In the end his was the most courageous choice of all.
I placed the Dick Tracy envelope in my pocket. It belonged to Warren now. The film he had made could have been his own dissertation on his childhood, with his father as the leading character—the Tracy hero resplendent in his stylish yellow raincoat (Dad was very dapper), fighting crime and evil (Dad was black and white about good and bad), tempted by a wicked female figure (most of the shadow women of Dad’s vivid imagination!): Ira Beaty, a man who, even though a husband and father, was never really fulfilled in that role, secretly longing for so much more from life if only … And Dick Tracy, never quite committing himself to the tie of marriage, because, in doing so, he might lose so much … Yet Tracy remained a hero-image, bringing laughter and adventure to his devoted fans. And the all-too-human person that my father had been still brought tears and cheers to the hearts of those who knew him.
I wiped my cheeks with dusty fingers. The dust of the past of our family would eventually pass away, just as we would. My mother did not have much longer: the treasures in the basement had come along for me just in time. I had needed clues to who we were—mother, father, brother, sister—how we really related to each other. We had been inextricably intertwined and would be until our children’s children’s children rummaged around in our own basements or attics, finding a fingerprinted locket here, an old script and box of crystals there, an old meditation tape or an even older, yellow-paged book I had written that could only begin to express the pent-up wellsprings of love that we had always felt for each other, the yearning creativity, the ideas unspoken: and somewhere beneath the surface, the profound certainty that each of us chose, above all, to be with one another in the branches of this particular Family Tree. That was how we chose to learn about love. No one knew us better than we knew each other. That knowledge would always translate to the larger family of the world we lived in. Learn to love and forgive and understand family, and the world could be our true playground. It was up to us.
As I turned out the light and climbed the basement stairs, I reached down and patted my knee. Without its having buckled under me, I would not have come to the understanding I now had. I would now be capable of walking with new strength for the rest of my life. If it had not “failed” me, I would not have understood how I had been subtly, but surely, failing and undermining myself.
I closed the door at the head of the stairs, leaving the rest of the unknown memorabilia in the darkness below. My mother had long since forgotten they were there. She and my father had saved them for fifty-five years, waiting, I suppose, for a time when one of us children might want to ferret gently through the collection, looking perhaps for a book of poems, photographs in black and white always taken alongside the family car, a game of jacks still kept with chipped marbles, a tattered diary, a rumpled favorite doll, a report card with comments on the side relating to our futures.
We would be searching for clues from times past that would help us to understand more of who we were today, never suspecting that one small Father’s Day card drawn on a Sunday morning forty-seven years ago might lead to a flood of realization that we, the children, were indeed the product of dreams and nightmares—just as they had been of their parents.
I would return someday, to sift and savor other treasures, perhaps to glean new understanding, and to recognize that the world of our mom and dad, which looked so very different, was nevertheless inexorably Warren’s world and my world, the passage of time only providing one of many links that would hold us together always.
Slowly, slowly the creative puzzle that was our family would come clear, and through the shifting shapes of our lives the harmonious pattern would emerge that would allow us to come to terms with the whole….
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SHIRLEY MACLAINE was born and raised in Virginia. She began her career as a Broadway dancer and singer, then progressed to featured performer and award-winning actress in television and films. She has traveled extensively around the world, and her experiences in Africa, Bhutan, and the Far East formed the basis for her first two bestsellers, “Don’t Fall Off the Mountain” and You Can Get There From Here. Her investigations into the spiritual realm were the focus of Out on a Limb, Dancing in the Light, It’s All in the Playing and Going Within, all of which were national worldwide bestsellers. In her intimate memoir Dance While You Can, she wrote about aging, relationships, work, her parents, her daughter, and her own future as an artist and a woman. My Lucky Stars: A Hollywood Memoir, published in 1995, offers a candid and searching look at her forty years in Hollywood and the stars who taught her about show business and about life.
DANCE WHILE YOU CAN
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam hardcover edition published November 1991
Bantam paperback edition/August 1992
UNLESS OTHERWISE CREDITED, ALL PHOTOGRAPHS ARE COURTESY OF SHIRLEY MACLAINE’S PERSONAL COLLECTION.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1991 by Shirley MacLaine.
Spine photo copyright © 1991 by Ian Miles.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 91-13527.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.
eISBN: 978-0-307-76508-6
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.
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