chapter 10

Lillian stood infront of her dancers in the warehouse space the show had assigned them for rehearsals. The show occupied three distinct spaces: the soundstage, set up to look like a flashy theater; a labyrinth of basement greenrooms and makeup stations; and a warehouse with rehearsal spaces for every team. They’d been rehearsing for two days, from six a.m. until Lillian released them around eight, so that she could go back to her room and adjust the choreography. Lillian tried to fix the image of her dancers in her mind. If they lost—and they might lose tomorrow—she would never dance with them again or see them like this, all standing at attention.

There was Jonathan, their gentle giant, dreaming of one day returning home to dance for the Dance Theater of Harlem. Elijah, who swished his hips at every hot guy he passed and pursued none of them because his first love was dance. Malik, who called his grandmother every night. Pascale, with her mushroom cap of processed hair, who always gave ninety-nine percent and never a hundred and cried when a tour started because it meant more time away from her kids. And brilliant, insubordinate Imani. Lillian understood Eleanor when she watched Imani dance. How could you not push a talent like that to the breaking point? Once you saw Imani turn a grand fouetté en tournant, her soul spinning in the spotlight, her braids coiled up toward heaven, your life was complete. At least it felt that way for a second.

“How are you feeling about the choreography?” Lillian asked.

The dancers nodded.

“Good.”

“Yes.”

“Got it.”

“Pascale? Questions? Problems? Issues?” Lillian asked.

Pascale straightened.

“No,” Pascale said.

“Are you nervous?” Lillian asked, spreading her hands to include the whole company.

“Just excited to crush it.” Elijah did an overly dramatic grand jeté.

The cameras would love him.

No one said anything else. They’d talk when Lillian was gone, just like Pascale cried when she thought Lillian couldn’t see her. That was good. Lillian danced with the company, but they still needed a ballet master, the premier ma?tre de ballet, someone who drove them to do better. Always. Someone to trust, fear, dislike, and revere at turns. Lillian had cultivated that persona. She committed, even when she was tired or nervous or uncertain about her choreography. A ballet master wasn’t distracted by their own feelings. Had Eleanor said that? Or was that one hers?

“Fine. Go,” Lillian said.

The dancers were out the door in seconds, their voices ringing out as soon as they were out of the space. Lillian walked slowly to her bag tossed in the corner. She pulled out her phone and glared at the screen. There was a perfectly punctuated text from Eleanor.

Eleanor: When you’re done with rehearsal, would you be so kind as to give me a call.

Reluctantly, Lillian touched call.

“I know you’re busy,” Eleanor said by way of greeting. “If anyone can make that show see real talent, it’s you. I’ll be quick. I have something I’d like to discuss.”

Just once she’d like Eleanor to greet her the way Uncle Carl greeted Kia when he called, usually jumping directly into conversation with something like The Grand H?tel Etienne is mixing a wheatgrass mimosa. What do you think? Genius or affront to humanity?

“If it’s the teaching fellowship in Paris, I’m not ready to commit.” Lillian lowered her voice although the dancers were gone. It wasn’t fair to the company for Lillian to have her own backup plan and nothing for them.

“If you’re worried about the company, they’ll be fine,” Eleanor said, reading her mind. “Pascale can go parent her children.”

Lillian shouldn’t engage. She should find out what Eleanor wanted, get off the phone, and sleep as much as she could before call in the morning.

“There is nothing wrong with parenting her children,” Lillian shot back instead.

“Of course not. Being a parent is a beautiful thing.”

Eleanor tacked on a silent for some people.

Lillian relaxed the muscles in her throat and abdomen.

“What can I help you with, Mom?”

“Did you see the movie Inevitable Comfort? No?” Eleanor answered for her. “You’re too busy. Disciplined. The only way to win.”

“I did see it. Kia made me.”

“Did you like it?”

“I guess.” She’d been more stressed about wasting time relaxing than she was focused on the movie, but every single person who cared about film said it was brilliant.

“The director, Ashlyn Stewart, she was a guest lecturer in your father’s department last year. The Film Department loved her. And she’s finishing up a documentary on dancers of color.”

No. No. No.

It was obvious where Eleanor was going.

“The film is basically done. It’ll be premiering in a few weeks, but I told Ashlyn she has to have your perspective. She said there’s enough flexibility in the documentary format that she could splice in a few quotes from you.”

Why can’t the past be over?

“Our lawsuit was a landmark moment for the Lynn Bernau School,” Eleanor said. “When we won, we changed ballet education.”

Now everyone knows that saying, The choreography calls for consistent complexion, could get you sued.

“I know that was a difficult time for you,” Eleanor said. “But this will be a paradigm-shifting documentary, and it won’t be complete unless you’re in it. You were at the center of that. Your talent made that lawsuit and everything that came after possible.”

How much did Lillian want to relive, on camera, the most stressful time in her life, a time she still couldn’t think about without getting nauseated? Not at all. She could still feel the bile rise in her throat as she waited backstage for a solo or audition. Before the lawsuit, Eleanor had pushed her to be her best, but as soon as Eleanor put down the lawyer’s retainer, sixteen-year-old Lillian had to be more than the best. If you sued one of America’s premier dance schools because they weren’t giving your talented daughter the parts she deserved, it better be obvious to every ballet master in the world that your daughter deserved them. It wasn’t enough to be better than her peers; she had to be ten times as good. If she wasn’t and they lost, Eleanor came off looking like a jealous dance mom. The case against the Lynn Bernau School set legal precedent for the idea that ballet companies couldn’t pick their dancers based on race because choreography required consistent coloring.

After that, Lillian’s friends didn’t want to be associated with her. The school administration hated Lillian as she continued to study at the school while the lawsuit dragged on. We must show them you belong there, Eleanor had said when, in an uncharacteristic bout of tears, Lillian had begged Eleanor to let her change schools. Only her girlfriend kept texting and comforting her in the few moments they could steal together. But, according to Eleanor, the girl was a distraction. Lillian didn’t know if she had been angrier at Eleanor for telling her to break up with her girlfriend or with herself for doing it. All she knew was that when she called it off, something inside her broke and something was reinforced with steel. Ballet was everything. You didn’t get to be as good as Lillian was and fall in love too.

Wasn’t it enough that she’d made that sacrifice? Did she really have to tell Ashlyn Stewart how great it was to give up a personal life to be the best? You couldn’t be in a groundbreaking documentary and say, I fought racism in dance, and I won, and sometimes when I’m having sex with a woman I’ll never see again, I think, I’d probably be happier if I’d lost. And why did Eleanor have to shove her in the spotlight again? Ashlyn was done with the film. She didn’t need to fit Lillian in.

Could she get out of the interview? Maybe she could go sailing with Uncle Carl, get stranded on an island, live on coconuts… no. The Coast Guard would find her. She and Kia could move to… what country didn’t have cell service or Wi-Fi? None. She had to say yes. Jacksons said yes. They didn’t turn away from a chance to make a difference.

Lillian slid down the wall, until she sat on the cold concrete floor.

“You are an icon, Lillian. You truly are.”

Lillian wanted to say, You love Uncle Carl for having a yacht with a million spaniels. Why do I have to be a fucking icon?

“Stewart’s producer talked to one of The Great American Talent Show producers. You’ll be filming a challenge in LA. Don’t mention it. It’s a huge surprise. It’s reality TV, after all.” Lillian could almost hear her mother roll her eyes. “He said the show wouldn’t mind if you used your days off to do the interview. Generally, that’s against contract, but having you on the show and in the documentary would be good publicity.”

For a second, Lillian was back in the courtroom, sweating in a high-collared blouse, the eyes of every administrator at the Lynn Bernau School of Dance stabbing her from the gallery. Now she’d have to relive that so she could be an icon or a paradigm or a trailblazer or all the other hyperbolic things people had called her because when she was sixteen, her mother sued her dance school. Why couldn’t Kia have been the dancer and Lillian have gotten the gay single father whose idea of activism was banning wheatgrass mimosas?

“Of course you don’t have to,” Eleanor said with uncharacteristic gentleness.

But Lillian did have to do it. Dancers knew how to move through pain.

“I’d be honored,” Lillian said. She rushed through her goodbye and hung up.

Half of Lillian’s mind was still in the courtroom as she stepped out of the rehearsal space into the hallway, swinging the door open and directly into… Blue. Blue dodged, then saw who it was.

“Oh,” Blue gasped.

For a second, they stared at each other, Lillian taking in Blue’s screamingly tangerine-colored suit and purple corset that lifted her breasts toward Lillian, the breasts she’d cupped for only a second. Lillian needed to learn the exact blend of caress and bite that made Blue—

No. She did not need to learn anything. Or look. Or think about. Especially because Blue was accompanied by what was probably her troupe: four of the most mismatched people Lillian had ever seen in one place. Lillian whirled away, but not before she felt a flash of delight at the sight of Blue, like she had when she was a teenager and saw a new post by one of her favorite dancers. She tamped it down and set her lips in a neutral line.

One of Blue’s troupe, a woman with bright red curls, glared at Lillian and then walked on, followed by a trio that looked like a goth stripper, a businessman, and a quarterback.

“We’ll be late, Blue,” the redhead called over her shoulder.

“I’ll be there.” Blue turned back to Lillian. She looked like she was about to say something flirtatious, then stopped, her face resolving into a stranger’s neutral politeness. “Sorry. After you.” She gestured for Lillian to precede her.

Lillian should follow Blue’s troupe, but suddenly the prospect of making conversation with the other performers exhausted her. She waited until Blue’s troupe turned a corner.

Blue studied Lillian. “You okay?”

Totally. Absolutely. Always.She was in some windowless warehouse, in Portland, Oregon, a day away from letting a studio audience determine her fate, reliving the worst day of high school, an icon of Black ballet who wouldn’t even consider saying no to her mother.

Lillian let out a long breath. “I just got off the phone with my mother.”

“I know that feeling,” Blue said ruefully.

“She is not a bad person. No. She’s a good person. An excellent person. It’s just…” Lillian hiked her bag higher on her shoulder. “I shouldn’t complain.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Blue hesitated. “You don’t have to, obviously, but sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to pretend we’re strangers.”

“Just that we haven’t…” Blue spoke so quietly, Lillian wasn’t sure she’d heard her behind the sound of the HVAC.

“Right,” Lillian said. “But not because it wasn’t… special.”

Blue tucked her hands in the pockets of her traffic-cone-orange suit and bobbed from side to side as if trying to contain a little burst of happiness.

“So your mom?” Blue asked.

Lillian could not spill her feelings to Blue. Of all people! But suddenly Blue felt like just the person she wanted to talk to. Blue wouldn’t rhapsodize about what an icon her mother was or tell her Eleanor wasn’t as uptight as Lillian made out or call her a little puffin.

“You ever feel like you love everything that you do, but it’s just too much, even if you love it?” Lillian let her bag slump to the floor.

“You just described my whole life. And is your mom one of those too-much things you love?”

“Yeah. She wants a favor. And it’s not too much to ask, and it’s important, and I said yes. It’s just… I don’t know.”

“The last straw?”

“No. I’ll do it. It’s no big deal.”

“But it is,” Blue said sympathetically. “If it’s a big deal to you, it is.”

“I wonder what it’s like to have a last straw, to have something that makes you fall apart or do the thing you never thought you’d do or give up or get on the next plane and go wherever it’s going. That makes you go, Oh, fuck this shit, I’m going to do whatever I want.”

“I bet you never say Fuck this shit,” Blue observed.

“Nope. You?”

“Look at me.” Blue spread her arms, then gave her breasts a squeeze.

She clearly meant the gesture to say, Obviously, I’m a fuck-this-shit kind of person. But Lillian had seen Blue struggling over her president app. And Blue might sign women’s breasts, but she cared about the toxicity of the pen she used. And Blue had been the most attentive lover Lillian had had in a long time, asking and listening and tuning in to Lillian’s every movement.

“No.” Lillian shook her head slowly. “I don’t think you’re like that.”

Blue’s eyes seemed to say, Thank you.

“If you have that last straw while we’re on the show,” Blue said, “you can come and find me if you want someone to talk to. My friend Sarah”—Blue gestured to the hallway where her people had gone—“she’s not a therapist, but she thinks she is, so I get a lot of insight into… things. People. Feelings. She’s loaned me a lot of self-help books.”

“I’ve never had time to read a self-help book. Do they help?”

“I don’t read them,” Blue said, lightening her tone. “I don’t want to deal with my deep emotional issues.” She grinned. “Nah. I’m already perfect.”

“You and me both.”

They exhaled a collective sigh. Blue’s grin faded to a real smile, tired and friendly. Depending on how the first challenge went, Lillian might never see that smile again. What a shame.