Family Dancing

by David Leavitt

  She doesn’t blink. “I assumed you’d find out sooner or later,” she says. “But, Mother, can you understand that I didn’t want to hurt you?”

  I was expecting confessions and tears. Nina’s sincerity surprises me. “Nina,” I say, trying to affect maternal authority, “tell me what’s going on.”

  Nina smiles. “In the Fourth Millennium,” she says, “when it was least expected, the Brolian force attacked the city of Landruz, on the planet Abdur. Chaos broke loose all over. The star-worms escaped from the zoo. It soon became obvious that the community would not survive the attack. Izmul, the father of generations, raced to his space-cruiser. It was the only one in the city. Hordes crowded to get on board, to escape the catastrophe and the star-worms, but only a few hundred managed. Others clung to the outside of the ship as it took off and were blown across the planet by its engines. The space-cruiser broke through the atmosphere just as the bomb hit. A hundred people were cast out into space. The survivors made it to a small planet, Dandril, and settled there. These are my origins.”

  She speaks like an oracle, not like anything I might have given birth to. “Nina,” I say, “I am your origin.”

  She shakes her head. “I am a surveyor. It was decided that I should be born in earthly form so that I could observe your planet and gather knowledge for the rebuilding of our world. I was generated in your womb while you slept. You can’t remember the conception.”

  “I remember the exact night,” I say. “Daddy and I were in San Luis Obispo for a convention.”

  Nina laughs. “It happened in your sleep,” she says. “An invisible ray. You never felt it.”

  What can I say to this? I sit back and try to pierce through her with a stare. She isn’t even looking at me. Her eyes are focused on a spot of green caught in the night outside the window.

  “I’ve been receiving telepathic communications,” Nina says. “My people will be coming any time to take me, finally, to where I belong. You’ve been good to this earthly shell, Mother. For that, I thank you. But you must understand and give me up. My people are shaping a new civilization on Dandril. I must go and help them.”

  “I understand,” I say.

  She looks at me quizzically. “It’s good, Mother,” Nina says. “Good that you’ve come around.” She reaches toward me, and kisses my cheek. I am tempted to grab her the way a mother is supposed to grab a child—by the shoulders, by the scruff of the neck; tempted to bend her to my will, to spank her, to hug her.

  But I do nothing. With the look of one who has just been informed of her own salvation, the earthly shell I call Nina walks out the screen door, to sit on the porch and wait for her origins.

  Mother calls me again in the morning. “I’m in the garden,” she says, “looking at the sweetpeas. Now I’m heading due west, toward where those azaleas are planted.”

  She is preparing the Christmas newsletter, wants information from my branch of the family. “Mother,” I say, “it’s March. Christmas is months away.” She is unmoved. Lately, this business of recording has taken on tremendous importance in her life; more and more requires to be saved.

  “I wonder what the Garveys will write this year,” she says. “You know, I just wonder what there is to say about something like that. Oh my. There he is now, Mr. Garvey, talking to the paper boy. Yes, when I think of it, there have been signs all along. I’m waving to him now. He’s waving back. Remember, don’t you, what a great interest he took in the Shepards’ son, getting him scholarships and all? What if they decided to put it all down in the newsletter? It would be embarrassing to read.”

  As we talk, I watch Nina, sitting in the dripping spring garden, rereading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Every now and then she looks up at the sky, just to check, then returns to her book. She seems at peace.

  “What should I say about your family this year?” Mother asks. I wish I knew what to tell her. Certainly nothing that could be typed onto purple paper, garnished with little pencil drawings of holly and wreaths. And yet, when I read them over, those old newsletters have a terrible, swift power, each so innocent of the celebrations and catastrophes which the next year’s letter will record. Where will we be a year from today? What will have happened then? Perhaps Mother won’t be around to record these events; perhaps I won’t be around to read about them.

  “You, can talk about Charles,” I say. “Talk about how he’s inventing an artificial imagination.”

  “I must be at least seven hundred feet from the house now,” Mother says. “Can you hear me?”

  Her voice is crackly with static, but still audible.

  “I’m going to keep walking,” Mother says. “I’m going to keep walking until I’m out of range.”

  That night in San Luis Obispo, Alden—can you remember it? Charles was already so self-sufficient then, happily asleep in the little room off ours. We planned that night to have a child, and I remember feeling sure that it would happen. Perhaps it was the glistening blackness outside the hotel room window, or the light rain, or the heat. Perhaps it was the kind of night when spaceships land and aliens prowl, fascinated by all we take for granted.

  There are some anniversaries which aren’t so easy to commemorate. This one, for instance: one year since we almost died. If I could reach you, Alden, in the world behind your eyes, I’d ask you a question: Why did you turn off the road? Was it whim, the sudden temptation of destroying both of us for no reason? Or did you hope the car would bear wings and engines, take off into the atmosphere, and propel you—us—in a split second, out of the world?

  I visit you after lunch. Joe doesn’t bother to say hello, and though I kiss you on the forehead, you, too, choose not to speak. “Why so glum?” I ask. “Dehydrated egg bits for breakfast again?”

  You reach into the drawer next to your bed, and hand me a key. I help you out, into your bathrobe, into the hall. We must be quiet. When no nurses are looking, I hurry us into a small room where sheets and hospital gowns are stored. I turn the key in the lock, switch on the light.

  We make a bed of sheets on the floor. We undress; and then, Alden, I begin to make love to you—you, atop me, clumsy and quick as a teenager. I try to slow you down, to coach you in the subtleties of love, the way a mother teaches a child to walk. You have to relearn this language as well, after all.

  Lying there, pinned under you, I think that I am grateful for gravity, grateful that a year has passed and the planet has not yet broken loose from its tottering orbit. If nothing else, we hold each other down.

  You look me in the eyes and try to speak. Your lips circle the unknown word, your brow reddens and beads with sweat. “What, Alden?” I ask. “What do you want to say? Think a minute.” Your lips move aimlessly. A drop of tearwater, purely of its own accord, emerges from the marbled eye, snakes along a crack in your skin.

  I stare at the ruined eye. It is milky white, mottled with blue and gray streaks; there is no pupil. Like our daughter, Alden, the eye will have nothing to do with either of us. I want to tell you it looks like the planet Dandril, as I imagine it from time to time—that ugly little planet where even now, as she waits in the garden, Nina’s people are coming back to life.

  Danny in Transit

  Danny’s cousins, Greg and Jeff, are playing catch. A baseball arcs over the green lawn between them, falls into the concavity of each glove with a soft thump, and flies again. They seem to do nothing but lift their gloves into the ball’s path; it moves of its own volition.

  Danny is lying facedown on the diving board, his hands and feet dangling over the sides, watching the ball. Every few seconds he reaches out his hands, so that his fingers brush the surface of the pool. He is trying to imagine the world extending out from where he lies: the Paper Palace, and the place he used to live, and the Amboys, Perth and South. Then Elizabeth. Then West New York. Then New York, Long Island, Italy. He listens to the sucking noise of the wind the ball makes, as it is softly swallowed. He listens to his cousins’ voices. And then he takes tight
hold of the diving board and tries to will it into flight, imagining it will carry him away from this back yard. But the sounds persist. He isn’t going anywhere.

  The huge back yard is filled with chilly New Jersey light, elegant as if it were refracted off the surface of a pearl. Carol and Nick, his aunt and uncle, sip tomato juice under an umbrella. Nearby, but separate, Elaine, Danny’s mother, stares at nothing, her lips slightly parted, her mouth asleep, her eyes taking account. All that is between them is a plate of cheese.

  “We went to a new restaurant, Elaine,” Carol says. She is rubbing Noxzema between her palms. “Thai food. Peanut sauce and—oh, forget it.”

  “Keep that pitch steady, buddy,” Nick calls to his sons. “Good wrist action, remember, that’s the key.” Both of the boys are wearing T-shirts which say Coca-Cola in Arabic.

  “What can I do?” Carol asks.

  “She’s not going to talk. I don’t see why we have to force her.” Nick turns once again to admire his children.

  “Greg, Jeff, honey, why don’t you let Danny play with you?” Carol calls to her sons. They know Danny too well to take her request seriously, and keep throwing. “Come on, Danny,” Carol says. “Wouldn’t you like to play?”

  “No, no, no, no, no,” Danny says. He is roaring, but his mouth is pressed so tightly against the diving board that his voice comes out a hoarse yowl. Such an outburst isn’t hard for Danny to muster. He is used to bursting into tears, into screams, into hysterical fits at the slightest inclination.

  Nick gives Carol a wearied look and says, “Now you’ve done it.” Danny bolts up from the diving board and runs into the house.

  Carol sighs, takes out a Kleenex, and swats at her eyes. Nick looks at Elaine, whose expression has not changed.

  “He’s your son,” Nick says.

  “What?” says Elaine, touching her face like a wakened dreamer.

  Carol rocks her face in her hands.

  Belle, Danny’s grandmother, is in the kitchen, pulling burrs from the dog and cooking lunch, when Danny runs by. “Danny! What’s wrong?” she shouts, but he doesn’t answer, and flies through the door at the back of the kitchen into the room where he lives. Once inside, he dives into the big pink bed, with its fancy dust ruffle and lace-trimmed pillows; he breathes in the clean smell of the linen. It is Belle’s room, the maid’s quarters made over for her widowhood, and it is full of photographs of four generations of champion Labrador retrievers. When Danny arrived he was supposed to live with Greg and Jeff in their room, but he screamed so loudly that Belle—exhausted—said he could sleep in her room, and she would sleep with her other grandsons—at least for the time being. It has been two months, and Danny has not relented.

  Belle is pulling burrs from her pants suit. “I’m coming in, Danny,” she says, and he buries his face—hard—in the pillow. He has learned that he can usually make himself cry by doing this, even when he is actually feeling happy. The trick is to clench your eyes until a few drops of water squeeze out. And then it just happens.

  Danny feels hot breath on his hair, and a soft body next to his on the bed. Belle crawls and eases her way around him, making the bed squeak, until her wet mouth is right at his ear. “What’s wrong, sweetie pie?” she whispers, but he doesn’t answer, only moans into his pillow.

  Belle gets up abruptly. “Oh, Danny,” she says, “things would be so much easier if you’d just be nice. What happened to the old Danny I used to know? Don’t you know how much happier everyone else would be if you’d just be happy?”

  “I hate baseball,” Danny says.

  Danny is an only child and he looks like the perfect combination of his two parents. His eyes are round and blue, like his mother’s, his mouth small and pouting, like his father’s, and his wavy brown hair halfway between Elaine’s, which is red and packed in tight curls, and Allen’s, which is black and straight and dense. Growing up, Danny rarely saw his parents together, and so he doesn’t know the extent to which he resembles them. He remembers that his father would come home from work and insist that Danny not disturb him. In those days Allen believed that when a man got back to the house in the evening he deserved time alone with his wife as a reward for his labors. Every night Elaine ate two dinners—SpaghettiOs or Tater Tots with Danny, at six, and later, after Danny had gone to bed, something elaborate and romantic, by candlelight, with Allen. She would usually talk about the later dinners with Danny during the earlier ones. “Your father’s very demanding,” she said once, proudly. “He has strict notions of what a wife should do. Tonight I’m making chicken cacciatore.” Danny knows that both he and his mother must have been very young when she said this, because he remembers the dreamy deliberateness with which Elaine pronounced “cacciatore,” as if it were a magical incantation.

  Sometimes, before Elaine put Danny to bed, Allen would pick him up and twirl him around and make sounds like an airplane. Danny slept. Through the open crack in his bedroom door he could see the candles flickering.

  As he grew up Danny got to know his mother better. Starting when he was six or seven she lost her enthusiasm for dinner. “I can’t manage you, Danny,” she’d grumble to him. “I can’t manage children. I’m unfit.” Danny thought of how she always wrote danny g. on his lunchbag (and would continue to do so, even when he entered middle school, where last names matter). He thought of the way she made his lunch each day—peanut butter sandwich, apple, bag of cheese puffs, paper napkin. The candlelit dinners stopped, and Danny, who had never attended any of them, probably missed the ritual more than either of his parents. The three of them ate together, now, usually in silence. In those days, Elaine had a habit of staring darkly at Allen when he wasn’t looking. Danny remembers Allen’s anxious looks back, when he caught her face full of questions, before she shifted her eyes and changed the subject. In retrospect, Danny knows that his mother was trying to guess something, and that his father was trying to figure out how much she already knew. “I still wanted to cover my tracks,” Allen recently told his son. “I knew it was futile. I knew there was no going back. I don’t think I even wanted to go back. But I still covered my tracks. It becomes a habit when you do it your whole life.”

  One day Danny’s mother did not show up to pick him up at day camp. It was getting dark, and he was the only one left. The counselor who had stayed behind began to grow impatient. Watching the sky darken, Danny felt more embarrassment than fear. He was worried that Elaine would be misconstrued as the neglectful mother she believed herself to be, and he knew her not to be.

  He lied. “Oh, I forgot,” he said. “She had a doctor’s appointment. She said I should ask you to drive me home.”

  “Drive you home?” the counselor said. “Why didn’t she send a note?”

  “I guess she just thought you would,” Danny said.

  The counselor looked at him, her face full of confusion, and the beginnings of pity. Perhaps she would call child welfare. Perhaps he would be taken away. But nothing happened. She drove him home. His mother offered no explanation for what she had done, but she did not forget to pick him up again. Danny was relieved. He had feared that she would break down, sobbing, and say to the counselor, “I’m an unfit mother. Take him away.”

  Somehow they survived the winter. One night at dinner, a few days before spring vacation, Elaine stood up and said, “This is a sham.” Then she sat down again and continued eating. Allen looked at her, looked at Danny, looked at his plate. A few nights later she picked up the top of a ceramic sugar bowl which Danny had made her for Christmas and threw it overhand at Allen. It missed him, and shattered against the refrigerator door. Danny jumped, and fought back tears.

  “See what I can do?” she said. “See what you’ve driven me to?”

  Allen did not answer her. He quietly put on his jacket, and without a word walked out the back door. He was not home for dinner the next night. When Danny asked Elaine where he’d gone, she threw down her fork and started to cry. “Danny,” she said, “there have been a lot of lies i
n this house.”

  The next day was the first Monday of vacation, and when Danny came home from playing his mother was still in bed.

  “It’s O.K., Danny,” she said. “I just decided to take the day off. Lie in bed all day, since it’s something I’ve never done before. Don’t worry about me. Go ahead and play.”

  Danny did as she said. That night, at dusk, when he got home, she was asleep, the lights in her room all turned out. He was frightened, and he kept the house lights on even after he’d gone to bed. In the morning he knew that his father was really gone. Only his mother was in the bed when he gently pushed open the door. “I’m not getting up again,” she said. “Are you all right, honey? Can you go to the Kravitzes’ for dinner?”

  “Don’t you want anything to eat?” Danny asked.

  “I’m not hungry. Don’t worry about me.”

  Danny had dinner with the Kravitzes. Later, returning home, he heard her crying, but he couldn’t hear her after he turned on “Star Trek.”

  Every afternoon for a week he stood in the threshold of her doorway and asked if she wanted to get up, or if she wanted something to eat. He bought SpaghettiOs and Doritos with the money in the jar at the back of the pantry he was not supposed to know about. He never asked where his father was. Her room was musty from the closed windows, and even in the morning full of that five o’clock light which is darker than darkness, and in which the majority of car accidents happen. “Leave me alone,” she would call out from the dark now. “I’m tired. For Christ’s sake, just let me get some sleep. Go play or something.”

  Then he would close the door and make himself some Campbell’s soup and watch forbidden TV all night—variety shows and detective shows and reruns after eleven. Elaine had always allotted him three hours of TV per day; when she came home from shopping she’d feel the TV to see if it was warm, if he’d been cheating. Now there were no rules.