Tita by Marie Houzelle Read Free Book Online Page A

nor too elaborate. But having an attractive body is just luck, there’s no reason to gloat about it.
     
    At home, I look for Father. He’s in the music room playing the piano, trying out some composition of his. The same tune in various keys, with a few variations. I wait on the landing, because I know that if he sees me he’ll stop. Then when I haven’t heard anything for three minutes I go in.
    “Hi, Tita, how’s life? Do you want the piano?” How can he be my father, live in the same house with me, and not know I never want the piano!
    “Have you met madame Robichon?” I ask.
    “Who?”
    “Madame Robichon, our ballet teacher.”
    “I don’t think so. Why?”
    “She’s the stupidest person I’ve ever met,” I say. “I just wondered if someone more stupid could exist. You know so many people.”
    “How would you define stupid?”             
    Now. This is difficult. You can see that madame Robichon is stupid. If he’d seen her he’d know. But define it? “She’s like wood,” I say. “Her face never moves.”
    “Is she paralysed?”
    “No. She’s normal. But you always know what she’s going to say.”
    “Our words are often pretty predictable,” Father says.
    That’s not it. How can I explain? “She’s more stupid,” I say. “Most people, they mouth the usual phrases, but you can feel something else going on, underneath. They’re alive. With madame Robichon that’s all there is, and it’s... contagious. You end up feeling stupid too.” I’m not making my point. “Try to talk to her on Wednesday after the show.”
    “Oh,” Father says, “a show? Your mother didn’t tell me. I’ll have to call my bridge friends.”
    “You don’t have to come,” I say. “Honest, don’t come for me, or for Coralie. We’re no good.”
    “But I want to come!” he says. “You must have worked hard for this show!”
    “We haven’t,” I say. “We hate it. We’d like not to do it. I guess it’s too late for this year, but could we please not take ballet after the summer?” I hadn’t thought about this, it just comes out. And as soon as I hear myself, I know I should have kept quiet. Father looks at the piano stand, at the notes he’s been making for his song, in lead pencil, and the revision, in green.
    “You’ll have to see about it with your mother,” he says.
     
    Time for the show. Coralie and I squeeze into the back seat of Eléonore’s car between Eléonore’s large father and her larger grandmother, under a mountain of tutus. Coralie hugs me and whispers in my ear, “If we suffocate, let’s be buried in the same tomb.” Eléonore is in front next to her mother, with a few more tutus in her lap, including a rainbow one with, her mother says, seventeen layers of tulle. When we arrive at the theater, Coralie grins. “I think I forgot my demi-pointe shoes,” she says, looking into her bag. But madame Robichon sends Eléonore’s mother to the office to call our parents. Coralie should have waited. It’s no use anyway. We’re doomed. What can we do? Grow up, but it takes for ever.
    Mother arrives in time to re-braid my hair and stick in some flowers. Then it’s Coralie’s turn. She yells. Madame Robichon is giving a speech on the other side of the curtain. Thanks, art, support, Mr Mayor. Now it starts! Coralie goes, then Jordi… “Your turn!” Madame Robichon whispers loudly behind me. I throw my hands onto the wooden floor, but my legs don’t stick up in the usual way. I don’t know what they do, but my feet are back on the floor on the wrong side. “Hurry, try again!” madame Robichon urges. But I don’t feel like trying again. I just step to the other side of the stage. I don’t run away, but behave as if nothing had happened, looking straight at the audience. I bungled my cartwheel, and I want to laugh.
     
    We’re done. It’s been amazingly fast, and almost painless. Now there’s clapping and stomping. The room is full. We bow and re-bow,