Last Dance (2 page)

But if he showed up—oh, then it was romantic!

Beth Rose considered herself the most stodgy of personalities. She was the sort of person who would always stay for cleanup, and never skip the middle of boring books, and always, always pay her library fines. She had also been, until Gary, a wallflower. Last year, at another dance, Gary said, smiling, “Well, a flower anyway,” and kissed her. Now when Beth Rose stood by a wall, she felt she was not a wallflower, but truly a rose, because to be with Gary was to be special.

She even got along better with her parents because of Gary. The new pleasure of being popular made it easy to laugh when they nagged, and Beth Rose discovered something astonishing: If she laughed, her mother and father laughed! Life at home had moved from a sour lane to a sweet one.

The only snag was that Gary did not have what you might call an attentive nature. Sometimes he helped in his father’s restaurant, sometimes he got interested in school, sometimes he worked in the drama production, and sometimes he was fixing his car. And sometimes, with about equal emphasis, he wandered over to Beth Rose’s and took her out. Gary never saw anything wrong with this: He felt life was perfect—a dose of mechanics, a dollop of girlfriend, a smidgen of studying, and a speck of work.

It was Beth Rose who felt the proportions were off. She would have liked to see ninety percent girlfriend and ten percent other. She said that to Gary once. Gary said, “You’re kidding,” and laughed and kissed her and they went on to a movie and shared popcorn. It never crossed Gary’s mind that no, she was not kidding. The L word.

Beth Rose and Anne had discussed that L word at length. Gary was definitely not in love with Beth Rose. He liked her fine, but he also liked everything else under the sun fine. It was useless even to ask Gary if he loved her because he would have said, “Sure,” and then he would have said, “You wanna borrow my Dad’s motorcycle and helmets and we’ll go up to Mount Snow? You wanna ride the ski lift in summer? It’s pretty. I love it.”

Beth Rose did not want to be loved the same amount as a ski lift in summer.

Her mother came into the room, where she was fixing her dark red hair for the second time. “You be nice to Anne, now, Brose.”

A year ago Beth Rose would have tensed and gotten upset. Now she just laughed. “Mother, I’ve been nicer to Anne than anybody, including Con. It’s my Aunt Madge she went to live with, right?”

Mrs. Chapman shook her head. “I still don’t see why she couldn’t stay at home.”

“Because our town sends pregnant unwed teenagers to a special high school in Lynnwood, and Anne didn’t want to go. She was crying twenty-four hours a day, Mother.”

Beth Rose took the comb out of her hair and tossed her head violently, and now the curls sprawled all over her head like a garden of red poppies. Sometimes Beth Rose thought the best thing about this excellent year was not even Gary, but her new friendships with Anne and with Emily, girls in the junior class who never even knew her name before—never spoke to her because they never noticed her—and now each was on the phone with her at least once a day, talking boys, and life, and boys, and parents, and boys. (Emily and Beth Rose liked to start and end all conversations with boys.)

Mrs. Chapman said, “I don’t want you out late, dear.”

“Okay.”

“That means no later than one A.M., dear.”

“Okay.”

“That means leaving the dance shortly after midnight, dear.”

“Mother, I know! My middle name is Cinderella. Gary knows. He’s been taking me out all year! We’ve got the rules down!” Beth Rose laughed, surrendered her wild hair to the elements, hugged her mother, and dashed downstairs to leap into the car with Gary.

She could never wait for him to come inside. She was always ready early, always halfway on the date before Gary was even halfway to her house. She always ran out and jumped into the front and slid over the seat, and Gary would be laughing at her exuberance, and she would kiss him hard and he would just sit there, letting her, and then he would back out of the driveway.

This time she didn’t do any of that.

This was the Last Dance.

And Beth Rose wanted Gary to do it
right
.

Molly was schizophrenic.

She was half wild with excitement. She adored dancing, and she had the best dress in the world, and she was crazy about Rushing River Inn, and her silver slippers on her small slim feet were the perfect finish for her outfit. Her dress was very short, very purple, with one lightning strip of glitter; her stockings were lace, her belt a silver chain with a dangling silver sun and stars, and her matching earrings reached to her shoulders. When she danced, she rang like tiny bells.

But half of Molly—the invisible half—was seething with rage.

Con was taking Anne.

Talk about blackmail. It wasn’t Con’s fault Anne hadn’t been careful. Anne should have known better. And if Anne was such a dork she had to leave town and go live with somebody until she had the baby, because she wouldn’t have an abortion, well, that was Anne’s problem. Con, perfect Con, should not be subjected to such a thing, and she, Molly, had seen to it that from January to the first of June he wasn’t.

Molly had been laughter and fun, lightness and giggles.

She never asked anything of him; they never talked of anything serious, and gradually Con had stopped calling or visiting Anne. Anne was fat, anyway, and repulsive. And of course every time he had to visit her, Con was reminded of what happened, and Molly felt this was unfair. Somebody as wonderful as Con should not have to feel any guilt because Anne was dumb. Certainly she, Molly, would never be that dumb.

So here they were at the Last Dance, the pay-off socially for the whole long winter and the whole wet dismal spring, and who was Con taking?

Anne.

It was enough to make you spit.

Molly pounded her silver heels on the floor, and it was no dance—it was a tantrum.

But she blamed nothing on Con, and she blamed nothing on herself.

It was Anne Stephens’ fault, and if precious, elegant little Anne thought she could just waltz back to Westerly and take Con and her social position back up as if nothing had happened, well, precious Anne was wrong.

Molly was keeping Con, and that was that.

Molly smiled into the mirror.

The mirror said nothing.

Molly’s smile said it all.

Emily was shaking so hard she could barely find the telephone, let alone dial. Oh, for a phone with memory that would accomplish these tasks for her! What if Matt had already left? What if he was on his way? What would she do then?

“Oh, Matt!” she cried out, when he did answer. “Oh, Matt, don’t come. Forget it. We’re not going.”

“Not going? But Em, I thought you were so excited about this dance. We bought that dress, and—”

“And Mother and Dad are splitting up tonight, Matt. Right now. This minute. They’ve been throwing things at each other for hours and screaming horrible accusations, and Mother is packing a suitcase and shoving her things in her car, and she says I have to go with her, and we’re leaving
now
.”

Emily did not know why she was weeping so much. Her parents had no more use for her than they did for each other, and it was only since she began dating Matt that they saw anything good in their daughter at all. Matt was so wonderful they figured Emily must have something invisible going for her that they had not yet spotted.

It terrified her to think of moving away with her mother. She could manage a different high school, even if it was her senior year—her precious senior year—that would be lost. She could leave behind the familiar neighbors and rooms and garden and kitchen. But the only thing that had saved the Edmundson family this long was the fact that the rambling multilevel house permitted them to live quite separately. Emily knew she could not live in a three-room apartment in Lynnwood with her mother. They would be at each other’s throats. They could not pull it off. Emily had managed never to fight her parents the way they fought each other, and she could not bear to start now. The thought of the wars to come, once she and her mother were jammed in next to each other and could not be apart, was enough to make her feel ill.

“So let them split,” Matt said. “You and I are going to a dance. I’ve never been to Rushing River Inn, and I plan to throw you in the swimming pool. So be prepared. You’ll know when I’m going to do it because first I’ll unpin your corsage and set it in a safe, dry place. The money I paid for these flowers, I’m not getting them drowned in chlorine.”

His voice was as goofy as his grin, all spread all over the place, silly and sane at the same time. Oh, how Emily loved Matt! She took a deep, shaky breath and tried not to break down. “Matt, you don’t understand. Mother is in the hall screaming at me to get in her car, and Dad is on the landing, screaming at me to stay put.”

Her parents’ voices terrified her. Screaming at
each other
she had gotten used to. But screaming at
her
was new, and she wanted to hide from them, under the bed or in the closet, like a baby.

“M&M, I understand perfectly,” said Matt, who had begun calling her for her favorite candy, and also because her name (Em) and his initial (M) were M&M. “And who cares? You’re sixteen, soon to be seventeen. Old. Very, very old and mature. And we’re going to a dance, because kids like us spend all our time doing fun things. I have four new tapes, and my mother bought the neatest new snack—looks kind of like mouse droppings, but it really tastes pretty good. I’m bringing it to eat in the car so we can keep up our strength, and you’ll like it.”

Matt had a mind filled with thoughts. Emily visualized the inside of Matt’s head as a clothes dryer with a glass door: thoughts tumbling like drying jeans and socks, with no relationship to each other except they were all crammed into the dryer together. You had to concentrate to follow Matt, and tonight she could not think.

Emily’s parents appeared in her bedroom door.

The door framed them, like a picture, perhaps a twentieth anniversary picture—not that they planned to have or celebrate one. Her mother said fiercely, “Emily, the car.” It sounded as if she were introducing them.

Her father yelled much louder, “Emily, you’re not going anywhere.”

Matt said in her ear, “I heard that. They sound a little irritable. Listen, M&M, be happy, it’s finally going to happen, this divorce you’ve been worried about for so long. We’ll stay out all night, and when we get back at dawn, they will have split.”

“But Matt,” she protested. The tears had begun, and she did not know what to do about them. Emily generally choked when she cried and couldn’t talk. Anyway, she couldn’t tell Matt anything now because her parents were listening.

“If you do not come with me to Lynnwood right now, young woman,” her mother said, “as far as I am concerned you do not need to come at all.”

Emily clung to the phone like a life raft. Her own mother was giving her one chance—just one—now or never. Come or I don’t love you?

Her parents, unable to look at each other any more, because they were so angry and feeling so violent, glared at her instead. Her father bellowed, “You go with that woman, and I’m changing the locks, and you’re not coming back here. And that’s that.”

“Just stay calm and come with me,” Matt said in her ear.

Stay calm?

What—was he out of his mind? Stay calm? And if she went with Matt, she would have neither mother nor father; Matt couldn’t bring her home after the dance because she wouldn’t have one!

Emily wanted time to think.

She wanted to talk with her counselor in school and maybe her music teacher, who was very understanding even though Emily was a poor saxophone player at best. Then she wanted to talk with Matt’s grandfather, who was the most wonderful person on earth, and definitely with Beth Rose, who had become such a good friend this year. Emily figured she had at least a month of heavy-duty consulting to do before she could make this decision. And they were giving her one minute.

Why, oh why, couldn’t she have a
nice
family? Why couldn’t she be like Kip, with that horde of terrific little brothers, and that cozy mother who loved to give parties, and that father who seemed to do nothing but laugh and hug all the time?

Matt said, “Lemme talk to ’em.”

Oh,
yes
. He would be a buffer: like the wall around a castle. She could put him and the telephone between herself and her parents’ fury. Emily said, looking at neither parent, but holding the phone in their direction, “Matt would like to talk to you.” Let them fight over who got to do that as well.

Her mother took the phone and slammed it back down, hanging up on Matt. “Get in the car, Emily, we’re leaving.”

They loved each other once, Emily thought, or they wouldn’t have gotten married. How did this happen? How—

Her mother grabbed her wrist. Hard enough to hurt.

And Emily said softly, “Mother, I’m going to the Last Dance with Matt. I’ll telephone you and let you know what I decide about living with you or Dad.”

Her father said, “It won’t be me you live with, young lady, if on the night I need you most, you go traipsing off with that loopy jerky kid.”

She almost fell for it—his needing her—but the truth was that Mr. Edmundson seldom needed anything except his television set, and if he needed her, it was only to bring his food from the microwave in the kitchen to the TV in the family room.

Family room, she thought.

Some family.

Sobbing, she jerked her wrist free. She tried to run out of the room, but her father blocked the door. She shoved him away and ran down the stairs and out of the house. She would call Matt from the neighbors’—wait for him around the corner—figure out what to do later!

Her parents were yelling at her, and their terrible voices followed Emily across the lawn. She fled farther than she thought she would. She could not stop running, but crossed backyards, and stopped, panting behind a stranger’s garage.

Emily Edmundson thought—What have I done?

It won’t be a Last Dance!

It’ll be a Last Home, Last Family, Last Mother and Father.