“Okay, you know your routine—roughly, anyway. So now I want you to watch mine. I’ll say ‘lift’ when it’s time for one of your lifts, just so you know when they’re coming. But don’t worry, because as long as you do your routine, I’ll make sure we link up with the lifts. Okay?”
Tiffany is in tights and a T-shirt like every other day, but she transforms her face just before she pushes play on the CD player. So solemn. Those sad piano notes and those two dueling voices fill the room, and Tiffany begins to dance beautifully but sadly. Her body moves so gracefully, and it is only now that I understand what she means by crying through movement. She jumps, she rolls, she spins, she runs, she slides. She yells “Lift!” and then falls to the floor dead, only to explode upward in resurrection when the music picks up again. And her dancing is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I could watch her dance for the rest of my life, and strangely, watching Tiffany soar around the dance floor makes me feel like I am floating over waves with baby Emily. Tiffany is that good.
“Your father has stopped eating dinner with me, Pat. He’s not taking walks with me either. Ever since the Eagles lost to the Buccaneers, he’s back to his—Pat, please stop humming. Pat!”
In anticipation of our big performance, I’m running a little faster with Tiffany every day. We push ourselves, and when we get to the park, we sprint the last mile to her house and get really sweaty. I always beat Tiffany, because I am a man, yes, but also because I am an excellent runner.
“I don’t think you understand how much this means to my sister,” Veronica says, and I am shocked to see her and baby Emily in my basement gym. “Do you know that since Tommy passed, she has never asked her family to see her dance? In fact, for two years she’s banned us from attending any of her performances. But this year she thinks she is going to perform flawlessly enough to invite her family—she’s convinced, in fact—and while I am glad to see her so happy, I’m afraid to even think about what she might do if you guys screw up the performance. She’s not a stable person, Pat. You do understand that, right? You do understand that your performing poorly will result in months of serious depression? So I need to ask you how are the rehearsals really going? Do you truly think you can win? Do you?”
Before I turn off the lights, I stare into framed-picture Nikki’s eyes. I see her freckled nose, her strawberry blond hair, her full lips. I kiss her so many times. “Soon,” I say. “I’m doing everything I can. I won’t let you down. Remember—‘Forever’s gonna start tonight.’”
See me pumping iron: bench press, leg lifts, sit-ups on the Stomach Master 6000, bike riding, knuckle push-ups, curls—the works.
“The Asian Invasion will pick you up at—” Cliff nods at me and smiles. “Ah, the humming again. Your mother tells me you won’t talk to anyone about Eagles football, but you aren’t seriously going to miss a home game, are you?”
“The most important thing is to make the lifts look effortless, as if you are holding up air. I should appear to be floating. Understand? Good, because I need you to stop shaking during the routine, Pat. You look like you have f**king Parkinson’s disease, for Christ’s sake.”
“How does a four-and-one team lose three games straight?” Dad yells down from the top of the basement steps. “A team that beat the Dallas Cowboys handily? A team with a first-ranked offense and more sacks than any other team in the league? You can hum all you want, Pat. But that don’t change the fact that you took the good luck away from the Birds and are ruining our season!”
See me pumping iron: bench press, leg lifts, sit-ups on the Stomach Master 6000, bike riding, knuckle push-ups, curls—the works.
“Okay. Not bad. You got the crawling down, and one of the lifts doesn’t look awful anymore. But we only have a week left. Can we do this? Can we do this?”
“I bought you a present,” Tiffany tells me. “Go into the powder room and try it on.”
In her studio’s washroom, I remove a pair of yellow tights from a plastic bag. “What’s this?” I call out to Tiffany.
“It’s your outfit. Put it on, and we’ll have a dress rehearsal.”
“Where’s the shirt?”
“Again,” Tiffany says, even though it is 10:41 p.m. and my elbows feel as though they might explode. I am dancing on raw nerves. I am dancing on bone. “Again!”
Eleven fifty-nine p.m. “Again,” Tiffany says, and then takes her place at the left side of the studio. Knowing that arguing is no use, I drop to the floor and prepare to crawl.
“This might tickle some,” Tiffany says just before she slides her pink lady razor through the shaving cream coating my chest, and then she shows me how much hair is in the teacup she rinses the blade in. I am lying on a yoga mat in the middle of her dance studio. My chest is covered with some sort of green aloe shaving gel that turns white when you make foam. Being shaved by Tiffany sort of makes me feel strange, as I have never been shaved by a woman before and have never had my torso shaved at all. When she lathers me up, I close my eyes, and my fingers and toes tingle wildly.
I sort of giggle each time she shaves a line of hair off my chest.
I sort of giggle each time she shaves a line of hair off my back.
“We want those muscles to gleam like the sun onstage, right?”
“Why can’t I just wear a shirt?” I say, even though—in a weird sort of way—I secretly enjoy being shaved by Tiffany.