Irish Dance Macabre

by Rob Bailey

You can't tie your shoes. You never untie them, but this time you did. Maybe the laces loosened, and the leather no longer instilled the confidence of a tight grip. Maybe someone is sabotaging you; it's never been true, but it's always in the alleys of your mind. Or maybe that throbbing pain in the top of your right foot began with a stamp, the wooden heel of a teammate's hard-shoe as you threaded through the choreography, a silent grimace behind your forced smile, and, offstage after the applause, you had to pry out the swollen foot. The music is on. Your sister started the thunderous reel somewhere in the middle, knowing it would soon switch to a treble jig, the cue for your duet. You have either eight or sixteen counts to tie your shoes. She learned long ago how to tie them before your laconic choreographer finishes introducing a dance. You, however, haven't improved much since primary school, when you sat on the kitchen floor while your dad waved his briefcase, urging you to hurry so he didn't miss another train. The laces blur and multiply, and you can't be certain that you're holding them.

You have a crowd. The stretched faces of friends and strangers cram into the family room. Children sit on the stone hearth before a dark, cavernous fireplace. Their legs dangle, their shoes flashing as they kick the rug, which is rolled up to the foot of the hearth, revealing a worn, wooden floor, scratched from decades of practice. Your dad lounges in his leather chair, whistling the reel with his mouth drawn taut to the corners and watching a muted Cubs game. At this hour, the sliding glass door behind him reflects the television. Right-handed batters are left-handed batters, and there's always a force at third. The fiddle ricochets around the room.

The eight-count ends and repeats, still a reel. You shut your eyes hard and open them. You look again at your shoes; they're tied. You look up at your sister; she winks. Her hair behind her headband is a waterfall of fire; yours rises up like a torch. You find comfort in her calm blue eyes, her freckled cheeks. You stand on the worn, wooden floor and walk to your spot, tapping your toes and knocking your heels. Your hard-shoes, despite their percussive components, can fold in half, helping you balance on the flattened tip of your toes, a pose you've been known to hold after rocking on your ankles. Ignore the pain in your right foot. You line up across from your sister, flanking the television. Your dad groans at a ground ball through the wickets while your sister points her toe on the floor before her, a prelude with the pick-up notes. Showtime.

You and your sister have a secret language. Your smiles are not performative. You're grinning at the pleasure of reading each other's minds and leaving their jaws on the worn, wooden floor. You slowly approach each other—hop-point, hop-point, hop-1-2-3—in playful competition over who can point with their toe to the highest spot above their knee. The steps are from the second jig, the first couple's dance you ever learned, and she taught you. The treble jig is even and faster than the second jig. It's tempting to jump high as you point, but you better land in time, or the taps will sound plural. You meet in front of the glowing Cubs game, cross your arms, and take hands. Not too tight, or the spins won't look fluid. She spins, and you face the front, holding hands above her shoulders, strong but loose enough to feel like water, since the philistines think it's all Riverdance anyway. The choreography twists like St Brigid's cross. At the end of the eight-count, you compete for the highest kick without sacrificing technique: shoulders back, neither knee bent, toe pointed at the funhouse-faces in the front row.

Here come the steps. You're side by side, holding hands between your shoulders, outside arms straight down. You both jump, and gravity pulls your grip like a puppeteer from hell. As you land, you tip your toe in back simultaneously, crossed over like she taught you. You stay in sync as long as you don't think about it. You're two sides of the same battery. Your sharp and rapid legs contrast your militaristic torsos. You sweep your right foot up across your body, a cut, a recurring bruise on your left hip. The rush overrides all pain. Few things in your life are as electric as these forty-five seconds. Your sister is perfect; perfection is a myth; your sister is a myth, or perhaps a legend. Your friends always give you an out: You don't have to be like her, they say. She's an impossible act to follow. What they don't understand is that she's not an act to follow—she's an act to join.

And yet, your dad's eyes widen at the glow of the game behind you. He, who used to record every performance, leans to his left in the leather chair, as if you're a pillar at Wrigley blocking the cheap seats. You and your sister don't miss a beat. Your feet fly as you glance at the reflection of the game in the sliding glass door. Blue jerseys circle the bases. Forty thousand fans unleash their muted screams. The belly of a blimp beyond left field opens, and a spatial spatula slowly descends, as if Wrigley were a quarter of a deep dish pizza with a brick and ivy crust. The spatula slides under the dirt and lifts. The left fielder and the third baseman run for the edge of the slice and jump down to foul territory. The shortstop is not so lucky. Cheese drips down the third base line and bubbles on home plate. The pitcher's mound is a slice of pepperoni split by the spatula. You shut your eyes hard and open them. Wrigley's reflection vanishes, but only because someone opened the sliding glass door.

In steps Pop-pop, who's been dead for a decade. He runs a hand over his crew cut, adjusts his bowtie, pulls his glasses from the breast pocket of his three-piece suit, puts them on, and remains standing, leaning on his left hip, a habit of which he is well aware, having paid the tailor to compensate, to sew his jacket asymmetrically by half an inch.

Pop-pop, even as an apparition, is a gregarious yet serious man. Shakespeare resides at the tip of his tongue, but he can't act, at least not in charades because he can't stay quiet. He's a lawyer. A great one. A glass of Johnny Walker Red on the rocks appears in his hand. He swirls his glass and the ice clinks, adding a layer behind the treble jig and your rapid taps. What sort of wisdom has he come to impart? The last time you saw him, he told you not to let your rebellion inhibit your success. You were baffled at the time, a nine-year-old sitting in the passenger seat of his silver sedan, BONES on the license plate, a nickname he earned not for his money but for his frame. While his suit remains impeccable, he is in fact bones, a sharply dressed skeleton. Skinless fingers swirl the ice cubes in his scotch.

Each time you see Pop-pop—once every couple of months—you're so excited to talk that you fail to listen. Spew the good news until he's gone. Not this time. Your feet are lightning and your mouth is zipped. The treble jig courses through your veins. He lifts his glass, the preface to every great monologue. He looks you in the eye, the black caverns of his eye sockets. The rise and fall of the treble jig. A trance.

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places," he says, clinking the ice in his scotch. "But those that will not break it kills." He nods. "Your mother never broke."

He takes a sip of the scotch. It spills through his jaw down to the worn, wooden floor. The teeth fall from his wry smile. He turns to dust, his glass shattering on the floor.

The step ends, and you and your sister turn to face each other for the final choreography. Did she see him too? The flames of her hair flood the floor while yours lap at the ceiling, setting fire to the beams and enveloping the family. You wouldn't know it from her smile. She counts the syncopated ending through her teeth, the series of tips—crossed over, of course—that pull you to opposite sides of the stage. That was him, even if she didn't see, even if she won't admit it. You and your sister nail the timing of the tips and, as per the choreography, drift farther and farther apart.

BIO: Rob Bailey has published fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in the Under Review, On the Premises (prize), Glassworks Magazine, The Write Launch, and Bridge Eight, among others. He earned his MFA from California College of the Arts. He lives in Chicago with his partner and their two pets.