The Dance Begins (3 page)

“Only if you want to,” Amalia said.

Molly stood up. “I do,” she said firmly.

“Okay!” Amalia said. “Let’s go!”

Molly ran out the door and Amalia followed close behind. Graham stacked up her books on the table, picturing Molly and Amalia out on the loop road, Molly trying to balance on the two-wheeler. The road near the path to the springhouse had a gentle incline but it wasn’t far from the Hill from Hell and that suddenly worried him.

“Amalia can make up these beds,” Jim said. “I’m taking off. You doing okay?” Jim had grown up with a disabled sister and he was more sympathetic toward Graham than Trevor.

“Fine,” he said. “But I think I’m going to see how Amalia and Molly are doing with the bike.”

“Need any help?” Jim said as Graham got to his feet, picking up his cane.

“No, and thanks for all the work you did here, Jim,” he said.

“See you later,” Jim said.

Graham left the springhouse door open and walked to his scooter. He’d ridden halfway down the path when he heard Jim start his van and drive away. In another minute, he was close enough to the road himself that he could see Amalia running alongside Molly on her bike. They were headed up the gentle incline that ran south from the springhouse path and his heart began beating hard at the thought of Molly turning the bike around and heading down that same hill. He hadn’t been lying to Nora about learning to ride his bike without training wheels on these hilly roads, but he couldn’t remember much about it. It suddenly seemed impossible.

He turned onto the road and steered the scooter all the way up the incline until he reached Molly and Amalia. Molly had stopped pedaling and she straddled her bike in the middle of the road. “Daddy!” she yelled when she spotted him. “Did you see me? I rode all by myself! I thought Amalia was still holding on, but she wasn’t!”

Amalia bent over to catch her breath, her long hair nearly sweeping the dirt road.

“I saw you.” Graham maneuvered the scooter until he was right in front of her. “You were amazing,” he said, “but I have some important instructions for you.”

“What?” She looked suspicious, as though she expected him to say something that would sap all the fun out of her adventure. Amalia was standing upright now, and she, too, wore a wary expression.

“You just rode uphill,” Graham said, “but when you go
down
hill, you’ll be going much faster so you need to practice using your brakes. And you know what’s down there?” She turned her head to look down the road behind them and seemed to catch on.

“The Hill from H-E-double-matchsticks,” she said.

“Right. And you do
not
want to go down that hill on a bike. So when you go down the loop road from here, turn onto the path to the springhouse, okay? I don’t want you to ever go past that point on the road unless you’re walking your bike. Not till you’re much older and maybe not even then.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Show me you can do it,” he said. “Show me how you turn onto the springhouse path.”

“Okay,” she said again. She used her feet to turn around, concentrating hard, taking so many careful little steps to get the bike into perfect position that his heart cracked in two with love for her.

“Ready?” he asked her, and she nodded.

“Don’t go fast now. You don’t need to go fast. Just remember what I said.”

She gave a little nod, then took off without another word, working the brakes, riding with such ease that she surprised him. Yet his heart was pumping hard.

“She has perfect balance,” Amalia said, but he barely heard her. He held his breath, watching Molly begin to wobble a little as she neared the path.

“Turn in!” he shouted, but she was already beginning to make the turn and she took it smoothly, riding a few feet into the woods before coming to a stop. “Nailed it!” He grinned at Amalia as they started toward the path, his heartbeat settling down.

Molly hopped off the bike and ran to them. “I did it perfect!” she shouted. Her cheeks were flushed, her glasses a tiny bit crooked on her nose.

“That was really brave, Molly,” he said. He wished he could bottle some of her courage to give to his patients.

She fished around in her shorts pocket and held her fist out to him, opening the fingers so he could see the amethyst palm stone that rested on her hand.

“Aha,” Amalia said. “You have your palm stone with you.”

He’d given her the palm stone the year before when she’d been afraid to get on the bus for the first day of school. His own father had given it to him when he was a child, telling him the stone had magical powers that would give him courage. He’d skipped the hocus-pocus when he gave it to Molly, though. “It’s just a reminder that you have bravery inside you no matter how frightened you feel,” he’d told her. She’d carried that stone around with her for weeks afterward. He hadn’t realized she still did.

Molly closed her hand around the smooth purple stone and slipped it back into her shorts pocket.

“Do you want some more practice, Moll?” he asked. “We could ride up near Nanny’s house where the road levels out.”

“Okay,” Molly said, running back to her bike.

“I’m going to make the beds in the springhouse before I take off,” Amalia said.

“You don’t have to do that.” He hated asking her to do anything that seemed like housework. He and Nora were the only people on Morrison Ridge who didn’t have Amalia clean for them. She cleaned Trevor and Toni’s house, and Jim and Claudia’s and his mother’s. That was enough.

“I know I don’t, but I’d like to,” she said. She picked up the training wheels where she’d left them at the side of the road and put them in the rear basket of his scooter. “You have fun with Molly,” she said.

*   *   *

He rode his scooter while Molly rode her bike and once they hit the level ground at the southern end of the loop road, he relaxed and let her ride as fast as she wanted. They sailed past his mother’s house and he thought of stopping in so Molly could show her grandmother that she could ride without training wheels, but he didn’t want to get into an inevitably long visit, so they kept on going. Soon the tall platform for the zip line came into view on their right.

“There’s Uncle Trevor,” Molly said, slowing her bike. She pointed toward the tower.

Graham could see his brother at the top of the tower, no doubt getting the zip line ready for the summer when his high school age kids would want to ride it. It irked him that Trevor was messing around up there when there were still some things left to be done at the springhouse. The truth was, many things Trevor did irked Graham, and he knew his brother felt the same way about him. They’d been in competition all their lives.

He turned his head away from the platform. It hurt to think about the zip line and know there was no way he could ever go on it again. In a few years, Molly would be able to ride it. He’d have to settle for experiencing it vicariously through her.

“Let’s go back to the springhouse,” he said. “I want to show you where you can put your treasures.”

“If I decide I want to,” she reminded him.

“Right,” he said.

They rode back down the loop road and Graham forced himself to keep his mouth shut as they neared the path to the springhouse, waiting to see what Molly would do. She turned the bike smoothly onto the path. She was going to be fine out here. He couldn’t wait to tell Nora how well she was doing on the bike.

Inside the springhouse, Amalia had nearly finished painting the second window.

“I was going to do that,” Graham said as he leaned on his cane in the doorway.

“Beat you to it,” she said, capping the paint can, and he knew she’d done it intentionally to spare him. She put the paintbrush into a plastic bag and wrapped a rubber band around the handle. “It still needs one more coat, but I can come over tomorrow and do it.”

“Amalia,” he said, “did you know there’s a secret hiding place in this springhouse?”

“For real?” Amalia asked.

“Where is it?” Molly picked up her white paper bag from the table. “I might put my treasures in it,” she said to Amalia. “But I might not. I haven’t decided.”

“It’s in plain sight,” Graham said. He leaned against the wall near the door. His legs were beginning to buzz again.

“Hmm,” Amalia said, looking around the room. “Can you spot it, Molly?”

Molly walked around the room. She opened the microwave. Peered beneath the sink.

“It’s a little higher than my head,” Graham said.

She frowned at the fieldstone walls. “There’s only rocks as high as your head,” she said.

“Do any of them look a little different from the others?” he asked.

Molly tipped her head back as she studied the walls. She sucked in her breath when she spotted the rock that was a couple of shades lighter than those around it. She pointed. “That one!” she said.

“You’ve got it,” he said. He looked apologetically at Amalia. “I hate to mess up the bed you just made but can we move the mattress aside so I can get onto the platform?”

“No problem.” She slid the mattress halfway off the frame and Graham carefully took a step onto the wooden platform and walked over to the rock. “Can you help me lift Molly up?” he asked.

“I’ll lift her,” Amalia said, taking Molly’s hand and stepping onto the platform. “She’s a lightweight.”

She lifted Molly with apparent ease, holding her around the waist so that Molly’s eyes were in line with the fake rock. Graham felt Amalia next to him. Her bare arm touched his. He could smell her hair. A floral scent. Nothing cloying. Just sweet enough to cloud his thinking and make his legs feel softer and weaker than they already did. He leaned hard on his cane. He would not touch her. He would never touch her. But sometimes he understood why his family disliked her. He understood their fear.

Reaching forward with one hand, he carefully pried the plaster façade from the wall and Molly gasped.

“A hidey-hole!” she said.

He laughed. Where did she ever learn that term? “That’s right,” he said. “And I don’t think it’s seen the light of day since I was a teenager. Can you see what’s in there?”

Molly clutched her paper bag with her left hand and reached into the dark space with her right. She pulled out a half full bottle of bourbon.

“Sweet tea,” she said matter-of-factly, and he and Amalia laughed.

“It’s booze, darling,” he said.

“Well-aged by now,” Amalia added.

Graham tried to take the bottle from Molly but he began to lose his balance and clutched the rock wall instead. “I’ve got it,” Amalia said, and she somehow managed to take the bottle and still hang on to Molly at the same time.

“What’s booze?” Molly asked.

“Stuff Uncle Trevor and I shouldn’t have been drinking when we were kids.” He held on to one of the rocks, hoping his legs could keep him upright another minute or two. “We were being disobedient.”

Molly looked at him sharply, an expression of fake shock on her face. “Bad Daddy,” she said. She reached deeper into the hole and he worried about what else she might find. She pulled out a stack of baseball cards and a cigarette lighter in the shape of a pistol, followed by a length of gold-wrapped condoms. “Candy!” she said. “Can we eat it?”

He laughed and let go of the wall to take them from her. It took him two tries to stuff them into his jeans pocket. “They’re way too old to eat,” he said.

“You boys were rowdy,” Amalia said.

He wondered if the gold-wrapped condoms made Amalia remember being with him.

Molly peered into the hole. “That’s all there is,” she said.

“So, what do you think?” he asked her as Amalia lowered her to the platform. “You want to hide your treasures up here?”

She looked up at the hole in the wall high above her head. “I won’t be able to reach them,” she said.

“In a few years you’ll be able to when you stand on the bed. And for now, Amalia or I—or Mom—can get them for you.”

She opened her bag and looked inside. “Okay.” She still sounded uncertain.

“You don’t have to,” he said.

“I want to.” She reached into the bag and pulled out a shell, which she kissed noisily and then handed to Amalia, who put it into the hole with an amusing sort of reverence. This was going to take awhile, Graham thought, and he climbed carefully off the platform and sat down at the little table.

Five shells, a couple of shark’s teeth, a tiny doll, a glass bird, and many kisses later, Molly’s treasures were in the wall. “I don’t want to put my palm stone in there, though,” she said. “I need to keep it in my pocket.”

“That’s fine,” Graham said as he watched Amalia slip the plaster fieldstone back in place. She looked at her watch as she stepped off the platform. “I’ve got to run,” she said, pushing the neatly made mattress back in place against the wall. She pulled an elastic band from her wrist and used it to tie her hair back. “It’s my afternoon to clean your mother’s house,” she added.

He grimaced. “I hope she left it pristine for you,” he said.

“Her house is always pristine,” Amalia said. “I’m sure she cleans before I get there.”

“Thank you for helping with the springhouse,” he said. “Molly? Can you thank Amalia?”

“Thank you.” Molly raised her arms into the air and Amalia bent over to hug her.

“You’re welcome, baby,” she said. “Have fun on that bike!”

Once Amalia left, Graham looked toward the window she’d been painting. He stood up and walked over to touch the sill. Nearly dry already. He could give the window its final coat. Save Amalia from having to do it tomorrow.

“Can we go home?” Molly flopped down on the bed closest to the door. “I’m hungry.”

It was past lunchtime, but it would take him no time at all to slap the paint on the window frame. The panes were already taped off. Ten minutes, tops.

“I’m going to paint the window,” he said. “I’ll just be a few minutes. You can ride your bike if you want, but remember what I told you about turning onto the path instead of going down the hill.” They would take the eastern side of the loop road home, he thought. Much flatter.

“I remember.” The thought of her bike seemed to energize her and she ran out of the springhouse, leaving the door wide open behind her. He heard the snap of twigs and the rustle of brush as she raced down the path.