Slow Dancing

by Suzanne Jenkins

  When the weekend for the dance arrived, Ellen dressed quickly so she could help Frank. “Let me iron your shirt,” she said, fidgeting. “It’ll give me something to do.” He laughed, pulling the iron away from her grasp.

  “I won’t have my daughter ironing my clothes,” he said firmly. “Sit a bit and keep me company.” He put the shirtsleeve on the board first while Ellen sat carefully on the kitchen chair so as to not wrinkle her dress.

  “I’ve got Mother’s slip on,” she said. “We better go through her things; I thought I saw a moth on the floor of your closet.”

  “You can have whatever you want of her stuff and then we can get rid of what you don’t want,” he said. “You know how styles go around in circles. Maybe someday it will be worth somethin’ to someone.”

  “You mean like take it to the thrift store? Never, Frank. Can’t you see Mary sneaking over there as soon as word got out that Margaret MacPherson’s clothes have just arrived?” Frank let out a chuckle.

  “Never thought of that, sorry. You’re right, again.” There was something obscene, almost worshipful about the way Mary Cook spoke of Margaret.

  “But maybe we can find a way to preserve them, you know. For my own girls,” she said, looking at him shyly. So, she was thinking of her future already.

  The ninth grade graduation dance was a turning point for Frank and Ellen. After having stayed under the radar, watching them float so smoothly over the dance floor gave the people of the village something more to talk about than just the words of Mary. The simple-minded people whispering ugly lies about the father/daughter team now had real ammunition, while normal people were in awe of their talent. It put them on the map.

  Chapter 6

  Alan Johnson forgot about Margaret Fisher six months after arriving in Galveston, after catching the eye of exotic dancer, Janelle at the Bensalem Gentleman’s Club. He’d been going there nightly for weeks, trying to get the attention of any dancer who would look his way. Finally, on a Friday night in November, Janelle Fisher noticed Alan when he sat the front row table every night, drinking something tan in a glass and never sticking more than a wrinkled dollar bill in her G-string.

  “Who’s the loser in the front row?” Melanie asked Janelle. “Looks like he’s getting ready to shove his bar tab in my bra.”

  Janelle laughed. “I got a buck. It’s all he ever gives out. But I think he’s kinda cute.”

  “Yuck,” Melanie said. “You can have him.”

  Janelle was tired. She was thirty-eight to Melanie’s twenty. The Bensalem was her last gig; no other legitimate club in town would let a girl older than twenty-five get up on the stage. The clubs on the other side of town hired tips-only dancers, girls whose faces and figures destroyed by drugs or booze looked just fine at closing time. The Bensalem was a step up from those places for the working man. When Janelle started dancing twenty years ago, she was looking for a meal ticket, but he never showed up. Alan was eager, almost pathetic in the yearning written all over his face. She was ready to call it quits and she needed supplemental income. He was the only one interested.

  “Wait for me at closing,” she said softly, squatting in front of him. “I’m off at two.” He nodded at her, mouth hanging open. She stood back up maintaining eye contact with him as she moved on to the next guy. Alan watched her slowly walk along the edge of the stage, running her hands down her body and turning first one way and then the next, glancing over at Alan when she could and smiling sweetly at him.

  Even Galveston could be cold in November after the sun went down, but Alan waited outside for Janelle as she asked him to, freezing in his shirtsleeves. He took a last drag and threw his cigarette on the ground, grinding it with his heel when she opened the door, putting her coat on. “God it’s freezing out here,” she said, looking at his bare arms. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m good,” he said. “My car’s right over there.” He pointed down the block. “Do you want to meet somewhere or are you okay about leaving with me?” She thought he was being very considerate.

  “I can leave with you,” she said, gesturing over her shoulder to the building. “They know who I’m with.” They walked in silence to his car. She was ready to sleep with him if she had to.

  “Where’s your place?” He asked.

  “I rent a room in the East End, “she answered, looking at him concerned. “I know it sounds strange, but my landlady doesn’t allow men in the rooms.”

  “Oh, well, I can see the wisdom of that. For safety sake,” he said. “My place isn’t in the best neighborhood.” He looked concerned. “I don’t keep the neatest place, either.”

  “I don’t care about that,” she said. “Do you have any food?” He did, having just shopped. And Alan liked to cook, too. So their first date involved cleaning his kitchen so he could fix her breakfast, a shower for her and sleep on his couch.

  At noon the next morning, she woke up to the sound of a key turning in a lock as Alan came home for lunch. “I figured you might need to go home to get ready for work.”

  “Yeah, I guess I better,” she said, sitting up.

  “I’ll make you some coffee now,” he said. “But I thought, if you’d like, you can pack a bag and come back here tonight.” She looked around his living room, at the piles of papers and dusty furniture. It needed cleaning, but it wasn’t bad for the crappy neighborhood it was in.

  “Okay, I guess I’d like that, if you’re sure.”

  “We can be roommates unless something else develops,” he replied with a smile. So that’s how he forgot about Margaret.

  Moving in together, they played house for almost a month until she discovered photographs of beautiful Margaret Fisher. It took them a few days to work their way back to the bedroom, and a few weeks for Janelle to grow tired of the squalor of his messy apartment. It was during a cleaning spree she came across an envelope filled with colored photos of a naked woman. Alan forgot he had the photographs; his version of artistic poses using a Polaroid. The images could have been random, taken by anyone, but Alan the ego-maniac had to make sure he was in several of them, laying on the bed next to the woman, holding the camera arms length to get both faces in the frame, as well as one perky breast. Nagging Alan about Margaret, she was jealous and suspicious.

  “She’s someone from the past,” Alan said. “Haven’t seen her since I moved to Galveston.”

  “How long were you together?” Janelle asked. She was standing at the stove, debating whether or not to distract him with egg frying, or throw the pan in his face.

  “Not long,” Alan said, trying to remember exact dates. “Less than a year.”

  “Why’d you split up?”

  “I moved here and she wanted to stay in Saint Augustine.” He was lying, but he didn’t want to admit he’d borrowed money from Margaret to run away. He’d lied to Margaret, too. There had never been a better job, or corporate begging him to head up the sales team. The bill collectors and loan sharks were closing in on him, and he was in so deep he had to leave.

  When Janelle grew tired of Alan’s lies, Becky the secretary moved in, and when she moved out, Cynthia the dental hygienist moved in and so on for ten more years. Alan didn’t think about Margaret again until he lost his job.

  Car sales plummeted and the dealership folded during an economic downturn and hard working, generous Margaret popped into his thoughts. The only number he had for her was one that she’d had disconnected when she was supposed to be coming to join him. Then she’d called one night, leaving a message at the boarding house, that she was going to be delayed.

  “You got a person to person call from Seymour last night,” the landlord said. “Margaret has car trouble and won’t be here till next week.”

  “Seymour? Where the heck is Seymour?”

  “Some place in Alabama, I reckon.” She never arrived, and he figured she went back to Saint Augustine after all.

  Now, years later, with no other options, he had nothing to lose by heading back to Florida, the tow
n of Seymour forgotten. But when he arrived in Saint Augustine, there wasn’t anyone left who knew Margaret. He went to her aunt’s house, but the woman had died. Tracking down her friends was impossible because he’d never met any.

  Remembering where Margaret worked, Alan walked around the building, finding a directory posted on the wall next to the elevators. A maintenance man walked by and Alan caught his attention.

  “Can you tell me what happened to Hartland?” Alan asked. “An old girlfriend worked there and I’m trying to look her up. I don’t see it listed here.”

  “Hartland sold out to Reynolds a while back. I worked in Hartford offices.”

  “Do you remember Margaret Fisher? She was in the pool. About five six, a hundred ten pounds, auburn hair and blue eyes.” He told the man about waiting for Margaret to show up in Galveston.

  “She’ be hard to forget,” he said when Alan questioned him.

  “She was a looker,” Alan said, feeding his memory. “Do you remember when she left?”

  “She got throw’d out like all of ‘em. How late you say she was?”

  “Thirteen years,” Alan answered, frowning.

  “Yep, it be around thirteen years. She had a baby, a little girl it was. The boss let her bring the baby to work with her.”

  Alan reeled. A baby? “You sure about this?” Alan turned away to hide his face. Margaret never mentioned a baby, didn’t even hint of one. Maybe it wasn’t his. He turned to the man. “Do you remember when she had the baby?” He screwed up his face and looked at the ceiling.

  “No, but the child was walkin’ along side her when she left. I’d say she was two or three years,” the man said. Alan thought about this for a moment; he’d left Saint Augustine fifteen years earlier so she must have been pregnant. It made him angry that she didn’t tell him. He didn’t like sneaks, forgetting he’d taken her money and lied to her, his part in the end of their relationship, how he took off for Texas leaving her high and dry. How would he ever find her now? Where was Margaret Fisher?

  No money for a private investigator, before the time of internet searches and online family trees, the only research tool Alan had was attached to his body. Deliberating, he guessed he needed to find out more about the birth of Margaret’s baby to determine if it was his. The only place he could think of to get the information was the hospital in Saint Augustine.

  Hanging around the coffee shop adjacent to the local hospital, Alan met Noelle after a week of diligently going there for breakfast. She was a big girl, five more pounds and she’d be chubby. Her hair caught his eye, shiny auburn, almost plum; she wore it in a long braid down her back. The opportunity to approach her would come about after seeing her there three days in a row. That day, on a mission to get coffee for her co-workers, Alan was sitting at table near the cash-register when she came in to the shop.

  “I’ll take four regular, two black and a decafe,” she said to the waitress. Turning to sit down while she waited, Alan quickly pulled a chair out from his table for her.

  “Join me,” he said. “Saw you here yesterday.” Not sure if he was serious, or if she even wanted to sit by him, she paused. “Please. Join me.”

  Hesitantly, she pulled the chair out a little further and sat down. “Thanks,” she said. “My feet are killing me.”

  “Nurses are always on their feet,” Alan said, noting she was in a navy blue scrub suit.

  “I’m not a nurse,” she replied, holding out her hand to shake and holding up her hospital identification card. “Noelle. Noelle Carson. Housekeeping.”

  He made small talk to get her to relax, but he could tell it might not be as easy as he hoped. She was so shy, her face expressionless except for a mean mouth, the corners turned down. He wondered if she smiled if she’d be more attractive, but the more he said the more awkward their conversation got, her defensiveness growing. Studying her face, he could see makeup skillfully applied hid the ravages of acne or maybe something worse. Several bandages were stuck to her arms. Housekeeping must be dangerous work, he thought.

  Noelle didn’t catch on that Alan was trying to engage her. Getting through life was exhausting for her; just as she would have something approaching success, some Lothario would come along to disrupt her equilibrium and she’d have to start back at square one. Subtlety wouldn’t work with her due to the huge wall of defense she had up. Redoubling his efforts, he increased the charm. Alan was so handsome and so engaging with his compelling story, she decided to let her guard down, just a little. He chipped away at her resistance with chatter and compliments but nothing worked. Until he mentioned Margaret.

  Somehow, hearing about another woman put her at ease. If Margaret had a baby at that facility fifteen years ago, there would be a record of it somewhere. Telling more lies, he fabricated a story about being away at war, not sure what war was going on at the time but he thought it was something in the Persian Gulf, and that he’d just discovered his girlfriend at the time had had a baby while he was gone.

  “I have to find her if I can. She and her mother disappeared into thin air.”

  “Oh how sad,” Noelle said, understanding the pain of having lost a child after losing custody of her son fifteen years ago. His father took him back to Mexico and she never saw the baby again. She didn’t share this with Alan, although the parallels between them were amazing.

  “I don’t even know the baby’s name. She’s not a baby any more,” he said, bowing his head. “I don’t even know if they’re alive.”

  “What about her friends?”

  “Margaret didn’t have many,” he said. “It’s been so long ago, I don’t remember any names.”

  “Gosh, it seems pretty hopeless,” Noelle replied, softly, not used to offering encouraging words. “Do you know who her doctors were?”

  Alan shook his head. He remembered he was supposed to have been overseas. “We’d just started to date when I got orders. I’d only met her aunt, and she’s dead now.”

  “I just had an idea. Why can’t you go to admissions and find out if she had the baby here?”

  “They won’t give me that information because we weren’t married.”

  “What about getting an attorney?” She was on the path he wanted, hopeful, thinking of ideas.

  “I don’t have the money for an attorney, Noelle. I barely have enough to pay my rent this week.” He’d rented a room in town with the last money he had. “I’m looking for work, but until I find something, I’ve just got unemployment.” If she was wondering why a man his age didn’t have any money set aside, she wasn’t saying. Grabbing her hand, he laid it on.

  “You’re my lucky star,” he said, smiling. “I feel like we were meant to be together, the first person I talked to when I arrived. I have a good feeling about us.” He was putting it on thick, but she was lonely, and he hoped, desperate. She smiled and it changed her appearance, for which he was grateful.

  “That’s so sweet of you, Alan. I wonder if there isn’t a way I can find out something for you?” He feigned surprise. From their first meeting, partial honesty about his reason for being in Saint Augustine would make the request for snooping seem less like he was using her to gain access to hospital records.

  “In what way?” he asked. “You mean by asking around at the hospital?”

  She was looking off, chewing on the inside of her mouth. “I know some of the women from medical records,” she said. “My cousin is the receptionist in the department.” Not showing much interest, like his heart rate didn’t just increase exponentially, he nodded his head.

  “Gosh I wonder if they’d help.”

  “It couldn’t hurt to ask, I guess,” she said uncertainly. Rather than rouse her suspicions, he’d ask her to dinner.

  “Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?” He’d avoid any mention of lost children and disappearing girlfriends, the Persian Gulf and Army service. He’d never even held a gun.

  She frowned. “You want to have dinner with me,” she said cynically. It just didn�
�t feel right. He was too handsome. “Why?”

  “Why? Because I do. I think you’re pretty and interesting. Isn’t that enough? We’ve had coffee everyday. Now, let’s have dinner.” His flattery hit its mark because as she felt better about herself, she smiled more, which changed the shape of her face. She was almost pretty.

  Alan was eager to start a relationship with her, albeit a strange one, so he could better take advantage of her connections. Locating her apartment the first time wasn’t easy; in a dark neighborhood outside of Saint Augustine, he had to navigate behind an abandoned factory, reaching a dead end at a chain link gate. Backing up, he found the street, little more than an alley, and turned into it, looking for her building. Checking his appearance in the rearview mirror first, he was then careful to look around the area before he unlocked to get out. After he knocked, he looked over his shoulder again nervously before she answered. She was surprised he didn’t just beep the horn for her.

  “Nice neighborhood,” he let slip out. But she didn’t take offense, chuckling.

  “I like the rent.”

  “You look nice,” he said finally looking at her. He was relieved, not having seen Noelle in anything other than scrubs he wasn’t sure what she’d wear. They went to a seafood restaurant he remembered being fancy years before, but seemed to have fallen on hard time.

  “I’ve always wanted to eat here and now I hope we’re not too late,” he said, worried.

  “It’s fine,” Noelle said. “They stopped having entertainment about five years ago. But I hear the food is still good.” Alan made the effort getting to know Noelle, but wondered about his ability to take it the next level. He didn’t see her becoming a scout for him unless he slept with her, and that might take some effort.

  Noticing odd wounds on her legs and arms, almost too precise, Alan began to worry they were self-inflicted, but didn’t want to call attention to them. There was definitely something not quite right about Noelle, but he decided to let it go. Her value was in the facts she could gather.