A dream remains a dream.
Heather and David come over from next door and ask me to a dance down the shore. I have just moved into my uncle’s cottage and know nothing of dances; in fact, so far I know no one in the neighbourhood except Heather, whom I met at university many years ago. At forty years old, I am too old for a dance, but then I reason that Heather must be about my age and her brother David, perhaps a little older. So I set out the coffee things and say, “Yes, but only if they play a polka; David, will you dance it with me?”
I do not say the other things connected with dancing. Mainly that I’m a good dancer and my husband—long divorced—was a wizard dancer, about the only thing he was good at. That first year alone, when I started to feel safe, I taught myself the polka from watching Polka Time on TV. After that, I always wanted to polka with someone, anyone, but it never happened. Weddings passed—my daughter’s wedding last year, the niece in Toronto; the bands played, but I was never asked to dance, polka or no.
David smiles. “Love to,” he says. “And I’m not on call this weekend.”
Why is it we’re drawn to doctors, I think as I watch them walk away. Perhaps because they seem so kind, and one believes they are kind at home, too—patient and generous with their time. “Don’t be silly,” I say out loud and then wince at the words—the exact words my mother used when, a couple of teenage times, I cried out to her, “You don’t love me.” “Don’t be silly,” she said. Both times.
To be ignored, to be unloved, to marry foolishly, it all fits together, so that out of the blue one is invited to a dance; one’s heart jumps with joy, even at such a banal thing as a polka. It’s quite possible I’ve forgotten the steps. We only exist in the context of our own time, after all. And my time is good now, deep-breath good, hyper-ventilating good—my lovely cottage with its painted walls, oriental rugs, screened porch with day bed, and the sound of the ocean, the rain, the people walking by on the path down by the shore, a sturdy door, a car, a good job, money in the bank, and plenty of time to work, study, read, cook, walk, and live unafraid, secure—the basis of all happiness.
A polka? Not silly at all. Just a diamond chip in the golden ring of the present.
The band is hot: first rock, then waltz and then—what? Could it be a schottische after all these years? I sit at a side table with the rum and coke that David bought me when we first arrived, and I watch the dancers. Heather introduces me to a man called Blair and then they swirl away. David stands talking by the bar and then he disappears. After an hour, I’m tired of watching everyone dance.
The polka at last. Many people sit down around me so that only a few remain on the floor. After the last stamp and yell, I gather up coat, boots, and hat, and lifting my long skirt over the snow ruts outside, I walk home; lights shine far out to sea, an icy drizzle of rain catching me on the neck, the wind pushing between the houses of the little village, pushing me home.
Self talk is the key to happiness. Very useful.
The next day I drive into the city, to the art gallery where I work as a bookkeeper. They’re putting up pictures, Desmond directing, and I remember how, when I first started working here eight years ago, I had a crush on Desmond and later I had a crush on the carpenter who renovated the cafeteria. Then I said to myself, Don’t be silly, and to change direction, I bought a white leather couch for the old apartment on Main Street.
But not long ago, there was the old uncle in the Home—my only relative—and I brought him grapes and soft candies and listened to the stories of his brother, my father, who was a government health inspector, and my mother, so short—as short as Queen Victoria—that she had special low kitchen cabinets made so she could cook. Once Uncle was a fisherman, but in the ward, only his great knobbled hard-working hands confirmed it.
I watched Uncle die after the stroke. He breathed without moving for two weeks, his tough old heart pumping on. His eyelids were half shut but only the whites showed. I sat by his head and babbled: the weather; the ships in the harbour; the latest art show; the carpenter who was renovating the cafeteria in stone trim and a great beam of black ash, all to reflect the landscape of Newfoundland outside.
In my little office, I feel safe. I have my cover story to explain why I’m here on a Sunday—just checking a few things, entering the latest invoices, managing the latest out-voices, the forever-voice that has only one sentence.
After an hour or so, I wave to the men in the big room. “Goodbye,” I say at the exit door as I button up my winter jacket.
“Bye, Janet,” they answer, half turning. “You take care now.”
