A Perfect Life_A Novel by Eileen Pollack

Author:Eileen Pollack [Pollack, Eileen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adult
ISBN: 9780062419170
Google: _2dqCgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 26156473
Publisher: Ecco
Published: 2016-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

As it turned out, everyone gave blood, even those islanders who weren’t at risk. They seemed to find it reasonable that the price of an evening of pleasure be pain. By five, they had lined up beside the schoolhouse, the men in stiff white shirts, the women in flowered dresses with wide cardboard belts. The children kept peeking in to see if balloons truly did hang from the ceiling and a bowl of punch and a case of beer really were sitting on the teacher’s desk beneath the letters of the alphabet and the time line that stretched from prehistoric times to the 1950s. Miriam dragged a table beside the threshold and jabbed each person’s arm as he or she came in. One old man was pushed to the dance in a homemade cart. Another man made the trek from the east point of the island for the first time in years. “Yow!” he said when Miriam jammed him with her needle. “I’d a-known you was a-going to break my arm, I’d a-thought twice about coming.”

After the guests gave blood and let Sumner examine them, they were allowed to dance and drink. The band was set up beneath a yellowed map of Asia. Eve Barter, on a stool, wore shiny white boots, her beefy legs bare to the hem of her short red skirt. Her sausage curls wobbled as she pumped a spangled blue accordion. “Listen up!” she ordered the musicians. “I don’t think we were all playing the same song that time. Ned, I know we been doing a lot of funerals lately, but our audience here is trying to dance.” She addressed this to a teenage boy with a pompadour; the mouthpiece of a sax dangled from his lips like a cigarette. Beside him sat a whey-faced guitarist who had been a bishop on the mainland before he lost his church, I never found out why. The pianist wore white gloves and pumped the pedals with such vigor she seemed to be marching, hour after hour, without reaching the end of whatever parade she was in.

Willie had been persuaded to take a turn on someone’s guitar. But he was clearly out of practice and couldn’t keep up. A string popped. I saw him mouth shit. Like me, he rarely cursed. Someday, I would like to take a poll of how many people whose parents died of Valentine’s try their very best not to swear.

When the band took a break, Eve offered Willie a beer. He shook his head. She tried again. He paused, then put the bottle to his mouth and drank.

I stepped forward to stop him. It hadn’t occurred to me that he might become as unglued by this crazy island as I was. Midway across the room, I was stopped by a man with wind-burned skin and splintery teeth. “Want to dance?” he asked me angrily. The band resumed playing, and my partner pulled me across the floor. I had never danced a polka. I stumbled, but my partner yanked me back up.

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