Read Online Dancing in the Dark by Joan Barfoot - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Joan Barfoot
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was away and because Harry was teaching me to see and because I could trust and therefore love him.
“Well then, why don’t you say it? Maybe it only takes one person and you’d shake things up so everybody could.”
But it would be like walking naked in front of them. Everything might disintegrate with the shock.
His people, when I eventually met them, were quite different. His mother was small and grey-haired and charming and his father was big and tall and grey-haired and courtly. They touched each other often and smiled at Harry. Just small touches, a pat on the hand or the back. They seemed fond of each other, and they were proud of Harry. He was their only child. “That makes a difference,” he said. “They only had me to love.”
Yes, well that hurt a bit, although he wouldn’t have meant it to.
They were well-dressed and prosperous. His mother wore a grey silk dress that made her hair glint at the lunch at which Harry introduced us all, and his father wore a charcoal three-piece suit. Harry, too. “It’s the family uniform,” he joked.
I wore a new dress that Harry had helped me choose. I had only ordinary school clothes, skirts and sweaters. This dress was cotton, ivory with thin pink stripes. Plain, with matched buttons down the front and a matching belt around the waist. Simple, and a bit expensive. Another thing I was learning: that simplicity can cost more than the elaborate, and is in better taste.
I also bought white pumps and a small white handbag for the occasion.
They were pleasant and polite and kind and proper. Prosperous, although not rich, and their prosperity and satisfaction showed in small ways that made them different from my family—the way they handled their forks, the way they ate—the meal a ceremony of some pleasure, not an uncomfortable tongue-tying necessity. I managed to say some things about myself and to ask polite questions in return. Harrycarried things along. It seemed he could take care of any awkward moments. Afterward he said they liked me. “They said you seem a nice girl,” and he grinned as if we knew much better. It was a new pleasure to be secretly daring, cleverly deceptive; because by then we were going to bed together, an astonishing leap for someone like me so many years ago.
I wonder what they would have thought of me if they had known. I wonder how I felt myself.
Our two families at the wedding, such a contrast. Except for Stella, of course, who danced and danced and seemed more likely to be Harry’s sister than mine.
12
H e had a wonderful body.
“Edna, come on,” he said. “I love you.” I could never, despite my joy and greed for him, have been the first to say those words. But now he demanded, “You love me, don’t you?” It was hard: as if the words were taboo, and I could be struck down for saying them.
True enough, one can be. They leave quite a gap.
I thought myself a moral person, and this was more than twenty years ago, when these things mattered. But Harry’s and mine was a separate world, a small and enclosed universe, and nothing outside seemed to apply here.
He undressed me slowly, gently, and with admiration in each step. He kissed each breast and then, startlingly, my thighs. He was—almost pure about it; as if he were removing wrappings from a lovely statue. As if the object were to worship, not to hold.
But he did hold. I lay beneath blankets while he undressed. He was much quicker with himself than with me: swift, efficient undoing of buttons, a shrug to discard the shirt, a zipper rasp, hands thrust beneath elastic, bending, stepping free,sitting on the end of the bed, leaning over for the socks and then standing and this was it, a naked man.
I thought of mirrors and pillows and what had been unimaginable then and would now be real.
He slid beneath the blankets with me, turned on his side. For a while he just touched fingers and lips lightly here and there. I felt, now and then, tremors rippling through his body,
“Well then, why don’t you say it? Maybe it only takes one person and you’d shake things up so everybody could.”
But it would be like walking naked in front of them. Everything might disintegrate with the shock.
His people, when I eventually met them, were quite different. His mother was small and grey-haired and charming and his father was big and tall and grey-haired and courtly. They touched each other often and smiled at Harry. Just small touches, a pat on the hand or the back. They seemed fond of each other, and they were proud of Harry. He was their only child. “That makes a difference,” he said. “They only had me to love.”
Yes, well that hurt a bit, although he wouldn’t have meant it to.
They were well-dressed and prosperous. His mother wore a grey silk dress that made her hair glint at the lunch at which Harry introduced us all, and his father wore a charcoal three-piece suit. Harry, too. “It’s the family uniform,” he joked.
I wore a new dress that Harry had helped me choose. I had only ordinary school clothes, skirts and sweaters. This dress was cotton, ivory with thin pink stripes. Plain, with matched buttons down the front and a matching belt around the waist. Simple, and a bit expensive. Another thing I was learning: that simplicity can cost more than the elaborate, and is in better taste.
I also bought white pumps and a small white handbag for the occasion.
They were pleasant and polite and kind and proper. Prosperous, although not rich, and their prosperity and satisfaction showed in small ways that made them different from my family—the way they handled their forks, the way they ate—the meal a ceremony of some pleasure, not an uncomfortable tongue-tying necessity. I managed to say some things about myself and to ask polite questions in return. Harrycarried things along. It seemed he could take care of any awkward moments. Afterward he said they liked me. “They said you seem a nice girl,” and he grinned as if we knew much better. It was a new pleasure to be secretly daring, cleverly deceptive; because by then we were going to bed together, an astonishing leap for someone like me so many years ago.
I wonder what they would have thought of me if they had known. I wonder how I felt myself.
Our two families at the wedding, such a contrast. Except for Stella, of course, who danced and danced and seemed more likely to be Harry’s sister than mine.
12
H e had a wonderful body.
“Edna, come on,” he said. “I love you.” I could never, despite my joy and greed for him, have been the first to say those words. But now he demanded, “You love me, don’t you?” It was hard: as if the words were taboo, and I could be struck down for saying them.
True enough, one can be. They leave quite a gap.
I thought myself a moral person, and this was more than twenty years ago, when these things mattered. But Harry’s and mine was a separate world, a small and enclosed universe, and nothing outside seemed to apply here.
He undressed me slowly, gently, and with admiration in each step. He kissed each breast and then, startlingly, my thighs. He was—almost pure about it; as if he were removing wrappings from a lovely statue. As if the object were to worship, not to hold.
But he did hold. I lay beneath blankets while he undressed. He was much quicker with himself than with me: swift, efficient undoing of buttons, a shrug to discard the shirt, a zipper rasp, hands thrust beneath elastic, bending, stepping free,sitting on the end of the bed, leaning over for the socks and then standing and this was it, a naked man.
I thought of mirrors and pillows and what had been unimaginable then and would now be real.
He slid beneath the blankets with me, turned on his side. For a while he just touched fingers and lips lightly here and there. I felt, now and then, tremors rippling through his body,
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