To Dance Again - Short Story

Literary Review, Summer, 2001 by Kate Blackwell

"It'll be fun. Alan and I are going to design it together. I haven't had a chance to mention it to John. He comes home tonight."

"Well, you need a little pleasure in your life, sweetie, and if a gazebo'll give it to you, I'm all for it. You tell my stick-in-the-mud son I said so." Then she hopped out of the cart to slam her ball straight into a pine tree.

When they finished the ninth hole, they parked the cart and went into the clubhouse where Carolyn decided to join Peggy in a martini. Frank D., Peggy's special waiter since her glory days, seated them in what was still known as the ladies' bar, a sunny room with white and gold rococo tables and beige banquettes. When he set down Peggy's glass, Beefeater's, extra dry, garlanded with frost, and murmured, "Here you are, Miz Martin," her mother-in-law's gray eyes glowed like Christmas in her wizened child's face, the way they must have glowed back in the forties when she was Miss Peggy Battle, dancing and golfing all over the eastern part of the state. "A real charmer," Carolyn's father used to say, having danced with Peggy Battle at the debutante parties of '49. Her mother always added elliptically, "What a shame."

"Peggy, I'm only going to have one," she announced firmly as they raised their glasses. "Then I've got to eat my salad and run."

"Sweetie, we're here to relax. We earned it out on that golf course. You know, I don't recognize a damn soul in there."

Her mother-in-law was staring into the large airy Florida room that opened off the ladies' bar, where several dozen colorfully dressed women sat at tables of bridge, chattering like parakeets. The day had been when Peggy could have named every woman in the room, along with her family pedigree, none of which would have been as impressive as her own, the Battles having been the first family of Carthage since the Creation, owning thousands of acres of pine woods, the local bank, and tobacco markets across four states.

"Who's that little girl with the fancy hairdo," Peggy asked. "Do I know her?"

Carolyn could not place the girl with the fancy hairdo. Emily something? Husband with the new mill? John would know. She sipped her martini, awaiting the warm tingle she was counting on to calm her down and make her stop seeing herself emblazoned bare-breasted in the window that morning. On the other hand, for all she knew, Alan might be nearsighted.

"Frank D., this martini's mighty near perfect," Peggy rasped in her smoker's alto. "Where are you, Frank D.?"

"Right here, Miz Martin. Are you ready for another one?" Frank D. was a short dapper man, bald, with taffy-colored skin. He had taught social studies at the black high school until integration, when he lost his teaching job and started working at the club. That was thirty years ago.

"Frank D.," Carolyn interrupted, "I'd like to order my chicken salad now. I'm sorry to rush, Peggy. I'm getting nervous about my yardman."

"There's not much out there for him to ruin, if you don't mind my saying so," her mother-in-law said. "Yes, I'll have another, thank you, Frank D."