Family Dancing

by David Leavitt

  It was all inside. At the group therapy session a woman had said, “I think of the cancer as being too alive. The body just keeps multiplying until it can’t control itself. So instead of some dark interior alien growth that’s killing me, it’s that I’m dying of being too alive, of having lived too much. Isn’t that better?” the woman had said, and everyone had nodded.

  Or is it, Mrs. Harrington was thinking, the body killing itself, from within?

  She was at a red light. “If the light changes by the time I count to five,” she said, “I will become normal again. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.”

  It changed.

  And maybe if I had asked for six, Mrs. Harrington was thinking, that would have meant another ten years. Ten years!

  As soon as Mrs. Harrington got home, she hurried into the kitchen. Her son Roy was watching “Speed Racer” on television. He was fourteen. She heard loud music in the background: Jennifer; Blondie—“Dreaming, dreaming is free.” And then the sounds of her youngest child, Ernest, imitating an airplane. She was grateful for the noise, for the chance to quiet them with her arrival.

  “What’s for dinner?” Roy asked.

  “Nothing,” Mrs. Harrington answered, “unless Jennifer cleans up like she promised. Jennifer!”

  “Ma,” Ernest said, flying into the kitchen, “the party’s tonight, right? Timmy’s gonna be there, right?”

  “Right,” she said. He was her youngest child. His nose was plugged with cotton because it had been bleeding.

  Her daughter came in, sucking a Starburst. She had on a pink blouse Mrs. Harrington didn’t much care for. “How was it?” she asked, beginning to scrub the pots.

  “Fine,” said Mrs. Harrington.

  “What’s for dinner?” Roy asked again.

  “Chicken. Broiled chicken.”

  “Again?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Harrington said, remembering the days before when chicken hadn’t mattered. Those days took on a new luxury, a warmth to match Christmas, in this light—the four of them, eating, innocent.

  “Can I make some noodles?” Roy asked.

  “Noodles!” Ernest shouted.

  “As long as you make them,” Jennifer said.

  Roy stuck out his chest in a mimicking gesture.

  “I’ll make them, I’ll make them. In a few minutes,” he said.

  The boys left the room.

  “Dad called,” Jennifer said.

  “Was he at home?”

  “He and Sandy are in Missoula, Montana.”

  “Ha,” said Mrs. Harrington. “One minute in Trinidad, the next in Missoula, Montana.”

  “He asked how you were.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “The truth,” said Jennifer.

  “And what might that be?” asked Mrs. Harrington.

  “Fine.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Harrington melted butter in a saucepan, for basting.

  “Are you looking forward to the party tonight?” Mrs. Harrington asked.

  “Yes,” Jennifer said. “As long as there are some kids my age.”

  Occasional moments it came back to her, and she had to hold on to keep from fainting. Such as when she was sitting on the toilet, in her green bathrobe, among the plants, her panty hose and underpants around her knees. Suddenly the horror swept through her again, because in the last six months the simple act of defecation had been so severely obstructed by the disease—something pushing against the intestine.

  She held the edges of the toilet with her hands. Pushed. She tried to imagine she was caught in ice, frozen, surrounded by glacial cold, and inside, only numb.

  But then, looking at the bathroom cabinet—the rows of pills, the box with the enema, the mouthpiece to keep her from grinding her teeth (fit into her mouth like a handkerchief stuffed in there by a rapist)—it came back to her, all of it.

  Roy tossed the noodles with butter and cheese; Jennifer sliced the chicken. A smell of things roasting, rich with herbs, warmed the kitchen.

  “Niffer, is there more cheese?”

  “Check the pantry.”

  “I’d get it if I could reach,” Ernest said.

  Their mother came in. “Looks like you’ve got everything under control,” she said.

  “I put paprika on the chicken,” Jennifer said.

  “I helped with dessert,” Ernest said.

  “It’s true, he helped me operate the blender.”

  Mrs. Harrington set the table, laid out familiar pieces of stainless steel. One plate was chipped.

  “Rat tart!” Roy was shrieking in a high imitation of a feminine voice. He was recounting something he had seen on television to his sister. She was laughing as she tossed salad. Ernest rolled on the floor, gasping, as if he were being tickled. Mrs. Harrington smiled.

  They sat down to dinner.

  Food made its way around the table—the bowl of noodles, the chicken, the salad. Everyone ate silently for a few minutes, in huge mouthfuls. “Eat more slowly,” Mrs. Harrington said.

  She wondered where they’d be today if, indeed, she had died. After all, in those frantic first weeks, she had planned for that possibility. Jennifer and Roy, she knew, were old enough to take care of themselves. But her heart went out to Ernest, who had stayed at her breast the longest, born late in life, born after the divorce had come through. Little Ernest—he had lots of colds, and few friends; crybaby, tattletale, once, a teacher told her, even a thief. He sat there across from her, innocent, a noodle hanging from his mouth.

  “I wonder if Greg Laurans will be at the party,” Jennifer said.

  “Why, do you like him?” asked Roy, leering.

  “Screw you. He’s very involved.” Jennifer reached to put a chicken liver she had accidentally taken back on the platter. “He runs a singing group at the state hospital through Young Life.”

  “Watch out for him, Jennifer,” Mrs. Harrington said. “This is just another phase for him. Last year he was stealing cars.”

  “But he’s been born again!” Ernest said loudly. He said everything loudly.

  “Talk softer.”

  “He’s reformed,” Jennifer said. “But anyway, he won’t be there. His parents aren’t speaking to him, Gail told me.”

  Mrs. Harrington didn’t blame the Lauranses. They were good Jews—gave a sizeable chunk of their income to the UJA. Jennifer played loud music and got low grades; Roy had bad acne, didn’t wash enough, smoked a lot of marijuana; but compared to Greg Laurans, they were solid, loving kids, who knew what they wanted and weren’t caught up in the craziness of the world.

  Jennifer and Roy both knew about the illness—though of course she couldn’t tell them “six months,” and they never talked about time. She guessed, however, that they guessed what she guessed. Dr. Sanchez had told her, “If you’re alive in two years, it won’t be a miracle, but if you’re not, we can’t say it would be unexpected.”

  Ernest, however, knew nothing. He wasn’t old enough. He wouldn’t be able to understand. It would be hard enough for him, she had reasoned, after she was gone; at least let him live while he could under the pleasant delusion that she would be there for him forever.

  But now, Mrs. Harrington stared across the table at her son, and the reasoning that had kept her going for six months seemed warped, perverse. The way it stood, she would die, for him, as a complete surprise. It might ruin him. He might turn into Greg Laurans. And already she saw signs that worried her.

  She knew she would have to tell him soon. In a way that his seven-year-old mind could understand, she would have to explain to him the facts of death.

  For in light of new knowledge, she was questioning everything. In those dim months when the doctors themselves, as well as Mrs. Harrington, had stopped thinking about the fact that she was to die, she had become too complacent, she had not made enough plans for what would be left after her. Die. The word struck, and bounced off her skull. Soon, she knew, when the chemotherapy began, she would start to get thinner, and her hair woul
d fall out in greater quantities. She envisioned herself, then, months, or perhaps only weeks from now, so different—bones jutting out of skin, hair in clumps like patches of weeds on a desert. She anticipated great weariness, for she would be lucid, fiercely lucid, and though she would look like death, she would live for the day when once again she would feel well. Her friends would come to see her, frightened, needing reassurance. “You look so tired, Anna,” they’d say. Then she would have to explain, It’s the radiation, the drugs, it’s all to make me better. And when they assailed her, begging her to complete that tantalizing hint of hopefulness so that they could leave without worry or fear for themselves, she would have to temper their desire for anything in only the middle ranges of despair; though she was getting better, she would probably be dead by next Christmas.

  Dead by Christmas; she wondered if her children suspected that this would be her last Christmas. Then Jennifer would go to college, Roy and Ernest to her sister in Washington (though her ex-husband would probably fight for a custody she had made sure he would never get; she had at least covered that base).

  Now she looked at her children. They ate, they gossiped between bites. Dear God, she thought, how will they get along without me? For if she had died today, they would probably be eating in a friend’s kitchen—the Lauranses’ or the Lewistons’—in shock, as yet not really believing she was gone. There would be the unfamiliar smell of someone else’s cooking, someone else’s dinner, another way of making spaghetti sauce. And at home, the unmade bed, her clothes, her smell still in the closet, in the bed, lingering a few days, then disappearing from the world forever. Soon Ernest would start to cry for her, and alien arms would take him up. There would be nothing she could do. She would be gone.

  They didn’t notice anything different. Happily eating, arguing, in the cramped kitchen full of steam and the smell of butter.

  “Pass the noodles,” Mrs. Harrington said.

  “Mom, you never eat noodles.”

  She dressed in a big, dark gown with an Indian design stitched into it—a birthday present from Jennifer. A life of objects spread out before her—the bed, the television, so many cans of SpaghettiOs for Ernest. New products in the grocery store. The ads for reducer-suits in TV Guide.

  “Mom, let’s go, we’re gonna be late!” Ernest shouted.

  “Ern, let’s watch ‘The Flintstones,’ ” Jennifer said. To help her mother. She tried to help.

  “Is Ernie dressed?” Mrs. Harrington asked.

  “Yes, he is.”

  But when she emerged, perfumed, soft, Ernest didn’t want to leave. “Dino’s run away,” he said.

  “We have to go, Ern,” Jennifer said. “Don’t you want to go to the Lauranses’? Don’t you want to see Timmy?”

  Ernest started to cry. “I want to watch,” he said in a tiny voice.

  “All your friends will be at the party,” Mrs. Harrington consoled.

  “Oh, shit,” said Roy, “why do you treat him like such a baby when he mopes like this? You’re a baby,” he said to his brother.

  “I am not a baby,” Ernest said.

  “Babies cry ’cause they can’t watch TV ’cause they’re going to a party instead. You’re a baby.”

  Ernest’s crying got suddenly louder.

  “You’ve done it,” Jennifer said.

  Thirty minutes later, Dino was safely home, and the Harringtons were on their way. Dry-eyed. “Happy now?” Mrs. Harrington asked.

  Jennifer and Ernest climbed into the back. “I hope Timmy’s there,” Ernest said.

  “Can I drive?” Roy asked.

  “Not tonight, I’d be scared,” Mrs. Harrington said.

  “Then can we at least listen to KFRC?” Roy asked.

  “Yeah! Maybe they’ll have the Police!” Ernest shouted gleefully.

  “O.K., sure,” said Mrs. Harrington.

  “You’re in a good mood,” said Roy, switching one of the preset buttons to the station he wanted.

  They pulled out of the driveway. The dark, warm car filled up with a loud, sad song:

  Why did you have to be a heartbreaker,

  When I was be-ing what you want me to be . . .

  Roy beat his hand against the dashboard. He looked funny in his orange shirt and green tie—long hair spilling over corduroy jacket—as if he had never been meant to dress that way and had adjusted the standard male uniform to his particular way of life.

  Oh, Mrs. Harrington relished that moment: her children all around her. What amazed her was that she had made them—they wouldn’t be who they were, they wouldn’t be at all, if it hadn’t been for her. Aside from a few sweaters and a large macramé wall hanging, they were her life’s artwork. She was proud of them, and fearful.

  They turned onto a dark road that twisted up into the hills. From the Lauranses’ high window, Mrs. Harrington’s house was one of a thousand staggered lights spreading like a sequined dress to the spill of the bay.

  The Lauranses had introduced her to a woman who was involved with holistic healing. “Meditate on your cancer,” the woman had said. “Imagine it. Visualize it inside of you. Then, imagine it’s getting very cold. Imagine the tumors freezing, dying from freezing. Then a wind chips at them until they disappear.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Harrington said, overcome again. “Oh.”

  “Mom, what’s wrong?” Roy asked her. In the dark car, concern seemed to light up his face. She could only look at him for a second because the road was curving up to meet her stare.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I’m sorry. Just a little pensive tonight, that’s all.”

  But in her mind she could see Dr. Sanchez’s hairy hands.

  The party was already in full swing when they arrived. All over the Lauranses’ carpeted living room the clink of drinks sounded, a slow, steady murmur of conversation. Ernest held Mrs. Harrington’s hand.

  She lost Jennifer and Roy instantly, lost them to the crowd, to their friends. Suddenly. They were on their own, moving in among the guests, who said hello, asked them what their plans were. They smiled. They were good kids, eager to find their friends.

  “Hey, Harrington!” she heard a gravelly adolescent voice call, and Roy was gone. Jennifer lost as well, to the collegiate generation—a boy just back from Princeton.

  Mrs. Harrington’s friends the Lewistons were the first to greet her. Mr. Lewiston had taught in the law school with Mrs. Harrington’s ex-husband, and they had remained friends.

  “How are you feeling, Anna?”

  “How’re the kids?”

  “You know, anything we can do to help.”

  She motioned toward Ernest with her eyes, don’t talk about it. Ernest, who had not been listening, asked, “Where’s Timmy?”

  “Timmy and Kevin and Danielle are in the family room playing,” Mrs. Lewiston said. “Would you like to join them?”

  “Kevin!” Ernest turned to his mother, his eyes and mouth breaking. There was a red sore on his chin from drool. He started to cry.

  “Ernie, baby, what’s wrong?” Mrs. Harrington said, picking him up, hugging him fiercely.

  “I don’t like Kevin,” Ernest sobbed. “He’s mean to me.”

  Kevin was the Lewistons’ son. As a baby, he had been on commercials.

  And the Lewistons looked at Mrs. Harrington in vague horror.

  “When was he mean to you?” Mrs. Harrington asked.

  “The other day on the bus. He threw—um, he threw—he took my lunch and he threw it at me and it got broken. My thermos.”

  Mrs. Harrington looked at the Lewistons, for a brief moment accusingly, but she quickly changed her look to one of bewilderment.

  “He did come home the other day with his thermos broken. Ernest, you told me you dropped it.”

  “Kevin told me not to tell. He—he said he’d beat me up.”

  “Look, Anna, how can you—how can you think . . .” Mrs. Lewiston couldn’t complete her sentence. “I’ll get Kevin,” she said. “Your son’s accused him of something he’d n
ever do.”

  She ran off toward the family room.

  “Anna, are you sure Ernest’s not making all this up?” Mr. Lewiston asked.

  “Are you accusing him of lying?” Mrs. Harrington said.

  “Look, we’re adults. Let’s keep cool. I’m sure there’s an explanation to all of this.” Mr. Lewiston took out a handkerchief and swatted at his face.

  Ernest was still crying when Mrs. Lewiston came back, dragging Kevin by the arm.

  Ernest wailed. Mrs. Laurans, the hostess, came over to find out what was causing such a commotion. She ushered the families into the master bedroom to have it out.

  “Kevin,” Mr. Lewiston said, seating his son on top of forty or fifty coats piled on the bed, “Ernest has accused you of doing something very bad—of taking his lunch and hitting him with it. Is this true? Don’t lie to me.”

  “Bill, how can you talk to him that way?” Mrs. Lewiston cried. “You’re never that way with him.”

  Kevin, a handsome, well-dressed child, began to cry. The adults stood among their sobbing children.

  “Oh dear,” Mrs. Harrington said. Then she laughed just a little.

  Mrs. Lewiston took her lead, and laughed, too. The tension broke.

  But Mr. Lewiston, overcome by guilt for treating his son badly, was holding Kevin, and begging his forgiveness.

  Mrs. Harrington knew what that was like. She also knew that Ernest had lied before. She led him over to the corner.

  “Did you make that story up, Ernest?” she asked him.

  “No.”

  “Tell the truth.”

  “I didn’t,” Ernest said.

  “Kevin says you did,” Mrs. Harrington said with infinite gentleness.

  “He’s lying.”

  “You can’t pretend with me, young man.” Her voice grew stern. “Look, I want the truth.”

  Sternly, she lifted up his chin so that his eyes met hers; she was on her knees. For a moment, he looked as if he might once again break out in full-fledged sobs. But Ernest changed his mind.

  “All right,” he said. “He didn’t throw it at me. But he took it.”