Family Dancing

by David Leavitt

  The first day of school—a week after Elaine had gone to bed—Danny woke up to hear her screaming. He ran to her bedroom, and found her sitting up on the bed, streaked in light. She had ripped the curtains open, and the bared morning sun, through the shutters, bisected her face, the mat of her unwashed hair, the nightgown falling over her shoulders. She sat there and screamed, over and over again, and Danny rushed in, shouting, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

  And then she grabbed the ends of her hair and began tearing at them, and grinding her teeth together, and wailing. Finally she collapsed, in tears, onto the bed. She turned to look at Danny and she screamed, “I can’t change! Don’t you see, no matter how much I want to, I just can’t change!”

  Danny got Mrs. Kravitz. She came over and hoisted Elaine out of bed and began marching her around the hall. “One, two, three, let’s go, let’s go,” Mrs. Kravitz said. “Danny, go look in the bathroom for empty pill bottles, sweetheart, your mommy’s going to be just fine.”

  Danny didn’t find any empty pill bottles, and when he came out of the bathroom some paramedics were coming through the kitchen with a stretcher. “I can’t stand up,” Elaine was telling Mrs. Kravitz. “I’ll be sick.”

  “Just lie down now,” Mrs. Kravitz said. Danny remembered that today was the first day of school, and he wondered whether he should go to his homeroom class or not, but when he looked at the clock, he saw that it was already eight o’clock. School had started.

  Danny spent the night at the Kravitzes’ house, and the next day he went to Nick and Carol’s. This was in a different school district, but nobody talked about school. That night, when his cousins wanted to watch a different television show from Danny, he threw his first fit.

  A few days later, while he was eating his cereal at the kitchen table, Danny’s father arrived. Danny didn’t say hello. He continued to spoon the sweet milk into his mouth, though the cereal was gone. Belle, who was making pancakes, turned the burner off and quietly slunk out of the room. Allen sat down across from Danny, holding a cup of coffee. He had a new short haircut, and was growing a stubbly beard. They were alone in the room.

  “I know you’re angry,” Allen said. “I know you wonder where I’ve been and why your mother got sick. I don’t know where to begin, and I don’t expect instant forgiveness, but I do want you to hear me out. Will you do that for me? I know you’ll have a lot of questions, and I’m prepared to answer them. Just give me a chance.”

  Danny looked at his father and didn’t say anything.

  On weekends Danny went to visit his father in the city. Allen was living with a man named Gene in an apartment in Greenwich Village, and though he had quit being a stockbroker, he continued to live off his own investments. Each Friday Danny rode the train up, past the fast-food franchises thrown up around the railroad stations, the muddy Amboys, the rows of tenements in Elizabeth. Allen took him to museums, to the theater, to restaurants. On Sunday he saw his son off at Penn Station. “I used to ride this train every day,” he told Danny, as they waited on the platform. “I used to play cards with Uncle Nick on this train. It seems like hundreds of years.”

  “That was when you and Mom had dinner by candlelight,” Danny said, remembering how his father twirled him in the air, how his mother pronounced the word “cacciatore”—slowly, and with such relish.

  “We were innocent,” Allen said. “Your mother and I believed in something that was wrong for us. Wrong for me, I should say.”

  Danny looked away from his father, toward the train which was now moving into the station.

  “You probably think your mother’s getting sick is the result of my being gay,” Allen said, putting his hand on his son’s shoulder. “But that’s only partially true. It goes much further, much deeper than that, Danny. You know your mother hasn’t been well for a long time.”

  From where he’s lying, his face against the pillow, Danny hears the harsh sound of tires against gravel, and bolts up in bed. Through his window he sees a taxi in the driveway, and Allen, dressed in bluejeans and a lumberjack shirt, fighting off Belle’s furious barking dog. Elaine, seeing Allen, has crawled up on her haunches, and is hugging her knees. When Allen sees Elaine, he turns to rehail the taxi, but it is already out of the driveway.

  “Now, Allen, don’t be upset,” Nick says, walking out onto the gravel, taking Allen’s shoulder in one hand, the dog in the other.

  “You didn’t tell me she was going to be here,” Allen says.

  “That’s because you wouldn’t have come out,” says Carol, joining them. “You two have to talk. We’re sorry to do this, but it’s the only way. Someone’s got to take some responsibility.”

  As if he is a child about to ride a bicycle for the first time without training wheels, Allen is literally pushed by Carol toward his wife.

  “What’s going on? What’s happening here?” shouts Belle. When she sees Allen, she stops dead in her tracks.

  “You didn’t tell him?” Belle asks.

  Allen begins to move uncertainly toward Elaine, who is still rearing, and Carol and Nick push Belle into the kitchen. Danny jumps out of his bed and kneels next to the door.

  They whisper. Nick nods and walks outdoors. “Relax, Mom,” says Carol. “They’ve got to talk. They’ve got to make some decisions.”

  “Elaine’s hospitalized.” Belle announces this known fact in a low voice, and looks toward the door to her room.

  “She’s been hiding her whole life. She’s got to face up to facts. I can’t take this much longer.” Carol lights a cigarette, and rubs her eyes.

  Belle looks away. “He’s just a child,” she says.

  “Their child,” Carol says. “Not ours.”

  “Not so loudly!” Belle says, and points to the bedroom door. “Have some sympathy. She’s been through a personal hell.”

  “I know things were hard,” Carol says. “But to commit herself! I’m sorry, Mom, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s just self-dramatizing. No one commits themselves these days. You see a psychiatrist on Central Park West once a week. You continue your life, and you deal with your problem.”

  “Her problem is worse than that,” Belle says. “She needs help. All my life I never said so, but I knew she was—not strong. And now I have to admit, knowing she’s taken care of, I feel relieved.”

  “But it’s not like she’s crazy!” Carol says. “It’s not like she’s a raving lunatic, or schizophrenic, or anything. She’s basically just fine, isn’t she? She just needs some help, doesn’t she?”

  Belle doesn’t answer. Carol sits down, lays her head on the kitchen table, and starts to cry.

  “Oh, my poor girl,” Belle says, and strokes her daughter’s hair. “I know you’re worried about your sister. And she is fine. She’ll be fine.”

  “Then why can’t she just check herself out of that hospital and take her kid and start seeing a goddamned shrink once a week?” Carol says, lifting up her head and turning to face her mother. “I’ll pay for it, if that’s what she needs.”

  “Keep your voice down!” Belle whispers loudly. “Let’s talk outside.”

  She pulls Carol out of her chair, and out the screen door. As soon as they’ve left the kitchen, Danny makes a run for the stairs. He sneaks into his cousins’ room, which is full of baseball cards and Star Wars toys, closes the door, and perches on the window seat, which overlooks the swimming pool. Below him, he can see his parents arguing in one corner, while in another, Belle and Carol continue their discussion. Belle is trying to explain that Elaine cannot take care of a household, and this is her problem, and Carol is shaking her head. As for Nick, he has moved out onto the lawn, where he is playing baseball with Greg and Jeff.

  Danny can just barely make out his parents’ voices. “They arranged this,” he hears Elaine saying. “They think Danny’s a pain in the ass.”

  “You know I’d take him if I could,” Allen answers.

  “I thought you were leading such a model life!”

  �
�There’s nothing about my life which would create an unhealthy atmosphere for Danny. I’m just not ready for him yet.”

  “Good,” Elaine says. “He can come live with me.”

  Danny closes the window. He knows to cover up his tracks. Then he runs back downstairs, through the kitchen, and out the screen door. He runs alongside the pool, past his parents, and toward the woods. Allen catches his eye, and waves. Danny waves back, keeps running.

  When Danny first arrived at Nick and Carol’s, everything was alien: the extra bed in Greg and Jeff’s room which pulled out from under, the coloration of the television set, the spaghetti sauce. They were so indulgent toward him, in his unhappiness, that he wondered if perhaps he had leukemia, and they weren’t telling him. And then he realized that he did not have leukemia. He was merely the passive victim of a broken home. For months he had held back his own fear and anger for the sake of his mother. Now she had betrayed him. She was unfit. He had been taken away, as had she. There was no reason to be good anymore.

  What Danny didn’t count on was Carol and Nick’s expectation that somehow he would change, shape himself to their lives. No child with leukemia would be asked to change. Danny decided to become a child with leukemia—a sick child, a thwarted child, a child to be indulged. Nick and Carol asked him if he wouldn’t maybe consider trading places with his grandmother and moving into his cousins’ room, which would be fun for all three, like camp. Danny threw his biggest fit ever. They never asked him again. They gave him wearied looks, when he refused to eat, when he demanded to watch what he wanted to watch, when he wouldn’t talk to company. They lost patience, and he in turn lost patience: Didn’t they understand? He was a victim. And certainly he had only to mention his mother’s name, and his own stomach would sink, and Carol’s eyes would soften, and suddenly she would become like his grandmother—maternal and embracing. He made himself need her to be maternal and embracing.

  The night his mother went to bed forever, Danny learned two things: to be silent was to be crazy, and to be loud was also to be crazy. It seemed to him that he did not have a choice. He knew no way of living that did not include morose silences and fits of fury. When Carol asked him why he wouldn’t just enjoy the life he had, he felt a fierce resistance rise in his chest. He was not going to give himself up.

  Now, running from his crazy parents, Danny arrives at a place in the woods—a patch of dry leaves sheltered by an old sycamore—which he has designated his own. Only a few feet away, the neighborhood children are playing Capture the Flag in the cul-de-sac, and he can hear their screams and warnings through the trees. He turns around once, circling his territory, and then he begins. Today he will invent an episode of “The Perfect Brothers Show,” the variety show on his personal network. He has several other series in the works, including “Grippo,” a detective drama, and “Pierre!” set in the capital city of South Dakota.

  He begins. He does all the voices, and makes the sound of applause by driving his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “And now,” he says, “for your viewing pleasure, another episode of ‘The Perfect Brothers Show’!”

  The orchestra plays a fanfare. In another voice, Danny sings:

  “A perfect night for comedy!

  For fun and musicality!

  We’ll change you!

  Rearrange you!

  Just you wait and see!

  Welcome to The Perfect Brothers Show!”

  He is in the midst of inventing a comic skit, followed by a song from this week’s guest star, Loni Anderson, when Jeff—the younger and more persistently good-natured of the brothers—appears from between the trees. “Can I play?” he asks.

  Danny, to his own surprise, doesn’t throw a fit. “Yes,” he says. “We’ll do a comedy skit. You’re the housewife and I’m Superman.”

  “I want to be Superman,” Jeff says.

  “All right, all right.” Now Danny begins to give instructions for the skit, but halfway through Jeff interrupts and says, “This is boring. Let’s play baseball.”

  “If you want to play something like that,” Danny says, “go play Capture the Flag.” He throws up his hands in disgust.

  “There are girls playing,” Jeff says. “Well, if you won’t play, I’ll play baseball with my dad!”

  “Good,” says Danny. “Leave me alone.”

  Jeff runs off toward the house. Part of the way there, he turns once. “You’re weird,” he says.

  Danny ignores him. He is halfway through his skit—playing both parts—when he is interrupted again. This time it is his father. “How are you, old man?” Allen asks. “Want to go to the Paper Palace?”

  For a moment Danny’s eyes widen, and then he remembers how unhappy he is. “All right,” he says.

  They take Carol’s station wagon, and drive to the Paper Palace, a huge pink cement structure in the middle of an old shopping center. The shopping center is near Danny’s old house.

  “You’ve loved the Paper Palace—how long?” Allen asks. “I think you were four the first time I brought you here. You loved it. Remember what I bought you?”

  “An origami set and a Richie Rich comic book,” Danny says. He rarely gets to the Paper Palace anymore; Carol shops in the more elegant mall near her house.

  “When we lived here, all I wanted to do was to get into Carol and Nick’s neighborhood. A year ago today. Just think. All I could think about was getting a raise and buying a house. I might have bought the house next door to Carol and Nick’s. I wanted you to grow up in that area. All those trees. The fresh air. The great club.”

  “I am anyhow, I guess,” Danny says.

  “Don’t let it fool you,” Allen says. “It all seems so perfect. It all looks so perfect. But soon enough the paint chips, there are corners bitten by the dog, you start sweeping things under the bed. Believe me, under the beds, there’s as much dust in Nick and Carol’s house as there was in ours.”

  “Carol has a maid,” Danny says.

  “Just never trust cleanness. All the bad stuff—the really bad stuff—happens in clean houses, where everything’s tidy and nobody says anything more than good morning.”

  “Our house wasn’t like that,” Danny says.

  Allen looks at him. But now they are in the parking lot of the shopping center, and the colorful promise of the Paper Palace takes both of them over. They rush inside. Danny browses ritualistically at stationery and comic books, reads through the plot synopses in the soap opera magazines, scrupulously notes each misspelling of a character’s name. Allen lags behind him. They buy a copy of Vogue for Elaine. In front of them in line, a fat, balding man upsets a box of candy on the sales counter as he purchases a copy of Playgirl. His effort to avoid attention has backfired, and drawn the complicated looks of all around him. Danny avoids looking at Allen, but Allen’s eyes shoot straight to Danny, whose face has a pained, embarrassed expression on it. They do not mention the fat man as they walk out of the store.

  Years ago, when Danny was only six or seven, he found a magazine. He was playing in the basement, dressing up in some old clothes of Allen’s which he had found in a cardboard box. The magazine was at the bottom of the box. When Elaine came down to check what Danny was up to, she found him sitting on a trunk, examining a series of pictures of young, dazed-looking men posed to simulate various acts of fornication. Elaine grabbed the magazine away from Danny and demanded to know where he’d gotten it. He told her that he had found it, and he pointed to the box.

  Elaine looked again at the magazine, and then at the box. She thumbed through the pages, looking at the photographs. Then she put the magazine down on top of the box and wrapped her arms around herself.

  “Danny,” she said, “for God’s sake, don’t lie about this. You don’t have to. You can tell me the truth. Are you sure that’s where you got this thing?”

  “Swear to God and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye,” Danny said.

  “Get upstairs,” said Elaine.

  “Do you want a Velamint?” Al
len asks Danny in the car, as they drive back from the Paper Palace. They are riding down a wide, dark road, lined with sycamores. Danny takes the small blue wafer from his father, without saying anything. He opens the window, sticks his hand out into the breeze.

  “You know, Danny, I’ve been thinking,” Allen says. “I know this fantastic place, this school, in New Hampshire. It’s great—really innovative—and it’s specially for bright, motivated kids like you.”

  Danny doesn’t answer. When Allen turns to look at him, he sees that his son is clutching the armrest so hard his knuckles have turned white, and biting his lip to hold back tears.

  “Danny,” Allen says. “Danny, what’s wrong?”

  “I know I’ve been a problem,” Danny says. “But I’ve decided to change. Today. I’ve decided to be happy. Please. I’ll make them want me to stay.”

  Allen is alarmed by Danny’s panic. “Danny,” he says, “this school isn’t punishment. It’s a great place. You deserve to go there.”

  “I played with Jeff today!” Danny says. His voice is at its highest register. He is staring at Allen, his face flushed, a look of pure pleading in his eyes.

  Allen puts his hand over his mouth and winces. When they reach a stop sign, he turns to Danny and says, as emphatically as he can, “Danny, don’t worry, no one’s going to make you go anywhere. But, Danny, I don’t know if I want you to stay with Nick and Carol. After fifteen years in that world, I don’t know if I want my son to be hurt by it like I was.”

  “I won’t become a stockbroker. I won’t sweep the dust under the bed. But, please, don’t send me away.”

  “Danny, I thought you didn’t like it here,” Allen says.

  “I’m not unfit.”

  They are still at the stop sign. Behind them, a car is honking, urging them to move on. Danny’s eyes are brimming with tears.

  Allen shakes his head, and reaches for his son.

  They go to Carvel’s for ice cream. Ahead of them in line a flustered-looking woman buys cones for ten black children who stand in pairs, holding hands. Two of the girls are pulling violently at each other’s arms, while a boy whose spiral of soft-serve ice cream has fallen off his cone cries loudly, and demands reparations. Allen orders two chocolate cones with brown bonnets, and he and Danny sit down in chairs with tiny desks attached to them, like the chairs in Danny’s elementary school. There are red lines from tears on Danny’s face, but he doesn’t really cry—at least, he doesn’t make any of the crying noises, the heaves and stuttering wails. He picks off the chocolate coating of the brown bonnet and eats it in pieces before even touching the actual ice cream.