Dancing by Heart

Her secret dancing began in anger. 

Every day, she sat in a call centre on her ever-widening bum selling timeshares for places she’d never seen.  On a good day, she sold enough to keep the supervisor off her case. 

Every day, Hal, a plasterer, screeded and dashed and pointed, exercising and tanning without even thinking about it. At the end of the day, he came home ready for a big meal and a night of telly, dozing in the armchair with a can of lager.

 

Weekends at the pub, a few drinks and a game of darts and his social life was sorted. 

She’d given up trying to get him involved in anything.  Any talk of something new – bowling or swimming maybe, he’d grunt a pretend agreement but make every excuse to avoid actually doing it.    

It was enough to make any self respecting, overweight girl livid.

She’d tried going to the gym with her friends.  A few sessions of being stuck between two babes zipping along a treadmill in size twelve leotards while she spilled over her tracksuit, gasping for air, made her decide to ditch the fitness centre.   

That’s how things stood until the day she checked her scratch card and got a surprise.  A win.  Her first thought was to rush home and tell Hal.  A thousand.  She thought about what they could do with it.  Pay some bills, reduce the overdraft, paint the flat. 

Her second thought was, nah.

That’s when Lisa enrolled in the Salsa class. 

Salsa dancing.  No need for a partner so nobody need know about this latest go at shifting the flab.  She’d seen it advertised on a poster sparkling with dynamic people in seductive poses. It looked so energetic and vibrant; highly recommended when nursing a grievance.

 

She signed up at the community centre and told Hal she’d be late on Tuesdays.  He shrugged “OK” while watching the telly.

Lisa loved the class right from the beginning.  Terence, the teacher, was very attentive. He’d hold her waist and demonstrate steps to the class.  Sometimes, to correct the positions, he’d run his hand down her spine or crook her leg just right.  He’d clasp her tightly and hold his face close to hers, a lock of dark hair falling over one eye.   He’d wink – just barely – as if they shared secrets.  It was blood tingling work.

She knew other class members envied her.  Teresa Danes kept asking questions about moves and steps, swinging her long hair as she spoke, clearly trying to get Terence over to her.  But he paid her little attention compared to the constant interest he showed in Lisa. 

She loved her dancing, couldn’t wait for each Tuesday.  Salsa became her beautiful secret.

The weeks went by and Terence began preparing the class for the Christmas Show.  He promised gruelling weeks of practice to stage a spectacular such as the community centre had never before seen.   This was to be her ‘reveal’ to Hal.  He would sit on a sticky plastic seat, enthralled by her dancing and the new Lisa.

By now she was living, breathing Salsa, secretly practising moves in the kitchen while Hal vegetated in the livingroom.  It took her over, she couldn’t get enough.

Soon, her skin and eyes glowed, she felt fitter and thinner.  She went shopping and tried on new, skimpier clothes.  None zipped up.  She still had a way to go. 

Then she saw it.  Red, cut low around the cleavage yet cleverly draped to reduce the shoulders and upper arms.  The full skirt fell gracefully to mid calf, ideal for showing off dance moves and shapely ankles while hiding thick thighs.  It fitted beautifully. 

She had to buy it.  She hugged it home and hid it in the back of her wardrobe, saving it for the Show. 

Every Tuesday night she danced wildly and then went home to Hal, slumped over the remote, glued to the screen.   No wonder she looked forward to seeing Terence each week, with his deep good looks and tantalising closeness.  Nothing like a little light flirting without the humdrum slog of a relationship.  She basked in proximity-pleasure, alive with possibilities.

*

In December Terence organised the dancers for various pieces in the Christmas Show.  He ran through the opening numbers first, the warm ups, he called them.

Then he got to the list for the grand finale Chachachá, the height of their performance.  Teresa Danes, still swinging her hair, was called first.  Lisa waited, tingling.   

Her name was called last of all. She wondered what special role Terence had created for her.  But he was listing the line to dance along at the back as a foil for the main dancers.  She was called last because she’d be on the far end of the line, half hidden by the stage curtain.  At the edge, the point of least exposure.  She felt sure it must be an oversight.

After class, Terence looked surprised when she questioned him.

“You’ll get to do more when you’re ready,” he smiled as he locked the classroom.

“But…” Lisa spluttered as they left the hall.  Didn’t he always dance with her to teach the class?

“To encourage the others,” Terence still smiled, “if you can manage it, so can they.”

Now they were outside where a tall, dark man waited.  Terence introduced her to Guy.  They walked off into the night together.  Clearly his interest in her had been purely professional.

In her heart she’d been graceful and passionate, showing the class how it was done. What Terence had seen was a lumbering fat woman, the proof that anyone can salsa. 

Nothing to do but go home.  Back to the telly and the mumbled responses; with a heart full of dancing and no way to express it. 

She tried.  Back home, she took hold of Hal’s hands, pulling him towards her.  He responded with,

“You OK, love?”

“Yes.  Oh yes,” She threw back her head, putting the excess into yes.

“Hal, dance with me.”  She’d reveal her secret right away.  She could get her red dress, put it on there and then and show him what she could do.

He moved his head to look around her at the TV.

“Hal, get off that couch.”

“You go on, I’ll be up when this is finished.”

Dancing had been a means to an end during Hal’s pulling days.  Now they were a couple, he could dispense with preliminaries.  For Lisa, dancing had become an end in itself. 

She went upstairs and lay sleepless and seething.  Hal came up later and was soon rhythmically snoring while she fumed silently. 

She woke in the morning, still furious.  She was full of dancing and nobody wanted to know.  Half-hidden behind the curtain at the Christmas Show didn’t do it for her. 

Hal left for work, but she couldn’t face the call centre.  Instead, she took her red dress out and held it in her arms; the folds fell over like a beautiful dance move, a scarlet invitation to Salsa.  She put it on.

It looked stunning, just as it had in the shop.  She complemented it with dramatic red lipstick and dark mascara, swept up her hair and slipped ino high black court shoes she’d once worn to a wedding. 

The mirror approved.  She looked stunning; but felt stifled, stuck in the flat while her real life was no longer here.  Her real life was dancing.

Leaving the house in her dress with only a black wrap over her shoulders, December didn’t touch her. She walked without thinking, music running from the iPod in her bag to the earphones and right into her veins.  Time passed. She had no track of it.  She walked on, absorbing the music, a walking, living rhythmic being.

The town was full of cars, buses, people with baby buggies and shopping bags.  They looked dreary, dowdy, preoccupied with dull stuff like the price of carrots and the next gas bill. 

She came to a steel bridge, one of those old ones that could be swung open to let ships through.  Painted mud-grey, it made a suitable background for the lanes of traffic stuffed with people who wanted to be anywhere else.  Stuck people.   Lisa, with her red dress and her music, was in another, magical world.

She stumbled on a discarded drink can and sidestepped to avoid it, moving her left foot back, slipping into the basic back movement, through the Eight Steps, finishing with a clap as the wrap slid off her shoulders and fell at her feet.

At the side of the bridge, as the traffic edged by, she danced.  Already warmed up by the music, she did moves and flings, better than she’d ever done in class.  She just danced, heart and soul.  Right then, everything she’d learned made more sense, more beauty, more passion.  She was alive; crazy with delight.

Passersby had to step off the pavement to pass, but many of them stood and looked.  She was dancing for herself.  Not for Terence, not to show the class, not for weight loss.  They didn’t matter now, Terence, Hal or Teresa Danes; nor even the Christmas Show.

There was only dancing, absolute dancing on the bridge.

Until a voice from another world cut through her bliss, “Lisa?”

That stopped her short.  It was Hal, off to a greasy spoon for lunch.

“Lisa?  What the hell are you doing?”

“Dancing.”

“You can’t, it’s…” he gestured to the traffic, “are you trying to embarrass me?”  Two laughing mates stood behind him.

“Hal, don’t be daft. I didn’t know you’d be here.” Hal moved around to different places with his work.

“You can’t do that here. You’ll catch…” he gestured vaguely towards her shoulders.

“I can.  Join me?”

“For Chr…” his voice trailed off as she began to dance again.

He spluttered, then moved off, angry and uncomfortable.  His workmates followed, grinning. 

The dancing began again, it had a life of its own.  She was ecstatic, had no thought of time.  Salsa itself decided when to finish.  When it did, she gave a final flourish and a showy courtesy.

One driver beeped, then others followed in a round of raucous applause.  Some pedestrians clapped.  She accepted the ovations with another bow, then another and another.  Then, scooping up her wrap, she strutted off the bridge, a star.

Something had happened. Salsa didn’t change her life with Hal.  It changed her. 

*

She was packing when he arrived home. 

“What are you doing?” Hal asked.

“Just going to Mum’s for a few days.  To think.”

“Think? About what?”

“Just to think.”

As soon as he realised she was serious, Hal changed his tack.  He kept asking, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong with you?”

And later, as she zipped up the second bag, “you’ve met someone.  You have, haven’t you?” 

“It’s not like that...”

“Who?  Who is it? Tell me – who is it?”

And Lisa anwered,

“Just me.”

   © Frances O’Keeffe