The short story “Dancing to Nat King Cole” is written by the British writer James Wall, and was first published in the online magazine The Front View in 2013.
The short story takes place in UK, and is about a couple named Charles and Katherine, one day when they are sitting down in their kitchen and enjoying a delicious breakfast, their daughter Rebecca calls, and asks if they are free for launch, so she can join them, Katherine says yes and tells Charles about it. When Rebecca arrives Charles welcomes her with a surprised face, and asks her why she did not call before she came over, at that point we have an idea that he might suffer some sort of dementia. Later in the story, when he smokes in the restaurant, even thug he have been told time, after time that it is not allowed, makes us positive that he is seek. But it is first in the ending part of the story, where he forgets his own wife; we get sure that he must have some sort of dementia.
The main character in the story is Katherine. Katherine is a caring and faithful wife, with a sick husband. She is an independent woman, who not only takes care of herself but also her husband who have some sort of dementia. She keeps all the suffering for herself and tries to protect her daughter from being a part of the pain. When her daughter Rebecca asks about Charles and how he is, she lies and says: “he is fine” (p. 2, l. 56). Even thug she is a strong women, it seems like she slightly are giving up: “His anger makes her start, like tasting sour milk (…)” (p. 5, l. 146), and she dreams about a day where she wakes up and there is no one in the house besides her: “In her mind, she sees the bathroom, her toothbrush in the glass by the mirror, the bedroom with her bed neatly made. Her breakfast cup and saucer are on the kitchen table, and the clock ticks on the wall above it. In the living room, a thin line of smoke is rising from the last cigarette (…)” (p. 5, l. 171-174). In this line everything is hers, her toothbrush, her bed, her breakfast, the only thing that is Charles is the “Last” cigarette. She seeks some peace, which she fully deserves.
From that day we open our eyes, we see our parents as our heroes, role models that can help us at any circumstances, and will always be there if we need them. So from the very beginning we start to relate to our parents, and do what they are doing, eat what they are eating, behave the way they are behaving. But that is only for some time, when the years are going by, and the little baby becomes a young kid, he starts to relate to his environment, his classmates, friends, superstars and so on. But the biggest change happens when the kid, becomes a young man, then he starts to be the one other people relate to, and slightly stops to seeing his parents with the same eyes as he did when he was a kid. He stops seeing his parents as superheroes and starts to see them as regular human beings with problems and issues, and the relation they had will slightly disappear. Now the young man tries to help his parents, instead of them helping him. And that is exactly what Rebecca tries to do, she tries to ask her mother Katherine, how her father is developing and when Katherine says he is fine, she does not believe it and says that he looks worse than ever.
Life is difficult, you can either embrace it and live with it, or try to fight it and maybe if you are lucky your will succeed. And that is exactly what Katherine tries to do.
