Jasmine

by Maggie Wells

  “Well, I wasn’t planning on that,” she said. “But you can clean out the spare room and make up the bed in there. There is still a lot of Christmas stuff that needs to be put away. Maybe you can do that tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I dragged my roller bag upstairs to the spare room and shoved the wrapping paper, ribbon and boxes of ornaments that were burying the bed onto the floor. I made up the bed with clean sheets, shut the light and curled up in bed with Orchid’s stuffed bunny.

  SIXTEEN

  TWO DAYS LATER, MOM DISCOVERED A LEAK IN THE upstairs shower. She called her insurance adjuster and he declared that the pipes had to be replaced. That would mean ripping out the tile and everything.

  “Basically, you’ll get a whole new bathroom for the cost of your deductible,” the adjuster said.

  “Well aren’t we glad that you’re home, now?” Mom said to me.

  “This is my project?” I protested. “Mom, I need to find a job.”

  “In between job-hunting, you can deal with contractors and shit,” she said. “I have a route to drive.”

  For the next three weeks, I fielded texts from contractors and potential employers and dashed back and forth between interviews, classes at Mom’s Y, and deliveries. Every now and then, I’d pause at the door of the childcare room at the Y and inhale the scent of freshly diapered babies.

  True to her word, Allison posted photos of Orchid every day. She was no longer getting breast milk and was putting on weight.

  Geez, I hope she doesn’t turn out to be a fat kid, I thought.

  There were pictures of Allison holding Orchid, obviously drunk with maternal delight.

  That should be me, I thought. Then I caught myself. Maybe Mom was right about this too. Maybe I should un-friend Allison. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see her looking so happy with my baby. Adoption in the days before Facebook must have been so much easier.

  Every day I checked Backstage.com and then I finally hit pay dirt. Elaine’s in Cape May was hiring dancers for a dinner theater show. It was a two-and-a-half-hour drive each way without traffic, but it was work, the tips were supposed to be good, and I would be dancing professionally again. And it’s not like I had to rush home to feed a baby or anything.

  I drove down for the audition on a Tuesday. The manager was a greasy guy named Guido.

  “Ladies!” he shouted. “We need to see cleavage. This is a big selling point. Nothing less than a C-cup. Please!”

  I flashed back to the audition for Bacchanal. Please God, don’t make us strip down for this.

  A handful of girls packed up their gym bags and left.

  “Okay, the rest of you,” Guido shouted. “Tap-dancing! Show us your stuff.”

  Tap-dancing and cleavage, I thought. What kind of a show was this? Hey, it was Cape May, I reminded myself.

  Guido put us through our paces, tap, burlesque, and a few moves that I was familiar with from my time in Vegas.

  “Okay,” Guido shouted. “Let’s see how you look in costume.”

  We were herded into the locker room and handed what looked like beer-hall-wench costumes. Low-cut, off-the-shoulder peasant blouse, with a strap-up bustier and a short, flared skirt. Fishnet stockings completed the look.

  We suited up and pranced back out onstage to pose wench-like. It was silly and actually sort of fun. We were play-acting at looking sexy in a PG sort of way. This was a family-friendly show, after all. I was struck by the sharp contrast with the raw sexuality and cutthroat environment of Vegas.

  I got the gig.

  We had three weeks of rehearsals before opening night. Since we were the actual waitresses as well as the performers, we had to learn the menu and also practice carrying heavy trays of food while wearing spiked heels. We also had to practice the famous dip as perfected by the original Playboy bunnies. When serving food or drink, heels together and bend from the waist.

  Once the show opened, I only had to work on weekends—dinner shows on Friday and Saturday and brunch on Sunday. Claudia, one of the other waitresses, had rented a cottage on the beach and invited a few of us to crash there. The place felt like a sorority house and I was grateful for the company.

  The other girls tended to head home on Sunday nights, as they had other part-time jobs in Philly or New York. I had nothing to go home to, so unless Mom needed something done around the house, I stayed at Claudia’s and we became close.

  Cape May in the winter was really quite nice. It was quiet; a lot of places were closed until April. The ocean was restless and made the beach a more interesting destination than in the summer months. Claudia and I went for long runs on the beach. She had been a gymnast in college and was working toward her certification as a Pilates instructor.

  “Let’s stop for a minute,” Claudia said.

  We slowed to a walk but the wind coming off of the ocean was biting, and within minutes the perspiration on my back started to freeze.

  “Let’s grab some coffee,” I suggested. We turned inland and walked toward the boardwalk.

  We ordered our drinks and found a table in a corner, far from the door.

  “This was a great idea,” I said. “Renting the cottage. I would never have thought of it. I would have spent all my time commuting to north Jersey.”

  “It’s wonderful out here, isn’t it?” Claudia asked. “My grandparents had a place out here and we spent all of our summers on the shore.” She sipped her hot chocolate. After a few minutes, she lowered her voice and said, “I’ve had a rough year. I needed to get away from my real life for a bit.”

  “What’s your real life?” I asked.

  “I got pregnant by accident,” she said. “My boyfriend accused me of plotting a conspiracy against him, to force him to marry me. Seriously? Who does that? And how could he think so little of me?”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “He made me get an abortion,” she said.

  “He couldn’t force you to get an abortion,” I said.

  “No,” she responded. “But basically he said he wasn’t going to marry me until I got an abortion.”

  “What?” I said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It’s not like I would marry him, after that,” Claudia said. “But I’m twenty-one. I wasn’t prepared to be a single mother.”

  “What happened to the boyfriend?” I asked.

  “He wanted us to go on as though nothing had happened,” she said. “What a joke! Can you believe he didn’t even go with me to the clinic? He was in Colorado skiing with his rich friends. I had to beg my friend, Patty, to go with me. It was horrible. And then when I got home, this huge bouquet of flowers arrived. I threw the flowers away. It just made me sad to look at them. As if that’s solace for the loss I was going through. Then he had the balls to call me from Colorado to tell me how sorry he was. He said all of his friends were dissing him for abandoning me to go on the stupid ski trip. And now he thinks we can just go on like before? What the fuck?”

  I took a deep breath and absorbed what Claudia had just shared with me.

  “I’m glad you feel you can talk to me about this,” I said. “Here’s my story. I’m not sure if it’s better or worse. I had a baby in September. Eddie Watson, the choreographer of my show at Bally’s, slipped something into my drink at a party and date-raped me. It wasn’t really date rape, since we weren’t on a date. I was at a party at his house and I woke up the next morning in his bed. That’s just rape. Anyway, I had the baby; her name is Orchid. Do want to see a picture?”

  I dug my phone out of my purse and scrolled through my Photo Stream. I showed Claudia the one that Nurse Ramone took at Orchid’s birth and then some of the pictures that Allison had posted to Facebook.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” I asked.

  “Oh my God!” Claudia said. “Where is she?”

  SEVENTEEN

  I SET MY PHONE DOWN ON THE TABLE AND LOOKED AT Claudia. “I gave her up,” I said. “I didn’t mean to. I really tried to take c
are of her, but I couldn’t find work and I couldn’t afford childcare. I found a family; Allison lost her first husband in the war and her second husband was older. Allison is a great mom; I know she is taking amazing care of my baby. We’re friends on Facebook, and she posts photos every day.”

  “Wow,” Claudia said. “Which do you think is harder—losing your baby to abortion or adoption?”

  “Either way, you think about them all the time, right?” I asked. “Wonder about the baby you didn’t have or dream about the one you did and wonder where she is and what’s she’s doing.”

  “I think about it every day,” Claudia said. Her eyes grew moist. “I’ll never be an activist—pro-life or pro-choice.”

  “Yeah, me neither,” I said. “I think those people haven’t gone through what we have. It’s a terrible predicament, and I don’t believe it’s anybody else’s business what a woman chooses to do.”

  We finished our drinks and hit the ladies’ room. Claudia took my hand in hers as we walked back to the cottage.

  “Do you think you’ll ever see Orchid again?” asked Claudia.

  “I ask myself that question every day,” I replied. “The Martins said they are open to me visiting anytime I want. I’m not sure I’m ready, though. I need to be in a better place psychologically—not working as a dancing waitress in some dorky dinner theater.”

  “Hey now!” Claudia said, laughing. “No, you’re right. I feel the same way. I’m saving up to open my own Pilates studio.”

  “I wish I had a dream like that,” I said. “I have no idea what I want to do anymore.”

  The show had been running for several months, and as the weather warmed up, the crowds got bigger. Guido started talking about adding a show on Thursdays as well. The audience was mostly families, sometimes a bachelorette party or two, but every night there was at least one table of drunks—sometimes college kids, sometimes older guys. Guido always seemed to seat those tables in my section. It was a mixed blessing. Their bar tabs were big, and they tipped generously as long as I let them look down my blouse and put up with a little bit of groping which involved a hand on my waist or hip, sometimes my thigh or shoulder and inevitably being pulled onto someone’s lap for the group photo.

  But I didn’t complain. They say that time heals all wounds and I was glad to be busy and found myself thinking about Orchid only once or twice a day instead of every waking minute. I mailed Allison a postcard every week in the hopes that she would save them for Orchid for when she was older.

  I think it was an evening in early May when a group of high school girls came in, chaperoned by a couple of adults—teachers, probably.

  “Guido, can I have that table?” I asked.

  “Why? They probably won’t tip,” he said. But he grudgingly made some adjustments with his wax pencil on the table chart.

  “Ladies, how are we doing tonight?” I said as they got seated. “Can I get anybody a beverage?”

  The woman seated at the end of the table ordered soft drinks for the girls and a bottle of wine.

  I recognized her voice.

  “Ms. Gregory?” I asked.

  She looked up and did a double take. “Jasmine?”

  Ms. Gregory was my dance teacher all through high school. She had also coached my synchronized swim team.

  “Is this the swim team?” I asked.

  “Actually, I’ve opened a dance studio in Jersey City, and this is my inaugural class,” she said. “Girls, I’d like to introduce Jasmine Walker, one of my star students. Last I heard you were dancing in a show in Las Vegas?”

  “Yes, that’s true,” I said. “But I had some health issues so I came home to recuperate. Look, let me get your drinks and then I need to check on these other two tables, but I’ll be back to take your order and we can chat later.”

  Her star student? How humiliating. What kind of a role model did I look like to those girls? You can have all the talent in the world and look where you end up—dancing topless in Las Vegas or in a lame-ass dinner theater on the Jersey shore. I vowed at that moment to get my life and my career on track. I needed to stop letting life happen to me and take charge—go after what I wanted. I had gotten lazy, hanging out at the shore all weekend and had missed the application deadlines for school. I was depressed; I was in mourning. But that was no excuse.

  “I’m sorry about the show,” I said to Ms. Gregory as I handed her the check. “It’s pretty lame.”

  “Nonsense, the girls loved it,” she said. “You all looked like you were having fun and it was very entertaining.”

  She signed the credit card receipt and handed it back to me.

  “I’d love to connect with you next week,” she said. “Can we meet for coffee?”

  “Sure,” I said. “That would be great.”

  “There’s a new coffee house that just opened on Bay Street,” she said. “I’ll text you the address. Tuesday morning good for you?”

  I got to the Warehouse Café early on Tuesday and ordered a medium dark roast, black, and found a seat by the window. I saw Ms. Gregory before she saw me. There was something about her that was different—the way she was dressed. She’d always been stylishly cool, but now she looked more professional and polished.

  I waited until she’d gotten her coffee and then waved her over.

  “You look great,” I said.

  “I’d been thinking a lot about you, Jasmine,” she said. “I had no idea you were back in town.”

  “Well I wasn’t really planning on it,” I said. “But here I am. I’m only working as a waitress until I finish school.” As soon as I said that, I regretted it. I hoped she didn’t ask me about it. I wasn’t even enrolled. Shit, I hadn’t even applied. And after school, then what—work as a bookkeeper?

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Ms. Gregory said. “I’ve opened up my own dance school—oh right, I told you about that. Well, I’ve been looking for a partner and I kept thinking of you and wondered what you were up to. Someone told me that you were working in Vegas, and that didn’t surprise me. When I called you my star student last week, I meant it. The things that really made you stand out when you were studying with me were your drive, your maturity, and your business sense. Do you know how many dancers have those qualities?”

  I was floored. And flattered. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had complimented me on something other than my looks.

  “Here’s what I’m proposing,” Ms. Gregory said. “I need you to take on some of my classes and help me run the business. I wanted to position my studio as a finishing school for girls heading to Broadway—or Vegas, I guess. I have some connections with the junior Broadway folks, and they are looking for a feeder program. That could be us. And maybe you could tap your Vegas connections?”

  “This is really exciting, Ms. Gregory,” I said. “But I don’t have any money to invest.”

  “Call me Diane,” she said. “We’re partners, now, right? I don’t need any additional investment. The school is already open and cash flow positive. I just need help growing the business. I’ve been trying to do everything myself and there’s some things I’m just not good at.”

  “When do you need me to start?” I asked. “I need to give notice at Elaine’s.”

  “Of course,” Diane said. “I’m taking reservations for the summer program, which starts June fifteenth. Would June first work? Then we could nail down the summer program and start developing the marketing strategy.”

  EIGHTEEN

  DANCE PROGRAM, MARKETING STRATEGY—MY HEAD WAS spinning. I felt like I was waking up from a bad dream and suddenly felt hopeful for the first time since I’d kissed Orchid goodbye.

  “I’m in,” I said. “This all sounds wonderful but I’m not so sure about feeding girls to the sharks in Vegas,” I said.

  “What, you think there are no sharks on Broadway?” Diane asked.

  We laughed and lifted our coffee cups in salute.

  “Here’s to feeding the sharks,” Di
ane said.

  I gave Guido notice and started packing.

  “I’ll miss you,” Claudia said as she hugged me. “But I’m really happy for you.”

  “I’m not going to be so far away,” I said. “I’ll come down and hang with you on weekends.”

  “I’m opening my studio in Philly in the fall, but I’d like to hang onto the cottage,” she said.

  “Count me in,” I said. “I’ll split the rent with you. It will be a great getaway. I’ll be back living with Mom for a while.”

  “That’s rough,” Claudia said. “Living with Mom, am I right?”

  “Did you ever tell your mom about your abortion?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “I was so ashamed.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. I held her tight. “I’m glad I could be here for you. I don’t think I’ve ever been this close to anyone before.”

  That first Monday that I showed up for work, I felt that all of my dreams had come true. Diane had already etched my name on the door: Jasmine Walker, Associate Director. For the second time in my life, I felt blessed and ever so grateful. Someone had looked at me, recognized my potential, and offered me an awesome opportunity. This time I wasn’t going to take any chances. I blamed myself for my mistakes—succumbing to temptation—the invitation to Eddie’s party, the sexy outfit he paid for from Rousso’s. I would never wear that dress again. Like the dress of a bride jilted at the altar, it hung accusingly in my closet, still soiled and stained with sweat. It was my Scarlet Letter and a constant reminder of Orchid, more poignant than her framed photo on my nightstand.

  I upgraded my wardrobe—for inside the dance studio as well as outside of the office. I wanted to be seen as a polished businesswoman and never again be viewed as someone to take advantage of. I enrolled at the College of New Jersey to finish my accounting degree and registered for some marketing courses as well.