Stand Like A Dancer (eBook)

Gillette Edmunds (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
308 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-8508-5 (ISBN)

Infos

Talented dancer and journalist Lydia falls in and out of love with basketball star Mark, leading to a tumultuous relationship filled with passion and addiction. Their story winds through a fabulously successful dance club, personal traumas, addiction recoveries, a dramatic cliffhanger, a new marriage and a spiritual resolution.

Stand Like a Dancer is Gillette Edmunds' third novel. Tourists off the Tour, Gillette's second novel was published in 2023. His first novel, We Were, was published in early 2021. After a successful career in money management, Gillette writes novels derived from his personal experiences including extensive travel and chaotic, comical relationships. Gillette has a BA in English and Creative Writing from Stanford University and was a ghost writer in 1980-81. Gillette is married and has three adult children and one grandchild. He had a successful career as a non-fiction writer. Gillette is the author of How to Retire Early and Live Well with Less Than a Million Dollars (Adams Media, 2000), Comfort Zone Investing (Career Press, 2002), REITs for the New Decade (various e-book web publishers, 2001), Retire on the House (John Wiley & Sons, 2006) and many articles. How to Retire Early sold more than 80,000 copies.

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Lydia, a brilliant dancer and journalist, embarks on a tumultuous romance with basketball player Mark at Cal, only to leave him for Broadway. When her theater dreams fail, she returns to Mark, reigniting their intense, substance-fueled relationship. As Lydia uncovers painful truths about her past, she and Mark crash in Lake Tahoe, then rise to fame and fortune, when a fiery act of vengeance nearly destroys their lives. They disintegrate in a whirlwind of inebriation, impoverishment, pregnancy, loss of life, desertion, spirit dance, sobriety, Broadway success and a new age reunion.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

Freak

Lidia loved her father. She played football with him and the neighborhood kids in the big park when she was five and six. He was tall, very strong, with a big smile. All the kids grabbed him, held onto his legs, but he picked up Lidia, and she rode on his shoulders. She looked down at all the kids trying to get up where she was, and she was proud to be the one up there, the only kid allowed on his shoulders.

In first grade, after school, he often came to pick her up in his black Mercedes. All the mothers watched him get out of the car, watched him come over to Lidia, watched him pick her up, hug her in the air, set her down on the playground, take her hand, and walk with her to the car. She looked at him, and she looked at the mothers looking at him, and she was happy.

The mothers were talking about a riot, a riot in San Francisco, and an assassination. Lidia didn’t know what those things were. Someone was named Milk? They were worried about milk? She was waiting for her father, dancing disco like the girls she’d seen on TV. As he pulled into the parking lot, several mothers looked at one another, flipped their hair, took out little compact mirrors, and fixed their lipstick. “Marquez looks good today,” one mother whispered to another. As he was getting out of the car, Lidia heard the other mother say, “The beautiful dark man in the black Mercedes is here. I wonder what he thinks about the riots last night.” Lidia looked at her father and at the car. The car was black. Her father was in a light blue medical shirt over black slacks. His skin was brown, maybe dark brown. She noticed he was darker than all the mothers. He was darker than her. Most of the kids were lighter than her. Some about the same.

“Your father’s family is from Mexico,” her mother told her. “They are Mayan and Spanish. They are beautiful people.”

“But they’re not like us,” Lidia said. “They don’t look like you and me.”

“I’m Irish,” Sarah said. “We are girls. You have a lot of me in you. We’re lighter skinned than your father. But you have your father in you too. His smile, his athleticism. You are Irish and Mayan and Spanish.”

Sarah held her arm next to Lidia’s arm. “And, lucky you, you have a little of his skin in you. You have beautiful golden skin.”

“That’s not lucky,” Lidia said. “I’m a freak.”

She ran out the door to the yard, jumped on the swing, and began swinging hard.

* * *

The summer after second grade, her father moved to Seattle.

At recess, Margaret told Lidia how she was sorry for her. “I heard your parents are getting divorced. Your famous dad met a movie star. You’re going to need to go to therapy. Melissa’s parents got divorced, and she had to go to therapy. Now she and her mom are moving to Montana. Are you moving to Montana?”

“My parents aren’t getting divorced,” Lidia said. “We like our house here. We aren’t moving. My dad just bought a dental practice in Seattle. He’s a millionaire. He’s just making more millions of dollars.”

Her mother picked her up from school in her dad’s black Mercedes. Sarah usually drove her turquoise Thunderbird convertible. All the mothers looked away from Lidia and her mother. Lidia noticed several girls looking at her mother.

“Are we getting a divorce?” Lidia asked her. She could smell the Scotch on her mother’s breath. She hated that smell. That smell meant crazy mother time.

“Hell no,” her mother said. “Your dad’s just on a little business trip. He’ll be back.”

They drove to the park a few blocks from the school. Sarah got out of the car, opened the trunk, slipped a bottle of Scotch under her blouse, opened Lidia’s door, and told her, “You drive.”

Sarah had shown Lidia how to drive to the grocery store and the wine shop and the liquor store. Lidia liked driving, except when her mother tried to step out of the car while it was still moving.

Lidia drove past the school and waved at Margaret. Margaret stared at her and then waved wildly. Lidia drove past their neighborhood and up the hill, winding toward the top, to Skyline. She knew a parking place where you could see the Bay on one side and the Pacific on the other. She and Sarah got out of the Mercedes sedan and sat on the hood. Sarah leaned back against the windshield, bottle in one hand, shielding the sun with her other hand. She looked at Lidia and smiled. Now Mom is okay, Lidia thought. Up here she’s okay. Lidia looked at her mother, at the Bay, at the Pacific. All was good. Then Sarah was snoring. And that was better. We are all safe now, Lidia thought.

Some days after school Lidia had dance classes, then did her homework, while her mother fooled around in the kitchen, talked on the phone, and drank. Other days Lidia did homework right after school and then turned on MTV and danced, following all the dance moves on the show. She let the music, the beat, the tones penetrate her ears and spread throughout her body. She felt her legs, her arms, her hips, her shoulders, her fingers, her toes move in rhythm, or counter-rhythm. After a few minutes she felt fully alive, every muscle in her body pulsing, moving, as a sense of ease and comfort came to her, a belief that all was right in her world.

Her ballet teacher told her: Stand like a dancer, always. When she wasn’t dancing, she stood like a dancer. Then she was a dancer, regardless of what was going on in school or at home.

Christmas of third grade, Lidia spent three weeks in Seattle with her father and his fiancé, Eliza. Eliza was nice to Lidia, but Lidia hated her. She reported to her mom that Eliza slept until ten in the morning, went jogging and to the gym, and then turned on the TV. Eliza had a TV in the bathroom and in the bedroom and in the living room and in the kitchen, and they were all on, all the time, on the news channels. Dad was at his clinic until six. Waiting for Dad to come home, Lidia saw Eliza as a reporter on several of the TVs. Eliza came home from the TV station after Lidia went to bed. Lidia spent most of her time wandering around the house; out on the deck looking at Puget Sound, gazing at the boats; and dancing disco while watching MTV.

She never wanted to go there again. Her mom told her she didn’t have to. She never went back. Yet she missed her dad terribly. She missed him picking her up at school, all the moms admiring him and her as his daughter. He told her stories as they drove home: the great football games he had won, the patient who threw up while he was working on a filling, the dance performance he wanted to take her to see. He dropped her at the house and went back to the office. But he always got home in time to read to her as she fell asleep, as Mom banged dishes in the kitchen, talking to herself.

She didn’t want to remember some things that happened. She and Mom were at the mall and Dad was hugging his tall, blond dental assistant in the Macy’s cosmetics area. Mom yelled at him and slapped him. He shoved Mom, she fell to the ground. He looked at Lidia. “Sorry,” he whispered to her. “Sorry,” and he walked away with the dental assistant.

That night, Dad and Mom were yelling about boyfriends and girlfriends and hitting each other. Lidia ate a piece of cold pizza, watched them, and went to bed. Dad didn’t read to her. She heard him go into their bedroom, and they didn’t come out. She listened for his footsteps, but he didn’t come.

A few weeks later, he picked her up at school and took her to 31 Flavors.

He said to her, “I love you, Lidia. But I no longer love your mother. I have been mean to her. She has been mean to me. I’m moving to Seattle. When you grow up, don’t ever let a boy be mean to you. Stop him. Kick him as hard as you can. Your mother should not have let me be mean to her. So I am leaving. Not because of you. I’m leaving your mother, not you.”

Lidia wanted to cry. She wanted to hit her mother. She needed to run. She ran out the door, down El Camino. Marquez sprinted after her. She ran across the red light. Her father followed. She ran into the neighborhood. She ran past wide lawns, barking dogs, loud leaf blowers, block after block, as her father followed. She stopped, turned, jumped into his arms.

Marching steadily, he carried her back to the car as she cried. They were silent as he drove her home. He carried her to the front door, opened it, gave her his key, kissed her on the cheek, and turned toward the black Mercedes.

Without her father, Lidia felt like a freak at school, the girl with divorced parents, the redhead with dark skin.

Away from school, she was okay. She loved ballet after school, all the dance classes, all the performances. She studied; she did homework; she liked learning, reading, math. She tried to ignore her mom and her mom’s boyfriends, and their drinking and yelling at each other. In the middle of the night, she often heard her mom throwing up, coughing, crying.

Recess was the worst. Lidia tried to stay in the classroom and study, but they made her go outside. She invented a game: the invisible game. She would stand like a dancer on one of the tiles under the portico leading to the playground, both feet inside the tile. She stood absolutely still, tall, and poised. At first, kids and teachers would look at her, ask what she was doing. She wouldn’t answer. She was silent. After a while no one noticed her. Everyone played around her, went in and out of the building without even looking at her. She was invisible, yet a...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.1.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-8508-5 / 9798350985085