Ballroom: A Novel

by Alice Simpson

  That was so many years before he danced with Maria for the first time at Our Lady of Sorrows, before he would consider falling in love with her. His father’s spoon stirring his coffee, salsa music playing, the rustle of his mother’s red satin dress, being enfolded in their laughter. Angel can still remember how, with her arms around his neck, Papa bent her back and gave her a big dramatic kiss, just like in the movies.

  Don’t you like the watch we bought you?” his father had asked. They were finishing dinner on a Sunday night, several weeks after his graduation from Washington Irving High School. “How come you never wear it? You’ll need it for college. To get to classes on time. Your mama and I want you to have a real good watch.”

  “I’m not going to college,” Angel insisted. “Mike’s offered me full-time. I’m eighteen, I wanna work, make money, dance. I can’t go to college, work, and dance.” The Movado watch sat on the night table next to his bed from the end of June through August, ticking away the hours his family spent arguing about his future.

  Even then, he was happy working full-time in the blueprint shop with people he liked and dancing at night. There was good money to be made escorting women to the Copacabana and other clubs. Though she tried not to say anything, he knew it worried his mother when he came home late.

  “You and dancing—and those women.” She was sitting at the kitchen table, sewing the hem of her new birthday dress. Putting the dress down, she leaned over, taking his face in her hands.

  “You got to get an education. Listen to me, Angel. Your father needs you in the business. Are you just going to spend your life in a blueprint shop?” she asked. “And dancing?”

  “Times are different now.” Pushing his coffee mug around in circles, he understood what they wanted for him: to go to college, to study accounting. Sell automotive parts like his father. “I have to lead my own life, Mama. I know how you feel, but like I told you, I don’t sleep with women I escort. I’m not a gigolo. Think about it. If I fooled around with them, soon I’d have no business at all. It’s business. Strictly business.”

  She leaned across the table to plant a kiss on his nose, like when he was a kid. He knew she loved him, no matter what.

  He began to think about having his own place. By September, he’d saved enough money to put down a two-month deposit on a one-bedroom apartment on East Twenty-Second Street. His thoughts turned to planning and saving for the dance center and the future he wanted with Maria.

  Chapter 15

  Harry

  A gentleman, making a formal call in the morning or in the evening, must retain his hat in his hand. He may leave umbrella and cane in the hall, but not his hat and gloves. The fact of retaining hat indicates a formal call.

  —Thomas E. Hill, Evils of the Ball, 1883

  When the new super, Manuel Rodriguez, moved into the first-floor apartment with his wife and infant almost twenty years ago, Harry had noticed right away that the building was cleaner. Burned-out bulbs were replaced; the smell of roach spray was gone from the hallways.

  Harry was forty-five then, and still working at Simon’s Shoe Factory. When he came home after work, the seductive Mrs. Rodriguez, with her small waist and rounded hips, was always sitting on the front stoop. She spoke no English, but there was a wild, eager expression in her eyes when she looked at him. He knew that look; knew there could be trouble.

  In the turquoise blue dress she often wore, with its frenzy of pink hibiscus, the perfect colors against her bronze skin, she reminded him of an exotic tropical island. The ruffles that fluttered around the hem accentuated her slender legs. He’d heard Manuel call her name, Vivianna, but he was careful to address her as Mrs. Rodriguez.

  The infant on her lap often reached her small fists toward Harry. When he touched his hand to the child’s arm for the first time, he couldn’t help but release a small gasp. Never having touched a baby before, he was astounded at the velvet surface of her skin, the creases between her chubby cherub joints, and the delicacy of her fingers. Until then, Harry had never noticed children, but Maria was the most beautiful infant he’d ever seen. As he drew his hand away, Mrs. Rodriguez gazed up at him again with her languid eyes, and he wondered how soft her skin might be.

  “Entra la apartamenta.” Manuel Rodriguez spoke sharply to his wife from the top step.

  Manuel went out on Friday nights at seven. One evening, soon after he’d left, Harry was on the second-floor landing on his way to Roseland when he heard the buzzer. An unfamiliar young man in a western hat with a turquoise band, fringed suede jacket, and cowboy boots slipped into the Rodriguez apartment. Harry was certain he could smell Tabu, Mrs. Rodriguez’s perfume, wafting up the stairs.

  When Harry left the building, he crossed the street to the bodega to buy a newspaper. From the bodega window he could see the flicker of candlelight in the Rodriguezes’ apartment.

  He left the dance hall early, at ten, and when he passed apartment 1A, he listened. There was music playing and the intermittent whimpering of the infant. Pausing on the second floor, Harry was held by the contrast between those initial sounds and intervals of quiet, as though she were waiting for something. By the time he reached the fourth floor, having paused every few steps to listen, the cries for attention had escalated into prolonged crying. The child’s need registered a familiar note somewhere long buried in him, memories of his own childhood; the mother who had never returned. He couldn’t close his door. Restlessly pacing the length of his hallway, he listened as her cries went unanswered. Soon Maria was shrieking with anguish. He felt an unbearable yearning to comfort her.

  Occasionally stepping outside his door to look over the banister during that seemingly endless night, Harry observed Mrs. Ortega and Mrs. Capinelli each come out of their apartments and, like himself, look over the banister. Each time he quickly moved back from the railing so they wouldn’t see him. He didn’t know why he didn’t close his door or turn his music on to block out the infant’s unrelenting cries. He wanted to rescue Maria, hold her, quell her agony, and it pained his belly and his heart to be unable to do so.

  Each Friday night the cowboy arrived soon after Rodriguez left the building, and Maria’s distress reverberated through the halls, digging through Harry’s thick skin, jangling his muscles and nerves, burying themselves in the marrow of his bones. He imagined that intertwined in Maria’s unceasing and plaintive sobs were sounds of pleasure, the blond cowboy entangled in Vivianna Rodriguez’s thighs; he imagined their moans, and remembered the pleasures of his own youth.

  Just before midnight Harry would watch at his window, hidden by the curtain, as the fair-haired visitor slipped out of the building, and wait to observe him pause, and tip his cowboy hat.

  She’s gone.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  Mrs. Ortega and Mrs. Capinelli were on the second-floor landing. Harry, getting his mail, took his time so he could hear their conversation.

  “She was a wild thing.” Even though Mrs. Ortega was whispering, her voice traveled down the stairwell. “Always dressed up in them fancy dresses—like she was goin’ to a party or somethin’. Too good-lookin’. A man’s got to watch a woman like that.”

  “Can you believe she left him with the child?” Mrs. Capinelli didn’t bother to whisper. Her deep gravelly smoker’s voice and cough were easily recognizable to Harry. He always knew when she was near because she reeked of cigarettes. “Such a beautiful baby.”

  “What kinda woman runs off like that?”

  “Carryin’ on.” She paused, probably inhaling her Camel cigarette. “Almost two years, and always leavin’ the baby to cry.”

  “She should rot. What went on in that place?” Mrs. Ortega looked to see if Rodriguez was around, nodded at Harry as he passed. “Good riddance,” she whispered. “Such a good-lookin’ man. He’ll find another woman.”

  No one ever spoke about Vivianna Rodriguez again.

  Years passed. Vivianna Rodriguez never returned, and Manuel did not remarry. He was devote
d to his job and his child, and Mrs. Ortega helped. Maria often followed her father around while he worked. Everyone in the building loved her, and she knew everyone’s name. Even Harry’s.

  “Hi, Mr. Korn. Where you going?”

  “I’m going dancing.” It was their game, even when he was just going to get the paper. “Want to be my partner?”

  Harry found special joy in seeing Maria playing in the hallway or on the steps with her dolls. He would pat her head or touch her cheek. Once he kissed the top of her head. She smelled like fresh air.

  At five years old her glossy chocolate hair was thick and dark and falling around her face in soft ringlets. But it was Maria’s mouth, its line like an archer’s bow, and the liveliness of her wide sparkling mahogany eyes that found a special place in him.

  “I got my own library card today. I can take home books. Want me to read to you?”

  “What books did you borrow?” He sat down on the staircase next to her as she showed them to him.

  “I’m going to be a ballerina, so I took five books on ballet.”

  “Then will you come to the Ballroom with me?”

  “Could I?”

  “Sure. You’ll have to learn to dance a mambo, though.” He had just been making foolish conversation, but whenever Maria saw him afterward, she asked.

  “Will you teach me to mambo?”

  He thought about Maria while he worked, hoping she would be in the hallway when he came home.

  One Sunday evening, on his way out to meet one of his dance students at the Ballroom, he found her sitting on the top step, outside the door of his apartment.

  “What are you doing up here?” His stomach tightened like a fist.

  “Listening to your music.”

  “You mustn’t come up here, Maria. You got to stay downstairs.”

  “Why? I like to hear your music, Mr. Korn. I come up here a lot to listen.”

  “Your father wouldn’t like you coming up here.”

  “Why?”

  “He wouldn’t know where you were, and he would worry.”

  “I’d be with you, Mr. Korn.”

  She placed her hand in his as he walked her back down the stairs, terrified the neighbors would see him. If only he could lift her and, with her close to his chest, smell the warm, sweet whisper of her breath.

  Imagining that Maria was outside his door, he began opening it at odd moments to see if she might be there. He played love songs, tangos, and rumbas, hoping they would beckon her.

  Chapter 16

  Maria

  No gentleman should use his bare hand to press the waist of a lady in the dance. If without gloves, carry a handkerchief in the hand.

  —Thomas E. Hill, Evils of the Ball, 1883

  Maria has only one memory of her mother. Parts of it are so fuzzy, she isn’t even sure it is real. But the clear portions are so sharp that she could cut around them with scissors and glue them in a scrapbook. Papi said that her mother had died, and that all the photos of her had been lost when she and Papi moved from the Bronx to Twelfth Street.

  She remembers her own small hands gripping a worn brass-buckled leather harness. She has chosen the enormous black stallion, understands that it is a pretender despite its expression of breath and motion. She has looked into its dark, dusty pocket of a mouth, seen that it has no throat. In the hard wooden saddle she sits up very straight, keeping her eyes ahead, so as not to notice how far she is above the floor. The stirrups are adjusted, and she presses down and forward through her black Mary Jane shoes. When the calliope’s steamy music begins, the carousel begins to turn. She feels excited and lost at the same time, unsure whether she is moving or the world beyond the carousel is in a faster-than-usual spin; fearful that she will be torn out of the saddle and sent flying out from under the red roof, over the fence, and into the autumn sky. She must hold on. Sit very still. It is the same joy and fear as when Papi lifts her off the floor and throws her into the air. On the merry-go-round, her only reassurance is the music, its lovely oom-pah syncopation keeping time with the ups and downs of her strong wooden steed.

  Grasping the pole tightly, she watches her mother, who is perched on a pink horse, its neck garlanded by yellow, red, and turquoise painted roses, strung together with pale green leaves. The horse looks over its shoulder at Maria, mouth agape, with large ferocious Chiclet teeth set in a permanent grin. Its nostrils flare beneath bulging eyes in deep carved sockets, and a mane of raucous pink curlicues rises from its neck, like frozen flames. Her mother sits sidesaddle, holding on to the pole with one hand, laughing openmouthed, head thrown back. She turns toward a man in a fringed jacket, who leans against her horse, his arms around her waist. With her other hand she is stroking his hair, while her own blows free, the mahogany strands streaming behind her like banners in harmony with the horse’s carved tail. Her hair has come loose from her brightly flowered scarf, which circles her neck as she arches toward him, her face flushed.

  “Mama,” Maria calls out, and there is that one vivid moment in the dappled sunlight, through trees barely leafed, when her mother turns to her, throws her a kiss. Her mother’s pink horse rises and falls at a different pace than her own, its hoofed legs flailing the air, and Maria is forever unable to catch up. Who will stop her on her runaway horse? Only that last kiss good-bye, as her mother disappears into the shadow. Lost.

  It is here that the bittersweet memory fades. Maria wanted her mother to ride with her, hold her, protect her from a world racing forward, madly turning. She’s never truly believed that her mother died, as her Papi said. Instead, Maria secretly believes, she simply galloped off on her flower-decked pink mount, through the park, over the trees, her hair flying, her cowboy’s arms around her waist.

  For as long as Maria can remember, on Friday nights Papi has played dominoes at Uncle Julio’s with friends. He changes out of the dark blue jumpsuit he wears all day, showers, and dresses with great style, slicking back his thick hair with pomade. In the summer he looks particularly handsome in his embroidered white guayabera shirt, white pants, and white shoes. She loves watching him stop in front of the mirror by the front door; smoothing his hair with the palm of his hand, smiling, and then running his tongue over his pearly white teeth. He stops for a moment at the bottom of the front steps as though testing the weather, turns to blow her a kiss as he crosses the street, then waves as he walks west on Twelfth Street toward Union Square Station. It seems to her that men do everything exactly on time. Once he is out of view, she climbs the three flights, two steps at a time, to Harry Korn’s apartment on the fourth floor.

  She waits on the top step, listening for the music to begin. Then, tapping on the door lightly, she listens for the distinctive shushing sound of his shoes on the path of brown paper grocery bags. Harry’s apartment smells of cooked carrots and onions. When he opens the door, she knows, without ever being told, that she must never step off the paper path. He has been giving her dancing lessons every Friday night for the past twelve years since she was eight. She has always dreamed of being a Latin ballroom champion, and Harry is a patient teacher.

  On Friday nights Harry leans a mirror against the refrigerator and takes up the eight bags that cover the section of the kitchen floor where she has her lesson. At seven thirty sharp he faces the mirror and begins dancing with her in a tight square of nine gray linoleum tiles. She’s memorized those tiles like a tic-tac-toe grid, giving them numbers. She is on two, facing Harry on eight. Her tile has a black scuffmark. Harry’s has a dent in it like a footprint, as though over time his hard weight has pressed into the floor. There is a triangular chip out of five. Five and nine are a lighter gray than the others.

  Harry doesn’t want her to look down when they dance, or step outside the nine-square perimeter of those tiles. Going over the same steps repeatedly, he attempts to perfect her Latin motion; the movement of each knee, which moves the opposite hip. He holds her upper body firmly to isolate it from the motion of her hips. He leads her in the tight squa
re of floor.

  Movements are minimal and contained. Always instructing, very patient, Harry arranges her posture, corrects the way she moves, the way she holds her arms, her hands, her fingers. With his warm, hard hands, he moves her head into the proper position, pushes her chest up and out, and presses her pelvis toward him with palms against her buttocks, as though she is a piece of clay he is molding. Over the years, he has taught her to rumba, mambo, cha-cha, salsa, and tango in those nine squares. She is grateful that he spends Friday nights giving her free dance lessons that her father would never have agreed to.

  She often considers calling Harry. “Papi’s sick, I can’t come tonight.”

  Of course, from his window, Harry would have seen Papi leave. She sees him there when she goes to school every day. He probably thinks she doesn’t know. She will leave early, tell him she doesn’t feel well.

  “If you’re going to be a professional dancer, you got to dance no matter what. With fever, or sprained ankle. Nothing stops a pro. Never forget that.” That’s what Harry will say.

  He promised her a tango lesson tonight, promised to buy a Carlos Gardel tape, because they never play tangos on La Mega. Pausing for a few moments before she knocks, she listens to the music that drifts under the door. The dread of discovery she feels as she climbs the three flights vanishes, replaced by a jumpy feeling of happiness and expectation as she gets to the top floor.

  She can’t explain or quite understand what it is that is special about dancing with Harry. When he opens his arms to her, he is so sure, the way he holds her, not too hard, not too soft. Like coming home. Where she belongs. The way he moves her. They are a part of the music. Their bodies fit together, move like one person. Perfect. The way a man and woman must feel, she thinks, when they are in love. He makes her feel beautiful, too, like when he assures her that someday she will be good enough to be a professional dancer. Harry must know, because he is the best dancer, the best teacher, a girl could have, patient and gentle. She is lucky that he believes in her. That is how she feels outside his door.