University of Northern Iowa

ChildhoodAuthor(s): Peter GordonSource: The North American Review, Vol. 268, No. 1 (Mar., 1983), pp. 40-41Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25124376 .

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can't rely on him. I don't know what to do with him. I told him to pick up the cleaning on his way home from work last night and he didn't do it. And I told him that because

of his stupidity I had nothing to wear this morning. He

always forgets to pick up the coffee or the milk or what

ever. I don't know where his mind is. Sometimes I won

der if he even thinks. He's so stupid." The other women

in the office, my wife tells me, nod their husbands into the same condition, compare notes about their husbands'

stupidities and agree that, indeed, men are out to make

the lives of their wives as miserable as possible. I have come upon these women toward the end of day,

when work has ceased, when their husbands and children

will be meeting and joining in their secret lives together. I wonder what these women will say when they rejoin their

husbands and begin again living with them. Lately, as I have entered the office, I have heard the sound of the other women in my wife's voice as she greets me with,

"So there you are, finally, I thought you were never

coming or that you had forgotten me." It is no reunion. I

am not late. I look at the clock on the wall hoping my wife will follow my eyes. I recall the eagerness, of a moment

earlier, of my thoughts of seeing her again. I am coming to

realize more and more that she is doing what they all do,

only more tentatively since I am there. I wonder what has

been said during the day, and my thoughts begin to dwell

on the possibilities among my latest blunders. I believe that my wife has begun to imitate the others. Maybe that's how it starts. But I notice that the other women are

aware of the tone of the greeting, these days, and that

they smile, slightly, not at my appearance in the office,

but, I think, at the fact that finally my wife has begun to become one of them. When I mention the effect of a comment to her, I am told that she had not been aware.

Privately I consider that worse than a conscious effort. I

wonder if tomorrow my wife will join in wholeheartedly with a particularly juicy tale of some lapse of mine. I think whether I have forgotten to do anything I had agreed to for this day.

I can see it coming. My worry is a personal worry. I do

not know how to escape the delight that they take in

seeing one of us fail. It will not be long now before, I fear, I will become like George or any other or all of them. And it will not matter w7hat I have done or left undone. I will

have ceased being myself and will have become one of the husbands who irritates more than he pleases. The disaf

fection will not mean that I have changed so much as it will mean that the women in my wife's office have a new

recruit. Somehow they could not bear her not joining in. I will stand guilty in collusion with the other men. What will I do with my civility and my charity? Which husband will I outdo in my cowardliness?

CHILDHOOD ( '^

" . ^ ftK?

Peter Gordon IKiB ^2 1111 _ 111,

1954 Dance grabbed us that year. Dance and exposure and

noise. The crowds were easy, the adulation, the envies.

You didn't get pegged on conspiracies then, you accepted the anonymous kiss. We developed skills, we wouldn't

founder. This was 1954 and we were early in our lives,

coming to bloom. America asked for us by name: Mary,

Marie, Otto (what the country would have given for Otto's yellow hair), Harry, Bonnie, and me.

Mary7 was 12, our baby dancer. Harry, Bonnie, and

Otto were 13, while Marie beat me to 14 by three days, three lousy days. Really, we were only ballroom dancers

at heart. We didn't break much new7 ground that year. We

waltzed, we foxtrotted, w7e rearranged the syncopated feet of the cha-cha with something our manager, Mister

Z, called the Pop. The Pop featured the male dancer

(Otto, especially, was so adept) kicking his feet at the shins of the female dancer, who backstepped in counter

point. Done by children, it was fast and lovely. Some

times Mister Z dressed us in blue tights and we did flips and backflips on rubber matting. We flopped. Mostly, we

waltzed, we foxtrotted, we Popped. We danced in chiffon and tuxedo, under Mister Z's

delicate invention. Mary appeared onstage first, curtsied,

began to spin. Otto emerged from the wings, beautiful

Otto, to take Mary's small hand. They waltzed. They

giggled. They stopped. They watched Ham* and Bonnie come dancing down from the north end of the stage,

maybe waltzing, maybe not. Harry was skinny and

Bonnie was thick and slow. But Bonnie dominated the

dance, holding Harry at bay, smiling at his feet. Otto and

Mary7 began dancing and smiling with them until some

thing else happened: Marie tiptoed onstage. Dark hair, dark eyes, the beginnings of breasts under chiffon. The four dancers froze. The boys took heart. Otto approached

Marie, begged for a dance. Marie refused. Harry ap

40 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW/March 1983

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proached and Harry was refused. Marie stood waiting,

waiting. Who would come to dance with Marie? Onstage, that year, it was me. I danced my way across the floor,

towards Marie. Marie noticed me. Marie noticed what a

handsome boy I was. Not as handsome as Otto, but a

handsome boy. She put out her hand and I took her hand. Otto took Mary's hand, satisfied with Mary's hand. Bonnie took Harry. We began to Pop pop pop.

Marie and Bonnie were miniature women (there was

nothing girlish about the w7ay they danced with a boy), aloof before performances, body-conscious, pretty. I

guess you could say I was in love with Marie, who was in love with Otto. Marie was my dancing partner, my height,

my weight, my age, but she was in love with Otto.

Then there was Mister Z, who only loved us, only understood us, as dancers. He loved to see children

dancing. In 1954 we danced from the Atlantic to the

Pacific, performing in casinos and old river ballrooms and

glitter dancehalls, transported by Mister Z and his white Cadillac. Onstage, we were celebrated for our lightness.

Offstage, we w7ere adored for our reality. I guess that

meant our bodies. Being superior, we wore white suits

(handpicked by Mister Z) and bunched centerstage at lawn parties like pelicans. It was easy to feign poses for the photographers, getting wild, grabbing headlines out of the blue or out of the toilet (famous photograph of Mary yanking up her underwear in a Newport stall). We were

the ones to mention. Mail flooded in from tiny outposts of American life, positively begging for our scribbled initials or locks of our hair (how7 the country coveted Otto's hair).

We stood for dreams discussed and not dreams de

ferred, that must have been it.

In 1955 we tried to go back across America, west to east this time, against the grain. It was okay. The photog

raphers took less notice of everyone's prettiness (except

ing Otto's). We were a rocket on a downward arch but still

a rocket. The dance was rewritten and Marie was dancing with Otto now. Marie danced with Otto and she could have been dancing with me, it didn't matter to Otto.

Marie mooned. Mary seemed less fragile. Harry filled out. We played shorter performances, highlighting Otto.

Only Otto was extra-magnificent in 1955. Otto was worth

everything.

But in September, in the hotel across the street from the Philadelphia Star Theatre, we lost Otto. Everyone lost Otto.

We were about to go on stage. "Otto is afraid," Harry reported. "Mister Z is holding

Otto's head over the toilet."

We wouldn't dance without Otto. Mister Z came to

say Otto wouldn't come. Otto was exhausted, Otto was

sleepy. "I won't dance," Mary declared.

We knew what the photographers knew: Otto's

beauty made the dance possible in 1955. Mister Z knew.

Mary7, our baby dancer, knew.

Mr. Z was shaking. "Please go dance."

So we tried. After spinning alone, Mary vanished.

Bonnie and Harry, even Bonnie, danced hopelessly. Marie and I danced together again, it was very disappoint

ing for Marie. There was no

Pop. We saw Otto after the performance. He was lying on

the bed in Mister Z's suite, wrapped in Mister Z's bath robe. The radio was playing at his feet. Otto, smiling, said

something nice to every7 one of us. We didn't know what

to say to him.

"Fred," he said to me, "I got sick and I can't dance

anymore." I started to cry, and Otto hushed me, and pulled me

towards him so Marie wouldn't see.

The next morning, Otto was lifted into the white Cadillac by hotel bellboys. Mister Z tried to keep the curious away but there were flashes of light everywhere. In his last photographs, Otto was wearing a white sweat

shirt and sky-blue yacht pants. There were groans because Otto's hair was underneath a baseball cap. The

newspapers were speculating right there in the street that

Otto was bald from disease.

Without Otto, we returned to earth. By the wintertime, no one was watching. Mister Z cried and cried and cried.

When he closed his eyes in bright light, we knew what he saw.

We were obsolete by 1956.

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW/March 1983 41

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