Dirty Dancing at Devil's Leap

by Julie Anne Long

  “Do your folks know you’re on your way home?” he said finally.

  She probably looked like someone who had fled the scene of a crime. There was a gym bag in her back seat and her purse on the seat next to her, and that was it, apart from those cutting-edge, not-yet-on-the-market Bluetooth speakers she’d received as a gift from a friend who’d meant for her to give them to Corbin. She couldn’t even remember what was in her gym bag, apart from sweaty yoga pants and maybe a fossilized M&M.

  She shook her head no.

  He pressed his lips together. “You’re not, um, impaired in any way, right, Avalon? Because I know you’ll tell me the truth and I’ll give you a ride to your folks’ house.”

  “Nope. Not impaired. Unless you count my judgment in men.”

  His head went back a little, then came down in a sort of nod of comprehension. Then his mouth quirked wryly at one corner and he shook his head to and fro slowly. She was pretty sure she’d just answered his why-are-you-speeding question.

  She tried an insouciant “what are ya gonna do?” one-shouldered shrug, but her body felt stiff from all her held-in emotion and she was a little worried it looked more like a death spasm.

  “Call your parents now,” Eli ordered. Albeit kindly. “Tell them you’re on your way. And swear on your mom’s bright red head and your dad’s Glennburger that you won’t speed again around here, because I know a lot of people kind of like you and it would ruin my day if I had to pull you out of an accordioned BMW.”

  She half snorted, half sighed. And obeyed.

  “Call Mom,” she told her car.

  Chapter 2

  Eli was smart, she thought dryly. Just the sound of her mom’s voice shaved the spiky edge from Avalon’s mood. She gave her mom a capsule version of today’s events and then drove like a responsible citizen into town the back way all the way to the Harwood House.

  The family homestead, an unprepossessing farmhouse built around 1940, was painted a muted periwinkle blue, which meant that around twilight its edges tended to blur right into the sky, and thanks to a competent but no-frills addition a few decades ago it was shaped a bit like an L, or as her father liked to joke, a boomerang, because the grown kids did have a tendency to return. (Except for maybe Jesse. Who was off gallivanting God knows where. The Himalayas?) The front window threw a rectangle of warm light down onto the porch.

  She parked her car on the verge, seized her gym bag from the back, climbed out, and sucked in a huge draught of startlingly brisk, woodsmoke-flavored country air. And paused. A million stars jostled each other in a black sky. You really couldn’t see them in San Francisco. Somewhere a dog barked, doing its job of warning off raccoons or deer, and the sound made her yearn. She’d had dogs, cats, mice, frogs, even once, for about three hours until her mom found out, a snake, and one darling squirrel, all of them rescued. But Corbin didn’t see the point of keeping a pet in their tiny apartment when they both worked all the time.

  She’d lived without a lot of things a little too long.

  The house was almost precisely between downtown and the hills, and Avalon knew that if she really craned her head in one direction, she could just about see the neon glow of the Misty Cat Tavern sign at the foot of Main Street. The restaurant and music venue had provided a comfortable living for her family for a few decades and a sort of heartbeat for the town.

  And then . . . there was the other direction.

  But even now her heart skipped with an echo of that old delicious agony of anticipation. It was a bit like when that pinky toe she broke when she was eighteen twinged now to signal approaching rain.

  Long ago, beginning the first day of summer vacation, she’d begin looking in that direction for a light at Devil’s Leap that would signal Mac Coltrane was in town.

  She didn’t look that way now. She resolutely headed up to the porch instead.

  Of course it was dark up there at Devil’s Leap. It had been dark for eons.

  “Here, honey.”

  Her mother thrust a soft bundle into her arms. Avalon unfurled it to find a blue flannel nighty that could have sheltered a dozen Bedouins if propped on sticks.

  Avalon held it to her nose and inhaled.

  “Snuggle, white lavender scent,” her mom informed her.

  While Avalon sniffed the nightgown, her mom had been watching her face as if it were a drive-in movie screen, and apparently what she saw there made her pull Avalon into a long squeeze which concluded with a kiss in the middle of her forehead, where Greta from the New Age Store in downtown Hellcat Canyon would say her third eye resided. Her mom had named her kids Jude, Jesse, Avalon, and Eden, all names inspired by a bygone time of peace and love.

  “And turmoil. Let’s not forget the turmoil, Mom,” Avalon always wanted to say.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Her mom wasn’t known for her circumspection, but she knew Avalon was less comfortable with gushing than frankness.

  “I . . .” Suddenly Avalon felt as though she needed an entirely new language to talk about what had just happened. It was utterly outside her realm of experience. “I don’t know. Not yet. I feel a lot of things. And nothing. I haven’t really run it through the Mass Spec yet.”

  Her whole family enjoyed watching Bones.

  “You might be a little numb,” her mom suggested cautiously. “It’s nature’s way of giving us a grace period before the annihilating rage sets in.”

  This was interesting. Her mom was the cheeriest, most unflappably no-nonsense person she’d ever met.

  “Wow, Mom, how often do you feel annihilating rage?”

  “Oh, every five years or so. Lasts seconds. For example, remember when Jesse’s soccer coach called him an idiot and made him cry when he missed that goal when he was eleven? I wanted to disembowel him.”

  Avalon mulled this. “Huh.”

  “That wasn’t meant as a suggestion for how you should handle Corbin, by the way,” her mom added hurriedly. “Maybe leave that part to your dad or your brother Jude. He wields a mean scalpel.”

  Avalon managed a smile at this. Her brother Jude was a surgeon in Black Oak.

  “It might be best to be a little careful during this stage, Ava. Maybe . . . don’t give in to impulses.”

  “Since when have I ever given in to impulses?” It was a wan joke.

  “Mmm,” her mom said, one of those syllables that could mean anything at all. Four kids had taught her to pick her moments. “Oh, here’s your dad.”

  Her dad was indeed hovering behind her mom. The hall light gave him a misleading halo. It was funny how age seemed to fade some people, but her parents only got more vivid. Her mother’s red hair bordered on scarlet now, assisted by whatever box of color happened to be on sale; her dad’s was gleaming silver, and his mustache would have won Best in Show in any mustache pageant. They both took up a little more space: both a little softer, a little broader, a little more imposing, perhaps, with a sort of seen-it-all, can-handle-it-all, usually enjoy-it-all dignity.

  Sherrie Harwood gave her husband’s arm a little squeeze and he gave her bottom a reflexive, affectionate pat as she retreated.

  Her dad propped a hand on the bedroom door frame. “If you need help sleeping, Avalon, I can get you a shot of brandy. I think I have a bottle around here left over from last year’s Chamber of Commerce Christmas gift exchange.”

  “Good parenting, Dad.”

  “Only the best for you, pumpkin.”

  She managed a little laugh.

  He hovered there in the doorway, as if he could body block anything else that might want to get in there and hurt her. “So . . . do you know what you’re going to do yet about . . . ?”

  “Nope. But we have a company together, so . . .”

  Funny how they were talking in ellipses about Corbin. Kind of like he was Voldemort, suddenly. Her dad wasn’t one for long, heartfelt, girlish talks.

  “I’m doing fine, though, Pop. Really.”

  Right on cue, a text pinged in from Corbin. S
he seized her phone and squeezed it like a KGB assassin strangling an enemy spy. The little screen finally went black.

  Then she slapped it punishingly down on the nightstand.

  Her dad watched all this wordlessly.

  “Yeah, you seem fine,” he said dryly, finally.

  She sighed.

  “Hey, I was talking to Lloyd at the feed store today. He says that that old Coltrane house at Devil’s Leap is finally up for auction. Tomorrow morning, nine o’clock, courthouse steps.”

  Her heart lurched.

  She couldn’t say a word for a few seconds.

  “I’ll be damned,” she said, almost stammering. “I was just . . .” Just what? Reviewing the ignominy of her romantic past? “I just saw it through the trees on the way here.”

  “Yeah, Lloyd checked out the photos on the auction website. Says it’s pretty much unchanged inside. Won’t sell, though. No one around here has that kind of money or needs a house like that.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Kind of a shame, though.”

  In her memories, the inside of that house glowed like a burnished romantic flashback in a movie. Golden hardwood floors and about a half dozen crystal chandeliers and an extravagance of windows, many of them trimmed with William Morris–esque stained glass. Its beauty had been an ache.

  Sometimes it seemed that as long as that house remained empty, it was like a snow globe around that time with Mac.

  “Well, it’s kind of a ridiculous house,” her dad said with typical pragmatism. “It has a damned turret. Beautiful grounds around it, though. Remember how you guys loved jumping off that rock into that swimming hole at Devil’s Leap? Those summer days when your mom and I could get away when you all played with those Coltrane boys.”

  She couldn’t speak for a moment.

  “Vaguely,” she lied. Her voice frayed.

  The Coltranes had bought the house the summer when Avalon was about ten years old. She and her siblings and Mac, and sometimes his brother Ty, had all run about together like little forest creatures up at Devil’s Leap, summer friends.

  But she and Mac had competed with each other in every imaginable way from the moment they met. She’d had no idea what to call that sort of exhilarating hybrid of fear and wild joy she’d felt in his presence, but she did know it was almost exactly the same way she’d felt that first time she’d jumped off Devil’s Leap into the watering hole.

  By the first time Mac kissed her—coincidentally right after she’d beat him in another race to the rock—she’d fully understood what to call those feelings.

  “We loved taking you out there,” her dad said. “You kids had such a blast, and you all were so damn cute. I remember like yesterday watching you flying off that rock right into the swimming hole that day you raced young Mac Coltrane.”

  “I won that day, too. And a lot of other days.”

  Funny, though. Mac almost seemed to enjoy her wins as much as his own.

  “Yeah, you sure did.” Her dad said this with relish. He was every bit the competitor she was.

  “I beat him at least half the time. Bike races, checkers, foot races, burping.”

  “That’s because everything you ever did, Avalon, whether it made any sense . . . well, you’ve never half-assed a thing in your life.”

  She gave a short, surprised laugh.

  She also often tried too hard and overshot her mark. Her dad refrained from saying that.

  She sat down on the bed, cradling the flannel nightgown.

  “Dad . . . what made you think of that suddenly? Devil’s Leap and all of that?”

  He paused. And then one side of his mustache hiked with his rueful, crooked smile. “I was just thinking you never were afraid of a damn thing.”

  His tone was richly complicated: loving and wry, proud and resigned. It contained everything he knew about her and everything he suspected she’d go on to do.

  It was his way of telling her that she would emerge triumphant, even if they had to pick her up and bandage her first. Or get the paddles.

  So like her dad to compress a long, heart-searching, girlish talk into just one sentence.

  Suddenly she couldn’t speak over the throat lump.

  He gave the door frame a brisk, conclusive pat. “Night, pumpkin. We’ll feed you breakfast tomorrow morning at the Misty Cat if you don’t have to head back to work right away. Want the light off?”

  “Not yet.”

  He pulled the door most of the way closed and flicked off the hall light.

  She sucked in a long, long breath and blew it out again, then she stripped off her sweaty, crumpled clothes and pulled the giant nightgown over her head, where it settled over her like a fragrant hug. She was too physically drained to contemplate a much-needed shower and still too wired from shock to actually sleep.

  Should be a fun night to get through, she thought dryly.

  Her eyes darted to her silent phone and her stomach knotted violently at the notion of texting Corbin, as if it was literally attempting to shrink farther away from him. But the GradYouAte staff would expect to see her tomorrow, and doubtless a hundred-some-odd emails awaited her, too.

  She could leave the phone off for the night. But she was going to have to face it all tomorrow, regardless.

  She could handle it. She was a big girl. She’d just turned thirty.

  And yet whenever she visited her parents she always felt as though this twin bed was gradually molding her into her teenage self, the way a mouthful of braces had reined in her overbite just inside a year back when she was twelve.

  She finally burrowed under the covers, shoved her feet down, and discovered her mom had put the purple-flowered sheets on her bed. They were percale and worn to soothing, buttery smoothness with age and a decade’s worth of kicking Harwood feet, and like hot tea with lots of milk and Graham Crackers, they were whipped out when someone had the flu or a broken bone. Her mom had clearly decided the pain of her condition warranted it.

  Did it? While she could practically feel the outline of a sort of icy, furious shock extending from her clavicle to her belly button, shouldn’t she feel . . . devastated . . . right now? Shattered? Destroyed? Or other words that featured hyperbolically in her teenage diary?

  Maybe her mom was right: maybe she was numb.

  Or maybe she just didn’t feel things seismically, anymore.

  Maybe age and the march of time just naturally leached potency from emotions, flattened the peaks and filled in the valleys. Maybe a relentless inflow of reality on the way to adulthood diluted magic the way she and her sister, Eden, had once sneaked water into their parents’ bottle of whiskey until they’d inevitably gotten caught.

  “Mac Coltrane is a wizard,” she’d once gushed to her diary. His eyes were the green side of hazel, and in them flecks of gold floated like autumn leaves on the Hellcat River. No one else she knew had eyes like those. With just a look he could turn her blood to sparkling cider, or make her breath go short and shuddery, or make her feel . . . cherished. It had certainly felt like alchemy then. He could say so much without saying a word.

  Like the day of the squirrel funeral. They’d wrapped Trixie in a velvet shroud, which was really a Chivas Regal bag he’d stolen from his dad, and put her in a shoebox, and she and Mac had silently hiked out deeper onto the Devil’s Leap land to a spot Mac had scoped out earlier, where two tall, beautiful blue spruces grew surrounded by smaller ones, like a little tree family. He’d produced from his pocket a perfect heart-shaped rock he’d found, gray, like Trixie’s fur, a little smaller than Avalon’s palm, and they laid it on the grave. Somehow no church or hymn could ever hope to be as comforting as the quality of his silence and presence.

  But his personality had edges, too, like a jewel, or a blade. When he liked things, he really liked them; when he hated things, he was funny about it, but deadly earnest. He claimed to loathe children (“Why?” he said simply, usually when a toddler was screaming nearby), the song “Don’t Cry Out Loud” (“the worst so
ng in the world”), restrictions on his freedom, and anything that smacked of “romance,” which he claimed was a construct designed to make everyone feel inadequate and to divest idiot men of their money. He’d had nothing but good-natured scorn when she’d told him about her fantasy of slow dancing on Devil’s Leap to what she thought of as her namesake song, Roxy Music’s “Avalon.”

  “Oh, Avalon. That’s just ridiculous. No one actually does that kind of thing in real life.”

  She wasn’t offended. She was amused. Nor was she swayed. She was no fragile flower. And she’d always sensed that at his core was unequivocal regard for her, no matter what she said or did.

  Things he loved: his Ritchey P-29 mountain bike, freedom, Devil’s Leap, and, she’d thought, her.

  He’d never said that last one out loud, though.

  And Mac Coltrane had cratered her heart when she was seventeen.

  So maybe “magic” was just another way of saying innocence. And innocence was another way of saying “pain.”

  And so in the end she supposed the death of magic was a mercy visited upon adults, because she never wanted to feel that kind of pain again.

  She supposed she had herself to blame, though maybe that was a mercy, too: an unworthy curiosity had led to her being somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be when Mac had uttered words that, much like the meteor that had supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs, changed her entire world.

  As for Mac, well, his whole life had cratered rather spectacularly—and publicly—just a few years after that.

  Google had never been forthcoming about what had become of him—he didn’t even have a Facebook page. Though that could be for privacy reasons, given that he was Dixon Coltrane’s son. If he Googled her today, he’d find the SilliPutty photo of her perched on a desk dangling an orange pump from her toe, her devoted boyfriend beaming over her shoulder, the very personification of modern love and success.

  So she supposed that meant that she’d won in the end. She’d showed him.