Current Skate of Mind

(A version of this short story - fiction - was originally published in the Roanoke Review. )  

My father started taking figure skating lessons the year I turned 15.  This made me a believer in the mid-life crisis theory. There does seem to be a point where our parents become untethered, when they flip the bird to their former selves and do something crazy.  In my mother’s case, she stopped ironing underwear.  And my father bought a $450 pair of deluxe figure skates.  This is a guy who was the star quarterback on his high school football team.  A guy who found chopping wood to be a fascinating hobby: he piled it up in our backyard with satisfaction. His thick, leathery, working-man hands seemed to be immune to splinters.   

So when he came home one day and told us he’d just taken a figure skating class and that there were seven more weeks in the session, my brother Ned and I were perplexed. We looked away from the television.  Dad pointed to a burgeoning blister on his right ankle, then produced, from an old bowling ball bag, a shiny black skate.  ‘Stiff as walls,’ he told us, proudly squeezing the unforgiving upper half of the boot.  Since my own ice skates, purchased at the hardware store, flopped over onto themselves and provided about as much ankle support as a Kleenex tissue, I understood that we were looking at a piece of official athletic equipment.  “Genuine leather.” My father showed us the branded seal on the inside.  Sure enough, it smelled just like the leather store at the mall where I’d put so many jackets on layaway but never closed a deal.

My father was speaking with a giddiness unlike I’d ever witnessed in him before.  Granted, he’d always been jovial, and I suppose charismatic in his own way. He owned the only print shop in town, and everyone seemed to like to do business with him. 

He’d been a machinist all his life, and even after he got his own print shop, he tinkered endlessly with those copiers.  Maybe in bigger towns, things were already entirely computerized, but my dad was a purist in that sense.  He bought all this old equipment either used, or imperfect, or discontinued and made it his problem to fix, then refix the machines on a weekly basis. So his hands were always kind of dirty with a mix of ink and grease.  If he handed a pile of wedding invitations over the counter, the top and bottom ones would inevitably be smudged with his fingerprints.  The wall surrounding the light switches in our house were gray and smudgy for the same reason.

He was a dad. He was rough around the edges.  And I had gotten used to him that way.

While my father was showing his figure skating blade, the flank of which was smooth as a mirror, there was a fishing show on the TV. I could hear the two fishermen chuckling over some bait joke I’d heard them use in previous episodes.

My father moved the metal blade back and forth so that it glinted in the day-time light. “Pretty thin to balance on, eh?” He nodded with a grin. “Go ahead, feel it,” he encouraged, as if there weren’t knives in our kitchen drawer. 

“I have skates, too, Dad,” I said, but touched it to satisfy him.  As I did so, I saw his callused thumb, stained with ink, reflected perfectly in the blade’s side.

“Sharp,” my brother agreed, leaning over and running his finger along the edge, humoring my dad. All I could do was glare at my father, and wonder what had come over him.

Yes, there had been skating on the TV quite a bit.  They twirled and pranced across the screen.  They kissed, they cried, they played out their little dramas on a sheet of ice then played out other little dramas while perched expectantly on the bench afterwards.

Once, when flipping channels, Ned and I happened upon a pink-sequined nymph receiving her scores. As each perfect six appeared, she squealed like a pig, hugged like a bear, and tears poured onto the highly-coifed deeply-dyed hair of her adoring coach.

Her competitors proceeded to fall, or just fall short of her perfection, then shed their own tears. Now I couldn’t help imagining my father behind us, behind the couch, maybe holding a wrench, watching and captivated, and resisting the urge to flourish his arms.  I had never actually seen him watch figure skating, but maybe there were some clandestine moments when he mimicked their movements, when he spun around on the family-room carpet when we weren’t around, then clicked back to the Packers game with a scowl when we entered the room.  Or maybe he didn’t study it from afar.  Maybe he just awoke one morning and decided to start an activity as contrary to his nature as possible, an activity that would bring maximum embarrassment to his family. 

Everything seemed to change, almost immediately.  Linda, the ice skating instructor, told my dad to wear his new skates around the house to break them in.  First, he soaked his bare feet in a bowl of warm water, one of our old salad bowls that had a big chip in the side.  This was apparently so that the leather would soften and mold to the exact contours of his feet. Then, he attached rubber skate guards to the blades, so as to not tear up the floor.  On Saturdays, he went to his lesson and on other days, he walked around in his skates.  He’d trudge by us stiffly with a bag of garbage in his hand, a good three inches taller, and slightly off balance.  I didn’t get up off the couch to watch him amble down the driveway, mortified by what our neighbors were witnessing.

As I said, my mother had already been going through her own transformation. The fact that we were all now wearing wrinkled underwear symbolized something. She had been rekindling her friendship with her high school friends and was busy planning to take a cruise with them within the year.

Walking by their bedroom door one night, I caught my dad trying to convince her to go skating with him the next day. He used the words ‘fun’ and ‘exercise’ in the same sentence.

“I just thought maybe it was something we could do together,” he said.

“We’re no spring chickens, Dan,” my mom replied. “Plus, I don’t have time to twirl off into the sunset.”

I scampered back down the hall, relieved that my mom wasn’t going to get involved in this as well.  

I thought about my dad and his ice skating a lot. I actually started obsessing over it, trying to figure out what strange, foreign thing was going on inside this person I’d known my whole life.

I cornered Mom one day in the laundry room. She was tossing bundled socks into the washer as if they were hand grenades. She wasn’t even pulling them right side out.        

“What’s going on with Dad?”

“I have absolutely no idea.” She shrugged her shoulders with an amused look in her eye.

“This ice skating thing.  Why is he doing it?”

“I dunno.”

“What are we going to do about it?” I tried not to whine.  

“We’re not going to do anything.” She closed the washing machine lid and hiked the laundry basket up to her hip. “Sometimes you just have to live and let live.” She flattened my un-ironed collar down with her free hand. I stood still as she walked away; I didn’t understand how she could be so nonchalant about this.           

I tried to enlist my brother next.  Ned and I surely shared the same ideological misgivings. I plopped down beside him on the couch and began unfurling all the arguments that had been mounting inside me, as if I were making a court case.

Ned just nodded without taking his eyes away from the screen.

“I mean, ice hockey would be one thing,” I said, “but I just don’t understand why it has to be figure skating, of all things. Have you seen his stomach lately? His legs might be spry enough, but all that chip and dip is making its mark.”

Ned changed the channel from the Food Network to NasCar.

“What are we going to do?” My voice was becoming more high-pitched. “We cannot have him spinning round and round like a spinning top!” I was genuinely worried about my dad. I worried about his reputation.  All right, I was a sophomore in high school at the time, so I was worried about my reputation.  

Ned tore his gaze away from the race track. He looked me in the eyes.  “Maybe he’ll be in the Ice Capades,” he said, grinning, mocking me and the whole situation. He was no help. 

The only bright side was that Dad’s lessons were in Madison, a thirty minute drive away, so, in one sense, sheer distance was in my favor.  In another sense, though, it had come into our home, and I had no choice but to accept it.

Linda, the instructor, might as well have been breaking bread with us at the dinner table, so intensely did my dad make her presence felt.  She apparently had tan-colored skates.  “Nude-colored,” my dad explained, “like nylons.  They make your legs look a lot longer.” And Linda, though she wasn’t the tallest “drink of water”, was evidently a true professional, having honorably served time as a Smurf in one of the traveling ice show troupes that blanket the nation. 

After the group-lesson series finished, my dad contracted Linda to teach him privately.  He did not hesitate to reveal that Linda had pulled him aside and claimed he was her star pupil.  When he told us this, my mom said, “Good for you, Dan!” with enthusiasm. I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or not. Across the table, Ned made a face of horror like that painting “The Scream,” and I couldn’t keep myself from laughing. 

But my father was unfazed, perhaps even further propelled by my outburst. He started going in on Sundays for additional practice, then Tuesday nights after he closed the shop.  He wore his gray sweatsuit with the zipper front, the butt of which was still visibly damp (from falling or sweat?) even after the 30-minute ride home. 

One Sunday afternoon, he telephoned from an emergency room in Madison.  “You’re kidding me,” my mother said into the receiver.  He apparently had a cast on his wrist and couldn’t grip the gearshift in order to drive back.  My mom and aunt went to retrieve him.

I leaned back on the recliner smugly: finally, Dad had been put in his place.  The slick ice surface had once and for all proven he was not cut out for this. But when he walked in the front door, there was a distant glimmer in his eye, as if he’d been places, and seen things that made him love his country even more.  This was but a minor setback, he assured us; a setback mainly for the fact that he could not drive to the rink.

To make up for his missed ice time, Dad started practicing on the living room carpet, and as a result, his glee was unavoidable.  He was learning a new vocabulary and was under the impression it would be useful in our daily lives as well.  Against my will, I learned that a “mohawk” was not just a tribe or an odd haircut, but also a handy way of gliding from forward to backward by changing from one foot to another. “Like this.” My dad demonstrated in his tube socks.  And a “three-turn” was yet another way to change from forward to back, this time on one foot. It supposedly left on the ice a perfect imprint of the number three.  This, my dad diagrammed on a piece of scrap paper, in case I wasn’t clear on what a ‘3′ looked like.

Mostly, he held onto the back of the couch as if it were a ballet bar, swung his leg to and fro to a modest height and perfectly straight like a pendulum, then turned around to give the other leg a chance. He kept time by rhythmically saying, “Swing. Roll. Swing. Roll,” over and over again, his eyes closed to concentrate, his toe pointed.  It seemed almost like meditation. 

When the hard cast was removed, he returned to his weekly practice regimen with renewed vigor.  As months passed, he talked less about his escapades, and I suppose, for me, the shock of it all began to wear off. 

Through most of that spring, things were okay.  Mom was busy searching for the perfect straw hat and handbag set for the cruise.  Ned was getting ready to graduate from high school. Dad simply wasn’t around much; he was up to four days of practice per week.  I was basically left to my own devices, which included pursuing a junior named Ryan who was on the soccer team. We hung out in the parking lot after his games. I’d started calling him Rye.

We’d almost gotten through May in this routine, when Dad made the announcement. He stood by the kitchen door.

“The powers that be,” he said, “have deemed me ready for the summer ice show which is called Holidays on Ice.” He took a bow, circling his hand a few times in front of him, like an English courtesan. “And I will be Marshall of the Easter Parade.”

There are certain concepts we don’t understand because we don’t want to understand, and there are others that are just plain incomprehensible.  My father’s announcement that he was going to be in an ice show could be filed under both categories.  In the next few moments, I learned that Holidays on Ice would celebrate, on ice, eight or so holidays, and that my dad was honored to be the only man along with six women in the Easter gala.

Furthermore, there were to be sets, like theatrical backdrops, to sit on one end of the ice during each holiday, and Dad had volunteered to make our basement Valentine’s Day headquarters. This was too much - not only did my father have his heart set on making a fool of himself in public, my family and I were called upon to assist.  Could we help him build something Valentine’s-ish? 

It was soon discovered that my mother’s cruise dates conflicted with Holidays on Ice. I envied her. She offered to channel her scant artistic talent to design the Valentines set, so that Ned and I could construct it.

Even though my dad was the only handy one in the bunch, he stepped out of the loop, claiming to need all his free time to prepare for the performance.He did, however, manage to find enough time to donate his printing services for promotional materials.  He drafted the newspaper ads and posters in conjunction with the show’s producer.  He printed the posters out on reams of canary-yellow paper and enlisted us to help plaster them on kiosks and community bulletin boards all over the county. In a moment of inspiration, he ran off a roll of stickers to add to the posters designated for our town:  Featuring Dan Shelley of Shelley Printing. Worst of all, I was expected to obtain permission from store-owners to tape in their windows this declaration of my father’s insanity.  Never before have I seen such eager accomplices.  Merchants for miles around were not only displaying the poster, but talking up the event, and planning to attend themselves. 

At dusk, my father slowly drove around to tally how many posters had been successfully hung.  Otherwise, he wasn’t necessarily lighthearted during this time.  A gravity, a serious determination had come over him.  I noticed he didn’t take second helpings at dinner. When he came home at lunch time, he did sit-ups.

In July, Dad’s coach, Linda, did actually make an appearance at our dinner table, with her husband Phil.  Dad requested that we have a low-fat meal.  So Mom made a big salad without any dressing, and set out cantaloupe halves as an hors d’oeuvre.  Linda was short, with long brown hair in a bun.  She wore a knee-length, flowery skirt which showed off a pair of uncommonly pale but taut legs.  Her calf muscles sloped and bulged like cobs of unshucked corn. 

What got me was that she really seemed to respect my dad.  “You’re in for a real treat,” she said to us, referring to the impending ice show. “Dan is a quick study.” 

My dad shook his head, smiling. “No,” he said, clearly agreeing with her. 

After dinner, he suggested we take Linda and Phil down to the basement to see how the Valentines set was coming along.  Ned and I looked immediately at one another across the table. “Oh, it doesn’t really look like anything yet, Dad.”

Many weeks before, Mom had sketched blueprints for two chubby, rosy-cheeked cherubs, their matchmaking arrows aimed to fire. We transposed these designs onto wood the best we could, but when Ned cut the cherubs out with the power saw, it was impossible for him to follow the lines, so they came out looking like blobs, or amoebas, and we hadn’t bothered to do anything to correct this, yet. 

“No reason to be so secretive,” Dad said, and started leading them down there.  Ned and I followed, and Mom went to the kitchen to wash dishes. 

I cringed as Dad held up one of the sheets of wood in the air, demonstrating how it would be elevated on a stand.  Our craftsmanship was so bad that Dad held it upside down.

Linda and Phil were polite and complimentary.  Dad was delighted. “Excellent job, guys,” he said, as we filed up the stairs.  He squeezed the back of my neck between his thick thumb and fingers. As he did so, I felt my stomach drop. My dad was sincere, he was proud.  I guess he was just pleased we’d made any headway whatsoever, or maybe he did think they looked good, an extension of his recent delusions.  Either way, I felt guilty.  I secretly vowed, no matter Ned’s stance, to give Valentines Day the attention it deserved. 

And Ned did follow my lead, I suppose for lack of anything better to do. We re-tackled the cherubs with the power saw and sand paper, ridding them of all jagged edges. It was Ned’s idea to make their arrows in the shape of three-foot skate blades.  We confiscated Dad’s skates one day while he was at work in order to commit the blade’s profile to wood.  His boots were by then deeply creased at the ankles, the sides of the blades scratched with use, the leather stinking of sweat. We copied the blades right down to the six sharp points of the toe pick, then carefully glued on a sea of silver sequins I found at the craft store. 

We attached the cherubs to their stands two days before the ice show.  They stood at attention in our basement, the paint dry and glistening.  Ned and I high-fived.  We ascended from below and plunked on the couch, as if we hadn’t seen the light of television in months.  Ned flipped channels with dexterity. Images refreshingly flashed and flitted in the TV box.  Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flicker of pink, or was it purple, rush from the bathroom to the bedroom.  I craned my neck in disbelief.  It was vaguely in the shape of a human, a male, but inconceivable that it was in our hall.  It was the color lilac, I realized, a lilac ghost I’d once called Dad. 

I stared again at the screen, watching a golf ball inch toward a hole, falter at the lip, then drop inside.  I’d been all caught up, gazing into the eyes of cherubs, and had forgotten that Dad was really going through with this grand humiliation. That’s the moment when I decided I had no choice but to become stoic: cold, hard, accepting of fate, and with impeccable posture.               

I stoically walked the same hall toward the bedroom.  I found my mother sewing at her dressing table. She had her new, wide-brimmed straw hat on her head, in anticipation of leaving for her cruise the next day. Draped over her lap was her husband’s lilac spandex.  Dad’s rigorous training had caused him to shed enough weight that his Easter Parade costume had to be taken in. As I watched my mother poke her needle in and out of that shining, pastel suit, I felt a wave of pity for the depths she’d been forced to. But she happily tapped her knee to some kind of island tune in her head.

Dad was now dressed in his white work shirt and navy pants. He primped in the mirror. “Do you think I should get a cut today after practice?” he asked her, flattening his curly hair down with his palms.

Mom glanced across the room. “It looks fine,” she assured him.

Dad dashed back to the shop.  One of the color copiers was on the fritz.  

Early the next morning, my mother left for her cruise.  Ned and I stood on the front stoop as she pulled out of the driveway with her friend Shirley.

“Bon Voyage!” Ned and I yelled as they pulled away.

Hat balanced on head, she waved from the passenger window like the Queen of England.

That afternoon, I walked over to Stewart Pond, where Rye and some of his friends were hanging out.  A girl I vaguely knew from Trigonometry tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey,” she said, “Isn’t your dad ice skating in Madison tomorrow?”  

I looked around.  Some of the guys were trying to crush beer cans with one fist. “I don’t know,” I said, and took off for the portable potties. 

“Well, I think I’m going,” she called after me. “Maybe I’ll see you there!” When I glanced back, she was chatting with a bunch of people on the hood of Rye’s old Volvo, possibly telling them about my dad. After I hid in the portable potty for a few moments with my I fingers clamped around my nose, I returned, silent and stoic, as if nothing could unsettle me.  I drank two fast beers. 

Rye gave me a ride home. When we reached my house, he said, “Give my regards to twinkle toes.” 

“Thanks,” I said, mortified. I slammed his door, then stood on the curb, reeling, as he puttered away.  This was it. 

I stomped into the house a little sunburned, a little drunk, and finally ready to tell my dad what I thought of his follies.  But the scene inside threw me off. All the rooms were dark, that awkward blue of early evening, and I found Dad on the couch by himself. The TV was on mute, showing that sitcom about four white-haired ladies in California who move in together.  Dad wasn’t laughing.  The walls around him flickered in a way that made me feel cold.  There was an open box of pizza splayed on the coffee table, three-quarters eaten, a bag of chips beside him, and a container of dip balanced on his knee.

I decided it was indignant enough, in this case, to just walk on by.  Dad didn’t even acknowledge me.  For a change, he didn’t ask where I’d been, or what “wild and crazy things” I’d been up to.  He didn’t say anything at all, didn’t even look away from the screen. I walked to the bathroom to brush the beer off my teeth, then got in bed. 

I lay there.  It was still a little bit light out.  I never went to bed that early.  I hadn’t eaten dinner.  I wondered where Ned was.  I flipped onto my other side. I could hear the crinkling of the chip bag in the living room. I remembered, suddenly, that today had been Dad’s dress rehearsal.  It was ice show eve and he was having some kind of breakdown.  I decided to get up and have some pizza. 

There was only one piece left.  The pepperoni was as dry and hard as poker chips.  Dad must have been sitting there eating for awhile.  I watched TV next to him.  The couch sagged differently than it did with Ned on it.  Dad and I didn’t laugh, we didn’t flip channels, we didn’t criticize the shape of anybody’s head.  I thought maybe I should ask him if there was anything wrong, but I couldn’t.  I only nibbled at the hard crust, wondering.

“Get the copier fixed?” I finally asked. 

Dad didn’t answer, he just looked toward the screen, but he was looking through it, not paying attention.  He pushed the power button on the remote control and the women devouring cheesecake in their kitchen disappeared.  Light from the street only partially filled the room.  I could hear myself chewing.  

“I don’t think I can do it,” he finally said, his voice flat. “It’s sold out.” He shook his head side to side. “Four thousand people, half of whom I’ll know.”  He breathed loudly out his nostrils, laughed a one-syllable laugh.     

You always hear about this point when the tables turn, when your parents don’t seem like parents anymore, but people who need support, too, when the kid is supposed to reciprocate, serve as crutch, wing, or cheerleader in a time of need.  There I was, called to the pep-talk frontlines before I’d been trained, for a cause I couldn’t condone.  This is Mom’s job, I thought. But she was on a buffet line somewhere in the Caribbean.  I examined my dad’s outline carefully; he was slumped now, his head angled toward the floor. It dawned on me that he was alone in this.

I sat up straight again, and tried to focus. In all these months, I’d wanted desperately for Dad to back out, to quit, and now that he was on the brink, I didn’t know what to do.  Frankly, I was still horrified to see him out there prancing around in the spotlight, but just then I felt as empty as I realized he’d feel if he didn’t go through with it.  I wracked my brain for something supportive to say, something to make up for my resistance all along.

I turned toward him. “But you’ve practiced,” I said.  This was one thing I had faith in, that he’d put in his dues.  It had to count for something.  I had meant to say it with conviction, like I really believed, but it came out childish and weak, almost like a question. I inhaled, tried to tap into the sincerity he’d used on me with the cherubs and countless other times throughout my 15 years.  I exhaled.  I spoke slowly, deliberately, sitting up so straight.  It was my fate to speak as if I knew the truth.

“The show must go on,” I stated with some gravity.

Dad nodded, squeezed the back of my neck. He emitted that awkward half-laugh again and cleared the coffee table of its junk food.

The next morning, I awoke to find the cherubs sparkling in the family room. Dad was in the kitchen with a half-eaten banana draped over his hand.  He was reading the local paper; I winced to see that the Holidays on Ice advertisement he’d paid for a few weeks ago took up the whole back page. He didn’t say good morning, or that we’d done a great job on the Valentine’s stuff.  In fact, he didn’t say much of anything all day.  He was skittish, with a paranoid look in his eye.

My aunt called to wish him luck, so did his friend Charlie.  “Thanks,” my dad said into the receiver, shaking his head left and right, slowly, as if he might retch.

At one point, I walked in on my Dad cleaning his hands with nail polish remover. He scrubbed at his ink-stained fingers and palms; there really was a flesh-color underneath.  Just before we left, he slicked back his hair with some of my styling gel.       

The cherubs barely fit in the back of the station wagon. I had to sit on Ned’s lap in the passenger seat and I could feel his bird legs crushing beneath me.  It wasn’t until we got to the rink parking lot that Dad uttered his first coherent words of the day.  “Here goes nothin’,” he said to the steering wheel, gripping it with his new, pink hands. 

Ned jumped out of the car, limping, claiming he’d gone numb.  Everybody waved to my dad as we carried the cherubs in.  They rushed over, they oohed and aahed.  We sat them backstage next to all the other holiday props, and I had to admit I was proud.  Next to ours, the Christmas tree looked like a weed; the Easter egg, rotten.

Ned was spotted by the show’s producer, who needed help pushing the props out in front of the curtain between holidays.  She had on a long, poofy coat and dangling earrings.  “Ever walk on ice?” She looked at his ragged sneakers. 

“No, but I walk on water all the time,” he replied then disappeared on her coat-tails. 

Dad turned toward the dressing room.  His costume was in the hanging bag hooked over his shoulder. 

“Good luck,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. I was nervous and the cold was already making me shake. 

“Thanks,” he shrugged, distracted.

I considered calling, “Break a leg!” but then I thought maybe there was too much real potential for that.    

I took a seat on the metal bleachers about half-way up at the fifty-yard line. The ice surface was dark.  Somebody in the corner of the arena was testing one of the spotlights. It circled the rink once then settled in the middle.  Soon enough, my father would be centered in that bright sphere.  Eight thousand eyeballs would be focused on him.   

The metal bench was hard as diamonds and freezing, too.  I stood to give my flesh a break.  Spectators eventually started trickling in.  I recognized a lot of them as Dad’s customers and wondered if they carpooled.  Rye’s parents greeted me, they glowed with anticipation; fortunately, Rye wouldn’t be caught dead here.   

Finally, there was a drum roll. And there were leprechauns.  Toddlers, tots, tiny kids wearing every shade of green, slid, skidded, waddled, hopped, fell then scrambled back up again. Irish music blared over the hollow sound system while they skated in no discernible pattern. The audience giggled and clapped.  If I squinted, I could imagine it was a grand old jig. Next, out came our Valentine’s cherubs - the producer had taken some artistic liberties by re-arranging the order of the holidays. A syrupy love song crooned while a pair couple gazed into one another’s eyes. The man balanced the woman above his head in sundry positions.  Then Santa made an appearance. You could tell it was a girl under that big costume, because of the white skates.  At the end of her routine, she climbed into a chimney somebody had made out of a refrigerator box and a stepladder. Soon after that, a gang of witches raced and leapt to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller!”

At last, I could see Ned, in the dark, pushing the large, pastel Easter egg into place.  I was chilled and suddenly covered in goose bumps.  The spotlights came on in a flash, illuminating a line of posing ladies.  They were clad in gowns of peach and powder-blue and held parasols above their heads, in that shade of lilac I knew too well.  The music started. It stopped with a glip.  It was then rewound, and started again. 

The ladies posed before the curtain, then changed poses, in time with the gush of violins and flutes.  They were still lined up in a row.  The music built and expanded like an artificial lung. Then, a deep, baritone voice began, “In your Easter bonnet…” One of the spotlights centered on the crease of the curtain.  Surely there are certain steps to be taken before the apocalypse, I thought, maybe sacraments or vows. I could only clench my jaw, bottom teeth strained against top, and revert to my impenetrable stoicism.  I rooted my spine straight on that frozen bench, bracing myself.      

He appeared in the light, his arms outstretched before him, as if welcoming the whole audience into his humble presence.  As, “…with all your frills upon it,” lilted, he wove between each and every lady, politely kissing their gloved hands, then stopped before one and offered her his arm.  She gently placed her parasol into the arms of the woman next to her, and off they went onto the large expanse of ice.

I swallowed stale saliva.  Reminded myself to breathe. 

It became gradually clear that my dad was a gentleman.  He looked debonair.  His tux wasn’t an Italian cut or anything, but aside from its color, it looked all right. He was almost svelte.  He held himself with the dignified air of any self-respecting parade Marshall. He switched from lady to lady, giving them each their time in the spotlight. I glanced over and saw Ned’s face peeking out from the side of the curtain.                                                                                                

I temporarily forgot Dad was skating, that he was on ice skates.  He wasn’t spinning like a foolish top, he was snaking all over the place with perfect, unwavering balance, switching from forward to back then back to forward with consecutive three-turns and mohawks and he was making it look effortless, like he was ballroom dancing.  I wondered, as I watched him out there, if he’d ever been dancing before, if he and Mom had danced like this at their wedding.  Right now, I wished that she was also seeing this.

Dad’s crescendo arrived: the moment the music, the evening, the last several months had been building to.  The group lined up like a can-can troupe and, across the whole length of the rink, they swung their legs in unison, not with high kicks, but mature leg flourishes.  My dad was not connected to them.  He was out in front, the leading man.  “Swing. Roll. Swing. Roll,” I said under my breath.  It was like a higher form of skipping. He was gleeful.       

The women gathered around my father for the choreographed curtsy at the end.  He presented them first, like a gracious host.  Then he lowered himself onto one knee and dropped his head in appreciation for the uproarious applause, the unanimous acclaim.  Some people were starting to stand, others were whistling. 

I was caught up in the moment.  My arm shot involuntarily into the air - I wanted him to smile at me, over here - it waved spastically for a split second before I could return it to its rightful place on my lap. That’s my dad, I thought, That’s my dad.

                                                           THE END