Marcia Talley - Dead Man Dancing

It wasn’t until the music stopped that I realized, except for Tom, Laurie, and me – and Shirley Douglas who I could see talking to Jay on the other side of the glass doors of his office – everyone had gone home. Where the heck was Chloe?

Before I had time to panic, Chloe shot out of the dressing-room door, ran over to me, grabbed my hand and tugged. ‘Grandma, I need you to come.’ Her normally smooth forehead was creased with worry, and she seemed on the verge of tears.

‘What is it, Chloe? What’s wrong?’

She tugged harder, throwing her whole body weight into it. ‘Just come!’

Chloe led me through the women’s dressing room and into the bathroom. She stopped in front of a stall at the end of a row of five. ‘In there.’

From behind the door came the sound of quiet sobbing. ‘Who’s in there?’ I whispered to my granddaughter.

‘It’s Tessa.’

I pushed on the door to the stall, but Tessa had it locked. ‘Tessa,’ I said in as soothing a voice as I could manage. ‘It’s Chloe’s grandmother. Will you open the door for me, sweetie?’

‘Nooooh!’

‘Please?’

‘I don’t want to!’ Tessa wailed.

‘If you don’t open the door, I’m going to ask Chloe to crawl under and unlock it for me. Do you hear me, Tessa?’

The sobbing continued for a long moment, and then I heard the latch slide open. Inside the stall, I found Tessa hunched over the toilet where she’d clearly been throwing up. I wrapped my arms around the little girl, supporting her until the worst of the retching had passed.

‘Chloe, go get a paper towel and put cold water on it, please.’

When Chloe returned with the dampened towel I used it to wipe Tessa’s cheeks and chin. ‘Run get Tessa’s mother, Chloe. She’s in the office talking to Jay.’

Tessa stiffened. ‘Nooooh! Don’t get my mom!’

‘What on earth is wrong, Tessa?’

‘She’ll be mad at me.’

‘No, she won’t.’

‘My mommy and daddy are fighting all the time,’ Tessa sobbed. ‘I’m afraid they’re going to get a divorce.’

‘Sometimes parents don’t agree on things,’ I reassured her. ‘It doesn’t mean that they don’t love one another any more.’ I smoothed some unruly strands of long, dark hair out of her eyes. ‘Chloe’s daddy and mommy sometimes yell at each other, don’t they Chloe?’

From the doorway of the stall, Chloe nodded solemnly. ‘And then they hug and kiss.’

Tessa snuffled noisily. ‘My mommy and daddy don’t hug and kiss.’

‘Maybe they hug and kiss after you go to bed,’ I suggested a little desperately, offering her a wad of toilet tissue with which to blow her nose.

Tessa took the tissue and blew, a honking A-flat that echoed from stall to stall. She smiled wanly. ‘If I’m very, very good, maybe they won’t fight any more.’

Poor Tessa. Suddenly all I wanted to do was pick her up and take her to my house. When I got her there I’d dress her in jeans and a T-shirt, let her get sticky making Rice Krispie Treats and allow her to eat them all in a single sitting while watching Shreck on DVD.

‘Tessa,’ I said. ‘Your mommy and daddy will love you no matter what.’

‘They will?’

‘Yes, they will.’

I sent Chloe and Tessa out to wash their hands, and had just flushed away the evidence, when I heard Shirley call from the dressing room. ‘Tessa! Are you in there? Don’t keep me waiting, little miss!’

When I got out into the dressing room, Tessa and her mother were gone, no surprise, and Chloe was waiting for me, a strap of her Angelina Ballerina backpack looped over one shoulder. ‘Can we go to KFC now, Grandma?’

‘Of course we can.’ I took Chloe’s hand, and we walked out the door together with Chloe chanting, ‘Chicken wings and fries, chicken wings and fries.’

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a bucket of chicken from KFC could solve all the world’s problems that easily?

A few minutes later, as we waited for our order at the drive-thru, Chloe said, ‘Tessa can’t eat French fries, Grandma.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because dancers can’t be fat.’

‘That’s true, I suppose, but your friend Tessa isn’t fat, is she?’

Chloe shook her head.

‘Well, I wouldn’t recommend eating French fries every day, Chloe, but there’s nothing wrong having a French fry every once in a while.’

I pulled up to the window, paid for our order, and set the hot, aromatic bag on the front seat between us.

I put the car in drive, but before I could pull away, Chloe said, ‘What’s wrong with Tessa’s nose?’

‘Her nose?’ I closed my eyes, trying to recall any imperfections in the little girl’s face as I was wiping it. ‘Why, nothing’s wrong with Tessa’s nose, Sweet Pea. Why do you ask?’

‘Because back there in the bathroom, Tessa told me she has to get her nose fixed.’

‘A nose job on a nine-year-old, can you believe it?’

‘Stop sputtering, Hannah, and hand me the pliers, will you?’

I handed Paul the pliers with one hand while steadying the ladder he was standing on with the other. ‘And you know what else?’

‘What?’ he mumbled around a mouthful of screws.

‘I always thought Tessa’s hair was improbably thick. Well, yesterday I found out why.’

Paul lowered his hand and snapped his fingers silently. ‘Bulb.’

I handed him a 100-watt bulb.

‘OK, I give up, why?’ He tucked the new bulb under his arm and handed me the dead one.

‘Hair extensions, and a really first-rate job of it, too,’ I said, grasping the old bulb gingerly by the screw end where it wasn’t so generously encrusted with fried insect carcasses.

Paul finished screwing the fresh bulb into the socket of the light fixture in the ceiling of our entrance hall, replaced the globe, then climbed carefully down from the ladder. ‘Don’t get your undies in a twist about the hair extensions, Hannah. Hair extensions are reversible. The nose job, though, is another matter.’ He collapsed the ladder and started lugging it toward the basement. ‘But, what reputable plastic surgeon is going to perform a nose job on a child?’

‘I’ve heard there are surgeons in Brazil who’ll do anything.’

In fact, I had a friend who took a ‘cosmetic vacation’ to Rio de Janeiro – the Face Lift and Tango Package – and came home with a new face and a Brazilian boyfriend, all for less than five thousand dollars.

Paul leaned the ladder against the wall, and locked his dark brown, no-nonsense eyes on mine. ‘Tessa is not your child, Hannah. This is not your problem.’

‘I know I need to let it go,’ I admitted. ‘But nothing’s going to stop me from composing letters to Child Protective Services in my head.’

‘My advice, sweetheart? Put it out of your mind.’

But I couldn’t.

That night I dreamed the mother of one of Tessa’s pint-sized rivals hired a hit man to bump off Shirley, believing that Tessa would be so upset about her mother’s death that she would bag the Tiny Ballroom competition. Instead, Tessa, in the weird, meandering way of dreams, ended up waltzing with a miniature Hutch for the Shall We Dance? auditions, while Melanie and Tom eloped to Vegas in an airplane piloted by Kay, leaving Jay to comfort Laurie in her tear-stained peach gown.

Ancient Romans sometimes submitted their dreams to the Senate for analysis and interpretation, believing dreams were messages from the gods.

If that was the case, I was keeping this dream entirely to myself.

Epiphany.

The Three Wise Men.

The true gift of the Magi, Pastor Eva once preached, was the revelation that the child born of Mary in Bethlehem was the Son of God, His gift to all the world. As Christians, she said, we are reminded to seek enlightenment during this season.