Ballroom: A Novel (18 page)

“Having trouble with the tempo?” he asks. “Follow me.”

“I am.”

“You’re leading.”

“Am I?” Will the song ever end? she wonders, as he repeats the same turning step until she feels dizzy.

“Count the rhythm. That should help you. Want to sit down? Can I get you a lemonade?”

“No, thank you. Will you excuse me?”

Meandering around the edges of the dance floor, she jealously watches as Tony D dances a rumba with Rebecca Douglas and more than a few fox-trots with Tina. It seems as if he dances with every other woman in the Ballroom—even Andrea, who is wearing the ugliest skirt and blouse Sarah has ever seen, but still laughing and having a grand old time. Sarah feels humiliated. Trips to the ladies’ room to fix her hair, put on lipstick, or cool her feet, which feel swollen, help pass the seemingly endless hours. It is clear that Tony D isn’t going to offer her a ride home. At ten o’clock, in complete misery, she thinks about her long subway ride home to Brooklyn and the ten-block walk in the February chill from the subway to her house, on dance-weary feet.

“Can I say I told you so?” Tina says as they sit out a quickstep. Tina is always telling her what to do. “Look. You had a few wonderful weeks. Get over it.” Tina Ostrov looks as ditzy and redheaded as Lucille Ball, but she isn’t. Sarah observes that she’s had plenty of cosmetic surgery, making it difficult to determine her age. Tina has the face and body of a young woman, but the crepey skin and brown spots on her hands betray her. She’s too familiar with all the men at the Ballroom, particularly the older men.

A small, stooped elderly man limps over and asks Sarah to dance a mambo.

“Thanks.” She smiles. “Maybe another dance.”

“Chico’s a great dancer. You should of danced with him,” Tina scolds after he walks away. “He was one of the original Palladium dancers.”

“Why don’t you?” Sarah retorts.

“What’s with you?” Tina asks. “You know, the Palladium Ballroom on Fifty-Third was the place to go from ’forty-eight to ’sixty-six. A thousand couples could dance on that floor. Nonstop music. Machito, Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez, the Big Three, all trying to top each other, so you couldn’t tell when one stopped and the next began. I loved dancing there!”

Sarah looks out onto the floor. Chico is transformed, standing tall and dancing an extraordinary mambo with a young woman.

“Mambo’s not my best dance,” she tells Tina, somewhat embarrassed.

When the next song begins, “I Get a Kick Out of You,” it is a quickstep.

“Quickstep’s too fast for me,” she says. “It’s a silly dance. Reminds me of champion ballroom dancing, and the ridiculous expressions and head-jerking
certain
people
affect.”

“International style.” Tina nods toward Rebecca Douglas, dancing by with her partner Hernan, the well-dressed and handsome messenger. “She looks as though she smells something terrible,” she agrees.

“Probably Hernan,” says Sarah, laughing. “I don’t think he uses deodorant.”

“He actually smells pretty good to me.” Tina laughs too. “I like that natural male scent. That’s what makes a horse race! I told you, he can put his shoes under my bed anytime.”

Sarah watches Tony D dance by. When she dances with him, she can follow every dance, quickstep, even
paso doble
. She is comfortable with him, his strong lead. He’s given her the confidence to relax.

“I know you’re upset about old Tony—it’s just the way he is,” Tina continues. “Stunted emotionally. They all are. That’s why you
cannot
get emotionally involved with any of them. How many times do I have to tell you? Just dance!”

Just dance, just dance, that’s all Tina ever has to say. “I want to know why,” Sarah protests.

“Come on, Sarah, he’s not for you. It’s always the same with him—a month and you’re history. There are some guys, they just want to dance. Nothing else. Tony is like that. You didn’t sleep with him, did you?”

“With Tony? Ooh, no. He’s too old.” Sarah cringes, even though she would—just to have him back. To have a partner.

“Besides, he’s in the Mob.”

“What? You’re kidding? Tell me you are.” Sarah feels frightened, thinking about Tony Soprano, how he and his pals often murdered their girlfriends.

“I’m tellin’ you, Sarah, he’s in the Mob.”

S
arah doesn’t go to China Kim’s, the Y, the Copa, or Roseland. She hardly knows what to do with herself all week. Why doesn’t anything ever work out? she wonders. Why doesn’t she have a partner?

On Tuesday night she lies on her bed, considering her inability to sustain a relationship. Her three failed marriages. None of her three husbands really loved her, and not one of them ever said the words she longed to hear. Each had held the promise of love, but each had disappointed her. Peter Cohen, her first husband, seemed brilliant. Prelaw at Columbia, he picked her up at a screening of
The Rose Tattoo
with Anna Magnani at the Museum of Modern Art. At the time she was going to junior college and living at home. She moved into his studio apartment in the Village and found temp work as a waitress and caterer’s assistant to pay her share of things. To her parents’ horror, she married him. They begged her to at least get an associate degree. But she was certain that she and Peter would have a wonderful future together. She dreamed about moving into a house in the suburbs, and having two beautiful children, and running her own catering business. She collected recipes, cut out pictures of decorative table settings and English rose gardens from
House & Garden
. But Peter became distant, and started staying late at the office. A year passed, during which she spent many evenings alone. And then he told her he was in love with his secretary, and wanted a divorce.

Eight years later, at a party on the Upper West Side, she met Larry Presser, a handsome actor, ten years older than she, who reminded her of Gregory Peck in
Gentleman’s Agreement
. Larry even played Greg on
Light in the Storm
. They discovered that they shared a love for theater and film. He began inviting her to the theater four or five nights a week, with cheap comp tickets. His friends were all in the business, and Sarah, with her knowledge of film history, felt accepted though she wasn’t an actress, didn’t have a career.

A month later she was thrilled when Larry suggested that it would be easier if she moved into his three-bedroom prewar penthouse apartment on Ninety-Seventh and West End Avenue, with stunning views of Riverside Park and the Hudson River. She made romantic dinners. They walked in the park every morning with Larry’s two greyhounds, Fred and Ginger, and she looked for part-time work during the day while he was working. She considered starting a catering business again, writing a cookbook or a book about film history. She felt aimless. Walking the dogs took up her day.

While Larry began avoiding sex, he convinced her that if they were married, it would resolve the problem. His proposal was impulsive, almost an ultimatum—marry me, or we are through. He could be withdrawn, but Sarah found that attractive, and enjoyed coaxing him out of his brooding. She was certain that whatever the problem was, as his wife he would feel committed to working it out. She wished Larry would say those things to her that he said to Lonnie, his girlfriend on the soap opera. Two months later they married, in a simple ceremony at city hall with two of Larry’s friends.

Larry began having serious bouts of depression, during which he’d hole up for days in the guest bedroom with the drapes drawn. He told her that he was certain that everyone thought he was a homosexual. She encouraged him to seek therapy, take medication, but he refused. The episodes lasted longer and longer. Sarah thought a baby would help make him feel more confident. She was eager to get pregnant. When that didn’t happen, Larry finally revealed that he had had a vasectomy before they were married. Outraged, Sarah filed for a divorce and was able to have the marriage annulled. Several years later she read in the
Times
that he’d committed suicide.

For her thirtieth birthday, her parents gave her a three-week trip to Morocco, where she met Henri Leone—swarthy, half Moroccan and half French. He ran the disco at Club Med, and they danced the nights away. Sarah imagined she was with Rudolph Valentino. Henri was twenty-three, but he swore that the difference in their ages was of no concern to him. He spoke little English, and Sarah struggled to communicate with him. Between her high school French and her
French for Travelers
, she managed somewhat. One night, while they were making love, she thought she heard him whisper “
vache
,” which her book translated as “cow.” She was certain she had misunderstood.

When Henri played the guitar and sang French songs, hypnotized by the sound of his resonant voice, Sarah believed that she had found true love. They were inseparable for three weeks, making love in her Marrakech hotel room, barely coming up for air. The bedside lanterns cast pinprick stars across their bodies, the bed, and the walls, turning the room into the Milky Way. It was magical.

When it was time for her to return to New York, Henri asked her to marry him. She agreed, despite a gnawing concern that he only wanted a green card, which ultimately turned out to be true. Back in the States, he disappeared a month after the wedding.

Sarah feels as though life has cheated her in love. Sometimes it seems that she is incapable of finding happiness, although at other times she believes it will happen if she is patient.

She sees herself in every film, in every love story, always hopeful that someone will love her as Humphrey Bogart loved Lauren Bacall. She wants to feel as beautiful as Burt Lancaster made Katharine Hepburn feel in
The Rainmaker
. Bogart and Lancaster—they were real men. So was Tyrone Power. How she adores him! She imagines herself as Norma Shearer playing Marie Antoinette, faithful queen to a foolish king, all the while loving and loved—to the death. Or Greer Garson, backlit, in
Random Harvest
, constant, willing to spend her life waiting for Ronald Colman’s love. Sarah believes she could love someone fervently. Forever.

At the Ballroom, when a confident partner holds her, she feels a part of something. When a man opens his arms to her and she steps into them, takes his lead, she feels she belongs, she’s important. Like someone with substance. Like Maria and Angel. Even Tony, paunchy and fat, his stupid toupee pasted on his head, makes her feel all those things: a part of the dance, of something larger than herself.

He should lead her gently, simply touching her fingers, not grasping her hand and dragging her, as if from some impending danger.

                
—W. P. Hazard,
The Ball-Room Companion
, 1849

T
here is a particular day of Gabriel’s junior year of high school that he still remembers clearly. Sitting at the back of Villa Vanetta on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills, he and Maury Feingold and Joel Starger, all seventeen, were splitting a large mushroom cheese pizza after school.

“Rita Mavista has the hots for you, Katz,” said Joel.

“How do you know?” asked Gabriel.

“When she walks by you in the caf. Her ponytail and her ass swing in two different directions!” Joel responded. “That’s for you, man.”

“No shit. Ya think so?”

“She wouldn’t give you the time of day, asshole,” Maury chided Gabriel.

Rita was sitting next to him in algebra when he first noticed her in his freshman year. She’d been left back because she never went to summer school. As she walked in slow motion up the aisle, her black skirt so tight she had to take baby steps, she left a hot animal breeze of Tabu perfume. She’d arrived late for class, in that fuzzy pink angora sweater with the deep V neck that showed off her big bust. Those days were worth sitting through algebra for. A flustered Mr. Schifrin frequently asked her to dress appropriately for school. She wore ballet slippers, soft, black, cut low, and clinging to her feet. The cleavage between her toes reminded him of her breasts.

With eyes encircled in sultry Cleopatra rings, she’d look at him coyly and slip her pointed foot in and out of her shoe, revealing red toenails. As she swung her leg, he was certain it was to a song by the Supremes.

After eighth period Rita would lean against an elm tree across from school, waiting for her pompadoured boyfriend, who was rumored to attend the tough Grover Cleveland High. He arrived like a black knight on his splendid black motorcycle, in his leather jacket with its multitude of zippers. Maury said that his girlfriend saw Rita in the locker room, cutting the name Vito into her chest with a razor blade. Gabriel daydreamed of taking her to the RKO, and the possibility of running his fingers over those scars. Rumor was, she would make out and give blow jobs in the balcony. Maury swore he saw Rita going down on Vito at
The Graduate
.

Suddenly his father’s red face broke through his daydreams of Rita.

“You goddamn putz. What the hell are you doing here? Your mother’s waiting for you.” Hy Katz’s face was scarlet and puffy, as though he was about to choke on his own rage. “Get off your goddamn ass and get home.” There was spit on his gray handlebar mustache. “Did you forget your mother’s dance lesson?”

All six-foot-two of him loomed over Gabriel, who had managed to crawl into the corner of the booth. His father’s neck was engorged, and his watery, bloodshot blue eyes appeared to be popping out of their sockets. Maury and Joel cowered on the opposite side of the table, keeping their eyes down, as though mesmerized by their pizza slices.

“Dad, I forgot. Shit. Can’t she skip it this week?” He heard the contained snickering of his two friends. His father had him by the neck of his button-down shirt. It was so tight against his throat that pizza spewed out of his mouth. As he was pulled out of the corner of the booth, he knocked his Coke over, and ice chips spilled across the red Formica table. All Gabriel could focus on was the spreading pool of soda. It was on his black high-tops, on the pizza parlor floor.