Tiny Little Thing

by Beatriz Williams

  “You’re so good to me,” I say, to drown out the whisper. “You really are.”

  “God. Don’t say that. It’s the other way around. You’re good to me.”

  “I’ve been wallowing in self-pity. I should have been here in the city, with you.”

  “Don’t listen to my father. I have plenty of help here. Too much. Anyway, it’s early days. We have weeks until the primary.”

  “No, it’s true. I’ve let you down, and I promised myself, I promised myself when we got married, that I’d never, ever do that. I’d never let you down.”

  He turns me around. “Jesus, no, don’t cry, Tiny.” He bends down and kisses my eyes, my cheeks. “Remember the photographers.”

  Remember the photographers. Downstairs in the ballroom, waiting, flashbulbs poised. The photo call at five, the reporter at our table, ready to take every note. To document the perfect young life of the perfect young couple.

  “What time is it?” I ask.

  He checks his watch. “A quarter past four.”

  “I’ve got to start getting ready.”

  “All right.” But he doesn’t let go. He raises his hands and strokes my hair, over and over, smoothing it flat against my head, except that the flip at the bottom insists on springing free whenever his palms lift away. “I do love you, Tiny. I do. Don’t ever think I don’t.”

  “I’d never think that.”

  “Poor Tiny.”

  “I’m fine, Frank. Really.”

  “No, you’re not.” He kisses me again, warm and deep. “I’ll make it up to you tonight. If you want me to.”

  “Of course I want you to.”

  “I owe it to you. You’ve been so good to me. I’ll make it up to you. You’ll fall in love with me all over again.” The dazzling smile breaks out, the gleaming teeth, while his hands keep stroking, stroking, down my throat and over the glittering necklace to cover my breasts.

  “What makes you think I ever stopped?” I say.

  Caspian, 1964

  When Cap returned from the French bakery on Beacon Street the next morning, bearing breakfast in one hand and a newspaper in the other, music was floating through the walls and under his door, colored with the scent of coffee.

  He paused at the top of the stairs. It was a waltz of some kind, tinnily rendered, probably Strauss, not that he’d listened to the pile of old disks under the record player in years. Not since he was a kid. He shifted the bag of croissants from one hand to the other—oh, the look the girl had given him at the bakery, the raised-eyebrow-curled-lip look, a look pregnant with Entertaining a lady friend this morning, are we?—and fished for the key in his pocket.

  No, not Strauss, it was Tchaikovsky, he decided, as he juggled the newspaper and croissants and opened the door; but before he could explore this thought any further, it more or less fell to pieces and dissolved into the ripples of his gray matter, because right bang before his dazzled eyeballs, Miss Tiny Doe was dancing across the length of the living room, wearing one of his shirts and nothing else.

  He knew his jaw was dangling somewhere around his sternum, and the bakery bag and the newspaper clung for dear life to the tips of his slack fingers, but he couldn’t summon the strength to put any of them back in proper place.

  All right. Jesus. Yes, she was wearing something else. Her—what did girls like her call them?—her foundation garments were right in place where they should be, thank God, flashing beneath the ends of his white shirt as she performed an exuberant series of pirouettes on the balls of her beautiful feet. Her eyebrows were screwed in concentration, but her mouth smiled as it flashed past and past, like a singularly arresting strobe light.

  Cap knew nothing about ballet, but he recognized the tireless perfection in the movements of her right leg, fully exposed, flicking elegantly back and forth as it propelled her around. And her left leg, long and straight, holding her up atop an impossibly miniature ankle, the foot pumping up and down like a slender piston in the rhythm of her rotation. He couldn’t even breathe, looking at her like this.

  He moved like a robot to the kitchenette and set the croissants and the Boston Globe on the scrap of empty Formica, and then he headed to the darkroom.

  Two days, he told her last night, as they shared an omelet and a pair of vodka gimlets for dinner. She had two days to decide what she wanted to do. She was still in shock from the coffee shop robbery, after all. She had to think about this carefully. Rationally. With a cool head. The stakes were high. Her entire life, in fact. She realized that, didn’t she?

  Oh yes, she’d said. Her eyes gleamed.

  Fine, then. She could sleep in his room, he told her. He’d take the sofa and a blanket.

  The loneliest damned night of his life, including the ones he’d slept in the jungle.

  He found his camera, his flash. The morning light didn’t reach the living room, which faced west. He’d need his fastest film, to catch those flashing legs. Or maybe the blur would look even better. Capture that floating quality in her movement.

  She was still dancing when he returned, but she caught sight of him this time, or else the sight of him actually registered on her brain, and she stopped almost midleap.

  He lifted the camera. “No, keep going.”

  “I can’t with you standing there, taking pictures.”

  “Pretend I’m not here.”

  She walked over to the record player, lifted the arm, and switched off the turntable.

  “Nice shirt,” he said.

  “I’m sorry. Do you mind?”

  “Not at all. It suits you. I don’t suppose any of my trousers will fit?”

  She laughed. She was still facing the record player, one hand on the edge of the box. “Not a chance. I made coffee.”

  “Good. I brought breakfast. I hope you like croissants.” He replaced the lens cap, set down the camera, and headed for the kitchenette.

  “You bought croissants?” She pronounced the word with a marked Parisian accent.

  “You seem like the croissant kind of girl. Was I wrong?”

  “No.” She laughed again. “I like croissants. Here, I’ll pour the coffee.”

  She came up behind him while he reached for the plates, faintly humid with exercise, breathing quickly. The mugs were on the top shelf. He pulled down a pair and handed them to her, trying not to breathe her in too deeply. In the absence of perfume, she smelled of skin and female perspiration, and a familiar scent he recognized as his own laundry soap. The combination unnerved him.

  “Thank you,” she said, taking the mugs and filling them from the shiny stainless-steel percolator, the only object he’d bought new for the apartment. “I hope you like it strong.”

  “Black and thick.”

  “I thought so.” She handed him his mug and opened the Frigidaire for the milk. He had to turn away, at the sight of Tiny Doe’s half-dressed limbs poised in front of his icebox light. She moved about his kitchenette without the slightest self-consciousness, adding milk and sugar to her coffee, stirring, joining him at the little table with her breakfast. The shirt, thank God, was buttoned almost to the collar. “Thank you for running out so early,” she said.

  “I was up.”

  “Oh, was that you, thumping up and down the stairs? I had to put my head under the pillow.”

  He shrugged. “Morning exercise. Why didn’t you let me take the picture?”

  “I don’t like having my picture taken. I never have.” She tore off a section of croissant with unnecessary vigor.

  “What, are you part Indian?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Well, some of them don’t like having their pictures taken, apparently. Because if you capture an image of someone, it’s like you’ve taken a part of his soul. Or so I’m told.”

  She lifted the mug of coffee to her lips. “Well, they’re right. That’s
exactly how I feel.”

  “What if I promise to give you the prints afterward? And the negatives?”

  “Then what’s the point of it? For you, I mean.”

  “Just to see if I can do it, I guess. Capture you, capture the essence of the dancing. On film.”

  “And why do you want to do that?”

  He finished his croissant and swallowed it down with a gulp of coffee. “Because it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Her long fingers went still around her coffee mug. She stared down at them, at the coffee, brown and milky. “Me, or the dancing?”

  “Both.”

  She made a choking sound.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . .”

  “No! No. Thank you. It’s a very nice compliment.”

  “It’s not a compliment. It’s just . . .” He’d finished his croissant, his coffee, too. Tiny sat with her head bowed, across from him. He rose and took his empty dishes to the sink. “It’s just what I thought, when I came in. That’s all.”

  “Well, thank you for telling me.”

  “Don’t thank me.”

  His belly rumbled softly. He was still hungry; a single croissant and a cup of coffee didn’t go far when you’d already pushed your body to the far limits of human endurance by six o’clock in the morning.

  “Would you like the rest of my croissant?” Tiny asked quietly.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Well, if you’ve been climbing stairs all morning, when any sane person would be lying asleep in his bed, you’re going to need some protein, aren’t you?” She rose from her chair. “I’ll make eggs.”

  “You don’t need to . . .”

  But she was already bustling about the kitchenette, dragging a pan out of the miniature cupboard, jerking open the Frigidaire door. He stood back against the wall and watched her, arms folded, while she beat the eggs with a vengeful fork and added milk.

  “The secret is to cook them slowly,” she said, “and keep stirring.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Sometimes—” Her voice caught. “Sometimes I put in a little cheese, at the end.”

  “I’m not sure I have any cheese.”

  “Well, you should. It’s a—” Again. “It’s a staple.”

  She stirred the eggs quietly. At one point she lifted her left arm and brushed the cuff against her eyes, a furtive gesture. She was so small and graceful, hovering domestically over his breakfast. So vulnerable in his laundered white shirt, buttoned all the way up to the collar. Her thighs were peach-pale and firm beneath the hem.

  Cap rested his head back against the wall and thought, I’m falling in love with you.

  “What was that?” Tiny turned her head, and he realized he’d whispered the words aloud.

  “Nothing.”

  He ate his eggs standing up, drinking another cup of coffee. Tiny refilled her own cup and nibbled a few bites of scrambled egg, straight from the pan, sitting at the table.

  “Good idea,” he said. “You need to eat, too. All that dancing.”

  “I know.”

  He placed the empty plate in the sink. “Listen. I’m going to go out for a bit. Take some pictures. Bring back a few groceries. I think you need some time to yourself.”

  “I was going to suggest the same thing, actually.” She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “Do you have any writing paper? I thought I’d start by writing a letter to him. Letters to both the families.”

  He turned on the faucet and reached for the dish soap. “You’ve decided, then?”

  “Yes. I think I have. I slept on it, like you said. And I woke up feeling exactly the same way as yesterday.”

  “Which is?”

  “That I’ve been happier in the past twenty-four hours than I have in the past twenty-four years.”

  She appeared beside him, without warning, and set the pan and her empty cup in the enamel sink, right next to his. She went on: “Freer. More myself. As if I’ve finally figured out what I really want from life. What’s really important, and it’s not being important. Or being married to someone important, which according to my mother is the same thing, only better, because you don’t have to do all the work yourself.” She laughed. “Anyway, I don’t have to send the letters until I’m ready, right? And then . . .” She picked up a dish towel and took the wet plate from his hands.

  “Then what?”

  “Well, that’s where you come in. Show me how to disappear, so they can’t find me and try to change my mind.”

  “Tiny, I have to report for duty in two weeks. I’ll be heading out to Indochina. Do you know where that is? How far? Playing hide-and-seek with Vietcong for another year. This nice little strip of land on the Laos border, a real paradise, eight thousand miles away.”

  Eight thousand miles away. The words, now that he said them, sounded inconceivably distant. Eight thousand miles away from Boston. Eight thousand miles away from Tiny Doe, dancing in his white shirt, stirring his eggs.

  “Caspian, really.” She wiped the mugs dry and set them back in the cupboard, side by side. “Cool your jets. I’m not asking you to marry me, for God’s sake. I just need a little—I don’t know, whatever you call it, in the army—tactical assistance. And maybe some moral support.”

  He unplugged the drain and dried his hands. “Are you sure you need it?”

  “Well, you’re the one who’s done this already, aren’t you? You’ve escaped. Made your own life. I could use a tip or two from an expert.” She flicked the dishcloth at him. “Now, off with you. Go wander around Boston and take your marvelous pictures. I’ll be just fine.”

  She looked up at him with those huge brown eyes, and he no longer wanted to wander the city and take pictures of bums and street corners and swan boats. He wanted to stay right here.

  Tiny reached up and touched the corner of his mouth with her dishcloth. Wiped away some particle of breakfast. “That wouldn’t be wise, though, would it?”

  This time, he was sure he hadn’t said the words aloud.

  “Off you go,” she said. “I mean it. I promise I’ll be here when you get back.”

  He levered himself away from the wall and went to put his camera in its bag, his film, his extra flash, his notebook, his dog-eared copy of The Mayor of Casterbridge, nearly finished. “Don’t mess with my darkroom,” he said, hoisting the bag over his shoulder.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. And, Caspian?”

  He paused at the door. “Yes?”

  “I might let you take my picture, when you get back.”

  Tiny, 1966

  When I was about eight years old, my mother, in a rare fit of maternal attention—she must have been between lovers—enrolled me in my first ballet class. Why do you think? To make me graceful.

  Actually, it was the three of us, me and Pepper and Vivian, but my sisters dropped out within a month. Or maybe they were kicked out. Anyway. They hated it, and I loved it: the discipline, the method, the way you had to combine strength with grace, science with art. The way you could, for a single soaring instant, set yourself free. You could articulate an emotion without saying a word. You could use your body, you could push and punish your muscle and bone and hone them into something magnificent, something that had purpose. Something that was no longer tiny but colossal. No longer delicate but strong.

  I attended my last formal dance rehearsal on the morning of the coffee shop robbery, over two years ago, but I still practice sometimes, in my room, before any sort of significant performance: a wedding, a formal party, a photo call. On the morning I married Franklin Hardcastle, I spent two hours in a ritual of pliés and arabesques, pas de chat and grands jetés, until my nerves were taut and secure, until I knew I could do what I had to do that day, to secure my brilliant future. I still remember the pleasant pull in my hamstrings as I walked down t
he aisle, that familiar ecstasy of a rope that has been stretched too tight and finally allowed to relax. I really don’t remember the ceremony itself, except for the glint of the candles on Frank’s hair.

  Today, at twelve minutes to five o’clock, dolled up in my strapless raspberry satin, gloved to the elbows, wearing my new diamond and sapphire necklace, stockings and makeup in place, matching raspberry satin pocketbook packed with lipstick and tissue and compact and a few sneaky cigarettes, I rest my hand on the back of the chair and arrange my feet in first position.

  Frank drifts between bedroom and bathroom, getting himself ready. It’s a high-roller crowd tonight, and he’s dressed the part: black tails, stiff shirt. His white bow tie forms a pair of flattened white triangles under his chin. He stops in the middle of the room. His head is bowed over his forearm. “Can you do these cuff links for me? My fingers won’t behave.”

  I rise from a plié and reach for his left wrist. “Nerves?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Don’t worry. They’ll love you. They always do.” I straighten the cuff and pat his hand. “Everybody loves you, Frank. You just have to show them the real you.”

  “Whatever that is,” he mutters.

  I lift my head. Frank’s face is turned away, but the expression there is entirely unlike the Frank I’ve always known. The Frank who knows who he is. The scent of cigarettes drifts from his clothes. His breath delivers a pungent fist of Scotch.

  “Is something wrong, Frank?” I ask.

  He looks at me, and the tension melts into a warm smile. “Nothing’s wrong, darling. Put those pretty shoes on. It’s time to go downstairs.”

  Photo call at five. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure. You pose in front of a line of men (it’s almost always men) in your best dress, you freeze your body and your face into the preferred ideal, into the woman the world expects you to be, and let the flashbulbs pop away like the Fourth of July, capturing this frozen and artificial you for the eager consumption of the general public. It’s a real gas. God forbid you should overlook a wrinkle on your dress or your forehead.