In Her Skin(13)

A woman with bright lemony hair and a chiffon pouf on one shoulder leans over me.

“I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it!” the lady exclaims, the champagne glass in her hand doing dangerous circles.

“Lanie!” Mr. Lovecraft says, sliding between the pretty lady and me and kissing her cheek. “You girls remember your third-grade teacher, Mrs. Higgins?”

My schoolteachers in Immokalee had big butts and angry lines between their eyebrows and didn’t hang out at schmaltzy events. This woman has white-tipped fingernails and she smells good.

“Retired now.” Mrs. Higgins points the glass at me. “But I’ve never stopped thinking about you.”

Mrs. Lovecraft starts in about the importance of taking my “reentry” slowly, but Mrs. Higgins isn’t listening. “You were a joy in class, Vivi. Always so inquisitive, so open!”

I smile, and the effect is of a rabid dog.

Mrs. Higgins taps a nail to her forehead. “It’s coming back to me now! A star reader, you were!”

My cheeks burn.

“You had the funniest habit of twisting your hair when you were thinking hard,” Mrs. Higgins adds, narrowing her eyes.

“We should probably be heading in,” Mr. Lovecraft says, looking around. “The lights just flickered.”

Mrs. Higgins juts her hip and leans back. “I’ll never forget how adorable your costume was for the wax museum project! Do you remember what you wore?”

I feel your hand slip into mine. “Do you, Vivi?” you say.

My mouth twitches. This is a trap.

“You looked like the biggest dork, in a turtleneck and glasses, pretending to be Steve Jobs!” you say suddenly, laughing and swinging my hand. And you are in Mrs. Higgins’s face, talking about how some science lesson she taught in third grade was the basis for an obsession with physics that drew you to fencing and …

… and I’m not following. Because all I can think of is how you rescued me from closer examination. There is love in the Lovecrafts’ eyes, for each other and for you, and I have the sense you just did something wonderful. These are pretty people who wear their kindness on their pretty sleeves, and these are my people. They are named correctly, they understand the craft of love, and I am further away from Tent City than I ever imagined. Mrs. Lovecraft pulls me closer and Mr. Lovecraft puts his arm around his wife and around you, and the four of us politely excuse ourselves from tipsy, dangerous Mrs. Higgins and make our way into the music hall.

I look up. My library is beautiful, but this place is beautiful-magical, a pop-up book of fairy tales, where Cinderella lost her shoe. It is made of cream cheese ribboned with gold. Crystal chandeliers drip from a honeycombed ceiling. Statues rise from shallow caves in the walls, and on the stage, empty white chairs and music stands crowd the floor. People fill every seat, even the three levels of balconies surrounding us, above.

You tug my hand. “Time to sit.” You lead me down a long aisle to seats so close we can touch the stage. We settle in chairs around a small table. “You don’t remember this place, do you?”

I pretend I can’t hear you above the roar of people.

“Our families came to the Presidents at the Pops together every spring,” you continue. “We sat in floor seats just like these every year.”

I let you pour me fancy water from a green bottle.

“It was a long time ago,” I say.

“A lifetime,” you say.

You fill in my blanks and it throws me. I’m relieved when the musicians appear onstage to applause. The conductor walks out last in a tux. He has a big personality but a little body, and he makes me smile when he talks to the audience, because he seems kind. He shrugs and raises his baton, and I become rigid in my seat, waiting, and the music is loud, and it fills my entire body. This is not the radio or the TV or the old laptop at Tent City someone jerry-rigged and I close my eyes and let it fill me. I feel the Lovecrafts watching, but I don’t care. They get pleasure from seeing me happy, and maybe Vivi liked music too, and if she didn’t, a girl can change.

Singers march out and line up in back. The conductor explains that the theme of the night is show tunes, and this is special. They launch into a bunch of songs that everyone seems to know, and the music swells, the end of one song running into the other, and the audience is supposed to sing along, so we do. To help us cheat, the words are projected on the wall behind the singers, and this is cornbally, old-fashioned fun, a sing-along with five hundred of your closest friends, and I can do this. Mr. Lovecraft has a smooth, deep voice, and I like hearing it rise above everyone else’s, and we sway together as we sing. You hold back. Everyone knows your voice is better, and you use about 20 percent of it, which is classy and sad at the same time. Or maybe you can’t use your whole voice because of the nodules thing, who knows? My heart is softening, and this is good but also dangerous. To have fun is to let down your guard.

The music slows for the last song. A girl strides out, some musical star, a skinny thing, in a sleek purple gown, and she’s our age—mine, Temple’s, Vivi’s—or close. She cradles the microphone like a pro, and I wonder if that’s how you held your mic when you were on that talent show. The words on the wall disappear: it is no longer our turn to sing. Everyone hushes, and I find myself moving to the edge of my seat. When she hits the first note, it is pure and un-showy and the opposite of every song that came before.