“What kind of dance?” Hannah narrows her eyes, looking between us.
“You know Ollie teaches dance,” I tell her.
“Ballet?” She examines him.
“Not ballet.”
“My friend Fiona does Irish step dancing,” Hannah says.
“I do not know Irish step dancing.”
Hannah frowns. “Tap dance?”
“No, but I can tap dance,” he says. He catches my delighted look and shakes his head. “No.”
“I will give you one of these very nice grapefruit seltzers if you demonstrate some tap dancing for us.”
“Oh, is that how things are going to be?”
“Please?” Hannah says. “I want to see you tap dance.”
He sighs and looks around. “I feel like a smudge-nosed 1920s shoeshine boy.” He does a quick little tap dance for us, about thirty seconds long.
“I couldn’t hear the tapping,” Hannah sighs. “But good otherwise.”
“Oh, thank you.”
“He teaches swing dance,” I say. “West Coast Swing.”
Hannah demands an explanation, and Ollie takes my hand to demonstrate just as the band starts up. Hannah watches us for a few moments, then jumps out of her seat.
“Teach me,” she says. “Mommy’s not good.”
Ollie laughs and gives me a glance to get permission, then begins to teach Hannah some steps. It reminds me of two years ago in the conference room at work: Hannah is an absolute sponge for his attention, and I can see right away that Ollie is not going to get a chance to sit down anytime soon.
He runs her through three separate twists, and then she tells him to spin her as many times in a row as he possibly can. He counts them off for her. “Ready? One, two, three, four…”
She gets dizzy and stops after seven times.
“It’s harder on concrete,” he says. “You need a slippery floor to get up to ten.”
“I can’t work in these conditions,” Hannah says wearily, sitting back down. I think of Abby; that’s a phrase that probably originated with my sister.
“Laura?” Ollie smiles at me. “I know you’re not as good as Hannah, but do you want a turn?”
I smile and concede to dance with him for a minute or two before I step back. Hannah is looking at us suspiciously.
“Can we go to the playground now?”
“Let’s eat first,” I reply. Hannah wolfs down her sandwich and announces that she is ready to go.
“Hannah,” I say, “why don’t you read or color for a minute while the rest of us finish eating?”
For some reason, I want to prove to Ollie that my daughter actually does read books; she isn’t a feral creature who insistson having her way all the time. But she’s not letting me have that small victory. She flatly refuses to read any of the books I’ve brought and then starts begging for more time on her Nintendo, arguing that there’s no real difference between letting her use it in the car and letting her use it in the park, which makes more sense than I can admit to.
“There are squirrels here,” I say. “See if you can find their hiding places in the trees.”
“That’s boring,” she wails.
