Ballerina

by Edward Stewart

  ‘He wants to stop at Liberty’s,’ Linda said. ‘They’ve got some kind of special on earphones.’

  Why not? Steph decided. She vowed she wouldn’t feel guilty.

  The two boys were waiting at the elevator. ‘Danny, you know Steph, don’t you?’ Linda said.

  Danny was staring straight at Steph. His eyes were brown. ‘Sure. I knocked into you in Arcade.’

  Steph was amazed he remembered. And pleased. A lot of the male soloists in the company acted as though they had it made, especially if they were tall. Danny was different. She’d seen him in class and he was a perfectionist. Onstage he was that rare thing, a partner who knew exactly how to show a woman off.

  And his eyes had beautiful gold flecks.

  They went laughing and chattering out to Ninth Avenue. They were waiting to cross when Steph noticed people watching them. She’d been aware of it before: the Lincoln Center area was a dancers’ ghetto, and non-dancers were always staring.

  ‘Why are they looking at us?’ she said. ‘What’s so odd about four dancers?’

  ‘We’ve got great bodies,’ Al said, loud enough to be overheard, ‘and we’re dressed like bag ladies—right down to the tote bags.’

  Steph supposed it was true: blue jeans, tie-dyed shirts, sneakers, weird jewelry.

  ‘Bull,’ Danny said. ‘It’s our feet. We’re like swans out of water—they can spot us two blocks away. Look at Linda. What human being waits for a light like that? She’s in fifth position. Feet turned out right foot in front of left.’

  ‘Sloppy fifth,’ Al said.

  ‘What about you?’ Linda shot back. ‘What’s that supposed to be, fourth position croisé?’ It was an exaggeration but only a slight one: Al’s right foot was turned completely out and he was tapping the curb with the toe of his left.

  ‘Okay, schmucks.’ Al arced his left arm up, hand overhead; he smoothly extended his right arm and his tote bag slid to the sidewalk. His left leg came up, knee bent, at a ninety-degree angle behind the right, into a classic attitude.

  An old man gave him a terrified glance and hurried across the street mumbling and they all burst out laughing.

  They took a bus to the Liberty Music Shop just across from St Pat’s and Danny tried out a half dozen stereo earphones.

  ‘That one,’ Al said. ‘It’s absolutely you.’

  Steph noticed that Danny’s cheques were printed Daniel Gillette aka Goldberg and asked what kind of name aka was.

  ‘Aka is Japanese for also known as, and Goldberg is Jewish for Gillette. A dancer might sneak by with Gold or Berg, but Goldberg, forget it.’

  ‘That’s why they call it the Gillette Variations?’ Al said.

  A lot of dancers took stage names, and Steph had suspected Danny’s Gillette hid something Greek or Italian. She’d never thought of Jewish. Now she’d learned something. There were Jews with beautiful Mediterranean eyes.

  They went to Burger King and ordered burgers with all the weird combinations of extras they could think of, just like the Burger King commercials on TV. The girl taking orders gave them terrible looks and dumped mustard and onion on everything but the milk shakes. They laughed and burped all the way to Fifth Avenue, where Al and Linda wanted to buy dog collars in a Sixty Nine Cents shop.

  ‘They come in brass and stainless steel and they make terrific necklaces,’ Al said.

  ‘For a dog?’ Danny said. He had thick dark eyebrows and when they arched he looked very sceptical.

  ‘For us, stupid,’ Linda laughed.

  Danny and Steph were alone. A Con Ed drill team was ripping up Forty-seventh Street and there was no sense trying to talk. The sidewalk crowd kept jostling them. Three or four times Steph felt the pressure of Danny’s body grazing hers, light and accidental. She moved away a little but only a little, and the pressure followed, just a little. She felt his glance keep skimming over her.

  ‘Steph,’ he shouted, ‘do you know how you look when you dance?’

  ‘How?’ she shouted.

  ‘Like you’re asleep.’

  She was silent a moment. A long speechless moment. The remark felt like an insult but his eyes weren’t insulting at all. They were soft as a baby’s fingertips exploring her face.

  ‘That’s the way a dancer should look,’ he shouted. ‘You’re a wonderful sleeper.’

  Al and Linda came out of the store, giggling and arf-arfing with matching brass dog collars around their necks. Al struck a high-fashion pose with one wrist dangling and shouted, ‘Chic, hey? The Countess in Giselle?’ and Linda shouted that they’d better hurry if they wanted to make the special on women’s lounging pyjamas at Lord and Taylor.

  All the way down to Thirty-eighth Street (they could have taken a bus but it was a crisp glowing fall day and they voted unanimously to walk) Danny kept looking at Steph’s hands. She wasn’t wearing any rings and her hands weren’t doing anything and she couldn’t understand the reason. It was as though he were measuring her.

  Al tried to gross out the saleswoman at the store by asking to try on a size eight. In a very grandmotherly way, she explained that he could change in the employees’ men’s room, but a guard would have to stand in the stall with him.

  Linda broke down laughing and said she was the gentleman’s size, she would try on the clothes. Danny looked uncomfortable and Linda and Steph went into one of the women’s changing rooms.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Linda said. Steph was staring at her.

  ‘You and Al—are you—‘

  ‘Are we what?’

  ‘Are you lovers?’

  ‘Oh, Christ, everyone asks that. We just happen to like each other.’

  ‘And you sleep together?’

  ‘Why not? His roommate threw him out, he needs a place to crash.’

  ‘But isn’t he—’

  Linda gave her a look edged in amusement. ‘Gay? Are you kidding? He’s gay and a mess and he’s hung up on some student at ASB who’s straight.’

  ‘Then what do you see in him?’

  ‘Beggars can’t be choosers, and if you’re a girl in the corps, you’re begging. Besides, he can talk about dance and he gives a hell of a massage; he’s got a great body and he makes me laugh. And frankly, he listens to my problems the way no man would.’

  ‘And is Danny—gay?’

  ‘Half the boys in the corps and Lester Croyden have tried and I’ve never heard a whisper. Believe me, if there was anything to whisper about, I’d hear.’ Linda twirled and made a face. ‘Tell me the mirror’s lying. I haven’t got hips like that.’

  ‘It’s the pyjamas that are lying,’ Steph said. ‘They make you look pregnant. And the colour—’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Something Al would wear to a Halloween ball.’ Linda stepped out of the pants.

  ‘Does Danny have a girl?’ Steph asked.

  ‘A lot of girls have tried.’

  ‘If he’s not gay, why haven’t any succeeded?’

  ‘Okay, let me give you the Danny Gillette story, capsule form. He’s a sweet kid from Scarsdale and he’s breaking his parents’ hearts. They want him in law school or pre-med, he wants to mess around with tutus and toe shoes. He knows he’s going to make it, the company knows he’s going to make it, the parents don’t know a pirouette from a pecan and they’re petrified.’

  ‘But what does that have to do with girls?’

  ‘Look, if on top of everything else he got serious about a girl in the company—and he could—his mother would throw herself off the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s got to be a nice Jewish girl. That much he owes the folks.’

  ‘But there must be some Jewish girls in the corps.’

  ‘Bess and Lizzie. And they lasted a week each.’

  Steph’s mind explored the puzzle. It was like a trick box. There had to be a hidden spring somewhere that would snap it open. She wondered if she should spread a rumour that her name was really something Jewish beginning with an L.

 
; Stephanie Liebowitz.

  Linda was staring at her. ‘Hey, he’s a nice guy. But aren’t you making a production out of it?’

  ‘I think he’s nice, that’s all.’

  ‘I’ll tell you something. He thinks you’re nice.’

  ‘Did he say so?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Then how do you know? Don’t tease me, Linda.’

  ‘Because he asked me to ask you to come shopping. Danny Gillette doesn’t give a damn about shopping and he hates Al’s camping. And I’ve seen the way he watches you in class.’

  ‘You’re making that up. He doesn’t watch me.’

  ‘Then he’s incredibly interested in who cuts your hair. Who does, by the way? I’m sick of mine.’

  For the rest of the afternoon Steph couldn’t be sure: from the corner of her eye she tried to keep track of Danny and he did seem to stare at her hair and her hands a lot. Once or twice their eyes met but she lost her nerve and let her glance slide away.

  When they got back to the theatre Vicki had tripped on the hood of the prompter’s box, which some fool had left up. She’d twisted an ankle, so Steph had to go on in the Ribbon Dance after all.

  She was petrified. It didn’t help that Al was standing in the wings mugging, trying to break her up. Danny, who was playing the foolish suitor, swatted her with his butterfly net on one of his leaps and she knew he’d done it on purpose. But she kept her eyes on the girl on her right and never let herself so much as smile. Amazingly enough, she got through the steps and the turns and the audience went politely wild and called the girls back for two bows.

  ‘You weren’t sleepy tonight,’ Danny whispered afterward in the wings, grinning.

  Steph went home feeling happy and high thinking: This is too easy, this is too much fun, this couldn’t be ballet. And when she fell asleep she saw Danny Gillette aka Goldberg’s gold-flecked eyes smiling at her.

  ten

  With Chris it was different.

  For the first several weeks she was thrilled to be part of National Ballet Theater. Then she was puzzled; and then, she realized, sad. She was lonely and it baffled her.

  She had known the solitude of doctors and nurses and doting parents, but now she was learning the solitude of being shut out. There was talk and there was laughter at NBT, but they were always around a corner and she was never part of them.

  The other girls had friends to help them practise. They had friends to gossip with and have coffee with. They had friends to cry with. Chris didn’t have anyone. She warmed up by herself, practised by herself, ate by herself. Half the time she couldn’t get the food down.

  She came to dread company class. The music was fast, and the dancers muttered about ‘concert tempo.’ It seemed there was a separate step for every note in every trill. Volmar thought nothing of throwing an entrechat huit at the company—one tiny jump and you had to beat your feet eight times before you landed. The best Chris could manage was six beats, and even those weren’t clean.

  The other dancers saw she was sloppy and they saw Volmar come and explain to her and put his arm around her and she heard them whispering.

  Even as she came to master the unfamiliar footwork she felt no sense of accomplishment: she learned to move faster—that was all. She felt betrayed. She had expected ballet to light up her life and instead there was darkness growing around her.

  She pulled herself from company class to rehearsal, from dressing room to performance. The corridors of the State Theater were industrial grey and they seemed to suck the strength out of her. Some days she had time to go home for a nap. But when she was cast in a new production there was no time; she had to go to the women’s lounge and pray there’d be a free couch or space on the floor to lie down.

  The worst evenings were Köchel Listing 312. She heard dancers say there were more steps in the allegro of Köchel than in all of Giselle. She believed it.

  The company took their places on stage at eight-five and the curtain rose at eight-seven sharp. There was always applause for the bare stage and the sky-blue cyclorama and the corps lined up dramatically along the diagonal. The conductor gave the brisk downbeat. The corps linked themselves quickly, orange and black. The music kept them blurred and bouncing, like a giant hand slapping thirty basketballs. By eight-fourteen Chris was dead tired, could hardly see clearly.

  A wedge of purple sent green spinning away from it. A fluttering V of grey entwined with a stripe of yellow. Streaks of white streamed past, tilted way off the vertical. Rosin squeaked like a massacre of cats. The chirping Mozart music went on and on, repeat after repeat. The dance mirrored the music: repeat, repeat, repeat. Hot needles went through Chris’s calves. Red male rectangles hoisted whirling blue female hoops. At last the retard: preparation, plié, leap into the wings.

  Chris’s hand found the honey that she had hidden in the electrician’s box. She gulped.

  Energy. A thick sweet taste blotted out the rhythms and the colours. Five counts till her cue. Her toes were squashed and screaming in their slippers. Four three two now—

  She was one of eight spinning skirts. The lights slapped her eyes. She leapt. Was caught. Was thrown. Was caught again. Her lungs were burning. She couldn’t catch her breath couldn’t catch up with the music and the music never stopped screaming orders, like a mad general in a battle that had no victory, no defeat, no truce or finish.

  At the end of the evening Chris sat in the wings on an electrician’s stool, crumpled over as far as a human body could crumple. It seemed she was the only one in the company who ever sprained an ankle or tore a toenail halfway off or was exhausted all the time. It took her an eternity just to get her breath back.

  The dancers streamed past. She didn’t know where they got their strength from. They laughed and cursed their slips, made dates for nightcaps at favourite bars, dates for the night.

  ‘Did you see Pierre cheat on that double turn?’

  ‘And the idiots applauded!’

  ‘I hear his wife hires them.’

  Not one of the dancers glanced at Chris. In stage make-up their eyes were cruel and catlike and the not-glancing was a trick, because dancers missed nothing and she knew they saw her seated on the stool in the dimmed stage lights, not moving.

  ‘Little Miss Muffet sitting on her toosh again.’

  ‘Does she know how to talk?’

  ‘Why should she talk to any of us? She has Volmar teaching her finger pirouettes personally.’

  She glanced up and caught the eye of a female soloist flicking something mean and crafty at her.

  They’re laughing at me. The realization hit her like a slap on the cheek. Panic held her nailed to the stool. She closed her eyes, tried to ignore her thumping heart, tried to blink the theatre away.

  She waited till the sounds of hurry dimmed, till the stage lights clicked off and there was only the naked bulb on a pole stage centre and a stagehand looking at her oddly.

  She crept back to the dressing room on tiptoe. She was the only person there. Something cold and wet crawled over her skin.

  Fear.

  ‘Why so glum?’ Steph said.

  They were standing in the kitchen. It was Chris’s turn to fix dinner and she was snipping the ends off string beans. She’d discovered that fresh beans were cheaper than frozen, cooked faster, tasted better, and had more vitamins.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Chris said. ‘Hard class, maybe.’

  Steph gave her an odd look. Chris knew it wasn’t much of an excuse: class had been more than eight hours ago.

  Suddenly Chris decided to let everything out. A little. ‘Steph, do you have friends at Empire?’

  ‘Sure—it’s a friendly company.’

  ‘But do you have friends?’

  ‘Friends to joke with, to have coffee with—that kind of friend.’

  And I don’t, Chris thought. What’s wrong with me?

  Steph bit down on a carrot stick. ‘Why, don’t you have friends at NBT?’

  I’m not going
to let Steph see. It’s not fair heaping my problems on her. ‘Oh sure, friends to joke with and take coffee break with. But there’s no one I can really talk to.’

  Steph laughed. ‘By the time I’m through with class and rehearsal it’s all I can do to pant—let alone talk.’ She glanced up at Chris and her expression turned serious. ‘Look, expecting to find a best friend in the corps is like—it’s like expecting to find the love of your life there.’

  Chris was silent. She’d always believed that somehow she’d wind up in the arms of a prince, not just during Sleeping Beauty, but after the curtain came down. ‘But some girls—do fall in love with men in the corps.’

  ‘If they’re men,’ Steph said. ‘No, I take that back. Some of the girls at Empire sleep with gay boys. Linda says they’re good lovers.’

  Chris made a face. ‘That’s just—sex. If I slept with someone, I’d want it to be love.’

  Steph smiled. ‘Everyone wants that. I guess either you settle for less or you grow old waiting for Mr Right to join the corps.’ She shrugged. ‘Or you shop around outside of ballet.’

  I wouldn’t know what to do outside of ballet, Chris thought. But she tried to sound flip and confident. ‘Who has the time? Or the energy?’

  ‘Then you have to choose. Dance—or a man.’

  No, Chris thought, there’s some other way, I know there’s some other way.

  ‘Tell me, Christine, how have you been feeling?’

  The doctor’s voice was professional cheerful, almost chatty. But his eye took in the flushed patches of skin, the abnormally small pupils, all the evidence of undernourishment and overwork and self-destruction.

  ‘Just fine,’ Chris said. She had learned it was the only safe answer. She didn’t want to be imprisoned in hospital for days and days of tests. She didn’t want to miss class. She was far enough behind already. She buttressed her lie with a wavering smile.

  ‘Unbutton, please,’ the doctor said.