Dead Man Dancing

Eight

As I thought about the weeks afterward, I found that I tended to identify them by the dances we studied.

The first, Waltz Week, was all about Ruth, waltzing as we were to her tune.

Cha-cha Week, the fourth one after Thanksgiving, found me multitasking – Christmas shopping, decorating, cooking, cleaning and babysitting for my grandkids while Emily and Dante managed pre-Christmas promotionals designed to lure new members into Spa Paradiso.

A year’s membership? The perfect gift.

Gained weight during the holidays? Get rid of it, fast. New Year’s resolution to get back into shape? Our trainers can help.

Rumba Week began normally enough until the Shall We Dance? bombshell exploded at our feet. The next day, Tuesday, not long before Christmas, I telephoned Ruth several times to find out what she’d decided, but her assistant at Mother Earth told me Ruth was out.

At four fifty, I dropped Chloe off at J & K for her ballet lesson and got the answer to my question. When Chloe and I walked in, Ruth was totally wrapped up in a private lesson with Jay who was wearing his trademark black pants and a maroon shirt like a second skin. I hung Chloe’s coat on a hook near the door, and the two of us stood on the sidelines watching.

Chloe tugged on the hem of my sweater. ‘That’s Aunt Ruth.’

‘Indeed, it is.’

‘She’s doing the rumba,’ Chloe informed me sagely.

‘That’s true, too.’ If the steps hadn’t been a dead give-away, Ruth was the complete rumba picture, down to green tights under a kicky miniskirt with a beaded hem that flicked around her thighs as she moved.

We watched for a while as Chloe’s classmates began to arrive for ballet.

‘I want to learn ballroom,’ Chloe said. ‘I want to be on TV.’

My god, I thought, does everyone want to be on TV?

‘Can’t you be on TV dancing ballet?’ I asked my granddaughter.

Chloe turned her wide, bright eyes on me. ‘Nooooh,’ she said. Rough translation: Duh, Grandma. ‘My teacher says ballet is excellent preparation for ballroom dancing.’

‘It is?’

‘Uh huh. You learn to do lifts and things, like on TV.’

‘But don’t you need a partner for ballroom, Chloe?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘Do you know any boys who like to dance?’

Chloe’s chin nearly touched her chest. ‘Nuh uh. Boys think dancing is gross. They have to, like, touch hands!’

While I was trying to come up with some words of wisdom to reassure my granddaughter that as hard as it was to believe, someday boys wouldn’t mind touching hands with her, Chloe turned to me and announced, ‘Tessa is taking ballroom dancing lessons.’ She rose on tiptoe, whispered in my ear. ‘They’re private.’

Chloe’s hand shot out, index finger extended. She was pointing to the women’s dressing room from which a munchkin of a girl was just emerging. She had cascades of ebony curls drawn up into a high ponytail and fastened at the crown of her head with a pink carnation. She wore a pink leotard and matching tights, and pink ballet slippers. I squinted, not quite believing my eyes. And lipstick?

‘Tessa has pink leotards, and blue ones, and yellow ones, too. I want purple leotards for Christmas, Grandma.’

‘Have you talked to Santa about that?’

Chloe nodded. ‘Can I ask you something, Grandma?’

‘Sure.’

‘Is there really a Santa Claus?’

‘What do you think, Chloe?’

‘I don’t know. Mommy says that if you don’t believe in him, Santa won’t come.’

Chloe’s normally smooth brow wrinkled in concentration. ‘I want a purple tutu, too.’

‘Then I think you should write to Santa about that.’

‘OK,’ she agreed. ‘But if Santa doesn’t bring me purple leotards this year, that’s it. I’ll never trust him again. And I’ll tell Jake and Timmy not to believe in him either!’

The ultimate threat. Exposure! Poor Santa.

The rest of Chloe’s little classmates began arriving, hanging up coats, flitting in and out of the dressing room, scurrying over to the barre preparing to exercise. A woman I took to be Tessa’s mother fussed over her daughter’s hair for a moment, then shoved the girl in the direction of the barre with the flat of a hand placed squarely on the child’s back. Chloe and I watched as Tessa raised her left leg, rested it on the barre, then slowly lowered her head until it touched her knee, as easily as a contortionist from Cirque de Soleil. Little show-off.

Chloe noticed me watching. ‘I can do that, Grandma.’

‘You can? Show me.’

Chloe skipped over to the barre, her golden hair flopping. Using both hands, she lifted her leg to the barre, then lowered her head a few inches, missing her knee by a mile. She turned her head slowly toward me, a grin splitting her face.

I clapped my hands silently.

‘She’s got to keep her leg perfectly straight,’ somebody behind me whined.

I turned to the speaker. Tessa’s mother.

‘Do you mean Chloe?’

‘Goodness, no, Chloe’s just a beginner. I mean Tessa. If I’ve told her once, I’ve told her a thousand times.’

‘How old is Tessa? Ten?’

‘Nine.’

‘Plenty of time for her to practice, then.’

Tessa’s mother stared at me as if I’d just told her that President Bush had declared the War on Terror a terrible mistake, and ordered all our troops home from Iraq. ‘For Chloe, maybe, but Tessa is trying out for Tiny Ballroom.’

I’d actually seen promos for Tiny Ballroom, an American spin-off of a popular British show featuring eight to eleven-year-old dancers that would make its debut on cable TV in the US this coming summer. When I first saw the ads, I cringed, having a major JonBenet Ramsey moment. ‘Ballroom? I thought we were talking about ballet?’

‘Tessa’s been studying ballet since she was five. She’s been taking ballroom privately from Alicia for about a year. We’re stepping it up a bit, because the Tiny Ballroom auditions are in three months.’

I watched as Tessa, Chloe and several other girls began their barre exercises. ‘Who’s Tessa’s partner, then?’

‘Oh my god, was that a production! When Joey retired, we had to put an ad in the paper. That’s how we found Henry. Tessa dances with him twice a week after school. He’s ten.’

‘Tessa’s partner retired? At ten?’ I was glad this woman wasn’t my mother.

‘Eleven. Apparently Joey preferred playing Little League.’ She sniffed, as if the child had declared himself a conscientious objector.

‘Tessa must like dancing,’ I said.

‘Loves it! Tessa’s a self-starter. She practices all the time. Link’s built a studio for her in the garage, fully-equipped. We’d schedule lessons three times a week, but Alicia’s only free on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and Henry has to be with his dad on Saturday. So Saturday Tessa does tap.’

I watched Tessa exercise and wondered if the little girl ever slept. But then, I didn’t suppose her schedule was any more taxing than that of any Little League or Youth Soccer fanatic. I pictured Henry as a serious kid with wire-rimmed glasses; a child of divorce, struggling to please. I wondered if he had a life, either.

Tessa spun away from the barre in a series of spot spins that made me dizzy just watching. She staggered to a halt in front of her mother. ‘What do you think about that? Good, huh?’

I hated seeing a little girl sweat.

Before her mother could answer, Alicia appeared, clapped her hands and said, ‘C’mon little sugarplum fairies! Time for your exercises!’

Ten little figures scrambled to the barre, rested their left hands lightly upon it, lined up like sparrows on a telephone wire. ‘Position one!’ Alicia shouted as the music began. ‘Plié. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.’

‘That’s so sad.’

Tessa’s mother couldn’t have been talking about the barre exercise. ‘What’s sad?’ I asked.

‘Tessa was going to dance a sugarplum fairy in The Nutcracker this year, but Annapolis Ballet Theater decided to team up with another studio. Idiots! Tessa was so disappointed.’

‘Demi plié!’ cried Alicia. ‘One, two…’

Across the room, Tessa raised a graceful arm and bent her knees, stealing a moment to glance at her mother who nodded in approval.

‘I was disappointed, too,’ Tessa’s mom continued. ‘I even considered taking Tessa out of class, but in the end, I just couldn’t do it. I’ve always been loyal to Jay and Kay.’ She turned to me and beamed. ‘But it’s just as well, isn’t it, because now there’s nothing to conflict with preparing Tessa and Henry for Tiny Ballroom!’

‘I guess not,’ I said, disliking the woman intensely. I’d taken dancing lessons as a kid, too, but prancing around the Rec Center – step, together, step, kick – to the Beatles’ ‘Yellow Submarine’ at one dollar a lesson was just plain fun. Nobody expected to turn me into Ginger Rogers. And when I said I’d rather swim, please, my parents just smiled and said, sure, no problem. Maybe if they’d cajoled and wheedled and bribed me a bit, I’d have been just as accomplished as Tessa at nine.

But without the fake tan and hair extensions.

‘If you’ll excuse me, now,’ I said, ‘I need to go powder my nose.’

It wasn’t until I got into the dressing room, and locked the door of the toilet stall behind me, that I realized I never asked Tessa’s mother her name.

But, since I never planned to talk to her again if I could help it, what did it matter?