Laudie invited me for lunch at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, the time Tito plays chess at Battery Hall. I haven’t told Laudie about the breakup yet, but it seems she somehow knows. When I walk into the kitchen, she hugs me tight and lets me cry. “I did it, Laudie. I called off the wedding. I had to. I kissed someone.” I can’t see her face. I’m not sure if I want to.
“Do you love Trip?”
“I care about him so much.”
“But do you love him?”
“Not as much as I should.”
“Oh, sweetie.” She hands me a tissue. “Life gets messy when our hearts don’t feel like they’re in the right place.” She guides me to a seat at the table. A pitcher of iced tea sweats on the sweetgrass place mat. She places a bowl in front of me: cantaloupe topped with cottage cheese and raisins: a feast for a prima ballerina. She retrieves her lunch from the counter and takes a seat.
“Do you think I made a huge mistake?”
“It depends on what you do next. Whatever you decide, don’t do it out of fear.”
“Be brave, huh?”
“That’s right, the moral of the story. And now it seems like it’s more important than ever for you to hear.” She slides her bowl, untouched, to the side, clearing the space between us. “I was nineteen. Your grandfather and I were dating at the time. Girls got married young those days. We weren’t engaged yet, but I knew he had marriage on his mind. And I knew if I ever wanted to be on my own, I had to leave before he proposed. I had read about this woman, Dorothy Alexander, in the paper. She had founded the Atlanta Civic Ballet. There was nothing like it anywhere else in the South, and she was looking for more dancers. I told Mother and Daddy that if they didn’t give me their blessing, I’d go to the tryouts anyway and take a bus in the middle of the night to get there.
“They knew I was serious. Mother rang the Pruitts to ask if I could ride with them when they went to drop Mary off at Agnes Scott.” She chuckles. “Oh, we had a grand time driving there, packed like sardines with all our suitcases, singing show tunes and eating egg salad sandwiches. As you can imagine, Tito was furious.”
“For leaving.”
“Yes, for leaving him. Of course he never knew about all the fun I was having.”
“Like what? What did you do?”
“I went to the theater whenever I felt like it. I’d go to the river. I even jumped off a train trestle.”
“What? How high?”
“Must have been twenty feet.”
“You daredevil.”
“One night, on a full moon, some of the boardinghouse girls and I went skinny-dipping. There was a big house across the street with a pool. I had noticed the family must have left town on vacation, so we all did it on a dare.”
“Wow.”
“If your grandfather found out, he would probably have had me committed.”
“Just for having fun?”
“I think it bothered him that I wanted to see if I could make it on my own.”
“Why would that bother him?”
“Because girls from good families didn’t go off and work.”
“Tell me about your job.”
“My roommate at the boardinghouse helped me get that job as a secretary for a manager at Coca-Cola. I typed letters and ran errands and all that sort of stuff. I got a paycheck and was proud of it, but I was still just a little helper like the rest of the girls. In the end, most of them were there to meet their husbands, anyway.
“I had other aspirations. I wanted to be onstage. I wanted something different for my life. I think your grandfather found that threatening. A lot of people found that threatening.”
I take the last bite of my doll-size meal. “It makes perfect sense to me.”
Laudie leans across the table to cup my chin. “I knew you’d understand.” She covers her lunch, which she never touched, with cling wrap and puts it in the refrigerator. “Come upstairs with me so I can get some time in at the barre before Tito gets home.”
We walk to her room, where she changes into her ballet clothes. I wonder if I should stop her, but I can’t. It would be like stopping a person from prayer. She lays her day skirt at the foot of her bed and places her Capezio heels on the rug just beneath it. She ties on her ballet skirt and uses her finger to hook the heel of her ballet flats around the back of her feet. Her movements are slow but deliberate and graceful. A quiet peace surrounds her.
I follow her to the hallway, plop onto the floor. From here, Laudie looks taller, prettier, robust even. She floats her left arm up, still in the removable cast. She dips into a demi-plié. “The dancing in Atlanta—I’d never seen anything like it. It was just wild.”
“The ballet?”
“Oh no, that was different. I practiced every day for those auditions. I used my windowsill as the barre and kept hitting my foot on the bed.” She laughs to herself. “I loved ballet, but I loved to go out dancing, too.
“The kids danced differently in Atlanta, not like they did here.” Her eyes dart around the room, as if to catch sight of the memory. “They did the jitterbug and the Lindy Hop and all that, but they danced like banshees, like they had a fever or something. The boys twirled the girls so fast their dresses stayed lifted above their knees for the whole song.” She cocks her head to the side, as though someone is watching her, and she’s allowing him the pleasure.
“That’s where you met someone.” This, I knew, was the real secret.
“Yes, I did. His name was John. And I remember thinking his skin glowed, like a golden idol’s. He looked heavenly, Simons. He really did. And he had an easy way about him, a sort of lightness I had never seen in a man. He danced that way, too. Light as air. I’d never danced like that before, but my body knew what to do. I could handle any turn he could come up with. Soon we were going steady. He’d take me out to dinner, and then we’d go to the nightclubs. The music there, it put everyone on fire. We’d dance all night, drinking gin. Then on the way home, we’d end up necking by the cemetery.” She turns to me with a luminous smile. “Do you still call it that?”
“No,” I say with a laugh, “but I know what you mean.”
She extends her right leg toward the barre, but it doesn’t catch the first time. I uncross my legs and tent my fingers on the rug, readying my body to sprint toward her. She tries again, dipping backward ever so slightly, before hooking her foot in place.
Part of me knows I should stop her; she could fall and hurt herself again. But the other half, the braver half, knows that ballet is her passion. Her first love, however, must have been John. Where is he now? After all these years, do they keep in touch? Is she hiding a stash of love letters somewhere? “What happened to him?”
“What happened to who?” A voice floats up from the first floor, feet pound on the stairs. When Mom’s face emerges just above the top step, her eyes widen with alarm. “Mother! What are you doing at the barre?”
“Oh hush,” Laudie says, but something causes her body to pitch to the side as though she’s been pushed. Mom darts behind Laudie to steady her. I race to the other side. We prop her up, like legs to an easel, and lift her back to standing. “Simons,” she hisses, “were you just going to watch until Mother fell and sprained her other wrist or something worse? Help me put her in her bed.”
I drape Laudie’s right arm over my shoulders. Mom takes her left. Laudie walks, leaning heavily on us to make it to her room. We lay her on the bed. Mom swipes some extra pillows from Tito’s side of the bed and stacks them behind Laudie.
“I’m fine. Y’all go on now. I just need a little nap.” Laudie flicks her good wrist at us, waving us away, insisting we’re not needed.
But I can’t go yet. If Tito finds her in bed in this state, wearing her ballet flats and skirt, he’d rip the barre from the wall himself. “Laudie, scooch your hips over.” I untie her ballet skirt and slide it from beneath her. I wish she would protest, say she can do it herself, but she’s too tired. I walk to the foot of Laudie’s bed to pull the ballet flats from her feet.
Arms crossed, Mom watches wordlessly while I tuck the contraband items deep inside Laudie’s chest of drawers. When I reach for Laudie’s day skirt, Mom surprises me by getting onto the other side of the bed. “Mother, lift your hips up.” Together, we hike the skirt over Laudie’s willowy, exhausted legs.
“You have to promise me you’ll stop going to the barre,” Mom says.
“Y’all quit fussing over me. I just need some rest.”
Mom closes the curtains and motions for me to follow her out into the hallway. “Simons, I know you mean well. But one bad fall could kill her. Promise me you won’t let her do that again.”
I can’t promise that, so I say the next best thing. “I’m sorry, Mom.”