Dancing After Hours (17 page)

“Jesus. I couldn’t do that work.”

“I don’t. It was like an accident in my life.”

“I mean the staff. This must happen and happen.”

“It does. I’ve only heard about it, till Thursday.”

The trail ended at a parking lot, and between it and the river were picnic tables. Teenaged girls and boys were sitting on one, and a family sat at another with food. Marsha said: “You want to walk on the road?”

“Yes,” LuAnn said, her arms swinging, sweat dripping on her skin, her tank top damp, her leg muscles warm with blood, and eager, her breath deep, and her biceps hard, her wrists and hands relaxed. Beyond the parking lot was a road going upriver. They walked through shadows of pines; then were on the road, and around a curve, and LuAnn could not hear the crowd at the stadium. They walked on the side of the road, with the river on their left and houses on their right. There were no cars; probably few people used the road, except those who lived on it. The river sparkled. Marsha said: “You believe in the devil?”

“I don’t know. I believe in possessions, and exorcisms. I don’t know if there’s a devil. I used to think of Christ in the desert, tempted by this powerful, visible, evil spirit. Maybe ugly with horns and fur, maybe beautiful, a shining face with black eyes. Now I think what tempted Him was his humanity He was hungry. He wanted people to know who He was. He wanted to just take over and call the shots. Impose agâpe on everyone. It’s funny, when I was at BU, somebody in our group started this: if you said the Lord’s Prayer backward, the devil would appear. There were probably only two of
us who even believed in God. Me, and one of the guys. We laughed, we snorted coke, we drank tequila, but no one would say that prayer backward. I wouldn’t right now. I don’t know if there’s a devil, and I’ll stay with that.”

“We hardly need him.”

“No. We’re doing fine on our own. Sylvie cried. Deborah was washing her. That’s when she stopped that awful moan; her eyes had been dry, and bright with something that was in her, and when Deborah ran water on her arm, she cried, deep, loud crying, and the tears jumped out of her eyes; her face was wet, and Deborah was washing and blood was in the sink, but it stopped soon, the bleeding; Sylvie quit fighting as soon as she cried. She looked like she’d fall down if they weren’t holding her. Roger just kept saying her name, and he loosened his grip on her right arm; then he let it go, and she clutched him, his sleeve, then his bare arm. There she was, in her jeans and teal sweater, sobbing. She was looking at Roger, but I don’t think she can remember what his face was like then, in the bathroom. Maybe his touch, his voice. She was still seeing herself, her pain. She’s in a hospital now. Psychiatric. After a while she’ll go back to the home. And after a while she’ll say she’s sorry, that she did it to get attention. She’ll even say it to me, one Thursday night. And it’s bullshit. She did it because hurting her body felt better than the pain in her soul, and it gave her relief.”

“Sure it does. I used to binge, when I was a girl. I still do.”

“With food?” She looked at Marsha, who was smiling and wiping sweat from her brow.

“Not now. I go to the gym. I work on those machines
till I’m not me anymore. In the shower I’m me again, but the part of me I couldn’t stand is dead. It’s in the gym, draped over a Universal.”

The road curved with the river, climbed and curved again, and a speedboat came downriver and LuAnn watched its wake spreading. Its motor was the only sound in the air. Then it was gone, and she said: “When Ted got hurt, he was relieved. After the explosion, when he was on the ground and there were no more explosions and he knew he was alive. His captain was talking to him and a corpsman was working on his leg, and he knew he was alive and he was going home, and he was relieved. He said it took him months, when he got out of the hospital in Philadelphia, to know it wasn’t relief he felt. It was gratitude. Because it was over, for him. He was going home. He had been afraid every day and every night at Khe Sanh, but it wasn’t that. He said sometimes the fear was a rush. It was the pain in his soul. It’s still there. All those boys he bandaged and shot up with morphine, talked to while they died or didn’t die, boys he saved or didn’t, all the boys whose bleeding he stopped and whose shock he stopped, and they went home without arms or legs or with their cocks and balls shredded. When he got hit, his pain was terrible, but he had morphine. I think Sylvie felt something on the edge of that. In its penumbra. But she’s not in a war she can come home from. When I talk to Ted about these girls, what they say about their lives, what the staff tells me, he says he’d rather Vietnam than a childhood of being raped by people he was born to trust. Nobody he trusted hurt him over there, and he always felt loved. Sylvie kept crying—her face was on Roger’s chest—and Deborah bandaged the
cuts, and I looked behind me, and the hall was full of girls and three staff, talking to them, turning them around, getting them out of the hall. Susan went through them, to call the hospital. Roger and Deborah were holding Sylvie, and they started walking her toward me, or toward the doorway I stood in, and I backed up, looking at Sylvie. Tears were still on her face, but she was quiet. She was breathing through her mouth; I could hear it. I looked at Roger. He was watching Sylvie and his face was firm and gentle at the same time. He was a father, doing what he could, and I knew he was sad and disappointed; maybe he felt betrayed, hopeless, but none of that showed, and I just wanted to lean against the wall and cry. I’ve never seen a child hurt herself on purpose. Or an adult, either; not violently, just drugs and drinking and smoking and eating—”

“And working.”

“Yes.”

“You were helpless, too.” Ducks were sitting on the river, gently bobbing. “If it were Julia or Elizabeth, you’d have been different.”

LuAnn looked at her.

“You’re right. I haven’t thought of that. I just felt in the way. So I got out of the way. I turned and went down the hall and through the dining room, and didn’t look at anyone. All the girls were standing in the dining room, with Sherri and another woman. I went to the glass room and sat down. Annette and Lisa and Tracy hadn’t come back, and their purses were gone. Roger and Deborah came with Sylvie and walked her through the dining room, with everybody watching. Annette and a woman came from the bedrooms.
Annette was carrying an overnight bag, and she handed it to Deborah; then she and the woman stood with the others. Roger and Deborah took Sylvie through the kitchen and outside. The girls were moving tables and putting chairs in a circle, and then I knew they were going to have a meeting now, to talk about it. So I went outside. Roger was standing in the driveway, and Susan was starting the van, and Deborah was holding the passenger door for Sylvie, and she got in with her bag, and Deborah sat beside her. I stood on the steps, looking past Roger at Sylvie. When they backed out, I started to wave. My arm started to; but I didn’t let it. Then they were gone, and Roger stood looking at the road. He folded his arms. He thought he was alone. I’ve always had a crush on him, since I started there—”

“You didn’t tell
me
that.”

“A crush. I have them all the time. I have one on the guy who delivers springwater.”

“You, too?”

“We have the same guy?”

“I had an affair with one. It ended my first marriage.”

They stopped and looked at each other. LuAnn said: “That’s why it ended, and you never told me?”

“It was eighteen years ago, and it was dramatic and tragic and all that. Now it seems like another life.”

They turned and walked downriver, LuAnn watching Marsha, trying to see her eighteen years ago. Marsha said: “This is my real marriage. With Bill and Annie and Stephen. Rick and I didn’t last two years. We were young, and it was before AIDS, and I wasn’t used to monogamy. You remember.”

“I was mostly sequential, except in college.”

“I was multiple. Then I was married, and I didn’t want children yet, and Rick was light-years from it. I’ve rewritten that marriage so much in my head that it’s not real anymore. I know I loved him, and he loved me; after that, I don’t know what we were doing. This cute, sexy guy delivered water early in the morning—usually Rick was in the shower or shaving—and I made some moves and he made some moves, and one morning he kissed me. I told him to come back in an hour, and Rick left for work—he had to drive farther than I did—then I called in sick. And stood in the living room and looked out the window for an hour, and bam, on the dot, here came the truck up my drive. After that we got on an adultery schedule. Rick was on the road a lot, and Derek would come to my house after work. It was winter, so it was dark early. He was married, too. He’d show up in his uniform, with all those muscles from carrying water. Here’s what’s odd: everything was fast. I don’t think he was ever with me for two hours. But Rick caught us. He was on the road—in the air, really—selling in Chicago; it was a Tuesday night, and he was supposed to come home Wednesday. But he finished in Chicago a day early, and he didn’t call; he just flew to Boston and got in his car, poor man, and drove home. I heard the door open. Because the bedroom door was open, and if it hadn’t been, he would have walked in on us. But I heard the door—I don’t know
how;
maybe when you’re cheating you keep waiting for that door—and I told Derek to get dressed and I left him and closed the bedroom door, and ran down the hall just when Rick turned into it, still carrying his suitcase and briefcase, still in his overcoat—”

“You were naked?”

“I was naked.” She smiled at LuAnn, then looked up at the sky. “I’ve thought about it over the years. Wondered if I meant to hurt him more. But I don’t think so. I was never trying to hurt him, anyway. I may have had time to slip on my underpants, maybe my shirt—run down the hall, trying to button. But I don’t think so. It was a small place, one story of a duplex. If
Ted
came home like that, you’d have time to get the guy down the back stairs, and dress and make the bed. ’Course you wouldn’t hear him come in, either; you’d hear him on the stairs.”

“What did Rick do?”

“I said: ‘You can’t come in. Somebody’s here.’ He said: ‘Somebody’s here?’ He said it quietly, like we were conspirators. And he was conspiring with me, not about what I had been doing but about what he and I were doing right then, at that moment. He had made a decision: he wasn’t going down the hall to confront, or to fight—”

“I would.”

“I wouldn’t be able not to. He was. He wasn’t angry yet. Oh God, he was hurt. He put down his suitcase and briefcase. He kept looking at me. Tears were in his eyes; his mouth was open. Then he turned to leave. He took one step and stopped, and turned back to me again, and he looked at me that way. He picked up his suitcase and briefcase, looking at me. Then he walked out. His head was down; I watched him, and his head was down. At the back door he had to put down his suitcase and briefcase, to open it. I wanted to go pick them up, hold them for him while he opened the damned door; but I saw it in my head, and it looked
like a cruel thing to do. It would look cruel. He opened the door and lifted the things through it and put them on the step. Then he went through and closed the door. I stood there and listened to his car starting and backing out and turning in the street. Then I went to the horrible bedroom, and Derek was dressed, his uniform coat, his gloves, and he looked as bad as Rick. I’m sure I did, too. But Derek’s bad was fear. If he’s stayed married, and he kept cheating, I think he goes to motels. I got dressed. I could not put on clothes fast enough. I said: ‘That was Rick.’ I said: ‘You better go.’ He just kept nodding his head. That man was already ten miles away, standing in my bedroom. He pecked me on the mouth, and was gone. Rick checked into a motel and called me. He wasn’t angry yet. That came later. But from the instant I heard him open that door, I paid for my fun. Paid and paid. Rick came back to the house once, to get his things. Derek brought water. We’d shake hands. He was nice and all. He’d ask how I was doing, say he was sorry. I’d look at him, and it didn’t seem real. There was Derek past and Derek present, and Marsha past and Marsha present, and I felt
nothing
exciting for him. Just this shared
mistake
. Regret. Then he’d leave with the empty bottles, and I’d drive to work and get on with other things. You know something that I’ll never know?”

The road straightened and LuAnn saw the park, and heard shouting from the stadium.

“I’ll never know if Rick and I would’ve made it. I loved him, there weren’t any rules, or I didn’t have any, I trusted my IUD, and I was just having fun. I never thought I could do so much damage. Because I never thought I’d get caught. So. I’m glad I’m with Bill. And
if I were still with Rick, I wouldn’t have Annie and Stephen. Maybe other children, but not Annie and Stephen. And Rick has children, and a wife he can probably trust, and loads of money. Still: if he hadn’t come home early, or he’d called first, my fun with Gunga Din would have dried, and maybe I’d still be married to Rick. I tried to stay married to him. I begged, I promised, but I had broken his heart, and there was no way it would mend. Not with this woman, anyway.” She looked at LuAnn. “I said I wished I’d had the chance Thursday night. That’s all I meant. I hope I never cheat.”

They moved into the pine shadows and onto the parking lot. A man with silver hair sat alone at a picnic table, reading a book. LuAnn said: “I didn’t know I would till Thursday. I knew I could. Lots of times. With pleasure. But I knew I wouldn’t. That was the trap: that I believed I knew I wouldn’t.” She looked at Marsha’s eyes. “If you ever hear me say I know I won’t do something, be gentle, okay?” Marsha smiled. “But love me, slap me.” She looked past Marsha at the river; in the stadium, people cheered, someone beat the bass drum, rolled snare drums, and struck cymbals together. “Sex is like the weather. It’s just there. One summer afternoon you drive to the mall, shop inside, go out again, and water is falling from the sky. It was blue when you went in, and now it’s gray and water is falling, and you’re wearing shorts and a T-shirt. There was a bright moon and a streetlamp down the road. I was standing on the steps, looking at Roger’s hair in the light. He didn’t move. So I went down the steps and on the driveway and he heard me and turned. When I got close, I could see his sorrow: in his cheeks, his mouth, his eyes.
He said: ‘LuAnn.’ I wanted to hold him tight, in his sorrow. He said: ‘Are you all right?’ and I said: ‘Shaken. How are you?’ He said he was tired. His voice was a sigh. I told him I didn’t know how he stood it—he works sixty, seventy hours a week—and I asked if he thought Sylvie would be all right, would ever really be all right, and he said: ‘I don’t know.’ Then he looked down and said: ‘She’s
got
to.’ The front lawn there is deep and my car was parked beside the road, behind a row of lilacs. I looked at its roof and said: ‘Are you going to the meeting?’ and he said: ‘Not right away. Sherri’s running it,’ and we started walking to my car. I got in and opened the window and he leaned down to it, looking at me, and I looked away to get my cigarettes. He said: ‘Could I have one?’ I opened my mouth to say sure, but the image that came was us sitting in the car, smoking; I said: ‘Join me.’ Before he got to the passenger door, I was feeling that first wave of thrill. Oh,
thrill
is dangerous; living is dangerous. He filled the seat. I gave him a cigarette and a light and lit mine. He’s divorced and isn’t with his children enough; he doesn’t go home to them and wake up with them. He takes them on weekends, but sometimes he doesn’t have whole weekends; the home takes him—girls run away or try to kill themselves, or some staff have the flu. So he hurts. He’s one of those who hurts and just keeps going. There was a tree between us and the streetlamp in front of my car, and the road was lit, but we were in shadows there, and the lilacs between us and the home are tall, and I couldn’t see the downstairs windows. There were houses across the street with lights low, people watching television. You could make love on their front lawns and they wouldn’t know. Murder
somebody, and they wouldn’t know till morning. I wanted to kiss him and I was trying to think of something to say, about Sylvie, about
anything
. Three drags on my cigarette. Two or three on his. Then he said: ‘I like watching you read.’ I didn’t say anything; it was in my face, though. Probably since he got in the car like a panther, if panthers were shaped like bears. Probably since I said: Join me.’ He leaned to kiss me and I leaned, and we were kissing and I reached behind him and dropped my cigarette out his window, and I felt him drop his. Then our hands were free: shirts unbuttoned. I was wearing jeans; we pulled them down and my underpants, and his. I wanted to get in the passenger seat, with him kneeling on the floor and my feet on the dashboard. I said: ‘Move.’ He pushed the seat back, got a condom from his wallet, and took off his shoes and slacks and shorts, and I was pushing my underpants and jeans—I had them to my ankles; then I knew I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Because of those seconds when we weren’t kissing and touching. I was touching my jeans and my pants and my skin. I saw myself walking into my house. I saw myself walking through the kitchen and the dining room to Ted in the living room. I didn’t see Ted. Or Julia and Elizabeth and Sam in their beds. I saw my face and the front of my body, walking toward—me. Walking on the floor toward me. And I knew I must not do this. I wanted to. All I could feel was my body and this thing in my chest that wanted to explode. Into blossom. But I knew, and I pulled on my underpants and I was pulling up my jeans and feeling with my feet for my moccasins, all that breathing in the car, and I said: ‘I can’t.’ I looked at him. I hadn’t stopped looking at him, but I looked
at his eyes and said: ‘I’m sorry.’ I had my jeans up and my moccasins on and by the time I was buttoning my shirt, he was dressed. His eyes were beautiful. He said: ‘Don’t be.’