Dancing in the Dark by Joan Barfoot

dismay; if also recollected fondness. After so many years of tables suiting chairs, and couches andcurtains matching, that apartment would be unthinkable now. But it was mine.
    This room, where I sit so straight by the large window, is not mine. It was not my choice, and has nothing to do with me. Only that first apartment and then the house were mine.
    It was not, I think, because that apartment was so shabby that I didn’t have the same compulsion to keep it spotless that I did later with the house. I think it was because just for me, that wasn’t so important. In my house, for Harry, it was vital.
    The apartment had a small single bed behind a heavy curtain that hung by rings from a bar across the doorway separating the tiny corner that was the bedroom from the living room. There, a cot with green, brown, and yellow cushions, ghastly now in memory, was the couch. A heap of books was piled against a wall. Later Harry made me a bookcase from red bricks and golden boards, the kind he said a lot of students had.
    The kitchen had a battered fridge and stove, a small counter, single sink, and two rough cupboards, two chipped cream-painted wooden kitchen chairs, and an old, small wooden table for both studying and eating. Beyond it was the bathroom, with old and irrevocably stained fixtures. I had scrubbed and scrubbed them, with the thought that the stains were who knew what kind of germs, but it made no difference.
    When I think of that apartment now, I have an impression of length and darkness, an aura of past tenants’ grime and cooking odours and paleness and unhealth, and my own small efforts to overcome all that. But then, it was mine.
    I made the coffee while he looked around. “Why this?” he asked, and he was pointing to a wall in the living room.
    Well, I had made some attempts to decorate with things that struck me, colour photographs clipped from magazines and pinned unframed to the walls. The one he was pointing to was a portrait of a young girl dancing, whirling, entirely intent on herself, her movements, and her body.
    “Oh her,” I said. What could I say about what she meant? “It makes me feel good to look at her, she seems so happy and full of what she’s doing.” This was true: some uplifting about her concentrated joy.
    “And this one?”
    This was an old woman full of lines and thought.
    “Well, I think that’s character. She’s suffered, you see, in her life, and it’s like she’s saying, ‘It can be tough but I’ve gotten something from it. I made it.’ She’s—triumphant, kind of.” That did not properly explain what I saw in the lines of that old woman’s face, but part of it.
    Did he hear my fear? Or maybe he thought I was profound, or sensitive. He sipped at his too-bitter coffee, asked, “You like living alone?”
    “Oh yes.” I had no idea. It was simply how it was.
    Did he, from that, deduce that I was independent and certain of myself? Certainly he could not have seen me as I saw myself, and I was careful that he shouldn’t.
    “Maybe,” he said at last, “I could take a look at those notes.”
    Of course he would want to do that, he’d want to go over them quickly and leave. I know what it means, that expression, “My heart sank.” That’s precisely what it was, the heart sinking like a stone.
    The apartment wouldn’t be the same when he was gone. As if he’d been a breeze and a light flowing through the place, all its bits of nastiness had been exposed. When he left, I would be lonely instead of just alone.
    All this because he had the missing face. Because he laughed and spoke the truth and because his body was lean and because he was here, in my apartment.
    “You have really clear handwriting,” he was saying. “How do you do that when you have to go so fast in class?”
    “Oh, I just take things down in point form. I write up the real notes later.” And then could have kicked myself: appearing once more the drudge. I might as well have greasy hair and