Dead Man Dancing

by Marcia Talley

  ‘Make sure of what?’ I asked, feeling a bit miffed that my advice about J & K Studios was being ignored.

  ‘To make sure that Hutch won’t be disappointed,’ she said. ‘He competed in college, so I figure he’s going to be a little bit picky about instructors.’

  ‘A serious competitor?’

  ‘Won all kinds of trophies.’ Ruth beamed at me over the rim of her mug. ‘His mother keeps calling from Nebraska to ask if he wants them.’ She laughed. ‘She’s turning his bedroom into an office.’

  ‘What’s her hurry? Hutch hasn’t lived at home for – what? – fifteen years.’

  ‘She’s threatening to give them all to Goodwill. Anyway . . .’ She hurried on before I could wedge a word in. ‘When I got home, I sat down and Googled all the Annapolis area dance studios. This one in Glen Burnie, for example.’ She read off an address that I knew must be located in one of the clusters of car dealerships and strip malls that lined Route 2 the entire twenty-some blighted miles from Annapolis to the Baltimore beltway.

  ‘They’ve got several wedding packages,’ Ruth continued. ‘Everything from reasonably-priced group lessons down to a one-lesson crash course for eighty-five dollars.’ She looked up at me over the frames of her reading glasses. ‘Even if it were worth the drive, I don’t think the crash course will do.’

  ‘And this gal –’ Ruth tapped the second name on her list – ‘she teaches out of her home in Annapolis, but I checked on her website, no Latin.’

  ‘Amo, amas, amat.’

  ‘Not that kind of Latin!’ I could see Ruth wasn’t in the mood for jokes.

  ‘Well, if I can’t paso doble, forget it.’

  Ruth’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do you know more about dancing than you’re letting on, Hannah Ives?’

  ‘Just what I see on Dancing with the Stars,’ I insisted. ‘Jonathan Whatshisname dragging Marie Osmond around the dance floor by her hair.’ I tried to imagine Paul in skintight pants, high heels tapping like a Flamenco dancer, his fingers entwined in the roots of my short, coffee-colored curls. I had to giggle.

  ‘Paso doble is supposed to represent bullfighting,’ Ruth explained. ‘La Passe, Banderillas, Coup de Pique and all that.’ She waved a hand. ‘If it weren’t for Hutch, I wouldn’t know the cha-cha from a rumba.’

  ‘What is the difference between a cha-cha and a rumba?’ I asked.

  Ruth ignored me. ‘Hutch comes home, grabs a cold one, and watches all those dance shows, yelling beery criticism from the sofa, especially at the judges. Hutch hates the judges.’ Ruth pantomimed a dramatic hair flip, batted her eyelashes furiously and gushed, ‘You two are, like, just so awesome!’

  ‘Hutch is a lawyer. He’s supposed to hate judges,’ I teased. When Ruth stopped laughing, I asked, ‘Why don’t you get Hutch to give you lessons?’

  ‘He’s offered, but I said, no. I can’t take the chance that it would wreck our relationship the same way it wrecked the relationship I had with Rusty when I took him up on his offer to teach me how to drive.’

  Remembering that notorious high school incident, it was my turn to laugh. ‘Well, if you hadn’t gotten a whopping ticket for driving Rusty’s car without a license . . .’

  ‘We were on back roads. Who knew there’d be a roadblock?’

  ‘Or even a learner’s permit,’ I added.

  ‘I was only fourteen.’

  ‘Not to mention driving over that patrolman’s foot.’

  Ruth leaned back in her chair, a grin splitting her face. ‘Now that was worth every penny!’

  Ruth, the radical, then as now. Back then, our dad, a navy commander, had been stationed at the Pentagon, a fact we tried to keep secret from our friends. We were living in a rented farmhouse in rural Virginia, on the outskirts of a tiny town where every infraction, no matter how minor, was eventually published in the police blotter of the local paper. Rusty, two years ahead of Ruth and flush with cash from his after-school job at Denny’s, had gallantly paid Ruth’s fine, but his ardor cooled after several months of missing Thursday afternoon band practice to drive Ruth home, where she hoped to retrieve the Woodbridge Gazette before Mom got to it. Eventually Ruth succeeded in snatching the incriminating issue off the stoop and burning it, but she hadn’t counted on the twenty-seven neighbors who telephoned Mom to clue her in. Small towns. Ya gotta love ’em.

  Annapolis was like that, in some ways. Population 36,000, and the capital of Maryland, but everyone seemed to know everyone else. That’s how I knew Kay Giannotti, the ‘K’ of J & K Studios. Even before the Dance for the Cure I kept running into Kay – Annapolis Symphony concerts, Newcomers Club, Graul’s Market, the downtown post office. She didn’t actually teach Chloe – one of her associates handled the under twelves – but I’d passed Kay in the studio parking lot from time to time, a friendly nod-and-wave sort of thing.

  ‘You were right, Hannah,’ Ruth said, as if eavesdropping on my brain. ‘J & K seems to have the best deal. Group lessons from seven to eight p.m. on Mondays, with an hour of free practice following.’ She looked up from her notes. ‘The “K” I can figure out, but what’s the “J” stand for?’

  ‘Kay’s husband, Jay.’

  ‘You’re making that up.’

  ‘No, his name is really Jay. Jay Giannotti.’

  ‘Too cute.’ She lay down her pen, picked up her mug, and began to concentrate on her coffee. ‘What’s Jay like?’

  ‘I’ve never met the guy. If he’s anything like Kay, which is to say late forties, slender, well-coifed and well-dressed, they’ll make a striking couple on the dance floor. They’re some sort of champions.’

  Ruth zoned out for a moment, staring into the depths of her cup. ‘Hutch is a really, really good dancer,’ she said at last. ‘But, he gave it all up when he went to law school.’

  ‘Do you think he misses dancing, Ruth?’

  My sister shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He doesn’t talk about it much. It’s all divorce, child custody, prenups, trusts and estates . . .’ She rested her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, and regarded me seriously. ‘I just want to make him proud.’

  ‘I’m sure you will, Ruth.’ I gestured with my empty mug. ‘More coffee?’ Ruth shook her head, so I collected our empty mugs and set them in the sink.

  ‘Paul and I might be an embarrassment, though,’ I said, rinsing a mug clean under the tap. ‘When we take to the dance floor, you and Hutch might want to chassé in the opposite direction. Pretend you don’t know us.’

  ‘I’m just happy you’re willing to give it a shot. Paul loves you, Hannah. He won’t let you down.’

  ‘It’s not me I’m worried about.’ Dish towel in hand, I turned to face her. ‘It’s you I don’t want to disappoint.’

  ‘It’s just Mondays for six weeks. Can’t Paul manage that?’ Ruth gathered the papers, folded them in half and tucked them into the pocket of her sweater.

  ‘If he doesn’t have to trim his nose hair or neuter the house plants.’

  Ruth’s eyes narrowed dangerously, so I raised both hands, palms out. ‘Joke!’

  ‘Seriously,’ she said. ‘I’ve already checked with Connie. She thinks she and Dennis can actually make it. Barring a jail break or hostage situation, of course.’ She chewed for a moment on her bottom lip, thinking. ‘We need at least three couples to get the reduced rate.’

  ‘If Dennis bags it, I could always dance with Connie, I suppose.’

  Ruth’s eyes widened, as if I had suggested something radical, like showing up for her wedding wearing flip-flops, a tube top and a pair of cut-offs. ‘Gosh, no. You don’t want to do that. You need to practice the ladies’ part while Paul learns the gentlemen’s part. It makes a huge difference.’

  ‘And the gentleman leads, I assume.’

  ‘Always.’

  Paul taking the lead. For income tax returns, car repairs and yard work, Paul at the helm was definitely A Good Thing. But ballroom dancing? Jeesh. I was in trouble.

  Three

  Even a freak mid-
November snowstorm couldn’t keep us away from the family dinner we’d planned before turning ourselves over to the trained professionals at J & K Studios.

  As surprised as I was by the unexpected turn in the weather, I was completely unprepared for who was presiding at the table when Paul and I walked into China Garden, one of those all-you-can-eat oriental buffets, a few minutes after five thirty that evening.

  My father.

  Paul crossed from the doorway to the table in four long strides, clapped his father-in-law on the back while simultaneously pumping his hand. ‘George! What brings you here all the way from the Eastern Shore?’

  ‘Connie and Dennis are snowed in, so Ruth put the strong arm on me. Some nonsense about a quota.’ My father turned to smile at the woman seated on his right. ‘I actually drove over Saturday morning. Neelie and I had an ass-ig-na-tion.’ He drew the word out into four long syllables, and wiggled both eyebrows, a sure sign that he was up to some sort of mischief.

  ‘George! Do grow up!’ Neelie tugged affectionately on Daddy’s ear lobe. ‘What your father is trying to say is that I invited him to spend the weekend. He’s been helping me put up storage shelves in the basement.’

  Neelie was Cornelia Gibbs, my widowed father’s steady girlfriend both before and after his recent post-retirement assignment to a hush-hush project with a government contractor in Saudi Arabia. Daddy had leased a one-bedroom house in Snow Hill on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to be close to his work at the satellite tracking station, but sometimes came back to our family home in the Providence community near the Naval Station in Annapolis. He’d rented the house out for a while, fully-furnished, but the last tenant had been transferred to San Diego and the next family wouldn’t move in until June, so except for my father’s pop-in-to-check-up-on-it visits, the place was now vacant.

  I’d never seen Neelie dance, but she was a slim, energetic senior citizen, and my equally slim septuagenarian father had always been light on his toes. He and my mother had cut quite a rug in the early years of their marriage. It had been five years since Mom’s death. Neelie was a tonic; it was good to see Dad having fun again.

  ‘Well, here we are!’ My father raised a glass of iced water and beamed like an Old Testament patriarch as Paul, Ruth and I joined him and Neelie around the table. ‘A toast to the Amazing Dancing Alexanders.’

  Paul helped me off with my coat, and we settled down to thaw our hands around cups of piping-hot green tea. ‘Sounds like a circus act, George,’ Paul remarked.

  ‘You’ll have to think of another name, Daddy,’ I said, cautiously sipping, ‘since you’re the only official Alexander in the bunch.’

  Ruth Alexander as-was Gannon soon-to-be Hutchinson, selected a crispy wonton from a bowl in the center of the table and dredged it through a sweet, orange sauce. ‘It’s going to be fun,’ she said, gesturing with the wonton, deliciously but dangerously dripping. ‘I’m just sorry Connie and Dennis got snowed in.’

  The Rutherfords lived on the Ives family farm near Pearson’s Corner, well south of Annapolis. It sometimes took days for the snowplow to reach them, so during inclement weather volunteers in four-wheel-drive vehicles would pick Dennis up and drive him to police headquarters. Poor Connie, though, was often stuck. ‘Connie promised they’d come next week,’ I said. ‘Not to worry. We’ve got our quorum.’

  ‘Quorum?’ Neelie looked puzzled.

  ‘The studio has a three couple minimum,’ Ruth explained.

  Neelie’s brow crinkled, taking in the sixth chair at our table. Still empty.

  ‘Hutch is on his way,’ Ruth hastened to add. ‘He called me on my cell a few minutes ago. He was just leaving his office.’

  We had completed our first circuit of the enormous buffet table when Hutch arrived, whacking his cap against his leg to dislodge the fat, wet snowflakes that were clinging to it. He bent to kiss Ruth’s cheek. ‘Sorry I’m late, sweetheart.’

  Ruth smiled up at her fiancé and used the tips of her fingers to flick water droplets out of the fringe of pale hair that flopped over his forehead. ‘You smell like wet dog.’

  ‘You want I should smell like damp polyester?’ he teased, glancing around the restaurant, looking for a place to hang his overcoat – one hundred percent cashmere, unless I missed my guess.

  A waiter materialized out of nowhere, relieving Hutch of his coat. ‘At least I don’t smell like an ashtray anymore,’ Hutch quipped as he made a beeline for the buffet table.

  Ruth beamed with pride. ‘And he’s off the patches now, too.’

  After a minute or two, Hutch rejoined us. He’d heaped his plate high with spicy chicken wings and egg fu yung, then – inexplicably – smothered it all with an indifferent brown gravy that was already congealing on the rim of his plate. Chef Martin Yan would have had a coronary just looking at it. Come to think of it, anybody would.

  Hutch tucked into his grub like a starving man, while I used a spoon to scoop up the dregs of my hot and sour soup, in a very ladylike way, then returned to the buffet to help myself to some Singapore rice noodles, loaded with curried vegetables and plump shrimp, and a couple of dumplings.

  When I returned to the table, Hutch was saying, ‘. . . why I was late. It’s someone you know, Hannah.’

  ‘Oh? Who?’

  ‘I met with her today, and she asked me to say “hi”.’ Hutch transferred his chopsticks to his left hand, reached into the breast pocket of his blazer, and pulled out a hot-pink Post-it note. It made its way around the table, hand to hand.

  ‘Eva Haberman?’ Daddy squinted at the Post-it as he was handing it over to me. ‘Isn’t she, I mean, wasn’t she, your priest, the one whose husband . . .?’

  His voice trailed off. Daddy had been in Saudi Arabia when his great-grandson Timmy was kidnapped, so he’d missed the whole ugly business with Roger Haberman, even though it was splashed across every television screen and made the front page of every newspaper in the greater Baltimore/Washington area. Then Timmy’d been found, and Roger’d drowned – hard to call it a happy ending, but it did wrap things up.

  While I was still trying to make sense of the news that the Reverend Eva Haberman was in communication with Hutch, of all people, Ruth said, ‘But I thought Eva was in Idaho?’

  Still staring at the note, I nodded. ‘After all the hoo-hah over Roger, she retreated to a family cabin in the Sawtooth Range. I had an email from her just last week,’ I added, really puzzled now. ‘You met with her?’

  His mouth full, Hutch grunted.

  ‘She didn’t say a word to me about returning to Annapolis.’

  Hutch swallowed a bite of egg roll. ‘Well, she’s back now, at least temporarily, and staying with the assistant pastor at St Anne’s. She wants you to call.’

  I nodded, still feeling a bit stunned. ‘Will do. Did she say . . .?’

  Hutch waved his egg roll. ‘Lawyer–client privilege, Hannah, yada yada yada.’

  Paul leaned in my direction, his breath warm against my ear. ‘The plot, as they say, thickens.’

  Resisting the urge to power up my cell phone and call Eva right away, I tucked the Post-it into my purse. ‘Very curious,’ I muttered, as I picked up my chopsticks and attacked a dumpling, spearing it neatly on the first try. ‘Very curious, indeed.’

  Across the table, Hutch shrugged unhelpfully.

  I shook my chopsticks at him. ‘No fortune cookie for you, Mr Hutchinson.’

  ‘I’m sure Eva will share her concerns with you, Hannah. It’s just not my place to do so.’

  ‘I know.’ I smiled back. ‘It’s just that I’m dying of curiosity!’

  ‘And I’m dying of hunger,’ Neelie interjected. She picked up her empty dinner plate in both hands, and held it out to my father. ‘Will you fetch me some more of those spicy green beans, George? And steamed rice.’ She smiled, revealing a row of even white teeth. ‘Please?’

  What’s the matter with you, Neelie, I thought. Legs broken?

  Even though Dad still had mounds of fried rice and s
weet and sour pork on his own plate, he got up from his chair, relieved Neelie of her plate and said gallantly, ‘My pleasure, Cornelia.’

  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.