The Summer That Melted Everything(71)

“We don’t care ’bout it bein’ fake,” I said.

“I do. It’s hideous.”

“It’s a marvel,” Sal corrected her. “Look all around this world. A tree loses a branch, no one replaces it. An angel loses his wings, and he’ll never have another pair.” He turned and showed her his scars. “But a girl loses her leg, and somebody gives her a new one. In this world where so few things are given, how can you not be in awe at what you’ve got?”

She took a few steps away from us, her eyes slowly widening as if through thought she was coming to defy her own gnawing doubt that she was not something special. When she let the dress slip free from between her fingers, I could see a sort of echo inside her. Broad and far, a glowing thing to flick back the shadows of her own self-hate.

“I didn’t lose my leg.” She whispered as if what she was saying were too fragile for anything more than a hush. “I never had one to lose. Still, I like what you say. Hand me those, will you?”

She held her hand out for the scissors, and as soon as Sal gave them, she gathered up the bottom of her dress and began to cut through its pale blue cotton. Thinking it too long after the first cut, she made a second and a third even, bringing the hem to above her gently freckled knees.

“I’ve never worn anything so short.” She giggled as if it came from the very small of her back.

Sal took the scissors from her to cut the remaining roses from the bush. These he would gently and softly tape to her legs.

The sun is hot and the boy is nervous as he moves his hand up the girl’s legs, toward the thighs that already know his name by heart.

“Sal,” she whispered, “my Sal,” while I, nobody’s Fielding, stood close enough to know I was forgotten.

“Did you know it’s my birthday?” She grabbed Sal’s hand. “And this is the best gift ever.”

“Sal, you swimmin’?” I spoke, if only to remind myself I still existed.

“You go ahead, Fielding.” He let Dresden lead him to the bench amongst the roses.

I tried to splash some water their way as I jumped from the diving board. Failing, I hung on the side of the pool, watching the two of them share the same smile as he leaned in and smelled the roses on her chest.

I dived under the water, nearly swam the length of the pool on that one breath. When I resurfaced, I heard Dresden talking about her construction paper makeup.

“Mother would be angry if I got into her makeup. I do it for her. Try to be prettier. I thought I’d put on some makeup and try to be prettier. She blames me, you know. For Father leaving. She says he left because of my leg.

“She hates my leg. She hates that I won’t be able to follow in her ballet footsteps. She says I’ll never be asked to dance. I think that’s the worst thing to tell a girl. That she’ll never dance.”

Sal began to remove the construction paper from her face. She didn’t try to stop him. The tape made soft sounds as he gently pulled it from her skin, the paper falling in a pile of color at their feet. Once every piece was removed, he held her face, his hand perfectly sized to her cheek as if the make of them individually was had in the creation of them both at the very same time

“I hope you’re infinity, Dresden Delmar.”

She sighed, “You know, I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”

“Because I’m the devil?”

“Because you’re … not white.” She struggled to say that very thing. “Mother says I am to stay away from you. She says my leg makes me prone to trash.”

“I’m trash? But I know Tolstoy and Shakespeare and…” his voice disappeared. A frown on his face as if the air was bad. An incident really, entangling him like wire wrapped around his teeth, back down to his ribs.

“I’m sorry, Sal. I didn’t mean to … it’s just, well, I don’t think you’re trash, but Mother’s Old South, you know?”

“I see.” He smiled for her sake. “If you’re not supposed to be talking to me, then I don’t suppose you’ll dance with me?”

She looked about to burst at that very question. A golden rise about her as if she could already feel herself being spun around, held, waltzed across a ballroom. Then suddenly she lost her smile as she stared at the white roses in front of her.

“Those are Mother’s favorite. But she’s the one who says I can’t dance with a black boy. It serves her right to lose her roses to my dance.”

She grabbed the scissors and without hesitation cut the white roses so quickly and with so much eagerness, she’d be cutting a new one before the old one even had the chance to hit the ground.

Rose by white rose, she taped his dark skin, until he was someone she could dance with. Sal in the white way, but not the right way. And yet it would not lower him, he would not let it. He was going to be dancing with Dresden Delmar, and everything else was outside the heaven of that.

“Fielding?” she called to me. “Would you turn on the boom box? There under the patio table?”

I pulled myself up out of the pool, shaking the water off my hands before lifting the box up on top of the table. I found the local station and turned up the volume. I suppose it could’ve been any song. In memory it is always Alphaville’s witchy ballad of youth. “Forever Young.”