A Lily in the Light(50)
“Esme,” Dontel would say over the music, “you love him. He’s leaving you. Let me see that.” Or “Esme, you hate him. Hate him with all your heart.” And Esme would conjure those feelings for Adam until she actually felt them and craved the intensity of it all. The rest of the day would be dull in comparison.
“The two of you,” Dontel would say at the end of a particularly intense session, holding each of their hands in his. “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.” It became a kind of secret between them, those after-hours sessions. The intimacy of the whole thing almost felt like a wedding, a new bride at the altar, full of expectation, knowing they’d be tied together and sent away into the world.
She’d hoped that Paris would be like that for them—that they’d finish performances and wander along the quay, finding picnic spots under the willow trees at Pont Neuf or lighting candles at Notre Dame, finding favorite espresso cafés and jittering for hours afterward, laughing, and she’d fill her soul with Adam like she used to—but it wasn’t. There were other company members that he danced with every day, and Adam’s time was split between them and his show. He’d grown into his adult life in the same way Esme wished she had but hadn’t.
The courtyard buzzed with dancers in tights and leotards, T-shirts thrown over for cover, knotted at the waist, cigarettes in one hand and water bottles in the other. Limp ponytails hung down backs, jagged from sleep. Circles formed throughout the courtyard, a flower bed of like plants with like plants. These were New York City Ballet dancers, Adam’s cohort, newly released from Saratoga Springs, using their break to dance in Paris. She was the only one from San Francisco. She didn’t have a circle, but she didn’t mind. She hovered in the corner alone, wondering why everyone was outside instead of in.
“Have you heard?” Ashley slid beside her, exhaling a plume of gray smoke that twisted Esme’s stomach. At twenty-five, Ashley already had lines deeply etched around her mouth. She was a soloist, not the oldest or youngest but old enough that she should have been a principal already if she ever would be. How anyone could make it this far and be content with coasting in the middle baffled Esme. The other dancers didn’t pay her much mind, and Ashley seemed grateful for an outsider to pair off with. It was almost refreshing to be around someone so content.
“Hear what? I just got here.”
“Denise fell,” Ashley whispered.
People fell, but it wasn’t talked about unless it was bad, and Denise was a principal. She was the Waltz Girl.
“I wasn’t there, but Adam’s looking for you.” Ashley raised her eyebrows.
Esme’s breath caught. She’d shadowed Denise’s rehearsals all week, running choreography while the sun burned from afternoon to night in the faraway world outside the mirror. The more she’d watched, the more she’d hoped she wouldn’t have to dance it. She’d run the choreography through technically, but she didn’t want to find the real Waltz Girl, the one who threw herself again and again against something that wasn’t working until it broke her. No, Esme had pulled inward, closing against the possibility of those feelings, of that little-girl version of herself who’d cried on the bathroom floor of a theater. That little girl was in her somewhere, beating behind her grown-up heart, and Esme wouldn’t let herself feel that way again.
Adam wouldn’t pick her over people he danced with at home. “It’s just a corps role,” he’d told her apologetically weeks before, knowing she was a soloist with SFB, “but it’s Paris.” She was safe.
The studio door opened, and Adam’s head popped out. He was eight years older than when they’d first met at school in San Francisco, but Adam was just as blue eyed and open faced as he’d been then. He reminded Esme of the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, only instead of making him goofy, all that charm had blown him to the top of the haystack. He still looked surprised to be an NYCB star instead of fumbling with the wet plastic rubber of a life raft.
They’d been a kind of family once, Adam and Esme, finding each other after classes were done and slipping off for rush tickets to whatever SFB was running that season. They went night after night, and when the initial wonder had worn off, they analyzed technique, compared performances. They spent every holiday together, alone in the dorms after everyone else had gone home to their families. “It’s just too expensive, Esme,” her father had explained over the phone, “what with everything else. You could come home two weeks later for half the price or less.” But she could not go home two weeks later because school was in session again, and after the initial disappointment had worn off, it was a relief. Esme had almost enjoyed holidays again. Esme and Adam watched movies in their pajamas and rode trolleys covered in twinkle lights or walked along the park under Golden Gate Bridge, looking for driftwood that would burn blue but never finding it. She didn’t feel lonely or family-less when she was with Adam. It was what Amelia might’ve meant once when she said life after Lily would be different, not necessarily better, but different. Being with Adam was certainly different. Esme never told Adam about Lily. He never talked about his life in Cuba, but there was an understanding between them, a language of loss, better unspoken.
There was something about Adam that made her feel like she’d been part of his success, even if it wasn’t true. Here, among his closest peers, she realized other people seemed to think that way about him too. It bothered Esme that her Adam feeling, the one that filled her with courage and made her feel unstoppable, wasn’t hers alone.