by, dancing with Margaret, his face red from fighting with his aunt. Margaret was still light on her feet, even in her heavy black Cuban heels, her horrid nun shoes. “Dad’s turning over in his grave at that sight,” Mark said, but his brother had already moved away from him. Tommy tapped James on the shoulder and cut in, grabbing his sister with a grin. “Oh, good,” Margaret said. “You’re a much better dancer.”
Tommy and Margaret had learned to dance together, in the basement of the big house, with Tommy Dorsey on the radio. Lightly they circled the room. “Are you all right?” he finally said.
Margaret frowned. “I think so,” she said. “I think I was going through a little temporary insanity this summer. Or puberty.”
“I thought we already had puberty,” Tommy said.
Margaret looked up into his flushed and boyish face. “I think our whole lives are puberty,” she said. “I think we all have to grow up again and again. Isn’t that depressing?”
“It’s crazy, is what it is.” Tommy dipped her so her veil hung straight to the floor as the last notes died away. “Leave the convent. Come back and be my sister again.”
“You’re drunk, Tom,” Margaret said, laughing. “Beside, you just want me to move in with Mother. Go dance with your wife.” But when the band began to play again, Tommy recognized the song after the first few notes, and shook his head. He kissed his sister, smoothed his hair with his hand, and crossed the room to his daughter. He was just drunk enough to feel like Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
“They’re playing our song,” he said to Maggie.
She flushed an unbecoming red and turned to the boy, who ducked his head again. Tommy was surprised when the kid looked up suddenly, his lip with its fuzz of facial hair working, and thrust out his hand. “Hello, Mr. Scanlan,” he said. “I understand you are a fine basketball player. Maybe some day we can have a game.” Without waiting for a response he turned and walked away, disappearing into the great expanse of tables, chairs, flower arrangements, and drunken Irishmen. Once he looked back over his shoulder at Maggie. “Jesus, what the hell was that all about?” Tommy asked. And turning to Maggie he said, “Isn’t that the kid whose mother died two years ago?”
“His name is Bruce,” Maggie said.
“Can he really play decent ball?” said Tommy. Then he remembered why he had gone to her and he held out his arms. Monica and her father were already dancing, the bride’s train thrown over her arm, a little soiled where it had dragged on the ground on her way into church. Monica looked over her father’s shoulder, and he looked over hers. They looked like an illustration in a woman’s magazine: That Special Day.
Tommy turned to Maggie and gathered her up, gliding around the floor, circling the other couple with long, graceful steps. Every fourth step he would spin, holding Maggie’s fingers in his lightly. He felt good, covering the polished parquet, his shoulders squared. He looked down at Maggie, whose pink dress belled out behind her slightly, but she was looking down at her feet.
“Don’t look at your feet,” he said.
“I can’t follow if I don’t,” she said.
“Stand on mine,” Tommy said. “I can take it.”
“Daddy, I’m wearing high heels. I’m too big to stand on your feet.”
“Then close your eyes,” he said. “Close your eyes and don’t think about it.”
Maggie tilted her head back and shut her eyes; the lights made copper spots on her hair, and little sparks shone from the amethysts dangling from her earlobes. Tommy kept his arm tight around her waist and turned again, and now she was finally following him. She could not dance like her mother, but she was making a creditable show. As his eyes passed, only half-seeing, over the tables ringing the dance floor, he could tell that people were watching them. He dipped her once, spun, dipped her again, and still she kept her eyes tightly closed and her torso limp and pliable. Tommy began to sing along with the band:
You’re the spirit of Christmas,
My star on the tree,
You’re the Easter Bunny to mommy and me,
You’re sugar,
You’re spice,
You’re everything nice,
And you’re Daddy’s little girl.
He sang all the way through to the end of the song, and when it was over James and Monica walked away from each other and Maggie and Tommy just stood there for a moment. Even after the music ended, she waited a