Dancing on the Edge Read Online Free PDF

waterproof, so there she stood, in a puddle of colors that had run off her face, waving a piece of toilet tissue and saying she’d visit when she could. I waved back and slunk down in my seat so that just my eyes were high enough to see out the window. I watched her dabbing at her eyes with the tissue and waving at us again. Then Gigi turned left out of the driveway and Aunt Casey was gone. It left me with a funny feeling, seeing her one second standing on the stoop waving, and the next second, without moving my eyes from her, seeing instead the bushes that ran along the edge of our property. I wondered if she was still there, or if she had disappeared. Maybe people existed only as long as you were seeing them, only as long as your mind could conjure them up. Maybe I existed only as long as someone was looking at me, or thinking about me. The rest of the time where was I? Who was I? I stared down at the dirty bits of bubble gum stuck to my fingers. I picked at the old gum and wondered,
What happens to a person when no one’s thinking about her anymore?
    â€œYes, I devoted my life to him. I made him what he is today,” Gigi said, jumping back into my thoughts.
    I looked over at her and saw her eyes watering and blinking.
    â€œNow that Dane’s melted, Gigi,” I said, “where do you suppose he is?”
    Gigi leaned forward, her large chest mashed against the steering wheel, and snatched a piece of toilet tissue out of the ashtray. She blew her nose and tossed the tissue onto the floor of the van. “Dane’s where he’s supposed to be, sugar pie. That’s what it’s all about, figuring where you ought to be and who you ought to be and then going and doing it.”
    â€œBut where does melting take you? What place?”
    â€œOh, some other place, some other time,” Gigi said, her right hand fiddling with the crystal she had hanging around her neck. “Wish I could tell you more, but that’s the way melting works. It’s a vague kind of thing, one of those mysteries of life scientists and spiritualists and other ists are always trying to figure out.”
    â€œOh,” I said, turning back to the window. I noticed people waving and smiling in the next car over, and I slid down in my seat. Anytime we left town in our van people stared or honked or pointed and waved—something. Gigi’s van was a sight to behold. The outside had been painted a deep purple, of course—the most spiritual color—and on it were crystal balls and Ouija boards and tarot cards and hands and stars and a giant Egyptian-looking eye and the words “O PEN YOUR MIND AND TRAVEL BEYOND THE U NIVERSE !”
    We turned into Grandaddy Opal’s driveway, and I sat up straight, chewing on my lower lip. I didn’t think moving in with Grandaddy Opal was such a good idea. I overheard Uncle Toole saying only someone as crazy as Gigi would go back and live with her ex-husband after fifteen years. Then Aunt Casey said they weren’t going to be living as husband and wife. “Why, they don’t even like each other,” she said. “Haven’t spoken to each other except lately, to say she needed to stay at his house awhile until she got back on her feet. But where else could she go? They were only renting that house of theirs, and the landlord told Gigi he’d read the article in the paper and he couldn’t have people like her renting his house anymore. Anyway, it’s just going to be a kind of
arrangement
.” And she emphasized the word making it sound like she meant to say derangement.
    All I knew was that I didn’t want to be there. Grandaddy Opal’s name always came up in Gigi and Dane’s fights, and so did mine, and they never sounded good together, my name and his—linked together when we didn’t even know each other. Their angry words had always scared me, and I had the feeling now that Gigi planned to leave me there alone with