FICTION: “Henry Goes to Dancing School” by Richard Holinger

Illustration by Maura Walsh / Black Nail Studio.

FICTION
Henry Goes to Dancing School
By Richard Holinger

A late October Saturday night wind off the lake cut through Henry’s bulky olive winter parka, prickly wool suitcoat, and button-down, heavily starched white shirt. Before dinner, playing two-hand touch anywhere in Lincoln Park, low clouds had threatened snow. Now, yellow streetlights lit the Inner Drive’s sidewalk as Wes and Henry slogged their way south to the Fortnightly.

Henry usually got out of dancing school, his father taking the family to their retreat from the city to their Yorkville getaway. “Mansions on Wheels,” one historian described Pullman’s private railroad cars. Henry’s mother’s father, Lynton, president of UTLX tank car company, had connections, and when the Americana retired from service in 1935, he bought it. Two tractor trailer trucks carried the car—its undercarriage removed—on flatbeds to a bluff overlooking the Fox River. Two additions adorned either end with bedrooms, bathrooms, and fireplaces. Staying overnight, Henry and his brothers slept in staterooms on converted couches’ lower bunks and fold-down upper berths.

Along with the train car, Lynton had bought a two-thousand-acre farm with three farmhouses, one for each farmer paid to plow and harvest the land as well as maintain the outbuildings for farm machinery and havens for dairy cows, pigs, beef cattle, and sheep when not outside in pens or, in the case of the cattle, grazing the floodplain’s grasses beneath aging oaks, maples, and sycamores.

“You going to the farm tomorrow?” Wes asked, pounding his formal shoes on each sidewalk crack as if gleefully maiming his mother.

“Don’t think so,” said Henry. “Probably church. We hardly ever go. Since we stayed in the city tonight, Mom’ll make us go to Sunday school.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

“Dad’d would rather be in the country out bird watching or painting storm windows instead of in boring church. We say prayers before bed at night, but a blind man can see he doesn’t believe in anything.”

“Next year’s confirmation. You going?”

“Guess so. If you do.”

“I have to. My dad’s a deacon. Big deal for him to have me join.”

“I hate Sunday school.”

“I hate dancing school,” said Wes.

“I hate school. Except for you guys and our pickup games and going over to friends’ apartments and country places.”

“That’s what makes the crap tolerable.”

“That’s a big enough word to pull you underwater and hold you there.”

“I’m smart,” Wes said. “Haven’t you noticed?”

“Ugly, too. Everyone noticed that.”

They turned right onto Bellevue and watched long, dark sedans and station wagons unload girls with fur-collared coats and patent leather shoes that glowed under the streetlamps. Boys threw open their parents’ car doors and hit each other on the arm or put each other in headlocks, laughing harder the more violent and dangerous the tussles. Everyone wearing overcoats too large, bought for future growth spirts, converged on the broad cement steps and trudged upward until reaching the Greek marble railing on the entrance balcony where heavy double glass and metal doors beside imitation coach lights swung opened and closed. Inside, the girls split off to the left, the boys to the right, for their respective cloak rooms.

“Hey, Gino,” Henry said, deflated to see the tall, thin kid with the best pitching arm in their class and sporting the coolest Brylcreem wave for his blond hair.

“Hey, Henry. Ready to rumble?”

“Oh, man,” Henry said, not sure what Gino meant. “And how.”

With three older brothers, Cool should have been Henry’s best friend and ally. Instead, his weight, his crewcut, and his lousy self-esteem at being the baby of the family had him groveling for looks from the best looking girls in class who fawned over Gino.

“‘Oh, man, and how,’” Henry reflected. “How stupid is that? Why couldn’t he have come up with something Gino would have responded to with a smile or a compliment? No, Gino had just turned and looked for others more cool, guys who knew the lingo, who might say something like, “That’s bitchin’,” something Henry remembered just now his brother Lance once said on the phone to a girl. Jeez. Henry had the verbal agility of a snake.

“Ready?” Wes’s chubby cherubic face, not much of an improvement over Henry’s, probably the reason they were good friends, looked scared, even less confident than Henry felt going into the gladiatorial arena.

“No, but we’re here.”

They entered the ballroom with its dim recessed ceiling lighting, a stage the size of two king-sized beds, and long, elegant curtains draping either side of windows the size of ping-pong tables looking onto Lake Shore Drive. A man holding castanets on the fingers of one hand welcomed Henry and Wes and pointed them to chairs lined in front of the windows. Todd, already seated, waved. When told to cross the room to pick partners, Henry figured he could push off from Todd and Wes, slowing them the microsecond allowing him to reach Wellesley, Stella, or Cindy before his rivals. Stephanie, everyone knew, belonged to Gino, or at least every boy knew not to interfere, even though no one ever talked about the romance, least of all the two people involved.

“Think we’ll get out in time for Have Gun, Will Travel?” Wes said.

“This guy always keeps us overtime,” Henry said.

“We have to practically run home.”

“We do run home.” Henry took his comb out of his back pocket and ran it over his crewcut. “At least part of the way.”

“If that’s what you call running,” Todd said. “Maybe for a block. I’ve seen you guys run. More like a fast crawl. You guys are too fat to run fast.”

“We’re stocky,” Henry said.

“Yeah,” Wes agreed, “big-boned.”

“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen.” Castanets stood in the middle of the ballroom. As he spoke, he swung his small body from side to side, addressing the girls, then the boys. “Tonight, we will learn and practice the Foxtrot. Like the waltz we took up the last two times, the Foxtrot breaks the traditional box pattern with a two-step and a four-four tempo, contrary, as you will remember, from the waltz’s three-four time.”

“I don’t remember,” Wes whispered.

“I don’t remember,” Henry said, “because I wasn’t here.”

“Gentlemen?” Castanets cast a glance at the boys. “Something you’d like to add?”

“Yes, sir,” Wes said. “Henry was hoping you’d do a short tango using your castanets.”

The man tried to smile. “Maybe before we leave tonight. But for now, it’s Foxtrot, thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome,” said Wes.

“Thanks, idiot,” Henry whispered. “Now we’ll miss Paladin because he’ll be doing the tango till midnight.”

“No, he won’t,” Todd said. “It takes two to tango.”

“He’ll get Stephanie. You watch,” Henry said. “That guy is such a leech.”

“It’s ‘letch,’” advised Wes.

“No, it’s ‘You’re a moron.’”

“Now,” Castanets said, moving to the girls’ side of the room. “I need to persuade one of these lovely girls to help me demonstrate the Foxtrot.”

“As predicted!” Henry said in a low voice and punched Wes on the arm. “He’s going for Stephanie!”

“Asshole,” Gino said from where he sat a few chairs down. “He’s such a letch.”

“That’s what I said,” Henry hissed down to Gino.

“May I have this dance, please?” Castanets said, offering a forearm to Stephanie. She looked at her girlfriends sitting near her, an embarrassed grin growing on her perfect face, her shoulder-length brown hair held behind her ears by a blue plastic headband matching her blue eyes and blue dress long enough to cover her knees.

“Sure,” Stephanie said, standing up and taking the arm. “I guess.”

“Thank you, my dear.”

The couple walked to the center of the room where Castanets began describing the back-and-forth movement, first by himself, and then offering his open arms for Stephanie to step into. She did so reluctantly, and instantly she became his puppet, swung to and fro, guided by his hand’s obvious pressure on her back pushing her forward, his raised hand pushing her back when reversing direction.

Henry watched Castanets, his black hair plastered down with a glue, his thin, pointy nose reminding him of Pinocchio. Although instructed to watch Castanet’s and Stephanie’s feet, Henry watched the man’s eyes darting back and forth from girls to boys to Stephanie while his lips moved, spewing directions on how to shift one’s feet, but he might have been reciting the Declaration of Independence for all Henry heard. Was the man’s arm wrapped around Stephanie’s back crawling across her shoulder blades with every box step, drawing her closer? Tightening, pulling her in? The look on her face had changed from mildly bemused to unbearably disgusted, her eyes wide, mouth agape, head twisting and turning back and forth to escape the man’s breath and perhaps search for the calvary to come riding across the ballroom to her rescue.

Henry stood up.

“What’re you doing?” Wes said. “Sit your ass down.”

“If Gino isn’t going to do anything, I am.”

“You’ll get crucified,” Todd said. “That, or the guy will clap your dick in his castanets.”

Henry set off across the room. Castanets was swinging Stephanie alongside the girls’ row of chairs to give them a closeup of the correct Foxtrot steps, now twirling his partner out of his embrace, twirling her about, and catching her back in his fold, even closer, if that were possible. As he closed in, Henry saw the girls shift their attention from the dancers to him with looks of horror, anticipation, and glee at the advancing threat.

“Um, excuse me,” Henry said and tapped Castanets on the shoulder, his motion halted like a battery had been removed. “May I cut in?”

As though awakened from a dream, Castanets let go of Stephanie and swiveled to face Henry who, knowing at least a modicum of ballroom etiquette, had turned to Stephanie, lifted his right arm, and circled his left, chest high, in the classic formal dance posture.

Glaring at Henry, then back at Stephanie, Castanets said to her, “Thank you very much, my dear, for the lovely dance,” then pivoted back to Henry. “Why, certainly. It would be my pleasure,” and walked into Henry’s waiting embrace. “Let’s dance. You’re the girl.”

Henry’s right hand melded with Castanets’ and fingers pushed into his back then felt himself being pulled around the room, his feet shuffling like blind turtles as snickers, chuckles, and guffaws turned into belly laughter from both sides of the room. The arm holding Henry’s back felt like a metal brace jerking him sideways and forward, Castanet’s other hand pushing, bending his wrist backward. The dancer’s eyes either glowered at Henry, stared at the ceiling, or fixed on his seated students while his breath exuded a sour, minty, whiskey mix.

“Thank you, sir,” Castanets said when they had stopped by Henry’s empty chair and released him. Sitting down, he felt his face burn with shame.

            “Looked good out there, Casanova,” Wes said.

            “Fred Astaire’s got nothing on you, man,” Todd said.

            Gino leaned forward and looked down the row at Henry. “Hey, Henry, cool.”

            Castanets called for the boys to ask a partner to dance and take their positions on the ballroom floor. Henry waited until all the boys had crossed the room and found girls to dance with before strolling over among the idling couples. Only Stacy Sheldon sat waiting, a short, short-haired girl with glasses, cloying voice, and slight harelip. He asked her politely if he could have this dance, and found that this was the only girl he wanted to dance with now, tonight, for his first practiced foxtrot. He offered his forearm, Stacy took it, and they joined the others on the dance floor.

On the way home, Castanets having forgotten about the promised tango, Wes said they would make it home in time for Paladin’s opening speech when he draws his pistol from his holster with the chess rook and aims it at the camera.

            “Uh-huh,” Henry said, and that’s all he said before he said goodnight to Wes and walked the last half block to his apartment building alone. The elevator attendant opened the doors to his apartment, he used his key to let himself in, and saw his brothers had the TV on.

            “‘The third phase of Neptune has crossed into Cancer, the sign of the skull,’” Paladin was saying. “‘Whatever you do will have only one end, your own death.’”

            “How was dancing school?” his mother called from the leather armchair in the library where she was reading and where his father was working at his leather-top desk, the cat curled on top under the heat of a lamp.

            “Okay,” Henry said. “I’m hanging my coat up.”

            “Better hurry,” his next older brother, Peter, called from the living room.

            But Henry didn’t hurry. He hung his coat in his and Peter’s bedroom’s walk-in closet, turned out the lights in their room and walked over to the window facing west. Chicago’s lights receded into the night the farther out he looked. He wished he were out there, beyond the last streetlight or apartment building, wandering along a country road, surrounded by darkness, looking ahead, leaning forward, dancing toward nothing but prairie beyond, with its thistles, poison ivy, Mississauga rattlesnakes, and everything else that could do him harm.

Richard Holinger’s work has appeared or will appear in Chicago Quarterly Review, Hobart, Iowa Review, Chautauqua, and has garnered four Pushcart Prize nominations. Books include “North of Crivitz” (poetry, Kelsay) and “Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences” (columns, Dreaming Big). He holds a doctorate in Creative Writing from UIC and lives northwest of Chicago where fox, deer, turkeys, blue and green herons, and eagles cross a field and lake.

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