Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn Read Online Free PDF Page A

my life. Half of my life. I have half of my life to live. Oh my God.
    “Half of my life,” I say out loud.
    “What?”
    “I have half of my life floating around out there waiting for me.”
    Elizabeth doesn't say a word but I notice her eyes light up a notch and a breath of something wild leaves her chest. She listens and I ramble and ramble and sip and sip again and I see something, not very clearly, something like a ship so far away you wonder if it isn't the wine or the bend of the horizon or the past meeting the future right there where your eyes happen to be resting for that one second. I see a glimpse of something moving so slowly, I imagine I could catch it if I barely crawled, but I cannot bear yet to reach out and touch it or see it or understand what it is. Please pass a baby blanket.
    “You are starting,” she says, like a professor nodding to a class of freshmen. “Crashes, wrong turns, be prepared. But also be ready for dancing.”
    “What?”
    “Naked dancing.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “The shit is about to hit the fan, Meg darling. Lives are changing as we speak. When you leave this house, as you must eventually, everything you know will have changed. Bob. The kids. Your job. Your role in life. All of this because of your watching. It can be a glorious relief. Wonderment. Naked dancing at midnight with flames of fire or at the break of dawn when the air is fresh and hard.”
    I am feeling woozy with the vodka but I almost get it. I put one hand on Elizabeth's thigh so that I can steady myself, and then I imagine me dancing naked—C-section scars, fifteen extra pounds around my middle, veins popping out like adolescent acne, dips and curves replaced by a melting pot of middle age, hair gray at the roots, scars from elbow to chin—and I am not quite sure if I should laugh or cry.
    Elizabeth looks over at me and sees my eyes crinkle with deep thought, notices the questions lying right there, and she tells me to imagine it anyway. “Just imagine it.”
    I do.
    The light is perfect and there are miles of red desert cliffs. All of my nails are painted to match the ribbons of a summer sunset and are perfectly filed. My hair has been bleached by the sun and hangs in perfect curls down the center of my back. My skin is the color of whole wheat bread. It is the glorious moment before day surrenders—hands in the air, clouds drifting fast—into the dark eyes of night. I take off my shorts, shirt and sandals. This act does not bother me. It does not matter if anyone sees me. I do not care. The music drifts in on the edges of the night air, musty, wild, scented with the smell of sage from the desert. It is never loud, and surely I am the only woman in the world who hears it. I hear it and I begin to dance. I dance for five, ten, fifteen then twenty minutes. I dance until it is as dark as it will ever be and the sky is littered with stars, and when I finally stop and look up, a crowd of ten thousand men and women begin clapping and the sound rumbles in my ears like an explosion in my own head.
    “Dancing naked at the edge of dawn, Elizabeth. I can imagine it, but can I do it? Can I?”
    My hands are in hers. She has moved to face me. I may never sleep or eat or walk again.
    “Drink up, sweetie. Drink up. You are going dancing.”

 
     
     

     
     
    1963
     
    The noise is a raging wave of mingled voices that wakes Margaret from a dream where ponies are dancing and she is talking to the sky. Her father's voice is the loudest. It is a deep siren that is laced with the words
No
and
Never.
She has heard the voices like this since the day she turned seven just three months ago. The house had been filled with her aunts and uncles, cousins running from room to room, a tub of beer on the back porch and her brothers swinging from the trees and stealing the birthday balloons so they could fill them with water and drop them onto the front sidewalk.
    Her Auntie Marcia was the last to leave and was also