The Sound of One Horse Dancing

The Sound of One Horse Dancing

Copyright © 2011 by Tom Baker

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4620-5063-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-5064-2 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-5065-9 (dj)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011915551

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 10/5/2011

CONTENTS

BEFORE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

for

GARY

BEFORE

SATURDAY AT NOON THE air-raid whistle wailed, and wherever I was, I would lie down on the ground or race down to the basement and cover my head with my arms and close my eyes to protect myself from flying glass. I didn’t know where the flying glass was coming from or how it might hurt me, but just in case it happened, I would save my eyes.

The fact that flying glass never came on Saturdays at noon made no difference. I responded to the cue of the whistle. When the siren ceased and the whining moan faded into the afternoon air, I got up and continued my chores in the garden, digging up dirt around the peony bushes to let air and water get to the roots, picking handfuls of phlox and daisies for the dinner table, putting them in the brown baked bean jar that I used for my flower arrangements.

Since I’d become ill, I spent every weekend with my aunt Bea, who lived in a large wooden frame apartment building in the old section of South Norwalk, Connecticut. I looked forward to those weekends, because then I saw Loretta—my best and only friend. She was a year older than me and lived in the apartment next door. Her parents were French Canadian, a stigma in our New England neighborhood, composed mostly of Irish, Italian, German and Polish immigrants. Loretta’s family was looked down on by the rest of the neighbors, people calling them French Canucks, and no one talked to them in the hallways. Loretta’s mother and father sat out on the back porch on summer evenings by themselves, speaking French, while other tenants in the building visited, playing pinochle, drinking pitchers of iced tea and gossiping.

No one seemed to notice or care that Loretta and I spent so much time together. We were the only kids in the complex. Loretta and I went off after supper to the corner variety store across the street from St. Joseph’s Catholic Church to buy ice-cream cones. We knew we were different. We returned to our apartment building on South Main Street and sat on the fading wooden back steps, looking out onto the backyard while above us the sounds of foreign accents and incomprehensible chatter cut through the rocking of wicker chairs and the waving of bamboo fans. On those summer nights Loretta and I sat on the steps for hours, looking up through the tangle of clotheslines attached to a phone pole at the far end of the yard. We dreamed about traveling to foreign countries and seeing the world.

Summers were the best times at Aunt Bea’s. Loretta and I would be on the back steps until after dark, when her mother would finally call out over the banister, Loretta, time to come in.

In the fall, when it got too cold to sit on the back steps, Aunt Bea let Loretta come over after dinner to watch television, as her parents did not have a TV set. Saturday nights were the best because Jackie Gleason was on. The skyrockets and the lines of June Taylor dancers reflected in the overhead mirrors took me to a different world. I thought how grand to be on television. The dancers looked like they were having so much fun, always smiling. I imagined how wonderful it would be to live such a glamorous life. But I kept it to myself, weeding the garden and digging up the dirt around the peony bushes, sitting on the back steps with Loretta under the clotheslines and looking up at the stars.

Loretta taught me how to dance. We practiced in Aunt Bea’s apartment when no one was around, when Aunt Bea was out shopping at the A&P. Loretta was Ginger and I was Fred, making up steps we had seen last week on Jackie Gleason’s TV show or in the movies.

Saturday and Sunday afternoons were our movie days. Loretta and I sat through double and triple features at the Empress Theatre in South Norwalk, munching through boxes of Goobers and Juicy Fruits while our minds and hearts danced with the images on the giant screen. A different world of fantasy unfolded to me. A world where it was real to see an elegant couple swooning under a lamp post in Central Park or tap dancing on the roof of an apartment building with the backdrop of a city skyline flickering in the dawn. A whole new life, so unlike mine, overwhelmed me with longing and hope as I sat in the Empress Theatre holding hands with Loretta, our fingers sticky from the Goobers and Juicy Fruits.

On Sunday, Loretta and I went to Mass at St. Joseph’s Church, down the block from Aunt Bea’s apartment building. The nine o’clock Mass was reserved for students from the adjacent parochial school, and the main aisle was blocked off and reserved by pew for each grade with the nun from that class, hovering over her brood like a mother hen.

Loretta had to sit with her classmates in the fifth grade, and I had to go to the fourth grade section, announcing to the nun guarding that pew that I was visiting from another parish and requesting permission to sit with her class. I dreaded this, but Aunt Bea insisted I sit with boys and girls my own age and not be off in the back of the church by myself. All this time Aunt Bea would be having a cigarette on the back porch with Loretta’s parents.

I hated going to Mass because I didn’t feel I belonged there. The other boys and girls sitting in the pews were not my classmates, and they looked at me suspiciously, as if I were an intruder. I sat in the pew waiting for Mass to start, thumbing through my missal, careful not to look at anyone around me.

Aunt Bea insisted I use the collection envelope from my own church, Assumption in Westport. The money all goes to God, she said, but I wasn’t so sure. I was self-conscious putting my envelope in the collection basket because it was a different color, with different pictures of the saints from those on everyone else’s envelope. I knew the mother hen nun noticed, and so did the boys and girls in my pew.

Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t skip Mass. Sister Mary Claire, who taught my fourth grade class at Assumption School in Westport, wanted to make sure I was going to Mass every week, even though I was in a different parish. She made me write a summary of the theme of the sermon to prove I had fulfilled my holy obligation. I sat in the pew at St. Joseph’s trying to follow what the priest was saying so I could write something to prove that I had not committed a mortal sin by missing Sunday Mass.

Occasionally, a visiting priest would say the nine o’clock Mass at St. Joseph’s, and instead of giving a full sermon, just read the wedding announcements and prayers for the sick and deceased. The first time this happened, I panicked because I had nothing to write about to prove to Sister Mary Claire that I had been to Mass. She would never believe there had been no sermon that Sunday, because she was already suspicious I was away every weekend.

I solved this dilemma by copying some words out of my missal from the gospel for that particular Sunday. It never failed, and I did not get caught. But I felt another kind of sin—that I had to lie to prove I wasn’t missing Mass. I didn’t admit this lie in my weekly confession, adding another sin on top of another. I was doomed to hell, and I saw no escape.

The rigidity of the nuns in everything they did fed a growing resentment within me, but I was too shy to fight back. It was the same feeling of having to wait to be told when I could go to the water fountain to get a drink on a sweltering June afternoon. Those last days of school before summer vacation, I dreamed of when I would be free, when I could go to the water fountain whenever I was thirsty and not listen to some prickly old woman, some Bride of Christ in a black habit deciding when I had earned the privilege of taking a drink of water.

Being badgered by the nuns through grammar school became a way of life. I believed that everyone had to go through this fate—Catholic and Protestant. But when I walked by the playground of Bedford Elementary on the way home, the boys and girls were laughing and having a good time—no mortal sins there. No one seemed to be worrying about impure thoughts or talking in class after the bell rang. I tried to understand why Catholic school kids were so different, and why Henry VIII and Martin Luther began it, this whole Protestant thing, and what they would have to say now.

My first real confrontation with a Bride of Christ came the day I had the misfortune to use the word snuck in class. I was in third grade and called on to compose a sentence about ships stealing out of the harbor under the cover of darkness. Glad to have an answer, I replied that the ships snuck out of the harbor during the night. Sister Mary Claire slammed down her textbook and demanded I repeat what I had just said. Flustered, I repeated my response that the ships had snuck out of the harbor during the night. Not satisfied, the crow marched down the aisle and demanded to know where I had learned the word snuck. The class was looking at me as though I had committed a mortal sin. The black robe stood over me repeating her demand to know where I had learned such a word, her long wooden rosary beads clanging menacingly.

I didn’t know what to say. I had no idea where I had heard the word snuck before. She hovered over me demanding an answer, so in panic I blurted out that my sister had taught me the word, hoping that would satisfy the old woman. That was a fatal mistake, because she then accused me of lying.

I was ordered to the front of the class while the old nun knocked on the door of the adjoining fourth grade classroom.

Sister Mary Joseph, she said as the door opened, I am sorry to disrupt your class, but I must ask one of your students an important question regarding her brother and an issue that has come up in my class.

I stood waiting for my execution. My sister had no idea what was happening. I was ordered back to my seat. At the end of class I was given a sealed envelope with instructions to give it to my mother when I got home. I was doomed. Crossing over the old cement bridge spanning the Saugatuck River, I thought of throwing myself in and letting the water take me out to Long Island Sound. But that would be suicide, another mortal sin. I considered ripping up the note from Sister Mary Claire and throwing it in the river. At worst, that was a venial sin. All this for an accidental lie about those ships that snuck out of the harbor during the night.

CHAPTER ONE

VIRGINIA WOOLF HAD TROUBLE with her opening sentences. I was just waking up from a dream, squinting through the harsh morning daylight streaming in through the skylight. Without even looking at the clock, I knew I had overslept, and I would be late for work. Of all mornings to screw up!

My body was stiff from sleeping on the drafty floor all night. I propped myself up on my elbows to look at the young boy curled up next to me under the comforter, sleeping quietly like a cocker spaniel. He was as striking as I remembered him, with perfectly straight blond hair falling over his forehead and across his closed eyelids. His body next to mine was the only warmth in the apartment, and I hesitated to disturb him. His lightly sunburned skin looked wonderfully healthy and out of place in the cold November light of New York. By contrast, I looked pasty and washed-out, having abandoned my rooftop tan in August when the heat, sooty air, and humidity became an unwilling price to pay for a little color.

The temptation to slide up to my sleeping guest and pull the comforter over us, falling back into a luxurious sleep, was overwhelming, but I could well have kissed off my career if I gave in. Dammit, I thought, why doesn’t this happen to me on a weekend when I don’t have to go to work?

I hesitated a few minutes, plotting out the recovery process. Brush teeth, take two aspirin, orange juice, coffee, go shower, shave, and get dressed. Pulling it together had become a routine, but last night I’d gone overboard. It started with Ken, after work, at the Roosevelt Grill. Usually we had two drinks before he caught his train home to Katonah, but last night we were both in the mood to unwind. We’d been working on a new business presentation for the last two weeks. Ken made the 9:05 after the fourth round of drinks and two bowls of peanuts. I’d lost any desire for food but was just wasted enough to stop for another drink. I was at Julius’, my neighborhood bar, at 9:30 on a week night where I met this beautiful blond boy, now lying next to me on the floor. He’d been leaning next to the jukebox at the rear of the bar, peeling the label off his beer bottle with his thumbnail, looking down at the floor. I’d had enough to drink to approach him. He’d smiled and immediately warmed up. He was a student at a junior college in Florida, on his way home for the Thanksgiving holiday. He lived somewhere in upstate New York, but other than that I couldn’t remember anything we talked about. Worst of all, I couldn’t even remember his name.

Our clothes were scattered across the floor, and two half-empty beers sat on the fireplace mantle where we had left them the night before. A fresh gray mound of ash in the fireplace confirmed that I’d put on the Presto-Log to complete the romantic setting. Records were out of their jackets on the floor by the stereo, but despite my efforts, it appeared the two of us had just curled up and fallen asleep on the floor.

My head was throbbing as I slipped out from under the comforter and made my way through the galley kitchen into the bathroom to get a terry cloth robe. My naked body felt like a corpse in the cold apartment, and with no heat on, I wondered if the landlord had forgotten to pay the oil bill—again. That would mean no hot water.

Hugging myself to warm up in the folds of the bathrobe, I stared into the bathroom mirror, letting the hot water tap run, just in case. I looked like a subway had run over me: my eyes red and glossy, swollen up, puffy. I smelled stale alcohol on my breath as I stuck out my tongue, dry as sandpaper. A few more hours sleep would help, but there was no way I could call in sick today, not with a creative review at eleven o’clock. I knew some day my little Dorian Gray act was not going to work, but with any luck I might pull it off one more time today.

Icy water continued to pour out of the tap, so maybe having to shave with cold water was enough punishment for the day. Forget a shower! My body couldn’t endure that much torture. This flat is what real estate ads referred to as a "brownstone apartment with Village Charm."

The teakettle whistled on the gas burner as I poured out two glasses of Tropicana orange juice. My guest had wakened and rolled over on his stomach, stretching out. He yawned and beamed a sheepish smile at me as I curled down next to him with the glasses of juice.

Good morning.

Oh … hi, he said shyly, sitting up and pulling the comforter around him for cover.

Here, I said, offering him a glass of juice. Medicine. I’ve got water on for coffee. It’ll be ready in a few minutes. Sorry … instant.

We sat on the floor, self-conscious in the brightness of the morning light, the spontaneity of the night before having evaporated. It was awkward waking up in my apartment with a stranger, especially when I couldn’t remember what did - or what didn’t - happen.

The whistling teakettle hissed and sputtered with a high-pitched shriek. I returned with two mugs of instant coffee and cuddled up next to him.

So, how did a squeaky-clean kid like you end up at Julius’ last night? He smiled, a light sprinkle of freckles on his nose and flushed cheeks. He looked like the classic all-American kid. No wonder I’d pounced on him last night. He was so atypical of the people you run into in New York bars.

He told me a friend of his that he went to high school with in Burlington used to come down to the city on weekends and make the rounds in the Village. His friend told him about Julius’, supposedly the oldest gay bar in New York, with all those cobwebs on the ceiling. It was a legendary hangout for locals, actors, and writers. That’s where his friend met Edward Albee. My guy had planned to stay over in the city on his way home for Thanksgiving, just to check out the Village. It was his first time in a New York bar, although he confided that he had been to a couple of places in Fort Lauderdale. I suspected the high school friend who had turned him on to Julius’ was more than