“Mom, you decide,” Henry says as he carries another trash bag out the backdoor.
Angie has gone upstairs to lie down, Uncle Eddie has gone to the garage to check on things, and Ellie is giving Gram a foot massage in the living room.
Mrs. Grover fills the sink to wash the dishes. Alice grabs a dishtowel. This she can do.
“Any more trash?” Henry wants to know.
“That’s it.”
He sits down at the kitchen table and grabs another molasses cookie. Alice pours him a glass of milk.
“You could still go tonight, you know,” Mrs. Grover says.
“Go where?” Alice asks.
“To the dance.”
Uh oh, Henry thinks, not a good idea.
“It’s not a crime or anything. You could ask your mom, Alice.”
“But—”
“I don’t think your dad would mind.”
“I don’t feel like—”
“It might do you good.”
“I don’t—”
“That’s okay, Alice. I don’t mind, really,” Henry says.
“You could still go, Henry.”
“Without you? Forget it.”
Alice looks out the kitchen window to her dad’s workshop and the garden beyond. The last of the sunset is still coloring the sky. The last thing in the world she feels like doing is going to the school gym to see all those people, to know that they all know what’s happened, but they don’t know, can’t know what to say.
“We wouldn’t have to go inside, even.”
Henry, it seems, can read her mind.
“You know how there’s that grassy area outside the gym, where the big maple tree is?”
“Just watch, you mean?”
“Or just listen. Maybe dance a little on the grass.”
Alice dries another plate.
“I mean we could go in if you want to, if you change your mind or anything; I’m just saying we don’t have to. . . . Not to pressure you or anything.”
Alice continues to stare out the window. Mrs. Grover dries her hands on her apron and puts her arm around Alice’s shoulder.
“You do what feels right to you, honey. It was just a suggestion.”
Alice puts her arm around Mrs. Grover’s soft waist in her paisley dress. Mrs. Grover feels so different from Alice’s mother.
“I know your dad would like to see you in that dress.”
“No, he’d think . . .”
“He’d be wondering how you grew up so fast and got so pretty. He’d be wondering how it is he hadn’t noticed all kinds of things about you while you were right under his nose.”
Alice, embarrassed, pulls away.
“You go change. I’ll help Henry get ready.”
“I have to ask my mom.”
“I know. I’ll pick you up about . . .”
“We wanted to walk.”
“That’s fine, then. Henry will be back to pick you up in thirty minutes. If all you do is walk to the corner and back, that’s fine, too.”
“Okay.”
“But stop by afterward and let me see you in that dress.”
Henry and Mrs. Grover are out the door and Angie has said yes, it doesn’t matter, yes, it’s all right, and now Alice is slipping into the dress and lifting her hair off her neck and twisting it and using too many bobby pins to try to hold it up. Maybe a ponytail would be easier. And stepping into her pointy-toed flat shoes and asking her mom if she can borrow a sweater and yes, she’ll be warm enough.
Angie turns and looks at Alice. And finds herself looking straight into Matt’s blue eyes.
There’s a pause while Angie tries to get her voice under control.
“Daddy would like that dress.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely.”
Matt should be here, she is thinking, Matt should see this, Matt would . . . Oh, when did she get to be so lovely?
“I tried to put my hair up, but . . .”
“Let me help.”
Angie deftly pins up Alice’s hair.
“Ask Mrs. Grover to take some pictures.”
“We won’t stay too long.”
“Who’s driving?”
“We wanted to walk.”
“Call Uncle Eddie if you want a ride home.”
“Mom, we don’t have to go, I’m not even sure I really want to go.. . . I could stay here with you, I could . . .”
“Go.”
Angie kisses Alice.
“Go.”
Gram and Ellie make Henry come inside when he knocks on the door, Henry who has opted to wear a T-shirt with the tuxedo pants and jacket, Henry who has showered in under five minutes, and slicked back his hair, who is looking older and cooler and somehow also even dorkier than he ever has in his life, Henry who, among other things in the last half hour, has learned how to spit polish his shoes to a mirror shine.
Henry stands just inside the door ready to cut and run at the slightest sign of a critical glance. He is feeling hot and nervous until Alice comes down the stairs in that dress and an entirely new mash-up of feelings starts to slosh around inside his stomach. Alice smiles at him, or at least her mouth smiles at him. Her eyes are still wary and desperate. Henry would like to kiss her eyes, but at the same time wonders just what kind of an idiot goes around wanting to kiss other people’s eyes?
Which is when he notices that Ellie is staring at him.
“If you must osculate,” she says, “please refrain from cataglottism.”
“What?”
“Leave Henry alone, Ellie.”
“But what did you just say?”
“If you must kiss, please refrain from kissing with the tongue.”
“Ellie!”
Gram makes Ellie find the camera, in spite of Alice’s protests. After a significant spell of photographic torture by the front door, Gram lets them go and Alice and Henry find themselves walking down the sidewalk in the near dark of late twilight.
“You sure you’re okay with this?”
Alice doesn’t say anything in response, she just reaches out and takes his hand. Henry thinks if she keeps doing things like this, which make him feel as if his stomach and his heart have changed places, all of his internal organs are likely to get completely mixed up and rearranged.
Lights are starting to come on in the houses they pass. It’s the afterdinner pause and the streets are unusually quiet. The breeze kicks up and stirs the new leaves in the trees arching over their heads.
They are going the long way to school, down Baird Road to Martin Street instead of cutting through the playing fields; they are passing Mrs. Minty’s house and Mrs. Piantowski’s house and The Bird Sisters and the Four Corners. Henry is worried that his hand is probably all sweaty and slick and gross, but if it is, Alice doesn’t seem to notice. Alice has closed her eyes against the well of sorrow that is always there, rising and falling like a tide, but with her eyes closed she is suddenly hearing and smelling the world around her; hearing the leaves rustle and the branches scraping against each other, hearing their footsteps on the cement sidewalk, the scuffing sound Henry makes in his unaccustomed fancy tie shoes, the
click, click
of her little flats, and then there it is, yes, there it is, the spring smells layered one by one, of new grass and clean dirt and somewhere in the twilight there are narcissus spilling their perfume into the night.
“Alice?”
“Yeah?”
“I’d really like to dance with you.”
“Okay.”
“A slow dance.”
“Okay.”
“And then we can go home.. . . Unless you want to stay.”
Alice takes a breath.
“I sort of promised John Kimball I would dance with him.”
“What?”
“It seemed so far-fetched at the time that I never really thought—”
“He asked you—?”
“Yeah.”
“What about Melissa?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Do you want to dance with him?”
“I don’t know. I mean, no, I mean . . . Henry, it’s not like a lot of people have ever asked me to dance.”
She looks at him.
“It was nice to be asked.”
“When did this happen?”
“At the Red Wings game.”
“I figured.”
“And then it was awkward and I didn’t know how to tell you, or if there was anything to tell. Which there isn’t. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Can we just forget it now?”
Approaching the high school they can hear the deep bass notes thumping and vibrating all the way from the gym. The principal is at the entrance to the school, his tie loosened, talking to the police officer whose cruiser is idling in the street. He looks up and sees Alice and Henry heading to the back of the building.
“You two have tickets?”
Henry sprints over and hands him their tickets.
“Come on in.”
“We were planning to just hang out on the grass for a while.”
“You’re supposed to go inside so we know who’s who, what’s what, and who’s where.”
“Mr. Fisher,” Henry starts to explain—
“Alice, I’m so sorry to hear about your dad.”
“Thank you,” Alice says to the asphalt in front of her.
“Mr. Fisher, we don’t want to go inside, we just—”
“—You just what?”
Henry steps up close and speaks quietly for a moment. Mr. Fisher considers.
“If I make an exception can you stay out of trouble?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I mean it, Henry.”
“I know you do, Mr. Fisher.”
They give the school a wide berth as they walk around to the back. Behind the school the double doors to the gym are propped open, spilling music and light onto the parking lot and the edge of the playing fields. The dance committee has hung disco balls from the basketball hoops at either end of the gym floor. There’s a DJ at one end and a table full of cookies and punch at the other.
Alice and Henry skirt the edge of the light as they make their way to the lone maple tree behind the school. There are several boys hanging out at the doors who seem to catch their scent and gather, in a body, to begin some kind of taunt. But then they recognize Alice, or one of them does, and they decide to leave them alone.
It is dark enough now to see the stars, dark enough and late enough for the DJ to start to slow things down. Alice sees John Kimball come to the doorway, talk to the boys who are still there, look her way, and head back inside. He seems so far away. It all seems so far away. The baseball game seems like it happened in another lifetime to another girl.
A slow song begins. Henry turns to Alice and puts his hands on her waist. She puts her hands on his shoulders and then he draws her close and she puts her arms around his neck and suddenly without thinking about it too much or having a chance to mess it up, they are dancing. Henry feels the music like his own heartbeat and moves Alice gently over the rough ground as though they are gliding on a polished floor. Alice had been afraid she would not know how to do this, or that she would do it badly or trip or step on his feet. But Henry relaxes into the music and Alice relaxes into Henry and it is so lovely and so unexpected that she allows herself to rest her head on his shoulder. She closes her eyes and she is floating in space, she is riding the music with Henry; she is trusting her body and her feet and she is not thinking about anything but this.
One part of Henry, the dancing part, is inside the music and wants to stay there because that’s what he knows, that’s where he can just move and hold Alice. But when she puts her head on his shoulder and he takes one hand from her waist and puts it on her head, his fingers in her soft, soft hair, it takes his breath away. He stumbles in that moment and steps on her toes, but they right themselves, they take a breath, together. Henry inhales the perfume of her skin, Alice feels the delicacy of his neck, the new strength in his shoulder; Alice feels the steps, the music, the letting go, the holding on.
The song ends and they separate. Alice does not want to come back to the world; Alice would like to stay lost in the music and the night sky and Henry’s arms for a little while longer, maybe forever.
She looks up to see John Kimball at the gym doors again. He takes a step toward her; she waves to him, and then Melissa Johnson is there to reach out and take him by the hand and pull him back inside. Stephie disentangles herself from Jeremy Baskin and comes to the door. Before she can wave, Alice and Henry retreat farther into the dark beyond the maple tree and decide to cut through the Baldwins’ driveway to Martin Street so they don’t have to see everyone coming out of the school and laughing and talking and waiting for their rides.
In the dark of Martin Street, holding Alice’s hand, Henry wants to kiss her. That rogue thought has been zinging around inside of him for weeks now, waking him at odd or inconvenient moments, startling him at breakfast or in the middle of a math test or at the piano. But this feeling in the dark of Martin Street is like a runaway car careening out of control; his blood is doing a jig in his veins, his heart is pounding, his knees feel all watery and weird, and his feet feel like they’ve grown six sizes. How in the world will he keep from tripping and falling? He is on the edge of falling every single second.
“Henry, are you okay?”
“What? Yeah. Fine. Why?”
“Well, you’re kind of breathing funny.”
Breathing, is he actually still breathing?
“Sorry. Sorry.”
And he trips. His legs are like Jell-O. This is ridiculous. He goes down on one knee and recovers, kind of bounces back up like his knee is rubber capped or something.
“Henry Grover, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were drunk.”
I
am
drunk, he thinks, or this must be what being drunk is like; woozy and hyperaware and clumsy.
“Are you okay? Are you sick?”
Yes, sick, that’s it. Sick and in pain and really, do people
want
to feel like this? It’s kind of like torture.
“Maybe this was a mistake? And we should have stayed home?”
No, no, not a mistake, he’s thinking as he trips again and recovers, but just barely. Not a mistake to walk with you and dance with you and hold you and . . . Oh, boy, this is not getting better, he thinks, this is getting worse and worse.