The Unexpected Waltz

by Kim Wright

“Time’s running out. I know that. I’m not delusional. But I think I have to try.”

  “Try what?”

  “To not be fake.”

  Elyse nods, slowly and carefully. I’ve lost my fucking mind, that much is evident to everyone around me. Last week I made that crazy speech at the charity dinner about how romantic love keeps women from going on a quest and everyone thought I was drunk and now I’m here at hospice, drinking again and talking about putting dogs out in the yard and I don’t even have a dog, which is probably just one more thing that’s wrong with me. I feel like I’m on some flat, open territory, some prairie in a state where I’ve never been before. Emptiness and possibility stretch out all around me, in every direction. I start to say that I don’t want to be one of those women who lies on her deathbed and repents for what she does not do, when I remember that Carolina is right here between us, looking up at me with wide, solemn eyes.

  I try again. “I know I was a bitch to you, Elyse, when you fell in love with Gerry and left Phil and I kept telling you to be careful. I know that’s not what you needed to hear. But the truth of it all is that I was jealous, so jealous I couldn’t see straight. Because you knew what you wanted and you went for it and now look at you, you got love. Meanwhile I’m still sitting here waiting and wondering if I even know what love is.”

  Elyse shakes her head. “I swear, Kelly, sometimes it’s like you and I aren’t even watching the same movie. I got love? That’s what you think?”

  “You got Gerry.”

  “I don’t have Gerry. Gerry comes and goes.” Elyse looks at Carolina. “I’m sorry, honey, Kelly and I are being rude, talking over the top of you like you’re a piece of furniture. Gerry is a man I met years ago on an airplane and after that I left my husband—he’s the one she means when she says Phil. Everybody thinks I traded my husband for my lover but it’s way more complicated than that.”

  “Oh, I know the whole story,” Carolina says confidently. “Kelly says that you had the safe man but you wanted the bad boy.”

  “Good God,” Elyse says. I drain my glass and hold it out. She ignores me.

  “And Kelly’s bad boy dumped her,” Carolina continues, her voice a little ragged. “So she married a safe man and she says that’s because there are two kinds of men in the world—the ones who make things easy and the ones who make things hard. You and her started out choosing the opposite, and then the two of you sort of crisscrossed somewhere along the way, and now she lives in a big house but you’ve had a lot more sex.”

  “Really?” Elyse says. “That’s what she said?”

  Carolina smiles and takes a dainty sip of syrah. “Some of it I figured out for myself.”

  Elyse gives a big hoot of laughter, which relieves me. “Well, it’s right as far as it goes, Carolina, but let me tell you, my life is about one-tenth as exciting as Kelly makes it out to be. Yeah, I left my husband because I was bored and lonely, but what I didn’t realize was that all the other women who were bored and lonely but didn’t have the guts to leave their husbands were going to crucify me. It’s all anybody ever says about me, that I left a nice man. They’re going to carve it on my tombstone: Here Lies Elyse Bearden. She Left a Nice Man. And yeah, I have a boyfriend, but he pops in and out of sight like a kid on a water slide. Meanwhile selling a bowl every once in a while doesn’t pay the rent, so I teach pottery at a community college. I bet you know how glamorous that can be. And that doesn’t pay worth a shit either so I just signed up to teach three classes a week at the senior citizens’ center.”

  “You didn’t tell me that,” I say.

  She shrugs. “They just offered it to me. The class starts after New Year’s. They’ve warned me that some of my students will be in pretty bad shape, but touch is the last sense to go. Even blind people can feel clay.”

  “You could do that at hospice,” I say. “The hospice in Tucson.” Elyse complains sometimes about money but I didn’t know things were this bad.

  “Hmmm,” says Elyse. “What about it, Carolina? Do you want to throw pots? Do you think that would fulfill you?”

  “I’ve never thought about it,” Carolina says, looking up at the clouds. “I’ve never thought about what would fulfill me.”

  “Then tell me this,” Elyse says after a minute. “Have you ever been in love?”

  I’m ashamed to say this is a question I’ve never asked. I know odd things about Carolina, like her white blood cell count and the amount of her weekly car payment, but I don’t know what happened to the father of her boys. Whether she loved him, whether she married him, where he went, or even whether he was the one who truly mattered. I roll over to where I can hear her better.

  “A long time ago,” Carolina says.

  “And was he one of the safe men or one of the bad boys?”

  “Hard to decide,” Carolina says. “And what difference would it make either way? Like my grandma used to say, they’re both no good.”

  Elyse shrieks again with laughter, rocking her knees back and forth on the bed. I reach over Carolina to hand her my glass and this time she lifts the bottle to pour in more but then she stops, leaving me with my hand and my glass out there in midair.

  “I guess you’ve noticed,” she says to Carolina, “that this one still wears her wedding ring.”

  I turn my hand, dropping a couple of drips of syrah on the sheet in the process. All three of us study my ring.

  “I can’t seem to take it off,” I say.

  Carolina frowns. “You mean it’s stuck?”

  “Not exactly. What does a ring like this say to you?”

  “It says, ‘I’m rich.’”

  “No, it says, ‘I married a rich man,’” I say. “Which, trust me, is a totally different thing.”

  The size of my diamond seems to get Elyse’s mind back on Elizabeth Taylor. “We should have brought Suddenly, Last Summer,” she says. “It’s the best movie ever.” She proceeds to tell Carolina why Elizabeth was the last of the true American movie stars and I put my head back on the pillow and shut my eyes.

  Suddenly, Last Summer is at the top of the pile of movies on my bedside table. It’s the movie I most associate with Elyse and I did indeed start to bring it today. Elyse and I first saw it together on one of those Saturday nights at the drive-in when we had our eyes on the screen and the four hands of the Pressley twins up our skirts. It wasn’t until much later, looking back, that it occurred to me I’d been watching all those old movies because I was desperately trying to get an idea of what a desirable woman might look like. And when I’d seen Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer, a film in which she is so beautiful that Montgomery Clift can’t stop himself from falling in love with her, even though he is her doctor, even though she is so obviously crazy and he is so obviously gay . . .

  Elizabeth was a goddess of sex and Elizabeth scared me. Look where sex got her—locked in a mental hospital on the verge of getting a lobotomy. I switched my allegiance to Marilyn Monroe, a woman who seemed—what did we know?—too giddy and innocent to ever be destined for tragedy. But even after I started to model my behavior on Marilyn, I couldn’t stop sneaking peeks at Elizabeth, who I knew, for all her flaws, was a more accurate reflection of what female desire really looked like. Elizabeth wearing heels and a white slip, Elizabeth in a speeding car, Elizabeth sprawled across a messy bed, more beautiful in black and white than she would ever be in color. Of course Montgomery couldn’t help himself. Her eyes were half-closed. Her mouth was half-open. This was the face of sex, somewhere between death and pain. I knew it then and I know it now, which is probably why I picked up Suddenly, Last Summer today and then put it back down.

  “But for now we need to catch up with Bette,” Elyse is saying, reaching for the remote. We’ve all slid down in the bed, and the wine bottle on the table is empty. We’re bunched, but it’s also kind of cozy. “We’ve left her in a bad place.”

&nb
sp; “Who needs the moon when you’ve got the stars?” I say. It’s such a great line.

  “I’ve never understood what that means,” Elyse says.

  “It’s bittersweet,” I say. “Because the man who changes her life isn’t going to be there with her when the new one begins.”

  “No matter how many times you say otherwise, I still think this is a fucking sad movie,” Elyse says.

  We sit for a moment in silence.

  “Maybe it’ll end different this time,” Carolina says.

  “Maybe it will,” says Elyse, and she presses Play.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I DECIDE THAT PAMELA'S red dress would probably be too much for the dance at the hospice Christmas party. I’m not good enough yet to carry the responsibility of that many crystals. Plus it’s too tight in the hips, just as Pamela predicted. It hangs in my closet and I see it every time I open the door.

  In the meantime, I have a long practice skirt and a pretty boat-neck top in a color that the dancewear company calls “pewter,” but which I think looks a lot like silver. It will be festive enough, and if it’s corny to wear a silver dress to waltz to “Silver Bells,” that’s okay too. They aren’t really looking for subtlety at the hospice Christmas party. Carolina wants to put up my hair with a rose in it, and even though I haven’t seemed to have much luck with that particular flower, I don’t have the heart to say no. Nik is meeting us there. He offered to bring his tuxedo, but I assured him that his nice black suit with a red tie will be more than enough.

  I called the grocery two days ago to order a cheese tray, which we’ll pick up on the way. Tory and Elyse seem excited about seeing me dance, but I’m trying very hard not to think about it. There will only be thirty or so people there, forty at the most, and I keep telling myself that none of them are likely to be connoisseurs of ballroom dancing. But still, I’m a little shaky as Elyse and Tory and I walk into the grocery. Elyse goes to look for wine and Tory left her razor back in Austin, so I’m alone when I go back to the deli counter and ask for my cheese tray. “There’s supposed to be a rose with it,” I say to the sad-looking stock boy, who’s obviously not pleased to be working the Friday before Christmas. “Just one single rose.”

  He finds the cheese but not the flower. I send him back to look harder. “Silver Bells” comes on over the sound system, which I decide to take as a good sign. The boy comes back roseless yet again and I tell him not to worry, that I’ll just pick up one. Carolina will be able to clip it down and get it in my hair. I’m humming along with “Silver Bells” and trying to unobtrusively practice my heel leads as I work my way to the crowded floral department, where, in honor of the fact that they’ve themed it to look like Provence, they’re playing “Joyeux Noël.” And it is there, among the flowers, balancing an unwieldy tray of cheese in one hand and reaching for a rose with the other, that the crowds suddenly part and I see Daniel.

  He doesn’t have a cart. Of course he doesn’t. He’s wearing a navy sweater and jeans and he has paused before the artichokes. He reaches, plucks one from the treacherously stacked pile, and considers it before placing it in his basket. For this is the kind of man he is. The kind who knows how to cook artichokes. Who doesn’t think they’re too much trouble, even if he’s just at home by himself. The kind of man who makes every moment a small celebration, who knows how to find sweetness and purpose in the smallest acts of daily life.

  What is he doing in Charlotte and not in Charleston? And alone, rather than in his complicated marriage?

  He turns. It isn’t him.

  Now that my eyes have cleared I can see that the man moving toward me in the navy sweater isn’t Daniel and, in fact, looks nothing like Daniel. He has caught me watching him and he smiles, almost apologetically, as he brushes past. I’ve picked up two roses by mistake and I try to put one back, but for some reason I cram it down among the carnations. Elyse is a few feet over, pondering the chilies, and I sidle up beside her and say, “You’re not going to believe this, but I thought I just saw Daniel.”

  “Daniel’s here?” Elyse spins around, actually looking. Of course she would take me literally. Things like that happen to Elyse. She lives in the kind of world where lost lovers reappear without warning, just suddenly manifest among the artichokes.

  “No,” I say. “A man who looks like Daniel.” Not even a man who looks like Daniel. They had the same curly dark hair, that was all.

  “All that stuff you said in Carolina’s bed,” Elyse said. “About wondering if it was too late. What were you talking about?”

  “Nothing. I was drunk.”

  “Not that drunk.”

  I look wildly around the store. “All of a sudden I don’t feel so hot.”

  Tory has come up behind me while we’re talking. She takes the tray from my hand but leaves me the rose. “You’re just nervous about dancing.”

  “Yeah,” says Elyse, willing to let it slide for the moment, although I know eventually she’ll be back on me like a hound on a scent. “Tory’s right. You’re just wound up about dancing and that’s why you thought you saw Daniel.”

  Tory tilts her head. “Who’s Daniel?”

  “He was the love of your aunt Kelly’s life.”

  “No,” I say. “He’s the man who broke me.”

  CAROLINA DOES A GOOD job with my hair, weaving it up into a high mass of curls and anchoring the rose above my ear. Nik texts me that he’s waiting in the lobby, right on time, and I walk down to meet him in my clogs, with my dancing shoes in my hands. He looks very handsome in his black suit and he smiles as he sees me coming toward him.

  “You are ready,” he says. It’s a statement, not a question.

  “I know.” We have practiced three extra times just for this and—other than the fancy spinning entrance—we’re doing the most simple of waltzes. “Silver Bells” is a slow song, an easy pace. I’m more than ready, and as I take his arm and we start down the long, cloudy hall I feel calmer than I have all day. He’s the one who seems nervous.

  People applaud the minute we come into the room, which seems to throw Nik further. Teresa makes a few announcements and welcomes everyone and while she talks, Nik drops to one knee and helps me buckle my dance shoes. The sight of this boy kneeling before me—I keep forgetting how pretty he is, how much he looks like the prince in a child’s book of fairy tales—seems to flummox Elyse. She frowns and studies the little one-page program, as if she might find some sort of explanation there. The room is full and I feel the pulse in my neck beating a little stronger now. All ten of our current clients, a few of the volunteers, and their families. Virginia and both of Carolina’s boys.

  “They die soon, these people?” Nik asks quietly as he rises, his eyes darting along the row of seats.

  “Most of them.”

  “You not pay me for this.”

  “Of course I will. You got dressed up and drove out here. Don’t be silly.”

  “No. This is Christmas gift.”

  Teresa looks at us and I nod yes, that we’re ready, and she may as well dim the lights and cue the music. We go to our opposite corners and begin. My opening spins are good—not perfect, but straight and well paced—and once I am connected to Nik it becomes a gentle dance, leaving me plenty of time to observe the audience as I pass them. Tory is smiling, Elyse is taking pictures, and Carolina seems transfixed, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. Or maybe it was all the other way around, hard to say, but I feel that we are moving easily and well. I’m soaring, I think. I’ve heard other women at the studio talk about soaring and I imagined it would feel something like that night I waltzed with Anatoly, but I was wrong. That night I had left my body and tonight I am acutely aware of every cell and every nerve. It seems natural to be the one in the center of the room, the focus of the attention, and it’s like being back in the old days of cheerleading. Like I have all the time in the world. I remember to smi
le. I keep my pinky lifted as I settle my hand on Nik’s shoulder. There is only one small mistake, a moment when I come slightly off balance in a twinkle. But Nik rights me, and we continue.

  When the music ends, Nik unfurls me, and I feel the soft rush of the fabric around my thighs, sounding like angel wings or prayers. I curtsy, and Teresa turns the lights back up.

  Everyone claps. Louder than I expected. All my girls are there, surrounding me with hugs, and chairs are being dragged against the floor. The pastor volunteer says a prayer and Teresa starts a CD of general Christmas music as people begin to eat. Wheelchairs go first. I’m too high on adrenaline to be hungry so I sit down and let the crowd pass. I would have expected Nik to bolt at once but he hangs around for a while, getting a plate of food and talking to Tory.

  “Your name Victoria?” I hear him ask her. “In Russia, we call Vika.”

  “I like Vika,” Tory says, dazzling him with the full power of American orthodontia. “It’s a much better nickname than Tory. Much better.”

  When “Jingle Bell Rock” comes on, he puts down his paper plate and teaches her a few steps of the East Coast swing. They’re beautiful together. I don’t know why it’s never occurred to me that the two of them are so close in age.

  “Don’t do it.”

  Elyse has come up beside me. She hands me a cup of coffee.

  “Don’t do what?”

  “Don’t turn him into the son you never had.”

  I look at her.

  “He’s about the right age, isn’t he?”

  Only people who have known you a long time can hurt you like this. “That’s not what I’m doing, but so what if it was? What’s wrong with trying to get a second chance? You did. Lots of people do.”

  “It could all be gone in a second,” she says.

  Anything we love could be gone in a second, a fact Elyse knows just as well as I do. She and I stand there, surrounded by people who won’t make it to the New Year, and I think of Mark, lying on his hospital bed with his face as gray as my dancing skirt. “He has a paper-thin heart,” the doctor had told me, as we watched him through the glass, but sometimes I think all our hearts are paper thin. Nik spins Tory and she laughs. He does too and it hits me, hot like coffee down the throat, that this is the first time I have ever seen Nik laugh.