Tiny Dancer (31 page)

“That’s what she told me.”

“She must have loved you very much.”

My tears finally came. I backed away from him. Before I left him, I said, “Mr. Johnson, you have everything that you need.”

“I’ve worked hard, I’ll admit,” he said.

“I’m not finished. You have everything you need in Irene and Claudia. You could lose your house, your property—that boat—but those two women are yours as long as you just love them as they deserve.”

He stared at a passing group of golfers. By the time he looked back, I was inside.

Irene came out of her bedroom. “The roast smells good. Did he give you any indication of what’s going on?”

“I can’t say exactly,
but something tells me he’s come back to you. But if I were you, I’d tell him to take his time, give you time to heal.”

“Listen to this young one,” said Saffron. “She’s got it all going on.”

             
                                                        * * * * *

Back home I received a call from a woman calling herself an attorney, name of Florence Grigsby. She told me I needed to pay her a visit after I had settled upon Alice’s funeral arrangements. I did not know how I would pay for any of it.

Florence said, “
Miss Curry, I can tell you to proceed. Your mother’s estate will cover the cost of her interment.” She knew the small details of Alice’s last wishes. “She gave specific instructions, asking that a Reverend Theo Miller officiate at her service. She wanted to be interred in Zion Presbyterian Cemetery.”

“Ma’am, that’s a black’s cemetery,” I told her.
“And a black minister.”

“I know.”

Zion Presbyterian was the small church Theo had shepherded for all those years after he and Dorothea had returned from the Outer Banks. Alice and I had not discussed my relationship with the Millers. That thought ran round my head never landing in any rational way.

Billy delayed his trip to Europe, telling Daddy he wanted to chauffer me anywhere I needed to go. We drove to the funeral home and then to the florist’s where I picked out a spray.

“Let’s go for ice cream,” he said as we walked from under the shade of the shop’s awning.

We crossed the street to the Corner Ice Cream Parlor.

We picked up our cones and took them outside to a bench. I said, “Since Alice Curry is gone. I have a right to know any secrets you’ve kept from me.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I agree and that’s why I asked to help you out. I feel as if I’m somehow helping Alice by helping you. I only know because my father knew her. Daddy fixed everyone’s car
s so he knew everything about everyone.”

“If this is about Vesta and Daddy and their affair, I know now,” I said.

“You know?”

“If that’s the scandal you talked about, yes, I know.”

“That’s not what I meant. But, yes, that was a scandal. After your daddy married Vesta, they settled into life as if they had always been together. You were too young to understand so they had a baby and made the best of it.”

He baffled me. “If that’s not the scandal, then what?”

“Your mother was secretly engaged. It was before she ever met Flynn. Matter of fact, everyone knew that Flynn Curry was her rebound.

Billy talked and I listened for the next hour.

Alice met a young man the summer after she graduated high school. They met at a downtown street dance. She was out with her friends slipping booze into her soft drink. Alice’s mother was on her all of the time wanting her to better herself. But she was boy crazy. The more she was nagged, the wilder she got.

A young man flirting with her got too friendly. She had had too much to drink and he took advantage. He separated her from her friends and led her down an alley.
That was when a young man heard her yelling for help. He ran into that alley and punched out that guy. He led Alice back to her friends. That would have been the end of it. But Alice was vulnerable. She grew up with a single mother and no daddy, no one to look out for her best interests.

She went after that young man. But his family was against it.

“What was his name?” I asked Billy.

“I never knew his name,” he said. “
His family tried to break them up. Alice schemed, begging him to run away to Ohio and marry her.”

“Why Ohio, I wonder?” I asked.

“Different sensibilities, I would assume,” said Billy.

“She was poor, he was rich,” I said.

“His family may have had some money,” he said.

“What was the scandal?” I asked.

“He died in some brawl. There was a lot of speculation but it was well known that she was broken-hearted over him.”

“Daddy came along and comforted her,” I said. At least I finally understood another part of Alice’s story. “She had such a hard life,” I said.

We finished our ice creams.

“I’ve got to go and see Theo about Alice’s service. It should be interesting,” I said. For I had no inkling why she would request Theo.
“Will you drive me someplace else first?” I asked. I gave him the address and then directed him. We pulled up in front of the law office of Florence Grigsby.

She was busy with a client and not really expecting me. I had no experience with end-of-life arrangements. I needed her guid
ance.

Billy waited in the reception room when Florence Grigsby called me into her office, shutting the door.

I said to her, “I need your help.”

She
counseled me through the legalities of releasing the estate. “You’re a minor. Your mother has left you some money. She asked that I release it to you when you go off to college.”

“Is it enough to cover college?” I asked.

“I would say so. Miss Curry. I like to call women like your mother. . . thrifty. Your inheritance will cover your college expenses and then some.”

That was all a surprise to me
of course.

Then she said, “Then there’s the matter of some property.”

“Alice Curry rented a small apartment,” I said. “She never owned property.”

“She did
own a bit of property. No house on it, she said.”

Ms. Grigsby’s receptionist told her that her next client had shown up.

“I can come back,” I said.

“
Actually it’s best you stay,” she said.

The door opened and the receptionist invited the client into Grigsby’s office. He hesitated at the door when our eyes locked.

“Reverend Theo?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’ll come
back later,” he said. He acted awkward, not wanting to enter at all upon sight of me.

“Reverend Miller, we might as well settle all of
Alice Curry’s affairs.”

He held his hat in his hands, th
umbing it nervously. Finally the lawyer coaxed him to take the seat next to me.

Grigsby turned her attention back to me momentarily. “We have a complicated matter to settle.”

“I wanted time to tell you,” he said to me apologetically.

She continued.
“Alice Curry, while leaving you her liquid assets, has bequeathed the property to Theo and Dorothea Miller. Do you understand what I’m saying, Miss Curry?” she asked, looking directly at me.

“I don’t,” I said.

“Her estate specifically dictates that Theo Miller keep the property, but at his death the land escheats back to you.”

“What land?” I asked. “Alice Curry owned property? Where?”

“797 Cotton Street,” said Theo.

“That’s our address,” I said. “That’s not possible. My daddy owns the land. He and my stepmother built a house on it.”

Grigsby leaned toward me. “Are you telling me that a house has been built on this property?”

“I am.”

“Then it was built illegally, Miss Curry. Your father did not have legal claim to that land.”

“How did my mother come to own it?” I asked.

“I can explain that,” said Theo. “I gave it to her.

                                                                      * * * * *

Florence scheduled a second meeting with me. Daddy needed to be present, she said. It would be an interesting meeting for she would inform him that he had built Vesta a home on his ex-wife’s land without consulting her. The deed he used to build Periwinkle House must not have been gone over carefully enough, said Florence.

If Winston Grooms had anything to do with it,
I speculated, then he would be called in to answer for lawyerly tampering.

Grigsby
told me to let her handle Daddy. She would ask him to bring along all of the documents including the deed. She oversaw all of Alice’s estate and she kept it in order. Had Alice lived, she could have asked Vesta for the key to Periwinkle House any time she wanted.

I left with
Theo who led me into Zion’s tiny chapel. We sat in a pew staring up at a picture of Jesus on the cross.

I said to him, “You want to tell me why you gave away part of your family’s property to a white woman?”

He did not answer right away.

“At least tell me why she named you to officiate the service,” I said.

“We go way back,” he said.

“Obviously.”

“I had to right a wrong. I found out you can’t buy your way out of your own poor choices.”

“All this time, you never told me you knew my mother.”

“You look so much like her. Especially before you up and changed your hair. Why you did that, I’ll never understand.” Then he told me the rest of the story, the parts Billy Thornton didn’t know.

Alice had fallen in love, all right, with Theo and Dorothea’s oldest boy. He had shunned her advances, but she was a beautiful young girl, spirited.
The opposite of Zebulon Miller. He was head-over-hills for Alice Morris, the girl from the wrong side of the wrong side of town.

“
Zeb was supposed to go off to college. He was my first child, big brother to his siblings. I wanted him to be an example. I told him to break it off with her. She was a summer fling.”

“She wanted her way, though,” I said.

“Alice always got her way,” he said.

“
Zeb gassed up our old car, hid a bag of things in the back seat. Might have gotten out of town too, but his mother found his bag packed. I confronted him. As I told you, most parenting is done with blinders on. We fought and he left the house on foot. He walked into a bar. White boys followed him. They confronted him for dating a girl from their side of town. They fought. He was a black boy, so the police never got to the bottom of who killed him. I was beside myself, same as when I lost Anton. It’s not what a parent expects to hear.”

“You gave my mother part of your property.”

“It was the only thing I could think to do. She came to me in a rage. She cried and blamed me, saying how if I had let them go, Zeb would have lived.”

I certainly understood Theo’s guilt and why he wanted to make it right with Alice.

“I had parceled off that piece of land to give to Zeb when he graduated college. I expected he’d meet a girl at school in Rock Hill. They’d come back and live next to us.”

“I guess you thought that Vesta moving in was God’s way of punishing you.”

He laughed at me, saying, “You would think so. I was sure a house wouldn’t be built there, not unless Alice built it. I was wrong.”

“That place
that’s prepared out in the cemetery for Alice, it’s next to Zeb’s plot, isn’t it?”

“It sure is. I thought he’d want it that way.”

Then a funny thought hit me and I started laughing.

“For the life of me, I’ve no idea what you think could be so funny at a time like this,” he said.

“That whole golf mess with Winston Grooms—it’s about to blow up in his face, isn’t it.”

“I believe so. But I’ve seen stranger outcomes, so I won’t try and guess God’s next move.”

“Theo, you and Dorothea own Periwinkle House.”

“I guess you’re right about that,” he said

“Did you sign Winston Grooms real estate contract?”

“I did not. Wait on the Lord and He will give you strength,” he said. “I felt as if I should ponder it for a day or two, so I waited.”

We sat planning Alice Curry’s funeral for the rest of the afternoon. It would be a beautiful ceremony, Theo said. A day of celebrating a woman who finally found peace and got everything she wanted. Like Theo said, Alice always got her way.

Claudia nagged me enough until I went for my driving permit.

She said we should celebrate. She had invited some classmates and even some of the graduates down to the lake for one more day of swimming before school started. That meant Billy, she said. I tried not to react.

When he came padding down toward the dock with Drake in tow, I said, “One last swim, before everyone disappears.”

“Look, do you see that boat?” asked Billy who pointed to a small motorless craft turned upside-down.

“No,” said Claudia.
“Where?”

“It’s abandoned,” I said.

“Then it’s ours for the taking,” said Drake. He immediately set off, swimming toward the overturned boat. Billy followed close behind, so I dove in behind him. I aimed for the deep water beneath Billy, bubbles effervescing from my nose and rising until I was sure I had engulfed Billy in my froth. I started rising through the swirling water, opaque as underwater caverns, leaf droppings floating and sticking to me like discarded shells from Theo’s sunflower seeds.  Then brushing against my back were sinewy thighs, bristly hair like wires, and then higher, a boy’s bare chest. I wanted to stay cupped next to him but needed to come up for air. By the time I plowed through the water’s surface sucking in air, Billy yelled, “What in the world? I thought I was being swallowed by a big catfish.”

I
bobbed around, facing him. “Just me,” I said. I took off swimming, but Drake was too fast to catch. Billy caught up with me, though I was determined not to let him reach the boat ahead of me. Our hands slapped the hull at the same time.

Drake had disappeared under the bow, but came out the other side. “I found a rope attached, the tie rope.” He used it to bring the small craft around and then frog-st
roked toward shore. Billy and I each held a side of the boat, helping with the tow.

We
raked the craft onto the rock-littered shore south of the private dock. Drake and Billy flipped it.

“Where did it come from?” asked Billy.

“Probably someone wanting to try and sink it for the insurance,” said Claudia. “Daddy says it happens a lot.”

“Or it just broke its mooring,”
I said, examining the tie rope that showed much wear, but not as much as the boat, all the paint worn off. The craft was worthless so Claudia’s theory was out of the question.

“Let’s see if it’s seaworthy,” said Billy and he immediately began pushing her back into the water.

Claudia ran to fetch two oars off her father’s boat, “Wait and check for leaks,” she said.

None of us seemed to consider we
could go boating in a perfectly good ski boat not thirty yards from us. A new adventure presented itself and we had no choice but to follow it.

I
waded alongside Billy until shoulder deep again in the lake. I told Billy, “Give me a hand.” He did and pushed me into the boat. I took an oar while Claudia held the other one. Marcy climbed in followed by the three other girls who had to come along too.

I
sat next to Billy basking in the laughter and even Drake’s crude stories.

“Give me that paddle,
Peaches, you’re such a weakling,” he said, taking the paddle from me.  He was never going to stop calling me that.

Marcy sat next to him on the middle seat
. I gave my paddle to her and they both paddled slowly toward the first white buoy in the lagoon.

I sat shivering so Billy put his arm around me
. Claudia sat in the front seat next to the two girls but she kept her eye on Billy and me. She took great pains to watch aft and yell whenever she suspected we were nearing a rock. She knew the lagoon well. “Slow down,” she warned the paddlers.

Minnows twirled, tiny
noctilucent lozenges spinning near the surface reflecting sunlight like mirrors.

“
              I think my lips are blue,” I said, hunched over, shivering and burrowing against Billy’s bare stomach. Something about the levity of the simple presence of friends made me  feel less nervous about my skin touching his. The girls were giggling and Drake was entertaining them, trying to sing, although off key. I looked up and Billy was staring off.

             
“What are you thinking about?” I asked.

             
“Like you said, soon all of us will be gone,” he said.

             
“Not us,” said Marcy, laughing and leaning toward Drake’s bare shoulder. She kissed him affectionately and he turned and gently pushed her hair out of her eyes.

             
Drake was going off to school in Boston. We all knew they would not last as a couple, but why spoil the day with such somber realities. We’d had enough of those over the summer.

             
“Since you’ve turned down your big break at show business, I guess you’ll be back in school in a couple of weeks,” said Billy.

             
“I’m going to give Claudia a run for her money,” I said, loud enough so she might hear.

             
She ignored me.

             
He did not act surprised at all. “I’m proud of you.”

             
Claudia yelled the boat was taking on water.

             
“Then you and Claudia will go off and live in a dorm,” he said.

             
I lowered my voice. “Claudia and I would kill each other.” 

             
We were rounding the buoy and heading back to shore.

             
Claudia squealed, “I said, we’re taking on water, hurry!”

             
I felt the first wet seepage of water hit my bare feet in the bottom of the boat. “Oh dear, we might get wet,” I said, laughing.

             
Billy laughed too. I liked making him laugh.

             
“I’m going to miss you,” I said, but then I got up rocking the boat, causing the boat to list.

             
“Sit down, Peaches! You’ll send us all overboard,” said Drake.

“Get down, get down!” Claudia yelled, snorting.

              I was in a hysteria by now. I placed one bare foot on the side of the boat and leaned forward. The old skiff took on water as I suspected it might. I jumped back into the lake while all of them were yelling after me I had abandoned ship. I wanted to be the first back to shore. I climbed the ladder onto the dock, running for a dry towel.

             
I hated the melancholy rhapsody playing over the speakers now. Seemed like one I had heard sung on Theo’s porch. At any rate, it brought back the memory of Vesta sending the cops down on Theo.

             
“Let’s go inside with Flannery,” Marcy squealed, referring to the grocery and bait shop on the dock. “I’m freezing.” They were each diving in one at a time and finally abandoning the old boat.

             
First Drake and Marcy plunked stones into the black water. Billy, Claudia and the other girls followed, swimming toward shore like madness had consumed them all. Then they spilled onto the beach, clambering uphill and onto the deck fighting for towels.

             
“We could drop a concrete block in it and sink it for good,” said Claudia.

             
I liked her idea. The old skiff would turn to rot and the fish would feed around it and create a first-rate fishing spot. “Such a good use for it,” I said, since it never works out to hold onto something that did not belong to you in the first place.

                                                                        * * * * *

              I got home and found the house empty. I went to the back porch and that was when I

n
early swallowed my gum. The sheer numbers, thirty or more men, milled around in Theo’s yard, some in business suits.

I panicked.
But Winston Grooms and his investors were long out of the picture, at least I thought so.

I calmed down when I saw
HuiLin the middle of the group giving a speech.

“What’s going on?”
I asked.

“Come help,
” said HuiLin. She welcomed me and introduced me as the great friend of Minister Theo Miller.”

I
could not muster a single intelligent thought. “Who are these people?” I asked.

“They all from my church,” said
HuiLin.

“We are from Singapore,” said one woman who, like the men, had come from work, it seemed.
For she wore an expensive dark suit over a crisp white blouse. “But our business is here in America.”

“This is Mrs. Huang, she got a dry cleaning business
outside Raleigh. Mr. Jin, he work at a bank.”

“I know your dear father,” Mr. Jin
said to me. “He do very honorable work guarding the services of the bank.”

One after another introduce
d himself or herself to me.

“We are
here for the Honor Garden,” said Hui Lin. “I think you will break ground first, yes?”

“Me?” I asked, for she surprised me.

Hui Lin kept glancing toward the Miller’s house. She said something to one of her colleagues but I couldn’t understand her. There was a lot of talk that followed, but finally Mr. Jin agreed to fetch Theo.

Each of them held
a bright new garden tool. Some held spades, other hoes, but all of them had come to plant.

“On this burned out lot?” I asked.

“We bring good soil,” said HuiLin.

“I order the dirt,” said Mrs. Huang, obviously proud of her role.
The dump truck came backing down the side of our yard not two minutes later.

“You know how to do it,” said
HuiLin. “I watch you work alongside Minister Miller. You work good, he tell me. You give us what to do, yes?”

“L
et me fetch Dorothea first,” I said, confusion rattling my thoughts for HuiLin had awful timing.

Just yesterday morning, Theo had signed a lease permitting Vesta and Daddy to live in Periwinkle House until my eighteenth birthday. Then
he declared the property would fall into my hands. I could do whatever I wanted with it, he said.

I felt it would be one birthday that would not be forgotten. Considering the circumstances, I had reminded Vesta that Theo Miller was showing her the grace she had never shown to him. He could have evicted her
or charged her with trespassing. But he didn’t.

“
Sorry we’re late,” said Theo. Behind him, trailing down the hill from his hothouse, came a stream of people pushing wheelbarrows full of the resuscitated potted plants. I recognized each person for there was Aunt Rosetta and all of the aunts. Every man, woman, and child that had come to a Miller pig picking got rounded up to get those plants down the hill. “We ready?” he asked Hui Lin.

She handed the spade to me. I shoveled the first hole from the burned out surface. Right underneath that charred spot, the soil was black and rich.

Rosetta started up a song.

Dorothea
let her finish, rolling her eyes. “Let’s get to planting.”

Everybody was talking and laughing. Men were getting their polished shoes all covered in dirt, but did not seem to care. Then a big hush fell over everyone.

I looked at Theo who was looking over my head.

Vesta had come home. She stood with her arms akimbo, staring like we were bugs crawling around on the soil.
She saw the dump truck and the tracks in the lawn.

The Asian driver stopped when he saw Vesta yelling and waving her arms. “You’re in the wrong yard,” said Vesta.

“He’s not,” I said. “He’s in the right place.”

“You know about this?” asked Vesta.

The driver proceeded after I motioned him to carry on.

T
he church members stood encircling the entire garden holding up the plants. HuiLin held a finger to her mouth, “Excuse us, Mrs. and Miss Curry. We offer a prayer of blessing now.”

A hush fell over the faces of the men and women as they held the potted plants over their heads. One pleasant-faced m
an I could only assume was their minister said a prayer in what might have been Malay or Mandarin. I could not understand the words, but I felt the same something much like when Dorothea prayed or the aunts. When we opened our eyes, HuiLin ordered the truck to back up and pour the ton of dirt onto the burned soil.

“Now hold on here, you can’t do this,” said Vesta. “Flannery, you tell them to stop, you talk to
HuiLin and let her know I said they can’t do this.”

“She understands you,
you tell her,” I said.

Vesta marched out into the dead center of the circle of friends. She turned
one way and then the other. Then she walked up to one of the men. That was when she noticed the first plant and then another. “Wait, where did you get these plants? Flannery?“