Chapter 48 - The Rehearsal I Couldn’t Remember
The dancer asked whether the chair should face the audience.
I stared at her.
For several seconds, I had no idea what chair she meant.
Then the rehearsal room returned.
The empty chair.
The final section.
The Woman Who Stayed.
My work.
The thing I had wanted badly enough to negotiate for it.
“Lena?”
“Toward the window,” I said.
There was no window in the theater.
Only a marked square where the light would fall.
The dancer nodded and moved it.
Rossi watched from the piano.
He said nothing until the break.
Then he closed the score.
“You are not here.”
“I’m standing in front of you.”
“An insufficient artistic defense.”
I wanted to laugh.
Instead, I sat on the floor.
He lowered himself onto a chair with considerably less grace than he expected from everyone else.
“The account?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Can you solve it in the next ninety minutes?”
“No.”
“Can the dancers?”
“No.”
“Then decide what you can give them.”
I looked across the room.
Paid professionals.
People who had arranged childcare, turned down other work, and arrived ready.
My fear did not make their time less real.
I called a ten-minute break and spoke with the rehearsal director Duval had assigned.
Her name was Beth Calder.
She had a quiet voice and the terrifying ability to notice when an explanation contained no decision.
We adjusted the session.
She would run the established material.
I would observe, take notes, and work on the final section after lunch.
If I could not do that, we would stop pretending I could.
The rehearsal improved immediately.
My pride did not.
That afternoon, Beth asked about a movement near the center.
A hand reaching toward an empty place.
Then stopping.
“It resembles the phrase in Elena’s notebook.”
“It began there.”
“Are you quoting her work?”
I hesitated.
Not because I wanted to hide it.
Because I had not fully decided what the resemblance meant.
We had cleared certain uses.
Other rights remained unresolved.
The production agreement did not permit us to turn uncertainty into certainty because a gesture felt personal.
I called Camille.
Then I asked Beth to mark the phrase for review.
Nobody accused me of artistic theft.
Nobody demanded that I abandon the piece.
We had found a question early enough to answer it properly.
That should have felt reassuring.
Instead, I went to the dressing room and cried.
When Alexander arrived to collect me, I told him I wanted to cancel dinner.
He nodded.
“Would you like to go home?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would you like me to decide where we eat?”
I looked at him.
“Yes.”
“Soup. Somewhere quiet.”
I almost smiled.
“You’ve become very specific.”
“I’ve discovered that sometimes helping is a smaller job than acquiring a company.”
We found a neighborhood restaurant with scratched tables and a server who did not recognize either of us.
Halfway through the meal, I admitted what I had not told Beth.
“I’m afraid the piece is only interesting because my mother is dead.”
Alexander put down his spoon.
“Do you believe that?”
“Today.”
“And yesterday?”
“Yesterday I thought it was good.”
“Perhaps today is not the day to issue a final judgment.”
I looked at him.
“That sounds like Camille.”
“I’ve been studying.”
After dinner, we walked slowly.
My ankle remained comfortable.
The city smelled of rain and warm pavement.
A woman passed carrying a bucket and a folded cleaning apron.
I watched her unlock a service door.
For an instant, I remembered the precise weight of a tray on one hand while opening a heavy door with the other.
Not suffering.
Skill.
Balance.
The invisible decisions a body made to keep a room functioning.
I stopped.
Alexander turned.
“What?”
“The chair is wrong.”
“Because it faces the audience?”
“Because she keeps waiting beside it.”
He listened.
“She should move it. Use it. Refuse to keep the place ready for someone who never arrives.”
The thought came quickly now.
Not from the archive.
From me.
At home, I wrote four pages.
The next morning, Beth read them.
Then she smiled.
“There you are.”
May you like
For the first time all week, the room did not feel like a place where someone might take my mother.
It felt like a place where I could make something she had never seen.
