I can’t help but laugh at this question. I hung up my jazz shoes long ago.
“Well, you should be. I teach a class for adults now. Tuesday nights at seven in the barn. You’ll love it. Come next week—we can talk business afterward.”
Her forcefulness could be viewed as abrasive, but I am reassured by it. I’m still getting used to my newfound authority—I have become my parent’s parent—and sometimes, I miss being told what to do. Paula pecks my father on the cheek and then grabs my forearm as she fixes her dark eyes on me. “I’ll see you Tuesday, Cricket.”
She floats out the door before I can respond.
“Quite a minx,” my father says.
We turn to see Warren beginning to distribute the flyers Paula has left. He shakes his head in amused exasperation. “Hell on wheels, that one.”
Chapter 14
As I drive to Paula’s dance class the following Tuesday, I call my mom. I’m on a stretch of road where I know I will have exactly five minutes of reliable cell service: the perfect amount of time to check in and speedily exit the conversation before she starts giving me life advice.
She picks up after one ring. “Cricket! Perfect timing. I was just telling George we should have you here for Thanksgiving this year. Nina could pop down from Stockholm.”
My mother met George Ratliff-Jones, a very British man with a very British name, on a red-eye from New York to London four years ago. They were seated next to each other on the overnight flight, and to this day, they like to joke that they “slept together on their first date”—a quip that I could do without. At the time, my mother’s consulting career had her regularly commuting between New York and London. They struck up a transatlantic romance, and when COVID hit just a few months later, they decided to go all in. My mother moved into George’s house in St. John’s Wood, and less than a year later, they were married. I still don’t know him well, but he seems like a good match for her. And it’s fitting that, whereas she met my father in the sewers of New York, she met George in business class at thirty thousand feet. It’s where she always aspired to be.
“Thanksgiving—that’s months away,” I say. “And I didn’t know you still celebrated, now that you’re English.”
“We don’t, usually,” she muses. “But we could approximate it this year. Remind me: Do you like quail?”
“It’s a nice idea, Mom, but I can’t leave Dad here alone.”
“Of course you can.” She doesn’t seem to understand that I have a real responsibility now. I am neither as flexible nor as persuadable as I used to be. “You don’t have a job yet, do you?”
“Actually, I might. A consulting gig. I’m heading to a meeting right now to iron out the details,” I say, embellishing just enough.
“Fabulous! For whom? Where?”
“A local business in Locust.”
“Oh.” Her voice falls.
“Do you remember my old dance teacher, Paula Garibaldi?”
“Vaguely.” She swiftly moves on. “Have you thought about Europe? You know, George could easily find you something here. In fact, I was just…”
“Mom, I can’t hear you. I think you’re breaking up.” I timed things perfectly. She says something abouttaking your future more seriouslyand then something about Nina, and I hear her sayquailagain before the line goes dead.
Though we speak almost every week, she still won’t acknowledge that I have made a commitment here. It’s as if my choosing to live at Catwood Pond somehow offends her on a personal level. She still thinks I should want what she wants and do as she does. She has never really seen me for who I am.
A few minutes later, I turn onto the dirt drive that leads to Miss Paula’s. Carl has agreed to hang out with my father for the evening while I “do something for myself.” I keep my expectations low as I envision myself doing sad jazz hands in the mirrored barn where I used to prance in my youth, but I figure that, at the very least, a little exercise and human interaction can’t hurt—and if some employment comes out of it, all the better.
As soon as I park, I can feel a distinct energy in the air. The door to the barn is slightly ajar, and I tentatively poke my head in. The space is as I remember it: rustic but clean, with low lights and a huge mirror taking up an entire wall of the structure. There are four people inside: Sal from the hardware store, a middle-aged woman, a gangly teenageboy, and, of course, there is Paula, who is dressed in sheer black tights and a low-back tiger-print leotard. Her hair is loose, and her powdery purple eyeshadow fades artfully into her brow bone. The Pointer Sisters’ “Slow Hand” drifts through the air, and Paula calls out to me: “Jump right in! We’re warming up!”
I drop my bag, kick off my shoes, and take a place in front of the mirror, where everyone is slowly writhing, hips revolving, shoulders rolling. For a moment, I regret my frumpy sweatpants and oversized T-shirt, but as I look around at the other outfits—denim cutoffs on Sal, a teal unitard on the teenage boy—it seems that anything goes here.
“Listen to the words. What’s she saying?I want a lover with an easy touch.” Paula dips her pelvis and answers her own question: “So make it easy!”
She throws her upper body toward the floor in a half-fold, and then slowly rolls up, dragging her hands over her torso inch by inch. Everyone follows suit. This is a far cry from the bubbly modern jazz of my youth. Honestly, I don’t knowwhatthis is—but I like it.
The Pointer Sisters gives way to a smooth Janet Jackson jam, and Paula purrs in her authoritative rasp: “For our newcomer, we have only one rule for the next hour: no thinking. Let your body take it from here.”
The other three members of the class whoop in excitement, and Paula starts to call out dance steps that I used to know by heart. “To the right:chassé,chassé,passé, and body roll! To the left…”
This could be my opportunity tochassémy way right out the door, but I drove seventeen minutes to be here, so I decide to surrender to the experience.
