The Red Dress at the VFW Hall

When the Song Ended

The song ended. People clapped a little, the way you do. I stepped back from Nick and wiped my eyes with my fingers.

And then I saw Harold. He had been standing at the far end of the bar the whole song, and now he was walking across the dance floor toward us.

He walked slow, the way big men do in a crowd, and people moved out of his way.

He stopped in front of me. He did not look at Nick.

He looked right at me, and his face was red, and I could not tell yet whether he was angry or about to cry.

“May I cut in,” he said to Nick, and it was not really a question. Nick stepped back.

Then Harold reached into his pocket. He pulled out a white envelope, the kind that comes with a greeting card.

It was folded in half. He pressed it into my hand and closed my fingers around it with his big rough hand.

“That’s yours,” he said, low, so only I could hear. “It’s nine hundred. I’m sorry it took me this long.”

I stared at him. “Harold, you don’t have to.”

“Yes, I do,” he said. “Now put it in your pocket, honey, because the band’s about to play, and I’d like to dance with my daughter-in-law.”

The Second Song

The band started the second slow song. Harold took my hand in his big hand and put his other hand on my back, very carefully, like I might break.

He smelled like Old Spice and the cigar he was not supposed to smoke anymore.

We danced. He was a better dancer than Nick, which I had not expected. He moved slow and sure. I held the envelope against his shoulder because the red dress had no pocket.

“How did you know,” I said.

He was quiet for a few steps. “I asked her how she paid for the hall,” he said.

“Back in the spring. I asked her, Marlene, how are we paying for all this, with my pension how it is. And she said she’d managed.”

He shook his head. “I should have asked again. I didn’t want to know. That’s the truth of it.”

“Then tonight,” I said.

“Tonight I saw you walk in,” he said. “No scarf, no nothing. And my boy with his head shaved. And I looked at her face, and I knew. I asked her right there at the table, when she wouldn’t get up to dance. She told me. Then I had to walk away for a minute.”

He swallowed. “I had nine hundred in my wallet for the bar tab. Cashed a check at the bank Friday. Took one of those card envelopes off the gift table and put it all in.”

“What about the bar tab,” I said.

He laughed, the big laugh that carries across parking lots. “Walt says the post will run a tab for me till Monday. I’ve known him since 1971. He’ll live.”

Then he got serious again. He leaned down so his mouth was by my ear.

“She’s not a bad woman, Laura,” he said. “I know how it looks. But she’s not. She’s scared. Let her come to you. Will you let her do that?”

I looked over his shoulder at the front table. Marlene was sitting alone. All her sisters had gone out onto the floor. She was looking down at her hands.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll let her.”