Dance of the Fools

"If you eat that seed, Adrian, a watermelon will grow in your stomach."

The four year old girl giggled, took another bite of the ripe melon, and precociously swallowed the tiny black seed.

"I can hear it now," her grandfather said seriously. "You'll soon have a whole watermelon patch in your belly. It can happen, don't look so surprised. Your stomach is warm and moist, exactly what baby watermelons like."

The two sat at the kitchen table, a man past the prime of his life, tired and worn from facing too many people's pain and illnesses across from him the embodiment of the freshness and vitality of youth. Grandma, plump and lovely, laughed softly from the sink where she erased evidence of the afternoon meal. The spring sun glared white and light golden through the window pane, silhouetting the petite southern lady while surrounding her husband of 28 years and their first grandchild with an ethereal glow.

Grandmother was glad for the bond shared between grandfather and granddaughter. The sight of Adrian's perky, bouncy, slightly pigeon-toed walk from the house she shared with her mother next door was a stimulant that brought the gleam of contentment back into the old doctor's battle weary eyes.

Adrian looked at Grand daddy Richard more seriously, concentrated on her stomach, and wondered if there really was a baby watermelon there. If grand daddy said so, she thought, it is probably true. Blue eyes wide she asked "will it hurt?"

"Oh, I don't know if it will hurt. Let me just take a look." Hands, speckled with dark age spots reached out towards Adrian's middle. Grand daddy probed Adrian gently. Accustomed to the serious task of diagnosis and prognosis, he dressed his haggard face in an overacted mimicry of pure concentration.

Suddenly, Grand daddy began tickling Adrian and the child screamed in delight. She thrashed in the chair and Grand daddy laughed his deep, quiet laugh, brown eyes squinting with mirth. "I'm just pulling your leg!"

"No... you're... not!" Adrian gasped between twinkling giggles. "You're... tick... ling... me!"

"If ya'll are going to play," grandma scolded halfheartedly, "go in the living room."

Grand daddy stopped and pulled Adrian out of her chair. He carried her into the adjoining room and settled into his recliner.

The living room contrasted sharply with the cheerful brightness of the kitchen. To protect an unsuspecting reader or television viewer from the harsh intrusion of afternoon sunlight, heavy drapes covered the windows. Three porcelain dolls sat lifelike on the brick fireplace, glass eyes of amber, blue and green staring constantly at the four year old child. Grandma's dolls also stood sentinel on shelves and in cabinets lining the walls of the spacious room. Although beautiful in their fur-lined capes and satin dresses, the dolls' eyes always seemed too life-like for Adrian. Chubby arms encircled Grand daddy Richard and the girl buried her head in his neck, breathing in the scents of tobacco mixed with a dash of doctor's office disinfectant.

Voice muffled Adrian asked, "Can we play our game?" She knew god and well he would say yes. He spoiled her with pure love, and with all the innocence of a child, she did not take advantage of his affection.

Adrian hopped off her grandfather's lap and grabbed the oblong board with red, blue, yellow and green pegs. The two wiled away the afternoon playing a game invented by the two of them, known only by the two of them, until the tow-headed child, as lovely as any of his wife's dolls, fell asleep on Grand daddy Richard's autumn colored polyester shirt.

Two twelve year old girls laid stomach down, side by side on Shelley's twin bed. Ozzy Osbourne blared on the stereo. The pair spoke of boys, school, boys, music, boys and other assorted subjects.

"I can't believe Alex Freeman left that note on my desk!" Adrian squealed. "He has got to be the grossest boy in school!"

"Oh, you know you love him." Shelley commented with only moderate interest. Although older by seven entire months, Shelley was not yet as fascinated with the opposite sex as her best friend. "I just can't believe Mrs. McIntyre sent us to the counselor for writing that silly story." Shelley rolled over and stared at the glow-in-the-dark Pink Floyd banner she won at the State Fair last week. "Like our brains are warped just because we wrote about the entire six grade class being killed."

Adrian couldn't help but laugh. The idea had been absurd from the beginning. Shelley's mind bubbled with terrific methods of dying Adrian had taken her friend's interest and fashioned a grotesque story complete with mutated teachers who ate their students. Adrian had been grounded for a month when the counselor had contacted her parents. "I can't believe your parents didn't even punish you."

Shelley merely shrugged. "Hey, Adrian, want some mac ‘n cheese?" Shelley jumped off the bed, playing air guitar with Randy Rhodes as she headed towards the kitchen. Adrian bounded after the other girl, almost relieved to be out of the room shrouded by black towels thumb tacked to the windows.

Alone in the house, Adrian felt something like a renegade. Although she felt fully capable of taking care of herself, she was never left alone without a babysitter. Shelley had been a latch-key child almost all her life, and being alone was not even an issue that crossed her mind.

Shelley set a pot of water on the stove and took a box of Food Lion brand Macaroni and Cheese from the pantry. She took no notice of the brown vinyl peeling, curling in great strips under the protection of faded wooden cabinets. The ugly black gashes that to Adrian looked like the thick clotted blood of an old wound, did not even warrant a passing glance from the other girl.

In an effort to escape the massacred kitchen floor, Adrian went into the adjoining living room and sat on the orange and brown plaid couch. The walls were unadorned except for a family photo Shelley hardly ever smiled, unless she was thinking of something that would make other people's stomach's turn. Garbed in black, with matching jet hair and dark eyes, Shelley was the most sardonic person Adrian had ever known.

Both girls were intelligent and advent readers who loved music and adored horses. Shelley collected Steven King novels, AC/DC records and wrote book reports on mummies. Adrian enjoyed romance novels, Madonna and was infatuated with the prospect of being in love one day. Shelley was the night to Adrian's day.

But they complemented each other well, and they shared interests when together. Unlike most friendships, neither was dominant and they were never jealous of each other. They had become friends when Adrian's grade school best friend and Shelley's grade school best friend had become friends, proving that three, or four as it had been really is a crowd.

Shelley brought Adrian a plate of the cheesy pasta, spread evenly at the bottom of the K-Mart plastique dish like a pie. After devouring the meal, the girls once again sat idle before Adrian spotted the board games on a dusty shelf in the corner. Adrian knew Shelley didn't like board games, but they were bored enough as it was. The girls were suspended at that difficult age when a girl no longer played Barbies, and yet was not old enough for dating, driving and other pursuits teenagers enjoy.

Adrian squatted in front of the games, passed over Parcheesi and a box of dominoes before her had came to rest on a cribbage board. "Oh my God! I haven't seen one of these since my grandfather died!" The blond held the cribbage board reverently and closed her eyes. Although seven years had passed since her grandfather's death, Adrian could see his face with the errant white hair that hung over his wrinkled brow and the chocolate eyes that always squinted like the sun shone into them as if he stood directly in front of her. A tear escaped a closed lid and migrated down Adrian's face.

Touching a red peg, Adrian tried to remember the game she had so loved to play, but the rules invented so long ago would not come to her. Adrian withdrew a blue peg, and in a feeble attempt to recreate the past, she hopped a yellow peg like one would do in Chinese Checkers. She was glad to hear Shelley's mother pull into the garage. Adrian was ready to go home.

Grand daddy Richard died when Adrian was four years old. She remembered waking up the morning he passed away to a feeling of wrongness. Every day Adrian walked across the lawn to grand daddy's house to spend the day while her mother went to work. This morning however, unusual activity and strange cars pulled in and out of her grandparent's gravel driveway. Adrian watched the entrance and exit of strangers from the pantry window.

Mother quickly dressed Adrian and drove the child to her father's house. "Why can't I go over to see grand daddy today?" Adrian asked repeatedly. She felt sick, like when her father took her on the Loch Ness Monster ride at Bush Gardens. Instead of answering, mother simply cried.

An unhappy day can seem like an eternity to a child. Two of these eternity-days passed before Adrian saw her grand daddy for the final time. She wore her very best, favorite and prettiest dress a pink gingham with a row of ruffles at the sleeves and hem. When mother held her daughter over the shiny coffin, the white cotton pinafore and baby pink of Adrian's dress clashed wildly against the dark mahogany.

The four year old had never seen a dead person. Adrian stared at the beloved face, waxen, drawn, like a doll. She didn't cry because that wasn't her grand daddy laying there on the bed of satin. The thing in the box was like one of the dolls her grandmother collected, only life-sized. Without the glass eyes staring through her, Adrian was not at all frightened.

"Do you want to touch your grandfather?" mother whispered in Adrian's ear. The golden head shook slowly. Mother reached out a manicured hand and touched the slack face she cried softly, a warm tear fell on her daughter's neck.

Adrian comforted her mother, "that's not grand daddy. It looks like him, but that's not him. Can we go see grand daddy now?"

"Honey, your grand daddy had a stroke. He's gone to heaven. That is him, but his soul is with the angels."

Laying on her white iron and shiny brass bed, Adrian wept loud wracking sobs. The bed that had cradled her since infancy held the girl safe. The powder blue walls and soft bubble of her aquarium comforted Adrian, allowing her to succumb to the magic of childhood. Although many memories and faces had faded, remembrances of her grandfather remained vivid in Adrian's mind.

Her parents had divorced when she was very young and grand daddy had been the only stable being in her life. He always had time for her, always made her feel better, always made her laugh.

When a play-mate had dropped a cinder block on Adrian's foot and her big toe nail turned black, the child screamed bloody murder when her mother probed the toe experimentally. Adrian had run from her mother to the sanctity of her grandfather's embrace. He soaked her tiny foot in warm water. Adrian sat quietly, confidently and trustingly when the doctor pulled the nail off gently with tweezers.

Adrian felt comfort in the fact that many people in town knew her grandfather. He had moved his wife and six children to the small southern town to open a medical practice, and Doctor Richard McIntyre was trusted and revered by many. He was famous for his generosity and compassion.

After she blew her nose, Adrian picked up the phone and dialed Shelley's telephone number. "Hey Shelley! What's up? I'm sorry I got kind of weird on you at your house..."

Four years, three beach trips and two ski trips later, Shelley and Adrian remained fast friends. Shelley had retained her black garments and tomboyish mannerisms and still had not found interest in boys. Adrian skipped in and out of relationships like a stone thrown over a pond, a habit that rather dampened her reputation among the other high schooler's. She dressed with precision and was never seen as less than perfect. In high school, where appearances meant more than academics, the dark metal head and chic blonde made an odd pair.

Through the passing years Adrian had retained her fidelity towards her best friend, remembering the pain they both felt when abandoned in middle school. She shared with Shelley all the important moments in her life, trusting her friend explicably and had never made an effort to make other female friends. Therefore, Adrian was mildly surprised when Shelley began garnering a new group of companions after the two entered high school.

Adrian felt more jealousy than any other emotion when she alighted the yellow school bus and saw Shelley laughing with three other somberly clad students behind the school. She saw a boy with stringy, brown hair light a cigarette and take a drag before he passed it to the girl beside him. She was flabbergasted to see Shelley, whom she KNEW had never smoked, take a drag without even gagging. Adrian had tried one of her mother's cigarettes one night and thought her throat had been seared permanently by the noxious fumes. How in the world could Shelley inhale without a single fit of coughing?

When Shelley met Adrian at their locker before first period, Adrian merely said, "I haven't seen Alex this morning. Tell him to meet me here before lunch if he's in Algebra today, O.K.?" She turned brusquely and hurried to band class.

In the circular band room, Adrian sat down between the saxophones and trombones and raised the french horn mouthpiece to her lips to warm up. She felt a tinge of sorrow at having snubbed Shelley. Ignoring the cacophony of woodwinds and brass and oblivious to the pound of the drums, Adrian never noticed the band director calling on different people to perform in order from right to left. The only french horn, she didn't hear the tenor sax beside her playing his measures smoothly for the band directory.

"Adrian, Adrian, earth to Adrian. How ‘bout giving me your solo in ‘La Suerte De Los Tontos'."

Fingers like wood, Adrian missed a fingering and a slur to high A flat before the band director stopped her and informed Adrian that she would perform the piece for him before class the next day. Adrian tried unsuccessfully to ignore the snickering of her other classmates.

That night when the two friends spoke on the phone, Adrian had completely forgotten that she had been upset with Shelley. Adrian chatted brightly about the usual subjects teenage girls talk about: hitting the orange cone on the driver's education range, the fight outside English class and the substitute teacher in World Civilizations whose fly was unzipped the entire period.

Shelley was more quiet than usual. Her friend didn't notice, caught up in the wonder and magic of being an attractive girl who enjoyed all the fruits of life.

"You will never believe what Alex and I did during the lunch period! We snuck off..."

Shelley interrupted Adrian in mid sentence. "There's something I want to tell you. I know you saw me smoking with Randi, Jason and C.J. this morning. I saw you get off the bus."

"You don't have to explain anything to me. If you want to smoke you know enough to not have to ask MY opinion. I mean, it's not like my grandmother died from cancer or anything. I don't care if your lungs rot off, that's your business."

"Adrian, would you shut up?!? You are not making this any easier for me. That wasn't a cigarette we were smoking. It was a joint," Shelley put in quickly as if under her breath.

"What do you mean a joint? As in marijuana? As in drugs?" Adrian was dubious. Her friend must be joking. The rumors about the heads at school who smoked dope between classes and even during classes in the bathroom called "the dungeon" were just that, rumors. No on at school could get their hands on drugs, much less know what to do with it.

"Yeah," Shelley said. "I've been smoking dope for about two years now. I never told you because I know you don't believe in that stuff and I didn't want to lose your friendship. You're my best friend, Adrian, and I'd never make you feel uncomfortable."

Adrian sat in silence. She could hear Metallica playing on Shelley's end of the phone. At a loss for words, Adrian said her mom was calling for her and hung up.

The following morning, Adrian hurried to the locker and with the excuse of having to play for the band instructor, avoided any sort of conversation with Shelley. Instead of meeting the other girl for lunch, Adrian stayed behind in Earth Science and worked on a lab. Adrian avoided Shelley again by going to her locker after fourth period instead of waiting until after fifth when she knew the dark-haired girl would be there.

Adrian could not erase the picture of Shelley smoking the joint out of her mind. Although Adrian had participated in her own share of sneaking out of the house, a dash of vodka in a glass of orange juice and other rebellious activities, she though only trailer park trash and sluts did drugs. Decent, intelligent people just don't do that sort of thing. And then, selfishly, Adrian wondered what people would think of her if they know her best friend was a head.

That was the moment when Adrian subconsciously made the decision to loosen the strings of friendship with Shelley. No, Adrian couldn't go to the movies next weekend, she had to do the science project she had procrastinated on, and as summer approached she made up the weak excuse that her parents wouldn't let her take a friend to the beach with them that year.

As August dawned the on start of her their Junior year in high school, Shelley attended class only occasionally and finally not at all. Adrian turned guiltily away from the gossip of Shelley's drug involvement and stalked away angrily when classmates cruelly asked if she knew anywhere they could score some crack. Adrian threw herself in her books and tried to drown herself in a world where friends did not betray each other and peers were not so abusive. Her mother noticed the change in Adrian, and made an extra effort to speak to her, but the girl turned a deaf ear, shutting herself away in her blue painted self-imposed prison where she could lament the loss of her friend and feel guilt over her own abandonment. Although she had other acquaintances, Shelley's seeming betrayal had hurt Adrian deeply as did the dark haired girl's immediate acceptance into the bosom of her drug addict friends.

Finally Adrian's mother cornered the girl when she found her daughter crying pitifully in her room.

"Oh, baby," mother said to Adrian, brushing wet hair back from a fevered brow. "What's wrong? You haven't been yourself in a year. I never see Shelley over here anymore and you hardly ever come out of your room. Adrian, are you taking drugs or doing anything I should know about?" Mother continued brushing Adrian's tangled blonde hair with soothing fingers and the girl's sobs grew even stronger. That her mother could accuse her of the very action that caused her to terminate her friendship with Shelley, and was the root of all her pain, was unthinkable.

"No mamma! You should know me better than that! Only losers do drugs. You don't understand, mamma! Shelley and I... Shelley. I just want my grand daddy, why did he have to die, he always made everything better. My life sucks!"

"Adrian," mother said sternly. "You have a wonderful life, and your grand daddy, he had his problems too. I never told you this, but I guess it is about time you found out. Your grandfather, daddy, he, well, he had a drug problem."

Adrian's tears stopped immediately. "What do you mean? What are you talking about?"

"You know we moved around a lot when I was younger. We would move to a town, daddy would begin practicing medicine, and then people would find out that he was a drug addict. And we would have to leave. I remember begging daddy to stop. One night I opened the bathroom door and he was sitting on the toilet, a needle in his vein. I cried for him to stop, I was about your age. I blamed him for making me leave all my friends. Then we moved here, and he opened the practice downtown. People knew, I am sure, but we stayed here. They took us in. Some were bigoted, as people can be, but most took the chance to know him, and they loved him for the caring, understanding person he was, despite his problem," Mother was shedding her own tears by now.

Fascinated, repulsed, Adrian stared blankly at her mother. "Why? Why? Mamma, I loved him so much!"

"You still do love him and you can continue loving him. Daddy had a problem. He knew he had a problem, but the drugs are too powerful. At that time you didn't have the awareness that you do now. And as a doctor, he could get the morphine, the heroine easily. I don't now why he started or when, he was in a lot of emotional pain. I think that he cared too much about people. Having to face other people's problems every day, to make them better, became too much for him. I don't know. But I never stopped loving him, and your grandmother never left him. She stayed by his side and took the good with the bad. Don't you ever forget how much he loved you. He was sick, Adrian, as sick as the people he made well every day. The only person he couldn't make feel better was himself."

Mother and daughter spoke into the night. They talked about growing up, about life, and the challenge that comes with living it.

"Something that you probably don't know, Adrian, is that your great uncle, your grandfather's brother started and opened the Koala Drug and Alcohol Re-Hab Center in Raleigh because of daddy's problem. Although he couldn't help daddy, he's been able to help a lot of others." With that last sentence, mother kissed her daughter on the cheek and rose to leave.

When Mother left and turned the lights out, Adrian lay in bed and thought about the revelation her mother had divulged. As with Shelley, Adrian had ignored all the clues, and she realized not that they had been many. A teacher once praised Adrian on her grandfather's caring and ability, "but it is a shame about his problem." Everyone knew that grand daddy smoked like a fiend, and to an innocent Adrian, she had though the teacher referred to his addiction to nicotine, not the drugs that wreaked havoc on his veins, and on his life. She had not even imagined the words held a much deeper meaning.

My grand daddy had a problem just like Shelley, Adrian thought. I could never have abandoned him, and I can't believe I left Shelley. She needs me more than ever now, and I will help her as much as I possibly can.

When Adrian got home from school the next day, she went to the card shop and bought one that intoned "I Miss You." She looked up the number for the Koala Center in the phone book and jotted down the number for the help line. After writing the number in the card, she scrawled "I miss you Shelley, and love you very much. I'll always be here if you need me. And, I'm sorry. Love, Adrian". She addressed and stamped the envelope and walked it to the mailbox, flipping the flag up, feeling more at peace than she had in over a year.

by Aprilrain

For more writing by Aprilrain, please visit the author's web site.