Don't Let Me Go (24 page)

“Sage,” Jesse said. “White sage.” It was the first time Billy had heard his voice. It was deep, smooth and reassuring.

“Yeah, sage,” Grace said. “That’s it. He said he was going to grunge the place with white sage.”

“Smudge,” Jesse said.

“Huh?”

“I said I was going to
smudge
the apartment with white sage.”

“Oh, right. Smudge. Where did I get grunge?”

“I’m not sure. Somewhere in your interesting and imaginative brain, I’ve no doubt.”

“Anyway,” Grace said, “when you smudge with white sage it chases away evil spirits.”

“Actually,” Jesse said, “I don’t really believe there is such a thing as evil spirits, but if somebody left some bad energy hanging around, it might help. If I really thought there was some kind of spirit haunting the place, which I very much doubt, I wouldn’t so much chase him away as make peace with him.”

“That would be a better tack to take with Mr. Lafferty,” Billy said.

“It’s a better tack to take with everybody,” Jesse replied.

Then they all stood awkwardly for a moment, and Billy realized he was being rude by not inviting them in. But he didn’t do strangers in the apartment, especially not on short notice.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’d ask you in, but—”

Grace interjected. Interrupted, really, though it was far from unwelcome.

“No, we gotta go,” she said. “I gotta take him to meet Felipe and then Mrs. Hinman.”

“He already met Rayleen?”

“Oh, yeah,” Grace said. There was something unusual hiding in the way she said it. A hint of subtext. But it was completely indecipherable based on the information Billy had to work with. “Oh, my God!” she shrieked. “Billy! You’re wearing tap shoes!”

“I am.”

“I didn’t even know you had those tap shoes. Those aren’t the ones you used to loan me. Oh, right. Never mind. I just got it. These are ones for grown-ups. So why didn’t you tell me you still had tap shoes?”

“I guess I thought it went without saying.”

“Wrong. Were you dancing just now?”

“I was choreographing some dance moves for you to learn for your big school performance.”

“Great!” she shouted. “Yea, yea, yea! As soon as I introduce Jesse to everybody I’ll come back down and we can get started. I think I feel better enough to start.”

“Nice meeting you, Billy,” Jesse said.

“Likewise,” Billy said, and made sure by his tone and facial expression that his new neighbor would realize he meant it sincerely.

He watched Grace drag Jesse to the stairs, holding one of his hands in both of hers. It made him feel just a little tiny bit left out.

“Billy doesn’t like people,” he heard Grace tell Jesse on their way up the stairs. “He’s…different. But he’s a good guy.”

• • •

Grace arrived back about twenty minutes later, and grabbed up her cat before doing anything else.

“Before I start dancing,” she said, “I have to tell you a secret.”

“How can you tell me if it’s a secret?”

“It’s not that kind of secret.”

“What kind is it?”

“The kind where you see something with your own eyes, and you know you want to tell somebody, but you know you don’t want them to tell the whole world.”

“And you figure I’ll be talking to the whole world in the near future?”

“Don’t be weird, Billy. I mean, don’t tell Felipe or Mrs. Hinman — and definitely don’t tell Rayleen.”

“OK, deal.”

They sat on the couch together, setting the stage for Grace’s momentous secret.

“You ready?” she asked, still squeezing the cat.

“More than ready.”

“Jesse likes Rayleen.”

“Oh. How can you tell?”

“It was so easy. Right from the time I met him I was saying, ‘You should come to our meeting, we’re having a meeting today and you should come.’ And he kept saying stuff like he had to unpack, and maybe everybody else would mind having him there because they didn’t know him. And then I took him to meet Rayleen. And then the minute we walked out of there, he said, ‘So what time is that meeting?’”

“Oh, right. What time
is
that meeting?”

“I don’t know. Whatever time I yell that the meeting is starting, I guess.”

“Well. Doesn’t that just give
you
all the power?”

Grace punched him lightly on the arm. “
You
pick a time, then. I just figured I was the only one who really wanted the meeting.”

“You can say that again.”

“So what did you think of my big secret?”

“Well. It’s not too surprising. Rayleen is a very attractive woman.”

“Yeah. She’s pretty. And she’s nice. But…”

“But what? There’s something you don’t like about Rayleen?”

“Oh, no. I like her all the way through. I was just gonna say that we don’t really know her that well.”

“We don’t?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I thought we did.”

“I just know she works on people’s nails at a salon, and that’s sort of all I know. Not that I know a bunch more about Felipe or Mrs. Hinman, but in another way I sort of do. It shows. With them it shows. But Rayleen doesn’t show much. The only thing I know about her because it shows is what she’s afraid of.”

Billy thought a moment, wondering if whatever Grace had observed about Rayleen showed to him, too. After all, he’d just noted that he prided himself on being a good judge of character. But as far as he had ever known, or even sensed, Rayleen wasn’t afraid of anything.

“And what’s that?”

“The county.”

“The county?”

“You didn’t hear me?”

“It doesn’t really make sense. She’s afraid of the county of Los Angeles?”

“Right.”

“What’s she afraid it’ll do?”

“Like, come and take a kid away.”

“Oh. Like that.”

“Yeah. Like that. Like maybe the county came and took her away when she was a kid.”

“Or maybe she had a kid and the county took the kid away. I guess if she wanted to tell us about it, she would.”

“That’s why we’re having the
meetings
,” Grace said. A little exasperated, as though it should be obvious. “Nobody wants to tell somebody else bad stuff like that. You have to push a little harder to get that stuff out of people.”

“Are you ready to dance?”

He asked it quickly, in case she was about to push a little harder on him.

“Are you kidding? I’ve been ready for a
week
,” she said. “I’ll go get my tap shoes on. They’re at Rayleen’s. I’ll be right back. You won’t tell Rayleen my secret, right?”

“But she was there. She was there when you introduced her to Jesse. So, if he likes her, don’t you think she knows?”

“I don’t know. You never can tell with grown-ups. They miss some really obvious stuff. Anyway, I sure wouldn’t want her to know we were over here talking about it.”

“Talking about what?”

“About Jesse and Rayleen!” she shouted, fully exasperated, probably loud enough for Rayleen to hear across the hall.

“It’s kind of a joke,” Billy said. “It’s a little signal. It means I already forgot there was anything to tell.”

“Why didn’t you say so? How was I supposed to know that?”

“I thought everybody did. I thought it was a cultural thing. Like it was part of the collective unconscious by now.”

Grace rolled her eyes skyward.

“You’re so weird, Billy.”

“Thank you,” he said, quietly, to her back, as she walked out his door.

He made his way carefully back to the dance floor and moved slowly through the routine one more time. He ended even more crisply than before, and stood, one foot raised, again thinking he was about to hear applause.

But not
his
applause. It was not about him this time. This was Grace’s applause. Grace’s first experience with the public ovation.

“Oh, good God,” Billy said, suddenly, and out loud. “I really do need to be there. Shit.”

Grace

“
Please
somebody go first?” Grace whined.

She looked at every grown-up in the room, one at a time. Only Mrs. Hinman looked back. Maybe because Mrs. Hinman had already taken her turn, at the last meeting, and so wasn’t feeling under the gun. Grown-ups always acted different when you put the tiniest little bit of pressure on them.

Everybody was gathered at Rayleen’s. Everybody.

Even Billy was there. Dressed, yet. Standing with his back against the door, like his own apartment would save his life if he could just stay close to it. She caught him biting a thumbnail, but she figured if she yelled at him like she usually did, he might run home again, so she let it go by.

Rayleen was sitting cross-legged on the rug, her back up against the couch, where Jesse could only see her from behind. Grace wondered if Rayleen had figured that out on purpose.

Jesse sat looking around at all the faces like he was memorizing everything for later, and it was impossible for Grace to tell what he was thinking, though she watched him and wondered about it a lot.

Felipe bounced one knee up and down and stared at the rug as if rugs hypnotized him.

“
Pleeeeease?
”

Then Rayleen opened her mouth to talk, which Grace took to be a good sign. But it didn’t take long to realize her mistake.

“I don’t know about anybody else,” Rayleen said, a sharpness in her voice that Grace had only heard Rayleen use when addressing Grace’s mom, “but I’m feeling pressured by this. I am
not
ready for this,” she added, glancing halfway over her shoulder in the general direction of Jesse.

Grace’s face burned, and a line of ache radiated down into her belly. Rayleen had never spoken to her in an angry tone before, and to have it happen now, in front of all these people…including somebody new…well, it was nothing short of humiliating. Tears welled up behind her eyes, but she fought hard to hide them.

She opened her mouth, but no words came out.

Felipe looked up suddenly. Right into Grace’s eyes.

“I guess
I
could go,” he said.

She wanted to hug and kiss him, but it all happened too fast.

“I
wasn’t
alone,” Felipe said, his accent thicker than usual, which Grace had noticed before, usually when he was extra-tired or feeling emotional. “I mean, until just…well…not long. Pretty much just a little while ago. A few weeks. I had a girlfriend. We were gonna get married. I gave her a ring and everything, and we had a little son. Twenty months. And then one day I get home from work, and there’s this bag by my door. It has my toothbrush in it, and the spare shirts and underwear I kept at her house. And at the very bottom is the little box with the ring in it. The engagement ring I gave her. So I guess that’s that.”

Felipe allowed a silence to fall, and…wow. It was a very silent silence.

“Did she say why?” Grace asked, reverently.

“I can’t even get through to talk to her. I left a million messages. Finally I called her sister. And so her sister says there’s another guy, and there’s been another guy for
mucho tiempo
. A lot of time.”

More silence.

Rayleen seemed to have forgotten her irritation. She opened her mouth to speak, and the words came out soft and helpful, the way Grace wished Rayleen had spoken to
her
.

“Did you have any idea?”

“Yes and no,” Felipe said. “I did and I didn’t. I was so surprised. But now I look back and see some things. You know how it is. At least, I think you know. You see but you don’t see. You see a thing. And you think it’s a certain way. But you tell yourself, ‘No, that’s crazy, you’re wrong.’ And then you find out you’re right. And part of you says, ‘Hell, I didn’t know,’ and another part of you says, ‘Oh yeah you did.’”

“What about
su hijo
?” Grace asked, her voice hushed with awe.

“What about
what
?” Billy asked, and then went back to shredding his thumbnail.

“His little boy,” Grace said. “Don’t bite your nails.”

“Well, I asked that,” Felipe said. “I asked her sister. I said, ‘What about Diego? How am I supposed to see Diego?’ I said, ‘After all, he’s my son. My flesh and blood.’ Know what she said?”

Felipe’s voice broke on the last sentence, and Grace found herself unsure if she wanted to know or not. She shook her head without thinking.

“She said, ‘Maybe he’s your son, and maybe he isn’t.’”

Grace got up from her chair and ran across the room, throwing her arms around Felipe’s neck.

“
Lo siento
, Felipe,” she said, in barely over a whisper. “
Lo siento para su hijo.
”

“
Gracias
,” Felipe breathed quietly.

“I have to go,” Billy said suddenly, from his perch by the door.

His panic must have hit him like a dam breaking, because Grace could hear how his words turned into the truth at nearly the exact same moment they rushed out of him.

She let go of Felipe and stepped back. Billy already had the door open.

“Oh, no. Billy. Can’t you please try just a little longer? It’s just getting to be a real meeting!”

“Sorry, baby girl. I can only do just so much.”

But he took a step into the room, not out of it. He took four or five steps, actually, toward Felipe, and stopped above Felipe’s chair and looked down, and his eyes looked soft. Felipe looked up and smiled sadly.