Dead Man Dancing

Eleven

Two days before Christmas, sporting a festive, holly-green cast on her leg, Ruth went home. Hutch installed his bride-to-be in the first-floor guest room periodically used by his mother so Ruth wouldn’t have to cope with the stairs.

Christmas came and went; a joyous time. Santa delivered the necklace I’d been hinting for, Ruth’s iPhone, and Chloe found lavender leotards, a matching tutu, and a glittery ‘amethyst’ tiara under the tree. Santa’d got the message. The old elf was no fool.

As usual, 193 Prince George was Holiday Central with feasting and merriment practically 24/7. Thank goodness for large-screen TVs, Christmas DVDs, and microwave popcorn to keep everyone occupied between unwrapping presents and eating until they could only waddle.

When Hutch returned to the business of running a law firm, I volunteered for Ruth detail. I arrived mid-morning on the twenty-sixth to find Ruth stumping around on crutches, determined to drive herself to the Safeway.

‘The hell you are!’ I said. ‘You can’t even get down the front steps.’

‘I can, too. On my butt. And it’s my left leg, Hannah. I don’t need it to drive.’

I put my own (very healthy) foot down, and drove Ruth to the grocery where she embraced her newfound freedom by speeding down the cereal aisle in an electric Mart Cart, terrifying the other shoppers. Backing up at the deli case to take another look at the potato salad – beep, beep, beep, like a heavy construction vehicle – she bumped into a pyramid of party crackers, and they all came tumbling down.

‘Ooops, sorry.’ But she didn’t seem very – sorry, that is.

That night I stayed on at Ruth’s to help with dinner, while Paul relaxed at Emily’s. Frankly, I’d rather be watching Ratatouille with my husband and the grandchildren than hovering over a hot stove in my sister’s kitchen, steaming plum puddings, even though it was my specialty, a secret recipe handed down from my grandmother and steamed in her tin pudding molds.

J & K Studio was closed between Christmas and New Years, so we were surprised when Jay showed up at Hutch’s around eight in the company of a woman – not Kay – who I guessed to be in her early thirties. Her blonde hair was feathered attractively around her cheeks, falling in layers to her shoulders, a hip and modern do, but with a salute to the eighties.

Hutch invited them in.

We’d just sat down in the living room to eat dessert, so I asked, ‘Coffee? Plum pudding?’

‘If it’s decaf,’ Jay replied.

‘A Diet Coke, if you have it,’ the girl replied.

‘This is Melanie Fosher,’ Jay said, as he helped Melanie out of her coat and handed it to Hutch. ‘A private student.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Melanie said, in an accent that was hard to place. Boston?

I raised a finger – hold that thought – and went out to the kitchen to fetch their drinks. As I fussed with the glassware, I wondered where I’d met the girl before – she looked vaguely familiar – but what the heck was she was doing in my sister’s living room with Jay Giannotti?

When I returned to our guests, mug in one hand and a highball glass in another, everyone was seated comfortably (although Jay had taken my chair) and Jay was saying, ‘I have a proposition for you.’

Melanie, I noticed, was watching her teacher closely, her bright blue eyes intent.

Hutch raised a suspicious, lawyerly eyebrow. ‘Yes?’ he said in a tone that was usually reserved for the big ‘but’ that came after ‘Congratulations! You are the winner of a new laptop computer!’

‘It concerns the Shall We Dance? auditions.’

‘That,’ Hutch said, acknowledging Ruth’s predicament, ‘is ancient history.’

Jay raised a hand. ‘Hear me out.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Melanie, here, is one of my best dancers. She’s been studying with me privately for two years.’

I’d assumed Melanie was single, but then I noticed a platinum wedding band and a diamond the size of a plump raisin on the ring finger of her left hand.

As I watched, Jay picked up that hand, and gave it a gentle squeeze. ‘Her husband is her usual partner, but he’s in the army, and his unit’s been sent to Iraq.’

At the mention of Iraq my sister stiffened. She hated the war, but in contrast to her usual outbursts, she knew to behave around an army wife with a husband in Iraq.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Ruth interjected. ‘Will he be there long?’

‘Thirteen months,’ Jay replied, before poor Melanie could get a word in edgewise.

‘You must be terribly worried,’ I said to Melanie as I handed her a coaster so her glass wouldn’t leave a water ring on Hutch’s expensive, highly-polished end table.

Melanie set the coaster on the table, and centered her glass on it. ‘We thought we were pretty safe being stationed at Fort Meade, but then Don was cross-leveled.’

I thought I’d misheard. ‘Cross what?’

‘Leveled. When there’s a shortfall of a specific skill in another unit, the army can transfer you just about anywhere. Don’s in military intelligence,’ she explained. ‘He must have some super-secret skill that they’re dying to have.’

‘Is he fluent in Farsi?’ asked Hutch.

Melanie grinned, and we suspected Hutch had scored a bull’s eye. ‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you, then, wouldn’t I?’

‘Well, anyway,’ Jay said, in a transparent attempt to steer the conversation back to the topic with which he’d begun. ‘With Ruth incapacitated – how are you feeling, by the way, Ruth?’

The man couldn’t have cared all that much about the state of Ruth’s health, because he paused only a fraction of a second before barreling on. ‘Melanie is a superb dancer, Hutch, and you’re a great lead. I’m suggesting you partner Melanie for the Shall We Dance? auditions.’

I nearly choked on my coffee.

Ruth sucked in air.

Hutch rose from the sofa and went over to sit on the arm of Ruth’s chair. She looked as if she’d been tasered, a smile – a grimace, rather – frozen on her face.

Melanie leaned forward, resting her hands on her knees. ‘I certainly understand your reluctance to partner with a complete stranger, Hutch, but I’m in the same position as you are. Don and I were going to audition for the show and then, boom, he’s shipped off to Iraq.’ Melanie looked as disappointed as if she’d been dumped by the star quarterback at the senior prom.

‘The show’s very popular,’ Hutch argued. ‘I’m sure it’ll be cluttering up the airways for several seasons to come. Ruth and I can put off auditioning to another year.’

Ruth’s expression suddenly softened. She shifted in her chair and rose (figuratively speaking) to the occasion. She lifted her chin and looked into Hutch’s eyes. ‘I don’t mind, really, I don’t. Next year we’ll be married and have other concerns.’ She turned back to Melanie. ‘Thank you, this means a lot to him.’

‘And to me, too, Ruth.’

Jay rubbed his hands together rapidly. ‘Excellent!’

‘Hutch and I have been working on this routine,’ Ruth began, but Jay raised a hand and cut her off.

‘Are you free next Friday?’

Everyone nodded, including Ruth. I knew my sister, and could translate that lower lip quiver. She’d shown courage by agreeing to Jay’s plan, but she wasn’t going to sit on the sidelines like a wallflower. Ruth would attend every rehearsal, cheering her fiancé on, and since I was her de facto chauffeur, it appeared that I wouldn’t miss a single rehearsal either.

‘Well, OK, then.’ Jay exhaled noisily, as if he’d been holding his breath, waiting for the go-ahead. ‘Perhaps I can have some of that plum pudding now?’

Melanie smiled – apparently the arrangement suited her, too – but as I rose to get the cake, she surprised me by getting up from her chair. ‘Here, let me help. I’d also like some pudding, if you don’t mind.’

Melanie followed me down the hall. While I uncovered the steamer to remove a fresh hot pudding, she wandered around the kitchen, touching Hutch’s state-of-the-art appliances with reverence and awe. ‘This under the counter wine cooler is amazing!’

I had to agree. My wine cooler was a quick twenty minutes in the ice cube bin of my refrigerator’s freezer compartment, and Lord help me if I forgot and left the bottle in there to freeze, as often happened by bottle three, or maybe four.

When Melanie tilted her head for a closer look at Hutch’s ‘cellar’, her hair shifted, and I noticed that she wore one of those newfangled ear bud phones. If I had an ear bud phone, I would have taken it off to go visiting, but perhaps she was expecting a call from her husband in Iraq. IEDs to avoid, suicide bombers to steer clear of; who knew when a call would come in.

‘The forks are in the drawer next to the stove,’ I told her as I scrabbled in the cupboard, reaching way back for the last of the hand-painted plates that matched the ones I’d used earlier. Call me a perfectionist.

‘Please turn around,’ Melanie said. ‘I can’t see what you’re saying.’

I had the plates in hand by then, and nearly dropped them. I turned to face her. ‘You’re deaf?’

‘As a post,’ Melanie said. ‘I lost my hearing to meningitis when I was five. That’s why I talk funny.’

‘I never would have guessed,’ I laughed. ‘I thought you were from Boston.’

‘Cleveland, actually. They talk funny there, too.’

I realized then that what I had taken for a cell phone hooked around her ear, was actually an industrial-strength hearing aide. And she wore two of them.

While Melanie held the plates, I served up generous spoonfuls of the cake-like pudding, and topped each with a dollop of hard sauce. While the hard sauce melted and drizzled deliciously down the pudding mounds, I asked, ‘Do you sign, too?’

‘I know how,’ Melanie told me, ‘but I don’t use sign language very often since I lip-read so well.’

‘I studied ASL at AACC,’ I signed, finger-spelling the letters clumsily. It’d been several years since I’d taken the class, and I was a little rusty.

‘Good to know,’ she signed back.

‘But, how…?’ I began, then paused, searching for the right way to ask what might be an embarrassing question.

Melanie interrupted me. ‘How do I dance if I can’t hear the music?’

‘Exactly. Do you feel vibrations through the floor or something?’

‘I wish. No, you’re moving around too much for that.’ She pointed to one of the plates. ‘Forks?’

‘Oh, sorry. I intended to tell you. They’re in the drawer by the stove.’

Melanie picked out a couple of salad forks and arranged one on the side of each dessert plate. ‘My hearing aides help with the bass notes,’ she continued, ‘and I’ve been told that I have a good inner sense of timing.’ She smiled. ‘But do you want to know the real secret?’

I nodded.

‘A good partner. All I have to do is follow his lead.’

‘Well, you’ve certainly got that in Hutch.’

Melanie and I returned to the living room with the dessert, interrupting Jay in mid-sentence. From the startled looks on Ruth and Hutch’s faces, I suspected Jay had taken our absence in the kitchen as an opportunity to tell them about Melanie’s ‘handicap’.

Melanie served Jay his pudding with a smile, then settled down in her chair to sample her own. ‘Delicious’ she said after a moment.

‘Ditto,’ said Jay. Once he’d swallowed, he turned his back on Melanie (deliberately, I was sure), waved his fork in the air and continued. ‘As I was saying, handicapped contestants have a leg-up with the producers, if you know what I mean. Remember Heather Mills on Dancing with the Stars?’

Hutch nodded.

‘She went a long way on that artificial leg. Big sympathy vote from the fans.’ He took another bite of pudding. ‘And So You Think You Can Dance had a gal with an artificial arm, and a pint-sized dancer with rheumatoid arthritis or spina bifida or something. Judges love ’em. Melanie’s deafness could be a real asset. Trust me on that.’

I was embarrassed for Melanie, who kept glancing in Jay’s direction, clearly suspecting that he was talking about her.

I was about to say something, when Jay turned to look at us. His face could have been flushed with embarrassment, I suppose, but it was hard to tell what might be going on under all that tan. ‘Sorry, Melanie,’ Jay said, tap dancing as fast as he could. ‘You’re so normal in every other way, I keep forgetting you can’t hear.’

Melanie managed a sugary smile. ‘If that’s a compliment, Jay, I’ll accept it.’

When Jay turned his attention back to Hutch, Melanie flapped a hand to get my attention, then began signing. ‘A-S-S-H-O…’

If anyone wondered why the two of us began laughing hysterically, they never asked.