Pug Hill - Alison Pace [108]
I walked downstairs in my lavender dress and my high heels and my makeup. I walked over to my parents, and my mother stepped back for a minute to look at me. She smiled at me, no, she beamed at me, and then she said, “Hope, you look just beautiful tonight.”
And I thought how I agreed with her, how it must be true since she was, after all, so often right. I felt something start to sting in the back of my eyes and I thought how completely simple it was, and how endlessly complicated, that maybe this, all along, had been all that I’d needed.
“Don’t cry, Hope,” my mother said, “your mascara will run.”
And so I went to the bathroom and I cried. But only a little bit, and then I fixed my mascara and practiced The Lion one more time. I walked around and said hello to all my parents’ friends. I assured Darcy that the hot pink boa she had opted for was nothing if not appropriate and tasteful. I tried not to drink too much champagne for what seemed like an eternity, but I think was only for an hour. And then, the mullet-headed band singer tapped on his mike, and announced to everyone, “Hope would like to make a speech.”
Hope, I repeated to myself. Hope would like to make a speech.
I don’t think I can really say that I stood up there brilliantly. I don’t think I can really say that I Took the Room and made eye contact with all the different people in the room. But I can say that honestly, truly, I did okay. And I can tell you with complete accuracy that at the end, there was clapping.
Dad leads Mom out onto the dance floor, and I listen to the clapping and step back from the microphone, officially ending my speech, officially ending my Overcoming of Presentation Anxiety, and maybe a few other things, too.
The band guy, the one with the mullet, looks over at me and winks and I think, Really? And then I think, I wonder if a band guy with a mullet is the way it all turns out for me? and then I hope not. I don’t have to worry for long though. I realize that the band guy is winking at me because I’m still standing in the middle of the stage, grinning. The band guy’s winking is not so much, “You and me babe, how about it?” as it is “Honey, it’s over, you need to get off the stage.”
“Okay, everybody!” he shouts into his own microphone. “Let’s bring it on back to the sixties!” A few woops rise out from the crowd. “Let’s put our hands together for The Beach Boys!” The band starts playing “Do You Wanna Dance,” as a horde of sixty-to-seventy-year-olds pile enthusiastically onto the dance floor. Many of them, I notice, are doing creative renditions of the twist.
I make my way down the steps, to the edge of the dance floor, just as Darcy and C.P. sashay on by. And they really are sashaying: they’re facing each other holding hands, letting go on one side and fanning out their arms and then holding both hands together again. They’re passing right by me and I smile. They both smile back at me and then, something bad is happening.
Both C.P. and Darcy have stopped anything that resembles forward motion. They are both facing me and dancing in place in front of me. They’ve let go of each other’s hands. They hold their hands out to me to join them. C.P. even gives a little flick of his wrist to be sure I’m quite clear that he wants me to join them. I start to shake my head, “No,” because sometimes, as much as I endeavor not to be, I am nothing if not a creature mired in habit. But I don’t quite get the shake out, and I change the “No,” at the last minute to, “Yes.”
Darcy is bouncing up and down like the Energizer bunny, and singing along to the Beach Boys, “Do you wanna dance and hold my hand?”
I step forward a little bit and take Darcy’s hand with one hand, and I take C.P.’s hand with my other. And the three of us together, we sashay. We sashay around