Dance, Gladys, Dance

by Cassie Stocks

  And what if I don’t, and what if I do?

  And what if I don’t, and what if I do?

  “I hear they have a dance called the two-step now.”

  I went cold. Gladys, the ghost woman, or whatever the hell she was, sat in the armchair between the bookshelves. She wore the same floor-length plain white dress, but this time a blue silk scarf was wrapped around her head like a turban. Without her weird haircut showing, she looked almost normal — a beautiful old lady who dressed like it was the 1900s. Her hands were folded in her lap and she was smiling. I looked away and began to clean up the papers on the desk, shuffling them into manila folders. I was not going to interact with madness.

  “Can you do it? Couldn’t be hard. Only two steps and all. Can you hear me? Hellooo?” she said.

  “Don’t talk to me. I don’t want you to speak to me. You’re freaking me out.” I gathered my folders and stood.

  “Freaking out. That sounds bad,” she said.

  “It is. Trust me.” I hesitated behind the desk, the papers held against my chest. I wanted to leave but didn’t want to walk past her. What if she grabbed me?

  “Why don’t you trust me?” she said.

  I could think of a thousand reasons, beginning with the fact that trusting hallucinations was never a good idea. “All right. What do you want?”

  “I have a story to tell you and then there’s something you need to do.”

  “You want me to do something?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, get in line, lady,” I said. “You and everyone else. What is it?”

  “Let’s start with the story.”

  “Will you tell me and then leave?”

  “Certainly.” She settled deeper into the blue velvet chair. I wondered for a second if she’d emerged from the hole in the seat and perhaps might sink away back down into it. She remained where she was.

  “All right, then. . . shoot,” I said.

  “Shoot? I don’t have a gun. They’re dangerous, you know.”

  If I was going schizo and she was some fractured aspect of my personality, parts of me were definitely thick.

  “Are you a ghost?”

  “I’m not the tooth fairy, if that’s what you thought.” She reached up and adjusted her turban.

  “Fine, just tell me the damn story.”

  “Now you’re being rude,” she said. “Perhaps I’ll start another time when you’re not so cross.”

  “I am not cross. I’m losing my ever-freaking-loving mind. Shit.” Too much. Assembling the résumé from hell that showed the world what a screw-up I’d been my whole life and now some ghost or demented vision telling me I had to do something and calling me rude. Everything welled up from the pit of my stomach into my throat, and, to my surprise, I began to cry.

  “There, that’s what you need to do. Have a good cry. You’ll feel better. I’ll come back later.” She disappeared.

  I dropped the folders, kicked over the metal garbage can beside the desk, collapsed into the office chair (causing it to give an alarming squeak), put my head on the desk, and wailed. I cried for what felt like an hour, pausing only to swear. Then I stopped, stood, and began to pick up the garbage I had kicked over.

  “Frieda, I’m home. Come see what I bought.” Mr. H.’s voice boomed through the house.

  I threw the last crumpled piece of paper back in the garbage can, wiped my nose on the sleeve of my sweatshirt, and went into the kitchen. On the table sat four cardboard flats of blooming flowers. Petunias, I thought, a mixture of red, white, pink, and peach. Mr. H. stood by the table wearing his usual white shirt, canvas pants, and suspenders, but he had on big green rubber boots with yellow laces up the front.

  “They’re nice,” I said, fingering a leaf. “What are you going to do with them?”

  “Are you all right? You look a little peaked,” he said.

  “I’m fine. Working on my résumé gave me a bit of a headache. Cool boots, by the way. Are you allowed to wear them in the house?”

  “I’m going to plant,” he said. “Come outside. I have a trowel with your name on it.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m kinda beat.”

  “Come on. A little dirt up your nose will make you feel better. Shirley always had the yard looking so nice. I’d like to get it going again.” He picked up two of the flats and started out. I picked up the other two and followed him, too exhausted to protest.

  “Watch your step,” he said, as we went down the front porch stairs into the yard. “The board on the bottom is loose.”

  At some point, he’d cleared and spaded the flowerbeds. I hadn’t even noticed.

  “Haven’t you planted since Shirley died?”

  “I tried the year after, but I put in some sort of purple flower that damn near took over the entire yard. I had to dig it out after it crossed the fence and got into Miss Kesstle’s roses.” He looked around and lowered his voice. “She threatened to call the Noxious Weed Police on me.”

  It did feel good to be outside digging in the dirt. My knees pressed into the grass. I took one tiny plant after the other, dug a hole, and placed it in the ground. Mr. H. came along behind me with an old metal watering can. The rich, heavy smell of the wet earth was soothing.

  It was getting dark when we finished. Mr. H. gathered up the tools and the little plastic pots. I followed him to the garden shed; it had been a chicken coop once, the ancient boards a soft weathered grey. Mr. H. spent a lot of time working on the shed, propping it up, and trying to keep it intact.

  I stood outside and listened to the sounds of the evening city, a radio playing a French station, children in the park down the street. Then I heard a strange sound, from right behind me. Clapping. The sound of one person clapping — one person clapping, not one hand. There was nothing Buddhist about it. I glanced around, but no Gladys. There was no reason for the sound to be so frightening; after all, it wasn’t frantic screaming or a chainsaw roaring. Still, a shudder ran from my lower spine all the way up to my neck. Then, as suddenly as it started, it stopped. Mr. H. emerged from the shed.

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked.

  “Ghosts? I don’t know.” You could trust Mr. H. to take any topic of conversation in stride. “I always assumed Shirley would come back and see me if she could. She never has, but I hear her voice inside my head sometimes.”

  “Saying what?”

  “Things like ‘Are you sure an electric egg poacher is really practical?’” He put the rest of the tools inside the shed. “You can store some of your things in here if you like. There’s an old Chevy in the back shed you can use if you need to drive anywhere. I haven’t used it in a few years, but I keep the insurance going on it just in case.”

  “Thanks.” We walked side by side back to the house. The streetlights had come on, and long dark shadows appeared on the lawn.

  “Miss Kesstle told me you have a son.”

  “I do,” he said softly. “Whitman. He lives in Los Angeles.”

  I turned toward Mr. H. and wanted to paint him as he looked at that moment, his face blue twilight, his hair silver, with a background of leaves and shadows. I shook my head, trying to clear it like a mental Etch A Sketch. I didn’t want any pictures forming on that screen.

  “You see him much?”

  “No. We’re not close. Shirley and I were older when we had him. We were selfish. Or I was. I didn’t want to share her with anyone.”

  “But you loved him when you had him?” I could see moths fluttering around the front porch light as we turned the corner of the house.

  “I thought I did. Not enough, I suppose. I was wrapped up in Shirley, and work, and my pictures. . . I’ve been trying to make it up to him for years. I’d like to be closer to him but. . .”

  “But?”

  “But you can’t always get what you want,” he said.

  “The Stones made out pretty well, though.”

  “Ah yes, to be igneous and ignorant of it. The stones have it easy.”
>
  I smiled in the darkness.

  “He didn’t come to see Shirley before she. . . went. I called him, but perhaps I wasn’t clear about how bad things were. He came to the funeral, but without Shirley there as a bridge between us, things just got worse and more awkward.”

  As we walked into the kitchen, he put his hand on my shoulder. “How about you? Are you sure you’re all right? Do you want to have a cup of tea and talk awhile? My crossword puzzle can wait.”

  “Not right now — I have some things to figure out first.” Like how quickly and for how long I’d be locked away if I told anyone about my ghostly hallucinations.

  “Good night,” I said as I climbed the stairs to my room. “I’ll be job hunting again tomorrow.”

  He folded the newspaper open. “Good for you. ’Night. Don’t let the head-thugs fight.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Dominant Oblique Direction

  I believed my bright and shining future had begun when I was eighteen and Geordie backed the band bus down my parents’ driveway. Travelling with a rock band wasn’t a show in a New York art gallery, but it was metaphysically closer to it than a day shift at donut shop, or so it seemed at the time. To celebrate my new life on the road, I did a series of dead rock star paintings with psychedelic celestial backgrounds.

  The other band members had obviously never heard of groupies. They thought my travelling with them cramped their style; old ladies should be left at home. The drummer took to walking out of any room I walked into. Drummers are, of course, notoriously over-sensitive. I painted all the cooks from the hotel restaurants with fried egg eyes. I would have been the Yoko Ono of the Bang Howdy Band if Geordie had chosen me instead of his bandmates, which he didn’t. We broke up after a year somewhere in northern BC. The bus ride back to Saskatchewan took forty-six hours.

  I got a cheap apartment in Saskatoon where I waitressed and let my hair grow long. My parents left Kindersley and moved to Florida. I think they hung around for awhile, hoping for a wedding before they left, but after seven years of a different fellow every Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas dinner, they gave up and went.

  Seven years may seem a long time, but it passed like nothing; time flies when you’re doing sweet fuck all. I lived in a strange sort of non-space during those years. I was intelligent and knew it vaguely, but it didn’t seem to matter. There seemed nowhere to go with it, nothing to do with the ideas that drifted around in my head. I could not imagine myself as either nurse or doctor. I could not imagine myself as wife or mother. I could not imagine myself as anything except an artist and I had no idea how to get there.

  I paid the rent on time most months by working a series of jobs: a waitress here, a clerk there, a dead end everywhere. I set up easels in spare corners and worked throughout the craziness of fellow drifters and the demented situations that too much partying and too many unstable personalities bring. Painting kept me going. It was the one thread that never changed in the crazy quilt of my life. Even when I had no idea where I was (and there were days like that), I knew where my latest painting was. When I didn’t know who loved me, I knew what I loved: my art. The painting kept me steady, gave me something to hold onto, a purpose in life besides the next big party. Still, I was far from the fame and fortune I’d imagined before I left home. I worked my ass off, but was I even an Artist? How did you know and what gave you the right to declare yourself one? Was twenty-four old enough? Of course, Basquiat had already painted all his great works and died by his late twenties. Now that was a depressing thought. Or maybe a certain amount of money had to be earned from your art before you became credible. I looked up galleries in the Yellow Pages and gathered up a few of what I thought were my best paintings.

  I had to take the bus, so I chose three small paintings that I wrapped and placed in my backpack.

  The gallery had a large front of glass. On the entrance in gold script were the words Felinchi’s Gallery. I pushed open the door and wandered around looking at the paintings on the walls. It was so quiet you could have heard a nose-hair drop. I wondered if I’d chosen the wrong gallery. If it were always this empty, I’d never sell anything. Massive modernist paintings, in frames of ornate gold or simple black, filled the walls. I stood in front of a huge impressionistic painting of an old woman on a park bench. It made me want to weep and tear at my hair, it was so good. The woman, her face, her clothes, her bags, and the bench were solid, sombre shades of grey and burnt umber. The park, the people, the world behind her swirled in a kaleidoscope of colour. The expression on the woman’s face was not exactly sadness. I couldn’t find the word for it at the time, but a few years later, I’d be able to place it as resignation. I moved closer to read the artist’s name on the small typed card on the wall when I heard the click-clack of high heels on the floor behind me. I didn’t see the name, but I did read the price — $8,525.00. Holy shit. I turned. A woman in her thirties stood with one hand on her hip. She wore a slim black skirt, a quilted black vest, and a white turtleneck. Her blonde hair was up in a bun with what looked like red chopsticks sticking out of it.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I was wondering if. . .” I took the knapsack off my back.

  “Sorry, but I’ll have to ask you to check your bag. Theft, you know.”

  “Oh no. I brought you some paintings to look at.” I gestured at the walls. The knapsack banged against my knees.

  “Did you have an appointment?”

  “No.” I eyed the door, ready to bolt, but then she’d probably think I had stolen something and call the cops.

  “It’s normally done by appointment only, of course. But let’s have a quick look.”

  Thank God. I followed her to a small room behind a counter at the back. She gestured to a table in the centre of the room.

  As I unwrapped a painting, I realized the towels I’d used as coverings looked pretty grotty. One was spotted with purplish stains from when I’d briefly dyed my hair black, and all of them had holes and strings hanging off the edges. Note to self: Buy new towels to wrap paintings in.

  She took the first one I uncovered and held it up. It was Jimmy Wong from the fried egg eye cook series. I’d painted him sitting formally, his hands folded in his lap, wearing a cerulean blue mandarin jacket. The background was Chinese red wallpaper with a repeating pattern of blue and white saucepans and dragons.

  “Hmmm,” she said and looked at me. I tried to appear as artistic as possible while holding my breath. She was slightly pleased, I thought. I heard the front door open and footsteps cross the gallery. A portly man in a black suit entered the room. The lady put the painting down. The man nodded at her and she nodded back.

  When she looked back at me her eyes held something different. “And your training?”

  “My training?” I imagined myself doing push-ups on the floor in front of my easel.

  “Do you have any formal art training?”

  “No. But I’ve been working really hard.” I started to unwrap another painting; “This is of a woman who lived in an apartment beside me. I think it’s one of my best.”

  The man by the door cleared his throat. “The people from McKinley Design will be here in. . .” He looked at his watch. “. . .three minutes.”

  The lady stood. “Well, thank you for bringing these in, but I’m afraid they don’t quite meet the. . .” She glanced at the man. “. . .standards we have at Felinchi’s.” She walked out of the room and the man in the suit followed her.

  I packed the paintings back up and walked through the gallery. The man and woman stood in front of a large painting. The woman held a clipboard and wrote down what the man said. As I went out the door, one of the backpack straps caught on the door handle. My hands shook and I couldn’t get the strap untangled. I was afraid I’d dump the contents. There were tampons, safety pins, and linty mints rolling around in the bottom of it. I’d die if it all went scattering across the white gallery floor. The lady turned and walked over to me. She unhooked the backpack
strap and whispered in my ear. “Your paintings are good. Go to school. Don’t give up.” Then she walked back over to the man.

  I exited, took a deep breath, caught the bus to the library, and researched art schools. Over the next week, I prepared a portfolio, crossed my fingers, took a lot more deep breaths, and, at the grand old age of twenty-five, applied to the Paraskeva College of Art in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

  The day I got the acceptance letter in the mail, I whoo-hooed until my voice was hoarse, broke up with my current boyfriend, and began packing.

  I moved into a dorm room on campus and, on the first day, wrote in big black letters on the inside cover of my binder, Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul. — Vinnie Van Gogh. The campus of Paraskeva wasn’t large, but I still found myself lost almost every day. I’d arrive in class fifteen minutes late, breathless and disheveled, trying not to meet the eyes of the cool cucumbers already in their seats. I thought art school would be a huge community of freaks like me. I wasn’t prepared for the divas, the careerists, the competition, or the striving, striving, striving. I’d spent so many years with pipeliners, burnt-out musicians, and café cooks that I wasn’t sure how to talk to my shiny-faced classmates. My marks were good, but I was overwhelmed by all there was to learn and my inability to absorb it all. The other students seemed to know everything already, all the names of the famous painters, all the styles, schools, and techniques. I wondered if they were real artists. I felt like an amateur. They all seemed poised on the edge of greatness. I teetered on the window ledge of a high-rise, inside of which was the life I wanted. On the walls of that room hung the paintings I desperately wanted to paint. Off the ledge was more of the same life I had been living; the same people, the same parties, the same hangovers, the same dreams one always talked about but never got any closer to.

  Professor Gimlet taught Design Fundamentals 108, Thursday afternoons at one o’clock. He was older, maybe in his late forties, but he had a wonderful, wild mane of red hair that suggested deep emotion and sophisticated bohemianism. He wore jeans, impeccably cut blazers, and crisp cotton dress shirts unbuttoned low enough to show his sexy, hairy chest. He’d stride about on the platform waving his arms as he lectured. He seemed more like a conductor than an instructor and we all sat upright in our seats waiting for his hand to point to us — to take our turn in the piece he guided.