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Mouth wobbling in a downturned curve so deep it was almost a clown’s mask, Ruby left the room they’d retreated to, on her shiny shoes she’d been so proud to wear tonight, to show off how she could almost do her own buckles.
The house inhaled, cold tugging Lizzie’s hair.
But it was only Charlie at the window, fidgeting with a pivoting pane as distraction.
Lizzie clawed at her eyes, grabbed the conflicting, unnamed thing, tried to throw it away. The staff had absented themselves in some proprietary etiquette, or he ordered them away via standing rule or gesture unseen, Lizzie didn’t care; it meant she needed to follow her child, who had spontaneously decided to return to her father.
Protect her.
The thought immediately rang false, untrue. But Lizzie didn’t know if she trusted her instincts these days.
‘Come on, Charlie.’ Her outstretched hand, rings glinting.
Open. The boy considered, shook his head, staring out the window. Closed.
‘He doesn’t mean it to hurt you, you know that.’
‘He says. Then he does.’
Then he’s ashamed. Then he curls up around the knife he stuck in himself because it had to go somewhere, but he forgets you saw. You were there.
‘I never understand what he says.’ That lashing fury, ‘I wish he wouldn’t say anything. He’s hardly here and then he comes and it’s all over the place until he goes. I wish. I don’t know.’
That he would just go.
‘Either he’s here or not here, Charlie. I thought you wanted him here.’
Open. ‘Not like this.’
‘Setting conditions, are we?’ Words for herself as much as Charlie. ‘Can’t have it both ways, love. He’s home.’ With everything he brings with him.
But that wasn’t right, either. Wasn’t brought along, as if it could be set aside like a bag, like a trailing dog.
Abrupt, Charlie pulled the windowpane closed and turned the latch to lock.
A whisper of a tune curled through the hall, an echo of a party long past in a place somewhere else. Flat and off-key, too soft and low for anything more than the rasp. Familiar.
Foxtrot in a dance hall full of the shadow of so many soldiers, the smell of gin, sweat and cologne. The weight of their uniform wool. Chalk on her fingers, aching feet, and smiling, smiling, trying to have a good time even knowing what was coming.
Why don’t we do this more often, eh?
Lizzie swallowed heavily, hairs prickling on the nape of her neck. Forced herself the last steps to the open door, then could go no further.
Eyes closed, he carried Ruby close, one arm a prop for her backside, her feet nearly tucked in his pockets. Ruby’s cheek rested on his shoulder, facing away, still with that stricken face and the distant, stunned-shocked glaze to her eyes, unseeing. His other hand offered in a dancer’s pose, elbow crooked to stay close to his body, which let Ruby web her fingers through his.
They swayed through the steps.
Broken glass glittered, spirits staining the carpet a deep, dark red. The whiskey bottle lying beside the mess, the long horizontal of gold liquid within insufficient to spill. He’d sworn it wasn’t drink, somewhere through it all. Lizzie couldn’t decide if she believed him.
If it were drink. Then he could stop.
The half-heard song with its trailing litter of ghosts cut off short. ‘Wrong mood, my love. Wrong song.’
'Daddy,' Ruby said. ‘Try something new.’
Again, the house breathed.
But this time it was only Lizzie, selling her soul for a ruby in a golden ring, closing the door behind her. The shift in the bowstring air briefly lifted stray strands of his hair, too, what little was spared the sweat-damp cling.
Turning through the steps, he hummed a waltz this time. Nothing that called back to dance halls, to clubs. Nothing Lizzie could recall, so not a soldier’s song, then. But the rhythm was good, the sway to his step, turning, dipping, always holding Ruby so close. Ruby’s mouth softened slightly, a blink of those staring eyes. Her grip on his fingers didn’t loosen.
His eyes opened as the song trailed away. That stare, looking at nothing.
Tommy tilted his head, cheek resting against Ruby’s hair, at the touch his eyes closing so tight the skin feathered into a web of creases.
Across the sitting room, Lizzie caught the sight of the other large door cracking open, just a sliver. Charlie lurking without, sneaking his peek within. The silent dance went on.