A Lily in the Light(46)
Her mother used to brush Esme’s hair into a bun and secure it in place with bobby pins and absolute faith that her daughter could do what so few people were able to. That was why she’d made costumes at night in between her real business, why she’d done everything she could to get Esme into Amelia’s studio, why she’d gotten up before the sun to take Esme to auditions all over the city and hunted down the right ones for her. “You would be perfect for this,” she’d say softly to Esme as she showed her a flyer, and Esme would believe her because her mother’s faith was contagious.
Now, she had to believe it for herself. She wouldn’t have that whispered faith from her mother anymore, but Cerise had planted it a long time ago, and it had been growing all along. Maybe Esme was wrong; it hadn’t come from her mother at all. Her mother had only watered something that was already there.
Andre put one cold hand on Esme’s shoulder. She didn’t push it away even though the weight pressed into her sore neck. Her fist balled in her lap. She wanted to slam it against the table and rattle the dirty dishes loud enough that her mother would stop putting her shoes on and look at Esme, really look at her little dancer like she used to, and then say no, but the door had already opened and closed. Esme sat with a hot rage in her chest and her father’s hand on her shoulder. It didn’t matter how bad he felt if the answer was no.
“Next year,” Andre whispered softly. “We can think about San Francisco when all this is behind us.”
She climbed into his cab that next afternoon and silently waited for the ride to Amelia’s to end.
But the next weekend, as Esme waited for the bathroom and mixed cold water into her oatmeal packet, wondering why the oats were floating in milky liquid instead of puffing up, she counted the hours before she could go back to Amelia’s.
“You have to heat the water first, dumbass,” Nick mumbled, poking her floating oats with a spoon. “It’s not gonna work that way.”
Her mother was in the trailer with the advocates. Who knew if she’d come out again before Esme left. Nick had the football game on mute in the living room. Little helmeted people ran across the green field. Her father circled the living room, staring out the window at the trailer below, pacing past Nick and Esme and the garbage bag over the hole in the wall until Esme was sure she’d lose her mind.
“Enough,” he said suddenly, startling the two of them. The spoon clattered to the table. “Esme, get your stuff.”
It was too early to go back to Amelia’s. She couldn’t just . . .
“But, Dad—”
“We’re going to the airport. I’m not gonna lose you too.”
He unzipped Nick’s backpack and dumped everything inside onto the living room rug. A mess of crumpled loose-leaf paper, pens without caps, cigarettes, and a switchblade spilled out.
“We’ll talk about this when I get back.” He pocketed the switchblade and threw the cigarettes into Esme’s oatmeal before dumping it into the trash. Nick stared from his slumped heap on the couch. Andre stuffed a change of clothes into Nick’s empty backpack and slung it over his shoulder. Go, Dad! Esme silently cheered, so thankful to see her real dad again instead of the shadow version. She gathered her ballet things as quickly as possible, anxious to keep moving so her father wouldn’t have time to slip back into his sad self. He stopped only once at the trailer, opening the door just wide enough to toss the knife inside, and then they were off.
At the airport, Esme watched in disbelief as her father pulled the emergency credit card from his wallet. The airport was a flurry of rolling suitcases behind quick footsteps. Announcements Esme didn’t understand filled the empty air. There were lines of people and luggage everywhere. A plane whooshed past on the runway, throwing a shadow over the terminal. Esme wrapped her arms around her stomach. We don’t buy what we can’t afford, Cerise’s words echoed. Panic boiled in the pit of her stomach as her father slid the card across the counter to the ticket agent.
“But, Dad . . . I might not even get in.” It was true. It hadn’t fazed her when she was tracing the Golden Gate Bridge with her index finger or imagining Chinese lantern tassels making shadow lines on the sidewalk. But at the airport with the emergency card swiped and her father’s signature on the receipt, the hours he’d spend driving people from borough to borough while her mother stitched beads onto satin, working extra to cover this trip, made not getting in seem suddenly too real. It was wasteful and selfish, especially after Lily, but Andre was smiling. He folded the tickets, slid them into his jeans pocket, and gathered their two small bags.
“Look at me,” he said. He looked so out of place without the backdrop of their house, his cab, their neighborhood. He looked like a different person. Had he ever even been on a plane before? Oh my God, she realized, staring at the planes landing and taking off through the window, I’ve never been on a plane. Her stomach lurched. What a stupid idea this was.
“It’s not an option.” His voice was calm, but every word buzzed as loud as a bee swarm. “No matter what it is, even if it’s just an idea, everything starts with your head, and your head starts here.” Andre tapped the place where his heart would be.
“Come on.” He threw her backpack over his shoulder and reached for her hand. She would have been embarrassed anywhere else, but not here. Not today. He was the dad she remembered from before, and she’d do whatever it took to play along.