,” Grover said. “When you subtract her personality.”
Sam saw Ashley coming toward him and darted off toward the boys’ bathroom. After a couple more waltzes, Mr. Godleski stepped up to the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll wind up the eighty-ninth Isaac Claxton Christmas Waltz with a special request.”
Grover made his way across the crowded gym floor in the direction of Emma Lee. The band played the melody a couple of times through and then Mr. Godleski stepped up to the microphone and started singing in his high, nasally voice.
Grover needn’t have worried about Mr. Godleski knowing the words. He sang it like he’d sang it hundreds of times before, like the words were part of him. It was a song about someone remembering the night of a dance when he lost his girlfriend to an old friend he’d introduced her to. As Mr. Godleski sang, Grover imagined Emma Lee as a little girl riding her father’s feet, squealing and laughing, while he danced her around the grandmother’s cabin. Then he thought how neither father nor daughter could’ve known what was coming to change everything. Even good memories had a sadness to them, because they were memories.
After Mr. Godleski had sung the song through one time, he stepped back from the microphone and rejoined the band as they played through the melody again. Grover dodged through the dancing couples but didn’t see Emma Lee anywhere. He was running out of time. The song would be over before he could get to her. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. Emma Lee held out her arms and they began to waltz. As they danced around the gym floor, Grover saw her eyes were glistening.
“Thank you,” she said.
They danced around the gym floor, having to go much slower with all the couples crowding the floor. Mr. Godleski stepped up to the microphone and sang the song again. This time, he sang it a little slower, a little sadder, and Grover thought it was one of the most beautiful songs he’d ever heard. As Mr. Godleski sang the words, Now I know just how much I have lost, Grover looked into Emma Lee’s eyes, thinking about this girl who, after the Christmas Waltz, would be gone. But the dancing didn’t let him stay in his head. The weight of Emma Lee in his arms as they circled the floor, the press of her back against his hand, the warmth of her other hand in his, all kept him firmly in the gym. Moving across the crowded floor, Grover felt more with her than he’d ever felt.
“What wonderful music.” Mrs. Dillingham had climbed on stage and was speaking into the microphone. “Please join me in giving Buncombe Turnpike a hand.” The gym thundered with applause and whistles as Mr. Godleski and the other men bowed.
Grover and Emma Lee stood looking at each other. Then they started out of the gym together and into the lobby, where parents were waiting to pick up their kids.
“Doesn’t Sis look like a movie star?” Clay said, coming up.
“There they are.” Leila gave Grover a hug. “Don’t you look handsome?”
“How’s the Bamboo Forest?” Clay asked. “Any new weavings?”
“A few,” Grover said.
“A few?” Sudie’d walked in with their father. “He’s made a whole hallway.”
Sudie and Clay moved off by themselves, talking a mile a minute.
Their father talked to several parents in the crowd and then made his way over to them. Their father stopped smiling when he saw Leila, and Leila did the same.
“I didn’t know y’all were coming,” their father said to Leila.
“Emma Lee promised Grover,” Leila said.
“It’s good to see you,” their father said to Leila.
“Sorry we missed y’all when you came up to Roan Mountain,” she said.
“We were already up that way getting a tree,” his father said.
“You’ll have to bring the kids up again,” Leila said. “Maybe they could spend a night with us.” Leila looked at their father, then looked away. “Well, I guess we better get on back up the mountain.”
“Right,” his father said.
“Could we go for hot chocolate?” Clay asked.
“I’ve got to get up pretty early tomorrow,” Leila said.
“Come on, Mama,” Clay said. “Can’t we visit a little bit?”
“I’m not even sure where we could get hot chocolate this time of night,” their father said.
“Bean Streets,” Sudie said.
“What do you think, Leila?” their father asked.
Leila glanced at Clay and Emma Lee, then looked back at their father. “Oh, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to get back a little later.”
“Yes,” Clay said.
“But we can’t stay long,” she said.
They started out the front door but Emma Lee stopped. “My coat.”
“I�
�ll get it.” Grover trotted back into the gym. Most of the kids were gone. Miss Snyder, Mrs. Dillingham and a couple of teachers were carrying food and punch back to the kitchen. Mr. Godleski and his band were packing up. Grover found Emma Lee’s coat draped over the same chair he’d put it on. He was heading back when he spotted Sam leaning against the wall.
“Where’s Ashley?” Grover asked.
Sam nodded toward the girls’ restroom. “She went in there with a couple of her friends. What all do girls do in the restroom anyway?”
Grover shrugged.
“I can’t believe Emma Lee came all the way down from Bakersville to dance with you,” Sam said. “I saw you dance with Mira a couple of times too. You danced with the two prettiest girls in the whole place.” Sam nodded at the coat in Grover’s hands. “That’s Emma Lee’s, isn’t it?”
“We’re going to Bean Streets with her family,” Grover said.
Sam put his hand on Grover’s shoulder. “When it comes to advice about girls, next time I’m coming to you.”
They heard girls’ voices coming out of the bathroom.
“Uh-oh,” Sam said.
“See you later,” Grover said.
“Have fun for the both of us,” Sam called after him.
Just before the gym door closed after him, Grover heard Ashley say, “What was that supposed to mean, Sam? Don’t you have fun with me? You better have fun with me.…”
Bean Streets was so crowded that after they got their hot chocolates they had to wait for tables to clear. A good many people were dressed up like they’d been to a concert or a play. Some Claxton kids from the Christmas Waltz were there with their parents. Then there were the usual hippie-ish tattooed dreadlocked quasi street people, whose dogs, tied up outside, pawed at the window.
Grover couldn’t walk into Bean Streets anymore without checking for Matthew. In fact he couldn’t go by Riverside or ride the bus downtown or even walk down his street without checking for him. He hadn’t seen him once since the night his father had told him Matthew had been the driver. It made him wonder if somehow Matthew knew he knew and was avoiding him.