by Kim Wright
“We should have had twenty firsts by now,” Anatoly says to Quinn, “and we would have, if only—”
She puts her hand to his lips. It’s a small competition, not even a regional, and we’ve been through a hell of a day by anyone’s standards. Yet all he can think about is that he looks foolish in front of the other studio owners? He should be ashamed, she says, so hush up.
He does loosen up a little through the night, after the first and the worst of the embarrassment is over. He is dancing almost every heat, and he begins to enter the same zone the rest of us are in, the zone of just coping, moving mindlessly through one song and then the next. Steve and I have danced well together lately and we might even have placed in our foxtrot heat if we’d remembered to keep our heads to the left. But for some reason as the music begins he looks me right in the eye and I look back. We do not break this gaze throughout the entire dance and when we finish, he kisses my hand. We place fifth out of six couples, beating only an eighty-two-year-old woman whose instructor had to drag her through her routine.
But overall Steve has a good night. He wins all the heats he dances with Quinn—although, of course, in many cases he’s the only person of his gender and age group entered, so the vast majority of his wins are uncontested. Valentina reminds me that there’s another small drama playing out tonight—that Steve’s ex-wife is here and this is the first time he has danced in her presence.
At the break they give out the second set of awards, and I sit back in my chair and listen to Steve’s name being called time after time. Quinn had wanted him to leave the dance floor with handfuls of ribbons, and so he shall. Some people might say that being the best dancer because you were the only dancer is a hollow victory; just a few weeks ago, I would have been one of those people. But now, upon reflection, I’ve decided it is not. Quinn has always known just what Steve needs, and she knows he needs her to walk with him across the dance floor after the break is over: to walk straight up to the table where his ex-wife is sitting with her own instructor and her own handfuls of medals and her dress, which looks even heavier than mine. Where he tells her, “You dance beautifully. And it is to my eternal discredit that I never told you this.”
So that’s it, I think. He’s done. You can blame or explain, or try to demand answers and hope all that will bring you what the shrinks call closure. Or you can just forgive and that’s the spiritual fast track. A road like one of those beltways that circle cities, which take you smoothly around all the snarls and tangles of memory, and onto the open road beyond.
As Steve and Quinn start back across the floor, someone takes their picture. If you know just where to look, you can see a few drops of blood on Steve’s crisp white shirt. This was not a hollow victory, not hollow at all. Steve has defeated all the men who didn’t dance tonight. He is first among the millions who are home watching TV, all those men angry at their ex-wives, angry at their present wives, the men masturbating into a towel in front of their computers, the men who stay silent, who stay sullen, who stay scared, who stay small—tonight Steve has bested them all. And when he gets back to our table he announces—to the mixed horror and amusement of everyone except his loyal Quinn—that his real strength may be Latin and he wants to start competing in the cha-cha.
But Jane is the one who breaks through. She wins her scholarship. Her first dance is the waltz, and as she walks onto the floor with Anatoly, she’s trembling so violently that I wonder if she’ll be able to perform at all. She takes a deep breath and steadies herself and then she’s granted a privilege given to very few athletes. She gives the performance of her life when it counts—in competition, in the spotlight, in front of the judges. She dances with a kind of bewildered femininity, a confused and gentle grace, and in a sea of women who are trying too hard and smiling too grimly, she stands out. She is fierce in the tango, playful in the foxtrot, dynamic in the quickstep, light in the Viennese. When she comes back to the table and hands her trophy to the beaming Margaret, we’re all hit with a new whiff of hope.
“How are we doing in the rankings?” Harry asks, and Quinn, snickering, says, “Horrible.”
“Horrible?” we all say at once.
She nods, still laughing.
“This calls for more champagne,” Harry says, and goes to get it.
“You’d think they’d cut us some slack,” Steve says. “Considering we’re ‘Hostage Ballroom.’” This sets off more giggles, which last until Harry is back with a bottle of champagne.
“Don’t drop it,” I say, and he says no one in his right mind would drop a twelve-dollar bottle of champagne. But he is careful as he pours it and then suggests a toast. Even Lucas takes one of the plastic cups. We hold up our glasses and the table falls silent.
“To Canterbury Ballroom,” Steve says. “They might say we can’t dance, but goddamn it, they’ll never be able to say we didn’t dance.”
“How many heats are left?” Valentina asks.
Quinn consults her list. “Twenty-two, so we’re almost done. Kelly, you tango in three. And Harry and Valentina are up after that.”
Harry, Valentina, and I move to the waiting area just off the stage. Anatoly comes by, mops his brow with the edge of the nearest tablecloth, and tells me that he’s going to grab some water.
“Valentina,” I say when he’s gone. “What does the word Izvinite mean?”
“Who taught you this?”
I shrug. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just curious.”
“It is a funny word for you to ask about,” Valentina says. “It means ‘Forgive me.’ ”
As Anatoly and I find our place on the floor, the light is blinding. It falls straight down upon us so that we leave no shadow. I have forgotten the steps we discussed in the limo and so I have no choice but to follow Anatoly. He does the simplest and gentlest of tangos, leads me almost like a father would do with a child. He lifts his arm, and I move under it. He steps back as I step forward, and for some reason I think of what Quinn said the first day I came into the studio, something about how you have to lose your balance in order to find it. I had no idea what she meant at the time and I still don’t understand it fully, but I know that somehow, somewhere, a spell is being broken. So many things have been taken from me lately—some of them ripped away with more cruelty than I would have thought possible—and yet I am dancing. I stretch my rib cage and inhale. Let myself become big. The floor beneath my feet feels broad and solid and my story, I believe, will end differently this time. The prince has come and gone but Cinderella is still at the ball.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
YES, IT HAD been a strange night. We had pulled it together and performed, but Anatoly must have known we were all on some sort of unnatural, adrenaline-fueled high. I imagine him the next morning, going to the empty studio and walking around, reenacting events in his head. Wincing at the sight of the shattered mirror, stopping at the spot where Pamela’s husband had first seized me, wondering if he would ever see any of us again—for we could easily scatter. Stop dancing entirely or find another studio. We would be justified. People take up ballroom dancing for fun or exercise or to meet members of the opposite sex. They do not take up ballroom dancing with the expectation they will be shot at. Who could blame us if we hesitated to return to the literal scene of the crime, if we had found ourselves unwilling to remember that night?
So when we had all walked in at our usual time . . . shrugged off our jackets and buckled our shoes . . . when Isabel had looked Anatoly straight in the eye and coolly asked, “So who’s teaching group today?” for a strange moment I had thought he was going to salute us.
Perhaps because he has no home of his own, Anatoly works very hard to give us one. He tries to step into the void that Nik left. He observes the way Quinn jokes around with people, and I know he wishes he could emulate her easy gift for friendship. He makes notes on his calendar so that he can remember birthdays and anniversaries of the day a
student first came into the studio. He tilts his head sometimes and watches us, as if you can tell just by looking what each person hopes or fears.
I bought the strip center from Bob. Everyone always said he was unreasonable, but as it turns out, a man who owns so much property that he can’t pay the taxes on it can prove to be reasonable indeed. And if he is making his business deals from a pay phone in a psychiatric hospital, his thirst for negotiation is even further slaked. The rumor is that Bob and Pamela have reconciled. She visits him each day in the lockdown ward, so maybe this is what she wanted all along—a declaration of love so violent and bizarre that it would make the evening news.
So I get a good deal on the property, and Anatoly is happy to take me on as a silent partner in the studio. He swears no one knows, which probably means everyone does. I set up a trust for Carolina’s boys—nothing extravagant, but enough to make sure Virginia can see them through college—and I take Isabel with me to the pound to get a dog.
“Just go in and grab one,” I tell her. “I can’t face it. I’ll see those sad eyes and those cages and end up with twenty dogs.”
She’s back in ten minutes with a whole file full of paperwork and instructions and a scrawny brown puppy that crawls in my lap and immediately pees. I call her Apple—it was after all an apple that brought me to ballroom dancing in the first place.
The last thing I do is put the house on the market. I decide to pack up a few of my things and move to an apartment during the time it’s listed. Because it really was my home in the end, my home as well as Mark’s, and I don’t want to hear people complaining about the colors as they walk through it with their Realtor, making plans to knock out walls and change the rugs. Ultimately I suppose I will buy a condo, but for now I like the simplicity of the apartment. It has hardwood floors for practice and a balcony where I have placed a single rosebush, in a pot. I pulled it from the garden the morning I left and as I drove out of the community that final time, I sat in the car and watched the gates close, ever so slowly, in my rearview mirror. I could see the potted rosebush in the rearview mirror too, its pink petals barely visible from the backseat where I had wedged it between my books and dishes. You always take something with you. That’s just how it is.
And each morning I check the total in the Bank of America account. For weeks there is no activity. But then, near the end of the second month, there is a withdrawal. He must be settled in Canada.
In the weeks and months that follow, I will forget exactly what his face looks like. I’ll begin to dance with Anatoly and learn to love him too, but I’ll continue to have arguments in my head with Nik for the rest of my dancing life. And at some point—there is no doubt of this—the money I loaned him will come back into the joint account. Nikoli Demidov is a man who pays his debts.
THE LIGHT IS SO different here. Clean and bright. I can see for miles. I’ve come to Arizona, as I often do, in the late spring, and Elyse and Apple and I have taken a hike to scatter some of Carolina’s ashes. We follow the trail for over an hour, then sit for a minute, drinking water and resting. Elyse says they’ll give me some time alone. I unzip my backpack and take out the baggie.
As I was walking through the canyon on the way in, I kept thinking about Mark, that dream in which he told me something I still haven’t been able to remember. I came to him heartbroken, scared of everything, devoid of hope, and lately I’ve started to see just how much I cheated him out of while we were married. I always told myself that he liked our neat little existence in our neat little community, but now I see that I never gave him the chance to have a whole life. A whole wife. “Izvinite,” I whisper. I may have woken up beside a dead man once, but he woke up beside a dead woman every day.
I say “Izvinite” again, not just to Mark and Nik and Daniel and Carolina, but for every moment I have wasted. For the moments I will waste in the future because I’m not some sort of saint, and odds are I’ll barely be out of these hills before I start making all the same mistakes over again, in very slightly different ways. Who knows—I may even find another man to hurt and be hurt by, and in that instant a sudden breeze whips the piñon trees around themselves. The leaves show their soft silver underbellies, and a whooshing sound comes up from the canyon, something holy and solemn in the air of everyday life.
I open the plastic bag and release Carolina over the hills. The air takes her, lifts her, then drops most of the ashes among the cacti and the pebbles and the snakes. But a bit more is pulled higher and blows all the way down into the valley where Elyse and Apple are descending, scrambling and sliding their way through the piles of pale rocks. Spring is almost over. Soon the full heat of summer will be upon us and even from this distance, I know that Elyse is talking to the dog. They are planning what we’ll have for dinner, the chicken and artichokes we will roast on the grill, the wine we will drink on the deck. All the birds we will bark at as they swoop and dive their way across the endless unformed possibility of the western sky.
Wait for me, I call, pushing to my feet. I’m right behind you. I’m right here.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THANKS FIRST OF all go out to my dance family, the students and teachers at Piper Glen Ballroom, as well as the staff at Metropolitan Ballroom. Without this dedicated group, I never would have been introduced to the life-changing world of dance.
I’d like to thank my warm and unfailingly sensible agent, Stephanie Cabot, and the team at the Gernert Company, especially Anna Worrall. Words can’t express how grateful I am to Kim Hubbard for introducing me to Stephanie, who in turn helped The Unexpected Waltz find a perfect home.
Which leads me to the wonderful people at Gallery Books. I am thrilled to be working with Karen Kosztolnyik once again and couldn’t ask for a more supportive editor. Special thanks to Gallery Books president Louise Burke, publisher Jen Bernstrom, and publicist Jen Robinson. I’m grateful to Lisa Litwack for her beautiful cover art, John Paul Jones for his production edits, and Davina Mock for the interior design. Kudos to executive assistant Alex Lewis for her nonstop good ideas. And, of course, none of this would mean anything without the marketing team of Liz Psaltis, Ellen Chan, and Melanie Mitzman.
On a personal note, writers are so very dependent upon other writers. All my love goes out to Dawn Clifton Tripp and Alison Smith, who were with me from the very start of this journey, when our books were no more than half-formed ideas. I’m also grateful to the Brinkers Writers Group for their critiques on everything from overarching themes to the placement of commas. And I’d be lost without the savvy advice of Marybeth Whalen, Erika Marks, and Kim Boykin, aka “The Panera Bread Literary Society.”
Also by Kim Wright
Love in Mid Air
GALLERY READERS GROUP GUIDE
THE
UNEXPECTED
WALTZ
KIM WRIGHT
INTRODUCTION
At the age of fifty-two, Kelly Wilder Madison finds herself with a beautiful house in a gated community, a pretty face, and more money in her trust-fund allowance than she can spend each month. From the outside looking in, she has it made. But when her late husband’s attorney assures her that “nothing has to change,” something inside of her awakens and sets in motion a quest for a way of life that can’t be bought or acquired through social connections. The Unexpected Waltz is the story of her journey of transformation that begins with a single step—onto the dance floor.
TOPICS AND QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. In the first chapter of the book, Kelly Madison says, “I want things to change.” Precisely what is it about her life that she wants to change? What words would you use to describe her at the beginning of the story?
2. What are the similarities and differences between Kelly and her best friend, Elyse? Kelly calls Elyse a “witness” to her life. What do you think she means by this statement? Do you have someone in your life who you would describe as your witness?
3. Kelly
seems to stumble into the dance studio by accident but later comes to embrace this apparent mistake as fate. Have you ever had a similar experience where a chance meeting or event had a great impact on your life? She also makes the spontaneous decision to take back her maiden name while signing up for lessons. Discuss her decision to suddenly become “Wilder” once again.
4. Kelly comments, “I think people look to dance to give them whatever’s lacking in their day-to-day lives.” What do you think was lacking in her life that she was looking for through dance lessons? Does she ultimately find it?
5. Kelly says of Elyse, “She has always expected too much out of life . . . and it was her destiny to be constantly disappointed.” How does Kelly differ from Elyse in the scope of her demands? Which one do you most identify with?
6. What role does volunteer work play in Kelly’s life? She claims that she chose hospice because when Mark was diagnosed with heart disease she didn’t want death to sneak up on her. Do you believe this claim? Or is Kelly using the fact she’s “good at death” to hide from life?
7. Kelly clearly thinks she’s there to help Carolina, but throughout the book their friendship becomes far more mutual than she anticipated. What does Carolina teach Kelly?
8. Do you think Kelly loved Mark? Why or why not? Did her feelings about her marriage change throughout the course of the book? Why is it sometimes easier to understand and appreciate people once they’re dead?
9. What do you think enticed Pamela to risk so much for a romantic relationship with Nik? What was she looking for? Is she the villainess of the book or a somewhat sympathetic character?