The Begging Dance

Today, five years ago, July 13 Maxx was "officially" diagnosed with Hepatosplenic T-Cell Lymphoma. The "official" beginning of the end.

When I was a girl at home with my mother, who had she not died from breast cancer would have drunk herself to death on Smirnoff 100 proof vodka (red label, not blue), we participated in a particularly memorable danse macabre. The "Begging Dance." The first move was hers. Wherever she happened to be sitting, the corner of the couch, or in bed, she would turn her head in my direction, face contorted in an agony of anxiety, eyebrows pinched into a little hill of despair, mouth pulled down at the corners, eyes swimming in tears and the glassy confusion of alcohol, and move out onto the dance floor.

"Lisa, do you think he will come home this time?"

She was referring to my delinquent, whoring father who was at sea as a third mate, gone usually at this point about 4 weeks.

Depending upon my mood, which was usually at this point, about 4 weeks, a sober match for her own, I would say irritably, "Of course, mom. Do we have to do this again?"

And this was where the dance took off. Out onto the gravel floor in our bare feet we would begin the Begging Stomp.

"But Lis, are you sure? Do you really think so? How can you be sure? Why do you think he'll come home this time?"

I loved her. I hated her. She repulsed me. But I took her hand and we danced on that stoney ground until our feet bled anew. 

And here's the thing about that dance. We always knew, she and I, how it would end. In her case, with another drink and a handful of tranquilizers. I could no more answer her frenzied questions about my father's return than I could refuse to be her partner.

Now, I am two years shy of the age she was when she died; about 10 years beyond the age she was when she invested so much of her survival in the outcome of a dance whose end never varied. And, finally I get it.

"Please, let this never have happened. Please, please, please. Let this never have happened. Please bring him back. Please, let him be here. Please. Please, I want him so much. Please."

Here I am 45 years later, flinging myself into the same choreography of despair, eyes brimming, muscles knotted, bent legged, back bent into a C of sorrow. Empty arms.

"Please bring him back. Please."

My father always came home. Maxx cannot.