Family Dancing (13 page)

Somehow they survived the winter. One night at dinner, a few days before spring vacation, Elaine stood up and said, “This is a sham.” Then she sat down again and continued eating. Allen looked at her, looked at Danny, looked at his plate. A few nights later she picked up the top of a ceramic sugar bowl which Danny had made her for Christmas and threw it overhand at Allen. It missed him, and shattered against the refrigerator door. Danny jumped, and fought back tears.

“See what I can do?” she said. “See what you’ve driven me to?”

Allen did not answer her. He quietly put on his jacket, and without a word walked out the back door. He was not home for dinner the next night. When Danny asked Elaine where he’d gone, she threw down her fork and started to cry. “Danny,” she said, “there have been a lot of lies in this house.”

The next day was the first Monday of vacation, and when Danny came home from playing his mother was still in bed.

“It’s O.K., Danny,” she said. “I just decided to take the day off. Lie in bed all day, since it’s something I’ve never done before. Don’t worry about me. Go ahead and play.”

Danny did as she said. That night, at dusk, when he got home, she was asleep, the lights in her room all turned out. He was frightened, and he kept the house lights on even after he’d gone to bed. In the morning he knew that his father was really gone. Only his mother was in the bed when he gently pushed open the door. “I’m not getting up again,” she said. “Are you all right, honey? Can you go to the Kravitzes’ for dinner?”

“Don’t you want anything to eat?” Danny asked.

“I’m not hungry. Don’t worry about me.”

Danny had dinner with the Kravitzes. Later, returning home, he heard her crying, but he couldn’t hear her after he turned on “Star Trek.”

Every afternoon for a week he stood in the threshold of her doorway and asked if she wanted to get up, or if she wanted something to eat. He bought SpaghettiOs and Doritos with the money in the jar at the back of the pantry he was not supposed to know about. He never asked where his father was. Her room was musty from the closed windows, and even in the morning full of that five o’clock light which is darker than darkness, and in which the majority of car accidents happen. “Leave me alone,” she would call out from the dark now. “I’m tired. For Christ’s sake, just let me get some sleep. Go play or something.”

Then he would close the door and make himself some Campbell’s soup and watch forbidden TV all night—variety shows and detective shows and reruns after eleven. Elaine had always allotted him three hours of TV per day; when she came home from shopping she’d feel the TV to see if it was warm, if he’d been cheating. Now there were no rules.

The first day of school—a week after Elaine had gone to bed—Danny woke up to hear her screaming. He ran to her bedroom, and found her sitting up on the bed, streaked in light. She had ripped the curtains open, and the bared morning sun, through the shutters, bisected her face, the mat of her unwashed hair, the nightgown falling over her shoulders. She sat there and screamed, over and over again, and Danny rushed in, shouting, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

And then she grabbed the ends of her hair and began tearing at them, and grinding her teeth together, and wailing. Finally she collapsed, in tears, onto the bed. She turned to look at Danny and she screamed, “I can’t change! Don’t you see, no matter how much I want to, I just can’t change!”

Danny got Mrs. Kravitz. She came over and hoisted Elaine out of bed and began marching her around the hall. “One, two, three, let’s go, let’s go,” Mrs. Kravitz said. “Danny, go look in the bathroom for empty pill bottles, sweetheart, your mommy’s going to be just fine.”

Danny didn’t find any empty pill bottles, and when he came out of the bathroom some paramedics were coming through the kitchen with a stretcher. “I can’t stand up,” Elaine was telling Mrs. Kravitz. “I’ll be sick.”

“Just lie down now,” Mrs. Kravitz said. Danny remembered that today was the first day of school, and he wondered whether he should go to his homeroom class or not, but when he looked at the clock, he saw that it was already eight o’clock. School had started.

Danny spent the night at the Kravitzes’ house, and the next day he went to Nick and Carol’s. This was in a different school district, but nobody talked about school. That night, when his cousins wanted to watch a different television show from Danny, he threw his first fit.

A few days later, while he was eating his cereal at the kitchen table, Danny’s father arrived. Danny didn’t say hello. He continued to spoon the sweet milk into his mouth, though the cereal was gone. Belle, who was making pancakes, turned the burner off and quietly slunk out of the room. Allen sat down across from Danny, holding a cup of coffee. He had a new short haircut, and was growing a stubbly beard. They were alone in the room.

“I know you’re angry,” Allen said. “I know you wonder where I’ve been and why your mother got sick. I don’t know where to begin, and I don’t expect instant forgiveness, but I do want you to hear me out. Will you do that for me? I know you’ll have a lot of questions, and I’m prepared to answer them. Just give me a chance.”

Danny looked at his father and didn’t say anything.

On weekends Danny went to visit his father in the city. Allen was living with a man named Gene in an apartment in Greenwich Village, and though he had quit being a stockbroker, he continued to live off his own investments. Each Friday Danny rode the train up, past the fast-food franchises thrown up around the railroad stations, the muddy Amboys, the rows of tenements in Elizabeth. Allen took him to museums, to the theater, to restaurants. On Sunday he saw his son off at Penn Station. “I used to ride this train every day,” he told Danny, as they waited on the platform. “I used to play cards with Uncle Nick on this train. It seems like hundreds of years.”

“That was when you and Mom had dinner by candlelight,” Danny said, remembering how his father twirled him in the air, how his mother pronounced the word “cacciatore”—slowly, and with such relish.

“We were innocent,” Allen said. “Your mother and I believed in something that was wrong for us. Wrong for me, I should say.”

Danny looked away from his father, toward the train which was now moving into the station.

“You probably think your mother’s getting sick is the result of my being gay,” Allen said, putting his hand on his son’s shoulder. “But that’s only partially true. It goes much further, much deeper than that, Danny. You know your mother hasn’t been well for a long time.”

From where he’s lying, his face against the pillow, Danny hears the harsh sound of tires against gravel, and bolts up in bed. Through his window he sees a taxi in the driveway, and Allen, dressed in bluejeans and a lumberjack shirt, fighting off Belle’s furious barking dog. Elaine, seeing Allen, has crawled up on her haunches, and is hugging her knees. When Allen sees Elaine, he turns to rehail the taxi, but it is already out of the driveway.

“Now, Allen, don’t be upset,” Nick says, walking out onto the gravel, taking Allen’s shoulder in one hand, the dog in the other.

“You didn’t tell me she was going to be here,” Allen says.

“That’s because you wouldn’t have come out,” says Carol, joining them. “You two have to talk. We’re sorry to do this, but it’s the only way. Someone’s got to take some responsibility.”

As if he is a child about to ride a bicycle for the first time without training wheels, Allen is literally pushed by Carol toward his wife.

“What’s going on? What’s happening here?” shouts Belle. When she sees Allen, she stops dead in her tracks.

“You didn’t tell him?” Belle asks.

Allen begins to move uncertainly toward Elaine, who is still rearing, and Carol and Nick push Belle into the kitchen. Danny jumps out of his bed and kneels next to the door.

They whisper. Nick nods and walks outdoors. “Relax, Mom,” says Carol. “They’ve got to talk. They’ve got to make some decisions.”

“Elaine’s hospitalized.” Belle announces this known fact in a low voice, and looks toward the door to her room.

“She’s been hiding her whole life. She’s got to face up to facts. I can’t take this much longer.” Carol lights a cigarette, and rubs her eyes.

Belle looks away. “He’s just a child,” she says.

“Their child,” Carol says. “Not ours.”

“Not so loudly!” Belle says, and points to the bedroom door. “Have some sympathy. She’s been through a personal hell.”

“I know things were hard,” Carol says. “But to commit herself! I’m sorry, Mom, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s just self-dramatizing. No one commits themselves these days. You see a psychiatrist on Central Park West once a week. You continue your life, and you deal with your problem.”

“Her problem is worse than that,” Belle says. “She needs help. All my life I never said so, but I knew she was—not strong. And now I have to admit, knowing she’s taken care of, I feel relieved.”

“But it’s not like she’s crazy!” Carol says. “It’s not like she’s a raving lunatic, or schizophrenic, or anything. She’s basically just fine, isn’t she? She just needs some help, doesn’t she?”

Belle doesn’t answer. Carol sits down, lays her head on the kitchen table, and starts to cry.

“Oh, my poor girl,” Belle says, and strokes her daughter’s hair. “I know you’re worried about your sister. And she is fine. She’ll be fine.”

“Then why can’t she just check herself out of that hospital and take her kid and start seeing a goddamned shrink once a week?” Carol says, lifting up her head and turning to face her mother. “I’ll pay for it, if that’s what she needs.”

“Keep your voice down!” Belle whispers loudly. “Let’s talk outside.”

She pulls Carol out of her chair, and out the screen door. As soon as they’ve left the kitchen, Danny makes a run for the stairs. He sneaks into his cousins’ room, which is full of baseball cards and Star Wars toys, closes the door, and perches on the window seat, which overlooks the swimming pool. Below him, he can see his parents arguing in one corner, while in another, Belle and Carol continue their discussion. Belle is trying to explain that Elaine cannot take care of a household, and this is her problem, and Carol is shaking her head. As for Nick, he has moved out onto the lawn, where he is playing baseball with Greg and Jeff.

Danny can just barely make out his parents’ voices. “They arranged this,” he hears Elaine saying. “They think Danny’s a pain in the ass.”

“You know I’d take him if I could,” Allen answers.

“I thought you were leading such a model life!”

“There’s nothing about my life which would create an unhealthy atmosphere for Danny. I’m just not ready for him yet.”

“Good,” Elaine says. “He can come live with me.”

Danny closes the window. He knows to cover up his tracks. Then he runs back downstairs, through the kitchen, and out the screen door. He runs alongside the pool, past his parents, and toward the woods. Allen catches his eye, and waves. Danny waves back, keeps running.

When Danny first arrived at Nick and Carol’s, everything was alien: the extra bed in Greg and Jeff’s room which pulled out from under, the coloration of the television set, the spaghetti sauce. They were so indulgent toward him, in his unhappiness, that he wondered if perhaps he had leukemia, and they weren’t telling him. And then he realized that he did not have leukemia. He was merely the passive victim of a broken home. For months he had held back his own fear and anger for the sake of his mother. Now she had betrayed him. She
was
unfit. He
had
been taken away, as had she. There was no reason to be good anymore.

What Danny didn’t count on was Carol and Nick’s expectation that somehow he would change, shape himself to their lives. No child with leukemia would be asked to change. Danny decided to become a child with leukemia—a sick child, a thwarted child, a child to be indulged. Nick and Carol asked him if he wouldn’t maybe consider trading places with his grandmother and moving into his cousins’ room, which would be fun for all three, like camp. Danny threw his biggest fit ever. They never asked him again. They gave him wearied looks, when he refused to eat, when he demanded to watch what he wanted to watch, when he wouldn’t talk to company. They lost patience, and he in turn lost patience: Didn’t they understand? He was a victim. And certainly he had only to mention his mother’s name, and his own stomach would sink, and Carol’s eyes would soften, and suddenly she would become like his grandmother—maternal and embracing. He made himself need her to be maternal and embracing.

The night his mother went to bed forever, Danny learned two things: to be silent was to be crazy, and to be loud was also to be crazy. It seemed to him that he did not have a choice. He knew no way of living that did not include morose silences and fits of fury. When Carol asked him why he wouldn’t just enjoy the life he had, he felt a fierce resistance rise in his chest. He was not going to give himself up.

Now, running from his crazy parents, Danny arrives at a place in the woods—a patch of dry leaves sheltered by an old sycamore—which he has designated his own. Only a few feet away, the neighborhood children are playing Capture the Flag in the cul-de-sac, and he can hear their screams and warnings through the trees. He turns around once, circling his territory, and then he begins. Today he will invent an episode of “The Perfect Brothers Show,” the variety show on his personal network. He has several other series in the works, including “Grippo,” a detective drama, and “Pierre!” set in the capital city of South Dakota.