The Last Dance

by Nan Ryan

  That same wind and rain was lashing Lucy’s quiet white house a few blocks away, banging the screen door back and forth incessantly. The telegram left inside the screen by young Bobby Flatt on the morning Lucy left for Atlantic City had remained there while she was gone.

  But it blew away in this afternoon’s late summer rainstorm. The yellow envelope skittered across the front yard and sailed into the street. It stayed there for a time, snagged on a brittle limb that had broken off the apple tree in Lucy Hart’s front yard.

  The telegram lay there as Lucy, parasol unfurled, stepped down from the carriage before her front gate. Lucy was preoccupied with seeing to the unloading of her luggage, paying the hired cab driver, and getting in out of the blinding rain. She never glanced at the street.

  As she hurried up the walk to her front door the soggy yellow envelope came loose from the broken tree limb and was carried swiftly down the gutter by the surging, muddy rainwater.

  The telegram, informing Lucy that Mr. Theodore Mooney would not be coming to Atlantic City to meet her due to his sister’s sudden serious illness, would never be seen by her.

  Lucy had barely gotten inside and changed into dry clothes before she heard the loud knocking on the back door. She smiled and hurried through the house. Her neighbor Kitty Widner and the adorable golden-curled four-year-old Annie stood on the back porch. Mother and child each held a covered dish in their hands.

  “I was beginning to think you were never coming back,” said Kitty, hurrying inside, pressing her rain-wet cheek to Lucy’s.

  “I considered it,” said Lucy, beaming down at the big-eyed Annie. “Is that for me?” she asked the beautiful little girl.

  Nodding so vigorously she set her golden curls to dancing, Annie smiled shyly and held the cloth-covered plate out to Lucy. Lucy took it, lifted the dishtowel, looked at the fancy sandwiches, and said, “Mmmm, they look delicious. Thank you, Annie.”

  “Did you bring me a present?” Annie asked.

  “Annie Widner!” her mother scolded as she crossed the spotless kitchen to deposit the freshly baked pineapple upside down cake on the table.

  “I sure did, Annie,” Lucy told the little girl. “Wait right here.”

  She set the sandwiches on the cabinet, dashed into the other room, came back and plucked the little girl up into her arms.

  Annie’s enormous blue eyes lighted happily when Lucy presented her with the pink seashell she’d bought on the Boardwalk.

  Annie’s observant mother, noting the lettering on the souvenir, clapped her hands and said, “Atlantic City! So that’s where you’ve been all this time! You went to Atlantic City!”

  “Yes.”

  “You know something? You look different! I noticed it the minute I walked in this house. Something about you has changed,” Kitty smiled cat-like and shook a finger at Lucy, “I’ll bet I know what it is. You met somebody in Atlantic City! A man!”

  Lucy felt her face flush with warmth, wondered if had turned scarlet. “Yes,” she said, attempting to sound blasé, “I did. I met a rather nice gentleman and we…we spent a good deal of time together.”

  “I knew it!” squealed Kitty Widner. “Oh, I knew it! Is he a postmaster? Or a college professor perhaps? An accountant or bookkeeper with some reputable firm? How did you meet him? What did the two of you do when you were together? Will you be corresponding with him? Will he be coming to Colonias? Promise you’ll tell me everything, Miss Lucy!”

  Lucy inwardly recoiled. She was jarringly reminded that here in her hometown she was still very much Miss Lucy. Even to her closest friend. She had almost forgotten that she was Miss Lucy. Had been Miss Lucy for years. Would always be Miss Lucy. Amazingly, in just two short weeks she’d grown used to being simply Lucy.

  “There’s really not much to tell,” Lucy lowered the golden-curled Annie to her feet. “Why don’t we sit down,” she inclined her head toward the kitchen table.

  Kitty eagerly took a seat, her expectant eyes never leaving Lucy’s face. Lucy knew Kitty was waiting to hear about some shy, stuffy school teacher or accountant that her prim, spinster friend, Miss Lucy Hart, had met on holiday in Atlantic City.

  Lucy was half a mind to set her straight. Imagine Kitty’s shock if she’d known the truth. Lucy was tempted to tell the other woman that she had spent all her time with a worldly New York playboy who had become her passionate lover!

  But, of course, she couldn’t do that. Miss Lucy Hart would never have behaved so shamefully, much less have spoken about it later. Had she still been the carefree, madcap Lucy of Atlantic City, perhaps she would have told her friend something of the libertine lifestyle she had embraced on her long seaside holiday.

  She found herself longing to brag to Kitty about the handsome, worldly Blackie. To boast that the most eligible bachelor in Atlantic City had chosen her, and that he was wonderful and romantic and exciting and sophisticated and sexy and funny and…

  Lucy didn’t dare tell Kitty—or anyone—about her summertime love affair with a dark, handsome stranger. Kitty would have been horrified. So Lucy said only that her gentleman friend was a thirty-three-year-old bachelor from an eastern real estate family. Which was true. Never mind that Blackie was anything but a gentleman and his family had ostracized him years ago.

  Referring to him as Robert LaDuke, Lucy told of their excursions along the busy Boardwalk and of the afternoon band concerts, and the frightening rides at the amusement piers. She spoke at length of the thrilling sights and sounds of the City by the Sea. No, she answered when Kitty repeated the question. She wouldn’t be corresponding with Mr. LaDuke. Nor would he becoming to Colonias. It was, she said, just one of those meaningless summertime romances. Nothing more. And changing the subject, she told Kitty of the other friends she had made, a southern Colonel, a titled noblewoman, a crippled seaman.

  The rain and the wind continued to lash the house as the three of them sat at Lucy’s kitchen table. While Annie pressed her ear to her pink sea shell attempting to hear the ocean’s roar, the two women talked until Kitty, hearing the grandfather clock in the hallway chime the hour of six, leapt up out of her chair.

  “Good Lord, Bruce will be home from the lumber yard any minute and I haven’t even started supper.”

  Lucy pushed back her chair and rose. “Thank you both for coming and for bringing the sandwiches and cake.”

  Kitty, her hand atop her daughter’s blond head, was pointing Annie toward the door. “You’re very welcome,” she said, then paused at the back door and added, “I’m happy you enjoyed yourself, Miss Lucy. But I’m glad to have you back home where you belong.”

  Kitty picked up Annie, stepped out onto the back porch, and skipped down the steps. She darted across the yard in the rain, slipped through the back gate, and disappeared into her own big back yard.

  The house seemed usually quiet and lonely after her two exciting weeks in Atlantic City. Lucy ate a solitary supper of sandwiches and pineapple upside down cake as darkness fell with the rain. She wasn’t really hungry. Her appetite had left her.

  She cleared the table, washed the dishes, tidied the kitchen, and went into the bedroom to tackle the chore of unpacking.

  The first thing she took out of her luggage was the treasured oyster shell music box Blackie had given her for her birthday. She placed the exquisite box on the night table beside her bed. Her fingers caressed the ivory porcelain gardenia on the lid before she slowly opened the music box.

  The tiny, golden couple popped up and began spinning about on their mirrored dance floor as music began to play. Lucy looked at the golden couple and saw Blackie and herself whirling about on the parquet floor of the Atlantic Grand’s Blue Room.

  Lucy turned back to the open valise. She unwrapped her white tulle evening gown from its protective tissue paper, lifted the dress, and saw a few loose grains of sand against the white of the paper. She smiled and a sweet rush of warmth swept through her. For a moment Blackie was again kissing her in the moonlight on the beach.
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  The wave of warmth quickly passed and was replaced by a surge of intense loneliness. A loneliness far greater than any she’d ever known. She shivered and hugged herself. The poet had said ‘’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’ but she wondered if that was actually true.

  Before Blackie, she had been lonely at times, bored now and then, had daydreamed and longed for a kind of excitement she never expected to find. Nonetheless, for the most part she’d been comfortable and fairly satisfied with her well-ordered life.

  Now she would never be content again. Before Blackie, she could only imagine what falling deeply in love would be like. Could only speculate and guess and wonder exactly what it was about love and intimacy that was powerful enough to make fools of wise men.

  Now she knew.

  She loved Blackie with all her heart and making love with him had been the most beautiful, pleasurable experience of her life. Nothing else could compare. A patient, caring lover, he had taught her the sweet mysteries of his body and her own. They had been as intimate as two people could be and it was far more wonderful than she had ever dreamed. Every look, every touch, every kiss would live on in her heart.

  She had lived—really lived—and nobody could ever take that away from her.

  Yes, she decided, the poet was right. It was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

  Lucy finished with the unpacking. Everything was back in its place. Just as it should be. Including her.

  The rain had finally stopped when Lucy got into bed that night. Tired though she was, she lay there wide awake in the quiet stillness of her house. Funny she’d never noticed before how deafening was the silence. And had the clock on the night table always ticked so loudly?

  Lucy slowly turned onto her side and looked at the window beside her bed. The curtains were open, but the bedroom was dark. It was dark outside as well. The world was dark. Pitch black.

  A new moon was just starting to rise. A puny sliver of a moon that would shed none of the silvery radiance that had spilled across the bed in Blackie’s penthouse suite.

  And bathed two naked, entwined lovers in its heavenly light.

  “Blackie, Blackie,” Lucy said aloud, “Not only did you take the sun with you, you took the moon as well.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The 7:10 from Rochester was right on time, and so was Post Office Champ.

  The minute the heavy mail pouch was tossed from the moving freight train, Champ pounced on it. Snarling, he clamped the bag firmly in his teeth, yanked it up, and wheeled about. He leapt down off the platform, rounded the tiny depot, and raced away, heading directly for Colonias’ white-fronted post office two blocks away.

  Lucy had reached the post office at straight up seven. She immediately brought the folded American flag outside, unfurled it, clipped it to the grommets, and raised it up the steel flagpole.

  When she finished, she didn’t go back inside. She lifted the gold cased brooch/watch penned to her starched shirtwaist and looked at it. 7:04. She heard the blast of a whistle in the distance as the morning freight train roared nearer to the Colonias station. Only a few minutes now.

  “Why, good morning, Miss Lucy!”

  She looked up, smiled. “Good morning, Judge Fite.”

  A minute passed.

  “Mornin’, Miss Lucy,” Matthew J. Henderson, president of the Colonias bank, tipped his hat. “You’ve been away a long time. Glad to have you home.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Henderson. It’s good to be back.”

  A dozen gentlemen came up or went down the sidewalk outside the post office in the six minutes Lucy waited there. They were all cordial, friendly, happy to see her.

  Every one of them addressed as ‘Miss Lucy’.

  Inwardly sighing, Lucy looked at her brooch/watch again, then expectantly up the street. Sure enough, Champ was sprinting toward her, his long, full tail curled up over his back, the mailbag clenched in his teeth. Lucy’s face broke into a wide smile and went to meet him.

  The huge, silver Siberian was so excited to see her, he dropped the mail while he was still several feet away and barked a loud greeting. Lucy went down on her heels on the sidewalk to affectionately pet him. Champ jumped up on her and licked her face before she could turn away.

  But she laughed and hugged his big, warm body, saying, “I’m glad to see you too, Boy.”

  Champ barked wildly and wagged his tail.

  Lucy gathered his great jaws in her hands, looked into the big eyes, which were startlingly blue in the intelligent silver face, and said, “Since it’s a special occasion, I brought bacon for your breakfast.”

  As if he understood exactly what she said, the husky pulled anxiously away, spun out of her grasp, and made a beeline for the post office door. Amused, Lucy laughed, rose to her feet, and followed.

  By ten minutes of eight the usual crowd was gathering in the small front lobby of the post office, visiting, chattering, hoping for a letter or postal card or the latest copy of the Ladies’ Home Journal. Several of the ladies who waited just beyond the closed caged window whispered about Lucy, as if because she couldn’t see them, she couldn’t hear them either.

  “…and thought she might have gone to Saratoga but Leslie Bennett said that was out of the question. Ruthie Douglas figures she went down to Texas to her brother’s,” said Fredda Barnes.

  “I imagine Ruthie’s right.” It was Myrtle Poyner. “Most likely they invited her to come so she could take care of their children while they went on vacation.”

  Lucy, standing behind the closed window unhurriedly turning the tiny rotors on the cancellation stamp, smiled to herself. They felt sorry for her, but they wasted their pity.

  If you only knew, she thought with relish.

  But they didn’t. And they never would. It was her lovely secret and hers alone. Actually she felt sorry for them. None had ever met—much less been made love to—by a man half so exciting or handsome as Blackie LaDuke. Not the prettiest woman in town, or the richest. None had ever known a single hour of joy that could compare with the lovely two week interlude she, Miss Lucy Hart, old maid postmistress of Colonias for whom they felt sorry, had spent with the marvelous man of her dreams in the romantic City by the Sea.

  Lucy drew a deep breath, glanced at the sleeping silver Siberian, smiled, turned back and raised the caged window.

  It was after six p.m. when Lucy lowered the flag, folded and boxed it, closed the grilled window, locked up, and left. That night after supper, she walked the four blocks to the Harrisons for the weekly card game. The next day, the first of her handful of piano students came for her regular evening lesson. Sunday were church services and afterward the usual chicken dinner at Bruce and Kitty Widner’s.

  Everything was the same. Yet nothing was the same.

  And Lucy, knowing it was foolish, began looking anxiously forward to Champ’s morning mail delivery. She’d been back home only ten days when a nice, long letter came from Lady Strange. A week later she heard from Colonel Mitchell; he sent her a postal card from London, England.

  From Blackie she heard nothing at all.

  Autumn came early to Colonias.

  The muggy heat of summer gave way to a precious few cool, crisp days of extraordinary beauty. A bright sun shone down from a cloudless blue sky and the faintest hint of a chill made the clean air bracing, invigorating. The leaves were beginning to change to their vibrant autumn shades of red and rust and gold. Exhilarated citizens of Colonias went about their varied tasks with renewed vigor, remarking to one another as they did every season that upstate New York in the fall was surely the prettiest spot on God’s own earth.

  Lucy wholeheartedly agreed. Autumn in her hometown was beautiful every year. This year it was almost too beautiful, achingly beautiful to her. More than one cool, quiet evening she sat alone on the steps of her front porch, arms wrapped around her knees, watching the harvest moon rise over the peaceful town. And seeing Blackie’s handsome
face there instead of the man in the moon.

  As the end of September approached, the sun was less in evidence. The cool, bracing air had changed to a biting chill that seeped right through light clothing. The trees’ colorful leaves began to turn brown, curl up, and flutter listlessly to the dying grass below. The dwindling days of September saw the skies turn gray and cloudy.

  Lucy was lonely. Painfully lonely. She missed Blackie so much it was like a physical suffering. She thought about him at least a thousand times a day, wondered where he was, and how he was, and if he ever thought about her.

  But she didn’t feel sorry for herself. Not in the least. The Colonel had been absolutely right about memories. She could remember no bad ones. Only the happy ones came back with vivid clarity.

  Amazing. Truly amazing.

  Routine had returned. Life had become a slow, uneventful, normal existence again and Lucy had smoothly adjusted, just as she had adjusted to every change that had ever occurred. She did so now with the customary ease and reminded herself to count her many blessings.

  She had her position at the post office, the safe haven of her home, the respect of her friends and acquaintances.

  She had no regrets. No complaints. No worries.

  Or so she thought.

  Until a cold, drizzling rain began late Sunday afternoon, the very last day of September. It continued throughout the night and into Monday morning. Lucy awoke to the rain peppering the window beside her bed. And to a dreadful, devastating feeling of nausea.

  Like a bolt out of the blue, Lady Strange’s prophecy came back to her as if the royal reader of tealeaves was shouting in her ear, ‘When you leave this place you will be very different. You will be a changed woman. When you have been back home for several weeks you will learn of yet another change that occurred while you were here. And this change will forever alter your life.’