Caleb insisted upon coming along “for moral support,” which is in fact making me considerably more nervous than I would be if it were just Miss Julia and Lena in the room. But I’m hoping that if the nerves wear off, I’ll dance this solo as well now as I did in December—the first time I thought I was dancing it for him.
“I can’t tell you how pleased I am about this whole thing.” Miss Julia buzzes around the studio, making sure there aren’t any stray ballet slippers or towels strewn where the camera will catch them. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. What’d your parents say when you told them?”
I stretch at the barre in the corner while Lena attaches her tiny camera to a tripod. To say I was anxious about telling my family about this would be an understatement. Mostly I was worried that my mother, so unpredictable these days as she loses her ability to regulate herself, would say something horrible, tell me I’d never get in, or that I didn’t deserve it. But she didn’t. For that moment, she was her old self, who loves ballet as much as I do. Even Dad—who I predicted would grumble about how “dance isn’t much of a career path”—had nothing to say but carpe diem, more or less. Maybe Mom’s good day was wearing off on him. Or all the bad ones were.
Of course, I didn’t tell them the entire story—which is that in addition to booking the studio to make a tape for PCCA, I also booked an appointment with the genetic counselor to talk about getting tested for the Huntington’s mutation. That seemed like it might sour the mood.
“They’re excited,” I say as I press my face against my leg.
Caleb comes up behind me and massages my shoulders while I stretch. He’s wearing this black Boston Rugby Club hooded sweatshirt and jeans. I don’t know where the sweatshirt came from; he doesn’t even play rugby, but it looks good on him. I know I’m supposed to think he looks best dressed up, like he was when we went to the BPC, but the truth is, I think he looks pretty cute when he’s all casual. It’s mildly distracting.
“Your mom must be super proud,” he says softly in my ear.
For today, she is. Tomorrow, who knows.
“Okay, people, we’re all set here,” Lena announces. “Are you warmed up?”
“Hold on,” I say. “Not quite.” I move to the middle of the floor and do a few quick leaps and turns, shaking out my muscles in between.
“Sit over there,” I tell Caleb, pointing at a folding chair in the corner, next to Miss Julia. “And don’t say anything. And don’t laugh. And don’t, I don’t know…”
“Should I also wear my invisibility cloak?” he asks.
“I wish. Okay, I’m ready. We might need to run this a few times.” I let Lena direct me to the right spot on the floor.
“Three, two…” Lena mouths the one like a movie director and points to Miss Julia, who starts the music. I close my eyes and take myself back to the theater. I can almost hear the quiet shifting of the audience in their seats, their anonymous faces packed in the dark. And then there’s just me and the floor, and Tchaikovsky’s music, calling me home.
* * *
Lena said she’d edit the footage and send it over later, so I go home after my last class and try not to think about PCCA for the rest of the evening. While I wait, I lie in bed with my laptop propped up on a pillow, staring at my online application to Cunningham College for the umpteenth time.
Last spring, Cunningham was just one stop on an epic road trip of practically every college within seven hours of Boston. Most of my classmates came back from their own college tours complaining about how annoying their parents had been—asking questions about things like shuttle buses around campus after midnight—but our trip was pretty fun. Mom’s symptoms weren’t that noticeable yet, certainly not to the strangers we took the campus tours with, and we strayed from the groups after a while to hunt out the best local ice cream and bookstores. It felt like a normal, family-ish thing to do. But for the most part, the colleges all felt the same to me—nondescript collections of old buildings around lush lawns, invariably dotted with college-y types throwing Frisbees.
Cunningham had its own share of Frisbee throwers and old buildings. But when we were wandering around campus, Mom spotted a flyer stapled to a bulletin board. “Common Ground: DanceWorks Spring Show.”
“There’s a dance performance tonight,” she said—with total clarity, I remember that. She was slurring less back then. “We should go.”
“We have to get on the road, ladies,” Dad said. “Otherwise we won’t get as far as Ithaca tomorrow.”
Mom pulled the flyer off the board and scrutinized it more closely. She shook her head. “I think we should go to this. Ithaca will still be there on Friday. Rose wants to, don’t you, Rosie?”
I shrugged. “May as well. We’re here.”
That’s how we ended up in this black box theater space at Cunningham College on a Thursday night. The house was packed with all these college students carrying bouquets of tulips and bright gerbera daisies. And the show—which was a mix of jazz, modern, some hip-hop, and some that refused to be boxed into a category at all—was crazy good. Like stuff you expect to pay a lot of money to see. I’ve never danced much beyond ballet—there’s something about modern especially that feels too uncontrolled, too lawless to me—but I know enough about the other genres to recognize that these kids were good enough to be dancing professionally. And there was a feeling in the theater that night. It reminded me of the annual showcase at NEYB, the buzz and energy in the air, the anticipation—a complete and absolute shared love for dance. Even sitting in the audience, I could feel it. I liked it.
Plus, as I pointed out to my father, at Cunningham, I could dance and major in business, if I felt so inclined. He seemed to like that idea.
The application is due tomorrow by 11:59 p.m. Mine’s finished, just waiting there, ready to go. I give my essays one more read, and hit Send. At least I’ll have a backup plan. Because I probably won’t get into PCCA anyway.
It’s almost midnight when Lena finally sends a text: “Just sent over your video. It looks awesome!!” My whole body tenses up, as if it’s preparing in advance to be mortified. I almost never watch my performances on film. It’s too torturous. Video never seems to capture the whole moment, the intensity and magic of it. But then I think of Caleb’s face when I finished dancing this morning. He’d looked at me like he’d never seen me before. Is that because he’s Caleb, and he doesn’t know anything about ballet? Or because he’s biased about me? Or is it really because of my dancing?
I open Lena’s e-mail and click Play. She was right about the natural light—the sun streaming in through the studio windows gives the whole room a kind of soft glow. But there’s more to it than Lena’s videography skills. I think I forget for a moment that I’m watching myself. It’s like looking at Caleb’s drawing of me. I don’t recognize her, but the person in this video is good—maybe good enough to have a shot at this.
Sixteen
Roxanna, the genetic counselor Dr. Howard referred me to, looks like a typical Cambridge therapist—flowy linen pants, a kind of purple tunic top, and a heavy beaded necklace. She has one of those granny chains attached to her glasses so she won’t lose them, although it doesn’t seem to help much. In the first ten minutes of our first session, I watch her search high and low for those glasses while they’re perched right on top of her head, nested in her spiky white hair.
She looks like a therapist, but the thing about genetic counselors is that they’re not therapists exactly. Although they’re supposed to be, more or less. I researched this. Officially, they’re supposed to practice something called “patient-centered therapy,” where they don’t tell you what to do—they’re supposed to help you make your own decision. That’s how the field of genetic counseling started out, anyway, when the main recipients were pregnant women who were at risk of carrying babies with genetic conditions. Of course, that was before there were actually any tests for the stuff, so the counselors were just working off the knowledge that something or oth
er bad ran in the woman’s family. Back then there really wasn’t a right answer: all a counselor could tell the woman was her general risk, but they couldn’t tell her anything for sure.
That’s no longer the case, now that we have access to more information about our genes. I imagined that Roxanna would explain all my options—even though I already know what they are—and then tell me that whatever I end up doing is the right thing for me. Not the case.
In reality, Roxanna lays out all the possibilities—I take the test, I get a negative result (good); I take the test, I get a positive result (bad); I don’t take the test—and then starts pretty obviously pushing her own agenda. Which is: Rose, don’t be an idiot, don’t take the test.
Unfortunately, I have to put up with whatever pressures Roxanna wants to apply, because more than my parents, she’s the gatekeeper to my genetic information. If I want to take the test after I turn eighteen, I’ll need to see Roxanna at least three more times. They make you stretch it out, presumably to give you plenty of opportunities to change your mind. And at the end of it all, I’ll still need her sign-off. I have to pass her test before I can take my test.
“Rose, can I ask you something?” she says ever so earnestly, cocking her head to the left. She squints a little bit and makes one of those sort of solemn, close-lipped half smiles. I stare over her head. On the wall opposite there’s a mass-produced painting of some sand dunes that I think I’ve seen on sale at Target. Soothing, supposedly.
“I want you to close your eyes and imagine, just for a moment, that you take the test, and you get a positive result.”
It’s weird, isn’t it, that getting a positive result is bad news. Why do they do that in medicine? HIV-positive. Positive biopsy. It’s condescending. We’re not dumb. We know bad news when we hear it.
“What’s the question?”
“I’m sorry?” Roxanna cocks her head the other way.
“You asked if you could ask me a question. You didn’t ask me anything.”
“I’m sorry. Imagine that you get the positive result…”
Like I don’t do that every day.
“… And tell me, what do you do first? What’s the first thing that happens?”
“I’m not going to kill myself, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
I think about what Lena said. I could just walk out of the doctor’s office, go home, and book a train ticket. I could start with the Zephyr, Chicago to San Francisco. Then, after that, I could take all of Mom’s train rides, one at a time, until I can’t, just like she planned to do.
I elect not to tell Roxanna that particular plan.
“I’ll join a support group,” I say instead, assuming that’s the right thing to say. My mother went to a few support group meetings when she was first diagnosed. Then she quit. She decided she didn’t like being around sick people.
“That’s the very first thing you’ll do?” Roxanna asks, incredulous.
“No, I guess not. The first thing I’ll do is drive home.”
“You won’t be alone. Who’s with you, your dad?”
Unlikely, considering that Dad doesn’t even know we’re having this conversation. Again, I figure that’s probably not what Roxanna wants to hear.
“I guess,” I say. “We’ll go back to our house and I’ll make tea.”
“You’ll make tea?”
“Dad will be really upset.”
“How will you feel?”
She studies me, like I’m a specimen in a research project—which I might as well be. There’s a lot of research on how much people really want to know about their health, and about their genetic health, specifically. I’ve Googled this, and the results mostly contradict themselves. One study I found says there are two kinds of people: people who want information and people who would rather bury their heads in the sand—which isn’t a surprise, really. It depends on the kind of person? Thanks for the insight, Science.
“Rose?”
“Honestly?” I ask Roxanna. She nods a little too enthusiastically. “I think I’ll feel in control.”
“Okay,” she says slowly. “And if the test is negative? How do you think you’ll feel then?”
When I was little and I couldn’t decide something—stupid things mostly, like whether I wanted the blue Converse sneakers or the purple ones, or a birthday party with pizza or Chinese food—my mom used to tell me to flip a coin, but then as soon as it lands, to register my natural, automatic response. “Quick!” she’d say. “Are you happy or disappointed?” She’d smile knowingly (because she usually knew what I really wanted before I did) and say, “See, Rose? That’s how you know how you really feel.”
The strange thing is, when Roxanna asks me how I’ll feel if the test is negative, my natural, automatic response—only for a split second, but still, there it is—is disappointment. It only occurs to me now that maybe I’ve spent so much time imagining life with my mother’s illness that I’ve never considered life without it.
* * *
As soon as I get home, I pound up the stairs and open my laptop. It’s been two weeks since I sent the tape in to PCCA, and according to their Web site, I should be getting an answer about the audition today. Sure enough, there it is. My hands shake like Mom’s as I go to open the e-mail.
From: Office of Admissions, The Pacific Coast College of the Arts
To: Rose Alexander Levenson
Dear Rose,
Thank you for submitting an audition tape to the Gerald Grierson Scholarship Committee at The Pacific Coast College of the Arts. The Admissions Committee would like to invite you to audition in person on April 4. For your convenience and ours, this session will serve as your audition for both admission to the BFA program and the scholarship itself. Further information is attached.
We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco!
All best,
The Admissions Committee
This time, the first person I call is Lena.
Seventeen
“That conversation was binding, Levs,” Lena says, one hand on her hip as she surveys the insides of my closet, trying to choose an appropriately celebratory outfit for the birthday dinner she wouldn’t let me out of. “Listen, you are eighteen now: you can vote, you can serve in the military, you can take ill-advised genetic tests to determine your medical future…” She pauses and shoots me a pointed look. “And you’re the best dancer in the universe, and you’re going for free to the best dance school in the country. We have to celebrate!” She practically sings as she prances around my bedroom, trying to get me in the going-out spirit.
“Okay, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?” I say. “It’s only an audition.”
There’s no chilling Lena out right now. This dinner—Caleb’s and Anders’s first time meeting each other—is basically Lena’s dream come true: the two of us on a much-heralded double date. But I still don’t think of Caleb and me as the same kind of couple as Lena and Anders—one of those coupley-couples. Despite Lena’s assertion that I’m falling in love with him, Caleb and I are just … people who sometimes kiss. And want to talk to each other all the time. And seem to be starting to care about each other.
“You’re wearing the yellow wedges, obviously,” Lena says as she begins laying clothing items out on my bed. Lena herself is already perfectly attired, looking like she always does—somehow like she didn’t think about it at all, and happened to randomly throw on this just-right outfit. Tonight she’s wearing tight black pants in some kind of stretchy material, a loose striped sweater that seems to always be sliding off one shoulder or the other, and high-heeled gray boots.
“Dress, or jeans?” she asks. I stare at her, already exhausted by what I know is about to turn into twenty minutes of trying things on and taking them off.
“Jeans.” I sigh. “It’s freezing out.” I never understand girls who force themselves to wear tiny dresses and high-heeled shoes in the dead of winter. This is F
ebruary in New England, people. It’s freakin’ cold out.
“We can do jeans. These,” she says, pulling my only pair of decently dressy jeans out of my bottom dresser drawer. “And … wait for it.” She wiggles her eyebrows up and down at me and goes over to the duffel bag—her stuff for spending the night—that she’s tossed in the corner. Digging through it, she unearths a black V-neck shirt that looks too small for either of us. “Try,” she orders, tossing it at me.
“This is not going to fit me in any way that is appropriate.”
“Whatever. Do as your personal stylist says.”
I really don’t know how she does it, but she gets me every time. I peel off the T-shirt I’m currently wearing and finagle my arms into the shirt, which is made of some kind of thick, soft, stretchy cotton and is gathered around the sides.
“Yes,” Lena says, like a proud parent, grinning at me. “Look.”
I turn and examine myself in the mirror. She’s right, actually—the shirt fits surprisingly well. It’s low-cut, but not inappropriately so. Once I’ve wriggled into the nice jeans and the wedge heels, I have to admit I look pretty good. Like an almost-normal, decent-looking eighteen-year-old human.
* * *
Dinner is at a divey Mexican place with hockey on the televisions by the bar, and a guy with a guitar coming around to serenade the diners (automatically drowning out any conversation and requiring the entire table to smile awkwardly at him for two and a half minutes until he’s finished).
Caleb busts out his best guy’s-guy repartee with Anders. “You a Bruins fan?” he asks, nodding up at the hockey game. It’s either a lucky guess, or Caleb is stereotyping about Scandinavians’ love for hockey. Either way, he’s right, and Anders launches into a monologue about injuries endured by the Bruins this season and why he thinks they’re still on track for a Stanley Cup win.
Lena rolls her eyes at me across the table, and I smile and shrug. They can talk about hockey all night if they want—I’m happy to just sit and listen. The restaurant is warm, and Lena swore up and down that there would be no singing of “Feliz Cumpleaños” from the guy with the guitar, and the whole thing feels just about right.
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