Read Online Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn by Kris Radish - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kris Radish
Tags: Fiction, General, Psychological, Psychological fiction, Adultery, Middle-Aged Women, Married Women, Self-actualization (Psychology), Chicago (Ill.), Separation (Psychology)
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Maybe some kind of secret powder was released and I'm doomed to spend the rest of my life looking for things that I have lost. How ironic. Yesterday I forgot to turn off the iron, lost my car keys and could not remember if I parked in front of the building or behind the building. I am so distracted, I suddenly think, I should not even be driving a car.
My purse is sitting on a chair in the waiting room when I get there. It looks just a bit lonely, and when I go to pick it up I decide to sit in the chair for a while. Just sit. I could be in a dentist's office. Magazines are on the table. A photograph of geese flying over a long cornfield is tipped to one side above a long table by the door. I move my hand to the wall behind me, where I know there are several offices where psychologists listen and then listen some more, with their fingers tapping against the sides of their chairs, legs crossed, words rationed out like pieces of old bread to starving birds. I think of the piles of secrets and the damaged souls and hearts and minds that must have reached some interesting conclusions just beyond my fingertips.
“Touch the wall,” I wonder to myself, “and will I feel a beating heart, the swell of a heartache, the devastation of a lost love?” No one is in the office, so I get out of the chair and stand with my back against the wall. It does not matter to me that I am in this suite of offices and that someone could come in at any moment or that my own doctor could walk back and see me caressing the wall and have me committed. People do worse things than fondle a portion of a room.
I close my eyes and place my palms against the wall, fingers spread, and I listen through my skin for those beating secrets. I sense the rumbling announcement of an avalanche of emotion, but is it theirs or my own? The wall is moving into my hands, a slow cascade that seems to be pushing me out into the room. There is so much hidden in the fabric of walls. So much. Heartaches and healing hands. A secret sorrow released from its cage and into the arms of a kind and smart woman who will throw it out the door so it lands in the lobby, where it will be swept away after hours. But in the corners, some of the secrets linger and there are piles of transparent tears that cling to each other longer and harder than their former owners kept them melded to their souls.
I know also that the swirling mess of my life must be nothing compared to some of the tragic complications that have walked past my chair. Death. The loss of a child. Suicide. Incest. Rape. Lost love. Mental illness. My pain is a simple scratch compared to what I see when my hands are pressed to the wall.
“How easy to feel guilty,” I say out loud.
A woman comes into the waiting room. There are dark circles under her eyes and she cannot bring herself to say hi to me. She looks at the door that leads down to the offices and I think she must be deciding if she is going to stay or run back out the door she just came into.
“Hello,” I say. “How are you?”
She catches my eye for a second and I see the breath go out of her. Is she on medication? On the verge? Accustomed to coming into an empty room? Or maybe she can see through my skin and into my dungeon of terror. Maybe.
“Fine,” she responds, and I see that she decides to sit and stay. I think she will stay. This makes a sigh, wide and long, leave my own chest, and that mother spot in me, the spot that brought me back home, that keeps me weighted to a place that can no longer be ignored for the deep pit of its uncomfortableness, makes me want to reach out and take her hand. I am a toucher; there is no doubt about that. It has gotten me in trouble plenty of times with babies at the mall, young boys on the verge of adulthood—why is it no one wants to touch adolescent boys when that is the one thing, simple and true, that they so much desire?
Shaun was fourteen when I discovered this. My son was in one of his constant angry and
My purse is sitting on a chair in the waiting room when I get there. It looks just a bit lonely, and when I go to pick it up I decide to sit in the chair for a while. Just sit. I could be in a dentist's office. Magazines are on the table. A photograph of geese flying over a long cornfield is tipped to one side above a long table by the door. I move my hand to the wall behind me, where I know there are several offices where psychologists listen and then listen some more, with their fingers tapping against the sides of their chairs, legs crossed, words rationed out like pieces of old bread to starving birds. I think of the piles of secrets and the damaged souls and hearts and minds that must have reached some interesting conclusions just beyond my fingertips.
“Touch the wall,” I wonder to myself, “and will I feel a beating heart, the swell of a heartache, the devastation of a lost love?” No one is in the office, so I get out of the chair and stand with my back against the wall. It does not matter to me that I am in this suite of offices and that someone could come in at any moment or that my own doctor could walk back and see me caressing the wall and have me committed. People do worse things than fondle a portion of a room.
I close my eyes and place my palms against the wall, fingers spread, and I listen through my skin for those beating secrets. I sense the rumbling announcement of an avalanche of emotion, but is it theirs or my own? The wall is moving into my hands, a slow cascade that seems to be pushing me out into the room. There is so much hidden in the fabric of walls. So much. Heartaches and healing hands. A secret sorrow released from its cage and into the arms of a kind and smart woman who will throw it out the door so it lands in the lobby, where it will be swept away after hours. But in the corners, some of the secrets linger and there are piles of transparent tears that cling to each other longer and harder than their former owners kept them melded to their souls.
I know also that the swirling mess of my life must be nothing compared to some of the tragic complications that have walked past my chair. Death. The loss of a child. Suicide. Incest. Rape. Lost love. Mental illness. My pain is a simple scratch compared to what I see when my hands are pressed to the wall.
“How easy to feel guilty,” I say out loud.
A woman comes into the waiting room. There are dark circles under her eyes and she cannot bring herself to say hi to me. She looks at the door that leads down to the offices and I think she must be deciding if she is going to stay or run back out the door she just came into.
“Hello,” I say. “How are you?”
She catches my eye for a second and I see the breath go out of her. Is she on medication? On the verge? Accustomed to coming into an empty room? Or maybe she can see through my skin and into my dungeon of terror. Maybe.
“Fine,” she responds, and I see that she decides to sit and stay. I think she will stay. This makes a sigh, wide and long, leave my own chest, and that mother spot in me, the spot that brought me back home, that keeps me weighted to a place that can no longer be ignored for the deep pit of its uncomfortableness, makes me want to reach out and take her hand. I am a toucher; there is no doubt about that. It has gotten me in trouble plenty of times with babies at the mall, young boys on the verge of adulthood—why is it no one wants to touch adolescent boys when that is the one thing, simple and true, that they so much desire?
Shaun was fourteen when I discovered this. My son was in one of his constant angry and
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