Machine Dreams

rectangular peepholes to drive them at five miles per hour. The blockish floats were like an awkward herd of mechanical cakes tiered with girls in gowns and children in white under bowers. The first one always carried part of the Children’s Court, six-year-olds who’d participated in thecrowning ceremonies on the lawn of the local college. Little girls in organdy and gloves, boys in white suits with short pants, bow ties. Danner squinted up at them against the sun—oh, it was hot up there—the warm pavement radiating heat, and they felt like giants.
    Danner had been one of those children; somehow Billy hadn’t. She remembered riding in the parade: a confusion of caretaking by strangers before it began, the frothy dresses and the heat,
sit just like this and don’t move.
Endless slow progress of the oceanic float, the spell of continuous scattered applause while the street unwound below her. The cool, green-shaded park where she was lifted off the float by a parade marshal and fell at his feet as he released her, her legs completely without sensation.
You mean you never moved once in the whole parade?
His big face above her as he put her under a tree to wait for her mother, wait for her legs to come alive. The dreamy, sensual time in which she sat, immobilized, the green park dense with heavy trees and the parade fallen to wandering fragments across the dappled ground. The coldness of the shaded grass, her drowsy exhaustion, her legs tingling. She’d seen Jean walking into the park, wearing a full white skirt and sleeveless blouse—her hair was long then, pulled back in a chignon at the nape of her neck; her lipstick was red. Jean looked beautiful and anonymous, yet deeply familiar. Danner felt herself alone, unattached and content. Her mother was a familiar body moving over grass, the way sun moved and stopped abruptly at the shade of the trees.
    Where was Jean now? Danner saw her then, sitting in the middle of the line in one of the aluminum lawn chairs, pouring a glass of iced tea from the cooler. She held up the glass and gestured to Danner; Danner approached her, and her mother’s dark face, framed in the red scarf and the line of her black hair, was calm and steady in the heat. The colors of another band jangled behind her.
    She put her hand on Danner’s forehead. “Take a drink of this. You’re so hot your face is flushed. It’s that long hair. I don’t know why you won’t let me get you a nice haircut for summer.”
    Danner took the glass. “I don’t want short hair.”
    “All the girls have short hair this summer. Did you see Bonnie Martin’s hair?”
    Bonnie Martin was a majorette. “No,” Danner said.
    “Sure you didn’t.” Jean smiled. “Don’t you want me to pull it back for you? Want my scarf?” She touched the scarf to pull it off.
    Danner shook her head. The scarf would smell of Jean’s hair, a perfume dense and subtle at once, like heavy waxen flowers wilted by warmth. How could her hair smell that way? Danner wanted to touch the scarf and hold it.
    Jean sighed. “This parade will go on another two hours. Why not sit on the porch with Katie?” She nodded at Bess’s house. “See how cool Katie looks.”
    Danner turned. Katie didn’t see them looking and peered at the street, the porch swing under her moving slightly. Her skin was very pale and she swung absently on the broad white swing, as though the street were empty and she were totally alone. Usually she was alone on her frequent visits; her husband owned a hardware store in Winfield and came to Bellington only a few times a year. Danner turned back to Jean. “Mama, is Gladys coming out for dinner?”
    “Yes, and she’s bringing the strawberries. Would you rather I have to drive clear up to Hall’s field in this traffic and get them?” She waited for an answer; then her expression softened. “Does Gladys bother you so much? She lives all by herself. Who does she have but us, with Jewel clear up in Ohio? It’s not like Bess, with Twist and his family right here, and your dad, and Katie coming so often from Winfield.”
    “I know.”
    “Go ahead, sit on the porch. Let Katie do French braids. For the dance tonight. Tight as Katie does them, they’d last. Be pretty with your new dress.” She stroked Danner’s wrist with her warm fingers.
    The new dress: Danner’s heart sank at the prospect of wearing it. Jean had gone all the way to Winfield to shop and bought the dress as a surprise; it was a tailored