I’d stayed in the studio and looked through the books until my eyes were bleary, then closed them, put my head down.
My mother sang out, her voice low and hypnotic:
“I have seen you, little mouse,
Running all about the house,
Through the hole your little eye
In the wainscot peeping sly,
Hoping soon some crumbs to steal,
To make quite a hearty meal.
Look before you venture out,
See if pussy is about.”
“I don’t want the kitty to eat me, Grandma Needle!” Olivia squealed.
“Oh, no kitty will get you, my love. You’re my clever little mouse, aren’t you?”
Our whole family had been in my mother’s room earlier. Mark had dragged the large-screen TV in and attached it to his laptop so he could share the video ofThe Nutcrackerone of the other fathers had taken. Olivia was wearing her ballet outfit. We’d made popcorn, and Mark had bought candy and soda. And when the show was over, Olivia had stayed in with my mother, snuggled up next to her in bed, telling her stories about the silly antics backstage, how her friend Sophie had snorted grape juice, which she wasn’t supposed to be drinking, and gotten it all over her costume and they had to rinse it out and she’d danced with it still damp. She told my mother about how scary the Rat King was, and how you’d never know it was Carrie in that costume—she was so nice, but once she put on that mask, she became terrifying.
I’d carried the empty popcorn bowl and soda glasses into the kitchen; now I hovered in the doorway, watching and listening, not wanting to enter the room fully and break the spell, but hesitant to leave the two of them alone for long.
“I wish you could have seen me for real inThe Nutcracker,” Oliviamused, her head on my mother’s bony shoulder. I felt a pang as I remembered how I used to snuggle my mother the very same way when I was little and she’d read me stories. It was strange to think I’d been that small once, that vulnerable, that trusting.
“Oh, I did,” my mother said, smiling. “I did see you, little mouse.”
“How?”
“I was there in spirit, watching.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you ever have a dream where you realize you’re dreaming, and you realize you can go wherever you like, do whatever you’d like?”
“Yes!”
“It’s like that. My body is sick here in bed, but with my mind, I can go flying all over the world.”
“You can go all over the world and you came to the opera house to see me?”
“Of course. There’s no one else I’d rather see.”
Olivia threw her arms around my mother. “I love you, Grandma Needle.”
“And I love you, little mouse.”
I was clenching my hands so tightly that my fingernails were clawing into my own palms.
“Do you want to watch my dance again?”
“Yes, let’s watch the whole thing again, from the beginning.”
Olivia bounced up and pressed play on the laptop. The ballet began on the TV screen, the closed curtain opening for the party scene.
