Dancing on Coral

by Glenda Adams

  “Give her a break,” said the kind man in the crowd.

  “But she did something wrong,” said someone near him. “You can’t go leaving people on islands and expect to get away with it.”

  “I can prove it,” said Donna Bird.

  “We’ll hear from the defendant,” said the judge.

  Lark managed to pull herself together, suddenly trying to marshal a defense. She threw the daisies and daffodils to the ground, dabbed her eyes with the corner of her dress, and began. “She didn’t like me, right from the first day that Tom noticed me and talked to me. She wanted Tom for herself. She even talked to him of settling down and having children. She was always trying to keep us apart, she didn’t want me to work with them on Strange but True stories. On board the ship she constantly goaded me about Tom, telling me, for instance, that if I went coral walking it would make a good story for Tom, it would entertain and impress him. In fact, I think she planned the whole journey by ship rather than by air in order to keep me from Tom. When she saw Tom liked me better, she set me up. It was a joke that she had planned. She intended to remain on the island all along. She’s always staging practical jokes.” Lark was guessing, but as she developed this idea, she became convinced that it was the truth.

  “She’s just falling back on psychology, plumbing the depths, interpreting,” objected Donna Bird. “The truth is on the surface. Look only at what happened. Look at the facts.”

  The judge held up his hand for Donna to cease her interjection and nodded to Lark to continue.

  “She thinks jokes are educational, subversive. The ludic, she calls it. The world as text, she calls it. Ludicrous, I call it.” Then Lark recounted the kidnapping, which had been designed to show how easy it was to manipulate the press.

  “She’s right about manipulation,” cried her supporter. “Look at that television camera now, at this very moment.”

  The judge held up his hand.

  Lark told of the ringing of the alarm on the American warship and was about to tell of the Strange but True hoax, but thought better of it, since it reflected badly not only on Donna Bird but also on Tom and her. “And then she tried to get me to blow up the ship.”

  “Blow up the ship? Destroy property? Commit a terrorist act?” The crowd reacted to this allegation very strongly.

  “Quick,” said Lark to Jean-Claude, sensing that she was ahead, “go up to my desk. There’s a folder with pages and pages of names there, in green ink. Bring it.”

  Elizabeth had just emerged from the building with the espadrilles and the coral. She gave the key to Jean-Claude and brought the espadrilles and coral to Lark.

  “You see,” cried Lark, exhibiting the soles of the shoes. “They’re all cut up from walking on coral. I had to do it, too. She tells lies, you see. She thinks anything is justified, if she is making a point.”

  “What point is she making by setting it up so that it would appear that you left her behind on the island?” asked the judge.

  Lark thought for a moment. “So that she could turn up like this and win Tom.”

  A murmur swept through the crowd.

  “I was forced to walk on the coral. The Captain forced me, and she walked on coral, too. The only difference is that she wanted to and I didn’t. We both could have been killed. And this is the coral I got while we were on the reef. She even slipped it into my pocket and said that I should keep it as a souvenir.”

  The judge inspected the shoes and passed them into the crowd. They were handed around and examined.

  “You could do this with a razor blade,” someone suggested.

  “That’s exactly what I said when I saw them,” said Manfred Bird. “Just walking around New York streets would do that.”

  “Why would I cut up a pair of espadrilles?”

  “Why, just to be prepared for Miss Bird’s accusations and to support your claim that you actually went walking on coral.” This was Tom, looking perplexed, angry. “And did you actually have an affair with that cabin boy?”

  “You have always said that no one possesses anyone else.”

  “Then I guess I have to rule that the shoes are circumstantial evidence,” said the medievalist judge.

  “And the coral?”

  “I guess you could also pick up a piece of coral anywhere. I’ve seen bits like this for sale in tourist shops in the Caribbean,” said the medievalist. “And we’re losing our focus. The issue is, did she or did she not deliberately leave this young lady behind on a remote island?”

  “She tried to get me to destroy that ship,” Lark shouted, sensing that the opinion of the crowd was now swinging away from her to Donna Bird. “Anyway, she herself says that there’s no such thing as tragedy or error, that things just recur in different forms.”

  Jean-Claude returned and gave Lark the list of names. Lark turned to the last page. “See? Listen to this.” She read the words first as names, then joined together as warnings.

  “They could be names,” said Donna Bird defensively. “If you’d traveled as much as I have, you’d know that people have all kinds of names, that are strange to you who grew up in a homogeneous society. I collect people with funny and strange names, which is why they are on that list.”

  “And she helps me,” Manfred Bird added.

  “What if I had actually destroyed the ship? Or if I had been caught trying to? You must have wanted me to be arrested for terrorism or mutiny.” Lark addressed the crowd. “She wanted me permanently out of the way, so that she could get to New York and have Tom for herself.”

  “Where’s your sense of humor? Your sense of the ludic?” asked Donna.

  “I can see how it could be considered a joke,” said Tom slowly, pondering. “After all, Miss Bird is an aesthete, and the spectacle is the ultimate victory for the aesthete.”

  “Everything so far is just the word of one against the word of the other. Speculation. Their evidence isn’t hard. We have no proof,” said the medievalist judge. He stood up, as if his task was finished, and the crowd applauded him.

  “But I have proof,” said Donna Bird, “proof that she was in conspiracy with that cabin boy and that she left me on the island deliberately. It was a premeditated act.” Donna Bird reached into her bag and pulled out a box of film. “I filmed it all.”

  The crowd gasped. Followed by the television camera, Donna Bird walked over to the projectionist, who had fallen asleep sitting in his little chair, waiting to be called on to run The Sky Above and the Mud Below. “Run this,” said Donna Bird, shaking him. The man jerked awake, shook his head to clear it, recollected where he was, then threaded Donna Bird’s film into his projector. “They’re going to have to pay me overtime,” he said.

  Before the streetful of people—friends and strangers—Donna’s movie of life on the island unfolded: the nun, the Protestant church service, the village, and the children’s production of Our Town. On film it all looked pacific and romantic.

  “She’s remarkable, isn’t she?” said Manfred Bird to Portia. “The boys will be the same when they’re older.”

  Then suddenly, there appeared a sequence of shots of Lark and Paul Crouch, first lying close together on the top deck of the ship, him leaning over her as if he was about to kiss her, followed by the scene on the cliff below the Catholic Church, when Paul Crouch had held Lark to him to prevent her falling, after she had dislodged the stones. Finally, there was a shot of the Avis Maris pulling away from the island, taken from the dock, and on the top deck above the bridge was a tiny, ill-defined figure.

  “You can’t prove that’s me or that that person, whoever it is, is even looking your way!” Lark shouted.

  The long shot zoomed in to a close-up, and although the figure was still small, clearly it was Lark standing there, her short blond hair and tan skin clearly discernible, staring straight into the camera’s eye.

  The photograph was on the front page of Strange but True. Lark had left the wedding party, after Donna Bird’s incriminating film, and was walkin
g in her white dress along Broadway, determined to walk and walk and not return until the late news containing her humiliation was over. Then she could go back to the apartment, pack her suitcase, and run away. She had not made a plan beyond escaping, beyond just leaving with a few things.

  She picked up her skirt as she stepped off the curb and crossed the road. She was hungry and thirsty, having had nothing at all during all the evening’s proceedings—she did not know whether it should be called a wedding or a trial—and the luncheonette on the other side of the street was still open.

  The man behind the counter was pleased to see a customer. Most people at this time of night wanted only to get the first edition of the Sunday papers. They merely came in, paid, and left again.

  “You look as if you just got married,” he said and slapped a glass of water in front of Lark as she sat on the tall metal stool at the counter. That was when she saw the photograph. She looked around the store partly to make sure there was no television set going in any corner and partly to insure that she was alone, since the last store she had entered, the day before, had produced from its inner recesses Donna Bird. On a rack opposite the cash register and along a low counter beneath the store window were the magazines and newspapers, and among those magazines and newspapers was the latest issue of Strange but True, and on the cover of Strange but True was Lark’s picture. The picture was credited to Tom Brown. It was the picture Tom had taken at the party in his flat after the rally in Sydney. Lark was sitting on the kitchen counter, and the barefoot Perce, drunk at the time, clung to Lark with his head in her lap. Taken by surprise by the camera flash, Lark’s mouth was open, giving her an almost joyful expression, rather than exposing the revulsion and disdain she had felt at the time. The caption read: Too Shy to Propose, Man Begs Ex-Wife to Be His Proxy and Pop the Question to Wife No. 2.

  The story accompanying the photo, with Tom’s byline, recounted how after his divorce this Englishman, who was so shy that he could not even face a camera without panicking, had asked Wife No. 1 to propose on his behalf to Wife No. 2. “ ‘We divorced because of his extreme shyness,’ said Wife No. 1. ‘Sometimes he couldn’t even talk to me. But he’s improving all the time, and he’s a really sweet person.’ Wife No. 1 helped him out when he started dating after the divorce, telephoning young women he was attracted to and arranging dates. Sometimes she would take him right to his date’s house and ring the doorbell, just to get him started. ‘I hope she’ll be very happy with him,’ said Wife No. 1 of Wife No. 2.”

  “What’ll it be?” asked the counter man. “I’m afraid we’re all out of wedding cake tonight.” He was pleased to be expanding his joke.

  Lark ordered a donut and a cup of coffee, and considered things. Along with the donut and coffee the counter man slapped down the check.

  “I haven’t got any money,” she said. “I forgot. I just ran away, you see.”

  “You won’t get far,” said the counter man, removing the plate and cup. He made a performance of tipping out the coffee and replacing the donut on its stand. “I should have known,” he said into the air. “Nuts come in all ages, shapes, and sizes.”

  “I should have eaten it before I told you,” she said. “It was an honest mistake.”

  “That would have made it simple for me. I just call the cops when someone doesn’t pay. You could have spent the night in jail.”

  “So give me back the donut and coffee,” said Lark. “Jail sounds good to me.”

  “Crazy,” the man said. “Go on, leave, don’t bother me.”

  While he was wiping down the counter, Lark got down from the stool, still holding Strange but True, still thinking, and walked back to her apartment. It was after midnight when she rang the bell, for she had also walked off without her keys and had no idea if Tom or anyone else would be there. The street door buzzed open, and when she rang the bell of her apartment, Tom, wearing a sarong, flung the door open.

  “You ran off, we need to talk,” he said, stern.

  Lark pushed past him into the living room. “We do need to talk.” She spread the newspaper on the coffee table. “How could you do this? You must have sent in this story and the photo weeks ago. And yet you said nothing to me.”

  Tom looked at the newspaper, then seized Lark and started dancing around the room. “That’s great, wonderful, far out, that’s the best news I’ve had all day.”

  “Stop, stop,” cried Lark. “You’ve made a fool of me in every way, at our wedding and now this.”

  “At the wedding I’m not sure who made a fool of whom. I felt pretty deceived myself, and I had to watch you making love with another man, a cabin boy no less, on my wedding day.” But he had picked up the paper again and was reading the article.

  “I’m going to leave, you needn’t worry.”

  Tom was not listening to her. “You know what this means, don’t you?” He looked up. “We’re exonerated. They’ve forgiven us. That’s what it means. Even if they tracked us down with their lawsuit, they wouldn’t have a leg to stand on because they’ve continued to use our work. Don’t you see? It’s like adultery. If you sleep with your wife after you’ve discovered she has a lover, it’s tantamount to forgiving her. Legally there’s no case.” He twirled around the room. “How do you like my honeymoon sarong? I wanted to surprise and amuse you.”

  Lark sat on a cushion on the floor. “I think it’s despicable of you even to consider using my picture like that.”

  Tom stopped twirling and sat beside her. “You didn’t think it was despicable when you took photos at the bus stop and got the credit. It could be argued that it was despicable to abandon Donna Bird on that island.”

  “It’s despicable to make my wedding a fiasco.”

  “It’s despicable to trick me into marrying you.”

  “And it’s despicable to ask me to marry you without loving me. I really loved you.”

  Tom put his arm around her. “So, it comes down to this. You left Donna Bird behind and I used your photo.” He kissed her. When she did not respond, he gave her a little tickle. “You wanted to marry me, and I asked you to marry me. We’re even,” and he kissed her again, “Mrs. Brown.” He lay on the floor with his head on the cushion and patted the floor beside him. “So we’ll just have to make the best of it.”

  “Then you do love me?”

  “Mmmm,” said Tom. “That, Mrs. Brown, is a question without meaning. You’re quite a spunky young woman. I like it. Arguing suits you. You have mastered lesson number two, making a show in public, and also lesson number three, getting your feet wet in the real world. You were a match for Donna Bird, more than a match—if she had not had that film, you would have won the case. You’re coming along nicely.” After a while he mumbled, “You missed the news. What a gas. We were on it, the last item. It was very funny. It’s not so hard to influence the press.”

  Lark shook her head. “You’re impossible.” She could either laugh or cry. “Do you realize that I even shoplifted that newspaper? And I’m not sorry. The guy in the luncheonette deserved it.”

  “Then, Mrs. Brown, I’d say you are coming along very nicely indeed, learning your lessons well.”

  “How many lessons are there?” Lark asked, staring at the ceiling.

  “Only one more,” Tom mumbled, then turned over and fell asleep. They were awakened by the telephone at eight the next morning.

  “I just wanted to say good-bye? Did I awaken you? Awfully sorry, of course, but I’m leaving for Europe.”

  It was Donna Bird. Lark handed the phone to Tom.

  “So, you’re going today,” Tom said. They talked for several minutes about Donna’s itinerary and the friends she would be staying with, including, in Paris, the family of Agnes Comet, Tom’s old girlfriend.

  Lark tickled his feet while he talked, and when Tom hung up he said, “I’m not ticklish. I trained myself out of it when I was in grade school, and after that no one could get at me, tease me or affect me. I have been safe ever since. “So,” he put his
hands behind his head and contemplated the ceiling. “Our Donna’s off to conquer new worlds.”

  Lark was delignted. “Who is she going to persecute now?”

  “Now, now,” said Tom. “You yourself know firsthand that the world is her stage, that she has to keep moving, engaging in new enterprises. To her, that is freedom.”

  “She’s dreadful, and you know it.”

  “Let’s not get nasty about Donna Bird.”

  “All the Birds are dreadful. And all views Manfred Bird holds are opposite to yours. He probably gives those names of his to the authorities. Manfred Bird tyrannizes. So does Donna Bird. They all do. They are like an invading army.”

  “He is a father to me. I can’t just dismiss him.”

  “He’s dangerous. He’s also a crook. Nevertheless, you, who aren’t afraid of authority, succumb to him, to them all. You are a hypocrite.”

  “He is grooming me to succeed him.”

  “Then you are an opportunist.”

  “I told you, he is a father. You can’t harm the father. Perhaps someone else will, but the son himself can’t. Or the daughter.” Tom put his head in his hands.

  “He probably informs on you. What do you think those lists of names are for? His files?” Tom was right, Lark thought. Perhaps there was hope for them together. “He’s bogus and devious.” She was enjoying herself enormously.

  “He is exactly as he appears on the surface,” said Tom through his hands. “The man has no depth. I know that.”

  Lark felt like crying tears of sheer joy. Tom actually was agreeing with her. Tom was criticizing the great Manfred Bird. This was the most intimate conversation she had ever had with Tom. And for the first time, Tom was quiet, not performing.

  The telephone rang again. “You take it,” said Lark. She believed it was Donna Bird again and wanted now to see how Tom would deal with her.

  Tom shook his head. He reached out a hand, picked up the receiver, and handed it to Lark. “I can’t,” he whispered, and she had to answer.

  “This is your telephone courtesy representative,” said a woman’s voice, smiling, unctuous. “I am calling to report that there is nothing wrong with your telephone.”