Dance, Gladys, Dance

by Cassie Stocks

  Miss Kesstle moved her head up and down, her mouth still full of puffed wheat. I watched her, hoping she wouldn’t choke.

  “I still have lots more,” said Girl. “I’m going to make a bunch of clothes. You are a doll.” She leaned over and gave Miss Kesstle a kiss on the forehead. “And you have the coolest hair.”

  Miss Kesstle swallowed and smiled. “Frieda did it.”

  “Do you want to come see my projects?” asked Girl. She took Miss Kesstle’s arm, and away they went, looking like models from some incomprehensible high-fashion shoot.

  I stood with my mouth hanging open for a minute and then went to look for Mr. H. to see if he needed any help. I found him and Norman in conversation with several reporters in the hallway near the stained glass display. Mr. H. escorted the reporters away to tour the facilities.

  “Hey,” I said to Norman, “it’s going pretty good, I think.”

  “I can’t believe it might be closed down.” He hesitated and put his glass of wine down on the ledge of the display case. I stepped back and lifted my shoulders in readiness for another stealth hug attack. “My mom is coming tomorrow,” he said.

  “Lady March? Why?”

  “I asked Mr. Hausselman. He said it was fine.”

  “Does nobody ask me anything anymore?” I picked up his wine and drank it.

  “She’s bringing me some things.”

  “Like what?” I put the empty glass back on the ledge.

  He shrugged. “Just things.”

  “Fine. Great. Where’s she staying? Or is she going to a retreat somewhere?”

  Norman picked up his empty glass and frowned at it. “At the house. Mr. H. said I could sleep on the couch or in the study and Mom will take my room.”

  “This should be interesting.”

  We were interrupted by a loud yodel from farther down the hallway. I turned along with everyone else. I saw Whitman make a hasty exit into the men’s room, leaving Ginny standing alone.

  I pushed forward. In the middle of the hallway stood Whitman’s not-friend Marilyn from the deadbeat hotel. She wore the florid geometric print blouse again, her stirrup pants, and one white high-heeled shoe.

  “Whoooeee!” she bellowed. It sounded like the mating call of a consciously endangered species.

  “God,” said Ginny, “what is that?”

  “A screenwriter,” I said.

  “Where’s the party?” yelled Marilyn. Whitman stuck his head out the door of the men’s room, saw Marilyn a foot away from him, and tried to duck back in, but not quickly enough.

  “Hey, darling.” Marilyn lunged over, grabbed him around the neck, and hauled him out.

  “Get off me, Marilyn,” growled Whitman.

  Norman stood beside Ginny and me. “Friend of Whitman’s?” he asked.

  “Looks like they’re very close,” said Ginny as Whitman attempted to pry Marilyn’s arms off his neck.

  Norman approached the two of them. “Can I help you?” he asked Marilyn, smiling his widest Boy Scout smile. Marilyn released Whitman.

  “Is this a party?” she asked, looking around. “It’s a boring party. Do you want to dance?”

  Norman was shaking his head no when Marilyn grabbed his arm and took off unevenly down the hallway towards the main room with him in tow. I followed; this would be too good to miss.

  “Hitch up your suspenders and secure your hats,” said the bandleader. “The next song is ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown.’ Anyone with a heart condition should leave the floor now.”

  The men in the band stomped their feet and played their banjoes quadruple time. Marilyn pivoted on her one high heel and swung Norman around like a cooked noodle. The other dancers gave them a wide berth and Norman’s face blossomed a bright pink. Just as I thought one of them was going to fall, the band switched to a slow version of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” and by the time they reached the first chorus of by and by, Lord, by and by, Marilyn was draped over Norman’s shoulder, weeping. He talked to her while trying to lead her off the floor. She asked him something, he answered, and suddenly she attacked him, her arms windmilling but not connecting. She screamed, “You goddamn bastard! I suppose you think I’m one of those. Well, you motherfucker, you can dance with me but that’s it, you shit.”

  Whitman and Ginny disappeared out the door. No sign of Girl or Miss Kesstle.

  Mr. H. hurried over from across the room. “What’s going on?” he asked. “People are starting to leave. Who is that? Do you know her?”

  “Sort of, I met her once with —”

  “Could you please get her out of here? Or the only story we’ll get tonight is ‘Assault at the Art Show.’”

  Norman held Marilyn back with one hand and gestured at me with the other. Since when did I become Winnipeg’s peacekeeping troop of one? Mr. H. walked off. I went to the refreshment table, grabbed a full bottle of wine, and went back to where Norman and Marilyn were still engaged in their strange grappling. I waved the bottle at Marilyn. “Why don’t we get you back to your room and you can have a drink in peace.”

  “Sure, I’ve just got to finish with this fellow.” Her rotating arms increased their speed.

  “What did you say to her?” I asked Norman.

  His glasses slipped down his nose and he looked ready to cry. “I told her what I did for a living,” he said.

  I waved the bottle at Marilyn again. “Well, if you’re not coming, I guess I’ll just have to go and drink this. . .”

  Marilyn let go of Norman, stepped away, and shook her fist at him. “I’m not finished with you, buster,” she said. “You better watch your back. Let’s blow, chickie.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  A Scared-Ass Rabbit

  Mr. H. reappeared with my bag and a pair of crocheted slippers from the crafts table. “Here, see if you can get her to put these on. She’ll break her ankle in that shoe.”

  Marilyn steadied herself on my shoulder. She smelt sour, like she’d been on a six-day unwashed bender, which was likely. Mr. H. took off her shoe and put the slippers on. They were pink and purple and had two hairy little dingle balls of yarn on the top of each.

  “Fuck, are those ugly,” said Marilyn, unsteadily surveying her feet. “I’ll never get any action wearing those.”

  “You can change when we get back to your place,” I said, taking her shoe from Mr. H.

  Marilyn looked down at my shoes and shook her head. “You’re not going to get lucky either.”

  Mr. H. patted Marilyn on the back. “You’d better go, Cinderella, before you turn into a pumpkin.”

  “Ha,” said Marilyn. “Okay.”

  Away we went. I saw Miss Kesstle and Girl wandering back up the hallway as we left. I waved at Miss Kesstle. “I’ll be right back. Norman and Mr. H. are in there.”

  She smiled and waved. “Okay, Girl’s going to show me around.”

  We made our way out of the Centre. Marilyn seemed calmly absorbed by the dingle balls on her slippers, but I didn’t like the idea of her having a foggy mountain breakdown in a cab, so we walked. It was dark outside and the sidewalks were almost empty, but shouts and conversations drifted from the back alleys and buildings we passed. In this neighbourhood, the night’s entertainments had just begun. The fresh air perked Marilyn up. She muttered for the first few blocks about goddamn pornographers and then gazed at me.

  “Who are you again?”

  “I’m Frieda. You met me with Whitman.”

  This didn’t seem to impress her a lot. “Are you a movie ass-hole too?”

  “No, I’m a painter. Well, I was but I quit.”

  “They got you, did they?”

  “Who?” Marilyn stumbled and I caught her knobby elbow.

  She poked my palm with her elbow and I dropped my hand. “Potholes. Them, they, the soul-stealers.”

  “Uh, maybe.”

  Marilyn gestured around her, up at the seedy month-by-month apartments we walked by. “The rest of these losers never made a choice, you know, nobody ever wan
ted them. They’re garbage people. I decided not to part-ic-ipate.” She thumped on her chest with her forefinger. “I threw myself away before they could use me up.”

  I nodded, though I wasn’t really getting the gist of it all. I could see the hotel just up the block. I tried to think of something to change the direction of the conversation. Pre-frontal squall line, low pressure system, prevailing wind. Warning: Here be inebriated screenwriter monsters.

  “They never found me,” she said. “You know why? Because they weren’t looking for me. I could shit better poetry than Bukowski writes. A woman drunk is nothing but a drunk — I’m a genius — well, I was. You know that?” She glared at me, as though daring me to disbelieve her.

  “No.” If she took offence to something I said, I still had the wine bottle in my bag. I could bribe her with it, or, if worse came to worst, crack her over the head with it.

  “You don’t know anything. Do you think it doesn’t get you? Miss — what was your name again?”

  “Frieda. What doesn’t get me?” I said, wondering how I’d come to be escorting a crazy drunk wearing dingle ball slippers down the street.

  “It’s about prejudice, honey. That’s all.”

  “I don’t think so. I haven’t been prejudiced against.” We’d reached the steps of the hotel. She allowed my hand on her arm as we went up the stairs, then pushed it off once we entered the doors. There was no one at the desk again but the little radio was on, playing off station, a mixture of voices and static. The large stain still marked the carpet and I stepped over it as best I could. I was happy to see no one had defecated on the landing tonight. Maybe the sign worked. “Do you have your key?”

  She reached inside her bra and took out a key.

  “Right here in the safety chest. They’ll show you a few like Plath or Woolf and they’ll say, there, look, there’s a path. It’s a path, all right — under the bushes that a scared rabbit could maybe fit through if it kept its skinny-ass little back down. The men are on the expressway, and don’t you forget it while you’re belly down in the bushes.”

  We stood at her door. She leaned against the wall and handed me the key. Mascara was smudged in dark circles under her eyes and one eyebrow had been rubbed off at some point. She looked lopsided and twenty years older than when I’d first seen her in the hallway at the Art Centre. I opened the door and turned on the light, but she made no move to go in.

  She continued, “They swerve, swarve, sarve. . .”

  “Save?” I ventured.

  “Save? Are you an idiot? They serve,” she enunciated carefully, “up those women.”

  “What women?” I surveyed her room. It was as filthy as before and smelt like fifty-six dirty ashtrays.

  “Listen, chickie. Plath. Woolf. They’re telling you that’s the price you’ll pay.” She rubbed her hand across her face, smearing her remaining eyebrow across her forehead. “You’ll leave your little squalling babies some bread and milk and go and put your goddamn head in the oven and turn on the goddamn gas.” She banged on the hallway wall with her fist. “You wonder if the next day will be the one that makes you put the rocks in your pockets. They tell you you’re not fulfilling your true purpose, to have babies and serve the world, they’ll tell you that you’re selfish and warped to want to do something as ego-tis-ti-cal as art. To want something as ne- ne- ne. . .” Her eyes swivelled up to the ceiling as though she might find the rest of her word up there.

  “Needed?” I tried. This was some warped game show.

  She shook her head.

  “Nebulous?”

  “Better. More.”

  “Uh, nefarious?”

  “More.”

  “Negligent, neurotic?”

  “Excellent!” She clapped her hands and tilted forward.

  I caught her and propped her back up on the doorframe. “But,” I ventured, sure that I was going to lose even the possibility of lovely parting gifts, “no one told me that.”

  “Every day the whole world tells you. In your bones, in the air. You think you know better, you still feel guilty. And, and, and. . .” Her eyes closed, then opened again. “And if you manage to do anything — you believe every fucking damning thing they say ’cause you don’t believe in yourself. You’re an idiot, go away, you give me a headache.”

  She didn’t move from the door. I gingerly took her arm, led her into the room, across all the crap on the floor and onto the bed. I got her shoe out of my bag and sat it beside her. She seemed to have forgotten all about the wine. She began to droop and her words slowed like a pull string doll with damaged mechanics.

  “You thought you. . . could make. . . it once, didn’t you?” She looked ready to fall asleep, so I started to edge towards the door. She lifted her head slightly, her eyes narrowing as they met mine.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” I was at the door.

  “Nothing. . .” she mumbled, her head beginning to drop to her chest.

  I put my hand on the doorknob and she suddenly sat upright, picked up the shoe I’d left sitting beside her, and threw it at me. The shoe thumped on the wall beside the light switch.

  “Everything!” she screamed. “It has everything to do with everything.”

  She bent down, picked up an ashtray, and hurled it at me as I tried to get out the door.

  “You stupid shit —” The ashtray shattered on the door as I closed it. There was another thud, then a crash on the door, then silence.

  Things were winding down at the Centre. The bluegrass musicians were packing up their gear. In the days I traveled with the Bang Howdy Band, I would have been on my knees pulling up the duct tape that secured the wires to the stage and scrubbing off gooey balls of glue residue with my fingertips. The glamourous life of a groupie girlfriend.

  A few people lingered by the refreshment table, packing up the squares and finishing off the wine. Ginny and Norman cleared empty glasses and plates off a table.

  “How’d it go?” asked Norman. He balanced two plates in one hand and held a rag in the other.

  “As well as can be expected,” I said. I took the plates from him. “You wipe, I’ll carry.” I gathered more plates and stacked them up and down each arm.

  “Do you think there’s still discrimination against women?” I asked Ginny as we walked down the stairs to the basement kitchen.

  “Did you see Whitman leave?” she asked.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “He just disappeared. He didn’t even say anything.”

  “Marilyn thinks prejudice still stops women from doing things.” I opened the swinging door to the kitchen with a hip-check, then held it with my foot for Ginny to get through, still balancing my two armloads of dishes. Who said I never learned anything in my waitressing years? The second door swung back as I turned to get in and smacked me in the face.

  “Shit.” I did a little octopus dance to keep the plates on my arms.

  “Do you think he went to see her?”

  “Who?”

  “That freakish screenwriter.”

  “No. I’m talking about feminism.” I put the plates on the counter and rubbed my forehead. The room had the slightly dreary air of a church basement kitchen, designed purely for functionality, its drab whiteness relieved only by handwritten notes: Please Rinse Sink. Turn Off Lights Before Leaving. I thought I should add another: Please Let Art Students Loose in Here. I’d suggest it to Mr. H.

  “Feminism is so old.” Ginny set her stack of plates down on the counter. “Maybe he’s waiting outside.”

  “It’s a political movement, not a dance step.”

  “Feminism is passé,” she said. “It’s like nipple piercing. No one even talks about it anymore. I’m going outside to have a look.”

  “Right,” I said as she left the room, “feminism is exactly like nipple piercing. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”

  “What?” Ginny turned.

  I closed my eyes. Maybe when I opened them I’d be having a conversa
tion with someone who was listening to me.

  “Never mind,” I said.

  Mr. H., Norman, Miss Kesstle, and I finished tidying up the worst of the mess and Norman drove us back to the house. Ginny took a taxi home to see if Whitman was waiting in the lounge at her apartment building. Miss Kesstle sat beside me in the back seat of the Valiant. Her hairdo had started to droop, but she was cheerful and smiling. She talked non-stop about Girl all the way home. What a sweet person and how talented to make that beautiful dress out of her doilies.

  We delivered Miss Kesstle next door and went inside the house. Norman went straight to bed; he had to get up at six to pick up Lady March from the airport. Mr. H. and I sat at the kitchen table and had a cup of chamomile tea. The phone rang. It was Ginny.

  “Did Whitman come back there?”

  “No. Why?”

  “He dumped me. He was waiting outside my apartment building. He said he didn’t think it was a good idea for us to see each other anymore. I think he’s really attracted to me and it scared him. But where’d he go? Do you think he found somebody else?”

  “That would be moving fast.”

  “Let me know what time he comes in. I’m going to go in case he calls.”

  “You’re probably better off —”

  “Okay, bye.” Click.

  “See ya,” I said as I hung up the phone. I went and sat back at the table.

  “Troubles in the big city?” asked Mr. H.

  “Just the usual.”

  Mr. H. yawned, slouched forward, and stirred honey into his cup. He still wore his tuxedo shirt and purple suspenders, but he’d taken off his tie. I took a sip of tea and grimaced. Herbal tea just doesn’t do it for me. No matter how long you let it steep, it always tastes like something that hasn’t quite happened yet. Still, I knew better than to caffeinate the head hamsters before bedtime.

  “Can you believe Miss Kesstle and Girl hit it off?” I asked.

  “It might be good for both of them,” Mr. H. said.

  “You figure? I can’t think of one thing they have in common, besides the doilies now.”

  “Loneliness?” said Mr. H.

  CHAPTER TWENTY