Free Greedy Little Eyes by Billie Livingston Page A

she’d shown me once, there were black and white photographs of her when she was a kid, and two newspaper clippings, one at eleven years old, the other when she was a teenager, blonde hair ina swinging ponytail, trophy in her hand. She won the district tap finals when she was eighteen years old. She met my father right about then, though, and they were married soon after she’d graduated high school.
    Tap dancing became sort of silly at that point, a stunt performed by fools and people who delivered singing telegrams. So she dropped it.
    My mother and I made our way over to Broadway, where she took me into The Dance Shop and had me try on four or five pairs of tap shoes until she declared, “Yes, that looks like it.” She stepped back and took me in from another angle, head to toe, corners of her eyes crinkling with pleasure. “What do you think? Are they yours?”
    I tried to clack around the floor a little, dance the way I’d seen kids do on a talent show I watched Saturday mornings, but I had a nervous stomach all of a sudden, what with all this delinquency, hers and mine. In her case though, she wouldn’t have an excuse; if she didn’t quit Bobby Gordon’s car lot, she’d get fired again. But still, at that moment I couldn’t help feeling like a brand new car myself, she was so pleased with my feet.
    When we got home, she had me put on some play clothes and she did the same. She got me to help her move each piece of furniture out of the spare room, which as of last year had become her sewing room. She’d seen some celebrity on television boasting that she made all her own clothes and my mother decided she could easily make all our clothes and save us hundreds of dollars—not to mention make us into one stylish familywith her knock-offs of designer outfits spotted in magazines. She made an apron.
    Once the room was clear of furniture and sewing paraphernalia, she went and grabbed any tools she could find in the garage and we set to work ripping up the carpet.
    “You can’t dance with no floor,” she said.
    Freeing up a corner of the carpet, she had a look at the hardwood underneath and declared it to be in not-too-bad-a-shape. But she wanted it to glint. We’d get it resurfaced, she said.
    I helped her rip free the rest and roll it up while she muttered about its colour.
    “ Beige. Why did I ever let him talk me into a beige carpet anyway? It’s enough to bore me into a coma …”
    Dad drove up just as we dragged it the last foot or two into the garage. His face dropped when he saw the long tube of short shag being pushed against the wall. He asked what was going on.
    “We’re making ourselves a dance studio,” she told him and her voice had a choppy, defiant quality. As if she were a brat and she knew it.
    He looked from her to the rolled rug, took a breath and closed his eyes a moment. As he composed himself, he appeared odd to me, suddenly out of place. Opening his eyes, he gave me a stiff sort of smile and asked if I could go make us all some tea, which is when I noticed the tail of his shirt coming out, spitting up over his belt. I was so used to the button-down quality he normally possessed, the assured crispness, that this minordishevelment made him look to me as if he’d lost a battle he hadn’t begun to fight.
    He took my mother’s arm and led her into the house and up the stairs. I followed quietly, hanging back a little, waiting until their bedroom door closed before I made my way nearer.
    Their voices were low—his growling, exasperated, hers hissing and quick.
    I heard: “Marion, that carpet’s … six months! … What are you trying to prove?”
    “Oh for god’s sake … woman’s prerogative … Would it kill you … ?”
    “Woman’s what? Just because … and why are you home from work?”
    “ … shysters anyway. I want to teach Mitzi to tap dance … my own money !”
    “ … you work, it’s your money, but when I work, it’s ours … you think it’s boring just