Ballerina

by Edward Stewart

  ‘I’ve done three Franzes in Coppélia.’

  ‘Coppélia doesn’t even have a male variation.’

  ‘He put one in for me.’

  ‘Are you kidding? A thirty-second petit allegro lifted from Sylvia? I’m telling you, Marty, you’re not a principal with NBT and you never will be. Look who’s getting the roles: Bobby Baylor does umpteen Prodigal Sons, Sandy Harris is forty and can’t even pirouette and he gets all the Apollos. Volmar may tell you you’re a principal, he may pat your ass and make you feel like a principal, but where are your premieres? Where are your galas? When did he ever make a new role on you?’

  Marty’s eyes were green and thoughtful. The skin around them crinkled. ‘He never has made a new role on me. Not yet.’

  ‘And he’s never going to. He’s got you typed as a nobody.’

  Marty smiled and his face was strong and handsome, like the rest of him. ‘Come on. We’ve only been in the company two years.’

  Anna looked away. She could not cope with his good looks. They lit things up. She wanted to see the apartment as it was: stained wallpaper, cracked mouldings, worn linoleum. A trap.

  ‘How many years does a dancer have? It’s fine to schlep around in the corps at nineteen. But you’re twenty-four. Think of the future, Marty. Where are we going?’

  She went to the oven. The gas made a thin flickering line around the door. She put the pork chops on plates. Down in the street a fire engine was screaming. Marty was staring at her with that baffled look of his.

  ‘I’m not in the corps any more,’ he said.

  ‘You might as well be.’

  ‘We’re getting good pay. We have security.’

  ‘Eight crummy solos in two years, you call that security?’

  ‘I sure do. Most dancers don’t even know where their next cup of coffee’s coming from.’

  ‘You’re not most dancers. You’re one of the best. You could dance anything, anywhere. Beats me why you have to stay tied to that man’s apron.’

  ‘Honey, I’m at the breakthrough point.’ Marty’s voice was gentle and pleading. ‘He’s building me. You have to understand the way he works.’

  Anna was sorry for him. She wanted to handle this so as not to hurt him. It was like tearing the bandage off a child’s cut: a little ouch and the quicker the better.

  ‘I know exactly how he works,’ she said. ‘Just two hours ago he tried to get me to go to bed with him.’

  ‘He tried to what?’

  Anna could see the sudden anger choking him. She let him be miserable a moment and then she went to him and kissed his forehead. ‘And it wasn’t the first time either. But he never ripped my blouse before.’

  ‘You’re kidding. You must be kidding.’

  ‘Kidding, am I? And why the hell do you think I quit?’

  She saw the shock building in his eyes. ‘Quit the company?’

  ‘Makes me want to throw up every time he paws me. “Let me show you that lift, dear.” “Put your weight against my hand, dear.” I’m not staying in NBT and that’s that.’

  ‘Anna, are you sure you—’

  ‘Okay, stand up for your dear friend Marius Volmar. I’m sick and tired of fending him off. I’m clearing out.’ She gave the words a minute to sink in. ‘Are you coming with me or staying with him?’

  Marty scowled and shook his head. ‘Let me think. Give me a minute.’

  ‘You’ll be thinking a year. I haven’t got a year, Marty. I’m pregnant.’

  ‘Jesus, Jesus....’ He stared at her with panicky eyes. He drew in a breath and his head sank down on the table. Thick dark hair tumbled over his fists. There was a retching sound in his throat and his body twitched like an old man’s.

  She stood looking at him a moment, wondering if she had gone too far. She told herself he’d be all right; he’d get over it in an hour.’ ‘Look, it’s up to you. Him or me. I don’t mind getting a divorce.’

  He raised his eyes to hers. It was as though, for the very first time, she was seeing the man she had married. He could lift a hundred-twenty-pound woman one-armed yet his hands were gripping the table as though to borrow its strength. He stood six foot two and his stomach was lean but here he was bent like a fat man over a pain in his belly. She saw something in him stretch out and die.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right. We’ll join another company.’

  But it wasn’t that easy.

  The major companies acted scared, wouldn’t touch Anna and Marty Lang. They did guest stints with old friends like Eglevsky and Youskevitch, and when they’d used up their contacts they hired an agent. For thirty per cent he got them three minutes on Ed Sullivan and seven weeks in Radio City Music Hall. Those were the high points.

  Then came summer tents in Westchester and Chautauqua, guest shots in Wyoming and Delaware, recitals in high school auditoriums. Anna’s hands were raw from washing the grime out of Marty’s Dacron shirts, wringing the filth out of four pairs of tights. Her rear end ached from bus rides. For three months she couldn’t afford to buy herself a new pair of nylons.

  Through the grapevine, they heard of teaching jobs. Marty did a term of master classes at Chapel Hill, hating it, and Anna taught toe till it turned out she really was pregnant. After the baby came, Marty’s drinking began to show. His face got red and he thickened around the middle. He spoke in a constant whining slur and most of the time Anna couldn’t understand a word he said, not that she cared any more.

  Amazingly, he could still dance. But he was a fat man doing pirouettes, and not even TV wanted him, not even for laughs. So he taught exercise at the Y and started staying out nights. The baby kept him awake, he said—all that screaming.

  Once, in a rooming house in Oklahoma City when Marty had run out on her for the hundredth time, Anna put her hands on the back of a chair and extended her leg. She tried to do a rond de jambe à terre—a circling motion of the foot on the floor. She couldn’t keep her hips square; they tilted. She couldn’t do a rond de jambe in the air. She couldn’t développé—raise her leg and hold it straight. She had no turn-out for second position.

  Everything was gone: the balance, the strength, the toes—all that she’d worked for since she was seven years old.

  She sat down and cried. It wasn’t fair. Fat, drunk Marty still had his feet and she didn’t have anything.

  Except smarts. Overnight, Anna Lang got smart.

  She learned not to wait up for her husband and she learned how to get down a fire, escape with a baby in one arm and not wake the landlord. She learned how to switch price stickers in supermarkets, how to lie to collection agencies. Most important of all, she learned there were three things in life not worth the time of day: idleness, regret, and Marty Lang.

  She couldn’t afford a baby sitter so she worked at home. She ironed other people’s shirts, baked pies, licked envelopes. She boarded cats and she boarded house plants. She opened a mail forwarding service. She knitted tea cozies and afghans and she dunned boutiques into selling them. She pinched pennies till there was blood on Abe Lincoln’s face. She made enough to feed the baby and when Marty was there she managed to feed him too.

  She wasn’t happy, but she wasn’t ashamed either.

  Sometimes at the end of a day she’d sit down by the window, too exhausted to keep her thoughts from drifting. She’d remember evenings of curtain calls and bouquets and applause and an ache would rise in her chest.

  She’d wonder what would have happened if only Volmar hadn’t been such a bastard, if only Marty hadn’t been such a weakling.

  ‘If only,’ she would sigh.

  If only was the story of Anna Lang’s life.

  The marriage came to an end in Cleveland.

  Anna had managed to find them a furnished room over a tobacco shop. One Saturday morning Marty went out for a drink. Monday morning the ballet school where he taught ten-year-olds phoned asking for him. Tuesday afternoon two cops knocked on the door.

  ‘Mrs. Lang?’ the tall one said. ‘Mrs M
artin Lang?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you recognize this wallet?’

  The wallet was stained three different shades of sweat, curved to the hip pocket Marty had carried it in. She knew at a glance there was no money left in it.

  ‘Where’d he lose it this time?’

  ‘It might be better if we came in.’

  She took the door off the chain. The chain was for bill collectors.

  The two cops came in. They held their hats in their hands. She’d never seen a cop with his hat in his hands and it seemed odd to her. They didn’t react to the mess but she felt she had to explain it anyway.

  ‘Been busy all morning—selling magazines subscriptions on the phone. Reader’s Digest, Time—either of you interested?’

  ‘Not for us, thanks.’ The cops stood looking at her. She didn’t see how they could be comfortable, jackets buttoned on a hot day. She saw they were wearing wedding rings.

  ‘ ‘Maybe your wives could use Good Housekeeping? Fifty per cent off newsstand price.’

  ‘It’s about the owner of this wallet.’

  Anna wasn’t certain she was ready to hear about the owner of that wallet, not if there were cops involved. ‘Say, would you fellas like some iced tea? I got a whole pitcher in the icebox.’

  ‘Not right now, thanks.’

  It was the tall one who did all the talking. The fat one kept sneaking looks over at the crib where the baby was sleeping.

  ‘Marty’s got a bottle of gin,’ Anna said. ‘I could flavour it.’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘At least I could offer you a seat, right?’

  The two cops sat on the sofa. A spring squeaked. Anna hated that spring. She went back to the card table and picked up licking envelopes where she’d left off.

  ‘Don’t mind me, I’m listening. Gotta have these envelopes stuffed by five.’ A mail-order house paid her a third of a cent per envelope. She could do six a minute. And she was nervous—she needed something to hide the twitch in her hand. ‘So tell me about Marty. Where is he? Jail? Hospital?’ Not that she cared any more.

  The two cops sitting on her landlord’s sofa had tight lips. ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘If you’re looking for him, you’re not going to find him around here. I keep a cold meal in the icebox for him and that’s all.’

  ‘This wallet was found in a dead man’s pocket, early this morning.’ The cop wasn’t looking at Anna. He was looking at the brown spot that Marty had burned in the lampshade.

  Anna’s fingers stopped. ‘Marty’s dead?’ She stood. She felt stronger standing. She wiped her hands on her apron. ‘What are you telling me? What happened?’

  ‘It’s being investigated.’

  ‘ Where’d you get the wallet?’

  ‘It was found in a hotel in a dead man’s pocket.’

  ‘So where’d you find him? Where’s Marty? What hotel? Where’s my husband?’

  The fat cop nodded toward the crib. ‘Is that your kid?’

  ‘That’s my daughter. Marty’s and mine. Stephanie.’

  ‘Maybe you could ask a neighbour to watch Stephanie. We’ll have you back in an hour or so. It won’t take long to identify him. If it’s him.’

  Anna untied her apron and carefully folded it over the back of the rocking chair. ‘He was gone four days this time. Never told me anything.’

  ‘I’ll get the neighbour,’ the tall cop said.

  ‘Meat loaf.’ Anna didn’t know why it popped into her head. ‘I got meat loaf in the icebox for him. He hated meat loaf.’

  She bent down to check the baby’s diaper. The fat cop watched.

  ‘Maybe you could use a little of your husband’s gin, ma’am.’

  ‘I don’t touch that stuff.’

  The tall cop came back with Mrs McElheny. He must have told her. Her face had gone white and her hands kept fluttering around Anna.

  ‘The milk’s in the icebox,’ Anna said. ‘Warm it in the saucepan, give her half a bottle when she starts crying.’

  They took Anna to the morgue. The right side of Marty’s face was one fat purple bruise. She looked away. She didn’t want to remember him like that.

  ‘We’re sorry, ma’am.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault but his.’

  They took her home in the squad car. Mrs McElheny said Stephanie had been a darling, hadn’t cried once. Anna could tell the old woman was dying to pump her. Anna didn’t feel like being pumped. She sent Mrs McElheny away.

  She sat staring at the empty wall, not crying, not feeling anything. She wondered what she’d tell Stephanie when the time came.

  She tried to remember Marty’s face and instead she saw the bruise. She thought of all the fights when he’d slapped her, all the nights she’d waited up for him, all the debts she’d inherited now that he was gone. She took Marty’s supper from the icebox and scraped the plate into the garbage can. The last food she’d ever waste, so help her God.

  The baby was jingling the bells in the crib.

  ‘Be quiet, Steph. Momma’s gotta think.’

  It turned dark outside. The blinking Pabst Blue Ribbon sign came on across the way.

  The baby was standing, holding on to the edge of the crib. Her fists were tiny and pink and her eyes were a soft wondering blue and she hadn’t made a sound for forty-five minutes. Anna jumped up.

  ‘What are you trying to do—wreck your feet?’

  She snatched the baby into her arms.

  ‘When you’re twelve you’ll stand on your toes—and you’ll do it right—five minutes a day after class. Now you go to sleep, understand?’

  She checked the diaper and kissed Stephanie and laid her in the crib. Then she sat in the rocking chair and went on thinking till dawn.

  It took some looking, but Anna found a priest who was willing to give Marty a Catholic burial. She moved to Kansas City, where she’d heard a waitress could make eighty dollars a week. She used her maiden name, Boborovsky, so the bill collectors couldn’t track her, and she used her professional name, Barlow, to talk her way into a job teaching exercise at the women’s Y.

  Between waiting tables and teaching fatties to slim down she made enough to pay the neighbour to baby-sit. Some weeks the tips were so good she even had a couple of extra dollars to put away for Stephanie’s future.

  Steph was a good girl—a pleasure to come home to. Her blue eyes turned green, which almost broke Anna’s heart, but her hair stayed blonde. She had a dancer’s high arches. Anna limbered her in the crib—rotated her feet and calves, taught her to stretch and contract. She bought a secondhand phonograph and got records of Swan Lake and Petrouchka so Steph could grow up hearing good music, not that Elvis Presley junk.

  When Steph was old enough to take her first steps Anna showed her how to put her feet in first and second position and how to keep them there. The hardest part of dance, starting out, was just learning how to stand still and stand straight. Steph was a dream at it.

  Old Mrs Epstein, the widow from next door who baby-sat, was always saying how quiet Steph was, how gracefully she moved, never bawling or bumping into things or losing her balance like most kids her age.

  Anna would smile a smile of secret pride.

  For Steph’s birthday Anna had a carpenter make an adjustable barre—nothing fancy, a broomstick and two supports—but solid. She hung a fourteen-dollar mirror low on the kitchen wall. She chose the kitchen because it was the biggest room and she wanted to be able to watch Steph practise while she cooked and washed dishes. y

  She showed Steph the basic movements, the bends and leg raises.

  ‘I wish I’d had your advantages,’ she said. ‘If only my mom had started me out when I was five.’

  If only....

  One afternoon over coffee Mrs Epstein asked about the mirror. ‘Don’t you have to bend down awful far to see yourself?’

  Anna laughed. ‘It’s not my mirror—it’s Steph’s.’

  ‘But what does a little girl n
eed with a mirror that big?’

  ‘A mirror is a dancer’s best friend.’

  Mrs Epstein’s eyes bulged behind their bifocals. ‘Is little Steph going to be a dancer?’

  Going to be? Anna thought. If only you knew! ‘Anything’s possible if you work for it. And Steph’s a born worker.’

  Mrs Epstein tipped the coffee that had spilled into her saucer back into the cup. ‘When I was a girl in Milwaukee I saw Pavlova dance the Dead Swan. I cried. It was the prettiest thing I ever saw.’

  Anna’s teacher had studied with Pavlova in St Petersburg. Wow. How time flew. ‘Dying Swan,’ Anna said. ‘Wasn’t her best.’

  For her daughter’s sake, Anna got back in touch with dance. When a company came to town, she took Steph. She subscribed to the magazines, kept track of who was still at the top and who was up and coming. She got out her old address book and sent birthday cards and Christmas greetings to dancers and stagehands and musicians she had known. A few of them replied. It made her happy to know that Anna Barlow wasn’t completely forgotten.

  For Steph’s eighth birthday, Anna wrote to Dancemagazine to get the name of a good, reasonable school in the area.

  Anna pulled Steph up the dingy stairs.

  ‘Come on, stop being scared!’

  The chipped gold lettering on the frosted glass door was barely legible: Elise Meyer, formerly of the Atlantic Civic Ballet, Academy of Classical Dance. Class had already begun. Nineteen little girls in pink leotards and pink shoes were lined up at the barre. They all had identical pink flowers in their hair. The air had the faint, rancid smell of sweat. Reminded Anna of her own student days.

  A tall, middle-aged woman was barking at the kids in time to the music: ‘Pli-é, three four.... Pli-e, three four....’ She was dressed exactly the same as the students, with a few extra ruffles on the skirt to show her rank. Her face was set in a bored scowl that deepened when she saw Anna and Steph. ‘Keep going, three four....’

  She came across the room, flexing a four-foot switch as skinny as she was. ‘Help you?’

  Anna hadn’t heard a voice like that since she’d left New York. She’d been out of touch too long, much too long.