by Janice Sims
“Nona, don’t make things worse for yourself,” Nick warned.
The same nurse finally returned with Vincent who was no longer holding the towel over his burning eyes. He was wearing a disposable pair of dark glasses.
“He should be fine now,” the nurse said, “but he’ll need to fill this prescription for eye ointment. He needs to use it for ten days. He’ll have some redness, but there should be no scarring.”
Relieved, Belana stood up and went to the nurse, holding her hand out for the prescription. “I’ll make sure it gets filled.”
Earlier, she had wanted to take care of Vincent’s medical bill but Nick had insisted on paying, saying it would come out of Nona’s allowance.
Nona went to Vincent and put her arm around his waist. “How’re you feeling?”
“My eyes aren’t burning anymore,” Vincent said. “I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to my mom and dad.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Nick. “We’re all going over to your house and we’ll take turns telling them what happened.”
Vincent winced. “Mr. Reed, I know this looks bad but I really care about Nona. And for what it’s worth, nothing happened.”
“That’s good,” Nick told him, taking him by the arm. “Let’s go tell your parents that.”
Belana and Nick were exhausted by the time they and Nona got back to his place later that night. Vincent’s parents had been livid that their son had been caught in a compromising position and they promised to punish him appropriately. He would be spending a lot of time visiting the elderly at area nursing homes. His mother was a nurse at one of them and knew the residents could do with a few youthful visitors who would willingly read to them or simply talk to them for a couple of hours per week.
Nick had phoned his mother and told her what happened. He told her Nona would be staying with him for the weekend. He would come up with a punishment for her sometime during the weekend.
At his apartment, Belana collected her belongings that she’d left behind in their haste to get Vincent to a hospital, and left Nick and Nona alone.
She took a cab home and fell into her bed, ignoring her growling belly until the wee hours of the morning when it woke her and she opened a can of soup, warmed it and devoured the entire can.
At Nick’s place Nona was ordered to bed. Her father would deal with her in the morning.
The next morning Nick still had not thought of a suitable punishment. They ate breakfast in silence and then he told her to go to her room and do the homework she’d brought home for the weekend. Nona told him she’d already done her homework.
“That’s what’s wrong,” her father had said. “You have too much time on your hands. If you worked harder in school you wouldn’t have time to be plotting how to lose your virginity. Maybe I ought to send you to an all-girl school.”
Nona, who resented being punished when nothing had happened between her and Vincent mouthed off with, “Go ahead. I hear girls who go to all-girl schools manage to lose their virginity even faster than girls who go to coed schools.”
Nick glared at her. “You honestly don’t understand why I’m upset with you?”
She sat like a bump on a log.
“You know you were born to your mother and me when we were both only eighteen,” Nick said.
His daughter nodded.
“Well, we were sixteen when we became sexually active. We thought we knew everything and were prepared for the consequences, but we weren’t, Nona. Your mother got pregnant and we panicked. She considered having a secret abortion…”
Nona’s eyes stretched in horror.
“Yeah, that’s right, you might not have even been born if she had,” Nick continued. “But we were smart enough to go to our parents for advice and after all the yelling they promised that they would stand by us. We had you, and we got married shortly after you were born. Your mother’s parents moved back down South so most of the responsibility of seeing us through it fell on your grandmother. My dad, whom you never knew because he died shortly after you were born, said the best thing to do was have us live with them. We moved in and we were still living in your grandmother’s house when your mother, who had earned her teaching certification, went to visit her parents because her father was sick, and left you with me and your grandmother. She was killed in an accident on the way back.”
Nona was crying.
“What I’m trying to say to you, Nona, is your mother and I worked hard so that you wouldn’t have to struggle the way we did. We both wanted better for you and it would have broken her heart to see you going down the same road we did with your irresponsible behavior. Having sex at your age might seem like a good idea to you, but believe me, there are consequences.”
Nona ran to her father and threw her arms around his neck. “I’m sorry, Daddy! I’ll be more responsible, I promise.”
Nick held her tightly. “You’re precious to me. You’re all I have left of your mother. You’re the product of our dreams for the future, don’t you see that?”
Nona looked up into her father’s eyes which were moist with tears. “I’ve got to apologize to Belana, too. I yelled at her. I said some awful things to her. I told her I hated her.”
Nick smiled. “I’m sure she knows you didn’t mean that. You love her. I can see it in your eyes whenever you look at her.”
“I do love her,” Nona said. “I wish I could take back what I said.”
Chapter 12
On debut night, Belana tried to keep her focus entirely on her upcoming performance, but it was hard to do. She was emotionally fragile. Because of her tight rehearsal schedule she and Nick had not been able to spend more than a few minutes at a time together since the day she’d walked in on Nona and Vincent. Phone calls just weren’t cutting it. Her relationship with Nona had improved, though. Nona came by her apartment one afternoon and apologized to her, saying she realized, now, that she had done a foolish thing and she and Vincent had agreed that it was too soon to be thinking of having sex. Belana had been relieved beyond words. However, her happiness was short-lived because that very night her father phoned and said Drusilla had taken ill and was in the hospital in New Haven. Her father and stepmother assured her it was nothing serious, just a stomach virus, but at Drusilla’s age a stomach virus could lay her low. Therefore, her father and stepmother wouldn’t be at the debut.
Elle and Patrice, with their families, would be in the audience, though; and Erik, who would be escorting Ana. They were still only friends but Belana saw it as a good sign that they were attending social events together more and more.
Nick promised that he, Nona and Yvonne would be there to cheer her on.
She was in her dressing room now, listening to the orchestra warming up. She was in full costume. Titania, queen of the fairies and wife of Oberon, king of the fairies, was a vision in white sprinkled with fairy dust. There was even glitter in her hair which was left unbound and flowing down her back as befitted the queen of the fairies.
She frowned at her reflection. The makeup, applied thickly as usual, was ethereal. She looked like an otherworldly spirit. The makeup artist had achieved this by making her brown skin glow, but making her features stand out in stark relief by painting her mouth white and sculpting her cheekbones to make them look as high as humanly possible. Her long, thick false eyelashes also glittered.
There was a knock at the door. She automatically glanced at the clock on the wall. It was too early for her five-minute warning. She had a full fifteen minutes before that.
She walked to the door and called through it, “Yes?”
“Miss Whitaker?” asked a feminine voice with a lilting tone.
“Yes?”
“It’s your mother, Belana. Please, open the door.”
Belana’s stomach muscles constricted painfully. The blood drained from her face and her skin suddenly felt chilled. She touched the doorknob but stayed her hand, wondering if she truly wanted to open the door.
She was already at an emotional deficit worrying about Drusilla. Would she be able to perform after seeing the woman who had abandoned her twenty-six years ago? Yet, curiosity was eating away at her rationality. What could her mother want? Had she aged well? Was she alone or had she brought her husband, Henri, with her? Did she and Erik have half brothers and sisters whom they’d never heard of?
She wound up opening the door and standing aside for her mother to enter.
Mari Tautou entered on a cloud of Chanel no. 5. She was wearing a red designer suit with tan accessories. The sable coat she had on was a rich brown that matched the color of her eyes. She was as Belana remembered: petite perfection. She had not lost her figure and her face was unlined, although both could have been surgically enhanced, Belana thought pettily.
She closed and locked the door, then turned and faced the woman who had negatively affected her life in spite of her attempts to prevent that from happening.
Mari Tautou smiled at her. “You make a beautiful Titania.”
Belana recalled that Mari had danced the role for the first time more than twenty years ago and had reprised it at least two more times over the years. “I haven’t seen or heard from you in over eighteen years. What are you doing here?”
“I came to see my daughter dance Titania,” she said, her smile never wavering. “Is that so strange?”
“I’m sure you know that a dancer expresses her emotions on the stage. What possessed you to come here and upset me just before the debut?”
“It wasn’t my intention to upset you,” Mari denied. She removed her sable and held it with her arms folded in front of her, her chic little shoulder bag on her right shoulder. “I only wanted to see you and Erik. Finding you was easy since opening night is advertised in all the papers. But Erik wasn’t as easy to track down. Will he be here tonight?”
Belana was having trouble wrapping her mind around this moment. It felt like a dream, surreal and yet too real. She continued to look at her mother, at the veneer of coolness etched on her face. How could anyone display such icy detachment?
“I assure you, Erik is not as eager to see you as you are to see him,” she said after a while.
“Nonetheless,” Mari said stubbornly, “since I’m here I’d like to see him, too.”
“Do you think I actually care about what you want?” asked Belana, barely able to contain her irritation. “You don’t just drop into somebody’s life after eighteen years without a good explanation. I repeat: why are you here?”
Mari’s gaze roamed around the room. “What a charming dressing room. It’s much larger than the one I had when last I danced here.” She walked over and sniffed the roses that Nick had sent her. “From an admirer?” she asked softly. “How sweet.”
“Seriously,” Belana said, walking over to the door and placing her hand on the doorknob, “I’m going to have security escort you off the premises if you don’t tell me why you’ve come right now!”
“I’m not well,” Mari said hurriedly. “I wanted to see you and Erik one more time before it was too late to see you.” She looked at Belana beseechingly.
Belana peered at her with skepticism. The best ballerinas were good actresses. They had to convey emotions with their bodies that most people could not even express with words. She got closer to her mother. Close enough to see that the whites of her eyes were discolored. What she had thought was flawless skin was really achieved with the help of the skilled application of makeup. And her petite figure was a tad emaciated.
“What’s wrong with you?” Belana asked, frowning with concern.
“It’s nothing hereditary,” said Mari quickly. “I have stage four lung cancer from smoking for over thirty years. You know how some of us smoke to curb our appetites. I began doing it and, alas, I got hooked. I hope you never picked up the habit, darling. It’s a miracle I’m standing here, really.”
Belana felt her body begin to tremble with pent-up emotion. This was horrible. Why had her mother waited until she was dying to come back? When it was too late to have any kind of relationship with her? It was the ultimate form of rejection as far as Belana was concerned, and the ultimate example of narcissism on her mother’s part. Her mother got to have her wish fulfilled, that of seeing her children again. But her children would forever be denied the opportunity to know her.
Belana wanted to swear, but instead, calmly asked, “Where is your husband?”
Mari’s eyes watered. “He died a year ago, from lung cancer, too. The ironic thing is he didn’t even smoke.” She looked toward the ceiling as tears left streaks down her face. “It’s only fitting that I join him soon.”
Belana cringed. Her mother blamed herself for her husband’s death. How did anyone live with guilt of such magnitude? She wouldn’t wish that kind of pain on her worst enemy. However, she couldn’t bring herself to rush forward and offer her comfort. There was too big a chasm between them that would probably always be too wide to cross. She could give her what she’d come here for, though. “Excuse me,” she said softly as she crossed the room and picked up her cell phone, which she’d left atop the vanity.
She punched in Erik’s cell phone number.
“Belana, is something wrong?” Erik asked, sounding panicked. He knew she was getting ready to go on and she wouldn’t be phoning him just to chat.
“Sweetie,” Belana said, her voice cracking. “I have a visitor in my dressing room. It’s our mother and she wants to see you. Will you come?”
Emotion thickened her brother’s voice when he answered, “I’ll be right there.”
Belana hung up the phone and looked over at her mother. “He’s on the way.”
“Thank you,” Mari said. “I know I don’t deserve your kindness.”
They waited in silence for the next couple of minutes. Then Belana said, “Now that I’ve done you a favor, would you reciprocate?”
“Anything,” said Mari, and her eyes revealed her desperation to please.
“I can almost understand why you left. Daddy wanted a full-time wife and you had to be free to dance. I understand the compulsion to dance since I feel the same way and wouldn’t want to be with a man who wanted me to give it up. But why didn’t you even want to share custody of me and Erik? Why shut yourself off from us completely?”
“First of all, I have to clear up a misconception you have concerning your father,” Mari began. “He was always supportive of my career. He would have gladly continued to support me. But I fell in love with Henri. I felt a passion for him that I didn’t for your father. Because of that, I felt unworthy as a mother. I had left your father because I couldn’t control my libido, or so I felt back then. And after I’d left I felt I’d made my bed, I had to lie in it. Therefore, I decided that a complete cut was for the best. You didn’t need the influence of a faithless mother, and I didn’t deserve your love.”
“But you did influence me,” Belana told her. “For years I wouldn’t let myself get close to a man for fear I’d wind up hurting him like you hurt Daddy. I thought I didn’t have the capacity for faithfulness.”
This time Mari’s tears were not silent. Her tiny body was racked with sobs. Belana went to her and cradled her in her arms. It was then it really hit home how fragile her mother was. Holding her was like holding a bird with brittle, hollow bones. That was when she started to cry.
She thanked God when Erik knocked on the door a short while later.
Instead of the heart-wrenching reunion with her mother depleting her and sending her into a downward spiral of depression, it served to buoy Belana’s spirits and she danced beautifully on opening night. She felt as if she was dancing for both her mother and herself. The next day the ballet critic who had put the success of the show squarely on her shoulders was compelled to report that, Belana Whitaker was the definitive Titania. I don’t believe I’ve ever witnessed a more powerfully spiritual performance. I am privileged to have been in the audience last night. It was an experience I’ll never forget.
The
show was sold out every night of its eight-week run. And Belana performed with as much vigor and passion as she had that first night.
Between rehearsals and performances, she and Erik spent time getting to know their mother. Initially, she was going to go back to Marseille after a few days’ visit because she didn’t want to be an imposition. Belana suspected it was because her strength was failing her and she didn’t want to be a burden on them.
They were having dinner together at Belana’s apartment one evening. Nick and Ana were there as well. Mari swallowed a mouthful of sautéed green beans and grimaced. She rose quickly. “Please excuse me,” she said and fled to the bathroom. A moment later, Belana followed.
Erik followed Belana.
They heard their mother coughing so badly it sounded as if she might choke.
The bathroom door was closed but Belana tried the doorknob and discovered it was unlocked. She saw Erik behind her and motioned for him to stay there. When she got inside, her mother was hacking up blood into a wad of tissues.
“I’ll call for an ambulance,” Belana immediately cried, turning to leave.
Her mother reached out a hand and grasped her by the wrist. She coughed again into the tissues, and then seemed to get it under control. Raising her reddened eyes to Belana’s she said in a hoarse voice, “They can’t do anything for me, darling. I must go home.”
“Who do you have at home to take care of you?” Belana asked.
“I have dear old friends,” her mother answered.
“Dear old friends who’re willing to be with you through it all?”
Her mother looked away and Belana knew she didn’t really have anyone in Marseille who would be with her at the end. She couldn’t bear to let her go back there to die alone.
“You’ll stay with us,” Belana said. “Erik and I will look after you.”
Erik, who had been eavesdropping through the door Belana had left ajar, strode into the room. “Yes, we will. You don’t have to endure this on your own.”
