Page 78 of Barre Fight
“Dad, cleaning the barbeque is not a two-man job,” George protested.
“It is when only one of those men has ever done a real job,” Luke grinned. “Off you go, Georgie.”
George rolled his eyes, but he stood, too, and Luke opened the back door and gestured him through it with an elaborate parody of a bow.
Once George had slid the door shut with a dull thud, Ivy’s father looked over his shoulder to check that the two of them had gotten to work, then turned back to face her.
“What’s the matter?” her mother asked gently.
“Nothing’s the matter.” The words flew off Ivy’s tongue without a second thought. She resisted the urge to keep talking, to reassure them and herself.Everything is fine, I am figuring it out, I have it under control. Nothing to worry about, nothing to see here. I am the responsible, successful child who has a real job and doesn’t chew with her mouth open.
“Ivy, honey. Please tell us. What’s the matter?” His voice was gentle, too, but something in his tone told her he wasn’t going to accept a denial or a brush-off or a half-truth. She was reminded that as much as she was her Opa’s granddaughter, her dad was his son. And if stubbornness was genetic, he’d inherited just as much of it as she had, if not more. Hadn’t she seen that stubbornness in him every time he served his wife the best cut of meat and kissed her when he handed over her plate?
“You guys keep saying how proud you are,” she said softly, and she couldn’t believe she was complaining about this. How many people spent their whole lives hoping to hear those words even once?
“Because we are. We think you’re wonderful.”
“But what if I weren’t? What if I were bad at this job? What if I weren’t agolden girl?” she said miserably. God, she hated that phrase, and the matter-of-fact inevitability in George’s voice when he said it, as though Ivy would never not be golden. As though, if she weren’t golden, Ivy would not be Ivy.
Her father was quiet for a moment. “We’re always going to think you’re wonderful. Your job doesn’t have anything to do with that.”
“But you keep talking about it.”
“Because it’s important to you,” her mother said. “Just like journalism was important to you, and ballet. We care about the things that are important to you because we care about you.”
Ivy swiped away the tears that had escaped down her cheeks. “What if it’s not important to me? I mean,” she sniffed, “I need to work. I need a career and I need to pay rent, but what if I don’t like this job? I think I could be good at it, but what if it feels empty?”
What ifshefelt empty?
“Then you find something else. You’re talented and hardworking, and you’re a hell of a writer. There are lots of things you could do.”
Ivy nodded, blinking through more tears. Her dad sighed and wrapped an arm around her mum’s shoulder. She sniffed and wiped at a tear, too.
“I’m sorry if we’ve made too big a deal about the job,” he said heavily. “We are proud of you. But I suppose… I suppose we were also relieved that you bounced back as quickly as you did this time.”
Ivy looked up into his lined face, so like her opa’s. Somehow, she knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“When you stopped dancing, you were so sad. It was hard to watch you struggle like that. It was like a part of you had disappeared, or died.”
“The brightest, most beautiful part of you,” her mother added. “It broke our hearts. All we wanted was for you to feel better, and to be yourself again. We were really worried about you some days. Opa was, too. We tried everything we could to help you feel better and see that there would be life after ballet, but there were some days where we were afraid you’d never be your old self again. So this time, when you lost your job… I guess your dad and I worried that it would be ballet all over again. And when it wasn’t, we were so relieved. And, yes, proud.”
“We never meant to put pressure on you. We want you to succeed, of course, but we never want you to feel like there’s no room to stumble. You’re only human. You’re going to make mistakes and come up short. We all do.”
Ivy nodded. She knew that. She didn’t always believe it, but she knew it.
“But you are a success story,” her dad pressed. “You got out of bed, and started from scratch, and you built yourself a whole new career.”
“That got pulled out from under me.”
“Yes. An enormous disappointment. Not a failure. Not something you had any control over. And look at what you did. You picked yourself back upagainand found something new, something you’re good at. And alright, you don’t like it. That’s fine. You can stick with it and see if you come to like it, or you can move on. Whatever you do, you’ll be successful. Not because everything always goes right, but because you, Ivy Edwina Page, are your opa’s granddaughter. You don’t give up when other people would.”
Ivy’s heart twisted in her chest at the mention of her grandfather, and the memory of his twinkling, knowing eyes. His rueful smile that told you he had all the answers to life’s questions, big and small. He would have known what to do. He would have told her exactly what to do, and she would have resisted it at first—just like she had when he told her ballet teacher she’d help out at the studio—but eventually she’d have realized he was right. And if she hadn’t come round, well, he wouldn’t have given up on her.
“I miss him,” she said quietly.
“I know,” her dad replied. “Every day.” Ivy looked up and saw that his eyes, which usually held some of his father’s knowing sparkle, were shining.
“He wouldn’t want me to quit,” she almost whispered the words. “He wanted so badly for us to make something of ourselves, me and Luke and George.”
