‘I want you to teach my little girl,’ Anna said.
Steph hid her face in her mother’s skirt. Anna had to tug her by the ear. It was ridiculous for the girl to be shy: she was eight years old, the teachers at public school loved her, they were always saying how pretty and well behaved she was.
‘We’ll have a look at her after class,’ Elise Meyer said. ‘Why don’t you just take a seat and watch how we do things?’
She nodded towards a row of wooden slat chairs. Two women sat knitting. Mothers. An Indian war whoop came up through the floor. The academy was smack over a movie theatre.
‘Why not have a look at her now?’ Anna said. ‘You got room at the barre. Steph, go change into your dance clothes.’
Elise Meyer gave Anna a look and then she turned and went back to her students. The phonograph was scratching out the Pizzicato Polka from Sylvia. Elise Meyer patrolled up and down the barre. She touched the tip of her switch to a girl’s calf.
‘Foot out straight, Cleo. Point those toes.’
Anna sat down to watch. Half the kids didn’t know the difference between a plié and a deep knee bend. La Meyer had to keep switching at them like ponies. And that girl in the torn leotard! Who but a mother would have put such a fatty into ballet school? Ten years old if she was a day and still had pig’s knuckles for feet; forget it.
Steph came back, trim and graceful in her clean pink leotard, and took her place at the end of the barre. Anna winked. She caught the other mothers stealing glances in the long mirrored wall. She knew all about mothers. They were jealous because Steph moved like a ballerina—kept her back straight and turned her leg out correctly and held her chin up. True, one other girl did turn her leg out nicely, but she had no chin and you couldn’t make it in ballet without a chin.
Class lasted an hour and forty-five minutes. It was baby stuff: relevés, battements, tendus. Steph handled everything except one rond de jambe. La Meyer had to correct the position of her supporting leg. Anna grimaced. How many times had she nagged Steph about that supporting leg?
Discipline in class was good. There was no giggling, no horse play between exercises. La Meyer was an okay teacher. At this stage of Steph’s career, she’d do.
At the end of class the kids clapped. Reminded Anna of her own dancing days, when you clapped to thank the teacher. The two mothers gathered up their knitting and their daughters and Elise Meyer collapsed into the chair beside Anna. She wiped the sweat from her face. Her handkerchief smelled of Lanvin and it was losing its monogram.
‘I don’t see why we can’t make an opening for your daughter, Mrs—’
‘Lang. Anna Barlow Lang.’
There was not even a twitch of recognition. She couldn’t believe Elise Meyer didn’t remember Anna Barlow and Marty Lang and the cover of Dancemagazine. She had half a mind to say something, but instinct told her to forget it. Let La Meyer think Stephanie was a no-talent like the rest of her students. She’d find out soon enough.
‘Now you understand, Mrs Lang, we make no promises. But ballet is very useful in developing co-ordination, balance, poise. Far better than sports and a lot safer.’
What the hell was she trying to do—sell Anna on dance?
‘Your daughter obviously has a feel for music, and she’s lyric. If you like, I could teach her pointe.’
And wreck her feet? ‘She doesn’t go on toe till she’s twelve,’ Anna said. ‘She needs four years’ training still.’
La Meyer sighed. ‘She needs everything. Strength, balance, feet, arch, développé. A lot of work.’
How the hell would you know, you con artist? Anna thought. Steph’s not even grown yet. La Meyer obviously took Anna for a dance ignoramus.
‘I’ll tell you what’s really bothering me about Steph. After she passes sixteen counts in passé balance she doesn’t hold her turnout.’
La Meyer’s expression narrowed and Anna knew she had hit home. No one that young could hold a balance that long, let alone a turn-out, and none of the mothers around this town could pronounce the words.
Anna motioned Steph over. ‘Steph, Madame Meyer is going to teach you. Say “Bon jour, madame.”’
Steph curtsied the way her mother had taught her. It was the same deep curtsy Anna had used for the last curtain call of her Lizzie Borden, and to see an eight-year-old do it was a knockout.
‘You can go change, honey.’ Anna took the chequebook from her purse. ‘How do I make it out, to you or the academy?’ First academy she’d ever seen with laths showing through the plaster.
‘Academy will be fine,’ La Meyer said. If she’d said ‘cash,’ Anna would have worried.
‘Look I know the kind of guff those mothers give you. I’m not one of them, and I’m not paying for Steph to take naps. Don’t be afraid to be hard on her.’
La Meyer tucked the cheque for the term into her skirt without even looking at it. Some businesswoman, Anna thought. No wonder she was operating out of a fleabag movie house.
Steph clung tight to Anna’s hand all the way down the stairs. ‘Is Madame Meyer a dancer, Mommy?’
‘She used to be, honey.’
‘Like you?’
‘More used to be than that, honey. But you don’t have to be a dancer to be a teacher. Me, I was a terrific dancer but I can’t teach worth a damn. So you listen to everything Madame says. It’s costing money.’
Anna wasn’t one of those mothers who had to supervise their daughters’ every leap and tendu, but now and then she did look in on the Elise Meyer Academy of Classical Dance.
Within three months Steph’s pliés were liquid and she had no trouble at all keeping her heels down in fourth. At age nine she had the best pirouette in the class, and at ten the best fouetté, and Elise Meyer suggested that Steph might care to dance a featured solo at the annual recital.
‘Naturally,’ La Meyer said, ‘she’ll need a special costume, and I’d suggest getting a record to practise to at home, but you can buy those through me.’
‘Naturally,’ Anna said. ‘How much?’
Naturally it was too much, but it was also Steph’s chance to appear in public, and the sooner a dancer got used to that, the better. Anna paid the thirty-two dollars and made a face. Not at the money, but at the record: ‘Waltzing Cat.’ And at the costume: ‘Waltzing Cat.’
The recital was a madhouse. Reminded Anna of her own student recital.
Most of the little girls had never worn make-up or costumes before and they were crying their eyes out, scared stiff at the idea of standing up in front of strangers. Their moms were going crazy trying to get them to sit still long enough to take the rollers out of their hair.
Not Steph. Steph was an angel. Not a tear, not a whimper.
When it came time to perform one little girl forgot her steps entirely and just stood on the stage peeing in her pink leotards. Anna could see the dark spot. The kid just wasn’t a pro.
It was a typical schlock recital. The music was on tape and only one of the speakers worked; the other kind of hummed along. The footlights had two levels, on and off, and that was it. La Meyer danced Dying Swan herself and four of her older students flapped through the Dance of the Little Swans.
The corps was hopelessly out of sync, a bunch of frightened little girls watching one another to see who’d have the nerve to move first. Steph had the nerve. She was always right there on the beat, always first. Half the girls watched their feet. Steph never even glanced at her feet: her eyes were on that make-believe horizon right above the audience’s head, just as Anna had taught her. Most of the girls were too busy trying to remember steps to smile. Steph never stopped smiling.
She was a pro.
And even in that ridiculous Waltzing Cat, with the corps meowing and waving tails, she was a knockout. The little extra unsupported pirouette that Anna had had her sneak in brought the house down. Three curtain calls.
There would have been more if La Meyer hadn’t gotten jealous and cut them short. ‘I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen,
but we really must get on with the baton twirling.’
At eleven, Steph joined toe class. She had fabulous turns and a balance on pointe she could hold forever without a hint of a wobble. What a pro, Anna thought: pro, pro, pro!
When Steph was thirteen Elise Meyer said there was nothing more she could teach the girl. If she hadn’t said it, Anna would have.
‘I’d like her to study with Buddy McKay in Chicago.’ La Meyer looked sad. ‘He’ll help her footwork.’
‘Can she get a scholarship?’ Anna said.
‘I’m afraid he doesn’t give them. You could try applying to the National Federation of Dance or the Harkness Foundation.’
Anna applied. They turned Steph down. What did they know?
She took Steph to Chicago anyway. She waved her photo on the cover of Dancemagazine and talked her way into a job teaching calisthenics at Elizabeth Arden. The pay was enough to send Steph to the Ecole McKay for ten hours a week.
Steph’s body developed. Her placement got even better. She was doing triple unsupported pirouettes by the time she was fifteen. Her jetés were as high as a boy’s and her fouettés were fantastic.
By the time Steph was sixteen, Anna knew her little girl was ready. She cashed in her savings and bought two one-way plane tickets to New York. She grovelled in front of Dorcas Amidon and she grovelled in front of Christine Avery’s mother and she grovelled in front of anyone else who could help.
She wangled a scholarship for Steph. She wangled a decent home for Steph. She wangled a career for Steph. She realized now she’d spent half her life grovelling and wangling for that kid.
And what for, Anna wondered, what for?
She paid the cab driver and let herself into the empty lobby and stood with a finger jammed against the elevator button.
I’m not going to let her throw it away, Anna vowed. I’m not going to let her.
Steph awakened to the sound of a phone. It seemed to have begun ringing a thousand years ago in a dream she could no longer remember. She heard a mattress squeak and Chris’s shadow moved toward the door.
‘If that’s my mother,’ Steph said, ‘tell her I’m in coma. No, don’t. That’ll just bring her over again.’
‘We don’t have to answer,’ Chris said.
Steph shook the sleep out of her head and turned on the light. ‘I’d better talk to her.’ She sighed, thinking what nuisances mothers could be, and Chris stood watching her.
‘You know, Steph, you’re lucky to have her.’
‘Lucky?’
‘I wouldn’t mind having someone who cared ... even if they cared too much.’
‘Too much is putting it mildly.’ The phone was still ringing and Steph sensed it wasn’t gong to give up easily. ‘I’d better answer before she sends the fire department.’
She stumbled into the living room and groped in the dark for the receiver. A man said, ‘Chris—is that you?’
Steph didn’t recognize the voice. It was slurred, with an edge of hostility. ‘Who is this?’
‘It’s Ray. Is Chris awake?’
Something’s wrong, Steph thought. ‘Just a sec.’
She went and told Chris and Chris made a curious face.
‘At this hour?’ Chris pulled herself back out of bed and went to answer. ‘Yes, Ray?’
‘Why didn’t you phone? I had dinner and wine and flowers—’
She could tell he was angry, angry at her, and it frightened her. ‘Dinner ready for what?’
‘For us. We had a date, remember?’
‘Ray, it was Steph’s premiere tonight.’
‘As you conveniently forgot to tell me. Damn it, Chris, I was worried about you. I thought you’d had an accident. I even went looking for you.’
‘I’m sorry you worried, Ray, but I didn’t have an accident and we couldn’t have had a date.’
But he cooked dinner for me, she thought. Not once in her life had a man cooked dinner for her.
‘I told you I was cooking beef bourguignon and you said okay.’
Vaguely, she remembered the beef bourguignon.
‘What is it about you dancers, you think nobody else matters?’
‘Ray, I honestly—’
‘Well, you can just go to hell for all I care!’
The receiver went dead in Chris’s hand. She jiggled the cradle and got a dial tone. Her heart was thumping. She dialled three digits of Ray’s number and the next three and then her finger lost its courage.
After an aching moment she hung up.
As she came back into the bedroom Steph was staring, a faint wrinkle of perplexity between her eyes. ‘What was that all about?’.
‘He says I broke a date without telling him.’
‘Did you?’
‘We didn’t have a date. We couldn’t have.’ She slipped back into bed and turned off the light. ‘He shouted at me.’
‘Don’t let it worry you. You’ll make it up to him. Chris, he really likes you. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Does he?’ Chris pulled the covers up to her chin. She didn’t think Ray Lockwood liked her at all. You couldn’t like a person and shout that way.
I’ve lost a friend, she thought. I have so few and now I’ve lost one.
nineteen
Lester Croyden heard the telephone ring.
He was still in his bathrobe, watering geraniums on the terrace of his Central Park West penthouse. He glanced at his watch. Curious, he went indoors to the library. He dropped two tabs of saccharin into his café au lait, stirred, and made himself comfortable on the Mies leather lounging chair.
When the ringing stopped he quietly picked up the receiver. Hannah Meredith, his co-director at Empire, was arguing with the answering service.
‘I know he’s there, I just heard him pick up.’
‘I’m sorry, ma’am, if you’d care to leave your—’
‘That’s all right, dearie,’ Lester Croyden cut in. He called his answering service dearie. ‘How are you, Hannah? Why so bright and early?’
‘Have you seen the paper?’ She sounded as though she’d ripped her dentures on the late city edition.
‘Why should I spoil my coffee, dearie? We both know that, of two decades of slovenly Sylphides, last night was the all-time slut. Who needs to see it in print?’
Hannah’s silence was ferocious.
Lester Croyden reviewed the links in last night’s chain of disasters. Ilonka had been partying, though she denied it. As a result she arrived late, rushed her warm-up, sprained her Achilles’ tendon. Sylvia Farnum, her cover, had to substitute. Naturally Sylvia couldn’t do Ilonka’s fouettés to tempo in the Grande Valse Brillante—who could? So naturally Teiji Yushima, the conductor, took the Grande Valse at a slower tempo; and naturally, being an idiot, he took the entire score slower, dragging the Nocturne at such a funeral trot that the corps couldn’t hold their balances. You could hear heels thumping like storm troopers as the girls tried to sneak down ahead of the beat.
Laughable.
Disaster.
So what?
‘You did or did you not consult Ivor Noble on the casting?’
‘Dearie, I suffered through three drunken lunches with Ivor. He thinks it was his idea to put Victor into Sylphides. I also paid him three thousand from contingency—once again.’
It was standard operating procedure for Lester Croyden to ‘consult,’ unofficially of course, with Ivor Noble. Ivor felt flattered to be asked his opinion—which was worthless—and, more important, he felt obligated to give good reviews. Empire was pegging half its spring gala on Victor Topacio. Lester Croyden had gone all out—three drunkathon lunches with Ivor at the Century Club—to guarantee Victor six months of good personal notices.
‘If this is the review Ivor gave Victor,’ Hannah said, ‘you damned well get that three thousand back.’
‘Dearie, I haven’t read the review. Now remember, the corps was not their twinkle-toed best and Sylvia did fall and she did leave out her variation without telling anyon
e. Ivor has every right to be mean. But surely he did manage to say something glowing about Victor?’
‘Why don’t I read you the glowing something he said about Victor?’
‘Gladly, dearie. All ears.’
Hannah put on her ‘I quote' tone of voice. ‘“We are in the presence of a great contemporary choreographer,”’
Lester Croyden coughed up café au lait. ‘Contemporary? That rehash of Fokine? How many scotches did Ivor have last night?’
‘The bartender says he had eight Ivor Noble specials. “Great contemporary choreographer, probing the interworkings of fantasy and reality, passion and purity, death and immortality.”’
‘That’s the trouble with Ivor’s reviews. He doesn’t know the names of any of the steps. Could you skim a little, dearie, and cut to the hard-core quotables?’
‘Very well. I skim. “This was, by in large”—whatever “by in large” means—’
‘Typo.’
‘No, that’s the way he talks too.. . “by in large a dazzling achievement, deft, fitful, beyond measure brilliant. Mr Gillette promises to be—“’
‘Gillette?’
‘“... promises to be—nay, on the evidence vouched safe by Lacrymosa—”’
‘Lacrymosa?’
‘“... safe by Lacrymosa there can be no doubt is—one of our best choreographers for women, certainly the best presently under the aegis of Empire Ballet, though interestingly this work was presented at the independent Pepsi-Cola-sponsored Damrosch Festival.”’
Lester Croyden dropped another saccharin tablet into his cafe au lait.
‘“Mr Gillette’s females are fascinating chiaroscuros of the psychological layers that lie betwixt public patina and private persona. What he has accomplished here in one bold stroke is altogether remarkable, the first work of rank since Antony Tudor’s Pillar of Fire worthy of being mentioned in that breath. All concerned for the future of dance in this country owe it to themselves to attend the next performance of this unforgettable, staggering, seminal work, which we hope and are confident will soon be seen in circumstances more deserving of its stature.” End of review. Voilà Victor’s rave.’
Lester Croyden watched a spume of saccharin fizz to the shoreline of his cup. ‘Gillette? Danny Gillette? Our Danny Gillette?’
Ballerina Page 20
