Page 38 of Across the Universe

Instead, Jo clips her earring back on her ear, gathers her purse and keys, and leaves the house like a woman on a mission.

* * *

“And one, two, three, four,” Frankie is saying, standing at the front of the dance studio she runs on Stardust Beach.Mia Perla, the little dance school, is home to ballerinas and would-be dancers of all ages. Right now, Frankie is leading a group of four-and-five-year-old girls through a series of pliés and lunges. “Make sure you do ballet arms, girls!” she says over the scratchy classical music coming from her turntable. “Graceful like swans, ladies!”

Jo stands in the doorway, watching them all with amusement. Now that her kids are all getting older, seeing little ones with that distinctive roundness to their bellies and the touch of innocence in their eyes is enough to tug at her heartstrings.

“Hi,” Frankie says, crossing the room as she pauses to tweak a little girl’s stance. She stops to run her hand along the spine of another to show her how to stand up even straighter. “How are you? Everything okay?” she asks Jo.

The tiny girls continue to dance and lunge and twirl, some with abandon and with little regard to balletic form as they realize that Frankie’s back is turned.

“Yes, everything is good,” Jo says. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your class here, I just needed to tell someone my good news. But I can wait. What time is class over?”

“Tell me now!” Frankie insists, putting a hand on her hip as she stares at Jo. She’s just getting a tiny swell to her belly, though it would be unnoticeable to anyone who doesn’t know that she’s expecting.

Jo glances at the clock over the wall of mirrors. “How much longer is this class? Do you have a break after?”

Frankie looks at the narrow gold Bulova watch on her wrist. “Ten more minutes, and then I have an hour until my pre-teens show up for tap class.”

“Can you meet me at the coffee shop next door when you’re done here?” Jo watches the row of moms standing along one side of the room; more than one is looking impatient at this interruption to the class that will undoubtedly turn their little girls into future Sugar Plum Fairies.

“Sure, I’ll come over as soon as I can,” Frankie says, turning back to the class. “Ladies, line up at the barre, please!” A gaggle of ponytailed little girls scurries to the barre and finds spots to do whatever their teacher tells them to. Jo gives them all one last smile and then steps back out onto the sidewalk to head into the coffee shop.

“Okay,” Frankie says, when she walks in fifteen minutes later. She’s wearing a wrap skirt over her leotard, and on her feet are flat shoes instead of Capezios. She quickly asks the waitress for a cup of herbal tea, and then puts her elbows on the table as she and Jo sit by the window that looks out at the street. “Tell me everything.”

“I got a call,” Jo says, suddenly feeling shy. She looks down into the cup of coffee she’s been nursing for fifteen minutes, reaching for another packet of sugar to stir into it. “I got a call from New York—from the literary agent who asked for my new story.”

Frankie’s face goes slack with anticipation, and she doesn’t even acknowledge the cup of tea that materializes in front of her. Her eyes never leave Jo’s face. “Is it good?” she asks, sounding anxious.

Jo nods eagerly. “It’s great. He offered to represent me and help me sell my book. He thinks we can do it.”

Frankie whoops loudly as she slaps both hands on the table, making their coffee and tea slosh around perilously as the ceramic cups jangle on their saucers. Jo laughs at the jubilant response of her best friend. She reaches for a napkin to wipe up some of Frankie’s spilled hot water from the table.

“I still need to write the rest,” she says in a cautious tone, “but he thinks people loved what I wrote inTrue Romanceenough that this will be a relatively straightforward thing to sell.”

“Oh, Joey-girl,” Frankie gushes, forgetting all about her tea as she reaches across the table and takes both of Jo’s hands in hers. “Things are really coming up roses, aren't they?”

Jo exhales as she holds Frankie’s hands. She nods, but is unconvinced. There is at least a small part of her that feels as though things are good, but there are still so many things that could go wrong. She doesn’t want to feel that way, but she does.

“Things are definitely good, Frankie,” she says, meaning that the things going on with Frankie are all good. “And I think there are exciting things on the horizon.”

Frankie is watching her with the kind of narrowed eyes that mean she’s assessing her best friend’s demeanor. She shakes Jo’s hands across the table but doesn’t let go of them. “What’s not sitting right with you, Jo? It’s something.”

Jo tries to shake her head and shrug her shoulders at the same time. “No, nothing. Really. I’m so excited for you and Ed, and I can’t wait to meet this baby.” Jo’s eyes mist over as she glances toward Frankie’s stomach. “I want to babysit and take him or her on evening walks with us… I’m just over the moon for you, Frank.”

“I’m over the moon for me, too,” Frankie says with a half-smile. “But I’m also excited about you and your news. And I really want to know what’s holdingyouback from being excited.”

Jo pushes out a loud breath. “Bill,” she says flatly. “Bill is holding me back.”

Frankie frowns. “He’s not as excited about the book news as you wanted him to be?”

Jo looks at the table. “I haven’t even told him. My first instinct after the phone call was to grab my things, get in the car, and come to tell you.”

“Ohhh,” Frankie says knowingly. “Okay. Well, I bet when you tell him he’ll be so happy for you, Jo. He will. He’s got to be incredibly proud to have such an accomplished wife.”

Jo lifts her eyes and looks into Frankie’s. They’ve never talked about the night that Frankie and Ed picked her up on the side of the road as they were driving home with Jo’s children, and though the kids had asked her a couple of times why she was walking home alone, they’d quickly come to realize that it wasn’t a question that had a satisfying answer, and so they’d dropped it.

“He’s wrapped up in his own world,” Jo says glumly. “It’s just work, therapy, and working on himself. And that’s all fine and good,” she says firmly, “but I think we might need to work on us, too. If we don’t… I don’t know. It just feels like we’re headed for disaster.”

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