The Line Between

I can't be sure of what I saw through the gathering dark then and the gathering years now. Millamant seemed to me to be moving almost on point, if you can imagine that in a cat, but moving with a kind of ardent restraint in which every stillness implied a leap at the throat, and vio–lence trembled in the shadow of rigor. At moments she appeared to be standing completely motionless, letting the twilight dance around her, courting her like a proper partner. There should have been a moon, but there wasn't: only my rust–colored bug light to catch the glitter of her eyes and the ripple of her fur: So the one thing I am certain about, even at this dim distance, is that that dance was entirely for Emilia. Not for me, not for Emilia and me together, like that first time. Emilia.

She wouldn't look at first. She turned her head completely away, star–ing blindly back at the street, one hand clenching white on a fold of my sweater. So something else I can't say is just when the dance took hold of her, drawing her gently home to what Sam and Millamant, Millamant, too—were telling her forever. All I know is that she was crouched beside me, paying such attention, paying, as I never paid to my wives, my direc–tors, or to Sam himself, at the moment when someone's headlights played briefly over us and it was only Millamant there, limping down the steps to clamber heavily into Emilia's lap and lie there, not purring. Only old Abyssinian Millamant, tired and lame, and uninhabited.

I also don't remember when it was that I said, «He made us let him go. He danced us away from thinking about him, holding him. Just for that little, but it was all he needed.» Emilia didn't answer. The lighted kitch–ens along my street were long dark when I finally got her into the house and put her to bed.

That was long ago. Emilia went back to New Jersey with Millamant and married a nice special–education teacher named Philip, some years later. She didn't write to me for some time after her return, but she telephoned when Millamant died. Gradually we took up our correspondence again, though Sam was as notably absent from it as he had once been its prime mover. I sent a gift when the boy was born: a complete Shakespeare and a Baseball Encyclopedia. If those don't cover a growing child's major emo–tional needs, he's on his own.

Me, I haven't yet been summoned to play Captain Shotover—or Lear, either—but

the Falstaffs have started coming lately, and the James Tyrones, and I did do a bloody good Uncle Vanya in Ashland one sum–mer. And I got to New York for the first time in decades, for a get–killed–early role in a big–budget thing where they blew up the Holland Tunnel at the climax. I rather liked that one.

I stayed with Emilia and Philip over a weekend after my part of the shooting was over. They live in an old two–family house in a working–class neighborhood of Secaucus. Secaucus still has one of those, a work–ing class.The place could use a new roof, and there's a draft in the kitchen that Philip hasn't been able to trace down yet. It's a good house, with a black kitten named Rita, for Rita Hayworth. Philip loves old movies and early music.

On the day I left, Emilia and I sat in the kitchen while she gave Alex his lunch. Alex was ten–and–a–half months old then, with a rapturous smile and the table manners of a Hell's Angel. But today he was in one of his dreamy, contemplative moods, and made no difficulties over the brown stuff, which he normally despised, or the green stuff, which he preferred to play with. I sat in a patch of sunlight, watching the two of them. Emilia's gained a little weight, but on her it looks good, and there's a warmth under her pale skin. Marriage suits her. Secaucus suits her.

I think I was actually half–asleep when she turned suddenly to me and said, «You think I don't think about him.»

«Actually, I hope you don't," I said, rather feebly. «I try not to, myself.»

«There isn't a day," Emilia said. «Not one.» She wiped Alex's mouth and took advantage of his meditations to slip some of the yellow stuff into him. «Philip always knows, but he doesn't mind. He's a good man.»

«Does he know the whole story? What can happen when you think too much about someone?»

She shook her head without answering. When Alex had reached capac–ity and was looking remarkably like Sydney Greenstreet in the noon–day sun of Casablanca, she took him to his crib, singing «This Time the Dream's on Me» softly as she set him down, already asleep. It was one of Sam's favorite old songs, and she knew I knew. I looked down at Alex and said, «Nice legs. You think there might be a dancer at the other end of them?»