Page 182 of Lovers' Dance: Vol. 2

“Aunt Cleo.” My exclamation earned me an annoyed grunt.

“I’m no saint,” she groused. “And I was young once too. Hot-blooded with a quick temper,but, my mother had always told me not to act on such emotions.”

I scoffed. “So you let it fester. Great. The building block for unhealthy passive aggressive behaviour which, let me add, seems to be one of my many problems. Huh, must have learnt that from you, right? Mom cheated on Dad, and I look like her so, presto, Madison is just like her mother! A sorry excuse for a human being. Untrustworthy. Deserving of-” The anger wasn’t meant for her. My childhood happiness was based on a sham. I shut my mouth and took a deep breath. “He stayed with her because of me, didn’t he? They stayed together because of me. That’s fucking perfect.”

“He forgave her,” Aunt Cleo said without pulling me up for swearing. “He loved her and she loved him. People make mistakes and your mother made hers, but he forgave her. I couldn’t. It wasn’t my business, I know that. What goes on between a man and his wife is nobody’s business but their own, but he was my brother and she hurt him, so when he didn’t leave it was a slap in the face. I thought it made him weak and,” she broke off with a sharp breath. “I couldn’t forgive her and he couldn’t give her up, so he chose his family and Ilost him. Years, I didn’t talk to him for three years and then he was gone. You know, sometimes I blame myself. If we were still close, maybe that year you would have visited us. Maybe we would have made a trip to see you and it would have been different. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened.”

The tears rolled down my cheeks. The blame game was one I knew all too well. Hearing her voice her own guilt, it broke something inside me and as the tears fell from my eyes, I sobbed out, “It was my fault, not yours. At least I thought so but I don’t anymore, not too much, I mean. I saw a psychiatrist, she said I shouldn’t blame myself. And Matt…Matt thinks I cheated on him and he won’t listen to me. He doesn’t believe me and I don’t know what to do anymore. I love him so much. He wants a divorce and I- I…I’m tired. I’m tired of it all.”

Her murmurs of comfort was the background to my desolate crying.

“He never listened to me and I didn’t want kids. He worked all the time, me too, but…” I hiccupped and wiped my nose on the sleeve of my cardigan. “I wasn’t ready for marriage but I loved him so much I thought it would work. That all we needed was love. I kissed another man, well, he kissed me and Matt saw…he thinks I’m a cheater. And the pictures, he has pictures of me with someone – I don’t understand, Auntie Cleo.”

“Shh,” she soothed from thousands of miles away. “It will be alright.”

“No,” I disagreed. “It won’t be. He wants a divorce and I’m starting to think he’s right. We don’t fit together. We’re too different and sometimes love just isn’t enough. We made a mistake getting married and now everything is ruined.”

“If the good Lord chose him for you, things will work out.” she said without doubt. “Maybe not when you want it, but on His time. Have faith, Madi.”

I sniffed, then started sobbing again. Today was never a good day for me.

“Pray with me.” Aunt Cleo said after a stint of my garbled words amidst the water-works.

“I don’t want to pray.” I snarled. “What’s the point? When have prayers ever helped me? It didn’t help when I was growing up-”

“I know you don’t want to,” she cut in gently. “But still, do it forme.”

And there it was, perhaps my greatest flaw or greatest strength, depending on which way you looked at it.Do it for me.I was a pleaser, willing to put aside my feelings for those of my loved ones. Had I always been that way? Or was it a learned trait?

“Ok.”

We prayed, and I felt better, lighter. Later that night when I snuggled under the covers in my lonely bed, I decided to let go. It wasn’t giving up, it was simply accepting the fact that some things were beyond my control. Sometimes you just had to let go. I slept like the dead that night.

CHAPTER 22

“Let’s take itfrom the top.” I ordered, snatching up my discarded towel and wiping the sweat off my face. “Emily swap positions with,” For the life of me, I couldn’t remember the other dancer’s name.

“Olivia.” Dante covered for me, already knowing who and why I wanted the change.

We were on stage and working through the moves of the current production. Our artistic director, Francois, seemed to have a perpetual scowl on his face since he arrived this morning. It was already gone 1pm, no one was happy with the dancing today. He wasn’t usually a shouter, but the past few hours his extreme annoyance was manifesting itself in cutting insults and visible frustration.

Interpretive dance was always more difficult in my humble opinion. And this production was completely different from our last. Thinking about The Ice Queen and Princess caused a frown to wrinkle my forehead as I tossed the face towel aside. We were working on two productions at the same time, something my corp had never done before. With a two week performance earmarked from the second week in January next year at the Birmingham Hippodrome, we were under pressure. Time waited on no man and we were mid-November already. Sinners and Saints was due to go live mid-December and it still wasn’t perfect. Gerrard threw a bottle of water at me from where he sat cross-legged on the edge of the stage. I smiled a thank you and took a few sips before tossing it back.

“It’s not working.” Francois pinched his nose bridge and waved Dante over to his side.

Flexing the toes on my left foot, I stayed away as the two became embroiled in a low argument on the far side of the stage. Don’t get me wrong, it was great having an artistic director, it was a necessity; but sometimes it felt similar to a kick in the teeth whenever he slated my choreography, or Dante’s. Francois’s opinions could be harsh, downright offensive; yet I would hate to cut him from my payroll.

Lisa and Eddie stood with a few of our temporary dancers, waiting for further instructions. I mentally tallied the numbers and the overall wage bill. We needed less temporary dancers to perform this show, but The Ice Queen and Princess was a big production, andsome of our temps were not suited for Sinners and Saints. It was a total ball-ache as Liam would say.

I flexed my bare left foot again, wincing at the sharp twinge in my arch and slightly alarmed over the swelling on the edge of my big toe. Hopefully it would go down. My knee ached too…and my hip. Hell, I’d been feeling like shit the past few days. Everything hurt. This was no time to get sick and there was a bug going around. Rubbing my nose, I rolled my head around my neck then walked across the stage.

“Maybe we could drop the lift,” I suggested to Francois and Dante when I came to a stop next to them. “Instead of her being lifted by,” I squinted, mouth scrunching up in thought.

“Raoul and Patrick,” Dante supplied.

“Yeah,” I continued while promising myself to go over all the temp’s names later. “They could probably evoke the intended imagery by circling her from about two metres then close in with somepas du basque.”

Francois nodded slowly, mulling it over in his head. “Maybe if she crouches down also, so it appears as if they’ve overwhelmed her, devoured her,”

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