Dance Real Slow Page 5

  “Oh, no big deal. Sometimes has trouble turning over, so you gotta let it set awhile. That’s ’cause it floods real easy. The steering also pulls a little to the left, mostly when you’re stopping.”

  “Is that the brakes?”

  “The drums wear a little unevenly. We have ’em sanded down every six months or so.”

  I open a folder in front of me, leafing through the tune-up records. “I don’t see anything here that shows you get the drums sanded.”

  “Wouldn’t be there. Joyce’s brother usually does it, in Nebraska. We visit ’em a couple times a year and he always messes with her car. He’s got his own tire-and-wheel place in Lincoln. Does it in an afternoon.”

  “When was the last time he looked at the car?”

  “Oh, I guess it must have been May.” Rob stops, scratching at his eyebrows with his forefinger. “No. We took my car up in May. Don’t usually take the Camaro ’cause I don’t want to put the miles on it. But this time we did, on account of I needed a new set of tires. Mark, that’s Joyce’s brother, he sells ’em to me at cost. So it must have been last December, for the holidays.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know his phone number up there?”

  Rob shakes his head.

  “Got it at home, though.”

  “Could you call me with it, when you get a chance?”

  “Sure.” Rob shrugs. “But what do you wanna talk to him for?”

  “I just want to check the brakes through him—that nothing could have gone wrong.”

  Rob covers his mouth with his right hand, brushing down several times, stopping before the end of his chin. He lets out a hard breath through his nose, causing his nostrils to flare. “Wasn’t anything with the brakes, Mr. Nash. She just damn drove through the wall. Comin’ for me.”

  “Why was that?”

  “I know you know why,” he answers, looking straight, not blinking.

  “Because you were seeing one of the waitresses.” I glance down at my legal pad for the name. “Carol?”

  He does not respond for several minutes, standing rigid, hands quiet at his sides. “It’s a queer thing. It wasn’t like I was ever intending on seeing someone on the sly, you know? Me and Joyce was happy—geez! We still are, sort of. I love Joyce as much now as when we first got married. It ain’t about that. It ain’t about not loving her.”

  Rob takes several steps toward me and stops. I want to tell him that he does not have to go on, he can keep this to himself. But I don’t.

  “I used to think that Joyce was all there was for me, that we belonged together. I still kinda do. But … well.” He looks to the sky, spreading out his fingers and running them back through his straggly brown hair. “I feel the same way with Carol. Like maybe there’s not one or even two women out there that I’d be happy spending the rest of my life with. That maybe I could be just as content with someone else.”

  A soft ticking noise rises from the distance, like the settling of an engine or a baseball card stuck in the spokes of a bicycle. But after several minutes it stops.

  “You lose some of your desire for things, for people. There was a period of my life when I wanted only Joyce. But now I’m not so sure. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s not about one perfect match. A person could have five, maybe five hundred, perfect matches. I just happened to run across two in my lifetime. Two at the same time.”

  Our living room smells horrible. Calvin is lying spread-eagled on his back staring up at the ceiling, the man-o-war floating beside his head. I lean close and sniff first Calvin and then the jar.

  “The man-o-war reeks,” I say, tapping Calvin’s chest.

  “Huh?”

  “Your man-o-war is rotting. We’ve gotta get rid of it.”

  Calvin rolls onto his side and pulls the jar near to him, squeezing it between his stomach and thighs.

  “Cal, can’t you smell that?”

  Mrs. Grafton walks in from the back porch, placing Calvin’s gunnysack on a straight-back chair beside the doorway.

  “I know, isn’t it just awful?” she says, smoothing out the front of her sundress. “It’s been like that all day. He wouldn’t let me put it outside.”

  “We’re throwing it away.”

  Calvin whines, kicking his legs against the floor, which in his profiled state makes him look as if he is running.

  Mrs. Grafton stoops down and strokes his cheek with her hand. “Come now, honey. Let’s show your father what a big man you are.”

  He tucks his head against his shoulder and settles into a fetal position, folded like an omelet around the mason jar.

  Mrs. Grafton steps back, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “This is so unlike him,” she says.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. He’s got a pouty side, too. Don’t you, Cal?” I ask, prodding at his ribs with the toe of my shoe.

  He moans and then starts to cry, muffled at first and then louder, breaking into short gasps as he tries to catch his breath. The back of his green T-shirt wavers with each sob, holding thin shivers of light below the crease of his spine.

  “This is quite distressing,” Mrs. Grafton says, following me into the kitchen. I tell her it isn’t, really. That in Calvin’s four years of life I have spoiled him. He is far too accustomed to getting his way; he needs to learn things will not always work out for him. Even as I’m speaking this sentence, though, I realize how false and flat my words sound. Calvin, more so than most four-year-olds, more so than many adults, is aware of the fact that life is not always straight with us. For he has lost a mother. And at times is alone in a world he does not understand.

  Mrs. Grafton collects her belongings, cradling them near her breast as she steps onto the back porch. Moonie lies beneath a wicker rocker, remaining motionless even as the screen door slaps closed.

  “Thank you,” I say, unbuttoning the top of my shirt and loosening the knot on my tie.

  “Oh, it’s a pleasure. He’s usually so good,” she says, swallowing the hard consonant sound at the end. She turns and walks the seventy or so yards to her house. When she is nearly halfway, Moonie stretches and then taps quietly, effortlessly, down the steps and into the wake of Mrs. Grafton’s path.

  When I return, the living room is empty and I call out to Calvin, but he does not answer. I hear the pattering of his stocking feet on the floorboards above. I find him at the foot of my bed, huddled over the mason jar, which has been opened, leaving salty splashes beading on the dark brown floor. He is holding a blue bottle, its cap a marble at his side.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. The air is terrific, sharp, but not only with the smell of the man-o-war. Calvin has poured cologne into the mason jar, spilling a salad-plate-sized ring onto the front of his shirt.

  “See,” he starts, standing. “It doesn’t stink bad anymore. See. Smell.”

  I take the nearly empty bottle from him, screwing the top back on and buffing it dry with his shirt.

  “And you think that’s gonna do it?”

  “Yeah,” he says, his face shiny warm with excitement. “That’s it. That’s doin’ it.”

  “Think so, huh?”

  He nods and then steps back as I refasten the lid to the mason jar.

  “Yeah. That’s doin’ it,” he repeats, sincere as a sunrise.

  The light begins as tight rows of glowing white coins, slowly dispersing into grainy wedges that meld together before they reach the perfect rectangle of green, making it impossible to tell where one beam starts and the next finishes, unless you follow the nearly seamless trails back up to their origin. The green is fierce, without variation, so hard it creates wavering bars of black against your eyes if you stare too long. Huddled to one side is a grandstand, wide and steep, of silvery cast iron and stiff planks of red-painted wood. There is a similar, smaller version of the grandstand at the opposite end, for fans of visiting teams. Calvin and I sit at the top, near the home team, so he can see, our lower backs pressed against a creaky rail for support. We are eating
hot dogs wrapped in wax paper, and potato chips, which I have spread out on napkins between us. A jumbo-sized Pepsi sits at my side, away from Calvin, to avoid mishaps.

  Tarent High’s players are in helmets of muted gray with a thin red line down the middle and the red silhouette of a Trojan on both sides. Their jerseys are crimson, with black-and-white stripes on the sleeves and white numbers sewn to the front and back and on the shoulders. White three-quarter-length pants have a single crimson stripe down the sides. Most are wearing black cleats, but a few have on white, and Calvin points to them while kicking his own white sneakers out in front, at a right angle. From what I am told, Tarent has never been particularly good in football, with last year’s team going 5-4, the third best record in school history. However, this season they are without their top six players from a year ago, all of whom graduated. So there is not a great deal of interest for this game, with Lawrence’s North Bedor. Mostly parents of players, girlfriends, teachers, and a handful of students with nothing better to do on a Friday night. Calvin and I have several sections to ourselves and sometimes, in between bites of hot dog, he climbs down a few rows and sits, chewing, punching at his thighs to the rhythm of the marching band’s bass drum.

  North Bedor, in white and green, is both physically larger than Tarent and greater in number. The Grizzlies, as they are called, force Tarent into a turnover on the third play of the game—stripping the ball from a Trojan running back and carrying it down to the 14-yard line. Two plays later North Bedor’s quarterback sails a perfect spiral to his tight end in the left corner of the end zone. The opposite grandstand shakes with green and white. High-kicking cheerleaders wave flimsy pom-poms of shredded crepe paper, fastened to the end of cigarette-thin sticks. One cheerleader back-flips her way to the edge of the playing field, where she stands and pauses, chest out, straightening the pleats in her skirt, before skipping back to the sideline.

  “You like her?” I ask Calvin. He does not answer; he does not know what I am talking about. Climbing back toward me, he leans down and places both hands around the mouth of the flimsy Pepsi cup. I hold the bottom, helping him lift it to his face. Flecks of wax float on the liquid’s dark, oily surface. Calvin takes large, open swallows that cause his Adam’s apple to throb, pushing against the soft, taut skin of his throat. When finished, he pants, lips parted so he can catch his breath.

  At halftime, Tarent is behind, 24-6. Richard Blyth comes over and stands a few rows below us, his right leg propped the next level up, his forearms crossed against his knee. Richard’s oldest son, Sam, is a third-string wide receiver for Tarent. He is only a sophomore and still quite skinny and gawky. Richard asks Calvin if he is enjoying the game, if someday maybe he wants to play football. But Calvin is quiet, scribbling on a game program with my felt-tip pen.

  “I think I may have rented the floor above us,” says Richard.

  “That’s great.” I’m watching a group of teenagers gathered at the bottom of the grandstand, in front of the black cinder track that encircles the field. “To whom?”

  “A couple of accountants. They’re kids—just outta college. Kansas State. One of them grew up around here. He says the other fella is from Tulsa. They’re going to talk it over, but I’ve got a good feeling.”

  The teenagers’ voices carry and I can hear them talking about a party later this evening at a Jake somebody’s house. His parents have gone to visit relatives in Missouri and won’t be back until late Sunday. One girl, dressed in a faded, oversized jean jacket, khaki trousers rolled up to midcalf, and high-top sneakers with red-and-gray laces, lets out a loud scream. Shaking her head, she grabs the arm of the girl next to her and shouts “No way” three or four times.

  “Young business types are just the kind of people we want in there,” says Richard. “Quiet. Responsible. Courteous.”

  A tall, blond-haired boy in a Tarent letter jacket walks up to the group. He is greeted by a girl in a blousy white turtleneck, speaking in rapid sentences that I cannot understand. She is using her hands, pointing beyond the craggly line of treetops, to her right. She brings her hands together, forming a T, and the blond boy nods, saying, “Second house.”

  “Are you going to get the price you wanted?” I ask Richard.

  “I lowered it a little. They’re just starting out and all and I figured I’d give them a break. But only until they get settled—six months or so. Then the lease goes back up to my asking price.”

  It has become breezy and I slip a sweatshirt on Calvin. He fights it at first, hooking his arms against his chest, folding forward, level to his legs. I rub my knuckles down the side of his rib cage, gaunt and exposed, causing him to giggle and squirm. He relaxes and I tug the shirt down over his head, pulling his arms out and rolling the sleeves back above his wrists.

  The two teams return to the field in a trot—Tarent’s limp and measured. Calvin stands high on the seat, stretching his neck as if looking for somebody. But he knows no one, at least not well enough to recognize unless you were to point them out and say their name. I grab hold of Calvin’s jeans, my fingers buried inside the waistband near the small of his back. He slaps at my hand, moaning, while he tries to shove me away.

  “You wanna fall?” I ask, jerking him from side to side.

  He nods.

  “Oh yeah?” I push him forward, dangling him horizontally over the seats in front of us. He laughs, waving his arms in a crawl stroke toward escape. Swimming to freedom. “You are a very peculiar boy,” I say. Richard smiles slow and then turns, in time to see Sam glancing up in his bright, unsoiled uniform, the number 88 wrapped to his sides, the front and back ends tucked below his arms. Richard waves and Sam starts to wave back, but stops, looking around before lifting his hand quickly, lamely, wiggling his fingers and then reaching to snap his chin strap in the same motion. His helmet is too large and as he pushes the buckle into the right side, the helmet shifts against his head, lurching leftward.

  “Well, I’d better be getting back,” says Richard, pointing across the grandstand to where his wife and some friends are sitting.

  “If it stays like this, maybe the coach will put Sam in.”

  Richard raises his eyebrows and shrugs. He says “Maybe” and then descends to the walkway at the grandstand’s base, passing the group of teenagers as he returns to his seat.

  My memories of football games with my own father are surprisingly pleasant. Sunday mornings I would awaken in time to read through the sports page while my mother prepared our lunches: three sandwiches apiece, usually kosher salami and Swiss cheese on Italian bread, an apple or pear or banana, cookies stored in plastic sandwich bags, pretzels—which my father preferred infinitely to potato chips—several cans of ginger ale, and a thermos of coffee. Game time was one, but we always left the house by eleven. With traffic, it took about forty minutes to get to the stadium and another fifteen minutes to park. We always took the same route: down Chester, right on East 9th, and then left to St. Clair, to the second of two underground parking garages.

  We did not speak much, my father and I, and when we did, it was invariably about something trivial, like how I was doing in school or a recent movie we both saw or why the Cleveland Browns should or should not trade a particular running back or linebacker. It always seemed odd to me that my father, who made his living teaching, communicating, was unable to do so away from the game of basketball, with his own family. Later in life, after I had married, my mother told me that when she started dating my father, while they were both still in college, they would often stay up talking until five in the morning at a local doughnut shop. She would always be the one to break off conversation, say it is time to go, she needed sleep. When I asked her what they talked about, she took a breath, low and swift, and then said, everything. They talked about everything. I told her I found it hard to believe, and she agreed. It seemed like another lifetime, she said, or maybe one that belonged to somebody else.

  Tarent has lost by 32 points. Sam Blyth played the last offensive series
of the game, but the ball was never thrown in his direction. Calvin is tired and I carry him over my right shoulder, like a sack of grain. At our car, I watch the tall blond boy in the letter jacket talking with another girl, helping her into his pickup truck. A pair of miniature basketball sneakers hang from his rearview mirror, red and black and white, swinging in quick ovals that change motion with the truck’s movements. He rolls down his window and stops, exchanging words with another letter-jacket-clad boy before pulling out of the parking lot and onto Montgomery Street. As I lower Calvin to the seat, a woman’s hand reaches in and brushes a gentle tongue of hair from his forehead. It is Joyce Ives.

  “Hello, sweetie,” she says to Calvin. Dressed in a tan hunting jacket and jeans, Joyce turns away, taking a cigarette from her purse. She touches its end with a silver Zippo and returns the lighter to one of the baggy pockets on her jacket.

  “You caught us leaving. He’s tired.” I close Calvin inside the car, his head droopy as a daffodil.

  “You’re a hard man to get ahold of.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been kinda busy lately. How’re you feeling?”

  “I’m fine. Took the neck brace off two days ago.”

  “Really, I’ve been meaning to call you.”

  She nods, blowing cigarette smoke quick, like steam, from the corner of her mouth. “I heard you met with Rob.”

  “Yeah, but just to look at the car. To see how bad the damage was.” I kick at some gravel, forming a small pile with the instep of my foot. “Rob says it’s running pretty well.”

  “That’s because I took my foot off the gas.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I took my foot off the gas—after I hit. That’s why I didn’t do more damage to the car or the inside of Gooland’s. Shit, I could have driven right into the kitchen—with Rob as a goddam hood ornament.”

  I am not sure what to say, how to respond to Joyce. Staring down, I bury my toe in the center of the gravel pile and dig out a hole in its center.

  “You wouldn’t have really wanted to hurt him?”