Ballroom: A Novel

by Alice Simpson

  Long ago she learned that Papi is not there for hugs. He kisses her on the forehead, but his arms remain at his sides when she puts her arms around him. She feels as though he doesn’t love her enough to hold her close.

  Maria loves everything pink. For her fourteenth birthday Papi gave her a new ruffled comforter strewn with clusters of pink cabbage roses and matching pillow shams. Maria thinks that Mrs. Ortega probably bought them for Papi to give her. One day after school, Mrs. Ortega took her to El Barrio—around 110th Street and Lexington Avenue—where Maria picked out pink sheets. That was when she saw the comforter and showed it to Mrs. Ortega, who had been teaching her how to sew and had promised to help her make curtains for the room as well as a pink dust ruffle. After school, Mrs. Ortega would usually fix tuna sandwiches, and they would sit together on the sofa with the plastic covers and watch a soap opera that Papi would never let her see. It was sexy, with all the handsome guys and women in beautiful clothes.

  “Angel could be on the show—he looks like a movie star. Doesn’t that one look like Alexis, his girlfriend?” Mrs. Ortega had asked one day.

  “Maybe.” Maria didn’t want to think about Alexis.

  On the Saturday before her birthday, Papi went to the hardware store and had paint mixed for the walls to match the roses, and Angel came by to help them paint. Papi was in a real good mood, not bossy or angry. The three of them painted and danced, singing along with the music, and when it was time for lunch she heated up bacalao, a stew made of salt codfish, potatoes, onions, and tomatoes that Mrs. Ortega brought them, and they ate picnic style on the floor. When they finished at midnight, they went around the corner for a pizza. Angel put his arm around her when they crossed the street, brought her food, and bowed gallantly as he set the tray in front of her. It was one of her favorite days.

  Maria never told Harry that, on the Saturday night after her fourteenth birthday, she danced with Angel Morez for the first time. She was embarrassed, being at an Our Lady of Sorrows dance with Papi, dying to dance but certain that no one would ever ask her in a million years. Then when Angel asked Papi’s permission to dance with her, she thought she’d die. She couldn’t believe that Papi had said yes. Angel was such a great dancer, but old. Although not as old as Harry. He was twenty.

  Angel was tall, gracefully muscular, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. She’d watched him at other dances, self-assured and sensual, as he danced with his girlfriend Alexis. She felt stupid and shy when he held out his hand to her, but right from the start his kindness calmed her fears. When Angel smiled at her, she felt like the most important person in the room.

  The clank and knock of the heat working its way through the building’s old pipes awakens Maria. It is the week of her sixteenth birthday. From outside comes the cacophony of garbage trucks, the distinctive upstart roar of the motor beneath the sound of garbage cans noisily thrown back onto the curb.

  The light filters pink and hazy through her gauzy curtain. Her bedroom window overlooks Avenue A, where the noisy life of the street goes on day and night. People shout to one another out the windows and over fire escapes. Boom boxes play salsa music. Weekends there are fights, horns honking, and the rude, hoarse noises of motorcycles. Someday she plans to leave Alphabet City and move uptown to Park Avenue, where it is quiet and elegant. She will have a good job, a beautiful apartment, and be someone important—and she will win the Latin division with Angel.

  Tonight is the night! She thought it would never come. She is going to the Copa with Angel! Her first date. Well, almost. The Copa is having a Latin dance contest, and Angel thinks they can win, and Papi has said that she can go. Angel didn’t invite Alexis, who is nineteen and absolutely gorgeous, like Paula Abdul, with long red “porcelains.” She works at a beauty shop, and she has at least a dozen hairpieces. Angel takes her out for dinner and movies. But she’s not a good dancer, like Maria. Maria and Angel have been dancing together more and more often at the church on Saturday nights. If Papi says yes when Angel asks, they will be dance partners.

  Papi took her uptown to Randy’s Dance Shoes. She plans to tell Harry about that store, because they dye shoes to match. She tried on half a dozen pairs until she found the right pair, and they fit like a glove. Now she lovingly takes each shoe out of its tissue. They smell sweet and new. She wants the shoes to be new forever. She will take good care of them and remember to scratch the velvety kid soles in several directions with a wire brush, like the pros do, to avoid slipping on the dance floor. Real dance shoes. She slips them on, points her toes, admiring how graceful the shoes make her legs look. She dances a box step, then a cha-cha with one of her stuffed bears. His eyes are large merry circles, just like Angel’s when he laughs.

  She counts the beat and dances around the room in her pink nightgown and new shoes. And one, two—one, two three and one, two—one, two, three.

  Locking her bedroom door, she pulls the nightgown over her head and reaches for her new dress, pale cream satin with a full lace skirt. The bodice has short puffy sleeves, a scoop neck, and thirty pearl buttons the size of tiny peas to the waist. Layers of crinoline under the lace skirt feel crisp and scratchy as they slide over her face, across her shoulders, and down over her bare legs. The satin fabric is cool and slippery as it brushes past her ears and over her cheeks, and fits perfectly over her bare breasts.

  As she buttons the pearls, she wishes that the dress showed more of her cleavage, but Papi would never allow her to wear anything so revealing. She runs her fingers down across her chest, feeling the firmness of her breasts and the smoothness of her torso. Holding her arms out, she spins around and around, the skirt opening like an umbrella. She likes the rustle of fabric. If only she had a full-length mirror! All she can see in the mirror above her dresser are her face and shoulders. Tonight she’ll stand on a chair to see how she looks.

  If she had gone shopping with her girlfriend Anna, she would have chosen the red strapless dress that hung in the window at Rosie’s.

  “No,” Papi said. “You’re only fifteen.”

  “I’ll be sixteen in a couple of days, Papi, please,” she argued. “Can I just try it on?” She was always only twelve, only thirteen, and now it is only fifteen. He will never let her grow up, but at least he is letting her go to the Copa with Angel. “Do you think we’ll win?” she asked. It’s her first competition, if she doesn’t count the times that she and Angel have won first place at church dances.

  Papi was growing restless. “We’ll take the cream-colored dress.” Under his breath Maria thought she heard him mumble something in Spanish about her needing a mother. Maria longed to throw her arms around him, to thank him for the dress and permission to dance with Angel, but Papi wouldn’t like that.

  Come, chiquita, make my breakfast.” Papi’s voice breaks through her daydreaming. “I gotta clean up outside. It’s getting late. You got to get to school, and I’ve got to work on the busted boiler. Mr. Korn upstairs left me a note under the door. No heat on the top floor. Son of a bitch never wants me up there; too cheap to pay me for fixing anything. Never tips neither. Tonight, you do your chores before you go dancing, do you hear me? Do them right.”

  “Yes, Papi,” she calls to him in the kitchen.

  She takes a quick spin, feels the skirt swirl around her thighs before taking it off. Wrapping each shoe back in its tissue, she places them back in the box and, taking one last whiff of the sweet leather, closes the cover.

  “Sweet dreams till tonight!” she says to the shoes and begins making her bed.

  “Shut up that fuckin’ dog!” It is Ms. Capinelli from across the hall, shouting out her open window.

  “Min’ your own business,” Mrs. Ortega, 2B, screams back as she stands at the curb while her Chihuahua circles and barks at the garbage men.

  “You no shut up that little rat, I call SPCA!” threatens Ms. Capinelli.

  Maria smoothes every wrinkle out of her flowered comforter, lines up all her bears along the pillows.

  “
Pick up after your dog, Mrs. Ortega,” Papi warns. “I tell you every day.”

  “Thaz not my dog sheet.”

  “Yes, it is. It shits like a cockroach. Pick it up!” Papi curses as he comes in for breakfast. “That Mrs. Ortega is something, always pretending her dog is some kind of angel.”

  “Oh, Papi, I’m so excited about tonight,” she chatters as she cooks. “Thank you for letting me go.” She puts her arms around his shoulders after serving him home fries, thick slabs of bacon with eggs, and Spanish coffee, into which he dips his toast.

  “Just act like a lady.” She feels his body stiffen at her touch. “Make me proud. Now sit down. Eat breakfast.”

  “I want to win so bad. More than anything in the world. I’m not even hungry.”

  “Just be sure you do your chores and your homework before you go,” he reminds her, “and don’t you go put on any makeup. Do you hear? I don’t want you looking cheap.”

  “I promise.” Maybe just a little lipstick.

  She clears the table, washes, dries, and puts away all the dishes. Closing up the sofa bed where her father sleeps, she looks around to make sure everything is exactly the way he likes it.

  On her way to school, she realizes that Papi forgot to wish her a happy birthday. She forgives him because he had so much to do to take care of in the building this morning. Harry never forgets. This will be the first Friday in eight years that she won’t go up to his place. Poor old Harry. What will he do tonight? She’s never thought about that before. They never run into each other in the hall anymore, and she never sees him go out. Maybe he just stays in his apartment all the time. Does he have any friends? Does he ever go out dancing? He must, she is certain, because he is such a good dancer. It seems that he has no life other than being there on Friday nights when she knocks on the door. As if he only exists to teach her to dance.

  How will she ever get through the day at school? She and Angel just have to win. When she turns to look up at Harry’s window, there is a flutter of his bedroom curtain.

  Mr. Rodriguez, I know Maria’s just turned sixteen, and her schoolwork comes first, but she’s a really fine dancer.” It’s the night after they danced and won first place at the Copa. “I would like to ask if she could be my dance partner. I know it will mean a great deal of time, sir. She’ll need ballet classes on top of practicing with me a couple of nights after dinner. We can practice at church. I know Maria wants to go to college, and I’ll make sure she does her homework.”

  “I want to dance more than anything in the world, Papi. Please say yes.”

  “You’ve got school to pay attention to,” her father says. “You need to get A’s.”

  “I will, I really will, Papi. I can do both.”

  “You’re a lot older than she is, Angel. Would you be responsible, respectful? I don’t want no messing around. She’s sixteen.”

  “Yes, sir. Strictly dancing.”

  “Everyone who sees us dance together says if we really work at it, we could enter the championships next year, Papi,” Maria says. “And we might even win,”

  “I give you my permission, as long as she keeps up her good grades.” Papi speaks directly to Angel, as though she isn’t there. “If her grades go down, that’s it.”

  Maria continues going to Harry’s, but she never tells him about dancing with Angel, and she makes excuses to Angel every Friday. Practicing with Angel is real; it makes Harry’s dreams of Buenos Aires seem foolish. He’ll be almost seventy when she is old enough. Seventy is too old to compete. Angel is real.

  She has so many different feeling about Harry. Sometimes she can’t bear to look at his face, the expression of sorrow in his eyes. She understands that she is important to him, and that she makes him happy. At the same time she finds him such a lonely man, filled with such a deep sadness, living in his empty apartment, not one book anywhere. A man without any friends. With no life. Only dreams.

  Harry, I can’t come upstairs anymore.” She is lying in her bed and having an imaginary conversation that she has yet to find the courage to initiate. “I’m getting too grown up. And I have a dance partner now. Angel Morez. With Papi’s permission.”

  The truth is, she likes dancing with Harry, especially the things he’s taught her about each dance; the way he holds her and cares about her . . . and Harry loves her. It is almost the same as when she dances with Angel. Special. Like being one person. But Angel has Alexis, and Papi is always angry about something. He never compliments her, either, even when she dances with Angel at church. All he cares about is that she does well in school, keeps the apartment clean, and behaves “like a lady.”

  Something begins to change with Harry. He begins whispering words that he repeats over the years, like a fairy tale reread until every word is familiar. Maria knows she has her part to play in his dreams. It is what she does to make him happy and ensure that her lessons continue.

  “Maria, every week I put money away, just for you, so when you grow up, I’ll have enough money to buy you the most beautiful dance dress in the world,” he begins.

  She looks into his old eyes and says, “What will it look like?”

  “Turquoise silk organza as blue as the Caribbean. Sparkling with sequins. It will fit you like a glove.” His sour breath is warm against her cheek.

  “Will you wear a tuxedo?”

  “Of course.”

  “And my shoes?”

  “Blue satin dance shoes dyed to match. And you’ll wear your hair pulled back.” He strokes her hair. “My very own Maria, I wait for you on the dance floor. You come to my arms.” He holds out his arms, beckoning. “You are perfection.” He seems lost in a dream. “We’ll live in Buenos Aires. Dancing the tango, in the salons, on the streets and cafés. Together.”

  There are parts of Harry’s dream that she shares and more. She loves the theatricality of costume and stage makeup—the thick black false eyelashes, the glittery eye shadow, the brightly lined lips and porcelain fingernails. But even more she longs to dance in the grandeur of a ballroom with glittering chandeliers, high ceilings, and spectacular spaces that inspire sweeping movement.

  When Harry presses her toward him, she feels that there is something he has lost. She wants to bring him the joy he brings to her in these lessons, in everything he teaches her.

  “Tell me you love me.”

  “I love you,” she whispers.

  “In Spanish,” he pleads. “Say it in Spanish before you go.”

  “Te amo, mi amor.” And she does love Harry, with a sense of admiration as well as guilt and heartache, knowing that this must be wrong; that Papi wouldn’t like it.

  When the Big Ben reaches nine thirty, Maria pulls out of his embrace. “I have to go before Papi telephones.” Harry stands by the half-closed door, fingers pressed to his mouth in a kiss, as she slips down the stairs on tiptoe, to be home before Papi calls at ten.

  “Mi amor,” Papi says when he calls. “I’m leaving. I’ll be home soon. Sweet dreams, muneca linda.”

  Chapter 17

  Harry

  Create not the heart-burning of jealousy, and perhaps lasting misery for yourself, by forgetting a lover for some newer face in the ball-room.

  —Robert De Valcourt, The Illustrated Manners Book, 1855

  On Maria’s sixteenth birthday he wanted to surprise her with a special birthday present. Lately, something has been gnawing at his stomach. He was having difficulty sleeping through the night. He was remembering things he wanted to forget. He was waking at four in the morning, with terror in his belly. He thought about his mother, who had disappeared, and all the faceless women he had danced with at dance halls. He had hoped to put Belle Fine out of his mind forever.

  I can’t come next week, Harry,” Maria had said the week before her sixteenth birthday. “I’m going to the Copa. There’s going to be a live band.” It was almost a quarter to ten, and her hand was already on the doorknob.

  “On Friday night?” As he stood up, his chair fell over. “What
about our lesson?” he asked. He remembers holding on to the table’s edge until his knuckles hurt.

  “I’m sorry. I have to tell you the truth. I have an uncle—Uncle Julio Morez, who is not really my uncle. They’re just old friends, and that’s where Papi plays dominoes.” Maria spoke rapidly without even taking a breath, and the words poured out of her as though she had been practicing them. “He’s got a son—Angel Morez, but he’s not my real cousin—and we dance together at Our Lady of Sorrows on Sunday nights, and he asked me to dance with him in the competition at the Copa. I really want to go, more than anything. He’s a really good dancer, too, almost as good as you . . . and besides, it’s my birthday and I think we’re going to win . . . and Papi bought me this satin dress and real dance shoes. Everybody thinks we’re going to win, Harry. It’s all because you taught me to dance so well. Please don’t be mad at me. Please. I’ll come the next Friday, I promise. I swear.” She looked so fragile, almost frightened. “I promise, I’ll never miss another Friday. I have to go. It’s almost a quarter to ten.”

  Sixteen. Too young to be going dancing with Angel Morez. Her father should never have given permission for her to go to the Copacabana. Especially with someone like Angel Morez, arrogant, with his dark good looks and that fake smile. Harry’s seen him dancing at the Copacabana, Sigh Street, and at the Ballroom, with the array of women he escorts. Like a gigolo. So charming. Gallant. Rodriguez should know from Angel’s conceited gaze that he’s thinking dirty thoughts about Maria. A thief. Yes, Angel is a thief, who has waited for Maria to grow up and, after Harry has taught her to dance better than anyone, is stealing her from him.

  Harry was beginning to feel unsettled. Maria was no longer a child. Her gentle nature, her touch, the look in her eyes, was stirring ideas he could not allow himself to consider. Yet in these hours with her, his loneliness was assuaged. She was a soothing presence. More and more he thought about the possibility of more, of taking her to Buenos Aires when she turned eighteen, and this filled him with hope.