Belly Dancing for Beginners

by Liz Byrski

  Marissa slept most of the way to Yallingup and later they walked to the restaurant for a meal and back along the moonlit beach. Next morning before six he heard her moving around in the kitchen and got up to find her waiting for the kettle to boil, pacing up and down, her face drained of colour, hands shaking.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘I’ll do that. You come and look at the view.’ Out on the balcony there was a stiff breeze off the ocean, and he wrapped a blanket around her shoulders as they stood watching the small black-clad figures of the surfers clustering in wait for the next wave. Then he set her up in a reclining chair, with her feet on a stool.

  ‘I’m not an invalid, you know,’ she said, mustering a weak smile.

  ‘I know,’ he said, handing her a mug of tea. ‘But just indulge me for a day or two.’

  ‘Frank,’ she said, not looking at him, ‘there’s something I’ve wanted to ask you. The plants – my plants, you brought them back.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It seemed odd. You could have charged me.’

  ‘Would you rather I had?’

  ‘Of course not, but I wondered why you didn’t.’

  ‘Waste of time. The kids that pinched them told us where they got them. We were around your street a lot that week but we had bigger fish to fry than you growing a bit of weed in the back garden.’

  ‘I kept wondering,’ she said. ‘I thought perhaps there was some sort of hidden agenda.’

  ‘Of course there was,’ he said, sitting down beside her. ‘I wanted to ask you out.’

  She smiled and sipped her tea. ‘For a while, I thought you were playing some sort of power game with me. So I dumped the plants.’

  He laughed. ‘But you didn’t give up, I’ll bet. You do still have a smoke?’

  ‘Only other people’s,’ she said. ‘What about you? When are you going to give up tobacco?’

  He thought she sounded as though she cared what he did but he knew that he should not attach too much meaning to anything she said or did over the next few days.

  He fetched shopping and the papers that morning, and she watched as he pottered around the house and later took himself off for a swim. When he got back, she was crying again, just quietly crying, and he made no attempt to stop her. He knew there must be a lot of crying still to come. Being with her had seemed perfectly natural: he gave her the same space he needed for himself, and felt entirely at ease.

  ‘Twice you saved my life now,’ Marissa had said when he finally dropped her at home in Fremantle the following Saturday afternoon.

  He laughed. ‘You’re worth saving.’

  ‘I owe you.’

  ‘No,’ he’d said. ‘This is what friends do – you just have to get used to it.’

  The timer pinged, and Frank swallowed the last of his wine and went inside. The moussaka was golden and bubbling. He wrapped a tea towel around his hands and lifted it out of the oven.

  ‘That looks good and smells even better,’ Marissa said, appearing at the kitchen door. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Moussaka.’

  ‘Your speciality. Very Greek, very seventies.’

  He smiled. ‘That’s me,’ he said. ‘Very seventies. It’s actually vegetarian moussaka – please note the major concession to your dietary preferences. And, by the way, you have a very poor collection of cooking equipment. How did your class go?’

  ‘Fine, really good,’ she said, dropping her keys on the table. ‘That smells and looks absolutely delicious. Will it keep?’

  Frank’s face fell slightly. ‘It’s ready to eat now,’ he said. ‘Timed to perfection. How long?’

  Marissa shrugged. ‘Half an hour, an hour . . . maybe more?’

  He tried to hide his disappointment with a shrug. ‘Well, if it has to, I suppose. You won’t get it at its best, of course. What did you want to do?’

  She stepped up to him and put her arms around his neck. ‘This,’ she said, and she kissed him, gently at first and then passionately, her tongue finding his.

  Frank had imagined it so often but now she took him by surprise. ‘Just this?’ he asked, kissing her again, sliding his fingers into her hair.

  ‘Well, quite a lot of this,’ she said, ‘and some other things.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure about this, Marissa?’

  ‘I’m absolutely sure.’

  ‘Moussaka keeps for ages,’ he said. ‘In fact, I always feel it benefits from standing overnight.’

  ‘This is beautiful, Marissa,’ Gayle said, shaking the sequin-embroidered scarf from the tissue paper and holding it up. ‘Thank you so much.’

  ‘And look at mine,’ Sonya said, ‘it’s the same green as my favourite costume. Did you make them, draw the pattern and sew on all those sequins by hand?’

  Marissa nodded. ‘I just wanted to thank you for . . . for everything – coming on the tour, helping me so much, looking after the classes the other week –’

  ‘Teasing you about Frank,’ Sonya cut in.

  ‘That too,’ Marissa said with a smile. ‘But most of all for showing me what it’s like to have friends, and for making it safe for me to talk about the past.’

  ‘Friendship isn’t a one-way thing, Marissa,’ Gayle replied. ‘Without you and the dancing, without being with you and Sonya all those weeks, I doubt I’d have had the courage to do what I’ve done.’

  ‘Gayle’s right,’ Sonya said. ‘Me too. And look what it’s done – taught me something about my family, and most of all myself. Heavens – you guys even made my sister like me again.’

  ‘I think that’s overstating our role some what,’ Gayle said. ‘Just the same, Marissa, it’s an indication that next time you ask someone to dance their way around Western Australia with you, you can never be sure what will happen.’

  Marissa laughed. ‘I can’t imagine doing it with anyone else.’

  ‘I should hope not,’ Sonya said. ‘Thank you, Marissa, this is beautiful.’

  ‘They’re rather selfish gifts, really. After all, they’re only of any use if you go on dancing. So they’re my way of saying I hope you’re not going to stop now.’

  ‘Stop? You’re joking.’ Sonya replied.

  ‘Me neither,’ Gayle said. ‘So it seems you’re stuck with us and with Frank, I suspect.’

  ‘Yes,’ Marissa said, ‘and Frank.’

  ‘And there’s Oliver too,’ Gayle said. She had been thinking about him a lot, about the fact that in all the years she had known him she had seen occasional flashes of the hidden Oliver: a remark here, a gesture there, the discussion of an idea, that had all been evidence of the man who was now, so rapidly, emerging from his shell. ‘Is it a domino effect, do you think? Or has it nothing at all to do with us?’

  ‘I’d like to think that by bonking Oliver I played a seminal role in his transformation,’ Sonya said with a grin. ‘But, actually I think that it’s more complicated than that. Lots of things came together at the same time.’

  ‘I think you’re right.’ Gayle said. ‘Not, of course, that I want to undermine the important and entirely selfless nature of that contribution of yours.’ She paused, wondering whether she should say anything or just shut up. ‘But as we’re having this very frank discussion, Sonya, you do realise, don’t you, that Oliver is in love with you?’

  Sonya, who had just picked up a couple of dried apricots from a dish on the table, nearly choked. ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ she managed to say when she’d finished coughing. ‘Oliver? In love with me?’

  ‘Of course, that’s why he’s learning the tango.’

  ‘But I don’t dance the tango.’

  ‘No, but he wants to show you he can be what the tango represents – dramatic, passionate, sensuous, because that’s how he sees you.’

  Sonya held up her hand. ‘Hang on, Gayle, you’ve got this all wrong. Oliver is in love, certainly, but with you. Can’t you see that? The way he looks at you, the way he is when he’s around you. Big mistak
e, Gayle. Oliver sees me as his mate – you are his object of desire.’

  Marissa drew the cork from a bottle of chilled white wine and poured it into three glasses. ‘You’re both wrong,’ she said. ‘I’ve only met Oliver a few times but I can tell that Oliver is, very clearly, a man in love with himself.’

  ‘That’s a bit unkind,’ Sonya said.

  ‘I don’t mean it unkindly. It’s just that Oliver is like a butterfly crawling from its chrysalis, and he’s surprised, stunned probably, by his own transformation. He’s marvelling at the size and colour of his wings and that with them he can fly. He won’t really be able to fall in love with anyone until he’s done more flying practice.’ There was a silence and Marissa wondered briefly if she’d offended them. ‘Sorry,’ she murmured, ‘that was pretty insensitive, especially if one, or even possibly both, of you are in love with Oliver.’

  ‘In love with him? Of course not,’ Gayle said, looking away. ‘I mean, I love him to bits, but I’m not in love . . . anyway, I’m too busy flying myself. Although –’ she looked across at Sonya – ‘I did feel a bit jealous when he admired your breasts so much. Isn’t that silly?’

  Sonya laughed. ‘I know what you mean. I am definitely not in love with Oliver, but I’m very fond of him and I think he’s becoming more attractive by the minute – or maybe by the tango class. Even so, I felt a bit jealous of you, Gayle, when he started talking about how wonderful you are.’

  Marissa raised her glass. ‘This is all very interesting,’ she said, ‘and it’s far from resolved. My guess is that all this leaves room for possibilities and I may yet be counselling one or both of you about Oliver in the future.’

  ‘Well, look who’s the relationship expert now,’ Sonya said. ‘I notice there are two toothbrushes in your bathroom.’

  ‘Is nothing sacred?’

  ‘No. Did you give Frank a present too?’

  ‘I have one planned,’ Marissa said. ‘But it’s more complicated.’

  ‘Not a sequinned scarf?’

  ‘Not his style, I think,’ she said. She took some folded papers from the pocket of her jeans. ‘But have a look at these emails.’

  ‘The thing is, Ma,’ Oliver said under his breath, addressing the headstone, ‘I got it all wrong, even you. I even got you wrong. Trying to be what I thought you wanted, I forgot to be myself. In fact, I don’t think I ever knew who myself was.’ He emptied a plastic bottle of water into the stoneware vase, stripped the cellophane off the bronze and white chrysanthemums, pressed the stems into the oasis and straightened up. He’d been in the habit of coming here at least once a month, but now three months had passed since his last visit, since the day that Andrew had asked him why he continued to visit so often.

  ‘I owe it to her,’ Oliver had said, suddenly bewildered by both the question and the answer. ‘Why? Do you think that’s odd?’

  ‘I think the frequency is unusual,’ Andrew said. ‘Commendable, of course, but unusual, especially after . . . what . . . twelve years?’

  ‘Thirteen.’

  ‘So that’s it, is it? You go because you feel you owe it to your mother? And would she think you owe her that?’

  Oliver wavered. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it like that. But I suppose, knowing her . . . no, she’d think it was a waste of time.’

  ‘Well, then?’

  ‘Now that you’ve asked, I think I haven’t been going there for her, but for myself. I have a chat with her, you see.’

  ‘You mean she communicates with you?’

  ‘I talk to her.’

  ‘Or to yourself?’

  ‘Yes, to myself, really, but I think . . . well, I suppose I pretend to myself that I’m talking to her.’

  Andrew nodded.

  ‘It is odd, isn’t it?’ It had shocked him to realise that he’d set off, time after time, with a strong sense of duty and responsibility, often when he didn’t feel like going there at all, thinking he was doing it for Joan. Once again he’d been using her, just as he had hidden behind her ideology and made her the excuse for so many things. If she had indeed communicated with him, she would doubtless have said, ‘For heaven’s sake, Oliver, get a life! Just get a life!’

  Oliver brushed grass clippings from the knees of his jeans and stared down at the stone. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘It will be different from now on. It’s already different.’ He glanced at his watch and gave a mock bow to the grave. ‘Gotta go now, Ma. Getting a life is pretty demanding.’ And, blowing a kiss in the direction of the grave, he strode off down the path and back to his car.

  His appointment was the last one of the afternoon and Andrew’s previous client was obviously running late. In the waiting room, Oliver thumbed through a copy of Wellbeing, reading advertisements for herbal remedies, meditation, visualisation, cranio-sacral rebalancing, and Feldenkrais practitioners. He was attempting to follow a five minute guide to the Alexander Technique when a woman emerged from Andrew’s consulting room looking shell shocked. She stumbled along the corridor and paused, seeming to realise she was going in the wrong direction, then she turned, clutched the wall and made her way to the front door and out into the sunlit forecourt.

  Oliver watched her, remembering his first visit, and the shock of insights that had left him stunned and confused. It all seemed much longer ago than it really was, and he wanted to run after the woman and tell her it would be all right, that it was worth entering the dark tunnel, because emerging at the other end was simply brilliant. These days he wondered how he could have worn blinkers for so long, and he still blushed with embarrassment that he had had the temerity to criticise Gayle for hiding from the truth of her life when he could now see that he had spent all his life hiding from himself.

  ‘You’d be proud of me, Andrew,’ Oliver said, settling into the chair. ‘I flirted with a woman at the dance class, and I did it so successfully that she asked me to go and have a drink with her.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I went, and it was fun.’

  ‘And you didn’t talk politics or feminism to her?’

  ‘Not a word. Not any sort of politics. I didn’t even ask her if she liked Leonard Cohen, because she was probably too young to have ever heard of him.’

  Andrew smiled. ‘Well done. Are you planning to see her again?’

  Oliver shook his head. ‘Oh no, although I guess I’ll see her at the class. She’s nice but she’s very young and we have very little in common other than the tango and the salsa. I felt as though I was out with one of the students.’

  ‘And your friend? You said last time that once the rift between you had been mended, you were confused about your own feelings for her.’

  ‘I’m still confused,’ Oliver said. ‘We’re similar in so many ways, and now, here we are, both of us going through these incredible changes in our lives at the same time. Maybe I just think I love her because all the boundaries are moving – maybe I just love what’s happening to her.’

  ‘That could be the same thing,’ Andrew said. ‘Do you think she has any idea of this? Any chance that she might feel the same?’

  Oliver shrugged. ‘I just don’t know. I think it’s too soon. She’s got so much happening at the moment, I doubt she knows what she wants yet.’

  ‘I hate to sound like a cliché,’ Andrew said. ‘But time really will help. “Wait and see” is a tedious technique but in this case it seems to be the best course.’

  ‘Yes, and it was time that I wanted to talk to you about,’ Oliver replied. ‘I think it’s time I stopped coming. I know it hasn’t been very long but I’ve made a lot of progress thanks to you.’

  Andrew smiled. ‘Some people don’t need very long,’ he said. ‘Once they get a few things clear they can strike out on their own, and of course you can always come back if you wish.’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing,’ Oliver said. ‘Frankly, Andrew, I’d just like us to be able to go and have a drink together when we feel like it and talk about all sorts of things, not j
ust my weird hang-ups. Couldn’t we just be friends?’

  Andrew chewed one arm of his glasses. ‘I’d like that immensely,’ he said, ‘but suppose you feel the need to return to therapy?’

  ‘Then I’d have to find someone else, wouldn’t I? You could suggest someone.’

  ‘You’re becoming positively assertive, Oliver,’ Andrew said, looking hard at him.

  Oliver stood up. ‘Yes. Good, isn’t it? Anyway, I’m your last client today, so come on, let’s go.’

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘Over to the pub. We’re going to celebrate the transition from therapist and client to mates. And we could have a meal as well. If you haven’t got anything else on, that is.’

  ‘I never have anything else on,’ Andrew replied. ‘Since my divorce, I haven’t had a life – I simply encourage other people to talk about theirs. Just give me a minute to lock up.’

  ‘You know,’ Oliver said as they walked across the park to the pub a few minutes later, ‘maybe you should see a therapist yourself, Andrew. On the other hand, I could introduce you to my friend Sonya.’

  THIRTY

  ‘I still don’t understand why we had to come on the bike,’ Frank said as Marissa pulled into a parking space. ‘Why couldn’t we have come in my car?’

  ‘Because it’s a surprise,’ she said. ‘Come on, put your helmet in here so I can lock it up.’

  Frank, feeling somewhat uneasy, handed over the helmet and undid the top buttons of his leather jacket. It wasn’t that he had any objection to the Harley; in fact, he was learning to love it, although not with quite the same degree of passion that Marissa obviously felt. No, his unease was about the surprise, about not knowing where they were going or why. He was used to being in control, to determining how and when things would be done. Letting someone else plan for him was a leap of faith. He knew he needed to learn to trust, but knowing didn’t actually make it easier.

  Marissa had trusted him, not only by telling him about her past, but letting him help her through the aftermath of that revelation. She had let him take over, put her in his car, drive her to a place she didn’t know, and look after her for a whole week when she was at her most vulnerable. And then she had let him into her home, her secrets, her life, in the most intimate way. Frank felt churlish that he seemed to be finding the whole letting go and trusting thing so hard. Tonight, for instance, she said she had a surprise for him, and she wanted him to come with her and not ask questions.