Fortunate Lives

by Robb Forman Dew

  Even though it was soft, Netta’s voice had the quality of carrying, with a syllable here or there flashing out in absolute clarity as though her confidences were like the metallic threads in Dinah’s skirt, illuminated randomly by any light. “Oh, I haven’t really minded. I know how threatening stray people can be. But I guess I was surprised. Oh, yes…” The pattern of her speech was compelling in its lilt and in its gentle, prolonged sibilances, almost a lisp. “I really was.” Her words were followed by a long silence that had the quality of a breath caught, a hint of suspense in the air. “I don’t suppose I really did expect…” Netta’s voice trailed off into a pale note of wonder. “… well, you don’t expect jealousy these days… you really don’t. What I’d gotten used to at Harvard was a kind of cooperative misery.” She gave a pensive, deprecating little laugh. “Or elation. Oh, but never the sort of… well… envy. From other women. It gets very lonely, you know.” Her tone was that of resignation, not anger. Resignation with a trace of perplexity. Once more there was a hush in the conversation. Dinah and Ellen exchanged a glance, and Ellen headed for the porch, rubbing her still damp hands together.

  In spite of the lurking cat, Taffy, who never hesitated to investigate the counters, Dinah left the tray she was arranging uncovered and escaped into the living room, from which she removed any fragile objects that might be in reach of small children. But everywhere Dinah went in her own house, as she arranged flowers in a vase or moved through a room to put out bowls of nuts and olives, straightening this or that, she felt she was intruding. Sarah’s friends had arrived and the three girls had taken over the dining room. Although they were friendly and offered help, their conversation came to a stop whenever Dinah passed through. The house was blossoming with intimate conversations, furtive discussions, muted confessions.

  Just before four o’clock, when people would begin to arrive, Dinah returned to the kitchen to make the final preparations and discovered Netta there once again. She had hoisted Anna Tyson up on the countertop next to the sink and was gently swabbing her daughter’s sleep-swollen face with a dampened towel. As Dinah leaned against the counter and watched Netta and her daughter, she felt a lessening of the tension she had experienced all day.

  She could hear Vic and Martin still chatting on the porch. “… a luminosity to her intelligence. Don’t you think so?” Vic was saying. Dinah could hear Christie in the living room trying to persuade David to do the spider song. “… but you know they’ll all get silly if I do it. Especially the little boys. It won’t kill you, David.” And she could hear Sarah’s stereo from upstairs, where she and her friends had retreated. This one moment of peace in the kitchen was soothing.

  Anna Tyson turned her head away from her mother’s hand and stared at Dinah in that belligerent state of sudden wakefulness that small children sometimes experience. “Why are you wearing those shoes with your toes showing?” she asked sulkily in Dinah’s direction, and Dinah just smiled back at her, not answering, but reminded of how cranky her own children had always been—and sometimes still were—in the moments before they had to give up wakefulness or just after they had come out of sleep. She felt indulgent and fond of Anna Tyson, whose face was still flushed and blotchy from her nap, and who resisted her mother’s ministrations so vigorously that Netta finally lifted her down to the floor. Netta leaned over the sink and cupped water in her palms and splashed her own face while Anna Tyson approached Dinah.

  Anna Tyson stood with her hands at her sides, her mouth a disapproving line tucked in at the corners. “My mother says I can’t wear anything shiny.” She was looking at Dinah’s dress.

  “My mother says the same thing,” Dinah said lightly, with a little laugh so that Netta would realize that she wasn’t insulted by Anna Tyson’s rudeness. But Netta didn’t appear to notice. Anna Tyson silently studied Dinah, as though she had encountered another species.

  “You painted your toenails red, didn’t you? Why did you do that?”

  Dinah was feeling far less fond of Anna Tyson by now, and she was at a loss to find a diplomatic way to respond. She looked to Netta for assistance, for a word to ward off her own daughter, but Netta was merely watching them while she gently patted her own face dry with a dish towel. Finally, though, she dampened the towel again under the faucet and stooped down to Anna Tyson’s level, and Dinah didn’t want to hear the little girl chastised; Dinah was anxious to deflect Netta’s attention from anything Anna Tyson had said.

  “You know,” Dinah said conversationally, as though she hadn’t paid any attention to Anna Tyson’s behavior, “Anna Tyson’s really a lovely-looking little girl.” Dinah said this in a manner of reassurance, because she really thought that Anna Tyson was one of those children who just look like anyone; there was nothing arresting about her, she wasn’t lovely or unlovely. But Netta’s face registered a discernible reaction for the first time, and it was disapproval.

  She rose, carefully refolding the damp towel and aligning it neatly along the edge of the sink. No one spoke at all while Netta observed the precision of her own movements. With apparent reluctance she faced Dinah, speaking slowly and with great patience. “You know, I’m sure you would never have made that remark if Anna Tyson were a boy. I know you meant it as a compliment. People always do. But don’t you see how it focuses Anna Tyson’s attention on all the wrong assets? I’m sorry, but I really find unconsciously sexist remarks more and more intolerable. I know you meant it kindly, but I don’t want Anna Tyson to define herself by how she looks.”

  Dinah was so astounded she couldn’t speak. As she stood in the kitchen reviewing exactly what Netta had just said in her careful and deliberate speech, it crossed Dinah’s mind that Netta had the same personality as the spell-checker on Martin’s computer. The spell-checker made no allowances, had no sense of humor, no knowledge of context, no social radar. Dinah found that her usual impulse to save people from themselves—to save them from knowing what fools they have made of themselves—had entirely deserted her. She didn’t feign agreement, she didn’t gently reinterpret Netta’s words for her so that later Netta would believe that she had made her point tactfully or even politely. Dinah simply turned away and went out to the porch to wait for the guests to arrive.

  David watched as Dinah drifted through the rooms, collecting the children while the party went on around her. She stopped and smiled and greeted people here and there. And David had no memory of ever perceiving her as foolish or threatening. He admired the way she bent down to this child or that, never altering her voice the way many adults do when they speak to children.

  “You’d better come with me out to the porch so you can practice the Moonflower song. You know about Moonflower, don’t you?” And the child would shake his or her head solemnly—even suspiciously, the older ones.

  “Ah, well…” and she would take the child’s hand and explain as she led the little girl or boy out to the porch, where Christie was already going over and over the songs with the other children assembled there.

  “I haven’t seen Moonflower in… oh, an awfully long time,” David heard Dinah confess wistfully to a little boy who was trailing along beside her with some reluctance, “because she’s not a bit interested in grown-ups. She thinks they’re too judgmental, you know,” she added conversationally. Although the little boy, who was probably no more than four years old, had no idea what that could mean, he nodded in agreement.

  “She might not come, of course,” Dinah added matter-of-factly. “She’s very moody. I just hope that no one hurts her feelings. But sometimes! Well, sometimes she does appear at this time of year, just when the light is fading. We can hope…. She’s very shy, though, you know.” And she looked down at the child to whom she was talking, and he nodded mutely, understanding Moonflower’s reluctance perfectly as he was being led through this house that was not his own by this tall woman. But slowly he gave up his disbelief in the face of Dinah’s skepticism.

  “The thing is, it’s so frustrating!” Dinah said a trif
le petulantly. “Sometimes she just sulks and won’t show up and do her beautiful dance. She’s so vain!” Dinah was clearly scornful, and she added softly, “I really don’t approve of her very much, because it’s not as if she does anything helpful. She’s a… oh… a common sort of fairy. Except, of course, that she’s so beautiful, and her dance is so pretty. We can try to flatter her enough to bring her out of the trees, but I just don’t know if she’ll show up.”

  “I know she’ll come!” the little boy said suddenly, practically shouting at Dinah with conviction.

  David was talking with Netta and Anna Tyson when Dinah approached, and Anna Tyson eyed her doubtfully. Dinah bore her no goodwill at all, and she only asked if she wanted to join the other children out on the porch, and Anna Tyson shook her head. “Okay. That’s fine, but you’re welcome to change your mind,” Dinah said and moved past her to speak to a little girl nearby.

  David gave his mother an odd look, but she was so irritated at him for standing there drinking wine and talking to Netta while Christie dealt with all those children by herself, that she simply looked back at him blankly. Besides, she had caught snatches of David and Netta’s conversation as she passed by them to greet other guests, and she didn’t want to stay in the vicinity. “… because our sex life was fine until I got pregnant. I mean, we had Anna Tyson…” and Netta gestured slightly to indicate her daughter, stolidly present beside her and listening carefully to every word.

  “… and he could only have sex with my closest friend. She lived with us to take care of Anna Tyson, and…” Dinah glanced at David’s face and saw that his expression was exactly like that of the small children to whom she spoke of Moonflower. “… you know, when I first met him I was repulsed and attracted—all at once, all at the same time—by his… oh… almost a feminine sensibility. So, of course, until I realized I just thought he might be bisexual, but it was just that Celia was right there….” The children always pretended that they already knew all about Moonflower; they pretended that it was nothing out of the ordinary, their faces carefully unperturbed, just like David’s as Netta leaned toward him. “I think that in his mind she became me, you see. It was just that responsibility made him impotent.” Netta was speaking earnestly, and with that repeated gesture of flicking her hair back and shaking it to settle behind her shoulders, although her hair only reached the nape of her neck. Oddly enough, that gesture, more than Netta’s words, grated on Dinah’s nerves, and she led the last stray child away to the porch, leaving Anna Tyson behind.

  The light had faded beyond the softly lit rooms, and the adults refilled their drinks and began to make their way to the porch as well. David joined Christie and took up his guitar. The children quieted down at once, and after a few trial runs, and under the weight of his stern expectation, they sang along with him:

  The itsy bitsy spider

  Climbed up the water spout.

  Down came the rain

  And washed the spider out.

  Out came the sun

  And dried up all the rain.

  The itsy bitsy spider

  Climbed up the pipe again.

  When the luminous blue spider dropped down over the roof of the porch, floating and bobbing in midair, the children shrieked with combined excitement and terror. Dinah gave Vic an imperceptible nod, and he disappeared from his post at the door to tell Ellen that none of the spider’s wires could be discerned in the dusk.

  “No, no,” Dinah said, and she moved among the excited children, bending down to explain. “That’s not Moonflower! She’s just waiting to see if it’s safe. And, of course, I’ve told you how vain she is. She wants to hear you sing a song. She thinks she’s much better than that spider. He has to spin a web to come to earth, you see. Why, Moonflower… well, she can fly. You’ve got to sing another song for her, though! Whenever she’s not sure if she’ll come or not, she sends down her friend the spider. He checks to see that everything’s safe. But, really! You’ve all got to sing!”

  Long ago, in Sheridan, Mississippi, when Martin’s great-aunt had brought the magical apparition to earth on one of the evenings of summer when the moonflower vine bloomed on her veranda, he remembered that he and his cousins had been instructed to sing “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam.” But Dinah and Ellen had secularized it, substituting a Peter, Paul, and Mary song that both the children and the adults would know.

  David changed chords and began singing harmony to Christie’s purer contralto.

  Puff the magic dragon

  Lived by the sea

  And frolicked in the autumn mist

  In a land called Honah Lee.

  The children were hesitant to join in, and David, with feigned exasperation, exhorted them to sing. “Okay. Okay, you guys! Mark, I can see you’re not singing, and I’ll tell you… Moonflower’s not coming if she doesn’t think everybody wants her.” And the children did finally begin to sing the refrain. They were familiar with the song from kindergarten and day care and tapes and videos their parents bought for them, although only the older ones knew the verses.

  At last a shimmering golden shape, doll-sized and lighted from within, and with clearly discernible, pale, moving wings, made its appearance just over the edge of the porch roof. The children rushed forward and pressed themselves against the screen in an effort to see better. David and Christie continued to sing.

  Oh!

  Puff the magic dragon

  Lived by the sea

  And frolicked in the autumn mist

  In a land called Honah Lee.

  Little Jackie Paper

  Loved that rascal Puff

  And brought him string and sealing wax

  And other fancy stuff.

  “You’ve got to keep singing,” Dinah said softly, ushering the children back from the edge of the porch, back into their little cluster around David and Christie. “I think she’s going to dance for you,” Dinah whispered urgently, “as long as you keep singing for her. Isn’t she beautiful? She’s so beautiful! Please sing for her!” And she turned to the parents, who were standing back against the wall, looking on indulgently. “Everyone has to sing, now! All of you sing along!” And each year the parents did sing along, and each year they were momentarily taken aback by the pure delight on Dinah’s face.

  Oh!

  Puff the magic dragon

  Lived by the sea

  And frolicked in the autumn mist

  In a land called Honah Lee.

  Together they would travel

  On a boat with billowed sail

  Jackie kept a lookout perched

  On Puff’s gigantic tail

  Moonflower spun and twirled up and down the length of the porch, halting hummingbird-like with her translucent wings beating, and then darting away while the group on the porch repeated the refrain over and over. One little boy could not contain himself, and he rushed to press his face against the screened wall. His father came forward and picked him up and let him straddle his shoulders, while they all sang on. For a moment there were only David’s and Christie’s voices in fairly complicated harmony through one more stanza.

  Noble kings and princes

  Would bow when e’er they came

  Pirate ships would lower their flags

  When Puff roared out his name.

  Oh!

  Puff the magic dragon

  Lived by the sea

  And frolicked in the autumn mist

  In a land called Honah Lee.

  Christie and David leaned together, their voices intensifying. Attractive and self-absorbed, they sat at the center of things, observed by everyone, emanating a kind of oblivious, youthful sexuality the parents had long ago passed through and the children, of course, had not yet reached. The two of them had become so involved in singing the song, involved in the satisfying combination of their voices, that the music reverberated in the soft air. The whole assembly felt a need to join them, and everyone sang the final chorus without a trace of reluctance.

  Oh
!

  Puff the magic dragon

  Lived by the sea

  And frolicked in the autumn mist

  In a land called Honah Lee.

  David struck several chords to end the song, and the children sagged against each other or their parents, exhausted.

  “What’s that?” said Dinah. “Oh, no! Look outside! Has Moonflower fallen? I see something glittering on the ground. I hope she didn’t make herself too weak to fly! She did such a long dance, tonight! Someone go see!”

  It was almost entirely dark, and as soon as the singing stopped, Vic had turned on the floodlights mounted on the roof to illuminate the backyard. The children pushed each other in their haste to get through the porch door. Right outside the steps they came upon a wide trail of silver glitter, and they stopped en masse, looking back to the lighted porch, uncertain what they should do.

  Dinah joined them and bent to peer at the ground where they pointed. “I think it’s a trail! I think Moonflower must have left a trail for you. See if you can follow it to the end and maybe you’ll find out where Moonflower comes from. No one knows. See if you can find her!” And the children dashed off, following the trail of glitter around the corner behind the house, until they reached the lilac bush that was strung with white lights and wound all around with garlands of gold braid and tied up with the golden crowns, the burnished doves, the bracelets and necklaces, and the tiny gilded cars. The children were stunned with excitement and exhaustion and sudden greed, and Dinah wandered back to the porch while they fell into squabbles about this or that prize. Greed among the children of other people didn’t bother her at all, and she left it for them to sort out, knowing that each child would get something.