80
SANFORD CHERNOFF
coming through. With her she had the man from the apartment be–
low and a bottle.
It
looked like she already had had a few. Her hair,
for one thing, had come undone and fell comically down one side.
Then there was all this talking she did. And before long, she was trying
to get into one of her old dresses. For a minute there I thought it
was one of those from the shop and worried what I would do if she
tore it or something. I would, I decided, do just what I was doing.
The dress had little to do with it really and, watching her struggle
with it, I cared little now one way or the other. She somehow man–
aged to work the dress down over one breast. But there she was stuck
with it. She could neither squeeze any further into or out of the
dress. The effort brought her color up and there was this distorted,
yet anything but comic, look to her now . And she was quiet, thor–
oughly quiet, now that the struggle was over with, if only for the
moment. Then she had to dance, she said, and sent the man down
for his phonograph. He returned with his boxing gloves as well, and
tried to get my brother to put them on with him. He didn't have the
time, he had a train to catch, Ed kept saying in that loud way of his.
And once more the phonograph repeated ,
"It
had to be
YOll."
It was
the third time. My leg was acting up but she wouldn't let me stop
dancing. "We're just getting started," she sang, her breath short and
timeless by my ear. Once or twice I tried to get that side of her hair
back up where it belonged, but it wouldn't stay. It ran like dust
from my hand. She dipped again, one of her fancy dips and, over
her shoulder, I saw us in the mirror.
It
was unbelievable. I looked
the older and, if not for the hat, the image of my father. And it
struck me then that it was him she was dancing with, holding to.
"You're all over me. Don't you hear the damned mu 'ic?" I closed
my eyes the next time around the mirror. But it was worse that way.
I saw more that way. Something fell then. It was behind us and,
from the sound of it, I expected to find something more than just
the man there. But there he was flat on hi. back, his mouth cut and
smiling. "Sweet," was his fir. t word and it was unmistakably for
my
brother, standing there above him, unlacing a gloye with his teeth.
"Don't apologize.
It
was beautiful. I can 't rememher the last time
I was hooked like that. Sweet. The way you threw it. So nice and
easy. Like it was nothing. Like you had nothing behind it. Where
did it all come from?"
