by Janice Sims
“Kyra Nichols,” Belana said. “She retired after thirty years.” She sighed. “What she did was amazing, but I don’t think I’m going to last that long. I’ve been dancing for over twenty years already, only professionally for about ten, but I can already recognize the signs.”
“Signs?” asked Elle. Ari had gone to sleep, so she had practically whispered the word.
“Signs that my body is sending me,” Belana explained. “For one thing, I don’t recover from a long performance as quickly as I used to. It’s harder to get up in the morning. I used to be up at the crack of dawn ready to endure a rigorous two-hour dance class. Plus, my chiropractor says my spine isn’t taking the abuse as well as it used to. I had a bulging disc on my sciatic nerve. Luckily my doctor caught it before it got really bad.”
“Belana, why didn’t you tell us?” Patrice cried, worried about her friend’s health now.
“I didn’t want to bother you,” Belana said, sounding unconcerned. “It’s not a chronic problem and it’s treatable. I had injections and it went away.”
“Didn’t that hurt?” Elle whispered.
“I’m not afraid of needles,” Belana replied. She sighed deeply. “The important thing is I’m fine. I think I have two more great years in me and want to dance some of the roles I’ve longed to dance like Aurora in Sleeping Beauty and Titania in Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. City Ballet is putting on Dream next season and I will dance Titania or die trying.”
“A girl has to have goals,” said Patrice teasingly. She knew that Belana would have to compete against some of the finest dancers in her company for such a coveted role. “I’m keeping my fingers crossed for you.”
“Besides,” Belana said, continuing with the reasons she was thinking of quitting in two years, “I want to get married and have babies. When I do get married and have children I’d like to be a full-time wife and mother. I know dancers who do it all, but not without sacrifice. I feel like the only reasons a dancer keeps dancing beyond the point when her body’s telling her to quit is because she’s either financially in need or she craves the spotlight too much to quit. Like boxers who go back into the ring after retiring, or other athletes who simply can’t stay retired and keep coming back in one form or another.”
Elle laughed softly. “Michael Jordan, for example, who missed the game so much he wound up buying a team.”
“Or George Foreman who came back in his forties,” said Patrice. “I know what you mean,” she said to Belana. “You want to bow out gracefully.”
“Yes,” said Belana. “And quit while my body can still push out a couple of babies.”
“I love babies,” said Stavros.
The three friends laughed. They had forgotten they were not alone. But that’s how it was with them when they were together—totally engrossed in one another.
Later, they had lunch on the patio of their suite. Ari was asleep in her mother’s bedroom and Elle had the baby monitor close by so she could hear her when she woke.
“Now that I have you two together,” Belana said to Elle and Patrice, “I can ask you. Is marriage what you thought it would be?” She wore a smirk, which Elle and Patrice knew preceded ribbing.
The dynamics of their relationship had changed somewhat with their marital status. Belana used to be the bossy one, the one who gave advice even when it wasn’t needed. She was older than Elle and Patrice by a few months, and used to rub that in, too. They all knew that life wasn’t a race and it didn’t matter which of them got married first or had a baby first. However, sometimes a bit of comparing lives was cathartic.
“No, it isn’t,” Patrice said frankly. She smiled. “It’s better!”
“Come on,” said Belana, disbelieving. “T.K.’s perfect? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Far from it,” Patrice said. “He’s all too human, which is what I love about him. Perfection is overrated. He’s only perfect in the movies.” Her eyes sparkled with laughter. “He doesn’t want to be away from me for more than a week and, believe me, with our schedules, making sure we don’t be apart longer than that is hard to do.” Her short black hair was naturally curly and she had it shaped at the nape in a V. She ran her hand through it, remembering how her husband liked to run his hands through it. “Lately, all he talks about is having a baby.”
“Are you?” asked Belana excitedly. “You’ve been married over a year and half, right?”
Patrice drank a bit of her water before answering. “I want to have a baby but my career is going so well now, it would set me back years if a project had to be postponed because of a pregnancy.”
Elle, who had been silent until now, simply enjoying her meal, looked intently at Patrice, and said, “If you’re looking for the most advantageous time to have a baby, it’ll never come. Most of the parents I know didn’t plan their children down to the minute, Patty. Look at me, I got pregnant and was going to leave Dominic rather than suffer the humiliation of begging him to marry me because I was pregnant. I wanted it all—love, marriage and a baby. I got love, a baby, and then the marriage. Life isn’t neat, it’s downright messy sometimes.”
“Have you seen my husband?” Patrice cried. “He’s built like, well, a Greek god! If I got pregnant I would be fat and grotesque. He works with beautiful women all the time, then to come home to me looking like a beached whale!”
Elle laughed. “I can’t believe those words are coming out of your mouth.” She looked at Belana, appealing to her for backup. Then she returned her attention to Patrice. “You’re saying you don’t trust T.K.?”
“Of course I trust T.K.,” Patrice said, exasperated.
“Then you’re just making excuses, Patty,” Elle said. “I used to admire the fact that you were so ambitious, but I’m beginning to wonder if your ambition is hiding something else, like insecurity.”
Patrice stared at Elle, shocked. “I’m not insecure, I just have a five-year plan, and having a baby doesn’t come until the third year of marriage when I will be able to take a couple years off from work. I’ll have ten films under my belt by then. Compared to T.K.’s thirty or so, that’s not much, but at least I won’t be forgotten while I’m gestating.”
Elle couldn’t control her laughter. Tears were streaming down her face she was laughing so hard. “Oh, Patty, now you’re competing with one of the top box-office draws in the world? My, haven’t we gotten egotistical!”
“Yeah,” Belana agreed. “What’s happened to you?”
Patrice felt like they were ganging up on her. She looked from Elle to Belana. “If you were in the business I’m in, you would understand. I have to maintain a certain level of success in Hollywood. Before I married T.K., nobody knew my name, or it felt like it. But suddenly I’m living in his world and they’re saying things like I’m not worthy of him, and he could have chosen better. Things like that can make you insecure!”
She stopped with her mouth momentarily open in surprise by what she had just said. Elle had hit the nail on the head. She was insecure. “When did that happen?” she asked softly, more to herself than to her friends. “I swore I wouldn’t let Hollywood get to me. I swore that T.K. and I would have a normal marriage based on love, and I’ve changed in spite of it.” She looked at her friends with tears in her eyes.
She got up and went around the table to hug Elle. “Thank you, sis, you called it.”
Elle got up and hugged her tightly. Belana joined them in a group hug.
“Problem identified, now we solve it,” Elle said with determination.
For the next five days the friends shopped, swam in the sea, and went back to the resort to be massaged by muscular male massage therapists on open-roofed verandas with the sea breezes cooling their warm skin.
By the time they boarded the ferry to leave Mykonos they felt strengthened by the encouragement they’d given each other. And even more certain of the solidity of their friendship.
Belana arrived back in New York on Saturday evening. She took a taxi from the airport and w
hen she got home, she dropped her bags on the foyer floor and immediately went to check her answering machine on the foyer table, hoping for a message from Nick. It had taken a great deal of restraint not to phone him from Greece, but she had been determined to wait. Now she was dying of curiosity.
She had plenty of messages from friends and acquaintances who weren’t aware she would be out of town when they called. However none were from Nick.
Suddenly drained of energy, she walked slowly through the apartment and once in her bedroom began peeling off her clothes. Jeans, shirt, athletic shoes all ended up in a pile at the foot of her bed. Then she threw herself face down on to the queen-size bed.
“I scared him off,” she muttered into her pillow.
Chapter 6
While Belana was in Greece Nick was extremely busy. He had to renegotiate a multimillion-dollar contract for one client, reminding management that he’d been indispensable to the team during the NBA finals this year. Then there was the twenty-one-year-old kid who was being courted by a beleaguered baseball team in Florida. Nick advised the kid not to take the job, but he was from Florida and had dreamed of playing for that particular team all his life. He naively felt he could singlehandedly turn the ball club around. Nick was at a loss trying to convince someone with that kind of faith in the team of his boyhood dreams to seek a position with a team that could offer him a more secure future.
The kid would not budge, so Nick had gotten him the best deal he could under the circumstances. He didn’t feel particularly optimistic about the chances of the team’s prospects improving, but in his years of following sports, stranger things had happened.
On the home front, he’d gone to church with his mother and Nona on Sunday. His mother had been delighted he could join them, but Nona, still miffed at him—that girl could really hold a grudge—pretty much ignored him.
Over dinner, she talked animatedly with his mother, mostly about dance. Nick felt like a third wheel. He had eaten his meal and watched her. She looked so much like Dawn. The same milk-chocolate toned skin and almond-shaped golden brown eyes. She had his black hair, though. Dawn’s hair had been dark brown. She also had his chin. The cleft in it was exactly like his.
His daughter caught him looking at her across the table and frowned. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter,” he’d said, smiling. “I was just thinking how much you look like your mom.”
There was a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth, but she beat it back down and sighed as if he were tiresome. “You say that all the time.”
“Because it’s true all the time,” he countered, perhaps a bit too sharply.
His mother cleared her throat, something she did whenever she wanted to caution someone at her dinner table against bad behavior.
Nick took a deep breath and tried again. “How are your dance classes coming along?”
Nona looked at him with more than a little suspicion. “Why? You want to make sure I’m going when I should be going so that I’m not wasting your hard-earned money?”
“No, because I’m interested,” he said. He wanted her to tell him about Belana mentoring her so that he could casually mention that he knew Belana. Then they would at least have that in common.
“Why are you interested all of a sudden?”
Nick put his cloth napkin in his plate, denoting he was finished eating. This time, though, he felt he was also finished trying to make nice with his stubborn daughter.
He regarded her with narrowed eyes. “Nona, let’s make one thing perfectly clear. I am your father, and I’m interested in every aspect of your life whether you believe it or not. And I think it’s time you stopped punishing me for doing what fathers the world over do for their children, provide for them!”
Nona jumped when he raised his voice toward the end of his speech.
Nick immediately regretted his tone. Why must she push his buttons?
Tears collected in the bottom rims of Nona’s eyes. Her bottom lip stubbornly poked out and began to tremble slightly. Nick sighed. He hated when she tried to manipulate him with tears. It was what she fell back on when she thought she was losing an argument.
He smiled at her. “You’re not three years old anymore. You’re fifteen, a young woman. Be mature enough to deal with your father without the theatrics, please.”
Nona blinked back tears. Her nose began to run. She picked up her napkin, dabbed at her eyes and wiped her nose. “I really don’t have anything to say to you that you haven’t already heard from Momma Yvonne. I’m getting good grades in school and I never miss a dance class. Your money is being well-spent. I’m trying to be a model daughter for a model father.”
“Sarcasm,” Nick said, “is lost on me.” He grasped her wrist between strong fingers and said, “Look at me, Nona.” She reluctantly met his eyes. “I’m all you have. Make the best of it. Now, since you won’t share what’s going on in your life, I’m going to share with you what’s going on in mine. I’ve met someone.”
Nona’s brows rose in surprise. Her father didn’t often mention women. She had begun to think he had lost interest in that kind of thing. But she supposed he wasn’t old and decrepit yet at only thirty-three. He and her mom had been teenagers when she had been born. In some ways she admired him for not freaking out like she’d heard some guys did when they found out they were going to be fathers and leaving the girls to deal with it on their own. He had married her mother and both of them, with the support of their parents, had gone to college. Her mother had become a teacher and he’d eventually gotten his law degree.
Her gripe with him wasn’t about his not supporting her financially. It was about his spending time with her. Now, he was telling her he was interested in a woman. A woman who would take whatever time he had allotted for her out of his already busy schedule. That didn’t seem fair to her.
“I’m happy for you,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“You really are not good at that,” Nick told her, smiling. “Don’t you want to know her name, and what she does for a living?”
“I’m not interested in your love life unless, of course, you’re going to get married and start having babies. Then, I suppose I can come visit you and the stepmom parental unit and the new rug rats. I hope you have a girl. I always wanted a sister.”
Nick winced. Maybe she was good at sarcasm after all.
Nona smiled smugly.
“We haven’t discussed marriage,” Nick said, keeping his tone purposefully light. “We have discussed you, though. She thinks you’re a good dancer.”
Nona stared at him, smug smile gone. “You’re dating my dance teacher?” she screeched.
Nick laughed. “If your dance teacher is Belana Whitaker then, yes, I’m dating your dance teacher.”
“Belana!” Nona cried. She removed her napkin from her lap and threw it on to her plate, which was still practically full. Glaring at her father, she said, with a great deal of skepticism in her tone, “Really? Where did you meet?”
Nick was happy to have finally gotten her undivided attention. “We go to the same chiropractor,” he told his daughter. “She was leaving the elevator one day, the heel of her shoe got caught on loose carpeting and she went to fall and I caught her. It was very romantic, really.”
Nona stared blankly. “She never mentioned knowing you,” she said, stunned.
“That’s because she didn’t know you were my daughter,” Nick explained. “We dated a couple of months then we broke up. I only met her again last night. She apparently started mentoring you after we broke up. She and I hadn’t discussed family at length. She knew I had a daughter but not your name or how old you were. If you had ever mentioned my name to her she would have put two and two together but you didn’t.”
“You broke up?” Her eyes stretched in disbelief. “What could possess you to break up with Belana Whitaker? Are you insane?”
Going for full disclosure, Nick told her why they’d broken up.
Nick smiled. She’d called him Daddy. It had been a long time since she’d done that. Usually whenever she referred to him it was in third person, as in: You’re my father, so what? And as for respect, that was news to him. He’d had no idea she respected him.
He believed he’d told her enough, so he simply said, “I made a mistake.”
“Duh, you think so?” said his sarcastic daughter.
Nick laughed. “All right, you got me.”
Nona smiled. Then, as if she’d remembered she was at war with her father, the smile vanished. “You said you saw her again last night. You’ve made up, and everything?” she asked doubtfully.
“We’ve made up,” Nick confirmed.
“Then why didn’t you invite her to church with us this morning?”
“She’s in Greece with friends,” Nick explained, beginning to wish he had waited to bring up the subject of his and Belana’s reconciliation until later. He saw now that Nona really admired Belana and the idea of his being in a relationship with her was rife with stress and worry for her. “It’s not as if we knew we were going to get back together last night. It just happened.”
His daughter shook her head in amazement. She rose. Looking at him with disgust, she said, “What if you break up again? Is she still going to be my mentor? I doubt it! If you mess this up for me, I’ll never forgive you!”
She ran from the room.
Nick started to get up and follow her but his mother, who had listened quietly throughout their conversation, said, “Let her go, Nick. Give her some time by herself. She’s just reacting. She hasn’t had time to digest what you told her. She’s smart. She’ll realize that she has to share you with the world.”
“She didn’t sound as if it was me she didn’t want to share,” Nick said.