The Best of Nancy Kress

by Nancy Kress

  “Good,” he said, not looking at me. “Just hold down the metaphors, Susan. You’re still too given to metaphors.”

  “New York Now could use a few metaphors. A feature magazine isn’t supposed to be a TV holo bite.”

  “A feature magazine isn’t art, either,” Michael retorted. “Let’s all keep that in mind.”

  “You’re in luck,” I said. “As it happens, I’m not a great lover of art.”

  I couldn’t decide whether to tell Deborah I had agreed to write about ballet. She would hate my writing about her world under threat.

  Which was a reason both for and against.

  September heat and long, cool shadows fought it out over the wide plaza of Lincoln Center. The fountain splashed, surrounded by tourists and students and strollers and derelicts. I thought Lincoln Center was ugly, shoe-box architecture stuck around a charmless expanse of stone unredeemed by a little splashing water. Michael said I only felt that way because I hated New York. If Lincoln Center had been built in Kentucky, he said, I would have admired it.

  I had remembered to get the electronic password from Deborah. Since the first murder, the New York State Theater changed it weekly. Late afternoon was heavy rehearsal time; the company was using the stage as well as the studios. I heard the Spanish bolero from the second act of Coppelia. Deborah had been trying to learn it for weeks. The role of Swanilda, the girl who pretends to be a doll, had first made the brilliant Caroline Olson a superstar.

  Privitera’s office was a jumble of dance programs, costume swatches, and computers. He made me wait for him twenty minutes. I sat and thought about what I knew about bioenhanced dancers, besides the fact that there weren’t supposed to have been any at City Ballet.

  There were several kinds of bioenhancement. All of them were experimental, all of them were illegal in The United States, all of them were constantly in flux as new discoveries were made and rushed onto the European, South American, and Japanese markets. It was a new science, chaotic and contradictory, like physics at the start of the last century, or cancer cures at the start of this one. No bioenhancements had been developed specifically for ballet dancers, who were an insignificant portion of the population. But European dancers submitted to experimental versions, as did American dancers who could travel to Berlin or Copenhagen or Rio for the very expensive privilege of injecting their bodies with tiny, unproven biological “machines.”

  Some nanomachines carried programming that searched out deviations in the body and repaired them to match surrounding tissue. This speeded the healing of some injuries some of the time, or only erratically, or not at all, depending on whom you believed. Jennifer Lang had been receiving these treatments, trying desperately to lessen the injury rate that went hand-in-hand with ballet. The nanomachines were highly experimental, and nobody was sure what long-term effect they might have, reproducing themselves in the human body, interacting with human DNA.

  Bone builders were both simpler and more dangerous. They were altered viruses, reprogrammed to change the shape or density of bones. Most of the experimental work had been done on old women with advanced osteoporosis. Some grew denser bones after treatment. The rest didn’t. In ballet, the legs are required to rotate 180 degrees in the hip sockets—the famous “turnout” that had destroyed so many dancers’ hips and knees. If bones could be altered to swivel 180 degrees naturally in their sockets, turnout would cause far less strain and disintegration. Extension could also be higher, making easier the spectacular arabesques and grand battement kicks.

  If the bones of the foot were reshaped, foot injuries could be lessened in the unnatural act of dancing on toe.

  Bioenhanced leg muscles could be stronger, for higher jumps, greater speed, more stamina.

  Anything that helped metabolic efficiency or lung capacity could help a dancer sustain movements. They could also help her keep down her weight without anorexia, the secret vice of the ballet world.

  Dancers in Europe began to experiment with bioenhancement. First cautiously, clandestinely. Then scandalously. Now openly, as a mark of pride. A dancer with the Royal Ballet or the Bolshoi or the Nederlands Dans Theater who didn’t have his or her body enhanced was considered undevoted to movement. A dancer at the New York City Ballet who did have his or her body enhanced was considered undevoted to art.

  Privitera swept into his office without apology for being late. “Ah, there you are. What can I do for you?” His accent was very light, but still the musical tones of his native Tuscany were there. It gave his words a deceptive intimacy.

  “I’ve come about my daughter, Deborah Anders. She’s in D level at SAB. She’s the one who—”

  “Yes, yes, yes, I know who she is. I know all my dancers, even the very young ones. Of course. But shouldn’t you be talking with Madame Alois? She is the director of our School.”

  “But you make all the important decisions,” I say, trying to smile winningly.

  Privitera sat on a wing chair. He must have been in his seventies, yet he moved like a young man: straight strong back, light movements. The famous bright blue eyes met mine shrewdly. His vitality and physical presence on stage had made him a legendary dancer; now he was simply a legend. Whatever he decided the New York City Ballet should be, it became. I didn’t like him. That absolute power bothered me—even though it was merely power over an art form seen by only a fraction of the people who watched soccer or football.

  “I have three questions about Deborah, Mr. Privitera. First—and I’m sure you hear this all the time—can you give me some idea of her chances as a professional dancer? She’ll have to apply to college this fall, if she’s going to go, and although what she really wants is to dance professionally, if that’s not going to happen then we need to think about other—”

  “Yes, yes,” Privitera said, swatting away this question like the irrelevancy he considered it to be. “But dance is never a second choice, Ms. Anders.”

  “Matthews,” I said. “Susan Matthews. Anders is Deborah’s name.”

  “If Deborah has it in her to be a dancer, that’s what she will be. If not—” He shrugged. People who were not dancers ceased to exist for Anton Privitera.

  “That’s what I want to know. Does she have it in her to be a professional dancer? Her teachers say she has good musicality and rhythm, but…”

  My hands gripped together so tightly the skin was gray.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps. You must leave it to me to judge when the time comes.”

  “But that’s what I’m saying,” I said, as agreeably as I could. “The time has come. College—”

  “You cannot hurry art. If Deborah is meant to be a dancer, she will become one. Leave it to me, dear.”

  Dear. It was what he called all his dancers. I saw that it had just slipped out. Leave it to me, dear. I know best. How often did he say that in class, in rehearsal, during a choreography session, before a performance?

  The muted strains of Coppelia drifted through the walls. I said, “Then let me ask my second question. As a parent, I’m naturally concerned about Deborah’s safety since these awful murders. What steps has City Ballet taken to ensure the safety of the students and dancers?”

  The intense eyes contracted to blue shards. But I could see the moment he decided the question was within a parent’s right to ask. “The police do not think there is danger to the students. This…madman, this bestia, apparently attacks only full-fledged dancers, soloists and principals who have tried to reach art through medicine and not through dancing. No dancer in my company or my school is bioenhanced. My dancers believe as I do: You can achieve art only through talent and work, through opening yourself to the dance, not through mechanical aids. What they do at the ABT—that is not art! Besides,” he added, with an abrupt descent to the practical, “students cannot afford bioenhancing operations.”

  Idealism enforced by realism—I saw the combination that kept the City Ballet a success, despite the technically superior performances of bioenhanced dancers. I could al
most hear dancers and patrons alike: ‘The only real ballet.’ ‘Dance that preserves the necessary illusion that the performers’ bodies and the audience’s are fundamentally the same.’ ‘My dear, he’s simply the most wonderful man, saving the precious traditions that made dance great in the first place. We’ve pledged $20,000—’

  I decided to push. “But Jennifer Lang apparently found a way to afford illegal bioenhancements that—”

  “That has nothing to do with your Deborah,” Privitera said, standing in one fluid movement. His blue eyes were arctic. “Now if you will excuse me, many things call me.”

  “But you haven’t said what you are doing for the students’ safety,” I said, not rising from my chair, trying to sound as if my only interest were parental. “Please, I need to know. Deborah…”

  He barely repressed a sigh. “We have increased security, Ms. Anders. Electronic surveillance both at SAB and Lincoln Center has been added to, with specifics that I cannot discuss. We have hired additional escorts for those students performing small professional roles who must leave Lincoln Center after ten at night. We have created new emphasis on teaching our young dancers the importance, the complete necessity, of training their bodies for dance, not relying on drugs and operations that can only offer tawdry imitations of the genuine experience of art.”

  I doubted City Ballet had actually done all that: it had only been three days since Jennifer Lang’s murder. But Privitera’s rhetoric helped me ask my last questions.

  “Have any other parents withdrawn their sons and daughters from SAB? For that matter, have any of your dancers altered their performance schedules? How has the company as a whole been affected?”

  Privitera looked at me with utter scorn. “If a dancer—even a student dancer—leaves me because some bestia is killing performers who do what I have insisted my dancers not do—such a so-called dancer should leave. There is no place for such a dancer in my school or my company. Don’t you understand, Ms. Anders—this is the New York City Ballet.”

  He left. Through the open door the music was clear: still the Spanish dance from Coppelia. The girl who turned herself into a beautiful doll.

  Michael was right. I was definitely too given to metaphors.

  As I walked down the hall, it occurred to me that Privitera hadn’t mentioned increased bioscanning. Surely that would make the most sense—discover which dancers were attaining their high jumps and strong développés through bioenhancement, and then eliminate those dancers from the purity of the company? Before some bestia did it first.

  Deborah, I knew, was taking an extra class in Studio 3. I shouldn’t go. If I went, we would only fight again. I pushed open the door to Studio 3.

  I sat on a hard small chair with the ballet mothers waiting for the class to end. I knew better than to talk to any of them. They all wanted their daughters to succeed in ballet.

  Barre warm-ups were over. The warm air smelled of rosin on wood. Dancers worked in the center of the floor, sweat dripping off their twirling and leaping bodies. Bourees, pirouettes, entrechats. “Non, non!” the teacher called, a retired French dancer whom I had never seen smile. “When you jump, your arms must help. They must pull you through from left to right. Like this.”

  Deborah did the step wrong. “Non, non!” the teacher called. “Like this!”

  Deborah still did it wrong. She grimaced. I felt my stomach tighten.

  Deborah tried again. It was still wrong. The teacher gestured toward the back of the room. Deborah walked to the barre and practiced the step alone while the rest of the class went on leaping. Plié, relevé, then…I didn’t know the names of the rest of these steps. Whatever they were, she was still doing them wrong. Deborah tried over and over again, her face clenched. I couldn’t watch.

  When Deborah was fourteen, she ran away from home in St. Louis to her father’s hovel in New York, the same father she had not seen since she was three. She wanted to dance for Anton Privitera, she said. I demanded that Pers, whom I had divorced for desertion, send her back. He refused. Deborah moved into his rat-trap on West 110th, way outside Manhattan’s patrolled zone. The lack of police protection didn’t deter her, the filthy toilet down the hall didn’t deter her, the nine-year-old who was shot dealing sunshine on the stoop next door didn’t deter her. When I flew to New York, she cried but refused to go home. She wanted to dance for Anton Privitera.

  You can’t physically wrestle a fourteen-year-old onto a plane. You can argue, and scream, and threaten, and plead, and cry, but you cannot physically move her. Not without a court order. I filed for breach of custody.

  Pers did the most effective thing you can do in the New York judicial system: nothing. Since Pers was an indigent periodically on public assistance, the court appointed a public defender for him. The public defender had 154 cases. He asked for three continuances in a row. The judge had a docket full six months ahead. In less than a year and a half Deborah would be sixteen, legally entitled to leave home. She auditioned for Privitera, and the School of American Ballet accepted her.

  Another kid was shot, this one on the subway just before Pers’s stop. She was twelve. A boy was knifed, a young mother was raped, houses were torched. Pers’s lawyer resigned. Another was appointed, who immediately filed for a continuance.

  I quit my job with St. Louis On-Line and moved to New York. I left behind a new promotion, a house I loved, and a man I had just started to care about. I found work on Michael’s magazine, for half the prestige and two-thirds the salary, in a city twice as expensive and three times as dangerous. I took a two-room apartment on West Seventy-fifth, shabby but decent, just inside the patrolled zone. From my living room window I could see the shimmer of the electronic fence marking the zone. The shimmer bent to exclude all of Central Park south of Seventieth. I bought a gun.

  After a few tense weeks, Deborah moved in with me. We lived with piles of toe shoes and surgical tape, with leotards and tights drying on a line strung across the living room, with Dance magazine in tattered third-hand copies that would go on to be somebody else’s fourth-hand copies, with bunions and inflamed tendons and pulled ligaments. We lived with Deborah’s guilt and my anger. At night I lay awake on the pull-out sofa, staring at the ceiling, remembering the day Deborah had started kindergarten and I had opened a college fund for her. She refused now to consider college. She wanted to dance for Anton Privitera.

  Privitera had not yet invited her to join the company. She had just turned seventeen. This was her last year with the School. If she weren’t invited into the corps de ballet this year, she could forget about dancing for the New York City Ballet.

  I sat with the ballet mothers and watched. Deborah’s extension was not as high as some of the other girls’, her strength not always enough to sustain a slow, difficult move.

  So glamorous! the ballet mothers screeched. So beautiful! So wonderful for a girl to know so young what she wants to do with her life! The ballet mothers apparently never saw the constant injuries, the fatigue, the competition that made every friend a deadly rival, the narrowing down of a young world until there is only one definition of success: Do I get to dance for Privitera? Everything else is failure. Life and death, determined at seventeen. “I don’t know what I’ll do if Jeannie isn’t asked to join the company,” Jeannie’s mother told me. “It would be like we both died. Maybe we would.”

  “You’re so unfair, Mom!” Deborah shouted at me periodically in the tiny, jammed apartment. “You never see the good side of dancing! You’re so against me!”

  Is it so unfair to hope that your child will be forced out of a life that can only break her body and her heart? A life whose future will belong only to those willing to become human test tubes for inhuman biological experiments?

  Nicole Heyer, the dead ABT dancer, had apparently come to the United States from Germany because she could not compete with the dazzlingly bioenhanced dancers in her own country. Jennifer Lang, an ordinary girl from an ordinary Houston family, had lacked the money for maj
or experimentation. To finance her bioenhancements in European labs, she had rented herself out as a glamorous and expensive call girl. Fuck a ballerina! That was how her killer had gotten into her apartment.

  In her corner of Studio 3, Deborah finally got the sequence of steps straight, although I could see she was wobbly. She rejoined the class. The room had become as steamy as a Turkish bath. Students ran and leapt the whole length of the hall, corner to corner, in groups of six. “Grand jeté in third arabesque,” Madame called. “Non, non, more extension, Lisa. Victoria, more quick—vite! vite!. One, two…next group.”

  Deborah ran, jumped, and crashed to the ground.

  I stood. Jeannie’s mother put a hand on my arm. “You can’t go to her,” she said matter-of-factly. “You’ll interfere with her discipline.”

  Madame ran gnarled hands over Deborah’s ankle. “Lisa, help her to the side. Ninette, go tell the office to send the doctor. Alors, next group, grand jeté in third arabesque…”

  I shook off Jeannie’s mother’s hand and walked slowly to where Deborah sat, her face twisted in pain.

  “It’s nothing, Mom.”

  “Don’t move it until the doctor gets here.”

  “I said it’s nothing!”

  It was a sprain. The doctor taped it and said Deborah shouldn’t dance for a week.

  At home she limped to her room. An hour later I found her at the barre.

  “Deborah! You heard what the doctor said!”

  Her eyes were luminous with tears: Odette as the dying swan, Giselle in the mad scene. “I have to, Mom! You don’t understand! They’re casting Nutcracker in two weeks! I have to be there, dancing!”

  “Deborah—”

  “I can dance through the injury! Leave me alone!”

  Deborah had never yet been cast in Privitera’s Nutcracker. I watched her transfer her weight gingerly to the injured ankle, wince, and plié. She wouldn’t meet my eyes in the mirror.