I ignore that. “Maybe this is just my size!”

“Try eating less sugar,” she goes on. “And water will flush out the fat,” she adds.

“I’m not going on a diet,” I say. “And why should I go on a diet if I’m so beautiful?” She’s not hearing me either.

“You are, honey. I’m just saying. I’ve been trying to protect you your whole life.”

She stormed out of the first ballet studio I was rejected from, raging, How dare that woman think she’s better than us. How dare she call you fat. You are beautiful, baby. Don’t let anyone tell you different. (She didn’t say I wasn’t beautiful, Mom. She just said I was fat.) But we also went to the weight-loss center in the strip mall by our house.

“I know, Mom,” I say. Her glass clinks on one of her rings, and her swallow is noisy. I picture her sitting at the kitchen counter, the box of Chablis at her elbow.

“Just think about your movie career,” she says. “Or television.”

“I want to be a dancer.”

“Well, can you be a fat dancer?”

“Yes!” I snap. What have I been doing all this time?

“Professionally, I mean,” she says impatiently.

I suck in a breath. “I got Angles. They seem to think I can be.”

“And what’s that supposed to do for you? You dance in Paris, and then what?”

I stumble. “I don’t know,” I say, but that’s not right. I’m going to Milan. Angles is the start of a huge career.

“I’m just trying to look out for you, Addie,” my mom is saying, her voice rising. “I have given everything up for you to be successful—”

“You have done everything for me, and I appreciate you so much,” I rush to say. “You have. But—”

“Oh, baby,” she says, subsiding, cutting me off at the knees. She sniffles. I guess we’re done.

We sit there quietly for a minute. I breathe in the dark. I can hear my friends faintly in the next room, the pulse of music. Finally she sighs. “Well, it’s good you’ll be off in Paris anyway, because I’m still moving,” she says. “I don’t need him.”

I tell her I’m excited for her, but I don’t ask for details. What does it matter where she’s going, right? I’ll be in Milan.

She talks for a bit more and then tells me she’s got to get her beauty rest and that I should be in bed; why am I up so late? When we hang up, I sit there for a second, watching the screen wink out.