Pivot

"She used to make me dance with her. After dinner…while we were supposed to be cleaning up."

His hand, bony with long graceful fingers, almost delicate compared to yours, grabs you by the hem of your sleeve, yanking you up as if you're his own personal rag doll, there only to do as he pleases. After you're done stumbling over your big, clown feet, he grabs your hand, and throws an arm around your shoulders. He takes a step backward, pulling you with him, to the side as you grab his waist for more stability, moving his body to a lazy tune in his mind. You take the steps with him, heaving a sigh as if this is agonizing for you to do. It takes a moment to realize, but you're leading. He's never let anyone else lead, yet as he begins, leading you though you're leading him, to drag you around in slow, lazy, tight circles around the Swamp.

"We did this every night," he says quietly. "Though obviously not this close."

You smirk into his hair, because if his mother had held onto him this tightly every night…you don't even want to go there, especially not as you feel his even breathing against your neck. Slowly you take control, really leading, and not being led in your leading, and you guide him around the room, careful not to run either of you into anything, careful not to trip over any of the things the two of you leave on the floor.

Spin

You can almost see her sometimes.

He's never said anything about her really. Never hardcore details on what she was like, just a random comment thrown out there at the most unexpected of times. He tells you that she smoked while you're sitting with him, watching the latest latrine being dug. He mentions that she used to iron her curtains daily, while listening to the radio—"Jazz. She loved Jazz." –while you're sorting through your laundry together. He discusses with you her shoes; her collection of high-heeled shoes that she wore anywhere and everywhere. He tells you all the time of her hands, especially while he's watching yours mix him a drink.

And from brief images in the back of your mind, from facts that don't make anyone more special than the person they're standing next to you have an image of his mother.

She was a good height for a woman, probably would have been a little taller than Margaret is now. With red-brown hair, perhaps the color of the Redwood tree, always wrapped up in a bun pinned to the back of her head, she had golden skin, even though he says that she never really went into the sun much. In your mind, he got his eyes from her, the inner part of his irises the color of daytime sky, while the outer part the color of nighttime sky. She liked to wear prissy dresses to go with the high-heels she wore all the time, but she didn't wear any jewelry, especially not on her hands, because they were beautiful enough without them.



You can see her with a smile that brightened any room she was in, quite a bit like Peggy can do now. You believe that's where he got his smile from as well. You believe he got it from his mother, even though his will to use it comes from his father. She had that laugh to. That hysterical laugh that he has, that you imagine your daughter must have right now whenever she finds something wonderful.

And she danced every night with her only child, her little boy right after dinner and shortly before it was time for him to go to bed…

That was Isadora Pierce.

Twirl

(Come on, Benny. Dance with me. she says pulling him around with her.)

"Come on, Beej. Dance with me," he says pulling you around with him.

That's where he gets this insane need for you to lead him, you decide. She must have led him in those early days of his life. She must have been the one to teach him how to follow, because, Lord knows, he doesn't follow any other woman. It must be a comfort you give him, maybe like his mother had at one point. It makes sense. You're always there when he wakes from a nightmare, when he needs consoling, at dinner time especially.

Yes, that's way he has a need to let you lead as he makes you spin him around the Swamp. It could also be because in a very strange way, you lead in your relationship with him. You keep him level-headed. You make him drinks. You tell him flat-out when you think something he's doing is ridiculous. You make love to him…

Yes, he let's you lead.

Rotate

(Dance with me, Benny…turns to Dance with me, Beej…turns to Dance with me, Darling…)

At home Peggy wants you to dance with her, and you smile and you dance with her, all the while thinking of Isadora Pierce and her son.

You're wife is short, a mere 5'1" tall. She's not like Isadora Pierce is in your mind, and not how her son was in your arms night after night while your third tent mate was away for some reason or another. You used to wish it was her you led around a small room, yet now you wish it were him. He was taller than she is; he seemed to fit against you better. No. He didn't seem to fit against you better. He did.

He was the perfect height for you. Only an inch or two shorter than you are. When he grabbed your hands, they seemed at the perfect level, unlike now, you feel like an orangutan with your arms held so low. His hands, though they may have had an appearance of delicacy to them, were strong. You could hold them firmly. You're afraid you're going to break your wife's hand. Peg's head rests against your chest, just barely and where you're sure that it's quite poetic that she can simply rest her head on your 

heart, you miss the feeling of content breath ghosting across your neck, proof of life, that you aren't dancing with a rag doll.

You wonder if this was how Isadora felt when she made her son dance with her. If perhaps she couldn't get Daniel to do it, so she settled with her son. To short for her, and she had to go backwards, because he didn't know how to lead. But that doesn't sound like Isadora to you. Isadora, to you, and from the brief snippets of life with her that you can coerce out of him, loved what little time she had with her Benny.

She wasn't like you, either that, or you are all too much like her. Isadora danced with her son because she loved to, and so did you. But you don't dance with Peg because you love to. You dance with Peg because your dancing partner isn't what one would call… conventional. No, you're dancing partner is male. He's another surgeon, and he's three-thousand miles away. And he loved to make you lead.

Peg doesn't know how to lead. You have to lead. But with him, he had the chance of making you follow, perhaps he had thought to once. You led, though. He handed over the reins to you and he silently told you that he trusted you enough—like he had trusted his mother—to let you lead.

Turn

You know there were times that you wished you were home with your wife, Peg, dancing with her and not a tall, too thin man who had eyes that held time. You can't pinpoint a specific day like that, but you know that there had to be one, because when you were around him, Peg seemed to be on this pedestal but because she was in a place where blood didn't flow like a fountain.

Now that you're home though, Peg is plain, and too short, and she doesn't talk about life the way he did. She doesn't revere her parents, because there are two of them. She's never lost her mother, and she doesn't understand what it is to literally only have one person in the entire world to hold onto. Because that's all he's ever had. He's only ever had his father, and when that was taken away from him, he had one friend from Boston, and when that was taken away from him…he had you, and only you.

It was something that Peg will never understand, and never be able to duplicate. She doesn't need you like he needed you. She has her parents. She has her friends. Lord knows, she has more suitors than anyone could ever dream. But most of all, she has trust in people not to hurt her. That was something that he never had.

You miss being needed like that. You miss having him rely solely on you.

You miss the way…

Pirouette

He used to make you dance with him every night after dinner, while your third tent mate was out for some strange reason or another.



InnocentGuilt