Portia Steele Award Organization(c)

First Place Winner, Prose

Jullia
by
By Rosemary Woodel
Bishop, GA.

At Julia’s Wedding Reception

The band plays Cajun waltzes for the bride, groom and guests – accomplished and fervent dancers. I’m standing on the edge of it all, anxious to dance, but finishing a piece of the groom’s chocolate cake. Helene, who drove here with me, is sitting across the hall with a covey of women in their sixties.

Leo stands near me, tending to his wife, Jenny. Leo leans toward her with loving eyes. “Do you want your sweater from the car?” he asks.

“No,” she says. “You dance.”

When he reaches for my hand to lead the next waltz, I say, “I haven’t finished eating my last bite of cake. You’d tell me if I had chocolate on my mouth, right?”

“No. I’d lick it off,” he says with twinkling eyes. I nearly swoon, imagining that.

“It is delicious cake,” I say, just in case he was thinking with his stomach.

“But that’s not why I’d do it, because of the cake...”

What a flirt! As if I were truly desirable. God bless you, Leo.

Our dance is almost passionate. Leo holds me (and other women) so that we have maximum body contact. Some of his chubby stomach molecules mingle with mine. A master of the hesitation step, he holds me back with the tension of not-moving.

I’m excruciatingly aware of Leo’s smiling wife sitting nearby, dancing through us. Jenny was a lovely dancer who wore high heels to show off her shapely legs. Now she is so fragile, light from the window shines through her. Cancer has taken her substance but not her love of life.

On the dance floor I think, “Leo is so kind to flirt with me.” I nearly miss a step while I’m in my head so I stop thinking. We waltz. I’m glad to be alive. I’m full of joy, dancing for me and for Jenny too. Afterward I hug Jenny’s boney shoulders when I come to her with wedding cake. She says, “I love watching you dance.”

I lead a waltz with Donia, who pronounces that I am her best lead of the day. And with Peggy, who says there are not nearly enough men dancing.

“That’s why women need to lead,” I say.

“I can’t lead,” she says.

“I learned how because I would rather dance with another woman than sit on the side waiting for a man to ask me.”

I am ready to proclaim further, but Peggy says, “That’s smart. It’s such great exercise. But when you get to be in your seventies, only the kindest men ask you to dance. I’m all wrinkled up now so I can understand why the younger men don’t ask me.”

“You’re not much older than I am and you look terrific, Peggy. You always look so elegant to me.”

“That’s because I wear long sleeves and skirts to cover up my saggy, baggy elephant skin.”

“Oh, Peggy. Hush up and dance.”