The Spaces Between Us Page 5

  I wish we could just go, just leave this town and this Valley, these people and their comments. If we just got on the bus and went to New York City, we could probably figure it out from there. We just have to make the first move. Every time Grimshaw starts a dance class, they tell her how much talent she has, and I’m smart enough to succeed at whatever I want, once I decide what that is, so I do have confidence that something is out there for us. I know what Grimshaw would say to that, though: confidence doesn’t have wheels, and I’m not old enough to drive.

  I stick my hand in the water and let it lap up to my elbow. The voice of the water slowly clears the beer out of my head. Somewhere on shaley cliffs above me, maidenhair ferns hang down, and every few minutes, a drop of water lands on my face. From here, the party is only a flickering orange glow against the trees and a few hoarse shouts.

  I lie down on the rock and close my eyes. The moss is soft, and the occasional drops of water that reach my face remind me of the woman in the rain in the Jacques Prévert poem. If I pretend to be French, I might forget about where I live. I hear sirens, and blue lights flash over my head through the trees. I listen to the commotion that has started above me, shouts and the running of feet. The police coming to flush the underage drinkers home is a regularly scheduled feature of weekends in Colchis. After the excitement dies down, I make my way back up to the party. The fire has become a glowing orange mound of coals. People are quieter than they were before, but it’s a warm night, and there’s still a buzz in the air, like anything could still happen. I don’t see Grimshaw anywhere, or Mike Lyle, or the Corvette. An old Blazer and a bashed-in pickup truck are parked on either side of the bonfire, close enough to blister the paint. Stretching over the fire from the top of one to the top of the other is a long board. I’m trying to figure out the point of this when somebody shouts, “Who’s gonna walk the plank?”

  “I’ll walk it,” somebody slurs. It’s the valedictorian again. People cheer. He crawls on top of the pickup, and they help him up onto the roof. Of course, as soon as they let go of him, he staggers forward, twirls around, and then falls off, which everybody thinks is very funny. They beat him on the back, even though he falls clear of the fire, and he holds up his bottle like he has won a great victory. Then he gets dragged off by the armpits to retch into the poison ivy.

  Heavy metal music comes buzzing and thumping out of the open windows of a truck. I while away some time thinking of the torture that awaits me at home as I watch the youth of the Minnechaug Valley fall one by one into the coals, which get grayer and dustier as they cool. The plank is kind of soft and spongy, and sags when they get to the middle of it. Nobody makes it to the other side. After a while, I notice a certain chill in the air and the sky getting a little darker. A yellow rind of moon climbs out of the trees. This night is ending, and I need to get home.

  Then I see her, up on the roof of the Blazer. This might be what we were waiting for, it might be why we came to the party in the first place. For her it’s not a party, it’s an audience, but she has to be drunk enough, and so does the audience.

  The bottle of schnapps is still with her. She takes a swig of it, makes it part of the dance, then lets the bottle lead her out to the middle of the plank. Everybody is quiet, watching her undulate into center stage. Grimshaw’s dancer fantasy doesn’t come out of nowhere. The girl really does know how to move. Even drunk and in heels, her balance is perfect, and she doesn’t take a false step. She gets to the middle of the board and stops and sways with her eyes closed.

  “Take it off!” somebody says, a male voice. Grimshaw smiles and closes her eyes and continues to sway. First she holds her hair up. Then she stretches her arms out and starts to unbutton her sweater—my sweater—with one hand.

  Somebody turns the music up. Once her sweater is open, she starts peeling it slowly off her arms. I don’t want it to end up in the fire, so I fight my way to the front of the crowd and grab it just before it lands in the coals.

  Underneath the sweater is a lacy top, and under that is her bra. Liberated from the sweater, Grimshaw moves her arms more freely. The silence of the men around the fire has a particular focus to it, like they don’t know Grimshaw is just dancing. They think she’s promising them something. I seem to be the only other female present. With my eyes open, I say a silent prayer that the song will end and we’ll go home with no more drama than that. The skin on the back of my neck starts to prickle. Behind me a stick cracks. Mike Lyle walks up behind me. I’m glad to see him. He’ll defend our honor and drive us home in his Corvette. He’s the answer to my prayer.

  “Looks like all the good little girls have gone home,” he says. “And you’re still here.”

  “Could you take us home?” I ask him. “Like, right now?”

  He focuses on me with those laser-vision eyes of his and pretends to be confused. “You want to go home with me, little girl? I thought you didn’t like my car.”

  “I didn’t say—”

  He looks around. “Seems to me like the party’s getting going again. All the little kids have gone home.” He lets out a long, low belch. “Or almost all.”

  Suddenly, I feel like one of those little kids, and all I want to do is go home. We both look at Grimshaw. She’s holding the bottle at the end of her arm and following it around in small circles.

  “How much has she had to drink, anyway?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I’m not her babysitter.” He takes another swig of beer. “And neither are you.”

  The song stops, and I wait for her to get down. Mike and I stand there together and watch her twirling around on the plank in silence, smiling to herself while all these guys watch her from the shadows. But no, another song starts, and she moves to that. She could dance to anything, really.

  “Somebody should stop her,” I say. “It’s not safe, what she’s doing.”

  He takes a swig of his beer. “Life’s not safe. You better get used to it, little girl. Or stay home.” He leans in closer to me, without taking his eyes off Grimshaw. “You think you could do that?” he asks me softly. He doesn’t look at me, just gestures with his chin toward Grimshaw.

  “Do what?” I whisper. For some reason, my voice doesn’t seem to work. I clear my throat. “Do what?” I ask again, louder.

  I hear a low chuckle. “You know what I mean,” he says. “Smart girl like you. I think you could,” he says, still without taking his eyes off her. “I think you got it in you. You’re still just a little…” Here he leans close to my ear. “Scared…” He breathes on my neck. “We’re all just the same, underneath it all, we’re just animals, you and me.”

  He clearly isn’t going to help us, so I don’t want to waste any more time on him, but there’s something about the way he stares at you that you can’t look away from.

  Then he keeps going. “You and your mom,” he says. “I know Scot. Put it this way—she ain’t Mrs. Pentz because of their intellectual discussions.” He laughs, like he’s just told a joke. Then he winks at me.

  Somebody throws something—a chunk of wood or a heavy rock—in the fire. I turn to look. A column of sparks swirls up around Grimshaw, who seems to enjoy it. Like she’s been waiting for that cue, she holds the bottle over her head and twirls around. It’s gotten light enough that I can see Ruby’s pickup truck parked at a little distance. Why doesn’t her own brother know what’s going on? Ruby will do something about this if Mike won’t. I run to the truck, and there is Ruby, asleep behind the steering wheel. I slug him in the arm as hard as I can, so he stirs, barely opens his eyes, sees me, and shuts them again.

  “You better drive,” he says. “I’ve had…” He doesn’t finish the sentence.

  “Move over, then.”

  I leave the driver’s side door open, go back to the Blazer, walk out onto the plank, and reach for Grimshaw’s hand. “Let’s go,” I tell her. “We have to go home.”

  She opens her eyes wide at me. “Come on.” I snap my fingers. With drunken docility
, she lets me lead her off the Blazer. I help her down, then I push her in front of me to Ruby’s truck, and she gets in and slumps against the passenger-side window. Ruby is already stretched out in the back, sleeping next to Jake and Jaws. Before I get behind the wheel, though, I turn around. Mike is still standing in the same place, watching me.

  “Remember what I said,” he calls.

  I rush up to him and get right in his face. “You leave us alone,” I tell him. As I turn to go, his hand snakes out, he grabs me by the back of the shirt, and he pulls me in close to him.

  “I’ll give you some advice, little sister,” he whispers into the back of my head. “Don’t take me on.”

  He lets me go and I run to the truck. When I get to the door, I turn around and give him the finger. “You’re too old,” I shout at him. “We’re still in high school.”

  He seems to think this is the funniest thing he’s heard all night, and his laughter stays with me all the way up the hill.

  three

  AFTER I SLEEP FOR MOST of the next day, I head out to an old cemetery, located halfway in between my house and Grimshaw’s, going crosslots. It’s on a little knob on the side of a hill, a swell in Mizerak’s rising sea of corn. Ever since sixth grade, it’s been our secret meeting place. There are about a dozen lichen-covered graves surrounded by cedar trees. There are only four families buried here—the Purdys, the Getmans, the Helmers, and the Spragues, all related. Nobody’s been buried here since 1924. Grimshaw uses the Helmers as her stage.

  I get there in the late afternoon and wait for about half an hour, when here comes Grimshaw, gliding up through June-high corn. She’s wearing a sleeveless black Harley T-shirt that comes down almost to her knees. Maybe it’s because it’s a breezy day, with everything in motion—trees, clouds, corn, Grimshaw, all moving together in the same graceful rhythm—but she really looks like she’s dancing. This is the last day I’ll see her before our senior year begins. It turns out I’ll be gone all summer after all. Tomorrow they’re putting me on a bus to Maine.

  “I like walking through corn,” Grimshaw says as she reaches the graveyard. “I think it’s my favorite crop to walk through.”

  “I’m leaving for Maine tomorrow,” I tell her.

  “Tomorrow?” Her eyes widen in surprise. “Did you get in trouble for last night?”

  “No, but I’m banished anyway. Something very weird is going on at my house. Scot wasn’t home, and my mom was on the phone, praying. Five o’clock in the morning. I just walked right by her and went to bed. There’s no way Scot’s not having an affair.”

  “With that secretary?”

  “Yes. With the heinous, hideous, and hateful Nanci Lee.” What I don’t tell Grimshaw is that my mother interrupted her prayer to tell me that she already hired a babysitter and they’re putting me on the bus for Maine tomorrow, and that if my attitude doesn’t improve, I can do my senior year there in Maine and not bother coming home, which is ridiculous. They don’t even like me in Maine.

  Grimshaw reclines on the Helmers, and her hair spills over the edge. I sit on Mr. Sprague, who died in 1901, aged seventy-eight. She stares up at the sky.

  “I don’t have any cigarettes,” she announces.

  “Me neither.”

  “You never do.”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “You smoke mine.”

  “Dancers aren’t supposed to smoke,” I remind her. “It cuts down on their wind.”

  “It’s too late for me, anyway. I read you’re supposed to start training when you’re eight.”

  “Hold fast to dreams,” I quote Langston Hughes, with my finger in the air. “For if dreams die—”

  “I’m not interested in dreams,” she interrupts. “I’m interested in reality.” She props her head up on her elbow, and we watch gusts of wind chase each other across the corn, making dark streaks against the brilliant green.

  “Remember when we used to make a game of running through Mizerak’s corn?” I ask. We’d start at opposite corners of the cornfield, pretend we were lost and had to find each other in the corn. The rules were that you had to keep running, and you couldn’t break the stalks. You could only change rows if there was a break in the row or you had come to the end. It was really fun, running down the endless rows through the weeds, the blades whipping by your face, especially when you’d see the other person running by a couple of rows away, and then you’d start to laugh so hard you couldn’t keep running. It was easy to miss each other. We’d play at the end of every summer, when the corn was way over our heads. By October it all gets cut to silage.

  “If I had a car,” she says, “I could get a job. I could get hired to teach down at Monique’s. She knows I’m good with the kids. It takes money to get a car, and it takes a car to get money. And I don’t have either one. Nice, huh? And I’m almost eighteen.”

  “You could come with me to Maine,” I offer.

  “But I need money.” She stands up on the Helmers and starts swaying to her inner orchestra. “Some dancers make great money,” she says. “They work at night. Mike says he knows people in the business.”

  “Mike,” I say, investing the word with as much disgust as one syllable can contain. I shake my head and turn my back to her. While she stretches and lunges, Grimshaw keeps talking about the great outfits strippers get to wear.

  “My brother Wayne’s fiancée, Gloria, used to be an exotic dancer at this club in Florida,” she rattles. “She doesn’t do it anymore since she gained all that weight, but she kept the clothes.” I roll my eyes and shake my head. Wayne and Gloria. Wayne has a part-time job unloading trucks at a grocery store. They live in the trailer park, and they’re always trying to fall down the stairs so they can sue somebody. Grimshaw finishes warming up. She gets down from the Helmers and sits next to me. She’s taken the Harley shirt off. She’s wearing her bra and a pair of bike shorts.

  “Do you ever have this … feeling?” she asks. “Like, you have this feeling you’re going to die young?”

  “Not exactly. I try to look into my future, but there’s always a manhole cover in the way.”

  “It’s just that—” She picks at the hem of her shorts. “I don’t know—I can’t see myself like Gloria, doing that.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Or any of the others, either. Lisa or anybody, with kids and a job and stuff. But I can’t see myself doing anything else, either, far away from here. That’s why I always figure I’ll be dead.”

  “I think there are other options than Colchis or death.”

  She executes a backbend on Mr. Sprague’s bench. She is so flexible that her hands and feet almost touch. Then she runs through splits and then she wants me to spot her up on the Helmers again, while she jumps, so I stand up. Spotting her is just a formality: she lands every jump like a sparrow landing on a twig. Standing up on the Helmers, you can look down into the Valley and see the smokestacks and the steeples of Colchis.

  “I think it’s your fault, actually.” She stops to catch her breath. “Not that I blame you.”

  “Go ahead. I’m getting used to having everything blamed on me.”

  “Because of you, I know that there’s the big world out there, that people have dreams. If I didn’t know you, I’d just think, This is it, and I’d probably be happy here.” She lists the many blessings of being a Grimshaw—lots of family you can count on, and they all know how to fix a car. I say nothing. “But your big mouth and your big words,” she continues. “It’s like your words come from someplace else, so it makes me think I’m gonna go someplace else, too.”

  “We’ll get there.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet.” We sit down again. “But just because we failed history, there’s no reason for despair.”

  “But that’s the point,” she says. She gathers all her hair on top of her head and knots it into a bun. “It doesn’t matter. We could pass history or fail it, and it wouldn’t make any difference. So why are we doing it?”r />
  I don’t have an answer for that, so I’m quiet, feeling the despair come over us, like exhalations from the dead bodies underneath us.

  “It’s because I’m gonna be eighteen,” she continues. “That’s why I’m thinking about it. When you turn eighteen, you start thinking about death. You’ll see.”

  “Also because you need a cigarette.”

  “Maybe. But seriously, Serena, what about all those bullshit classes we signed up for next year? Consumer Concepts? What the hell even is that?”

  “We talked about it. We signed up for easy classes so we can have fun.”

  “Boring isn’t fun,” she says. “Mr. C. was right. You should be taking harder classes.”

  “Just be here when I get back, that’s all I ask. And stay away from Junior Davis, too—I have a feeling those fascist cheerleaders are capable of violence.”

  Grimshaw pulls her shirt back over her head. “Anybody else you don’t want me to see?”

  “That goon in the rusty Corvette.”

  “He has ambition,” she says. “He’s getting a Dodge Viper.”

  “Right. And I’m getting a flying zeppelin. I know, I think I’ll call it … the Hindenburg.” Then I think of something. “Dammit,” I say. “I forgot about my hair again. Can you do it tonight?”

  “Leave it alone.” She takes off my Red Army cap and pushes my hair around my head. “What would you do if you woke up one day and you were the prettiest girl in the room?”

  I push her hand away and pull my hat back as low on my head as it will go. “That’s your job.”

  “My job.” She laughs. “That must be why I’m so rich.”

  I tell her how much my grandmother in Maine hates my hair, and then I imitate her, saying, “‘I’d rather she were on drugs’—that’s what she says every time she sees me. She takes one look at my hair and goes, ‘I’d rather she were on drugs.’”