Chương 11
Then Julia said, “I thought you would enjoy watching me lose things.”
“I did for a while.”
Julia looked at her coffee.
“Thank you for not lying.”
“It wasn’t attractive.”
“No.”
A child at the next table dropped a spoon and began crying as if betrayed by gravity. His father retrieved it, wiped it, and gave him another. The child rejected the replacement.
Julia watched them.
“I don’t know whether Mark and I will stay married,” she said.
“Do you want to?”
“Some days.”
“That may be the most honest description of marriage I’ve heard.”
“You were married for four years.”
“Which gave me exactly four years of expertise.”
Julia stirred her coffee though she had added nothing to it.
“Lily thinks you’re proud of her.”
“I am.”
“She thinks you don’t trust her.”
“I don’t.”
Julia nodded.
“She understands the difference.”
“That’s more than most adults manage.”
They sat in silence.
At last, Julia said, “Ruth really gave you that necklace because you visited?”
“Yes.”
“I had two children.”
“I know.”
“She could have said she understood.”
“She wasn’t good at mercy when a fact was available.”
Julia smiled faintly.
“I did want it.”
“I know.”
“Not because it was valuable.”
“I know.”
“I wanted proof that she had loved me too.”
Claire looked at her sister.
“She kept every school picture you sent.”
“That is not the same.”
“No.”
Julia’s eyes filled. She looked away before the tears fell.
Claire did not reach across the table. Comfort offered too quickly would have returned them to the old arrangement, where pain erased responsibility.
After a moment, she said, “Mom has the blue file box. There are letters you haven’t seen.”
Julia wiped beneath one eye.
“Will you look at them with me?”
“Not today.”
“But someday?”
“Possibly.”
Julia accepted that answer.
Winter came early. Lily trained before school twice a week and every evening except Friday. She worked Saturdays and used the repair money to pay for an intensive workshop in January.
She did not tell Claire until after she had registered.
“I decided something responsible,” Lily said over the phone.
“That sounds suspicious.”
“I spent the money on training.”
“Your money?”
“The money I tried to give you.”
Claire sat at her kitchen island with an unopened takeout container.
“Do you expect approval?”
“I’m hoping for mild approval.”
“Mild approval granted.”
“Thank you.”
The workshop instructor recommended Lily for a spring audition at Metropolitan. The academy permitted deferred students to re-audition for placement and additional merit consideration, though no funding was guaranteed.
Lily almost refused.
Then she told Claire she was afraid of being accepted again.
“Rejection would be simpler,” she said.
“Yes.”
“What if I get in and still can’t pay?”
“Then you will have accurate information.”
“That’s a terrible comfort.”
“It is still better than inventing certainty.”
Lily went quiet.
“You sound like Mom.”
“I sincerely hope not.”
“No. You sound like what you said about Mom.”
Claire understood.
“Do the audition,” she said. “Then decide what the result requires.”
“Will you come?”
Claire looked at the necklace lying beside her takeout container. She had removed it after work because the clasp irritated her skin in cold weather.
“Do you want me there as your aunt or as someone who might pay?”
“My aunt.”
“Then yes.”
The audition took place in March on a wet Saturday morning. Claire drove because Mark’s car needed a transmission repair and Julia had taken Owen to urgent care for a sprained wrist.
Lily wore headphones most of the way into the city. Her pink dance bag rested between her shoes. At one point she removed the headphones and said, “I’m going to be sick.”
“Use the bag without the shoes.”
“That’s your advice?”
“It is practical.”
Lily laughed once, then pressed her forehead against the window.
At the academy, Claire sat in a lobby with other parents and guardians. Some spoke too loudly about summer programs. Others stared at their phones. One father slept with his arms folded while his daughter stretched against the wall beside him.
Lily signed in under her own name.
No one greeted Claire as a donor. She had asked the development office to ensure that staff involved in admissions were not told about her gift beyond what compliance required.
Before entering the studio, Lily looked back.
Claire lifted one hand.
Unlike Mark at the dinner, she used her voice.
“You earned the room,” she said.
Lily nodded and went inside.
The audition lasted nearly three hours.
Claire drank vending-machine coffee and read half of a novel without remembering any of it. When Lily emerged, her hair had escaped its pins and her face was pale with exhaustion.
“How was it?” Claire asked.
“I have no idea.”
“That sounds normal.”
“I fell out of a turn.”
“Did everyone survive?”
“Barely.”
They ate sandwiches in the car because the rain had become too heavy to walk anywhere. Lily picked the tomatoes from hers and placed them in the wrapper.
“Mom says you used to paint,” she said.
“Your mother says many things.”
“Grandma showed me pictures.”
Claire looked over.
“Of what?”
“Sets you built. One had a little staircase.”
“It was supposed to be a hotel.”
“It looked like a haunted dentist’s office.”
“That is why I work in finance.”
Lily smiled.
“Do you miss it?”
Claire watched rain run down the windshield.
“Sometimes I miss the person who thought she might do it.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I was afraid of being impractical. Then I became good at being practical.”
“You could paint now.”
“I could.”
“Will you?”
“I don’t know.”
Lily folded the sandwich wrapper into a smaller square.
“That’s not very decisive.”
“People are allowed to remain unresolved in areas unrelated to your audition.”
Two weeks later, Metropolitan renewed Lily’s offer and awarded an additional twelve thousand dollars in merit aid.
May you like
Combined with the earlier need-based grant, the remaining cost was twenty thousand dollars.
Mark could contribute eight. Julia had saved four by selling jewelry and reducing expenses. Lily’s studio offered a small community scholarship. A gap of six thousand remained, not including transportation.
