TJ: Maybe we make our own place in stories.
FM: In your own story, sure. I agree with that. But I’m not in my story. I’m in yours.
35
NIGHT MUSIC
CECILY
The last thing I want to do is go to a church and watch a kids’ Irish dancing show, but I’d promised Sara weeks ago that I’d attend her son Ben’s recital with her, and she’s done so much for me this year I don’t feel like I can back out. Besides, if anyone’s looking, I should stick to my routine and show up where I’m expected. These are new thoughts. Before, I never ascribed any real credit to those who might look into my background. But after this afternoon, I can’t feel that way anymore. I know better now.
A half inch of snow fell this afternoon when I was meeting with Teo. The driving’s dicey, and the entranceway to the church basement is scattered with boots. I add mine to the collection, hang my black coat on a wire hanger next to six others, and pay for my ticket. I pay another ten dollars to enter the wine raffle because: wine. Then I take a program and search the room. Sara’s sitting midway up, glaring across the aisle at her ex-mother-in-law.
Sara and Bill’s divorce a couple years ago was awful, an example that gave me pause even as my own marriage was collapsing around me. I understood her acrimony, but his family’s wholehearted decision to blame her and turn their backs on her was a puzzle. My own mother might hate Tom, but she’d never have spoken badly about him to the children even if he’d lived. Bill’s mother, on the other hand, regularly denigrated Sara, saying such charming things as, “Your mother should be a personal shopper; she’s so good at spending other people’s money,” and actively encouraged Bill’s paranoia that Sara might take the kids and run away.
“What’s the witch done now?” I ask as I sit next to her. She’s wearing her hair in a ballet bun, which suits the clean lines of her face.
“She tried to keep me from coming tonight. Said it was Bill’s night with the kids, and I wasn’t welcome. As if I’m somehow a bad mother for wanting to come to my son’s dance recital in a public venue. What the fuck?”
“She’s evil.”
“And to think I used to like her.”
“I always thought she was batshit crazy myself.”
She laughs. “Thank God for you.”
I open the program. “What’s on the bill tonight? Lord of the Dance?”
“Probably.”
“And the alcohol is where, exactly?”
Sara looks sheepish. “Did I say there’d be alcohol?”
“Pretty sure you did.”
“Do super-fattening cookies count?”
I sigh. I could use a drink. “They’re at least going to be wearing cute costumes, aren’t they?”
“I can guarantee that.”
“Phew.”
We lean back in our chairs, those wooden hard-backed kind I don’t think they even make anymore.
“Where have you been for the last couple days?” Sara asks. “Feels like forever since we talked.”
“It’s been busy with the new job and . . . everything.” I wish I could tell Sara what’s going on. I need someone to talk through all this with like a girlfriend, not just a therapist like Linda, and the only person I have is the person who screwed it all up in the first place.
“That Franny news is crazy. Have you spoken to her? Or Joshua?”
“Franny, no. Joshua, briefly.” I hesitate, then fill her in quickly on what Joshua found, the e-mails between Kaitlyn and Tom. Surely this much is safe to share.
“Oh my God,” Sara says several times while I’m speaking and one more time when I’m finished.
“I think I used some more colorful words.”
“That is . . . I don’t even know what that is.”
I look down at my program. There is, in fact, going to be a Lord of the Dance starring her son.
“I’m having trouble processing this,” Sara says.
“Join the club.”
“She always seemed so innocent.”
“Did she?”
“I thought she was a prude. Remember that time when I was telling the story about”—she lowers her voice—“my one-night stand with that guy from yoga?”
“You guys never got along, though.”
“And now I know why.”
“You think you saw something in her I didn’t?”
“You don’t?”
The Irish-dancing teacher takes the stage. She’s in her seventies but still has the upright carriage of a dancer. She’s wearing a floaty hippie dress, and she thanks us all for being here through a tinny microphone. This is their most important fund-raiser of the year, and they have lots of dancers to send to the Irish-dancing competition in Dublin. Please eat a lot of cookies. Ha-ha-ha. She leaves the stage, and the curtains part. Four tiny girls and Sara’s son Ben are standing in the middle of the barren stage in glittering green costumes. They’re adorable.
“I haven’t even told you the best part,” I hear myself say.
“What did you say?”
“I haven’t . . .” The music blares, and the kids start to clomp their feet on the floor. They’re off the beat but impressive nonetheless for six-year-olds.
“I’ve got to record this,” Sara says, getting up with her phone.
She walks to the stage. I watch her ex, Bill, who I used to be friends with. When things turned nasty, Tom and I ended up taking sides. But when they’d first broken up, Bill had moved into the mother-in-law’s suite they’d installed above their garage. He’d slip into the house every morning to be there for the kids at breakfast. It was that act that kept me from hating him. I’ve told Bill this, too, but that doesn’t keep him from glaring at me as he walks past my seat. Hate is such a weird emotion, and contagious, apparently.
The music ends as the kids clack their final clack. Ben raises his hands above his head in victory as the girls crouch around him looking up
