Best Laid Plans
The fog that moves in every morning breaks up earlier now. Sun warms the patio and we spend more time outside. Roger and I are pleased that David got early acceptance to Stanford but mystified over why he’s not eager to visit the student store and outfit himself with a Stanford Indians sweatshirt. He spends all his time in the garage teaching himself to weld and has yet to choose his classes.
Danny’s work permit has come through. Every day after work he beelines to the garage to check on David’s progress. They pour through electronics catalogs together and place orders that cause the UPS truck to make more stops here than our Peninsula Creamery milkman.
Sophie is taking a couple of dance classes at Foothill, but she’s outside a lot too. She reads in a lounge chair, but she never relaxes. Sophie has a hard time sitting still. Roger has installed a ballet bar for her in a corner of the garage, opposite David’s encroaching warehouse of wires, switches, and boxes. He laid down some linoleum tile squares to cushion the cement garage floor. When she’s not peppering the boys with questions, she goes through her barre exercises.
Sophie has an almost perfect dancer’s body, except that she’s loose-limbed. It’s not just her knees, she moves with an organic fluidity. She’s lovely to watch, and the only thing that draws David’s eyes away from his work bench. When Sophie executes her pirouettes her long legs fly as she rotates her body, gathering speed and power that has nowhere to go in such a small space. Then, she strips off her shoes and moves barefoot on the linoleum, a mobile of twisting postures that flow from one to the other. She moves to unseen breezes, jerks in a ghost wind. But she never dances when Scott is present.
Sophie has made friends at Foothill. They come by and pick her up for drop-in classes at one or another of the dance studios springing up in residential garages or rental spaces. That she hasn’t learned to drive is becoming a hindrance.
“We’re going to have to get these kids some wheels,” Roger says as another carload of girls pulls out of the driveway.
Valerie frowns at Roger’s suggestion. “Dad, we don’t want to make them too comfortable here. They may never leave.”
That’s the first indication that she may be tiring of having a houseful. It’s also the first time I’ve ever heard her call Roger Dad.
“Oh, I know that Valerie.” Roger sits at the kitchen counter wiggling a pencil between two fingers over the Used Cars section of the newspaper he’s consulting. “Don’t worry, I was planning to buy David a car to use when he starts Stanford anyway. Might as well do it now and they can share the car until David moves into the dorm.”
“Freshmen can’t have cars at Stanford,” Valerie and I say in unison.
“All the better; we can keep it here for him until he’s allowed to bring it on campus. He can use it on school breaks, and Danny and Sophie can share it when David’s at school.”
“Sophie doesn’t seem much inclined to do any job hunting, does she,” Valerie says with a frown on her face. “I tried to talk her into taking a full load. If she gets a degree, she could be a teacher or a choreographer. She could be teaching ballet right now instead of hanging around dance studios with her little fan club.”
“My, we’re testy, today.” Why has Valerie turned on Sophie? “Where would she teach? Our garage?”
Valerie recoils. “It’s getting messy, isn’t it.”
“The garage?”
“No, all of us living here on top of each other.”
“If the kids had a car, they’d be gone more.” Roger fans the auto buying guide in the air.
“That’s not a permanent solution,” Valerie says.
I stand up and smile down at my irritable daughter. “I think if we are patient, a solution will present itself.”
R
Although it’s not my plan to carry Valerie’s message, I find myself tapping at Sophie’s half-closed bedroom door. I walk in at her invitation and sit on her bed, watching her remove packaging from make-up she walked up to the store to purchase.
“How are you liking your classes at Foothill?”
“I like them very much, but I think I’ve discovered something I like even more.” Sophie tosses her new lipsticks into her large make-up case and comes to sit cross-legged on the bed, facing me. “I’ve heard about a dance movement just beginning in San Francisco’s Mission District. I want to go up there and check it out. When I was in New York, I went to see Yvonne Ranier perform. She’s a modern dancer who started the Judson Dance Theater a couple of years ago. She turns ordinary movements into improvisational dance. It is very unlike ballet, which is so disciplined. Ballet is taught. Modern is discovered. It’s very free. I’ve been a student all my life, Dee. Now I want to be an explorer.”
Sophie’s face is glowing as she spills her hopes and dreams onto the blue sateen coverlet we’re sitting on together. I see myself reflected in her excitement over the idea of collaborating in a new movement. This was me many years ago, when a young Walt Disney asked me to join his team of illustrators. How many times have I wondered how my life would be now if I’d accepted that invitation instead of Henry’s marriage proposal? I admire Sophie for the way she can turn disappointment over how her body failed her into the joy of discovering another path. I admire her spirit, but these days I’m suspicious of anything that is called a movement.
“Are you thinking about moving to San Francisco?”
“I’m going to go up there, take a few classes, talk to people, and start looking for a job. I can take the train, right?”
I think about the car Roger is planning to buy. I tell her the train is probably the best idea.
Later, in our room, I mull over Sophie’s plan and worry about her. What if she has trouble getting connected and gets sucked into something seedy?
Stop worrying. A few months ago you didn’t even know her. You weren’t worried then.
Maybe I should offer to go with her.
That’s ridiculous. She’s eighteen years old. She wants to do this on her own; and she should.
I’m watching movies in my head of down-to-her-last-dime Sophie picked off the sidewalk in North Beach by some dissolute when Roger walks in and tells me Mike is here to see me.