Dancing Naked in Dixie

by Lauren Clark

  I realize that she must be talking about my arm, which is a lost cause. Even nail polish remover and a good scrub with a wire brush won’t do much good. It’s Sharpie Marker.

  “Was I surprised to wake up and see this,” I try to appear jovial, as if this random body-art by kids happens to me all of the time. “I’ll never take that much cold medicine again.”

  I stop my babbling and attempt to move past her when I notice something. The flight attendant isn’t looking at my hand or wrist. She’s focused on my face.

  “Oh, no,” I say, realizing what must have happened. “Excuse me,” I yell and push her out of the way, almost jumping over five rows of seats to get to the restroom door. In my hurry, I almost yank the panel off its hinges.

  Once I’m inside the tight space, the fluorescent lights flicker on. The glow adds a green cast to almost everyone’s appearance, so it’s been my practice—on every flight—to avoid my reflection entirely.

  This is different. This is desperation. This is… I force my eyes up. I look.

  And scream bloody murder.

  Chapter 33

  I’m in the busiest airport in the entire world. And I look like a freak. Worse than a freak. A freak who’s OD’d on cold medicine.

  In an attempt to disguise myself, I wrap the scarf around my head and face like a hijab. I wish like crazy I’d thought to pack a hat, a proper scarf, or extra clothes. And extra strength makeup remover.

  With one last look in the restroom mirror, I bend my head and slip into the empty aisle. I whisper a thank you to the flight attendant and rush into the hollow-sounding jet way, my purse slapping against my side with every step. Airport sounds—clatter, traffic, people—fill my head as I get closer to the terminal. My plan is to plunge into the fray, find the nearest car rental counter, then the closest Walgreens.

  “Julia?” I hear a voice over the din.

  Of course, I know that whoever it is can’t be looking for me, so I keep my head down and hurry off in the direction of baggage claim and car rentals.

  “Julia!” It’s the same voice again. Deep, male, commanding. This time, the word has a familiar ring. In fact, the tone and quality are the same my father used to use. Especially when I was in trouble.

  My body tingles as I inch toward the side of the building, away from the person calling my name. Surely, this man will find who he’s looking for. Not me. I don’t know a single person in Atlanta, Georgia, let alone Hartsfield International Airport, Concourse A.

  I’m about to break into a run, when a hand grabs my shoulder and spins me around.

  “Julia, didn’t you hear me?”

  It’s my father. David Sullivan, in the flesh.

  I’m flabbergasted. And begin to cry in the middle of the airport terminal.

  My father is holding me, first at arm’s length, then tight against his chest. I inhale his warmth, the woodsy smell of his cologne, the smooth brush of his navy Brooks Brothers sport coat. All at once, I’m transported back to my childhood—and the last time I can remember that we ever embraced.

  It was junior prom, way before my mom was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease. My father hadn’t seen the dress I was wearing, a Scarlett O’Hara number with a flouncy, billowing skirt and a dark green ruffle that framed my bare shoulders and unadorned neck. My mother and I had shopped for weeks, searching everywhere for a dress no one else would be wearing. When I caught a glimpse of the silken sheen in the window of an exclusive dress shop in Westchester, I knew we’d found it.

  My mother had twisted my auburn hair into a chignon and tugged a few tendrils loose to frame my face. She’d applied a light touch of lipstick, a brush of mascara, and blush to make my cheeks rosy. When she finished, and we looked in the mirror together, she was sniffing and brushing back tears.

  “You look lovely, Julia. The prettiest I’ve ever seen,” she told me, squeezing my hand. “I hope you have a wonderful time.”

  To her credit, she didn’t give me a last minute lecture about boys and sex, she didn’t warn me about creeping in past my curfew, and she didn’t lecture about alcohol.

  We’d had the talks, beginning when I turned thirteen. I’d asked questions. I’d read books she’d check out of the library on all of the squeamish topics my mother was uncomfortable discussing. I was ready—as ready as I could be. Or so I thought.

  I was attending prom with a senior, the guy I’d been secretly in love with since the fifth grade—the same guy who’d had his heart broken exactly one week ago. To everyone’s surprise, the girl he dated for the last three years quit high school and ran off with the police chief’s son. There were wild rumors—pregnancy, drugs, even that they’d won the lottery and had bought a small island in the Caribbean. I didn’t care. She was gone.

  So, when this same neighbor showed up on my front doorstep and asked if I’d like to be his date for the prom, I was out of my mind with glee. After floating on a cloud for a few days, my mother—ever so gently—yanked me back to earth and reality.

  “Dillon’s hurt,” my mother said, draping one hand over the steering wheel at a red light. She looked at me long and hard, her big hazel eyes wide open. We were driving home from the dress shop, my gown in the backseat, wrapped in a white plastic bag, my matching shoes in a pretty pink box on the floor.

  “I know,” I frowned over at her, annoyed that she’d bring it up.

  The light turned green and my mother pressed the accelerator. I reached over and snapped on the radio, ready to change the subject and keep the mood light, but my mother took the first opportunity—the next traffic light—to press a finger and turn the music off again.

  “Julia,” my mother continued. “I am not one to lecture and am only going to tell you this once,” she drew in a breath. “But being second choice has its challenges.”

  Deep down, I knew she was right. I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted to revel in the thought that—I Julia Sullivan—was going to prom with the most handsome senior at my high school. I wanted to bask in the warmth of it. I wanted, desperately, to enjoy it.

  Second choice. But my mother had said the words, making them real. Making them stick. And, after all, that was her purpose. Second choice.

  At the time, I wanted to spring out of the car, I wanted to yell at my mother, and tell her she was wrong. I wanted her to drop me off on the corner and never come back. At the time, I thought she was the meanest woman in the world. How could she say those things? How could she be so hurtful? Didn’t she love me?

  Second choice.

  I sniffed and lifted my nose, trying my best to appear unaffected at her words. Even though I wasn’t looking in her direction, I knew she was watching me. Caring about me. Loving me, even though I was rejecting her.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Dillon’s still in love with that girl,” she said, turning the wheel toward home. “I need you to understand that, Julia.” She allowed that to sink in.

  Try as I might to shake off the message, it seeped in, little by little. I could ignore it, but the words were true. Dillon didn’t suddenly come to his senses. He didn’t wake up and realize that I was his first and only love. He didn’t worship me. Not even close.

  “How do you know?” I tried asking, certain that she wasn’t an expert on love and relationships. Sure, she’d married my father in a white dress with a small ceremony. I’d seen the photographs, a few. Pictures of her looking up at him. He was twenty-two, she was twenty-one. I’d come along a year later. As far as I knew, it was fate and magic and all of that.

  Not that it seemed that way now. I was sixteen and naive. Selfish, concerned with my own life and future. I didn’t pay much attention to my parents’ marriage and certainly didn’t keep track of kisses and romantic moments.

  My mother parked the car. We were blocks away from the house.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, confused.

  With both hands clasped above the steering wheel, my mother closed her eyes. “I’m telling you this�
��something important—because I don’t want you to make the same mistake I made.”

  I shifted uncomfortably. Was I adopted? Were my parents not really married? Was there some problem with our family?

  “You see,” she said with a gentle whisper, “I was the second choice.” She swallowed. “I met your father and he was so handsome, and smart. But he was in love with someone else. Someone he could never have.” My mother blinked back tears. “At the time, I was okay with that. I would make him love me. We’d be happy. And a baby would help us become a family.”

  A truck roared by, its engine drowning out everything but the grinding of machinery.

  “And we were happy, we are happy,” my mother corrected herself, trying to reassure me. “And your father loves you the best he can. But, for me, there’s always been this distance, this part of him that I can’t reach. I can never get him to open up and let me in.”

  At the time, I sat stone still, wishing that I could melt away, become invisible, or disappear. I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to know that my father didn’t—or couldn’t—love my mother enough. And I didn’t want to think the same thing about Dillon.

  So I blocked it out. I blocked everything.

  Including my father’s reaction that evening. The look on his face when I walked down the stairs, when I reached the landing, and twirled around on the wood floor. I remembered the click and flash of cameras, the admiration for my dress, the admiring glances thrown at my handsome date. Dillon was nervous, I remembered that, carrying the wrist corsage across the driveway, ringing the doorbell, stepping inside like he’d never been in our foyer, when actually he’d run in—in a ripped shirt and gym shorts—smelling of fresh-cut grass and dirt more times that I could count.

  My father stood to the side. Thinking back now, he was paralyzed. His eyes didn’t leave me. In fact, it made me so uncomfortable that I ignored him until it was time to leave.

  We stood in the doorway, enjoying the cool night air, and he didn’t speak for a long time. “Daddy?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

  “You remind me of someone,” he confessed, his voice rough and gravelly, but his eyes soft and dreamy. “From the past. A long time ago.”

  He hugged me then, tight, for a long time.

  Then, Dillon walked over and my father snapped himself back to reality. He pulled away, offered some gruff advice about having me home at a proper hour, and that Dillon needed to behave like a perfect gentleman.

  There was the mention of a shotgun, I vaguely remember, and a joke about a shovel and one hundred acres where no one would ever find a person. I think my mother finally rescued us, pushing my father away, waving good-bye, and giving me a kiss.

  “Have a good time,” everyone chorused. There was another flurry of photo taking and flashes blinking, cameras snapping until we slid into his borrowed BMW.

  Dillon and I went to the prom. We danced, we laughed, and we even kissed goodnight. My date was sweet, but distant, and I felt the longing, an undeniable urge to tell him that I could be his one and only, solve all of his problems. I would make him love me. But, in the end, I didn’t say any of it. In the end, I knew that my mother was right.

  In the end, I thanked him for a wonderful evening. And I told him good-bye.

  I’d repressed all of the memories and ignored any hidden meanings. In the Hartsfield Airport, all of it came rushing back. My mother’s words, the gentle warning, the message she was trying so hard to tell her young, teenage daughter who didn’t know a thing about life or love.

  “Why are you here?” I demand.

  “I could ask you the same question,” he says, “unless you have a connecting flight to New Orleans.”

  When I don’t answer, my father trains his eyes on mine, and I can’t hear anything but the sound of my own breathing. The moment envelopes us like a titanium shield, cutting out the squawk of overhead announcements, the bleep of vehicles transporting passengers, the dull noise of everything moving at once.

  I break the silence. “Marietta told, didn’t she?”

  My father shakes his head. “No, she wouldn’t tell me,” he chuckles, “even when I threatened to fire her.”

  My lips twitch, but I don’t smirk. It’s refreshing to know that someone will stand up to my father. While David wouldn’t hesitate to hand me a pink slip, there’s no way reliable Marietta would get cut loose over another one of my screw ups—the key word being ‘my.’ If anything, her loyalty probably won her another notch in my father’s employee of the month tally—if such a thing exists.

  “So, you’re here to stop me, talk some sense into me?” I ask and settle my shoulders against the airport wall. “Tell me what a gigantic mistake I’m making?” A minuscule piece of dust or dirt tickles my nose. “A-choo!”

  I sneeze again, and David steps out of the line of fire, and takes a spot next to me. “Bless you.” He gazes out into the crowd. “You going to tell me what happened to your face? And why you’re wearing a scarf wrapped around your head?”

  A harried mother rushes by. She’s pushing a stroller and I catch a flash of golden curls, but the child tucked beneath the blanket is decked out in lime green and purple. I grimace. It’s not my marker-wielding attacker. Lucky for her, and me, too.

  “Long story,” I mutter, pulling the frayed edges of my sleeve to cover my marked-up skin. The fringe catches on my watch and I notice the time. “I have to go anyway. I need to get cleaned up and make a quick stop—before I catch a flight to the Big Easy.”

  With a furtive glance, I dart my eyes to the right. My father’s smiling at the comment. He’s pleased with my determination. But, without even asking him, I can also guess that he’s completely convinced I won’t be able to pull it off.

  I can’t let him have the satisfaction. With a sniff that I hope comes off like total disdain, I start walking. I don’t say good-bye. I step up my pace, feeling triumphant, edging around slower travelers, dodging suitcases. I begin to run, knowing that in another five seconds, I’ll be around the corner, down the escalator, and I can get lost in the chaos of baggage claim.

  Except that I hear David’s Italian-made leather shoes slapping against the tile floor behind me. Up ahead, I see a slack-faced security guard. He’s almost asleep, from the look of his drooping eyelids, but I start waving anyway, wind-milling my bandaged arm.

  “Help, officer!” I yell, hoping my outburst will force my father to give up the chase.

  Just as the security guard springs to life, a hand catches my sleeve.

  “Julia, quit it,” my father, red-faced, is clutching his chest. “Let me drive. We’re going to the same place.”

  Chapter 34

  Too late. After the Hartsfield Airport security guard assumes my cries are related to a terrorist plot or kidnapping attempt, three uniformed men with guns tackle my father and throw him to the floor.

  “Stop,” I call out, waving my arms for someone to listen. “I didn’t mean it.”

  No one hears me. As if a 7.5-magnitude earthquake just rocked the terminal, people run, scream, or duck to the floor for safety, covering their heads. Children cry, service dogs bark, and more alarms sound.

  I watched in horror as my father is shackled, yanked to his feet, and dragged into a lock-down room, where I know he’ll be interrogated like a criminal.

  “Please wait,” I say, racing after the swarm of security personnel, trying to stifle a sneeze. A-choo! “This is all a big mistake. He hasn’t done anything wrong. That’s my father.”

  After repeating my plea to everyone who will listen, one of the female guards takes pity on me. She does a double take when she sees my pink and blue marked-up face full-on, but gives me the benefit of the doubt. “You’re his daughter?” She raises both eyebrows, her dark eyes suspicious.

  I nod.

  “All right, sister,” she says, taking my arm. “Let’s hear what you’ve got to say.”

  Amid a few more sneezing fits, I manage to tell my story. Halfway through, I pull
out my driver’s license, the last name of which matches my father’s, recite his birthday, and spout off the phone number of our workplace and one Dolores Stanley, executive assistant.

  After that information is checked and verified, I produce my boarding pass and ticket information. I find the of bottle cold medicine in the bottom of my bag—as well as the receipt for the pills—which includes a helpful time and date stamp. The security guard then confirms that exactly four tablets are missing, and admits that the medicine may explain my vegetative state during the flight to Atlanta.

  When I describe the little girl, the Sharpie markers, and her mother, the agent coughs and covers her mouth. She doesn’t believe me. Now, even more self-conscious, I run a hand over my scarf, pulling the edges together under my chin.

  “I needed to disguise my appearance,” I gesture at my face and roll my eyes toward the ceiling, “until I could figure out how to get this stuff off,” I explain.

  There’s a knock on the door, and another uniformed officer hands the woman across from me a handful of white squares.

  “Give these a try,” she tells me and slides the pile across the table.

  Alcohol preps. Individual wipes. Smart.

  With a bit of a struggle, I rip one of the packets open, releasing the scent of antiseptic. My eyes begin to tear, but I hold the square against my chin and begin to scrub. The white cloth turns an awful shade of purple-brown when I lift it from my skin, but I’m thrilled. It’s working.

  While I reach for another alcohol prep, and repeat, my captor presses her knuckles against her bottom lip. “So, back to the disguise. That’s when your father saw you?” I can’t tell if she thinks I’m crazy, or if she believes me.

  “Yes,” I answer. “We haven’t had the best relationship since I lost my mom.” Her face flashes in front of me, and I have to stop talking and inhale to regain my composure. “Now, we have to work together. He’s my boss.” My nose tickles, but I manage not to sneeze.