House of Dance by Beth Kephart Read Free Book Online Page B

nap,” I said.
    “I’m getting too tired not to be tired,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
    I came to him, and I settled his pillow. I sat back down to watch him sleep. He closed his eyes and sighed and turned. I listened for the music, then, from far, far down the street. I tried to find my mother in my mind: in a house somewhere, in her overalls, listening to the squeaks of rags on glass. Did she ever think of her growing-up music? Did she ever remember the old-time songs or the feel of the moon on her face?

TWELVE
    T WO MONTHS AFTER Leisha and I caught my mother making out with Mr. Paul, Leisha, Nick, Rocco, and I went to the theater in the next town over to see a new James Bond movie. It was Christmastime and bitter cold outside, and we’d gotten a ride from Rocco’s mom, who drove a bright-turquoise Pontiac Sunbird from the Jurassic era. Rocco sat up front. Nick sat in back, between Leisha and me, and the window on my side was broken, rolled halfway down and not budging. There were flakes of snow in the wind blowingthrough. The wind itself was brutal.
    I was shivering, and Rocco and Leisha were laughing. Nick, though, didn’t laugh, not much, just put his arm around me and pulled me close. “For warmth’s sake,” he said, and I shiver-nodded yes and leaned against him, leaned in hard, wanting the drive never to end. I knew about throb, is what I’m trying to say, before I found the House of Dance.
    But now, coming and going to Granddad’s, sitting and waiting at Granddad’s, bending and bundling and boxing at Granddad’s, I was always on the hunt for something bigger than the work before me, bigger than the facts of Granddad’s sickness and my mom’s absence. A leaf would pinch itself off a tree and flick and glide in the breeze, and that was something good. Or a butterfly would come from nowhere, skidding in. Or a spider would reach a sidewalk curb and step up, his eight legs a sudden mess, and I would think how funny it was to see a spider dance.How bigger than life itself.
    I started studying the steam rising from the asphalt. I was aware of the clouds blotting out the stars at night and the stars coming right back. I was thinking about living and dying, and secrets, and the shadows being cast by trees, and I was standing beneath awnings on the street where Granddad lived, looking up and watching dancers dance, in the long, wide window bands. Those thin arms rising, those hips in a swivel, those hands reaching, that music coming from, and going to, places far away.
    The dance was alive. That was what I knew. The dance was something whole. The dance was hope, and hope was what I needed most of all the summer my granddad died. Hope was what I began to put In Trust, above all other things. Hope, which comes in all the brightest colors.

THIRTEEN
    T HE NEXT MORNING Mom was still not home. I’d knocked on her bedroom door, and no one had answered. I’d opened the door and found her pillow undisturbed. She was gone and had been gone since the day before, and it was morning, and she hadn’t even called. I looked out her bedroom window, and I could hear her in my head: Not a word, Rosie.
    Later, down on the kitchen table, I found the note she’d left. “Be good,” it said, and I thought: Be good? Be good! When you callMr. Paul’s to fix a date for your cleaning, it is Mrs. Paul with whom you speak. Mrs. Paul, who has two young kids, the father of whom is Mr. Paul. Mrs. Paul, who shares a house with Mr. Paul. “Mom,” I said out loud, “come home.” As if talking were taking some kind of action.
    In the house the windows were streaked gray with old rain. Cobwebs hung from the ceilings like old-lady lace, and there wasn’t the slightest bit of gleam. There were loose nails and weaknesses in the floor, places that would crack beneath almost any weight. The house was long and thin, with a front room, followed by a dining room, and over to the right of that a kitchen, and only in the front room were there