Len Kuntz

THE HARD DANCE

      Before she leaves for the weekend, my daughter asks me if I’ll teach her how to dance, slow dance.

      When she was young she took hip hop classes, so chubby with all the other blades.  The following year chubby gave way to fat.  She wore sweats and only continued for my wife’s sake, for mine.  In those outfits the spandex looked like a mudslide and I found myself looking away at the other girls more fit and prettier, blonder, with clean teeth.

      When I put my hands on her hips now she winces. 

      I yell, “Damn it!”

      She says it’s okay, it’s just a few small bruises, it’s not what I think, Russell wasn’t even around when it happened, he was in Chicago, he was, he was.

      I pull her close.  Her pulse throbs through her wrist.  He’ll be holding her like this, I think.

      In the ceiling I see a new crack, a gray streak of crooked lightning from where the house has settled.  Then I notice others a few feet away.  Those’ll need to be fixed, I tell myself.

      When we put the sign in the yard my daughter went berserk, tossed the toaster through the kitchen window.  “I know why you’re doing this!” she screamed.  “You two can go ahead and move if you want, but I’m staying.”

      Now we sway, our shoe tips brushing.  We cut odd concentric paths round and round right there in the living room where I watched her take her first step.

      She squeezes my hand.  She leans in and tells me she loves him.  She says he makes her happy.