Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn (19 page)

That night, with Michael holding her hand and pouring out his longings and realizations, there was the soft beating of a Tongan drum in his head. But Meggie heard nothing. There was an ocean right outside her window and there were strange but beautiful birds calling her name and the whispers of ancient souls pointing her in the proper direction, but she was not ready, would not be ready for a very long time.

Margaret Joan Callie dreamed, but she did not know how to dream. Margaret Joan Callie loved, but she did not know how to love.

When Michael left, she was brave enough to stand in the yard and hold him one last time before he slipped into Mark's car and disappeared down Washington Avenue and toward the swaying palms of the South Pacific. She thought she heard someone whisper her name before she snuck in the back door and quietly slipped into bed, wrapping the quilt around her shoulders to savor the final scents of Michael's aftershave and the beer and maybe the lingering echo of one more laugh.

She thought it was the beer when she heard the whisper again, or maybe the whiskey, and so she did not listen. She did not listen to the whispers of her life, and while Michael winged his way west she embraced her old dreams, the ones with ponies and bright morning light and girls dancing in tights. She did not hear the whispers that spoke to her of mountain passes where the birds' wings touched the tips of the trees and all the good men in places with names she could not pronounce who would hold her hand but never hold her down and the way everything that touched her lips never tasted bitter, but sweet and fine.

She did not hear the whispers.

There is a golden unwritten rule in Mexico. It is the rule called “Never hurry up when you could go slower.” This rule has me totally messed up. I do not like to wait; I do not know how to wait. But in the morning when everyone in this part of the universe is still asleep, I want them all to be awake. We should be driving and galloping and running at full throttle toward this momentous life occasion that will show me whatever in the hell it is I missed and should have come searching for years and years ago.

Elizabeth is asleep.

Linda is asleep.

Jane is asleep.

No one in the very dark and quiet home of our lovely hosts is moving, and here I am all dressed up in my purple skirt, with nowhere to go.

“Damn it,” I say to myself as I kick sand all the way to the beach. “Damn it.”

I decide to walk the beach and air out the purple skirt. It could be hours before anyone wakes up, and I am far too restless to sleep. The sun is not close to blinking awake yet either, and I have no idea what time it might be, so I walk into the beginning of the beautiful Mexican day alone and waiting—two items that seem to be appearing at the top of my list quite a lot lately.

The light here is exotic to me, dancing colors that seem more vivid than the colors of the world I am used to. The sky this early in the morning is just now beginning to turn into a flame of orange. The ocean is not just aqua, it is a shimmering wedge of turquoise that slaps my eyes in a way that feels addictive. I cannot stop looking at the water. Even the air has the scent and feel of something earthy, foreign, new. When my feet kick up the sand, I cannot help but think of the mix of men, women and children who have walked in this very same direction. There is a feeling of foreign grace in every movement. With each step, I wonder whose footfall I have replaced, what great woman has walked this same path, what ancient ship passed on the horizon a hundred years ago right in front of where I am standing. The past, I think with a laugh, is not so far behind me.

Direction has not been my strong suit for quite some time now, but I head—what, east?—along the water's edge and past low bushes, where the scent of something sweet—an unknown flower—drifts across the surface of my skin and makes me smile. I think in that moment that this is the first time in weeks and weeks that I have felt great, just simply great. The confusion of my direction does not matter right now; I know my daughter is all right, I am with three of the most wonderful women I have ever known and I am wearing a purple skirt. There is something in the air, in the simple joy of movement, that delights me, and I consciously choose to be happy, and hope to God I can make this happiness last for a very long time.

It is fifteen minutes before I see a building or any signs of life, and then another forty-five minutes before a group of old, battered tables appear on a small hill just at the edge of the water. A café? Maybe some kind of gathering spot. I cannot see over the top of the hill, but I decide to stop and sit in one of the chairs. It looks as if this was at one time a popular place to stop, and when I close my eyes, for just a few seconds, I imagine it is 1959 and that people from all over the peninsula have come to spend a day or two here and that the beach is littered with wealthy Americans and everyone is happy and having a great time. There is no way I could not stop and rest in this terribly important place.

I suppose I should not be startled when a man comes over the rise with a cup of what I presume is coffee, but I am.
“Café solo, señorita,”
he says, startling the living bejesus out of me and causing me to rise right up out of my chair as he passes me the small cup, tilts his head and smiles. He has beautiful teeth, white and straight, and I stammer, “I'm so sorry, I just stopped for a moment to rest, and I have no money.”

I should have kept up on my Spanish. “Damn it,” I think to myself, as I stand there desperately wanting the coffee and totally penniless and unable to say anything that I think will make sense to this man with the fine set of teeth, but he startles me again by answering in perfect English.

“Someone has already taken care of this, señorita,” he says. “A gentleman who said to watch for the woman in the purple skirt who might pass this way early this morning. I have been looking for you. We open very early, but business is slow in this sleepy Mexican village in the mornings.”

My heart begins to race as if it has been suddenly shoved off a cliff. A man? My aunt's friend? I turn quickly, to see a tall man with a short-brimmed hat move to the edge of the hill. He tips his hat and walks away just as a large bird, the size of a small dresser, takes flight from a far side of the tables. I lose my balance in the cosmic moment and the waiter reaches out to take my arm, and the simple touch of his hand there, just above my elbow, unsettles me even more. It is so warm where he touches me, and when I turn to look at him and his beautiful smile and then back up the hill, the man with the hat has disappeared.

“Wait!” I yell, still unsettled.

“It is okay,” the waiter says. “He cannot stay. He said to tell you he will see you very soon.”

“Who is he?”

“He will tell you that.”

My hands are shaking. I want the beautiful man with the even teeth to stay with me. I suddenly become bold. This is definitely something unusual.

“Will you please sit with me and drink coffee?”

The waiter nods, still holding on to my arm, and then lets go so he can move up the hill to get more coffee. Before he leaves, he gently places me in the chair and tells me not to go. He is back in moments with more coffee and a plate of rolls.

“You are too kind,” I say.

“It is nothing. Your friend on the hill left this note for you.”

The waiter sits while I fold back the single white sheet and read what the mystery man has written.

     
A beautiful morning.

     
The beach is also what she loved, and often, so often, she came to sit in the very chair where you are now drinking coffee with my son, Tomas. Tomas has a heart lined with simple kindness. Let him take your hand. He will bring you to me, and many other places, if you let him.

I am stunned and thinking that I may be in a movie. I look around, turning my head to make certain that everything is real, to make certain that I am real.

“Are you okay?” Tomas asks me, concerned.

“Yes. I'm a bit scared. Was this all planned?”

“Yes. And no.”

“Please tell me where you learned to speak such perfect English, Tomas.”

“I attended a boarding school in Boulder, Colorado, for my high school years and then graduated from the University of Chicago.”

“Chicago?”

“Yes,” he answers, and then I get it.

“Aunt Marcia!”

“Yes,” he says, smiling as he sips his coffee.

“Me this morning and the coffee and you coming to meet me. How did you know?”

“My father knew that you would be like your aunt because she loved you so much. He said that your aunt gave you part of her spirit when you were not working and that she worried you would never realize it, because you, well . . .”

“What?” I demand to know.

“Because there were many things in your life that you did that drove her half crazy and she did not understand why you never followed your heart.”

“My God.”

“When we found out you were coming, when Linda came to find my father, he knew that you would travel the same path.”

“The same path?” I ask, confused and on the brink of tears.

“The path by the beach, for one thing. You are following her path, which has been your path all along. Same path, different direction.”

I do not even know this man who appears to be reading my palm. He has a singular energy that makes me want to fall into his arms. Strong. Kind. Slow and gentle. Wise. How could he be so wise?

“It is a lot. I know it is a lot,” he tells me, reaching out again with his hand to touch me.

I want to know everything, every single thing about him and his father and my aunt, but Tomas will only tell me about his life, and it does not strike me as odd or strange or anything but wonderfully cosmic that I am sitting at this old table, on a beach in Mexico, with a man who makes my body tremble when he touches me and who begins to tell me a story, a small part of the whole story, that I swallow as if I have not eaten for days and days.

“My father will tell you more later today,” Tomas says. “But I owe you my story now while we drink our coffee and watch the sun. This is my favorite spot. It has always been my favorite spot.”

It has been a long time since I have enjoyed the company of a man. A very long time since a touch has ignited a spot anywhere on my body, and as his story unwinds and our unlikely worlds begin to merge and touch here and there, I wonder what it would be like to know a man again. This man, any man. I push the thought away hastily because it does not seem appropriate, and I dig my elbows into the table and savor every word of his life story.

Tomas is a computer engineer who has come home to help his father, Pancho Gonzales Quintana, die. When he tells me this part of the story, I keep the news in a place of reserve because I cannot deal with it now. I do not know his father or love him, but I know I will come to that place, and when I do the grieving and invent my own new story, the places I am about to discover, will be extraordinary.

He tells me his story—divorced, a bit of a wandering heart, a world traveler who has spent a great deal of his life close to me in the Chicago area. I tell him how strange it seems now to think that we may have passed on the loop or walked next to each other along the lakefront or eaten at the same downtown restaurant.

“Life is more of a mystery to me every day,” he says. “Yesterday, I wondered how long it would be that I had to live here and how I could deal with my father's death, and then I look up and a beautiful woman in a purple skirt is walking across the beach and into my life.”

“Am I walking into your life?”

“Here you are. That says it all.”

“Thank you for dropping out of the clouds for a bit,” I say not as shyly as I should have.

I ask him to tell me more. His father owns many properties, and Tomas manages this small restaurant while he is here, juggling through paperwork and accounting files to settle his father's estate before his father can no longer communicate his wishes and hopes. He is an only son. There is no one else.

The prostate cancer, he tells me, has moved from this part of the body to the next until there is no place else for it to go but back around again. There is maybe six months at the most, and Tomas, who readily admits that he loves working in the restaurant, says he has no idea what he will do or where he will go after his father's death.