All stories › Humor › Slow, Slow, Quick, Quick › Episode 3
Folding Chairs
Episode 3 of 3 of Slow, Slow, Quick, Quick by Ron Esposito · free to read
Bernice’s grandson came to the recital twenty minutes early to decide, which is how I knew he was hers.
I watched him go up the stairs from inside the hardware store.
“Six more,” Mr. Bixby said at six-thirty. “That’s forty-eight. You could hang a lot of shelves.”
He rang them up and flipped his sign to Closed.
“You’re shutting early?” I said.
“I’m coming up,” he said. “I’ve been listening to that ceiling for eight weeks. I want to see the end.”
Upstairs, Harold had set out three rows of folding chairs. The grandson sat in the front row with his fiancee, holding his program flat on his knee. Glenda came with her husband and the boys.
She checked her purse twice.
“I didn’t bring one,” she said.
“You checked twice.”
“I didn’t bring one, Dad. Are you nervous?”
“I’m seventy-four. I’m not nervous. I’m early.”
The boys took the end seats.
“Grandpa,” the older one said, “are you going to fall down?”
“Not on purpose.”
Bernice stood by the radiator in a navy dress, not writing in her notebook. Her mouth was shut in a straight line, and her hands were cold when I took them.
“You all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said.
It was the first lie I had ever heard her tell.
“He took the front row,” she said. “I told him to sit in the back.”
“He’s twenty-seven. He can sit where he wants.”
“He never once listened to me about seats.”
“Do you want me to ask him to move?”
“I want you to keep your elbows up.”
The group routine went fine because the whole class counted together, low, in Bernice’s voice.
“Solos,” Harold said. “Remember. Four boxes and you’re done.”
The first married couple did four boxes and a little turn. Everybody clapped.
The second couple forgot the turn and did a fifth box instead. Everybody clapped harder.
“Ready?” Harold said to me.
“Not even a little.”
“Lovely,” he said.
In the back row, Mr. Bixby was mouthing the count. He had learned it through his ceiling.
“Leon Galloway,” Harold said, “and Bernice Szabo.”
We took frame. Right hand on her shoulder blade, not her belt.
The music started.
Bernice did not count.
Her eyes were on the front row, on the boy she had raised from nine. She was not lost. She was frozen, which looks the same from outside.
I had wanted that door for eight weeks. I could walk us both off, say she felt faint, and he would cut the dance kindly.
If you can’t feel it, count it.
“Slow,” I said.
I stepped forward, heel first. She stepped back, because I gave her somewhere to go.
“Quick, quick.”
Side. Close. Then back, slow, quick, quick. One box. Two bars.
My wife asked me to dance at every wedding we went to for forty-six years. I always said next time. I said it like there would be plenty of them.
“Slow. Quick, quick.”
The second box. I kept the count low, just for her. Bernice’s hand warmed up in mine. Her lips moved.
“Slow,” she said, with me. “Quick, quick.”
On the fourth box I stopped counting, and she didn’t need me to.
Eight bars. Four boxes. Harold stopped the music.
Nobody clapped right away. Then the front row stood up, and the rest of the room had to.
Afterward, the grandson came over with his program still in his hand. He didn’t say anything to his grandmother at first. He just held out his arm, the way you do when you mean it.
“Saturday,” he said. “Keep the dance.”
Then he looked at me. “Thank you, sir.”
“She did the counting,” I said.
“No, sir,” he said. “I was watching.”
Bernice nodded once, like she was returning a salute. Then she went to the window and looked at the parking lot for a while, and I let her.
Glenda found me by the folding chairs. Her eyes were red, and she was smiling.
“You led,” she said.
“Somebody had to.”
“Dad. You counted out loud. In front of everybody.”
“Nobody ever died of counting.”
She laughed and wiped her eyes. “I lied before. There’s a brochure in the car.”
“Bring it in. The other leg wobbles.”
“So that’s it? You did the eight weeks. You can quit now.”
“I had a speech for that,” I said. “I never got past the first sentence.”
Bernice came back from the window and tore a page out of her notebook.
“The first night,” she said. “I wrote you down with a question mark.”
The circled date was the twenty-fifth. Under it was my name. The question mark was crossed out.
“Inspection passed,” she said.
Harold was passing a clipboard around. Intermediate Smooth, Tuesdays, eight weeks. Glenda reached for her purse.
“I’ve got it,” I said.
I wrote my own name. Bernice wrote hers under it without looking up.
Mr. Bixby leaned over to see the list.
“I’ll set aside six wing nuts for Tuesday,” he said.
“No need,” I said. “I know where it is.”