it.
Yeah, you paid for it all.
But
I
sacrificed
myself.
And now we find out
I
did it
for
nothing.
But
it was
me.”
Knock, knock.
“Not now,” Mom and I yell together.
“Clare? Martha?” It’s Dad.
I gulp.
“It’s okay, Dad.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Call me
if either of you
need me.”
“Okay,” we say.
“I can’t believe
you are doing this to me, Clare.”
Mom starts crying.
“This was mine, too.
I wanted it.”
“For me or yourself?” I hiss.
“For you,” she sobs.
I turn to her dark shape.
“What do I have
if it wasn’t my dream?
What, Clare?
Nothing.
I have nothing without this.”
“Maybe you’ve never had
anything, then, Mom.”
“No, I did.
I had this dream for you.”
“For me?
Prove it.
Say dancing was my dream.
Say it.”
“Dancing was … ”
“See? You can’t even do that for me.
You want to fix this, Mom?
Admit dancing was mine.”
I blow out air
and lean back against the wall.
She’s hopeless.
She’s so wrapped up in what I do
she can’t separate herself.
She is
as bad as Willow’s mother.
Who is
my mom?
It’s like she wants to be me,
or us,
not herself.
What kind of weird psycho head game
is this?
She keeps crying.
Mumbling.
I sit there.
My clock flips by
sixteen minutes.
Long ones.
“Dancing
was …
your dream …
Clare,”
Mom sputters.
She crumbles to her knees
and crawls over to me.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” she cries.
“For real, Mom?”
She hugs me tightly.
I let her,
then hug her back
a little.
“Your dream,
your dream,” Mom keeps whispering
in my ear.
Rocking me back and forth.
“I did do nothing.
But watch
and root
and pay.
You are the one
who worked as hard as possible.
You
are
the dancer, Clare.
Not me.”
Well,
not a dancer.
But it sounds like she heard me.
Un-be-lievable.
She lets go,
gets up,
and flicks on the light.
We blink hard,
look down and away
from each other.
We sit on opposite ends
of my bed.
“Really, Mom?”
She nods.
“You get it?”
“Yes.”
“But why all of a sudden—”
“I’m your mother.
You’re my baby.
It’s taken your entire life
for me to see you separately.
I always knew you were independent,
but never faced
that you are an individual.
Till tonight. It’s so hard, Clare.
Maybe you’ll understand
if you have a child.
The drive is incredibly strong
to keep your baby
tight and close
so she stays a part of you.
How she started out.”
Big tears run down her face,
but she doesn’t wipe them off.
Isn’t it?” she says.
“Yeah.”
It’s like we survived a tornado.
Everything feels blown to pieces,
but there’s peace.
Quiet peace
between me
and my mom.
“Now that that is over,
and a long time coming, I imagine,
you have to promise to
tell me
about this kind of thing
sooner, Clare.”
Oh, fun.
“So then,
can you please
tell me about the audition, honey?”
“Ugh!”
She’s incredible.
Right back to the dead horse.
“Mom,” I whine.
“No, I really want to hear.
I missed out.
I want to know what you went through
every second.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you, Clare.”
No answer to that.
So, after dragging out the stall
as long as possible,
I tell her how the audition went,
step by step.
She listens,
and glows with the excitement
and moans at the end
when I’m puking
after talking to Madame.
She listens to everything
about the hospital, too.
I can’t believe it.
This is like talking to Rosella.
My mom wants every detail,
and she really does root for me
every second.
And there’s no competition between us.
Weird.
Knock.
Dad opens the door and looks in.
Grandpa is peeking over his arm.
“Everything okay in here, ladies?” asks Dad.
“Fine,” I say.
“Are you behaving yourself, Martha?” Grandpa
pushes into the room.
“Dad!” says Mom.
“Can I take that as a yes, then?”
She throws a pillow at him.
He catches it,
tosses it back to me,
and rubs his hands together.
“Well, how about some ice cream, then?”
“Yeah, how about it?” Dad grins.
“We’ll be right there,” says Mom.
The four of us look at each other.
It’s so intense,
the feeling of okay,
I get goosebumps.
Mom’s right there
to rub my arms.
I wash off my face
in the bathroom.
Is it for real?
Does Mom really believe
dancing was my dream?
That I’m a separate person?
How do you ever know
what someone’s
thinking deep down?
They
might not even know.
Maybe she only wants
her peaceful,
everyone-happy
family.
So,
is it for real?
I can kind of see,
in a little tiny way,
she had a dream
for me.
Her dream
was that my dream
would come true.
Neither of ours
did.
At the table
we dig into our French vanilla ice cream.
Dad gave me a c
ouple of giant scoops.
“So, what do you want to do now, Clare?”
Mom asks.
“Martha,” Dad and Grandpa say.
“What?”
“It’s okay.” I let the coolness slip down my throat
before I go on.
“I don’t know.”
Grandpa looks over the top of his glasses at me.
“Madame told me Clare is a dancer.
She told Clare that herself.”
“Huh. I really don’t remember that.”
I take another big bite. “It’s strange now.”
“How?” asks Dad.
“Well,
it’s like I don’t even know who I am
without ballet lessons.”
Our spoons clink in the bowls.
“We’ve—” Mom starts.
I look at her.
“You’ve
done it so long,
I can see why.” She scoops her last bite
and swallows it.
“It’s going to be hard
to separate yourself
from ballet, Clare.
It’s what you’ve always done.”
I shrug and lick my spoon clean.
She sticks out her tongue
and licks her bowl spotless.
Grandpa and Dad do too.
I crack up.
Sometimes the unexpected
makes you laugh.
The guys tidy up the kitchen.
Mom leans her elbows on the table.
“Maybe I took your dream, Clare,
because I never had one of my own,”
she whispers.
She gets up and goes to the kitchen
before I can say
anything.
Get to sleep.
I flip over.
Not fit for classical ballet
is what I remember Madame saying.
Not good enough for New York.
Go to sleep.
I turn over.
Not have lessons
ever again?
Sleep!
I tug at the twisted sheets.
What am I
if I don’t take ballet classes?
Who am I?
If I don’t learn to dance,
will another dream come?
Do I want another?
Maybe it’s like falling asleep.
You can’t make yourself do it,
but it happens.
And then
you dream.
“Clare.”
Someone’s shaking my arm.
“Clare.” Dad sits on the edge
of my bed.
“What?” I sit up. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry to wake you,
but your mother said
you called yourself a failure tonight.”
“Uh, yeah.
City Ballet, Dad?”
“Clare, whenever I said
failure’s not in your future,
I didn’t mean
not getting what you want
makes you a failure.”
I rub my eyes. “What?”
“I meant as long as you’re trying,
you’re succeeding.
If someone else says you don’t make
City Ballet,
that doesn’t mean
you’re a failure.”
Did Dia’s mom try this one on her?
“All that hard work will yield something,
even if
it’s not what you expected.”
I scoot down under my sheets.
“I don’t know, Dad.
I should have tried more.”
“That’s not what this was about.
It was about your height, Clare.
You can’t control that.”
“I wish.”
“There’s so little we can control, Clare.
The best we can do
is accept the situation,
learn from it,
and go on.
I mean it.”
“Dad, can I go back to sleep?”
“All right.” He kisses my forehead.
“But think about what I said. Okay?”
“Sure.”
Did he make all that stuff up
so I wouldn’t feel so bad?
But if I had tried harder
I could have been a superstar,
and my stupid height
wouldn’t have mattered.
I squint in the dark
and pull the sheet to my nose.
Face it.
I tried as hard as I could.
I don’t have
enough talent
inside me.
Mija
jumps onto
my bed
and curls
against
my neck.
I hiccup
into her old warm fur,
until
I fall
back
to sleep.
I follow Grandpa to the front door.
“Your folks said they’d be back around 5:00.
What are your plans today, Clare?”
“I’m going to walk down to the used bookstore.
I thought it would be nice
to get lost in a good, thick fantasy.”
“Excellent idea.”
“Don’t tell Dad.
He always says he can get whatever book I want.
But it’s fun to find something on my own.”
“Understandable.”
Grandpa gets his walking stick and a book. “You
want to meet for tea
at the coffee shop at 3:00?”
“Sure. I’ll meet you there.”
“Perfect.” He opens the front door.
“You going for a hike, Grandpa?”
“No. A walk on the trail
around Bonney Lake after my book club.”
“Have fun.”
“You too.” He kisses my cheek
and pulls the door closed behind him.
In A Good Book used bookstore,
I sit on my knees and
pull an old dance magazine
from the bottom of the pile.
This thing is ancient,
with Deirdre Carberry on the cover.
I promised myself I’d come in here
to get a fantasy novel to read.
But I can at least
look
at the dance magazines.
I flip through the pages
and Carberry performs a pas de deux
with Baryshnikov
from one picture to the next.
Perfectly.
Before I know it,
I’m bawling.
It feels like my ribs
are squeezing so tight,
my heart is going to be punctured.
I hold the magazine to my chest
and lean against the cold metal rack.
I cry and sway
without a sound.
I’m turned inside out
and there’s nothing there
to show.
Keeping my face down,
I step up to the counter
with my book
and dance magazine.
At least this place is empty.
Maybe no one saw me losing it.
I smooth out the book cover
and clunk my money down.
“Clare?”
Elton’s walking toward me
behind the counter!
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“It’s my summer job.”
“Cool,” I answer. “My parents own
the In Print bookstore.”
“Now that’s cool.”
I smile, then remember
how absolutely embarrassed I am
about my life.
It gushes to my face.
I look down.
“Sorry about you not making the company,”
Elton says.
“I thought for sure you would.”
“Thanks,” I mumble. “Congratulations
for making it.”
“Thanks.”
He rings up my total on the cash register
and takes my money.
“I waited around for you, Clare,
after the audition,
to talk to you about it.
But I never saw you.”
“Yeah, it took me awhile
to, you know,
get it together.”
“Sure.”
He hands me my change.
His warm palm
brushes against my weak hand.
I pick up my stuff
and turn to go.
“Do you want a bag?”
“Um, no thanks.”
“Don’t stop, Clare,” he says.
“What?” I turn back.
“Don’t stop dancing.”
“But Madame kicked me out of class.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re a dancer.”
I stare at him.
“Take the adult class,” he says.
“It’s not bad, sometimes I—”
“Why would I ever?”
“Because you love to dance.”
I hurry out the door.
Elton
gets me all jumbled up.
But I can’t keep from smiling.
That’s really nice
that he’d still talk to me
even though I didn’t make the company.
He was always different
from everyone else in class.
The clock on the bank says 2:15.
I can stop at the park
for a while.
I walk down the block
and refuse to look over at the conservatory.
I bet it’s the little preschool class working now.
Learning their positions.
Stopping in front of the portraits of Madame.
Dreaming about wearing tutus.
Daydreaming—
yikes! Like me.
I start walking again.
And leave the conservatory
behind.
The magazine says
Deirdre studied dance in Miami, Florida,
in the 1970s.
Before she went to New York and danced with ABT
and Baryshnikov.
I bet the Miami school is like our
conservatory.
Wow. Willow could really make it
like Deirdre did.
She could be the one
to catch her dream.
If her mom doesn’t get in the way.
You go, girl.
I stretch out my legs in the grass.
The maple moves shade on and off my magazine.
This edition is so old,
I bet most of these people aren’t dancing on stage
anymore.
Even when you do make it to the top,
ballet is a short career.
Kids are swarming the playground area.
“Got you!
You’re it!”
“Mommy, look at me!”
calls a little girl from the top of the monkey bars.
Her mom stands below.
“My, aren’t we good climbers?”
No,
she is.
The little girl who did the climbing
is the good climber.
Not you, lady.