Fiction from The Literary Review

To Dance Again

KATE BLACKWELL

It was spring again and nothing had changed, except that Carolyn had put on more weight. The extra flesh padded her thighs with a soft silkiness and her upper arms felt pillowy where they touched her breasts, as though she wore a life jacket that was permanently attached. Sometimes when she walked she had the feeling of floating, though she wasn't really that huge-a size sixteen the last time she stopped at Razook's and the saleswoman showed her a purple muumuu and praised her "mature figure." But her face was still hers. There, in the blue eyes and ever-so-slightly tipped nose and petal-like lips, she could discover traces of the girl who had been her college's May Queen twenty years ago and danced barefoot on the grass with her court, slender pretty girls all laughing and glancing brightly at the crowd of onlookers, fathers and mothers and boyfriends riotously applauding.
     The extra weight made dancing less desirable now, even if there had been the opportunity. In all ways, she seemed to move more slowly through her days, which was why, this morning, the yardman caught her still sitting at the breakfast table in her yellow robe. He was a county boy named Alan Turner who had worked for her the summer before. She had looked forward to his coming back in spring.
     "Didn' scare you, did I, Miz Martin?"
     He stretched one arm up and propped it against the door jamb. He was lean-limbed and narrow-hipped. A Confederate flag bandanna held back his long mud-colored hair.
     "Well, yes, you did a little, Alan." She smiled and peeped at the bright fur in his arm pit.
     "You didn' hear the truck?"
     "I didn't hear a thing." A lie: His truck would wake the dead. "Don't tell me it's time to mow already."
     "Nope," he said. "Time to seed."
     They both turned and looked out the window at her large troublesome lawn, a broad pine-studded swathe of patchy grass straggling down to a small lake. The lake was communally owned by the residents of Wilde Woode Estates, an exclusive development of a dozen houses out in the middle of nowhere in piney sandy eastern North Carolina. All the houses had enormous yards, but it was hard to grow grass in any of them. Only bushes and weeds did well, though Alan had tried. Azaleas ran along two sides of the yard, their leaves still dark, no hint of the pink and scarlet glory to come. Little crowds of daffodils bloomed against the fence and, down near the lake, the forsythia had produced the first of its sunny yellow fronds.
     "Everything seems to be coming out early this year," she said. "Or is it just me?"
     "It's that warm winter we had. Dogwood and redbud gonna pop at the same time. You don't see that too often."
     He pronounced the word "of-ten," the way county people did. Alan lived in a community called Sandspur, a collection of small houses and trailer homes hugging the road halfway between Wilde Woode and the town of Carthage. She had driven past those houses a million times without dreaming they actually had a name until Alan mentioned it last summer: Sandspur. One of the houses, a blue frame, sported a sign, "Sharon's Beauty Saloon," that made her smile every time she passed it. It wasn't Alan's; he lived in a trailer and his wife's name was Melody.
     "There're some worn spots down by the fence," she said, thinking of Melody but not wanting to ask about her yet. Melody drove Alan crazy with her smoking and other self-destructive habits.
     "I seen 'em," he said, meaning the grassless spots. "I'm gonna start down there. I'll stake off the places where I have to seed so nobody'll walk on 'em."
     "Oh, don't bother staking. Nobody walks out here but me."
     She gave a little laugh. It wasn't a convivial neighborhood. Everybody residing in Wilde Woode, except her, left every morning to go to work in Carthage or else stayed home behind closed drapes all day. Even on weekends she rarely saw neighbors out in their yards. It was a lonely existence for someone used to living in town with friends running in and out and a hectic schedule of club meetings, PTA, and church events, most of which she had had to drop since they moved out here, though maybe had to was too strong; she just had. Her husband, John, the one who said he wanted a little peace and quiet when he came home, was hardly ever at home. And their children seemed to her to have evaporated overnight. Her son was at Carolina now and her daughter, a high school junior, was off in the Richmond girls' school Carolyn herself had attended.
     "Well, I guess I'd better get dressed," she said, glancing down at her large ruffled front. She wished Alan would go on out in the yard before she had to stand up, though perhaps it was vain of her to think he would notice how much heavier she had become. But Alan didn't show signs of going outside yet. He was digging something out of the pocket of his jeans.
     "You remember that project we talked about last summer, Miz Martin? Have you given any more thought to that?" He spread a wrinkled sheet of paper on the table in front of her. "I drew a picture of one you might like."
     She gave a little cry. "The gazebo! I'd forgotten all about that."
     Another lie: She had thought often about the gazebo. It was an idea she and Alan dreamed up one day last summer during one of their rambling talks when she had brought a pitcher of iced tea out to where he was working on the lawn-actually a whole tray with lemon, fresh mint, cookies. She couldn't remember which of them had first suggested a summerhouse and it didn't matter. The idea excited them both. She had mentioned it to her mother-in-law, who said if Carolyn wanted such a contraption, by golly, she ought to have one. Carolyn had not yet broached the idea to John.
     At first, she couldn't make heads or tails of Alan's sketch. Then an elongated figure took shape in the maze of pencil lines, as in one of those paper placemats in restaurants catering to children: Find the bunny rabbit and the bicycle. This figure resembled a bird cage.
     "What d'you think?" Alan demanded.
     "I love the way you've drawn the roof. Like a circus tent." But really like a cage. What better for her? "What's all this?" She pointed to an explosion of tiny lines at the top of the drawing.
     "Decoration. We can leave it off if you want."
     "Let me think about it. Could you build this by yourself, Alan?"
     "Sure. I could do it in the next coupla weeks."
     "It's very tempting. I'll have to talk to my husband though. May I keep this?" She picked up the paper. "You go on and start in the yard. I'm supposed to play golf with my mother-in-law, but I should be back before you leave."
     Oh, why didn't he go on out in the yard before she had to stand up?
     "You mind if I get some coffee, Miz Martin? I saw you had your pot plugged in."
     "Help yourself, Alan. You know where the cups are."
     Relieved, she waited until he went back into the kitchen, then heaved out of her chair and pushed through the swinging door into the dining room.
     The dining room was her least favorite room in the house, mainly because it was so rarely used, despite the mahogany table that seated twelve and the matching chairs covered in Italian silk. The only thing she really liked in the room was the silver service on the buffet. Her mother-in-law had given it to them on their anniversary a few years ago. "Here. You polish it," Peggy Martin had said, as though she were passing on a family curse. "Just throw it all in the bathtub. That's the easiest way to do silver." But Carolyn didn't mind taking care of the silver. Twice a year, she spread newspapers over the breakfast table and sat down with several jars of polish and a pile of John's old undershirts. By the time she finished, the silver service and the candelabra and all the useless wedding bonbons gleamed as bright as stars, taking her back to her old self, the sylph who had danced around the table laden with wedding gifts for her and John, so happy, expecting so much from life.
     Beyond the dining room was the front hall and on the other side of the hall, a vast pastel living room packed with sofas and chairs in various seating arrangements, one facing the fireplace, another in a window alcove looking out over the lake. Her mother-in-law claimed the living room beat anything she'd ever seen in House & Garden. In addition to everything else, there was a Japanese screen their decorator had found in Raleigh and a baby grand nobody played. Her daughter had taken lessons for a few years and Carolyn could plunk out hymns, but lately she hadn't even bothered to have it tuned. Because of the unused piano, she didn't like the living room much anymore either.
     As she passed through the hall and started up the stairs, she heard the back door slam, which meant that Alan must be taking his coffee outside. If she hadn't made this golf date with Peggy, she could have spent the whole morning working in the yard with Alan. The day was warm with just the hint of a breeze spiced with the winey odor of pine sap. No bugs yet. Alan would have told her about Melody and their arguments over her many trips to the Kwik-Pick ostensibly to buy cigarettes and about his dream of moving to California to tend the yards of movie stars. She loved hearing his stories and his dreams, all so different from her own, so much more imaginative. Last summer her girlfriends had asked her why they didn't see her more often in town and she had replied coyly that she was spending time with her yardman. The girls got a hoot out of that.
     But she could not disappoint her mother-in-law. Though it was still early, Peggy would already be dressed in her plaid golf skirt and Lacoste shirt that made her look like a little girl of six, with her tiny body and spidery arms and legs, except that her hair was iron-gray and her skin pure leather and she chain-smoked Camel Lites. By now, Peggy would have her clubs stowed in her shiny red golf bag, the same bag she had used in her golfing triumphs forty years ago-women's champion seven years straight at the Carthage Country Club, multiple championships in Raleigh, Pinehurst, and Wilmington. She would have lugged the bag out to the curb in front of her condominium in Carthage and would be sitting on the grass, cross-legged, smoking, having forgotten nothing, extra balls, kidskin gloves, flask of gin.
     Carolyn removed her robe and gown and headed into the bathroom to shower. As she passed a window, she saw Alan walking around a clear space near the azalea hedge where he had coaxed some Bermuda grass to grow last year. He was taking long, even strides and she realized he must be pacing off the area where the gazebo could go. Gazing out the window she suddenly saw it, a gracefully rounded white structure with a peaked green roof, latticed railings, steps on two sides, not a cage at all but a miniature theater. "You and Mr. M can sit out there in the ev'nin' and drink your cocktails," Alan had said. She hadn't had the heart to tell him that she and John never had cocktails together anymore-if John did get home for dinner he wanted to eat right away, then watch TV before bed. But Alan's imagination must have been contagious because suddenly she saw the two of them, herself and John, seated in white wicker chairs in the gazebo. She saw John reach over and take her hand and squeeze it.
     "Alan!" she yelled out the window.
     He looked around, still pacing.
     "Up here, Alan!"
     When he saw her at the window, he stopped and stared.
     "Alan, I want it! I want the gazebo! Go ahead and start building it."
     He didn't say anything, just stared.
     She yelled louder, "I want the gazebo, Alan!"
     He still didn't say anything, though he flipped his hand in an assenting gesture. She smiled and waved gaily and stepped back from the window, feeling wonderful. Then she looked down at her white naked self and nearly died.
     She and Peggy were alone on the course. The acres of velvety fairways and scissored greens lay mostly vacant during the week, at tremendous expense to the club. Weekends were crowded, though. At one time she had played every Saturday in a mixed foursome with John and another couple, a custom long since abandoned. Her game had never been more than mediocre; today it was atrocious, since all she could think about was that moment at the window-what Alan had seen, what he must think.
     "Tee it up again, sweetie," Peggy told her when she topped the ball on the first tee, but she doggedly exchanged her driver for a three iron, strode out the thirty feet, and hit a low looping shot that landed on the lip of a pond.
     "It's just concentration," Peggy said, after firing a long arching ball straight down the fairway. "It's all in the mind."
     As if Carolyn didn't know that. And what was in her mind was what Alan Turner had seen--all of her from the waist up. Though it was possible that the angle had prevented his getting a good view. She'd check that out when she got home. Meanwhile, she trudged down to the pond to chop her ball out of the weeds.
     Her mother-in-law continued in excellent form, parring the first hole and bogeying the second, until they got to the famous number three, "Old Hell Hole." "God a'mighty," Peggy cried as her ball, after a heartbeat of hope, hooked left into the woods and descended with a discreet disturbance of dry branches into the underbrush. Carolyn steered the cart to the edge of the fairway where her mother-in-law hopped out and plunged into the rough, warning, "Don't come in here, sweetie. This place is a mess of poison ivy. I'm immune." So she sat in the cart and listened to Peggy's furious attacks on scrub oak, stripling dogwood, and matted pinestraw, while overhead, doves murmured their soft consolatory cries. At last a ball dribbled onto the grass and Peggy herself emerged to say with a quiver of belief, "All's well that end's well."
     By the fifth hole (they customarily played only nine), Peggy was returning from the adventurous places her erratic ball led her-woods, sandpits, creeks-with her leather cheeks stained pink, full of mirth and gin. Where on her small person she hid the flask had always been a mystery.
     "Honey, this is not my day." Peggy sprang stiffly onto the cart's seat. "Actually you seem a little off your game too. My so-called son hasn't upset you, has he?"
     "John's been out of town," Carolyn said. "But my yardman came today. You know how that is."
     "Lord, yes. I've had a hundred of 'em. You think it's safe to leave him? Did you lock the house?"
     "Oh, I don't worry about Alan."
     They were gliding up the long hill of number seven and she felt her face getting hot. She could smell the dry sharp grass and feel the slick oily sweat under her arms.
     "He's the one who's going to build a gazebo for me," she said.
     "You're still going after one of those?" Peggy lit a fresh Camel and exhaled fiercely. "I couldn't take all the mess and racket but you're younger than I am."
     "It'll be fun. Alan and I are going to design it together. I haven't had a chance to mention it to John. He comes home tonight."
     "Well, you need a little pleasure in your life, sweetie, and if a gazebo'll give it to you, I'm all for it. You tell my stick-in-the-mud son I said so." Then she hopped out of the cart to slam her ball straight into a pine tree.
     When they finished the ninth hole, they parked the cart and went into the clubhouse where Carolyn decided to join Peggy in a martini. Frank D., Peggy's special waiter since her glory days, seated them in what was still known as the ladies' bar, a sunny room with white and gold rococo tables and beige banquettes. When he set down Peggy's glass, Beefeater's, extra dry, garlanded with frost, and murmured, "Here you are, Miz Martin," her mother-in-law's gray eyes glowed like Christmas in her wizened child's face, the way they must have glowed back in the forties when she was Miss Peggy Battle, dancing and golfing all over the eastern part of the state. "A real charmer," Carolyn's father used to say, having danced with Peggy Battle at the debutante parties of '49. Her mother always added elliptically, "What a shame."
     "Peggy, I'm only going to have one," she announced firmly as they raised their glasses. "Then I've got to eat my salad and run."
     "Sweetie, we're here to relax. We earned it out on that golf course. You know, I don't recognize a damn soul in there."
     Her mother-in-law was staring into the large airy Florida room that opened off the ladies' bar, where several dozen colorfully dressed women sat at tables of bridge, chattering like parakeets. The day had been when Peggy could have named every woman in the room, along with her family pedigree, none of which would have been as impressive as her own, the Battles having been the first family of Carthage since the Creation, owning thousands of acres of pine woods, the local bank, and tobacco markets across four states.
     "Who's that little girl with the fancy hairdo," Peggy asked. "Do I know her?"
     Carolyn could not place the girl with the fancy hairdo. Emily something? Husband with the new mill? John would know. She sipped her martini, awaiting the warm tingle she was counting on to calm her down and make her stop seeing herself emblazoned bare-breasted in the window that morning. On the other hand, for all she knew, Alan might be nearsighted.
     "Frank D., this martini's mighty near perfect," Peggy rasped in her smoker's alto. "Where are you, Frank D.?"
     "Right here, Miz Martin. Are you ready for another one?" Frank D. was a short dapper man, bald, with taffy-colored skin. He had taught social studies at the black high school until integration, when he lost his teaching job and started working at the club. That was thirty years ago.
     "Frank D.," Carolyn interrupted, "I'd like to order my chicken salad now. I'm sorry to rush, Peggy. I'm getting nervous about my yardman."
     "There's not much out there for him to ruin, if you don't mind my saying so," her mother-in-law said. "Yes, I'll have another, thank you, Frank D."
     The waiter hurried off to the bar. Frank D. took care of Miz Martin first; others waited their turn. This had been going on for years and everyone was used to it, except John. "Mother has no sense of how things look and never has," he often said. John did not appreciate his mother the way Carolyn did. How could he? For years, while Peggy flirted and caroused at parties, trying to keep her "belle" days alive-she had been famous at one time for dancing on tabletops-he had stood silently beside his father, both men holding themselves as stiff as though they were ironed, waiting for the inevitable moment when they would be called upon to step forward, help Peggy to her feet, nod politely to embarrassed onlookers, and support her to the car. Jack Martin had made it a point of honor never to criticize his wife no matter what she did. In his later years, he rarely spoke to her at all. All this had taken its toll on John. "Mother's like a child. She'll do anything to get attention," he had said once in an uncharacteristic outburst. "Your mother's just having fun," Carolyn had tried to soothe him.
     "Don't you see how unhappy your mother is?" she had wanted to say, remembering Papa Jack's rigidity, his terrible silences. But John wouldn't have viewed unhappiness as an excuse for bad manners.
     
     He would have been horrified if he knew that Frank D. regularly drove his mother home from the club. Carolyn had forgotten how it started. She said good-bye after lunch and Peggy remained ensconced in the ladies' bar, well cared for and happy, until Frank D. got off work at five. He would help her to his elderly El Dorado, a spotless robin's egg blue, and drive her the five miles into Carthage. At her condo, he would escort her to her door, carrying her golf bag over one shoulder, set the bag inside, perform an old-fashioned bow, and leave. Though Carolyn had never witnessed this scene, others had and had mentioned it condescendingly, though not, fortunately, to John. John would have viewed the arrangement as a scandal.
     John was short like both his parents, with his father's stocky squared-off build. Carolyn had begun dating him when she was in her junior year in college and John in his first year of law school. They married two years later, enabling him to avoid Vietnam, though that had not been their intent. He had been a polite, serious young man whose brown eyes followed her adoringly as she danced around their kitchen, serving up the harum-scarum meals that used to be her specialty, artichokes with canned crab, tuna in aspic with olives. But with age, John had acquired a brusque abstracted manner, which she attributed to the pressures he put on himself at work; he was a successful lawyer, traveling often to Washington and Atlanta. Often when he came home, he seemed not to know quite where he was. She'd tease him, make faces, waggle her fingers at him from behind her ears, and he would smile, but she could see the disappointment-puzzlement, really-in his eyes when he looked at her.
     "If I were you, I'd let him handle whatever it is," her mother-in-law was saying, apparently still talking about the yardman. "They always know better than you. I had one, his name was Gus, I'd ask him to spray the roses for blackspot and he'd say, 'Not time yet, Miss Peg.' I'd point to the yellow places on the leaves and Gus'd say, 'Not time yet, Miss Peg.' Drove me crazy. Then when I thought I'd lost all my Queen Elizabeths and the floribunda for sure, he'd decide it was time to spray, and he'd spray and spray. The neighbors thought we were fumigating the universe. But the blackspot would disappear and everything would be fine and dandy. Do you remember Gus, sweetie, or was he before your time?"
     Carolyn smiled. It seemed to her there was no time before she had known Peggy. She could even, almost, imagine telling her mother-in-law what she'd done that morning. You exposed yourself to the yardman, sweetie? Well, he can consider himself a lucky son of a gun. Poor "lucky" Alan was probably at this moment still in a state of shock. She giggled.
     "You have to laugh," Peggy agreed, "or go bats."
     
     The noise from the Florida room grew louder as the bridge players rose like a flock of startled birds so their tables could be re-set for lunch. Several of their number drifted into the bar and called out greetings to the two of them in their corner. A blond in red linen tripped over to give Peggy a peck on the cheek.
      "Miz Martin, how in the world are you? Hey there, Carolyn."
     "Well, look who's here," Peggy cried, clearly without any idea who the girl was.
     "I'm Ashley Wofford, Miz Martin," the blond said, unfooled. "Kay Davis's daughter. I just had my hair high-lighted."
     "Tell your mother to call me up, honey. We need a good gossip before all our crowd dies off and there's nobody to talk about."
     As other girls flurried around Peggy, the blond turned and demanded severely, "Carolyn Martin, where have you been? I haven't seen you in ages."
     Carolyn cocked her head and smiled coyly. Privately she called Ashley Wofford "the gusher." Her husband was in John's firm.
     "Seriously, Carolyn." Ashley bent over her in a cloud of Fabergé. "Some of us were talking about you the other day. We're worried about you stuck out in that big house all by yourself."
     "John's there," she said opening her eyes wide.
     "John Martin works like a dog. Everybody knows that. He's never home, now is he? Aren't you scared out there by yourself? I would be."
     Even as she rattled on, Ashley's cool eyes drifted to Frank D. leaning on the bar, reading a newspaper.
      "If you really want to know, Ashley," she said quietly, "I spend my time running naked around my house."
     Ashley's eyelids fluttered. Her lacquered smile stiffened.
     "It makes you feel marvelous. Very free. I highly recommend it. I probably wouldn't do it if I still lived in town. Too many prying eyes, you know."
     Ashley patted her arm. "You're a trip, Carolyn. But you better watch what you tell people. Somebody's going to take you seriously one of these days."
     "Now remind me who your mother is, honey," Peggy was saying loudly to one of the others.
     "Come on, girls." Ashley's face was a smooth mask. "We better go eat our shrimp before they shrivel up on us. Bye, Miz Martin. I'm gonna tell mama to call you. Bye, Carolyn."
     "Bye, Ashley," she murmured as they fluttered off. Her face tingled as though she had a rash. What had possessed her, saying such a thing?
     "Where's Frank D.?" Peggy demanded. "We need another one after that onslaught."
     
     Warmed by a second martini and fattened by chicken lumps and mayonnaise, she announced she had to go.
     "You run along, sweetie," Peggy rasped through smoke. "I'll be fine. Frank D. and I have a lot to talk about. We're settling our differences on affirmative action."
     She leaned closer, "I know that son of mine's told you not to let Frank D. drive me home. But honey, I'm a lot safer with him than with the other old coots who might be dancing attendance. Frank D.'s a perfect gentleman, but don't tell Johnny. I want him to worry."
     Somewhere in the recesses of the club, rock music played, the kind her son and daughter listened to. Through the music, chirrupy laughter wafted in from the Florida room where the bridge club was eating shrimp and gossiping. Carolyn Martin's such a trip, Ashley Wofford would be saying, which was code for Carolyn Martin's becoming an eccentric alcoholic like her mother-in-law.
     "Except for you, honey," Peggy was saying, "Frank D.'s the only person I enjoy talking to anymore. His wife died ten years ago, the same year as Jack. He and I have a lot in common. You'd be surprised."
     No I wouldn't, she wanted to say. Hadn't Alan broadened her view of the world too? Alan, who was probably telling Melody at this very moment what he'd seen that morning. Would Melody be angry? shocked? laughing her head off?
     "Can I get you anything, Miss Carolyn?"
     The waiter's creamy brown face appeared above her, his large intelligent eyes inquiring. Instead of getting up to leave as she had planned, she ordered dessert.
     Dreamily she consumed forkfuls of the club's famous chocolate pecan pie while Peggy and Frank D. carried on an animated conversation about issues in the news she had long since lost track of. As she tasted the heavy sweetness on her tongue, she was aware again of her body surrounding her like a soft cocoon. She's gotten big as a house. Do you think it's glandular? Her glance drifted toward the Florida room, from which a fierce Amazonian chattering now emanated. She imagined the girls staring out at their threesome in the bar, the tiny old woman in her aura of cigarette smoke, the large fair younger one stuffing herself, and the black waiter who had drawn up a chair and was volubly conversing, a breach of club etiquette to be tolerated only because of Peggy Battle Martin's special status in the community, itself almost a thing of the past as new people moved in who did not know about family lineage, or care.
     "I'm all for black people going to college," Peggy was declaring. "I just think they ought to pass the same exams as everybody else to get in."
     "Peggy," Frank D. replied in his warm reasonable voice, "you know as well as I do that blacks are just as smart as whites but a lot of them still can't pass those tests. Now what are we going to do about that?"
     He calls her Peggy, Carolyn thought.
     "The youngsters have got to study harder," Peggy continued. "You ought to go back and teach them yourself, Frank. You know more history than anybody I ever heard of."
     "Why I'm as old as you. We are history, Peggy. Who's going to listen to us?"
     Peggy chuckled and picked up the coffee pot. Frank D. held out his cup and she poured. Carolyn blinked. A whole new scenario began to unroll. How strange life was if you opened your eyes.
     "Honey, are you still here?" Peggy cried as Carolyn rose from her chair.
     "I'm leaving now, Peggy. No, don't get up, Frank D."
     She reached down and enfolded her mother-in-law in her arms, careful not to crush the fragile bones. What on earth would she do without Peggy?
     "That son of mine leaves you alone too much," Peggy murmured into her shoulder. "I could kill him."
     "John does his best, Peggy," Carolyn said, tenderly. "He does what he can."
     
     The pink gateposts poked up among scrub oak and bracken on the Carthage road, two phallic spires with fake Roman swags and brass letters spelling out "Wilde Woode Estates" and, underneath, "Private." They never failed to make her wince. What did strangers think as they drove past? Did they try to imagine the sort of person who lived inside those gates? If it were she, she might turn in to see for herself, but as far as she knew no passerby ever had. All a motorist would glimpse, of course, would be pretentious houses, like the massive Tudor just inside the gate, and beyond that, a creamy "Tara" with miniature pillars, and next, a bright yellow Italian villa-no people anywhere, unless it were a large middle-aged white woman walking alone on the shoulder of the road, as she sometimes did in the late afternoons.
     As the lake glittered ahead, she turned in at their house, a two-story redbrick American colonial. The driveway was empty, the blue truck gone. She pulled her car into the garage and turned off the motor. Alan had left, probably for good, out of fear of what she might do next. Their gazebo would die a natural death. She was relieved, or ought to be, she told herself as she walked slowly into the house.
     But no. On her kitchen table under the sugar bowl, she found a note: "Finished seeding. DON'T WALK NEAR FINCE. Back tomorrer with lumber," signed with a flourish, "ALAN." Her heart pumped with timid gladness. He had not abandoned her after all. No word about the incident. Well, of course not. What would he say? The sun was in my eyes so I didn't see nothing when you showed your nekkid breasts out the window. Or, Don't worry, Miz Martin, you look real good for your age.
     He had also left a new drawing. The roof decoration had been eliminated and the gazebo looked square and clunky, more like a hotdog stand than a summerhouse, not at all her airy vision of the morning. She frowned, imagining John's reaction. A toolshed perchance? She moved to the stove to put water on for tea, feeling the soft heaviness of her body and imagining the disappointment in John's eyes as he looked at her. Life had not been what he had expected either.
     It's a gazebo, John. I plan to paint it white and grow wisteria over it and a zillion petunias around it.
     Ah. Are you thinking of becoming a landscape designer? There's good money in that, I hear.
     The yardman designed it. It's for us.
     I see. You're spending money then, not making it.
     Oh, John! I'm trying to make things different. Don't you see? John, look at me!
     She made tea in her old Chi Omega mug and carried it out onto the darkening lawn. The western sky showed streaks of vivid pink and orange. You didn't see sunsets in town, John had told her when he was pointing out the advantages of the new house, though she couldn't remember his viewing a single one since they'd moved out here. Speaking of viewing, she thought, and looked up at her window. The window was dark; it was impossible to tell how much Alan could have seen. An eyeful, honey, Peggy's voice whispered. He got an eyeful.
     She sat down on the scrubby grass, set the mug beside her, and stretched out her large white legs. Bending over, she eased off her golf shoes and ankle socks. The cool grass prickled her toes. She smiled. An eyeful. Well, why not? In one swift movement, she pulled her shirt off over her head. Arching her back she reached around, unhooked her bra, and tossed it aside, gasping at the shock of cool air on her breasts. She struggled to her feet, unbuttoned her skirt and let it slide to the ground. Then she removed her underpants. She gave a little twirl, feeling parts of her jiggle unfamiliarly, but the feeling didn't bother her-she liked it. Holding out her arms for balance, she began to dance. Amazingly, the steps of the English country dance from her long-ago girlhood came back to her exactly as she had performed it as Queen of the May, step-step-dip twirl, step-step-dip-.
     Out on the road, a white Cadillac turned in at the pink gates and glided noiselessly past the enormous houses that were nearly invisible in the gathering dusk, while on the lawn she dipped and twirled, her pale body moving in gentle madrigals across the patchy grass. The car slowed, pulled into the driveway, and stopped, but she heard nothing, lost in the delight of the recovered dance, step-step-dip, turn-step-dip-. She lifted her arms and her breasts swayed heavy and free. She stretched out one leg and looked down at the wide, white flowing flesh. She stood on her toes and twirled, feeling her whiteness flame like a candle in the fading light.
     Suddenly, from the shadows near the house, a solitary pair of hands began to clap. She faltered for a moment but did not stop. Nor did the clapping. It went steadily on, accompanying her as she dipped and turned on the cool grass. She redoubled her efforts, twirling and dipping, dipping and twirling. Her heart swelled and in her imagination, ghostly onlookers gathered-Alan and Melody, Peggy and Frank D., her children, even Ashley Wofford peeking around a corner of the house. Dip-dip-dip twirl! Turn-turn dip! She had no idea what lay ahead after the dance was over--what would John say? what would she?--but she let that thought go as she went on turning and weaving across the lawn, dancing now only for him whose clapping hands echoed in her bare and hopeful breast.