Dancing With Venus

by Roscoe James

  “I want you to take that, dear. I don't want anyone else to have them.”

  “Nana. What are you talkin' about? There's plenty of time—”

  “When you listen to them just remember that ''Round Midnight's' the one. The one I got my Jimmy with.”

  Jessie slipped the dusty box under her arm and leaned down to kiss her grandmother good-bye.

  “You never know, dear. It might work for you too.”

  Too late for that, Nana.

  When Kimmie and the collegiate squad went on for two days about the gorgeous hunks of man meat at the bachelorette party, Jessie thought she saw her mother blush more than once. Superman and the fire chief had been big hits. When everyone acted as if absolutely nothing had happened the afternoon of the big party, Jessie almost jumped in someone's face and yelled, “Hey, what about that pair of dykes at the Madison? What'd ya think of that? Eh?”

  But she hadn't. Her sister was her sister. The same Short Stuff who used to follow her around the farm on a stick horse now had a million things on her mind. Not the least of which was the stunningly handsome Dr. Dick. The man even measured up for Jessie and only filled her with more regret.

  Dr. Dick and crew had arrived on Thursday and set up camp at the Hyatt. Charlotte and Becky's boyfriends were part of the wedding party, and Thursday night Jessie found herself assigned entertainment director while her sister and Dr. Dick sneaked off to the Hyatt away from their mother's prying eyes.

  To make love or fuck?

  The answer Jessie conjured saddened her more.

  At Red's the cheer squad had insisted, and Jessie had gotten up onstage and wooed her charges and the rest of the joint with a three-song set. The drinks were free, everyone was happy, and life went on.

  On Friday Dr. Dick's family had arrived and the obligatory dinner out for the families had actually been fun. Her parents had rented the back room at Jack's Roadhouse, a fancy Southern-eats place that liked the scruffy image the name gave them, and they brought in a piano player who specialized in ragtime. The fact that Dr. Dick's dad was a doctor wasn't much of a surprise, but Dr. Dick's gay uncle was. The man knew every redneck joke ever written. A mean trick for a New Yorker.

  Her father tried to close the night down by singing a song for the bride and groom. He'd followed that with one for Jessie's mother. There wasn't a dry eye in the house when he finished. Not even Jessie's.

  She laughed when Nana was pushed to the head of the table in her wheelchair brandishing a microphone.

  “Get outta my way, sonny. Let me show you how it's done.”

  The piano player vamped while Nana sat with her eyes closed waiting for the right moment. Voice shaking, a tremble caressing each breathy word, pitch as true as it had been over sixty years before, Nana brought the house down with an old Julie London song.

  Jessie couldn't help the tears when her Nana finished and smiled one of her million-dollar smiles.

  Dr. Dick's gay uncle jumped up and yelled, “Marry me, baby.”

  The wedding day had been hectic and the ceremony as advertised. The bride was beautiful and managed to blush a time or two, and the groom was gallant and always attentive. Jessie couldn't recall seeing her sister open a door since Dr. Dick's arrival.

  And over the days Jessie's mother had managed to make her feel petty, small, and mean without saying or doing a thing other than loving her. Their first few words had been stilted and stiff. But once it became clear Jessie wasn't going to run off in a huff or throw a tirade, they both settled into a visit that included showing Jessie where everything went in the kitchen. She couldn't believe she'd grown up in the house and had never spent enough time with her mother in the kitchen to know where the iron skillet went.

  Her mother had picked up their lives as if nothing had happened and treated Jessie like the loved and loving daughter she always could have been. Just contemplating her mother's ability to forgive was exhausting for Jessie.

  When Marci didn't call, Jessie fell into a noxious routine of pin the blame on the jackass.

  A jackass named Jessie.

  * * *

  Jessie pushed out of the vending-machine room and crushed her cigarette on the concrete apron of the parking garage beneath the Madison. The reception meal was over, and the dancing had started. Jessie wobbled to the elevator on her heels and looked around the dim basement hallway. When she was sure she was alone, she whispered, “I know you were making love to me. I know because it scared the shit out of me.”

  Back at the reception she grabbed another glass of champagne and wandered the tables. The lights had dimmed, and the dance floor was full. Her father was resplendent and her mother lovely. The huge ballroom was full and hiding was easy. She'd been away so long that being anonymous was as easy as wandering the fringe of the tables lost in thought.

  When a woman she didn't know from Eve jumped up and called her name, Jessie walked over.

  “I bet you don't even remember me.”

  The woman had short hair, a boyish cut, a trim figure, startling green eyes, and was dressed smartly in a woman's suit of black wool complete with slacks. Jessie shook her head slowly. “Sorry, can't say as I do.” Jessie grinned really big to be hospitable.

  “Come here, Darcy. I want you to meet Jessie.”

  Darcy looked about Kimmie's age and was wearing a peach-colored full-length dress with a waterfall of sequins down the front.

  “This is Jessie? The Jessie?” Darcy sounded like she'd just met a movie star. Jessie decided they were blues fans.

  “It's nice to meet you, Jessie. I'm Darcy, Cassie's partner.”

  Jessie shook hands with Darcy and wondered how Bernie had managed to sneak a record producer and attaché into her sister's wedding.

  I'll kill him.

  “It's me! Cassandra. Cassandra Pfeifer? From that sleepover in high school? You know. You and me. High passion in a sleeping bag on your bedroom floor. I live in Nashville now. I'm an investment banker. Wow, I wondered if I'd run into you. It's been a long time…”

  Jessie felt like she'd just stood up too fast. Her arms and legs tingled, and she was dizzy. She recovered from the first sway, but on the second she fell into someone's arms and woke up looking at the ceiling. This time there were bright spots of light from a disco ball dancing in circles on the ceiling that made her queasy.

  Her mother was there. So was Cassie and her attaché.

  “Are you okay, dear?” Her mother was fanning Jessie's face with a menu card from one of the tables. Dr. Dick's dad showed up to help. They got her to a chair, and she answered a few questions for the good doctor.

  “Maybe it's that bump on her cheek. I tried to get her to go to the—” Her mother sounded genuinely concerned.

  “Here, Jessie. I want you to follow my finger.”

  The crowd grew enough that Cassie and friend were squeezed to the outside, out of sight.

  “I'm okay, Mom. Really. Thanks a lot, Dr. Mills. I think it must be the heat.”

  By the time she got away, she was having a full-blown panic attack. In the hall outside the ballroom, Jessie ran for the ladies' room. She fell to her knees in front of a commode and vomited. When she thought it was safe, she pushed up from the floor and sat on the seat lid. Her head filled with the same shame and guilt her mother had instilled all those years ago when all the memories of that night came rushing back.

  That day in May had been rainy and wet. Her mother had baked a cake and put a happy-birthday banner over the kitchen table. Some of her friends from school were over, and her mother was letting her have her very first sleepover.

  They'd watched some silly movie and oohed and aahed only as thirteen-year-olds could during the long kiss and impassioned embrace somewhere toward the end.

  Jessie recalled her mother reminding her she had guests and to stop worrying about her Aunt Trudy.

  “I'm sure she'll be by tomorrow sometime.”

  The afternoon had turned to sitting around in Jessie's bedroom, the floor littered wit
h sleeping bags, and everyone talking about something they knew nothing about. Boys.

  She couldn't recall what time it happened. She only recalled that the lights were out, her room was quiet, and the jabber had died. Something woke her. Her mother's angry words made it down the hallway and into Jessie's bedroom. Her parents were arguing, something they seldom did. She couldn't hear the words, only the angry inflection. She remembered looking around the floor at the sleeping bags to make sure everyone was asleep.

  Cassie had peeked out from her sleeping bag and whispered, “It's okay. My parents do that all the time.”

  The next morning her world was torn apart when her mother, upset and distraught, burst into her bedroom to announce that her friends had to go home.

  “We have to go to the funeral home.”

  “Is it Nana?”

  “No… Your Aunt Trudy died last night.”

  That moment, those words, had been a part of her for the rest of her life. Her parents' angry words the night before. The embarrassment and humiliation of finding Cassie awake, listening. The shock of being told her aunt Trudy had died.

  But now there was more. Something else that had been hidden by the shock of her Aunt Trudy's death. The words that came when her mother looked down and realized what she and Cassie had been doing.

  “How could you, Jessica? How on earth could you? We didn't raise you to be some kind of slut, much less a… Oh, well, I can't even say the damned word. How could you do this to me? I mean, what do you think you were doing? This is just the kind of thing you can't take back… You will burn in hell for this! I just can't believe you would do this to me!”

  She could still see Cassie, terrified, trying to hide her naked body. Both of them frantically reaching for clothing strewn about the sleeping bag on the floor.

  The curtain pulled back, and Jessie stared openmouthed at the Wizard of Oz. He turned out to be her mother scared shitless at finding her adolescent daughter having a gay moment of bliss and experimentation the morning after a sleepover.

  All those years. I never knew. The memory was gone completely.

  “No take-backs.” Jessie hung her head and wanted to cry. But the entire week had been too much. There were no tears left.

  * * *

  Jessie stood at the edge of the dance floor feeling wilted and looking worse. She waited for her father and Kimmie to dance by. This time when she waved, Kimmie waved back and shoved their father over.

  Kimmie ran and hugged Jessie for the fifth time that night. She was all smiles and bubbles. Jessie held on tight and didn't want to let go. Tears left over from the ladies' room threatened, and Jessie pushed away. Her father hugged Jessie, and she put her head on his shoulder.

  “You're beautiful, Kimmie. The whole thing was. And Richard is just…” Jessie laughed nervously. “I don't know. He seems just like that knight in shining armor you always said you'd get. I'm really happy for you.”

  Kimmie grabbed her back and held on. Her father hugged them both, and Kimmie whispered right into Jessie's ear, “I'm so glad you came, Jessie. My big sis here to watch me marry my man. I wanted you to be the first to know. I'm pregnant. Six weeks. We're going to tell the rest of the family when we get back from our honeymoon.”

  “But—”

  “Go look at the postmark on your invitation. The wedding's been planned for over three months. He proposed last December. If you called home every once in a while, you'd know these things.”

  Jessie found more tears. When Richard showed up and dragged Kimmie away, Jessie still didn't want to let go.

  She dabbed her eyes and wiped her cheeks. She leaned into her father and didn't want to let go of him either. Finally she stopped sniffling long enough to say, “Look, Dad. I'm not feeling too well. I wondered if you would mind if I go on home.” Her dad looked grand in his getup for the wedding. His cheeks had a rosy glow that spoke of too many glasses of champagne. He smiled and squeezed her tight.

  “Are you sure you're okay, Jess?”

  “I'm okay, Dad. It's just been a long week.”

  “What? No dance for your old man?”

  Jessie sputtered and laughed. “Sure, Dad. But no promises on how your toes will feel in the morning.”

  The man who had always been there for her, for both of them, swept her into his arms and waltzed her around the dance floor. As the music wound down, he leaned close and whispered, “Thanks, sweetheart. And I don't mean just the dance. I'm talking about your mother. You don't know how much these last few days have meant to her. To both of us.”

  “Sure, Dad.” With a forced smile on her face, Jessie rushed out of her father's arms and straight for the exit. She cried all the way down in the elevator.

  * * *

  Jessie checked her duffel bag for the third time. Her clean clothes were all neatly folded and stuffed away. She sat her guitar at the foot of her bed and picked up her Stetson. She sneaked down the hall and out the front door, avoiding her mother. At the barn she found her father sitting in his office going over bills.

  “Hey, Jess. You all packed?”

  Jessie plopped down in the other chair and propped her boots up on the saddle stand. “Sure am, Dad. I just wanted—”

  “Did I tell you I like your hair like that?”

  “Thanks, Dad. Listen. I need to—”

  “Where you off to, Jess?”

  “Why do you do that?”

  Her father was surprised when she looked over at him.

  “What's that, Jess?”

  “That. You call me Jess. Not Jessie or Jessica. Sometimes you say Jessie. But most the time you call me Jess.”

  “I never really thought much about it. I guess that's just a pet name I gave you. You know. Just a name 'tween you and me. Jessie was already taken. And you always hated Jessica. I never knew—”

  “That's it? You just wanted to have a name that was special for me?” Jessie dropped her feet to the floor with a thud and leaned forward on the rickety old chair.

  “Why sure, hon. I figured I was the only one who would use that name. Why'd you think I called you that?”

  “No. No reason. I just wondered. You're not the only one who's called me that…”

  Her father settled back in his chair and crossed his arms across his chest. “Right.”

  Jessie rolled her eyes. She shoved her boots back up on the saddle stand and parroted her father's demeanor. Her father finally broke the silence.

  “So where you off to?”

  “That agent of mine has been calling. He might have some studio work for me. I thought I'd check that out. It's in LA. I'll be in Denver in three weeks. After that I'm going to head south. There's a club down in Clearwater that keeps calling me. Then I'm going—”

  “You know what a telephone is, don'tcha?”

  “Yes, Dad. I know what a telephone is. And I promise I'll use it at least once a week. I told you I would, and I will.”

  “You need some money?”

  “No, Dad. I'm holdin' my own. Actually, I've got a little nest egg built up. Not much to do with money when you're on the road.” Jessie rolled her eyes again. Things got quiet. Again. And for the first time in a long time, Jessie didn't want to leave. She didn't want to leave her father's office, and she didn't want to leave home. She thought there were things she'd missed out on, and selfishly, she wanted to get them back.

  “You know, that Marci girl sure is nice,” her father quipped out of the blue.

  Jessie jerked her head up and stared at her father before looking back at the floor. He pushed up out of his chair and grabbed his hat. He dropped it on his head and said, “Well… You headed for the airport or the bus station?”

  Jessie didn't notice her father standing over her. She was busy counting scuff marks on the toe of her boot.

  “Jessie?”

  She jumped up and brushed off the seat of her jeans. As they headed out her father stopped by the door and pointed at a picture in an old dusty frame on the wall by the door frame.
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  “You remember her?”

  “Sure. That's Aunt Trudy. I sure miss her.” Jessie touched the glass and ran her fingers lovingly over the smiling image of her confidante and best friend. “A lot.”

  “See that woman there?” Her father pointed. “The one with the scarf on her head?”

  “Yeah?” The photograph showed Jessie's mom smiling at the camera, her Aunt Trudy standing alongside smiling as well, and in the background, between the two, stood a woman. Her black hair was trapped by a scarf, and she wore big sunglasses that hid a lot of her face.

  “She was your Aunt Trudy's girlfriend. Well, I think they call 'em partners now. Somethin' like that. I can't keep up with that stuff. We didn't know until she came over with your Aunt Trudy one night. I think it was your birthday, the night your Aunt Trudy died. She was just some friend of your Aunt Trudy's until then. Someone she would hang out with.”

  “She had a…girlfriend? Wait. You're telling me Aunt Trudy was…” The empty feeling in Jessie's chest detonated, leaving her throat scratchy and her voice hollow.

  “You don't know how many times I've wished I'd stepped in and calmed things down that night. I tried to tell your mother after they left, but she wouldn't listen. Seems that when your mother answered the door that night, the two of them were kissing. Last thing I heard your mother yell was, 'You'll go straight to hell for this.' That was the last time we saw your Aunt Trudy alive. She tore out of here like a bat out of hell. State trooper called early in the morning. Said your Aunt Trudy was goin' at least eighty when she hit the tree. Both of 'em died.”

  Jessie felt nauseated. Her brow was sweating. She thought she might get sick. Again. “But… Did she, well?”

  “No. Far as we know your aunt didn't do it on purpose. She hit a patch of water on the pavement, lost control, and hit the tree.”

  “But Mom… She seemed so angry. It was her sister and she never cried. Not a tear.” Jessie fidgeted before adding, “And I hated her for that.”