Welcome to Episode 22 of Dancing at The Orange Peel, a 1960-70s serialized historical novel. Just getting started? Episode 1 | Full Episode Guide | Extra fun content in THE MAILBAG
Previously: Episode 21, Forthcoming Truths. Wednesday evening, April 10, 1968. Back at the apartment, Gwen and Denny pick up the argument about Washington while Libby tries to pull the night back toward board games and Chinese takeout. Pressed between what to say and what to keep quiet, Gwen finally trusts her brother with what she’s been holding and asks her daughter for something she’s never asked before. For the moment, a fragile peace settles in.
Episode 22: DOUBLE EDGES
Grant arrived with sweet and sour chicken, plenty for all four of them. Gwen ate quickly, quietly, allowing Libby to dominate the conversation then cajole Grant and Dennis into playing a game of LIFE. The two men sat with Libby cross-legged on the floor around the coffee table, the board in the middle. Gwen watched their game from a distance, her legs curled under her on the farthest end of the couch.
She examined Grant’s handsome profile and couldn’t help but smile at the easy laughter between him and Libby. After a while, the scene before her became like a silent movie, voiced over. Instead of their actual chatter, what echoed in Gwen’s ears were Grant’s words from earlier: “Doesn’t any of us want to share space with them.” His remark was typical, not just for him, but for this town. She was surprised he hadn’t said ‘darkies’ or worse. Regardless of how he said it, the way it must have made Nate feel left her breathless. Still she had to wonder, being so accustomed to hearing such things, would she have simply shrugged it off if Nate hadn’t been there? Her cheeks flushed.
After the game, which of course, Libby won, Gwen sent her to change into pajamas.
“Just one more game, Mama. Puhlease!”
“I know these are your two favorite boys to beat, Libby, but it’s a school night, and this game takes forever to play.”
Denny assured Libby he was leaving anyway and gave her a tight goodbye squeeze. Gwen wished he’d stay. Or else that Grant would take the cue from him and leave, too. He didn’t.
After her brother was gone and Libby was tucked into bed, Gwen went to the kitchen to busy herself. Grant followed. “Dennis told me if this Ralph Abernathy fellow takes over for King, they’ll still do the march.” He snatched a cardboard takeout box off the table and studied the red symbol on the side. “Poor People’s March, I think he called it.”
She didn’t like the mocking way he said “Poor People’s March,” but she had no energy to oppose him. Instead, she grabbed the box from his hands and slung it into the trash can. “He’s determined to go.”
Grant sat then leaned the chair back on two legs. “Thought for sure they’d call it off.” He pulled out his pocketknife and tapped the butt of it on the table. “But it’s Dennis’s choice to go. Right?” He flipped the closed knife between his fingers then tapped the other end, flipped it, tapped again.
Gwen snatched the knife away, stopping his noisy, irritating habit. “He already missed his mid-terms just by coming home to tell us he’s going. If he goes to Washington”—she squeezed the cool metal into her palm—“he’ll never go back when this is over.”
“He’s smarter than that.” Standing, Grant adjusted his belt buckle, then leaned against the kitchen counter beside her. “He’s gotta know quitting school won’t help the poor man; it’d just make another one.” Then he mumbled, “Not that art’ll make him any dough.”
She ignored his remark. “He says his advisor understands, encourages them to go. Two professors are actually going with them.”
“What kind of teacher does that?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged, still worried but weary of the topic. “He says they can make up missed assignments.”
He tucked his thumbs under his belt. “Everyone’s a goddamn activist these days.”
She tumbled the pocketknife in both hands, then gripped it in her fist again. “I’ll never forgive him if he messes up and loses this scholarship.”
Grant wrapped an arm around her shoulder. Before she could pull away, he said, “You should have gone.”
“To Washington?”
“To art school, silly.” He smiled, squeezed her shoulder once, then let go.
She paced to the door and back. What a funny thing for him to say now. She’d wanted to go to art school, of course. But when she married Carter, everything had changed. Grant knew that. “My chance is gone.” She grabbed his wrist, planted her fist in his palm, then released the knife. “Denny better not miss his.”
Stuffing both hands and the knife in his pockets, Grant faced the window above the sink, his broad back to her. He was quiet for a moment, peering into the darkness. “Staying in college would keep him from getting drafted, right?”
She hesitated. “At least for a while.” He had to stay in school full-time and keep his grades up to keep the II-S deferment. She cocked her head to better see Grant’s face. What was he thinking?
He turned to her, crossed his arms on his chest, then slumped against the counter again. “Is that the real reason you want him back in school?” His expression was relaxed but curious.
“No!” She stepped back. “Art is his passion!” Denny was in school to follow his dream. But her words had come out defensive . . . of course, Grant was right. “Okay, yes.” She bit her lip. “Draft aside, though, if he takes a break from college now, I just know he won’t finish.”
He dropped his arms to his sides and shrugged. “It’s his life, right?”
The familiarity of those words rankled her. How many times had she said, “It’s my life,” in defense of her own decisions? But this was her baby brother. “He’ll blow it if he goes to D.C.” She huffed, then opened the fridge, shocked by the intensity of her building anger yet surprisingly eager to ride its wave. “He’ll get his head all tied up in war politics, in the . . . adrenaline of it, the . . . aggression.” She reached for the tea pitcher, seeming far heavier than it should be. “That will smother the creative life right out of him.” The way Kent Creek had smothered her.
“This so-called ‘passion’ of his for the art—you think it’s that fragile that he wouldn’t go back?”
She stopped mid-step, as if he’d shoved a mirror in front of her. But this wasn’t the time to consider herself. She shook her head, redirected her thoughts to Denny. “He can get . . . zealous about the anti-war stuff.”
“Mmm.” Grant took two glasses out of the cabinet and sat them on the counter in front of her.
Realizing her hands were shaking, she poured slowly. “I understand the sentiment. But if he follows it, he could lose everything.” When she set the pitcher down a little too hard, tea sloshed on the counter. She grabbed the dishrag that was draped across the faucet and used it to slosh up the spilled liquid. “He won this scholarship and everything’s finally falling into place for him.” She paused. “He can’t give it up so easily.” Swiping at the wet counter, she blinked back tears. “All these kids think they can solve the world’s problems with a protest.”
“Mmm,” he repeated. “I remember a Gwen who would be right out there with him.”
She tossed the soaked, rust-colored rag into the sink. “That’s what he said.”
“Well, wouldn’t you?”
Denny’s words came back to her: If you didn’t have Libby . . . She huffed. “Probably.” She sagged against the counter beside him, their arms touching.
In a near whisper, he said, “Let him go to D.C. He’ll feel like he’s making a difference and get it out of his system.” He nodded once, decisively. “Then he’ll go back and make up his work so he can graduate.”
She wanted to believe all of it, but couldn’t. “They plan to build a tent city, stay there ’til Congress gives in. Who knows how long that’ll be.” She sighed. “I can’t shake this feeling that he’ll never go back to Atlanta.”
“Then he’ll get drafted.”
His certainty made her suck in air.
He reached for a glass and took a swig of tea. After wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he continued, “If the alternative is the draft and, knowing that, he still doesn’t go back to school, maybe he’s not as passionate about being an artist as you think.”
His words might as well have been a gut punch. She squeezed her eyes shut.
He put down the glass and, facing her, gently wrapped his large hands around her upper arms. “Or, maybe, possibly, going to college in the first place was less about his art and more about a plan for getting out of the draft.”
So there it was, plain as day. She hadn’t allowed herself to admit what was right in front of her. It made sense now. All year, she’d had to drag out of him how school was going, what kinds of projects he was working on. Unless she asked, he never talked about any of it. He didn’t use to be that way. When he first showed interest in art in junior high, she’d told him how, when she finished a new piece, she felt like she’d done something meaningful, something uniquely hers. Eventually, he confessed art made him feel that way too. Could he let that go so easily? But then . . . hadn’t she? She hardly remembered what that feeling was like now.
With a knuckle, Grant wiped a tear from her cheek, then pulled her close. She surrendered into his shoulder and let silent tears fall. Staring blankly at the narrow pantry door on the kitchen’s far wall, she recalled the enormous pantry in the tiny first apartment she and Carter had shared. So out of proportion to the rest of the space. She’d been giddy about it, not for food storage and spices, but as a home for her art supplies. It took three days to wallpaper, hang shelving, organize her paints, canvases, brushes. Denny had helped. Only thirteen then, his drawing skills already astounded her. She’d encouraged him, reassured him—attempts to make up for their father’s ridicule. He had told Denny more than once, and in front of his friends, that art was a sissified hobby. Denny had kept at it anyway, just as she would have, simply to spite their father.
A breath caught in her throat. To spite their father. Was that what Denny was doing at art school now—nothing to do with passion? Or was he there to avoid Vietnam—another thing to compound the spite? She didn’t know what her baby brother was thinking anymore. Her best friend was slipping away from her.
Grant smoothed her hair back from her face, his hand warm and comforting. He held her until her tears stopped. When he pulled back, she avoided his gaze by peering into the blackness out the window. “If he doesn’t go to college, they’ll put him in that awful war.”
“Might take him regardless. If they replaced oldest-first with a lottery system, who knows how soon he could go.”
A knot tightened in her throat, choking her words. “Then Libby and I . . . won’t have anybody.” With their big family, noses sticking into each other’s business all the time, no one else would see it that way. But without Denny, there’d be no one she could trust.
“Hey! Hey! Hey!” Grant took her by both arms. “What am I? Chopped liver?” He always tried to make her laugh by using that bad Yankee accent. Instead of laughter, tears flowed again, and she gave in once more to his comforting hug. His chest lifted, then fell in a deep sigh. “I will always, always be here for you and Libby.”
But Denny won’t.
Her tears finally eased, but her breath was ragged. “I . . . know.”
She stepped back and looked up at Grant. All she could see was the smirk that had been on his face earlier that day as he’d strutted out of the Chamber.
She startled at how abruptly anger now displaced her anguish. This was the same man who’d crossed her office, deliberately making horrid remarks meant for Nate to hear. “See you at seven,” he had said to her, assuming he could show up tonight and act as if nothing had happened at the Chamber or the Saturday before. He’d always be here for them . . . but only if she allowed herself to accept the terms he lived by.
Stifling a hiccup, she checked the clock over the door—ten thirty. Time to remind him of his late shift. “Except when you have to run off and play cops and robbers.” She forced a smile.
When he touched her cheek, she grabbed his hand then quickly dropped it, turning to lead him to the door. Before she could open it, he stepped in front of her. “I’m here. No matter what. You hear me?”
She heard him loud and clear, just as she had heard him at the Chamber. As long as she’d known him, how did she always manage to forget what a contradiction he was? But she could count on him to eventually do something to remind her.
These last few years, he’d been so kind to her and Libby that she’d willfully, repeatedly turned a blind eye. She’d even tried to rationalize that what he’d said in her office was out of a twisted sense of jealousy. But he knew nothing about her and Nate. No, his words had come from a cruel heart of hatred, a bigotry that blanketed this town. She wanted so badly to tear into him for his bad behavior.
But defending Nate would likely make him ask questions, grow suspicious. She couldn’t risk it. Yet, she had to make him leave her and Libby be. She had to get some distance.
“Goodbye,” she said flatly. June wouldn’t have to worry anymore that Gwen was leading him on, giving him false hopes of being her husband and Libby’s father.
Oblivious, he replied, “Talk to you tomorrow.”
“Goodbye,” she repeated, closing the door behind him. At the window, she inched back the curtain with one finger and watched him approach his cruiser. How many times had she vowed to herself that a goodbye to him was going be the last one? Too many. But no more.
Next Episode —> Coming Soon!
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