Chapter 26 - The Voice Behind the Glass
Duval sent forty-three seconds.
Not the recording.
Not even a complete scene.
Forty-three seconds of my mother standing in a rehearsal studio, wearing a faded blue sweater and one leg warmer pushed lower than the other.
I watched without breathing.
The camera was fixed near the piano. The image trembled whenever someone crossed the floor. My mother moved into the center of the frame, stopped, and shook her head.
“No,” she said in English, her accent stronger than I remembered. “You must not reach because the audience expects reaching. You must need what is beyond your hand.”
I pressed my fingers against my mouth.
Her voice.
Not the softened version memory had made.
Not the elegant voice in old interviews.
Her tired, impatient teaching voice.
The one that had told me to finish my soup and stop pretending my homework was invisible.
Alexander sat beside me, perfectly still.
Onscreen, my mother began the phrase again.
Then someone outside the frame said, “Elena, we’re almost out of tape.”
She laughed.
“Then stop recording my mistakes.”
The clip ended.
I stared at the black screen.
For fourteen years, I had feared forgetting the exact sound of her laugh.
Now someone had sent it as an attachment to a negotiation.
Alexander reached for my hand.
I let him.
Neither of us spoke for a long time.
Then I whispered, “I want the rest.”
“I know.”
The simplicity of his answer nearly broke me.
He did not say he would get it.
He did not promise a number would solve everything.
He knew wanting and owning were different things now.
Camille called an hour later.
“The preview was authorized for private review,” she said. “I’ve asked for confirmation that it came from the material he actually owns.”
“Could it be altered?”
“Anything digital deserves verification. That doesn’t mean we assume it’s false.”
I looked at the paused image.
My mother’s hand remained lifted toward something outside the frame.
“What does he want exactly?”
“A featured project. A defined period of development. First presentation rights. Filming permissions. Publicity.”
“How long?”
“The proposal describes ten weeks of preparation and a possible international extension.”
I glanced toward the studio calendar.
Summer classes.
Teacher schedules.
Scholarship interviews.
Children who had begun asking what came after the spring presentation.
Ten weeks was not merely time.
It was a life arranged differently.
“I’m not saying no,” I told Camille.
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“I’m not saying yes because I miss her.”
“That’s an excellent distinction.”
The next morning, I arrived before the first class and placed my mother’s notebooks on the piano.
I watched the preview once more.
Then I closed the laptop.
Ruby entered with her mother a few minutes later.
“Miss Lena?”
“Yes?”
“Are you sad or concentrating?”
I smiled.
“Both.”
She considered that.
“Should we be quiet?”
“No. You should warm up.”
She nodded and ran toward the barre.
The room filled.
Shoes.
Laughter.
A child complaining about tights.
Marisol carrying an impossible number of papers beneath her arm.
My mother’s voice had returned.
So had the temptation to disappear into it.
I understood, suddenly, that missing someone could become another place to hide.
After class, I told Marisol about the proposal.
She listened while I described the theater, the recording, and the possible tour.
Then she asked the question I had hoped she would not.
“Do you want to perform it?”
“Yes.”
“Or do you want access to the film?”
I looked down.
“I don’t know how to separate them yet.”
“Then don’t pretend they’re the same.”
That evening, Duval’s representative sent a revised schedule.
A date had been added for an announcement.
My name appeared beneath the words:
THE ROSTOVA LEGACY RETURNS.
I had not agreed to participate.
I called Camille.
She read the page in silence.
Then she said, “We’ll correct this before it becomes public.”
“Why do people keep mistaking discussion for consent?”
“Because sometimes the announcement makes refusal more expensive.”
I looked toward the mirror.
The woman reflected there wore no cleaning uniform.
No borrowed gown.
May you like
She still knew what it felt like to be moved into position.
“Then let him find out,” I said, “that I can leave a stage before the music starts.”
