Ballerina

by Edward Stewart

  ‘Well, that’s white of you, but it’s pretty damned stupid. Don’t you realize that Wally and I are lovers? No, you don’t.’

  ‘You stupid lush!’ Wally’s face was red and the arteries stood out rigid and pulsing in his neck. ‘Just shut the hell up!’

  ‘Blew your cover, did I? So sorry.’

  ‘The last thing you blew was this afternoon in a Christopher Street bar and I wish to hell you’d stayed there.’

  ‘And missed your balancing act? You’re the only player who can cover first and third bases in one stretch. I love watching it.’

  ‘I never lied to Chris.’

  ‘You never spelled it out in skywriting either.’

  ‘The skywriting’s your speciality, is it, Ellis?’ Steph said.

  ‘Hold it,’ Ellis said. ‘She’s in love with him. He’s gay. She’s going to find out. It’ll hurt.’

  ‘So you dropped by to do a little mercy killing?’ Steph said.

  ‘Now I get it,’ Ellis said. ‘I’m the villain, I’m making Bo-Peep cry. Well, let me tell you something, St Joan, and you too, Mr Prince Macho. She may be a ninety-two-pound nit with a stranglehold on Marius Volmar, and she may be nine tenths of the rent on the pretzel box. But to me she’s Miss Jackie Horner sitting in a corner stitching elastics onto her toe shoes. And unlike either of you vampires, I don’t need a drop or ounce or penny of her. I don’t need to pretend to like her. I can look her in those big cistern eyes and tell her straight out: “Honey, you are a ballet classic, virgin at eighteen; victim at nineteen. You are a sitting duck soon to be roast sitting duck, you are a one-girl slaughter of the innocents, unless you wake up and jump into your magic pointe shoes and bourrée away from these two users as fast as your underdeveloped little ankles can take you.”’

  ‘Ellis,’ Steph cried, ‘you’re a jealous, vicious wrecker.’

  ‘What am I wrecking, Wally’s and your plans for carving up Chris?’

  ‘She has the most important debut of her career coming up and you’re systematically destroying her confidence in her partner and in herself.’

  ‘Can I help it if she’s got a low tolerance for truth?’

  ‘If you have a fight to pick with me,’ Wally said, ‘save it for home.’

  ‘And that,’ Ellis said, ‘sounds the best suggestion of the evening.’ He got to his feet, tapped Wally on the shoulder. ‘Let’s go, lover.’

  ‘Ellis,’ Wally pleaded.

  ‘Home, baby, Ahorita.’ Ellis snapped a finger.

  Wally rose slowly, as though he’d been sandbagged.

  ‘Do you have to?’ Chris blurted.

  ‘He has to,’ Ellis said, ‘if he expects to have an apartment left in one piece.’ He tilted a grin at Wally. ‘You have two minutes to faire your adieux. I’ll hold the elevator.’ Now the grin included the girls. ‘Ciao, ladies.’

  The door slammed behind him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Wally stammered. ‘He’s not usually that way.’

  ‘Guess we just hit an off night,’ Steph said coldly.

  ‘He doesn’t mean it, it’s the liquor.... He’s got a lot on his mind.... I’d better go, he might get in some kind of trouble by himself. I’m really sorry, I ...’

  ‘I understand.’ Chris’s voice was bled of all expression. ‘Anyone can get drunk.’

  Wally darted a kiss on her cheek and then very quickly he squeezed Steph’s hand.

  Chris turned away. She began picking up glasses to take into the kitchen. She stood at the counter a long time, staring at cups and plates and saucers stacked in unleaning towers, awaiting a dinner that would never be. She heard the door shut. A stillness seeped into the apartment.

  Steph came up soft-voiced behind her. ‘Chris—I’m sorry. You did your best and you did a wonderful job. If it hadn’t been for that little rat Ellis—’

  Chris turned slowly. They looked at one another. For a moment neither spoke. Chris tried very hard not to sob.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘If it wasn’t Ellis it would be someone else. But it wouldn’t be me.’ Her eyelashes flickered, little and golden without their stage make-up. ‘Wally doesn’t want me. He just doesn’t want to hurt my feelings.’

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘I made a fool of myself and that is my fault.’

  ‘You didn’t make a fool of yourself. You were perfect. No one could have handled it better.’

  ‘I was a perfect ass. Everything Ellis said about me was true.’

  ‘Everything he said was vicious and twisted and he was only trying to hurt you.’

  ‘He succeeded.’ Tears moved down Chris’s face, inching along faint lines that Steph had never seen there before.

  Good lord, Steph wondered, is she in love with Wally?

  ‘I wanted everything to be perfect,’ Chris whispered. ‘I tried so hard.’

  ‘And everything is perfect,’ Steph said. She brought the lamb out of the oven and set it on the butcher block. ‘Come on—we’re going to have dinner.’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘You go sit at the table and relax. And have a big glass of wine. You’ve earned it. I’ll take care of everything.’

  ‘Steph, I’m not hungry.’

  ‘We’re not going to let a gourmet dinner go to waste. It smells terrific and I am hungry.’

  Chris went to the table with a big glass of red wine and Steph served dinner and they ate in silence. Two years ago they had been children and tonight they sat alone at their first party in their first apartment with two empty places at the table and dying memories of garlic and lamb.

  Steph insisted on doing the dishes and later, as she got ready for bed, she heard the muffled clatter of Chris cleaning and recleaning the apartment. It was one-thirty when Chris finally came into the dark bedroom and lay down on her bed. Steph could not see her, but long into the night she heard the faint sound of tears being crushed into a pillow.

  fourteen

  ‘You paid money for these seats?’

  ‘Mom, it’s Chris’s solo debut.’

  ‘I could’ve gotten us walked in.’ Anna slung her wool coat over her arm. It looked less woolen that way. She ignored the stares and pushed through a row jammed with knees and minks and umbrellas.

  The seats weren’t bad: Row R, dead centre. Anna looked around. Full house—how come? She leafed through the programme, frowning. Must be a subscription night. She stared at a full-colour photo of Catherine Deneuve modelling Chanel Number Five. Who cared any more? She found the programme notes.

  ‘We have to sit through Firebird?’

  ‘Mom, please.’

  They had to sit through Firebird. Anna squinted. Same mess it always was. ‘Who’s dancing Firebird—Volmar’s new girl friend?’

  Anna could sense Steph cringing into a corner of her seat. What the hell was she nervous about, her friend wasn’t even dancing yet.

  ‘She’s never going to get through the pas de deux,’ Anna whispered. ‘Look at those feathers, who did that costume? The Prince will pull her through one pirouette and the stage will look like a henhouse.’

  And it did.

  Anna sat back, satisfied, waiting for the princesses to come on and form their little circle and toss golden balls back and forth. Anna had been a little princess in Firebird once. No one had taught her how to catch ball. No one had taught these kids either. One gold ball rolled into the footlights and another bobbed into the orchestra pit. Same as in the old days.

  Anna couldn’t help smiling. A little of the tension floated out of her. The Infernal Dance was sluggish, but wasn’t it always, and the Berceuse looked like a pyjama party.

  ‘Looks like a pyjama party,’ Anna whispered.

  Steph put a finger to her lips and Anna shrugged. The lights came up for intermission and she crumpled a dollar into Steph’s hand.

  ‘Go get yourself an orangeade.’

  Anna stayed behind and studied the programme notes. At curtain’s rise the Girl is on stage. The Boy approaches. One of those,
Anna thought: the Girl, the Boy. Real abstract. At first the Girl does not respond to his advances, but as his ardor increases....

  Anna patted back a yawn, flipped to Catherine Denevue. Someday this Girl is going to buy herself a bottle of Chanel Number Five.

  Steph slid back into the row and Anna could see she was edgy.

  ‘Don’t you worry.’ Anna squeezed her hand. ‘Your friend’ll do just fine.’

  The lights dimmed. Anna sat straight in her seat. This she didn’t want to miss one second of.

  The conductor hurried into the pit and the audience clapped. Anna’s hands stayed in her lap. She didn’t believe in payment in advance. The conductor raised his baton, waited for some idiot in the third ring to stop coughing, gave the downbeat.

  The music came sobbing out of the strings, familiar but not exactly familiar, like an old friend who’d had a face lift. Anna clenched her memory. The programme said Andante Cantabile from the String Quartet, but this was a sixty-man quartet. Since when?

  The curtain rose. You-know-who was sprawled on the floor. A spot came up, haloing her.

  ‘Mattress commercial,’ Anna muttered, just soft enough so Steph couldn’t shush her.

  Wally Collins tiptoed on stage. Good dancer, but he’d look better partnering Steph. Same old schmaltz. The Boy, lonely and heartbroken and aching, was looking around everywhere for Miss Right, except under his nose where she happened to be dozing. Beautiful arms, that Wally had; knew how to use them.

  But wait one minute.

  Anna craned forward. Either he was wearing gloves that matched the mid-section of Chris’s tutu, or that mid-section really was skin, in which case his hands and her belly had both been under the same sun lamp. And since when did anyone wear gloves on stage except magicians and the Merry Widow?

  It took two minutes before Chris even lifted an arm, and that was the good part. Anna stared in disbelief. The girl had no ankles, no pirouette, no balance. Her port de bras had improved; so who couldn’t wave their arms? She looked like a cheerleader on downs.

  The whole damned ballet was the male. Chris didn’t use her legs once! Never even went higher than half pointe without help. Wally partnered her so-called balances, steadied every wobbly extension. He stood her up for her pirouettes, gave her a push to start her, kept her spinning, clamped a hand on her waist to stop her. He moulded her through her variation like a lump of Silly Putty.

  Those gloves almost worked.

  Almost.

  A little nugget of anger began radiating in the pit of Anna’s stomach. ‘I—don’t—believe—it,’ she muttered, one hand cupping her eyebrow and miming a very loud ouch.

  Wally propped her up for her développés, let her go long enough for a piqué turn, caught her before she fell—and she would have. He backed off, presenting her—Jesus, what was that she was doing, a curtsy? Now the male knelt in extended fourth. Very pretty, like a bookend waiting for the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  Chris pas de bourrée’d over, if you could call it a pas de bourrée, pulled alongside, backed up a little like a truck that had overshot the gas pump. She went up on pointe, no help this time—how come?—développé’d into third arabesque and held the balance—

  Wait a minute.

  That was no balance. His left hand was on her waist and he’d raised his right arm so it looked like third position en haut.

  ‘He’s holding her!’ Anna hissed.

  But Chris’s body was in the way and you couldn’t exactly see him holding her, and then the lights dimmed, and now Anna understood why the male was wearing a dark long-sleeved shirt—it looked like Chris was floating over him, unsupported, balancing on that wobble she called an ankle.

  The audience started clapping.

  Anna couldn’t believe it. Didn’t they have eyes? She wanted to stand up and shout, Fraud!

  Not that anyone would have heard her. The so-called string quartet swelled into a fat brass fortissimo and—Jesus!—a cymbal crash, and smack on the crash Chris let her head and her wrist jerk down and some idiot screamed, ‘Brava!’

  Anna grabbed her coat. She wasn’t going to stay and clap for that.

  ‘Come on.’ She grabbed Steph too. ‘Buy you a ginger ale.’

  Chris’s parents had promised to fly east for her premiere and she had left a pair of tickets at the box office. But when she got back to the dressing room she found a florist’s bouquet with an envelope addressed to her in a strange handwriting: Christine Avery, deliver after performance.

  The note was in the same unfamiliar hand.

  Heartbroken we could not make it. Dad was called suddenly to Anaconda board meeting. Know you did brilliant job. Love, Mother and Dad.

  ‘You’re better than her.’

  ‘Mom, that isn’t true.’

  They were sitting at a corner table nursing ginger ales. The lights had been turned down and the Theatre Pub was almost dark. A waiter went from table to table blowing out bottled candles. A drunken clarinettist from one of the ballet orchestras slapped a tip down on the bar and struggled to his feet.

  ‘We’re completely different dancers,’ Steph said. ‘You can’t compare us.’

  ‘Amen,’ Anna said. ‘You’re twice as good as she is, that’s how different you are. Should have been you on that stage tonight, not her.’

  Steph’s eyes jerked up, green and surprised. ‘How can you say that? After all the work Chris has put in—?

  ‘Has she put in more work than you? Or me? She zooms ahead and you’re stuck in the back line of the corps—like your father.’

  ‘You’re not being fair to Chris.’

  ‘That’s just beautiful. She grabs the job that could have made your career and you stand up for her.’

  ‘She didn’t grab anything.’

  ‘Oh, didn’t she now? Volmar would have taken you if it hadn’t been for her sneaking around.’

  Steph sighed, wishing her mother wouldn’t rewrite history. ‘She didn’t sneak around.’

  ‘He just phoned a perfect stranger out of the blue? You saw her Snow pas de deux—pas de klutz!’

  Steph was silent.

  ‘Volmar would have taken you and given you a good contract and he would have given you that role! They would have been clapping for Stephanie Lang tonight and you would have deserved it because you’re a dancer, not some duck with a waddle and eight million dollars!’

  A questioning crease furrowed Steph’s forehead. ‘How can you talk like that?’

  ‘Because I’m sick and tired, that’s how. Twenty years I’ve scrimped and slaved. Twenty years I’ve fought your battles. What for, for her? Tell me what for!’

  ‘I don’t know what for. I just wish you’d stop fighting. Please. I don’t want fights. I don’t want battles. I can’t stand it when you’re like this.’

  ‘And I can’t stand the idea of you winding up like your dad! Nowhere! He put in twenty-six years and he got nowhere!’

  And what about you, Mom, Steph wondered: where did you get? She squirmed into a corner of the bench. ‘Can’t we just relax and be happy for Chris? Tonight’s her night. Truce.’

  ‘Someone has to stick up for you. You don’t know how to fight for yourself.’ Anna laid her hands on the table, palms up, empty, showing she had nothing hidden, no weapons, no motives. ‘Oh, honey, you have the sweetest face in the company and no one has better feet and your top’s terrific and everyone says you have a memory like Einstein—but it’s not enough.’

  ‘Tell me what is enough then.’

  ‘People have to like you.’

  ‘I thought some people did.’

  ‘Forget some people, I’m talking about the people who count.’

  ‘And who are they?’

  ‘Come on, use your head. Your director. Your board. Your choreographers. Your dance masters. Your conductor. Your rehearsal pianists. Sure, go ahead and smile. It may sound funny but think about it. If they notice you—and like you—and go out of their way for you—you’re home free.’


  ‘And how do I arrange all that?’

  Anna jabbed finger number one in the air, ticking off her catechism. ‘First off, company class. Get there early. Get a good position at the barre so the dance master can see you. Centre of the room. If you can manage, get a position between two boys. That way even if you make a mistake you’ll look more fluid, more feminine. And your extension will look higher because you’ll be between two lower extensions. Watch what the principals do wrong and you do it right; if it kills you, you still do it right. And make sure the dance master sees you do it right! Stay after class and ask questions. Even if you don’t have any questions, ask them. The dance master will remember you: she’s the kid with a better lower back than Martine! He’ll have you covering roles and one night you’ll go on and you’ll be good and you’ll start getting write-ups and the directors will notice you.’

  Finger number two shot up.

  ‘Secondly: shyness has to go. A dancer can afford cigarettes, coffee, lousy marriages, but shyness will sink you. Cozy up to the boy soloists. Tell them you’re having trouble with your finger pirouettes, can they help you. Don’t bother with the boys in the corps, they’re nowhere; and the principals will know what you’re up to. But latch on to the right soloist now, and you’ll have a principal on your side in two years, and he’ll ask to partner you.’

  Steph was staring at her blankly, uncomprehendingly. Anna didn’t see how she could lay it out much plainer, but she kept trying.

  ‘When you’re not rehearsing, don’t just sit and stretch, go sit and stretch by the piano. Talk to the pianist. Turn his pages for him. Compliment him. Wow, what a sight reader! Did you ever do concert work? Do you compose? Get the pianist on your side and he’ll make you look good even when you stink; and he may make someone else look bad just to make you look a little better.’

  All the while Anna talked, Steph continued to stare. There was something removed and defiant about her; she could have been a conscientious objector waiting out a war.

  ‘And don’t be shy with the conductor either. Say hello when you pass him in the corridor. His Pillar of Fire may sound likeTil Eulenspiegel, tell him it made you swoon. If he asks you for a cup of coffee, go. You’ll see a difference. He’ll give you time to prepare, he’ll slow down when you’re out of breath, he’ll watch out for you. Believe me, it can make a difference.’