Balancing Acts Read online

  Today Alison needed to find a way out of Alice’s dilemma: part of her wants to accept the mutilated truckdriver’s love, but another part of her is repelled at the idea of those cold hooks caressing her naked body. She stood up to take a break first, and pulled her blue T-shirt over her head. It was by now unmistakable—she had breasts. Some of the other girls had had them for more than a year, but she was skinny—maybe that slowed things up. The nipples protruded as if puffed with air, and they were surrounded by a soft fleshiness. She touched one breast with a forefinger. It felt tender. Looking in the mirror, she twitched one eyelid and her upper lip very slightly, a faint expression of disdain that had taken weeks to perfect. Soon they might begin growing at a shocking speed. She had seen it happen to Franny Grant, her ex-best friend, and to Hilary and Karen. When they jumped for the ball on the volleyball court, the breasts bounced. It must feel strange, soft bumps on your body, flopping uncontrollably. The cycle of nature, as Miss French said. A portent of things to come. Pimples next, on her high forehead. But pimples could be covered up, and eventually they pass away. Breasts are forever.

  Unless you got cancer and had to have one taken off. Like Lou, her mother’s best friend, a few months ago. Wanda went to visit her in Parkvale Hospital and came home murmuring, ‘Poor Lou, poor Lou,’ as she drifted around the kitchen fixing herself coffee. While the water heated Wanda put her head down on the kitchen table and cried. ‘A young woman like that.’

  ‘Lou’s not so young. She must be thirty-five at least.’

  ‘That’s young, Allie, that’s very young. Listen, sweetie, make yourself a hamburger or something. I’m not hungry. I’m going to lie down.’

  It was odd to see Wanda cry, because most of the time, when she wasn’t being moody and silent, she was silly, like people on TV acting slightly drunk. And yet Wanda hardly ever drank—it made her too dizzy, she said.

  When Lou came over she looked the same as before, on both sides. Alison could hear the two of them in the living room, talking softly against the sound of coffee cups clinking on saucers.

  ‘But what does it look like?’ Wanda sounded eager as a child.

  ‘Ah, well, Wanda,’ drawled Lou, who came from South Carolina. ‘What’s the point? Better not to know. I don’t look at it myself.’

  ‘Listen, Lou, it’s like an epidemic—you’re lucky they caught it so soon. Think of it that way.’ ‘Sure, hon. Easy to say.’ She couldn’t imagine anything that would make her mother weep and moan, ‘Poor Alison, poor Alison.’ Oh, no. Wanda stared at her sometimes with those daffy green eyes as if she were a creature from another planet. An alien. It was true, she certainly didn’t look like any child born of Wanda, who was blond and pink. She had her father’s coloring. ‘Olive, sweetie,’ Wanda said when she was in a good mood. ‘Olive is nice.’ And at other times she said, ‘Why do you stay cooped up in your room all the time! For God’s sake, you’re positively green.’ Her eyes were good, though—tiger eyes that gave a clue to the real person inside. Staring at the mirror, she raised her head and straightened her shoulders. Miss Hanes, the gym teacher, was always telling them to straighten up and let the world see who they were. The world would not see any better who she was this way, though. Who people were was the greatest secret on earth; they guarded it with their lives.

  She put her shirt back on and returned to the bed and to Alice’s dilemma. Alice feels sorry for Hal and is grateful for the long ride through the Midwest. Also, she wants to see what it’s like—everyone talked and wrote so much about it. But still, those cold hooks...She postponed the decision by making the truck fall in a ditch. In the complicated rescue operation the hooks come in very handy. But she would have to look up the names of the parts of the truck and fill them in later. She was too tired and hungry now.

  As she knocked on Wanda’s door a low, steady murmur came from inside—Wanda on her Princess phone.

  ‘Alison? You can come in.’

  Her sneakers sank into the lavender carpet. The master bedroom, it was called, because the master and the mistress slept there. It was spacious, hung with purple and green velvet curtains and full-length mirrors; in the center reclined Wanda, rolled in a pink satin quilt on the king-sized bed, the telephone cord around her wrist like a bracelet. Her face was flushed from sleep and her short yellow curls were mussed. Magazines lay open around her.’ A cigarette butt smoldered in the ashtray and the odor of the burning filter spread through the room.

  ‘What is it, Alison? I’m talking to Lou.’

  ‘Is there anything to eat? It’s almost six.’

  ‘Oh, Christ. Already? I never got to go shopping. Look, honey, take ten dollars from my bag over there on the dresser and run over to the A & P and get a couple of steaks. Okay? Be a good girl. Honestly, I haven’t felt like myself for days.’ She made a pleading face.

  ‘Can’t we just have spaghetti or vegetables or something? I’ll make it.’

  ‘Just go, all right? I’m talking on the phone. Get some ice cream too, any flavor you like.’

  She took the money from Wanda’s purse and walked to the door.

  ‘Wait. Wait a second, Allie.’ Wanda took her hand from the mouthpiece of the phone. ‘Lou? Let me call you back in five minutes, all right?’ She hung up. ‘Come here, sweetie. Sit down by me, that’s right.’ She put her hand over Alison’s. ‘I really am sorry about dinner. I feel extremely lousy. Try to understand.’

  ‘If you’d tell me in advance I’d plan it myself. Last week you sent me out once for pizza and once for barbecued chicken.’

  ‘Did I really?’ Wanda raised her eyebrows and smiled. ‘That’s shocking! I guess I’m not the most efficient person in the world. Let me look at you. It seems like I haven’t seen you for days. How’s school? Do you know, you’re finally getting something up on top? How do you like that! Let Mamma see.’ Wanda made a grab at her shirt.

  She leaped away and crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Cut that out! For Chrissake!’

  ‘Oh, you’re sensitive about it.’ She laughed, reached for a cigarette, and fit it into a plastic holder. ‘Well, all right. I must say it’s about time.’

  ‘I think I’ll go for the steaks now, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Alison, before you go, would you bring me up a glass of ginger ale, please? Lots of ice. Five ice cubes! Maybe it’ll help my stomach.’

  ‘Yes, Miz Markman. Right away, ma’am.’

  ‘Oh, go on. Don’t be such a tough customer.’

  When she returned with the soda, Wanda was on the phone again, giggling with Lou. She sounded as bad as Franny and Hilary and Karen giggling in front of the pizzeria, waiting for the boys to notice them. They weren’t speaking to her now because she had told them how stupid they looked chasing Bobby and Elliot around the parking lot to get their books back. Well, tough shit. She got her bike out of the garage and coasted down the driveway.

  Steak. Slabs from a cow, soft and porous, sliced off its body. Meat. There was the same kind of meat in her. Squeezing her thigh, she could feel the muscles move as she pedaled, and she shuddered. In less than an hour she would be holding the slabs of cow in her hands, with the red blood dripping into the sink and making pale pink stains. She would pat them dry with a paper towel, like drying a baby after its bath. Lay them out on the broiler and salt them, like powdering the baby with talcum. And then eat one—she was so hungry she would love it. She was an animal that preyed on her fellow creatures. Part of the cycle of nature.

  She slid her bike into the rack outside the market and tested the automatic In door to see exactly which point on the rubber mat made it open. Inside, she took a Hershey bar with almonds from a front rack and tore off the wrapper—if anyone asked, she would promise to pay on her way out—and at the encyclopedia display, looked up Vegetarianism. Many eminent and talented people, it said, such as George Bernard Shaw, a playwright, and Mohandas Gandhi, an Indian leader, had been vegetarians. It wasn’t so weird after all. She had heard of that George Bernard Shaw recently.
Yes, Miss Patten had read them something two weeks ago from a play he wrote about Joan of Arc. Next week she would look up Puberty, and the week after, Breasts.

  The meat bin was stacked with dead flesh and bone wrapped in plastic. Once they had all walked around on four legs, peacefully eating grass. A few packages were labeled ‘Hearts.’ So they took the very heart out! ‘He’s eating my heart out,’ their next-door neighbor sometimes said to Wanda, about her husband. Right in front of the sirloins, blocking her path, an old man was bent over with his eyes closed. He was lean and muscular, and his large hands gripped the edge of the counter. From under a dark beret white hair showed straight and thin. He had a large bumpy nose and a cleft chin, and his face was crinkled with tiny lines. It was a sharp, almost harsh face, with the full lips pressed firmly together, but the expression was remote, as though all his concentration had been withdrawn from the world to some tremendous sensation within. She hesitated. ‘Excuse me.’

  He opened his eyes, black and glittery, but didn’t move.

  ‘Pardon me, I need to reach the steaks.’

  He shook his head, a minuscule arc.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Here, sit down.’ She dragged over a huge carton of paper towels and he slumped on to it, leaning an elbow on the meat bin and supporting his head on a veined hand with very long fingers. Miss Belling, the art teacher, once showed them photos of artists’ hands; they had become tools, she said, the fingers stretched and articulated from work. His hand was like those artists’.

  ‘Should I call a doctor or something? Are you very sick?’

  He shook his head again.

  ‘Well...when are you going to feel better?’

  ‘Why, is there any hurry?’

  His voice was low, with a slight rasp to it. She edged off and chose two steaks, the least bloody-looking she could find, then returned. ‘I don’t think I should just leave you like this. I’ll get the manager.’

  He lifted up a hand weakly. ‘No managers. It’s going away. It’s nothing.’

  ‘Are you—you’re not going to...pass out here or anything?’

  ‘Not at the moment. But the prognosis is grim.’

  ‘Do you have any pills? I could get you a glass of water.’

  ‘The pills are in a suitcase.’

  ‘Oh, I have an idea. Have one of these cans of orange juice. There are little openers on top. See? Here, drink it.’

  He drank. ‘A resourceful girl. Thank you. That’s better. How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘I’m almost thirteen. How old are you?’

  ‘Seventy-four.’

  ‘You don’t look that old. That’s quite an advanced age.’

  ‘I think so too. Sometimes I even think, enough is enough.’ He took a red bandanna from his jacket pocket and wiped his face.

  ‘Would you like me to walk you home?’

  ‘Thank you, no. I’ll be fine. I’ll have them deliver it. Go ahead with your shopping. Your mother will worry about you. Doesn’t she warn you not to talk to strangers?’

  ‘I don’t think she cares who I talk to.’

  He shrugged. ‘Well, that can have its advantages.’

  ‘I don’t know. Lately she just stays in bed and talks on the phone all the time.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s not feeling well.’

  ‘She looks okay to me.’

  He spread out his palms and tilted his head. ‘An enigma, then.’

  He couldn’t be from around here. He spoke differently and he thought differently. Possibly from very far away, somewhere exotic.

  ‘When I was younger I used to think I was adopted,’ she said. ‘In fact, I once wrote a story about it, a few years ago. There was this changeling. Her mother was a gypsy princess and her father was a Turkish lion-tamer. But it turned out to be not true.’

  ‘You asked?’

  ‘Well, not exactly. But whenever I got mad I would tell them that when I grew up I was going to search the entire globe till I found my real parents. My father got disgusted and dug my birth certificate out of an old carton. And then my mother found these ancient pictures of herself pregnant. So that was that. I was very disillusioned.’

  ‘Yes, I can imagine. May I ask...’ He closed his eyes for a moment and ran his hand slowly over his face. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘Because...I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t usually tell people things. Am I bothering you?’

  ‘No, that’s quite all right. I’m indebted to you for the juice and the carton.’

  ‘Really? Do you think I saved your life?’

  He smiled. ‘I suppose it’s a possibility. But you shouldn’t go about telling your private fantasies to strangers, you know.’

  ‘Did you ever think you were adopted? It’s a common fantasy, I’ve read.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ he replied. ‘No, that would have been a great luxury. Look here, I’m really not up to a serious discussion. And I’m sure your mother’s waiting for you.’

  ‘You’re sure you’ll be okay?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Go on about your shopping now.’

  She paid for the steaks and dashed outside to her bike. At last, someone! He was like a messenger in a play who bursts in with news of the outside world. So there really were people like that out there. He had traveled and seen life, as Alice was going to do. And she herself had saved a life. She longed to tell someone, but the only one who could possibly understand was Alice. She raced towards home, the sentences spinning out to the rhythm of the wheels. She had the dilemma all worked out now. Alice could save Hal’s life when the truck falls in the ditch, and he would be so grateful that he would look upon her with awe and reverence. He wouldn’t need to run those chilly hooks all over her. ‘His hungry eyes took on a look of trance as he gazed down at her slender, lissome body. Instead of brute craving, his face portrayed infinite gratitude. He reached out to touch her, but quickly drew back his hook. “No,” whispered Hal. “I have gone beyond that. You must remain untouched by crude passion.” ’ She pedaled up the driveway and took the package of dripping steaks out of the basket. Lissome, or lissom?

  A week later it happened again, like an omen. Late as usual, she pushed open the gym door, to be assaulted by a clamor of voices and bouncing balls. Four volleyball games at once. Four gray balls smudged with years of finger marks flew over the four droopy nets while dozens of arms flailed in disorder. Shouts rang through the air, which was already damp with sweat. Over in the left-hand corner, away from the games, Fats Fox, one of the gym teachers, stood high up on a ladder, threading a length of thick rope through big hooks in the ceiling. And there below him, on a wooden stool, sorting lengths of aluminum tubing and calling out instructions—she could see his full, old lips moving but couldn’t make out any words in the din—was that man, the one whose life she had saved! From the grim reaper. The icy grip of death. Cold fingers clutched at his throat but were thwarted just in time by a youthful...Okay, enough! she whispered fiercely, and in her head a black curtain dropped on the parade of phrases. Skirting the games, she strolled over. The navy-blue beret lay on a black attaché case near his feet. He looked like the photo of Picasso that Miss Bejling had hung in the art room—head thrust forward like a large cat about to spring, hard dark eyes glinting rays into the camera. This man might be a foreign painter too. From Paris, maybe. She could see him seated in front of an easel, on a bridge over that famous river, what was it again? Except he had had no accent.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  He swung around on the stool to face her. His eyes were dark and glinting also, and seemed to penetrate behind her face.

  ‘Don’t you remember me? We met at the meat counter.’

  His brows contracted and the eyes narrowed, as if searching in a cluttered place for the memory. ‘Ah, of course! The young lady who gave me the orange juice. The nonadoptee. Allow me to thank you once again. Pardon me for not getting up, but if I move I lose t
he exact measurements.’ He was marking off spaces with a pencil on a length of tube.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m helping Mr Fox set up some equipment. Obviously. And you, I take it, are a student?’ He looked briefly toward the volleyball games; there appeared to be a touch of scorn in his face.

  ‘Yes, but I find volleyball barbaric. It comes at you so suddenly. I’d much rather play basketball—at least it’s not so disorganized.’

  ‘It’s true,’ he said, glancing again at the nets. ‘Volleyball is a particularly chaotic game.’

  ‘I can get it in the basket every time. It’s my one skill in life. I really like that curve the ball makes, you know, when it goes over the hoop and slips in? I can feel that curve in my hand while I’m still holding the ball. It’s like magic. It’s all controlled and beautiful.’

  He had stopped penciling the tubes and was looking at her curiously. ‘You have the curve in your hand? Yes, I know what you mean. Fox!’ he called out all of a sudden. ‘Hold it right there! That ought to be firm enough. Try sliding down. Your weight will test it.’

  Fox, red-headed, wide-shouldered, and pudgy, pulled his gray polo shirt over the strip of pinkish belly above his sweat pants and stared down. ‘You mean slide down the rope?’