Opportunity Dances
By: Lisa Sellge
Tags: Obsession, Coming Of Age, Its Complicated, Love, Fiction

Opportunity Dances

(photo by the author)

On my Mother’s kitchen counter, dark red wine tempted me from the glass. I put my nose over the rim and breathed it in. Still, the tingle of a long class on my damp skin. Still, the stirring planted in my brain from the words they had allowed me to hear, things they had let me know without telling me. They were safe. They hadn’t touched. They hadn’t really even flirted. Only commented, really. I raised the glass to my lips and sipped. I thought it should taste the way smoke smelled coming out of Rebecca’s cigarette. Why she should haunt me like this I wasn’t sure. I swallowed. Not a foreign taste, even at sixteen. At my house, we were allowed. Wine was part of the food we ate.

Mother had her back to me while she cooked. Her own wine at the ready and frying pan sizzling something with onions. She rarely asked me about ballet. She asked instead of the people there, some delicate sense in her maternal brain setting off alarms.

“Is Dudley still using a cane with his bad knee?”

“Yes, still.”

“Poor old Dudley. I should call him.”

My mother never called Dudley. Not since I was a six-year-old in a square looking black leotard and the only student in black shoes. She hated pink.

“You should call him.” I tried to sound nonchalant. He would be surprised, I thought. Would they talk about me? Or his knee? I hoped the latter.

“Did you have Jade’s class tonight?”

“Yeah.” We sipped.

“Are she and Rebecca friends?”

“I guess.”

She let minutes pass in silence. Only the crackle of her frying pan and the smell of onions and red wine filled the space.

“You know, Rebecca’s a little strange…”

“I guess. How do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” She sipped her wine. She did know. She hoped I did not. “How old is Rebecca?”

“Twenty-five.”

“And Jade?”

“Twenty-seven.”

I wasn’t sure where she was going with these questions. But I would have told her anything she asked. Just about. I would have told her the things I understood. For instance, Jade had the most perfect develope’, the most fluid arabesque, the most elegant pirouettes. I would have told her that Jade drove us to the point of exhaustion and exhilaration and that I adored her classes.

But Mother didn’t want to know about ballet. She sipped.

“Is Christopher still with Ricky?” she asked?

“Christopher will always be with Ricky,” I said.

It was strange to hear my mother acknowledge Christopher and Ricky as lovers. She tried to sound natural and comfortable with the subject, yet I could tell from the tense gathering between her shoulders as she sautéed onions, the tight-throated tone, even siphoned through wine, that the thought of male lovers made her squirm. She was searching.

“Aren’t they worried? …About AIDS?”

“I’ve never asked them. They don’t seem to be.”

It was a lie. Here is what I remember about the night Christopher talked:

The studio rang with quiet after our evening class and we had collapsed together on the floor. “I just finished reading And the Band Played On,” Dudley had told us. “It was quite worrisome. All about AIDS, where it came from. It did not have a hopeful ending. I urge you all to read it.” He was looking at Christopher and Ricky.

“Yes, Dad,” said Christopher.

Dudley had packed his classical albums and his choreography notes into a burlap sack, which he slung over his shoulder. He did not smile. He placed his reading glasses on his nose, took his cane, and headed for the door.

“Good night, all!” he said. We all smiled as we looked after him. But he stopped and looked back. “Is someone coming for you, Anneliese?”

I felt my face heat up. I was the only dancer in the room for whom someone needed to come. “My Dad will be here,” I answered quickly, wishing I had a more interesting answer. Dudley nodded and continued to the parking lot. When he was gone, Christopher lit two clove cigarettes, side by side, in his mouth, inhaled, and handed one to Rebecca.

If you had been a spirit that day and looked down upon the circle of friends, you would have seen a light around Christopher. You would have heard him sigh in resignation. No one else, that night, would have a glow such as his.

“Why would I want to get tested?” said Christopher, “I already know I have it.”

I looked in his eyes for fear. For truth. It was all there.

“I wouldn’t want to know,” said Ricky.

“And the awful truth, my love, is that if I go, you will go with me.”

“Could be,” said Ricky. “No one knows for sure how it spreads.”

“Yeah,” said Rebecca, “they know.”

“Oh, what do you know, Princess?” said Christopher. He threw a sweaty towel at her. I wondered how he could be so unconcerned. Rebecca blew the smoke from the corner of her lips, eyes locked on Christopher’s. I knew that look. She cared for him. She cared for us all. She wished we all loved each other the way she loved each of us. But for Rebecca, to love us was to know each of us, all the way inside out. It made us all jealous.

“Hurry Please” Photo by the author

“Well,” said my mother, tossing the onions, swallowing wine, “I hope they are alright.

“Me, too.” I said.

“Do you think she, Rebecca, well …”

“What?”

“Is she like them?”

“Like Christopher and Ricky? No. Maybe. I don’t think so. She dates men.”

“She likes you an awful lot, doesn’t she?”

“I guess so. She likes everyone an awful lot.”

I went to bed early. I hadn’t thought about Rebecca that way, really. I thought of the women in my family. They were strong and passionate. And there were not many men to be trusted. Except maybe Dudley, who had nurtured me from childhood and smiled when I succeeded. But when you’re sixteen, when there are questions, there must be someone to ask. Someone who won’t gasp and fear for your life. Someone whose azure eyes are welcoming and deep. For me, there was Rebecca.