Pretending to Dance (24 page)

“You'd never know he's helpless,” I said.

Russell raised his eyebrows at me. “Your father is anything but helpless, Molly,” he said, lifting his coffee cup toward his mouth. “You can trust me on that.”

*   *   *

We had a handicapped-accessible room at the hotel for Daddy and Russell to share and it was connected by a door to a room for me. They had two double beds and I had a giant king-sized bed all to myself. I flopped spread-eagled onto the bed the moment I got into the room, enjoying the space that was mine-all-mine. I stared at the ceiling, trying to remember the last time I'd stayed in a hotel. It was before Russell came to live with us, so it must have been three years ago when we drove to Pennsylvania to visit my mother's mother. I'd had a connecting room then as well. I remembered Daddy using a mobility scooter in the hotel, so he must have still had some use of his hands. I distinctly remembered getting in the elevator with him, just the two of us. He'd tried to push the button for the lobby, but his hand wouldn't cooperate. I'd felt his frustration as I reached in front of him to push it myself.

“Will you ever get better, Daddy?” I'd asked, once the elevator started its descent.

He didn't answer right away. He was staring at the buttons as though he wished he could push them with his eyes instead of his uncooperative fingers. “I'm afraid not, darling,” he'd said finally, turning his head to look at me. “I will only get worse, so I have to make the most of the time I have now.”

I remembered crying myself to sleep that night. I couldn't imagine him getting any worse than he already was. But, of course, he did.

*   *   *

The three of us rested before the event at the bookstore, which was scheduled for seven o'clock. I stared at the phone on the nightstand next to my bed. I had Chris's number written down in the little notepad in my backpack and I wanted to call him so much, but there would be a bill, wouldn't there? I read the instructions written on the phone. Local calls were free, but long distance calls would be charged to the room. I didn't dare, yet my fingers itched to dial his number.

I painted my nails with the night-sky polish, then lay down on the bed to let the polish dry. Staring at the ceiling, I slowly became aware of an ache low in my belly. It took me a few minutes to place the feeling. Was I getting my period? I'd only had four of them, the first coming a year ago when I was thirteen. I'd been the last of my friends and had begun to think I'd be the one girl in the world who never got her period. It “sputtered”—that was the word Mom used to describe its irregularity. “It will get regular eventually,” she'd assured me, and I wished she'd thought to tell me to be ready for it on this trip. It had been so long since the last time, though—three months at least—that she and I had sort of forgotten all about it.

I jumped off the bed and raced into the bathroom, and sure enough, there was a spot of red on my underpants. I tucked folded sheets of toilet paper into my underpants and tried to figure out what to do. This hotel was in the middle of nowhere. I didn't remember seeing anyplace nearby where I could get supplies.

I knocked on the door between our rooms, hoping they weren't both asleep.

“Come in,” Daddy said.

I found him propped up in bed, a book on the automatic page turner in his lap, while Russell was ironing a blue shirt on the ironing board next to the window.

“I need to talk to Daddy alone for a minute,” I said to Russell.

Russell looked only mildly surprised. “No problem.” He turned off the iron. “I need to make a quick call from the lobby, anyhow,” he said.

I climbed onto Daddy's bed, waiting for the door to close behind Russell. Daddy looked at me with an expectant frown on his face.

“What's up?” he asked.

“This is embarrassing,” I said.

“You don't have to say anything tonight if you don't want to.”

“What?” I was momentarily confused. “Oh no. That's not it.” My cheeks felt hot. “I got my period and don't have any … I didn't bring anything to use because I didn't expect it.”

“Ah,” he said. “Well, Russell can take you to the store.”

I scrunched up my face. “It's so embarrassing.”

“Nah.” Daddy shook his head like I was making a big deal out of nothing. “We'll just tell him you need to pick up some personal items.”

“That's so obvious.”

“All right.” Daddy chuckled. “A few things then. You need to pick up a few things.” His gaze fell to my nails. “Hey! I love it,” he said.

I held up my right hand to admire the sparkly dark polish. “Thanks,” I said. “Me, too.” I wished Russell would get back, but he was probably giving us lots of time to talk. Daddy told me about the book he was reading, while I felt that miserable ache get a grip on my stomach and worried the blood would seep through the toilet paper.

I finally heard Russell's key in the lock and he poked his head into the room. “Can I get back to ironing?” he asked.

“Molly needs to make a run to the store,” Daddy said. “A convenience store will be fine. She just needs to pick up a few things.”

I couldn't look directly at Russell. My gaze was somewhere off to his left.

“Sure,” he said. “Now?”

I nodded and he walked across the room and picked up his keys from the dresser. “Are you okay, Graham?” he asked my father. “Do you need anything yourself?”

“Not a thing,” Daddy said. I felt bad leaving him with his finicky page turner. If it got stuck as it usually did, he would have absolutely nothing to do except sit and think until we returned.

Russell and I didn't speak as we rode the elevator to the lobby, then walked out to the van. He turned the key in the ignition. “Let's see if we can find a store for you,” he said. We drove a short distance and I spotted a gas station with a little store attached to it. He pulled up in front of it, then took his wallet from his pocket and handed me a ten.

“That enough?” he asked.

I nodded. My cheeks were burning again, and he gave me a sympathetic smile.

“I came up in a house full of women, Molly,” he said. “No daddy. One mama. One auntie. And five sisters. This ain't no big thing.” I'd never heard him use the word
ain't
before. Except for his colloquialisms, Russell spoke the same language I did. But the way he said it—lightly, kindly—eased the color from my cheeks and I gave him a grateful smile. “I'll be right back,” I said.

I bought a package of sanitary napkins, eyeing the boxes of tampons wistfully. I'd tried to use one of my mother's when I got my first period, but there was no way that thing was going in.

Back in the van, I tried to hold the thin plastic bag so Russell couldn't see the box inside it. I didn't know why I still felt so embarrassed.

“All set?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.”

We were halfway back to the hotel when he spoke again. “I've been thinking,” he said. “Tuesday—the day we're heading home—my family's having a pig pickin' at our homeplace outside Hendersonville. Think it'd be fun to stop there for a couple hours?”

I thought I'd rather get home so I could talk to Chris, but a pig pickin' sounded like the kind of thing Daddy would love. He was crazy about barbecue. “Would it be okay for Daddy?” I asked. “I mean, would everything be accessible for him?”

“Well, it'll all be outside, unless it's pouring rain, so shouldn't be a problem.”

“I think it's a good idea then,” I said. “He'd like it.” I felt proud of myself for putting my father's wants ahead of my own, even though my heart sank a little as the words left my mouth.

“Let's see how he's feeling,” Russell said. “He might be too worn out by then.” He shook his head with a grin. “We might
all
be too worn out by then.”

*   *   *

We showed up at the bookstore a few hours later to find it packed with people. I could practically hear our collective sigh of relief at the sight of a crowd. A bunch of chairs had been set up in the middle of the giant store, and they were full of mothers—and some fathers—and lots of squirmy children. The staff was setting up more chairs for the people who were standing.

“We don't usually get this big a turnout,” the store manager, a dark-haired man with wire-rimmed glasses, said to us as he reached out to shake my father's hand. He awkwardly put his hand behind his back when he realized Daddy could not lift his own. “It was your radio interview,” the manager said. “We started getting phone calls to reserve your book as soon as the interview was over.”

I stood there talking to the manager, feeling somewhere between cute and cool in my short pink skirt and my purple Doc Martens. I'd taken a couple of Daddy's Advils for the cramps and I felt really good. I wished Chris was there to see me right then.

Daddy wore tan pants and the blue shirt Russell had been ironing, along with a smile nothing would ever be able to erase from his face as he took his place in front of the audience.
This is exactly what he needs,
I thought.

The manager introduced him as “pretend therapist Dr. Graham Arnette,” and everybody applauded. Russell and I sat in the front row and neither of us seemed able to stop grinning as Daddy spoke. He briefly explained why he was in the wheelchair, because it was obvious that the people who'd heard him on the radio had had no idea. Then he launched into a description of Pretend Therapy, saying that while it could work for anyone, children were particularly receptive to the techniques he talked about in his book.

“Pretend Therapy means having control over your life,” Daddy said. “The tools you need to ‘fix' yourself already exist inside you. Pretend Therapy simply helps you track down those tools to make them work for you.” I'd heard him say those few sentences a hundred times before, but I heard them differently on this night, when the parents sitting around me seemed to hang on his words with interest and hope.

“There's someone here tonight who's been my guinea pig over the years as I've developed Pretend Therapy techniques,” Daddy said after he'd talked for a while and was ready to take questions from the audience. He smiled at me and my heart started pounding, surprising me. I suddenly wished I hadn't left my palm stone in my backpack at the hotel. “I'd like her to join me up here,” Daddy said. “This is my daughter, Molly.”

I got to my feet and everyone clapped as I sat down next to him in a chair. There were so many people in front of us! I smiled, pretending I did this sort of thing all the time, and I felt my heartbeat begin to steady itself.

People began asking Daddy specific questions about their children, and he offered suggestions. The hands flew up faster and faster, and he answered question after question, often brilliantly suggesting they could find more answers in his book. He was a natural at this.

Finally there was a question for me.

“What's it like, growing up with a father who has such a fascination with pretending?” a man asked from the back row. The little girl he held on his lap was nearly asleep, her head on his shoulder.

“It's normal, I guess,” I said with a shrug. “I mean, for
me
it's normal, anyway. I don't know anything different. Doesn't every father tell his kids to pretend to love doing their homework or washing the dishes or eating broccoli?”

The audience laughed, and I glanced at my father. There was pride in his eyes. We answered a few more questions together, and I felt as though we were a team. I realized, with a sense of joy and wonder, we always had been.

*   *   *

Daddy was happy but exhausted by the time we returned to the hotel. I took a bath while Russell got him into bed, and then I sat and stared at the phone for a while, wishing I could call Chris. I suddenly remembered Russell saying he was going to make a phone call from the lobby earlier that day. There had to be a pay phone down there.

I pulled my wallet from my backpack and counted out my change. A dollar fifty-five in quarters, dimes, and nickels. Would that be enough?

I changed into my shorts and stuck Chris's number, my room key, and the change into my pocket. Leaving my room, I shut the door as quietly as I could in case Daddy and Russell could hear it in their room. I rode the elevator to the lobby, growing excited over the thought of hearing Chris's voice. I'd tell him about my Doc Martens and how cool the bookstore event had been tonight. As I searched the lobby for the phone booth, I tried to think of questions I could ask him about his day.

I had to ask someone at the front desk where the phone was. There were three booths tucked into an alcove near the bank of elevators, but only one of them was free. I tried to make the call, but the operator asked for more money than I had. I'd have to get more change tomorrow. I sat staring unhappily at the phone for a moment, and that's when I became aware of the voice coming from the booth behind me. It was muffled, the words hard to make out, but it was definitely Russell's voice, and I was relieved then that I hadn't been able to reach Chris. If I could recognize Russell's voice, he would have been able to recognize mine. If I left now, I'd have to walk right past him, so I burrowed deeper inside my booth to wait out his call. I tried to listen in, feeling nosy, wondering who he might be talking to.

I heard him laugh. Maybe he was talking to someone in his family to say we might come to the pig pickin'? That was probably it. I couldn't make out more than a couple of words, but I didn't care. All I wanted was for him to get off the phone and go back upstairs so I could get out of this booth. Finally, he said, “love you, too,” clear as day. I heard the door to his booth open and burrowed my head between the phone and the wall, hoping he wouldn't see me as he left. I heard him walk away from the bank of phone booths and breathed a sigh of relief, but then I thought of those words
love you, too
. They made my heart freeze. Would he say them to someone in his family? Or did he have a girlfriend we knew nothing about? And if he had a girlfriend, would he leave us someday to be with her? That thought was unbearable—we'd be so lost without him—and I suddenly felt the burden of needing to keep not only my father happy, but Russell as well.