#propagator

Sam makes a little pfft noise. “Amateurs. I know every name in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

You are skeptical. (Skeptical is a really important word that you learned from Mom’s assistant Claudia one time when you told her that Mom would probably think it was fine if you used the lab’s new stress-strain analyzer to test your favorite leotard and your least favorite one so you could get some empirical proof that your favorite one, the Bering one, was better, and Claudia had said it would certainly be proof of something, but she was skeptical about whether she would keep her job if she let you obtain this empirical proof, so you also learned the word obtain but it just means get so it’s less important.) “Every single one?” you ask Sam.

“Sameen,” Tracy says, like a warning, but also a little bit silly, like how she sometimes says “Junior” when you are being more of a kid than she thinks you should but she’s going to let you go ahead and be a kid.

“Yeah, that’s one of ’em,” Sam says. “If you guess the other six, you win a prize.”

You decide right then that you will google about the Islamic Republic of Iran and try to figure out the other names, because Sam is probably kidding and there’s no prize, but Sam might not be kidding and there might be a prize. Because you never know with Sam.

It turns out to be really true that you never know with Sam: because the reason you’re visiting and talking to J.J. is that Sam thinks J.J. could make it so Mama could dance. Not ballet though.

“What would she think about that?” J.J. asks you, about it not being ballet.

You know the answer to this. You look at Aunt Tracy to see what to do, because you are pretty sure she knows the answer too... she nods, so you say, “Mama would think it isn’t really dancing. But she might not say it. To be polite.”

Sam says, “Polite. Right. As if that’s ever been Senior’s—”

J.J. tells Sam to shush, and Sam makes a face but actually does shush. You look at Aunt Tracy again. Now her face is all big, like she’s as amazed as you are.

“Sounds like she wouldn’t want to hurt my feelings,” J.J. says. “That’s a good place to start. If we’re talking about dancing, though, it might have to happen anyway. Both ways.”

You don’t know about J.J., but Mama’s feelings are already so hurt. “Why would it have to?” you ask.

You hope maybe he’ll just say he’s wrong and it won’t have to after all. But instead he says, “I heard you’re in ballet. Does anybody ever hurt your feelings in class?”

In ballet, there is just one right way to do everything. Sometimes you can’t get to the right way because your legs won’t do what you want or you lose track of your hands or you get tangled in your brain. Miss Leena is always nice and says it’s okay, and you know she means it—but it doesn’t feel okay. And you look at the other kids who are doing it right and it feels even less okay. “Yes,” you tell J.J. “But mostly I hurt my own feelings.”

“Tell me why that happens.”

“Because sometimes I can’t do things right.”

He’s quiet for a minute, like he’s really thinking about your words. Eventually, he says, “Or is it that you’re doing things different? Can you show me fifth, then a demi-plié?”

You can. So you do. Like Miss Leena taught you—and it feels like a long time ago now—arms up, round; feet solid, down; feet stay down, arms stay round as you bend your knees and bring your arms low.

Now J.J. says, “What if you do it again, but this time wiggle your shoulders around, back and forth, side to side, while you sweep your arms down?”

Wiggle your shoulders in a plié? “But that’s wrong.”

“Not wrong here. Just different.”

It seems like something you shouldn’t do though. You tell that to J.J.

He nods and says, “Okay. Maybe you shouldn’t. But if your mama wants to dance now, she might have to do things she thinks she shouldn’t. Does she want to dance?”

You tell him what you told Sam. “She can’t.”

“Hm,” J.J. says. Then he asks another one of his funny questions: “Has she always danced the same way?”

“Yes?” you try, because that’s what you guess he wants the answer to be.

You guessed wrong: J.J. shakes his head. “I bet when she was your age, she danced more like you do.”

“You mean she learned. And got better.”

“Got different, anyway. Her dancing changed, with time. And so maybe now, with more time, it could change again. Because her body’s different now, right?” he asks, and you do have to agree with that, because having a hip made out of titanium is absolutely different than having a hip that’s regular bone. He says, “And bodies let us know what they can and can’t do. For example I’m strong, but my body tells me, real clear, real loud, I shouldn’t lift people bigger than me.”

“Could you lift me?” you ask, because what counts as bigger? Is it tallness? You’re just about as tall...

He looks at you, the whole of you. He says, “I’m not sure.”

You like the way J.J. says things, like he is really not kidding. It’s like Sam when she forgets to be careful. “Do you want to try?” you ask.

He smiles big, and it’s like a light turns on—on his face, in the studio, maybe everywhere. “I want to try if you want to. But only if you do.”

You nod at him.

He puts his hands at your waist. “Stay strong in your middle,” he tells you. “Arms out, legs too; don’t wobble.” He lifts you up, and there’s a first part where neither of you is balancing totally right, but then his arms straighten, and you are in the air above him, looking down, arms out, legs too, not wobbling (much), and he is looking up and asking you, “Where do we go from here?”

You expected him to tell you what should happen next, so you start to say “I don’t know”—but then you think of the videos of Uncle Liam and Mama doing the angel lift in the pas de deux in Giselle (whenever you ask anything about that ballet, everybody, even Grandpa, makes jokes about how very meaningful it was, and all they ever say to explain the jokes is that it was how Mom and Mama met each other, but that doesn’t seem like something to joke about, so you are always confused and also a little angry, and then you get angry on top of that, because Giselle is beautiful and you don’t want to have to be confused or angry about it) but anyway every time you see that lift, you sort of wish Uncle Liam would do more than just pick Mama up and set her down again, even though that’s one of the most beautiful parts but not quite as beautiful as the arabesques, so you say, “Can you turn me around in a circle?”

“I can.” He turns in the softest circle, like his feet, his bare feet, are just brushing the floor, and you move through the air just as soft, like you are lying on it to rest or even sleep. Then he turns again, this time stamping his feet, chanting a little “ha” with each stamp, and now you feel the rhythm all the way through your arms and legs, all the way out, your whole body drumming along. “Good circles?” he asks when he stops.

“Best circles! What now?”

J.J. laughs. “My arms are getting tired. Can you somersault down behind me if I lower you head first?”

“I can,” you say, trying to be as sure as J.J. was about turning you in a circle. He lets you down—and you do the somersault! By the time you stand up and turn around, he’s turned around too, and he’s nodding and clapping his hands, that same rhythm of his stamping feet, and you say what’s in your head: “I want to shout!”

“So shout!” he shouts at you.

You do: you shout back, a big “Ah!” because you and J.J. just did something new, together, without knowing what it was going to be or supposed to be, and you don’t feel totally sure that it’s dancing, but you are also feeling a little sure that maybe it is.

He asks, “So how was that?”

What’s in your head now? “It was a surprise,” you say, and that’s a surprise too, that that’s what you wanted to say.

“Could I surprise your mama?” J.J. asks. “Should I? Not with a lift—I’m sure I can’t lift her—but is surprise a good idea?”

Surprising Mama gets her attention. Almost always, and it’s almost always her good attention. Sometimes you try to surprise her just so you can get her good attention. If J.J. can surprise her into dancing... “Yes,” you say, “but only if you don’t make her do anything that hurts her except for her feelings that she might hurt for herself anyway. You wouldn’t do that, would you?” Because Mama’s pain is usually a two or a three or even sometimes a one now. Not eights. And it feels silly to think what you think next, because you probably can’t do it, but what you think is that you want to save her from eights.

J.J. says, “The safety of every person’s body matters to me. I promise.”

Those words make you feel so good. You want to ask why that matters to him, because the way he says it, it sounds like he has a real why. But the promise maybe means you don’t need to ask.

You look at Aunt Tracy and Sam. They’ve stayed quiet while you and J.J. were talking—and even while you and J.J. were maybe (probably) dancing. Sam staying quiet isn’t normal, so it means something. Aunt Tracy being quiet is very normal, but it usually means something too.

You hope it means they’re thinking what you’re thinking: that J.J. might really make it so Mama could dance.

****

The day after their beach day, Myka and Helena receive a Skype call from Tracy. She deposits Junior in front of the screen, saying, “You wanted to talk to them, so talk.”

They hadn’t made plans for a call with Junior before they left. Helena had raised the possibility of setting a time, but in a way that suggested she thought exactly what Myka did about bringing such a plan to fruition: if they had scheduled it, they both would have been waiting for it, enduring the time until it arrived. This way, it’s an unexpected treasure. Or even a reward? Or it might have ended up, depressingly, as a consolation, and Myka is relieved that that isn’t so, but on the whole she supposes her delight (and Helena’s) at the sight of Junior confirms Helena’s point: they are stereotypes, as preoccupied by their child—and as willing to let that preoccupation loom larger than other work—as any other parents.

Myka’s initial question to Junior about what’s been fun elicits a familiar cascade of barely followable information, culminating in “—and Aunt Amanda coached me at swimming and Pete said I can be disease twins with him.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Helena says, saving Myka the need to say it.

“Lice and rabies,” Junior informs her, with seriousness.

What Myka does say, to Helena, is, “What does Amanda see in him?”

“He is very kind to our daughter.”

“I didn’t ask what you see in him.”

“Do you feel some renewed need to familiarize yourelf with the attributes your swimmer finds attractive in anyone?” Helena demands.

The hauteur makes Myka want to disconnect the call and demonstrate what she does want to familiarize herself with. Instead she says, as mildly as she can, “I’d think you’d enjoy explaining in detail how far down she traded.”

Meanwhile, Junior is enthusing, “And I want to grow my hair really really long so I look like Jason Momoa so I can be Aquawoman!”

“Not the worst goal,” Myka tells her. Jason Momoa. She’s never been able to get a clear read on whether she finds Junior so irresistibly charming because she’s her child, or because Junior actually is charming. Of course any real charm, particularly as it works on Myka, is probably down to Helena’s influence anyway. “Speaking of your hair, lean down; we’re not seeing your whole face. Did you grow six inches?”

Junior looks down her body, then back up at the screen. “Not six. Maybe two. And a half.”

“Not six?” Helena asks, her tone indulgent. “Is Tracy failing to feed you?”

“We had chicken curry last night but Sam also had half a can of Pringles and the other half for breakfast today. Can I have Pringles?”

“Absolutely not,” Helena says.

“But Mama, they come in a can.”

“So does motor oil.”

Myka says, “I don’t think that’s true anymore. Not a good counterargument.”

“Well then, so does... wait, what does come in cans?”

“Tuna,” Myka offers. “Kidney beans. Tomato paste.”

“That does not help make my case against Pringles.”

“Maybe tomato paste does. Watch.” Myka raises her voice. “Hey Tracy, how do you feel about tomato paste in a can?”

“I feel like you’re trying to get me to say you might as well let her eat Pringles,” her sister shouts back, “because decent tomato paste only comes in a tube!”

“Not in our house when we were kids, you gourmet snob, and not in my house now!” To Helena, she says, “So it all depends on which kind of snob you want to be. Lots of options. Gourmet, nutrition—”

Junior interrupts, “Guess where we went today!” This is a tone Myka recognizes—also down to Helena—as “I am being paid insufficient attention.”

“What day is it?” Helena asks.

This dazzles Myka. She really doesn’t know. Together, we did that. Lost track of how the rest of the world names successive sunrises. She kisses Helena’s cheek, then turns back to Junior and asks, “Was it a class day? Was it ballet?”

“No, but we met—”

Sam literally elbows Junior out of the way, blocking her from the screen, saying, “So anyway, how’s the pineapples?”

Pineapples...? Myka is stranded. “How’s... what?”

Junior elbows her way back in. “Sam said you went there to have wild pineapples, because Mama couldn’t have them while she was doing rehab.”

A pause ensues. “Wild pineapples,” Helena then says, with an attempt at severity that Myka recognizes as barely contained hilarity.

“You know what I mean,” Sam says. “Tigers.”

She could at least have done them the courtesy of winking.

“Tigers like pineapples?” Junior asks.

Sam nods with purpose. “You bet they do. So much, they invent new ways to have pineapples. Don’t they, Senior.”

As Helena opens her mouth to answer in god only knows what way, Myka hastily says, “Junior, put your Aunt Tracy on right now.”

“She’s indisposed,” Sam says.

“Is she.”

“Busting a gut.”

“I’m fine I’m fine!” Tracy yells from wherever she is, but she’s laughing hard; Myka hears the snort. Since Tracy learned how to laugh, as an infant, she’s snorted, and Myka envies people who are singular, in whatever ways they are. Laughing: pig-snort Tracy wins, and so does donkey-honk Liam.

Helena has surrendered to laughter now too, in her non-singular way, and Myka asks, “Am I the only one who doesn’t find this funny?”

“I don’t get it either,” Junior tells her.

Myka wants to say, “Oh, I get it, Junior,” but she settles for, “You and I can find something else to get, that they won’t. Hey, what about the picture of me and my fabulous sand sculpture? Did you recognize it?”

“It looked kind of like a really thin tall castle.”

“It was a Type A indenter for a Shore durometer!” Myka is appalled at herself for being appalled that an eight-year-old doesn’t know this.

“But it was big. Indenters are tiny,” her daughter objects, and Myka is now appalled at how relieved she is by this objection, which means that Junior does know. “Anyway it was weird,” Junior finishes, petulantly. Helena-ly.

“I didn’t say it was to scale. Or maybe it was; it was looming pretty large in my mind. Once I start working on these wetsuits that I’ll tell you about when we get home, you’ll understand why. Won’t seem so weird.”

“It isn’t weird that it was an indenter! That’s normal! But you were smiling! On the beach! That’s even weirder than tigers liking pineapples! Why is everything so weird right now?”

Her vexed little face, as she tries to parse it all out... Myka would take pity on her, but honestly having any kind of “talk” over Skype, as it relates to pineapples, tigers, and Myka’s own renewed so-in-love-with-my-wife giddiness (Junior’s right: who is this person who smiles on a beach?), is more than a little beyond her. Despite the fact that she is clearly the only adult in either of these Skype-linked spaces. She settles for saying, “Nothing’s as weird as pineapples. Trust me.”

Once the call ends—thank goodness, and Myka could never have imagined the circumstances under which it would seem such a comedic mercy not to talk to their child, but this has been an unusual succession of sunrises—she says to Helena, “Wild pineapples. That we’re having.”

“In Ms. Shaw’s defense, though it pains me to contribute to any such thing, she wasn’t wrong.” Helena smirks. “Tiger.”

“Do you primas ever think about anything else?”

“What is your preferred answer, tiger?”

“How is it that you can get more impossible? And don’t try to get around me by calling me ‘tiger’ again.”

“Why not?” She’s about to say it; Myka can hear it tensing in her mouth, waiting to pounce.

“Because it’ll work,” Myka concedes.

Helena doesn’t say it. But her eyes dance with it as she advances on Myka... and that works just as well.

****

Sam understands that she can’t strangle this kid—if she did, several situations would all at once get very fucked up. However. “What did I tell you right before?” she demands. “What did I tell you?”

“To keep it a secret,” Junior says.

“And what did you chassé your way real close to not doing?”

“Keeping it a secret.” The kid at least winces as she says it.

“See? You do get it. Don’t play dumb with me, kid.”

“I’m not playing dumb! I just almost made a mistake, and you make those too. For example when you almost let Pas De out the door and into the hallway yesterday!”

Sam tries to shrug that off (though the kid has an annoying ability to make a point) with, “The cat wants its freedom. Maybe. Probably. I like dogs. Why don’t you have a dog?”

“Because I wanted a cat. Also Mama said no pygmy goats.”

“Ah,” Sam says, but... goats? “Sure. Logical next step.”

“If you like dogs so much, maybe you should get a dog.”

“Maybe she shouldn’t,” Tracy says from the kitchen, and Sam knows a warning when she hears one.

“Aunt Tracy, you should,” Junior says. “Then Sam would want to be here all the time, and that’s what you want too.”

“But I’d have a dog,” Tracy says, and Sam knows a shudder of dismay when she hears that, too.

Junior shrieks, “But also Sam!”

“No guarantees, Berings,” Sam tries to tell them.

“I’m a Bering-Wells,” says Junior. With that tone.

“And I don’t want a dog,” says Tracy, in exactly the same tone.

Sam gives up. She doesn’t say it out loud, but it’s there in her head: she gives up. What exactly the contours might be of what she’s giving up—that, she’s not so sure of.

****

Some time after the call from home, Myka and Helena go to the beach again—an excursion not lengthy, but sufficient. Helena relaxes under the delicate, attenuated evening light, so different from both the propulsive sunrise and the fierce, insistently cheerful afternoon shine.

“Do you need to sculpt again?” she asks Myka.

Myka leans to the sand, takes up a handful, tests it in her fingers. She then discards it, as if its grains have failed to measure up to the prior material. “I’d just make another indenter. Probably bigger, to make Junior think even harder about the scale.”

“You can’t wait to get to work on those wetsuits,” Helena says, because she knows her wife.

“I kind of can’t. Because I think the polyethylene—”

Helena, so lately thankful to know that she knows her wife, kisses Myka just as the overexplanation hits its on-ramp.

Instead they walk. Helena walks well. Sand is a challenge, but this evening she walks on it well.

When they return to the room, Helena runs a hand up Myka’s arm and asks, “Do you want to?” She’s tired but not too tired. Asking seems right.

Myka seems to appreciate the ask, saying “We don’t have to,” and adding, with a soft kiss as they reach the bed, toward which they have seemingly naturally moved, “we don’t even have to try.”

And they both, Helena knows, feel that as a relief. Decisions like this, now, aren’t decisions.

As they simply lie quiet together, relaxing in the post-decision dusk, Myka says, “You know, I’ve never minded managing you. It’s been my job to manage you. And maybe I’ll miss that if it goes away. Maybe I was already missing that.”

“You can manage me as much as you like,” Helena assures her. Reassures her.

“But what if there’s nothing to manage.”

“I think we both know that’s unlikely to ever be the case,” Helena says, another conscious attempt to reassure. “But... perhaps the stakes can be lower.”

Myka gives her a heartbeat of a pause. Then: “That doesn’t sound so bad,” she reassures back.

“Were we estranged?” Helena ventures, thought she knows the answer. She knows the answer, but she wants to know that Myka knows it—wants her to say it out loud. To get the taste out.

“Yes,” Myka says, with a accompanying nod. Helena is glad to feel it. Myka then says, “In a very literal sense.”

“A very bad literal sense,” Helena says.

Now she feels a chuckle. “You sounded just like Junior.”

“Isn’t it that she sounds like me? I’ve heard she’s my daughter.”

“And don’t you forget it,” Myka says. It’s not a clearing of that slate. This child, this reason. Helena knows she will most likely be unable to keep herself from stabbing with it again, for fights stay the same... but their impact can be, she knows, more or less palpable.

Myka obviously feels the tension, the knowledge, as it inhabits and does not leave Helena’s body. “We will make this work,” she says, with force.

And while Helena is persuaded of that, she needs yet more honesty. “How angry with me have you been? And how angry are you still? Please tell me the truth.”

Myka makes her wait. Helena of course has no morally justified ground from which to hurry her answer. Myka at last says, “I was always more scared than angry.”

“Your sister was right. Change, and how we’ve dealt with it. Or haven’t.”

“And it’s your body. And I can’t even understand it.”

Helena burrows against Myka’s arm. The slightly sunburnt skin of her deltoid is a radiant comfort. “I want to go home,” she sighs out. It is not what she expected to say.

“You are home,” Myka says, tightening her arms around Helena.

“You make a very fine metaphorical point. But I still want to go home.” As she says it again, it’s even more true.

“And leave this tropical paradise?”

“Which you hate,” Helena points out.

“Seriously, were you testing me?”

“I don’t know the real answer to that.”

Another chuckle, one that gladdens Helena. “Fair enough. Look, I’ll change the tickets if you want me to, but I might make you sign an affidavit to the effect that I did not agitate for this.” She pauses. “But you’re right. I think. We’ve done what we came here to do... and I miss her too.”

“You are beautiful and a mind reader.”

“So anyway, we’d better try to have that sex after all, even if it’s rote. Be noisy, make the most of this last Hawaiian night. And then I’ll deal with your strange ticket-changing request that isn’t at all what I also want.”

“It certainly doesn’t matter anymore that it’s Hawaiian, if it ever did. We truly could be anywhere.”

“Anywhere with a sunrise. And a Japanese breakfast,” Myka says.

“Yes. Tamagoyaki making my moral failings far more clear than, say... is there something typical of breakfast in Kansas City?”

“I bet it involves bacon.”

“My moral failings are many, but can you illustrate them with bacon?”

“Don’t they do everything with bacon now? Coat it with chocolate, make it into jam, cookies, pasta... illustrating moral failings doesn’t seem like a stretch. So maybe we just needed a breakfast. Oh, and a bed. You’ve got moral failings; I’ve got decrepitude. I’ve obviously also got moral failings, but I refuse to do anything on the floor anymore.”

“That’s just a challenge. Or it would be, if I could do anything at all on the floor other than fall onto it.”

“Don’t do that. Let’s acknowledge that our floor days are behind us. They were nice days, some of them, but—”

“Some of them?”

Myka’s loop of a smile against Helena’s cheek is perfect, as are her words: “I love that you’re predictable about that, prima.”

That they can make the most of it. They don’t, not quite. But that they want to and can try to and can laugh about not quite doing so... this is what they came here to remember: that even “not quite” is making the most of something.