Authors: David Leavitt
The next song on the tape is “It’s Raining Men.” Pearl is imitating John’s long-legged way of dancing, to the delight of everyone around her—even Suzanne, who now stands on the periphery of the patio, clapping her hands and throwing her head back in full laughter. Now she stumbles over to the table where Herb is sitting with Miriam and Lynnette and reaches out her hands. “Let’s dance,” she says. “Come on, Herb, come dance with your wife. For old time’s sake.”
Herb looks up at her, confused. “Go ahead, Herb,” Miriam says. “I think it’s a lovely idea.” She smiles. As for Lynnette—Lynnette’s eyes bulge. Her make-up has smeared in purple and black circles under her eyes; sitting there, she looks like an old cartoon illustration of Satan Suzanne saw once, arrived uninvited at some absurdly genteel dinner party. He sat at the table in all his hideousness, and no one in the picture seemed to notice. The caption read: “The Unexpected Guest.”
“Suzanne, please,” Herb says. “I really don’t want to dance.”
“But it’s all right with Miriam, isn’t it?” says Suzanne.
“Go ahead, don’t stop on my account,” Miriam says.
Suzanne grabs Herb’s hands and hoists him up. “Come on,” she says loudly, so that several of her relatives turn and look. “We’ll show these young people what dancing really is.”
Herb has no choice but to go with her. She drags him between two of her cousins into the center of the patio, where John and Pearl are still going strong.
Pearl, who has been enjoying her spotlight, gives her daughter a look of irritation and suspicion. “Come on, Mom,” Suzanne says. “You can’t hog all the attention all night.” And she grabs Herb’s hands, and swings him into a jitterbug.
But “It’s Raining Men” ends. The next song on the tape, inexplicably, is “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” John gets down on his knees and begs Pearl, who shoos him off. “No, I just can’t anymore,” she says. “I’m just too tired.”
“Oh, you’ll break my heart,” John says. “My heart is breaking.
“Good to see you haven’t forgotten how to flirt, Mama,” Suzanne says to Pearl, and everyone laughs. She has grabbed Herb firmly around the waist, to make sure he doesn’t try to run away from the slow dance. Now, alone in the circle, they writhe, Herb trying to keep his distance, Suzanne insistently holding him down so that his chest pushes against hers.
“Hey,” Herb says, “I have an idea. Let’s make this a family dance. Let’s have the whole family. Come on, Seth!”
Everyone roars approval. Seth nods no, but it’s only for show. His grandmother pushes him out into the opening arms of his parents, who take him in. The song continues, and the three of them roll haphazardly over the patio. “When an old flame dies,” Suzanne sings, “you know what happens.”
There is a sound of rustling, now, behind the circle. Someone is trying to persuade Lynnette to join the dance. Indeed, several of her aunts have hoisted her up, and are pushing her toward the makeshift dance floor, refusing to heed her insistent pleas that she does not want to dance.
“Come on,” Pearl says. “Don’t be a spoilsport. Dance with the family, darling.”
But a spoilsport is exactly what Lynnette wants to be. “I don’t want to,” she says through gritted teeth, and elbows her way out of her aunts’ grips. To no avail. A space has cleared in the circle, and John has grabbed Lynnette by the arm so firmly that tears spring to her eyes. “Come on,” he says. “Dance.”
“Let me go or I’ll scream,” Lynnette warns him.
“Shut up and don’t be a baby,” John says, and plummets her into the center of the circle, into the reeling inner circle of her family.
Immediately they close around her, like a mouth. It is dank inside that circle, full of the smells of alcohol and perfume. Arms around arms, heads knocking, the family stumbles, barely able to keep its balance. “I love you, sweetie,” Suzanne says from somewhere, and a mouth nuzzles Lynnette’s hair.
She is crying now. Besides the music, her crying is the only sound, for the crowd has suddenly been struck silent, and is watching with wide eyes. And though Herb’s hand squeezes her shoulder, though he whispers in her ear, “It’s all right, honey,” all she feels is the terror of inertia, like the last time he ever pushed her on the swing. Higher and higher she went, as if his strength could disprove her fatness. “Daddy, stop!” she had screamed as the swing rose. “Stop, stop, I’m scared!” Her hands clutched the metal chains, her mouth opened. She wasn’t scared of the height; she was scared of him, of how he kept pushing, as if the swing were magic, and by pushing he could change her forever into the pretty little girl he really wanted to be his partner.
Two sisters and a brother were sitting at a kitchen table watching “General Hospital.”
Is Monica good now, or bad, asked the younger sister, a girl of eight.
I can’t tell, said the brother, who had just returned from a summer program for college-bound youths.
Shut up, shut up, I can’t hear, said the oldest sister, waving away a fly attracted to her damp skin.
First she was bad, I think, then she was good, but now she’s bad again, said the cleaning lady, who had been intimate with the show since its inception.
The younger sister got up and ran across the house to her mother’s room. On the way, she played a game of her own invention involving somersaults and spinning.
The mother was riding the Exercycle, and also watching “General Hospital.”
Again the girl asked, Is Monica good or bad?
I don’t know, said the mother, pushing up and back against the handlebars to improve muscle tone. I can never tell.
On the screen Monica and Lesley were arguing over Rick.
An alarm went off, a commercial came on. The mother stepped off the Exercycle, sat down at the make-up vanity, and began combing her hair. She had it cut specially by a hairdresser who specialized in ladies undergoing the treatment. As the comb went through, lifting each tuft from the scalp, it revealed the concealed bald patches.
Want to go with me to the radiation therapy center? the mother asked the daughter.
Nah, I’d rather watch, the daughter said. Bear and Ivy’ll go, though. They’ve never been yet.
No, the mother said, they haven’t. She put on her lipstick, then dabbed off the excess with a Kleenex.
Kids, you ready to go? the mother asked, walking into the kitchen.
We are, said the older daughter.
Just remember to put on your shoes, will you? the mother said.
The older sister looked at her brother and grimaced, sucking in her cheeks and curling her tongue in a way that six out of every seven people can do. Then she touched the tip of her nose with the tip of her tongue, smiled, and said in falsetto, Yes, Mother dear.
In the car, the son, who was called Bear, lay down along the full length of the back seat. His sister, who was undergoing psychotherapy as part of her training to be a psychotherapist, was explaining that often children who have had abnormally close relationships with their parents are unable to break away from them when they become adults. Consequently, they deal with their aggression by “rebelling” over and over again, well into adulthood, rather than simply letting go, saying, my parents are this way, and I accept them this way. And that, she went on to explain, was why her old best friend Katie had done what she had done.
What she had done was go through the motions of a full wedding to her boyfriend when in actuality they had never even gotten a marriage license.
In addition, the ceremony had been questionable, what with each vowing to love, honor, cherish, and always be ready to fuck the other.
So you see, the daughter finished, it’s a very complicated situation when viewed psychologically.
The mother didn’t see it that way. Her main point was, what a rotten kid, what a rotten thing to do. Keith, Katie’s father, her
fathe
r
, she reasoned, is dying and he wants to see his daughter married before he goes. Is that too much? Is it? I always knew Katie was a sneak, the mother said. Out for herself. Selfish.
The daughter twisted in the seat and again stuck her tongue out. It’s more complicated, she said again. I don’t see anything complicated about it, the mother said.
Look, the daughter said. You know what I mean.
While she talked she played with the electric window.
Look, she said, Corinne’s in a weird way—
Don’t play with the electric window, it’s already been broken once this year.
Corinne, the daughter began again, is in a weird way jealous of Keith.
Corinne was Keith’s wife, getting a Ph.D. late in life.
Jealous! the mother said. Jealous of a dying man. She can’t wait until—
Look! Now the daughter began to play with the seatbelt. She almost wishes it was her dying because she thinks she’s so much more unhappy than he is, and she wants to justify her suffering. I think she’s actually glad Katie and Evan didn’t get married, even though she wouldn’t admit it.
I don’t buy it, the mother said. Corinne’s a sneak, too. Jealous! If she was jealous, why would she want to marry your father?
What?
The son, lying in back, sat up.
What? he said again.
It’s nothing, Bear, said the daughter.
Come on, Ivy, he’s old enough now, the mother said. All it is, Bear, is that once Corinne got drunk and told Daddy that when I died and Keith died they could get married.
The son laughed nervously, perhaps relievedly. You’re kidding, he said.
And don’t you dare mention this to anyone, the mother said, especially your little sister.
Of course I won’t, the son said, of course not.
By this time they had reached the radiation therapy center, which was new and modern and underground. They took an elevator down and emerged in a large, plush waiting room with carpeted walls.
Wow, the sister said.
Isn’t this nice? the mother said, smiling. She led them through. It was nice. All the tables had backgammon boards and chess boards built into them. There were Folons and O’Keeffes and Wyeths on the walls. There were books and magazines, toys and puzzles for kids. The colors were bright and cheerful, but not so bright and cheerful as to leer at the dying, the architect having conferred with a noted death-and-dying specialist on the design.
Isn’t this nice, Bear? the mother said. See through the glass? That’s where they do the treatment.
Behind a big glass pane—too big to be called a window—the son could see a flat, silver table that looked cold. It stood like an island in the center of a room behind the glass. Above it, a large machine, resembling a machine gun, pointed down from the ceiling.
They walked over to the nurses’ station.
Hello, Joanne, the mother said to the nurse.
Good to see you again, Gretl, the nurse said. These your kids?
They sure are, the mother said. This is Ivy, and this is George, but we call him Bear.
Your mom talks a lot about you, honey, the nurse said to the son. How’s the new lawn furniture? You get it yet?
We sure did, the mother said. It’s great. But you know, furniture you leave outside, it always gets ruined. I don’t count on it lasting more than a year.
Well, said the nurse, Frank and I have had the same set for almost three years now. Where’d you get yours?
The son turned from the conversation to watch an older man emerge from the row of dressing cubicles. His sister watched him watch. The older man had put on a white robe which tied around the back. He still had on his black business shoes and short black socks; his legs were skinny and white. Having taken a moment to light his pipe, he sat down in a corner and read a copy of
Time
.
Nearby a couple of little girls played Chutes and Ladders. He remembered his little sister told him, there were always kids to play with at the radiation therapy center.
Lurene was asking for you, the nurse said. Too bad you missed her.
Lurene was a character the son had heard of, part of his mother’s dinnertime monologue of her life at the radiation therapy center. She was old, a phone operator, and she had the same disease the mother had, only in the earlier stages. She was frightened because the doctors gave her contradictory reports. But the mother prevailed, took her under her wing, told her what was what, offered her whole living self as evidence that it could be got through.
Now Lurene knew what was what.
The mother had gone into a little cubicle to change, so the brother and sister sat down. The brother picked up a copy of
Highlights
; the sister chewed her hair.
Bear up, Bear, the sister said.
The son put down the magazine.
It’s just I don’t like this place. She pretends it’s so happy, why pretend she likes to come here?
People cope in different ways, the sister said, trying not to sound holier-than-thou.
I don’t know, the brother said. I guess I’ll feel better when Daddy gets home. Things are better when he’s here.
He turned back to the magazine. He started to read the “Goofus and Gallant” column.