Disintegration in Five Scenes
Elke Blackstone
I
The tiny dressing room is a pandemonium of nakedness, sweat, and panic. On the walls are banks of mirrors surrounded by hot bulbs of light. Don’t touch them, my mother says, you could burn your fingers. She is wearing too much blush, and her thin, perfect lips are painted large and red. I am underfoot, and I know it. But the room is too small, and I don’t know where to put my eight-year-old body so that I won’t be in the way. The dancers move around me, occasionally placing a damp hand on my head to get past. Stay here in this chair, my mother tells me. Be good. She leaves a rose of lipstick on my temple.
I know all the dancers’ names. Eleina has a rich husband, and Charlotte yawns like crazy when she gets nervous before a performance. There are others, too, and, of course, my mother—my perfect, gorgeous mother—twenty-six years old and wearing so much makeup that I can barely recognize her. I watch them as they frantically yank pantyhose up their long legs, the dark triangle of pubic hair flattened under a crooked nylon seam. In their nudity they are almost identical—legs nearly as long as my body; small, high breasts; abdomens so tight that their bellybuttons are pulled into slits. The men are here, too; their bodies more varied. Ken is Asian, beautiful as a woman, his lips as soft and smooth as caterpillars. I would know because he likes to kiss me on the mouth and pinch my earlobe. I’m only eight, but I think I’m in love.
This is the intermission, and although the room is muggy and suffocating from their sweat—the good kind, the kind that smells sweet and intimate instead of sour—all of the dancers are diving into suits and ties for the next number. It is called “Pass the Hat.” I have seen it many times because my mother is the choreographer, and I have watched her work out the steps, listening to the same few minutes of jazz over and over again. During the performance, I will see her flash a smile at the audience that momentarily transforms her into someone I don’t know. It scares me, that smile. It is at once vicious and seductive. I am too young to know that Charlotte is sleeping with Eleina’s husband. Too young to know that Ken is gay and overly fond of cocaine. But I am old enough to know that the glinting smile my mother throws from her face when she passes the hat comes from some secret place inside her.
II
My father has rented a disintegrating mansion for his dance party. It is a massive, white architectural monstrosity with pillars and warped wood floors that creak. I am the only child here. My father, being the d.j., can keep only a cursory eye on me. There are five floors to this place and more nooks and crannies than any nine-year-old could ever make good use of, but I’m trying. I’m pretending that I’m a spy on a secret mission. I have played this game often enough to know the dangers. Last year, on a reconnaissance mission, I followed my father’s friend Bob away from a backyard barbecue to find him pissing on the neighbor’s car. But this is a party worthy of James Bond, with all the dancing and kissing, the smell of salt and breath and cigarettes. I can sense the intrigue, even if I haven’t yet learned the word. And sure enough, in one of the upper rooms, there is a whiff of pot smoke easing into the hall—I know the smell—and, as I run downstairs, I pass a couple fumbling inside each others’ clothes on the stairs.
Back on the first floor, my father is playing the Ramones. On his head is a pair of enormous headphones. He is easing a needle down onto a second turntable as “I Wanna Be Sedated” draws to a close. The next song is “Love Cats” by The Cure, and I hop up and down on my skinny legs, watching my father examine the back of another album jacket. And then he is dancing in that way he has —moving his bony hips back and forth, his tongue lodged between his teeth and his lower lip. Everything about his rectangular face, lean body, and ravaged skin looks like Iggy Pop, though I won’t realize that until years later.
I’m jumping around on the dance floor when my father comes up behind me, picks me up, and jiggles me back and forth the way you would a spinning top before you let it go. I squeal and laugh. When he puts me down I’m dizzy and hot and ecstatic. I want you to meet my friend, he says. This is Abby. I look at her face, cheekbones like clementines. Abby is young. Much younger than my father. She is beautiful, with bright red lips like my mother’s when she performs. In Doc Marten boots and a tight black skirt, she looks funky and careless and perfect. She leans down to me, smiling. I can see the dark roots of her blond hair. I’ve heard so much about you, she says.
III
Our kitchen floor on Spruce Street is made of light shiny wood. My bare feet stick to it a little as I walk across the room in the dark. I am in the fourth grade. It is a winter morning and almost time to leave for school, but the school lunch is pizza today and I don’t care for it, so I have to make my lunch. In the stilldark (a word I have invented for sunless mornings), I move quietly around the kitchen gathering ingredients. With a pairing knife, I cut through the grainy leather of an avocado skin and twist the sides apart. They come away from each other with a little shlip. The pit is smooth and oily under my thumb. To pile an entire avocado into a sandwich is a luxury, but these days I can do anything I want. My mother has moved to New York City “for a little while” to pursue her dancing career. My father owns a night club now that keeps him up late, and I don’t see him until I get home from school in the afternoons.
I squeeze mountains of avocado flesh between two pieces of brown bread and fold it into a square of wax paper for my lunch. Then it’s time to be out of my nightie and into my red corduroys and my white turtleneck with pink and purple sheep on the collar that is my mother’s favorite. Can’t forget to brush my teeth. Rub the crusty sleepies out of my eyes. Tie my shoes with rabbit ears. Put the sandwich in a brown paper bag with a Granny Smith apple and a Fruit Roll-Up.
I thought I woke up late but maybe I was fast. It’s not quite time to leave yet. So I sit on the couch in the stilldark turning to gray and wait. Across the room, my parents’ bedroom door is closed. I try to imagine that my mother is in there. Maybe she’s in bed with my father right now, a pillow between her knees, breathing quietly against his neck. But, of course, if she were here, she would be awake with me. She would have made me a sandwich with some turkey and lettuce and only a little bit of avocado. I’m glad she’s gone, I think. I think it in an outward arc, aimed at the bedroom door. I’m glad she’s gone because now I can eat whatever I want. I will make sandwiches with salsa and salad dressing and whole avocados because no one can stop me.
I take my front door key from the bookshelf and shut the door behind me with a quiet ca-click. At school, I will discover that the bread around the enormous bolus of avocado has turned soggy and thin. They will take my photograph because it is school picture day, which I have forgotten. When the pictures come back, I will hide them in my room because in them I look exhausted and pale and my hair is sticking up in the back.
IV
On the beach, we have brought turkey and cheese in pita bread, beer for my parents, and Capri-Sun for me. I like the red kind. My father is wearing a Speedo with a drawstring, but I’m too young to be embarrassed. For once, it is hot in town and perfect on the beach. Perfect not only because the water is warm enough to swim in—an unusual circumstance in Maine—but also because my mother has returned from New York, and after scrabbling for eight months at a parachute that wouldn’t open, I have landed back in her arms. She usually drapes herself languidly over a towel while my father and I roll around in the frigid surf, but it’s lovely here and even she has deigned to dip her goddess body into the water today.
We are playing Frisbee, she and I, waist deep in the meager waves. The strip of sand stretches for miles behind her, speckled with sunbathers in stripes and polka-dots, stringy contraptions and skirted contraptions. My mother’s bathing suit is a tiny two-piece tied in a hundred places yet vulnerable to wind or wave or careless tug. Throw me the Frisbee, she shouts over the surf. And I will. But at eleven years old, I have seen enough. I want some reassurance. I hold the Frisbee tight to my chest, seeing my mother’s nipples like small glass beads underneath her bikini top. Ok, but you have to promise me something, I say. My heart is clattering against my ribs. Ok, what, she asks with a smile. With a smile because she doesn’t see it coming. Promise me that you and dad will stay together forever, I holler into the wind. My mother. My poor mother. I can still see her face at that moment, her high cheeks sagging into sad pouches. Her breath caught in her chest. The lie falling from her mouth before she can catch it. I promise, she says.
V
We have a new apartment on Falmouth Street. My parents have separate bedrooms now. There is something I don’t like about this place, but I’m not sure what. There is a wrongness here, a sense that the world has been picked up and shifted, and now we are stuck in perpetual shadow. Each morning I wake up to find fat black ants crawling around under my covers. I pull the comforter back, and they flee from the light. I don’t mind them too much. I think they must be cold in this permanent stilldark that I can’t seem to wake up from.
It is early morning. My parents are not up yet. I climb out of bed and pull the covers over the mattress again so the ants can come back to the warm spot. In the hallway, I hear voices and giggling. I put my ear to my father’s bedroom door and hear a woman inside murmuring. I don’t recognize her voice, but I know that she is not Abby or Anne or any of the others. She is new. Walking to the front of the house, I try not to think about why she’s there.
In my mother’s bedroom, there is sunlight pouring through the bay windows, but she and the man in bed with her are as still as stones. I know this man. I have recently been cajoled into play dates with his shy daughter. Later, he will marry my mother, as the murmuring woman will marry my father; but right now, he is only a man tangled up in my mother’s sheets. Their bodies are a jumble of elbows and hip bones, flung loosely together in the dusty light. I stand there for a long time, watching them breathe. It’s early and I’m tired, but I have nowhere to go. All of the beds are occupied, even mine.
Previous | Contents | Next