House of Dance by Beth Kephart Page A

guardrails, the chair with the wheels, the air with the smell of lemons, acids, bleach. I didn’t want to have to say how tired he was or tell her what Teresa had told me when I was leaving, how much sadder sadness sounds in Spanish. I didn’t want to admit that there might not be time for me to give Granddad the present I was planning. “You know what I learned today?” I asked.
    “What’s that?”
    “That I kind of like Granddad’s music.”
    “Well, that’s a good thing. I guess.”
    “Of course it is.”
    “Me and him, Mom. Me and him. We’refamily.” You could have confused my mom for a kid, I swear. She looked that small, that fragile.
    “How is he?” she asked.
    “He sleeps a lot,” I said.
    “I was guessing he would.
    “He doesn’t complain.”
    “I’m glad for that.”
    I had one foot on the bottom step by now, was waiting for my mother to come down so I could go up. But she sank to the step, put her elbows on her knees, her face in her hands. I understood that something had shifted.
    “It’s getting hot,” I said. “Isn’t it?”
    “Have you eaten?”
    “I had stuff.” I had climbed a couple of steps up by now, closer to her. There were dark traces of mascara raccooned beneath each eye, a little bruise on the lip that she’d been chewing.
    “We’ve got more than saltines and peanutbutter in this house,” she said. “I could make you something.”
    “I’m okay, Mom. Really.”
    “Just offering.”
    “Tired,” I said. “Headed for bed.”
    “Night, Rosie.”
    “Night, Mom.” I slipped past her on the step and then, a few seconds after, came my shadow. I stepped through my bedroom door, closed it behind me, walked to the windows to find the moon. It was round on its way to getting rounder, Ella Fitzgerald style.
    I threw open the windows to hear the crows in their trees and the next train coming. I pushed my head out to hear the swish swish thrum from the House of Dance, the music that was spilling through the windows there, fizzing up between downfalling star-dust, knocking hard at my heart. I remembered all of a sudden a time that felt like centuries before, when Dad had come up with one of his crazy Christmas schemes.He’d started taking me to Miss Marie, the local seamstress, sometime just after Thanksgiving. He’d had her make me a dress of purple velvet with a broad white collar onto which she’d threaded hot pink flowers. He’d had her make me a purple hair band too. Then one day we took a snowy walk to Miss Marie’s, and everything was ready. I’d peeled off my everyday clothes, down to my undershirt and panties. I’d stood in the back of that shop with my hands high in the air while Miss Marie pulled the dress into place. I’d waited until she had zippered me up, and then she’d fixed my hair, and then she’d spun me around and called my dad’s name, and he came in to see.
    “Do you like it?” he’d ask me.
    I nodded.
    “Do you think your mommy will?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “You’ll wear it Christmas morning then,” he said, “when I give Mommy her present.”
    I remember changing back into my regular clothes. I remember Miss Marie handing my father two long bags. One that was little and mine, with the velvet dress. One that was longer and wide and held inside my mother’s brand-new white wool coat. She’d wanted a coat so badly that winter. Miss Marie had made her one.
    “It’s our secret,” Dad had said, and that was such a happiness. That was us, before.

NINETEEN
    A LONG TIME AGO , when I was eleven, there was a luscious maple rooted deep in my backyard. It was wider than tall, and some of its limbs were loose, but I liked that tree because I had learned from its branches how to save Nick’s lost planes. I could fish the sturdy balsa woods out from a mess of leaves and make Nick smile. I could dig out parts of planes from the maple’s squirrel-nest hollow. Whatever I’d find, I’d run it straight back to Nick’s place, hollering the news: