Don't Let Me Go (37 page)

“Not to look back, I think.”

“You don’t
think
, you
know
.”

“Are your hands cold? Why are you rubbing your hands together like that?”

“I’m going to do reiki on you.”

“Right out here in front of everybody?”

“Got a better plan?”

So Billy stood a moment while Grace held her hands close to his belly, but not touching. He glanced around to see if anyone was watching. It didn’t seem to help much, but then, he figured, he wasn’t really cooperating. Instead of releasing his anxiety, he was drowning in fresh anxiety over receiving reiki in public from a nine-year-old.

“Let’s walk some more,” he said.

She grabbed his hand and pulled.

He walked two blocks on sheer willpower, and then stalled again.

“You have to do this, Billy. I can’t go the rest of the way alone. I’m not allowed.”

He opened his mouth to answer but found his voice disabled.

“OK, there’s just one more thing we can do. We’ll have to dance to school.”

Billy dug deeper in a desperate attempt to get his voice back.

“I can’t,” he said.

“You said it would work for me, and you were right. Now come on. Latin salsa.”

“I can’t. People will stare at me.”

“So? Let “em stare. That’s what you said to me.”

“I wish you wouldn’t always parrot back what I’ve said to you. It’s irritating.”

“Why? Because it’s true stuff?”

“Something like that.”

“Come on. Latin salsa. Right now. Unless you want to waltz.”

“I don’t think the waltz would work well in a straight line. It more takes you around in a circle.”

“Then start salsa dancing, Billy.”

Freshly out of options, he did as he was told.

Wonderful, he thought as they danced down the street together. The only thing worse than being out in public: being out in public behaving strangely and drawing attention. He reminded himself that he had done this before, with far less anxiety. But he didn’t even ask himself what the difference might have been. It was obvious. Jesse.

An older couple came out on to their porch to watch them go by. Four cars slowed down. One driver shook his head slightly before accelerating again. He heard someone call out, “Hey, Frankie, come ‘ere an’ see this,” but could not tell from which direction.

And then they arrived at Grace’s school. And Billy had to admit, though not out loud, that the blocks had flown by.

He leaned down and kissed Grace on the forehead.

“You just gonna run?” she asked.

He nodded, having misplaced his voice yet again.

“OK. See you after school. You can tell me how it went.”

Billy nodded one more time, and then took off sprinting.

He built up to a speed he could not recall having ever accomplished before. The houses and apartment buildings streaking by him seemed to stretch out, as if he were altering time by racing through it. The rasp of his own labored breathing sounded artificial and far away. Then the world began to whiten, and it dawned on him suddenly that he was probably in the middle of a steep oxygen deficit, and that if he didn’t slow down he might pass out. But he couldn’t bring himself to slow down.

And then, somewhere in that moment, he had an imagining. It wasn’t a hallucination. He didn’t literally see it. It just came into his head, with a strong picture.

Wings.

They did not flap at him, nor did they taunt him by holding still. They surrounded him. Wrapped themselves around him like a warm blanket.

Billy slowed to a trot, and trotted the rest of the way home.

• • •

“Oh, boy, you’re here. Thank goodness,” Grace said. “I was worrying about you all day at school. So I guess you got home OK. So how did it go?”

“It was all right,” Billy said. “I just ran.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’re gonna tell me about it?”

“At least for now,” he said.

• • •

Billy woke from a dreamless sleep to hear Grace whisper his name from her bed on the living room couch.

“Billy? Are you awake?”

“Sort of,” he said.

“Did I wake you?”

“Sort of.”

“Oh. Sorry. I’m having trouble sleeping. You know tomorrow is Wednesday.”

“Right.”

“And then Thursday and Friday, and then the weekend, and then the big day. It just gets harder and harder to sleep every night.”

“Are you nervous about the dance? You know it backwards and forwards.”

“A little bit. Just because it’s big and exciting. Not because I think I won’t be good. Mostly I’m nervous waiting to see if my mom really is coming, and if she really is about to have thirty days clean. Just think. I could go back and live with her again. But then the closer it gets to that, the more I get scared.”

“Yolanda says she’s really doing it.”

“Right. I know. That’s why I get scared. Cause I always say I won’t get my hopes up, but then I do. I just can’t stop. Cause I really do want to live with her again.”

Billy said nothing, absorbing the emotional resonance of Grace going home.

As if she could hear him thinking, she said, “I’ll still come visit you all the time, you know.”

“I know.”

“I’m also worried that it’ll get harder and harder to sleep every night. And what if Sunday night I don’t sleep at all? I’ll have to do my big dance and I’ll be all tired.”

“If Jesse’s back, I bet he could do reiki on your sleeplessness.”

“But what if he isn’t? And that’s another thing. What if Jesse’s mom is still dying on Monday? Maybe he won’t come to my school to watch me dance. Maybe Rayleen won’t even come.”

“You’re getting yourself too upset to sleep. Here. Try this. Close your eyes and picture something with me. Picture big, white, feathery wings. All wrapped around you. Taking care of you.”

A long silence.

“Wings? Like the ones you have nightmares about?”

“Except not scary. Because…I mean…you can turn things like that around. Remember how I used to be scared of cats? But then I got to know one. There are all manner of things that scare us at some point in our lives, but then later we find out they really never meant to hurt us anyway.”

“What made you think of that, Billy?”

“Just try it. Please.”

A long silence. It lasted. And it lasted.

Finally, a good five minutes later, he got up and checked on her, quietly. She had fallen back asleep.

Grace

It was Friday, last school day before the big event.

Billy had danced her to school every morning, and every morning more and more people had looked out their windows or stepped out on to their porch to watch them go by. Like people knew to expect them by now. Like it was the morning performance of some big show, and everybody wanted to get a good seat. Except they mostly stood.

On Thursday they’d done the tango, and people really seemed to like that.

And Billy seemed OK.

But then it was Friday, and Grace had the big idea to waltz to school. Because it was fun when they waltzed in Billy’s living room, and it had made them laugh.

Billy said again what he’d said the first time, that the waltz takes you more around in a circle. Not so much to school. But Grace was sure they could just take longer steps in the school direction, like they did with the Latin salsa. And she was in one of those moods that involved not letting anything drop.

They were about halfway to school when it happened.

Billy had just spun her around in a twirl, and that nice Spanish-speaking family in the blue house were all watching and clapping, and Grace thought it would be nice to spin Billy, too. She thought the family would like that.

So she reached up high, and he ducked down low, and he spun wildly, really getting into it, lots of forward motion, and then he got his foot caught on a big slab of concrete where the sidewalk was uneven. Grace saw it happen, but there wasn’t much she could do. It just all happened so fast.

He went down like the trees she’d seen in movies about lumber cutting. You know, right after somebody says “timber.” He built up speed on the way down and landed right on his face. Literally. He put his palms down, but it just wasn’t enough to stop his face. Grace could hear the sound all the air made when it rushed out of him. She heard the sound of gasps from the nice family.

“Oh, my God! Billy!”

Grace helped him turn over and sit up. There was a lot of blood coming from his nose. A scary lot.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m fine.”

But he definitely said it in that way that people say they’re fine when they’re not fine in any way. And by then the family had run out to help them. A nice older man, short and thick, a grandpa type of guy, who brought a handful of tissues, and a woman who might have been his daughter even though she was definitely grown to maybe middle age, and a girl who was a teenager.

Everybody was talking at once, but mostly in Spanish. It was too much Spanish for Grace, but she did get the part where they kept asking if he was OK.

Billy took the tissues, and held them gently to his nose to try to stop the bleeding, but it was too much bleeding, and those tissues got swamped right away. He kept saying he was OK, but they kept asking in Spanish, and Billy kept answering in English, and Grace could see that nobody was getting anywhere with that system.

So she said,
“Esta bueno.
Billy
esta bueno
.”

But then she wondered why she even said it when she knew it was just a big lie.

The lady, who Grace didn’t even see leave, came back with a clean dishtowel, and Billy held that to his nose.

“I have to get home,” he said to Grace.

“I know,” she said.

“You can’t go on alone. You have to come back with me.”

“I know.”

“You can wake up Felipe. He’ll walk you.”

“Maybe I should stay home with you today.”

“It’s fine. It’ll stop bleeding. Ask if they want their towel back.”

“I don’t know how to say ‘Do you want your towel back?’ in Spanish.”

“OK. Whatever. Help me up, OK?”

He was still using both hands to hold the towel to his nose, which left no hand to grab him by, so Grace took him by the elbow and pulled. But he didn’t budge. But then the nice grandfather guy took the other elbow and they got him on his feet, even though he swayed hard partway up, and Grace thought he might pass out or something. She couldn’t figure out if he was really hurt that badly, or if looking at tons of his own blood made him feel a little faint, but she figured it was something she could sort out later on.

Billy stood swaying on the sidewalk for a minute, all by himself. Then he held the towel out to the woman, questioningly. As if she might want to take it from him. As soon as he did, a bunch more blood ran down his lip, and he had to wipe it away.

“No, no,” the woman said, waving off the idea. “Is your.”

“Thank you,” Billy said.

“
Gracias
,” Grace said. “
Muchas gracias
.”

And they headed off in the direction of home. But then Billy swayed again, so the old grandfather took him by the elbow and walked with them.

Grace could tell Billy was embarrassed and wishing the old man wouldn’t be so helpful. But he was, and there was no way Billy was going to fix that.

The old guy walked them all the way to their front door.

“
Gracias
,” Billy said.

• • •

“Go wake up Felipe,” he said to her.

He was lying propped up on his couch, still holding the towel to his face. The cat was sniffing all around him, like she was worried and wanting to know what was wrong.

“Why? Do you need him?”

“No. You do. To get to school.”

“I’m late anyway.”

“So? Be late. But you have to go.”

“I’m not leaving you, Billy. You need me. Here. Let me get you some ice.”

“Don’t you have a big rehearsal today?”

“Nope,” she shouted from the kitchen. “Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yesterday was our last rehearsal.”

She scooped two double handfuls of ice cubes into a paper napkin and ran them back to Billy. He pulled the towel away, slowly. Like he was scared what would happen when he did. Nothing happened. It didn’t bleed any more. It had finally, finally stopped.

“Oh, my God. Billy. You look terrible!”

Somehow it had seemed like a reasonable thing to say. At the time. She couldn’t have imagined he would take it too personally. Wouldn’t most anybody look bad after falling flat on their nose?

“What does it look like?” he asked quietly.

Grace hated to tell him. The bridge of his nose was swelling up, but that wasn’t the worst of it. His eyes were both going black all the way around. And he had veiny red blood showing inside the corner of one of his eyes. It was horrible. It was hard even to look at him.

“I’ll bring you a mirror. Where’s a mirror?”

“I don’t have one.”

“You
don’t have
one? Who doesn’t have a mirror?”

“Me,” he said.

He touched the ice to his nose and yelped.

“Have you got any aspirins to take?”

“I doubt it. If I do, they’re probably years old.”

“I bet Rayleen has aspirins. I’ll go look.”