Tiny Dancer (5 page)

Claudia
and I unpacked in the guest room Dottie had prepared for us. Pink sheets and rosy quilts made the bedroom appear to blush the color of Pepto Bismol. I shared a bureau with Claudia, the top covered entirely with Dottie’s grandchildren’s framed photographs.

“
We’ve got to talk your mother’s friend out of the boat ride,” I said.

Claudia laughed. “She is a gabby
woman. She driving you crazy already?”

“I made plans for us.”

“Like what?”

“Billy Thornton and some of his classmates are
staying not far from here in a hostel.”

“Billy Thornton’s friends? Your
dance teacher? How could they be any fun?”

“
He’s fun to me. And you’d like him too. He’s not uptight like some of the other seniors,” I said, defending Billy. “I talked to him late last night on the phone. He told me right where they would be tonight and said we should look them up.”

“Is he the reason you aimed my mother at the oyster bar?”

“Yes.”

Claudia laughed. “If you’d let me in on a few things, I could help out, you know. My mother’s not hard to turn around. But she can’t think I’m trying to meet boys or we’re done for.”
She opened a closet and spied a record player. She squealed and pulled it down, plugging it in between the twin beds.

I riffled through Dottie’s collection of records. Nothing before 1960 caught my attention but one. I put on a record by Billie Holiday. Daddy liked
her, that I knew. I’d heard him playing her songs after Vesta had gone to bed. He danced with Mama to Billie Holiday. She always said I got my dance moves from Daddy, but she was being modest. Everyone said Alice Curry was the best dancer in Moore County and beyond.

The last time he sat listening to the record, I heard him cry softly in the privacy of his bedroom.
He played records that I knew he had taken from our closet. Those were the albums that made him think of Siobhan. He played Billy Holiday for my mother.

A feeling of melancholy swept over me. “I think I’ve done something bad.”

“You? Never,” she said, joining me, poking through the albums.

“Tomorrow is the anniversary of the accident. I should have stayed, at least for Daddy’s sake.”

“We can’t have any fun if you’re going to be like that.” She made a silly face, trying to make me laugh.

I knew she was right. Here I was
oceanside, inviting along a funeral. “I’ll do better.”

“You like your dance teacher, don’t you?” Claudia was smiling as if she knew everything about me, which she seldom did. She stretched across the bed she claimed for herself. “Don’t look at me like that. I figured it out a long time ago. He’s all you talk about.”

“You know he’s a friend. My dance teacher is all and nothing more.” She and I had argued about a good many things. This was the first time she stuck her nose in matters pertaining to Billy though in such a way as to imply I had a thing for him. In spite of the dance competitions I had won and the long hours Siobhan and I had spent in training, Claudia scarcely acknowledged my dancer’s life away from our small circle of school friends. “You know Billy’s like a member of the family. Besides, he’s too old for me.” I changed the subject. “Let’s ask Dottie if we can boat tomorrow night. You’re prone to seasickness and don’t want to ruin the first day.”

Claudia rolled onto her back, a smile forming.

                    
                                                * * * * *

I struggled with whether or not to call Billy’s hotel room from the telephone in our bedroom. He had not told me what time exactly he would show up at Neptune’s. Still, I wanted the evening to feel like a surprise and calling Billy again might cause him to give away my plan in a manner that might be all too evident to Irene. The afternoon was slipping away and the chances were that he was only just arriving at Wrightsville Beach. Claudia could wind her way around her mother but I was not as adept at manipulating a woman I admired. Then it took a lot of shameless begging on Claudia’s part to coax Dottie away from her grilling endeavors. She had already marinated half a dozen chicken breasts.

“Ms. Willoughby, you shouldn’t spend the first night
in the kitchen,” I finally said. “You and Irene need some time to catch up on things.”

“How thoughtful,” she said
with much enthusiasm. “I don’t mind cooking for you all though, Flannery.”

Claudia pinched me from behind. “Besides,” I said, “Claudia is prone to seasickness. That would be awful if she had to spend the week in bed.”

“She
is
prone to nausea,” said Irene, casting her eyes at Claudia, woefully sympathetic. She gave me a bit of a wink, though. Claudia had grown up boating with her daddy. Irene was on to us and caving in all the way.

Dottie was
as much a sympathetic sort as Irene and did not want to ruin our first night in town. She acquiesced pretty as you please. Claudia and I were off to the guest room to doll up for the boys we hoped to meet soon at Neptune’s.

Neptune’s
was not quite filled up when we drove up to the little oceanside nightspot. I worried the women had gotten us here too early. The lanterns strung along the boardwalk lit up as a host seated us at an outdoor table. Dottie was ecstatic about the water view although Irene kept bringing a handkerchief to her nose unaccustomed as she was to fishy pier smells. Billy and his friends were nowhere in sight. Claudia and I made excuses and immediately headed for the women’s room and then took a turn around the entire restaurant.

Irene had alr
eady ordered an appetizer when we returned and the ladies’ drinks were being served. She and Dottie were selecting a plate of steamed oysters to share, insisting we try them. Since it delayed our turn at choosing an entrée, I quickly agreed and Claudia followed my lead.

Claudia hated the oysters
even more than I did. But I kept trying them to keep the women talking about the food and to slow down their need to order entrees. Just as the waiter pressed us to make up our minds, I heard my name called from across the dock. I turned as casually as I could muster and had to hold back my elation upon seeing Billy grinning and waving. He led his group to the front door.

“Would you look who just arrived?” I said to the ladies. I jumped
up to cross the room but also to keep Billy from giving away the fact he had tipped me off to their plans. I greeted his friend Marcy who walked in behind him, her arm hooked inside his other friend Drake’s arm. Ashley, brought along by Marcy, shrieked upon sight, throwing her arms around me as if we were old friends. I barely remembered meeting her in the high school cafeteria seated with Billy’s friends. Irene and Dottie were smiling across the way at us and all my plans were coming together.

“I
sn’t this a surprise?” I asked Billy.

A glimmer in his eyes, he did not give away my scheme.
“Have you already eaten?” he asked.

“
Appetizers only,” I said, the residue of salt and slick seafood coating my tongue.

“Good. Can you join us or would that be rude?”

“I’ll ask,” said Claudia.

I
introduced Billy and the group to the women but insinuated myself between Jordan and Claudia whose attention lingered over the tanned youth, the one male not attached besides Billy. Claudia said to her mother, “You ladies must have so much to catch up on. Why don’t we join the young folks at their table and the two of you can go ahead and order your food?”

The waiter was pleased and set to work taking Irene and Dottie’s orders.

The boys led all of us to a double table that ran the length of the opposite side of the restaurant. Claudia prattled on about how much she and I had hoped beyond hope to meet up with someone we knew and here we finally did.

“Where are you staying?”
I asked, the name of the hotel escaping me as I looked into Billy’s eyes. I sat across from him but still next to Claudia. That placed Jordan across from Claudia who was soon lost in his amiable attention.

“We’re staying at
the Seashore Hotel, my first time,” said Marcy, nearly bursting with the freedom of being away from home. She had combed her straight hair back into a ponytail, but kept pushing her bangs out of her eyes as she talked. “It’s next to the Little Chapel on the Boardwalk. We’re not all eighteen yet, but Drake’s cousin runs the hotel desk and he let us slide tonight as long as we behave.”

“No promises from me,” said Ashley, ecstatic to be out of town.

“I wish we could stay at the hotel too,” said Claudia, the longing evident in her eyes. “We’re staying with my mother’s friend at her marina house on Cape Fear.”

“That’s a rich side of town,” said Drake
, impressed and familiar with the waterside neighborhood. “Better than a hotel.”

“It’s just that my mother and her
college professor friend, this Dottie, have their own ideas about what we’re supposed to do while we’re here.”

“I think
the girls are saying we rescued them, if I understand correctly,” said Billy, using a scholarly voice.

“Yes. You did,”
I said, wanting Billy to keep talking, to take up the night saying one funny thing after another. Whenever Marcy would talk too long or Drake would get caught up in telling about one of his drunken binges, I was fast to direct another question at Billy. I was careful not to show too much attention or else Claudia might suspect wrongly that I was interested in Billy, or even worse, Billy might wrongly think the same thing. I was careful to come off as nothing more than Billy’s little student.

I
sat back enjoying the attention of the wait staff that ran back and forth keeping our courses coming and filling our water glasses. I closed my eyes and imagined that this was my real life, this place near the ocean, lost in the music of this sociable company of friends. I was not the girl in the accident whose little sister had died. For four days I could disappear from Bitterwood Park and be a different Flannery entirely.

                                                
              * * * * *

Dottie loaned
Claudia and me two bikes to ride down the cobblestone lanes into the shopping district for a morning get-away. Billy had given me specific directions to find our way to the hotel. The houses warming in morning light gave way to little flower shops and cafes, strung together by bricked roads. We laughed and rode holding out our legs, jostled by the uneven brick lanes. I led nearly-giddy Claudia down through the neighborhoods to the business district, finally arriving at the trolley stop where we locked the bikes to a post and climbed aboard. The trolley circled through Wilmington and then straight over the bridge onto Wrightsville Beach.

We got off the trolley and passed through a group of foreign students who eyed us with interest, but I kept leading Claudia on, past the cottages and the chapel until we stood in the center of the island looking up at the Seashore Hotel.

Marcy met us down in the lobby to let the clerk know we were invited guests. While the two of us followed her down the long corridor leading to their rented room, Claudia was still gushing over our first day of independence. “I love you for this,” she said, walking beside me convivially. “I dread to think of what Dottie would be cooking up for us otherwise. She’s boring as hell. And there you kept it from me all the way from Bitterwood Park. You’re too good at keeping secrets.”

We found them
all sitting down to a breakfast of Cheerios and coffee in the girl’s room. Billy invited Claudia and me to join them. I got the usual side-embrace from him while he poured me coffee and offered me his chair. A song played from the radio, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”. Drake said they had to turn up the radio to drown out the neighbors next door, a group of college students over from Spain.

“Oh we saw them,” said Claudia, nudging me from behind.

Ashley came out with her hair in a towel. “Look, you’re here! Glad you could find us. Now look, y’all! I’ve got a new do,” she said. “When I dry it out, I should be as red-haired as you, Flannery.”

“I don’t know why anyone would
go red on purpose,” I said, stirring another sugar cube into my coffee.

“
Why, my darling? I love your hair,” Drake said to me. “It’s like a poem.”

I
was taken with his attention although Marcy did not look altogether pleased. She managed a smile, all the while clinching her teeth. “Don’t let him charm you, Flannery,” she said. “He’s only interested in one thing.”

“Love,” said Drake. “What
’s wrong with that?”

“If you don’t like your hair, you can change it, you know.” Ashley pulled the towel off her head.

Marcy squealed about the new color. “I’m coloring mine next!”

“Me too!” said Billy, feigning female overtures. Billy was different when he was away from
the dance studio. He was bobbing around the little hotel table parroting us girls, although Marcy did not appreciate his fairly accurate mimicry of her. I could not stop snorting.