Tiny Dancer (6 page)

“Why don’t you change your hair color?” Claudia asked
me. “You’ve always said you hated your red hair.

“No,” said Billy
as firmly as he could without sounding overbearing. “Vesta would kill us all if you came home altered.”

“She would get over it,”
I said. Billy could be too parental at times.

Ashley was smiling wickedly. “Do you mean it?”

By the afternoon, the girls gathered in a circle around me who they had seated in the middle of the room, my shoulders and clothing covered in towels. From the drugstore in town, Ashley selected an auburn color that might more easily cover over my natural red, or so she thought
.
Billy finally stopped complaining since nothing he could do or say could stop us women in our new pursuit.

“Let’s hurry,” said Marcy, impatient we were losing the day in our frivolous makeover. She stared out the window at the lapping waves.

“You know you might as well go all the way if you’re going for a dramatic change,” said Ashley.

“
What do you mean?” I asked,  pretending I was as sophisticated Ashley.

Claudia could not stop gigglin
g
.

Ashley stood in front of
me, pulling out the ends of my hair on both sides, demonstrating the long length when my curls were fully extended.“Bangs, right? Don’t you think, Marcy?” The two of them studied my features.

“I agree,” said Marcy.

“You’re not a hair stylist though are you?” I asked, my concern rising about putting myself entirely in their hands.

“Why not? She cuts mine,” said Marcy. “And I cut hers.”

“
Do it! Do it!” said Claudia. “Then me next.”

“Claudia, no. Irene would kill us both,” I said, sensing my little experiment getting out of hand.

“But your hair is beautiful, Flannery,” said Billy.

“Oh go on then and cut it,” I finally said, snickering and clinching my fists at my sides
.
            
 
Drake brought in sandwiches while the girls wiled away the afternoon fussing over me like I was their pet. Marcy pulled out some of her own clothes and even her jewelry. When I stepped out of the bathroom, the guys were taken aback.

“You look amazing,” said Drake. “I had my doubts but look at you. You’re ninetee
n
.” He stood next to me in front of the small bureau mirror, pulling me close to him. His fingertips brushed my breast.

I flounced away from him so as not to look nervous to the older girls, all but sliding across the floor, trying not to trip in Marcy’s heeled pumps. But I gasped when I looked into the full
-length mirror hanging on the closet door. “It’s black!” I said, shocked at my new hair color.

             
Marcy and Ashley came behind me, each taking one of her arms. “You look like Liz Taylor,” said Ashley, looking jealous. “Exotic.”

             
I had once heard someone remark my mother looked exotic.

             
Then somewhat apologetically, Ashley said, “I chose black because it’s so hard to change red hair to dark, or so I’m told. Do you like it?”

             
My curls were gone, smoothed into perfectly straight hair, trimmed just below my ears. But Billy was looking at me with a look I had seen only once when he would ogle one of the svelte older dancers. I had a picture etched in memory of Siobhan and I in our curly hair—Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Siobhan had called us that. “You’re Dum, though,” she liked to remind me. This new hairstyle erased all traces of Tweedle Dum, to say the least. I twirled and faced Ashley. “I love it.”

             
By nightfall, Claudia had succumbed to a new hairstyle too, a short cut that took the weight off her natural curls, tumbling in soft waves around her round face. She pushed the hair away from her forehead with a red headband.

             
“If I say so myself, you ladies look amazing,” said Billy.

             
“And there you were trying to stop us,” said Ashley.

             
I enjoyed all of their praise. The way Billy seemed to ogle me made me feel as if I was the one casting a spell.

                                                                                 * * * * *

              Claudia had to arrange another night away from Irene and Dottie. She called her mother, saying that Billy wanted to give us a tour of downtown and then we were taking in a movie. After several begs, it was evident Irene was not wanting to release us into the company of older upperclassmen. Finally, as had always been the case, Irene caved.

             
“We have to be back at Dottie’s by eleven, but we’re free,” said Claudia.

             
“First, we’ll swing by Wits End,” said Drake.

             
“Then we’ll end the night at the Pavilion,” said Marcy. “We have to, it’s custom.”

             
“Shrimparoos, right?” asked Ashley. “I can’t believe I’m here.

             
Billy acted unhappy, though, as usual treating me like I was forever six. “We can’t take them to Wits End. It’s a college bar. And the Lumina Pavilion is a dance club.”

             
“Oh, yes, we are going,” I said. I had never lied to Billy and wasn’t about to start. But I didn’t want him using Claudia and me as the group’s wet blanket. “We won’t drink,” I told him, promising.

             
“Not much,” said Claudia, only so I would hear.

             
Marcy held open the door and we filed out. Billy slipped one arm into mine and the other into Claudia’s. “I’m keeping my eye on you two.”

             
Claudia sighed and rolled her eyes, mouthing, “I told you so,” to me.

             
I leaned into him, placing myself entirely in his care.

             
Wits End was packed with college students, the line to get in extending out the front door. “Let’s make our own party,” said Billy, to which Drake and Marcy readily agreed. Ashley followed on their heels. They left in the car for food and drinks. Billy led Claudia and me down to the shore where we sat on the sand watching the sun go down.

             
“This is Flannery’s first beach trip,” said Claudia, a bit of superiority in her tone.

             
“I haven’t been here with Daddy and Vesta, is what I meant. My mother brought me here,” I said, correcting her. “I was three.” She wore a strappy sundress bordered in red. I wasn’t sure Daddy came along, but I remember sitting in her lap on a pier, our feet dangling far above the crashing waves. I was afraid but she kept telling me to close my eyes and pretend we were flying.

             
“She was a pretty lady,” said Billy.

             
I took my eyes off the sunset, surprised since he had never mentioned my mother. “You knew her?”

             
“I was a student at the dance studio back then. But everyone noticed her leading you into the studio your first day. She was the prettiest lady in the room.”

             
“And there I always thought Vesta was the stage mom in your life,” said Claudia.

             
“She was,” I said. “My mother liked to dance too though. I guess she wanted me to be as good a dancer as she was.”

             
“Runs in the family, then,” said Billy. “You were a natural.”

             
He had never said that before either. He was a surprise a minute when away from his work at the studio. I wondered what else he knew about my mother. Daddy had made a pact with me never to discuss her leaving so I never had. When you’re age four, you just go along with what’s asked of you.

             
Drake and the girls returned, hauling six packs of Pabst and Coke and grocery bags. Billy questioned Drake nervously about how he came about getting the beer. Drake said, “Friends in high places, old man.”

             
Billy put Claudia and me to work shucking corn. He borrowed a shovel from a nearby cottage owner and dug the pit while Ashley and Marcy gathered stones. Drake walked down the shore and returned several times with driftwood.

             
An hour later, the rocks were red hot. Billy and Drake tossed in sausages, potatoes, corn, a pile of lobsters, garlic, two hefty flounders, and emptied a sack of clams.

             
Our fire pit drew a group of students from the university. One student with a set of bongo drums joined a guitar player. The duet played some tunes while the guys tended the pit with seaweed. The six packs were quickly emptied and three fraternity brothers came whistling over a dune, hauling two kegs.

             
Claudia struck up a conversation with two of the university girls, asking them what they knew about the campus journalism department. She accepted a beer but nursed it quietly. She was soon introduced to a good looking writing student much to Billy’s chagrin. He eyed the boys nervously as they gathered around Claudia and me. I was offered a beer but turned it down, quickly drawn into a conversation between two women who were law students. The only attorneys back home were men, so I was energized by their eagerness to waltz around the men only signs.

             
By ten o’clock we were finishing up the clambake. I organized a clean up and we cleared the beach of any debris while Billy cleaned the pit area. He stretched out on one of the blankets the college girls had brought with them. He had drunk a bit too much and his eyes were half-mast.

             
Claudia took advantage of our constant chaperone’s nap and joined her new university friends for a walk barefoot along the incoming tide. The moon sat in the black sky keeping its light all to itself contrasting the ocean that appeared ominous and dark. Drake drew another draft of cold beer from the nearly empty keg and invited me to join him and the beach walkers.

             
“Maybe in a while,” I told him, seating myself on the blanket by Billy.

             
Two girls ran toward the incoming tide, squealing when the water splashed around them. The smallest girl sounded exactly like Siobhan. I could not take my eyes off her until she disappeared up the shore into the dark. It was strange how I saw my sister all over again, and so often, even a year later. It was as if memory took hold of my reality, keeping her alive through everyday scenes that would never have the chance to happen. Was she in a place where she saw me everywhere she looked?

             
It never occurred to me until now that we had never stopped being sisters. Even death could not separate our sisterly bond. But living attached to a relationship that was more suspended animation than a life of happy conjured memories was yet another painful obligation attached to my role as the survivor. I willed my phantom attachment to Siobhan from me as the tide receded. But, unlike my stupid hair, I could not cut it away or change its color.

             
Soon the laughter faded as the students wandered a half-mile from our spot, gathering into a tiki bar. Temperatures dropped. Billy slept soundly. I reached over him to pull a corner of the blanket around his bare feet. As I came back up I stopped, one hand on either side of him. I stared into his face and nearly laughed. I had only seen him in one role, as my demanding dance teacher. He looked a bit helpless. No one would know if I took advantage of him, but it was not like me to do such a thing. I couldn’t, I knew. But here I hovered an inch from his face. I placed what I could only describe as a platonic kiss on the side of his mouth. I assumed he slept too soundly to realize what was going on, but his arms came up around me. He pulled me close to him, his eyes still closed.

             
Billy had broken up with a long-time girlfriend, Celia Straights, right after the senior ball. He had not mentioned Celia since then. Quite honestly, I did not give a care for her and thought her too crude for him. She was beautiful and they cut a figure on the dance floor, but Billy had a sensibility too cultured, too mature for any of the girls his age. That was why he would never give me a serious thought. But perhaps the pain of the breakup still lodged inside him. In his drunken state, he was not wrapping his arms around me, I deduced, but Celia. I was doing him a favor, I reasoned, silently allowing him to pull me against his chest. I was merely helping him work through his state of break-up misery. Like an army nurse. I came up off the blanket, my heart pounding, my wobbly thin wrists scarcely able to hold me up. There my body dropped against his. It was my first time to be that close to a boy. It was my first kiss, although I would have never admitted it to Claudia. I was not about to waste it on anyone but Billy Thornton.

Billy’s lips parted and I could smell his breath, the slight mixture of spearmint gum and Pabst beer intoxicating me. I closed my eyes and pressed my mouth against his. His tongue came slightly into my mouth and I reciprocated, hardly aware of the art of the French kiss.