The Night Grandpa Harold Danced

Friday

The Buick turned onto our street at seventeen minutes after five. I had been at the front window since five. It is a 2004 LeSabre, champagne colored, without one dent. He came down our street at about twenty two miles an hour with both hands on the wheel. Grandma rode beside him in her good gray wool coat.

He parked at the curb and turned it off. Then he sat there for a minute. I started down the steps, and he lifted one hand off the wheel without looking at me. It meant stay put.

So I stayed put. He swung his legs out and reached into the back seat for the walker, folded flat behind his seat with the tennis balls rolled in a towel. He unfolded it, locked the sides, and stood up.

He was in the brown suit, a little long in the sleeves now because he has gotten shorter. White shirt. A brown tie with tiny gold dots. His black church shoes, polished so hard they looked wet.

He had the corsage box in the basket on the front of the walker. He came up our front walk one step at a time. Grandma followed with her hand out, not touching him, just ready.

He stopped at the bottom of the porch steps and looked up at the door. Ellie was standing in it. She had on the red dress and her new silver flats, and I had curled her hair, and she had borrowed my lip gloss without asking. She was holding the door frame with one hand.

For a second neither of them said anything.

“Well,” my grandfather said. “Somebody told me there was a dance tonight.”

Ellie looked at the walker. Then at the suit. Then at his face. Then she let go of the door frame and came down those four porch steps so fast I thought she would fall, and she put her arms around his middle and held on.

He stood very still with his hands on the grips so neither of them would tip. He looked at me over her head, and his eyes were wet.

“Mae,” he said, after a while. “Hand me that box.”

His big hands had trouble with the elastic on the corsage. Ellie held her wrist out very still and did not try to help, and I was proud of her for that.

“There,” he said. “Now it’s official.”

Grandma moved to the back seat so Ellie could ride up front with her date. It was six blocks to the school. I followed in my car the whole way.

The gym

The elementary school is a long, low brick building with the old gym attached to the back. The gym was the high school gym until 1962, when the county consolidated.

Mr. Peterson was waiting at the east doors, just like he said. He shook my grandfather’s hand and said, “Mr. Bauer. Welcome,” like he had been expecting a dignitary.

“Harold,” my grandfather said.

“Harold,” Mr. Peterson said, and held the door wide.

Inside, it smelled like popcorn and floor varnish. The PTO moms had hung pink and red streamers from the basketball hoops and taped paper hearts along the walls with the girls’ names in glitter glue. Somebody had borrowed the disco ball from the high school, and it hung from the scoreboard throwing little squares of light.

Mr. Peterson had a folding table by the stage with his laptop and two speakers. There were maybe forty dads on the floor and fifty girls. Some dads wore sport coats. Some wore their good Carhartt jackets, holding their seed caps, not sure where to put them.

I knew half of them. I fill their prescriptions. Grandma and I sat in the first row of the bleachers, right at the edge of the floor. She kept her coat on. She always does in public buildings.

My grandfather parked his walker at the edge of the floor, about five feet from us, and set the brakes. Then he took both of Ellie’s hands in his.