Dancing in the Dark Read Free

at what they were capable of? I look at mine that way sometimes. They seem so innocent and placid now; difficult to believe what they have done. Yes, I can see Harry looking at his and feeling that way sometimes too.

3
    D oes this mean I thought it out and knew what I was doing? I’d like to think so, but it’s past lies now. It turns out I spent twenty years unwittingly. Who taught me what to do, so that I thought it was my own idea?
    And then I did a lifetime’s thinking in a mere twelve hours, almost precisely twelve hours. The time between the phone call from that woman—what was her name, Dottie something?—and Harry coming home. An abrupt change of gears, a wrenching out of order in my life.
    And Harry coming home. And a single clarifying moment.
    I was upstairs vacuuming; twice a week I did each room. I have read of ground-in dirt, deep in carpet fibres, causing rot. Heard the phone, shut off the vacuum to be sure, dropped it, ran down the stairs, fit, quite fit for running, work and exercise have kept the body firm, to catch the fourth, maybe the fifth ring.
    “Edna?” Not an unfamiliar voice, but also not one that could be placed exactly. “It’s Dottie. Dottie Franklin.” Yes, that’s her name. What kind of person can she be?
    “Are you busy? Have I called at a bad time?” She was justthe wife, known casually, socially, of a man with whom Harry worked, whom Harry had beaten for the most recent promotion. She never called. Drinking? Perhaps; some lonely women did. Not I. I had no reason.
    “Edna, this is difficult.” Not drunk; tension, not liquor, in the voice.
    “It’s something Jack saw this morning on his way to work. Just by accident because our car wouldn’t go and he had to get a ride with some man at the garage and the guy took a different route.”
    So?
    I saw my knuckles, holding the receiver, turn white. I felt my body tighten and my mind turn cold. Ice in my warm and perfect home.
    “It was only eight o’clock in the morning. There couldn’t be any other explanation. I’m sorry, Edna, but I thought you ought to know. It’s only fair.”
    Fair? What the hell is fair? Is knowledge more fair than faith? More valuable? Oh, God would have done better to make me Eve than the Eve He made. I would not have chosen knowledge over peace.
    I don’t think I would have.
    Once knowing, there is no going back.
    “What can I say, Edna? Forgive me, I had to let you know.”
    The wallpaper in the living room was fairly new. Gold-flecked white. Elegant, I thought, for just one wall. I’d done it in a day, and when Harry came home he put an arm around me and said, “Lovely. Just right. I was afraid it would be too pale but you knew best, as usual.” He did not say that resentfully, but with pride in my judgment and taste. In my home I did not make mistakes, and he would have been surprised, no doubt, if the wallpaper had not been right.
    So. The wallpaper before me, the carpet beneath my feet clean, the pillows around me on the couch all pure. The gold flecks danced in the wallpaper.
    My house was always quiet. Any sounds in the day were only mine, and I liked that. But this was a different stillness, a different sort of waiting.
    It seemed to me that I had never moved, could never have; that I had only ever waited. And that there was just this motionless instant, only this; the ends of my life snapped off, leaving this moment of waiting in the centre.
    Broken again at one point by the telephone. Answered without taking my eyes from the gold-flecked whiteness of the wall, the point that rooted, the point without which I might topple, slide, lose balance irrevocably. Groped for the receiver.
    “Edna?” Harry, of course. His dear, familiar voice, warm along the line. But so distant. Like going deaf, a faint tinkling of burning words. “Listen, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to work late again. This job is driving me crazy, there’s a lot more to it than I thought. Do you mind? I should make