Our Last Dance

Spring 1942

Katt had chosen the yellow dress with the short sleeves from the Sears catalog. She’d saved up for months. Using babysitting money, birthday money, and money from her part time job at Mason‘s Hardware. Her grandmother had chosen a pattern and wanted to sew her a dress. But that dress was pink and fru-fru. Katt had told her grandmother she was eighteen years old, not eight.

When Thomas came to the door he whistled appreciatively.

“Yowsa! Katt, you look like an actual girl!”

Katt was not certain how to take that comment. She kissed him lightly and then grabbed the corsage he‘d brought for her and pinned it to her chest.

Her grandmother insisted on taking their picture with her ancient camera. They complied, anxious to be in the car alone.

Katt was sure the crepe paper decorations in the gym were lovely and that the Home Economics department had done a marvelous job with the cookies. She didn’t really notice. She was oblivious to everyone around her except Thomas.

She twirled about the dance floor in the yellow dress, wrapped in Thomas’s arms. She barely noticed the other couples dancing around them, or that their favorite song “Always“ played on a donated record player. She was only aware of herself and Thomas and the heat between them.

When he suggested they go outside, Katt could not agree fast enough. She took his hand as they raced through the gymnasium.

They grabbed two paper cups full of punch and escaped to a woodsy area behind the school. Thomas had a flask filled with corn liquor hidden in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He poured a generous amount into each of their cups.

She had never had alcohol before and expected a bitter taste. But once the liquor blended with the punch, she could barely taste it. In fact, she asked Thomas for another shot.

“Easy, Katt. You’re not a drinker!”

“I had a sip of wine at my cousin‘s wedding once. We are eighteen. It’s time we acted like adults.”

Thomas lit a cigarette and offered her one but she would not take it. Drinking was bad enough. Her father would not take kindly to his daughter coming home smelling like smoke. Eighteen or not.

In less than two months they would graduate. Thomas would be off to Navy boot camp before summer ended. Half the boys in their class had enlisted after Pearl Harbor and were already gone. Thomas had promised his mother he would finish school first.

“Katt, I need to ask you something. Why don’t we get married this summer? What‘s stopping us? We’re old enough. We love each other. Why not?”

He was staring at her in her bright yellow dress, her brown hair falling about in waves around her shoulders. She had applied face powder and lipstick tonight. These were things she normally did not do. There was love in his eyes. Katt took that for granted sometimes.

She had wanted to marry Thomas Gilbert since they were nine years old and running back and forth on the muddy path between their houses. People said it was natural that they’d fall together. Katt had no mama and Thomas had no daddy. They filled the gaps in one another’s lives. Katt’s dad took them both fishing and taught Thomas to play catch. Thomas’s mama taught Katt how to make cupcakes.

Katt was quite taken aback with all of this. Lord, she had not been expecting this at the Senior Spring Fling.

“Why not isn’t a valid reason to get married, Thomas. We aren’t ready, financially or otherwise. I applied to nursing school in Chicago. I was going to tell you later tonight.”

Katt’s sister had taken a secretarial job in Chicago and loved the city. Her letters home were full of details about her new friends and the exciting night life. Katt wasn’t interested in all of that, but living in the city might be fun for a while.

“So? You can still do that. If not now, someday. I want to know I have you to come back to, Katt.”

”You will have me to come back to either way, Thomas. I love you. I don’t want to get married yet. I am so sorry.”

They barely spoke the rest of the night. When Thomas dropped her off, he did not hold the car door open the way he usually did.

She went upstairs as soon as she got home, not even stopping to talk to her father. She took off her dress and left it in a heap on the bedroom floor.

She had a fitful night, alternating between crying and dreaming about a future with Thomas.

She wanted a life with him. A house. A little farm. A bunch of loud, rowdy kids.

She dreamed of Thomas with his goofy smile. He was so kind to his young nieces and nephews and said he wanted to be a teacher one day.

Thomas, who was her heart.

In the morning, she dressed quickly and ran the path to the Gilbert’s house.

He scowled at her at first when he answered the door. Well, he did have a right to be mad at her.

”What are you doing here, Katt?”

“To say, yes. Yes, I will marry you this summer.”

They were married two weeks after graduation in the Gilbert’s back yard. Katt wore her mother’s wedding gown, repaired and altered my Katt’s sister and her new mother in law. They had a brief honeymoon in Wisconsin and then Thomas was off to boot camp.

Katt still went to nursing school, but in nearby Danville and not Chicago. Everyone was being told to do their part for the war effort and becoming a nurse was doing her part.

Fifty years later

After Thomas had passed, Katt was in a vintage store with her daughter when she came upon a yellow dress that looked exactly like the one from the Sears catalog she’d worn so many years ago. She was so overcome she burst into tears, collapsing on the floor.

“Mom, are you okay? Should I call someone?” her daughter Francine asked.

“I’m fine, Frannie. I was just thinking about your father. And our Last Dance.”