During the next week I didn’t see much of Tyler, but I dropped by the lab occasionally, and once he came and said hello while 1 was on duty, and he always seemed glad to see me. So I was happy enough. And Johnny saw Lilly almost every day. He took her to the mountains and to the zoo, to rock concerts and to symphony orchestras. He took her to music stores where she could sample a hundred different types of music; he took her to movies and candlelit dinners, and when she asked him to, he took her to bed.
The next morning, when I was getting ready for work, I saw Johnny sitting disconsolately on our little sofa, staring into space. I rubbed my eyes and looked again; he was still there, and he was awake. Johnny is never awake in the morning.
“Johnny? You OK?”
He glanced up, and shook his head. I sat down beside him and said, “It’s Lilly, isn’t it.”
“Yeah.” He looked down at the sofa and tore a piece of worn thread out of the fabric. “We slept together last night. She asked me to. She’d seen it on movies and TV, listened to people talk; she thought it would make the difference. And so did I, you know?”
“And it didn’t make a difference?”
“No. ’Course not. I took her home just before dawn, and I started crying on the way, and she touched my face and looked at me, and she didn’t know why I was sad. Nothing’s changed for her. Maybe it can’t change.”
“I don’t think it can, Johnny.”
“Doesn’t matter, though. I still love her.”
“I know.”
I sighed and got up from the sofa; I was going to be late for work. “Come on, Johnny, go to bed. You have to play for ballet class tonight, remember?”
“Oh, Heather. I don’t want to.”
“Well, you have to. You’re behind on your share of the rent. Way behind, I might add.”
“All right,” he said listlessly. “I’ll go.”
It wasn’t easy, but I got Johnny out of the house and into the ballet studio that night. He sat at the piano, uncommonly morose, as the girls entered the studio and started to warm up. When Lilly came in, he caught her eye and his face lit up with happiness. She looked back at him, gave him an acknowledging, automatic smile, and went to the barre. Poor Johnny. It was going to be hard for him.
The class began, and though Johnny’s playing lacked his usual energy and vigor, he made no mistakes that I could hear. We warmed up with barre exercises and then moved out to the floor.
We started out diagonally across the floor, one by one, chames turns on pointe. Lilly was first in line. She sprang up onto pointe and started across the floor in precise half circles, legs and back perfectly straight, arms graceful and controlled. I watched her enviously; I was terrible at chames turns. I saw Johnny glance up at her, over the piano, and his music suddenly became stronger, more compelling. The tempo changed subtly, and Lilly hesitated fractionally, almost visibly adjusting the count in her head, and then danced on. Johnny was trying to touch her through the music, but it wasn’t going to work. It hurt to watch, but I couldn’t stop looking. And then Lilly faltered.
She lost her balance, wobbled a bit trying to regain it, and fell off pointe halfway across the floor. There was an audible gasp from the other girls. This happened to everyone else, especially me, but not to Lilly. Never Lilly. She never stumbled or fell. But there she was, in the middle of the floor, gathering herself to start the turns again. She made it almost to the opposite corner before losing her balance again and coming to a stop. The music stumbled with her, and Johnny called out anxiously, “Lilly, are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “My legs are just tired.” She curtseyed apologetically to Marianne and crossed to the opposite corner for the next set of turns. Nonplussed, Johnny returned to the piano, and class went on. Lilly’s turns on the opposite diagonal were as flawless as usual, and so was her dancing for the rest of the class, but when we walked out of the studio she looked tired, which wasn’t at all usual for her.
“Do you feel OK?” I asked her. The cool night air of the parking lot felt wonderful on my face, but Lilly still looked strained.
“I don’t know,” she said. “My legs do seem tired.”
“There’s the flu going around,” Johnny said. “Maybe you’re coming down with something.”
“I don’t know,” Lilly said again, looking puzzled, and abruptly she fell to her knees in the gravel. Startled, Johnny caught her arm and helped her to her feet, and she stood for a moment brushing dirt and bits of rock off her legs. I touched her face; there was no fever that I could detect, but without doubt something was quite wrong with her. We refused to let her drive. Johnny took her home in the Rabbit, and I followed, driving Lilly’s Oldsmobile.
Lilly’s car smelled new. I touched the passenger seat as I drove; it was spotless. There was no trash on the floor, no papers strewn on the back seat, nothing hanging from the mirror or stuffed in the glove box. It occurred to me, as I drove, that the car was as perfect, and as sterile, as Lilly’s dancing. As Lilly was herself.
Lilly felt fine the next day, but the day after her symptoms returned, and Vanessa brought her to the hospital. I drew blood for a multitude of tests, but the bloodwork revealed no abnormalities. The MRI and the genetic tests held the answer; Lilly carried both of the defective genes for M.S., and her MRI showed distinct plaques of demyelination in the spinal cord and brain stem.
When my shift was over I went to visit her. I found her sitting in a chair by the bed, leafing idly through a magazine.
“Hi, Lilly,” I said. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine, thank you. My legs just get tired now and then. I suppose after a while I’ll have to stop dancing.”
I looked down at the floor. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. I don’t really get anything out of dance, even after all this time.”
“Why do you dance, then?”
“Because of Mother.”
“Because she wanted you to dance?”
“No, no. Because of what dancing gave her. What it still gives her. There’s this look she gets on her face when she just thinks about dancing; it’s joy, I guess. I wanted to know what that felt like. I thought if I practiced hard enough, or for a long enough time, I’d find out. You know.”
“Yes. But it didn’t happen?”
“Oh no. But I got used to dancing. It’s comfortable, I suppose. A routine.”
I didn’t know what to say. Lilly turned her head slightly, to glance out the window, and I was struck by her expression; her face was serene, untroubled. The prospect of giving up dance, of living with a potentially crippling disease… it didn’t trouble her at all. I wondered if that was something to be grateful for.
On my way out through the halls that night I ran into Tyler. Literally. I was walking along staring at the floor and wondering how I might react to such a diagnosis (not well, I was sure) when Tyler came around a corner with an armload of papers. We collided, but fortunately he was able to hold on to the papers.
“Sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
“Me either. Well, no harm done. Are you off for the night?”
“Yes.”
“Good, good. I’m headed home myself. It’s been quite a day.”
“Yes, it has. Well… good night.”
“Good night, Heather. See you later.”
He was off then, down the hall to the doctors’ parking lot, and I was left alone with all the things I could have said. Such as Would you like to come over? I’ll make dinner or Johnny’s playing at the cafe on Friday; want to come? or Can I interest you in a movie? But, I told myself, the time wasn’t right. He had all those papers with him; he would probably be up half the night working on them. Another time would, no doubt, be better.