He rolled over until I saw his mischievous smile. I’d sent him to the well-rated public school around the corner where he did well enough on the power of his brain, but his learning style made him rebel against the structure. Mom and I found him a progressive, project-based, experimental school that ate through money like a piranha but made him happy.
“Half a day,” he said. “Math in the afternoon. Then we did flower-sniffing.”
“Flower-sniffing?” He was joking, but I had to get mad. That was the routine. He was doing all the geography and algebra a kid needed to do.
“And tomorrow we have ‘cultural pluralism’ all day!”
“Cultural what?”
“We sing ‘Kumbaya.’”
He said it with half a laugh. When I got back from the first open house, I called it a “Kumbaya school,” and he begged to go. None of his friends were there. He wasn’t trying to fit into a group. He wanted more art. He wanted to be in a school where they worked to understand him. I figured a little squishy left-wing arm-linking wouldn’t kill him.
I tickled him and kissed his face.
“What’s this about Jerry’s Wi-Fi?”
“I wanted to check something on the internet, and his password was really vulnerable to a brute-force attack. I emailed him and told him how to fix it.”
“After you used his bandwidth.”
“I needed to look something up for homework.”
“We have books.”
He rolled his eyes. I didn’t know how to fight against Google-ization. The rock I was rolling up the hill got heavier and heavier, and the boy was getting too old to boss around. He was just starting to exhibit manly stink. The air in his room was getting particularly thick.
“Did you shower before bed?”
“Morning,” he said, eyes half-closed. He held up his fist.
“Size of my heart,” he said.
I held up my fist. “Still bigger.”
We bumped knuckles to prove we loved each other as much as a heart could.
“I love you, Dad.”
“I love you too, kid. Now get to sleep.”
CHAPTER 12
EMILY
I woke up with a headache. Not a nagging pain that would go away but a dense throb that felt like a cinder block duct-taped to the left side of my head. Add a side of nausea, and bang: recipe for my morning.
After coffee and three ibuprofen, the cinder block turned red brick, and the nausea came out as the star of the show, took a bow, and wouldn’t leave center stage. I showered, dressed, and got to work only slightly grumpy.
The morning sun blasted through the windows and went right into my brain. The early birds were at the craft services table or checking equipment. I grabbed a piece of bread to soak up whatever my insides were producing too much of.
“Good morning,” Carter said as he poured fresh coffee into his Starbucks cup. I grumbled a polite response. I had more to say, but I didn’t know what he deserved. Thanks for the kiss? An insult for cutting me off at that? Praise for a solid lip-lock?
“I went to Vince’s place last night.”
Every muscle tightened. I didn’t expect him to mention my psycho ex. My entire body tingled with adrenaline.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.” He stirred his coffee. “From across the street, he seems like a standard-issue douchebag.”
“He’s much worse up close.”
“I bet.” Pensively, he tossed the stirrer in the bin.
I had moves to practice before everyone arrived, but I couldn’t just walk away.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“You want to know how I could be with him.”
“You’re way out of his league.”
“Good to know you won’t question my looks as easily as you’ll question my judgment.”
I stormed off before he could answer. I didn’t want him to defend himself, and I didn’t want to apologize. I didn’t want to hear about how pretty I was or whatever he had in his mind.
Mostly, I didn’t want to get to the true fact. My judgment sucked.
All the signs had been there. I was out of his league, sure. Whatever. He turned his polo collars up and wore his hats backward. He had a drawerful of sweatpants he found appropriate to every situation. He laughed at other people’s misfortunes and took personal offense when someone went the speed limit in the left lane.
All that was true, and I hadn’t seen it.
He was nice to me. He acted as if he were the luckiest guy in the world. He said he won the lottery with me. Blah blah. When another man looked at me, he went wild with jealousy. I had to peel him off a guy at Cat’s Cradle. I blamed the alcohol. But when I was supposed to meet him at the Arclight and I ran into my uncle before Vince arrived, it stopped being cute. My uncle Jim was a fascinating guy. He worked at JPL designing updates to the Hubble telescope and played oboe in the NASA orchestra.
Vince jumped him. He had him on the ground while I screamed, “He’s my uncle, he’s my uncle!”
And oh, the tears. And the begging for forgiveness. And the self blame. He was a picture of contrition. Stupid me. I fell for it, but I made sure to stay away from other men in casual conversation. I introduced him to every male dancer ahead of time so he could shake their hand too tight and glare at them.
And that seemed normal enough. He was still nice to me. More or less. Kind of normal. I figured the honeymoon phase didn’t last in any relationship. I’d tried to explain that to Darlene, who was the product of an abusive father. She wagged her finger at me. She said guuurl a lot and told me she’d be there for me when he went too far. I said I was okay a million times.
I was a frog in boiling water. Everything seemed fine, a little different but tolerable, until it wasn’t. He had everything in the world to say about how much skin I should show when I rehearsed and how I touched the other dancers. His tone got angry and threatening often enough but not all the time. I kept going back to those moments when he was honored to be with me. When I needed him to be 50 percent nicer, he gave me 45 percent. I accepted that.
Then, like a frog in a pot, I realized it was too fucking hot and I was going to get eaten for dinner.
Looking back and seeing how stupid I’d been was a bad habit. Every time I had to look behind me, every time I wouldn’t go on a date because I was afraid he’d come for the guy, every time I refused an unknown number, I beat myself raw. I was a stupid, stupid woman with shitty judgment who was living the life she deserved. There was no chance I could go back to singing either. He’d see me. I couldn’t be seen. I’d paid a price to leave him and to be with him. I’d paid for being stupid, and the price had been my career.
That punitive loop ran in my brain all day long. Even watching the dancers, training Darlene, and trying to avoid Carter’s motherfucking piercing blue eyes, I ran that loop.
I was in denial that I deserved anything good at all, and the denial was such a habit I didn’t know there was another way to live.
It took a lot of concentration to berate myself and choreograph a major production at the same time. When the dozen red roses arrived, I didn’t even see them. They just sat on the piano until Darlene stopped after a turn, nailing the move.
“Excellent!” I shouted.
“Whose are those?” she demanded.
Monty snapped the card off and handed it to Darlene. I assumed they were for her.
She closed the envelope and pointed to me.