Dance with Me
Image via Ahmad Odeh When Kayla found out that Ellen had danced with Merce Cunningham’s company and now taught at Juilliard, she couldn’t believe her good luck. Ellen’s child was having his mac and cheese, saying yuck as he found the leftover ones mixed with the ones she’d made fresh, when Ellen had explained what she did for a living. Kayla was speechless and had to will away her tears—such was the force of what she would later describe as epiphany.
Ellen had escaped New York City just as the pandemic was about to shutter the schools, bringing her four-year-old in tow. Up here they were closer to Niagara Falls than to Manhattan, but Ellen had interviewed Kayla carefully about her contacts. Had she been keeping quarantine? Kayla had, religiously. Her mother was recovering from cancer and couldn’t afford Kayla getting sick.
Do you know it’s Shakespeare’s birthday today? Ellen asked. She had a soft gamine hairstyle Kayla loved; thick hair she’d let grow gray without concern.
Were it not for this virus we’d be watching a production. They have a theater in Cold Spring, you know, a festival every year.
Oh, Ellen was always bringing her tidings from a world that seemed farther and farther away. Cold Spring was half a day’s drive, though who could imagine spending the gas to see Shakespeare? Kayla had lived in Henrietta all her life, traveled just a handful of times to New York City. Her mother still reminisced about their last trip together, a mother-daughter soiree, as she’d
