The Unexpected Waltz

by Kim Wright

  The phone in my purse vibrates and I look down. Hospice again. I’ll have to call them back, but maybe not today, when all I want is to go home. The library books in my tote bag were each chosen because the blurbs on the back promised happy endings. No kidnapped children or exploding car bombs or emerging family secrets. And at the last minute I threw in a Jane Austen—sweet Jane Austen, who never fails to fix it all by the last page, who marries off her heroines to the only men in England who value a woman’s character over family fortune, the only men in the world who have ever valued intellect over beauty. I’ll go home and read and eat my tuna and drink my wine and deal with hospice tomorrow.

  There’s a little girl sitting in the buggy beside me, kicking her chubby legs. She’s holding a pink and gold fruit in her hands like a ball. A guava, I think it must be, or is it a papaya? I grab something from the nearest stand. My hand comes back with an apple, but an apple is good enough, and I feel suddenly exhausted, suddenly teary, and I’m relieved when the phone stops ringing. I can’t face death right now. I can’t even face a guava.

  I pay and leave, loaded down with the books, the wine, and the groceries. The surprising weight of a single woman’s Friday night. It’s hot out here on the street, way too hot for the black suit I’m wearing, but it was the only thing I owned that seemed appropriate for the lawyer’s office. Another wave of dizziness rises up in me. I never ate lunch, and there’s no telling what, if anything, I had for breakfast. I stop for a moment to shift the bags and take a bite of the apple, and it suddenly hits me that I didn’t pay for it. That I held this apple, this sad little apple, the whole time the checkout kid was scanning my groceries. How distracted must I be to not notice I had something in my hand even while I was sliding my credit card and approving the amount? Why didn’t the checker say something? I’ve never shoplifted in my whole life and I’ve turned to go back and pay when, from the dark recesses of my purse, my damn phone vibrates again, sending a jolt into my side like a cattle prod. I’m looking down and digging for it as I push open the door with my hip. Just when my hand finds the phone, it stops vibrating, and I look up.

  I’m inside a large, bright room.

  The walls are covered in mirrors and for a minute I see nothing but images of my own body, reflected back at me from every angle. The floor is wide and blank, like an ocean. There’s a rack in the corner crammed full of spangled dresses, a big oaken bar with stools, a sagging couch, and an enormous blinking sound system, the components awkwardly linked together with a visible snarl of cables and cords. Music is on. Sinatra.

  This isn’t the grocery. I’ve managed to stumble into the dance studio beside the grocery. Canterbury Ballroom, I think they call the place, and I notice it, in a peripheral sort of way, when I go into the grocery every day. The studio has trophies in the window, like the kind they give children for soccer and karate, along with a group of framed pictures. Women in thick fake eyelashes with their hair slicked back, smiling these maniacal smiles as they wrap their arms around spray-tanned men in open shirts. I’ve always wondered how such a tacky place ended up in such a pricey part of town.

  “Hello there,” a voice says, and a girl stands up from behind a desk. Her hair is one of those colors never seen in nature, somewhere between red and purple and brown, and the style is very severe, a china bowl cut with long bangs. “Did you come in about the free introductory lesson?”

  “I don’t know why I’m here,” I say, and the girl nods patiently, as if something about me has already made that all too clear. As I step deeper into the room, I can see that two people are in the corner, dancing—or at least sort of dancing. An old woman is being steered in circles by a much younger man in a black T-shirt and black pants. He carefully matches his steps to hers, moving slowly, slightly off the beat. Two of a kind, Sinatra sings. Two of a kind.

  “I’m Quinn,” the girl says, extending a hand. Her fingernails are short but the polish is the exact same color as her hair.

  “I’m Kelly Madison. No . . . no. I mean I’m Kelly Wilder.” Apparently at some point in the course of this morning, I have decided to take back my maiden name.

  Quinn nods again, as if she’s used to greeting people who don’t know their own names.

  “This is embarrassing,” I say, “but I accidentally stole an apple from the grocery next door”—and here I shift the bag again and hold out the apple to prove my point—“and I was trying to go back to pay when my phone rang and I looked down and I ended up here . . .” It sounds even stupider when I say it out loud.

  And Quinn nods yet again, with that same annoying yoga-girl exaggerated calm. “So you don’t want to dance?”

  “Well, of course I do. Everyone wants to dance. I mean, someday I want to dance but right now I’m just trying to pay for my apple. Coming in here was an accident.”

  “You know,” Quinn says, tilting her head, “I’ve never believed in accidents.”

  “Neither have I,” I hear myself saying. And it’s true. I believe in a lot of things, but accidents are not among them.

  “So you’re here for the free introductory lesson.”

  “Evidently.”

  Quinn turns and her hair moves as a perfect unit. “We have a few forms for you to fill out,” she says, walking behind the desk.

  Forms? I almost bolt. An introductory lesson sounds harmless enough, but filling out forms is a commitment. Sinatra has finished and the man is heading toward the music system. He brushes by me as I duck my head and rummage through my purse for an ink pen. It’s impossible to write and hold the groceries, so I put them down on the couch and, after a moment, sit down myself. The form is pretty much what you’d expect—name, address, and contact info, including next of kin. In case the samba kills you, I guess.

  And then a single question: Why do you want to dance?

  I sink back into the couch and stare at myself in the mirrored wall. There are gold chains stretched across my chest, hooked to big gold buttons. My clothes are expensive, but the word “frumpy” also comes to mind, and it occurs to me that this suit is a uniform for a job I no longer have. And my face . . . it’s like the air is slowly but steadily seeping out of me and I’ve started to pucker around the seams. Living among people twenty years older has given me a false sense of my own youth and now, surrounded by mirrors, I see exactly how much I’ve aged. That the hair I’ve always described as “ash blond” is actually streaked with gray.

  “Our group class starts at seven,” Quinn calls out. The room is so big and so empty that her voice echoes. “Feel free to stay if you want to. Today we’re doing jive.”

  “I can’t,” I say. “I’ve got tuna.”

  “There’s a refrigerator in the back.”

  “Oh. That’s very kind of you. But I have a salad too.”

  “It’s a big fridge.”

  The man in black has pressed some buttons and music swells up again, something with violins. I know the song but can’t quite place it. I smile at Quinn and shake my head. I’m not the sort of woman who just wanders in off the street and puts her groceries into a strange refrigerator and starts to jive, and furthermore I don’t know why I want to dance but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I live alone in a five-thousand-square-foot house, I have eleven thousand dollars a month automatically deposited into my checking account, and I have absolutely nothing to do all day. I struggle to my feet—the couch is not only lumpy but low—and carry my bags and the form to Quinn’s desk.

  “That last question is a stumper,” I say, but Quinn merely looks up from her computer screen and asks if I can come in at four o’clock next Thursday afternoon for a lesson with someone named Nik.

  “No c,” she says.

  “Nik with no c,” I repeat.

  “Short for Nikoli. He’s Russian.” She shrugs. “Both of our male instructors are. Oh, and one more thing. When you come for your lesson, wear the highest
heels you have. Preferably ones with slick bottoms.”

  I am already halfway out the door when I turn and look back doubtfully. I’d assumed I’d wear running shoes and workout clothes. This is exercise, isn’t it? Something like Zumba class at the Y?

  “Heels,” Quinn says again, plopping a heavily tattooed leg onto the desk in a single fluid movement. Her shoes are at least three inches high and the bottoms are covered with suede. The straps cross in front and buckle behind the ankle. Very sexy in a Betty Boop kind of way.

  “I don’t have any shoes like that,” I say. “Nothing remotely like that.” What does this girl take me for? If I had shoes like that I wouldn’t need to come here in the first place. A woman who owned shoes like that would be leading a conga line down a gangplank somewhere in the tropics. She’d have a loud, outrageous laugh and a thousand lovers, and I get a sudden faint glimmer of why I might want to dance. But I push the thought down like a beach ball and say, “The only heels I have are something I bought to wear to somebody’s wedding.”

  “Wedding shoes are better than nothing,” Quinn says. “But the higher the heels, the better you’ll move. No really, I swear. It’s like you have to deliberately get yourself off balance before you can learn how to balance. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but trust me.”

  For some reason I do trust her, but I still stand, halfway in and halfway out the door. It would be easy to say forget it and walk away, but my eyes drift once more to the couple in the corner. What dance is this—the foxtrot? A waltz? Or just an elaborate sort of shuffle he’s made up to accommodate a woman clearly old enough to be his grandmother?

  Yet . . . there’s a heartbreaking kindness in the way he dances with her. He deliberately reins himself in, downplaying his youth and strength, and he turns her gently, again and again, as if he is showing her off to an imaginary crowd. She is barely moving but he has managed to make her come alive. Everything about the woman is absurd. There are smears of turquoise on her eyelids and even from this distance I can tell that she dipped a shaky finger into a pot and slashed the color on like war paint. Her hair, most likely a wig, seems a little off center, as if she is Carol Burnett pretending to be one of her old movie stars. Some grande dame unaware that time has passed her by.

  But this man is completely focused on this woman. He sees her. Most men do not look at aging women. I know this because in the last five years I have begun to fade from the eyes of men. And yet this particular man, young and strong as he is, sees this particular woman. He swirls and bows and pivots around her, honoring the space she occupies. And when she finally turns back toward me, I can see that she is radiant with joy.

  One of my feet is inside the studio, on the glossy floor of the ballroom, and the other is on the sidewalk. It would be as easy to go one way as another. I have Jane Austen and pinot gris and a single piece of tuna inside a sack and if I’m sure of anything, it’s that I don’t ever want a man to touch me again. I doubt I have to worry about it. That part of my life is probably over, and yet I can’t seem to look away from the couple in the corner. The woman’s face is happy. And mine, I know even without looking, is not.

  It would be easy to say forget it and hurry home.

  I should say forget it and hurry home.

  But instead, for some reason I will never understand, I lean back toward Quinn and ask her, “Exactly where’d you get those shoes?”

  "I REALLY FELL DOWN the rabbit hole today,” I tell Elyse. It’s just after nine. I’ve grilled the tuna, covered it with salsa straight from the jar, and emptied the salad onto a plate. I started on the wine two hours ago, and I’m a little floaty as I wedge the telephone under my chin and carry everything to the table.

  “Like how?” Elyse’s voice through the phone is indistinct. She’s either out on her patio, where reception isn’t good, or her mouth is full, or both.

  “For starters, I went to the law office and they told me I’m rich.”

  “Well, that’s swell, but we already sort of knew that, didn’t we?” She pauses for a moment and swallows. “How rich?”

  “They wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Wouldn’t tell you? Why not? Is it set up like a trust fund?”

  “I guess. They deposit eleven thousand a month in my checking account. I’m not supposed to worry about anything.”

  “Jesus. You didn’t ask them the principal amount? I mean, is it yours to do what you want to with, or does the estate control—”

  “I don’t know. And I don’t want to talk about that part right now.” I feel a little tickle of shame. After dinner I really do need to send that lawyer an e-mail demanding he give me the total. I stab a lettuce leaf and shake it until most of the dressing flies off. “Because that’s not even the weird part of the day. After I left the law office I went to the grocery and somehow, I don’t know how, I ended up in the dance studio beside it and I signed up to take a lesson. So get out your calendar and circle the date in red. This is the day Kelly Wilder officially lost her mind.”

  “You’re going back to Wilder?”

  “The point is, I signed up to take a dance lesson.”

  “What’s weird about that? You always liked dancing.”

  “This isn’t club-style dancing. It’s ballroom, the sequins and spray-tan shit that comes on public access late at night.”

  “Ballroom’s hot,” Elyse says. “Everybody’s doing it.”

  “Exactly. I’m a cliché. And then, as if the lessons weren’t bad enough, I furthermore agreed to buy special shoes to do it in. They have really high heels and straps that wrap around your ankle and the soles are suede, and you can’t even wear them on the pavement, you have to carry them around in a little silk bag. Why would they make shoes you can’t walk in?”

  “Probably so you can slide your foot.”

  “What?”

  “Suede soles would make it easier to slide your foot. Dancing is a sport, so you need a sport-specific shoe.”

  “I hate it when you’re logical.” I take a gulp of the wine. “But I haven’t told you the strangest part of all yet,” I say. “All the lawyers were moving in unison, like zombies, and I got the feeling that one of the female lawyers was winking at me. Then when I was in the produce aisle at the grocery I got all flipped out about what kind of fruit to buy. There were so many choices and they were all so beautiful and there was a little girl holding a guava and for some reason the whole thing made me feel like crying and I ended up with an apple.”

  Elyse is silent. She waits.

  “They have a thousand kinds of fruit,” I say. “Glamorous exotic stuff, and I choose this scuffed-up little red apple like you can get at the BI-LO. And then—you’re going to love this part—I accidentally fucking steal it. I mean I hold it in my hand all the way through the checkout line and by the time I realize what I’ve done, I’m out on the street. You know me, what a nerd I am. I turn around to go back and pay and I accidentally wind up in a ballroom studio instead and then before you know it I’m agreeing to get suede-bottomed shoes and let some Russian who’s probably sprayed orange lead me around the dance floor for a million dollars an hour. I’ve become that woman, Elyse. You know—the old pathetic kind who pays men to fuss over them.”

  “Maybe the apple was enchanted.”

  I laugh, despite myself.

  “Well, you have to admit the whole thing’s pretty Disney-fied,” she says. “There’s a mysterious fortune, a number that cannot be uttered aloud. A stranger winks at you. You take a bite of an apple and boom, you’re pulled into the ballroom against your will. And now you’ve got to find some magic shoes that the minute you put them on will make you start to dance.”

  “They’re just a pair of fuck-me heels. Nobody said they were magic.”

  “Personally, I blame Cinderella,” Elyse breezes on, and across two thousand miles I hear her fork clank against her plate. “Or maybe Dorothy from
The Wizard of Oz. Between those two, there isn’t a woman alive in America today who doesn’t think her whole life would be transformed if she could just find the right pair of shoes.”

  “What’d you make tonight?”

  “Tuna too,” she says, laughing softly.

  Elyse and I like eating together. North Carolina and Arizona are in different time zones but I eat late and she eats early, so it isn’t an issue. I always sit in the chair that faces the setting sun and sometimes I wonder if she sits facing east. She knows I need these little rituals, that I’m not yet accustomed to having dinner alone and maybe never will be. I imagine her out on her adobe patio, her hair tied in a loose knot at the back of her neck, squinting like a French film star. Living out west agrees with her. She seems taller since she moved there, rangy like a cowgirl, with a kind of elegant messiness. Elyse doesn’t bother with Botox or Spanx or highlights to hide the gray. She doesn’t need to. For Elyse, pretty would be a step down.

  “I’m cracking up,” I say, surprising myself. For the second time today I feel like crying, but then again, I often cry when I drink.

  “Oh, Kelly, you’re not cracking up. You’re trying to act like it was an ordinary day, but it wasn’t. Settling the estate means the last link to Mark is broken, so of course you’re rattled. The dancing is a great idea. You can’t stay all boxed in and bunched up forever.”

  “I know, I know. It’s been a whole year.”

  She hesitates. “It’s been a lot longer than a year.”

  I sit up straight. It feels like she’s slapped me.

  “Mark wasn’t so bad,” I say. “It’s not like he could help getting sick.”

  “I didn’t mean Mark,” she says. There’s static on the line. She must have walked off the patio. She must be standing in the sand among the cacti, looking up at the mountains. “Are we ever going to talk about Daniel and what happened way back then? How he broke you?”