Dancing Lessons

by Olive Senior

  Having come along this route, I slid from thinking of these people’s lives as models of excess to mine as an example of deficiency. Of carelessness. Of loss. Didn’t I always manage to let slip away anything of value?

  Contemplation of this state must have induced some kind of trance, for when Maisie banged on the door I’d left open to ask if I wanted her to put my lunch in my room, I jumped. I was surprised to find myself standing in front of the bathroom mirror holding plastic bottles of shampoo in both hands and squeezing them.

  Once I took that break for lunch I found the morning’s work had worn me out. I decided to leave the rest of the task for the following day. This was mainly the clearing out of the other items—the top drawer of the chest that held jewellery and odds and ends, and the two drawers of his bedside table. I thought that task would take me no more than an hour or two. I vowed that after I was finished there, I would make my way downstairs and face the world.

  84

  WHEN CELIA CAME OVER that night, I don’t know why I didn’t tell her about what had happened with Mr. Bridges that last day, for I wanted to. I wanted to tell her about what might have been, about the circumstances of his death, that breathless word withheld. How my heart was pounding, longing so hard to hear it, I sent such a powerful signal to his own that it was shell-shock all over again, a short-circuiting of the body’s electricity.

  Instead, I found myself telling her about my day, sorting out his things, and how I was bothered that I didn’t feel sad at the death of my friend but rather detached—as if I was clearing out a stranger’s room.

  “Was that natural, do you think?” I asked.

  She said, “Yes, it takes time for grief to develop fully, and sometimes activity to displace that grief, at least for a while, is just what is needed.” She paused, and then she added, smiling at me, “Perhaps that is why Mrs. Spence asked you to do it.”

  What! I thought, but didn’t say, Matron with insight?

  “She knew,” she said, “as I did, how much he meant to you.”

  I mentally retorted, Of course you do not know. No one will ever know.

  As she continued to talk, I turned to marvelling as I always did at how even in tone her voice is, almost without inflection, unlike mine, unlike most of the rest of her countrymen and women, for we are all given to voices that play up and down the scale to reflect the high drama, the low moments of our lives. And yet that modulated voice was commanding, one that I, like her students, her television viewers, could have confidence in. For like Mr. Levy she spoke with the voice of authority. Looking at her, lying stretched out on the bed, shoes off, in a simple pink cotton dress that made her look girlish and pretty, I couldn’t help wondering, what were the high dramas, the low moments of your life?

  I was never there to share them, not really. Though when you came home on your visits you might have been telling me much more than I realized at the time. I used to eavesdrop on your play sometimes, when you had all the little children under your spell, not just your brother and sisters but often the neighbours as well. You were their Pied Piper, as they hardly ever had visitors. How exciting and glamorous you must have seemed to them, with your beautiful clothes, your books and your toys that you willingly shared. But it was the stories you told that I listened to, the way you kept them in line with your rules and your instructions. You were as open and alive with them as you were like a clam with me. I listened as often as I could, pausing to eavesdrop as I went about my day’s work, especially if you were at your favourite spot, which was under the big poinciana tree at the back, with the swings and the bench or exposed roots that were perfect for sitting. You would have the bench, of course, because you were not used to slumming. I would watch how carefully you would first dust it off, then arrange your skirt before sitting down so it would not get crushed or dirty. How unchild-like these gestures were. I suddenly recalled the very first time I saw her, this woman you came to call “Auntie,” how she had peeled the cellophane off the lollipops she brought for Shirley and Junior and how, instead of discarding the paper there on the roadside as any normal human being would have done, she kept the wrappers in her hand the whole time, taking them back to the car with her, no doubt to be properly disposed of. Was it that carefulness that was rubbing off on you? Was her vocabulary becoming yours, peppered now with words like satan, sin and Jesus, Heaven and Hell, words you had never heard around my house, well, not outside the goodnight prayers I encouraged the children to make. My one concession to churchiness. You were so kind to the other children, but so strict, with all your rules and regulations, with your punishments for infringement, which they happily complied with, thinking it all a game. “You, Shirley. Into the corner with you, miss. Think about what you have done and don’t come out until I say.” And Shirley would go and stand in the designated space and turn her back, while the rest of the children giggled. At the time, such actions made me smile, too, because it seemed so incongruous coming from such a little one. And, because you were small, never once did I think of my own constricted childhood in the thrall of adults.

  85

  I WAS SITTING UP in bed with my back resting against the headboard, letting my thoughts roam, for Celia had fallen asleep beside me. I didn’t wake her, for I knew she had some sort of built-in clock that would suddenly propel her awake and into movement. But while she was asleep, I could talk to her the way I couldn’t otherwise. I turned to gaze at her closed eyes, her eyelashes still long, but fuller with mascara. You are like a doll still, I thought, but one much emaciated, the cheeks no longer plump, the skin no longer bisque. If I shook you like a doll, would your bones rattle? Would your eyes, not earthy like mine but water-signed like your father’s, fill with tears? You hardly ever cried as a child. So I never wanted to shake you, as I wanted to shake the others sometimes, especially Lise who was so filled with temper. What wounds to her soul had transmitted such agony that she in turn inflicted on others? Had I conveyed my own unhappiness to her when I carried her? Did the blows I received when she was already inside my belly create a disturbance that registered inside her tiny brain? Is there already a functioning brain at that stage? How little I know.

  I do know that’s the last time we had our drunken dance at night, he and I, the last time he laid hands on me, in any sense of the word. For it was only the next morning in the pristine light of day, as he sat on the bench on the veranda and pulled on his boots before leaving for work, that I told him I was expecting. I have to admit, it hit him hard. I could see by the blood rushing to his face and his hands falling from tying the laces. He lifted his head and looked out at the yard, his expression bleak. I wasn’t sure what disturbed him really, the prospect of another child, or the balling up of the fist to hit me the previous night. He didn’t look at me and my swollen mouth. He looked at his hands. He clenched and unclenched them. He didn’t say anything for a long time while I stood, in my kitchen apron, my hands unconsciously curled around my belly. He resumed tying his laces, and he got up and put on his hat and he mumbled something as he turned and walked away. I still am not sure if it was “Sorry.” It would have been the only time the word was ever said.

  86

  IT IS TO YOU I’ve wanted to say sorry, those other evenings when I was ill and you dropped by on a quick visit and you lay beside me on the bed, dressed in your business suit, which signified you hadn’t gone home yet after your day’s labour, your high heels off, your feet stretched out though not reaching as far as mine at the bottom of the bed, for you didn’t inherit my height. Rangy, like your father, your body, your arms, your little legs sturdy from the start, and strong, well able to carry you as you left me. For that is what was hurtful, your eagerness to leave, to find another home away from us. Was it the crowded room you shared with your brother and sister, the skimpiness of everything? Our meals, our clothing, our toys and playthings. Our threadbare lives?

  That day you walked away, you didn’t wave when you looked back. You didn’t cry.

  S
uddenly I’m startled, for out of nowhere, as if you were reading my mind, you ask, “G,”—for so you have taken to calling me from that day at the coffee shop—“why did I end up living with Aunt Phil and Uncle Ted? You know, I’ve been trying to remember, but nothing comes back at all.”

  It takes me a long time to reply to your question. For since our talk in the coffee shop you have showed no further interest in the subject. Nor have you ever shown interest before in discussing anything about our lives. I’m stunned to hear you say you don’t remember anything about leaving home when it is so engraved on my heart. Your calling them “Aunt Phil” and “Uncle Ted” still makes me want to grind my teeth in a jealous rage, for they were not related to you at all. Yet in all these years it is them you related to.

  I wet my lips that are suddenly dry and I open my mouth several times without getting the words out, for it is as if the shyness that had been gradually leaving me during my time at Ellesmere Lodge, the inability to speak that plagued me all those years, has returned. I glance at you and am glad that you are still lying there with your eyes closed and not witnessing my confusion. But I am conscious of your waiting on my answer, and I feel the moments stretching between us. Finally I mumble, just as I pull the blanket up to my neck and bury half of my face, like a child, so you can’t hear me properly, nor suspect the reason for the telltale tremor in my voice, “You know, I can’t remember now either. Isn’t that strange? But I’ll think about it; it will come back, I’m sure.”

  And you say, “Oh, don’t worry. It’s just that there are so many things that I wonder about, that I would like to ask you now that I have you here.” You chuckle. “Maybe it’s the age thing. This looking back.”

  You softly pat my shoulder that is already burning up under the blanket, my whole body, from cowardice, from sadness, from denial.

  “But,” you say, “things can wait. We have lots of time.”

  87

  I DID NOT MAKE it downstairs for the next few weeks. After the equanimity of the previous day, clearing out Mr. Bridges’ room, who could have guessed what surprises awaited? I cleared out all the bits and pieces. I retrieved the jewellery boxes, placed the rings and cufflinks inside them, and set them along with some odds and ends from the chest of drawers into a box and labelled it for the cousin to take away. Then I started on the bedside table. There wasn’t much in the large bottom drawer, just a few fat file envelopes. I didn’t open any of this, feeling respectful of Mr. Bridges’ privacy.

  After that task, I decided to take a break and I spent some time looking through his CD collection before packing that away. Since Matron had offered me a memento, I was strongly tempted to take his miniature stereo and some music to go with it. For that was not on the list of things the family wanted. But then I thought it was much too extravagant for me, as I’d seen similar sets advertised in American magazines for thousands of dollars. I was intimidated by its endless array of buttons. How would I ever understand them? The red and green and yellow lights that raced along a track or blinked softly, even now. Should I unplug it? Turn it off? Where was the CD he had been playing that day? I looked at the little player, willing it to defeat me, but when I found the button marked STOP and I pressed it and it did so, I smiled in my moment of triumph.

  On the floor, between the chair and the stand holding the player, I found the empty case together with the other CDS he had brought home that day. They had probably been placed there by someone else, as I remember now his putting them down in the chair when he entered the room with me. I reached down to pick up the CDS and brought up the mail he had carried in that day. Most of the envelopes were unopened, but as I walked over to drop them in the carton with the papers, I came to one that had been torn open, and I stopped. Unlike the others that were clearly official, with typed addresses, this address was handwritten, in flowing black ink. It had come from the U.S.A. I squinted at the return address, which was on a little printed label. Mrs. Margo Haynes-Crosswell and a Florida address. My first thought was that it was from one of his children, then I remembered they did not live in Florida. Then I thought, well, it’s a cousin, it’s a married woman, so that’s okay then. But instead of throwing it into the box, I held on to it, a feeling compounded of fear and jealousy growing in my heart. I truly didn’t know why I had such a strong reaction to this letter, which could have been of the most innocent sort. But I felt the envelope burning my hand and without any further thought I extracted sheets of airmail paper so fine they crackled.

  Well, isn’t this proceeding just like your typical Mills and Boon or Harlequin novel? Or maybe more like Victorian romance, or one of Mrs. Revd. Humphrey’s bodice rippers. The device of the letter! That fatal letter by which lies are finally ripped away and truth is unmasked. It was like that for me. Though it took more than one letter to convince me of the enormity of this lie—the ignominy of something much, much worse. It wasn’t that here was revealed the romance conducted on those Miami visits, an old flame rekindled, that here—finally—was the woman he intended to marry. Far worse was to come. For I would discover that I had all along been playing a starring role in their little drama: the Little Country Mouse, or LCM to use their playful shorthand.

  That first letter was only the beginning of what I was to find out. I read it as my face burned and my body shook so much I had to sit down. And then I read it over and over again. She was obviously returning home to marry him, to be the chatelaine of the mansion he was restoring. That much was evident, but now she had finally given him a date, assuming all the work was finished by then. Was this what he had rat-tatted on my door to tell me? The source of his secret, inward smile, his playfulness that day? The fact that nothing I thought of as a relationship with him ever existed. Not even that most basic of connections, mutual friendship, respect, loyalty?

  I came to this conclusion after sitting down in the armchair to read the stack of letters from her that were in the top drawer, for I went looking for them, neat packs in order of arrival, each set bound with coloured rubber bands. There was no reference to me in the first letter I read, and so my initial reaction to the shock was shame at my own poor deluded self. Shame at my foolishness. Thankfulness that I had confided in no one. Shame at how I had mentally elevated myself into a sphere that I was so clueless about, for this was one in which a woman would get down to brass tacks immediately after the endearments and the pledge.

  For dear Margo was dictating the terms from the start, with the whip hand holding Architectural Digest to beat the rat that was running around in the cage. Inventory, inventory. These types of windows. This type of flooring for the living room and hallway. Carpets? Question? Back patio ripped up and replaced with terrazzo tiles. Relined swimming pool, a gazebo at the far end. Paint chips, catalogues, estimates for designer sanitary fixtures coming by courier. And when next would he be up so they could consult?

  I guess I’m being facetious about this now because I really don’t want to talk about the other bit, the part so painful that it scored my heart more than anything had ever done. It was so cruel. So gratuitous. So indecent.

  I spent the rest of the day in that room reading those letters. I had to. I didn’t leave the room to eat the lunch brought up for me. After Maisie knocked on Mr. Bridges’ door to let me know she had left it in my room, I got up and turned the lock in the door. I could not trust myself to speak to anyone.

  I focused on the discussion of the china, the throwing out of the old—his, Spode, too old-fashioned—a suggested list of the new that was to be bought. Perhaps they could have a look on his next trip, or should they wait until Europe and see what they had in Florence? She was thinking she would get rid of her silver tea set, for she seemed to recall his was much nicer. They didn’t want two, did they?

  I kept thinking, china? New tea service? At her age? I didn’t know her age, but from the large photograph in the drawer—much handled, I now noticed—and the smaller one among the many framed photos in the room that I had never actually scru
tinized before, she had that seamless, elegant, bland look that denoted age erased by plastic surgery, the tight smile a tribute to expensive orthodontics. Her hair and her face had that finished, polished look that rich people who take care of themselves seem to have, but the eyes behind the mascara looked tired and washed out. Or maybe the image was simply dissolving into my own raddled, washed-out, washed-up self.

  88

  I READ ALL THE letters. I now know the worst that can befall a human being. But I also finished off my job in Mr. Bridges’ room, left everything neatly packaged and labelled and tied up for Matron. The CDS in racks fitted into cartons. The stereo in the very box it had come in, which I found stored flat in the top of the clothes closet. The framed photos all carefully wrapped before packing, to go with the other carton for the cousin. I turned back to survey the room before I closed the door. Good job! Every scrap and speck accounted for. No broken hearts lying on the floor. Not a shred of trampled reputation or skewered loyalty. Those were tightly bound up in the stack of letters, which I clutched firmly in my hand as I exited. My precious souvenirs.

  89

  I HID THEM IN the same place I used to hide the pens and pencils I borrowed when I first came to Ellesmere Lodge. None of that foolishness anymore. All the pens and pencils have been liberated, restored to some owner, if not the rightful one. But that whole subject is making me think that perhaps if paper and pens and pencils had not been invented, typewriters or printing presses or computers, there would be a lot less misery in the world. Though I’m not sure how I’ve arrived at this argument, which jerks me from the sleep I have been trying all night to fall into. The ink that wrote those letters is black and rich, the hand is firm. The recipient is dead. The current reader is dying. Well, not quite, not yet.