A Lily in the Light(40)
When she still couldn’t sleep, she tiptoed to the closet. It was stupid, but she didn’t want Amelia to know she wasn’t sleeping. It wasn’t something a serious student would do. Sleep was just as valuable as waking time. Her brain would process what she’d learned that day, organizing it into categories as tidy as moving boxes while her muscles healed and cells rebuilt, but the closet had been staring at her all night through its slanted wooden door and made her feel uneasy.
Even without opening the bulging garment bags inside, Esme knew they were costumes. She glanced at her bedroom door before unzipping the first bag. The pale-pink bodice was crisscrossed with beige ribbon. The sleeves puffed, and the skirt was long and mauve, longer in the back than the front. Aurora. Esme tried not to squeal as she unzipped one bag after the next. Juliet. Odette. Odile. The Sugar Plum Fairy. But it was the Firebird that intrigued Esme most. Amelia was famous for the Firebird, but it was shoved in the back of the closet.
The tulle was coarse under her fingers, and the whole thing was heavier than she’d expected. Beads swirled over the bodice like flames. The audience would only see a glimmer of this beautiful costume as fleeting as the Firebird herself. Before she could stop herself, she’d slipped out of her pajamas and into the costume. It was too big. She pinched the shoulders to hold it up in the mirror, disappointed by the messy-haired girl in dress-up clothes staring back at her. Her pajamas were curled on the floor like shed skin. She rose into dancer’s pose and imagined it hugging her waist and chest. If. If she grew enough. If she was just the right size.
The TV clicked off downstairs. Esme slipped the costume back on the hanger and slid the garment bag into place. Next time, she’d try on the feather headpiece, full of hot-red-and-orange feathers. She’d look more like the real thing then. Her mother would have loved all that beadwork, but she wouldn’t see these costumes. Esme felt guilty for sneaking through Amelia’s things as she crawled back into bed, for not sharing something her mother would have loved, but it was a secret treasure, the kind she always hoped to find in dreams about secret doors that led to rooms with miniature carousels and Ferris wheels, secret attics with train sets above her head, only these costumes were real. She could look at them whenever she wanted.
Outside her window, a dog barked. Amelia climbed the stairs, heels thudding against the wood floor. Even though the room smelled like lavender and the pillow under her head was flatter than she was used to, Esme fell asleep counting details on the Firebird costume, the swirling beads as magical as counting stars.
Esme slipped her foot into her first pointe shoe. It closed around her foot like a second skin. She wiggled her toes inside the box. They didn’t move as much as they would in her technique shoes, and she wasn’t used to the extra weight, but Amelia said they were just right. She tied her ribbons and adjusted the elastic, smoothing the wrinkles in her tights. Her first few steps to the barre took extra thought, but then she was in first position, second, rounding her way through positions she knew so well but that felt new again with pointe shoes. She remembered suddenly Lily’s first steps, holding Cerise’s index fingers as she’d taken her tiny steps on wobbly feet. Esme’s hands tightened a little on the barre. She checked the mirror for Imaginary Lily, but it was empty except for Amelia and her own reflection, which was a little more serious than usual now that she was focusing so intently.
“Ready?” Amelia asked. The first few notes of “Clair de Lune” started behind her. “Start in second, and roll very slowly into relevé.”
Esme closed her eyes and placed her fingers on the barre for support. Shouldn’t her father be filming like he did for special occasions, that boxy camera pressed into his shoulder, face scrunched behind the eyepiece? She was not used to doing special things alone, but the wood was there beneath her fingertips, cool and reassuring.
She rolled into relevé, muscles stretching, feeling the pressure on her toes from the box. How long had she hoped for this moment? She fought back the urge to smile and look down at her feet, but when she opened her eyes in the mirror, she was smiling—the happiest one she could remember in a long time now.
Amelia adjusted Esme’s core, pressing down gently on her shoulders.
“Relax,” she said softly. “And then let’s do it again.”
She lowered herself to the ground again, but inside, Esme was still floating, hovering above the ground by only a few extra satin inches, enough to make her feel new and alive again, as if she’d lifted herself over the same fog that floated above her Golden Gate Bridge and could see the sun again, shining and shimmering just for her.
“I have a surprise for you.” Amelia flipped an omelet. It landed perfectly in the middle of the pan. Sunlight poured through the kitchen windows, especially bright against the snow outside. Seeing Amelia in anything but dance clothes was weird, but Amelia looked so comfortable in her gray sweatpants, and her hair was in the same braid as always, only little wisps escaped from sleep. Everything about the round white plates and the mug of spicy chai tea and the half-melted real candles on the table was new and exciting, as exciting as the costumes in the closet. She wondered how she’d managed to sleep at all.
“What is it?” Esme looked up from her tea, mouth ringing from the peppercorn and ginger floating in her cup.
“Well.” Amelia slid the omelet onto a plate and cut it in two, sprinkling green stuff over the top, a half smile settling over her mouth. “It’s Nutcracker season, but a few friends of mine are rehearsing Serenade for a private performance, and I thought you’d like to see it.”