The news is devastating, but Stuart, the company manager, and other performers assure me that it is best that I take the doctor’s advice and rest so I can heal quickly.
As the show must go on, it is decided that Jane the dance captain will fill in for me. Stuart rehearses with Jane to teach her some basic lifts.
“What can I do to help?” I offer, hobbling into the rehearsal lounge on crutches. Stuart and Jane are on stage, trying to choreograph the adagio routines for the show. They are working on the angel, a basic lift, but one that can only be done with the understanding of how the female partner must distribute her weight to ensure balance.
I move closer to the stage and offer help. “Jane. You have to walk forward leading with your hips because your weight has to be—”
“We don’t need your help,” Stuart snarls at me, giving me a disdainful look. I am astonished and hurt by his attitude. “Go away! You are not the star of this act. I can do this and make it look just as good without you!”
Jane looks embarrassed. “Okay,” I say softly, forcing a smile, not wanting to show how much his stinging words hurt, and I hobble out of the lounge, leaving them to it.
It is the evening of the first show with Stuart and Jane dancing the adagio numbers. I sit in the back of the audience with my left leg in a cast. Passengers who recognize me come and inquire as to how I was injured and tell me how disappointed they are because I am not performing. I appreciate their comments, but I am here to show my support for Stuart and Jane.
The curtain rises, the music begins, and Stuart and Jane begin to dance. Jane looks nervous, uncomfortable, awkward, balancing in the air, held by Stuart, who has a look of determination backdropped against his stiff, artificial smile. They do a fair job under the circumstances, but it is nothing as compared to the skill level of Stuart and me, who have worked together for years. The number ends, and there is lukewarm applause from the audience. Stuart does not look happy as he takes his bow. After the show, as the passengers leave the showroom, several of them stop and tell me that the show wasn’t the same without me. I am thankful for their comments, but they don’t know how hard Stuart and Jane have worked in trying to give them a good performance.
I go backstage to the dressing room and congratulate Stuart and Jane on a great job. Stuart tells me in no uncertain terms to “get lost!” Later that night in our cabin, he doesn’t talk to me. I can’t think of anything that I have done wrong.
My injury is not healing, and we are coming to the end of our contract. Stuart and I agree it is time to leave ship life and go back ashore to perform. I am hoping that getting away from the ship might improve our relationship again. Also, it is Mark’s last year of high school, and I would like for us to spend one last year leading a normal family life before Mark ventures out toward his future. Stuart is offered a job in Las Vegas. We buy a brand-new house there and move into the house the week before Christmas.
It is Valentine’s Day. Things have been more amicable between Stuart and me over the past couple weeks, and I am in a good mood as I sit out on the back patio, enjoying my morning caffeine. I still cannot dance, but put every effort into making our new house a home.
Stuart comes out, puts a potted plant on the ground in front of me, and walks away back into the house. I follow him into the house. “Is that for me?”
“It’s for Valentine’s Day.” Stuart walks out to the garage.
“Thank you, it’s great!” I shout after him, but my thanks is ignored, as is my card and gift to him, sitting on the mantel in the living room, waiting for his attention. They sit there the entire day while Stuart and his buddy John do some carpentry in the garage. My day is spent sitting out on the porch holding back tears, not understanding why Stuart is being so mean to me.
Stuart is about to leave for the evening show, and I go to the foyer to see him off. “I hope you have a great show,” I say cheerfully.
He opens the front door and then turns back to me. “I want a divorce. We’ll talk about it Friday on my day off.” With his announcement made, he leaves, slamming the door behind him.
I am standing alone in our new living room, in the lovely dream house we have worked so hard to earn. I replay Stuart’s unexpected words again and again in my mind, and feel the impact from the heartlessness in his tone.
Stuart refuses to talk to me until Friday comes, and then his discussion involves handing me four hundred dollars for child support for Mark and a comment that he is done being a father. He exits my life with his job and paycheck, leaving me with no income, no unemployment benefits, and with a mortgage to pay. So much for “in sickness and in health.” I tacitly understand that my dancing career has unceremoniously come to an end, as has my marriage and my quest for an ideal life. Those dreams are to be set aside to be replaced by the utter devastation I feel. Between the bouts of heartache, depression, and alcohol-induced stupors, I recognize that I have new challenges in my life. I pray I am up to those challenges.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Out of all of Dad’s things I still need to sort out in the attic, I leave the photographs until last. I instinctively know that once I open the old wooden cigar box and other miscellaneous boxes housing the family photographs, I will want to take the time to look at them carefully and in doing so will become immersed in the images. Lifting the cigar box from the dusty attic floor, I feel the coarse wood against my fingertips. I run my thumb down the jagged seams of the box, allowing the roughness to scrape my skin as if it is penance for my sin of abandonment. The box is larger than those typically used for its original purpose, packaging cigars, but now the mellow brown-colored panels guard a cache of memories. I blow the dust from its top, the particles gently rising then falling at the disturbance. I sit down on the attic floor, under the light hanging from the ceiling, which now becomes the spotlight for the exhibition.
I push the lid of the box sideways along its tracks, forcing this gatekeeper of family memories to reveal its treasures. Hundreds of black-and-white images are squished tightly within the confines of the box. I begin pulling the images out of the box one by one, revisiting the memories frozen in time by the simple click of a camera shutter. I appreciate the preservation of those moments so I can remember them, and relive them now.
The first photographs that I study in detail are of my father as a youth. One is a very small headshot picture of him with two other boys. They wore suits. Incongruous for a period in my father’s life when I knew his family lived on, if not below, the poverty line. Perhaps a hint that regardless of the income level, standards were still to be maintained. The three youths all faced to the right, the staged pose no doubt typical of the time but odd for three cheeky-looking boys each showing the hint of a grin. What was going through their minds? I wonder. What was the occasion that allowed money to be spent on the photograph? Who was the photographer?
My father’s voice joins my thoughts, telling a familiar childhood story. “Ah was a wee lad barely old enough to go tae school. Ma, me, an’ my brothers Joe an’ Russell lived in one of the auld tenements in Glasgow. We had nae dad. I got rheumatic fever and couldnae go tae school and so was left on ma ain all day. The tenement was miserable. Rather than stay on ma ain I’d get up, gather ma clothes and shoes, and go oot tae the street, just wearing my jammies. I’d say to a passerby, ‘Scuse me. Can ye help me get dressed?’ I’d stand in the street wi’ some stranger helping me get dressed, and then I’d wander doon tae the school looking for Joe and Russell. I’d sit ootside in the playground until they came oot.”
As my father reminds me of his story, I picture the scene of a small boy, from a poor, depressed area of Glasgow in the 1930s, having to stand out on the dirty street, clothes clutched to his chest, a wee voice asking a stranger passing by to help him get dressed. The image I see is pitiful. I feel bad for my father. Dad had been left to fend for himself and at such a young age. In those days it was not considered wrong to leave a young lad on his own all day to take
care of himself. But my father had been resourceful. He had managed. He had risen to the challenges. He had come a long way in life.
Turning the small photograph over, I see the names of Dad’s companions written on the back of the photograph in my father’s handwriting: Simpsons. I don’t recognize the name or the images of the other boys. I wonder who they are. Are they relatives? Are they my dad’s friends? I wish Dad was there to ask. I look at the image of my dad’s face. He was a handsome boy, with a cheeky grin. I grin myself. I wonder what his life was like back then. What were his hopes and dreams? Did he ever reach them? Was he happy with his life? Did he ever have any regrets? Questions I have that I know will never be answered.
Another black-and-white photograph is of my mother as a young girl in an overcoat, standing outside the Wills Tobacco Factory in Glasgow. My mother had started work at the factory when she was fifteen. I pull the next photograph from the box, and it shows my mum holding a greyhound on a leash. My Grandma Campbell had once owned greyhounds and would race them in tracks around Scotland. The war changed things as Grandma Campbell was forced to turn the once grand house into rental accommodations.
Moving on, I look at other photographs from around the same era that show Dad as a sailor, on HMS Bermuda in 1950. There are black-and-white photos of him next to a gun turret, with other sailors on the deck of the ship. In with the photographs there is a postcard entitled “HMS Bermuda West African Tour 1950.” In 1950, Dad would have been nineteen years old. I analyze those circumstances with wonderment, thinking, What an experience that must have been for him, having the opportunity to travel and see the world, and to see places and things that many people never get the chance to see. The family never took holidays abroad because Dad would say he’s seen everything he needs to see in foreign countries.
author’s dad as young matelot, photo courtesy of a family friend
I start looking at the smaller, older black-and-white photographs, seeing myself as a baby, three weeks old, four months old. There is a photograph of me as a baby with my parents outside St. Andrew’s Church on my christening day. I recall my last visit to the church: the day I vowed never to go to church again.
I’m six years old. Sitting on the pew in Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian Church of Scotland with the Gilchrist family, neighbors from across our street who bring me to church with them every Sunday. The minister’s voice and his long sermon are making me sleepy. Usually I watch the sun shining through the stained-glass windows, making them sparkly and pretty, but there is no sun today. I can’t find anything to amuse my six-year-old mind. I stare at hats on the ladies in front of me for a while, deciding which hats I like and those I don’t. Soon bored with the hats, I look around for something new, and along the pew I catch Ian Gilchrist’s eye. He is a year older than me. He sees me looking and sticks his tongue out at me. I stick my tongue out at him. Mrs. Gilchrist catches Ian sticking out his tongue and gives him a hearty thump on the arm. I quickly sit back against the wooden pew, hiding behind Mr. Gilchrist’s big chest, hoping Mrs. Gilchrist didn’t see me sticking out my tongue.
I think it is funny that Ian was caught and I wasn’t. When I think it is safe again, I lean forward and carefully peer around Mr. Gilchrist to see what Ian is doing. Ian sees me peeking and scowls. I give him a silent laugh. Our antics are interrupted by a comment from the minister. In the Presbyterian Church the first part of the service is for the whole family, and then halfway through the service, the children leave for Sunday school, which is in a hall at the back of the church.
We children dutifully stand and make our way out of the pews into the center aisle of the church. I am the last out of my pew and follow Ian into the aisle. His brothers are already walking toward the door at the side of the altar. Ian waits for me at the end of the pew. I know he is ready for some mischief to get back at me. We walk down the aisle together, children in front of us and behind us. The cheeky monkey in me wants to get Ian before he gets me, and I mischievously stick my leg out, trying to trip him up. Wise to my game, he in turn sticks his leg out to trip me up—and he does. I trip over his leg and fall hard onto the flint stones lining the aisle. I am smacked with an awful pain shooting up my lower leg. I can’t stop myself. “Aaaaaargh!” I cry out with an alarming, unholy yell not found in any prayer book, and which reverberates up and around the ancient church rafters. I forget it is the middle of the church service, and I continue my loud wailing—“Owee it hurts!”—unaware of anything but the dagger of pain in my leg. A man picks me up and carries me out of the main door at the back of the church.
Somewhere through my haze of pain, I am aware of being driven home, and once home my mother yells at me. “If I have to spend money we can’t afford to get a taxi to take you to the hospital, I’m going to thump you!”
I have to go to the hospital. My shin bone is broken. My leg is put in a plaster-of-Paris cast. I can’t go to school until it is settled. I can’t go to dancing. I can’t do much of anything except sit. Sit and play with my dolls. Sit and read. Sit and watch television. Sit and think about how I am never going back to church again!
Smiling at my childishness, I return my thoughts to the present and pull another photograph out of the pile and intently study the image of myself as a baby. I am probably less than a year old, and I am sitting on the grass in the back garden of the house in St. Augustin Road. I have a big grin on my chubby face. It is a picture of innocence. This baby didn’t yet know of the trials and tribulations that lay ahead for her. She didn’t know that she was going to meet people who would be mean to her, who would break her heart. She didn’t yet know that she had a family that would love her unconditionally no matter the mistakes she made. She didn’t know of the dreams and wishes that would never be fulfilled, or of the accomplishments that lay ahead. I want to hug this baby tight. I desperately want to let her know that life was going to be okay; she will get through it.
Putting the photograph back into the pile, I look through other photographs from my childhood and the family holidays in Scotland. I find a picture of Mum and me when I was about nine or ten, putting a stone on the cairn as we entered into Glen Coe in Scotland.
The glen is infamous for the massacre of the McDonalds by the Campbells in 1692. There are different versions of the legend, but my mum told me that the Campbells and the McDonalds were longtime warring clans. According to legend, and my mother, the Campbells offered hospitality to the McDonald clan when the McDonalds were in Glen Coe. They drank a lot of whiskey as the clans celebrated the truce around the campfires long into the night, until the McDonalds fell into a drunken stupor and slept obliviously. As the McDonalds slept, the Campbells, who had only been pretending to get drunk, slit the throats of the McDonalds. Such is the charming warrior, take-no-prisoners legacy of my family. Mum and I have to put a stone on the cairn to give us safe passage through the glen because we are both Campbells on Mum’s side of the family. According to legend, if any Campbell spends the night in Glen Coe, the ghosts of the McDonalds will slit their throat.
Staring at the photograph, I remember the day well. It is late afternoon, and we are driving back to Glasgow through Glen Coe. The fan belt in Dad’s car breaks. We pull over to the side of the road, and Dad tries to fix the car. We are in the middle of the most desolate area of the glen, surrounded only by mountains and with no sign of human life. It is getting late, and the sky around us begins to darken; gray clouds ominously begin to descend down the mountains, filling up the glen around us. Mum begins to panic, convinced that if we do not get out of the glen immediately, the ghosts of the McDonalds will come and slit our throats. Her panic is making me nervous. She frantically shouts at Dad, who has his head under the bonnet, seeing to the fan belt.
author as young girl, photo © Ian
Denny author putting stone on Cairn in Glencoe Scotland, photo © Ian Denny
“Och! Hurry up, Ian. Can yae no go any faster? What’s takin’ yae sae long?” Mum is pacing beside the car, looking up into th
e darkening sky and wringing her hands.
I watch my mum watching the sky and the growing darkness. I am getting nervous. I don’t like the moan of the wind as it creeps along the ground, its sweeping tentacles brushing against the bracken and whipping around my face like some invisible specter able to move objects and be felt but not be seen. Something tickled the back of my neck. Was it just the wind or some other force causing my hair to stand on end?
“Ian! Ye need tae hurry up! It’s getting dark. We cannae spend the night in the glen!” Mum’s raised voice and panic are as unnerving as the wind.
Dad, as good-natured as always, is not bothered and continues his work under the bonnet with an unhurried pace. He is not a Campbell. If the ghosts come to get Mum, so be it. He has nothing to worry about.
I look one last time at the black-and-white picture of me placing a stone on the cairn. My hair hung down my back in a long pigtail. I wore an anorak and skirt. I was wearing two-toned flat, lace-up shoes. I smile, remembering those shoes. They were my favorites. I remember that moment of putting the stone on the cairn. My life was just beginning then. Parents were taken for granted. I had eternity to do the things I wanted to do. It has to be forty years ago at least. Where have those years gone?
Changing my focus, I find some more recent color photographs, including a color print from my time in Italy. The dancers from The Three Cs and I are sitting on the floor of the pensione, watching Mark blow out a candle I had placed on his second birthday cake—the same cake I had found after my brave walk along the shoulder of the Italian motorway. The cake is white with little cherries on top; that detail I had forgotten. Had I sent these photos to Dad? Had I left them behind when I moved to the States? I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter as I begin pulling them out, one by one, spending a moment revisiting the people, the scenery, and the events they captured.
Our Grand Finale Page 22