The preacher calls all the little kids up to the front, where he does a short little minisermon for the kids before sending them out for children’s church. It’s usually a parallel for the more complex message he’ll give the rest of us. And I find myself thinking that church is like my kid’s sermon . . . it parallels my life as a whole. I show up, but I’m not in it. I go through the motions, but my mind wanders elsewhere. I dress and behave in the ways I know won’t get me in trouble. I get by. I bide my time waiting for the moment when it all ends.
But life isn’t church. It isn’t one hour during one day in the week. It’s everything, and I’m wasting it.
By the time the service ends half an hour later, I’m awash with emotions, anger and guilt and bitterness swallowing up whatever hope I manage to conjure. As soon as the benediction ends, I slip past Dad before he stands, mutter, “Be right back,” and flee before he’s inundated. As I walk away I hear Mrs. Simmons, whose daughter I went to school with, say, “You know, our youngest is shaping up to be quite the receiver. He’s just in eighth grade, but I’m sure he’ll make varsity as a freshman. Maybe you’ll be seeing him at Rusk in a few years.”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. In Texas, everyone is a wannabe coach. Levi used to have strangers hand him plays they’d drawn up “just in case he wanted to try something new.” I pass Levi’s parents gathering their things from the second row, where they’ve sat for as long as I’ve known them. I smile politely and nod as I go.
It’s not their fault their son is a jerk.
Levi stopped coming to church not long after he started college. I should feel guilty over how glad that made me, but I don’t. Church always feels a little bit like I’m putting on a show, but with him here it was ten times worse. If I looked at him too much, of course I was still madly in love with him. But if I didn’t look at him at all, I was madly in love (and heartbroken). It was like living under a microscope.
Breakups are a careful and exhausting dance.
That’s exactly what I need. Dance. It clears my mind better than anything else. I stand by the raised little nook that houses the piano and wait for Mrs. Dunlap to finish the postlude. She must feel me there, because she looks away from her sheet music and gives me an overdramatic smile. She presses the keys with a bit more flourish for my benefit, and I lean against the wall humming beneath my breath.
She holds on to the last chords for a long moment, and they ring out in chorus with the organ before the song ends and only the chattering conversations across the hall are left.
“Let me guess.” Mrs. D turns on her bench to look at me. “You want the studio?”
“How’d you know?”
She snorts. “Because it’s all you want. Always has been.”
I know that. And she knows it. Dad still insists I’ll want other things if I give them a try. After living in a house for eighteen years with me, you’d think he would know me better than the lady who teaches my dance class a few times a week.
“You have a key,” Mrs. Dunlap says. “No reason to drag yourself all the way up here to see little old me.”
She gave me a key when I started teaching classes to the younger kids, but I still felt bad about using it without her permission.
“You’re not old.”
She is. The woman is nearly seventy, but she doesn’t look it. She’s lithe and slender, and if she’d dye her gray hair, she could probably pass for fifty, if not younger.
“Oh pish. You don’t need to suck up to me, child.”
I step up on the platform and place a quick kiss on her cheek. “Learn to take a compliment, Mrs. D.”
I turn to go, and she calls out, “Says the girl who never thinks anything is good enough.”
I blow her a kiss and call back my thanks instead of saying the thought that pops into my head.
Good is never good enough.
One of Dad’s mottos. He would frequently tack on, “Good may win games, but great wins titles.”
As I walk back toward him, he manages to peel himself away from the leeches, I mean, parents surrounding him.
He joins me in the aisle, and we head for the door together.
“Lunch?” he grunts.
I shake my head. “Mrs. Dunlap is going to let me use the studio for a while. I’ll just grab something fast after.”
“Sure?”
I nod. “Yep.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
We don’t say another word until we’re outside, and I press the button to unlock my car.
“Drive safe,” he says, and then climbs into his own truck.
I turn the key in the ignition and mutter, “Good talking to you, Dad.”
It takes me ten minutes to get to the studio, a nondescript storefront in a strip mall. Not exactly the height of culture, but it’s about all this town has to offer. And it’s been good to me. I’m careful to lock the door behind me and keep the lights off in the front so no one thinks we’re open. I choose the larger of the two studios and push open the door.
Breathing deep, I take in that indescribable smell of the studio. Sweat. Feet. Rosin wood from the barre. You’d think the smell would be unpleasant, but it’s not. It’s home.
Dance had started as a babysitting service while Dad had practice. He enrolled me in everything from piano lessons to Little League softball, so that I was occupied while he did his thing. I’m willing to bet he regrets that first dance class he dumped me in all those years ago.
I switch on the light and drop my bag by the door. Slipping off my street shoes, I dig out my lyrical sandals, which Mrs. Dunlap always calls dance paws. They leave my toes free and wrap just under the pad of my foot, giving me a better surface to spin and slide, but still allowing me the flexibility of being almost barefoot.