The Man in Row Three
The wave
The first Saturday in November, it was cold and spitting sleet, and the studio smelled like wet coats. Class ended, and the girls lined up at the door to go back out to their mothers, and Ava stopped in the doorway and turned around.
She looked right at the third row. Right at me. She held my eyes for maybe two seconds.
Then she reached up and tapped her nose, and she wiggled four fingers down by her hip where her mother couldn’t see.
I tapped my nose and wiggled four fingers back, slow, and she smiled the smallest smile, and she turned and went out the door with her mother.
I sat in my truck in the parking lot for a long time after that, too. Different kind of sitting.
I called my mother, and I couldn’t get the words out for a while, and she said, “Jacob, you just breathe,” and I did.
From then on, Ava did the wave every Saturday, once at the start of class from the barre and once at the door going out.
I always waved back. I never once went to her, and I never said a word. That was the deal, and I wasn’t going to be the one who broke it.
The winter showcase
The studio held a winter showcase the second Saturday in December, right there in the studio, with the folding chairs set up in rows and white lights strung along the mirror.
The little girls were all in the back room getting dressed in the first costume, red velvet with white fur along the edge like a tiny Santa suit.
Through the open door I could hear Ava crying, the hiccuping kind I knew from years of it.
Then Shayla came out of the back room with a brush and a big red bow in her hand and a look on her face I hadn’t seen since our kitchen table.
She stood at the end of the third row and she said, “Jake. I can’t get it to stay. She says only you can do it.”
I looked at her. She looked at the floor. She said, “Please.” That’s all. Just please. And I got up and walked back there with her, and Ava was sitting on a bench in red velvet with her hair half falling down, and her face lit up like Christmas morning.
I knelt down on that dressing room floor. I took the brush and I did it the way the woman in the video taught me, slow, gather it high, twist it twice, pin it under, bow on top, two pins crossed through the knot. Ava held perfectly still the whole time.
When I finished, she turned her head side to side in the mirror. The bow held. She whispered, “You still remember,” and I said, “I’ll never forget how, kiddo.” Shayla was standing in the doorway with her hand over her mouth.
Ava danced a little number about snowflakes, and she was the only one in her row who didn’t fall out of step. At the end of it she found me in the third row and tapped her nose and wiggled four fingers in front of everybody. Shayla saw it. Shayla saw the whole thing.
Spring
Kyle came to the studio one Saturday in February. I saw him through the front window, standing out by the car in his railroad jacket, not coming in.
When class let out I went out the side door so he wouldn’t have to see me come past.
He walked around to the side lot and found me anyway. He wasn’t angry. He just looked tired. He said, “Why do you keep coming here, man? She’s not yours.” I told him I’d been coming to things for that little girl since before she could walk, and I’d told her I always would.
He stood there for a while with his hands in his pockets. Then he said, “Shayla cries after these Saturdays sometimes. In the car.” I said I was sorry about that, and I was.
He nodded and went back around the building, and that was the last I saw of Kyle.
In April, Ava came in one Saturday without her mother’s hand in hers. Shayla was walking behind her with her eyes red.
Kim told me in a whisper during class that Kyle had moved out the week before and taken a job with the railroad out in Newton.
I didn’t do anything with that information. I didn’t call. I didn’t send flowers or a card. It wasn’t my business. But I’ll admit I prayed for Shayla that night, at my kitchen table, which I hadn’t done since the split.
I prayed she wouldn’t be as scared as she had been.