“Robert? I’m your father.” He waits for the accusations—“then act like it”—but I won’t give him the satisfaction. He sets down the menu. The woman at the adjacent table hears the deep pinch in his voice and looks over at us. He clears his throat and leans forward. “Are we getting dessert tonight?”
“I’m a ballerina.”
“Are you going to still be a ballerina?” he asks, his words clipped. I’ve clearly hit a nerve. “Your mother told me about the school’s decision, Bette.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Head high and eyes straight ahead, I make sure not to look away. He taught me that. “You all of a sudden care now what happens to me?”
“I’ve always cared.”
“Then where have you been?”
His wide shoulders seem to jump with what I can only assume is surprised humiliation. I think about saying something to smooth over the anger, but my mind fills with other mean things to say instead. Since he left, our relationship has been a series of missed dinners and empty apologies and bank deposits.
“Your mother can make things quite difficult.” He puts a hand under his chin, like the words coming out of him are too heavy for even his firm mouth to handle.
“Mom is difficult. No, she’s terrible. And you left us there with her.” I clutch the locket around my neck. It was his grandmother’s. He gave it to me for my thirteenth birthday. My hands are shaky. The buzz of the pill is finally settling in and I am hyperfocused on the way he looks at me, the fact that he opens and closes his mouth more times than words actually come out.
A flicker of guilt flutters in my chest as I think about what it must’ve been like to be married to my mother. But I won’t feel sorry for him. I can’t. He chose to marry her. He left us with her. We didn’t get a choice. So, no, he won’t get any pity from me. Not now, not ever. “Have your panna cotta,” I tell him. “I’ll see you next time. Whenever that is.”
The maître d’, used to scenes like this, I guess, already has my slim red peacoat waiting for me and slips it over my shoulders as I walk out, my stride strong, not revealing the shakiness inside.
But once I’m out the door, my shoulders drop and my pace slows. It’s exhausting pretending to have it together. I wait a few seconds, thinking he’ll run after me and beg me to come back to the table. I had hoped—stupidly, I guess—that maybe, just maybe, today I’d find in my father an ally. Like the way we used to be. But no one comes outside. And now more than ever, I know that I’m in this on my own.
On Monday morning, after my mother goes off to the spa for her usual weekend recovery appointment, I call the lawyers’ office. I pretend to be her—slurred, angry voice—and demand that the files from the settlement with the Stewart family be sent over for her review. They arrive within an hour.
I have the courier set the lawyers’ boxes on the dining room table. In the dark, they are shadowy tombs. I turn the light up, pull open the drapes, and the boxes become less scary in a haunted-house way but more intimidating in a real-life way. My whole life is in these boxes, filed away forever, everything in them shouting that I was bad.
I riffle through the files. The first one has pictures of each person in my class, their names scrawled along the bottom in black marker. I set them out on the table like I’m a ballet master placing dancers into a piece of choreography.
Giselle Stewart
E-Jun Kim
Eleanor Alexander
William O’Reilly
Henri Dubois
Sei-Jin Kwon
Alec Lucas
I run my fingers across Alec’s face, missing him. He hasn’t called. Not once. I haven’t exactly reached out to him. I couldn’t bear the idea of calling him and being clicked to voice mail or sending a text and having it go unanswered.
I comb through the boxes and lay out all the evidence that led to the settlement with Gigi’s family:
1) A copy of Henri’s statement saying that he saw me push Gigi in front of that taxi.
2) Pictures of the crime scene: the street outside the club, the curb where we stood, the hood of the taxi bent with an indentation from Gigi’s body.
3) The police report from that night.
4) A copy of Will’s statement about past pranks I’ve pulled on other girls. Though there’s no mention of the role he played in any of those pranks, of course.
Reading these just confirms what I know: I am the most hated person at American Ballet Conservatory. Maybe I deserve to be, according to the quotes from Will, Henri, and half a dozen other dancers, some of whom I’ve never even talked to.
“Bette is toxic.”
“Bette has it out for anyone who is better than her.”
“Bette’s jealousy turns to madness.”
“Bette terrorizes people.”
I’m not supposed to be going through these files. The Abney family therapist said I shouldn’t fixate on things that I don’t have the power to change at this moment. But she should know by now that I don’t listen, and I don’t follow directions well unless they’re doled out by Madame Morkovina. I wonder what Morkie thinks of me now. I feel a hot pinch in my stomach. One I can’t ignore.
I look at a lawyer’s crude drawing of the scene. They’ve used basic, almost stick figures to draw where I said everyone was standing that night. I’m on the curb next to Alec, Gigi, and Eleanor. Henri is off to the left or maybe it was the right. This summer my memories of the night skewed each time I was asked to replay them out loud for the lawyers. Sometimes Henri was on the right. Other times he was behind me. Sometimes Will lingered behind Gigi.
I bend the edges of Gigi’s picture. The audition photo she took before getting accepted to the conservatory smiles up at me. Bright white teeth, happy eyes, and perfect sun-baked skin. I look at my own picture. My mother had a famous fashion photographer take it. I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy as Gigi is in that single photo. I remember her first ballet class with us. She stuck out. It made me realize, for the first time ever, just how white the ballet world is. Even the Asian girls sort of blend in at initial glance, with their pale little arms and tiny frames and quiet personalities.
But not Gigi. She barreled into the room, her hair a burst of wild curls, pins between her teeth as she wrestled it into a bun, and she wore a hideous, multicolored leotard, totally ignoring the very specific ballet class uniform instructions in the conservatory packet we all received. I remember thinking she was gorgeous, despite it all. Her skin glowed like she’d just run three miles.
I close my eyes and can see her dancing. I see how loud it was. How riveted everyone was. How much fire she had in her movements. A hot and angry knot forms in my stomach. I throw her picture back in the cardboard box and slam the lid on it. I may hate her but I didn’t push her. I didn’t hurt her in that way.
I take my phone from my pocket and dial Eleanor. Voice mail. I hang up and dial again, and again. She still doesn’t answer. I leave her several messages, telling her I need to talk to her, that I miss her and she’s my best friend. My only one.
I build up my courage and dial Alec just once. I leave the smallest, vaguest message ever: “Call me. Need to tell you something.” I’ll regret it in an hour, but the adrenaline of it all pushes me. If he calls me back, I need to figure out what that something is.