Nervous Dancer
Page 18
“Lights and sirens,” said Eleanor.
“No lights and no sirens,” said Hooper. “I don’t want to scare my missus.”
“Sirens and lights were in my dream,” said Eleanor. “My terrible premonition, it was about me. I was dreaming about me.”
Dee whooshed out air. “You’re okay,” she assured her. “My God, what are we going to do? We’ve got to be quick.” The room rushed around her like she was running. She pulled at Ty—this and that—not knowing what she wanted to do with him. Her eyes were off focus, she had smudges on her eyeballs.
Ty’s fingers spread out on hers, an annoying, sticky feeling. “If she wants to be the baby, how can she take care of me? Hooper likes dogs,” he said.
The dog whirled silently, her tail still.
“Give that dog back,” croaked Eleanor. “I don’t want to take care of it anymore. Everything makes me nervous. Give everything back.”
“Give me back, too?” Ty’s eyes were without expression, only reflection. “I remember when the big dog was borned, but where was I borned?” he demanded. “I can’t remember.”
Dee said, disgusted, “You’re not supposed to remember being born.” Her head was spinning. “She’ll make it back, Ty. Heck, it’s only her first little stroke. We’ve got to be quick.” She stepped in place and swallowed her words like they were knots, and tried to catch an old floor lamp to hold her up, but it turned out to be impossibly far away. She almost fell over nothing. The only thing within her reach was the very thing she feared most. She grabbed Ty by the tender nape of his neck and delicately balanced.
“What’s happening?” asked Eleanor.
“I’m thinking,” said Dee.
Silence buzzed like bugs between her ears. “Ty?” She tried his name twice. “Ty?”
“I’m so sorry,” Dee said finally. “You think your mother gave you away to a foster home? Well, she’s only pretend. I made her up. I’m your real mother.” She filled with tears at this old news.
“You told your own secret,” said Eleanor in her stroke-cracked voice.
Ty made a dull sound.
“I never could keep a secret,” Dee said.
Ty took a deep breath and refused to let it out. They had to shake him.
“Give him a drink of water, give him a drink of water,” said Hooper. They gave Ty water and he held it in his cheeks till it got warm.
Padded now by couch pillows on the floor, Eleanor laughed loudly lying down. Tears ran up her face. “He’s mine. You gave Ty to me.”
“Mother! Just for a while, to make up for me as a child. I can’t give for keeps!” said Dee.
“Ty’s just too small for me to see at my age,” said Hooper, nervously holding onto the dog.
Ty kept tiptoeing out. Dee kept finding him.
The ambulance arrived quiet and dark as a passenger car. It brought action, confusion, and rubber-tipped sounds. The attendants said, “Hi-how-are-ya,” did what they could for Eleanor, and carefully secured her onto the low stretcher. Because they were strangers pushing and pulling at her, she tried to tease them. “Don’t worry, I’m a tomboy.” With a snap, the thin legs of the stretcher slipped their catch and rose with her on it. She looked reckless that high. A colorless coverlet was smoothed around her, but she whispered urgently, “Is my skirt down?”
Dee said, “I know you can’t see beside you. But it’s where I am. I’ll keep up.”
“Do you have your shoes on?” Eleanor asked. “You might not be able to tell till you look, the soles of your feet are that hard.”
“I’m going to spit up,” shrieked Ty. “There’s a thumb in my throat.”
“No, there’s not. It’s your feelings.” Dee stabbed her toes deep into the ends of both shoes.
Ty then squeezed his throat up like a paste tube. “I think I’m going to spit up a bird. It’s flying in my throat. Help! Get away!” he called at the same time, begged her to come, and then whipped his shoulder at her.
Rolling, lying down, Eleanor passed the big TV; it was staring and whispering. “Somebody cut that poor damn picture off.”
Ty put his hand gently before the dog’s rubbery nose. She sat crooked on the rug, a dog waiting for its family.
Dee bent down. “You’re real family, so you’re not being given away.” She kissed the dog’s face. Ty watched closely and waited for the sound of the kiss.
Outside, deep black night had come through. The fog was in scraps. They could taste the humidity. Dee’s hair rose like wires.
Hooper was as muddled as if he wore shoes on the wrong feet. “I want to go with Dee and tell her how to drive,” he said, “and I want to ride in the ambulance.”
Dee settled it. “You don’t have to watch out for me, Daddy. You don’t have to keep telling me I’ve got it made!” She willed tears back in. But they came right out as four little blurry moons on her eyes.
“Oh yes, I do have to keep telling you,” he hooted, making fun of her. “Right now you don’t even remember what you came to get—you forgot your damned old eggs!”
They got Hooper into the ambulance; it was hard. He said, “I’m waiting for the one big break in life. But it keeps breaking into a lot of small moments.”
The ambulance geared to leave first. Through the glass, Hooper peered out intently, point-blank at Dee.
“Daddy? What are you staring at? You taught me every game, and let me win. You always gave me the biggest piece. Didn’t you want me to have it?”
They turned on the rotating light. The siren was silent. The light swept. One of Hooper’s eyes turned blue.
“I never say thank you,” said Dee. “Thank-yous are for phonies.”
This time Ty got very close before he ran away. He was so jumpy, one foot had flipped loose out on top of his sandal, licking like a tongue at his foot. So when he ran from Dee he lost. She caught him and played a trick on him. She swept her hand across his face, popped her thumb through her fingers, and said, “Look, you have to stay with me; I’ve got your nose.”
The dog barked, “Ruth warf,” once and no more.
“It’s all she can do,” said Ty. “Dogs can’t cry.” Through the lighted window they could see her turn twice and bump down on the couch, waiting.
They climbed into the car as if they had blinders on. They couldn’t look at each other yet. The key, forgotten, hung ready in the starter. Ty sat high on his tense bottom. He had two hard heels under him. He was straining against the seat belt.
Dee had no trouble following the ambulance full speed, it slinging a thin blue banner of light. “This kills me to follow,” she said, “when I know a shortcut.”
An old mosquito was in the car somewhere. It was after Dee. She scratched before it bit, and drove one-handed, the other curled around memories—Eleanor saying on and on, “Ty had to be saved from you before he was even born. You screamed the whole time trying not to have him. You made your doctor mad and he told you, ‘Stop it or I won’t be able to save this baby.’ You were so scared, you didn’t want to give birth to your own baby.”
The streetlights shed quicksilver, making their faces look quivery.
Dee, who saw no farther than the front of the car, said, “You seeked and scared my own secret out of me.”
A laugh flew from Ty’s mouth. “You didn’t even guess the right secret.” His swallow got stuck halfway. His face looked porous, pale white and fragile. “The right secret is that I want to grow up to be your boyfriend.”
“Thank you,” said Dee, and she thought her heart had filled with too much blood.
They were in a short block of buildings that looked exactly alike in the night. On the windshield their faces were reflected riding backwards. It handed Dee’s face to her, and Ty’s.
She gripped the steering wheel like she was going to stand up. “Don’t copy me,” she told him. “You’re not going to learn from me, are you? On the thin chance that I do despise myself?”
A man who didn’t even know me good, she thought, gave me
something as fantastic as a real baby. But then he left me and came back in a loose window and stole my old radio, the one that taught me to sing. I toughed it and went all the way with him and called it smart.
She looked between the fresh smears on the windshield. “Poor old bug splatter,” she said. “Will I ever learn to just meet people halfway? You know, we’re faster than an ambulance. We’re going to beat Mother to the hospital! We’ll be there to catch her coming in.”
Dee stuck a finger in her mouth, bit a fingernail, and spit out the polish. “I didn’t give you away to her—I was just giving you a chance to get away from me.”
Ty got the temporary giggles.
At the next hard turn, he said, “Then you’re not pretend anymore?”
Dee laid down on her horn, blowing it in alarm and celebration. Both at the same time.
Beside her, Ty shrieked in desperate delight.
The Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction
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Sandra Thompson, Close-Ups
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Molly Giles, Rough Translations
Daniel Curley, Living with Snakes
Peter Meinke, The Piano Tuner
Tony Ardizzone, The Evening News
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Philip F. Deaver, Silent Retreats
Gail Galloway Adams, The Purchase of Order
Carole L. Glickfeld, Useful Gifts
Antonya Nelson, The Expendables
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Debra Monroe, The Source of Trouble
Robert H. Abel, Ghost Traps
T. M. McNally, Low Flying Aircraft
Alfred DePew, The Melancholy of Departure
Dennis Hathaway, The Consequences of Desire
Rita Ciresi, Mother Rocket
Dianne Nelson, A Brief History of Male Nudes in America
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Carol Lee Lorenzo, Nervous Dancer
C. M. Mayo, Sky over El Nido
Wendy Brenner, Large Animals in Everyday Life
Paul Rawlins, No Lie Like Love
Harvey Grossinger, The Quarry
Ha Jin, Under the Red Flag
Andy Plattner, Winter Money
Frank Soos, Unified Field Theory
Mary Clyde, Survival Rates
Hester Kaplan, The Edge of Marriage
Darrell Spencer, CAUTION Men in Trees
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Bill Roorbach, Big Bend
Dana Johnson, Break Any Woman Down
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Eric Shade, Eyesores
Catherine Brady, Curled in the Bed of Love
Ed Allen, Ate It Anyway
Gary Fincke, Sorry I Worried You
Barbara Sutton, The Send-Away Girl
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Randy F. Nelson, The Imaginary Lives of Mechanical Men
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Peter LaSalle, Tell Borges If You See Him: Tales of Contemporary Somnambulism
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