Ambrose

Lily wants to live in the old days. Her mom, Debra, says, No, you don’t, because in the old days all women did was cook and sew and die in childbirth, but Lily still wishes she could travel back in time. Her older sister, Sophie, says, Stop, you just hate school, and that is true. Lily hates sixth grade. However, Lily hates other things, too, like parties and kissing games and boys keeping score. Guess what? Sophie says. There were parties in the old days, too.

Sophie is more pragmatic than Lily. Debra says so on the phone late at night. Lily is more anxious, Debra says. Then Lily thinks, Am I? She sits up in bed and strains to hear her mom’s voice downstairs.

“Yeah,” her mom says. “Yeah, I know. Well, she’s upset.”

She’s wrong, though. Lily is not upset. She just wants to live in a castle or a secret cottage in the woods. She is writing a novel about a girl named Ambrose who becomes a swan at night. The novel is in a journal her teacher gave her. It’s a black-and-white composition book for her feelings or whatever she wants to say.

East of the sun and west of the moon lived Princess Ambrose with her mother the Queen, her father the King, and her eleven sisters. She was a regular princess except for one thing. Every night at dusk she turned into a swan.

“How?” Sophie says, but Lily’s teacher comments in green pen, “Lily, what a wonderful story! Tell me more about the swan.”

“Why is her name Ambrose?” Lily’s dad, Richard, asks when she’s at his house that weekend.

“It’s short for Amber Rose,” Lily explains.

He says, “Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Ambrose keeps her wings under her bed and at night she slips them over her shoulders to fly across the sky and gather tiny stars. She pours the stars into the drawer of her nightstand where they sparkle secretly. She loves to look at them—but in the morning she must sit at her loom with her eleven sisters and weave nonstop. Her mother is always telling her, hurry up, work faster.

“Oh, wonderful,” Debra says. “Is that supposed to be me?”

“What are the sisters weaving?” Lily’s teacher asks in green.

Lily doesn’t answer questions. Home with her mom, she cuts pictures of flowers and swans and diamonds from magazines. First, she glues roses and sunflowers and red poppies to the cardboard cover of her composition book. Then she adds the diamonds. Finally, she pastes a swan with outstretched wings. The swan is much smaller than the roses and poppies, but that’s just perspective. When Lily is done gluing her pictures, Debra says, “It’s beautiful! But you need to protect the edges,” so they drive to Michael’s and buy Mod Podge to brush over the collage.

“Just keep it on the newspaper,” Debra tells her.

Lily shoots her mom a look, because everyone remembers how Lily opened nail polish on the couch and splattered the cushions, but she has not ruined anything in years.

She is named for her great-grandma Lillian, who made all her own clothes, including her coats. Not only that, but she upholstered her own furniture and sewed all the curtains for her house in Brooklyn. And they were lined. Lillian went to the Lower East Side and bought Schumacher fabric covered with roses. Her house was filled with roses, on the curtains and on the sofa. When she and Great-Grandpa Morris moved to Brookline, Lillian cut roses from her new garden. The Brookline house was always blossoming. In the dining room, Lillian polished her silver until it gleamed. In the kitchen, she baked rugelach, Linzer tortes, and mandelbrot. For dinner parties, she served her own napoleons, and then she was so exhausted she had to lie down. Lily imagines Lillian lying on a bed of roses.

At night, when she is supposed to be doing her homework, Lily lies on the couch and writes.

She loved to feel the wind in her feathers, but she was always looking for something where were the other swans?

Her teacher comments, “I hope she finds them! (Watch out for run-on sentences.)”

In her cement-and-glass school, Lily opens her book, now covered with roses and red poppies.

All day long, Ambrose waited to change into a swan and fly again. After waiting for her eleven sisters to brush their teeth, she locked herself in the bathroom and fastened her wings.

During lunch, Lily hides in her empty classroom and writes.

The reason she flew all night was to look for the other swan girls who she knew were in the sky if only she could find them. She flew and flew until finally she saw a large bird coming toward her.

“Lily?” Mrs. Berman, the assistant principal, stands in the doorway. “What are you doing?”

“Working,” Lily says.

“But at lunch you need to be in the lunchroom, honey.”

When she’s supposed to be at assembly, Lily sits in the hall and writes.

Ambrose flapped her wings and quickly met the other bird in midair. Are you a swan? she asked. No, I am not said the other bird. Sorry about that I am a pelican but don’t lose heart. Go! Fly to the—

“What’s wrong?” Mrs. Berman almost trips over her. “Lily? Why are you sitting out here?”

“So I can concentrate,” Lily says.

“I hear what you are saying,” Mrs. Berman says. “It’s hard to concentrate sometimes.”

“Yes,” Lily says.

“Come on into the auditorium.”

“No, thank you,” Lily says.

“That wasn’t a question,” Mrs. Berman tells her.

“Just a second.” Lily is trying to finish her sentence.

“I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you take your notebook with you?” Mrs. Berman says.

Then Lily scrambles to her feet, because that is also not a question.

“Thank you,” Mrs. Berman says. “I want you to know we all support you.” But later that week she calls a team meeting. The team is Mrs. Berman, and Dr. C, from the Learning Center, and Lily, and both of Lily’s parents. Lily can’t stop staring at her mom and dad sitting on the same side of the table.

First of all, Mrs. Berman explains, this meeting is about safety. It is about respecting Lily’s needs but also making sure everybody knows where she is. There might be a way for Lily to alert a teacher that she needs a break from an activity like lunch, and if there is staff available Lily might be able to step outside for a few minutes and come back when she is ready.

Lily’s parents are nodding while Lily wonders what “second of all” is going to be. There should be a second, but Mrs. Berman never gets to it. She just keeps talking. If you were an animal, Lily asks Mrs. Berman silently, what kind would you be?

Debra and Richard turn toward Mrs. Berman at the same time, but Richard starts drumming his fingers on the table and ruins the symmetry.

“Dad,” Lily whispers. “Stop that!” He looks confused, and she says, “Stop fidgeting.”

Afterward, in the car, on the way to ballet, Lily’s mom says, “Were you even paying attention?”

“Yes.” Lily pulls on her tights and leotard in the back seat, because she had no time to change at school.

“What did Mrs. Berman say?”

“I can alert a teacher.”

“Why?” Sophie asks, from the front seat. “What did you do?”

“Nothing!” Lily is pinning her bun as fast as she can. Sophie will be fine, because Level 7 starts later, but Lily needs split-second timing.

As soon as her mom pulls up at the studio, Lily jumps out. Inside the studio building, she races up carpeted stairs with her dance bag and backpack. She can’t be late. She’s already been late twice, and her teacher, Gwen, says, If you are late again, you can’t come in. But it’s not Lily’s fault she had to go to a team meeting.

In the waiting room, she pulls off her boots and stuffs her feet into ballet slippers. Through the glass studio wall, she can see everybody standing at the barre. Softly, she opens the inner door.

“Lily!” Gwen snaps. “No. Just no.”

Lily retreats and sinks into the waiting-room couch. If she could have explained—but no excuses is her teacher’s motto. Gwen’s hair is short, and she has a short temper. She chops off everything, even her own name, which should be Guinevere.

If Lily were in Level 7, she would be early. She would be changing with Sophie in the dressing room. Lily watches the girls of Level 7 walk like ducks in their point shoes to the big studio. As they pass through the waiting room, Lily tucks her legs under her, so she’ll be inconspicuous—but Sophie’s teacher sees her. Sophie’s teacher, Nastia, owns the studio, and she sees everything, even a speck of lint, because she trained at the Vaganova Academy, in St. Petersburg, where you had to work even when you were tiny children. Nastia wears black tracksuits. Only black. Her voice is harsh, even as she says, “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

“I was late,” Lily confesses. For a second, she hopes Nastia will take her to class and tell Gwen to let her in—but no.

Nastia declares, “Late students waste everybody’s time.”

And so Lily spends ninety minutes on the couch with two mothers sewing spangles onto tutus. One tutu is lilac and silver for the Lilac Fairy. The other is crimson and jet black for Don Q.

“This was Hannah’s,” the lilac mother says, “but I had to get it altered for Olivia.”

“You can’t win,” the crimson mother says. “I had to get this altered, and it’s new.”

“They keep growing,” the lilac mother says, as Chopin seeps from the big studio.

When Level 6 is done, Maddy and Scarlett rush out to tell Lily they feel so bad and Gwen is so mean, but then they zip up their coats and run downstairs, because their moms are waiting. All the girls run down, but Lily has to wait for Sophie’s class to finish before her mom will come.

She pulls out her book and violet gel pen.

In the sky, Ambrose spent all her time gathering new diamond stars but while she did that she was looking for the other swans. If she could find them the spell would be broken and she could fly all day.

She is still writing when Sophie’s class is done, and she keeps writing in the car. At night, she sits up writing because she cannot sleep.

The next day, she writes in the lunchroom, but it’s so loud that she takes refuge under a table.

Her classmate Rachel bends down to look at her. “Are you O.K.?”

“Oh, my God, Lily’s sitting on the floor,” says a girl named Kayla, who posts pictures of herself with boys.

“Honey, you can’t sit under there,” Mrs. Berman says. “Come on out now. Do you need a break?”

Lily takes a break in the nurse’s office, with its jars of cotton balls and Popsicle sticks. Her temperature is fine, and so is her blood pressure. She tells the nurse she is not sick, and the nurse says, “I know. We just check everybody.” Then a seventh-grade boy comes in with a staple in his hand, and it’s almost an emergency. While the nurse is taking care of him, Lily grabs her bag and escapes to the girls’ bathroom. She waits and waits for a stall. Once inside, she pulls off her clothes, wriggles into tights and a leotard, and then pulls on her jeans and shirt. Camouflaged, she stands at the sink and pins up her hair as though she were the Lilac Fairy preparing for a ball. By the time she is done, she has missed social studies.

On the phone that night, Debra says, “But I do worry about her.”

Why is her mom always talking about her? Lily slips out of bed and creeps to the stairs. Sitting on the landing, high above the entrance hall, she sees Debra pacing below.

“Mom?”

“Lily Anne Eisen!” Debra says, as though Lily is the one doing something wrong. “Get back in bed.”

Phone in hand, Debra runs upstairs and tucks Lily in and tells her she loves her, and Dad loves her, and Sophie loves her.

“And Max,” Lily says, because she can’t forget the dog.

“Right,” Debra says. And they will always be a family and that will never change.

Once her mom is gone, Lily sits up in bed with her novel and her clip-on book light.

The spell originated from a witch who turned swans into girls. The witch sends girls down from the Swan Kingdom to live on earth.

The witch wears black from head to toe and sees everything with X-ray eyes. She calls you sweetie but she is not.

In the morning, Lily has trouble waking up. When she is supposed to be eating breakfast, she says, “I’m sick. Can I stay home?”

Debra says, “What are your symptoms?”

“I’m tired.”

“Tired isn’t a symptom,” Sophie says.

Lily says, “Yes, it is.”

Since being tired is Lily’s only symptom, Debra makes her go to school and then to tutoring with Megan and then to therapy with Danielle. By that time, Lily can barely keep her eyes open. She sits on a blue couch near a window with a large plant on the sill. The plant is a philodendron with drooping leaves.

Danielle says, How are you feeling, and Lily says sleepy. Danielle says, You look sleepy. Then she asks, How is the novel going? Lily says good. Danielle says O.K.!

There are board games in Danielle’s office, but Lily would rather rest. She closes her eyes for a few minutes—actually, for half an hour.

“Lily?”

She opens her eyes.

Danielle says, “I hear you are having trouble sleeping at night.”

Lily says, “I think that plant needs more sun.”

Danielle says, “You’re probably right.”

“You could get a plant light.”

“It’s not really my plant,” Danielle says. “It’s a shared office. I’m only here Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

Lily feels bad—not for Danielle but for the philodendron who never asked to be here. “It’s sad,” she says.

Danielle looks at her encouragingly. Lily looks at the plant.

Unfortunately, the less Lily talks, the more everybody wants to know what she is thinking. On the weekend, her dad says, “How is Ambrose?” But she does not feel like showing her book to him—or anyone.

In bed, at her dad’s house, Lily writes Chapter 4, which is about how Ambrose runs into trouble. Her mischievous ninth sister, Ruby, steals her wings, and it’s a disaster because only Ambrose can fly. If anyone else tries, she will end up plummeting to her death. So now Ambrose has to steal back her wings and save her littlest sister, whose name is Pearl. Meanwhile, it looks like the witch is about to reappear.

“Hey, Lily.” Her dad walks into her room without knocking. “It’s almost midnight.”

“You should be asleep,” she tells him.

“You’re funny.” Richard sits on her bed.

“Dad,” she says, “I’m trying to work.”

“Maybe you should work during the daytime, kiddo.”

She closes her book. “I don’t have time.”

“Really?”

“Dad, I’m busy every minute.”

“You’ve been taking some expensive naps.”

She looks at him, puzzled. Then she understands, and she’s a little scared. “How much does Danielle cost?”

“That’s not important.”

“But you said that she’s expensive.”

He’s getting irritated. “She’s not expensive if you’re awake.”

“I don’t have to go.”

“You said you like Danielle.”

“I do! But I don’t want to spend all your money.”

“I’m not talking about money.” He shifts his weight on the bed.

“Then why did you say ‘expensive naps’?”

“O.K., that’s not the point. That’s not the message I want to convey.”

“What do you want to convey?”

“Your mom and I—” he begins.

“Why do you always say ‘your mom and I’?” Lily asks, because who else would he be talking about? Some other person’s mom?

“Listen to me. We’re worried about you.”

“What are you worried about?”

“School,” he tells her. “Sleep. How you are feeling.”

“Can I be homeschooled?”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Who’s going to homeschool you?”

“Mom?”

“Don’t you think Mom does enough?”

“If we homeschool, she won’t have to drive me anymore.”

“No. The point is, you need to go to actual school and see people.”

“But I don’t like people.”

“Lily.” He looks like he might laugh, but he does not.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t like school.”

“Nobody likes sixth grade.”

“Sophie did.”

“This is not about Sophie.”

Lily hugs her novel to her chest. “She’s more pragmatic.”

“Where do you come up with this stuff?” her dad says.

Then Lily feels guilty, because her mom came up with that, and now it’s plagiarism. “Forget I said it,” she says earnestly.

Her dad leans over and hugs her hard. “Just tell me what’s on your mind.”

She swallows. “Dad, I just don’t like—”

“You don’t like . . . ?” He seems to dread her answer.

“This time period.”

“What?”

“I mean, I don’t want to die in childbirth, but—”

“Lily, what are you talking about?”

Her voice is pleading. “I don’t like this century.”

Richard shakes his head, bewildered. He adjusts his glasses. “Well, what century would you prefer?”

Then she’s stuck, because all the centuries were terrible for girls, just like her mother told her, and she knows that they were also bad for Jews. As a Jewish girl, she would probably be dead. “It’s just so sad,” she says.

“What’s making you sad,” Richard asks. “Is it me?”

“No, not you,” she reassures him.

“You know you can tell me anything,” Richard says. “You know I’d do anything for you.”

Then come back, she thinks. Live with us all the time. In the nights and in the mornings. But since she can’t have that, she asks, “Could I just try learning at home?”

“You can’t run away from school.”

“I’ll do better at home! I learn better one on one.”

“Yeah, that’s why you have Megan.”

“I know but—”

“Are you learning better with her?” He’s got her now, because she is still failing math, even though she works with Megan twice a week. “Prove it to me,” Richard tells her. “Prove that you learn better one on one.”

Lily sits with Megan, and they fill in the missing numbers in equations. There is something about if there’s a ten it’s easy, and if there’s a five you can pretend it’s a ten and divide everything in half.

“Don’t let decimals scare you,” Megan says. She has golden hair and sapphire eyes. She could be a princess if she wanted, and she loves math. Megan used to be a ski instructor, but then she broke up with her boyfriend. She drove all the way from Aspen, Colorado, to Cherry Hill, New Jersey, to be a teacher, except she makes more money tutoring. Now she has a new boyfriend, and they are getting married in June. Lily has seen pictures of Megan’s dress, which is strapless. Megan says, “Just multiply, and then deal with the decimals at the end. Don’t be intimidated.”

“O.K.,” Lily says.

“Don’t guess,” Megan says. “Use the method. Are you with me?”

Lily is staring and staring at the equation 6 x _ = 4.2. “Seven?” she says.

“Good,” Megan says. “You know six times seven is forty-two. But what we have here is four point two. Where do you put the decimal point?”

“Is it point seven?” Lily asks.

“Exactly! ” Megan says. “Ding, ding, ding!”

Megan was a cheerleader in high school. She is a little bit dramatic but a good teacher nonetheless. Lily loves that word, “nonetheless.” When you are with Megan you feel like you know what you are doing. Nonetheless, you take the test alone.

All alone, Lily sits with her math test in Mrs. Berman’s office. It’s because she got a twelve per cent the first time. She sits with her chin in her hand, and she has a method, and she’s practiced, but there are a lot of problems. Fractions and ratios and cross multiplication. There are also word problems, which Lily was not expecting.

“If one bag of sugar weighs 14.5 kg, how much would 6 bags weigh?”

Isn’t that a lot of sugar? Why would you need that much sugar for anything? Maybe if you were a bakery? Multiply, she thinks. Worry about the decimal later. But multiplying is tricky because you end up with more place values than you had before. She hears Megan’s voice. “Don’t be intimidated!” She hears her dad’s voice. “Prove it!” But she isn’t sure where to put the decimal point. She isn’t sure she multiplied right, either.

“How was the test?” her mom asks as soon as Lily gets into the car after school.

“I don’t know.” She regrets sitting in front, where her mom can see her easily.

“Better than last time?”

“I’m not sure.” Lily pins up her hair as they drive to the high school to pick up Sophie.

“Megan says you are doing great work,” Debra says.

“But it’s different when she’s not there.”

Lily’s mom scans the front of the building. “Where is your sister?”

Sophie is five minutes late. Then seven minutes late.

Lily’s arms are tired as she pins and then unpins her hair to try again. “If I’m late, I can’t go to class.”

“Stop it.”

Lily pulls out her book and rereads the ending of Chapter 4.

You are not going to get your chance said the evil witch. I have scattered all the other swan girls and you will never find them. Yes I will said Ambrose, even if I have to travel to the ends of the earth. The pelican will help me I will find her on the mountain. Good luck said the evil witch you’ll need it.

“Hi.” The car door slams.

“Could you not slam the door?” Debra says as she starts driving.

“You’re making me late!” Lily accuses her sister.

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are, obviously! If your class was first, you’d be on time.”

“Oh, my God, stop,” Sophie says.

Lily turns around to glare. “You only care about yourself and your friends.”

“At least I have some.”

“I’m going to pull over,” Debra says.

“No!” Lily wails, because she doesn’t have time for that.

“What is your problem?” Sophie demands.

Lily is clutching her novel as tears pour down her face. “Please, Mom, keep driving.”

“Apologize to your sister,” Debra tells Sophie.

“Because she’s crying?”

“Because you made her cry.”

“She makes herself cry!”

“Now.”

“I’m sorry!” Sophie says when they pull up at the studio. She snatches her bag and leaves, not quite slamming the door but closing it hard.

Lily should follow, but she doesn’t. “It’s too late.”

“No, it’s not. You have two minutes,” her mom says.

“I can’t go in there looking like this.” Lily’s hair is half up, half down, her face is hot and red in the passenger-side mirror.

“Sweetie.” Her mom hugs her as best she can over the gearshift and the emergency brake.

“I wish I was little again,” Lily sobs.

“Me, too,” her mom says.

“You wish I was little, or you wish you were little?”

“I don’t know. Both!” her mom says. “All of the above.”

“Why are you crying?” Lily asks.

“Because you are.”

They look at each other, and Lily says, “I think I failed my test.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Debra says.

“Yes, it does!”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“But how?”

“We’ll talk to Megan,” Debra says. “We’ll talk to your teacher. We’ll make a plan.”

“It’s too late.”

“Go!” her mom says, like the pelican. “You can do it. Run.”

Go, Lily tells herself. Go, nonetheless. She plunges Ambrose into her dance bag, wipes her face with her jacket sleeve. Dashes up the stairs. She runs as fast as she can, but she doesn’t make it.

She hears the music. Through the glass wall, she sees everybody at the barre. She almost runs downstairs again—but then she realizes that it’s not Gwen teaching class. They have a substitute! It’s Cassandra, who isn’t strict at all.

Lily pins up her hair and takes a breath. She slips into the studio to stand between Maddy and Scarlett.

“You got lucky,” Maddy whispers, because Cassandra doesn’t mind whispering, either.

“I know!” Lily says.

“Stand tall,” Cassandra says. “Shoulders down. Elbows up.”

Lily stands tall; she points her toes as she extends her leg. Her arms are tired, and in the mirror her face is flushed, but she doesn’t think anyone can tell that she has been crying. By the time barre is done, her cheeks don’t even look that red anymore.

Cassandra says, “Come out to center.” The class stands spaced apart. “That’s it,” Cassandra says. “Lily, lift your head.”

Through the glass wall of the studio, Lily glimpses Nastia, all in black. Nastia, who sees everything—but she didn’t catch Lily sneaking in.

Only Lily’s classmates know that she was late, and they have already forgotten. That’s how it is when you are dancing. You can only think about what you are doing now. You breathe. You bend, and you come up again. You stand with your chest open and your shoulders back. Line up in threes to practice leaps. Wait in your corner, and lift your wings to fly. ♦

This is drawn from the author’s upcoming story collection.