The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(69)

*

The readings didn’t close out the evening. Mahenny removed the podium, and three Irish musicians took the stage. The lead singer had ferocious red hair and a bird’s nest of a beard, and the three didn’t just sing their songs—they attacked them. Tables and chairs were pushed aside to clear a dance floor.

George threw off his jacket and swung Molly around in a bucking polka, and the young poet with the piercings paired off with a cowboy in a starched shirt and handlebar mustache.

Bree stopped by with Reuben. “Jo, you were terrific.” She had to shout to be heard above the reel blasting from the stage.

Reuben leaned close. “The family’s throwing a shindig in a few weeks for my brother’s birthday. You’re all invited.”

“How old’s he now?” asked Simon.

“Turning sixteen,” Reuben answered as Bree pulled him back to the dance floor.

Olin stood and offered his hand to his wife. “Honor me?”

Jessie’s smile as she took it dropped decades off her.

“You know,” I told Simon as I watched them on the floor, “they dance like this more nights than not. Turn on their old radio and off they go. I don’t know where they get the energy. I’m starting to wonder what he packs in that rolling paper of his.”

Then it was Simon who stood and stepped to my side. “May I?”

I stared at his open hand.

“Simon,” I said, “I haven’t danced in years. And I’ve never tried a reel in my life.”

He glanced toward the stage, then back at me. “This song’s about over. If the next is a slow one, will you dance?”

The Irishmen had been playing only jigs and reels. They could read the crowd, and the crowd wanted to move. I felt safe in agreeing.

“Sure,” I said.

Almost as soon as I said it, the reel was over. There was a pause, and the three musicians exchanged a look. Without a word, one of them took up a penny whistle, the second an electric guitar and the third an electric bass. The bass beat a deep, rhythmic thrum while the flute broke into a slow, melancholy tune.

“What are the odds?” I murmured.

Simon was gazing at me steadily now, arm outstretched.

I laid my hand in his and he pulled me gently to my feet.

Even after a decade, I still managed to remember whose arms went where. What I’d completely forgotten was the initial thrill of stepping into a man’s embrace—the feel of skin against skin, of warm breath against my temple.

I moved stiffly at first—for so long, physical contact with a man was something I’d tried very hard to avoid. And I was painfully aware that I was just as skittish as I’d been at my first junior high dance. But if Simon was aware of it, he didn’t show it.

He didn’t pull me tight or let his hand roam, nor could I ever imagine he would. Not like that. He pressed his palm lightly against the small of my back, and the warmth of it seemed to percolate through my clothes, through my skin, down to my core.

The music was almost primal—a minor bass chord, over and over, like the beat of a drum, the flute raveling against it like a keening voice, prickling every hair on my arms.

I closed my eyes and there were images of landscapes I’d never seen before—immense, ragged mountain ridges carved by receding glaciers. Deep valleys exploding with yellow gorse and purple thyme. Lush lowlands sweeping down to the North Sea, waves pounding against the rocky coast, so close you could breathe in the cold salt spray . . .

The scenes were so intense, so vivid, that when I opened my eyes again it was disorienting not to see the surf crashing on the rocks right in front of me . . . to feel the salt water on my face, or taste it on my tongue . . .

And there was Simon, watching me with the slightest smile, and those knowing, careful, hooded eyes.





Climbing a Mountain





It took a while to identify what I was feeling lately. I ran through the usual roster, but nothing fit.

At last, I put my finger on it: I was happy.

It had been so long. Jim had taken so much—lopping away bits and pieces until there was nothing of the essentials left. Till Joanna was gone, boiled down to baser elements.

Now here she was again in the mirror, gazing back at me. Not quite what she had been, not yet. But no longer the lump of potter’s clay on Jim’s wheel, either.

The feeling persisted until I filled up the notebook, then started another. I had so much to say, and every word on every page felt like a victory. A battle won. I reveled in it.