Backdated to just after Christmas.
Word Count: 2219
The phone rang four times before the line opened.
“Baby?”
That seemed to be the way their conversations always started when he took the time to call—with his mother staring, bewildered, at the caller ID, and answering in a mix of surprise and confusion. Paris wondered what she was expecting, if she ever thought it would be bad news, or perhaps that he’d called by accident, by a slip of the finger or his phone being wedged awkwardly in his back pocket. He wouldn’t blame her for it, if she did. It wasn’t often that he consented to call of his own accord.
Paris lowered himself onto the edge of his bed, phone pressed to his ear. He dragged the stuffed ballerina swan Ladon had given him a year ago into his lap, and fiddled with one of its slipper-ed feet.
“Hi, Mom,” he said.
There was silence for a moment or two. Paris imagined she was trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t reveal her shock.
“Is everything okay, Baby?” she finally asked.
Paris bit at his bottom lip to keep from laughing. “Yeah, everything’s fine. I just… thought I should give you a call. It’s been a couple of weeks, so…”
“Oh,” she said. There was a long pause. Paris could hear a muffled rustling on the other end of the line, like she’d just sat down. “What have you been up to?”
“Just the usual,” he said. “Dancing and stuff.”
“Is that still going well?”
“Yeah, it’s great. We’ll be doing Sleeping Beauty soon.”
“I’ll have to come down and see you again,” his mother said.
“You don’t have to do that,” Paris told her. He gave a bit of a start when Sassy suddenly jumped onto his bed, but he recovered quickly and reached out a hand to pet her. He was always so tense, he thought, when he talked to his mother, even when the conversation went smoothly.
“I want to,” she argued.
“Okay…”
“You were so beautiful last time, Baby. I love watching you dance. You always look so happy.”
“I won’t be doing it for much longer,” he revealed.
“What?” The worry in her voice was immediate. “What do you mean? Did something happen?”
“No!” he quickly denied. “No, everything’s fine, I promise. I just… I mean, I’m going to keep dancing, but… I decided to go back to school.”
A second long pause. Paris imagined his mother must be gaping at the wall, perhaps trying to decide if she’d heard him correctly.
“Not high school,” he explained. “I still want to keep performing for the rest of the season, and I’m still helping Dad with the store, but I signed up for some remedial classes. They start in mid-January. I can go whenever I want, or whenever I have time, and then when I think I’m ready I can take the test for my GED.”
Paris paused to let her talk, but he was met again with silence.
“I only dropped out in August,” he continued. “So I’ve only missed my senior year. And the only subject I was ever really bad at was Math, and then a little Science, but Chris can help me study, and everything else I just slacked off in, so I figure if I work hard and go to the classes when I can and study every day… I might be ready in a few months, maybe. I want to try to go to DCU in the fall.”
“Oh,” his mother finally said. It came out as more of a breath of air, like she was still recovering from shock. “But… you’ll be applying really late, Baby.”
“I know,” he said. He pushed himself further up on the mattress, resting back against the headboard. Sassy followed and battled the swan for a place in his lap. “Chris’s dad says he knows a couple of people he can call. I mean, it’s not a guarantee, but… it’s something, I guess. And if I don’t get in, I’ll just apply again for the spring semester.”
“And… what do you plan on majoring in…?”
“Dance Performance and Dance Education.”
“Two?” his mother asked. She was no longer attempting to conceal her surprise.
“Technically,” Paris said. “Some of the required courses overlap. If I take a full course load each semester, I might be able to finish in four years. If not, then I should be done in five. I’ll probably end up taking classes over the summers, too, since all I’ll really be doing at that point is helping Dad with the store, so depending on what I can get done when, it might even take less time than that.”
“And… Education?”
“I think I might want to teach,” he told her. “Dance, I mean. Maybe do classes at one of the schools, or… I don’t know, open my own studio or something.”
“… Does your father know you’re doing this?”
“He knows I’m trying, but I don’t think he thinks I’m serious, and he probably expects me to give up at some point.”
“I… I don’t know what to say.”
Paris lapsed into silence, partly to give his mother the opportunity to think, but mostly because he’d run out of things to ramble about on the subject. It had been a bit of a spontaneous decision, but one he fully planned on going through with. He thought he needed it, in a way—not to prove to anyone else that he could do it, but to prove it to himself.
“Baby,” his mother breathed. She seemed to still be struggling to vocalize her thoughts somehow. “I… Baby, I’m very proud of you.”
Paris felt the corners of his mouth twitch, but as far as words were concerned, he was at a loss.
“Just let me know if there’s anything you need,” his mother said. “Money, clothes, books, anything.”
“Okay…”
“And tell me if you ever have any trouble with anything. You know I’ll help all I can.”
“I will, Mom,” he reassured her.
The conversation fell into another pause. Paris suspected his mother was still trying to recover from the shock. For his part, Paris suddenly found his head buzzing with questions that had nothing to do with dance or school, questions and accusations that always seemed to plague his mind whenever he spoke with his mother. It was one of the reasons he barely called her, one of the reasons it hurt to see her, because the memories inevitably resurfaced. They’d lingered for years. He’d thought at first that ignoring his mother when he could and trying to forget that she’d even been a part of his life would help.
Now he thought it’d just made things worse.
“Mom?”
“Yes, Baby?” she said in a hurry, perhaps expecting him to share some other piece of good news.
Paris hesitated, suddenly unsure. His free hand stroked along Sassy’s back. She’d found a way to curl up in his lap by this point, half on top of his stuffed swan and half on his thigh.
Eventually, he asked, “Why did you leave?”
His mother didn’t answer right away. Paris hadn’t expected her to. There was another long pause, tense and uncomfortable this time. Paris was sure it felt that way for the both of them.
This wasn’t the first time he’d asked that particular question, but it had been years since the last time he’d voiced it. It wasn’t often that he asked her. The only other instance he could truly remember was during another phone call almost eight years ago, soon after she’d walked out the door and turned up in New York. “Why did you leave, Mommy?” he’d asked her.
Her only answer then had been, “Baby, I had to.”
It wasn’t an answer he’d been able to understand.
“Baby,” she began this time. She seemed to be struggling, as if she couldn’t decide whether or not he was old enough for the truth. “Paris,” she tried again. She sounded a little more firm. “You know your father and I… We wanted different things. It didn’t make our relationship easy.”
“You argued all the time,” Paris recalled.
“It wasn’t just that,” she said. “Your father… you know he’s stubborn. You know how set in his ways he is. He never had the sort of ambition I wanted from him. He was perfectly fine running his store, even though I knew it wasn’t what he wanted most. He didn’t have a hard time giving up on the things he wanted when he was younger. I… I expected more, when we were married. I wanted more. I didn’t want to work in a little art store, or at the diner on the weekends trying to get some extra money. I was… disappointed… in how we lived… and in your father. It wasn’t a healthy relationship for us to be in.”
“So you left,” he said.
“Paris, I was young when your father and I were married,” his mother continued. “I was young and he was so much older. I expected too much, and I still had dreams I wasn’t ready to give up on. I was young when I had you. Your father and I… we met and then we rushed in to everything, and it was fine at first, but eventually I realized… I realized that I felt trapped. The life we had… it wasn’t what I wanted, for any of us. It was selfish of me, leaving… and it was a mistake to do it the way I did, but I… I felt like I had to escape. I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t, but… I thought, at the time, that it would be better. Do you… do you understand that?”
The little boy inside of him that had spent so many nights crying for his mother wanted to say “no.” But then he remembered running—running so hard and so fast and so long he made himself sick, all because he suddenly found himself too young and involved in something he didn’t know that he was ready for.
The two situations were starkly different, yet now that he was older, Paris thought he knew better. He knew that it couldn’t have been easy.
Few things ever really were.
“Why didn’t you take me with you?” he asked.
“Because I honestly thought you’d be better off with your father,” his mother said. “I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going to end up. I stayed with a few friends for a while, going from place to place, but it wasn’t stable, Paris. At least with you father you had a roof over your head and food on the table, and you had school and dance. I couldn’t give you that, Baby, not without a steady income.”
He could hear something he recognized in her voice, because he felt it, too—pain and regret.
“I was working three jobs just trying to keep up with rent before I got to where I am now, and I never even knew if I’d make it. That isn’t any sort of life for a ten-year-old. That isn’t any sort of life for any child. I wanted you to have as much stability as you could, and by the time I was finally settled… you didn’t want to come live with me. You were thirteen and angry and getting into all sorts of trouble. I wanted to help you… but I couldn’t force you, not when it was already my fault.”
Something in Paris’s chest—something tight and painful—slowly, slowly began to loosen as he listened to his mother speak.
He didn’t know that he understood completely. He didn’t even know if her explanation was enough. After hanging onto the bitterness for so many years, after letting it become such a large part of himself, after letting it control him—the things he said, the things he did, the way he felt—for so long, he wasn’t sure that it was something he could be rid of so easily. He remembered too many things done in moments of anger, when he’d felt lonely and abandoned and worthless. He couldn’t just forget it. He couldn’t pretend that it hadn’t hurt—that it didn’t hurt still.
But he thought he might be able to try harder.
He thought he could stop letting it hold him back.
“Mom?” he said.
“Yes, Baby?”
Paris took a breath and held it, and shut his eyes against the sudden sting. “I forgive you,” he said.
His mother had no reply for him for quite some time. After a few seconds, he heard a muffled sniff, and he thought she must be crying on the other end.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He didn’t know whether to be surprised or not, realizing that he felt a bit better.
“No, Paris,” she told him. Her voice sounded tight and strained. “Don’t be sorry, Baby. I’m sorry. I never wanted to hurt you.”
“I know,” he said.
“I love you, Baby. I never stopped.”
Paris kept his eyes closed, his hand motionless against Sassy. He hoped his voice didn’t sound as hoarse as it felt.
“I know,” he said again.
For once, Paris could allow himself to believe it.
