The Water Dancers, page 5
“And if I don’t?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
His mother set her coffee cup carefully in its saucer. She was wearing the diamond pin Woody’s father had given her for the birth of their first child—Hannah, dead to influenza. Now Lip was gone in the war. Would his father give her jewelry for the dead? Woody noticed her silver knot had been cut off, her hair short and gray for mourning. His father, on the other hand, looked the same, an ascot knotted in at his neck. An affectation, Woody thought. Like the little pin of the family crest stuck in his lapel. Again, Woody recalled that long-ago helm, the stern patrician in the commodore ’s hat.
A candle sputtered, dripping wax onto the damask cloth. Cupping her hand behind the flame, his mother blew it out. “What about Elizabeth?” she said. “You haven’t returned her calls.”
“Hmmm,” Woody said, watching the smoke curl up from the extinguished flame. Smoke was a fickle stuff, subject to the currents of air—like Elizabeth who was now saying she had changed her mind. Darling, she wrote, I was being silly…
“You could at least answer her letters.” His father’s words flowed like a river of blue.
His mother reached over and covered Woody’s hand. “What about talking to Father Tom?”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“This won’t do, Woodrow,” said his father.
His mother pressed on. “He’s wonderful with pain.”
Woody laughed. Shades of red. “I have something for the pain. I don’t need the priest.”
Mandy was clearing the dishes. Woody wondered where Rachel was. Dark, weighted with a cat’s grace—her words would be pale green and lavender.
“Wouldn’t you like to dance again?” his mother said. “Get on your feet?”
Woody liked the feel of Rachel’s smooth, brown hands when she rolled up his sleeve and carefully stroked his skin.
“Have some people over for cocktails?”
That morning, she had smelled like the lake.
“The Boyds? You always liked Serena Boyd.”
Rachel came back with Mandy to clear the table. She took his plate. A shimmer of pink. He turned to his mother. Woody wanted to tell her he never liked Serena Boyd, but his words were black and stuck like tar.
He waited for her on the bayside veranda. The sun beat against the cerulean lake, the blue of his summer memories. A screen door slammed. He peered over the rail to see her head.
“Rachel?”
She stopped, turned.
“Where are you going?”
Her face in the sunshine was younger than he thought, the planes of her cheeks soft as a girl’s. Again, Woody recalled the Philippine Sea, a body floating past him. What could Rachel possibly know of life?
“To the beach,” she said.
“Mind some company?”
A rogue cloud shadowed her face. In her eyes, he could have read anything. Contempt. Indifference. Love. Yet she came up the stairs, her uniform smelling of bleach, her hair of pine. Leaning into her, he detected a trace of his mother’s perfume as they hopped down steps to the path.
Released by the sun—the sweet scent of cedar and honeysuckle. Behind them, the house disappeared behind a blind of trees. Woody’s crutches sank into the sand. The lake curved against the sky. Slowly, they made their way to the water. At its edge, Woody realized he had traveled six thousand miles to get here.
The wind blew Rachel’s hair across her eyes. A half mile offshore, waves broke on the pale band of shallows. She toed the pebbles at the water’s edge, bent down, snatched up a green bit of glass.
Woody caught his breath and pointed to the shoals. “My brother and I used to swim out to that. It was a contest to see who could make it to the sandbar first.” He recalled the summer he had found out that Lip was going to run the bank someday. They had been skipping stones on the beach when Lip brought it up. How old had Woody been? Fourteen? You’re the free one, Woody, Lip had said as they stood beside each other, seeing who could skip the farthest. You’ll get to do as you please.
“It’s not so far,” Rachel said.
They started up the beach, Rachel gathering pieces of gull bone, the rib of a fish, a shell, driftwood. She put everything into her pocket. A band of rocks rattled in the waves.
“Most girls I know like jewelry,” said Woody.
He scooped up a fistful of tiny stones—reddened by iron, greened by copper, pocked, mottled, glinting with quartz or mica. When he was a boy, he used to scavenge these rocks, looking for shells or bits of fossils, some evidence of Pleistocene life, immortal and petrified, the rubble of the glaciers.
“Look,” said Rachel. She took his hand, poked through the gravel, teased out a tiny fossil no bigger than her nail. Woody lifted it carefully with the tip of his finger, held it close till a gust of wind carried it off.
Life goes on, Woody.
But life need not go on, Woody thought as he let Rachel lead him away from the water to a dune where he could lie on the sand, inhale its warmth. Rachel examined the smooth palm of his right hand.
“What was it like?” she asked.
Woody thought for a moment. “Foreign,” he said. “Like no place I’d been.”
Minutes passed. His bones softened like wax, his skin liquefied, darkened. Reaching up, he touched the tip of her hair, rolled it like silk.
Rachel licked the sand off her fingers, stared at the lake.
What are you thinking about? Woody wanted to ask her. She seemed so different from other girls. That absence of chatter—was it a sign of deeper waters? But he was drifting off, his spirit light as helium, and Rachel was reaching out to shield his eyes from the bright and quickening sun.
CHAPTER FIVE
After that, they met each cloudless day at three, making their way to the beach as his mother napped. Woody would brace himself on Rachel, feel the outline of her clavicle as, gradually, sensation to his fingertips returned. He could walk with a cane now, but still he leaned on her. Sometimes, she pushed away and ran ahead—a brown-limbed girl, clutching the hem of her dress, knee-deep in water.
Woody followed her down the beach, the print of his right foot alongside a gouge made by the dragged prosthesis. From time to time, he stumbled on the rocks. Rachel looked back quickly, made sure he was all right, moved on.
She was a girl who licked stones. He began to notice how she absentmindedly brought them to her lips. A strange thing, this stone-licking, but when he asked her, she looked away. It was another of her secrets. Perhaps she was ashamed, but he couldn’t be sure. That girl at the dock in Manila—she had had no name. He had gone back to give her more money, but he could never find her again.
“What do you taste in these rocks, anyway?” Woody said.
Her gaze seemed to measure him. Even Woody was surprised at his question. “My ancestors,” she said.
The sun was still high, but that night there was to be dancing at the club. He had promised his mother. Woody bent over and plucked a reddish rock from the pile at his feet. It tasted dull, metallic. He pocketed it.
That evening, Woody stared into the mirror over the bureau. Looking back was a thin man, his face older than its twenty-six years, his hands scarred, one leg missing, a wooden leg joined to the stump by a leather sleeve. Pants on, no one would spot his disfigurement, though he walked with the jerkiness of a puppet, a wobble and thrust, as if the ground were uneven. Strengthened by food and exercise, he could walk almost a mile with his cane, gaining yard after yard by placing the good leg first, launching the other. The pain of his severed limb still rocked him, but it was the other, deeper pain that morphine quenched. This will kill you, Rachel had said the day before, knocking the needle from his hand.
Only then did he realize he had started to care.
Woody buttoned the cotton shirt, fastened the sleeves with monogrammed cuff links. Woodrow Forrester March. He knotted his tie, chevrons of blue and yellow. The evening was as familiar as a recurring dream, one marked by the foreboding of twisted sleep. Now that his father had returned to St. Louis, Woody would escort his mother, sit at a table for two, try to rise when his elders passed by and greeted them.
Don’t get up, they would tell him tonight.
He adjusted his tie. It was a boy’s tie, worn to prep school dinners. Pain and conscience had collapsed the skin around his eyes, his cheeks.
“Life goes on,” Woody said to the mirror. He was older than his brother had been. Lip would be eternally young, the remains of his twenty-four-year-old body buried at Arlington.
“You look better,” his mother said as they started down the sidewalk. Woody’s leg faltered, but his mother did not reach out. Only when they arrived at the club did she take his arm. The war, it seemed, had not taken place. Two stone fireplaces on either side of the dance floor anchored the room as it ebbed and flowed beneath stars of white lights and the watchful eyes of dead commodores. No more uniforms, no dearth of men. Woody scanned the room for Lip, Bud, or Malcolm—all dead. The silhouettes in the flickering light could have been anyone.
“You are so naughty, Woody March! Six weeks and not a peep!”
Woody turned to see Serena Boyd, her hips thrust out beneath bottle green satin. Her left hand, holding a cigarette, was weighted with a large, square diamond. She wriggled her fingers at Woody. “You look divine!” She turned to his mother. “Doesn’t he look divine, Aunt Lydia?”
“Mother,” said Woody, his voice suddenly loud, “can I get us a drink?”
Serena touched his shoulder. “Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”
Woody scanned the room for the waiter. “I need to sit down.”
“Well, aren’t you?”
“What for?”
“I’m engaged to Max Bailey. Where have you been?”
“We ’ve been working on Woody,” said his mother.
Serena rolled her eyes. “We ’ve always had to work on Woody.”
“Lucky guy,” said Woody, lowering himself into a chair.
Dropping her voice, Serena nodded at his leg. “You can hardly tell, you know.” Then she smiled brightly. “Dance later? For old times’ sake?”
He mumbled something about being too rusty. What old times was she referring to?
“Everyone’s rusty,” said Serena. “Believe me.”
The waiter took their orders. Before long, their table was surrounded by the concerned faces of friends.
“Such an ordeal,” said Mrs. Boyd.
In a booming voice, Mr. Boyd added, “I’m sure Woody’d rather not talk about it.”
Woody wished his martini would come. He tried to focus on the dancers spinning past him, the too-stiff men trying to lead the women who coaxed them on with smiles and smacks to the shoulders for a more daring step, a bit of energy in that dip. He recognized the ramrod straightness of his Andover days, the tightness of the male spine. Everyone, he thought, was turning into wood.
“Well?” said his mother.
“Well what?”
“Are you going to dance?”
He looked around the room, saw Serena coming at him with a balding young fellow in tow. “Hell,” said Woody.
Max Bailey jerked out his hand, pumped Woody’s frantically. “It must have been hell, pal. Just hell!”
Before Woody could answer, Serena grabbed his hand. “So, kiddo? You ready?” She swiveled her hips. “Max says he’s only a teensy bit jealous.”
Woody’s stump hurt. He felt the low-belly panic of going before a group, of doing something he detested.
“I’ll go easy on you,” said Serena. The band was playing Cole Porter.
Max said, “There’ s no stopping Serena, guy.”
Woody could feel his mother looking at him, could see Serena’s blank, pretty face. A dim recollection of himself as a boy dressed in knickers and knee-high socks, his father holding up a paperweight, pointing to the ship inside, his own wonder as he took it from his father’s hand, his surprise at its heaviness. His father watching him, saying, Well? as Woody’s fingers slipped, that split second as the glass tumbled to the floor and shattered.
Hoisting himself, he let Serena guide him to the dance floor. She put a hand on his right shoulder, clasped his left hand and started to sway. “Don’t get no kick from champagne!” she sang sloppily into his ear. Gin had loosened her smile, added weight to her eyelids. Woody lurched into a box step, Serena pulling him along.
“There you go, Woody! You’ve still got it!” Her words lapped together like waves. “Elizabeth’s a lucky girl, I’ve always said. Even if you’re…you know.” She rested her head on his shoulder. “The March men were always the bestest.” She yanked her head up. “So when’re you going to do it?”
“Serena, you’re pulling me over.”
“Tell me, Woody. You ever slept with her?”
“Serena…”
“I mean, a lot of guys thought they were going to die, right? The things you boys used to say. ‘Just this once, baby. I’m a goner for sure.’ You know how many times I heard that? The only one who was good for it was Lip.”
“You and Lip?”
“Would’ve with you if you’d asked.” She screwed her eyes into a meaningful stare. “Only two more weeks till Elizabeth gets here.”
Woody suddenly let go of Serena and stopped.
“Oops!” she said. “Guess Aunt Lydia wanted to surprise you.”
“I haven’t talked to Elizabeth.”
“Don’t I know it, bad boy. I even told her to drop you. You never go out. Aunt Lydia says you’re morose.” Serena’s face grew sullen. “Well, things aren’t as fun as they used to be, that’s for certain. Before you know it, we ’ll have three screaming brats. Not just Max and me. You and Elizabeth, too. Baby puke and pabulum. Can’t you just see it?”
Realizing she was on the verge of tears, Woody took Serena’s arm and led her back to Max.
“Oh, Max!” Serena said, draping her arms extravagantly around his neck.
“She’s all yours, my friend,” Woody said. Leaning down, he whispered something to his mother.
“You can’t just leave!” she hissed.
“Good night, Mother.”
Outside, he gasped in the fresh night air. The door banged shut behind him, muffling the sounds of music and laughter. Everything was receding—his youth, his engagement, the war. Only his childhood memories clung fast, and those—even those—had yellowed like old newspaper.
His veins itched with need. Perhaps he would sit on the porch. Make a very stiff drink, rock back and forth on the glider. The moon—a full one—slid like a coin behind the clouds.
Rachel stood on the wide plank porch. Across the lake, a band played music—not the chanting, beating, wailing of the ceremonies and celebrations of her childhood—but a lively sound, not without rhythm. So what if the music had the same hearty falseness Rachel heard each night around the Marches’ dinner table? It was gay and seductive, and it begged her to move. Soon, her hips were swaying side to side, answered by her shoulders, neck, and hair.
A figure was coming down the walk, and from the jerkiness of his gait, she knew it was Woody March. She heard him say her name as he climbed the steps.
“I saw you dancing,” he said as he reached the porch. His jacket was off, his tie loose. Breathing hard, he asked, “You like this kind of music?”
Hot patches of color drifted up her neck. “You thought I’d prefer drums?”
She could see he was amused. He probably was thinking, Crazy Indian. Can’t dance either. She wanted to say that she could, too, but the ones she knew weren’t like his.
“So,” she asked, “was the broken branch able to cut a rug after all?”
Woody lit a cigarette, leaned against the rail. “I’ve never been much of a dancer.”
Glancing at her now-still hips, he told her that when he was a teenager, he and his brother would sneak away from the club to go skinny-dipping in the lake. Lip, he said, was the stronger swimmer, but if he had had enough to drink, Woody would forget his fear and match him stroke for stroke.
“I like to swim,” said Rachel.
Woody stubbed out his cigarette, tossed it off the porch. When his eyes met hers, she flinched. “Okay, then,” he said, “let’s go swimming.”
Rachel laughed.
“I’m serious.”
Rachel looked away. The lights from town had smudged the lake. “The nuns,” she said.
“It’s early.”
She thought about the convent with its white, barren walls, her thin bed, the other girls’ soft snoring, their braided hair.
Flipping her own braids back in a come-what-may fashion, she said almost defiantly, “Okay, why not?”
The path to the beach was all shadows and moonlight. Something scurried beneath the ferns as they laughed, tripped, nearly fell before pushing through the stand of twisted pine and landing on a ghostly beach. Rachel felt him watching her. When he touched her face, she was not surprised.
“Will you help me into the water?” he said.
Frogs called back and forth. Woody took off his tie, unbuttoned his shirt, pulled it off. Sitting on a rock at the edge of the water, he struggled with his pants, then tossed them away. Finally, he undid the canvas strap, the leather sleeve, groaning with pleasure at removing his leg.
“Now you,” he said.
The moment opened before her like the first time she had pierced his skin. She had seen his body half-naked when she helped him to his bath, had touched his skin before she pricked it. He had been watching her for days. Now she felt shy to the point of shivering.
He stood up and reached for her while she undid her dress, thumbed her collarbone when it appeared, the beads of her spine. As she stood in her underwear, a large wave broke and rushed about their feet. She shuddered at the shock of it.
“It’s rocky,” he said. “I’ll hold on to you.”
They picked their way through the rocks until they were waist deep in water. Slowly, Woody abandoned his footing, cradled first by her hands, then by the lake.
