The Night Grandpa Harold Danced

Telling Ellie

I did not wake her that night. I told her at breakfast on Thursday, over toast and the last of the strawberry jam.

“Grandpa Harold is taking you to the dance,” I said.

She stopped chewing and looked at me.

“Grandpa Harold?”

“He asked what time it starts before I even asked him to go.”

“Mom.” She put her toast down. “He has a walker.”

“I know.”

“He’s like a hundred.”

“He’s eighty eight.”

“That’s like a hundred.” She looked down at her plate. “People are going to look at us.”

That was the real thing. Ten is the age when you figure out that people are looking.

“Maybe they will,” I said. “Can I tell you something about your great grandpa?”

She shrugged, which at ten means yes.

“When I was four or five, he used to dance with me in the farm kitchen. Grandma would turn on the radio on top of the refrigerator, and he would put me up on his shoes, and we would go around the table until I got dizzy.”

She thought about that for a while. Then she said, “Did he step on you?”

“Never once.”

“Okay,” she said, like she was signing something. “But if he falls down, I’m going to die.”

“If he falls down, I’ll be right there.”

She went back to her toast. A minute later, without looking up, she said, “Can I still wear the red one?”

“That’s what it’s for,” I said.

Thursday

I called Mr. Peterson at the school on my lunch break, from the back room at the pharmacy. He was Ellie’s fourth grade teacher, a big quiet man who coached junior high wrestling and ran the dance every year because nobody else on the PTO would.

I explained it all as short as I could. Jason. The text. My grandfather. The walker.

“Is he going to be all right on the floor?” Mr. Peterson asked. It was a fair question, and I liked that he asked it plainly.

“He’s steadier than he looks. But I’d feel better if I could be close.”

“The bleachers are open,” he said. “A couple of moms always stay for one reason or another. You and your grandma sit up front. And come in the east doors. That’s where the ramp is.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Mrs. Bauer,” he said. “Ellie wrote about this dance in her journal back in September. I’m glad she’s still coming.”

I had to go stand in the back by the insulin cooler for a minute after I hung up. That evening Grandma Mae called to report.

“He’s been practicing,” she said, in a low voice, like he might hear her from across the house.

“Practicing what?”

“Dancing. With the walker. Around the kitchen table. He got mad when he saw me.”

I laughed for the first time in two days.

“I let out the suit,” she said. “He said it didn’t need it. It needed three inches. And I bought a wrist corsage at the Hy-Vee in Denison. White carnation, red ribbon, twelve ninety nine. I told the girl it was for a date, and she asked how old he was.”