Never Again

by Heather Starsong

  I settled myself in a chair at the edge of the dance floor, waiting for the changing of partners at the end of the tanda, a sequence of three or four songs. Next to me was a woman I’d often chatted with. She turned to greet me, looked at me for a moment with a puzzled frown. “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before. Are you visiting?” she asked kindly.

  I decided not to hide. “No, Sally. It’s been a while, but you know me. Clara.”

  “Clara! Oh, my God! I didn’t recognize you.” She turned in her chair to face me fully. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open. After a stunned moment she asked, “Are you really Clara?”

  I nodded.

  “Oh, my God,” she said again. “You’ve done your hair… your face. How did they get your face…? You look fabulous. Way younger. Where’d you get that done?”

  “I have to confess I don’t know. I was hiking last summer and got hit by lightning. I’ve had amnesia since. I can’t tell you where I’ve been.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “No.”

  I was getting more skilled in my lies, but was still uncomfortable. Sally was inhaling to ask more when Tim appeared in front of me. I stood and stepped into his arms, resting my head into the familiar hollow of his cheek. Over his shoulder as we moved away, I saw Sally staring after me, her mouth hanging open again.

  We had danced only a few steps when Tim stopped short in the middle of the line of dance and held me away from him. “Clara?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t recognize you. I thought you were someone new. You look different. Way different, but I know how you dance.”

  “We’re disrupting traffic.” Dancers were swerving around us.

  “Right.” He took me back into his arms and we moved on around the floor. “You smell the same.”

  “I’m still me.”

  He opened up out of close embrace and set me spinning in a series of rapid turns, watching me. When he gathered me close again, he asked, “What have you done? You look younger, really pretty.” He gave me a squeeze. “And you feel just as delicious as ever.”

  I was touched that he accepted me, but it was not surprising. He knew me. After all, we had danced two or three tandas a night, several nights a week, for years.

  When he led me back to my seat, women clustered around me.

  “Clara, we’ve missed you. Where have you been?”

  “You look fabulous.”

  “Your hair, your face. It all looks so natural.”

  “Look at your skin! Didn’t you use to have a lot of freckles?”

  Their questions and comments came quick and fast, bewildering me. I couldn’t tell if they were just humoring me, or if they really believed all my changes came from a makeover. Looking into their faces, I saw a mixture of disbelief—and hope. If I could be so changed, then maybe…

  “Where did you get that done?”

  “She can’t remember,” Sally said. “She was struck by lightning and has amnesia.”

  “Can’t remember?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, come on. How could you forget a place that made you look so great?”

  “Don’t hold out on us.”

  “Are you sure you’re Clara? You do look like her. Maybe you’re her granddaughter.”

  I began to feel desperate. “Steve’s asking me to dance,” I said, catching his eye across the room.

  He came and swept me away into a waltz. “You’re creating quite a stir,” he whispered into my ear. “You look gorgeous. Every woman in the room is curious.”

  “I know. Thanks for rescuing me.” We danced. Waltz was my favorite of the three tango rhythms and Steve was the best dancer of all. I hadn’t realized how much my dancing had been dragged down by the low-grade chronic ache of my aging body. No longer. Light and fluid, I whirled, floated like milkweed down on the wind. Sheer bliss.

  I had barely sat down after dancing with Steve when I saw Marco smiling at me from across the room. Oh, I thought, now he sees me. I felt a bit miffed, remembering all the times I’d tried to catch his eye over the years, and how he’d looked right through me. But I was curious to know his dancing, so I nodded and he came to me, beaming, his hand extended. He was fun to dance with, but all through the tanda I couldn’t get over feeling put out that while I was old he’d never noticed that I was a good dancer. He was noticing now as I followed him faultlessly through a lively and intricate sequence.

  “Uno mas?” he asked at the end of the tanda. One more?

  “No, gracias,” I responded and turned away to go to the ladies’ room.

  As I made my way down the hall, I heard voices in the coat room. “I just can’t believe she’s Clara. There’s no makeover that could change her that much.”

  I drew back. I should have gone on, but curiosity rooted me.

  “Then who is she? She’s wearing Clara’s clothes. How many times have we seen that same pink outfit? And why in the world would a young woman say she was Clara, who, everyone knows, is old? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It certainly doesn’t. Whoever she is, she’s messing with us.”

  I peeked around the corner. Liz and Cynthia, women I’d been friendly with. Their backs were turned.

  “It’s pretty weird,” Cynthia said, “but I think she really is Clara. I was watching her dance. She does the same ornaments Clara does—that little tap between steps and her unique way of doing a boleo. The guys think she’s Clara.”

  “She can’t be.” Liz half turned and I ducked back. “How could any makeover get her face that smooth? She doesn’t have that stretched facelift look. She used to have wrinkles in her cleavage and now she’s all round and firm. And the skin on her chest and shoulders—how could they do that?”

  “I don’t know.” Cynthia shrugged. “And she’s not telling. But she must have spent a fortune to get all that done. I never thought she was that well off. She hardly ever had new clothes. Maybe she got an inheritance or something. Imagine being so vain, at her age, to redo herself so completely.”

  That stung. I’m not vain, I protested inwardly, but was stopped by shame that I’d cared so much about being pretty all my life.

  “Well, it’s working for her,” Liz said, turning her back again. “Whoever she is, she’s the center of attention for sure. Marco walked right by me to ask her to dance.”

  There was jealousy in her voice. I slipped quickly by the open door and into the ladies’ room, and hid myself in a stall. My heart burned. I didn’t want to make them jealous. I didn’t even really want to dance with Marco. I may have been too concerned about how I looked all my life, but I never would have done a massive makeover. It was a gift, I wanted to tell them. But I couldn’t.

  I sat in the stall feeling a pang of loss. I had always been well-loved in the tango community, warmly greeted, supported, especially in the beginning as I learned the dance. An old woman is no threat, I thought sadly. I’m still not. Maybe they’ll realize that after they get used to me. It took a while for the discomfort to settle. Then I came out, smoothed my hair in front of the mirror, and made my way back to the dance floor, not wanting that bit of overheard gossip to spoil my evening.

  The rest of the night went better. The men seemed to accept me. As the evening went on, some of the women I had been close to came, one by one, to talk with me. I could see them searching my face, glancing down at my full, young cleavage, noticed how they subtly guided the conversation to see if I knew what Clara should know. When the conversation ended, I felt at least tentative acceptance.

  I had plenty of partners and lots of energy to keep dancing. After a while I relaxed. They could accept me or not. I was just happy to be dancing again, joyous to dance without pain.

  I stayed until the dance ended, a thing I’d never done before.

  “I never saw you last this late,” Tim said as
I helped him rearrange the chairs. “Looks like you got some kind of healing, too.”

  “I did,” I said. “And I’ve had a great time tonight.” I gave him a hug. “Thanks for all the dances.”

  The first frost came with a heavy, wet snow at the end of October. Most of the trees were still flaunting multicolored leaves. The weight of the snow bent them, broke many branches. I went out into the garden with my long walking stick and shook the limbs of the young maple that were dangerously bowed under the white weight.

  “Let go your leaves,” I told the tree as I bumped the branches as high as I could reach with my stick. “Don’t you realize it’s almost winter and it’s going to snow? Let them go.” Snow fell on my head in wet clumps.

  Fortunately the maple lost only a few small branches before the sun came out and melted away its burden. Other trees were not so lucky. The street was littered with huge broken limbs. Most of those trees quickly shed their leaves, but not the maple. The next week another snow fell. “Can’t you get the message?” I asked the tree as I stood under it again, tapping its branches, showered with snow. “Winter’s coming. Drop your leaves. You’re all out of sync with the season.”

  As I was brushing myself off on the porch, I looked back at the tree. Who are you to talk? it seemed to say.

  Once I started dancing again, my life became even fuller. I worked all day and danced in the evenings. Although I had danced tango for many years and was already accomplished, I started taking classes again, refining my skills and mastering new techniques, ones my grumpy knees wouldn’t have tolerated before. I loved it all, but there was a discordant restlessness in me. Finally I decided I was doing too much. I turned away clients and limited my practice to three days a week. Still I was busy. There was the garden to put to bed, leaves to rake, and always the many chores necessary to keep my house and business going.

  As often as I could get away, I ran to the foothills, climbed the ridges until I was breathless, and sat gazing out over the plains. All kinds of “shoulds” arose. Now you have all this energy, this new life, an inner voice admonished me, you should be serving more. You shouldn’t turn away clients. You should get involved again in the political chaos sweeping the country. What right have you to rest and read and dream as you used to, now that you are strong?

  Under the shoulds flowed a deep tide of yearning for the quietness and depth of my former life. An ebbtide, running in conflict to the strong flood tide that swept me.

  Your ulada is almost complete, the Elirians had sung as we parted. Was it? Then why did they give me this strength of youth? I wondered if they understood aging. Perhaps not. They spoke of just sinking into their planet when their ulada was complete, arising again when called by a new ulada. Maybe Elirians didn’t age, and those who had rescued me didn’t realize what they were doing when they transformed me.

  One day in November as I was shopping, I passed a kite shop on the mall. A kite! I hadn’t flown a kite since Robin was a boy. Impulsively I went into the shop and bought one shaped like a dragon. Katie and Colin, Robin’s children, especially enjoyed dragon play. Even before I was renewed, we used to pretend to be dragons together, enacting their dramatic fantasies. Colin used to curl up in my lap and pretend to be a dragon egg, just hatching. I loved that.

  The following Sunday I took the kite and went to visit Robin and his family. They had adjusted to my change in previous visits. Robin had told Alice the whole story. She marveled, kept my secret, and clearly didn’t know what to make of a mother-in-law who looked younger than she. The children accepted my transformation with little fuss. Katie, who was eleven, said she liked my white hair better, but it was okay that it was brown now. She and Colin were glad that I could run and romp with them as I hadn’t been able to before.

  They loved the kite. We took it out to the park near their home. I remember that afternoon vividly. It was one of those warm, sunny days that can show up in Colorado even in November. We ran along the side of the creek on the brown grass. The wind was just right and the kite went high. We shouted and laughed, our three spirits soaring as one with the kite.

  Soon we were into the long dark nights of winter and the holidays were approaching. Winter Solstice was the most powerful of them for me, that ­longest night, the still point of the turning seasons. I loved bringing in the greens and lighting the candles to call back the sun. After Solstice I had always closed my practice until the New Year, honoring the impulse to go inward until the sun grew stronger.

  More than ever this year, I felt the disharmony between that impulse and all the hullabaloo of Christmas. But there was no help for it. Lisa and her husband Phil and their sixteen-year-old daughter Jocelyn were coming from Brazil, and there would be a big family gathering, presents, lots of Christmas cooking, big turkey dinner, the works. And I, as mother of the family, was on. In previous years I had been gradually shifting some of the preparation to Alice, who liked to cook, but this year, in my strength, I had no excuse. Greg and his family would not be with us, but there would be plenty of action with both Robin’s and Lisa’s families here together.

  So I hung Christmas lights on the porch, decorated the house with greens and candles, went shopping for presents, and bought a big Christmas tree. By now I was used to having everything be physically easy, but every so often I remembered what it had been like to do those things the year before. How long it had taken, how awkward and perilous it had been climbing the ladder to hang the lights, how I had bought only a small tree because a bigger one was too hard to set up, how I had shopped from catalogues.

  Finally the day came when Lisa and her family would arrive. On the phone, I had warned Lisa that I looked different since the mountain trip, that maybe she wouldn’t recognize me.

  “Mother, I’d know you anywhere.”

  But she didn’t. I met them at the airport bus as I always did. Lisa walked right by me, looking for me beyond where I was standing.

  Jocelyn recognized me. “Wow, Grandma, you look great.” She grabbed her mother’s sleeve. “Mom, she’s right here.”

  Lisa spun around and stared.

  “You walked right by me,” I said. “Your own mother.”

  “Mother?” She put her hand to her mouth, her eyes huge. “What happened to you?”

  “I said you might not recognize me.” I held out my arms to her.

  “I do now.” She hugged me then and I held her close, Lisa, beloved daughter so seldom with me.

  Phil was busy gathering up their bags. “Where’s Clara?” he asked.

  Jocelyn was having fun with the situation. “She’s right here,” she said laughing. “She’s had a makeover. Doesn’t she look great?”

  Phil gave me a long look. “Whoa! She sure does. Hi, Clara.” He gave me a hug, stared at me again, frowning, then turned back to the luggage.

  As soon as we reached the house, Lisa called Robin. They had been bonded ever since the moment Lisa first held her newborn brother in her arms. Half an hour later, Robin and Alice and the children arrived. Jocelyn loved her younger cousins. She, like them, had no lack of dramatic fantasies to enact, and soon the three of them were tearing through the house with piercing screams. The adults were gathered around the dining room table, laughing, talking loudly.

  I was putting on the teakettle when Colin came zooming through the kitchen in mad flight from monster Jocelyn. I caught him and spun him around, released him as Jocelyn came after him. I loved it.

  And I could remember how in previous years it had almost been too much when all the family gathered, how I would retreat to my rocking chair and let the younger ones handle the children, make the tea.

  The children took their screaming drama downstairs into the studio. Carrying the tea tray, I joined Lisa and Phil, Alice and Robin around the dining room table. I was quiet, listening as talk and news flew back and forth. Lisa was watching me with her keen blue eyes, wise from many years of wo
rking as a trauma therapist. I could feel her taking in every detail and knew she wasn’t fooled by the makeover idea.

  In a lull in conversation, Robin said, “Tell Lisa, Mama. She’s going nuts trying to figure you out.”

  “Yes, please, Mother. What happened to you?”

  I looked around the table. “This is not a story for the children. You and Phil must keep it an absolute secret. You’ll understand why.”

  “We can keep a secret, Mother.”

  “And you may find it hard to believe.”

  Lisa shook her head. “It couldn’t be harder to believe than the way you look, the way you are.”

  I thought of the Elirians every day, but, as I told my story, I was swept again with awe and stumbled for words as I tried to express their perfect love. Lisa, who had shared my spirit as a child so deeply she had to flee from me, never took her eyes off me. I looked into her face as I spoke and knew that she understood all I couldn’t find words for.

  Phil nodded his head. “Amazing. Very interesting creatures. But it’s not so unbelievable, Clara. There’s been talk of flying saucers for years. I bet there’s lots of people who would like to connect with them as you did. I wouldn’t mind being rejuvenated myself.”

  All through the familiar rituals of Christmas—the stockings, the special rolls for Christmas breakfast, the presents, the big turkey dinner, the pumpkin pie—I felt Lisa watching me.

  Finally, the day after Christmas, when Robin and Alice took all three ­children to the zoo and Phil went off to visit some friends, Lisa and I curled up on the couch for a quiet talk.

  “How is it, Mother?” she asked me. “What’s it really like to be young again?”

  “It’s confusing,” I confessed. “I thought I’d get used to it, but I haven’t yet. I love having my body strong again, being able to dance and hike, do everything I want and not hurt. But it feels as if there’s a responsibility that comes with it.” I rubbed my brow.