Tiny Dancer (30 page)

I slipped in from the carport into the kitchen. The house was alive with talk. Adult chatter from our living room
was the kind of talk a child overhears realizing it’s not meant for her ears.

Vesta talked and then a man answered her.
She talked excitedly. Her visitor’s voice was loud and booming. I made out a phrase or two: “This is working out to our advantage.” And “Keep this all private, trust no one with the information.”

I crept to the sink and lifted myself onto the countertop so that my feet would not cause our old kitchen floor to squeak. I sat with my legs dangling.

A chicken was left to thaw out in the sink drain. A bowl of vegetables sat unwashed, the paring knife dropped in the sink. The frying pan sat empty. The oven was cold.

I thought I would go half crazy trying t
o eavesdrop. Then all at once, Vesta jumped up and headed into the kitchen. “I’ve forgotten my manners,” she said to the visitor. “I’ll make coffee.”

I slipped onto the floor. I turned and made like I was looking for the cereal box.

Vesta was taken aback. “I thought you were in bed.”

“I woke up early. Took a bike ride,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“I’m glad you’ve mentioned your bike. I need some things from the corner market. Let me fetch my purse.”

I
stubbornly disagreed. “Later. Who’s in the living room?”

The visitor followed her into the kitchen,
giving me my answer. “I take my coffee black,” said the gentleman to Vesta. He saw me and stuck out his hand to  introduce himself but I knew him. “I’m Flannery,” I said to Mayor Grooms.

“Flannery’s about to run some errands for me,” said Vesta. “Right, Flannery?”

“Is this meeting about Theo Miller?” I asked him directly.

Grooms glanced at Vesta and then included me in their cozy arrangement. “Your family is getting some good news. If you can keep it all mum, I’ve just dropped off a c
ontract that will help ease those undesirables on out of here without much of a fuss.”

“No fuss?” I said. “Imagine that.”

“Miller was compliant, as I knew he would be,” Grooms told Vesta.

“Theo Miller will never sell his property,” I said
, my ire rising.

“He will and he has so agreed.”

Vesta stood looking as smug as Grooms.

I was certain Grooms was placating Vesta.
That was when he rolled out a development plan on our kitchen table. The plans had written in big letters “Pine Acres Golf Resort and Club.”

Vesta listene
d intently as he showed her the lay of the golf course.  A thoroughfare was planned directly behind our property. “The tee box will stand right square in front of the Pine Acres lake.”

“
You mean Miller Lake,” I corrected him.

“Or Vesta
Lake,” he said, shrugging affably. “I think you need some credit,” he told Vesta.

Vesta could not stop voicing her gratitude. She clapped
with glee, ogling the plans.

“Now I own all of the property that abuts this land,” he told her. “I can’t tell you the patience I’ve exercised waiting for such an opportunity. My property and this land joined together will provide the community with the biggest, grandest golf course in the United States.”

That meant, of course, our property would go up in value as Vesta had hoped it would.

She asked him about that too. “
About our place, Mayor, you had mentioned it could rise four times in value.” She said it like a question.

“Mrs. Curry, that was a modest estimation. This planne
d golf course will increase your property’s value ten times, maybe more. Everyone living on its borders will be sitting on a gold mine.”

Vesta nearly fainted from the news.
“I’ll do my best not to tell Effie,” she laughed. “But I can’t wait to see the look on her face when all this finally comes out.”

Grooms grew serious.
“Then of course, as promised, you will follow through as agreed.” he said, prompting her.

She agreed to everything. Then she said to me,
“I know how you feel, so we’re going to see charges are dropped right away.

“You should drop charges,” I said, my temper rising. “
Theo Miller hasn’t done anything wrong.”

Grooms looked
askance at Vesta.

“Don’t worry about
my daughter. She’s a young lady with a lot of compassion,” she said. “She’s going to be famous one of these days if I have anything to do with it.”

“Let’s clear up one thing,” I said, before walking out the back door. “I’m not your daughter. My mother would never do anything like this.”
Then I turned back around before walking out the door. “I’m not accepting the dance troupe offer either. You can bank on that, Vesta.”

I
banged on every door at the Miller’s house. Ratonda’s car was gone. I saw no sign of anyone. If Grooms was right, Theo might have taken them all off some place quiet to grieve.

I sat down on Theo’s front porch. The sun was up fully by now. I swore I smelled coffee and Dorothea’s biscuits. It was a phantom memory. If I closed my eyes, I could smell a pig smoking in the bowels of the earth
too.

I looked across Battalion Street at the morning sun warming Miller Lake. Here I h
ad lived all this time near a place of glorious light and never even bothered to see all of it. I walked through the field to the lake and then into the wooded glen. I startled a fawn. Wisteria had grown up an oak tree and made its own shade. I was a glutton for the place so I continued my hike. I found the highest point and stumbled onto an old brick structure. Not much was left of it. I wondered if this was where Theo’s grandfather had lived with his wife and children. It was run over with ivy. Rabbits scattered when I jumped up onto the half wall.

A
cloud bank moved toward town from the west.

Tha
t was when I saw a light on down the other side of the hill. It came from inside the hothouse. I pushed through a thick bramble but finally got through the woods. I came out into the open field. Wild roses turned the hill pink. I walked past the beckoning aroma and finally drew close to the plant nursery. Someone was inside. I saw a bit of movement through the translucent walls. I pushed open the door for it was left unlocked.

Theo tu
rned around, startled. He was pleased, though, smiling at me. “I was wondering when you’d find my secret place.”

“Not so secret any more,” I said. “You can see it plain as day
now, your sunflowers all gone.” Then I took a step back. For hanging from the ceiling, on wires, and from clothesline cords stretched wall-to-wall, were dozens, no, hundreds of blooming potted plants. There were flowers as far as I could see, the whole length of Theo’s hothouse. Each plant was swathed in old florist’s papers and tattered ribbons.

The
nursery smelled like a florist’s shop, its floral perfume intoxicating.

“You never said you kept hot house plants,” I said.

“It was a small project that got a little out of hand.”

I drew close to one of the nursery tables to admire a particularly large hydrangea. It was blue and I’d not seen such big heads on a hydrangea plant since ours only seemed to bloom small and sometimes not at all. That was when I noticed a silk butterfly hanging from the pot.
It was a tattered little thing. The florist’s spike drove through it held a big old shred of cardstock in the soil. I pulled it out. Then I looked at Theo.

“Like I said, it was a long term project.”

“This plant was one Vesta threw out.” I held out the tag that read
Our deepest sympathy to the Curry Family.

“It was a shame to see it hauled off to the dump. You know you can split open a plant’s dead branch and if it’s green in the middle, it’s not dead yet.”

I ran plant-to-plant. I recognized them all. “All two hundred,” I said.

“Someone miscounted,” said Theo. “Three hundred plants in all.”

I had to admit, I was touched at the grand vision of it all. Theo Miller had saved every precious plant sent to my parents as a memorial. I had a brilliant thought. “If you showed this to Vesta, maybe she would drop this whole golf course scheme of hers.”

“Too late for that.”

“Then it’s true.” My hopes sank. “I had to hear it from you. I never would have believed it.”

He seemed quite at peace for a man who was about to be homeless.

“I know you. You fight for what’s right. This isn’t like you.”

“I fight for what’s God’s. He’s not worried about my earthly assets. Therefore, I can’t be either.”

“What about your family, your legacy?”

He turned and sighed like I was a hardheaded child who never understood a thing. “You think my legacy is wrapped up in this place?”

“Of course.”

“My legacy is not in an address, Little Sister. Not here any way. Maybe in heaven’s address,” he smiled. “My legacy is in human treasure. You’re included, don’t worry,” he said.

“Dorothea won’t agree,” I said.

“She’s already signed her name,” he said. “She’s with me. We’re one.”

“Calvin? Ratonda?”

“They’ll calm down
eventually, I hope,” he said.

“Where are they all? Why aren’t they here with you?”

“They’ve gone to the Twistee Treat to order ice creams,” he said. “I’m kidding. They’ve taken the girls out to the coast to see some old friends, get them out of the house. I didn’t want them seeing Winston Grooms coming and going, strutting around like a barnyard rooster.”

I wanted to run across the Mill
er’s little square of Eden, to storm Periwinkle House and back Grooms into a corner. I wanted to make him do right by the Millers. “They’re dropping charges, I guess you know.”

“It’s their prerogative to do whatever they want with whatever power they imagine they have, and then answer to the same God to whom I answer.”

“I don’t think Grooms factored God into any of this.”

“He will
. Men like him always give credit to God for what they consider their entitlements.”

Sure enough, the small cloud I saw from a distance was bringing rain our way. It thundered. A little lightning show lit up the skylight over our heads.

We stood back-to-back beholding the small miracle of Siobhan’s redeemed garden.

“What I’ll do with all of this, I’ve no idea,” said Theo. “I didn’t think that far out. That’s my problem, or so says my wife. I don’t think far enough ahead.
”

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” I
said. I grabbed a watering can for in spite of the drops hitting the roof, an indoor container garden wasn’t going to water itself. We spent the next few hours watering plants. It took all morning.

The last time it rained that hard and long, Theo said, God gave Noah more notice than he gave the Sandhills.

I got drenched running home. But the best news was that reports of a tornado on the ground
in Raeford sent Mayor Grooms back home to count his winnings and call his investors. I could live the rest of my days and not see him again.

I woke up once in the night hearing Daddy and Vesta
calling out to one another in the dark. The electricity had gone out. I got up and helped light candles, although it made no sense. If we would all go back to bed, candles were unnecessary. Vesta worried we would need to take shelter. Only two houses in the neighborhood came with a storm cellar. One belonged to Effie Sandersen. The other belonged to Theo Miller and Vesta would never go begging in his direction, not if a monsoon hit.

The wind howled and that set off all the dogs in the neighborhood. Lightning crackled
like the floor of heaven was about to bust through. Daddy finally got enough batteries together to turn on his big bank guard’s flashlight. I don’t know why that gave him so much comfort, but it did.

About an hour before dawn, the rain subsided to a slow patter on the roof. I fell asleep on the sofa
, curled up like an inchworm. When I woke up, Vesta and Daddy were standing out in the yard. The sun was out, the sky wiped clean of clouds. I opened our front door and saw neighbors standing out in the street, looking around and talking to one another.

A tree had fallen in
Hui Lin’s yard, barely missing our roof. Vesta said it was God looking out for us. I knew better. It was God all right and a million reams of mercy.

The drooping cherries dripped
rain, their branches waving lazily like old men’s beards. The back yard was littered with broken branches and a kiddie pool.

We were not surprised to hear sirens going off all morning. Any time a big storm rolled through
town bad news came rolling in too. Lightning had hit a tree near the village setting fire to the tree and then to a house. Drowning Creek had flooded. It took until noon for our electricity to be restored. A bridge was washed away and, it was reported, a car and driver washed away in the flood. That was the first tragic news we heard after we turned on the TV.

By mid-afternoon
one of the sirens grew close. A squad car pulled down Cotton Street. The siren was shut off right as the squad car stopped in front of our house.

I
made bacon and tomato sandwiches in the kitchen. Daddy answered the door. I figured the local police were out checking on those who had survived the storm, making sure we all got our electricity back on, and seeing about the giant tree uprooted and stretched across our front yard. As far as I was concerned, it was the biggest conversation piece ever to come to Cotton Street.

“Flannery,” Daddy called to me.

I plated a sandwich and carried it to him.

T
wo local policemen stood in our doorway. One of them addressed me. “Flannery Curry,” he said with a question in his voice.

With all of the shenanigans going on, and for all I knew, Vesta had turned me in for my wayward associations.

I didn’t say a word to that cop. At best, I wanted my rights read to me first and not until after I’d eaten my sandwich. Even hardened criminals were granted a last meal.

“You may have heard we had some flooding down Drowning Creek. The old bridge washed out.
Several cars were crossing it when it gave way,” said Officer Dowd.

Daddy stared down at his own tightly clasped hands.

I wanted the cop to stop moving his lips, stop talking, stop trying to tell me something I didn’t want to hear. Sheer terror shot through me. The first people I thought of were Irene Johnson and then Claudia. Then I imagined Billy driving over Patterson Road Bridge not knowing it was about to collapse under him.

“Did you hear me, Miss?” asked the cop.

“You said something?” I asked, my knees feeling weak. I held up my hand. “Wait.” I leaned against the wall. “Is there any way you could not tell me what you’re about to tell me?”

Vesta brought her hand
s up to her mouth. Daddy’s eyes were wide. He put his arm around me.

Dowd’s partner told Daddy, “We’ve had a bit of trouble running Miss Curry down. But Dowd here was the one who came here last year.”

“I remember you,” said Vesta quietly.

“You’re listed as the
only living kin of Alice Curry,” said Officer Dowd.

“Yes,” I said.

“She was one of the drivers crossing Patterson Road Bridge when the creek flooded. Her car and two others were swept downstream. One car was found all the way down at the mouth of the Neuse River. We’re still looking for Alice Curry and possibly other victims.” He asked me to describe her vehicle. Before Daddy could protest that I couldn’t possibly know anything about her, I said, “Yes, officer, I can describe her car. I know what she looks like. Of course, Alice Curry is my mother.

                                                                         * * * * *              

A bridge collapsing was not something that was going to escape the local newspapers. It was front page news. I rode into the village the next morning and fetched the newspaper the first thing because I could not bear the thought of Daddy reading Alice Curry’s place of employment, or worse, Vesta finding out.

Once back home,
I tucked the newspaper roll under my arm and ran onto the back porch to read in privacy. The report listed each of the missing drivers, where they lived, and where they worked. Next to Alice’s name, the journalist had written, “Student at the Cosmopolitan Beauty School.” That was it. Several news desk writers had called the house but Daddy would not let them talk to me.

Irene called. She asked Daddy if she and Claudia could do anything. Right as Daddy was thanking them, I said, “Ask Irene if I
might come over.”

Daddy drove me up to the circular drive but stopped a few yards away. He was quiet for a bit until I said, “You want to know how I know about my mother.”

“It would set a few things in order,” he said. “I’m baffled. You seem to have a whole other life outside ours.”

I agreed.
How could I not?

Before I could tell him anything, he broke down. He must have thought it would be inappropriate to cry over one wife in front of the
other. It comforted me in a way only I could understand. I did not believe that Alice had ever stopped loving him. He cried as if she were still his wife. Like a lot of Daddy’s realizations, his  came a day late and a dollar short.

I had yet to let go
, but seeing him so distraught pushed me to the rim. I could no more grasp what I had been thrown into these past few days than I could sort out the odd feelings swirling around inside me.

He finally got ahold of himself, drying his eyes with a hanky.
He said, “Just tell me when you’re ready. I’m glad you’re going to see the Johnsons. I know they’ll be a comfort to you.”

Irene met me at the doorway. She put her arms around me,
holding on to me. “We’re glad you’re here.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel,” I said. “It’s not like when Siobhan died.”

“Claudia, why don’t you find an old movie for you and Flannery to watch. I’ll make you girls some Jiffy-Pop.”

I sat next to Claudia on the sofa. She combed through my tangled hair. I had not touched it all morning. Being up all night waiting for the tornadoes to tool out of the county left me sleepy. I laid my head against Claudia and slept through the movie.

When I woke up Claudia and Irene stared down at me sympathetically.

“What’s going on?” I asked, wiping spit from my cheek.

“Flannery, I’m just so sorry,” said Claudia.              

“Your father’s called.
I told him you were resting. He asked me to tell you as soon as you woke up,” said Irene.

She didn’t have to tell me
. I already knew what it felt like for a soul connected to you your whole life to leave you. I knew Alice had left me when the cops first told me the bridge had collapsed. “They found her,” I said with resignation. It was not the first time Alice left me, of course. But it was different. This time she had given me a proper good-by. She had taken off those heavy stones laid on top of me since age four.

“That’s not all,” said Claudia. “Daddy’s on his way here.”

“He sounded awful,” said Irene, although she didn’t seem so bothered by the fact. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Maybe his girlfriend kicked him out,” said Claudia.
“One can only hope.”

Irene was up out of her chair, calling out for Saffron to put on a pot roast.

Claudia watched her mother bustle out of the living room with the first light of hope in her eyes. “She shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” said Claudia, her voice flat. “He’s probably coming back for his golf shirts.”

I only knew I had to head Dwight Johnson off at the
door. The chain of events unfolding these past few hours threatened to collide.

Claudia held out
a box of tissues.

“You keep them,” I said. “You might need them.

             
                                                        * * * * *

Dwight said very little to Irene or Claudia. He lit a pipe, something I had never seen him do. He parked his sorry self in one of their Adirondack chairs at the edge of the lawn out back. He sat in the shade of the trees and watched golfers pass by.

Irene kept finding reasons to go out onto the screened in deck. Claudia and I knew she was looking for reasons to
observe him, look for any signs that he was coming back to her. He gave her none.

She
gave up and retired to her room.

Saffron made the roast. We
stared at it while she plated it, arranging potatoes in a circle. “I guess dinner is ready,” said Saffron.

“I’ll go
fetch Mother,” said Claudia.

Finally Saffron said, “Mr. Johnson might like a martini.” She handed it to me. “I’m afraid I’ll say something I wish I hadn’t said. Poor Mrs. Johnson has cried her eyes out over that man. He
don’t deserve such a good woman.”

“You’re right about that,” I said. I accepted the
task. When I walked up on him, he sensed my presence although he didn’t look up at me. “You know what’s so interesting about a storm?” he asked.

I did not answer him.

“It blusters in like a big old buffalo, you know, all thunder and raising sand. Then it leaves and takes every cloud out of the sky. Everything is clear,” he said.

“I hope everything is clear,” I said.

“It is,” he said.

“Saffron asked me to bring you a drink,” I told him. I set it on the arm of his chair.
“Dinner’s ready too, Sir.”

“You are a dear young woman,” he told me.

“I need to ask you something, Mr. Johnson.”

He took a draw on his pipe. “Ask away.”

“I know about the woman you’ve been seeing, the dancer at the club.”

The pause between us
caused him to shift in his chair.

“I heard about your little jaunt to the Gentlemen’s Pleasure. You are a cautio
n
. I never saw you that night either. You could work in espionage, you know.”

“Truthfully, I never saw you either. I wasn’t there to see you.”

He looked curiously up at me. “Before you say anything you might regret, may I tell you that my lady friend died in last night’s bridge accident?” He paused. “Are you the daughter of Alice Curry?”

“You know my mother then?”

“Knew of her.”

“Please don’t tell Irene or Claudia. I don’t want them to hate me.”

His odd smile amazed me. I was surprised he could smile at all.

“Please tell me, Sir,” I said, “Did you love her? Did you treat her well?”

“Who?”

“My mother, Alice Curry.”

He looked as if he was getting some clarity, although any sane reasoning completely eluded me.

“You think that your mother and I—
” , he paused, making some back and forth motions with his hands.

“Weren
’t you?”

He shook his head. “My lady friend was in the car with your mother. Her name was Talia Simmons. Your mother knew a man, but Talia said she had left him. She had left the club too. It all happened quickly. Sometime this morning I put it all together when I saw your name as Alice Curry’s next-of-kin in the paper.”

I could not recall Talia Simmons. She could have been the dancer standing with Alice outside the club my first night I spotted them. Or maybe she was the woman knocking on my mother’s door. One thing was certain, Alice Curry did not break up Irene Johnson’s marriage.

He emptied his pipe onto the ground. “Your mother was turning her life around so she could be with you.”