Page 23 of Comeback
“I love that.”
“It wasn’t always easy, but it brought me a lot of joy. The building changed hands a dozen times before my husband got so sick of it, he bought it.” Her eyes twinkle as she talks about him.
“Wow. Really?” I find myself mirroring her big smile.
With a nod, she says, “Charles loved a big gesture.”
I’d already gathered by her choice of words that Charles wasn’t around anymore, but then she says, “He passed the same year I closed the studio for good. I guess that’s why I haven’t been able to sell or lease out the building to anyone. It feels like as much his legacy as mine.”
“I can understand that.”
“Tell me about you. What made you want to open a dance studio? It’s a lot of work.”
“Oh gosh. A million things.” I sit forward with my elbows resting on the table and then immediately lean back when some ancient manner advice about that being impolite flashes in my mind. “I started dance classes when I could barely walk. My mom said when I was a baby, she could set me in my carrier in the front of the room and I’d sleep through tap class or watch the ballet dancers too enthralled to cry.”
“Was she a dancer too?”
I nod. “She was my first dance teacher.”
“That must have been special.”
“It was.”
“I never had any girls. Only a boy who preferred playing outside with mud and sticks.”
“He didn’t want to carry on the studio anyway?” I ask. Even if he wasn’t interested in running it, he could have taken over and found someone else to do the day-to-day.
“No. He went away to college and never came back. Will and his wife are in Florida where her family lives.” She sighs. “He’s been on me to sell it and be done with it. He worries about me here alone. And I’ve had some good offers, but the thought of it turning into a shipping center or one of those cash loan places makes my skin crawl.”
“The location is great. It’s such a cute area.” I glance around. The café is only a block down from the studio and this afternoon it’s filled with people working on laptops and groups of friends talking and laughing.
“It wasn’t always. This used to be a bank. The pizza place at the end of the street was an insurance office. And there was a dry cleaner next door to the studio. I could do just about all my errands on my lunch break.” She smiles. “It was a quiet, commercial area, but nothing like what it’s become.”
“I tried to look up the studio, but I couldn’t find a lot. What sort of dance did you teach?”
“Ballet, mostly. Jazz, tap, lyrical, even a ballroom class or two, though it was not my strong suit.” The way she lights up when she talks about it, I can tell how much she loved it.
“What was your favorite?”
“Oh, that’s a hard question.” She takes a moment to think. “There’s nothing cuter than a three or four-year-old in a tutu.”
“Agreed.” I picture Greer in her princess costumes.
Eleanor and I talk so long that my tea goes cold. She tells me more about the studio, everything from the recitals they had twice a year to the summer camps. My head is spinning with more ideas, and I’ve completely forgotten that it’s not a foregone conclusion that the space will be mine until she stops talking and looks at me seriously.
“So, Sabrina…”
“Yes?” My stomach works itself into knots while I wait for her to continue.
“Have you seen the building?”
“Yes, Carrie Ann walked me through it yesterday.”
“Then you know that it needs a lot of work.”
“I like that it’s a clean slate.”
“That’s a generous assessment. We completely cleared it out after the studio closed and it’s sat vacant for a while. The floors are wrecked, the windows need to be replaced, and that’s nothing to the caked-on layers of dust.”
