The Dance Begins (2 page)

“Okay.” She still sounded uncertain.

“And you’d better bring some books to read today.” He ate the last bite of his waffle. “It might get a little boring for you while everyone’s working.” She was a good reader. The best reader in her class. He was worried she’d be bored next year in the first grade.

“The springhouse is going to be
my
playhouse, right? All mine.”

He was amused. “It will belong to everyone on Morrison Ridge, darling,” he said.

She wrinkled her nose. “Dani, too?” Dani was her nine-year-old cousin. They were oil and water when they got together.

“Dani, too,” he said, though he doubted Molly would have much competition from her cousins when it came to the springhouse. Dani thought it was too spooky, tucked so deeply into the woods. And the only other kids on Morrison Ridge were now teenagers and probably could care less.

“I can share,” Molly said, but she didn’t look happy about it. Sharing was a bit of an issue with her. He wished he and Nora could have given her a sibling, but that hadn’t been in the cards.

Nora looked at her watch. “I’m going to get fired,” she said as she got to her feet, but he knew she wasn’t serious. He watched her carry her bowl to the sink.

“Molly and I will do the dishes,” he said.

She picked up her purse from the counter and bent down to give Molly a kiss on the top of her head. “Have fun, honey,” she said. Then she walked to where Graham was sitting and leaned over to kiss him on the lips. She licked her own lips. “Maple syrup,” she said. “Delicious.” She smiled, then added, “Everything about this morning has been delicious.”

“What are you
talking
about?” Molly hated it when conversations flew over her head.

“She loved her oatmeal,” Graham said, and he gave Nora a wave as she blew out the door.

*   *   *

He and Molly rode along the narrow road that looped through Morrison Ridge. He was on his scooter and Molly on her bike with its training wheels. Molly had several books in her white wicker bicycle basket along with a paper bag containing the very few treasures she’d decided she might be willing to leave in the springhouse.

The Ridge had been in his family for more than a hundred and fifty years and the unpaved loop road connected the family’s five houses. Besides Graham and Nora’s house, there was the house he grew up in where his mother still lived, his brother Trevor’s house, his sister Claudia’s, and the renovated slave quarters where Amalia lived. And, of course, the tiny springhouse, tucked deep in the woods, where his ancestors had once kept their food chilled during North Carolina’s hot summers.

Molly had to walk her bike up the Hill from Hell—or, as he’d taught her to call it, the Hill from H-E-double matchsticks, which she found very funny and which went completely over her head. The hill was too steep to ride a bike up without rupturing a lung. Even the scooter struggled. His first scooter, which he’d owned for only a couple of months, couldn’t manage the hill at all. This one could, though he had to admit he found it mildly terrifying to ride
down
the hill on it. It was as close as he could get to a thrill these days. He used to love the zip line that stretched from one end of Morrison Ridge to the other, but there were 132 steps to the zip line’s platform and it had been more than five years since he could climb those steps. Even then, it had been an ordeal. Now, he could manage the six steps to his front porch—on a good day and with his cane. It was a bit like climbing through mud on legs he could no longer trust.
I will never again fly through the air. I will never again dance. I will never again hike a mountain trail.
When he caught himself filling up with those negative thoughts, he changed them the way he helped the kids he worked with change their own destructive thinking. He thought about all the things he
could
do, instead: work with his patients. Play games with Molly. Make love to Nora. He didn’t give in to self-pity often. Sometimes, though, he’d share his fears with Amalia. He could say anything to her and she would listen. She didn’t look tough, with that ephemeral green-eyed beauty, but he’d learned over the years that she could take his pain. With Nora, he tried hard to be strong. Nora needed that. He didn’t want to make her life any harder than it already was.

When they reached the crest of the hill, Molly climbed back on her bike and began pedaling next to him on the dirt road. Thick green forest surrounded them on both sides.

“There’s Uncle Trevor’s truck.” Molly pointed ahead of them and he saw Trevor’s shiny, beautifully maintained red F-150 parked on the side of the road near the path that led to the springhouse.

“Right,” he said. “And Uncle Jim’s van is in front of it.” Graham felt a rush of joy. He loved that his brother and brother-in-law were helping with this project. It was rare these days that the family worked together. Everyone was so caught up in their own career—Trevor with his construction company, Jim with his junk-hauling business. But maybe they—especially Trevor—liked the idea of giving the springhouse a second life after all the fun he and Graham and Claudia had enjoyed in the house as kids.

Jim had recently cleared the path to the springhouse of brush and vines, and Graham’s workhorse scooter handled it easily, but Molly parked her bike against a tree close to the road. She raced ahead of him on the path carrying her books and small bag of treasures. He watched her braids bounce up and down on her back and her pink sneakers flashed against the dead leaves and green vines that littered the path.

“I hear the spring!” she turned to shout to him.

He heard it, too, the musical rippling sound that would always remind him of his childhood. He could smell the spring, too—water and earth and the deep green scent of the woods. He rode the scooter another few yards and the small fieldstone building came into view. The door was open and he heard the pounding of a hammer.

Graham parked his scooter at the side of the building and reached for his cane. The ground here was uneven, covered in roots and vines, and he made his way slowly and cautiously to the door.

“We’re here!” Molly announced as she ran inside.

“Wow!” Graham said, stepping into the small, square space with its gray stone walls. A couple of days ago the building had been a blank slate. Now there were two low wooden platforms that would become twin beds, a small table and two chairs tucked into one corner, and a little red dresser hugging one of the walls. And there was a sink! He couldn’t believe it. Trevor was on his knees beneath the sink, doing something with the pipes while Jim pounded nails into one of the bed frames, wings of sweat on the back of his gray T-shirt.

“Hey,” Jim acknowledged them. “How’s it going?”

Trevor barely glanced in their direction. “Be with you in a sec,” he said.

“This looks amazing,” Graham said, still standing near the door. His gaze was on Amalia, who stood by one of the two small windows, opening a can of paint on the sill. A beam of sunlight somehow managed to cut through the forest and the film on the window to settle in her shimmery light brown hair. She set down the screwdriver she was using to pry open the lid and crossed the room to get to Molly.

“Hello, baby,” she said, wrapping Molly in a hug.

“It’s all different in here!” Molly said once Amalia had released her. She pointed toward one of the bed platforms. “What are these little stages for?”

Graham laughed. She’d been in her kindergarten play a month ago and the stage that had been set up in the school auditorium had indeed been no higher than these small platforms.

“I think they’re for us to dance on,” Amalia said. She picked up Trevor’s paint-spattered radio from the small counter next to the sink and changed the station from news to music. From beneath the sink, Trevor gave her a withering look that she pretended not to notice. “Jessie’s Girl” was playing, and Amalia grabbed Molly’s hand and the two of them hopped onto one of the platforms and began to dance. Watching them hold hands as they danced, Graham remembered his dream. He suddenly felt haunted by it. He could still feel Molly’s feet on his own. Her hands in his. That light sensation of gliding with her around the room.

Trevor stood up from beneath the sink and watched Amalia and Molly for a couple of seconds before reaching into the toolbox on the counter. “You’re supposed to be painting the windows, Amalia,” he said.

Amalia didn’t seem to hear him or, if she did, she chose to ignore him. Instead, she continued dancing with Molly, who was singing nearly all the words to “Jessie’s Girl,” some of which Graham wished she didn’t know.

“I can do the windows,” Graham said, happy there was a way he could contribute. He wasn’t sure he could stand for as long as it would take to paint one of the small window frames, much less two, but he planned to try. He walked with his cane over to the window where Amalia had been opening the can of paint.

“The generator’s hooked up,” Trevor said. “And check this out.” Graham watched him turn the handle on the faucet above the sink. Water sputtered, then poured from the tap. “I diverted it from the stream,” he said.

“Amazing.” Graham was truly impressed. He wouldn’t have had a clue how to do that. He’d always been the bookish, cerebral one in the family while Trevor was the brawny builder, good with his hands, and Claudia, Jim’s wife, was such a good baker that people paid her to make their wedding cakes. Graham was the only one of the three of them to finish college, much less graduate school, but he barely knew one end of a hammer from the other and, in the kitchen, he could make toast but that was about it. If one of them had to get multiple sclerosis, he supposed it was better it was the one who needed his brain more than his body.

Jim got to his feet and looked over at Amalia and Molly, who were standing stock-still on the other platform, heads tilted as they waited to hear what song would come next on the radio. “Are you going to help me with the mattresses or what?” Jim asked Amalia.

Graham hated the way he and Trevor talked to her, but he didn’t know how to change it. Amalia had lived on Morrison Ridge for four years and it had not gotten any better. In the beginning, he’d apologized for his relatives’ coolness, but she’d shrugged it off. “Ignore it,” she’d said. “I’ve heard so much worse.” She had a gift for tuning out things she didn’t want to hear. It wasn’t a realistic way to live, but he sometimes envied the peace that ability seemed to give her.

“At your service,” Amalia said to Jim, stepping down from the platform.

“But the music’s coming on!” Molly said as “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” blared from the radio.

“You can keep dancing, baby,” Amalia said. “I need to help Jim. We’re going to turn the little stages into beds.”

“
What?
” Molly giggled.

“Seriously,” Amalia said. “You’ll see.”

“Molly.” Graham pried the lid off the can of paint on the window sill. “Why don’t you sit and read for a while?”

“Where’s the place for my treasures?” she asked.

“I’ll show you a little later when things settle down,” he said.

“A place for her treasures, huh?” Trevor laughed. His gaze traveled to the fieldstone wall above the bed platform where Molly still stood, looking bereft at losing her dance partner. One of the stones looked a little different from the rest, but only a little. When they were kids,

Graham and Trevor had chipped out one of the stones to create a deep cavity and Claudia crafted a fake stone façade from plaster of Paris to keep the hole hidden from the rest of the world. “Wonder if anything is still in there,” Trevor said.

“Guess we’ll find out,” Graham said.

Trevor washed his hands at the sink and dried them on a rag hanging from the belt loop of his jeans. “Well,” he said, closing the lid on his tool chest. “I’ve got some things to do. You all can finish up.”

“You’re taking off?” Graham asked, surprised. He’d expected everyone to work on the springhouse today until the transformation was complete.

“I
do
have a job, you know,” Trevor said. “I’ll leave my tools here in case you need them.”

“Thanks for everything,” Graham said, but he couldn’t help it. It bothered him that Trevor was leaving when there was still work to do.

Molly sat at the table with one of her books as Graham taped off the windowpanes and began to paint. Jim and Amalia made a few trips from Jim’s van. They brought in two mattresses, each so thin and floppy that a single person could easily carry one of them with ease. Amalia brought in a small microwave and Jim, a three-tiered bookcase along with a bag of linens and blankets for the beds. Claudia worked for the local blanket-manufacturing company and one thing they had plenty of on Morrison Ridge was blankets.

By the time they’d carted everything in, Graham had painted only one side of the window and he knew he’d have to sit down soon. His legs were beginning to get that electric buzzing sensation he hated. “Isn’t it cool you’ll have a microwave out here, Molly?” he asked. “You can have tea parties and we can make that cheese dip we love.”

“Tonight?” she asked.

“Maybe next weekend, okay?”

This place was going to be a posh paradise. When he and Trevor and Claudia used to hang out in the springhouse, they slept in sleeping bags on the hard stone floor, ate cold sandwiches, and told each other ghost stories by lantern light.

Amalia took the paintbrush from his hand. “Sit,” she said, almost under her breath. “You rest a bit and I’ll do the painting.” Sometimes she seemed to know what he needed even before he knew it himself.

He sat across the table from Molly and helped her with the bigger words in the book she was reading. After Amalia finished the window, she came over to the table and bent down to speak to him.

“Training wheels?” she whispered.

He nodded. “Go for it,” he said.

“Molly.” Amalia opened Trevor’s toolkit and pulled out a couple of screwdrivers. “How would you like to get your training wheels off your bike?”

Molly looked up. “Really?” She looked hesitant and he knew she was a bit nervous about taking the wheels off her bike.