Come and Join the Dance

by Joyce Johnson

  She had left Kay’s room the night before and gone straight to a drugstore to call them. It had seemed so possible at that moment to finally reveal herself to them, to tell them everything. But there weren’t any empty phone booths, and by the time she got to the next drugstore, she had somehow done too much thinking. She had sat in the booth, listening to the phone ringing twenty miles away in her parents’ house. It rang a long time and she had remembered that they would be just sitting down to dinner. She had imagined her mother coming in as usual to set the glasses of tomato juice on the table, her father putting down his newspaper to draw the blinds, the two of them sealed up inside their house in their bedroom slippers and their well-worn silence. They hated to have anyone call them at dinnertime. “You’d think people would know better,” her mother would say. Her father had answered the phone and, almost before she realized it, they had had the same conversation they always had. “Everything’s all right?” he had asked, which was always more of a statement than a question, “Oh … okay.” Then he had told her that he was fine too, except for a little stomach trouble, and Susan had thought, In a moment I’ll tell him and he won’t be able to eat his dinner. But the conversation was already ending. Her father said, “Well, dear, I guess you want to speak to your mother.” He always said this as soon as he could, always assumed the call was really for her mother.

  And immediately her mother was on the phone, talking to her about shoes and about keeping her white dress in a plastic bag so that it wouldn’t soil. “Yes, I’ve been doing that,” Susan had lied. It had been strange to tell an everyday lie. For a moment it had seemed impossible that she wouldn’t be graduating—after all, she had the dress and her mother was talking on and on about the navy-blue silk suit she was going to wear and whether or not it would rain tomorrow. Of course it wouldn’t rain, Susan had thought. Her mother had already created the graduation, had insured it in advance at the department stores.

  She hadn’t been able to interrupt; it had seemed so pointless to say she wasn’t going to get her diploma. Her mother mightn’t have believed her.

  At the very end her mother had asked. “Why didn’t you wait to call us later? You know we’re eating dinner.”

  “I forgot,” she had said.

  She saw them now. They were standing at the very edge of the lawn where they were not quite part of the celebration. She should have looked for them there in the first place, remembering the way they always hung back from crowds. Even if she had graduated, they might have chosen to stand there. How small they were! Today they looked like two faded children. Their smallness upset her, yet she was small like they were. “You’ll be the tall one,” they had told her when she was a little girl. She was also to have been the one who would graduate from college.

  “Hello!” she cried, waving at them, coming toward them across the lawn. For a second she was sure they saw her, but then they looked away. She stopped waving. It was very difficult to walk up to them. She felt terribly exposed. Why wouldn’t they look at her? Why didn’t either of them move? Where was her mother’s quick, dry kiss, her father’s blue serge embrace? “You didn’t wait in the lobby,” she said lamely.

  Her father cleared his throat. “We didn’t feel like waiting.” His voice was husky. He glanced at her mother, who was taking a Kleenex out of her pocket-book.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you,” Susan said.

  There was an interminable silence. Her mother dabbed at her eyes with the Kleenex. Her father, Susan noticed now, had brought his camera. It hung around his neck on its worn leather strap. She somehow hadn’t imagined he would bring it today. She hadn’t imagined anything about her parents, hadn’t thought of her mother putting on her new hat or her father taking the day off from the store, or their drive into the city and what they might have said to each other. She had only thought of them as they might exist for her at this moment, imagining herself confronting their abstract anger and feeling her own abstract guilt. Instead there was the camera—she remembered how her father had always told her with such pride, “This camera is as old as you are.” She stared down at the grass, letting its greenness hurt her eyes.

  “Well,” said her father, “what have you got to say for yourself?” He was trying to sound stern. She didn’t blame him. If only he could sound simply very angry, then it would be easier for her.

  “I don’t know what to say,” she said. She couldn’t look at his face.

  “I see,” he said bitterly.

  “If you want me to say I’m sorry, then I am sorry.” The words came slowly, but her voice was steady, too steady. How cold that must have sounded.

  He didn’t say anything. Was he going to turn her over to her mother now? She knew all too well how to act with her mother, how to pretend not to care, not to feel. But her father cried out, “What kind of trouble are you in? What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into?”

  “It … it’s not a mess exactly,” Susan faltered. “It’s really something sort of stupid.”

  Her mother glared at Susan with her reddened eyes as if she hated her. “They don’t take away your diploma for nothing! You must have given them a good reason! I suppose you’ve been staying out all night with that boy Jerry. I know what goes on in these colleges.”

  Susan felt an anger that frightened her. “I flunked gym,” she said. “I hope you’re satisfied with that.”

  “Susan!” Her father clutched at her arm. “Don’t talk to your mother that way!”

  “If you’re interested in why I flunked gym,” Susan went on grimly, “it’s because I didn’t go to class. And I don’t know why I didn’t go to class. But I didn’t.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?” said her mother. “What kind of excuse is that?”

  “It’s not an excuse.”

  “But—couldn’t you have gone … just enough?” Her father sounded almost as if he were going to weep; his fingers tightened on her arm. She didn’t answer. There was no way of answering either of them.

  She let her mother’s voice tear at her: “You’ve just thrown your education away. You had to go to a fancy college! We’ve always given you everything you wanted. We’ve given you the best. But you have no consideration, no gratitude.” Her mother always spoke of consideration, gratitude—never of love; perhaps she thought they were all the same thing. “This should have been the happiest day of my life!” The voice rose hysterically.

  “Marian,” her father pleaded, “don’t give vent.”

  “She let us come here today. She let us walk into this humiliation!”

  “Susan,” her father said, his face white, “just tell me one thing: How long have you known about this?”

  “She’s known about it for a month.”

  “I’m asking her.”

  Susan felt her throat tighten. “I found out yesterday. I hadn’t picked up my mail for a while.”

  “A lie!” her mother cried triumphantly. “What do you mean you didn’t pick up your mail?”

  Her father spoke as if he were very tired. “You knew last night, when you called?”

  Susan stared at him for a long time. “Yes,” she said, “I knew.” She struggled to think, to remember why she hadn’t told them. If only she could find a lie. “I couldn’t tell you,” she said desperately.

  “You let us come here instead?”

  “I was going to tell you but then I couldn’t. When you and mother were on the phone, I couldn’t.”

  “I don’t understand,” her father said heavily. “I don’t understand because I don’t believe you.”

  Her father’s words stunned her. She wanted only one thing now and that was the ability to walk away. There was nothing more to be said; she had no other reasons to give them, no energy to make her father believe her.

  “You must be very proud of yourself,” her father said.

  She had to get away ve
ry quickly. She was trembling. If she cried, her father would believe her. But she would not cry for him.

  “Excuse me,” she said, “I have to return my gown.” She plunged forward into the celebration.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THERE WAS NO one in the locker room—no one except the girl who was to check in the caps and gowns. “You’re the first,” she said to Susan, slipping the gown on a hanger. Then she took the cap and put it in a cardboard bin and handed Susan a white slip of paper. “There’s your receipt,” she said.

  Susan looked at the receipt and then at the gown, no longer her gown, hanging all by itself on the rack. Her graduation was really over. Now she was supposed to go up the stairs to the lobby, walk out onto the lawn, and after that—where? If only she could stay in the locker room for a while—it was a good place to wait.

  The girl was asking, “What’s happening up there, anyway? I’ll bet it’s going to go on for hours.”

  It took an enormous effort to make herself answer. “Well, people are drinking punch and talking.”

  “Oh-h God!” the girl sighed. “I’m just dying down here. How’s the punch—awful?”

  “I didn’t have any.”

  “I wish I could sneak up and get some,” the girl said, yawning elaborately.

  Susan found herself saying, “Why don’t you? I’ll stay here for a few minutes.” When the girl left, she thought, she would sit at her desk. She would have a definite function, a perfectly sane reason to stay in the locker room.

  The girl was looking at her suspiciously—or was she imagining that? “That’s awfully nice of you. But aren’t there people waiting for you or anything?”

  “Oh I don’t think so,” she said casually. “I think they’ve gone.” She had an image of her parents exiting by the green gate, walking heavily to their car. The girl’s indecision angered her. “There’s really no one waiting. Why don’t you go?”

  “Well … well, fine.” The girl stood up now. “But suppose someone comes?”

  “Don’t worry about a thing.” I’m really carrying it off, she thought.

  “Just tell them I’ll be back in a minute,” the girl said. “This is really going to save my life,” she called as she ran up the stairs.

  Susan took possession of the chair and the desk. She studied the receipt the girl had given her—she was number 5214—were you supposed to keep the receipt or throw it away? She decided she wasn’t the sort of person who kept receipts; if she were she probably would have graduated.

  Now that the girl was gone, there was too much silence in the locker room, something ominous about all those rows of empty lockers and the gray concrete floor. Basements were always frightening. If the girl had stayed, though, she couldn’t have waited here; she would have had to go upstairs before she knew where she was going. This way she had time to think, make a plan—except there was a sentence in her mind, forming and dissolving itself over and over again: “I want to die.” She wondered whether that was what she really thought or whether she was just pretending to think it. She was probably pretending because the strange thing was she didn’t feel any pain at all. She could think about her parents driving back to Cedarhurst and the possibility that she was never going to see them again, and feel nothing; she could even think about the possibility that she hated them, that she had been deliberately cruel—which was what they believed—and there was still no pain, no feeling, only numbness when her father had turned against her, only numbness now wondering why she was here, who she was waiting for, since obviously no one was going to come and find her. She wasn’t even going to die—she would most likely end up going to the movies.

  There was a clatter on the iron staircase and then the girl reappeared, crying, “Hi! Anyone come?”

  “No one,” Susan said. She realized guiltily that she was still sitting in the girl’s chair. She stood up.

  “Say,” the girl asked, “is your name by any chance Susan Levitt­?”

  The question terrified her. “Yes … it is,” she stammered.

  “Well, there’s a man in the lobby who asked if you were down here. I think it’s your father.”

  Suddenly she felt completely calm, just as if she had never had any doubt at all that he would come for her. They might almost have arranged this meeting.

  “Thanks,” she said to the girl, and went to climb the stairs.

  Her father was sitting on one of the stone benches at the end of the lobby. From a distance, he looked like one of the old men who sat every day on Riverside Drive—his body had the same weary, round-shouldered patience. She had never thought of her father as someone who was getting old. “Susie … ” he said, standing up the moment he saw her.

  She said, “Hello, Dad,” and then advanced slowly toward him. It seemed such a long walk, so sedate and formal. Ten years before she would have run to him, flung her arms around his neck and cried, “I’m sorry, Daddy, I’m sorry!” She had always pleaded with her mother not to tell him that she had been bad—it wasn’t his anger she had feared as a child but his sadness. “Did you do that?” he would ask with unbearable gentleness. “Yes, but I didn’t mean to.” She had really believed in her own innocence then, never doubted that once she said she was sorry she would be forgiven.

  “The girl told you I was here?” he said. She nodded. “I didn’t think it would take you so long to return your gown, but”—he cleared his throat—“I told your mother you probably had to wait on line.”

  He was frightened, she thought, and that was why he was lying a little, lying to himself—didn’t he know she had to run away from them? And yet it was he and not her mother who had been able to come after her. “There wasn’t a line,” she said.

  He was silent. She knew she had hurt him—she had done it deliberately. And then he said loudly, “I had to ask to find out which building it was. Susie!” He called out her name as if she were far away at the other end of the hall.

  “Yes, Dad?” she said politely. She wondered when she had first known that her father was someone who was afraid—she had not been able to forgive him for that for a long time now. A man should not be timid; a father should not be weak. Even his gentleness was proof of his failure. Sometimes when the three of them, the family, were together, her mother would turn to her ever so slightly with a quick, sly look, a narrowing of the eyes, as if they were sharing a secret about her father. She would make her own face go blank, but would feel as guilty as if she had signaled back to her mother that she had noticed; she had always been guilty of knowing what the look had meant.

  “Your mother’s tired,” her father said. “Maybe we’ll all go out and eat now. Some nice air-conditioned place.” He smiled at her sadly and waited.

  “I don’t feel like having any dinner,” she said.

  “You want to hang around here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well … ” He caught his breath heavily and tried to smile again. “I want you to come to dinner. We’ll go to a nice place. We’ll all feel better.”

  “Dad,” she said helplessly, “I’m really not hungry.”

  “You’ll be hungry later.” He took a step toward her. She felt a rising panic.

  “I just want to be alone!” she cried.

  “You mean you don’t want to be with us? I want you to come to dinner.” This time he tried to make it sound like a command. “Susan, I want you to do that for me.” He took out his pocket watch and looked at it. “It’s not as early as you think—it’s almost six. See.” He was holding up the watch.

  She said, “I know what time it is.”

  He didn’t put the watch away, but held it in the palm of his hand, staring down at it.

  Somehow she had to make herself speak. “Look, Dad, I just don’t think it’ll be any good.”

  “What do you mean it won’t be any good? I don’t know what you mean.” His voic
e was toneless, weary.

  “But you do know!” He didn’t look at her. “You know we won’t just be having dinner.”

  “Susie,” her father said, with excruciating patience, “I didn’t come here to lecture you. I came to ask you to do something for me—one simple thing. I want you to come with me, now. We’ll go to a restaurant with your mother, we’ll sit down at a table, and we won’t even talk about what happened. I told your mother we don’t need to. You’ve done something foolish and you know you’ve done something foolish—you’re a bright girl.” She wanted to interrupt him, silence him—something—and yet she couldn’t. “You must be very proud of yourself,” he had said to her on the lawn, and now he was burying the thing he had said, the moment when he had perhaps hated her, with other words, and she was letting him do it—she was his daughter, as fearful as he was. She had even known all along that in the end she would go to dinner, but she wouldn’t be doing it for him but because she wasn’t capable of being alone or even wanting to be alone. Only her pride had made her lie before. She had been waiting for her father to come and find her from the instant she had walked away. In a little while, when it would not cost too much, she would let herself surrender.

  “You know,” she heard her father say, “you should have come to us in the beginning—that’s where you made your mistake. Maybe we could have talked to the Dean, written a letter.”

  She realized then that her father still didn’t believe her. “Dad—I didn’t know till yesterday!”

  “Well,” he sighed, “whenever it was.”