Tiny Dancer

by Patricia Hickman

  He finally got ahold of himself, drying his eyes with a hanky. He said, “Just tell me when you’re ready. I’m glad you’re going to see the Johnsons. I know they’ll be a comfort to you.”

  Irene met me at the doorway. She put her arms around me, holding on to me. “We’re glad you’re here.”

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel,” I said. “It’s not like when Siobhan died.”

  “Claudia, why don’t you find an old movie for you and Flannery to watch. I’ll make you girls some Jiffy-Pop.”

  I sat next to Claudia on the sofa. She combed through my tangled hair. I had not touched it all morning. Being up all night waiting for the tornadoes to tool out of the county left me sleepy. I laid my head against Claudia and slept through the movie.

  When I woke up Claudia and Irene stared down at me sympathetically.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, wiping spit from my cheek.

  “Flannery, I’m just so sorry,” said Claudia.

  “Your father’s called. I told him you were resting. He asked me to tell you as soon as you woke up,” said Irene.

  She didn’t have to tell me. I already knew what it felt like for a soul connected to you your whole life to leave you. I knew Alice had left me when the cops first told me the bridge had collapsed. “They found her,” I said with resignation. It was not the first time Alice left me, of course. But it was different. This time she had given me a proper good-by. She had taken off those heavy stones laid on top of me since age four.

  “That’s not all,” said Claudia. “Daddy’s on his way here.”

  “He sounded awful,” said Irene, although she didn’t seem so bothered by the fact. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Maybe his girlfriend kicked him out,” said Claudia. “One can only hope.”

  Irene was up out of her chair, calling out for Saffron to put on a pot roast.

  Claudia watched her mother bustle out of the living room with the first light of hope in her eyes. “She shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” said Claudia, her voice flat. “He’s probably coming back for his golf shirts.”

  I only knew I had to head Dwight Johnson off at the door. The chain of events unfolding these past few hours threatened to collide.

  Claudia held out a box of tissues.

  “You keep them,” I said. “You might need them.

  * * * * *

  Dwight said very little to Irene or Claudia. He lit a pipe, something I had never seen him do. He parked his sorry self in one of their Adirondack chairs at the edge of the lawn out back. He sat in the shade of the trees and watched golfers pass by.

  Irene kept finding reasons to go out onto the screened in deck. Claudia and I knew she was looking for reasons to observe him, look for any signs that he was coming back to her. He gave her none.

  She gave up and retired to her room.

  Saffron made the roast. We stared at it while she plated it, arranging potatoes in a circle. “I guess dinner is ready,” said Saffron.

  “I’ll go fetch Mother,” said Claudia.

  Finally Saffron said, “Mr. Johnson might like a martini.” She handed it to me. “I’m afraid I’ll say something I wish I hadn’t said. Poor Mrs. Johnson has cried her eyes out over that man. He don’t deserve such a good woman.”

  “You’re right about that,” I said. I accepted the task. When I walked up on him, he sensed my presence although he didn’t look up at me. “You know what’s so interesting about a storm?” he asked.

  I did not answer him.

  “It blusters in like a big old buffalo, you know, all thunder and raising sand. Then it leaves and takes every cloud out of the sky. Everything is clear,” he said.

  “I hope everything is clear,” I said.

  “It is,” he said.

  “Saffron asked me to bring you a drink,” I told him. I set it on the arm of his chair. “Dinner’s ready too, Sir.”

  “You are a dear young woman,” he told me.

  “I need to ask you something, Mr. Johnson.”

  He took a draw on his pipe. “Ask away.”

  “I know about the woman you’ve been seeing, the dancer at the club.”

  The pause between us caused him to shift in his chair.

  “I heard about your little jaunt to the Gentlemen’s Pleasure. You are a caution. I never saw you that night either. You could work in espionage, you know.”

  “Truthfully, I never saw you either. I wasn’t there to see you.”

  He looked curiously up at me. “Before you say anything you might regret, may I tell you that my lady friend died in last night’s bridge accident?” He paused. “Are you the daughter of Alice Curry?”

  “You know my mother then?”

  “Knew of her.”

  “Please don’t tell Irene or Claudia. I don’t want them to hate me.”

  His odd smile amazed me. I was surprised he could smile at all.

  “Please tell me, Sir,” I said, “Did you love her? Did you treat her well?”

  “Who?”

  “My mother, Alice Curry.”

  He looked as if he was getting some clarity, although any sane reasoning completely eluded me.

  “You think that your mother and I—” , he paused, making some back and forth motions with his hands.

  “Weren’t you?”

  He shook his head. “My lady friend was in the car with your mother. Her name was Talia Simmons. Your mother knew a man, but Talia said she had left him. She had left the club too. It all happened quickly. Sometime this morning I put it all together when I saw your name as Alice Curry’s next-of-kin in the paper.”

  I could not recall Talia Simmons. She could have been the dancer standing with Alice outside the club my first night I spotted them. Or maybe she was the woman knocking on my mother’s door. One thing was certain, Alice Curry did not break up Irene Johnson’s marriage.

  He emptied his pipe onto the ground. “Your mother was turning her life around so she could be with you.”

  “That’s what she told me.”

  “She must have loved you very much.”

  My tears finally came. I backed away from him. Before I left him, I said, “Mr. Johnson, you have everything that you need.”

  “I’ve worked hard, I’ll admit,” he said.

  “I’m not finished. You have everything you need in Irene and Claudia. You could lose your house, your property—that boat—but those two women are yours as long as you just love them as they deserve.”

  He stared at a passing group of golfers. By the time he looked back, I was inside.

  Irene came out of her bedroom. “The roast smells good. Did he give you any indication of what’s going on?”

  “I can’t say exactly, but something tells me he’s come back to you. But if I were you, I’d tell him to take his time, give you time to heal.”

  “Listen to this young one,” said Saffron. “She’s got it all going on.”

  * * * * *

  Back home I received a call from a woman calling herself an attorney, name of Florence Grigsby. She told me I needed to pay her a visit after I had settled upon Alice’s funeral arrangements. I did not know how I would pay for any of it.

  Florence said, “Miss Curry, I can tell you to proceed. Your mother’s estate will cover the cost of her interment.” She knew the small details of Alice’s last wishes. “She gave specific instructions, asking that a Reverend Theo Miller officiate at her service. She wanted to be interred in Zion Presbyterian Cemetery.”

  “Ma’am, that’s a black’s cemetery,” I told her. “And a black minister.”

  “I know.”

  Zion Presbyterian was the small church Theo had shepherded for all those years after he and Dorothea had returned from the Outer Banks. Alice and I had not discussed my relationship with the Millers. That thought ran round my head never landing in any rational way.

  Billy delayed his trip to Europe, telling Daddy he wanted to chauffer me anywhere I needed to go. We drove t
o the funeral home and then to the florist’s where I picked out a spray.

  “Let’s go for ice cream,” he said as we walked from under the shade of the shop’s awning.

  We crossed the street to the Corner Ice Cream Parlor.

  We picked up our cones and took them outside to a bench. I said, “Since Alice Curry is gone. I have a right to know any secrets you’ve kept from me.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “I agree and that’s why I asked to help you out. I feel as if I’m somehow helping Alice by helping you. I only know because my father knew her. Daddy fixed everyone’s cars so he knew everything about everyone.”

  “If this is about Vesta and Daddy and their affair, I know now,” I said.

  “You know?”

  “If that’s the scandal you talked about, yes, I know.”

  “That’s not what I meant. But, yes, that was a scandal. After your daddy married Vesta, they settled into life as if they had always been together. You were too young to understand so they had a baby and made the best of it.”

  He baffled me. “If that’s not the scandal, then what?”

  “Your mother was secretly engaged. It was before she ever met Flynn. Matter of fact, everyone knew that Flynn Curry was her rebound.

  Billy talked and I listened for the next hour.

  Alice met a young man the summer after she graduated high school. They met at a downtown street dance. She was out with her friends slipping booze into her soft drink. Alice’s mother was on her all of the time wanting her to better herself. But she was boy crazy. The more she was nagged, the wilder she got.

  A young man flirting with her got too friendly. She had had too much to drink and he took advantage. He separated her from her friends and led her down an alley. That was when a young man heard her yelling for help. He ran into that alley and punched out that guy. He led Alice back to her friends. That would have been the end of it. But Alice was vulnerable. She grew up with a single mother and no daddy, no one to look out for her best interests.

  She went after that young man. But his family was against it.

  “What was his name?” I asked Billy.

  “I never knew his name,” he said. “His family tried to break them up. Alice schemed, begging him to run away to Ohio and marry her.”

  “Why Ohio, I wonder?” I asked.

  “Different sensibilities, I would assume,” said Billy.

  “She was poor, he was rich,” I said.

  “His family may have had some money,” he said.

  “What was the scandal?” I asked.

  “He died in some brawl. There was a lot of speculation but it was well known that she was broken-hearted over him.”

  “Daddy came along and comforted her,” I said. At least I finally understood another part of Alice’s story. “She had such a hard life,” I said.

  We finished our ice creams.

  “I’ve got to go and see Theo about Alice’s service. It should be interesting,” I said. For I had no inkling why she would request Theo. “Will you drive me someplace else first?” I asked. I gave him the address and then directed him. We pulled up in front of the law office of Florence Grigsby.

  She was busy with a client and not really expecting me. I had no experience with end-of-life arrangements. I needed her guidance.

  Billy waited in the reception room when Florence Grigsby called me into her office, shutting the door.

  I said to her, “I need your help.”

  She counseled me through the legalities of releasing the estate. “You’re a minor. Your mother has left you some money. She asked that I release it to you when you go off to college.”

  “Is it enough to cover college?” I asked.

  “I would say so. Miss Curry. I like to call women like your mother. . . thrifty. Your inheritance will cover your college expenses and then some.”

  That was all a surprise to me of course.

  Then she said, “Then there’s the matter of some property.”

  “Alice Curry rented a small apartment,” I said. “She never owned property.”

  “She did own a bit of property. No house on it, she said.”

  Ms. Grigsby’s receptionist told her that her next client had shown up.

  “I can come back,” I said.

  “Actually it’s best you stay,” she said.

  The door opened and the receptionist invited the client into Grigsby’s office. He hesitated at the door when our eyes locked.

  “Reverend Theo?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’ll come back later,” he said. He acted awkward, not wanting to enter at all upon sight of me.

  “Reverend Miller, we might as well settle all of Alice Curry’s affairs.”

  He held his hat in his hands, thumbing it nervously. Finally the lawyer coaxed him to take the seat next to me.

  Grigsby turned her attention back to me momentarily. “We have a complicated matter to settle.”

  “I wanted time to tell you,” he said to me apologetically.

  She continued. “Alice Curry, while leaving you her liquid assets, has bequeathed the property to Theo and Dorothea Miller. Do you understand what I’m saying, Miss Curry?” she asked, looking directly at me.

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “Her estate specifically dictates that Theo Miller keep the property, but at his death the land escheats back to you.”

  “What land?” I asked. “Alice Curry owned property? Where?”

  “797 Cotton Street,” said Theo.

  “That’s our address,” I said. “That’s not possible. My daddy owns the land. He and my stepmother built a house on it.”

  Grigsby leaned toward me. “Are you telling me that a house has been built on this property?”

  “I am.”

  “Then it was built illegally, Miss Curry. Your father did not have legal claim to that land.”

  “How did my mother come to own it?” I asked.

  “I can explain that,” said Theo. “I gave it to her.

  * * * * *

  Florence scheduled a second meeting with me. Daddy needed to be present, she said. It would be an interesting meeting for she would inform him that he had built Vesta a home on his ex-wife’s land without consulting her. The deed he used to build Periwinkle House must not have been gone over carefully enough, said Florence.

  If Winston Grooms had anything to do with it, I speculated, then he would be called in to answer for lawyerly tampering.

  Grigsby told me to let her handle Daddy. She would ask him to bring along all of the documents including the deed. She oversaw all of Alice’s estate and she kept it in order. Had Alice lived, she could have asked Vesta for the key to Periwinkle House any time she wanted.

  I left with Theo who led me into Zion’s tiny chapel. We sat in a pew staring up at a picture of Jesus on the cross.

  I said to him, “You want to tell me why you gave away part of your family’s property to a white woman?”

  He did not answer right away.

  “At least tell me why she named you to officiate the service,” I said.

  “We go way back,” he said.

  “Obviously.”

  “I had to right a wrong. I found out you can’t buy your way out of your own poor choices.”

  “All this time, you never told me you knew my mother.”

  “You look so much like her. Especially before you up and changed your hair. Why you did that, I’ll never understand.” Then he told me the rest of the story, the parts Billy Thornton didn’t know.

  Alice had fallen in love, all right, with Theo and Dorothea’s oldest boy. He had shunned her advances, but she was a beautiful young girl, spirited. The opposite of Zebulon Miller. He was head-over-hills for Alice Morris, the girl from the wrong side of the wrong side of town.

  “Zeb was supposed to go off to college. He was my first child, big brother to his siblings. I wanted him to be an example. I told him to break it off with her. She was a summer fling.”

&n
bsp; “She wanted her way, though,” I said.

  “Alice always got her way,” he said.

  “Zeb gassed up our old car, hid a bag of things in the back seat. Might have gotten out of town too, but his mother found his bag packed. I confronted him. As I told you, most parenting is done with blinders on. We fought and he left the house on foot. He walked into a bar. White boys followed him. They confronted him for dating a girl from their side of town. They fought. He was a black boy, so the police never got to the bottom of who killed him. I was beside myself, same as when I lost Anton. It’s not what a parent expects to hear.”

  “You gave my mother part of your property.”

  “It was the only thing I could think to do. She came to me in a rage. She cried and blamed me, saying how if I had let them go, Zeb would have lived.”

  I certainly understood Theo’s guilt and why he wanted to make it right with Alice.

  “I had parceled off that piece of land to give to Zeb when he graduated college. I expected he’d meet a girl at school in Rock Hill. They’d come back and live next to us.”

  “I guess you thought that Vesta moving in was God’s way of punishing you.”

  He laughed at me, saying, “You would think so. I was sure a house wouldn’t be built there, not unless Alice built it. I was wrong.”

  “That place that’s prepared out in the cemetery for Alice, it’s next to Zeb’s plot, isn’t it?”

  “It sure is. I thought he’d want it that way.”

  Then a funny thought hit me and I started laughing.

  “For the life of me, I’ve no idea what you think could be so funny at a time like this,” he said.

  “That whole golf mess with Winston Grooms—it’s about to blow up in his face, isn’t it.”

  “I believe so. But I’ve seen stranger outcomes, so I won’t try and guess God’s next move.”