Life Among Giants by Bill Roorbach Read Free Book Online Page B

Rolling Stone magazine. On the cover was Sylphide, looking lost and bewildered in an office somewhere, a heartbreakingly lovely fairy tricked in from the woods for a photo shoot, her exquisite, muscular legs in ever-so-slightly wrinkled tights as she sat on a desk, faded leotard the only other cloth, perfect posture, grainy contrast, which hid the bad skin of her face. Inside was the story of her first performance since her husband’s accident—not a ballet, just a single number in a recital to benefit a famous famine-relief foundation, something she’d agreed to long before. She’d leaped out onto the stage, made a few magnificent turns, and then just come to a stop, staring out at the crowd. After a few more phrases the orchestra had stopped too, and the room (Bradley Center in San Francisco, eighteen or nineteen hundred well-heeled people) just sat there in silence, long minutes. “We love you,” someone in the balcony said finally—no need to shout. According to the article. Th e dancer had looked up there, looked up there a long time, then simply walked offstage.
    â€œI have to have this,” I said.
    Dwight accepted the Kennedy half-dollar I carried for good luck.
    I sat near Emily at lunch, opened my hard-won copy of Rolling Stone. And Emily noticed; you couldn’t miss that cover shot of Sylphide. And you certainly couldn’t miss me, pointing my toes as I read. Oh, Emily noticed and stood and picked up her dance bag and walked right past me and out the great doors to the bus loop where her mother waited to take her to the train station and the 12:41 to New York.
    Emily had no need of me, no need of any of us.
    I N THOSE DAYS, my mother was always off at tennis, the kitchen bulletin board papered deeply with schedules and tourney dates and lesson times, not the slightest letup since Kate had left.
    One fine Saturday, Dad and I raked leaves, the first weekend he’d been home for six weeks. Apparently, things were going better at work. Th is, I simply intuited—it’s not like we talked about our troubles. Th e poor guy had been putting in seven-day weeks, twelve- and fourteen-hour days, home on the late train to sleep, out on the early train, working his lips, chewing his nails. And something odd had happened. I’d driven him to the station Friday so as to have the car—dashed fantasies of driving off to Compo Beach for a walk with Emily—and he’d left his crappy replacement briefcase in the car, a cardboard thing already coming to pieces. When I returned with it, I spotted him climbing into the wrong train, opposite direction from New York.
    I leaned on my rake, smelled the brisk air, felt the fall sunshine, couldn’t help it: I thought about football. Th e team would be on the bus to Greenwich for a game they’d probably win—Greenwich was weak in those years. But then again, who did Staples have for a quarterback? No one but that scrawny Fielding kid, who’d gotten his chance from my abdication. If he won, he’d be a hero. Me, I was raking leaves. Dad made a show of pulling on his beloved work boots, his one connection with an identity he’d never had: paint-splashed, steel-toed, oil-proof soles, the leather worn and supple, lovingly waxed, the rawhide laces double-knotted, absurdly high heels.
    â€œSo where’d you go yesterday?” I said lightly.
    â€œYesterday what?”
    â€œYesterday morning. Without your briefcase. I came back to give it to you and you were getting on the New Haven train.”
    He laughed. And then he laughed more: busted. “I’ll let you in on a secret,” he said. “But don’t you tell your mom. I was going to see a lady.”
    â€œDad!”
    â€œNot like you think, bud. I just had to do a little job for Mr. Perdhomme up in Bridgeport. Wooing a client, you know. Perdhomme knows where his bread is buttered. I practically gave the woman a massage. One of the Fricks,