Curtis Sittenfeld - American Wife

Then, to my astonishment, my father stood, extended his hand, and said, “May I have this dance?”

“Oh, let me put on music!” My mother hurried into the living room to turn on the radio, and big-band music—it sounded like Glenn Miller—became audible.

My father raised our arms so they made an arch above my head, and he twirled me beneath it. Over the music, my mother said, “Alice, the dress really flatters your figure.”

My father held me lightly, prompting me to turn and sway, and he said, “Stand up straight. Even short fellows prefer girls with good posture because it’s a sign of confidence.”

I set my shoulders back and lifted my chin.

“Dip her!” my grandmother called, and my mother immediately said, “Don’t hurt your back, Phillip.”

As the saxophones on the radio soared, I felt myself swooshing down, and I heard my mother and grandmother clapping again. It may just have been the blood that had rushed to my head when I was near the floor, or the emotion of the music, but in this moment I loved my family, including my grandmother, so greatly that I felt I might weep. They were so kindhearted and good to me, I was so lucky, and even then I sensed luck’s fragility.

When I was upright again, my father said softly, so my grandmother and mother couldn’t hear, “You’re a very pretty girl. Don’t let your date take advantage of you tonight.”

ROBERT AND LARRY and Dena and I ate dinner at Tatty’s. This was Riley tradition, to get all dressed up in your finery and then go have a greasy hamburger, and, remembering stories of girls who ended up in tears well before they got to prom, their silk dresses splattered with ketchup or relish, I took care to fold my white gloves into my purse and spread three separate napkins across my lap. Robert had driven us, and sitting in the backseat next to Larry, I’d first felt my optimism for the night dimming when Larry made one perfunctory attempt to affix my corsage to my dress and then held out the pale pink rose and said, “Can you just do this yourself?” From Tatty’s, we drove to school, where the gym was hot and loud and crowded, which seemed to me exactly how it ought to be. The yellow and blue streamers crisscrossed above our heads, and the yellow-and-blue-frosted cupcakes were being consumed enthusiastically—I scanned to see how mine were faring, though with all of them lined up on tables against the wall, I couldn’t tell my own apart from anyone else’s—and a cover band from Madison called the Little Brothers, four men in tuxedos, were standing onstage playing “Who Put the Bomp.”

“Hey, Alice,” Robert said.

I looked at him.

He grinned lasciviously. “Larry’s really excited to dance with you.”

Both Dena and Larry laughed, and I felt a lurching panic that Dena had, via Robert, made some promise to Larry about my physical availability for the evening. Dena and Robert had by then had sex six times—once for each month of dating, as she explained, although half the times were retroactive. She told me she didn’t want to do it too frequently because then it wouldn’t be as special. Also, she said that his knowing he might or might not get it made Robert dote on her more; the week before, he’d bought her a stuffed white poodle that came with its own miniature fake-gold bone.

When Larry and I started dancing, he did not, to my relief, immediately try groping me. In fact, he was a good dancer, a better dancer than I was, and we stayed out there as one song ended and another began, and then another and another. The songs were all fast, and in the middle of “The Watusi,” he shouted into my ear, “Robert has some—” He mimed drinking from a flask. “We’re meeting in the parking lot.”

“But there’re teachers everywhere.”

“No one will see us in Robert’s car.”

“I need to check on my cupcakes.”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

As he walked away, I saw that Dena and Robert, who had been dancing close to us, were already near the doors of the gym. I headed to the refreshment table, where Betty Bridges was helping scoop punch, and I was still several feet away when I felt a hand on my forearm. I turned, and Andrew Imhof was standing beside me. “Would you like to dance?”

“Sure.” Then I recognized the first notes of Ricky Nelson’s “Lonesome Town” and I said, “Oh, but it’s a slow song.”

He smiled. “Does that matter?”

“No, I guess not,” I said, but I wondered, was it bad manners to slow-dance with someone other than your date?

As we walked together back to the dance floor, I felt an immediate and unexpected awareness of how we appeared—a sense that if people looked at us, they might form an impression. What that impression would be was harder to say.

We found a space in the forest of couples and faced each other. After a second’s hesitation, I set my left hand on his right shoulder, he set his right hand on my lower back, and we clasped our free hands together, held high. I was wearing my gloves.

“Who’s your date?” I asked.

“Bess Coleman.” He gestured with his chin, and I saw that Bess was dancing beneath a basketball hoop with Fred Zurbrugg, one of Andrew’s close friends.

“Are you and Bess . . . ?” Later, I thought that if I’d consciously been interested in Andrew that night, I wouldn’t have been so direct.

He shook his head. “You’re here with Larry, huh?”

“Dena set us up, but I’m beginning to wonder about her skills as a matchmaker.”

Andrew laughed. “Yeah, you’re definitely way too good for Nagel.”

We both were quiet, and then Andrew said, “Do you remember when your grandma thought I was a girl?”

“I had no idea you knew!”

“After she said to my mom, ‘Your daughter sure is pretty,’ it wasn’t very hard to figure out.”

“She never said that,” I protested.

“Close.”

“It was only because—”

“I know.” He covered both of his eyes—both sets of eyelashes—with his right hand and shook his head. “I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy. My brother says Max Factor should hire me to model mascara, and he doesn’t mean that as a compliment.”

“I’m sure he’s just jealous,” I said.

Onstage a member of the band was singing solo: “ ‘Goin’ down to lonesome town / Where the broken hearts stay . . . ’ ”

“What I said before, I didn’t mean Larry’s a bad guy.” Andrew’s tone had become more serious. “He’s just not who I’d picture you with.”

I could sense what Dena would say in this situation, what probably a lot of girls would say: Who would you picture me with? But it was so nice to rest in the moment without pushing it further, to feel its possibilities rather than its limitations. Later, I remembered thinking that I knew then Andrew would become my boyfriend, but that it wasn’t as if I were realizing it for the first time. Hadn’t I always known, for my whole life? And therefore, what was the hurry? Experiencing other people was almost a thing we ought to do before we were joined to each other.

“Have you eaten any of the cupcakes?” I asked.

“Yeah, they’re pretty good. There’s potato chips over there, too.”

“I made some of the cupcakes,” I said. “Not the blue ones, but the ones with yellow icing.”

“I thought that tasted like it came from the kitchen of Alice Lindgren!” he said, and I lightly slapped his arm. “No, it was delicious,” he said. “Really.”

We both were smiling, and after a beat, he said, “If you want to, you can put your head on my shoulder.”

I hesitated. “Am I tall enough?” Obviously, this was not my only hesitation.

“You don’t have to,” he said. “Just if you want to.”