*****
Maeve dances for four songs in total. All Frank Ocean and all songs I love, which makes me feel like maybe something other than the music streaming app on her phone is really in charge. We don’t speak about this – we don’t speak at all – but I hope she knows how pleased I am that she continues to move in frontof me. By the end of the fourth song, my eyes have adjusted so much to the darkness that I can catch her smiles and her little frowns of frustration when, I assume, a step goes wrong, although I can’t tell. She moves so gracefully, so elegantly. Her limbs seem to get longer, her head a little higher on her shoulders, and her hands move so fluidly it’s almost hard to believe they’re attached to her body.
By the time she comes down off her toes for good, I have a canvas that’s mostly full of paint, although it’s far from finished.
“Are you okay?” I ask as Maeve sits down on a rock.
Her chest heaves and she takes a deep breath before replying. “I have no idea what that looked like, but it felt really, really fucking good.”
“It looked like you were part of the sky, a supernova up close.”
“I’ve not danced in front of someone else other than in my classes for the longest time. But this felt very different,” she admits as she starts to unravel the ribbons from her ankles.
“That is a damn shame,” I tell her earnestly.
“How’s the painting going?”
“It’s going, but it’s not finished. Although I can finish it at home, or another night.”
“No,” Maeve says sliding on her jacket, “finish it. As long as you don’t mind me being here while you do.”
“I never paint with other people,” I realize out loud.
“If you’d rather be alone…” Maeve begins.
“No, I don’t want you to go. I quite like the idea of you being here while I paint the stars.”
Maeve tucks her pointes back in her tote bag.
“Then I’ll just sit here and watch the stars as you paint them.”
And that’s exactly what happens. We talk now and then, most often for me to point out constellations and planets to Maeve who seems more impressed than even she expects that she’sable to see Mercury, Venus and Jupiter, and I soak up her small exclamations of awe and amazement.
“What about Cancer?” she asks eventually. “Where’s that?”
“You’d need a telescope to see that,” I answer. “Scorpio too.”
“Our stars like to hide,” she says her head still looking up at the night that surrounds us.
“You don’t have to see something to believe it’s there,” I say and that pulls her attention to me and I feel her eyes on me for a long time, but I don’t say anything and I focus once again on my painting.
“I don’t think you’d ever see a night sky like this in Dublin, or anywhere in Ireland for that matter,” she says, and it sounds a lot like a thought she didn’t mean to vocalize.
“But Dublin has a lot to offer,” I remind her. “It has your family. It has your niece.”
“Ah yes.” She rummages around and finds her phone. The screen lights up and gives her face a blue glow. “My niece who… wait! She has a name!”
Maeve claps her hand over her mouth. I put down my paint brush. “What!? What’s her name?”
“Oh, it’s beautiful. It’s…” Maeve looks up again and the blue light reveals how moist her eyes are. “Patience Cynthia Catarina O’Martin.”
“Patience,” I repeat. “That’s a very pretty name for a very pretty baby. Although it’s an interesting choice for a baby who was born nearly a month early.”
Maeve laughs as she wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. “You’re not wrong, but actually it has a lot of meaning, for Jenna and Marty.”
“Oh?” I ask.
“Long story. I’ll bore you with it one day.” Maeve waves her hand around as if to dismiss this conversation. She switches her phone off and the screen goes dark again. “Loncey?”
