Dancing In The Light

by Shirley Maclaine

  I sat down beside her bed and prepared for an afternoon of happy reminiscing about her travels. But I did have a particular curiosity to explore her feelings about her trips.

  “Mom,” I asked, “were you ever anywhere that you felt you had been before?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, “I’ve thought about that a lot. I think it was in the hills somewhere in Scotland. I knew the look of that place so well. I couldn’t understand it. I thought I had been there with your daddy. But he didn’t feel it was familiar at all. So I don’t know why, but I knew I had been there. It was the smell and the feel of the place. And when I was there, I was happy, very happy, but I can’t figure out when.”

  A nurse came in to check Mother’s heart monitor. She looked over at me casually and said, “Good morning,” and then said, “Oh, my God. I didn’t realize you were here.”

  I laughed.

  “Yes, this is my daughter, Shirley,” said Mother.

  “Oh, my God,” said the nurse, “I’m a nervous wreck…. Well, we really love your mother. She takes as much care of us as we do of her.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I can imagine.”

  Mother looked up at her.

  “Is my clot dissolving?” she asked with an almost girlish smile.

  “It’s not one clot, Mrs. Beaty. It’s several clots and, yes, they are dissolving.”

  “Can you see them dissolving?”

  “Well, we take the CAT scans and that’s how we tell.”

  “See?” said Mother. “The doctors don’t tell you anything.”

  “Oh,” said the nurse, “the doctors will tell you everything if you ask.”

  “Isn’t that nice,” said Mother. “You see, that’s why I love doctors.”

  “Well,” said the nurse, feeling that she should leave, “I’ll let you two visit.”

  She left, and Mother asked if I could get her and Dad tickets to my show when they came to New York. I laughed and said sure, wondering what else I could do or say to get these two to relax and enjoy one another more.

  We sat and smiled at each other.

  “You know, Mother,” I began, “so many people are going through intense problems right now. Haven’t you noticed it?”

  Mother sat up in bed. “Yes, Shirl,” she said, “that’s true, isn’t it? Everyone I know seems to be going through difficulties.”

  “Well,” I went on, “we all draw to us what we need to experience, in order to grow, however that might be. So whatever we’re going through is a learning process.”

  “That’s right,” said Mother. “Same as your father. He knows that whenever he takes a drink, he has to be responsible for it.”

  I thought about how to continue the point I was attempting to make.

  “So,” I continued, “whenever someone chooses to do whatever they’re doing, there’s really nothing much anyone else can do but allow them with love and understanding to do it.”

  “Yes,” said Mother, “the only way to really help someone else is to be with them every minute of the day. Like your father with his drinking, I know where he is every minute. Sometimes he gets mad at me and I lose my temper, but that’s the only way I can help him.”

  “Well, Mother, maybe his drinking really isn’t that bad. I mean, he doesn’t exactly get drunk. It’s more that you think he shouldn’t drink at all because of what you feel it does to him.”

  “But it does, Shirl. He’s not happy when he drinks.”

  “But he says he is. And at this age, why not let him do it? It can’t be too terrible for him.”

  She shook her head stubbornly.

  “Nope,” she said, “it’s not good for him. Why, I find bottles all over the house—under the bed, in the closets.”

  “Well, no wonder, Mother. You won’t let him drink out in the open.”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay.” I let the matter rest for the time being. It was so amusingly clear to me that the issue wasn’t so much about my dad’s drinking as it was about control and interaction. If Dad didn’t drink, I wondered what there would be for them to talk about.

  “Are you eating all right, Mother?” I asked.

  “Oh,” she said, “I’m on a very strict diet. No sugar, no sodium. No salt, you know. Oh, yes, I have to be careful. Lunch will come in a while, then you will see.”

  “So,” I said, “did you have a nice visit with Sachi?”

  “Oh, Shirl, she is really something. She told me all about her acting and her scene partner. Did she tell you about the scene partner she had during the love scenes who stuck his tongue in her mouth?”

  Both my properly raised mother and my liberally raised Sachi had an uncanny gift for stating the blunt truth without censorship.

  “Oh, yes,” said Mother, “the boy wouldn’t leave her alone. He followed her everywhere and tried to make dates with her, but she didn’t want to have anything to do with him. She’s such a darling.”

  I laughed, wondering if not having anything to do with such a demonstrative boy was what made her darling.

  As she talked, Mother seemed unaware of her fragile bones, her dry mouth, her shattered shoulder, the monitor on her heart. She was aware only of what she was talking about. I admired her focus, her concentration, her obliviousness to pain.

  “Shirl?” she asked, changing the subject in that free-associative way that old people have of doing. “Do you really believe that we have all lived before?”

  “Yes, Mother. I do. That’s what I’ve been writing about.”

  “I know,” she said. “But I wasn’t sure you really thought it.”

  “Well, I do. I thought about it and questioned it and read everything I could get my hands on about it and, yes, I have come to the conclusion that it must be true.”

  “So you think we have known each other before?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “So, if I knew you before, then I would have known Sachi before too?”

  “I think so, yes. But I can’t say about anyone else. I can only speak for what I believe about me.”

  “Well,” she went on, “I feel very close to Sachi. Very familiar. I don’t know what other mothers feel about their grandchildren. I’ve never discussed it with them. But I feel I have known Sachi for eons. Especially when she touches my hand. I don’t know what it’s all about. It’s beyond me. And at a certain point, I just give up thinking about it. But I know that whenever she touches my hand, it reminds me.”

  I gazed at the faraway look in her eyes. She wanted to say more.

  “I think,” she went on, “that Warren had something like that with my mother. I remember he used to get all dressed up to come to the dinner table because he knew Mother would be dressed. She never came to the table without having dressed, with a new hairstyle and perfume. And she wouldn’t use a paper napkin. She insisted on a real linen napkin. Anyway, as soon as Warren and Mother sat down, Warren would snuggle up to her and say, ‘Oh, Grandmother, you smell so good.’ He never left her side. There was something very profound between the two of them.”

  I listened, remembering the trips we had taken to Canada to see her mother. The wind-blown clam hunts along the Nova Scotia shore were my favorite times. We dug the clams and steamed them over tin pots in the cool evening sand and told stories as we dipped them in dripping hot butter and slurped happily into the night.

  “You, on the other hand,” Mother went on, “you would come rushing in from dancing somewhere, all tumbled and disheveled. You’d eat partly standing up as though you couldn’t stop moving. Then you’d look over at Mother and say, ‘Hello, Grandmother. You’re looking beautiful.’ And Mother would say, ‘She’s such a little lady.’ ”

  I thought of Grandmother MacLean’s powder-white hair, like strands of fine ivory-colored silk. She had the bearing of a dean of women (which is what she was at Acadia University, in Wolfille, Nova Scotia) and she seemed aware of every move she made and the effect it would create. She flowed when she walked, as though she had an invisible p
ot on her head.

  “Well, what did we talk about at dinner when we were little?” I asked Mother.

  “Oh, dinnertime was the time for discourse,” she answered. “It was when your father flourished. You know how he loves to talk. He’d pick out a subject and then draw you and Warren out. Sometimes it went on for hours. Your father had plenty of time for it, but I was too busy.”

  “What do you mean, busy? Were you cooking?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It seemed as though I was always busy. You know, your father never changed a didi [diaper]. It made him sick. And if either one of you upchucked, I’d have to clean it up. So I was always busy.”

  “We must have upchucked a lot,” I said.

  Mother went on. “Your father is like that now. If I’m sick now, he falls apart. So I have to do everything myself. I’m always so busy.”

  “Well, so what did we talk about?” I asked.

  “Oh, the opera. Mother loved opera. But I hated it. She couldn’t get me to go with her. But religion was something we talked a lot about. You were attracted to the Episcopalians and your Daddy and I felt you should stay within the Baptist ranks, which was stupid because people should be able to choose. But frankly, you didn’t really think much of any of them. You didn’t like getting dressed up to go to church. You never thought that should have anything to do with God. That’s why you didn’t go much. You thought people should be comfortable when they worshiped. But really, you didn’t have much time anyway. You were always either at dancing class or rehearsing.”

  Mother sat up in the bed, her hands cupping her ears. “I have to have my ears repierced,” she said, looking ahead to the future. “I’ve been sick for so long, I let them go. And I want to wear those beautiful diamond studs you gave me years ago.”

  There was a flurry at the door. People were greeting someone outside. Ira O. Beaty made his entrance. He sported a cane in one hand and a bunch of flowers and a brown paper bag in the other.

  “Well, there himself is,” I said, chuckling at how commanding he was, even using his early eighties shuffle to the utmost effect.

  “Hi, Monkey,” said Daddy as he walked over to Mother, leaned down, and offered his cheek to her.

  “You brought me flowers, Ira?” Mother exclaimed with incredulity.

  “Yes, Scotch,” he answered. “Flowers from your own garden.”

  “Oh, Ira, did you pick them yourself?”

  “I picked them with my own lily-white hands.” He snuck the brown paper bag under her sheet. She noticed and stealthily looked up at him with grateful, bright eyes.

  As though I hadn’t observed the interchange, Dad began to make a fuss with the chair he would sit in. I said, “No, take my chair. It’s much more comfortable.” He said, “No, it’s too much trouble.” And before I realized what was happening, I, while maneuvering my chair over to him, looked up and saw Mother poke into the brown paper bag under her sheet, unwrap noisy tinfoil, and push a crump of moist chocolate cake into her mouth. Daddy continued with the diversionary tactic of the chair-moving exercise as Mother chewed voluptuously. She made no real attempt to hide what she was doing, apparently knowing that she would continue eating the obviously delicious forbidden food regardless of sugar shock.

  “Daddy,” I said, mockingly reproachful, “you snuck chocolate cake in here?”

  “Yes, Monkey,” he said guilelessly. “It’s real good cake.”

  “There’s not much sodium in this,” said Mother stoutly. Why, whenever I make tollhouse cookies, I always have to add a teaspoon of salt.” She seemed to feel this was an explanation.

  “Real good,” said Daddy. “Sachi had two pieces and Bird Brain ate the rest.”

  “Who’s Bird Brain?” I asked, realizing that now he was using a verbal diversionary tactic in lieu of chair moving.

  “The new woman who takes care of us. Mrs. Randolf.”

  “Why d’you call her Bird Brain?”

  “Well,” said Mother in between chews, “she can’t keep her mind on anything.”

  “ ‘An forgot,’ she says,” said Daddy.

  Mother laughed with Daddy as she fingered a piece of cake to the front of her mouth before the nurse came back. “She forgets the flour out of the gravy,” she said, swallowing a tiny choke as she laughed. “But she’s really a darling. Bird Brain is an affectionate name.”

  “Oh,” said Daddy, “she’s better than the TV. She’ll come around the corner of the kitchen cabinet with a knife. Then she’ll remember she forgot the fork and go back to the drawer and get it. Then she’ll remember she needs two sets, but she only comes back with one. She walks several miles a day in that kitchen. So I guess it’s good exercise for her.”

  Mother opened the drawer next to her bed. “They’ll never notice if I put the rest of the cake here, will they?”

  I couldn’t resist and said no, helping her stuff it into the back of the drawer.

  “Cake won’t kill me,” she stated positively. “And I’m not ready to die.”

  Daddy retrieved a piece of paper from his coat jacket. “Now this Bird Brain remembered,” he said.

  It was Mother’s exercises for her previously broken shoulder. “Bless Bird Brain’s heart,” said Mother. “I’m forever losing this paper, and she’s forever knowing where it is.”

  “We’ll get some different exercises when you decide what you’re going to break next.”

  “You may think that’s funny, Ira, but I don’t.”

  “You mean falling off the piss pot is not funny?” asked Daddy with his special brand of malicious glee.

  “Now, Ira,” chided Mother, “I like to tell my own stories.”

  All my life I had been privy to the tragicomic details of my parents’ life together. Bird Brain was a new chapter. I was very curious.

  “Tell me,” I said, “where does Bird Brain sleep?”

  “In your mother’s room,” answered Daddy. “She sleeps in the other twin bed so she can hear it every time your mother falls out.”

  “Now, Ira,” said Mother repetitiously. “I don’t like Bird Brain sleeping in the room with me much, but she’s nice and clean and was obviously brought up nicely [Bird Brain, I later discovered, was seventy-seven]. But when she takes her bath, she makes such a racket.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, trying to picture Bird Brain, whom I had never met, having a raucous time in the pretty pink-tiled bathroom Mother had decorated.

  “Well, for instance, the other night I was in bed about to fall asleep and Bird Brain decided she wanted to have a glass of milk. I got up and walked to the kitchen and found her in there in the dark gobbling up ice cream and cake with chocolate syrup poured all over it.”

  “Bird Brain puts butter and sugar on everything,” said Daddy. “Even sausage.”

  My stomach turned over.

  “Well, I left her alone and went back to bed and she still didn’t come to bed herself. So I got up again and went to look for her. I noticed the door to the guest room was closed. I opened it and there was Bird Brain asleep on your bed with a book over her face. I screamed at her, ‘What are you doing sleeping on top of that spread? Don’t you know if you sleep on that twenty-five times, I have to wash it?’ Well, Bird Brain was so startled she lurched out of bed, and I said, ‘This room is for my children whenever they decide to come home. No one sleeps in this room or on that spread.’ Well, poor Bird Brain. I terrified her. So then she went in the bathroom and made a terrible racket when she was taking her bath.”

  It occurred to me as I listened that what she was describing would make a good senior-citizens TV show. It was, however, interrupted by the arrival of a nurse. Mother eyed her table drawer slyly. Daddy gestured it was okay.

  The nurse pulled Mother gently to a sitting position and explained the exercises she was about to put her through.

  “You know,” said Mother to the nurse, “if I hadn’t fallen and broken my hip, I would have died of my aneurysm.”

  The nurse lifted her arm and
said sweetly, “Really?”

  “Oh, yes,” Mother went on, “because when they X-rayed my hip, they found the aneurysm there. So, you see, it all happened for the best. The good Lord said she’s not supposed to die yet.”

  “What about your wrist, Scotch?” asked Daddy, deciding to tease her in front of her nurse.

  “Well, I haven’t figured that out yet. It was an accident. And the pelvic break came because we were in a hurry. You should never get out of a car at Christmastime in a hurry unless you know you’ve gotten everything out of the car with you. I was just plain stupid to get my coat caught in the car door. So I learned my lesson. I’ll never do that again.”

  Daddy laughed. “You say you’re finished breaking your bones?”

  “You’re darned right I am,” said Mother defiantly. “I don’t want to have to keep going to restaurants where they serve you that soppy food. I want to entertain in my own home. I’m going to live to be ninety. I want my friends to be able to come and see me. I don’t want to retire to my bed and say I’m done.”

  “When did this ninety thing come up?” said Daddy, almost as though he wasn’t sure he would stick around for the event.

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about it since I came in here,” said Mother.

  “Why ninety?” Tasked.

  “Well, it seems like a ripe old age. I don’t want to live to be a hundred. I might change my mind, but I doubt it. At ninety people will give you their arm and help you to a chair, but more than that would just make people exasperated. I think my legs will give out first. I’m so long-legged, you know.”

  I turned to Daddy, wondering how he felt about living ten more years. “What do you think about ninety as a good, ripe figure?” I asked.

  Daddy ruminated. “I like that saying from Omar Khayyám. You know, the one about a jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou. These days the only thing I give a damn about is a loaf of bread.” He eyed Mother. “But I never dispute the boss,” he added.

  “He’ll be lying in the bed,” said Mother, “waiting for me to go. Then he’ll come right after me. There’s no way to get away from him.”