Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn (26 page)

When I go back out to the porch, she is sitting with her back to me and I move in behind and place my hands on her shoulders. It has been a long time since we have touched on purpose beyond those random acts of passing in the hall and hugging good-bye. My mother brings both of her hands to mine and I sense in that moment the patience that kept her with my father, that helped her raise three children, that got her through what I can only now imagine as days and nights darker, much, much darker than my own.

“Sit,” she finally tells me.

When I begin to talk, nothing seems to make sense at first, and then she touches me again and I feel something smooth and lovely move between us and I embrace the importance of touch and holding as the one solid thing that I have ever known as true. My mother's hand on my back as I walk into the hospital to give birth to my first child. Her fingers in my hair when I am a teenager and sobbing in her lap because of some now long-forgotten adolescent crisis. Her gracious shove the day of my wedding when I was panicked about making it up the aisle. All those nights she slipped into my bed after I'd heard the yelling, and her legs warm and firm against mine and her hands moving to rub my back and arms when she knew I was worried about her and him and us, as she cried quietly. The one day, many years ago, when I fell out of the car, my arm pushing down the lever in the new red Ford, and me rolling and rolling and rolling and my leg bent sideways and the gravel that dropped from under my skin and my mother's hands there again in my hair and touching the top of my chest and moving in circles on the side of my face that was not bleeding. The touch. Always the touch and the fine flow of energy from her skin to mine and the firm feeling of strength that I could feel rising from her—through her—to me. Her touch now gives me the courage to begin again.

“Mom, you are right, I am so unhappy. I can't remember being happy, really happy, for a very long time.”

“Tell me, baby, just tell me.”

And the circles of her fingers keep moving and I tell her everything. I tell her about the wanting to watch and leaving and then coming back. I tell her about Mexico and about following the trail that had been laid together piece by piece by her sister until I ended up on the edge of a sea wider than anything I had ever seen or felt and the circle of solid stones that sifted in an occasional breeze from the jungle, and I tell her that I know about my aunt's foundation, and then I pause and wait for her hand to stop moving on my arm, for her to walk away or to simply be quiet, and she does none of those things.

“Meg, you should have been my sister's daughter. Something got screwed up along the way and I ended up with you, such a great prize, one that I never felt I quite deserved.”

Mom. Oh, Mom.

She doesn't stop. I lean into her even more but she doesn't stop. She may explode, I think, if she doesn't get this out.

“You always seemed perfect to me, Meg. You did, really. I've wanted to tell you your entire life how sorry I am for all the times when you needed me to push through the door first and I couldn't do it. I just could not do it, and I apologize now, but I just could not do it.”

Mom. Oh, Mom.

She goes on for what I am sure to her seems like an eternity, when I realize that she must be doing this for a reason that is about to make itself known in a big way because we have had portions, in very small doses, of this conversation several times during the past three years. A weepy session at the hospital the night my father died. The funeral. Selling the house. A month alone in Arizona and dozens of late-night phone calls. One afternoon of wine and remembering things that would have been better not remembered. A lost card from Marcia arriving in a tattered envelope from the post office.

So this, some of this, most of this, is old, maneuvered back into place by my rotting life. Or is it something else?

I start talking again when she finishes, reassuring her that I understand the place and time, and then forgetting my premonition to ask her what the hell I should do next. It must be the whiskey and tea.

“What do you want to do, Margaret?”

“Start over.”

“Well, then, why do you ask me what to do?”

“I feel bad.”

“Oh, screw feeling bad.”

“Mom.”

“You would say ‘fuck it,' but I can only say ‘screw it.' That's all you are getting.”

We laugh, which seems to be the thread of who we are, have been, will probably always be—and without realizing it, I am holding her hand and kneading my fingers in between hers so that she can relax and let go of whatever it is she has left to say.

“So?” she asks me.

“I'm still exhausted, even after that trip.”

“You've got years of unburdening to do. I'm surprised you can walk, for heaven's sake.”

We pause again, take a sip of the whiskey tea and watch as three sets of golfers jockey for a place on the third tee that she can see from her porch. A breeze kicks up that ripples through the trees just below us, and it is as if something or someone is whispering in a quiet concert designed for us.

“Did you hear it?” I ask her.

“You think it's a voice from the dead?”

“Maybe just the cranky neighbors who heard us talking about sex.”

She laughs and then turns toward me quickly. A sharp turn. Fast. My head aches from the whiplash.

“Tell me what you want, Meg.”

My heart pounds. I cannot breathe, but I know. I suddenly know what I want.

“Something simple. An apartment,” I say, and then it is as if a dam has burst open, as if someone has plowed through an ice field that is a thousand years old, as if a dried-up spring has begun to flow, as if the blind can see and women are ruling the world.

“I want to live how I want to live and quit my job and spend lots of time in Mexico and make certain that Katie does not end up in prison and . . .” There's so much. I'm afraid that if I keep going I will never stop.

“What?”

“Well . . .”

“Baby, say it. If you say it, you make it real.”

“I want to be alone. I think I just want to be alone for a while, maybe for a long time. But I'm scared. I'm so scared.”

She laughs again and I know that she's not laughing at me but for some other old and ridiculous reason that I don't need to hear about.

“That's it?” she asks.

“Well, part of it.”

“That's enough. It's huge and perfect and you'll do it. Soon.”

“Really?”

“Oh, come on. Look what you've done in the past few months. I was beginning to think you were going to start selling Tupperware or those baskets at home parties, for crying out loud.”

Who is this woman? Where the hell did my mother go?

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Why didn't you say something?”

“You had to come into it on your own. It wasn't right. Timing, you know. It's important that it be your choice and your life and not mine. Never mine or anyone else's.”

Mom. Oh, Mom.

I think we are done then. I think that when I get up and drive home that there will be a little book of instructions on the kitchen counter to tell me what to do next. Everything will be outlined and the important stuff will be boldfaced and there will be a choir of naked male angels singing in the backyard to help me when I get low and lonely as I cross out one task after another.

This is when I realize the whiskey has taken its toll on my afternoon heart. I'm tipsy. Not drunk, but woozy enough to want to lie down on the porch and pull my shirt off over my head. Bad enough to know I should not leave my mother's wonderfully decorated condo.

“There's no way in hell I can drive home, Mom.”

She laughs again.

“This is like college or that last week of high school,” she tells me, moving already to get the pillows fluffed and pull back the covers. It's what? Jesus, not even eight
P.M.,
and I'm sauced.

In bed, she tucks me in like she must have hundreds of times when I was a little girl, and her fingers, just like then, linger on my face. When I open my eyes, I see that she is crying. My hand goes to hers and I rise up from the pillow. I cannot seem to speak.

“Meggie, this is something, isn't it?”

“Yes, yes it is,” I say through tears as thick as the wall we have just tumbled through.

“Meggie, just saying this has made us stronger, but . . .”

She pauses, and my heart, already flat and exhausted, stops.

“There is one more thing. It's a tough one, honey. Pretty damn tough.”

My mother never swears. She's done it several times in the last few hours.

“What?” I ask as I leap outside of my body and watch us, hands together, hearts beating from the same origin. “What?”

She takes a breath and even in my boozy state I can see that she has the words in her mouth but she is having trouble getting them to the next step.

“Honey, I have a lump. They found a lump. This is the worst possible time for you. But I need you. Auntie Marcia is gone. I need you.”

My mind is frozen and then dips suddenly to the warm beach and to the scented circle of laughter. I will myself to feel the breeze that shifts through the long green leaves, past the rows of grass at the edge of the beach and through the tiny cracks of the rock wall, and then I take my mother in my arms and say the only word that I can remember. The only word that seems finally perfect.

“Yes,” I say to her. “Yes.”

The mirror in front of the bathroom sink extends just far enough so that when I stand back I can see my body from the waist up. Once I lock the door, I turn on the lights and then look into my own eyes. I want to see myself as if I am a stranger, someone walking down the street who looks up and is suddenly greeted by my eyes, my smile, the color of my hair.

“Hello,” I say, and what I see are fading dark circles around eyes that are the color of a November afternoon, hair tousled by a sleepless night on the chair, couch, that goddamn twin bed.

“Hi,” I say back, wondering why this woman looks so tired and why when she smiles only the left half of her face moves up. What secrets are behind there? Who is she? Where is she going?

I have come to the bathroom alone at 4:30
A.M.
to look at my breasts. I have never looked at my breasts. Well, I have looked at them in passing but I have never saluted them, paid attention to their importance, lit a candle in thanksgiving for having them attached to my body. It is time. Katie is asleep. Bob rarely comes home, but I lock the bathroom anyway. It would be just my luck that someone three blocks over would pick this morning to sleepwalk and climb her way up the stairs to this particular room.

I take two steps back and then move in a few more inches. My long shirt falls easily off one shoulder and then the next and drops to the floor with a nearly soundless whoosh. I do not have on underwear, and a simple silver chain that I bought in Mexico balances at the edge of the bone below my throat. When I push my hair behind my ears it slopes behind me and I imagine exposes my breasts even more, but I cannot bring myself to look yet.

“What would happen if I lost one?” I ask myself. “Or both? Or the muscles under my arm and from the top half of my shoulder?”

I close my eyes and bring my hands up to cup my own breasts, remembering the first time I saw them budding out when I was eleven years old. It was as if I had gone to bed in my tiger pajamas and woken up in a silk nightie. There they were, tiny caps of flesh mounded around my nipples. I wanted to die. I wanted them to go away, and then, within weeks, was wishing I could water them at night with special breast-growing medicine so that they would get larger. Every girl I ever knew wanted Barbie doll breasts. How sad is that?

Now they have been pressed and sucked and stretched. They are close to fifty years old. Two babies have touched them with tiny fingers balled into fists as they filled their stomachs. They are definitely starting to head south, no matter how tight my jogging bras remain.

For years and years now I have done breast exams. At night, sleepless for what seemed like the forty-fifth night in a row, I would roll to one side and then the next and push my fingers in the obligatory circles, searching for a grain of sand, a pea stuck below the surface of my skin, and always I would fall asleep knowing it was okay, my breasts were okay.