Nervous Dancer

by Carol Lee Lorenzo

  “He’s your dad, not mine,” I say. We both laugh at his mistake. “Why isn’t he here? What does he want?” We talk while he hangs on in the city.

  “Dad says he thinks he’s going to get sick, so he’s staying and sleeping on the office couch.”

  I get on and tell him that when he thinks he’s sick it’s generally because he’s had too much to drink and that he has made his stomach swell, and he’ll be all right in the morning. And to try to go to the bathroom. That always helps, if he remembers. He feels that he is growing fat and old.

  “How’s your wound?”

  He seems to be moaning for me. “Oh, all right,” he says.

  That’s it, I think. When he did it, I forgave him. But now I’ve done it and I can’t forgive myself. Something is teetering.

  “Are you all right?” asks my husband, when he is not sure.

  “Are you all right?” I ask back, whenever I’m not sure.

  “You dressed yourself like a little girl,” he remembers. “I thought you needed taking care of. You didn’t hardly eat anything on a date. And now you are the strongest, most destructive woman I know.”

  There is a pause for my breath and his. “I’m drunk,” he says. We hang up for the night.

  Our dinner is on unstable TV tables, but we are not watching TV. We are watching night and the pond touch. William is the only one who ever terrorized me and hit me and held me down. And he is the only one who ever saved me (from myself, my mother, and my first home). Outside is one deep color now; the mountains are furry with the dark. The corset of my spine unclasps and unhitches.

  Later I lay stretched out in Ian’s room on top of the spread of one of the twin beds. Drowsiness rubs around me like a cat. I feel much better now. I relax and grow full size. There is a cricket tonight behind the bathroom door making a fuss for us, giving us a song on his spurs.

  Our cat hears the cricket, but she lets it live and seeks out my heartbeat and breath, and she lies—a great slick black stone of a cat—on my chest and when she breathes out, I have to shut my eyes, she’s that close. She smells like the summer osprey I made up because I fed her sardines for dinner. “Wanna go fishing?” I ask Ian.

  “Mom, you’re so silly,” he says. “It’s night and almost winter.”

  I rise in slow pieces and have to settle the cat twice before she pins herself to the pillow. I search for a sitting spot and find one right where Ian’s little boy’s waist curves in briefly.

  “Ian,” I say, “did you miss me?”

  “When?”

  “This morning. At school. I took too long. About the stupid car. No, the car’s not stupid. What I did was.”

  “What’d you do? Get lost in the garden?”

  “I tried to hurt somebody and I got mad at myself.”

  “Again?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I wanted to hear you sing.”

  “It was all of us singing. The whole school.”

  I’m rubbing my fingernails against my mouth. Without looking at Ian, I say, “Are you still listening to me?”

  “I’m asleep,” he says. Then, “Why did we move? We had bad times in the city, too.”

  I suck the lining of my mouth over my teeth till it draws thin. I take my fingernails and on Ian’s pajama chest I draw a box house and tiny chimney and the one big window of his bedroom only—a child’s picture. I carefully breathe my tears up my nose and say, “I love you, Ian.”

  I don’t pray. Am I going to play the helpless little girl with God, too? I get as far as hoping. It is not me that is the most vulnerable. It is the sergeant. I hope that his first guesses about me, through the trees, are right and that what I know is wrong. He doesn’t know how deep I can cut.

  I hold both of Ian’s hands, a child’s damp hands. He is asleep. I’m afraid I’ll hold too tight and hurt him. I make no sound, only my tongue tickles my palate. I see the sergeant lying in my yard on the ice hill. He is slowly sliding toward us.

  the one-armed man

  It was the morning of the vacation. “Mother, Una’s out there throwing a tantrum at herself,” said one of the sisters. “She’s beating her head on the car hood,” said the other.

  Una could hardly hear them. They were behind her like they were in a jug and she was the one who was out because of her temper.

  The car hood was cool; her head was hot. “You just give yourself such awful hurts,” her father said. He stopped her, held her with his right hand, and soothed her with his missing left hand. This made them both look down to be sure his gloved artificial hand was touching. A long time ago he had lost his hand and part of his arm in a power company accident. He tried to always wear a long-sleeved shirt, and a black glove covered the appliance, which he hated.

  This whole morning tantrum had started when Una came to the door to see when they were leaving. She’d been asleep and dreaming. Then she’d seen they were all ready and she was the one out of step—the last one, the cow’s tail again. Her father had called toward her darkened shadow stuck in the screen door, “Is that you, Una? Let’s get going. Are you still in your birthday suit, darling?”

  Of course, her two silly sisters had laughed and said, “Look what she’s wearing for vacation.”

  “It’s just my pajamas!” It had made Una angry at them, and angrier at herself. She’d rushed to her room, shucked off the pajamas, and wadded up the hateful new sundress with a hole in the back top of it. “I’ll stick to the car upholstery.”

  “Don’t tie knots in your clothes like that,” said her mother. “They’re new and you wanted to be different from your sisters. They’re in yellow; you’re blue. I know you hate to look like them.”

  “I had been resting,” she said. Resting like she’d swallowed a pool of sleep and could breathe underwater. When she woke she’d felt sleep had tripped her. “You moved me secretly.”

  “Just to the front room, so we wouldn’t forget you.” Her mother kissed her while talking.

  She didn’t want to have anything to do with her mother anymore and didn’t know how to get rid of her. Her finger came up to stamp the kiss right off.

  “Why does she have to start things ugly?” one of the sisters said.

  “Why do we have to start vacation so early?” Una bit back. “When I’m sleepy.” She had been up late spying on her parents.

  “Now you just calm down, you little viper,” her father said.

  “Don’t call her that,” her mother said.

  “Don’t take up for me,” said Una, her mouth as bitter as if she’d eaten grass for breakfast.

  “All that’s wrong is you pulled her from a deep sleep. You scared her.” Her mother handed her the broken ring of a glazed doughnut. “Your sisters ate too fast. I took only a bite and then realized it was the last one and you love them.”

  Una would not eat after her mother. “I don’t like the last of anything,” she said. “And I see you even put the pet birds in the car before me.” The cockatiels were in their big cage in the middle of the back seat with their cover folded alongside. A morning halo of loose feathers hung over them, came apart, and drifted down to their feet and the cage bottom.

  She got in the front seat next to the shift to sit beside her father. The older she got, the more she loved him and the less she loved her mother. The hole design in the sundress felt like a rash on her back.

  “Cover the birds so they won’t get the a/c draft. And they can go back to sleep now,” said her father.

  “I wasn’t ready to wake up either.”

  “Next time, honey, give me a sign,” said her father.

  Marie and Rita, the sisters, were quiet for a minute, the bird cage between them.

  “You just can’t keep ‘honey’ off your tongue,” said her mother. Something still wasn’t settled.

  Last night, in their room, there had been trouble between them. Una had not slept, but stood on her rock in the grass outside and watched them through the windows without being able to hear more than a few words at th
at distance. It looked like the same subject to her—her father’s women—where he would admit he had broken the promise again. He’d failed them all. One moment everything would be fine and the next he would be sinking into a terrible sadness he alone carried. It was always a woman that got him past it—but separated him from his family.

  There was never any violence. Only Una was violent, with her temper tantrums. But they were surely mad—her mother with her father, her father with himself. She would give her forgiveness over and over again until he took it. As Una watched, she took his one hand in hers and kissed his shoulder.

  In the back seat, Rita and Marie peeked under the cage cover. The birds stretched their wings to balance when the car started moving.

  “We don’t want to sit next to the birds,” said Marie. “They smell like seeds and they’re dusty. But we don’t want Una cause she talks with her feet. She won’t keep them still. And she keeps things in her pockets that poke us.”

  “I don’t! It’s my hipbones,” said Una.

  Rita said, “Look at her hair, she hasn’t even combed it.”

  “I can’t,” said Una. “It’s wrinkled.”

  When she turned her head to them, they said, “Don’t let her look at us with those old dark eyes of hers; they’re so dark you can’t even see the pupils in them.”

  “The Twins,” Una called them because they generally came up with one thought between them.

  “We don’t bang our heads on the hood so Daddy’ll come running either. We’re more subtle than that,” said Rita, who did the best at school.

  Loud and slow, Una drew their share of air-conditioning into her lungs and held it.

  Soon they were out of town, their father driving one-handed, the other in its black glove resting lightly with the wheel running between unfeeling glove fingers. The map was unfurled. Their mother lifted it crinkled in front of her and their father literally drove up the corner of New York State and cut into Vermont. As the road switched and turned, the birds would shuffle on their perch and crack little seeds in rapid succession.

  “We’ve got empty husks floating from under the cover and all over us,” complained the sisters. “We’re going to smell like birds in Vermont.”

  Now all the unfamiliar towns were way back from the road. The sisters drank thermos water and wanted to stop for bathrooms, but they kept going. The trees had more space between them until the fields won and the trees were dark nests hovering at the edges. “Wildflowers look like silk growing in grass fields,” said their mother. “Flowers just spreading out everywhere.”

  The sisters ate Lifesavers.

  Then they read the “Welcome to Vermont” sign. “We’ve crossed over,” said their father. Their mother read the next sign on the opposite side of the road. Its back to them was tattooed with spray paint. “Vermont for Vermonters. Turkey, go home.”

  Their father began to sing about cows and then he said, “If you stick your fingers in a cow ...” Their mother stopped him, but he started again. “Stick your fingers in their mouths, they’d suck on them.”

  Una was sewn up silent by it; she never laughed at adult jokes.

  “Daddy, you’re disgusting,” the sisters said. Their voices spiraled and darted.

  “Look,” shrieked Una. “A covered bridge.” As they entered it, she ducked. The shadow of it climbed into the car and rode with them. The tires had a hollow beat inside this thing, as if the car now had heavy hooves. It was suddenly cool. The passing through had been like a little nap for them.

  Una and her father looked straight ahead. The others looked sideways to see Vermont’s grass flying by. Una would not turn to watch the grass because she felt like she still had herself by the neck; tantrums really did hurt.

  “Weeds can be so delicate when they’re wild,” said their mother.

  “And look at that,” said their father, when he gave a glance. “A bull just got up with wildflowers stuck on his big pee-pee thing.”

  The sisters in the back buzzed with astonishment.

  “Men,” said their mother—her voice broke on the word.

  The birds dropped to the cage bottom. “Who shook my birds down?” asked their father, exasperated.

  “No one. They fell.”

  “Perhaps they just suddenly saw the sky,” said their mother. The Vermont blue was high and made Una feel like she’d dropped her gravity.

  Not long after, they got to the place they were going. “Snakes!” the sisters in the back cried. “We see snakes.”

  “I’m not scared of them,” said Una.

  “Why not?” asked their father.

  “Cause I learned,” she said.

  “Well, you were once a little snake,” said their father.

  “Stop,” said their mother. “You’ll hurt her feelings.”

  Una held onto his one hand.

  “Ah, that’s just low wind parting the grass for us to get to our cottage.” Then he poked Una with his artificial hand. “The only snake in the grass is me.” She wouldn’t answer him or let go of his other hand.

  “Oh, the country is awful,” said the sisters, but they liked the cottage and the stone rise, a mound of granite that rose right behind it. They went to it immediately while their father unloaded.

  The rooms of the cottage were small and opened into each other like chambers of a shell.

  The sisters came down from the granite outcropping and their mother followed. “There’s a pool in the middle of the rock,” said Rita. They were always dressing and undressing for something, so first thing, they skinned themselves from traveling clothes into tight, brief bathing suits.

  “I’d better check,” Marie whispered to Rita. Una watched their lips move, but actually the sisters kept their voices so low to each other they all had to read lips. Una knew what this was about. One’s period had come several months back and they were expecting the other’s. And the one who got it was on a hop, skip, and jump schedule. “As regular as a cut-rate sheet,” their mother said.

  “No freckles in my pants,” Marie said.

  Then they began testing everything in the cottage—drawers, mirrors, doors. Una and her father unpacked, arranged, smoothed feathers, and settled into their new temporary place.

  Their mother had changed to long walking shorts. “I don’t want to go in yet,” she said. “Not on the late half of the first day.”

  They walked up to where they would swim later. “Such blue,” said their mother. In unison, they looked down. “Try up,” she said. She was talking about the sky over the quarry that was only reflected in the water.

  It had been a rock quarry, so it was somewhat scary. “Harvesting rocks, for heaven’s sakes,” Rita, with the good grades, said. Only the sisters went in together and dabbled and never quit holding hands, except when coming out—there were two ladders. They said the water was a wonder if you didn’t look down. “It’s a blue hole all the way through to the bottom.”

  “But where’s the bottom?” asked their mother.

  “You’re not supposed to be able to reach the bottom of everything,” their father told her.

  “Come with me, Una,” said her mother. “We’re going hunting.” Her mother set out for a fenceless field. Una crisscrossed her mother’s path while her mother named wildflowers out loud. She had a good eye, a field guide, and patience to have a gentle hand to look at them carefully.

  “But you don’t let flowers into our house,” said Una. “Why?”

  “I don’t like flowers in vases or cold flowers from the florist shops. Because they make me think I’m sick.”

  “Were you ever sick?” said Una.

  “Almost,” her mother said.

  When they circled back, the sisters were halfway out, coming up, naming the ladders—mine, mine, they said. They took over one of everything.

  “Disgusting,” said Una. “It looked like you were taking a bath. You didn’t swim.”

  “We’ll swim tomorrow,” they said.

  When they came in t
he cottage, their father was in the bathroom, his clothes empty on the big bed. He could be heard this time removing the appliance that was his missing arm; it slipped and clicked against tile. They listened to him shower in private, free of the thing which he even wore in sleep.

  The sisters said, “Girls at school fall in love with our father because he only has one arm.”

  “What?” Their mother shuddered and shook out her blouse. Dressing, she was forever losing and finding her jewelry, so there was a little flutter before dinner that mildly upset the birds, who had been watching the sky for wings.

  In the main house’s dining room, their mother ordered a salad. When it came it was huge and deep in a dish. She said over it, “Well, shall I eat the Garden of Eden now?”

  This shamed Una, though her mother was slender in her clothes. She hated to see her mother eat the wrong salad, big instead of small. Una distrusted food. Their father got her a steak and a potato, which she mostly cut and made patterns with.

  The sisters discussed what they would do on their vacation now that they were here, and it sounded like it had already happened. Una never liked either their surprises or their plans.

  On the way back, their father stopped by the linen closet and took extra towels for the birds, who slept safe under towels hung on their cage. Moonlight was out and moonlit air was the purest to breathe, their mother said. And Una got a mosquito up her nose that kept singing there all night, she said.

  Their mother could not hold their father’s one hand now, she carried iced raspberry tea in a glass with her. “I just loved each swallow so much,” she said, “I couldn’t and wouldn’t stop drinking it.” It looked like stained glass and she finished it. If you got close enough to her lips, and their father did, she smelled like a raspberry.