by Cara Malone
Jessie put the joint to her lips and followed along with Melody’s instructions.
“Suck the smoke into your mouth, and then inhale it into your lungs. You might cough,” she said, watching Jessie intently the whole time. The smoke was acrid but she managed not to choke on it like a complete idiot. Melody grinned and said, “But probably not because this is some pretty weak stuff. Okay, now exhale.”
Jessie tilted her head up the same way Melody had, blowing her first hit of weed skyward, then she handed the joint back to Melody, who was still looking at her expectantly.
They were silent for a moment, and then she said, “I don’t feel anything.”
Melody took a second hit, then brushed the joint against the brick until the burning tip fell to the pavement. “Give it a minute.”
Jessie watched her pinch the tip of the joint, checking to make sure it had gone out, and then pull the glass tube back out of her pocket to carefully put it away. Melody’s fingers were so slender and yet they moved so adeptly at her task. Jessie found herself blushing as she wondered what else those fingers could do, and then Melody was laughing.
“What?”
“Don’t look now, but you’re a little stoned.”
“I am?”
“You were watching my hands as if I was performing brain surgery,” Melody said. “Yeah, I’m pretty confident. How does it feel?”
Jessie tore her eyes away from Melody’s fingers as she stuffed the joint back into her pocket. She looked around, at the motionless parking lot and the expanse of asphalt, and then at the way the sun glittered through the leaves of a nearby oak tree, and the feeling of the breeze on her skin. It was all exactly the same as it had been when she came out here, but slightly different in a way she couldn’t really put into words.
She looked at Melody and something in her chest swelled with joy. Aside from the precious few moments she got to spend with Ellie in the evenings, seeing this girl was the highlight of her week. Now that was an effect of being high, perhaps, because Jessie never would have admitted that, even to herself, if she was in her right mind.
“You’re beautiful,” she said before her filter had a chance to catch up to her mouth.
And then, before her brain had a chance to catch up to her body, she watched Melody lean over to kiss her. She watched Melody’s dimples deepen, then those beautiful chestnut eyes came closer and closer, and Jessie could smell strawberries in her hair and peppermint balm on her lips. They were just inches from Jessie’s and she wanted nothing more than for them to meet, but at the last second, she came to herself again and stepped away.
“I’m sorry,” Jessie said, but before she had a chance to say what she was sorry for, the door banged open behind them.
“Break’s over,” Mary Beth said loudly to Melody. “We need you in there.”
No sooner had she made her announcement than Mary Beth whirled around and went back inside, the door swinging shut behind her.
“I- I gotta go,” Melody said with an apologetic smile. “Thanks for talking me down from my panic attack – I feel a lot better now.”
It occurred to Jessie to say something slick, like so do I, but Melody was already gone by the time she came up with the words, and it was probably better that she didn’t say anything. She stood outside for a few more seconds, taking deep gulps of the cool breeze and feeling the tingle of Melody’s peppermint balm on her lips. She looked into the oak tree and the leaves were just leaves again. Maybe there was nothing to that single hit of weed after all – maybe Melody was the reason she felt different.
***
When Jessie found Ellie, she was backstage whispering excitedly to Mary Beth while the poor woman tried to organize a half-dozen dancers in the wings.
“I’m going to be in the number next year,” she was chattering at Mary Beth as Jessie approached, hoping that the skunky pot smoke had permeated her clothes.
“Come on, bug, you’re talking her ear off,” Jessie said, taking Ellie’s hand. She turned to Mary Beth and tried not to look too guilty as she said, “Thanks for letting her watch from the wings. I hope she wasn’t too much trouble.”
“On the contrary, kiddo,” Mary Beth said as she waved her next set of dancers onto the stage. She turned to Jessie and said, “I saw some natural talent in your daughter. She seems to have an eye for the choreography.”
Jessie looked at Ellie, who was smiling from ear to ear at this complement despite the fact that Jessie was about ninety percent sure she hadn’t yet learned the meaning of the word ‘choreography’. She asked Mary Beth, “Is that so?”
“When her class went onstage, Ellie stood in the wings and I watched her do the routine along with them,” Mary Beth said. “Of course she doesn’t have the technique down yet, but that just takes practice. Ellie, it’s too bad you didn’t enroll soon enough to order a costume or you could have been out there dancing this year.”
“Well, she has spent just about every waking moment in her ballet slippers since we started coming to class, so I’m not surprised,” Jessie said with a proud smile.
Mary Beth winked at Ellie, then told Jessie, “She’ll have to start in the beginner ballet class in the fall, but I don’t know if that’ll be much of a challenge for her. I bet she’d really benefit from one-on-one lessons with a private instructor.”
Jessie saw Ellie’s eyes lighting up at this idea – she’d only been to four lessons, but already she was making friends in that class. It was Jessie’s fault for not having the heart to tell Ellie that she’d have to wait til fall to start classes, and it would mean a lot to Ellie, bragging rights notwithstanding, to get one-on-one attention like that.
“Private lessons… I don’t know if that’s in the budget-” Jessie began, not eager to have this conversation from the wings of the stage. She’d have to break the news to Ellie later in the evening, once they got home.
“I have to go get the next group,” Mary Beth cut in.
“Of course,” Jessie said, feeling guilty for taking up so much of her time. Had she been rambling? Was that a lingering effect of the pot?
“But don’t discount it simply because money is an issue,” she said, shooting another encouraging look to Ellie. “Call me once classes start up again and maybe we can work something out.”
CHAPTER 10
Melody drove her father’s car home after the recital ended. It was dark by the time she finally finished vacuuming glitter and sequins off the dressing room carpet, and even though she’d looked for her, Melody didn’t run into Jessie again.
She figured Jessie and Ellie went home after the beginner ballet class performed their number, and they were lucky to have an excuse to leave. The couple of hits she’d taken from Andy’s joint had helped calm her nerves, but for some strange reason, she found Jessie’s presence even more calming. As a result, she could feel her absence all the more keenly, and she wondered what exactly was happening between the two of them. She had never felt her heart pulling so strongly toward someone before.
Melody’s parents were waiting for her when she got home. She would have preferred to go straight upstairs to her room, or maybe into the bathroom for a soak in the tub where she’d do her damnedest not to let her mind wander to the way it felt to be but inches away from Jessie’s plump lips. Instead, her mother called her to dinner.
She came obediently into the dining room, where she found her father already sitting at the head of the table and her little sister, Starla, sitting with her hands folded on the table in front of her.
“The meatloaf went cold,” Starla said with a snotty tone as Melody sat down across from her and their mother started passing the dishes around.
“I didn’t ask you to wait for me,” Melody said. “I was working.”
“Be nice, you two,” her father barked as he took a plate of mashed potatoes. He plopped a generous spoonful onto his plate and asked, “How’s that going, by the way?”
Oh boy, Melody thought, a heaviness settling on her c
hest like it always did when she and her parents had a ‘serious talk’. Here we go.
“It’s actually going okay,” she said grudgingly while Starla passed her the meatloaf, which had indeed become lukewarm.
Melody didn’t want to tell her parents that life at Mary Beth’s turned out not to be one long torture scene as she’d predicted to them – and to Dr. Riley – that it would be. Then she would have to admit that it hadn’t been a mistake to apply there, and that she was ready to take at least a few tentative steps toward figuring out her life again. Just the thought of admitting it made her feel like hyperventilating.
But since she couldn’t outright lie to them, she settled on selective truth-telling. “I had a panic attack at the recital tonight and had to go outside for a breather.”
She didn’t mention the pot, or Jessie’s strange calming effect on her. She definitely didn’t mention the fact that they’d almost kissed, or the fact that it was all she could think about since then.
“Oh, honey,” her mother said, reaching across the table to pat Melody’s hand. “Well, you got through it. That’s the important thing.”
“She got through something that she used to do every day of her life for hours and hours,” Starla said, rolling her eyes in the severe way that only a fourteen-year-old girl is capable of. “Let’s give her a medal already.”
“Star,” their mother snapped, and Starla shut her mouth, looking down at her dinner plate and picking at the somewhat congealing meatloaf.
“Well, I’m glad to hear that it’s going well,” their father said, bringing the conversation back around to what was most important to him – responsibility. “Do you think there’s any chance of getting promoted to a full-time position, Mel? You know, with benefits, a raise?”
“Mom,” Melody said plaintively, turning to her mother for backup. She’d always come down on the side of helpful, where her father was more or less always on the nagging end of things. “I’m going to help you guys pay back those loans, but I’m doing everything I can right now.”
“Give her a little more time, Frank,” her mother scolded, but her father was on a tear and nothing was going to stop him now that he got going.
Melody glanced over at Starla, who was eating her cold meatloaf with a small smirk on her face. She’d lived her entire life in the shadow of her big shot ballerina sister, and now that Melody had come home in disgrace, she never missed an opportunity to rub salt in the wounds.
“She’s almost nineteen years old,” her father pointed out. “She should be finishing her first year of college right now, not starting over from scratch and working part-time at a minimum wage job.”
“Plans change,” Melody muttered, a line that Dr. Riley was fond of in their sessions but which did little to assuage her father’s objections.
“You’re right, honey, they do,” he said, taking in a deep breath, and she knew exactly what was coming next.
Second behind his desire for her to find full-time work that could feasibly turn into a career was his desire for her to go back to Pavlova so that all the time and money they invested in her when she was a kid wouldn’t go to waste. She didn’t like to think that her father saw her as a poor investment, but when he talked like this, it was hard not to see it. She braced for it.
“You could go back,” he said. “You could meet with your instructors and work out a plan to get up to speed for the fall, make up the classes you missed last semester and catch up to your class.”
“I wasn’t up to speed when I was there,” Melody pointed out through gritted teeth. “That was the whole problem.”
“The problem was that you threw in the towel,” Frank said, his voice edging slightly closer to frustration, and Melody didn’t want to have this conversation yet again.
She couldn’t have it right now, not when she really was making progress with Dr. Riley and things were going okay at Mary Beth’s. She couldn’t have it when things were just beginning to make sense again and Jessie was in the back of her mind. She stood up from the table.
“I did throw in the towel, and I’m retired from dance,” Melody said for about the hundredth time. “If somebody in this family has to be a ballerina, it’s going to have to be Starla. Or you.”
Melody stomped out of the dining room – turning into a petulant teenager yet again. She felt helpless and powerless so often now that she was back in Lisbon, living under her parents’ roof with the acute awareness that she had no other choice and no refuge except Andy’s basement. It regressed her and she didn’t even care that she was ruining dinner as she stormed out of the house.
How many times did she need to explain to her father that no one gets a second chance at Pavlova? Even if she wanted to return to New York and beg everyone she knew at that school to let her back in, it would never happen. She’d been absurdly lucky to be one of the twenty-four admitted in the first place, and then she’d fallen to pieces and ruined it all.
Melody’s days as a dancer were done.
She headed outside and didn’t even think about where she was heading. On muscle memory, her legs carried her up the sidewalk and a few houses over to Andy’s place. It was like the hundreds of arabesques she’d done in her life. She never had to check in the mirror to make sure her leg was parallel to the ground or her toes were pointing out like they should – she could do a perfect arabesque in her sleep – or so she’d thought until her confidence was shattered in New York.
Now, her big trick was that she could walk blindfolded to Andy’s basement - she’d come to know the route so well in the last six months.
“Hey,” she said as she came down the steps and found Andy right where she’d left him, sitting on the couch with an assortment of food littered around him and a game controller in his hands. “You should get up and move around sometimes or you’ll get bedsores.”
“Would you be my nurse if I did?” he asked, and Melody made a retching sound.
“Barf,” she said as she sat down in her customary recliner. He nodded toward the bong, his version of hospitality, but she waved it away. “I’m good. You know, my parents think you’re a bad influence.”
“Because of the weed?”
“Because you have no ‘aspirations’ for your life.”
“Sheesh,” Andy said. “I’m feeling attacked. Tell me, how else am I a piece of shit?”
“I’m sorry,” Melody relented. “My dad got on my case again about finding a full-time job, or a purpose or something.”
“And I have to bear the brunt of your anger?” Andy asked. “I’ll have you know that I do have aspirations.”
“Yeah? What are they?” Melody asked, looking curiously at him.
“Get high, get laid, get to level fifty,” he said, ticking them off on his fingers.
“You’re a walking stereotype,” Melody said with a groan.
“Maybe, but I’m two thirds of the way to living the dream.”
“Let me guess which goal is lagging,” Melody said with a roll of her eyes.
“And you’re a regular lady Casanova,” Andy said. “Those in glass houses…”
“I’ll have you know I almost got to first base today,” she said a little cockily as she thought about Jessie.
Andy looked surprised, but he laughed. “Well, look at you.”
Melody sat back in the recliner, glancing over at the television, which Andy switched over to old cartoon reruns. If he wasn’t playing video games then he was watching cartoons, the perpetual man child. Maybe her parents were right about one thing.
CHAPTER 11
Jessie spent the summer working long hours at both the grocery store and the diner. She figured that Ellie’s three months off from dance would be as good a time as any to bank some extra money and make sure they’d have enough to cover a full year of dance lessons. She’d balked when Mary Beth suggested that Ellie should take private lessons, but she’d quietly decided to start saving toward that goal in case Ellie really got into ballet and Mary Beth still
thought she’d be advanced enough to catch up with the intermediate class this year.
Besides, the busier she kept herself, the less time there was to think about what had happened between her and Melody in the parking lot at the recital. She walked outside and the moment she saw Melody, Jessie turned into a dumb teenage girl. What was that all about? There had definitely been sparks, and she hadn’t stopped feeling guilty about that fact ever since.
Jessie felt sick whenever she thought about Melody and then thought of Steve. The way their sex life was – nonexistent - she’d be shocked to find out that Steve never looked at women. But Jessie couldn’t fathom life without him, and how much more complicated things would be if she had to juggle her jobs, Ellie’s education, dance lessons, and visitation with Steve on top of all that. Jessie wasn’t even sure if she could support the two of them on a pair of minimum wage jobs.
Even more than all of these hypothetical scenarios running through her head, though, Jessie was afraid because Melody had turned something on inside of her that she’d been trying very hard to keep turned off.
The moment her lips drew close, Jessie’s stomach stirred, her thighs got warm and tingly, and she felt something that she long ago wrote off as dead. It was the price she paid to maintain a civil, functional marriage with Steve and provide a good life for Ellie, and it had seemed like a pretty minor sacrifice to her until she met Melody.
Jessie always abided by that old adage, you can’t miss what you never had, and in the rare moments when she and Steve kissed and she felt nothing, she had tried to convince herself that kissing just wasn’t her thing. There were no fireworks or butterflies or any of the other cliché, stupid things that the people in movies and romance novels described, and eventually she and Steve stopped bothering with each other so none of it mattered anyway. There was no point in coming out about her sexuality, even to herself, when she was determined to keep her family together for the sake of her daughter. She could live without sex, and even without love, as long as she had Ellie to pour her heart into.
