Ghost Dance by Carole Maso Read Free Book Online

distant family members seemed, finally, to lack. I liked Aunt Anastasia especially, but I think she came from a Bertolucci movie my father took us to one dark afternoon. They all seemed like movie characters in the end somehow—distant, too easy to love.
    I suppose they will look just like everyone else when I finally see them. If they could still talk, their concerns would probably be ordinary. If they could still talk, their concerns would be of money and weather, I’m sure of it. Nothing to be frightened of, Daddy. Nothing to hide.
    We are sitting in a dark room together. Outside it is always raining. We are both thinking of Mother, who is far away, but neither of us mentions her. The music seems melancholy to me. Her flight from Paris will not arrive for five days yet. He is stretched out on the couch in the dark. I am lying on the floor. Soon he will get up and begin to conduct his imaginary orchestra, so moved is he by the music. He forgets that I am in the room at all until he is back on the couch again and I speak.
    “Tell me some names, Daddy,” I whisper.
    “Rameau,” he says.
    “Rameau,” I say.
    “Ravel,” he says.
    “Ravel,” I say.
    “Satie.”
    “Satie.”
    “Gabriel Fauré.”
    “Gabriel Fauré.
    “Saint-Saëns.”
    The record ends. “Saint-Saëns,” I say into the silence.
    If those relatives could still talk, their concerns would be simple, Daddy. They would beg us to eat. They would tell us that everywhere there are children who are starving.
    I did not mean to leave you there with the Topaz Bird flying so near, its feathers pointed, its claws so sharp. I did not mean to leave you there alone, your New Year’s resolutions crumpled in your shaking hand, a pocketbook holding the whole weight of your great confusion.
    After you left, Dad left, and after Dad, Fletcher, too. I never thought this would happen to us, that we would end up like this: hundreds of thousands of miles apart, flung like fish across the water, scattered like ashes.
    They have already begun hanging this season’s wreaths. It’s hard to think of Christmas coming at all this year. You’d never know it’s November, it’s much too warm. Winter approaches tentatively—in a rush of cold air, a sudden chill at the back of the neck that comes from nowhere and then disappears as quickly. The last time I saw you it was January and there was snow. This year winter approaches with great awkwardness.
    I would not place you in this uncertain season.
    I try to picture you safe in some eternal summer—lying in a white hammock, your notebook open on your lap, above your head a slow fan blowing a cool breeze—a safe place, where a small woman brushes your beautiful hair and sings you songs and brings vou tiny sandwiches to eat.
    I would not place you in this dangerous city—climbing in high heels three flights to some dark hallway, or sinking into a plush rug on Madison Avenue, or crying because no taxis come.
    No, somewhere you are waiting and you are safe. Martinique? Guadeloupe? Crete? Somewhere you are all right, free finally of your jewelry, free of your awful accessories—light.
    What I see sometimes is my real mother looking out at me from a place where she is not crazy at all, and she talks to me. “Vanessa, don’t let them put me here,” she begs. But there’s no convincing them. They are taking away her belt and necklaces. And we must leave her there, shivering, standing in her underwear.
    From the fashion pages she reads to me of the new collections of Calvin Klein and Yves St. Laurent: the billowing sleeves, the padded shoulders, the pleated skirts. I dress her in my mind in the fashions of spring.
    “And from the young designers,” she reads, “three-quarter-length coats in giraffe and leopard designs and wide, western-type lizard belts. And red hats,” she says, “shaped like snails!” She laughs and laughs, tilting her head back.
    Although I walked through a fog of fashion, through hats and gloves,