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Both brothers got on football teams in Detroit, and my sister, Keely, started to get involved with boys and "Godspell." I went home for Thanksgiving to see the Detroit Lions play on national TV. They went into overtime, and then the other team ran the ball back for a touchdown on a kickoff return. We didn't have Thanksgiving until three days later.

I gradually stopped watching football. It was like being set free in a way. I no longer had to count the minutes on the scoreboard. I no longer had to pray like hell for Daddy's team to win. I no longer had to wear ponchos or pantsuits with fringe made by mother in the colors of the team that my father was coaching. (My mother was a true believer in fringe. "If you sew fringe on the bottom, be it curtains or a poncho or pants, you'll never have to make a hem in your life.")

Eventually, Duffy stopped playing football, although he played for two years in Division III schools -- first at West Georgia in Carrollton and then at Theil College in Pennsylvania. But at 5-foot-10, he just wasn't big enough. My other brother, Casey, used to grill my father. "Why didn't you marry someone taller?" (My mother is only 5-foot-2.) "Then I would have been taller! Duffy would have been taller!" I told him, "It doesn't work that way, idiot!" But he was sure that somehow a taller version of himself and Duffy could have happened if only our father had married a taller woman.

Then Duffy picked up the guitar and started teaching himself how to play by listening to Willie Nelson. My father was hired by the Atlanta Falcons while I was getting a master of fine arts degree in playwriting at Tennessee. (I think I am the only MFA student in playwriting ever from the University of Tennessee.)

After a while, I got married and went to teach English in China with my husband, my dad moved to San Diego to coach with the Chargers, and Duffy moved on to live a songwriter's life in Nashville, playing at open mikes, studying the blues of Robert Johnson, refinishing and moving pianos with an evangelical, Rick Fretters, who ran "Fretters Piano Services" out of his garage. Duffy also waited tables at the Blue Moon, landscaped and hooked up cable lines.

He had a serious girlfriend, a dog and a life, and then he found flamenco. While channel-surfing one afternoon, he came upon an old Lawrence Welk clip that featured flamenco dancers. Captivated, he sought out lessons. He was hooked, and said, after an early outing on the dance floor, "I smell like I did after football practice."

At first, we all thought flamenco would be a phase, but we were wrong. My father has sighed more than once over Duffy and flamenco. "He's 36. A flamenco dancer. My son is a flamenco dancer. What the hell are his job prospects?"

When Duffy first started dancing, flamenco pickings were slim in Tennessee. One teacher had her students perform at happy hour at the Holiday Inn Lounge in Kentucky. Duffy also practiced at a friend's duplex, but a neighbor came running over and banged on the door, shouting, "Don't know what you're doing in there, but you're knocking pictures off my wall!"

Leaving his girlfriend and dog behind, Duffy studied flamenco in New York for several months. When he ran out of money, he moved in with our parents in San Diego and found a teacher, Juanita, who was into choreographed dances and parades. He danced in the Mardi Gras parade even though only three dancers showed up. Juanita, the teacher, never did get there. From the crowd, a heckler shouted at Duffy, "Hey, Rico Suave!"

Now Duffy pays rent to our parents, teaches guitar and commutes to the San Fernando Valley from San Diego, putting 700 miles a week on his Cabriolet so that he can study with Roberto Amaral, a flamenco master who conducts class behind his Van Nuys carport in a converted garage studio. During heavy rains this winter, the electricity went out, but Roberto lit candles and class continued by candlelight.

I tagged along one night and asked my brother, "Think you'll ever do this professionally?" He shrugged, "I mostly think about getting the footwork right." He has no time for a girlfriend. Flamenco and blues guitar are the loves of his life. When he's not dancing, he's playing guitar. When he's not playing guitar, he's dancing. He's even learning to play flamenco on the guitar.

I've also worked out a deal with him. He spends Wednesday nights at our house in Los Angeles, so he can attend flamenco classes in the Valley on Wednesday and Thursday nights. In exchange, he baby-sits for me on Thursday mornings, so I can get writing done.

He takes our 1-year-old daughter to the park for a few hours. I have watched him amble off with her in the stroller, occasionally doing flamenco steps down the sidewalk. In the afternoons, he might pick up our two older kids at the bus stop, coach them on their piano lessons or challenge them to a pillow fight. It's really nice having him around.

I have thought about our professions as children of a former football coach. None of us went into sports. My father always did say, "Find something that you love to do and do it!" I am a writer with three children. At age 4, when my son saw his first football game on TV with my father, he'd been watching Charles Laughton in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," and was inspired to stuff a pillow into the back of his shirt to create a hump. Notre Dame happened to be playing that day, and he said to my father, "They're a bunch of Quasimodos, right? Look at their hunchbacks." My dad said, "Jesus Christ, haven't you taught this kid anything?"

As for my other siblings, Keely is a playwright and actress in New York, and Casey sells insurance in Chicago. He's the practical one. He calls us up to make sure we're saving money. He reminds Duffy to keep paying on his student loan. He calls up my father to discuss stock options.

As I watched Duffy dance recently in flamenco class, I was in a trance. Flamenco means "outside of society." It's a dance of the earth, gypsies and blues. In that hot Van Nuys studio, just down the road from a huge Bible and religious accessories warehouse, students from age 9 to 60 danced. I met a criminal lawyer and his librarian wife, who take four classes a week from Amaral. A young brother and sister come down to Van Nuys from Santa Barbara to study.

Beginning with castanets and footwork, Amaral directed the dancers, keeping them "in compass" (in time). The dancers' hands moved like birds, their feet stomped across the floor. Amaral sang rich, melodious laments and clapped as he called out, "It's not 'River Dance,' people!" One woman whispered to me after class, "When I dance, I feel alive!"

I suddenly remembered my brother spinning our mother around our shag-carpeted living room in Knoxville to "Saturday Night Fever." My mother shouted, "Your brother has great rhythm! Come dance with us!" Of course, I did no such thing and went up to my room.

My brother plans to leave for Spain shortly. I used to watch him play football. Now I watch him dance.
salon.com | April 14, 2000

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