Dancing in the Dark (14 page)

“Mother says, you surely didn’t have to make him leave. You can live with a lot of things. Well, maybe she can, but
I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life with any guy who can do a thing like that. Once something like that starts it doesn’t stop, and besides, my best friend! I can’t get over that. I don’t ever want to lay eyes on him again, and as for living with him!

“Pretty soon, this is the rest of my plan, I won’t have to lay eyes on him ever again, because I’m leaving town. We have to do a bunch of legal stuff, of course, and I’m making him pay through the nose for this, believe me, but as soon as all the papers are signed, I’m taking off. It’s funny, but now I’m almost used to what’s happened and having everything all of a sudden go all ass over teakettle, I’m kind of excited. Like for the first while I just hurt, that’s all I could think about, and then I was furious, but then I started to think, well, to hell with it then, and after a while I got to wondering about what I’d do next. There’s only a certain amount of time you can spend not doing anything, after all.

“So I thought and thought, and it dawned on me I’m free. I’m not so old, and I can start again. I’ll have enough money from Frank to give me a breathing space and a chance to get on my feet and I don’t feel bad about that because by God he owes me.

“Anyway, what I’m pretty sure I’m going to do is move out to Vancouver. The first thing about being free is not being here, that’s for starters, so I looked at a map and I thought, Vancouver. At least it’s supposed to be warm. No more of these lousy winters. And it seems it might be far enough away that everything really might be different. Can you imagine, Edna, everything all of a sudden being different? It’s like getting a chance to be a new person.

“It’s funny, though, the dumb things you miss. I guess they’ll go away. But for instance not having to have Frank’s
supper on the table at six, that makes the whole hour between five and six a little weird, like there’s just no
reason
to do certain things any more. It’s really strange sleeping alone, that’s hard to get used to, because you’re so used to having somebody else there, it’s like the bed’s out of balance. And I don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn, so I’ve been sleeping in sometimes till nine and then I wake up and lie there wondering what the hell I have to do that means I should haul myself out of bed. There are all these things I never thought about before. Like why
did
I used to get up so early? Just because he had to get up. It makes you wonder about all the other things you did, just because of somebody else.

“Now I’m free, though, and whatever I do from now on is going to be for me. The hell with sacrifice.

“I get so damn mad when I think about it. It sets me off, just thinking about getting up to put a good breakfast into him so he’ll have lots of energy to get through the day, and then he goes off to screw Carol.

“The other thing is, you lie around wondering what you did wrong and what you should have done so he wouldn’t have to go running off to somebody else. But then I think, so what? Maybe he’s just a bastard. Why should I kill myself trying to hold onto somebody like that? I mean, he ought to owe me something too, he should have put some effort into this.

“And then Mother tells me things are never quite what you might want in a marriage, and you have to just get used to that and live with it. At least she can’t say think of the children because thank God we don’t have any and maybe if we did I’d agree with her and decide to stick it out for them. But I don’t see any need to suffer just to keep Frank and his pay cheque rolling in. I don’t want Frank rolling in at all, and I can
always learn to take care of my own money, I expect. With some off the top from him to get me started.

“Poor Mother. It makes me wonder what she put up with. Heaven knows Dad wouldn’t have been screwing around, but she’s right, there’s always something. She sighs a lot. She always sighed a lot, but now she sighs all the time. I bet she gets up in the morning and looks out the window and sighs.

“Lucky you, you got away. I probably shouldn’t say this, it’ll likely sound awful, but I was always jealous of you. It wasn’t your fault, but I always remember Mother saying stuff like, Why can’t you be like Edna and just be good? and Edna works hard in school, you could get good marks too if you worked hard. She was right, too, I could have gotten away to university maybe, and everything would have been different if I’d had better marks, but you don’t think about those things when you’re just a kid having fun. And now you’re all settled down in a nice house with a nice smart husband and you can do whatever the hell you want. So sometimes, I have to tell you, I think, How come Edna got everything right and it turns into such a mess for me? It’s my own fault, of course, but now I’m going to go out and get what I want and I’m not going to make a mess of things again.

“Sometimes I wish we could sit down and talk. We seem miles apart. I guess we are. Now I don’t have a best friend any more, it’s kind of lonely. I guess you don’t realize how few people you can really talk to until something like this happens. What it comes down to is, old happy-go-lucky Stella doesn’t have a soul she can tell her troubles to. Sounds like a song, doesn’t it?

“I’m not going to be able to get all this into the envelope if I don’t stop. I’ll write again and let you know what’s happening and when I’m leaving, and maybe we can work in a
visit before I go. I don’t know what time there’s likely to be and just how much money I’m going to be able to get out of Frank. Anyway, I feel better now for sitting down and writing it to you. It makes it realer to me.

“See you, big sister. Love, Stella.”

Well. I read it again slowly, to take it all in. Sorting the facts and the feelings from the odd sense of a plea running underneath it all.

In every possible way, this was an astonishing letter. Because of the news itself, for one thing. Who would have dreamed all this from a dull lumbering man like Frank? In that dull lumbering town.

And with a best friend? I have had no opportunity to test any theory I might have about best friends, but I imagined closeness and trust. I thought Harry must be my best friend, a compact relationship that included everything.

I read the letter again. The fact that it was from Stella, and to me, was also astonishing.

All those Christmases and recipes and bits of gossip and all those evenings watching my golden sister dance out the door—and instead of that, this was Stella? Stella was also proud and lonely and hurt and excited and—most amazing to me—envious? Envious of me?

There had never been anything to indicate that she was even particularly interested, much less envious.

And why should she be? My dreams were of Stellahood. Given them I would be a blonde with flying feet and laughing eyes and easy conversation. I might still have Harry, but I would be someone else.

But I was not that sort of person. And she was right, things did work out for me, I had what I had wanted. The rest was only a dream.

She felt a little guilty about what happened? A little that it might be her fault, Frank going off like that? Well, it sounded reasonable. She must have missed something, true enough, he would surely not do it for no reason at all. There must have been something lacking in her. I admit to a little nudge of pleasure, seeing she could not be perfect. Not nice, but there it is.

But then she could skip past that, could divert herself from searching for the flaw. She could dismiss whatever her fault might have been and not try to make it up or correct it. She could say, “But now I’m free.”

Free? But how was she bound? How terrible can it be, how great an infringement, to get up early to make a breakfast, or to concentrate on dinner? Like Harry, she called me free. I suppose they were right, in a way. But I didn’t know what it meant. Stella did, she learned. She was excited by it. If I thought of freedom, I saw chaos; a great black catastrophic pit in which anything could happen.

And Stella was excited by it?

She could look at a map and point at a city and suddenly, bang, she would go there and live. A new start, a different life. She thought that would amaze me, that possibility? It horrified me. What if such a thing could happen? “What if Harry died?” I thought, for it was all I could imagine.

Oh, the things I would have asked her, right then. And more things I would ask her now.

I read the letter again and again, trying to understand. When Harry came home I showed it to him. Relieved, because knowing so much, he would know this as well, would be able to analyse it for me at a glance.

“Too bad,” he said. “Dirty trick. Sounds as if Stella’s right though, getting out while she still can. She’s young enough to
start again. Surprising though. I didn’t know the bastard had it in him.”

Was there a touch of admiration there? I didn’t hear it.

“Doesn’t it seem funny to you that she can just leave? And she feels free? Doesn’t that sound wrong somehow?”

“Well, it isn’t all she feels, after all. And no, I can’t see it’s wrong to feel free. No, not really.” I hear those words now, his tone—I listen.

“But,” and this was what I really wanted him to explain, “to think of her envying me!”

“Well,” and he smiled, “you’re a pretty enviable person. You’ve got me, and that alone…” We laughed, and something almost touched fell back out of reach again.

“Don’t you think, though, he wouldn’t have done it if she weren’t doing something wrong? He must have been missing something, surely.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Edna. Some guys are just pricks that way, and I sure don’t know him well enough to say. Anyway, it sounds as if she’ll be better off without him. Stella’ll do all right, I expect.”

I thought he was probably right. And it made her seem far away and different again.

“If you’re concerned about her, why don’t you write and ask her to stay with us for a while, until she gets organized?”

A pretty picture, two sisters talking. But faced with it, something else. Stella in my home? To have my days disrupted? She would want to talk and talk. I would have to listen. I wanted to talk with her, but not for days. Maybe just for an hour or so.

That wasn’t really why, though. The truth was, I didn’t want to bring the glowing Stella, and she would still glow—whatever her tragedy she would still be my little dancing
sister—into my cool and perfect sanctuary. Harry would see us and wonder. She might make a difference, if he saw us, just the two of us, together, and noticed what I wasn’t.

I wanted him to talk about her letter and what we might know of her marriage. I thought it might be an interesting comparison. I thought he might tell me things he didn’t otherwise, about how he saw us. I thought if we talked about our marriage, I would know how good it was.

But he wasn’t interested. No reason, I guess, why he should have been. He wasn’t impatient with my questions, but he wasn’t thinking, didn’t give thoughtful answers. How was it that he could talk so much about what he cared about, and pay so little attention to something I cared about? Talk to me, Edna, he’d say, but he didn’t seem to want me to.

He took up all my listening. I couldn’t have had Stella in the house as well, I could not have listened as much as that.

“Dear Stella,” I wrote back. “I’m so sorry. If there’s anything I can do, please let me know.”

Maybe that’s why she does not come to visit.

Later, she wrote to say she wouldn’t have time to visit before leaving for Vancouver. “It’s all a rush now because we sold the house for the settlement so we could split the money, and now I have my half and no place to live except with Mother and Dad, which is a fate worse than death, so I’m taking off right away.”

She found an apartment, sent me her new address. So it was true, this business of an entirely different life was possible.

“Dear Edna, Things are going so well here I can’t believe it. It’s sort of fun for a change living in a high-rise, where everybody’s a stranger and nobody much cares who you are or what you do. Sure different from home! I’ve walked
around and gone to movies and a few bars. I figure I’ve had my little holiday and now I’m going to salt away the rest of Frank’s money (my money, I earned it) and go out looking for a job.

“It drives me crazy to think of all the years I spent missing all this. You can do
anything
here.”

“Dear Stella,” I wrote. “I’m glad you’re settled, and hope you’ve found a job by now.” I would have liked to ask, “What is this pleasure in being able to do anything? How do you choose? Isn’t it confusing?” But of course did not.

“Dear Edna, I’ve landed a pretty good job, working for a bunch of lawyers. Keeping Frank’s books and all those commercial courses I took in high school turned out to be a help, so I don’t have to start off away down in the typing pool or something. But boy! Living in a big city sure is different. It’s a lot harder to get to know people. I guess I’m just too old for some things, too. I mean, I’ve gone out with a few guys, you can’t help meeting men in a lawyer’s office, but sometimes it seems so stupid, like being seventeen again, all the hassles. This being single isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, let me tell you. But on the other hand, it’s a change.”

So freedom, even for Stella, was not wholly wonderful?

I cleaned a little harder, kissed Harry a little more firmly when he came home from work.

He may not have done or said what I had hoped he would; but there was no question about the need for him. He was all that stood between me and the perilous parts of Stellahood.

A few months later, “Dear Edna, Big news! I’ve met a perfectly gorgeous man! At least I think he is. His name’s Kurt Walther (his folks are German), and he’s divorced too, like me, except he’s got two kids, but his ex has them. He gets them on weekends, so I do too now; we take them places like
the zoo and they seem to be getting used to me. He’s an accountant and I met him where I work. (Told you you meet plenty of men in a lawyer’s office.) We’ve been going out pretty regularly for a couple of months now, and I think it’s looking good. He’s tall and blond and I think he’s cute, even if he is going a little bald. He’s fun and kind and also smart—all in all, quite a change from Frank!”