Previously – Chapter 8: The Morning After
He was pleasant for eleven days.
Mia counted them from the Sunday after the kiss. She was aware this was not a healthy activity and she did it anyway, in the way you press a bruise, and she did it without knowing about the notebook, or the parking lot at Crestwood, or what Sylvia Wilcox had said to him in an empty lobby. She had the surface. The surface was immaculate.
Day one he called back within four minutes and asked to leave it a few days. Day three he sent a photograph of the ceiling cut back to the joists with the caption Behold. Day five he asked her opinion about the spring schedule, professionally, at eleven at night. Day seven was the Saturday of the rent. Day eight he said, in front of Mrs. Fletcher, that he didn’t know what he’d do without her, and Mrs. Fletcher beamed, and Mia went out to the parking lot and sat in the car for a while.
She was not angry. That surprised her. She had expected to be angry and instead what she had was something flatter and more useful: the professional certainty that a person who behaves like this has a reason, and that the reason is almost never the one they would give you if you asked.
“He’s a coward,” said Lucy.
“He’s not a coward.”
“Mia.”
“He walked into a lobby last Saturday and told a hundred and forty-one people that his dead wife would have hated the flyer.” Mia turned her glass around. “That’s not a coward. That’s a man who has got something enormous in his hands and no idea where to put it down.”
“That’s very generous.”
“It’s very accurate,” Mia said, “and I’d like it noted that I’m being accurate at some personal cost.”
* * *
On the third of those eleven days, October twenty-first, Sasha put her on the plinth and did the measurements again and went quiet for slightly too long.
“Say it.”
“Range is down four degrees on flexion and about seven on internal rotation.” Sasha wrote it down. “Your abductors are stronger. That’s good and it’s the only good thing on this page. What happened?”
“I moved a chest of drawers.”
“When?”
“The eighteenth.”
“You moved a chest of drawers on October eighteenth,” Sasha said, “and it is the twenty-first, and I am hearing about it now.”
“I’ve had a busy few days.”
Sasha put the pen down.
“Right,” she said. “Here’s what we’re doing. Two things, and I’m not negotiating on either, and if you argue I’ll write to Dr. Peterson and you can have the conversation with him instead. You’ll enjoy it less.”
“That’s blackmail.”
“It’s a referral pathway.” Sasha took the glasses out of her hair. “One. You are off your feet in that studio. Entirely. Not ten-minute stretches, not standing at the barre, not walking around a room giving corrections. You sit down and you stay sitting down and if you need to be somewhere else in the room somebody moves the chair.”
“Sasha, I can’t teach a room from.”
“You’ve been teaching a room from a chair for six weeks. You just haven’t been honest with yourself about how much you get up.” Sasha held up a second finger. “Two. You take a stick out of that studio and you use it in the building. All the time. Including on the four steps from the desk to the studio door. I know for a fact you do those without it, because you told me in September that you didn’t want the teenagers to see.”
Mia looked at the poster of the hip joint on the wall.
“They’ll see,” she said.
“Yes.”
“They’ve got about seven percent respect for me that isn’t about what I used to be, and it’s taken six weeks, and the second I go into that room with a stick every single one of them is going to.”
“Is going to what?” Sasha said.
Mia stopped.
“You’ve been in that building since September,” Sasha said, “and you’ve told me about four of them by name and what’s wrong with their turnout and what their fathers do. You know exactly what they think of you. You’re not frightened of the teenagers.”
“Then what am I frightened of?”
“I have no idea,” said Sasha. “I do hips.”
* * *
It turned out to be fine.
That was the humiliating part. Mia went into the Saturday class on October twenty-fifth with a cane in her hand and a chair that Connor Reyes moved four times over two hours without being asked and without making a thing of it, and the standard of the class went up.
She worked out why on about the third Saturday and it made her furious.
From a chair she could not go and fix things. She had to say them. And saying them meant finding out what the actual problem was first, because you cannot put your hands on somebody’s ribs from twenty feet away and shortcut the diagnosis, and it turned out that the shortcut had been costing her about a third of her usefulness for six weeks.
“Bethany. Stop. What did you just feel?”
“Nothing?”
“Wrong answer, try again. You did four turns and the third one was different. Where was it different?”
Eleven teenagers learning to describe their own bodies out loud, because the woman at the front could not come and show them, and by the last week of November they were describing each other’s, and by December two of them were teaching the thirteen-year-olds.
There were casualties.
Amy and Ash, the inseparable thirteen-year-olds, found the new arrangement intolerable for about two weeks, because being told to describe a sensation out loud in front of eight people is a nightmare at thirteen and because they had spent two years being able to hide inside each other. Mia lost Ash for three weeks and got her back by giving both of them the same correction on the same day and asking them to argue about which of them it was for.
Connor Reyes, who could not describe anything, turned out to be able to describe everything if you asked him about somebody else. He watched Bethany do a phrase four times and then said, “She’s putting the arm on the count and it wants to be before the count,” which was correct, and which Mia had been trying to say for twenty minutes.
“Do that with your own.”
“I can’t see mine.”
“No,” Mia said. “That’s the entire profession. Nobody can see their own. That’s why the room exists.”
Adam noticed on the second Saturday and said so, in the lobby, carefully.
“They’ve started using words.”
“Yes.”
“Was that on purpose?”
“No,” Mia said. “It was a complete accident and I’m going to claim it for the rest of my life.”
He laughed. It was the first uncomplicated thing between them in three weeks and they both stood in it for a second and then Mrs. Fletcher came through with a box of rosters, and by the time she had gone past it had cooled again, and neither of them was able to get it back.
* * *
The council business started with a notice in the paper on October twenty-second and a phone call from Lucy at seven in the morning.
“Are you awake?”
“I am now.”
“Page eleven. Notice of application for lease of the Town Hall Annex, Pine Falls, by Crestwood Dance Studios LLC, for use as a satellite teaching facility, two evenings per week.“
Mia sat up.
“The annex is the room with the stage in it.”
“The annex is the room with the stage in it,” Lucy agreed, “and it’s four hundred yards from Adam’s front door, and it belongs to the town, and the town lets it for about ten dollars an hour because it’s been letting it to the Scouts since 1974.”
“How much would Crestwood pay?”
“That,” said Lucy, “is going to be the entire argument.”
The hearing was on the twenty-fourth, at seven in the evening, in the council chamber. It held about forty, and had five people in it on a normal week, and had a hundred and six that night.
Adam did not want to go.
“It’ll look like whining.”
“It’ll look like a business owner attending a meeting about a competitor renting a room four hundred yards from his door.”
“Mia, if I stand up in that room and say please don’t let them, every single person in this town will hear a man who can’t compete.” He had his hands on the back of a chair. “That’s how it’ll be repeated. Not what I said. That.”
He was, Mia thought, entirely right, which was the trouble with almost everything Adam Lockwood said about Pine Falls.
“Then let me do it,” she said.
* * *
She got there at twenty to seven and got sat down.
Danielle King arrived at five to, alone, with a folder, and took a seat two rows in front and turned around.
“Miss Chambers.”
“Ms. King.”
“You’ve got a hundred people in a chamber with forty chairs in it,” Danielle said, “and about eleven of them are here because they’re frightened and the rest are here because there’s nothing on television.” She smiled. “I’d like it on the record that I think this is going to go badly for me and I’m doing it anyway because it’s worth about ten thousand dollars a year.”
She was, it turned out, right about the first part and wrong about the second.
The meeting did not reach the annex for fifty-five minutes.
It reached, first, the minutes of the previous meeting; a question about the salt bins; a nine-minute item on the Christmas lights that turned, as it did every November, on whether the tree went outside the town hall or outside the diner; and a report from a man called Alan about the drains.
Mia sat with a cane against her knee and a hundred and six people breathing behind her and watched a town spend fifty-five minutes on salt and twelve minutes on its own future.
At about eight she caught Danielle King, two rows ahead, checking her watch.
You have a hundred and forty students and three buildings, Mia thought, and you have come to Pine Falls on a Friday night and sat through the salt bins, and that is exactly why you are going to win everything eventually.
The chair of the council was a woman called Marilyn Boyce who had been on it since 1998. She read the application. She invited Ms. King to speak, and Ms. King spoke for four minutes and was extremely good: two evenings a week, a hundred and twelve dollars an hour against the current ten, sixty additional children from Pine Falls who would otherwise travel, an outreach rate for families on assistance.
A councillor asked whether the Scouts would be displaced. Ms. King said Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the Scouts were Mondays, and she had checked.
Another asked whether local people would be employed. Ms. King said two, initially, and possibly four, and did not oversell it. Mia noted that.
A third asked, at some length and with evident pleasure, about parking.
Mia listened and thought: she has done this before, and she is going to win.
Then Marilyn Boyce said, “Anybody wish to speak against?” and Mia put her hand up and Marilyn Boyce said, “Mia Chambers. Yes. Well. Go on, then.”
Mia stayed sitting down, because she had to.
“I’m not going to speak against,” she said.
There was a small movement in the room.
“Ms. King’s application is good. The money’s better than you’re getting. She’ll run a proper program, she’s got the staff, and sixty children in this town would get two evenings a week they haven’t got.” Mia let that sit for a second. “So I’d like to say two other things instead, and then you can vote.”
“Go on.”
“First. Whatever you decide tonight, it’s got nothing to do with dance and everything to do with the annex. It is the only room in this town with a stage in it. The Scouts have had it at ten dollars an hour since 1974, and the amateur dramatics use it in March, and the school uses it for the Christmas thing because the school hall’s got no lighting.” Mia looked at the councillors. “If you let it for a hundred and twelve dollars an hour to anybody, for anything, you have just changed what that room costs, and you will not change it back. That’s the actual decision. Everything else is dancing.”
Somebody at the back said, quite loudly, “Well.“
“Second thing.” Mia turned slightly, because she wanted to be talking to the room and not the table. “I’ve been at Lockwood since September. If Crestwood take the annex, Lockwood loses about twenty students by March and probably closes within two years. I want that said out loud in this building by somebody, and Adam Lockwood won’t say it, because he thinks it sounds like a man asking for a favor.”
The room went quiet in a way that a hundred and six people can.
“That’s not an argument for refusing the application,” Mia said. “It’s just true, and if you’re going to do a thing you should know what it costs.”
Marilyn Boyce made a note.
And then a man in the fourth row whom Mia did not know put his hand up, and turned out to be called Gerald Wicklow, and said:
“Can I ask her something?”
“You can ask her something.”
He stood up. He was about seventy, in a good coat, and he was not being unkind. Mia understood that immediately, and it made everything much worse.
“Miss Chambers, everyone here knows who you are and we’re all very sorry about your leg.” He said it perfectly pleasantly. “But you’ve been back two months. And I’ve been on this council’s planning committee for eleven years and I’ve heard a lot of people speak in this room about what this town needs, and the ones who speak best are usually the ones passing through.”
Somebody said, “Gerald.”
“I’m not being rude. I’d like to know. Will you be here in a year?”
A hundred and six people looked at her.
Mia sat in a chair in the council chamber in Pine Falls with a cane against her knee, and the question went into her the way it had gone in on a Saturday morning in a lobby four weeks earlier, in a lower voice, from a kinder person, in almost exactly the same words.
She could have said yes. It would have cost nothing, it would have been what the room wanted, and about six people would have applauded.
“I don’t know,” Mia said.
Gerald Wicklow nodded slowly, as if a thing had been confirmed.
“But I’d like the annex to still be ten dollars an hour when I find out,” she said.
* * *
There was then, because it was Pine Falls, another forty minutes.
A woman from the amateur dramatics spoke for six minutes about the March production and the lighting bar. A man spoke against on the grounds that the annex roof was unsound, which turned out to be about a different building. Somebody raised parking again.
And then Beverly Ann Wicklow stood up, at the back, and said that she wanted to say something about Adam Lockwood, and every single person in that chamber went still.
“He does the Christmas thing at the church for nothing,” she said. “Seven years. Him and Heather and then just him. And he did my Marianne’s girl for two terms in 2023 when we couldn’t and he’s never once mentioned it, not to me and not to her, and I only know because she told me last year when she’d had a drink.”
Marilyn Boyce said, “Beverly Ann, is this on the application.”
“No,” said Beverly Ann Wicklow, “it isn’t,” and sat down.
Gerald Wicklow, four rows in front, put his face in his hand, because he had been married to her for forty-one years.
* * *
The council voted six to three to defer for ninety days pending a review of the annex letting policy. This was not a refusal, Marilyn Boyce explained, and everybody in the room understood it to be a refusal.
Marilyn Boyce caught Mia by the door on the way out, with her coat half on and seven people waiting to speak to her.
“That was well done.”
“It wasn’t meant to be done at all.”
“It was done extremely well and I’ve been chairing this council since 1998 and I know the difference.” Marilyn Boyce got her other arm in. “The annex point was correct. That’s the trouble with it. If we take a hundred and twelve dollars an hour off her, the Scouts go to twenty in April and the dramatics go to twenty and by 2028 nobody in this town can afford the only room with a stage in it.”
“So it’ll happen anyway.”
“It’ll happen in about four years, when I’m not chairing anything, and somebody will be very sensible about it.” She buttoned the coat. “You want to tell Adam Lockwood something from me.”
“Go on.”
“Tell him ninety days is ninety days,” said Marilyn Boyce, “and that if he wants the annex for anything, at ten dollars an hour, he should put an application in before February, because there’s about to be a policy and policies are much harder to be kind inside of.”
Danielle King found her in the parking lot.
“That was the best four minutes I’ve ever been beaten by,” she said, without any apparent rancour. “You didn’t argue with me at all. You made it about a room.”
“It is about a room.”
“It is entirely about a room. That’s why I’ll have it in about fourteen months, when the Scouts have folded and somebody looks at the heating bill.” Danielle put her keys in her hand. “You should have said yes, by the way. To the old man.”
“It wasn’t true.”
“No,” Danielle agreed. “But it’s the answer you’ll be giving in a year, so you may as well have started.”
* * *
Lucy drove her back and was, for the first four miles, completely silent, which from Lucy Henshaw was an event of national significance.
“Say it.”
“I’m composing.”
“Lucy.”
“Right.” Lucy took the bend by the water tower. “I have known you since we were nine. I watched you tell a hundred and six people that Lockwood closes in two years if she gets that room. In public. With Adam Lockwood not in the building and about eleven of his parents in it.”
“It’s true.”
“It is completely true and it is now a fact in this town.” Lucy’s hands were at ten and two. “By Thursday every single family at that studio will know the words closes within two years, and about four of them will decide they’d rather move now than in the middle of a term, and you’ll have done it.”
Mia looked out at the black trees.
“I know,” she said.
“You knew when you said it.”
“I knew about a second and a half before I said it, and I said it anyway, because Adam won’t and because somebody in that room had to say what it costs.” She rubbed her eyes. “It’ll cost us four families and it bought us ninety days, and I’d do it again, and it was still the wrong thing to do to him.”
“Both of those can’t be true.”
“They’re both true,” said Mia, “and that’s the entire problem with him, and I’ve had six weeks to think about it.”
* * *
Adam was in the studio when she got back at half past eight. She had known he would be.
“Six to three,” she said.
“Lucy texted me at seven fifty-one.”
“Then why are you standing there looking like that?”
He was leaning against the reception desk with his arms folded and he had, Mia thought, a very strange expression on him.
“Gerald Wicklow asked you if you’d still be here in a year,” he said.
“Who told you that?”
“Fifteen people, so far. My phone’s been going since eight.” Adam did not move. “And you said you didn’t know.”
“Because I don’t.”
“No.” He looked at the floor. “No, I know.”
And then, because it was quarter to nine and because they had both been being pleasant for a week and because Mia had spent four minutes that evening being extremely brave in a public building:
“Is that why?” she said.
Adam’s head came up.
“Is that why you’ve been like this? Because I might go in the spring?”
“No,” he said.
“Adam.”
“No, honestly, that isn’t it.” He rubbed his eyes. “It’d be much easier if it were.”
“Then what is it?”
He opened his mouth.
The heating clicked off, the way it did, at quarter to nine.
“I don’t know yet,” Adam said.
Mia stood in the lobby with her coat still on.
“Then find out,” she said. “Because I’m running out of ways to be gracious about it.”
She was at the studio at ten the next morning with her hair done and the roster in her hand, and she said good morning, and he said good morning, and they got through a Saturday.
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