All Lined Up

Chapter 6 Dallas

Stella kept me out late again on Saturday (thankfully not at another party, but at the coffee place just off campus). Even after we turned out the lights for bed, we stayed up a while longer talking across the small space that separated our twin beds. Because of that, I snooze two too many times, making me a few minutes late for church on Sunday morning. When I squeeze past Dad sitting in his usual spot at the end of a pew a few rows from the back, his gaze turns steely.

I knock a hymnal off the shelving on the back of the pew, and it thumps against the carpet, drawing even more attention to my late entrance as the youth minister finishes greeting the congregation. Dad shifts, flexing his fists on his knees, and I rush to pick up the book and plop myself down beside him.

That would normally be the end of it. I would sit incredibly still until all the eyes left me, but somehow in my rush to sit down, I ended up with a few stray strands of hair in my mouth. I claw at my cheeks, trying to find the offending hairs and pull them away.

Dad makes a low grumbling noise that reminds me of a grizzly bear.

I show him my teeth in a grimace barely passable as a smile. If he wants a proper and polite daughter, he shouldn’t have spent my childhood dragging me to places where I was predominantly surrounded by men.

I fix my gaze straight ahead, taming my hair and clothes just in time for the youth minister to say, “We’re so glad to have you all this morning. Please take a few moments to greet your neighbors and say a warm hello to any new faces.”

The pianist and the organist start an upbeat version of “Joyful, Joyful,” and I wish that I had managed to be just a few minutes later. Maybe it makes me heartless, but this is my least favorite part of church. Dad and I are immediately inundated with former players and parents of players and teachers. It used to be that they all wanted to stay on good terms with Dad so that their kids would get more playing time. I had hoped that Dad’s new job might make us a little less popular, but no luck there.

Dad’s all smiles, shaking hands and laughing, his loud voice carrying and no doubt drawing more people toward us. I stand there awkwardly, smiling (horrendously fake) smiles and nodding along like I know a good daughter should. Mostly the men talk to Dad, and the women talk to me since there’s no mom to play that role. I get compliments on my hair (which I know is a hot mess because it’s hella windy outside) and my outfit (which is lined with wrinkles and smells of Febreze since I just grabbed it off the floor of my dorm room).

And of course . . . there are the questions.

“How’s college?”

“Have you settled on a major?”

“How are your classes?”

“How does it feel to be all grown-up?”

Plus a few questions about Dad and the university team, like I know or give a crap about that.

On the surface I’m all Oh, haha. I’m great. Loving it. Everything’s great. Just great. Hah. Hah. And underneath I’m like Dear God, why is this hymn SO LONG?

It’s the college inquisition, and it’s enough to make any recent graduate vow never to visit home again. Unfortunately for me . . . I don’t have that option.

One year. Two, tops. Then I’m getting out of here. I have to.

I shoot Mrs. Dunlap at the piano a desperate look, not just because I want her to speed up, but also because she’s one of the few people in this building that I actually want to talk to. In addition to playing the piano during the service and teaching the second-grade Sunday school class, she’s been my dance instructor since Dad and I moved here four and a half years ago.

The youth minister steps up to the pulpit once more, and people begin making their way back to their seats. I let out a sigh of relief when he tells us to bow our heads.

I try to listen, but I zone out not long after “Dear Heavenly Father.”

There’s too much quiet in prayers, too much time for my mind to wander. I think about how miserable it was to roll out of bed this morning and watch Stell go right on snoozing while I struggled to kick-start my day. Then I feel guilty for thinking I’d rather be sleeping during church . . . during a prayer, no less. But that only makes me think about the other things I feel guilty for . . . like the seriously hot stranger-danger make-out session I had two nights ago. Then I chastise myself over feeling guilty about something that in the grand scheme of things isn’t really that bad. But then the minister says, “Amen,” and I concede that while kissing someone isn’t bad, thinking about it when I’m supposed to be communing with the big guy upstairs probably isn’t winning me any bonus points.

We stand to sing a hymn, and even though the words are written up on a big screen hanging above the pulpit, I grab a hymnal so that I’ve got something to do with my hands. I follow along in the book, but don’t sing myself. I sound like a hyena on my good days (a hyena in the jaws of a lion on my bad days), and I’m too self-conscious that other people will hear me.

I hear Carson calling me a daredevil, and God, how wrong he was. If I were a daredevil, I would have said screw Dad and auditioned for real dance programs instead of caving to what he thought was best (and what his money provided). I would have found a way to make it all work—the auditioning and the moving and the money. That’s what daredevils do. I also wouldn’t have run off like a timid preteen when Stella caught us together. As if that weren’t pathetic enough, I’d then lied to Stella and told her that maybe I’d had a few drinks after all.

Because, of course, that was the only explanation for me doing something fun and out of character like actually hooking up with a guy.

A guy who didn’t answer either of the texts I sent him yesterday. Clearly he’d gotten over the fascination he’d had with me on Friday night. Maybe he’d been drunk.

I don’t know if I always hate myself this much and I never think about it, or if it’s a product of the reflection that’s inherent in church and religion and being wildly unsuccessful at growing up. Feeling like everyone around me can see the failure written across my forehead certainly doesn’t help either.

I sigh, and when Dad shifts next to me I catch him looking at me from the corner of his eye. I can’t tell if he’s disappointed or worried or annoyed.

Dad really only has two faces: normal and pissed.

And football. Football kind of gets its own expression, though it overlaps with pissed a lot.

Eventually, we return our hymnals to their holding places and take a seat for the sermon. I’ve given up the pretense of paying attention, choosing instead to doodle little dancers in the margins of the church bulletin.

The preacher calls all the little kids up to the front, where he does a short little minisermon for the kids before sending them out for children’s church. It’s usually a parallel for the more complex message he’ll give the rest of us. And I find myself thinking that church is like my kid’s sermon . . . it parallels my life as a whole. I show up, but I’m not in it. I go through the motions, but my mind wanders elsewhere. I dress and behave in the ways I know won’t get me in trouble. I get by. I bide my time waiting for the moment when it all ends.

But life isn’t church. It isn’t one hour during one day in the week. It’s everything, and I’m wasting it.

By the time the service ends half an hour later, I’m awash with emotions, anger and guilt and bitterness swallowing up whatever hope I manage to conjure. As soon as the benediction ends, I slip past Dad before he stands, mutter, “Be right back,” and flee before he’s inundated. As I walk away I hear Mrs. Simmons, whose daughter I went to school with, say, “You know, our youngest is shaping up to be quite the receiver. He’s just in eighth grade, but I’m sure he’ll make varsity as a freshman. Maybe you’ll be seeing him at Rusk in a few years.”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. In Texas, everyone is a wannabe coach. Levi used to have strangers hand him plays they’d drawn up “just in case he wanted to try something new.” I pass Levi’s parents gathering their things from the second row, where they’ve sat for as long as I’ve known them. I smile politely and nod as I go.

It’s not their fault their son is a jerk.

Levi stopped coming to church not long after he started college. I should feel guilty over how glad that made me, but I don’t. Church always feels a little bit like I’m putting on a show, but with him here it was ten times worse. If I looked at him too much, of course I was still madly in love with him. But if I didn’t look at him at all, I was madly in love (and heartbroken). It was like living under a microscope.

Breakups are a careful and exhausting dance.

That’s exactly what I need. Dance. It clears my mind better than anything else. I stand by the raised little nook that houses the piano and wait for Mrs. Dunlap to finish the postlude. She must feel me there, because she looks away from her sheet music and gives me an overdramatic smile. She presses the keys with a bit more flourish for my benefit, and I lean against the wall humming beneath my breath.

She holds on to the last chords for a long moment, and they ring out in chorus with the organ before the song ends and only the chattering conversations across the hall are left.

“Let me guess.” Mrs. D turns on her bench to look at me. “You want the studio?”

“How’d you know?”

She snorts. “Because it’s all you want. Always has been.”

I know that. And she knows it. Dad still insists I’ll want other things if I give them a try. After living in a house for eighteen years with me, you’d think he would know me better than the lady who teaches my dance class a few times a week.

“You have a key,” Mrs. Dunlap says. “No reason to drag yourself all the way up here to see little old me.”

She gave me a key when I started teaching classes to the younger kids, but I still felt bad about using it without her permission.

“You’re not old.”

She is. The woman is nearly seventy, but she doesn’t look it. She’s lithe and slender, and if she’d dye her gray hair, she could probably pass for fifty, if not younger.

“Oh pish. You don’t need to suck up to me, child.”

I step up on the platform and place a quick kiss on her cheek. “Learn to take a compliment, Mrs. D.”

I turn to go, and she calls out, “Says the girl who never thinks anything is good enough.”

I blow her a kiss and call back my thanks instead of saying the thought that pops into my head.

Good is never good enough.

One of Dad’s mottos. He would frequently tack on, “Good may win games, but great wins titles.”

As I walk back toward him, he manages to peel himself away from the leeches, I mean, parents surrounding him.

He joins me in the aisle, and we head for the door together.

“Lunch?” he grunts.

I shake my head. “Mrs. Dunlap is going to let me use the studio for a while. I’ll just grab something fast after.”

“Sure?”

I nod. “Yep.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

We don’t say another word until we’re outside, and I press the button to unlock my car.

“Drive safe,” he says, and then climbs into his own truck.

I turn the key in the ignition and mutter, “Good talking to you, Dad.”

It takes me ten minutes to get to the studio, a nondescript storefront in a strip mall. Not exactly the height of culture, but it’s about all this town has to offer. And it’s been good to me. I’m careful to lock the door behind me and keep the lights off in the front so no one thinks we’re open. I choose the larger of the two studios and push open the door.

Breathing deep, I take in that indescribable smell of the studio. Sweat. Feet. Rosin wood from the barre. You’d think the smell would be unpleasant, but it’s not. It’s home.

Dance had started as a babysitting service while Dad had practice. He enrolled me in everything from piano lessons to Little League softball, so that I was occupied while he did his thing. I’m willing to bet he regrets that first dance class he dumped me in all those years ago.

I switch on the light and drop my bag by the door. Slipping off my street shoes, I dig out my lyrical sandals, which Mrs. Dunlap always calls dance paws. They leave my toes free and wrap just under the pad of my foot, giving me a better surface to spin and slide, but still allowing me the flexibility of being almost barefoot.

I pad over to the stereo system, the floor cold against my toes. I press play on the CD that’s already in there, and start skipping through the songs, waiting for something to speak to me. I flip past a few hip-hop and pop songs, followed by classical music (only in Mrs. D’s dance class would she have Mozart following up “Lady Marmalade”).

I flip through about a dozen songs, each time more and more frustrated with a feeling I can’t quite name. It’s not that I’m angry, though it’s close. Sad doesn’t quite fit either, even though I can feel hints of that dripping from the edges of whatever it is that’s eating at me.

Finally, a song makes me pause. Slow and simple, it starts with a long, low chord and a soft, frenetic beat building beneath. It reminds me of my morning spent at church. Serene on the outside, roiling in the depths.

A voice, smooth and sweet, rings out.

I’m wasted, losing time. I’m a foolish, fragile spine.

Yeah. That sounded like it had enough self-loathing in it to do the trick.

I start the song over and make my way to the center of the floor.

I let the music move me slowly at first, gentle swaying. Then right before the words begin, I burst into movement. I don’t bother dancing a routine I already know. There’s no challenge in that. It’s a battle already won, a feeling already mapped and conquered. No . . . that’s not how I like to dance, not like my father plays football with a book of mastered plays, each carefully designed with no room for mistakes. I dance the way musicians play jazz, with improvisation and soul.

It means I always dance alone. Group and coupled dances don’t exactly leave much room to play and change as you go along. I’m fine with that, though. I’ve gotten quite used to being alone. I thrive that way.

I move how the song tells me, cobbling together a series of steps on the fly. Some of them are familiar, stolen from previous routines, while some leap into existence of their own accord, rustling through my body before my mind even bothers to make sense of what my body is doing.

I make mistakes. I build to a move that doesn’t match with the song. Sometimes I stand there for a few seconds, not sure what to do next, but miraculously . . . it works with the hesitation of the song, of the lyrics. Because sometimes in life, you just have to stand there and do nothing. Overwhelmed by all the versions of ourselves that exist in our minds—who we want to be, who we should be, who we’re not, and who we are—it’s a jungle that can ensnare your feet and confuse your eyes. But sometimes if you stand still, all those things will snap back into place like a rubber band. And if you can get past the sting, you can keep moving, not quite whole, but held together for the moment.

That’s what the dance becomes for me. All the versions of myself. I move toward one corner, playing the perfect daughter, dancing with all the moments I’ve spent in bleachers burning behind my eyelids. Then I drag myself back to center. I take off toward the opposite corner. I throw myself into the highest leap I can manage, drawing on all the most complex combinations I know. That’s the me that doesn’t hesitate or question. That’s the me that dreams. But then mournfully, I pull myself back to center. I keep dancing—the me that placates Stella in order to keep her while simultaneously burning with jealousy, the me that strives to be better than everyone else at dance and school and everything within my control, the me without a mom, that’s too afraid to be feminine or emotional, too afraid I won’t know how or worse that I will and the emotion will consume me, the me that jumped off a balcony and kissed a boy I barely knew just so he’d call me a daredevil and I could pretend for a moment that he spoke the truth. I cover every inch of the studio, and when I drag myself back to the center of the room for the final time, it’s on my hands and knees, slicked with sweat, my version of tears.

I lie flat on my back as the stereo plays “Meet Virginia.” It’s one of Mrs. D’s favorites to use in warm-ups, and it’s already well into the middle of the song.

Pulls her hair back as she screams,

“I don’t really wanna live this life.”

I didn’t notice as I danced when the music switched, but I close my eyes and breathe, enjoying the familiarity of the song as it pulls me home, drags me back to center.

Back to me.

I don’t know that dancing fixes anything. I don’t feel magically happy because of it. My problems don’t disappear when the music ends. But I understand life better when I dance, and understanding is half the fight of surviving.