Dancing on Coral

by Glenda Adams

  Lark threw herself down on a bench in the square, dropped her book beside her, hitched her skirt above her knees. She stretched out her legs, reached her arms along the back of the bench, dropped her head back, closed her eyes, holding herself out to be warmed by the sun. Then, conscious that she must be drawing great attention to herself, she sat up, stood up, straightened her skirt, picked up her book, and after a brief look around her, ducked into the subway.

  When Lark arrived home, Manfred Bird had left and Tom was involved in a long phone conversation with the secretary of a hated colleague in his department. His feet were on Lark’s desk, the television was on. The secretary needed to discuss with Tom the affair she was having with a certain prominent member of the department, for it appeared that the wife might be on the point of discovering it all.

  “Far out,” said Tom. “People aren’t possessive anymore, jealousy is a thing of the past. Nobody owns anybody. He’s free, you’re free, she’s free. Just hang loose.” He began to offer sympathetic and lengthy advice, then said, “Hey, hold it, I’ve got to take a leak.”

  The secretary held on at her end of the line while Tom went to the bathroom.

  “Hi,” said Lark, as Tom passed her in the hall on the way.

  “Hi,” said Tom. “Don’t hang up the phone, I’m still talking to Mimi.”

  This gave Lark time to reconsider the encounter in the bookstore. By the time she got off the subway and had seen the notices for The Sky Above and the Mud Below tacked on trees and railings and posts, confirming the present and her marriage to Tom the following day, she was sure that the Donna Bird she had seen in the bookshop did not exist.

  Lark prepared a cheese soufflé, using stone-ground whole-wheat flour and a salad with walnut oil imported from France, which Tom ate while he talked on the phone. “I’m having a gourmet omelette here,” he said to Mimi, between mouthfuls. “You should see it.” Then he called out to Lark. “She says to tell you you’re terrific.”

  As she ate, perched on a stool in the kitchen, Lark decided not to mention the Donna Bird episode. She washed the dishes, then went to the bedroom and laid out the long white cotton dress she had bought for the wedding. Then, since she could hear that Tom was nowhere near finished talking to Mimi, she started putting away her winter sweaters and socks, slamming cupboards and drawers.

  “Hey,” said Tom, coming into the room after a while. He had finished his telephone conversation. “The phone tappers would have enjoyed that phone marathon I just had with Mimi. All that info about who is sleeping with whom.”

  Lark was standing on a stool poking a sweater into the top of the closet.

  “Anything wrong?” Tom asked.

  “Just a bit tired. Long day.”

  “Mimi really needed my help tonight,” said Tom. “She’s in a real mess. I can’t tell you about it. She wouldn’t let me go. I don’t know, but women just seem to confide in me. I’ve always been a crying towel, since way back.” He sighed and rubbed his cheek against Lark’s leg. “One of my students even sent me a note the other day—would you believe it?—that ended, ‘Of course I’m in love with you.’ It was a female student, of course.” Lark hopped down from the stool, gathered up her mittens and long johns, and hopped back up.

  “Hey, don’t put all those sweaters away. You’ll be needing one or two,” Tom said, suddenly remembering he had exciting news for Lark.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll be needing a sweater.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yup. It’s going to be colder, at night, you can be sure of that.”

  “Where?”

  “Where we’re going this summer,” Tom sat on the bed, fingering Lark’s white dress.

  “Where? The North Pole?” Lark stood still on the stool, holding the mittens and underwear.

  Tom shook his head happily.

  “Alaska? Chile? Bhutan?”

  Tom shook his head. “Come on, be serious. Not that cold. You’ll just need a sweater, that’s all, in case it’s cold.”

  “Are you going to tell me for once, without putting me through these wretched hoops of yours?”

  “Ha, it suits you, a little burst of temper. Good. Shows spunk.”

  Lark burst into tears.

  “Jesus,” said Tom. “What’s gotten into you? You really are on edge. It’s the wedding, isn’t it?”

  Lark dried her tears and got down from the stool. “I’m sorry. Where are we going this summer, Tom?”

  “Guess,” said Tom. He was putting on his beige pajama cutoffs.

  Lark sighed. “The Falkland Islands.”

  “Be serious,” said Tom. He climbed into the bed, which he had made from two slabs of foam glued together, which rested on two doors, which in turn rested on several cinder blocks.

  “You’ll never guess.”

  The phone rang. It was Solomon Blank. “I’ve been trying all night to get you. I can’t talk long. Amanda will be back any minute. I just wanted to wish you well, and I wanted you to know, if I weren’t married already, I would want to marry you myself.” And without giving her time to say anything, he hung up. Lark stayed holding the phone, wondering what she would tell Tom, then she replaced the receiver and quickly picked up her white dress and hung it on the closet door so that she could see it as she lay in bed.

  “You’ll never guess,” said Tom from the bed.

  “In that case,” said Lark, “why don’t you just tell me.” She put on one of Tom’s old shirts.

  Tom picked up a copy of Dissent and began turning the pages.

  “I’ll be back in a minute, then you can tell me.” And Lark left the room.

  When she came back, Tom said, “You were a long time.”

  “I just had to see something.”

  “Guess.”

  “France.”

  “How did you guess? You knew all the time, you heard me on the phone.”

  “I must have E.S.P.,” said Lark, getting into bed. “And anyway, tell that Mimi, or Peepee, or whatever her name is, to cry on another towel.”

  “Shame on you, Larkie,” said Tom. “You’re jealous.” Lark said nothing. She turned away from him. He rolled toward her and put his arms around her, fitting himself against her back, his cheek against the back of her head. “We’ll leave in a couple of weeks. It can be our honeymoon. We can stay with Agnes and her mother in Paris, and with Elizabeth and Jean-Claude for free. Mmmm, Larkie, what do you think?”

  Asking her opinion and giving out so much information all at once was Tom’s way of apologizing to Lark, making amends. She wanted to say something about Manfred Bird, his stupidity, since that seemed to be one way of aligning Tom with her, but it would spoil this moment. She turned around and nestled into Tom’s chest, then thought about Solomon Blank and his phone call. Fortunately she loved Tom now.

  That night Lark awoke suddenly. Her dress on the door looked like someone standing watching them. Then she saw a shadow. “There’s someone on the fire escape,” Lark whispered to Tom, sound asleep beside her.

  He leapt to his feet, his fists up, his legs apart, bent. “What? What?”

  “That shadow,” Lark said. A man seemed to crouch on the fire escape, his round back casting a blurred shape on the window shade.

  Tom jumped toward the window, landing in the same position, fists up, legs apart, bent. “Move it!” he screamed. “Move it!” The shadow seemed to move only slightly. He jumped at the shade and wrenched it down, then let it fly up and spin around and around, the tassel on the cord hitting the pane and frame with every revolution.

  There was no one, nothing, on the fire escape. Tom was now fully awake and seemed surprised to find himself stationed pugilistically at the window in the middle of the night.

  “What?” he asked.

  “There was someone on the fire escape.”

  Tom grunted. He threw up the window and leant out and scanned the air shaft. “No one here.”

  “There was someone there,” said Lark. “I th
ink.” Tom turned slowly to look at her. “Your shouting must have scared whoever it was away.”

  Tom leant out the window again. “Get out!” he yelled. “Get out!”

  A couple of lights went on in windows opposite. Tom returned to Lark. “Now that was cultural. I really meant it when I yelled ‘get out’ to that guy you say you think was there.” He sat on the edge of the bed, shaking his head.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” said Lark.

  Tom stood up. “I think I’ll get something to drink.” He stumbled out of the bedroom in the dark, and as he passed the front door there was a tremendous clatter, as if a set of pots and pans had been turned over, followed by a thump, as Tom fell to the floor. Lark rushed into the hall and turned on the light. Tom lay on the floor, cursing. Next to him lay a large saucepan, a saucepan lid, and a tin wastepaper basket, with its contents, crumpled sheets of paper, scattered around him.

  “I’m sorry,” said Lark. She knelt and righted the basket, popping the balls of paper back in.

  Tom sat up. “What the fuck is this collection of percussion?” He picked up the saucepan and its lid and banged them together, like cymbals.

  “Sh.” Lark grabbed at his hands. “Everyone’ll hear.”

  “Everyone has heard already, when I ran into this scrap heap,” said Tom. They are waiting for the show to begin.” The cymbals clashed.

  Lark sat back on her heels. “Sometimes I hear someone trying the door. I think I hear someone. Often when you’re not here.” It was Donna Bird she always imagined tracking her down, coming to take her revenge.

  The cymbals clashed once, twice.

  “Please don’t,” Lark begged. “This is New York. You said so yourself. There are break-ins.”

  Tom sat on the floor, his back against the wall, his bare legs out in front of him. “You set up this booby trap every night?”

  Lark shook her head. “This is the first time. I would have taken it down before you woke up.”

  Tom heaved himself off the floor and threw himself into the armchair in the living room. Under the chair Lark had hidden My Life in the Service of God in the South Pacific.

  “I got you a present.” She looked at the clock. “It’s past midnight, so I can give it to you. It’s our wedding day.” She knelt down to pull out the book, and still kneeling, Lark held out the book on both hands to Tom. While she held it, his page boy, he started turning the pages. “I’m thirsty,” he said.

  “Ah, a ceremonial drink,” said Lark, and went to the kitchen. “That’s what the two sides used to have before they went into battle, in parts of Polynesia.” She knew she was taking a risk talking about a Pacific island, because it raised again the issue of Donna Bird and her whereabouts, but she desperately wanted to keep Tom placid and happy throughout this day. Everything seemed so precarious. She stood for a moment. “There’s a bit about worms, did you come across it?”

  Tom stretched out his legs and yawned.

  “There are two mornings a year when they stop everything and hunt sea worms. The sea worms only come two days a year. The coral reefs are crowded. And the canoes get so full of worms that there is no room for the people. They have to swim back to shore beside the canoes. Now that I know what a coral reef is like, having walked on one, I’d hate to catch worms on one.” Lark was attempting levity. “Isn’t it a great book? Don’t you just love it? I always wanted to live on an island,” she babbled, running the water until it was cold, then got out ice cubes, placed them in a plastic bag, and smashed them into little bits so that they would melt more quickly, the way Tom liked it. “But I don’t want to anymore. The worms come to the surface of the lagoon and when you put your hands in the water, they just hang onto your fingers and you fling them in the canoe. That’s how you catch them.” She brought the glass of ice water into the living room, where Tom lay slouched in the chair. “And then the worms break up into small pieces, all by themselves. They seem to prepare themselves to be eaten. They cooperate, so willingly.” She dipped her finger into the water, about to flick some of it onto him. But she saw that he was asleep.

  She took the water onto the balcony and stood there, leaning. In the street below, in response to Tom’s application for a permit for the outdoor wedding and film show, tied to the trunks of the gingko trees, were the notices from the Police Department telling motorists not to park on this particular street on this particular Saturday. At the corner were the barriers the police would use to close the street to traffic.

  In her last letter Mrs. Watter had written: “We have had several nasty decapitations. At Wiseman’s Ferry, where they water-ski, skiers have fallen into the water and been chopped up by other speedboats while waiting to be picked up. And all in that beautiful countryside, with the fruit trees coming right down to the river. Dreadful. So much for life and progress in the Southern Hemisphere. I’m sure you have more interesting tales to tell. Your father says to tell you bon jour. He has been studying French in secret. I found the books under the mattress. Don’t mention it to him. He doesn’t know I know. They changed your old school into a nursing home, and old Mrs. Blank is in it. She says her boys are devoted to her, but I don’t see them visiting her, in their far-flung corners. We are all without our children. We are glad you are so happy and will be thinking of you on the day.”

  Lark dressed carefully in her long white dress and sandals. She held a bunch of daisies and daffodils, although the florist, when he learned that it was to be a wedding bouquet, had said they were not appropriate. The sun was shining, and in a few weeks it would be summer.

  “You ought to wear something on your head,” said Elizabeth, who had come to help Lark get ready. She was wearing a white shirt belonging to Jean-Claude as a maternity smock, over trousers that might have been Jean-Claude’s pajamas. She held up a white kerchief, then a white cap, rather like a painter’s cap, then a piece of netting into which she had threaded flowers, all of which Lark brushed aside. Head coverings, particularly the netting and flowers, reminded her of Donna Bird. “You can’t go bareheaded.”

  “Beheaded? Oh, bareheaded.” Lark seized the kerchief and tried twisting it into a band to tie around her head.

  “That’s nice,” said Elizabeth.

  But Lark threw it aside. The twisted cloth, resting on her forehead above her eyebrows, reminded her of the dream she had had on the Avis Maris, when she wore Donna’s visor in the sun and was left with a white mark across her forehead.

  The police barriers had been set up at either end of the block. The street was clear of cars. On the sidewalk outside Lark’s building was a collapsible table on which rested plastic glasses, flagons of California wine, and paper plates piled high with crackers and cubes of cheese. Milling about on the sidewalk and the road were dozens of people, those who were friends of Tom and Lark and those from the neighborhood who had read the notices for the film and had come to have a free drink and snack and to watch a free film. The screen had been set up in the middle of the road, the projector on a card table a short distance from it. The wedding and reception would take place in the last light, the film would begin as soon as it was dark.

  Tom himself was down there. Lark leant against the balcony rail and watched him. She had often seen him in his OshKosh overalls standing on the corner with young women in identical overalls, looking up at him as he gestured and talked, taking in the world.

  Today Tom wore pale-blue cotton trousers and a white Nehru jacket. He stood below Lark, talking wildly and laughing with a man wearing sandals, jeans, and a plaid shirt. This was a college friend of Tom’s, recently ordained, who had traveled from Boston to perform the ceremony. Lark had not met him before. Their laughter reached Lark on the fifth floor. On a canvas director’s chair sat Professor Manfred Bird, with a glass of wine in his hand. Around him gathered half a dozen of his students, eagerly listening as he talked apparently continuously. One of the students pulled out a little note pad and took a few notes. Portia, having wandered around the periphery of the crowd, final
ly sat herself down on the curb, her baby toddling beside her. Her three older boys, their socks collapsed around their ankles, raced up and down the street, dodging among the wedding guests and at one point knocking down the screen.

  “Boys,” cried Portia, leaping to her feet and seizing the oldest by the sleeve. “He’ll kill you one day.”

  The baby began to cry, and with Portia distracted, the boys went off to surround the projectionist, who was fiddling with the placement and focus of his projector.

  Elizabeth came to Lark and said, “It’s time.”

  Lark locked the apartment, descended in the elevator to the ground floor, and walked out onto the street. There was no altar, no apparent focus for the ceremony. Lark poured herself some wine. She looked around. Tom, catching her eye, lifted his glass to her.

  The minister turned to look, and seeing the bride in her long cotton dress, said, “Okay, then,” quietly, so that only the few people who stood near him realized that the ceremony was under way. The minister beckoned to Lark. “I imagine that you, Tom, agree to take,” he hesitated, unsure of her name, “Lark—is it?—for your wife, and Lark, I imagine that you don’t mind taking Tom for your husband, right?”

  Both Lark and Tom nodded and said, “Right.”

  “If anyone has any objections, now’s the time to say so,” said the minister.

  There was a yell from the projectionist, followed by the clatter of running feet as the Bird boys fled to another part of the street, with Portia’s reasonable voice crying after them, “You promised!”

  “Goddamned kids!” the projectionist said.

  The clergyman, who had halted the ceremony to observe this incident, continued. “Then, I guess you are man and wife.’’ He looked around. “Hey,” he added. “That’s neat-o, keen-o, far out, and groovy.”

  And that was that. Manfred Bird had not even stopped talking.

  Then came a voice, soft, strong. “Wait.”

  It was Donna Bird.

  Manfred Bird let out a cry, leapt out of his canvas chair, which fell over and folded up on the ground, and strode to Donna. He gripped her shoulder with one hand, surveying her, nodding his head. “My girl,” he said. “She’s back,” he called to the assembled crowd, “from working in the field.” He started applauding. “The more credit to her.” The people around joined in the applause, which swelled across the street, through the crowd of friends who had come for the wedding and the passers-by who had come for the film, most of them believing they were applauding the happy couple.