Dance Lessons — Part 1 (a short story)

A married couple faces an inevitable transition

PART 1 OF 3

Jim pulled into the narrow dirt driveway in front of their small house at the usual time. Through the window, he saw his wife walk past carrying dinner. Wednesday meant pot roast. He got out of the car and went up their snow-slushed walkway to the front door.

Inside, he hung his coat on the hook hanging from the back of the door. He put his shoes in the corner. When he stood up he felt a twinge in his knees.

The cold wooden floor licked through his socks as he went from the foyer to the living room. Susan had set up the foldout table and placed one small candle in the center of it. She smiled and kissed him on the cheek. His feet suddenly felt warm.

“I got your note,” she said.

“You did?

“So sweet. And unexpected.”

In truth, he kept a planner in his jacket pocket that scheduled each note all year. He was impeccable in his ability to set a date and keep it. If he had a deadline, he didn’t miss it. He committed to what he knew he could deliver.

He sat down feeling the weight of the one thing he kept writing and moving back. It didn’t matter so much to him, but when he looked at Susan, he remembered all she’d done for him.

She served him, then herself, then sat down. “I think it was colder at noon than it is now. You ate in the square?”

Jim smiled but felt light of breath.

“Donald interrupt you again?”

She knew him so well, how to bring him back with the right question.

“Well…you know,” he said.

“Jim, you can’t let him bother you. He’s in Creative. They’re different kinds of writers.”

He sat for a second, then said, “I just wish he’d let me read the paper in peace. What if there’s an important article hidden inside?”

He knew her well, too. The question turned up the corner of her mouth. He saw it from the corner of his eyes.

Routine was part of the pleasure of their relationship. This script was one of his favorites.

“So, what did you read about?” he asked her, thinking of the article in E9 on rising literacy rates.

But she looked off, as though truly remembering something and not playing the part they rehearsed every night. “There was one thing that caught my eye.”

“Did it now?”

“You know, the kind of thing you wouldn’t expect.”

“I suppose it’s a natural reaction.”

“You saw it, too?” she said.

“No, no,” he said, unable to stop himself from smiling. He’d imagined her comments all day, rehearsed his responses, delighted in options A-D and how happy he’d be if she went with E.

“It was in the classifieds,” she said. “Someone offering private dance lessons.”

“That’s right.” He let his smile get as big as it felt. “I thought the same thing when I — “ But then he had to repeat what she’d said. Surely he’d misheard her. “Dance lessons.”

“That’s right.”

His heart wasn’t racing just yet. It wasn’t even jogging. But each pulse of blood was like a fist pounding on a door.“You think that’s a good idea?”

“We always talk about doing it.”

One of the few things they talked about but never made time to do. It just wasn’t part of the plan.

“But you really want to,” he said.

“We talk about it, but we never do it. I already checked the price. Only a few dollars for both of us. Really cheap.”

Money. Always a return to money. How little he made, how little she made, how little they had together.

Which always brought him back to how much they needed for what she really wanted. What she deserved. It didn’t matter as much to him, but she’d told him on their first date how much this surgery meant to her.

He’d never forgotten, even if she’d stopped saying so.

“I did it once or twice,” he said.

She paused, and he guessed it was her turn to consider what he’d said. “You’ve danced before?”

He caught her look. “Before we were together.”

“You never mentioned that.”

“It’s embarrassing. I thought it would help me get a girl. It was just high school. Before we took that class together.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“It was Biology.”

She rolled her eyes. Was there a hint of jealousy? “I mean I don’t remember you dancing.”

“That’s one of us.” He took a final bite of the pot roast, then set the knife and fork on the plate and pushed it forward.

She got out of her chair and came around to pick up the dish. “Just something to think about.” She kissed the top of his head and took his plate to the kitchen.

He looked at the flickering flame of the candle and listened to her turn on the kitchen sink. He should get up and help her, he supposed. Not just sit there. He joined her in the kitchen. Several dishes were already in the rising soapy water. She was scrubbing a dish furiously, though it looked to him like it was already clean.

“It’s not that I don’t want to take them,”

“Jim, I don’t even know if I want to.”

“You want me to say it? Okay. It’s the money.”

“I know that.” It wasn’t jealousy in her eyes now. “It was just a thought. What do the Mad Men call it? Planting a seed.”

“So you do listen to the shop talk,” he said.

“I listen to everything.” She dropped the dish into the water and took his cold and wrinkled hands into her warm wet ones. “Maybe in a few years, after you get some more raises.” She wiped his nose with her wet finger and left a dollop of soap like a small puff of snow. “It’s okay, honey.”

He hoped that was true.

Lying in bed, the thought wouldn’t go away. They needed to stop living day to day and put some money behind to pay for the way ahead. His wife had settled by being with him. Would he settle for what that meant?

Did he have to leave her with so little of what she deserved?

The winter years speeding towards them wouldn’t be kind. It was only moving into a house outside the city that allowed them to comfortably pay their expenses. Any extra money had to go into savings.

So why had she brought up dance lessons?

He could find only one conclusion. She’d told him the story about her prom night. How she’d longed to go with one guy in particular, and he’d even liked her, wanted her, said he’d take her.

But then he’d found out her secret. The one that wasn’t so much a secret as a fact he didn’t know yet about her.

They didn’t go to prom.

Jim woke up counting numbers and finding nowhere to budge, not without sacrificing some necessity. What good was surgery if it meant they’d live in a box?

The cold had worked its way from his knees and into the rest of his joints. The morning ritual of shaving, showering, and dressing gave him no relief.

The numbers eased their grip on him during the drive into the city. The radio played its monotonous, calming melodies. Heat flowed from the vents to his limbs. By the time he parked in the rear of the building and got on the elevator, he was ready to work.

As usual, several folders waited on his desk, each containing ideas that might work once he brought order to them. The steady routine of corrections to the advertising copy convinced him to stop worrying.

He knew what he was good at. Some ads were paired with rough sketches of posters. Usually those were okay. But any extended descriptions demanded his attention.

He finished the sixth piece at noon and, on cue, felt his stomach grumble. He heated the leftover pot roast in the department microwave, considered staying inside and warm, but reminded himself this was no time to forsake routine.

On his way out of the building, he stopped and picked up a newspaper from a stack provided by the agency. Then he went outside to his usual bench, close to the grass and away from the flow of people. There he could keep track of the clock on the top of the bank across the street.

A story on the front page reported on the deepening economic recession. It was the kind of story his wife expected him to talk about. He would say how bad it was out there, and she would smile and tell him how lucky they were he at least had a job. At the bottom of the page was a small, black box that indexed each part of the paper —

And he saw it before he could look away.

E3: Classifieds.

His hands shook as he turned the pages, knowing he shouldn’t. But within moments he scanned the ads. He saw it halfway down the center column.

PRIVATE DANCE LESSONS

AFFORDABLE RATE’S

PERSONAL ATTENTION

CALL TODAY

The misplaced apostrophe alone would have made his heart race. But then there was the rest of it.

“Hey, Jimmy!”

Donald waved and strode across from down the sidewalk. A fierce gust of wind blew his jacket open. He scrambled to get it closed again before the cold hit too hard. As he closed his jacket, Jim saw a page rolled into its inner pocket.

“So Jimmy, how’s the novel coming?”

“You know I’m not working on a novel.”

“Writer like you, I know you’re working on something.”

“Not that kind of writer.”

“You know, I said the same thing. Look where I’m working now. Thanks to you.”

“I just made a few corrections. They were your ideas.”

“Hey.” Donald pointed at Jim, his expression serious. “Now, all I know is before you made those changes, I didn’t even have a job.”

“You aced the interview on your own.”

“My good looks must have overwhelmed their better judgment.”

They’d been through this prelude before, and Jim settled in for what he knew was coming. He looked back at his newspaper, ready to get this over with.

“You know,” Donald said. “I never told you this, but…”

Jim looked up.

“…I barely had time to get this cute blonde secretary to retype the copy before I showed it to them.”

Jim wasn’t the sort to laugh, not with someone or at someone, but he couldn’t help him. “You didn’t show them the marked pages?”

“Of course not. Are you kidding?”

The revelation seemed silly and obvious. Of course Don had retyped the pages. Of course he always retyped whatever he showed to Jim on their lunch breaks. What did Jim think, that Donald had been going back to his boss with pages covered in red ink? He’d have been laughed out of the room. Perhaps worse. Perhaps been fired.

I miss so much.

How much else had he missed that was right in front of him?

Donald said, “You know there’s probably still a position open for you. If you want me to put in a good word.”

“I see the job postings every day I pass through the lobby, Donald. There is no opening.”

“Yeah, but you know what I’m saying. They’d make an opening for you.”

Donald had made the offer before, and Lord knew the money was tempting. He thought of his wife and her request. He thought of his wife and her other request. The one he’d let slide into purgatory and him along with it.

But Donald’s casual compliment had lost its weight. Jim couldn’t take a job like this. Creative was a bad fit. Come up with something new every day? He would be fired within a week.

Then where would he and Susan be? Worse than this. Drowning in debt and regret.

Except, the hope in Donal’s eyes was contagious. He felt like Jim could save his entire world. With so few moments of heroism, Jim wasn’t going to say no after all.

“Donald, as usual, that’s flattering. But we both know why you’re really here.”

“I’m serious, Jimmy. If they just knew about you, they’d want you there. As many times as you’ve saved my ass, what else do you want me to say?”

“They’re your ideas, Don.”

“Yeah, but, well, you know.”

“You’re having trouble with another one.”

That single page came out of Donald’s inner coat pocket. “I wouldn’t ask. Sure as hell wouldn’t come out in this weather if I didn’t need to. But they’re already breathing down my neck about this and that. You know how it is. Sometimes I think, without you, I wouldn’t have a job. Now I mean that.”

Jim shrugged his shoulder and held out his hand. What if he looked at this and reconsidered?

What if he looked at it and saw more than he’d dreamed?

He took one look at the page and swallowed. Oh, God. From the first word to the last, one tall wave of errors rushed over him. It was enough to make a man wonder if anything could ever be right with the world.

But the ideas were good. Really good. The kind of things Jim couldn’t come up with in a year. He couldn’t live like that, people asking for what he couldn’t give.

His heart thudded to the ground.

“I can’t,” Jim said.

“It’ll just take a second. I got the commas in all the right places. I know that much. Put the emphasis on the important words.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Hey, you’d know better. That’s why I appreciate your help.”

“That’s not what I mean.” He shoved the paper back into Donald’s hand. “I have to go.”

“Can’t you take just a second to — ”

“No, I can’t.” It came out harsher than he’d intended, but he was already on the way back into the building before he thought to apologize. Donald would get over it. Donald was bad at punctuation, but he wasn’t stupid. They both knew where this was going, how pointless the routine was. Jim wasn’t going to ask for a job in Creative, and Donald was never going to learn why commas weren’t there to emphasize the important words.

He returned to his office and finished the day’s allotted corrections. But when he looked at the time, he saw the clock read a full half-hour before he normally left. He didn’t move. Then he opened several of the folders, sure he had missed something, or God forbid, made a mistake. But each page was impeccable, and he knew looking through them would only confirm the obvious. He closed the folders, stacked them on the end of his desk, picked up his briefcase, and left his office.

He made it several steps past the receptionist’s desk before she looked up. “Mr. Talbot, is something wrong?”

“Done for the day.”

“But it’s — “

“Only a quarter past four. I know.” Dear God, he knew. “I’m leaving for the day.”

“If they ask for you?”

“The folders are on my desk.”

“But if they ask for you.”

He didn’t know what to say. Finally, he shook his head and said, “Tell them I’m not well.”

The drive home failed to clear his head. A traffic light that was always green but must have known he was headed home early, turned red.

He tapped his left foot on the floor of the car. They wouldn’t take these dance lessons. They would have to put it behind them until next month, when it was the right time to bring it up and laugh at the idea. The way they always did. The light changed and he drove out of the city.

He thought Susan would hear him pull into the driveway, but she didn’t come outside. He heard the radio blaring before he had the door open. Something from the classics station, with a rhythm he could follow. He felt himself relaxing as he entered the foyer. He was almost around the corner and in the living room when he saw her. He stopped, then peeked around the corner enough to see again.

His heart was no longer on the floor. It was in his hands, begging for a moment of tenderness.

His wife held her arms out, eyes closed, and almost glided to one side of the room. Moments before she hit the couch, she spun around without looking and glided to the other side of the room. Then she leaned against the wall and tapped her foot against the floor, shaking her head back and forth to the beat of the song.

Stepping back nearly made him trip. He’d had no idea. Was this what she did every day? Did she time it so she was always finished before he came home?

And yesterday, she’d asked that question. Yesterday, she’d been brave enough to see what else was possible.

He went back to the car and sat down to let her finish dancing.

Sooner or later, she would see the car. He couldn’t drive away without restarting the engine. She’d taught him the value of letting someone find out something sensitive in a sensitive way.

He honked the horn. The radio turned off, and only now did he notice it had been just loud enough to hear from the driveway.

He opened the front door and she was there to meet him at the end of the foyer, wiping a line of sweat off her forehead. She looked at the radio on the stand by the couch, then at him.

“You’re home early.”

“Just a few minutes.”

She looked at the radio again. “You should have let me know.”

“Were you making dinner?”

“I could have had it ready.”

“I don’t mind waiting.”

She went into the kitchen, acting like she hadn’t heard him. Maybe she hadn’t.

He sat on the couch while she finished, and after a while, they sat down to dinner at the foldout table. At first, they ate in silence. Jim pushed his food around, wondering how to get back on track, but the practiced words had left him. And when Susan began to talk about the newspaper articles she’d read, he realized he’d thrown his newspaper into his office wastebasket without finishing it. He put down his fork and shook his head.

Susan reached across and rubbed his forearm. “Are you okay, honey?”

“Bad day at work.”

“Really?”

“I’ll be fine. You know me.”

“Never known you to have a bad day.”

“I guess there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there?”

Maybe she would see his look, and he’d have no choice but to talk to her. But she took his plate and went to the sink.

“I’ll help you,” he said.

“Jim, I’m fine. You need some rest. Watch some TV. I’ll finish in time for our show.”

He went to the living room and sat on the couch, but didn’t turn on the television. The blank screen stared at him, and he stared back. He didn’t know what else to do.

This was crazy. What would it take to dance with her? A sacrifice here and there? They had done it when they moved here. Couldn’t they do it for this?

Her soft whistling came from the kitchen, the same melody that had played on the radio when he came inside the first time.

He looked at the radio and thought of her dancing from one end of the room to the other in a motion so practiced she did it with her eyes closed. He thought of how free she longed to feel doing that in public. A subtle thing, to know that no one and nothing will ever remind you of what is there that you wish would not be.

She’d told him all of that on their first date. And yet here they were. A man and a wife in a comfortable home. A man and a wife who couldn’t afford dance lessons.

This wasn’t her problem. It was his. There was another way to make this work and he knew it.

CONTINUE READING NOW — PART 2 of 3…