Pretending to Dance (2 page)

“Oh, I'm sorry,” Patti says. “How about brothers and sisters?”

“No siblings,” I say, happy to be able to tell the truth. “And I grew up in North Carolina, so I don't get to see my extended family often.” As in, never. The only person I have any contact with is my cousin Dani, and that's minimal. Next to me, I feel Aidan stiffen ever so slightly. He knows we're in dangerous territory. He doesn't know exactly how dangerous.

“Well, let's talk about health for a moment,” Patti says. “How old were your parents when they passed away, Molly? And what from?”

I hesitate. “Why does this matter?” I try to keep my voice friendly. “I mean, if we had our own children, no one would ask us—”

“Honey,” Aidan interrupts me. “It matters because—”

“Well, it sounds like your parents died fairly young,” Patti interrupts, but her voice is gentle. “That doesn't rule you out as a candidate for adoption, but if they had inheritable diseases, that's something the birth parents should know.”

I let go of Aidan's hand and flatten my damp palms on my skirt. “My father had multiple sclerosis,” I say. “And my mother had breast cancer.” I wish I'd never told Aidan that particular lie. It might be a problem for us now. “I'm fine, though,” I add quickly. “I've been tested for the…” I hesitate. What was the name of that gene? If my mother'd actually had breast cancer, the acronym would probably roll off my tongue with ease.

“BRCA,” Patti supplies.

“Right.” I smile. “I'm fine.”

“Neither of us has any chronic problems,” Aidan says.

“How do you feel about vaccinations?”

“Bring 'em on,” Aidan says, and I nod.

“It's hard for me to understand not protecting your child if you can,” I say, happy to be off the questions about my family.

The rest of the interview goes smoothly, at least from my perspective. When Patti finally shuts her notebook, she announces that she'd like to see the rest of the house and our yard. Aidan and I had spent the morning dusting and vacuuming, so we're ready for her. We show her the room that will become the nursery. The walls are a sterile white and the hardwood floors are bare, but there is a beautiful mahogany crib against one wall. Aidan's parents gave it to us when I was pregnant with Sara. The only other furniture in the room is a small white bookshelf that I'd stocked with my favorite children's books. Aidan and I had done nothing else to the room to prepare for our daughter, and I'm glad. I never go in there. It hurts too much to see that crib and remember the joy I felt as I searched for those books. But now with Patti at my side, I dare to feel hope and I can imagine the room painted a soft yellow. I picture a rocker in the corner. A changing table near the window. My arms tingle with an uneasy anticipation.

We walk outside after showing her the bedrooms. We live in a white two-story Spanish-style house in Kensington, one of the older parts of San Diego, and in the bright sunlight our well-maintained neighborhood sparkles. Our yard is small, but it has two orange trees, a lemon tree, and a small swing set—another premature gift from Aidan's parents. Exploring our little yard, Patti says the word
awesome
at least five times. Aidan and I smile at each other. This is going to happen, I think. We are going to be approved as potential adoptive parents. Some birth parents will select us to raise their child. The thought both excites and terrifies me.

Patti waves as she gets into her car in the driveway. Aidan puts his arm around me and we smile as we watch her drive away. “I think we passed with flying colors,” Aidan says. He squeezes my shoulder and plants a kiss on my cheek.

“I think we did,” I agree. I pull a big gulp of oxygen into my lungs and feel as though I've been holding my breath all afternoon. I turn to him and circle my arms around his neck. “Let's work on our portfolio this weekend, okay?” I ask. We've been afraid to take that step, afraid to pull together the necessary photographs and information about ourselves in case we somehow failed the home study.

“Let's.” He kisses me on the lips and one of our neighbors honks his horn as he drives by. We laugh, and Aidan kisses me again.

I remember how I'd wondered if our daughter would have his brown eyes or my blue. His brawny athletic build or my long, slender arms and legs. His easygoing nature or my occasional moodiness. Now our child will have none of those things—at least not from us—and I tell myself it doesn't matter. Aidan and I have too much love for just two people. Sometimes I feel as though we're bursting with it. At the same time, I pray I'll be able to extend that love to a baby I didn't carry. Didn't give birth to. What is wrong with me that I have so many doubts?

*   *   *

That night, Aidan falls asleep first and I lie next to him, thinking about the interview with Patti. There was nothing there to come back to haunt me, I assure myself. Patti's not going to search for my mother's obituary. We are safe.

The lies I told Aidan when we were first dating—my dead mother and her breast cancer, my cold relatives—had been accepted without question and set aside. He knew I meant it when I said I'd laid the past to rest the day I left North Carolina at eighteen. We never revisited those lies. There'd been no need to, until today. I hope the interview with Patti will be the end of it. I want to move on. We need to create our own healthy, happy, sane, and loving family.

I think about our “open communication” Aidan had described to Patti. Our honest relationship. At times I feel guilty for keeping so much about my past from him, but I'm honestly not sure he would want to know. I try to imagine telling him:
My mother murdered my father.
I'd said those words once and they had cost me. I will never say them out loud again.

 

SUMMER 1990

2

Morrison Ridge
Swannanoa, North Carolina

Daddy sat across from me in his wheelchair at the small table in the springhouse, a beam of sunlight resting on his thick dark hair.

“Check it out,” he said, nodding toward the window, and I turned to see a dragonfly on the inside of the glass. Centered in one of the wavy panes, it looked as though it had been painted there with a fine-tipped brush.

I got up for a closer look. “A common green darner,” I said, although I wasn't certain. “There was one in my bedroom last night, too,” I added, sitting down again. “I think it might have been a dragonhunter.”

Daddy looked amused. “You just like the sound of that name,” he said.

“True. It was pretty, whatever it was.” I'd forgotten a lot of what I'd learned last summer when I was thirteen and so into insects I thought I'd grow up to be an entomologist. This was the summer nothing felt quite right. One minute I wanted to ride my bike at top speed up and down Morrison Ridge's hilly dirt roads. The next minute I was shaving my legs and tweezing my eyebrows. Even nature seemed confused this summer in the mountains where we lived outside Swannanoa, North Carolina. The laurel was trying to bloom again, even though it was July, and the dragonflies were everywhere. I was careful when I touched the porch railing or the handle of my bicycle, not wanting to squash one of them.

I picked up a chocolate chip cookie from the plate in front of me and held it across the table to him, aiming for his mouth.

“How many calories?” he asked before taking a bite.

“I don't know,” I said. “And besides, you're skinny.”

“That's because I count calories,” he said, chewing the bite he'd taken. “I'm heavy enough for Russell to lift as it is.” My father was tall, or at least he'd been tall back when he could stand up, and he had a lanky build that I'd inherited along with his light blue eyes. I doubted he'd ever been overweight.

“So, what are you reading?” he asked once he'd swallowed the last bite of the cookie. I followed his gaze to the thin brown bedspread of one of the two twin beds where I'd tossed the book I was currently reading.

“It's called
Flowers in the Attic,
” I said.

“Ah, yes.” He smiled. “V. C. Andrews. The Dollanganger family, right?”

My father always seemed to know something about everything. It could get annoying. “You've read it?” I asked.

“No, but so many of the kids I work with have read it that I feel like I have,” he said. “The siblings are trapped in the attic, right? A metaphor for being trapped in adolescence?”

“You really know how to ruin a good story,” I said.

“It's a gift.” He smiled modestly. “So, are you enjoying the book?”

“I
was.
Not so sure now that I have to think about the metaphor and all that.”

“Sorry, darling.”

I hoped he wouldn't call me “darling” in front of Stacy when she came over later that afternoon. I didn't know Stacy very well, but she was the only one of my friends around for the summer, so when my mother suggested I invite someone to sleep over, I thought of her. She loved the New Kids on the Block and she promised to bring her
Teen Beat
and
Sassy
magazines, so we'd have plenty to talk about.

As if reading my mind, Daddy nodded toward one of the three New Kids on the Block posters I'd taped to the fieldstone walls. I'd moved them from my bedroom to the springhouse for the summer. “Play me some of their music,” he said.

I stood up and walked over to the cassette player, which was on the floor under the sink. There were not many places to put things in the small cramped springhouse.
Step by Step
was already loaded in the player. I hit the power switch and music filled the little building. The springhouse had electricity provided by a generator along with a microwave and running water diverted from the nearby spring. Daddy and Uncle Trevor had fixed the place up for me when I was six years old. Daddy must have still been able to walk a bit then, but I could barely remember him without the wheelchair. I'd gone through summers of tea parties in the tiny stone building and I'd spent the night out here a few times with one of my parents sleeping in the second twin bed. Then I spent a couple of recent summers fascinated with the insect and plant life that filled Morrison Ridge's thick green woods. My microscope still sat on the ledge beneath one of the springhouse's two windows, but I hadn't touched it yet this summer and probably wouldn't. Now I was into dancing and music and fantasizing about the boys who made it. Oh, and Johnny Depp. I'd lie awake at night, trying to come up with a way to meet him. In that fantasy I wore contacts instead of glasses and somehow miraculously had great hair instead of my shoulder-length flyaway brown frizz. And I had actual breasts. Right now, I barely filled out the AA cups on my bra. We would fall in love and get married and have a family. I wasn't sure how I was going to make that happen, but it was my favorite thing to think about.

“It's warm in here, don't you think?” Daddy said. He couldn't stand being hot—it made him feel very weak—and he was right about the heat. Despite the fact that we lived in the mountains and the stone walls of the springhouse were twelve inches thick, it
was
toasty in here today. “Why don't you open the windows?” he said.

“They're stuck.”

He looked at the window closest to the sink as though he could open it with his eyes. “Shall I tell you how to unstick them?”

“Okay.” I stood up and crossed the small space until I was in front of the window. I stood there bouncing a little in time with the music, waiting for him to tell me what to do. I was always dancing these days, even while I brushed my teeth.

“Now, right where the lower pane meets the upper pane, pound your fist.” Daddy didn't lift his hands to demonstrate the way someone else might. Two years ago he might have been able to lift them, at least a little. Now his hands rested uselessly on the arms of his wheelchair. His right hand curled up on itself in a way that I knew irritated him.

“Here?” I pointed to a spot on the window frame.

“That's right. Give it a good whack on both sides.”

It took a couple of tries, but the window finally gave way and I raised it. I could hear the rippling sound of the nearby spring, but as soon as I walked to the window on the other side of the springhouse, the sound was overwhelmed by the New Kids singing “Tonight.” I used the same technique to open the second window, and a forest-scented breeze slipped across the room.

Daddy smiled as I sat down again. My mother said his smile was “infectious,” and she was right. I smiled back at him.

“Much better,” he said. “Even when I was a kid, those windows would stick.”

I held his lemonade glass close to his lips and he took a sip through the straw. “I love thinking about how the spring ran though this little house back then,” I said. I'd seen old pictures of the building. A gutter filled with springwater ran along one interior wall and, in the old days, my Morrison Ridge ancestors would keep their milk and cheese and other perishable food cool in the water.

“Well, my father changed that early on when he added the windows. Your uncle Trevor and I helped him, or as much help as we could give him. We were really small. Once it dried out in here, we had sleepovers nearly every weekend in the summer.”

“You and Uncle Trevor?”

“And your aunt Claudia and our friends—with one of our parents, of course—until we got old enough that the boys didn't want to hang out with the girls and vice versa. Later Trevor and I would stay out here alone. There were no beds in here then, but we'd sleep in our sleeping bags. We'd build a fire outside—we had no microwave, of course. No electricity, for that matter.” He looked into the distance, seeing something in his memory that I couldn't see. “It was great fun,” he said. Then he glanced at the wall above one of the twin beds, to the left of the Johnny Depp posters. “So, what do you keep in the secret rock these days?” he asked. When they were boys, he and Uncle Trevor had chipped one of the stones from the wall to create a small hollow, covering it over with a lightweight plaster cast of a stone. You'd never know the hollow was there unless someone told you. I kept some shells and two small shark teeth in there from one of our trips to the beach, along with a pack of cigarettes my cousin Dani had left on our porch the year before. I didn't know why I was holding on to them. They'd seemed like something exciting to hide at the time. Now they seemed stupid. I also had a blue glass bird my mother had given me for my fifth birthday in the secret rock, along with a corsage—all dried out, now—that Daddy'd given me before my cousin Samantha's wedding. And I kept my amethyst palm stone up there. Daddy had given the stone to me when I was five and afraid to get on the school bus. He'd presented it to me in a velvet-lined jewelry box and I didn't take it out of my pocket for a full year. He told me the story of the stone, how the amethyst had been found on Morrison Ridge land in 1850 when they broke ground for the main house where my grandmother now lived. How it had been carved and smoothed into the palm stone with a gentle indentation for the thumb, then passed down through the generations. How his own father had given it to him, and how it helped him when he was afraid as a child. He'd never believed that the amethyst had actually been found on our land, but he'd treasured the stone anyway and he seemed to believe in its calming powers.