The kids saw us coming and made room, clapping and shouting “Way to go, Mr. A!” and “Show him how you work, Miz Dunhill!” Sadie laughed and tightened the elastic holding her ponytail. Color mounted high in her cheeks, making her more than pretty. She got back on her heels, clapping her hands and shaking her shoulders with the other girls, then came forward into my arms, her eyes turned up to mine. I was glad I was tall enough for her to do that. We turned like a wind-up bride and groom on a wedding cake, then came apart. I dipped low and spun on my toes with my hands held out like Al Jolson singing “Mammy.” This brought more applause and some pre-Beatles shrieks from the girls. I wasn’t showing off (okay, maybe a little); mostly I was just happy to be dancing. It had been too long.
The song ended, the growling sax fading off into that rock n roll eternity our young DJ was pleased to call the grooveyard, and we started to walk off the floor.
“God, that was fun,” she said. She took my arm and squeezed it. “ You’re fun.”
Before I could answer, Donald blared out through the PA. “In honor of two chaperones who can actually dance-a first in the history of our school-here’s a blast from the past, gone from the charts but not from our hearts, a platter that matters, straight from my own daddy-o’s record collection, which he doesn’t know I brought and if any of you cool cats tell him, I’m in trouble. Dig it, all you steady rockers, this is how they did it when Mr. A. and Miz D. were in high school!”
They all turned to look at us, and… well…
You know how, when you’re out at night and you see the edge of a cloud light up a bright gold, you know the moon is going to come out in a second or two? That was the feeling I had right then, standing among the gently swaying crepe streamers in the Denholm gymnasium. I knew what he was going to play, I knew we were going to dance to it, and I knew how we were going to dance. Then it came, that smooth brass intro:
Bah-dah-dah… bah-dah-da-dee-dum…
Glenn Miller. “In the Mood.”
Sadie reached behind her and pulled the elastic, releasing the ponytail. She was still laughing and beginning to hip-sway just a little bit. Her hair slipped smoothly from one shoulder to the other.
“Can you swing?” Raising my voice to be heard over the music. Knowing she could. Knowing she would.
“Do you mean like the Lindy Hop?” she asked.
“That’s what I mean.”
“Well…”
“Go, Miz Dunhill,” one of the girls said. “We want to see it.” And two of her friends pushed Sadie toward me.
She hesitated. I did another spin and held out my hands. The kids cheered as we moved out on the floor. They gave us room. I pulled her toward me, and after the smallest of hesitations, she spun first to the left and then to the right, the A-line of the jumper she was wearing giving her just enough room to cross her feet as she went. It was the Lindy variation Richie-from-the-ditchie and Bevvie-from-the-levee had been learning that day in the fall of 1958. It was the Hellzapoppin. Of course it was. Because the past harmonizes.
I brought her to me by our clasped hands, then let her go back. We separated. Then, like people who had practiced these moves for months (possibly to a slowed-down record in a deserted picnic area), we bent and kicked, first to the left and then to the right. The kids laughed and cheered. They had formed a clapping circle around us in the middle of the polished floor.
We came together and she twirled like a hopped-up ballerina beneath our linked hands.
Now you squeeze to tell me left or right.
The light squeeze came on my right hand, as if the thought had summoned it, and she whirled back like a propeller, her hair flying out in a fan that gleamed first red, then blue in the lights. I heard several girls gasp. I caught her and went down on one heel with her bent over my arm, hoping like hell that I wouldn’t pop my knee. I didn’t.
I came up. She came with me. She went out, then came back into my arms. We danced under the lights.
Dancing is life.
The hop ended at eleven, but I didn’t turn the Sunliner into Sadie’s driveway until quarter past midnight on Sunday morning. One of the things nobody tells you about the glamorous job of chaperoning teenage dances is that the shaps are the ones who have to make sure everything’s picked up and locked away once the music ends.
Neither of us said much on the way back. Although Donald played several other tempting big-band jump tunes and the kids pestered us to swing-dance again, we declined. Once was memorable; twice would have been indelible. Maybe not such a good thing in a small town. For me, it already was indelible. I couldn’t stop thinking about the feel of her in my arms or her quick breath on my face.
I cut the engine and turned to her. Now she’ll say “Thank you for bailing me out” or “Thanks for a lovely evening,” and that’ll be that.
