Like Only the Stars are Watching

Mr. Glenn’s wife died the day before last. Of course, now all their children could talk about was what she would have wanted.

“She would want a proper burial,” Gary, the eldest, said.

“In the cemetery at Memorial Park,” Martin said.

Gary shook his head. “Much too crowded there. She wouldn’t want to knock elbows with anyone. She would prefer be buried in the Green Meadows Cemetery.”

“No,” Lisa Marie said, slapping her hand against Mr. Glenn’s antique table. “She wouldn’t want a grave. If she was here, she’d tell us to cremate her and spread her ashes across the farm.”

“I don’t think she liked this farm as much as you think,” Kurt said. “We should take the boat and spread her ashes out at sea. She would like that better.”

Lisa Marie huffed and crossed her arms. “Mom told me everything, and I can promise you that what she would want is to be here, on the farm.” This pricked at Gary’s temper, sending him on a tangent about how their mother had always prefered him over the others. Of course, he must have known more about what the late Mrs. Glenn would have wanted.

Meanwhile, Mr. Glenn sat across the room with his hands on the arms of his chair. Not one of them turned to ask him what he thought, because surely he couldn’t know more than they did. He was, after all, just the husband. He did, though, know plenty of other things. Things like how Memorial Park was the cheapest, and Green Meadows was three blocks away from where Gary lived. He knew that Lisa Marie did things she thought Christians disapproved of, which explained why she had three kids with three different fathers and a body covered in tattoos. He knew that Kurt was close to his mother, but as a sailor, he often didn’t get to see her.

And he knew what Mary had said eight years before.

It was the reception of Gary’s second marriage, the music swirling around them. Mary had been watching the people dance all night, but finally looked at him. She was smiling that smile, the one that meant she was sad but didn’t want to worry him. Naturally, it only worried him more. He took her hand and asked, as a proper husband should, what was the matter.

“I want to dance,” she said, brushing a lock of used-to-be-brown hair behind her ear.

“Perhaps you could talk Martin into it.”

“I want to dance with you.”

They hadn’t dance in years, a decade, maybe. When they went home, and after they said their goodnights, Mr. Glenn put off dreaming to pull out memories of the past. They had been seventeen the first time they had danced together. Neither of them had danced before, but there had been something about that night that had made them push her father’s record player to an open window and dance barefoot in the spring grass with only the stars as witness. He had gone home, well after midnight, with bruises on his toes and kisses on his lips. Every following Friday night was spent dancing, sometimes in her backyard, sometimes in his kitchen, and every now and again, if they were feeling brave, where anyone and everyone could see them.

Then there was that night in the middle of June when she looked up at him, clutching the fabric of her white dress. Her green eyes had been rimmed with tears as she said, “I never wanted any dance as much as I want this dance right now.” And they danced as any couple would on a night such as that, with family and friends watching and smiling like the stars had done that first night.

They could have danced forever.

But forever had ended, and he was once again an aging man laying next to his aging wife. She had wanted to dance, and he too wanted to be able to spin away her worries, to watch her throw her head back and laugh, to have kisses on his lips that could heal his aching feet. There was no other dance that he wanted more than the one that could never happen. Eight years later, when his children were sitting at his table arguing about who knew his wife better and what she would want done with her body now that it was no longer hers, he realized that it was still that dance that she wanted, still that dance that he wanted.

“Look,” Gary said, pressing his fingers to his temple, “we’ll talk about this later. I have to meet the lawyer. The divorce with Karen is getting ridiculous.”

“I told you it would be cheaper to remain single,” Martin said, standing up.

Lisa Marie looked up at the grandfather clock, her pierced eyebrows drawing together. “My boyfriend will duct tape the kids if I don’t get home.” She stood up as well, picking her purse up from the floor.

Kurt sighed and said, “Remember, I have to leave next Monday.”

As they walked out the door, Mr. Glenn followed them, although not one of them had bothered to say goodbye. He was pushing himself down the wheelchair ramp before Gary recalled that they did indeed have a father. He turned towards his siblings before they got too far away and said, “Perhaps one of us should stay with Dad.”

Lisa Marie rolled her eyes. “Mom wouldn’t have wanted us to make that sacrifice. We should just get him a home nurse.” And the Christians did say to honor thy mother and father.

“It’d be cheaper to put him in a home,” Martin piped in.

And since there weren't any ships involved, Kurt had nothing to say. They all left, one after the other, without bothering to ask Mr. Glenn what he wanted done with him. He didn’t watch them drive away, he was too busy watching the stars come out.

“When I get to heaven, you and me will dance, and not even Jesus will able to stop us,” he said as he touched the place where his left knee should have been.

Somewhere out there, maybe Mary was smiling and saying, “And we’ll dance like only the stars are watching.” But maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was just watching him push himself back up the ramp and into the too-quiet house where he mourned the times when he still had two feet for her to step on.