“Mom.” I drop to my knees beside her. My hands run over her limbs in search of injury. “What happened?”
She startles, wipes her eyes, and looks up at me. “B-Beau?” She studies my face before reaching for my cheek. “When did you... You have a beard?”
I’ve had the beard for two years, so I ignore the question and clasp her outstretched hand. “Mom, what are you doing here?”
She looks at me, her eyes fill, and she sniffles. “No one came to ballet today. None of my dancers.Why?”Her voice breaks on the question, and I feel it like a sucker punch.
She’s not here. She’s not now. She’s somewhere else. Some time in her past.
A better time.
“It’s okay, Mom. You don’t have class today.”
She frowns, a sharp expression of disapproval she used to give me or Val when we’d talk back. “Of course I have class today. It’s Thursday. I have class every Thursday.”
“It’s Wednesday, Mom,” I say gently. No sense in telling her the month or the year. It would just upset her more.
“It is?” She looks both confused and relieved. She takes a deep breath and glances around, but I’d bet my salary that she’s seeingLa Fêteinstead of Camelia Court’s exercise room. “I thought they’d all left me. That everyone had left me.”
She looks so lost, emotion blocks my throat. I fight to clear it. “No, Mom. I’m right here.”
Her eyes come back to me and the lines on her brow ease. I’m still holding her hand, and when she moves to bring it to my face, I let her. “This... makes you look so old,” she says, scratching the hair along my jaw. I do my best to smile at her. “What are you doing here, anyway?” she asks.
“I came to see you.”
Her look of concern returns. “But I have class. My dancers will be here any minute.”
I shake my head, debating if I should remind her where she is or let her stay in the past. Either choice is painful.
I take the easy way out.
“Not tonight,” I tell her, shaking my head. “I’m giving a private lesson.” It’s the truth, and the thought of seeing Iris in a few hours suddenly makes it easier to take a full breath.
Mom looks surprised, but not upset. “You do?”
“I do.” I clasp her hand again and get to my feet. “C’mon. Let’s go have lunch.”
She rises to her feet, graceful as ever, but it’s as though she hasn’t heard me. “Who’s your student?”
Warmth floods my chest at the thought of telling Mom about Iris. Even after she turned me down on Saturday, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her. I worried that Monday night’s class would be uncomfortable. It was at first. Iris had trouble meeting my gaze at the beginning of the lesson. When we started dancing, I know I held her more loosely than I have been.
And she was all over the place. She must have tripped and knocked my knee half a dozen times.
But as soon as I gripped her hand and waist tighter, and told her to tell me a story, she got out of her head, out of the awkward moment. We were dancing to Beausoleil. She gripped my hand tightly right back, and told me about the first commercial she ever filmed. It was for prescription acne medicine. She told me how she was fifteen at the time and had a “for-real-monster-of-a-zit” on her forehead that makeup had to disguise so they could shoot the commercial.
All I could think of at the time while I laughed was that my ex, Rebecca, never would have told me a story like that. Not one where she poked fun at herself. Not one where she was so human.
“Her name is Iris,” I tell Mom, smiling. “She’s an actor. I’m teaching her how to Cajun dance for a movie she’s in.”
Mom gasps, eyes going wide with delight. “A Cajun dance movie?!”
I chuckle and shake my head. “Don’t get excited, Mom. It’s just one scene.”
“Still. You’ll have to take me... to the... to the... to see it.”
My heart squeezes. “I’d like that,” I tell her, hoping that when Iris’s movie is released, Mom is still able to sit through a film and follow along.
To tell the truth, I don’t know if she can do thatnow.All of the movies in her collection are ones she’s watched for years, and she knows them by heart. But even while she’s watching, she must drift in and out.
