“Make me!” he fired back. He went, though, shoving through the men, stuffing his hat on his head. Wounds sprouted up on his skin in mad red patches. After snatching his jacket from the peg, he slammed the door on the way out.
I flinched. The sound of the door being slammed made me almost insane. The sound of it came mighty fucking close to making me lose my mind.
“Brando?” Violet’s voice was small, but strong. She was a tough woman. Tears on her cheeks were rare. But the tremble of her hands belied what she hid on her face. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
I nodded.
“It’s hard—” she began, but then her eyes glanced at the men. “I’ll just get the surprise.”
I sighed as I took a seat at the table, running a hand through my hair. The men relaxed after that, all taking food from around the stove, piling it on their plates.
Violet placed the computer in front of me, the screen up, some kind of page opened.
I stopped her when she went to type something in. “You okay?”
She kept her eyes glued to the screen. “I have a daughter who cries if I give her a blue shirt instead of pink, even though it was all about pink the day before. I have two sons who go at it every day now because one feels left out. And this, this—shit.”
“Yeah. Thisshit. You and Mitch need to work it out before it turns into something else.”
“Too late,” she said, and then she took a step back, nodding toward the computer. “Check it out.”
It was some sort of website, the page full of pictures of Scarlett. A picture of her in black and white, her entire profile in view, a leotard on her body, was centered in the middle of a circle at the top.
Next to it wasScarlett Rose Fausti, followed by a small blue star, a check mark in its center. Next to it aFollowbox. Just below a line of stats seemed to be given—posts, followers, following, and their numbers. The number of followers seemed insane. The following seemed to be slim.
Underneath all of that was a description:Wife of Brando Fausti. Principal Dancer with American Ballet Theatre.TheTiny Dancer.
Rows and rows of pictures and videos were spread out before me, all of my wife in various poses. All geared toward her career, though a few of the two of us were here and there. One picture caught my eye and I clicked on it. The picture came forward, right after a white heart and a white conversation bubble appeared, giving me more stats. Loves and comments.
Welcome to the age of the Internet and its Cadets.
The picture was almost magical. It was taken at the Vail Dance Festival. Behind her was a forest, lit with twinkling lights like a midsummer night’s dream, and she was caught mid-jump, as if her feet were levitating off the ground. An invisible cloud seemed to be lifting her off her feet, bringing her to heaven in an ethereal pose.
Violet clicked the picture off. There were so many, a man could get lost.
“Social media,” Violet informed me.
I checked the description again. Above everything else, she had listed that she was my wife first.
“Yeah,” Violet said, clicking through a few things, making me push back. “She caught hell for that.”
“For?”
“For listing that she was your wife before dancer.” She shrugged. “Okay.” She took a step back. “Surprise!”
Another box had appeared, snow falling down in drifts, as the camera zoomed in closer to the window. There, dancing as she had all those years ago in the snow, was my ballerina girl. She was dressed in all blue, twirling like a girl in a music box. The short video was set to “Ballerina Girl.”
The smile that came to my face was automatic.
“She said that this could be a secret, between you and her. It has meaning,” Violet said quietly.
To the average snooper, it was just another video on her page, of what she could do. But it meant something to me. A great deal to me, in fact.
I nodded, but I couldn’t speak. The video stirred up so many emotions, the ones I felt that night, the ones I continued to feel, only strengthening them. I watched the video fifteen times before I started to click on the others.
“Damn, she’s good,” I breathed to the screen.
“Oh, that’s when she had her BFO.”
