As Jack Maloney sat in the third row of Miss Hasselbrook’s eighth-grade language arts class, he was a boiling cauldron of nervous tics and aimless energy. He wiggled his blue Bic pen back and forth in a kind of frenzy, as if he had caught a small snake between his thumb and his forefinger. Occasionally, he stopped wiggling the pen and gnawed on the blue cap, which was pocked by teeth marks. He jiggled his left foot on the linoleum floor as if he were keeping time to a song that only he could hear. He licked his lips until they were raw, and he then dragged a cylinder of Chap-Stick out of his left front pocket to soothe the rawness. He picked at the nail of his forefinger until the skin lining the side of the nail was red and irritated and on the verge of bleeding.
At his desk, he leaned his chin on the flat of his open hand and, with his other hand, scribbled “Thou shalt not” in his notebook. He looked at the scribble and wondered what it was that he was not supposed to be doing. His hair resembled a rust-brown scouring pad, and his blue eyes were pale and limpid. Legions of freckles sped across his ivory skin and marched up and down his arms.
Of his many fears, the most intense was that Miss Hasselbrook would call on him and demand that he explain the important and everlasting difference between a direct object and an indirect object for the edification of the other scholars in the class. He assiduously avoided making eye contact with her, keeping his eyes trained on the pages of Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition. Later in the class, he dreaded that she would utter his name with frosty contempt and tell him to read a paragraph from “To Build a Fire,” the short story by Jack London that they were analyzing in class that day.
When school let out, though, Jack leaped on his bicycle—he was free at last! He pumped the pedals furiously, and the wind rushed past his face, tearing open the pores of his skin, blasting through his red hair, sweeping past his pale blue eyes, and releasing all of his anxieties and frustrations. He pedaled madly, furiously, and felt the exhilaration of his muscles working. His nervous tics disappeared, exorcised by the craziness of pumping the pedals and feeling the wind pummel his face. The trees, the houses, the cars all formed a blur. He flew outside himself. He pumped hard on the pedals, almost out of breath, and felt the oxygen rush into his lungs.
After school, he sometimes rode his bicycle to his Aunt Maddy’s apartment, which was only two miles from Edgar Lee Masters Junior High School in Elm Park, just outside the city of Chicago. Aunt Maddy was his father’s sister. She lived alone. She had never been married, at least so far as Jack knew.
Jack’s father was quiet and reserved and introverted and spoke only when it was absolutely necessary. Aunt Maddy was the yin to his father’s yang. She exploded into a room like a stick of dynamite. She was tall and lithe and athletic. Her eyes were cobalt blue and magnetic, her skin as smooth as the surface of a diamond. She owned a colorful world of scarves, which she had brought home from her travels to the exotic corners of the planet. She moved gracefully, elegantly. She reminded Jack of Ginger Rogers dancing with Fred Astaire in the musicals from the Thirties that Jack would sometimes watch with Aunt Maddy on the Early Show. She moved as if she were walking on clouds.
Her apartment was a refuge of wonderment and surprise. She was a passionate fan of jazz and popular music, and the walls of her apartment were festooned with photographs—some signed–of Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Rosemary Clooney, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett. Every week she watched The Perry Como Show, and sometimes Jack stayed for dinner and watched the show with her. When he arrived at her apartment after school, she inevitably had baked cookies, and the cookies always took the shape of one of her favorite singers. While he drank hot chocolate and ate a Perry Como cookie, they would chat, and she would put a record on her RCA Hi-Fidelity record player, and in the background, as they munched on cookies, would be playing “Catch a Falling Star” by Mr. Como or “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” by Frank Sinatra.
Aunt Maddy’s apartment was a haven from home, where resided three younger siblings—two sisters and a brother. The younger sister, Elizabeth, was one year old and still in diapers, and while Mother often felt overwhelmed, Father escaped on businesses trips, selling print jobs for the Acorn Printing Corporation in Chicago. The house would tremble with Elizabeth’s crying and Peter’s and Gwen’s shouting and the TV blaring and Mother vacuuming the living room floor because Baby Elizabeth had strewn crackers all over the carpet.
Aunt Maddy’s apartment was an asylum from the chaos. To ride his Schwinn to Aunt Maddy’s on Gladstone Avenue, to find shelter in her one-bedroom apartment with the photographs of those smooth and mellow and exciting singers on the wall–it was nirvana. One afternoon in May, toward the end of school–he would soon graduate from eighth grade–he entered her apartment, and she swept toward him and hugged him, and he could smell the odor of lilacs and cookies as she enwrapped him in her arms and asked him how his day had been. He said fine, for he had once again escaped being called upon by Miss Hasselbrook.
Aunt Maddy quickly steamed up a beautiful cup of hot chocolate and brought out a plate of cookies, which on this particular day were in the shape of Frank Sinatra—vanilla cookies with Frank’s blazing blue eyes and slicked-back black hair and angular nose and tie loosened at the collar.
Instead of ingesting his after-school snack, though, Jack just stared straight ahead. He cupped his chin into his hand, with his elbow balanced on the kitchen table, and he glowered. He could feel Aunt Maddy’s gaze upon him. He stared, and even though he was thirteen years old and on the verge of going to high school, he felt a diseased worm of a tear in the far corner of his eye. Aunt Maddy, with her keen instincts, knew right away that something was wrong—that some inner turmoil was wringing him dry and preventing him from gobbling down a Frank Sinatra cookie.
She leaned toward him. She put her warm, ancient hand on his heavily freckled arm. She asked, “Jack, honey, what’s wrong?”
He looked at her, struggling to keep the ridiculous tears from emerging. “Aunt Maddy,” he moaned, “I can’t dance.” He glanced away from her, embarrassed.
She looked at him, and her heart went out to him. He knew that she knew that his tears were buried just behind the veil of his eyes. He continued, “I just can’t dance, no matter how hard I try. I’m just too clumsy! I’m a big dumb clumsy oaf! I’m the worst dancer in the class! It isn’t even close! I dance like a drunken monkey! Other kids laugh at me when I dance! They laugh!”
He looked into Aunt Maddy’s eyes, which were limned with decades of experience and triumph and heartache and wisdom. He looked into her eyes, and the words poured out of him—the words of confession—the words of inadequacy—the words of shame. “We’re taking social dancing in gym class,” he blurted out, “and they’re teaching us all these steps like the fox trot and the waltz and the jitterbug. And I can’t do any of ‘em! The worst thing is, the most horrible thing is, I get so nervous that I just forget all the steps! And the very very worst thing is that today I asked Mary Lou Kramer to dance, and she’s the prettiest most fantastic girl in our class, and she said yes. But I couldn’t remember any of the steps! I stepped all over her toes with my big stupid clodhoppers. I could see that she was laughing at me. I said excuse me and ran off to the boy’s room and almost threw up!”
Jack turned away from Aunt Maddy, his face sodden with shame and humiliation. She put her warm cookie hand over his and squeezed it. Jack turned back toward her. In a warm, reassuring voice, she said, “Well, Jack, there is only one thing to do about your problem. Believe me, your problem is very solvable. There is a solution. It’s a very obvious solution, and it is staring you and me right in the face. And the solution is this—I am going to teach you how to dance! We’ll make it easy, and we’ll make it fun!”
He felt lifted ever so slightly from the depths of his despair. He felt no longer alone with his pathetic failures. They rolled up the rug in Aunt Maddy’s living room, revealing a beautiful wooden floor beneath. Jack reached out to her. It felt strange, even awkward , holding his aunt with his right arm around her sturdy waist and his left hand grasping her right hand. She was a couple inches shorter than he, and he looked over her blue-gray hair and smelled the gardenia odor of her perfume and felt her diamond-smooth skin.
They started with the fox trot. She slowly walked him through the steps, without music—left foot forward, right foot forward, left foot to the left, right foot to the left, left foot backward, right foot backward. He grasped her tightly. She looked at him and said, “Jack, remember, I’m a girl–not a bale of hay. Relax and hold me gently. Like you would a bird’s nest.” He loosened his grip.
They practiced slowly, without music, for several minutes. He moved as stiffly as the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. “Relax, Jack,” Aunt Maddy murmured. “I’m not going to bite you!” He chuckled. She put on “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” and they started to do the fox trot to the gentle and romantic rhythm of Tony Bennett’s singing.
“Feel the music,” she murmured. He listened to the music, started to enter into the music. He could feel his knees relax just a little. Left foot forward, right foot forward, left foot to the left, right foot to the left.
Aunt Maddy felt as light as air. She glided on the wooden floor. She was completely attuned to the music. “Loosen your grip on my hand,” she said. “Remember—you’re not carrying bricks.” He laughed. They fox trotted around the living room. One ballad from the Tony Bennett album blended into another, and Jack felt the timbre and restrained emotion in the singer’s voice. He could feel the music begin to flow into him. He turned off his brain. He never stepped on Aunt Maddy’s toes. The album came to an end, and they rested. He felt just a little bit more capable of doing this. There was a secret—to merge with the music.
They practiced the fox trot for an hour, and he started to understand the dance. They took a break and retreated into Aunt Maddy’s kitchen, and she brought out hot chocolate and more Frank Sinatra cookies. They both munched. “That was a very good start, Jack,” she said. “You listened to the music. You felt the music.”
The dancing had begun to break down his shyness, but still he wore a psychic protective shield. He had no idea why. He took a bite out of his Frank Sinatra cookie. “Jack,” Aunt Maddy said. “I’ve been wondering. Is there anyone you like at school?”
Jack felt embarrassed by Aunt Maddy’s directness, by her penetrating and inquisitive stare. He liked Mary Lou Kramer. He had never told anyone this. It was his most deeply held secret. He remembered that one day in class, Mary Lou had brushed past him when they were passing from one classroom to another, and the soft pressure of her sleeve against the sleeve of his shirt had excited him–had confused him. In that moment of brief touching, he had felt transported, embarrassed. “There is,” he said, “but I don’t want to talk about her.”
“I understand,” Aunt Maddy said. After a pause, she asked, “Why not?”
“I don’t know,” he murmured. “I . . . I just don’t want to.” He had felt a fear when he had brushed against Mary Lou Kramer’s sleeve, when she had been near enough for him to talk to. But his mind had frozen as if it had been encased in an iceberg. “I. . . I know she wouldn’t like me,” he said to Aunt Maddy. He didn’t know why he was opening up to his aunt. He had never done so before. He would never have said this to his mother. Aunt Maddy was slyly scraping open his thirteen-year-old soul.
“Why don’t you think she would like you?” she asked. He was dying of embarrassment. “How do you feel when you get close to her?”
“I feel dizzy and stupid!” he murmured. “My mind just empties. I don’t know why. My brain becomes as empty as the ocean.”
“Did you ever think to ask her things about herself?” Aunt Maddy asked.
“Like what?”
“Oh, you know—like her favorite TV shows or movies.”
“No.”
“You might try that. People like to be asked about themselves.” Aunt Maddy smiled. “Yes, we human beings like to talk about ourselves.” She paused. “I’m not sure if porcupines feel the same way.”
He laughed. “They don’t have to,” he said. “They just shoot their quills into people to get them to back off.”
For the next month and a half, Jack never worked so hard. There was a spring dance in May. That was their goal, their Holy Grail, their Troy. They had six weeks to get Jack’s clumsy self prepared for the dance, when the young gentlemen would be wearing suits and the young ladies would be wearing resplendent gowns and hair shaped in the most magnificent of ways.
At school, the two Phys. Ed. teachers who taught ballroom dancing introduced their students to the beauties of the waltz. Jack’s feet didn’t even begin to comprehend the waltz. As “The Blue Danube” bounced incongruously off the concrete block walls of the gymnasium, he stumbled and bumbled with his poor partner. His clodhoppers aimed like missiles at the girl’s feet. She rolled her eyes and shook her head. One, two, three; one, two, three. He stumbled through the steps. “The Blue Danube” wafted on forever.
He was once again in despair when he went to Aunt Maddy’s for his dance lesson later that week. She asked him what they were learning. He told her, and she exclaimed, “Delightful! I love the waltz!”
Aunt Maddy owned an album of Johann Strauss’s waltzes. “You know,” she said, “the waltz was scandalous in the nineteenth century because the partners touched each other! They embraced each other! Riots broke out at waltzes! People protested against them! Can you imagine?”
Once again Jack rolled up the living room rug, and Aunt Maddy slowly walked him through the basic waltz step: one two three, one two three. They moved around the bare living room floor, his shoes squeaking against the wood. “Relax,” she reminded him in a calm voice. Aunt Maddy never ordered, never commanded. She seduced him into following her direction. “You want to flow with the music.”
She put on the “Emperor Waltz.” At first, Jack stumbled and bumbled as Aunt Maddy led him through the steps. “Feel the music,” she said in a low voice. “Close your eyes. Don’t worry about me. Let the music flow through you.”
He closed his eyes, and he tried to feel the music. He felt his legs—his entire body—loosen, relax. He started to lead Aunt Maddy, and together, they fell into the stream of the music. They flowed like a smooth and beautiful river, and he felt the “Emperor Waltz” as something tangible that guided his movements. He was barely even aware of Aunt Maddy, of holding her. Dancing with her was like dancing with a soft breeze. They floated around Aunt Maddy’s living room, somehow avoiding her furniture, and he felt swept away by the music, his feet scarcely touching the floor as they glided through the waltz. He felt transported, outside himself, carried away from his shyness, his self-consciousness, his inhibition. The “Emperor Waltz” ended, but the feeling of being part of the river of life continued. The music ended, and both of them applauded.
Once again they retreated to Aunt Maddy’s kitchen. Today she had baked Dean Martin cookies. It was amazing how she had captured the likeness of the singer with his tanned skin, his warm yet slightly ironic smile, his slightly distanced eyes, his midnight-black hair swept back in a near-pompadour. They drank hot chocolate. They munched on Dean Martin.
There was something that Jack had been wanting to ask Aunt Maddy—something personal—something that he had never had the nerve to ask her before—but something he felt that perhaps he could ask her since they had come to know each other during the dance lessons. “Aunt Maddy,” he started. “Back in the day, when you were young, did you? . . .” He stopped.
She looked at him with a wry, sophisticated smile. “Just spit it out, Jack,” she said. “Just ask me. It’s just words, you know.”
He took a deep breath. He was so curious about her. “Like, I know you live alone and all that. Well, did you always live alone? Was there ever someone that you . . . well, I don’t really know how to ask it.”
She looked at him. “So what you’re trying to ask me is whether I ever had someone in my life.”
“Well, more than that,” he said slowly. “Like, were you ever married or anything like that?”
When he asked that, the mood in the kitchen suddenly changed. She looked at him. She was quiet.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Maddy,” Jack said. “I didn’t mean to . . . to be so nosy. I didn’t mean to ask something that I shouldn’t have.”
“That’s all right, Jack. You were just curious. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Without a word, Aunt Maddy arose from her chair and walked down the hallway of her apartment to her bedroom. In a few minutes, she returned, carrying a pile of envelopes—yellowed, stained envelopes—bound together with a piece of string. She removed one of the envelopes from the pile and handed it to him. The return address was a town in France. The usual bright color had disappeared from Aunt Maddy’s face. “Those are all that I have left,” she said quietly.
Silence fell into the room like a stone. Jack looked down into his lap, and he felt ashamed for having asked her about her private life. His imagination went wild. She had loved a soldier, and he had landed at Normandy on June 6, 1944. But somehow he knew that this was only a guess. He knew that if Aunt Maddy wanted to tell him the whole story, she would tell him. But she didn’t. A shadow crossed her eyes. She held the pile of envelopes in her hand. He wondered whether his father—Aunt Maddy’s brother—knew what had happened so long ago. Aunt Maddy wore a look of seriousness, of combative loneliness. She crooked a smile. She said, “Jack, I think our lesson is finished for the day.”
He arose from his chair. She arose, too, and she took him by the arm and guided him gently to the door. “Until our next dance lesson,” she said. He looked at her, and it was as if he were seeing her for the first time—as if he had a new and different understanding of his aunt. She gave him five Dean Martin cookies to take home to give to his mother and father and sisters and brother. He closed the door to her apartment behind him. The small episode had taken him outside himself. He felt a sense of loss for her, without really knowing what had happened to her so long ago.
The date of the spring dance arrived. Jack dressed up in his corduroy sports jacket and black trousers and narrow tie with the purple plastic tie clasp that he had created in shop. He slicked back his flaming red hair with Brylcreem. He stood in front of the mirror, putting each strand of hair exactly in place. The part on the right side of his head was as straight and sharp as a razor. He spread shaving cream on his cheeks and chin and, using his father’s safety razor, shaved off the peach fuzz that had started, however shyly, to populate his cheeks and chin. He patted on Old Spice cologne. He cut his fingernails to the quick. Using his father’s fingernail scissors, he snipped away two wayward hairs that poked out from the bottom of his left nostril. He straightened his tie. He tightened his belt. He was ready.
His father dropped him off at Edgar Lee Masters Junior High. On the way, he picked at his fingernails. Would he remember the dance steps that he had practiced so painstakingly with Aunt Maddy? Would he break some girl’s toes by stomping on them with his clodhoppers? Would he trip while dancing and make his partner fall and fall on top of her and live in everlasting infamy?
He pulled himself out of his father’s car and saw his best buddy, Petey Bronkowski, near the entrance to the gymnasium. Petey’s face was turned toward the brick wall, and he was bent over. Jack knew he was sneaking a cigarette. “Hey, Bronk!” Jack said.
Petey turned around and stomped out the cigarette. “Hey, Maloney Baloney!” They shook hands in manly fashion.
They walked into the gymnasium. The enormous room swarmed with multi-colored balloons and crepe ribbons that hung like hangman’s nooses from the ceiling. A gargantuan sign read, “Congratulations to the Class of 1961!” It was about a hundred degrees in the gym, and Jack started sweating right away. His armpits soon resembled Niagara Falls. He could barely breathe. He looked down at his feet. His shoes looked like paddles made of iron. He was surely going to break some poor girl’s toes with them. The Niagara Falls of perspiration streamed down his arms. Petey turned to him and said, “ Hey, Baloney, you’re all pale!” Petey peeled off to ask Wendy Winger to dance. Soon they were twirling around the dance floor—twirling like Fred and Ginger.
Jack saw Mary Lou Kramer standing with a group of girls. The enemy camp. Mary Lou’s blonde hair shimmered like a nuclear explosion. Her azure eyes sparkled. Her light orange dress glowed. She stood in a halo of light. Her teeth gleamed with the power of a thousand suns. Jack noticed her fingernails, painted as red as passion fruit. His heart thudded in his chest. He removed his handkerchief from his back pocket and mopped his brow and lips. Sweat rolled like the Mississippi River down his legs. His feet felt gooey.
He took a deep breath and walked toward her—toward the one and only and beautiful Mary Lou Kramer. He felt as stiff as Frankenstein’s monster. He hesitated but then forced himself to march forward. His legs were stiff, his mind awry. He approached her. She looked at him. Her blazing teeth blinded him. “Yes!” she said. He hadn’t even asked her to dance, and she had said, “Yes!” She smiled, and her smile encompassed him.
His body froze. What was the song? “Chances Are.” By the one and only and inimitable Johnny Mathis. Mary Lou raised her right arm, and he raised his left arm and grasped her hand. As he did so, he remembered Aunt Maddy’s words: “I’m a girl–not a bale of hay!”
Then he froze. It was inevitable, unavoidable. Everything that Aunt Maddy had taught him flew like garbage out of his brain. Mary Lou Kramer then did something—something amazing—something miraculous. She leaned toward him. She gave him a smile that burned like a thousand suns. She whispered in his ear: “Push everything out of your brain. Feel the music.”
They were magical words that summoned fairy godmothers. He let his mind go blank. His body took over. Left foot forward, right foot forward, left foot to the left, right foot to the left, left foot back, right foot back. He completed an entire cycle of the fox trot without smashing Mary Lou Kramer’s feet to smithereens. Miraculously, they began to move like lithe geese around the dance floor. Her hand felt like soft pillows in his hand. Her waist felt as smooth as freshly churned butter. He felt as though he were in a dream.
Mary Lou Kramer and he did not say a word as they glided across the dance floor. Not a word. They did not have to. They were completely in sync with the music and with each other. Mary Lou’s presence lifted his body into spirit. While doing the fox trot, they pressed a little closer to each other, drawn together like steel to a magnet. They were in their private little universe. Jack’s overactive mind shut off totally. He felt the smoothness of her hand as he held her lightly. They did not need to talk. The music was palpable, like a magic carpet that was transporting them.
Dancing with Mary Lou Kramer–it was Jack’s first taste of philosophy. There was something metaphysical in their movements together. Their dancing was synchronized, like the conjunction of the spheres of the solar system. They were at one with the universe. Body and soul had joined and consummated. Their dancing created a moment of satori. Between them, Mary Lou Kramer and Jack were plumbing the depths of existence. The music ended. They stopped and looked at each other. They stared at each other. They had been transported for an hour. Mary Lou Kramer suddenly leaned forward. She kissed Jack lightly, chastely, on the cheek. Her lips were like butterscotch pudding. Her lips were as light and soft as cotton. Her kiss—it simmered on his cheek.
Did Jack ever see Mary Lou Kramer again after the spring dance? It doesn’t really matter. In high school, they passed each other in the hall sometimes. He looked at her and felt a kind of beatitude. She smiled back at him and walked on. Their lives had intersected briefly, yet the intersection had been transcendent. They had danced to the edges of the universe, and that was enough. They were like two different solar systems that had come together. He held those moments like a treasure in his heart. Somehow it didn’t matter what happened after that. It was an evanescent moment that lasted forever.
Jack went to Aunt Maddy’s apartment soon after the spring dance. She served Tony Bennett cookies, and Aunt Maddy and Jack ate them and drank hot chocolate. Jack told her about the dance, but somehow he could not convey to her the feeling of transcendence that he had experienced as he had danced with Mary Lou Kramer. They sat at the kitchen table and munched on Tony Bennett. Aunt Maddy shared in his triumph. She partook of his joy, of his happiness, of the emergence of something in Jack that had lain dormant.
But as they sat there, Jack noticed also the shadow of a cloud in the corner of Aunt Maddy’s eyes—the shadow of romance remembered. He recalled the envelopes that Aunt Maddy had brought out for him to see. She had admitted him into the most sacred corner of her life. No words passed between them. They drank their hot chocolate and ate Tony Bennett cookies. An eloquent silence descended upon the kitchen. At one point, Jack arose to stretch his legs, to take a turn around her apartment. On the way out of the kitchen, he turned back toward Aunt Maddy, who was sitting down. He did a fox trot step to imaginary music, and he did the step as elegantly and effortlessly as he could. Aunt Maddy laughed, and then she applauded.//
About the Author
Christopher Johnson is a writer based in the Chicago area with a vast body of experience as a merchant seaman, a high school English teacher, a corporate communications writer, a textbook editor, an educational consultant, and a freelance writer.
He has published short stories, articles, and essays in The Progressive, Snowy Egret, Earth Island Journal, Chicago Wilderness, American Forests, Chicago Life, Across the Margin, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Blue Lake Review, The Literary Yard, Scarlet Leaf Review, Spillwords Press, Fiction on the Web, Sweet Tree Review, and other journals and magazines.
In 2006, the University of New Hampshire Press published his first book, ‘This Grand and Magnificent Place: The Wilderness Heritage of the White Mountains.’
His second book, which he co-authored with a prominent New Hampshire forester named David Govatski, was ‘Forests for the People: The Story of America’s Eastern National Forests,’ published by Island Press in 2013.
You can find him at https://chrisjohnsonwrite.com/
About the Author
