The Middlesteins: A Novel(9)

“When would you like to talk about it?” she said.

He put his hand at her neck lightly and then circled his hand around her hair into a ponytail. At any given moment, she could never be sure who was in control of their relationship.

“Never?” he said.

“She’s your mother,” she said. “You’re not worried?”

“All I ever am is worried about her,” he said sadly. His eyes widened, he made a tiny choking sound, and then he was crying. She threw her arms up and around him, and the two of them stood there in the cold embracing for a while, two puffy coats in the night. Between them hovered a shared thought: that they were in this together. And when one of them failed, the other must succeed.

“Maybe you could talk to her tomorrow?” he said finally. The prickle of his beard against her face as he spoke stimulated her.

“I could,” she said. “I could do it while the kids are at dance class.”

“There you go,” he said softly.



*

For three weeks, the twins had been taking hip-hop dance lessons in preparation for their b’nai mitzvah, and they had made some progress, but Rachelle was worried they wouldn’t be ready in time for the party, or worse, that they would embarrass themselves. The plan was for them to do a routine after dinner, followed by a video montage of the twins through the years. Then a dessert bar would be wheeled out, including a make-your-own sundae station and a bubbling chocolate fountain, surrounded by cookies, pound cake, and strawberries. Rachelle had seen those fountains before at other bar mitzvahs and once at a wedding, and she thought they were more trouble than they were worth—what a mess! Chocolate everywhere, but everybody had one at their parties now, and she would not disappoint her children, her babies, her miracles.

They had insisted on the dance lessons as well. They had no shot at singing, which some of their peers did for the performance portion of the party. Even Josh and Emily recognized that they would be setting themselves up for failure; Josh’s voice was in the midst of some serious and dramatic changes, and Emily—brassy, deep-voiced Emily—had been rejected from the school chorus three years running. But they were diligent kids, and had both played soccer since grade school, and were fit and athletic, and they understood what it meant to show up and practice. They had promised to take it seriously. They had promised results.

And she trusted their instructor, Pierre, who had toured nationally and, in one instance, internationally, with a number of productions of Broadway musicals—this she had learned from scouring the Internet ruthlessly, because in a former life she had been a good student, a solid researcher, and also because she was not going to leave her kids for one hour a day, three times a week, with just any old person with tap shoes and a three-year lease on some office space.

She need not have worried, though, for Pierre was the real deal. He had moved to the area a few years earlier because his mother lived nearby and was sick with something terrible—Rachelle couldn’t remember what, she wanted to say leukemia, who were all these people with all these awful diseases?—and then he had never left. “You’ve got to take care of your family,” he had explained to her. “I mean, in the end that’s all you’ve got, you know what I mean?” Rachelle had nodded furiously. He was speaking directly to her soul.

And though his dance studio was located in a dark corner of a sprawling business complex one block from the new Walmart on Route 83, once she entered it for the first time, she knew that this man was authentic and talented. It was just a simple space, with a small office in the front and a white-walled practice area. But the walls of the front room were covered with dozens of pictures of Pierre with celebrities, Broadway stars and pop idols and a handful of television actors. And these weren’t staged photos either: There was Pierre on a beach, shirtless and smiling, his arms slender like firm, flat noodles, wrapped around another shirtless and smiling man; Pierre crammed in at a dinner table surrounded by fabulous people, his big, gentle eyes glittering; a sweaty Pierre post-performance with the rest of the cast, his smooth, cocoa-colored face caked with makeup, his smile exuberant. Rachelle could almost hear his heavy breathing through the picture, the rapid thump of his heart. He was the most exhilarating and thrilling person she had met in a long time.

But as she watched Josh and Emily at the end of each class through the window between the office and the practice space, she saw how awkward they still were. Josh seemed the better of the two; he could keep a rhythm, even if his motions were stiff. But Emily was off on every count, and sometimes she stopped and stared, silently mouthing the count, her eyes glassy, as Pierre repeated the same moves over and over. He never lost his cool, though; his voice was warm and encouraging, and when Josh had a minor triumph, he hooted, “Oooh, boy, you got it going on now.”