The Song of David

“So if I spend a lot of time with Kathleen, do you think she’ll start to look like me?” I asked him, steering the focus away from his father.

Henry looked doubtfully from me to my grunting, banana-bearded child and back again.

“I hope so,” he said.

Georgia snickered, and I hooted and held my hand in the air so Henry could give me five.

“You hear that, Georgia? Henry hopes so,” I crowed. “I guess that means your baby daddy is a beautiful man.”

Henry obviously didn’t mean to be funny, and he totally left me hanging. Georgia reached up and slapped my hand and winked at me.

“If she looks like you, everyone will know you’re her dad,” Henry said, his voice perfectly level, his eyes solemn. “And that will make her happy.”

I nodded, no longer smiling.

“That’s why I go to the gym. I want to look like Tag,” he added to no one in particular. He set down the picture and proceeded to dish up four bowls of chili, handing one to me and placing Georgia’s beyond Kathleen’s reach. Before he ate, he took the fourth bowl into the family room, and we heard the tape pause and Millie thank her brother. Henry came back into the kitchen sans chili, and without a word, dug into his dinner. We were all silent as we heard Tag’s voice resume his tale.





PEOPLE WHO CAN see constantly move their heads. It wasn’t anything I had noticed before, not until I spent time with Millie. But movement was directly tied to sight, and where everyone else tossed and turned their heads, their bodies following where their eyes went, Millie moved cautiously, her spine straight, her chin level, her shoulders back, ready to soak in every available clue. She didn’t tip her head toward her feet when she tied her shoes or tilt her head up when the bell of a shop rang overhead. Moving her head didn’t give her any more information, and as a result, she was perfectly contained, and strangely impenetrable. It made her appear regal, like a Japanese Geisha. But it was intimidating too.

I was restless, always had been, and her stillness beckoned me while her concentration on the smallest things made me more aware of myself, of my size and my tendency to break things. I had always been physical, more inclined to hug than hold back, as inclined to touch as talk, although I did both. I wondered if Millie would have been as controlled if she could see, or if her poise and patience were a byproduct of the loss of her sight. The only time she moved with abandon was when she was dancing, hands glued to the pole, head moving with the music, body pulsing with the rhythm.

I watched her dance every chance I could get. It wasn’t her skimpy outfit or her graceful limbs, taut stomach, and shiny hair, though I was a man and I’d taken note of all those things immediately. But all the girls had beautiful, strong, slim bodies. All the girls danced well. But I watched Millie. I watched Millie because she fascinated me. She was a brand new species, an intoxicating mix of girl and enigma, familiar yet completely foreign. I’d never met anyone like her, yet I felt like I’d known her forever. And since the moment I’d looked down into her face and felt that jolt of ode-to-joy-and-holy-shit, I’d been falling, falling, falling, unable to stop myself, unable to look away, helpless to do the smart thing. And the smart thing, the kind thing would be to stay away. But no one had ever accused me of being particularly smart.

Now she stood perfectly still in the center of the crowded room, people swarming and slipping around her, her eyes open and unseeing. But open. Her stillness drew my gaze. Her straight dancer’s posture unyielding, chin high, hands loose at her side. She was waiting for something. Or just absorbing it all. I didn’t know, but I couldn’t look away. Everyone hurried around her and almost no one seemed to see her at all, except for the few who tossed an exasperated look at her unsmiling face as they squeezed past her and then realized she wasn’t “normal” and hurried away. Why was it that no one saw her, yet she was the first thing I saw? Her dress was blue. A pale, baby blue that made her eyes the same color. Her hair was gleaming, her lips red, and she held her walking stick like the stripper pole, swaying to the music as if she wanted to dance. She’d never come to the bar on club night before. I would have noticed her.