Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn (42 page)

i will not

simply walk

but

fly

with wings of gold

woman

warrior

feeling with a heart

the fineness of the journey

and dancing naked

at the edge of dawn

is the gate

that moves my soul

into the endless

realm

of possibility

—Chesnay Susan Thomas
    Chicago
    From: Passing the Light—Women in Transition—1968

Meg finished dancing naked before the neighbors looked out their windows, and claimed her house that night as her new home, which was a major part of her new life.

Just before Christmas, she resigned her position at the University and spent a month in Mexico. She visited her daughter in Mexico City and then went to see the dancing dogs, Tomas and her cottage by the sea.

She spent almost all of her time at the cottage and visiting with Pancho Gonzales Quintana, who, whispered into her hair, kept uttering unbelievably beautiful phrases of love, all the while in and out of a coma that kept him in one world one minute and another the next. One afternoon Meg decided to tell him what he needed so desperately to hear.

“Pancho, go to her, she is waiting for you. Marcia is waiting.”

The funeral was a grand affair that took place at his estate. Tomas set the casket in the living room so that his father was facing the sea. The dogs danced and there was music in the gardens, food, people laughed and talked about what a wonderful man Pancho Gonzales Quintana had been—generous, kind and fair. Several hundred people came by to pay their respects and they all brought flowers.

“My father was the one who put the dried flowers in the rocks by your cottage,” Tomas told her. “We would always find baskets of flowers by the road. People knew he loved dried flowers.”

One night, two weeks after the funeral, Tomas and Meg walked on the beach. They talked about Marcia and Pancho, and how the events of the past year had forever changed them. Meg instinctively reached down and took Tomas's hand while they sat on the beach, and then she turned and asked him a very important question.

“Tomas, do you think you could make love to me?”

They talked for a long time first. Meg said she wanted to feel the hands of a man on her who cared about her. She told him that it would not bind them, that he must see it as a gift to her and a gift from her.

“I trust you, Tomas,” she told him. “I know you would not hurt me. I need this. It is the last thing that will really set me free.”

Tomas was a sweet and gentle lover and they discovered that two people could spoon together and fit into the Stone Palace at the same time.

When Meg came back to Chicago, she began her classes at the massage school that was within walking distance of her home. The very first second of the first day of class, she knew she had found a place to rest her heart. She loved every single thing about her new profession.

During her yearlong program she took a job at the coffee shop on the other end of her block, where she met and dated several men. She made love in her bedroom with several of them, and when Tomas came to Chicago, he joined her there too and was pleased to discover that Meg's backyard rock house was also big enough for both of them.

Halfway through her massage training, Meg struck up a wonderful friendship with a woman in her class and they developed a business plan, arranged funding and located a suitable building for their massage practice. Meg made certain that her new partner realized she would be gone several months a year to Mexico.

Katie had the time of her life in Mexico, and Meg was not surprised to learn that Tomas helped her gain entrance to the university in Mexico City. He also helped her find a suitable place to live and part-time employment.

In January, during a long weekend off from school, Meg took the train to Denver and showed up at her son's home. Shaun's boyfriend answered the door; she embraced him and they were drinking wine together when Shaun got home from work.

They talked for hours, reconciled, and Shaun and his partner, Kevin, traveled to Chicago the following month to see Meg's house and to take a major step back into her life.

Shaun and Katie's father stayed with the geranium lover for less than a year and then immediately moved in with another woman. He helped Katie with her school costs, helped pay off Shaun's bills but gradually drifted out of Meg's life and world. He called her from work every other month or so to see if she was okay, and Meg was always glad to hear his voice.

Meg's mother continued her search for her lost lover, and by late winter was planning a trip to South Carolina, where the former football coach had moved. He was now a widower. Single. Free and absolutely healthy.

Jane fell back into her life as a writer with great enthusiasm and success. She put her house up for sale and began looking for an apartment closer to the heart of the city. She started dating, reconnected with several college friends from the past and began volunteering at the rape crisis center and homeless shelter. Meg threw her a huge Reverse Bridal Shower, which was featured on the front page of Jane's own newspaper.

Aunt Marcia's foundation flourished, and Meg attended her first board meeting, where she was introduced to a world and a cause that she would take on as her own. She immediately recruited her friends Elizabeth, Bianna, her new business partner, the members of the original Reverse Bridal Shower and her landlord to the cause, and within six months they were all working on fund-raisers and planning a trip to Mexico to work at the clinics and visit Meg's cottage.

By mid-summer, Elizabeth was spending so much time driving into the city to see Meg and meet with all her newfound friends that she was looking for a town house to purchase for herself. Meg would often come home from school and find her sitting on the deck, drinking wine, with her feet propped up on the rock structure.

Sometimes the two women would get into the rock palace together and talk for hours.

“Someday you'll have to put an electric ramp in here that will lower us in and out when we get arthritis,” Elizabeth told her. “One of these days my damn knees are going to blow out.”

Bianna's business continued to flourish, and Meg became a regular part of her Reverse Bridal Shower therapy sessions. By the end of the year, eight more women had found the courage to change their lives following a shower.

Dr. C broke all of her professional rules and struck up a wonderful friendship with Meg, and finally admitted that she and Elizabeth had been friends and a bit more for many years. When Meg was making the plans for her business, Dr. C proposed that she move her practice in with the two massage therapists. That led them to find a bigger building which they decided to purchase and restore. The women added a Reiki practitioner and are now in the process of turning the business into one of the most successful treatment centers in Chicago, where women can get everything from a massage and facial to a psychological overhaul. They also started a Reverse Bridal Shower group that has downtown divorce attorneys more than excited.

One summer afternoon, while Elizabeth, Katie, Meg, the funky landlord and her partner and the three guys from across the street were celebrating Meg's two-year anniversary of moving into her home, Linda, the guide from Mexico who had helped Elizabeth and Meg find the dancing dogs, showed up miraculously in the backyard.

“What the hell!” Elizabeth and Meg shouted at the same moment.

“How did you find us?” Meg asked Linda.

“I've been back in the United States for a few months, trying to decide what to do next, and I turned my head one day and I swear to God I could feel an occasional breeze from the jungle, and I followed it right to your backyard, Meg.”

Tomas, Meg thought.

That night, while various assortments of men and women and women and women and men and men took turns going in and out of the rock palace, Meg sat on the steps and called Carol Kimbal. She told Carol everything and then asked if she could come for a visit and drink that wine they had talked about so long ago.

“I thought you'd never get around to it,” Kimbal said. “I've kept the light on Margaret Callie.”

“It took me a while,” Meg admitted. “But I did it. I'm dancing.”

Then the wind blew across Chicago, an invisible sweet tornado that brushed against the smiling faces of all the men and women in Meg's backyard oasis, and within seconds a million flower petals were dancing everywhere as if they had just witnessed the infamous dancing dogs near a lovely cottage in Mexico.

About the Author

Kris Radish
is an author, journalist, public relations executive and nationally syndicated political and humor columnist. Her first novel,
The Elegant Gathering of White Snows,
was a Book Sense 76 selection and appeared on national bestseller lists. Radish is also the author of a true-crime book,
Run, Bambi, Run,
and a psychology book,
Birth Order Plus.
Her writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers throughout the country.

A lifelong supporter of women's issues and feminist causes, she travels throughout the country to speak about her novels and to empower women to seize their own personal power and to dance naked as often as possible. She lives in Wisconsin with her partner and two teenage children, who think it's normal to have a mother who rides a motorcycle, has written about everything from wars to windows, follows the very loud dreams in her heart, embraces change and still tells them to put a hat on in the dead of winter.

Visit the author's website at
www.krisradish.com
.

Also by Kris Radish

THE ELEGANT GATHERING

OF WHITE SNOWS

If you enjoyed Kris Radish's heartwarming
DANCING NAKED AT THE EDGE OF DAWN
, you won't want to miss her bestselling debut novel,
THE ELEGANT GATHERING OF WHITE SNOWS
. Look for it at your favorite bookseller's.

And read on for a tantalizing peek into

THE

ELEGANT

GATHERING

OF

WHITE

SNOWS

Kris Radish

Available now from
Bantam Books

THE ELEGANT GATHERING
OF WHITE SNOWS

Available now

Just a glass. Balanced for a moment as brief as a breath. Like a confused dancer undecided about a direction here on the edge of the ancient yellow Formica counter. A speck of light filters through the crystal etchings on this last, best glass, one of three remaining after years and years of life following the goddamned wedding.

Susan watches the glass, her hand stretched out in a flat welcome, her stomach moving in waves as the glass falls and Susan, always anticipating the next movement of everything, moves with it.

“Shit!” She screams as the glass punches through the soft skin in the folds of her fingers. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” The blood gushes, covering the spot where she used to wear a ring and then down onto wrists that are as thin as the stem of the broken glass. Before a drop of blood hits the floor, before Susan can raise her hand, before a thought can form, the women come running.

There is a concert of unrehearsed movement on the kitchen floor. Alice runs for the dishcloth; Chris is on the floor cradling Susan in her arms; Sandy is looking to make certain the good bottle of wine has not spilled. Joanne and Janice are crouched like frogs close by, their hands dangling between their legs; Gail guards the small door between the kitchen and the living room, and Mary is poised to grab more towels and maybe, if the cuts are deep enough, those big bandages she knows Susan keeps on the shelf behind the kitchen sink.