The Loose Ends List(16)

“Just go.” I shoo him away and dab my eyes with a cocktail napkin, pretending the prayer made me emotional.

I gain my composure as the band starts. This is our kind of music. Gram forced us all to endure dance lessons, so I’ve been dancing since I was three. I won’t have a knucklehead with two left feet at one of my affairs, she always said. Janie and I are probably the only teenagers who can dance the Lindy.

Wes and Uncle Billy grab Janie and me and pull us out to the dance floor. Wes throws his back against mine and flips me over his head, giving the crowd a great Spanx shot. The people line the dance floor and watch as Uncle Billy pulls Janie through his legs then throws her into a cartwheel. We jitterbug to the moon and back. All those days practicing routines with my uncles on Gram’s lawn in Bermuda were worth this moment. I think I see Wheelchair Lady dancing with her eyes.

The song fades to “In a Sentimental Mood,” and Uncle Billy ditches me for Wes. Couples flood the dance floor, and I go in search of water. “That’s my Maddie girl. You were brilliant, honey,” Gram says when I pass her slow dancing cheek to cheek with Aunt Rose.

The ceiling retracts above us, revealing a sky full of clustered constellations. I sit on a bar stool and catch my breath. The blond pixie haircut lady we saw with the baby walks over. “Did they hire you guys to get the dancing started?” she asks. “It worked.” She orders a chardonnay. She has amber eyes, the kind that are marbled with specks of gold, and is probably ten years older than me, and decades younger than most of the passengers.

“Ha! No. My grandmother trained us all to dance.”

“You’re so good. I just plant my feet on the ground, wiggle my ass, and hope for the best.” She sips her wine and waves to her parents on the dance floor.

I don’t want to ask her which of her parents is dying, so I decide to try the Wes approach and find something in common.

“Where are you guys from?” I ask.

“Chicago. My parents live in Florida now, but they’ve been back and forth a lot.”

“One of my friends is going to Northwestern in the fall,” I say.

“College,” she practically shouts. “Oh, I loved college. Where are you going?”

“NYU.”

“No way! I got my master’s in education at NYU. I loved every minute of it.”

“Oh! Where did you live?”

“In student housing near Union Square. I don’t even know how I passed my classes. I went out every night. Beware. That’s a bit of a problem in New York.” She reaches over the bar and takes a handful of maraschino cherries. “Want one?”

“Sure.” I suck the cherry off the stem.

“Oh, I’m so jealous of you. I mean, I have the husband and the baby and everything, but sometimes I think I’m a twenty-year-old stuck inside a thirty-two-year-old body.”

“My cousin and I are as close to twenty as you’re going to get on this ship,” I say. “You can hang out with us and pretend you’re still in college.”

She smiles and arranges the cherry stems in a circle.

“Okay, you can be my little sister. I was a Delta Gamma in undergrad.”

“I’ll totally be your little sister.” I’m guessing she was in the pretty girl sorority.

Pixie Hair’s husband walks up behind her and kisses her neck. “I’m hoping this is my husband, but at this point anything goes.” She turns and hugs him, then looks back at me. “What’s your name?”

“Maddie.”

“Lane, this is Maddie. She’s going to NYU in the fall. Small world, right? Maddie, this is Lane, and I’m Paige.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Lane and Paige.”

They go out for a dance and leave me trying to tie the cherry stem with my tongue. Lane hugs her close to him, and they sway slowly, foreheads touching. I hope I find somebody to dance that close to someday.

I turn toward the bar and notice a man and woman sitting in the dimly lit corner of the room. The man’s so skinny it looks like he came from a prison camp. The woman is old and obese, like the people who hang out all day at the Chinese buffet. They sit silently, staring at the dancers, pathetic and unkempt, not even wearing forties clothes. They don’t react to Bob Johns’s trumpet solo. They don’t tap their feet or snap their fingers. I don’t know why I can’t stop looking at them. Skinny Guy catches me staring, and I wave. He waves back with two fingers. Which one is the patient? I’m not even going to guess.

I hear Mom’s cackling laugh before I see her stumble through the middle of the dance floor, practically plowing down Paige’s parents. Gram makes her disapproving face and waves her hand at Dad, her signal for get Trish out of here before she causes a scene. I’ve seen that signal at Wes and Uncle Billy’s wedding, Jeb’s graduation trip to Montreal, and lots of other places. Dad puts his arm around Mom and pulls her through the ballroom door.



“Why are you naked?” Janie is doing nude yoga on our balcony.

“Come try it. Nobody can see us. It’s open sea. It’s liberating.”

“I’ll pass,” I say. I climb onto the bed and watch my cousin’s perfect little body mold into downward dog position in the glow of the moon.

I’m actually kind of proud of myself for making it through the first night. Dying people are slightly more normal than I expected.