House of Dance Read Online Free Page A

all through fighting,” he had told my mother, but that didn’t stop her from arguing with him or from trying to hide her sadness.
    “That feather?” he said at last. “That feather has meaning.”
    “Yeah?” I turned back toward him and shifted on my feet. “What kind?”
    “It was a feather on a dress.”
    “A dress?”
    “Not my dress.”
    “Couldn’t have been Riot’s.” The Maine coon opened her eyes when she heard her name. She stood and padded Granddad’s khaki pants, then wrapped herself back up into a fur ball.
    “Red,” he said softly, “was your grandmother’s color.”
    I tried to imagine the sort of dress to which such a feather might belong. Tried to imagine a woman with feathers for a neck, or for a hem, who said red belonged to her, triedto picture Granddad with that woman, young.
    “Aideen had such style,” Granddad said, drawing circles over the head of Riot with his hand. “She was always the star of the show.” He said nothing else, just sat as if he’d forgotten I was there: I, his one and very only granddaughter. The windows in his living room were open. A mellow breeze was blowing through, and also the zoom of cars and the sound of someone across the street, whistling some tune. The feather felt like nothing in my hand. I had to keep my eye on it to be sure that it didn’t disappear. I waited for Granddad to tell, but his mind had traveled and I was still stuck in a room full of things that were old and mysterious.
    “I’m putting the feather In Trust,” I said, after a while, placing it on the coffee table beneath a book of poems. I left a puffy corner sticking out, so that I would not forget it later.
    “Good decision.” He didn’t open his eyes.
    “Are you getting hungry?”
    “Tired more than hungry.”
    “You can sleep, you know.”
    “I’m becoming a champion sleeper,” he said.
    “Do you want the windows shut?”
    “I’m starting to like the sound of that guy’s whistle.” He let his head fall back against the cushion. His hand stopped drawing halos over Riot’s puffy head. The point of his chin dropped low toward his neck. His head began to bob, then stilled. The only thing alive about him was the coming in and blowing out of his breath.
     
    I spent the rest of the afternoon shaking the pages of all those volumes loose, sorting the fragments and bits. A lot of the time a book had been made thick with a tear of newspaper that cracked when I tried to unfold it. I wondered whether Granddad even remembered any of this stuff. I thought maybe hewas like a squirrel, burying the green walnuts in autumn so that they could rot come spring.
    But he had left the sorting up to me; that was my job, and after a while I had a system involving three of the baskets that had been stacked up by the TV. One was for In Trust. One was for Toss. One was for Deciding Later. A whole wad of stuff showed up in the D.L. at first, to buy me thinking time. I tossed old newspaper stories because news belongs to anyone. I tossed old labels, the buds of flowers that had turned brown, bookmarks that seemed to have been set aside for their usefulness and not for any kind of beauty. Into In Trust I put the feather and a stash of antique coins and braided ribbons and buttons and even embroidered collars taken from old clothes. I put decks of photographs that had somehow melted, one picture into the other, photos I’d one day steam apart. I put postcards and letters that someday I’d read. I put pressed leaves when the leaves stilllooked like nature. I put recipe cards on which were written the secrets to favorite pasta sauces, lists of exotic spices, best-sounding desserts from foreign places, a list of favorite herbs. I put whatever looked like something I could hold on to later, whatever I thought might tell a story about a man who had loved and lost and dreamed adventure but never traveled far.
    Outside, the day got warmer, and inside, the sun changed places in the room. The triangle