Again

by Sharon Cullars

  He addressed the man first with a half nod. The black man looked at him warily, his body taut. The man was a head taller and could probably overcome him.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt your evening,” he said immediately to allay their worries. “I simply came to apologize. I would have done so outside, but I wasn’t given the chance.” He turned to her, gave her a full nod. “So, madam, please accept my sincere and humble pardon for my bumbling. I hope I did not soil your dress.”

  He did not expect a smile. It transformed her features and he saw that he had earlier mistaken her demeanor as that of a shy fawn. Her voice confirmed his new assessment that here sat a lady who would not be put off by any situation.

  “I accept your sincere and humble pardon for your bumbling, as you so put it, but I wonder that such a small transgression warrants this production. I mean, it was an accident, was it not?” Her voice was dulcet and tinged with laughter.

  He couldn’t believe it. She was actually laughing at him! As was the black man standing near her seat. He could see it in the man’s smirk. How dare they!

  He bit back his words, aware that he was outnumbered and that he was the interloper. Embarrassed, his first instinct was to make a quick exit, put this matter behind him. But then he looked into eyes sparkling with amusement and more than anything he did not want to leave her with the impression of a withering coward.

  “To know that my apology is accepted, would you honor me with a dance?”

  He felt some satisfaction to see both smiles fade, to see the fawn return. She was trapped by decorum. To outright reject his offer would be the cusp of rudeness. She couldn’t even beg tiredness as an excuse for she had only just arrived. To accept his offer would put her in a socially disadvantageous position. No decent Negro woman would be seen dancing with a white man. It just was not done. All this he knew.

  Still, she offered him her hand. He noticed that there was no wedding band. There was daring in her eyes now. She rose in one liquid motion.

  “Rachel!” her companion warned. “You will not!”

  She calmly turned to the man. “Lawrence, would you have me be rude to someone courteous enough to offer amends? Especially when he did not need to.”

  “What will people say?” her companion countered.

  “What can they say? It’s only a dance.”

  The orchestra had finished the “Blue Danube” and was now beginning the first strains of “Viennese Waltz.” The dancers stepped back, creating a berth for the couple. A few women gasped at the sight of his hand going around her waist. There were throat gurgles and indignant whisperings.

  But because she looked at him with eyes that dared him to falter, he kept pace with the music, swirling her around stationery bodies. Suddenly, the whole thing seemed comic. Here he was, dancing with a Negro, shirking his dinner with Barrett, who would no doubt call him tonight with exclamations of reproach. But tonight was a night to throw away social recriminations. And it was well worth the small smile that played on her lips. Full and enchanting lips, covered with a rosy hue that played with the contrast of cinnamon…no, he had initially thought her skin the color of caramel. A curl hinged near a brow, toying with her lashes.

  “So, whom do I have the honor of dancing with?” she asked. “After all, I am probably wrecking my reputation, as my brother was so quick to point out.”

  He couldn’t describe the relief he felt at the designation “brother.” It was a relief ill-founded since he wouldn’t see her past this night. Past these few moments. Past this dance. As it were, he would not be taking the chance if there were a white guest to relay this back to anyone of consequence. Oh, he had no doubt that the Negroes would talk among themselves, but it would not interrupt his world. She would be the one to bear the brunt of tonight. He would simply have the memory of dancing with a beautiful woman.

  “My name is Joseph, Joseph Luce.”

  She looked startled. “Luce? Not of the Manhattan Luces?”

  Now it was his turn to smile. “And how would you know the who is who of Manhattan?”

  “And why wouldn’t I?” She appeared indignant.

  “Well, it’s not usual that a…a…well…you know…”

  “If you finish that sentence this night, and without insulting me, then I will congratulate you on a finesse worthy of the most astute diplomat. Mr. Luce, I not only know about Manhattan society, I also have heard of the Vanderbilts, Carnegies, and Astors. I also know that the present mayor is Edward Cooper, that Hayes is in office, that Mr. Henrik Ibsen has recently written another play. I believe it’s entitled A Doll’s House. I plan to read it as soon as I get time. Negroes have an ear to the ground, too.” The coda to this sentence was another smile that competed with the luminescence of her eyes.

  “I’m sorry if I presumed.”

  “Like you presumed that an escorted woman would say yes to your offer…”

  “And why did you?” He felt defensive.

  “Only because you looked so penitent and discomfited, I thought acceptance would be a saving grace. Of course, I expect an equally graceful exit after the dance has ended. We don’t want to extend the scandal.”

  He smiled now. “And is this a scandal?”

  “It is. And you well know it,” she said.

  “But as you said, this is only a dance. What more can come from it?” he asked, realizing that he did not want the dance to end, that he did not want to leave if it did. But even now, something was pulling at him. Voices strummed inside his head, joining the strains of the waltz, the murmur of the dancers. She was speaking to him, but it seemed to be from a distance now. She was smiling and beautiful and he thought that maybe his heart might have stopped.

  “I think we’ve got a pulse. C’mon, c’mon, come on back…there you go….”

  David felt pressure against his chest and an overwhelming need to vomit. He rolled his head on the floor. Water gushed from his nose, spurted from his mouth in small geysers.

  “That’s it. Come on back,” said a familiar voice. He opened his eyes to find a man bending over him. Ed, the lifeguard. Standing over them was a woman in a blue bathing suit. He recognized her as a regular swimmer at the club. Her ash blond hair was plastered to her skull.

  “Oh, thank God,” she said. Fear and amazement colored her eyes.

  The relieved lifeguard sat back on his haunches. “Mr. Carvelli, what were you doing out there? You know you shouldn’t be in the pool before or after hours. You coulda died. Almost did.”

  David tried to sit up, but his body wouldn’t cooperate.

  “No, lay still,” Ed said, pressing a hand to David’s shoulder. “An ambulance is on its way.”

  David still couldn’t speak. All he could do was lay there shivering on the cold, wet floor, his only purview the faces of his rescuers and the chipped white ceiling. Incongruously, the thought passed through his haze that for the fees he was paying, they surely could afford to paint the ceiling. He thought about Ed’s words then, and felt nothing. Not fear, not even relief that he was still here. He was numb inside. Ed said that he had almost died. But the lifeguard was wrong. Because he had, in fact, died. If only for a few moments, he had left this life behind. How else to explain the strange episode? He didn’t know how to explain it himself. He had left his body and had—his brain tried to reject it—traveled back in time. The memory was still vivid in his mind. Even now, he thought he heard music in the distance. He could still see her smile.

  All of a sudden, he began to feel again. An emptiness that threatened to overwhelm him. A loneliness that was more palpable than the restraining hand on his shoulder, the cold that enveloped his body.

  He wanted to go back to her. He almost cried.

  Chapter 14

  D avid knew before he turned who had entered his room. He smelled the perfume right away. Tabu. After fifteen years, it was her signature scent.

  “Who called you?” he asked, knowing the question was abrupt and ungrateful. The EMTs had brought him
in only a couple of hours ago, and he had not given any information other than his name, address, and insurance data. The fewer people who knew, the less embarrassed he would be. He already felt ridiculous as it was. He didn’t need his mother checking in on him.

  “Does it matter how I found out? I’m here.” He thought he heard a tremor in her voice. Also anger.

  Had to have been one of the nurses or someone at the health club who called her. Maybe someone had gone through his wallet and found her number.

  She stood near his bed looking down. Then, suddenly, she slapped his head, lightly. “Idiot!”

  “Hey!” He sat up. “What kind of mother love is that?”

  “The kind that will keep you from doing something this stupid again! Damn it, David, I’ve warned you too many times about going swimming alone! Why do you take chances like that? I lose you, I’ve got nobody.”

  David lay his head down with a sigh. On top of this disastrous morning, he was going to have to deal with mother guilt again. Damn that nosy ass who called her.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry, and again sorry. Jeez, I just wanted to get some laps in before I went into the office.”

  “What happened? You get a cramp?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I probably shouldn’t have been out there today. Wasn’t feeling at my peak.”

  He saw the tears brimming in her eyes. They pooled there, refusing to travel down. His mother was resistant to emotional shows, and she probably wasn’t going to start now.

  “David, I’ve been going about this all wrong. Trying to protect you. You could’ve ended up drowned like Terry.”

  He looked at her, confused. She wasn’t making any sense. What did his friend Terry have to do with anything?

  “Ma, you’re getting worked up over nothing. I’m OK.” He was OK. No point in telling anyone about what he had envisioned. Since being brought in he had gone over the scene again and again, and was slowly convincing himself that it had been a hallucination. He had read about these types of delusions, usually brought on by the delirium of oxygen deprivation.

  “OK? You’re laying here in a hospital, almost drowned, and I’m supposed to let you lie to me about being OK. David, you’re not OK. Far from it.” She paused, reached up to wipe the tears from her eyes. She was silent. He could tell she was pondering something; her eyebrows met the wisps of her bangs.

  She walked over and pulled the only chair in the room closer to his bed. She looked determined and he girded himself for a sermon or a diatribe, or a combination of the two.

  “David, remember when Bess went away?”

  “Bess? What are you bringing up Bess for?” He hadn’t thought about his old Labrador in years. She ran away shortly after his father left, and he searched for her for weeks, months even. There hadn’t been a tree or storefront window that didn’t carry the picture of the two-year-old Lab his father had given him for his eighth birthday. He had gone from door to door within a five-mile radius, asking his neighbors if they had seen his dog. He stopped searching only after the fire the next year. After everything seemed destroyed. Only then did he relinquish any hope that things could go back to the way they used to be. That his father would come back. That was also the year Terry drowned. He shut off the memories; they were too painful. He didn’t see why his mother was taking this trek down memory lane, bringing up things he hadn’t thought about for a long time, didn’t want to think about now. He was irritated and tired.

  “I’m leading to a point, so just bear with me. I need to make you understand before something worse happens. I know to you I’m just an obligation…”

  “Ma…”

  “Stop interrupting!” she leaned forward and he thought she was going to slap his head again, but then she sat back, her face set like that of a narrator about to impart some heretofore unknown folklore. “I know you love me. I know you do. But I also know you’ve been carrying around a lot of baggage, not the least of which is your blaming yourself for your father and me breaking up. That would be too much for any ten-year-old to handle, and I tried to tell you then that it wasn’t your fault, but you wouldn’t set down that burden. You still carry it with you after all these years. And if I haven’t said this enough, your father left me, not you. He was an asshole David, and I tried very hard to make sure you didn’t grow up to be like him. I think I’ve been doing a good job…so far. If it wasn’t bad enough that your father left, Bess goes up and runs away—or so we thought.”

  His initial resistance wavered at this last sentence. More than anything, he wanted to get up, get dressed and leave, but the doctor wanted to keep him here for at least a day “for observation.” He was a prisoner of his own making, and now his mother’s captive audience. He had thought he was through with the hurt, but his mother’s allusion to Bess’s disappearance just brought home the loneliness he had felt at the poolside, the questions he’d asked himself again and again: Why did the ones he love or care about eventually leave him? His father, Bess, even Karen, to an extent—although that had been his own fault. Still, there had been others.

  “What do you mean, ‘so we thought’? You know something?”

  She remained quiet for a few seconds, contemplating. He thought he heard his heartbeat rev up. At least he was alive, but he could only take so much.

  She finally spoke. “You remember that house about two blocks down from ours? The one with the blue and white door, yellow awning?”

  David nodded. He remembered the house vaguely, remembered specifically how hideous it was. He barely ever passed there, but it had been one of the homes he canvassed in his search for Bess.

  “Well, remember there was an an old man who lived there with his daughter? They hardly ever came out. I’m pretty sure he was the one who took Bess.”

  “What?” Dave jolted up, his pique giving way to anger, and suddenly his inertia was gone. “And you knew this?! You knew all this time and you said nothing! Letting me walk around putting up flyers, knocking on people’s doors! Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  He wanted to lash out at someone, her, the old man. He felt as though his head was about to rip open. He tried to remember the old man, to remember features, coloring, something. He needed some other face to focus his fury on. Someone other than his mother, who was just sitting there calmly.

  “I didn’t know about it until some time after the man died, David. Bess was gone by then. But—”

  “But what?”

  “I saw her in my dream. I saw her collar, the red one you bought her the Christmas before she was taken. I felt something was going to happen, but didn’t know what. I knew how much she meant…your last connection to your father.”

  This was getting confusing again. “In your dream—what are you talking about?”

  His mother’s shoulders rose up, her back stiffened. “I saw her in the dream—but too late, and I kept this secret because I didn’t think you would understand. But the time’s come for me to stop keeping secrets—just as you’ve been doing. Just like you never told me about the fire, the one that destroyed our home.”

  His first impulse was to deny it, a vestige of the fear of an eleven-year-old who had taken so much from her. Then he remembered.

  “Terry, he told you. Or he told someone else—his parents—and they told you…” he reasoned, trying to make the pieces fit into neat little compartments again. Trying not to deal with whatever was coming.

  “No. Terry never told anybody, just like he promised you. But I know Terry got you into a lot of other things, things you didn’t think I knew about. But I did. I saw. I may not dream or see as much as I once did, but I still see some things.”

  “See things?” It was worse than he had thought.

  “Like this morning. I saw you floating facedown.” She said this like a pronouncement, like the crescendo everything else had been leading to. “I tried to think maybe it was just a dream and my irrational fears playing with my mind. But then I knew when I saw you lying in a hospital, this
hospital. I knew that I’d almost lost you. I didn’t see it in time though, and I’m afraid that something else is going to happen, something worse than this.” The tremble was back in her voice.

  Disbelief crept in as a small smile on his lips. He had always known his mother was a little eccentric. Actually, more than a little eccentric. He remembered the tarot cards alongside the rosary beads on her bureau and never once growing up questioned the contradiction. Because that was just his mother. Her oddities were a part of her, just like the smoking, or those pearls she always wore whenever she went somewhere upscale. But there had been times…

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “You want to know why your father left? He left because he didn’t want to believe. Or rather, because he started to believe. He never liked my having an edge over him. It interfered with his agenda of getting women and getting drunk. I mean what’s the fun of cheating if your wife knows beforehand?” She paused, took a breath, continued.

  “Actually the main reason he left was that I told him to get out. I didn’t want him influencing you about women. Not that your father was a bad man, he was just a dick. Why we ever got together is still a question in my mind. Anyway, I worked so hard to conform to him, to be how he wanted to see me. But it gets tiring after a while, David. And as much as I love you, I can’t keep playing this little suburban mama sitting at home drinking tea with a little scotch on the side. I am who I am.”

  He didn’t want to prolong this drama anymore. He didn’t want to hear this ranting arising from what he was beginning to suspect was some sort of mental breakdown.

  “And who are you supposed to be?” he finally asked, already closing his mind to the answer.

  “I am a seer, clairvoyant, a psychic if you will. To put it simply, I see the future, and yours isn’t looking too good right now.”