Dancing in the Dark

by Joan Barfoot

  Was there a missed spot, an unremarked detail? Or something else entirely: Harry and me. Or only me.

  I know there are tinier details, much smaller things to notice. But with human eyes, there is a point beyond which it is impossible to see. Human eyes do not reach the limits of vision. There are microscopic bits; and maybe even further bits, beyond the powers of a microscope.

  The bedspread—just one thing. It is white and rough. But when I look more closely, I can see the fibres twisting all together, and from the fibres still smaller strands of thread, and I expect if I had stronger eyes I would see them furring out individually as well, and eventually down to the very atoms, and then the nucleus itself of each of them. Then to draw back a little and see that although the bedspread is white, there is variety, shading, some fibres not as pure as others, some more worn, a shifting of whiteness. So that not even a bedspread is allowed to be what it appears at first and easy glance.

  Before, I might wander my perfect home admiring light catching on a gleaming table, flat tugged-neat bedspreads, pure windows. I was enchanted by flawless glass, thought that to see through such panes was undistorted vision.

  What would I see now? Now that I have learned to look more closely?

  The trouble here, right now, is just how far my vision can extend. I would not, before, have rewashed a just-washed dish, or revacuumed a just-vacuumed carpet merely to be filling hands and time. And now I cannot re-observe and re-describe something already impaled by this pen in this notebook. There is only one time I can hear an old woman down the hall calling out “Help me, help me,” again and again, and have it new. I investigate, go to see the body behind the calling, and am surprised at how tiny and frail it is to have such force in the voice. I write, today a small woman called all day for help. Her voice is loud and desperate and has a scratching sound in the throat. All she says is “Help me, help me.” A nurse has gone to her at least three times, but when she leaves, the woman begins to call again, “Help me, help me.” I don’t know what kind of pain she has.

  I sit writing in this chair; I walk and watch and what I write is a constantly diminishing possibility.

  Before, when everything that could be done was done, I took a bath, changed my clothes, and changed directions for the evenings with Harry. But also I did wander, I did look for some perfection, a confirmation in the polished, dusted pieces of my home. I also had moments of blankness when it seemed nothing would ever be completed. But I knew Harry would be coming home, sometime.

  It is a shock when something absolute does happen.

  I have harvested details like a crop and stored them here. There can’t be many left, and what shall I do?

  The trees and snow are changing as spring comes, the snow diminishing and dirtying, a lightening in the air visible even through the glass. More a smell than something to see. Rough bark and soon, sweet grass. Flowers. Outside, there would be a thousand things to touch, examine, and describe minutely. Outside, it might take years to exhaust the possibilities.

  Still, would it not end here again, with more notebooks and a dwindling field of vision?

  I watch the doctor as I sit across the desk from him in his office. His walls are blue and so is the chair I sit in. His desk is oak, I think. On it there is a picture of his family: a blonde wife leaning over two small blonde children, all smiling up at the camera; at him, if he looks at them on his desk. Would he forget them if there were no picture, is that why he has it there?

  He is watching me, patient as ever, stringing out his endless questions. “Tell me about Harry, Edna,” he is asking, but without much hope; mere habit by now, I guess. “Tell me what he looked like.” I write down his questions.

  “Was he tall? Thin? Stout? Did he have a beard? Blue eyes? Brown? Dark hair, blond, bald? Tell me about Harry, Edna.” He’s asked all this before; but the words, as always, flow meticulously across the lines of my notebook.

  Could I ask him to let me go outside? Because I have surely learned at least to investigate alternatives before something happens. One should have all the facts one can get. I do not learn quickly, but it seems that I can learn.

  It’s hard, though, to ask. Changes this man with whom I’ve spent so many hours. He will become, the moment I put the question, a mere man, a doctor with authority, no longer someone against whose collarbones I would sometimes like to rest my head. The figure will be transformed, Edna the magician, altering substances with words. But an improvement over knives.

  I take a deep, brave breath. “Could I go outside?”

  He’s jolted, I see his body jerk just a little to hear me speaking. I see him hoping and interested once more.

  “Did you want to go outside?” and his voice is now alive, expectant.

  “If I could.” It is important not to waste words. They seize on words and try to turn them around, spare words are their weapons here.

  “What would you do out there if you could? What is it out there you want?” He, now, he uses too many words, throws them around too easily, plays with them. The advantage is with me and my tighter, tinier weapons.

  “I’d see what’s there.”

  He’s puzzled, it seems. “You mean you just want to go out and look around? Or are you saying you want out of here entirely. Did you want to go home, Edna?”

  He is not so clever. He doesn’t see so well. I was right, he was more interesting and important before I spoke.

  “Outside.”

  He sits back in his chair, steepling his fingers beneath his chin, looking at me. He’s pleased, I see. He thinks he has me some place where he wants me.

  Is that true? Or do I see everything out of kilter and off-balance now?

  “Well, Edna, I’d like to be able to tell you that would be fine. I understand of course that you’d be wanting to get outside, especially now with spring almost here. The trouble is, I can’t really give you that permission because I don’t believe you’re ready yet.”

  Does he not think I see well enough? How would he possibly know all the things I can see now?

  “Ready?”

  Now he’s leaning forward, hands clasped together on his desk, intent on me; even a doctor, who must make so many hopeless attempts, is hopeful. But I am not here for his hopes. I’m just trying to find out what to do.

  “You see, you haven’t been well, Edna. That’s why you’re here, why the courts sent you here. Do you remember the courts and what the judge said?” I do not answer, and write the question down.

  “Do you understand you haven’t been well? Do you know what happened? Can you tell me what happened?”

  He tries to go too far too fast. My eyes are down again, and I am writing. I will not look at him again. I can be silent and I can wait. He has no idea how much practice I have, how many years I perfected those skills, being silent and waiting.

  “When you’re well, of course you’ll be able to go outside. And when you’re really well, there’s always a chance you’ll be able to leave here altogether. We can work together on that, Edna. If you want to go outside, we can start to work on it. You can, if you let us help you to get well again.”

  I had a warm vision of him, and it turns out he, like Harry, is both ordinary and no match for me.

  If I don’t look at him, he must know it’s finished. But no, he is stupid and still hopeful. “We could start right now. You could start by showing me what you keep writing all the time. Would you show me your notebooks now, Edna?”

  More and more questions, that’s what I’m writing at the moment.

  “Well, Edna,” he says finally, and sighs, “we’ll talk about it again tomorrow. We’ll find a way to get you outside, if you’ll help. It’s a shame to miss the fresh air and the flowers.”

  Like Harry, he is sly. But he is not my husband, and my purposes have altered.

  At least I’ve found out what I needed to know: that I can’t go outside. So my choices are clear. I can pursue the smallest of the bedspread fibres, peering my way to blindnes
s, my handwriting getting tinier and tinier, like the details; or I can face the moment and the white and yellow daisy clock. Tunnelling in or spiralling out.

  I call it a choice; and yet like many other things, I can see it isn’t.

  What difference does it make? I am still Edna sitting in this chair.

  But you can sit and sit and still be a different person, sitting.

  I am only Edna, all by myself, and not important or strong. That must be something, although I can’t say what.

  It is reasonable that fear should be slipping away. There’s nothing more to be lost, and nothing terrible, nothing left that deserves terror. I have done my worst.

  And yet I miss fear, mourn it, try to keep a grip on what remains of it. It has protected me for so long, and from so many things. I get lonelier and lonelier as it escapes. A more constant companion than Harry, my fear has been, and I am losing it, too.

  It’s that white and yellow daisy clock. It dances on the bedspread and obstructs the other vision. There seems to be no getting around it.

  28

  Lies and lies and lies.

  Who was she to be more than me?

  Oh, I have tried not to see precisely. But there it is, the sweating bodies rolling and touching.

  And then he could come home to me, join me in our bed and lie.

  Did they talk about me? About us? If he could go into her bed and her body, what else? What did he keep from me to give to her? Bodies slithering together, words and touches.

  He was wrong. He did wrong. If we may have said lies to each other, or left truths unsaid, they were our lies and truths. He should not have taken them outside to someone else.

  It didn’t occur to me that he might do that. And that’s trust, isn’t it? It’s the same thing, isn’t it?

  But he did it; he betrayed belief.

  What if I had said to him calmly, “I know. I know all about it.” What might have happened? I think he would have said, “I’m sorry, forgive me, it will never happen again, I’m sorry, forgive me.” And no doubt I would have. What else would there have been to do and go on living? I would have bitten and chewed and swallowed the rage and we would have gone on. The pain would all have been inside me, instead of inside him. But we would not have looked at each other again. We would have skirted and been polite, and I would have been alone. Either way, I end up alone.

  I could stop it all now. There must be so many ways here: poisons and hanging and razors in the night. Pills, perhaps. They are careful, but no care is enough. I know that better than they ever can.

  I didn’t mean to be entirely alone; and I never intended for people to stare.

  Harry promised I might live to eighty? Oh, surely not.

  Could I not make it end right now? Would that be cowardice or courage? Where there’s a will there’s a way. My mother used to say that. She would not have blundered about like this, she would say, “Really, Edna, you’ll have to learn how to work these things out. You have to do some things for yourself. You have to make your own decisions.” But when did I pay attention to my mother, except as a poor example?

  Tough woman, though. I wonder if she was lonely. I wonder if she is lonely now.

  Stella might say, “Just take a run at it from a new direction. If it didn’t work, leave it behind you.”

  It hurts to move though. I might like to dance, but it hurts to move.

  Oh Harry, why aren’t you here to tell me things I need so badly to be told?

  Poor Harry, to have been loved with such a grip. To have carried my small weight upon his back for so many years. No wonder he began to stoop.

  Maybe he would have preferred it if he hadn’t been able to find a clean shirt, or if all his meals hadn’t been as pretty as a painting, a still life. Two white vegetables in the same meal might have suited him just fine. He might not have cared a bit. He was maybe tired.

  It’s even possible he did not find by chance a hole in the great wall I built so carefully around us, our shining wall, but instead deliberately made one, tunnelling through with his long, slender, talented fingers.

  I built so carefully and for so long. The two of us, we both made something, it wasn’t only me. And it can all be destroyed in a phone call, a sentence, a moment.

  Or, on his part a whim, a desire, a selfishness, a lie.

  At least the pain is cleaner here than there.

  But it’s much colder here. I am so cold.

  I used to be warm, so well-covered and safe. I thought all that padding, all the layers of soft warmth behind the wall, would keep me safe.

  Maybe I should have left some part of me exposed. Because I failed to hear voices or see signs. I missed so many things.

  Real passion—how would that have been? What would it have been like to really feel Harry’s skin, and my own, instead of turning it into something tougher, harder—protection? How would it have felt if there had been nothing between us? What if I had understood those hands, the body, all the words he spoke, were someone else, another person, a life?

  I took the face he gave me and transformed it into something else.

  I wiped myself off like a child at the blackboard and then both of us must have gone about writing on it something wrong.

  Is it something like being in a convent? To be a nun, with rules and times and faith, no questions? Is God like Harry? When they spend their lives for God, in the end do they go before Him thinking they’re paid up, and does He turn away? Does He say, “That wasn’t what I wanted at all, you made a mistake”? What a thing, to go for judgment and love, for reward at last for all the work and sacrifices, and have Him reject the gift. And then turn around and accept a sinner who has never made a payment. Would there be anger in the saintly hearts? Would they reach for knives and kill God?

  Where is the gratitude? Who pays? Who rewards those nuns if they go before God and He says it wasn’t necessary?

  Maybe He says, “But you shouldn’t have believed, that was a mistake. Faith made it too easy for you, it’s not supposed to be so simple. You took too much for granted, you assumed all I wanted was for you to follow rules.”

  Would He offer second chances? Might He say, “Now lose your faith and see what happens, there’s your test. Try again and see what you can do without it.”

  Is it possible to hope if there is no faith?

  Somebody should know, somebody ought to be able to tell me what I was supposed to do, what the real rules were. It isn’t fair that no one told me. Everyone kept these secrets from me, and they must have known. It would be like seeing somebody starting off across the country thinking they were on a main highway and not telling them they would wind up on a dirt track ending nowhere.

  This mistake, this crucial misperception—a deformity, like being born with two heads or one arm. I am missing something that should be there.

  Maybe God would say, “If I take away your rules, if it’s not simple any more, you’ll find out what you can do yourself. You have to muddle around until you find out what your own rules are.”

  What would my own rules have been?

  I can’t imagine. It doesn’t seem to have been my life at all; although it must have seemed like my life at the time.

  Where did I learn what I did? My mother used to say, with her usual impatience, “For goodness’ sake, stand on your own two feet, Edna,” so obviously not from her. My father, poor man, gave no advice. I did not want what they were, but the opposite. A queer backwardness of rules.

  What would my own rules have been? If I were free, what would I be?

  Oh, I might dance and dance, my body might tell tales, it might move like water. I might fling my arms wide and lift my body, spring up from my legs and my hair would fly around my face. I would shout and laugh out loud, I would feel blood pouring through my body, and I would stretch my earthbound fingers up as high as they could go.

  In my life I might have shouted and laughed out loud and cried my tears. I might have said certain things to Harry, or th
rown a glass at him. At parties I might have smiled and joked and flirted. I might have been all teeth and glitter.

  Now I might carry placards up and down in front of the offices of magazines and shout out how they lie. That if they say that if one does this one gets that, it’s only what is easy, not what is true. I might warn others not to believe truths handed out on pages.

  I might rage out loud.

  I am a forty-three-year-old woman who has not danced or often laughed out loud. I am a forty-three-year-old woman who has drudged like a nun for salvation. My glitter has been a smile or a pat on the shoulder or being held in the night. My joy has been gleaming glasses and waking to the sound of a snore.

  My reaching up has been a leaning down to vacuum or pack trash. My flinging arms have only touched Harry, and barely myself.

  Who taught me, and when? Who said, “Be still, Edna, don’t move, don’t make a sound and you’ll be safe”?

  It wasn’t in me to be a dancing girl; I did not have the gift, and I could not help what I was.

  Could I help what I did? Harry pointed out so long ago that being and doing might be different things.

  Now I am tiny here in this tiny room, whirling in diminishing circles to the absolute moment, the world grows smaller and smaller and my life is a pinpoint of a moment. All my thoughts within twelve hours and my life within an instant.

  The notebooks have filled the bottom bureau drawer and have begun to make their way into the middle one. My underwear and toiletries are crammed into small spaces now, making room.

  All the blue covers, grey lines, pink margins, and even holes, filled with all the meticulous writing. All the vital letters of my life. And the paper no longer binds the wounds. Blood seeps between the pages, and oozes out the covers.

  29

  A lifetime of thoughts in those twelve hours. All of it was clear, if not comprehensible.

  “I’m sorry, Edna,” said the woman’s voice. “But I thought you ought to know.” Explaining everything. “They were kissing. What other explanation could there be?”