Stepping (35 page)

It turned out that no, they didn’t usually sit at home and get depressed, they were sitting at home on my account; usually they had dates or went out to Louie’s.

“Louie’s? What’s Louie’s?” I asked.

Caroline looked mischievous. “You wanna see Louie’s? Hey, you
oughta
see
Louie’s
. Come on. It’ll be good for you.”

So we put on lipstick and got into our coats and went off to Louie’s. It turned out to be a big, dark noisy bar where a live band was playing and kids sat crushed elbow to elbow at tiny rickety tables, drinking cheap beer and overpriced mixed drinks. When we entered, the heat and the noise after the cold calm outdoors hit me like a wall and I had to stand still for a few moments to let my eyes get adjusted. It was, I suppose, any typical
bar where college kids hang out, only perhaps a little smokier and a little louder, but then again, it was a Friday night.

Caroline and Lynn seemed to know their way around, and led me through a maze of legs and tables and moving bodies to what seemed the only available table in the place, one back in the corner against the wall. As I squeezed and slid my way after the girls I noticed that no one in the bar was over thirty, or even close to it. I shrank a bit inside my clothes, wishing I could hide. I felt old, maternal, out of place. I
was
out of place; how long had it been—years!—since I had been in a bar without my husband. I was glad we were going to a corner table.

“This is it,” Caroline said to me as we sat down. I chose the chair that was most in the dark. “Look, Lynn,” she went on, “Ed’s over there with Andrea. Can you believe it?”

“I hope John shows tonight,” Lynn said.

I listened to Caroline and Lynn gossip about people I didn’t know, people who were not having babies and working on farms and holding down jobs, but who were breaking up with steadies or flunking upper-level courses or wrecking MG’s or going off skiing for the weekend. The waitress finally showed up at our table, and brought us all beers, which I paid for, and then I sat there, suddenly very happy, very content, to be simply sitting there, at Louie’s, listening to my stepdaughter and her friend talk. Caroline had had her hair cut that fall, in a simple Dutch-girl style with bangs. She was wearing jeans and an unmemorable blue jersey, and small gold pierced earrings. She had put blue shadow on her eyes and blusher on her cheeks, but wore no lipstick. She looked sophisticated and very lovely, completely different from the little bucktoothed girl I had first met, the little girl who had been all angles and sharp, breakable places. I wondered if Adelaide had ever come to Louie’s with Caroline; it didn’t seem like a place to bring one’s mother; in a surge of intuition I knew that Caroline would never bring her mother here, just as Lucy, when she grew up, would never want to show up at a bar with her mother. I felt warmed, special, privileged: I was getting to see a part of Caroline’s life that Charlie and Adelaide couldn’t share. I sat there, drinking, getting drunk again, smiling fondly at Caroline, thinking how lovely she was, wondering if I had had any influence at all in her growth.

“Would you like to dance?”

The boy said it three times before he got my attention and managed to make me realize he was talking to me.

Even so I said, “What?” I couldn’t have been more shocked if a frog had dropped into my lap.

“Would you like to dance?” the boy shouted.

Through the fog of booze I quickly registered: one tall, dark-haired, good-looking boy, slim, perhaps twenty, leaning on the table, looking at me. I also registered the looks of total surprise on Caroline’s and Lynn’s faces.

I didn’t know what to do. I felt totally startled and helpless. I looked at Caroline. “I think he asked me to dance with him,” I said.

“Well, dance with him,” she replied.

“Okay,” I said to the boy. He turned then, and walked out to the dance floor, and I followed, pushing my way through chairs and warm bodies. My heart was suddenly fluttering insanely, my hands were sweating, and I was afraid that my whole body would break out into one great twitchy tic of nervousness. I thought, all at once, in a rush of horror, I can’t dance with this boy! I’m a mother. I live on a farm. (My God, I’m married.) (My God, that’s my husband’s daughter back there, watching me.) I don’t know how to dance. I’ll make a fool of myself. What do I do? How does one dance? How could this person have asked me to dance; can’t he see I’m old and married? What a good-looking boy!

Of course I knew how to dance. Charlie and I had danced at parties, and at dances, and I had played the radio and held my children in my arms and danced with them. I had danced to rock music every day in the winter simply to fight off the boredom. I knew how to dance, but out there on the dance floor with a strange boy and Caroline watching I suddenly felt paralyzed. Every movement and gesture seemed difficult and clumsy. If I hadn’t had so much to drink, I wouldn’t have been able to move.

But I do like to dance. And the music was good and loud, and I had had a lot to drink, and the boy had a super smile, and all of a sudden I was dancing. All of a sudden there I was, wife and mother and farm lady, dancing in a bar in New Haven, Connecticut, with a gorgeous young boy. I was happy. I danced. I loved myself for having worn jeans and a sweater to visit Caroline instead of my dressier slacks.

I had forgotten how good it felt to dance while smiling at a good-looking stranger.

“Thank you,” I said politely when the music ended, and started to go back to the table.

But the boy caught me by my hand; he actually took my hand in his. “Wait,” he said. “They’ll play another in a minute.”

God forgive me, I believe I giggled. I couldn’t believe this boy was holding my hand. “That’s a married hand you’re holding,” I wanted to say, but fortunately the music did start again, right away, and he let go of my married hand, and we danced.

We danced for perhaps a half hour without stopping. The boy had a great long back and long, slim legs and his movements were easy and slow and smooth, not frenetic or wild, like some of the others. He had blue eyes, I began to decide, at least they looked blue in the dim light of the dance floor. At first I found it very difficult to look him in the eyes. I kept looking away, feeling somehow embarrassed and guilty, and then I did look him in the eyes, and he smiled, and I smiled, and once that contact was established it seemed too pleasurable to break.

When the band took intermission they put on some recorded music, but I decided to sit down. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was very much out of breath. The boy followed me back to the table and sat down next to me without being asked. Caroline and Lynn had been dancing, too, and were slowly making their way through the crowd back to the table.

“It’s wild tonight!” Caroline said happily, and sat down. She lifted her hair up off her neck. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat of dancing; she looked terrific.

“What’s your name?” the boy said to me.

“What?” I said. I had heard him, but I couldn’t believe the question. It seemed such an odd thing to ask. Also I wasn’t quite sure what to answer. I knew that “Mrs. Campbell” wouldn’t do.

“Zelda,” I said, and smiled.

“Zelda?” he asked. “No kidding? Zelda? I’ve never met a Zelda before. What a crazy name! Like Fitzgerald’s wife.”

“That’s it,” I said. “Yeah, it is a crazy name. My sister’s name is Audrey. My mother liked strange names.” I didn’t say—why didn’t I say?—“and my daughter’s name
is Lucy and my son’s name is Adam, and this girl sitting next to me, my stepdaughter, is named Caroline.”

“My name’s Charles,” the boy said.

“You’re putting me on,” I said.

“No, I’m not,” the boy said. He looked surprised. “What’s wrong with Charles? It’s a perfectly normal name.”

“Does anyone ever call you Charlie?” I asked.

“Nope. And no one ever calls me Chuck, either. I hate nicknames.”

I watched him carefully as he spoke. He wasn’t putting me on. It wasn’t a joke. His name really was Charles.

“This is Caroline,” I said, and motioned toward my stepdaughter, “and this is Lynn.”

“Hi,” they all said, and looked each other over. Suddenly a new fear hit me: that they would all start discussing where they went to college and what year they were, and I would have to reveal what had somehow become a shameful secret: my old marriedness.

“I’ve got to go to the john,” I said to Caroline. “Where is it?”

She told me, and I rose and wound my way toward it. I hoped that by the time I was back the boy Charles would have left the table. Perhaps, I thought, perhaps Caroline would tell Charles who I was, what I was. In the bathroom I began to laugh softly and drunkenly. I was after all having fun. It was after all a good joke, especially on that poor boy. If only he knew how I had to suck in my stretch-marked stomach in order to zip up my jeans! Still, I could see in the dim light of the restroom that I looked good, younger than I really was, with a glow on. I looked happy. I was proud of myself, I admit it, and I was glad that Caroline was there, to see that her boring stepmother was still zippy enough to be asked to dance by a college boy.

I took my time in the john, hoping the boy would be gone when I got back to my table, and when I did get back to it, the boy was still there, and he had ordered beers for all of us. He and Caroline and Lynn were discussing some current New Haven scandal.

I slid into my place and sat back and chugged at my beer, hoping for more courage to get through the crazy night.

“What do you think of Cataloni?” the boy asked, looking at me.

I stared back. I didn’t know whether he was talking about a person or an Italian noodle.

“She’s from out of town,” Caroline said, and went on talking. I realized then that she wasn’t going to give me away, she wasn’t going to say, “She doesn’t know who Cataloni is because she’s my stepmother and she lives on a farm with her husband and children.” I also realized what a great couple Charles and Caroline would make, the two of them so tall and slim, one so dark, one so fair.

The music started and Charles asked me to dance again.

“I’m tired,” I said. “I’d like to finish my beer. Why don’t you dance with Caroline?” There, I thought, I have done my respectable deed. Off you go, you two young lovers.

“I’ll just wait with you,” Charles said. He leaned back and put his arm around the back of my chair. I looked at him, astonished. He looked at me. He was gorgeous. I smiled. He smiled. It was ridiculous. I was sexually attracted to him, right there in front of my husband’s daughter, and I felt as embarrassed and guilty as if I had just wet my pants. I looked away from Charles, although simply taking my eyes away from his ended a warm pleasure I was beginning to feel. I looked at Caroline. Her face was expressionless: she was staring out at the dance floor, watching for someone, absorbed in her thoughts. At least, I thought, she didn’t seem ashamed of me. A boy came through the crowd to ask her to dance, and she smiled when she saw him, and I realized that she wasn’t all that interested in what I was doing.

So I danced again with the boy. I danced all night with the boy. With Charles. Not Charlie, my husband; Charles, my twenty-year-old one-night stand. We danced till two-thirty in the morning. We danced to fast music, and we danced to slow music. He held me quite tightly against him, and I thought I would turn into one long drop of sheer pleasure and puddle onto the floor. It felt so good to be in the slim unfamiliar arms of a strange male. After a while I stopped telling myself that this boy could have been a student of mine, I was old enough to be his teacher, and that my stepdaughter was watching. After a while I stopped telling myself anything. I gave myself over to the experience. How very sweet it was.

The boy held me close when we danced. He smelled good, like pine soap and
clean cotton and sweat, and I liked the smells, having been so long conditioned to baby powder and baby poop and disinfectant. I let myself go. I melted against him. I breathed in his smell. I relished the feel of his long, slim body against mine.

“Listen,” the boy said, whispering in my ear and sending chills all over me, “can I take you home?”

Take me home? I thought. Take me
home
? I live in New Hampshire, I’ve got a husband and children at home. And a stepdaughter here in New Haven.

But I had gone past the joking stage. I could no more say, flippantly, “Oh, I’m staying with my stepdaughter tonight,” than I could have laughed in his face. I didn’t know what to say.

“I—I’m staying with a friend,” I said. “We all came together, Caroline and Lynn and I.”

“Let me take you home,” the boy said. He looked at me. “Please,” he said.

God, it was like old college days, a night full of drinking and dancing and then the desire at the end of the evening, the desire not to go away from the good warm body, the desire to go further into some dark, warm delicious space with the person in your arms. And I had a nice trusty IUD, something I hadn’t had in college.

“I’ll check with Caroline,” I said.

But I couldn’t get to Caroline. She was on the dance floor with the boy she had been with all evening, and Lynn was dancing with someone, too. Charles had followed me, holding my hand, and when I said, helplessly, “I guess we’ll just have to wait till they’re through dancing,” he said, “Let’s sit down and finish our beers.”

We went back to our table and sat down, and I realized then how sleepy I was, how tired, but how sensually pleased. I sipped my beer and gazed out at the dance floor, watching for Caroline, and the boy said:

“Zelda …”

And I looked at him, and he leaned over and quite gently kissed me.

It was surely one of the lovelier kisses in my lifetime, rating right up there with some of Charlie’s better ones, and those of Lucy and Adam. It was a sweet, good, strong kiss, and he put his hands on my shoulders and I could tell he wanted me sexually. And I wanted him.

“Zelda,” someone said, and I looked up into Caroline’s smiling face.

“Are you ready to leave?” I asked. I was surprised to find that I could still speak in a normal tone of voice.