Chapter 40
Red elevator doors open to the welcome area of Steps on Broadway, where pop music plays and students of all ages pass in combinations of mesh shorts, loose tank tops, and tight tights. A hallway of glass doors leads to studios filled with light. The receptionist sits at a long wood desk.
“Hello.” I’m suddenly self-conscious of my posture. “I’d like to take a class.”
The receptionist taps on a tablet. “What level?”
“Oh.” I look at the line of postcards and flyers on the desk advertising summer camps and conservatories.
“Hey, Elijah.” The receptionist taps some more. “You’re good.”
I turn slowly. I wouldn’t say Elijah looks excited to see me.
“Hello, and sorry I’m here.” I maintain a neutral face. “What level would you recommend for a beginner?”
“The beginner level.”
“I see.” I look again at a flyer. It’s possible I never learned how to read. I pass my debit card to the receptionist. “Beginner, please.”
In what I take as a good sign, Elijah hasn’t walked away yet.
“You’ll be in Studio Three,” the receptionist says. “Dressing room is right over there.”
“Thank you.” I turn to Elijah, hoping this will get him to walk beside me. “That night at the Big Duck, you said I should try a movement class, and I think it would be a good experience to learn to be in my body more.”
“I meant a eurythmics class. It’s an entirely different philosophy and isn’t taught here.”
“Right. Well. Really, I wanted an excuse to see you.”
He pushes open the door to the dressing room. “I’ll be in a different class.”
“Maybe I’ll see you after!”
Little vestibules with canvas curtains line the walls. Elijah steps into one and I step into the one beside him. We don’t talk while we change, but I try to move quickly so I can be out at the same time as him.
I hear his curtain open and I quickly rush out.
He tilts his head. “You’re wearing leggings.”
“I borrowed them from my mom. But did you know they have whole stores of yoga clothes?”
“I did.” He wears black leggings and a tight white short-sleeved shirt that opens wide around his collarbone. “You could’ve just worn sweatpants.”
“I don’t own sweatpants.”
“What do you wear in gym class?”
“Comfortable jeans.”
There is at least some chance he stifles a laugh.
“See you after?” I ask.
He studies my face. “Maybe.”
When he leaves I’m overcome by a loneliness so sharp it almost knocks me down. I close my eyes and, like backstage at the Vanderbilt, I ask myself to become the person I need.
I understand now that this isn’t something I’ll remind myself of once or twice and then be fine forever.
This—caring for myself, loving myself—will be a lifelong journey.
I will feel sad again. Maybe in an hour, maybe first thing tomorrow.
That part of me doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon.
But this other part of me won’t go away either.
Someone will always be here to care for me. I will always be here.
I head to what I think is the back corner of Studio Three, an open room with a wall of windows and three walls of mirrors.
Most of the students look like they’re wearing pajamas, and one guy is definitely wearing comfy jeans.
Some people are stretching, so I try to touch my toes, and when I’m not sure what to do after that, I keep trying to touch my toes.
The instructor leads us through hard-to-do moves with hard-to-pronounce names.
Whatever video Tony found was no preparation for this.
I lift a leg out to the side and end up falling.
I get up as everyone is moving to the other leg, and I follow along and fall again.
I think maybe I should try just standing.
Standing without falling might be where I’m at.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the person beside me holding their foot out at a right angle, perfectly still.
It’s Elijah.
He moves through the positions with complete control.
He’s not simply re-creating well-practiced motions.
Or they’re no longer only motions. When Elijah bends both knees outward and brings his arms down before lifting himself up, it’s an expression of an emotion I can’t name, or a mix of emotions that becomes something new.
I’m startled by the human body and by the presence of the physical world.
“Don’t just watch,” he admonishes. “You have to try.”
So I do. I go up and down, moving my legs and arms as best I can, and when I want to joke about my incompetence I instead try again. I keep trying and I don’t get better, but I keep trying anyway.
As my muscles stretch, waves of heat move through my body and hit my face, filling me with frustration and desperation and emotions I don’t know how to name, the same ones Elijah expresses in his movements, like they’re trapped inside us but he can release them.
When the class ends I’m left with a warm, peaceful feeling, or at least an exhausted one, and I lie on the floor and close my eyes.
Elijah touches my arm. “I’m going to talk to the instructor for a few. I’ll meet you outside.”
On the sidewalk, I become aware of a truth I never noticed: Everything can be touched. The sticker-covered street sign, the crumpled paper cup in the trash, the rough brick building across the street—I could place my hand against each and they will communicate their silent texture.
Elijah comes out in his jeans, his arms and face bright with sweat.
“Can I walk you to the train?” I ask.
“Do you know how far Penn Station is from here?”
“Two miles south. I looked it up.”
“It’s a subway ride.”
“But do you want to walk?”
He considers it. “If we take a short detour we can go through Central Park.”
We pass the park’s low stone wall, and the hard cement of the city streets gives way to rolling hills and dirt pathways leading down into dark tunnels and up over little bridges.
Boulders jut out, trees reach up, and people and dogs sit everywhere.
Elijah gives his opinions on different ballet instructors, of whom he’s largely impressed, and different students, of whom he’s largely unimpressed.
He says it’s ridiculous to follow this passion because there are so few working dancers and it destroys your body, but he hasn’t found anything he loves more, and there are moments when a performance—watching one or being in one—can reach “the sublime.”
When we leave the park and are back between the tall buildings, crossing busy roads and going around slow walkers, it feels like the appropriate time to get down to business.
“One thing to consider is that we were just getting started,” I say as though we’ve been having this conversation the whole walk. “I didn’t even have time to get better at oral sex.”
“Oral sex is not that complicated.”
“I found it to be un-intuitive.”
“Your argument for getting back together is so you can practice giving blowjobs?”
“There are worse reasons.”
“That’s true. You could only be interested in receiving them.”
“And I’m not!” I hop over a pair of metal basement doors. “My true sexuality is I’m a giver.”
“It’s unrelated to gender and bodies?”
“If the other person is having a good time, preferably near my mouth—”
He lets out a cackle. “Stop.” He waves his hands. “This is irrelevant to why we broke up anyway.”
We pause at a corner so cars can pass.
I raise a finger. “Technically, we never broke up.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“There was no breakup text or statement.”
“Not attending your show was a statement.”
“Not a breakup statement.”
The crosswalk sign is still showing the red hand, but Elijah glances down the street and crosses anyway. “What’s your point?”
“You may have to break up with me officially. If you want to move back to New Jersey and never respond to another text, you’ll have to tell me our relationship is over.”
He gives me the look he and his mother exchanged.
“But—” I stop and check a street sign. “We still have twenty blocks until we get to Penn Station, so.”
Another held-back smile. “So you have a little longer to make your case,” he says.
I shift the conversation, though, asking Elijah about what he eats while in the city.
Does he bring dinner with him, or does he stop somewhere?
He leads me into a small place and orders two “bowls,” and I watch as veggies I’ve barely heard of are piled on grains I’ve never heard of.
The price is baffling, and I’m relieved when Elijah pays for both.
We eat at the counter at the glass storefront and comment on the outfits of people passing by.
Soon we’re walking under the enormous screens of Times Square, through thick crowds, Elijah pointing out the musicals he’s been to and the musicals he wants to go to.
I clear my throat and say, “I think it’s worth the risk.”
“What do you mean?”
“How did you get so good at ballet? Did you never fall?”
He rolls his eyes and dramatically stumbles.
I raise my voice. “Ya never got hurt?”
“I’m constantly getting hurt in ballet, but that’s not a logical comparison for being in a relationship, so move on to your next argument.”
I don’t really have a next argument, so I tell him about The Greenroom. I tell him about Joe Johnson saying we’ll have to perform together again soon. I tell him about my mom setting up a therapist for me. I tell him I am learning to love myself.
I ask him what it’s been like staying with his dad for two nights. I ask him about his skincare routine. I ask him about that first time he tried dancing and found he could be himself.
“That’s the story I was thinking to share in English,” he says, and he tells me about how there was an afterschool ballet class when he was in the third grade, and it was in his classroom with the desks pushed to the side, and it changed what he saw was possible with the space and with himself in that space.
All he had to do, he says, was reimagine everywhere this way.
He looks around. “Why did we stop?”
I point up. We’re outside of Penn Station.
His face goes still.
There’s a small part of me that wants to panic and say something, but I believe the correct thing to do is wait silently.
I think this is what he needs, this is what it means for me to be here for him.
To be reliable. So I tell the part of me that is panicking, I saved time for you later , and my body relaxes.
Elijah doesn’t look my way but instead keeps his eyes on the building, and then the people passing on the sidewalk, and then the sidewalk itself.
Eventually he turns and says, “I’ll ride the train with you.”
“But isn’t all your stuff in New Jersey?”
“I left some things on Long Island. Just in case.”
Now I’m biting my cheek. “In case of what?”
“In case of you.”
I blink. I blink again.
Without the fear and sadness that usually get in the way of my experience of the present, I’m here and I’m open and—
I touch the tips of my fingers to the side of his face, and he closes his eyes and leans into my palm.
He places a hand on my back and pulls me closer, and we wrap our arms around each other.
He holds me and I hold him, and I press my face against his skin and breathe him in.
He kisses my shoulder, the T-shirt on my shoulder, and I smile and kiss his shirt—this one is a bright yellow—and he lets out a laugh.
When we pull away and look into each other’s eyes, my breath catches.
This is my life happening right here all around me.