Drenched in Light (29 page)

“Oh, I don’t . . .” Pausing, I caught Dell’s hopeful gaze. I was momentarily torn. On the one hand, I really wanted to join her and her family for dinner. On the other hand, I had a pile of work to do at home and so far, no substitute teacher for algebra class next week. If I had to teach algebra again I would go crazy, first of all, and second of all, it would be impossible to finish the grant application in time. “I really shouldn’t—”

“Pleeeease?” Dell curled her hands under her chin in a begging-dog imitation.

Karen frowned sideways at her. “Dell, Ms. Costell might have things to do.” She turned to me. “We understand, if you do. We can give you a rain check. . . .”

Needling me in the arm, Keiler shrugged toward Dell and mouthed,
C’mon. . . .

The decision sifted through my mind as everyone watched me.
Maybe I could make substitute teacher calls on my cell phone. . . .
“Are you sure I won’t be in the way?”

Keiler gave me the thumbs-up.

“Oh, no, of course not. We’d love to have you,” Karen reiterated.

“Yes!” Dell cheered, like her team had just hit a home run in the World Series.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so wanted.

W
hile the rest of the crew was busy arranging Jumpkids materials for tomorrow’s performance, I went to my car to make calls on my cell phone. I started by dialing home to check on Bett and tell Mom and Dad I’d be late. Waiting for Mom to answer, I drafted a mental list of explanations for my all-day trip to some little town she’d had probably never heard of. Fortunately, Dad picked up. Mom was still over at Bett’s, making chicken soup to help my sister along the road to recovery.

Dad was stuck home babysitting Joujou and gathering his income-tax materials for the CPA. When he was finished with that, he had an online meeting with his fantasy baseball club. Every week without fail, Dad gathered with numerous other perfectly sane adults who, as nearly as Mom and I could decipher, pretended to be the managers of major league baseball franchises. Before the season started, they drafted teams, and then all summer long they carefully tracked the imaginary progress of their imaginary players, in hopes of eventually winning the pretend World Series. Dad had never even made the division finals, but struggled on through the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, dreaming of one day achieving fantasy baseball glory.

“How’s the baseball draft going?” I asked, after he’d run through his list of evening activities and finished complaining about income taxes and how this year would surely leave him in the poorhouse. “Hope those fantasy baseball players work for fantasy paychecks.”

Dad gave a sardonic laugh. “You all can ridicule me now, but when I win the World Series, you’ll be sorry. I won’t invite you naysayers to the awards ceremony in Las Vegas. Joujou and I’ll go alone. Just the two of us.” I could tell he was cuddling Joujou close to his face. She was growl-whining into the phone, enjoying her daddy time.

“Be sure you buy her something nice to wear.”

“Very funny.”

“Just think, you’ll fit right in with the high rollers in Vegas, with that fine-looking blonde on your arm, or . . . well . . . in your arms . . . or on a leash. Anyway, she’s blond.”

Dad scoffed indignantly. “At least Joujou believes in me.” No doubt this was one of those times when my father wished he’d been blessed with a houseful of boys, rather than three women and a neurotic Pekingese.

“I believe in you, Dad.” It felt good to be joking with him rather than talking about food, or Mom, or what I was doing and when I would be home.

“I know you do, honey,” he said tenderly.

I was filled with a rush of warmth that I couldn’t put into words. These past months, Dad had been a rock, always solid, always on an even keel when the rest of us were falling apart. I wished I could tell him how much that meant. Instead, I talked about baseball. “Hey, I heard that one of the teachers at school might have a pair of Kansas City Royals season tickets to sell. I thought maybe I’d check into it—what do you say?”

Dad didn’t answer at first; then he finally smacked his lips suspiciously and said, “You hate baseball.”

“Yeah, but for you, I’d do baseball, Dad.” There was a world of unspoken appreciation in the statement. I hoped he understood the things I couldn’t say.

“That’s my girl.” He chuckled softly, then let me off the baseball hook. “Maybe instead of season tickets, we could just do a game or two.”

“All right, Dad. I’ll see you later on this evening. It might be late.”

“Leave your cell phone on, all right? Mom tried to call earlier and got your voice mail. You know she worries.”

“Yes, I know, Dad.” I could feel us slipping into the same old routine.

“Where did you say you are?”

My body tensed up. Now we would have to go through the litany of explanations. “Helping with an arts minicamp. I’m going to stay for dinner, so it’ll be a while.”

“All right.” And then the sound of papers rustling. His mind was already back to the taxes and fantasy baseball. “Be careful driving. Call us when you’re headed home.”

“I will. Bye, Dad.” Hanging up the phone, I fished the substitute teacher list from my briefcase and began making calls. Once people went out for Saturday night, it would be that much more difficult to fill the vacancies.

Propping the paper on the dashboard, I started down the list. The sad story of the teacherless algebra class netted me three answering machines and four negative replies. The prospect of having to teach math all next week, on top of having been AWOL half of the weekend, loomed large on the horizon. I said a little prayer that one of the answering-machine owners would call back and accept the job.

A knock on the passenger window startled me from my thoughts, and I looked up as Dell opened the door.

“Karen said I could show you the way out to the farm, and they’ll be along in a little bit. Kate needs to get some stuff at the grocery store for tomorrow, and Keiler’s gotta fill a prescription for pain medicine for his leg. Kate said he’s probably not supposed to be riding around on a Harley, and he ought to leave it here tonight and ride out to the farm with her.” With an exasperated eye roll that was a perfect imitation of Karen’s, she added, “He’s such a goofus.”

“He seems to be,” I agreed, moving my briefcase out of the way so that she could slide in.

She reacted with a look of concern. “But Keiler’s, like, real smart and stuff. He only seems like a dope. He’s really not.”

“I can see that,” I agreed, charmed that she felt the need to defend her friend.

“He’s, like, really cool and stuff. He does all those silly things on purpose, so the kids will have fun. He calls it the Jumpkids secret—if he’s the biggest gooberhead in the room, none of the kids feel too embarrassed to try stuff.” Her face brightened with sincere amazement. “It works, too. It’s hard to feel stupid when Keiler’s around.”

I started laughing, and Dell smiled sheepishly as we pulled out of the parking lot. “Turn left here, then right at the next one, then left on the highway,” she said, pointing down the road. “It’s about ten minutes to the farm.”

“All right. Here we go.” Piloting the car through the small-town streets to a winding ribbon of highway into the hills, I had a sense of moving farther from my own world and deeper into Dell’s. I imagined her growing up in this tiny town, living in some ramshackle house along the riverbank, maybe riding her bike up and down the rocky slopes by the water, like the kids at the edge of town were doing. Far from any house, unsupervised and unrestricted, they glided down the slope with their jackets flapping and their feet spread out like stabilizers. At the bottom, they zipped under the highway bridge, then pumped up the other side.

I slowed to watch, recognizing Sherita among the group, and thinking that where I came from, kids would never be allowed such unstructured folly.

I was struck again by how it must be for Dell, having one foot in this world and one foot in another. It was no surprise that she felt like the shoes would never fit. Beside me, she leaned closer to the window, as if she wanted to be with the other kids, gliding down the riverbank in the late-afternoon sunshine. “Want to go for a walk when we get home?” she asked. “Just for a little while, and then we can study?”

I felt a rush of sympathy. She looked tired, worried, slightly lost—a little girl in mismatched shoes. “Sure. That sounds great. I bet both of us could use a break.”

“We could go down to the river.”

I pictured the river being like the one in my dream. “That sounds good. I’d like to see it.” We fell into silence, Dell lost in her thoughts, while I remembered the sensation of dancing on the current, bathed in sunlight. Before the dream, I’d been empty and useless, ragged as I drifted into sleep. Those emotions seemed far away now, and I realized I hadn’t fallen into that pit lately. I was healing in some way, growing stronger, slipping more firmly into the body of this new woman, this guidance counselor who was searching for a mission in life.

When did that happen? How did it happen? I couldn’t say, but looking over at Dell, I knew that she was part of the answer. Somehow in helping her, I was finding my way out of the darkness.

“Turn there.” She pointed. “That’s the road.”

I piloted the car into what looked like a long gravel driveway leading lazily through a winter-bare farm field, then uphill toward an old two-story white house, high atop a bluff overlooking the river.

“What a pretty place,” I commented as we drifted past an ancient hip-roofed barn and started uphill toward the neatly kept clapboard structure.

“That’s Grandma Rose’s house.” Leaning to peer out the front window, Dell pointed toward it. “Kate and Ben live there now, though. And their kids, Josh and Rose. Grandma moved out and gave them the big house. She said the little house was closer to the river, and she liked it better because she could open the windows and hear the water passing.”

I imagined having a river running by my bedroom window, falling asleep to the sounds of the current trickling over rocks. “That must be wonderful.”

Dell nodded solemnly. “I used to hear the river from my granny’s place. Sometimes I’d lay and listen to it until late at night. It’s a good sound. Like music.”

“You must miss it.”

“Sometimes,” she whispered, then lifted her shoulders and let them fall in a gesture of helplessness. “Karen got me a little fountain for my room. It doesn’t sound the same, but I like it.”

“That’s nice.” Reaching across the car, I squeezed her hand. “It’s OK to miss the way things used to be. It doesn’t mean you’re not grateful for the way they are now. Both lives are always going to be part of you, Dell. That’s the way it should be. The past is always part of who we become.”

Her eyes searched mine, as if she knew those words weren’t just about her. “Do you miss being a dancer?”

“Sometimes.” The word hung in the air between us, barely a whisper. “I miss how it felt. The good parts of it.”

Her fingers squeezed mine. “Me too,” she said.

Pulling up behind a detached three-car garage, I turned off the ignition. By the yard fence, a dark-haired man was trimming the winter-bare branches of a climbing rose and tossing the clippings into a barrel.

Dell waved to him as we got out. “Hey, Uncle Ben. This is my guidance counselor, Ms. Costell.” She introduced us from a distance. “I’m going to show her the river before everybody else gets here, OK?”

“Sure, go ahead.” Smiling, he lifted the pruners into the air in greeting, and we waved in response.

“Where’s Rowdy?” Dell called.

“Not sure.” The man returned to his pruning. “Out chasing rabbits or burying bones. You might run into him on your walk. He’s missed you.”

“My old dog lives here now,” Dell explained. “He wasn’t happy in the yard in Kansas City.” Leading me away from the car, she angled toward a small guest cabin out back. “The trail’s behind the little house.” She glanced over her shoulder at the driveway as if she were afraid someone would prevent our escape. Skirting the yard fence, we slipped through a seemingly impenetrable wall of barren blackberry brambles to a well-worn forest path. Ahead of me, she moved with a natural grace, her body twisting and curving in and out of overhanging branches and dangling briars, her passage as soundless as a slip of breeze, as if she were as much a part of the landscape as the soil and the trees.

I stumbled along behind her, stopping to push back tree limbs and pry myself from the clutches of marauding brambles. Dell moved farther ahead, seeming to have forgotten I was there. When she disappeared around a bend in the trail, I had the disquieting sensation of being alone in the forest. A moment later, I passed through the last of the dry underbrush and emerged on the riverbank. Dell was standing at the water’s edge, mesmerized by the play of light and shadow. I watched, thinking of the girl in the river. Even now, was part of her wishing the current would rise up and carry her away?