Past Tense

Nausea. As if I had left a boat trip three steps behind me. Two seconds of a little mental confusion. I need to sit on the bed and analyze the topography of the room. It is foolish to expect happy endings to breed only among themselves and dominate the species. Good heavens...! Where am I going with this denial? The lines start to scribble around outlining the unfamiliarity of that scene. Linen sheets, brown flannel curtains, a slightly musty oak smell were concealed within those two seconds. However, it was the silence that hit me most harshly.

For 45 years, Bill and I have lived in one of the busiest places in Chicago. We were habitués of the various cafes, restaurants, concert halls… No one would expect anything more from a dancer and an enthusiastic jazzman. By the way, that's how we met. The performance of his quintet was on the same day that I would audition for a tap dance show in this small jazz club on Wilson Avenue. I confess I hadn't noticed him right away. Charlie, the piano guy, was the catchy one indeed! The strings of the instruments quivered while strummed fast and the metals clanged convulsively, the drums jumped up-and-down carrying through the beats of the last song in the rehearsal - their arrangement of Carnegie Jump (oh how I love this one!).

Dancers and their focusing rituals adorned the club's east wall, waiting for the stage to clear. We then started the test, and he was there. The eyes consumed me while the instruments settled themselves in the cases. I understood how a pigeon feels when roaming the streets in front of a lazy cat. His head spun along with my movements. I cursed our existence when I realized I had delivered the choreography all wrong.

As soon as I stepped off the stage, I felt his gravitation, the tone of his voice softened the feline eyes, "... the most graceful dancer I’ve ever seen…". Heat went up to my cheekbones, jaws clenched, even my breath clasped. All I could do was allowing my hand to utter that wave that embossed my insides, my chest and my behind my ears. The five fingers splayed flat across his face! All he did was smile.

“And if it weren't for you, this WONDERFUL dancer would have gotten a place in the show! What a great compliment, you numpty!” It was not hasty. Not at all. Do you have any idea how difficult it was to become a well-known reputable artist? Even more so for newcomers to the United States. At that time we were fewer, here and there. This was one of the first fine tests that had turned up in weeks! I blew the air out of my lungs like a locomotive. Despite my customary readiness I sure feel as if I’d skipped one conscious decision or two, my eyes still flashing reflected in his. "Can I at least buy you a drink to redeem myself from my inappropriate behavior then?"

We were married seven months later. And lived with his father, what a magnificent, solid man, Mr. Beaumond. He passed two years after the ceremony took place. The old house in Eaglewood served us as a home for a few more months. It is a lovely neighborhood, don’t get me wrong, but… I guess you just can’t stop the liveliness of two blazing spirits. Bill then turned to me one day with his cold coffee on one hand and the newspaper int the other one. “Hey beauty, I think it's time to got to the eye of the hurricane”, and you bet the apartment we bought was just around the corner from Green Mill, “uptown doll!”

Bill, in addition to playing two or three nights a week with the quintet, had received an invitation to work with the band at the neighborhood school. “Those little heads! They all boil with creative ideas!”, He said excitedly after one of his first classes when I stopped by to catch him at the school door. “I'm sure of it, my love. As long as they don't learn so soon to lower their eyes, they will do very well having you to inspire them ”.

My dance classes in a nearby studio also helped a lot. Initially all types of students. Gradually, I became more... peculiar, I guess I can say. The owner of the studio was the one who realized I had a way of reviving relationships worn out by time and mortgages. In about eight or nine years, Bill convinced me to have my own studio. "I suspect that I trust your presumptuous ways more than you do it yourself!" he joked, usually squinting one eye and leaning slowly toward me to find the line between my neck and shoulder.

Bill has this ... HAD ... this fascinating way of not letting me remember life is made up of causes and consequences. One day roses, another one candles, walks during warm nights and romantic get always. He was the type of man who would never make his wife spend more than 15 minutes in hospital’s waiting rooms every week. Not to mention the amount of money we would spend on treatments. We had been married so recently, this was not the kind of thing newlyweds should be doing. He didn't want me to worry about those boring things. How can I blame you for wanting to make me happy?

In the last few years I noticed he’d begun to desert the trombone more and more. The age – I justified to my own blindness. “This is our cue”, I imagined. He had ensured that we saved a good amount of money to buy this cabin last year. “You know one of the things we never did together? I think we should try it… ”, we had never been prone to settle quiet ground, insulating ourselves from the all effervescent circles.

I still can seem to come to terms with it all. How did you manage all these years ...? The doctor swore to me that it was a patient's confidentiality issue. How did you manage to convince him? The disease caused accumulations of iron in the body, all kinds of damage to the organs when not treated. Everything had been downright calculated. With a low iron diet and, if he became a blood donor religiously, he would keep things under control.

A month and a half after we closed the cottage deal and sold the studio, his liver gave up. Bill has always hated how we petrify in face of endless catastrophic thoughts; and that this, most of the time for most people, seems to be the only way to manufacture new days. Worrying too much about a future that may perhaps sink, brooding over a past that has already estranged us. No. Not my Bill, no.