Peter Beagle - The Line Between

I stayed with Emilia and Philip over a weekend after my part of the shooting was over. They live in an old two–family house in a working–class neighborhood of Secaucus. Secaucus still has one of those, a work–ing class.The place could use a new roof, and there's a draft in the kitchen that Philip hasn't been able to trace down yet. It's a good house, with a black kitten named Rita, for Rita Hayworth. Philip loves old movies and early music.

On the day I left, Emilia and I sat in the kitchen while she gave Alex his lunch. Alex was ten–and–a–half months old then, with a rapturous smile and the table manners of a Hell's Angel. But today he was in one of his dreamy, contemplative moods, and made no difficulties over the brown stuff, which he normally despised, or the green stuff, which he preferred to play with. I sat in a patch of sunlight, watching the two of them. Emilia's gained a little weight, but on her it looks good, and there's a warmth under her pale skin. Marriage suits her. Secaucus suits her.

I think I was actually half–asleep when she turned suddenly to me and said, «You think I don't think about him.»

«Actually, I hope you don't," I said, rather feebly. «I try not to, myself.»

«There isn't a day," Emilia said. «Not one.» She wiped Alex's mouth and took advantage of his meditations to slip some of the yellow stuff into him. «Philip always knows, but he doesn't mind. He's a good man.»

«Does he know the whole story? What can happen when you think too much about someone?»

She shook her head without answering. When Alex had reached capac–ity and was looking remarkably like Sydney Greenstreet in the noon–day sun of Casablanca, she took him to his crib, singing «This Time the Dream's on Me» softly as she set him down, already asleep. It was one of Sam's favorite old songs, and she knew I knew. I looked down at Alex and said, «Nice legs. You think there might be a dancer at the other end of them?»

Emilia shook her head quickly. «No, absolutely. He's very much Philip's child. He'll probably play football and grow up to be an ACLU lawyer, and a good thing, too. I'm not going to make him into my dreams of Sam.» We tiptoed out of the room, and she gave me one of the heavy black beers for which Philip and I—and Sam, too, for that matter—shared a taste. She said clearly and firmly, «Alex is real. Philip is real. Sam is dead. My dreams are my own business. I can live with them.»

«And you never wonder — "

She cut me off immediately, her eyes steady on mine, but her mouth going tight. «I don't wonder, Jake. I can't afford it.»

She seemed about to say something more, but the doorbell interrupted her. When she answered it, there stood a small brown girl, no older than five or six, on the step, asking eagerly before the door was fully open, «Miz Larsen, can I play with Alex now?» She looked Filipina, and she was dressed, not in the T–shirt and jeans which children are born wearing these days, but in a white blouse and a dark woolen skirt, as though she were going to church or to visit grandparents. But her accent was unadul–terated New Jersey, born and bred.

Emilia smiled at her. «He's having his nap, Luz. Come back in an hour or so. Do you know how long an hour is?»

«My brother knows hours," Luz said proudly. «Okay. 'Bye.» She turned away, and Emilia closed the door, still smiling.

«Luz lives a block down from us," she said softly. «She's been crazy about Alex from the day he was born, and he adores her. She's over here almost every day, after school, talking to him, carrying him, inventing games to make him laugh. I'm sure the first real word he says will be Luz.»

She was talking fast, almost chattering, which is not something Emilia does. We looked at each other in a way that we hadn't since I'd been there. Emilia turned away, and then stood quite still, staring through a front window. Without turning, she beckoned, and I joined her.

On the sidewalk in front of the house, little Luz was dancing.

Not ballet, of course; not the self–consciousness that suggested lessons of any sort. Her movements were just this side of the jump–and–whirl of hopscotch, and there were moments when she might have been skipping double–Dutch without the ropes. But it was dancing, pure and private, and there was music to it—you had only to look at the intense brown face for that. Luz was hearing music, and to watch her for even a little time was to hear it too.

«Every day," Emilia said. «Her parents don't know—I asked them. She waits for Alex to wake up, and while she waits she dances. Nowhere else, just here. I hoped you'd see.»

Luz never looked up toward the house, toward us.

I said, «She doesn't dance like Millamant.» Emilia didn't bother to answer anything that dumb. We watched a while longer before I said, "«He told you, whatever became of him—his soul, his spirit, his molecules—he'd always know you. But he didn't say whether you'd know him.»

«It doesn't matter," Emilia said. She took my arm, hugging it tightly, and her face was as bright and young as the child's. «Jake, Jake, it doesn't matter whether I know

him or not. It doesn't matter.»

Luz was still dancing on the sidewalk when the taxi came to take me to the train station. I said goodbye as I walked past her, trying not to stare. But she danced me escort to the cab door, and I looked into her eyes as I got in, and as we drove away.

And what I think I know, I think I know, and it doesn't matter at all.

— =*@*=-