Marcia Talley: Dead Man Dancing

When he was out of earshot, Neelie touched my arm, her face serious, and I realized why she wanted to send Daddy away from the table. ‘I don’t want to worry you, dear, but your father is having terrible trouble with his eyes. He’s seeing a specialist up at Wilmer next Monday.’

I stared slack-jawed at Neelie, thinking damn . I’d arisen that morning in a cheerful mood, fed my husband hot oatmeal with butter and maple syrup for breakfast, sent him off to work with a kiss, and was looking forward, really looking forward to dance lessons – and so, Paul claimed, was he. And now, well, the older I got, the less I liked surprises. First, my old friend Eva mysteriously returns to town, and now my dad was going blind. What next?

‘Trouble?’ I asked. ‘What do you mean “trouble”?’

‘His vision is blurred, reading is an effort, and he’s having difficulty driving, particularly at night. We’re hoping it’s just cataracts.’

‘Just cataracts? Just ?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Hannah,’ Ruth chimed in. ‘Chill. Cataract surgery is no big deal these days. Besides, Wilmer Eye Institute is the best’

‘Why didn’t Daddy share this with us ?’ I asked.

‘He doesn’t want to worry you.’

‘What are families for, if it’s not to worry about one another?’

‘He said he was going to tell you girls all about it, but he wanted to wait until after the appointment, when he knew more about the situation.’

‘So why are you telling us now?’

‘I thought… well, I’m not as young as I used to be, girls. So if your father needs someone to drive him to his appointment…’ Neelie put a finger to her lips. Daddy was making his way back to the table with Neelie’s green beans.

I was thinking that Daddy didn’t have a bit of difficulty reading Eva’s Post-it note over my shoulder when the waiter returned with a fresh pot of tea. I decided to pour another cup and concentrate on clearing up the last strands of noodles from my plate.

Ten minutes later, the waiter was back with the check on a black plastic tray covered with fortune cookies. Neelie slipped the bill out from under the pile of cookies and handed it to Dad, then took charge of the tray. ‘Fortune cookies, anyone?’

I love fortune cookies, especially with Chinese tea, so I grabbed first. I tore off the cellophane wrapping and, as was our family custom, prepared to read it aloud, when Ruth beat me to the punch. ‘Listen to this: “A closed mouth gathers no feet”.’

Paul snorted. ‘Closed mouth? You, Ruth? That’ll be the day.’

‘Speak for yourself, Professor,’ Ruth said. ‘So, what does yours say?’

‘Let’s see here.’ Paul tore open the packet with his teeth, and read, ‘“A member of your family will soon do something that will make you proud”.’ He considered each of us seated around the table in turn, grinning. ‘OK, which one of you is going to make me proud. Ruth? Surely this must refer to your dancing.’

Ruth blushed. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’

It was also a family custom, appropriated from our daughter Emily, who picked it up from her classmates at Bryn Mawr College, to add the phrase ‘in between the sheets’ to the end of any cookie fortune.

Paul smacked his forehead with the flat of his hand. ‘Duh.’

Hutch had been part of the family long enough to be familiar with the game. He reached across the table for the fortune. ‘Hey, Paul, can I see that?’

Paul surrendered the slip of paper to Hutch who made an elaborate show of putting on his glasses, clearing his throat, and reading, ‘“A member of your family will soon do something that will make you proud – in between the sheets.”’ He laughed out loud, gave Ruth an affectionate peck on the cheek. ‘Now that’s more like it.’

Neelie opened her fortune, then dissolved into giggles. ‘Mine says, “Flattery will go far tonight – in between the sheets”.’

Daddy slipped an arm around Neelie’s shoulders, and gave her a hug, an intimate gesture, which made me wonder just how ‘platonic’ their relationship was. Daddy’s fortune, when he held it up close to read it next, did nothing to dissuade me of the notion that when he got Neelie home, he was going to jump her bones: ‘“A thrilling time is in your immediate future – in between the sheets”,’ he read.

At least Neelie had the manners to blush attractively as she said, ‘Your turn, Hutch.’

Hutch read: ‘“He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at…”’ He paused, then balled up his fortune and tossed it into his empty tea cup.

‘… in between the sheets?’ Ruth added.

‘I hope that’s not a commentary on my, um, equipment.’ Hutch raised an eyebrow.

Ruth punched him in the arm. ‘As if!’ Then she turned to me. ‘Well?’

I’d been holding the slip of paper between my thumb and index finger thinking about its significance, hoping it wasn’t an omen. ‘“If you want the rainbow, you must put up with the rain – in between the sheets”,’ I read.

Everyone laughed.

As fortunes go, though, mine turned out to be depressingly accurate, if you discounted the part about the sheets.

To the casual observer, waiting for his car to be finished at JiffyLube across West Street, our mass exodus from China Garden must have resembled a bomb scare. The six of us, irresponsibly responsible (ecologically speaking) for four automobiles, pulled out of the restaurant parking lot almost simultaneously; Ruth’s aged green Taurus in the lead, and Hutch’s burgundy BMW just behind. The cortège turned right on to West Street, and right again at the traffic light at the intersection of West Street and Chinquapin Round Road, the busy corner where a condominium complex called 1901 West had replaced the venerable Johnson Lumber yard which had served Annapolis’s home construction needs for more than seventy-five years. The developers had reserved space on the ground floor of the high-rise for retail shops, but with the exception of a lone, optimistic Starbucks, no retailers had stepped up to the plate, and the storefronts had remained vacant for more than a year.

A few blocks later, Paul pulled into one of two dozen marked parking spaces reserved for clients of J & K, where we sat, idling, listening to the end of Marketplace on WNPR, and waiting for Daddy and Cornelia to catch up with us. The J & K parking lot was on George Avenue, directly across from The Rapture Church. Down the street and to the left was the Harley-Davidson dealership. We’d just driven past Mr Garbage, Global Van Lines and The Air Works, light industrial businesses that were typical of this part of town.

‘Air Works?’ Paul asked, switching off the ignition as Marketplace came to an end.

I shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t like to speculate.’

The J & K building itself, flat-roofed and constructed of cinder blocks painted a creamy yellow, was as far removed from the modern brick, glass and steel facades of the towering condos two blocks away as a building could possibly be. In a former life, it had probably been a dark and dreary warehouse, but in converting it to a dance studio, the contractors had opened the building up to the light by replacing the cinder blocks along one wall with a row of picture windows. Through the windows, illuminated by bright overhead track lighting, I could see polished wooden floors. Mirrors covered the opposite wall, reflecting our cloaked, gloved and hooded images as we peered in.

Paul turned toward the entrance, but I tugged on his sleeve. ‘Look, Paul.’

Inside the studio, two couples were circling the ballroom, dancing to music we couldn’t hear. From the hopping, bobbing and quick little running steps they were doing, I guessed it must be the quickstep. One tall, impossibly slim couple was dressed almost identically in black stretch pants and white, sleeveless, high-necked tank tops. The second male dancer wore a green polo shirt with white and yellow horizontal stripes, tucked into a pair of slim black jeans. Only someone as trim as he could have gotten away with horizontal stripes, I thought. His partner was a woman I guessed to be in her early thirties looking incredibly sexy in a red leotard. A comb headband held her chestnut hair away from her forehead, and her shoulder-length curls bounced like springs as her partner led her in a series of slow-quick-quick-slow-slow steps across the dance floor. Then, after an appraising glance at the other couple, they switched seamlessly to a quick-and-quick-and-quick-quick-slow pattern that was so rapid and intricate, I marveled that their legs didn’t get impossibly tangled, causing them to trip and fall down in a heap.