Dancing Hours (28 page)

A little part of her worried that Andy was growing up and just had so much going on at school that she didn’t have time to fill her grandmother in on every detail.  It was only fair, though. 
Nessa
wasn’t being completely honest with the family either.  The damn doctors kept saying things like “cancer” and “aggressive treatment.”  It made her madder than a mosquito in a mannequin factory.  What did they know anyway?  Nothing had killed her yet and she wasn’t about to start dying now.

She looked for any reason she could find not to think about it.  She worked every day at the coffee shop, volunteered to teach more classes at the senior center.  And she couldn’t forget her young scholarship recipient.  Holly was doing very well with her schoolwork and bought a reliable car using money from a part time office job she had held down for some time.  She even rented a two bedroom apartment.

Holly sent an effusive thank you note to the Foundation that funded her scholarship.  She updated them periodically about her progress in school and suggested that she intended to have custody of her daughter soon. 

David had thanked her for getting Holly’s contact information and let her know that she had been talking with Jessica.  He had decided that the chores he was doing at the Taylor household weren’t enough to pay for them watching Jessica, so he started doing things around
Nessa’s
house too.  She was grateful for the help, with all the extra work she had been doing, she did feel very tired.

Josephine noticed and began insisting on taking Vanessa to the doctor, but
Nessa
just said that she had been already and she just needed to rest a little more.  Old age was catching up to her.

When Andy didn’t come home again for Thanksgiving or Christmas break for the second year in a row, Vanessa became concerned.  Then she got a call from Edward Wright – Andy had gotten mixed up with some small time thug in town.  He was investigating the situation, but wanted to let her know.  She thanked him and hung up the phone.  David happened to be at her house cleaning out the gutters since the snow had melted and they were caked with leaves.  Even if he hadn’t been there, she would have gone to see him.

“David, could you come down please?  I’ve made some tea; come on in for a few minutes.”

“Thanks Ms.
Nessa
” he blew on the hot mug as he settled into an arm chair “I’ve almost got your gutters clean.  When was the last time you had someone clean them out?”

“Let’s see… who’s the President these days?”

David laughed.  “Well, you really should do it every year.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.  Listen, I’ve just gotten a call from an old friend in California and I may need to travel out there on short notice to attend to something.  Would you be able to get away and accompany me if Josephine could watch Jessica?”

“Sure, I can take a few days off of work whenever I need to.  I hope there’s nothing wrong.”

“No, I don’t think so. 
Nothing that can’t be taken care of, anyway.”

“Are you going to see Andy?”

“Yes, but please don’t mention it to her if you should talk to her.  And if we do go, I think we should stop in Phoenix to see Holly, don’t you think?”

David narrowed his eyes “I guess that would be a good thing to do.”

Vanessa thought it might be time to come clean with David about her meddling in affairs with Holly.  She knew that Holly was doing well and she had been communicating with Jessica often.  She also knew that Holly was planning to
come
visit and hopefully take Jessica back with her.  It was a sensitive subject and she worried that David might be angry, but surprisingly he wasn’t.  He seemed quite glad that she had done the thing that David’s mother should have done or even he should have done. 

When Andy’s call came,
Nessa’s
bags were already packed – as well as a few bags with things for Andy to have as well.  David didn’t need to pack much, but he did have to do a fair amount of explaining to his grandmother and to Jessica.  When Jessica heard that he was going on a trip and would see her mommy, she was happy.  She wanted to go with him, but he explained that it was a grownup trip for now.  He reminded her that her mother was coming to see her soon.  She retorted like any petulant child “You ALWAYS say that.”  It was
true,
he had been saying that for a long time.

David felt like he’d barely made it to the airport by the time the flight left.  Apparently, with enough money, you really could get on the next plane out.  He was anxious and excited and he’d never flown in first class before. 
Nessa
confided that it was her first time too, but that it was about time she did. 

Part III – David

1

Maybe what Vanessa had said about Andy not coming back for the summer made
David
realize that trying to take sole responsibility for Jessica meant life would pass him
by.

When Jessica was first born, he knew that he would never be the same, but he had no idea what he would be getting himself into.  The first time Holly handed him the baby so she could take a shower because no one else was home, David thought he might break her.  She was bundled up tight and fit neatly between his inner elbow and wrist.  Her little eyes peeped open from being jostled into another pair of arms and she stared at David silently.  He stared back in awe at someone so small, so perfect coming from his idiot brother.

In a way, trying to help Holly out after her parents died was the most grown up thing Noah had ever done.  David doubted Noah had ever spent an entire day in school, but he seemed to care about Holly and, for a while anyway,
they seemed to help each other.  Even when she found out she was pregnant, Noah tried to go back to school and get a job.  David suspected he was trying to be a different kind of dad than they had.

By the time Jessica was born, Noah had saved some money and was studying for the high school equivalency exam.  Things seemed to be going pretty well for him and for Holly.  Together, they made a very young and highly dysfunctional, but loving family. 

That’s what David left behind when he went to college.  He lived in the dorm on campus, start
ed
dating a pretty girl and forgot to call home most of the time.  There were parties and just life.  At the end of the year, his English professor recommended him for an internship with a local historian doing research for a book.  It took most of his time and all of his money that summer to get an apartment and do all that work for “the experience” which meant free.  But he came back his sophomore year and knew that he wanted to be an English major.  That was worth something, even if his girlfriend came back from summer break with a different boyfriend. 

When he went home that Thanksgiving, things were so different.  His mother was pouring wine from a box at breakfast.
  Jessica had grown into a tiny little person, who didn’t remember him at all.  He felt guilty about that.  She was walking and talking – mostly saying “no” and pointing her finger a lot, but it was cute even to him.  Everyone else in the house just seemed to be strung out, tired and cranky.  Nobody even seemed to notice that the kid was walking around in a saggy diaper until he pointed it out. 

Noah and Holly looked at each other in what appeared to be a well-rehearsed “Your Turn”
stare
down.  After a minute, David just took the girl in to change the diaper himself.  The room was a stinky mess.  He laid Jessica down gently on the changing table.  She smiled up at him and
said  “
Jessica poop.” with sincerity.  He had to laugh.

“Yes, I can tell that Jessica poop.  David” he pointed at himself “will clean up.”

Jessica giggled.  “Clean up, clean up, clean up!” she cheered and clapped.

The diaper pail was overflowing, there was one diaper left in the bin and no wipes that he could find.
  David took a deep breath, this felt wrong. 
He didn’t know how to change a diaper.  This wasn’t even his kid.  Why did he volunteer for this?

After what he was sure was the worst diaper change in history, he dug out some clean clothes for her and carried her out to the living room where Noah had parked himself playing a video game.  His mother was absent-mindedly staring at a turkey in the oven and Holly was the only one who noticed he had come back.  She came over right away and thanked him for changing Jessica’s diaper, pulling her from his arms. 

“Some days I just get kind of tired of all the dirty diapers.
Noah
” she stressed
directing her remark loudly at his brother
“doesn’t help out much.”

“Help out?” he called from the couch.  “I work, don’t I?  I pay for those damn diapers.  Those things are expensive.  You should use the cloth ones.”

“Are you going to wash them?”

Noah ignored the question.

“Speaking of which, we need more diapers, can I have some money to go buy more?”

This started a massive argument over how many diapers they went through in a day.  It was probably a common argument between young parents.  David expected his mother to intervene at any moment, but she seemed to be humming a little tune to herself in the kitchen, probably drunk.

He gently took Jessica back from Holly’s arms and took her outside
where she couldn’t hear the fray indoors
.  She looked a little upset.  “Noah mad.” she scowled.

That frown on her face wasn’t fair.  “No.” he said to her.  “Noah is a stressed out kid and he doesn’t mean to sound like that or scare you.  He just doesn’t really know what to do.  Okay?”

Jessica had watched him talk as though she understood all of that.  She brightened as she heard “Okay” because that was something she could understand. 

“Okay.” She responded cheerily, a smile replacing the scowl.

He’d gotten a job at a restaurant near the school making crappy money and crappier tips from fellow college students, but he
looked through his wallet to see what he could find… enough for some diapers, anyway.  He had fallen prey to the numerous credit card company freebies his first week on campus too, so he was pretty sure one of those cards in there had some room on it.

He picked up Jessica and walked over to his car before he realized she probably needed a
carseat
.  He walked over to his mother’s car and found it unlocked.  The
carseat
in the back wasn’t even buckled in.  David took another deep breath. 
Was it really possible that all three of them had forgotten to strap the seat into the car for the last two years?
  The thought was too hard to stomach.  He imagined a plausible scenario in which they had to move the
carseat
the night before and had not gotten around to buckling it in yet.  It made him feel better.

He put the seat in the back of his car and looked at the funny straps dangling down.  There was a diagram on the side of how to install the thing.  It took him a few minutes to figure it out.  Strapping Jessica in took a few more minutes, but she was excited to go somewhere and she waited patiently for him to figure out the buckles.

As he started the car to leave, he wondered why neither of Jessica’s parents had come to find out if they were doing okay.  He shook his head slightly and headed for the nearest all purpose store.