The Man in Row Three

The recital

The spring recital was the third Saturday in May in the high school auditorium in Ottawa. Miss Renee’s studio did it every year, and every family in town with a little girl in a tutu showed up.

I worked that morning at the shop, an early job on a combine that had to be back in a field by Monday.

I came straight from the shop in my gray work shirt with my name over the pocket, and I’m glad I did, now.

On the way I stopped at the grocery store on the highway and bought a dozen pink roses out of the bucket by the front door, twelve ninety-nine, the kind wrapped in cellophane with a little packet of plant food taped on.

The auditorium was about half full when I got there, maybe three hundred people, with more coming in. The stage lights were already up and warm, and the curtain was down.

And in the third row, on the aisle, there was a big tan purse sitting on a seat.

Kim moved it to her lap when I sat down. Tom was two seats down with his wife. Amy leaned across from the fourth row and squeezed my shoulder.

Somebody had told every one of those families about the guy in the third row by now, and every one of them had made room.

I didn’t see Shayla anywhere in the crowd. I found out later she was working the lobby, selling flowers and programs for the studio fundraiser with Miss Renee’s daughter.

She’d volunteered for it. I think she couldn’t make herself sit down where she’d have to watch me.

There were nine numbers before the youngest girls’ class, and Ava was in two of them. Before every one, when the lights came up, I watched her come out on stage and look out at the dark.

I could see her searching. Third row. Every time, she found me.

She tapped her nose and wiggled four fingers each time she found me. The lady behind me said, “Oh, honey, look at that,” to her husband.

I tapped my nose back. I was holding those roses so tight I was crushing the cellophane.

I still wore my wedding band. I kept meaning to put it in a drawer and never did.

Her last number was the spring dance, and her costume for that one was pink, the sparkly kind with sequins on the top and a tutu that stuck out a mile, and a pink bow pinned in her hair.

I’d tied it myself in the hallway behind the stage twenty minutes before.

Shayla had come to the stage door and found me. She didn’t say anything this time. She just handed me the brush and the bow and stood there while I did it.

Ava said, “Make it the tightest one ever,” and I said I would, and I did.