Dead Man Dancing

by Marcia Talley

  ‘Well, dear,’ my late mother seemed to be whispering in my ear, ‘isn’t there an old saying? “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”’

  But I was thinking goose, hell. If this keeps up, before long the proverbial fur is going to fly.

  ‘So,’ I said when Jay finally released my sister, ‘I’m dying of curiosity. What does he want?’

  Ruth shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. Probably hopes to sweet-talk us into signing up for another package.’ She grinned. ‘He is a charming son-of-a-gun, isn’t he?’

  ‘I’d have thought you’d jump at the chance to continue taking lessons. I haven’t seen you so nuts about anything since you took up tie-dying broomstick skirts in the seventies.’

  Ruth frowned. ‘I do love dancing, Hannah. It makes me feel young and alive. But I have to be realistic. I’ve got Mother Earth to worry about, and the wedding.’ She chewed on her bottom lip thoughtfully. ‘No, we bought the wedding package, and a couple of extra lessons, but that’s it. All the arm-twisting and charm in the world isn’t going to convince me to sign a contract for some overpriced lesson package that neither of us needs, or has the time for.’

  ‘I’ve heard some of the major studio chains use high-pressure tactics to get you to join up, but Jay and Kay simply aren’t like that,’ I said. ‘According to the J & K brochure, the next level up is the 600 package: six privates, six groups, six parties, six hundred dollars. Sounds harmless enough.’

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ Ruth said. ‘I won’t do anything without Hutch. Can you imagine the creeps who show up for lessons with ridiculous comb-overs, bad teeth and damp hands wanting to dance with you? Ugh! Six hundred dollars sounds like a deal, until you realize that any serial rapist with six hundred dollars in his pocket could sign up for dance lessons, too.’

  Ruth grabbed my arm. ‘Hannah, you and Paul come along when he talks to us. Keep me focused. OK?’

  I laughed. ‘Oh, I think you and Hutch can take care of yourselves!’

  ‘No, I’m serious. Remember the time we won a free weekend in Virginia and they practically locked us up until we agreed to buy a timeshare in their stupid resort?’

  I laughed, remembering how Ruth and I, in desperation, had staged a fight, screaming, swearing, name-calling and hurling abuse at one another until the salesman couldn’t show us the door fast enough. ‘It won’t be like that at all,’ I assured her.

  Ruth didn’t look convinced. ‘I have a hard time saying no to telephone solicitors, for heaven’s sake. In case you didn’t notice, Jay has oodles of charm. I might find him impossible to resist.’

  ‘Ruth!’

  ‘Not that way, silly. But he’s soooo charismatic. If Jay were a TV preacher, I’d be claiming Jesus as my personal saviour and singing and sweeping the ceiling with the rest of his acolytes.’

  ‘Sweeping the ceiling?’

  Ruth’s arms shot ceiling-ward and she began to sway, singing, ‘He is wonderful, He is merciful,’ in a fluty soprano.

  I had to bop her with my purse to get her to stop. ‘Behave yourself!’

  ‘OK, but only if you agree to come along. Otherwise I might have to cover my ears and go “nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-I’m-not-listening-to-you” whenever Jay’s talking.’

  I laughed out loud. ‘It’s not going to be like that at all, Ruth.’

  And for once, I was right.

  ‘Ah,’ Jay said from behind his desk as Kay escorted the four of us into his office later that evening. ‘I was expecting Hutch and Ruth, but I seem to have won the lottery.’

  ‘We’re family,’ I said, as if that explained everything.

  ‘Yes. I understand. Completely.’ Jay shuffled through the papers on his desk, moving a page from the bottom to the top of the stack, as if Paul and my presence had changed everything. ‘Have a seat, please. Kay, you, too.’

  When we were all comfortably settled, Jay turned his liquid eyes on me. ‘Not to denigrate the remarkable progress you and your husband have made over the course of the past several weeks . . .’ He paused, while next to me, Paul beamed. ‘But I have to be honest. I called you in this evening primarily to talk about Ruth.’

  Ruth nearly fell out of her chair. ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you, señorita. Your advancement has been nothing short of extraordinary.’

  I resisted rolling my eyes. Ruth had been right. We were in for some major league flimflam.

  After a moment, Jay turned his attention to Hutch. ‘Hutch, of course, only needs a bit of brush up to get back up to speed, even after twenty-five years.’

  Get back up to speed for what? I wondered.

  Jay put his hands together, fingertip to fingertip and moved them up and down, like a spider doing push-ups on a mirror. He cleared his throat. ‘Have you ever heard of Shall We Dance?’

  ‘The TV show?’ Hutch asked.

  ‘That’s the one. To get right to the point, there’s a new season next year, and they’re holding open auditions in Baltimore on February 8th. I think you have a chance of making it.’

  Several moments of stunned silence was shattered by Paul. ‘What’s Shall We Dance?’

  ‘It’s an American Idol-style reality show,’ Kay explained, although how that would help Paul understand is anybody’s guess as he never watched American Idol, Survivor, Big Brother or any kind of so-called Unreality TV. ‘Instead of individuals competing, though, it’s dancing couples,’ she continued. ‘They start with twelve couples, all amateurs, and each week two are eliminated until there’s only one couple remaining.’

  Ruth paled. ‘I couldn’t. I’m not ready.’

  Kay rose from her chair and laid a comforting hand on Ruth’s shoulder. ‘Yes you can, and we can help you. If you agree to this, Jay will coach you privately, twice a week. Then, we’ll put you together with Hutch, and work up a dynamite routine.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Ruth said.

  Hutch, who had been slumped in his chair like Raggedy Andy, suddenly came to life. ‘I’m game if you are, sweetheart.’

  Ruth wagged her head. ‘This is all too sudden, I can’t even think.’

  ‘How much will it cost?’ I asked, remembering my promise to help Ruth keep her head.

  ‘Cost?’ Jay puffed air out of his lips, as if I’d insulted him. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

  Kay smiled benevolently. ‘If you make it through the auditions and get on to the show, it will be a priceless advertisement for J & K. That is our payback. That is our hope.’

  Hutch stood up, took Ruth’s hand, and pulled her to her feet. ‘This is all very flattering, of course, and exciting. But, it’s been a long day, and I think we’ll need to sleep on it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Ruth tossed over her shoulder as Hutch put his arm around her and led her out the door.

  Paul and I said our goodbyes, and followed them out to the coat rack.

  As Paul held my coat and I eased my arms into the sleeves, I heard Ruth say, ‘Somebody had better tell me what to do.’

  Eight

  As I thought about the weeks afterward, I found that I tended to identify them by the dances we studied.

  The first, Waltz Week, was all about Ruth, waltzing as we were to her tune.

  Cha-cha Week, the fourth one after Thanksgiving, found me multitasking – Christmas shopping, decorating, cooking, cleaning and babysitting for my grandkids while Emily and Dante managed pre-Christmas promotionals designed to lure new members into Spa Paradiso.

  A year’s membership? The perfect gift.

  Gained weight during the holidays? Get rid of it, fast. New Year’s resolution to get back into shape? Our trainers can help.

  Rumba Week began normally enough until the Shall We Dance? bombshell exploded at our feet. The next day, Tuesday, not long before Christmas, I telephoned Ruth several times to find out what she’d decided, but her assistant at Mother Earth told me Ruth was out.

  At four fifty, I dropped Chloe off at J & K for her ballet lesson and got the answer to my question. When Chloe and I walked
in, Ruth was totally wrapped up in a private lesson with Jay who was wearing his trademark black pants and a maroon shirt like a second skin. I hung Chloe’s coat on a hook near the door, and the two of us stood on the sidelines watching.

  Chloe tugged on the hem of my sweater. ‘That’s Aunt Ruth.’

  ‘Indeed, it is.’

  ‘She’s doing the rumba,’ Chloe informed me sagely.

  ‘That’s true, too.’ If the steps hadn’t been a dead give-away, Ruth was the complete rumba picture, down to green tights under a kicky miniskirt with a beaded hem that flicked around her thighs as she moved.

  We watched for a while as Chloe’s classmates began to arrive for ballet.

  ‘I want to learn ballroom,’ Chloe said. ‘I want to be on TV.’

  My god, I thought, does everyone want to be on TV?

  ‘Can’t you be on TV dancing ballet?’ I asked my granddaughter.

  Chloe turned her wide, bright eyes on me. ‘Nooooh,’ she said. Rough translation: Duh, Grandma. ‘My teacher says ballet is excellent preparation for ballroom dancing.’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘Uh huh. You learn to do lifts and things, like on TV.’

  ‘But don’t you need a partner for ballroom, Chloe?’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘Do you know any boys who like to dance?’

  Chloe’s chin nearly touched her chest. ‘Nuh uh. Boys think dancing is gross. They have to, like, touch hands!’

  While I was trying to come up with some words of wisdom to reassure my granddaughter that as hard as it was to believe, someday boys wouldn’t mind touching hands with her, Chloe turned to me and announced, ‘Tessa is taking ballroom dancing lessons.’ She rose on tiptoe, whispered in my ear. ‘They’re private.’

  Chloe’s hand shot out, index finger extended. She was pointing to the women’s dressing room from which a munchkin of a girl was just emerging. She had cascades of ebony curls drawn up into a high ponytail and fastened at the crown of her head with a pink carnation. She wore a pink leotard and matching tights, and pink ballet slippers. I squinted, not quite believing my eyes. And lipstick?

  ‘Tessa has pink leotards, and blue ones, and yellow ones, too. I want purple leotards for Christmas, Grandma.’

  ‘Have you talked to Santa about that?’

  Chloe nodded. ‘Can I ask you something, Grandma?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Is there really a Santa Claus?’

  ‘What do you think, Chloe?’

  ‘I don’t know. Mommy says that if you don’t believe in him, Santa won’t come.’

  Chloe’s normally smooth brow wrinkled in concentration. ‘I want a purple tutu, too.’

  ‘Then I think you should write to Santa about that.’

  ‘OK,’ she agreed. ‘But if Santa doesn’t bring me purple leotards this year, that’s it. I’ll never trust him again. And I’ll tell Jake and Timmy not to believe in him either!’

  The ultimate threat. Exposure! Poor Santa.

  The rest of Chloe’s little classmates began arriving, hanging up coats, flitting in and out of the dressing room, scurrying over to the barre preparing to exercise. A woman I took to be Tessa’s mother fussed over her daughter’s hair for a moment, then shoved the girl in the direction of the barre with the flat of a hand placed squarely on the child’s back. Chloe and I watched as Tessa raised her left leg, rested it on the barre, then slowly lowered her head until it touched her knee, as easily as a contortionist from Cirque de Soleil. Little show-off.

  Chloe noticed me watching. ‘I can do that, Grandma.’

  ‘You can? Show me.’

  Chloe skipped over to the barre, her golden hair flopping. Using both hands, she lifted her leg to the barre, then lowered her head a few inches, missing her knee by a mile. She turned her head slowly toward me, a grin splitting her face.

  I clapped my hands silently.

  ‘She’s got to keep her leg perfectly straight,’ somebody behind me whined.

  I turned to the speaker. Tessa’s mother.

  ‘Do you mean Chloe?’

  ‘Goodness, no, Chloe’s just a beginner. I mean Tessa. If I’ve told her once, I’ve told her a thousand times.’

  ‘How old is Tessa? Ten?’

  ‘Nine.’

  ‘Plenty of time for her to practice, then.’

  Tessa’s mother stared at me as if I’d just told her that President Bush had declared the War on Terror a terrible mistake, and ordered all our troops home from Iraq. ‘For Chloe, maybe, but Tessa is trying out for Tiny Ballroom.’

  I’d actually seen promos for Tiny Ballroom, an American spin-off of a popular British show featuring eight to eleven-year-old dancers that would make its debut on cable TV in the US this coming summer. When I first saw the ads, I cringed, having a major JonBenet Ramsey moment. ‘Ballroom? I thought we were talking about ballet?’

  ‘Tessa’s been studying ballet since she was five. She’s been taking ballroom privately from Alicia for about a year. We’re stepping it up a bit, because the Tiny Ballroom auditions are in three months.’

  I watched as Tessa, Chloe and several other girls began their barre exercises. ‘Who’s Tessa’s partner, then?’

  ‘Oh my god, was that a production! When Joey retired, we had to put an ad in the paper. That’s how we found Henry. Tessa dances with him twice a week after school. He’s ten.’

  ‘Tessa’s partner retired? At ten?’ I was glad this woman wasn’t my mother.

  ‘Eleven. Apparently Joey preferred playing Little League.’ She sniffed, as if the child had declared himself a conscientious objector.

  ‘Tessa must like dancing,’ I said.

  ‘Loves it! Tessa’s a self-starter. She practices all the time. Link’s built a studio for her in the garage, fully-equipped. We’d schedule lessons three times a week, but Alicia’s only free on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and Henry has to be with his dad on Saturday. So Saturday Tessa does tap.’

  I watched Tessa exercise and wondered if the little girl ever slept. But then, I didn’t suppose her schedule was any more taxing than that of any Little League or Youth Soccer fanatic. I pictured Henry as a serious kid with wire-rimmed glasses; a child of divorce, struggling to please. I wondered if he had a life, either.

  Tessa spun away from the barre in a series of spot spins that made me dizzy just watching. She staggered to a halt in front of her mother. ‘What do you think about that? Good, huh?’

  I hated seeing a little girl sweat.

  Before her mother could answer, Alicia appeared, clapped her hands and said, ‘C’mon little sugarplum fairies! Time for your exercises!’

  Ten little figures scrambled to the barre, rested their left hands lightly upon it, lined up like sparrows on a telephone wire. ‘Position one!’ Alicia shouted as the music began. ‘Plié. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.’

  ‘That’s so sad.’

  Tessa’s mother couldn’t have been talking about the barre exercise. ‘What’s sad?’ I asked.

  ‘Tessa was going to dance a sugarplum fairy in The Nutcracker this year, but Annapolis Ballet Theater decided to team up with another studio. Idiots! Tessa was so disappointed.’

  ‘Demi plié!’ cried Alicia. ‘One, two . . .’

  Across the room, Tessa raised a graceful arm and bent her knees, stealing a moment to glance at her mother who nodded in approval.

  ‘I was disappointed, too,’ Tessa’s mom continued. ‘I even considered taking Tessa out of class, but in the end, I just couldn’t do it. I’ve always been loyal to Jay and Kay.’ She turned to me and beamed. ‘But it’s just as well, isn’t it, because now there’s nothing to conflict with preparing Tessa and Henry for Tiny Ballroom!’

  ‘I guess not,’ I said, disliking the woman intensely. I’d taken dancing lessons as a kid, too, but prancing around the Rec Center – step, together, step, kick – to the Beatles’ ‘Yellow Submarine’ at one dollar a lesson was just plain fun. Nobody expected to turn me into Ginger Rogers.
And when I said I’d rather swim, please, my parents just smiled and said, sure, no problem. Maybe if they’d cajoled and wheedled and bribed me a bit, I’d have been just as accomplished as Tessa at nine.

  But without the fake tan and hair extensions.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me, now,’ I said, ‘I need to go powder my nose.’

  It wasn’t until I got into the dressing room, and locked the door of the toilet stall behind me, that I realized I never asked Tessa’s mother her name.

  But, since I never planned to talk to her again if I could help it, what did it matter?

  Nine

  Four days before Christmas, Ruth left a message on my cell, asking if I’d stop by J & K to critique the routine she and Hutch had been practicing for Shall We Dance? Paul was working late at the Academy, getting finals marked and end of semester grades turned in to the academic dean, so I thought, why not.

  On the way, I braved the icy roads, stopped off at Graul’s Market to buy a pound of coffee and a pint of half and half, so I got to J & K a little late, only to discover that Hutch had beaten both me and Ruth to the studio. ‘How’s it going, Hutch?’ I asked, peeling off my hat, gloves and scarf as I entered the studio and the air enveloped me in a superheated wave.

  Hutch tapped his watch, as if it might be broken. ‘Ruth’s late, and she didn’t call. With the icy roads and all, I’m a little worried.’

  I shrugged out of my coat. ‘She’s probably delayed in traffic.’ I hoped I sounded more reassuring than I felt. In point of fact, Ruth would be coming from downtown and using the same roads I had, and there had been absolutely no traffic problems for me. ‘She’ll be along.’

  ‘I tried her cell phone,’ Hutch said, ‘but it goes straight to her voicemail.’

  Now that was odd. Ruth never turned her cell phone off. By the worried look on Hutch’s face, I realized he knew that, too. ‘Maybe the battery died,’ I suggested.

  ‘Maybe.’ But he didn’t sound convinced.

  ‘Are Jay and Kay here?’

  ‘No. We’re working with them tomorrow. Just Chance.’

  ‘Let’s sit down,’ I suggested, casting about wildly for ways to distract the man. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.’ We settled ourselves comfortably on one of the spectator benches, then I patted Hutch’s knee and said, ‘So, truth or consequences. Where are you taking Ruth on your honeymoon?’