Psyche in a Dress (6 page)

P
syche finished her film about a young woman’s quest. It starred her daughter, Joy, and her daughter’s boyfriend, the performance artist. Everyone at the indie festivals loved it. They called it poetry. Psyche thought, if I spend the rest of my life alone, it will be all right. I have my art and I have my daughter back. What more could a woman want? Aging is easier without having to worry about a man.

One day Joy and her boyfriend took Psyche with them to a dance. The room was filled with people flinging their bodies around to live drums in front of an altar covered with stargazer lilies and beeswax candles. Psyche stood alone, motionless
in a pale blue sheer chiffon tunic dress covered with sequins that reflected the light. She watched everyone—so young, so abandoned. In the eyes of all the men in the room she was no more visible than Echo to Narcissus. The music had no more power to stop her from getting older than Orpheus had the ability to bring Eurydice back from the dead. She watched her child rolling on the floor, doing backbends and handstands, being lifted into the air.

“Come on, Mom,” Joy said, taking her hand.

They danced together for a while and then Joy danced away but Psyche kept moving. It was easier than she had expected. Soon she forgot herself entirely. She forgot that she was probably the oldest woman in the room. She forgot that she hadn’t danced in years. (Even then it had been mostly alone in her room with her mother’s shadow.) After she had been in motion for a long time Psyche began to feel as if she were sixteen. She wanted to say to all the young women in the room, “When your mothers tell you to love and appreciate your body it isn’t just to get you to shut up. They know that when you are old you are going to feel exactly the same way inside that you do now. We try on different dresses, different selves, but our souls are always the same—ongoing, full of light.”

As she was thinking this, Psyche closed her eyes. A hand was at her waist. She didn’t move but kept swaying to the music, feeling the pressure of the fingertips beneath her rib cage. She remembered how when she was Persephone, Hades had popped a rib out as if trying to get better access to her heart. What would he have done if he had actually held it in his hands? Her breath quickened and her legs lightened. All the blood moved to her chest. But her Hades had not come to claim her.

“Eros,” she said.

When she opened her eyes, he was standing there. Had she conjured him with her dancing? He looked older now; his hair was close-shaven, nearly all gray. There was nothing about him that screamed “ancient power of the cosmos, love god, son of Aphrodite, son of Chaos.” He was a man, getting older, her daughter’s father. He was also her first lover, her secret, her storyteller. And he was a god, yes. But she was a goddess and a storyteller too. A soul in a new dress now.