“Funny, we women see it the other way. That no matter what we achieve or what barriers we surmount—that we are the ones destined to have to give up everything for some man.”
“So, the battle of the sexes rages on, even in liberated America?”
“Are you less liberated on the other side of the Atlantic?” I nibble my order of fries, and offer him some, which he refuses. He orders a fish entrée, which arrives with a side of fried bananas.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“How so?”
“Well, my family hopes that I’ll marry a girl there, a friend I grew up with.”
I am stunned.
“So, you’re engaged?” I accuse. Suddenly Evan’s image looms before me, like the Statue of Liberty, a beacon of freedom in a blue bandana. Evan: with his beautiful skin and hair the color of caramels, and deliberately casual clothing. For all his ambiguities and perplexities and maddening mystery, at least Evan is not engaged!
“Not exactly.”
“In America, we make our own marriages.”
“Yes, and the results are rather dismal, or so I hear.”
“Isn’t it a bit archaic to be arranging marriages, in this day and age?”
“Well, it isn’t arranged. It’s more…expected.”
“So, you ran away to America, like all those poor stiffs before you from past centuries, seeking freedom from tyranny?” Evan is gaining height exponentially in my estimation, while David is plummeting faster than a penny dropped from a skyscraper. This is not the way it was supposed to be. David is supposed to help me forget Evan, not frame Evan in a better light.
He grins. “Yes, I suppose I have. In any case, I wanted to experience another culture. I suppose it’s an experiment of sorts, to see if I can break free from the bonds of my own.”
“Am I part of the experiment?” I dab my fries forcibly in a blob of ketchup, as if stubbing out cigarettes. Careen is going to pay for setting me up with an engaged guy.
“Perhaps you are the unexpected discovery in the experiment—the path that opens up and leads to some quantum leap.”
“I hope you’re good at leaping, because I may just push you out this window.” I gaze down at the crowded sidewalk below our window.
“Are you upset?” he questions earnestly.
“I don’t know how it works in your country, but in America a man who courts one woman while engaged to another is considered a cad.”
“I’m not engaged. It’s simply something my family hopes for, or, rather, expects of me. No formal arrangements have been made.”
“Well, I’m delighted to hear that they’re not sewing the bridal train while you gulp your telapia.” I slurp the rest of my egg cream. Slurping grates on David’s nerves, and so I give it a good last go. “Well, you ought to go back and marry your childhood friend,” I say flippantly, and he looks generally wounded by this.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because if you’ve led her on, then it’s the honorable thing to do.”
“Ah, that’s very American.” He sighs.
~ 11 ~
Bluebird
Our ballet company is performing The Sleeping Beauty at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I wear the bejeweled pale blue bodice and a deeper blue tutu that is two-toned; Sinclair has pulled out all the stops for my costume. Dylan comes to see me, bringing along my parents, and, of course, Careen and Mr. Palmer. It is a gray, wet day, and the dancers leap over the pavement puddles, filing into the theatre with costumes zipped up tightly into garment bags and hair arranged in stiff buns at the nape of the neck. There is a problem with the stage; someone has mistakenly waxed the wooden floor thinking this would be helpful. One of the dancers takes matters into his own hands and sprinkles flat Coca Cola over the slick surface.
We dress and stretch, and scant conversation is made backstage. Each dancer has his or her own individual routines executed before performing, whether a series of stretches, or silent meditations. For me, it’s rose petals from my first performance at age sixteen. I’ve sewn them into a tiny square of white satin, and I pin them just inside the bodice, for luck. I perform my stretches and plies. My partner, Benoit, nineteen years old, and a visiting guest artist from France, sips soda and lies languidly on the floor staring into the wings. I try to entice him to practice with me, but for him this is bad luck.
Careen appears backstage, and her frenetic energy is almost too much for me. I need these quiet moments before going onstage for concentration, and I’m still miffed at her for the coffee shop fiasco.
“My dear, you look positively otherworldly!” she gushes, darting about on all sides of me, like a hen pecking the air, to get a good look. “Who did your makeup?”
“Sinclair helped me with it.” I glance in the mirror at the exaggerated eyeliner and false eyelashes that are necessary to keep one from looking washed-out under the intense stage lights. Sinclair added a silvery-blue glitter eye shadow that gives me a doe-eyed look.
“The costume is lovely. Like a summer day and a summer’s eve rolled into one,” she says of the two striking shades of blue. “What sort of bird are you?”
“A blue one.” My tone is flat. I’m hoping to quell further conversation. Careen senses my mood. I generally find Careen’s effervescence energizing, except before a performance when I need to go inward and focus for the task ahead.
“Are Dylan and my parents here?”
“Yes, and some others.”
“Others?” I nearly stab myself with my needle as I make a last minute stitch on my pointe shoes. “Other than Brandon?”
“Your man is here!” She delivers this news with a clapping of hands and awaits my response.
“David is in England for a wedding,” I report, matter-of-factly.
“Oh, dear, not his own?”
“No, not that I would care.” I inject just enough reprimand in my voice to let Careen know that she’s walking on thin ice with me.
“Not him. Herman. Herman of Troy!” she clarifies.
My insides have suddenly hollowed out, as if every vital organ has plummeted to my toes and liquefied, and is leaking out of my body.
“Evan?” I manage weakly.
The news that Evan is in the audience, that Evan is indeed anywhere within a mile radius of me, is overwhelming.
“Did he bring a date?”
Careen blushes in reference to the girl from the coffee shop. “No. Nothing came of that!” she whispers, gesturing as if she wished to sweep the entire affair all under a rug for good. “That’s history.”
I breathe new life from the air about me at this revelation. “Why do you call him my man?” I say, trying to maintain my composure before Careen, who I no longer trust with vulnerable Evan information.
“Well, clearly he is. It’s evident to anyone with any sort of internal radar. It’s as if you’re a radio that changes frequency whenever he’s near, or even at the mention of his name.”
I have the urge to dash out the nearest exit and run until my legs give out. There is no way that I can go out on stage now, knowing that Evan is in the audience. I have always battled stage fright, even when there were no more harmless critics in the audience than my parents, who think everything I do is wonderful.
I pace the small space. Careen remarks, “My dear, now you look like a mad bird. Settle down. This is your opportunity to shine a bit for him and garner some admiration. Men love to watch a woman in her element.”
“Except this isn’t my element. It’s his.” I remind her.
“Oh, dear, I forgot,” she says, and then catches herself. “I mean, so it is! Even better! He’ll be better able than any of us dilettantes to assess—I mean appreciate—your talent!” Then, sensing my distress, “If you like, I can lure him out of the theatre on some mad pretense when it’s your turn to dance, and hold him hostage until you’re done.”
I assure her that it will be fine, and manage to shoo her back to her seat beside Mr. Palmer. The performance will begin
shortly, and I am not sure whether to wish it delayed, or wish it were underway so that I don’t have very long to dwell on the fact that I am about to put myself in perhaps the most vulnerable situation of all with Evan, which is to dance before him.
It is Sinclair who finds me shivering outside an exit, under an awning, trying to wrestle some air into my lungs.
“See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance. They are waiting on the shingle, will you come and join the dance?” he quotes Lewis Carroll in his classy Scottish accent.
“You better get inside and warm up. You’ll pull a muscle if you go onstage cold like that,” he warns, all business-like.
I grab his arm, and he turns, sensing desperation.
“He’s here, Sinclair. He’s in the audience.” He looks blankly at me and I qualify, “Alexander the Great! Nothing can save me now, not even the Technicolor Dreamcoat!”
“Ah,” he says, with a nod. “I must see him, point him out.” With sudden purpose, he yanks me inside and nearly drags me, like a wild game bird shot out of the sky, to the wings where we mingle in the folds of the curtain. Sinclair, in his black ensemble and Kenneth Cole shoes, peeps his head out of the curtains like an elegant spy. I manage to spot Evan; he is seated on the aisle beside Dylan, Brandon on the other side of Dylan, and my parents on the other side of Brandon. Dylan and Brandon chat, while Evan, in a slate blue shirt and jeans, leans back, one leg extended into the aisle, with that expansive way he has of owning space. Sinclair scoots away from me and I watch some of the dancers rehearse behind the heavy velvet curtain.
Sinclair returns, having introduced himself to my family and Evan. “Well, honey, he’s not in the closet, but I’d sure like to get him alone in one.” He fans himself with his hand, as if to disperse some inner heat.
After the performance my parents come backstage. Mom brings my favorite flowers, daisies, with some yellow roses interspersed to give the bouquet gravitas. Dad is all teary-eyed, as if I’ve just won the Olympics or the Nobel Prize, so choked up, he can only hug me. Brandon and Dylan trickle in, with Careen and her husband behind them. And lastly, Evan, who, I’m sure, is trailing behind them to give himself more time to dream up something favorable to say for my fractured performance.
“So you tripped, no big deal,” Dylan reports, with his usual lack of tact. Dylan, with his shoulder-length dark silky hair and blue eyes and devil-may-care aura, manages to invoke stares from the female dancers.
“Her partner knocked her off balance. It was like dancing with a chair,” Evan reports. He stands back from everyone, but seems to study the family dynamics.
Careen wiggles her eyebrows at me as if to say, “See, I told you he would see what the rest of us would miss.”
“You’ve got exceptional balance. Even when you’re not over the box of your shoes, you stay up there on pointe. It was that klutz they paired you with that was the problem. I was tempted to get out of my seat and get up there and take over,” he says, scratching his neck, and looking almost shy as everyone turns to him, deferring to his expertise.
They decide to make themselves scarce, and leave me alone with Evan. Perhaps they feel bad that I stumbled out of my pirouette during the pas de deux, although I managed to pick up the choreography shortly thereafter, and they sense that Evan, like a doctor, can mend the injured patient.
“You’ve got natural grace,” Evan says, without sentiment, and I believe he is giving me an honest assessment.
“I’m the least trained of anyone in this company, as you can clearly see. I haven’t got the cleanest technique. I only started dancing when I was sixteen. I woke up one morning filled with regret for not having done the thing I had always dreamed of doing, so I figured I would start anyway, even if it was a late start.”
“With earlier training you could have gone further than anyone here, in my opinion.”
“Well, I’m glad this is over,” I say, suddenly embarrassed.
Evan eases onto a bench, swinging one leg over the bench and straddling it like a graceful cowboy. His leather jacket is folded over one arm. He watches me.
“What?” I say, as I sit in the chair and begin to untie the ribbons of my pointe shoes. He shrugs, but does not stop looking at me. “Pretty good turnout, for someone who started at sixteen,” he says, of my feet. All of the other girls have changed clothes already, and most have left the theatre. One of the male dancers, Gilbert, pops in to say goodbye. He sweeps into the room and plants a kiss on my cheek, and offers a hearty handshake to Evan.
“Is this your brother?” he asks.
“A friend,” I say, and he replies, “Huh, you two look alike,” and then is gone in a flurry of crepe, transporting some of the scenery.
“What?” I ask gently, because Evan watches me still.
“You want some help with that?” Evan doesn’t move like other people; he relocates like water, in some wave that you can’t detect until it has washed over you. He stands behind me and helps me unhook the tutu and offers a hand that feels hot to the touch as I step out of it, and one that feels even hotter as it rests on my waist. He seems to drink in my figure as I stand there in the jeweled blue bodice and pink tights and silvery heels I’ve slipped into. He gently takes the bobby pins from my hair and lets my curls fall softly over my neck. Could there be a more perfect moment in life than this?
We are all going for dinner at Jalsha, an Indian restaurant on MacDougal Street, and I invite Evan.
“I can’t. I have to pack. I have an early plane.”
“Where are you going?” My heart sinks.
“I got the part in that new Fox series. We start eight weeks of filming in Vancouver.”
“You got the part?” It comes out sounding like an accusation.
“Don’t look so surprised.” He blushes.
“No, I didn’t mean it that way. I only meant—“
Dylan pops his head in. “Let’s go troops!” he commands, and Careen is suddenly behind him, jockeying for position in the doorway. “Take your time, my little Bluebird of Happiness, you can drive with Mr. Palmer and I. Your parents are going on ahead to the restaurant with Brandon!” She winks at me in a barely concealed plot.
Evan is moving toward the door. I’ve said something wrong. I’ve offended him in some way. He’ll be gone for eight weeks, and I have to say something to make it right.
“Evan.”
He turns to me.
“I only meant.” I don’t know what I am trying to say. Maybe I will never see him again; maybe the series will take off and he’ll move to the west coast for good, the way Dylan predicted all along. Perhaps I ought to say what I feel right now, while I have him alone, while I have these false eyelashes and silvery shoes and this dazzling costume to give me confidence. Or perhaps he’ll return in eight weeks and I’ll realize that there was plenty of time ahead for us, and I’ll wish that I had held back. Never give away too much to a man, always hold something back to preserve some of the mystery, my mother has always advised me.
“Don’t you want me to leave, so you can finish getting dressed?” He looks as if he realizes that he has not been chivalrous in remaining.
“The last thing in the world that I would ever wish for, would be for you to leave a room,” I confess ardently.
He watches me as if I were bringing him water in the desert.
“You say beautiful things, Sylvia,” he says, and leaves me to finish dressing.
~~~~~
We are dropping Sinclair at his apartment, along with his stash of elaborate tutus. I find Careen and Mr. Palmer in their car, Sinclair seated in front with them, Dylan in the back, looking like a disembodied head floating above a wall of colorful tutus stacked like tulle dominoes. There is only room for one more person in the back seat.
“Well, my little Bluebird of Happiness, you’ll have to sit on Herman of Troy’s lap,” Careen orders with an authority that even Dylan won’t dare challenge.
“I can’t sit in the back seat of a two-door c
ar.”
“Oh, heavens, the claustrophobia again. Mr. Palmer, I told you we should have taken the Ford.”
Sinclair has leapt from the passenger seat to allow Evan to slide into the back, and as I hesitate on the sidewalk, Sinclair whispers, “Best seat in the house,” and nudges me in.
The tutus are stacked to the ceiling, leaving Evan and I in our own little corner of the car, unseen by the others. As we pull away from the curb, I am engulfed by panic. I try to bolt from the seat like a colt thrashing against its stall, but there’s nowhere to go. Evan reacts, wrapping his arms around me and pinning me in place. He whispers, “there’s no escape this time,” his breath warm, and the smell of his cologne like the fresh air of some long-dreamed-of country. I’m torn between desire and fear but I surrender to Evan’s resolute grip, and Evan loosens his hold on me, encircling my waist with his arms, and pulling me up, with a thrust, deeper into his lap and further into his embrace. I watch the blur of lights beyond the car window, the rush of color of marquees, the jab of car horns, the pulsating life that is the city, while Evan’s hands slowly find their way to my lap, where he seems to tap out some tune with his fingers. In my earlier struggle my velvet skirt became bunched about my waist, and Evan inadvertently finds himself tapping out his tune on my thighs, where he lightly brushes his hands, only to discover the band of lace elastic at the top of my stockings. With a sharp intake of breath, he slips his fingers just over the tops of the stockings, his thumbs rubbing my skin, his strong hands kneading my thighs as he buries his face hungrily in my hair.
I can hear Sinclair jabbering away in the front seat, venting all the gossip of the ballet company into Careen’s captivated ears. Mr. Palmer silently guides the car over the avenue, while Dylan is a world away, on the other side of the car, beyond the wall of finery.
It’s as if some damn has burst inside Evan, the always-in-control Evan, and it suddenly gushes forth in some torrent of silent need, as his hands find their way everywhere on my body now, first squeezing my knees, then tracing my thighs, caressing my stomach, and up to my breasts, where he seems to find some solace in their softness. His tidal wave of emotion breaks over my body, and then just as suddenly it ceases. I visibly feel him relax and gain control, as his hands ebb from my breasts, which are almost sore from his sudden claim on them. He leans into me, his cheek brushing gently against mine, and when I turn to look at him his eyes are closed. He sinks back against the seat, just as we pull up alongside the brownstone. Sinclair is nimble as a dancer, out of his seat and lending me a hand out of the car, as if I were some red carpet celebrity. He takes one look at me, and knows something is up. He winks.
Blue Rose In Chelsea Page 10
