by Amina Gautier
You are on the way to your tango lesson with Tavares, the new young Puerto Rican teacher the center has hired to teach half of the Latin dance classes while Esmerelda takes a leave to have her baby. You are in the bathroom squinting under the bright lights, trying to see if the anti-aging anti-wrinkle serum you applied is working any miracles for you. It is not. Fine lines feather the frail brown skin near the sides of your eyes when you squint before you realize that squinting defeats the purpose of buying age-resistant makeup. You are applying lipstick when the phone rings.
It’s your ex-husband. He doesn’t even say hello when you pick up. “I would like to be there. It’s only fair since you had her all Thanksgiving,” he says.
Remind him that not only did he have her for Labor Day and Columbus Day, but that the two of you are splitting your daughter for the Christmas holidays. Warn him not to get greedy.
“You can’t block me out, Viv. I’m still a part of your life, you know. As long as we have Brooke, I always will be. Like it or not,” he says.
“Not,” you say and hang up before he can get bring up his favorite topic and start asking for reconciliation. Remind yourself that getting rid of your husband was a good thing. Blot your lipstick and head out the door to go to your tango lesson.
Walk to the cross. At that moment in Argentine Tango between the fifth and sixth step, with all your weight balanced on your left foot, lean in closer and forget about all of the things that really matter. Forget to worry about Brooke coming home for mid-winter recess, forget that Tavares is your teacher and not your lover, forget that you are in your forties and he is not.
Tavares frowns at your sloppy dancing and tightens his hold on your arm, “Wiggle arms! Be firm! Brace your arm against mine. This is not salsa!”
“I can’t help it.” Whine as he pulls you from the cross into forward ochos. Love the ochos, feel the turns, the back and forth. You know the two of you look fantastic on the dance floor.
“You’re never going to learn. You never pay attention.”
“But I am!” Snap out of your reverie in time to see him shake his head at you in that annoying way of his. Old woman, you know he is thinking.
“You would still be better off taking the group class. That way you could switch partners with each song and—”
Cut him off. Lower your voice until you are purring. Tell him you can only learn with him. “Lead me into the forward ochos again and I’ll show you.” Touch his arm lightly.
One. Two. Three. Four. “Don’t just dance like wood!” He half drags you once again to the cross.
“Don’t yell!”
“Don’t pout,” he says as he pulls you into forward ochos. Close your eyes when you feel him signal a gancho; try not to take that extra half step like you always do. Come chest to chest with Tavares again before he can lead the tango close. Stand on your tiptoes and press into him before you open your eyes. “See?”
“Vivian.”
“Okay, okay. Once more?”
Tavares releases you and looks at his watch. Take a look too, trying not to stare at the way the thick dark hairs on his arm almost curl over the watch face. You know that there are moments between the two of you when he doesn’t see your checkbook or your age. Like when he walks you to the cross and spins you out into ochos and lets his hand press against your back with more firmness than is necessary. There have been more moments like that than you can count. But you want to tell Brooke about him first, before you let this thing become. Wonder how Brooke would feel about Tavares being young and Puerto Rican. You raised your daughter with an open mind, tried to instill values in her that sank deeper and wider than mere culture, but Brooke has turned out to be an insufferable snob despite your efforts. And you’re not just saying that because you’re her mother. Brooke’s last three crushes have all been on boys from Third World countries. Their suffering is what attracts her. Doubt that Brooke would think Tavares has suffered enough.
“Pay attention!” he says, as you step back on the wrong foot. Suppress the urge to tell him that you love him and that at night sometimes you can’t sleep because there is this thing inside you that you can’t explain. A feeling like heaviness, like a lot of weight slowly crushing you. When you feel like this all of the words go out of your head and you feel like you are suffocating.
“Get your head out of the clouds. Your time is up.”
“Oh. Right.”
He smiles at you. “You have remembered that the session ends next week, right?”
Actually, you forgot. “Next week? Already?” Tavares fills up your Thursday evenings from 6:30 to 7:50. Realize that you have no idea what to do with a free Thursday.
He walks to the far end of the studio to turn the music off and locks the cabinet that holds the stereo.
“Then it picks up the week after, right?”
“No. We have a month off for Intercession.”
“Then you teach again?”
“I don’t do session two. Esme does. She had a girl. She’ll be back in time to take over again.”
Esmerelda has legs no middle-aged woman should have. They put Tina Turner’s to shame. Only her face shows her real age. The sun took its toll on her. Deep lines of age wrinkle her upper lip and crow’s feet pull at the sides of her weathered brown face, making it look as if someone were standing behind her and gripping her hair hard from the back. It’s a face you don’t like to look at. You are glad she is on leave. She is having her baby at forty-six. You would never have a baby that late in life.
Remind Tavares that your daughter will be home next Friday. Ask if he’s still having dinner with the two of you when she gets in.
Tavares looks up from changing his shoes. “How could I forget about the wonderful Brooke? She’s all you talk about, all you think about.”
Say, “That’s not true.” Use your most coquettish voice. Let it imply that you think of other things, such as him.
Tavares looks up at you. His eyes linger longer than necessary.
This is one of those moments.
Sometimes having coffee with a good friend is the best thing you can do and all you can hope for. Especially after five new messages from your ex-husband with suggestions about the ways you, he and Brooke could enjoy her mid-winter recess as a family. You are sitting on a stool at the island in the middle of your kitchen the next morning, surrounded by hardwood floors that gleam from a fresh waxing, twirling around in circles on the stool as if you are a teenager from the fifties hanging out at the local diner. No matter that your coffee stands cold and untouched on the counter or that the good friend you are imagining is none other than your housekeeper, Abby. Abby is in the kitchen pulling lettuce apart for a salad and you have not even offered her any coffee.
Abby is in her mid-to-late forties, just slightly older than you, but Abby seems much older. Watch Abby and understand that although you are both black and near in age that the similarities end there. Tick off a list of points in your mind to remind you of just how dissimilar the two of you are:
1. Abby acts old, walking around in senior citizen clothing fresh from a rack at K-Mart, while you make sure to feel and look and act young. You watch your weight. You keep abreast of all the latest trends. You have a personal trainer. You still wear your blue jeans tight.
2. Abby is a widow and not a divorcee like yourself. Therefore, Abby is prone to lapse into long droning family stories about her dead Nelson and her children. Abby whips out photos of grand babies at the drop of a hat. You, being divorced, are close-mouthed on the subject of your ex-husband. He is the last thing you want to talk about.
3. Abby has only finished high school. She’s never gone to college unlike you who have both your undergraduate and graduate degrees from prestigious institutions.
4. Abby is forgetful when it comes to her children. She has so many of them—three boys and two girls—that she can afford to mix up their birthdays and call one by the other’s name. You have the one daughter, Brooke, so you have to be very very careful of her.
Rise and begin to dance the eight basic steps of tango to imaginary music, making sure to extend your legs back far with each step. Pluck a daisy from the vase at the center of the kitchen’s island and hold the stem between your teeth. Close your eyes and pretend that your left arm is around Tavares’ neck.
“That’s what you do every week in that class, Miss Vivian? Isn’t that the kind with all the fancy stuff, where they drag you all over floor?” Abby asks.
Tell her, “No one drags me. We haven’t gotten up to arrastres yet.” The look on Abby’s face is discomforting. She seems to be watching you in a way that says she is trying hard to no avail to imagine someone your age dancing like that. Feel Abby’s gaze linger at the pinch of skin under your neck. Tilt your head down. Thwart her gaze. Feel Abby looking around your mouth for lines. Relax the muscles around your mouth accordingly and clench your jaw to tighten the skin under it. Remind yourself that you are not old. Remind yourself that Abby is a hag. And where does she get off pointing fingers anyway? Abby was old when you first hired her and she is even older now.
“You keep flowers in your mouth in class?” she asks.
“No. We don’t have to. Tavares doesn’t make us.”
Abby’s eyes light up with knowing and she puts the lettuce down. “Oh. He’s teaching it?”
“That’s not why I’m taking it!” you blurt before you can stop yourself.
“Of course not,” Abby says. “I wasn’t even thinking that.”
“Tango is demure. It’s got sophistication and class. It’s all about grace and elegance. It’s intricate, not like that salsa stuff Esme teaches which is just a bunch of wiggling.”
Abby nods and changes the subject. “I have to get used to cooking for more than one person with Miss Brooke coming for vacation. You eat like a bird so it’s not hard to get things ready for you—”
“Brooke definitely has an appetite,” you cut in, happier to be talking about something else.
“Sure does. Last time she was here she ate like it was the Last Supper!”
“She’s a starving student. You know what they say about cafeteria food.” You smile with thoughts of your own boarding school days. You reach out and lay your hand on Abby’s, momentarily forgetting about your differences.
Abby flinches and stares at your fingers draped lightly over her own. Look at your fingers. See them not as though they are the fingers you have lived with all your life, but as if they do not belong to you. See them as Abby might see them. Long brown fingers still smelling of scented lotion with weekly manicured nails shaped in tapering ovals. Fingers that have never had to become wrinkled while wringing a mop in its bucket. Or remain in a sink full of grimy dishwater. Or curl around the handle of an iron. Or tuck in the elastic of a fitted sheet. Lazy fingers. Idle and rich. You’ve never seen them this way before. Wiggle them to shake off the shame. Remind yourself that Abby could have had the same things you had if she’d wanted. No one ever handed you anything on a silver platter.
“That’s right,” Abby says as if there’s been no break in the conversation, “And Miss Brooke sure has a lot of favorite foods. Guess I better go to the market and pick up some things so I can start getting them ready for her.” She delicately pulls her hand out from under yours and heads for the door, leaving you with the distinct feeling of being dismissed.
Once Abby leaves, you run a bath and soak in it. Allow your mind to wander, even though it always comes back to Brooke. Wonder if Brooke will ever forgive you for sending her away and if you can ever know if Brooke has forgiven you. Realize that you don’t know your daughter anymore. Sixteen years old and already Brooke is a stranger to you. She had come back after the first trimester of boarding school a changed woman. You had not recognized her. She’d cut off her shoulder length hair—the hair that you had diligently oiled and braided and brushed and helped her grow and take care of for years— to get rid of the perm. She’d worn short baby dread locks that reminded you of a pickaninny’s pigtails you’d seen on Civil War memorabilia in the museums. The next vacation had brought even more changes. After last year’s mid-winter break, Brooke decided to become a vegetarian and join an animal rights group. She came home in the dead of a snowy New York winter wearing canvas sneakers and a cotton jacket because she decided that since she no longer ate animals she shouldn’t wear them either. You put up with these changes because it is the only way to keep her and because you sense that these rebellions are directed at yourself. You accept the blame because you and your ex-husband agreed that it wouldn’t be fair for only one of you to keep Brooke while you hammered out the terms of your divorce and the custody terms and that it would prevent one parent from unfairly hogging her if you sent her to Lyman-Sankey, a boarding school in western Massachusetts, and split the costs. So you bought your daughter herbal shampoos and conditioners with jojoba to encourage hair growth and you had Abby stock up on soy milk, soybean butter, tofu, tempeh and textured vegetable protein.
Next week, you are fifteen minutes late for your last session with Tavares. He lights into you about being late and irresponsible and wasting his time and your money and not bothering to call or reschedule —right in front of Esmerelda who is there showing off her baby to a couple practicing a milonga basic in front of the mirrored wall. The couple discreetly leaves the practice room, but Esme takes her time and throws a look at you that is vengeful and satisfied. In the middle of Tavares’ tirade, you take comfort in the fact that Esme’s legs are getting older and it will take her more than a few weeks to work off the fat she gained from her baby.
Tell Tavares that you are not a child and that he can’t yell at you that way. Slowly remove your jacket, fold it and lay it on the window ledge. Change into the dance shoes that make you two inches taller and put your street shoes in a corner by the radiator.
“Well, you act like one,” Tavares says as he walks away from you and opens the cabinet that contains the stereo.
“Go to hell, Tavares. Where do you get off yelling at me like that in front of everybody?”
He turns the volume up high and the music takes over the room, filling it so that it feels like the orchestra is right there in the room with you.
“Tango position!” he commands as he jerks your right hand into position and braces his forearm against yours. “In front of everybody?” Tavares mocks you, his voice a strained falsetto in imitation of you. “You see?” he says, roughly pulling you to him. “It’s so damn important to you to look good in front of everybody.”
“That’s not true!”
“It is. You’re just a big baby.” His fingers dig into your back.
“You’re hurting me!”
“So set on having everything your way!”
“Fuck you!”
“You you you. The world does not revolve around you, Vivian! You think you’re the only one that matters, the only one that’s important, right?” The look on his face is terrible. His voice drops to a whisper. “And it’s more important for you to show Esme up than for you to have the common courtesy to tell me you’re sorry for standing me up and being late.”
“And what the hell are you? Bitching and moaning like some prima donna! I was just a little late. I couldn’t help it. Brooke is coming and everything has to be perfect! I have to get everything right. You just don’t understand.”
You don’t mean to cry, but you can’t seem to help it, what with the music so loud in your ears that you can hardly think and Tavares so mad at you and dancing you so fast you can barely keep up without tripping and holding you so close and rough that you almost can’t breathe and your daughter coming and you being scared everything will go wrong. You cry right there in the middle of the scuffed floor with the radiator behind you and the mirrored wall before you and Tavares and the music and Brooke and all the things that matter caving in on you all at once. “I’m sorry!” you scream and pull out of his grasp.
Then Tavares’ hands are wiping your tears and you think he is apologizing because he’d forgotten about Brooke, but the condoleons and violins and all the other string instruments whose names you have never learned are so loud that you can’t hear well enough to be sure since he is whispering again. Then he is kissing you, kissing you and walking you to the cabinet and lifting you on top of it, fumbling with the latch on his belt, running his hands up your legs, pushing roughly at the hem of your skirt— you feel the softness of his hands, hands without calluses, and know without a doubt that Brooke would not think he has suffered enough.
Pull into the parking lot at Lincoln Center the next day. For some reason, the administrators at your daughter’s school have chosen Lincoln Center as the drop-off place for the kids taking the chartered bus into New York. Kids Brooke’s age mill about the three large buses, saying their good-byes and waiting for their rides to come get them. They all have a look about them that you can’t place. If you did not know they came off the bus together, you would still know that they were a group. They slouch and tilt and lean forward when they talk to one another, standing like they are too cool to stand straight. You can’t tell the boys from the girls. They are all dressed in baggy jeans, ski caps and big bulky down coats. Except for Brooke, who you can pick out right away. She is the only one not dressed for the weather. A thin denim jacket covers her bony shoulders and arms and you don’t have to guess that she didn’t bother to wear her thermals like you reminded her to. The navy blue paisley swirls of her bandanna cover her growing dreadlocks; the bottom half of her cherubic brown face is hidden by the upturned collar of her denim jacket. You can’t see her nose, but you know that it is running. You grab the raincoat you keep in the backseat and get out of the car, eager to cover up your poor freezing daughter. An Asian girl with a waif thin body and bright orange hair passes her a cigarette, but when she sees you, she refuses the smoke.
“Hey Mom,” Brooke says as you hand her a tissue and motion for her to blow her nose. She allows you to hug her for the briefest of seconds. You feel her thin fingers push at the tops of your arms when you have hugged long enough.
“You must be freezing to death out here with nothing on!”
“No, it’s cool,” she says. “This is Ji-In Kim.”
“Hello Ji-In. Here Brooke, this will keep you warmer. Put this on.” You try to help her into the raincoat, but she backs away and looks at you as if you are asking her to eat arsenic.
“What’s that made out of?”
“It’s perfectly safe. Plastic. Vinyl. No animals.”
She takes the raincoat from you and eyes it warily. After Ji-In puts out her cigarette, she eyes it, too. Brooke turns it inside out and thumps the lining. “What about this?”
“It’s padded.”
“With what? Down? Feathers?”
She’s got you there. “I don’t know,” you say.
“I’m not putting that on. No way.”
Ji-In nods and agrees with Brooke, even though she is wearing a pair of calf-high leather boots.
“Okay fine, Brooke. Then let’s just get you in the car. Where’s your stuff?”
“Dad’s getting it.”
“What?” Breathe slowly. Maybe you have misheard.
She shrugs and gives you her don’t weird out on me look. “Dad showed up a little bit before you. I thought you guys had worked something out or something. You’re not going to do anything are you?”
“Like what, Brooke? What would I do?”
“I don’t know, Mom. Just please, okay? Just be cool.”
Tell her that you’re the coolest and watch her roll her eyes again. You are losing points quickly.
As if he knows he is being talked about, your ex-husband comes up to you. He is carrying one of Brooke’s duffel bags in each hand as if they are lightweight. They are not. You’ve seen her pack before. Your ex-husband has grown a paunch. He doesn’t look so hot since your divorce, but you know you have never looked better. Feel a slight twinge of satisfaction when you notice that he knows this too.
“What are you doing here?”
“You were late.”
“Five minutes! Give me a break. Besides, it takes you more than five minutes to get here. So what were you doing? Spying on me?” From the corner of your eye, you see Brooke frown and whisper with Ji-In. You hear her say, “My parents are like so immature.”
“No, Viv, I was not spying on you.” Then he smiles and looks at you like you are crazy. “Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Dramatic?” you shriek as Brooke tries to blend in with the background behind you, too ashamed to acknowledge her relationship to you. “You have a lot of nerve. I don’t know how you can dare to show up here. This is a violation of the court agreement,” you say, wishing you had your can of pepper spray with you.
You snatch Brooke by the arm roughly and pull her over to you as if there is a white line etched in the ground between you and your ex-husband. If you gave her the chance to choose sides, you might lose. But for now —for this weekend at least— you can choose for her.
“I have Brooke for the recess. You don’t.”
He shrugs boyishly. “Well, I told you I wanted to see her. And I didn’t have any other plans for the weekend. And I figured if you could see that I was serious about spending time with the two of you, then maybe you would come around. Come on, Viv.”
You are so angry that you can’t speak for a good minute. You can’t believe him and his nerve and you don’t appreciate the way he is acting all innocent and making you look like the bad guy who won’t play fair.
Maybe you’d come around.
You remember that shrug and that phrase from countless times in your marriage when he coerced you into doing something you had already said you didn’t want to do. Like when he took the job in New York without telling you until it was a done deal, even though you said you didn’t want to leave Philadelphia. He took it and hoped that maybe you’d come around to the idea of living in the Big Apple. Like the nights when you wanted to be left alone and he put his hand on your thigh or breast and continued, because he wanted you and was hoping that maybe you’d come around. And when you told him to stop, he kept on going, hoping, just hoping that maybe you’d come around.
You could kill him right now with your bare hands for his assuming you’d come around.
Say, “I don’t think so,” and take the duffel bags away from him, even though they weigh more than you do and your arms feel like they are popping out of their sockets.
“You don’t have to be like this, Viv,” he says. “What about dinner at least?”
“I’m already having someone else over for dinner that I want Brooke to meet,” you say. Shoulder the bags and walk away.
“So you’re the famous Brooke! Or should I say infamous?” Tavares says when you let him in. He kisses your cheek briefly and then engulfs Brooke in a bear hug after giving her a small bouquet he’d picked up for her. The arrangement is cheap—yellow, white, and pink daisies, carnations, and baby’s breath—with not a single zinnia or gladiola in sight. You think it’s a bit overdone, but Brooke loves it. She blushes under the attention and basks in it. It makes her happy and more at ease and that is all that matters.
Tavares and his cheap flowers have made more leeway with your daughter in less than five minutes than you have all afternoon. Your initial greeting had been strained. Brooke rebuffed your attempts to hug and kiss her. She didn’t appreciate your efforts to keep her room exactly the way she’d left it the last time. She hugged Abby and thanked her for preparing her favorite pasta dish, a dish Abby could not have made had you not paid for the groceries.
You feel like an outsider. Throughout the morning and afternoon— with Abby and Brooke watching Oprah and Jennie Jones and Ricki Lake while Abby intermittently cooked and gossiped and now through a dinner peppered with questions directed to Tavares about the living conditions in Puerto Rico and the poverty in parts of the island that didn’t attract tourism and the depletion of its natural resources as a result of that tourism and the history of Argentine Tango and Tavares’ initial interest in studying it and the two years he spent in Argentina and whether or not tango really had African origins and the differences between Argentine Tango and Ballroom or American Style Tango— you feel as if you are on the outside looking in. And the feeling sickens you. Briefly, over salad and during the beginning of the meal, wonder if that sick feeling in your stomach is pregnancy and for five hysterical moments your mind is filled with anxiety over the possibilities of getting pregnant so soon as a result of last night with Tavares and having a change of life baby at your age like Esmerelda which is too reprehensible to bear. You look across the table at Tavares. He is wearing an olive green shirt with the first two buttons left open so that you can see a vee of golden brown flesh and chest hair. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. Dark curling hairs circle and hide the dusky skin of his forearms. His hands, large and brown drum idly on the white linen tablecloth and he leans back in his chair, eyeing you with sureness. Don’t let him distract you. Try to forget how handsome he is. That is what got you into trouble in the first place. Run off a list of points on how you feel about the possibility of having his baby:
1. He is too young. Fatherhood would be a joke to him until he matured.
2. He is Puerto Rican. He will teach the baby Spanish and you won’t be able to understand your own child.
3. He has no money and will probably fight you for custody. He might even make you pay him child support.
4. Having his baby might cast a shadow on your character and destroy your chances of winning custody of Brooke. The judge might think you easy and desperate, fast and loose, unfit to raise a precocious teenager and set a good example.
You come to your senses once the pasta is served, deciding that you are merely nervous and not pregnant. After pasta and dessert, usher the two of them into the den to show off some pictures of your daughter.
Tavares comments on an eighth grade photo of Brooke winning a debate, “Early on your daughter was showing the signs of becoming a very beautiful girl.”
“Thank you,” you and Brooke say at the same time.
When you go to the dining room to clear the table, Tavares follows you.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, kissing your neck. “You look really tired.”
“She hates me!”
“No. She’s a bit high strung like her mother. She’s got a lot of pride like her mother. And she thinks that she’s got a lot to prove—”
“Like her mother,” you and Tavares say at the same time.
“You have a knack for that,” he teases you.
“Do you think she likes me?”
“I don’t think this is as big of a deal to her as it is to you. I think you should relax and calm down and let whatever happens happens. That’s what I do,” he says. You can’t help wondering if that was how he explained last night to himself. “After all, she’s here now. You have the whole weekend to win her over. It doesn’t have to be done in one night. She’s here. With you. Let that be all that matters for the moment.”
Tell him he’s right. “What about you? Do you like her? Because she sure seems taken with you. ‘Tavares, was there ever a time in Puerto Rico when you didn’t have hot water to bathe in? Tavares, did you ever have to wear hand-me-downs? Is it very hard to learn the tango, Tavares? How do you feel about factory farming, or wearing wool, Tavares?’ “
“Don’t make fun,” he says. “It’s good to hold a pretty girl’s interest and have her look at you like you’re ten feet tall. If she were a few years older—”
“Then it wouldn’t be illegal.”
“In my country, a girl like her would already be married.”
“This is your country.”
“Some things we do different. My mother married when she was fourteen. She had me when she was Brooke’s age. In Puerto Rico, your daughter would be a woman.”
Say, “That’s enough, Tavares. I can bring the rest of these dishes into the kitchen myself.” The joking had been funny at first. You don’t mind being ribbed a bit, but some jokes can go too far.
Go into the dining room for the last plate. Brooke follows you back into the kitchen. Make a mental note to take her clothes shopping while she’s here and insist that she buy some decent clothing. She is wearing a tight orange ballerina top that hints at breasts she’ll never have. Her tiny waist is belted tightly; bright blue baggy jeans with a big X on each pocket balloon over her small hips and down her legs and are cuffed over the tops of faded canvas sneakers that have been patched with duct tape.
“So, is that your boyfriend or what?” she asks, plucking a spinach rotini from the plate in your hand and eating it.
In shock, you drop the plate you’ve been carrying to the garbage disposal. It clatters and crashes on your newly waxed floor, spreading tri-colored pasta all over the shine.
“Sorry Mom. I was just wondering that’s all. I mean ’cause he’s young and stuff and a lot of people’s moms go through stuff like this when they get to be your age, but that’s not cool. I mean, really, he’s hot and everything, but he’s not much older than me, you know?”
Lie.
Say, “He’s just my teacher. That’s all.”
“That’s cool, then. It just wouldn’t make sense, that’s all. Like, it would make more sense if I went out with him. Or somebody that’s like my age, you know? Do you want me to help you clean that up? I know Abby won’t be back till tomorrow and my work assignment is in the cafeteria, so I do this all the time.”
“No, that’s all right. Why don’t you just go back to the den? I’ll just be a few minutes cleaning up this mess. Ask Tavares to teach you to tango. Or show him your awards and soccer medals.”
“Mom, it’s no big deal.”
Refuse her help. Hold onto the counter. “Just go sweetheart. Don’t worry about this.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. Sure. Go.”
You don’t feel the coldness of the floor as you get down on your hands and knees with a wet paper towel to pick up the jagged edges of plate that lie scattered across the floor. Tell yourself that it’s not your fault that your daughter has become such a little bitch. Blame The Lyman-Sankey School, then remember that the decision to send her away was yours. It is your fault that you raised a daughter whom you love with a desperation bordering on insanity but with whom you cannot have a civil conversation. Wonder where Brooke learned to be so tactless and so shrewd. Oh yes, you understood the underlying threat. You heard it loud and clear. Laugh it off as absurd that you should compete with your daughter. You love Tavares, but you would give up a hundred Tavareses to be able to talk to Brooke without feeling sharp, needling pain.
Wonder if talking about Tavares could be the door-opener you need to make inroads with your daughter. You could tell Brooke how you feel about all of it. Brooke is a bright girl, a high school sophomore. She will listen and analyze. Then she will decide that you are having a mid-life crisis. You don’t want her to think that. Mid-life crisis. For men it’s buying a red sports car and chasing eighteen- year- old girls. For you, it’s tango lessons and a twenty-something year old Puerto Rican. You don’t want Brooke to see it that way. You feel the need to convince her otherwise choking you, overwhelming you. Spring from the floor to go tell your daughter the truth.
The den is empty although the green power light of the stereo is still on. You go to Brooke’s room next. Stop in front of her door. You hear something. Push the door open slightly; a shaft of light triangles on your daughter’s empty bed. You hear voices, soft and hushed, off the terrace. Follow the muffled voices until you see the silhouettes of their bodies through the balcony curtains. They are leaning over the railing, staring up at the skyline, talking and having fun without you. Brooke leans into Tavares’ side and his strong brown fingers twist and stroke her dread locks. Try not to notice how youthful their bodies look together, like two willows bending towards each other. Brooke points up at something you can’t see and Tavares laughs deep and long. Brooke joins in and pushes him lightly, just enough to tease. You step closer and strain to hear the joke. It would be good to laugh right now, but whatever they are saying is lost to you.
You know it’s not the words that matter.
Press down on the balls of your feet. Feel your calves flex and tighten. Throw your head back and straighten your posture like Tavares taught you. Then remember that you have already had your last lesson.