Steph sat a moment longer, listening. Over the loudspeaker she could hear the adagio of Études Symphoniques, the final work on the programme, blurred to a soft secret whisper. The other girls in the corps would be in the wings, just lining up for their entrance. By now they would all have heard: Stephanie Lang fell!
She was glad she didn’t have to face them right away. Company class tomorrow would be soon enough and awful enough.
She kept the cards and handed the bouquets to the dresser on her way out. ‘Could you take care of these, Lily? Maybe you’d like them or maybe one of the hospitals....’
Dressers wound up with half the dancers’ bouquets, and the wards at Roosevelt Hospital, six blocks away wound up with half of those.
‘Sure I will, miss. Aren’t they lovely.’
At the stage entrance Anna paced and scowled and arranged every accusation and reproach in order of increasing magnitude. She set her tears and her betrayed looks and her shouts in neat, ready stockpiles. She was armed for war.
And then the door opened and Steph came out, pale and little and hesitant, and Anna couldn’t. She was overwhelmed by an impulse to run to the girl and hug her.
They stared at one another a long moment. Something quiet and unexpected filled the space between them.
‘Hello, Mom.’
‘Oh, honey, what a night.’
Gently, Anna took Steph’s arm. ‘First time I danced with your father, I was doing this beautiful schmaltzy jump on his shoulder. I had hours to prepare, and don’t ask me how, but I jumped right over him and fell flat on my face. And you know what that rat Volmar said? He said, “At least you kept your leg turned out.” I could have died.’
A smile hovered but didn’t quite settle on Steph’s lips. They pushed through the street door, up the concrete steps toward the traffic.
‘How was my turn-out?’ Steph asked.
‘You held it like a pro—right till your ass hit. How do you feel?’
‘Me or my ass?’
‘Your ass I don’t care about—that’ll recover.’
‘So will I.’
That was all Anna needed to hear. She was glad now that she hadn’t shouted. ‘Do you want to talk?’
‘No. But thanks.’
They kissed good night, and then Steph walked east and Anna stood waiting for her bus. Her eye followed the child up the avenue. She thought of things she could have said, nice encouraging things, and she wondered why she always thought of the nice encouraging things too late.
Just before Steph turned the corner she looked back and waved.
Suddenly Anna felt happy. One of the worst nights of her life and for that single instant she felt happy.
The next morning Chris went out early and bought the newspapers. She served Steph her reviews in bed, with coffee and high-protein health drink made in the blender.
‘Have you looked at them?’ Steph asked, trying to sound very casual and calm.
Chris nodded.
‘And?’
‘They liked the ballet. They say they like Sergio. But I think they’re being polite.’
‘And?’
Chris shrugged. ‘Critics don’t dance. They don’t know anything.’
Steph opened one of the papers. The critic hailed Volmar: ‘His first work in thirty years was well worth the wait. Do I Hear a Waltz? is a searing statement on the bankruptcy of romantic values.’ He patted Sergio on the back: ‘A brilliant farewell. Dance has lost in Sergio Moritz a loyal and dedicated servant.’
And he crucified Steph: ‘Lacking the lyric brio to bring off the waltz, yet insecure outside the movements of traditional ballet, she makes little of her most dazzling opportunity, the apocalyptic final segment. What a joy it would be to see this role danced by a seasoned ballerina!’
Steph folded the paper. Chris had edged toward the door. Her eyes were helpless with embarrassment. She’s scared, Steph realized; she’s more scared for me than I am for myself!
‘Come on,’ Steph said, ‘it’s not the end of the world.’
‘It’s so unfair. I know how hard you worked.’
‘But I stank.’
A glaze of amazement dropped over Chris’s face.
‘And look at the bright side. I used to be scared of audiences. Scared I’d fall on my ass or make a fool of myself. Now I’ve done it. There’s nothing left to be scared of. You’re looking at a former coward. A flop is the greatest therapy in the world.’
Chris stood staring, mouth open, and then with a sudden cry she rushed from the room. Steph found her at the kitchen sink with a wad of paper towel bunched to her face.
‘What’s the matter, Chris? Look, I’m the failure in the family. What are you crying about?’
‘I just know—if it happened to me—I could never be like you.’
‘It’s not going to happen to you. And anyway, who the hell would want to be like me?’
‘I do, Steph. I do.’
twenty-eight
In the season’s schedule it had been a hole, a vacuum labelled ‘New Work.’ But now little stickers went up on posters outside the theater and inside the lobby, ads appeared in newspapers, correcting ‘New Work' to Do I Hear a Waltz? It was whispered backstage that people were actually standing in line asking for tickets to the five remaining performances. Do I was selling out.
The dancers were astonished. ‘Who’d want to see that?’
Two days after the premiere there was a change in the rehearsal sheet. Stephanie Lang was removed from the second and all other performances of Do I. Christine Avery was to dance in her place.
‘Why?’ Chris whispered. Huddled in the rocking chair, she looked underweight, eroded. ‘Why me?’
‘Because you can do it,’ Steph said. Though in her heart she wondered.
‘With only six rehearsal days?’
‘You can do it.’
Chris had the darting eyes of a tiny trapped animal. ‘The whole corps has been waiting for this. They’re going to rip me apart and eat me.’
‘Come on, Chris. It’s only a stupid second-rate ballet. Give it a try.’
‘Why can’t he use Carla? She covered the role!’
‘Maybe he doesn’t like the way she covered it.’ Steph felt tired. She wanted to close her eyes. ‘You can’t do any worse than I did, and I survived.’
Chris’s gaze met hers, direct and unswerving. ‘I can do much worse than you. That’s why he chose me.’
A sense of apprehension for her friend crept over Steph. ‘Would it make it easier if I came to rehearsal with you?’
Chris sighed and attempted a smile. Fear pushed ripples of sweat through her skin. ‘Would you mind?’
Steph hardly recognized Do I. It wasn’t the same ballet at all. With Wally partnering, everything in the waltz worked: the lifts, the spins, the sliding glissades. Volmar choreographed the assault. He rehearsed Chris with Jimmy and Andrés, leading her through every detail. This time nothing was left to chance or surprise or improvisation. The boys, meshed into fine nets of muscle, became one seamless ripple.
But Chris, trapped and alone in her fear, didn’t mesh. She stood outside the rippling net, squinting and scowling, falling off balances and missing turns, staring down at her feet as though they belonged to her worst enemy.
Volmar went and put his arm around her. He sat her down in a chair and talked to her for a long time.
It didn’t help. She was a lunging dagger, ripping the net, shredding movement into chaos.
Steph watched and wanted to hide her eyes.
At home, night after night, Steph marked the steps with Chris. Their fingers wiggled in the air like the chattering of two deaf mutes. They took the tricky parts over and over till Chris could mark them perfectly, without prompting. But the terror never left her eyes.
‘Why is he doing it, Steph? First you, now me. What does he want from us?’
Steph couldn’t answer. Like Chris, she wondered. But she had no idea what Marius Volmar wanted.
An
d Chris closed her eyes and crossed her arms and set her fear down in her lap.
The evening of the performance Chris sat staring: not at television, not at Steph, but at walls, like a prisoner with two hours till execution. Steph prepared the last dinner, to the prisoner’s specifications: yogurt, wheat germ, honey, lecithin.
‘Smile,’ she said, wiggling fingers. Chris didn’t smile and Steph was sorry she’d tried.
The phone call didn’t help. ‘Mom? Where are you?’
‘Still in Evanston. Ruthie has the flu and we couldn’t get out of dinner with the Morgans.’
Chris slumped into a chair. ‘I understand...
‘Be realistic, dear. Your father has a very crowded schedule and you only gave us six days’ notice.’
‘That’s all the notice they gave me.’
‘We’re bound to be coming to New York next month. You’ll be dancing in something, won’t you?’
‘Probably a role in the corps.’
‘That’s fine, we’d love to see you do a role in the corps. Dad sends love.’
They left for the theatre fifteen minutes before the usual time. Nights when they both danced they always went together, but tonight was different: Steph wasn’t just with Chris, she was attached—like a seeing eye dog, and a bossy one at that.
Waiting for the elevator, Chris fidgeted. ‘I forgot the new toe shoes.’
Steph caught her. ‘No, you didn’t. I put them in your bag.’
Chris’s face went through eight shades of desperation. ‘My eye liner—there’s none in the dressing room.’
Steph caught her again. ‘I have eye liner.’
‘I need green.’
Steph kept one foot in the elevator door and one hand reining in on Chris. ‘Borrow some of Carla’s.’
‘Carla doesn’t talk to me.’
‘Tonight she’ll loan you her green eye liner—even if you both have to mime the dialogue. Oh, Chris, calm down.’
They stood very stiff and straight in the elevator and all the way down to the lobby they carefully didn’t look at one another. The elevator was up to its usual unpredictable tricks. As they got out the door decided to slam a little faster than usual, catching Chris on the hip.
‘Ouch!’
‘It’s only a little bump,’ Steph said. She knew from experience how those little bumps could hurt but it seemed best, tonight, to treat everything as lightly as possible.
And to take no chances. She asked the doorman to call a taxi. It cost ninety-five cents to get to the stage entrance of the Met. She held Chris’s hand all the way and gave a dollar-five-cent tip, bribing fate. They flashed their passes at the guard, and he waved and buzzed them through the security door.
They got looks from the other girls in the dressing room, a few nods—some of them almost friendly—and one hello. Chris sat at her dressing table and took a metal box from one of the drawers. It was a fishing tackle box, from Sears, and perfect for stashing theatrical make-up—half the girls in the corps used them.
Steph made chitchat and pretended she didn’t notice Chris’s hands shaking. Chris arranged jars and good-luck charms on the table top in some mystical private order. She placed a ragged little toy bear against the mirror where it could stare at her.
‘What is that?’ Steph cried.
‘A friend I’ve had a very long time.’
‘I’ve never seen him before.’
‘He makes very few public appearances. Only on special nights, when I need him.’
Chris began dousing her face in Formula 405. And stopped. And turned. Her eyes were huge black O’s, all pupil. ‘Oh, Steph, I’m so—’
Steph knew. I’m scared shitless. She pressed a shushing finger to Chris’s lips. Don’t let her say it. ‘You—are—going—to—be—a—sensation.’
Chris’s eyes slumped. She glopped on another palmful of Formula 405.
‘Chris, what are you doing?’
‘Foundation. Why, shouldn’t I?’
Steph wondered how Chris could have been with a company this long and not picked up pointers from the other girls. No wonder her make-up blurred onstage. ‘If the foundation’s too heavy, the building sinks.’ Steph wadded a handful of Kleenex into a sponge and scooped off the excess. ‘Okay. Now build.’
Chris poked a jittery finger into the green eye shadow, closed one eye and dabbed.
‘Is that all you use?’ Steph said. ‘Three pirouettes and you’ll sweat right through it.’
‘I hate make-up.’
‘And I hate toe shoes. Here. Look at me.’ Steph took over. She blotted out Chris’s eyebrows with thick pats of bone color.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m giving you eyes. Now sit still.’ Steph whitened out the bottom lashes completely. Good. Already the eyes looked huge. Like a ballerina’s, not a little orphan’s. ‘Close your right eye. Right eye.’
Steph hesitated. Why not try something radical? She leaned and whispered to Carla at the next dressing table and Carla handed her a little pillbox of eye shadow.
Chris’s left eye gaped. ‘Pink?’
‘The whole corps wears green. Tonight you’re a nonconformist.’ And then Steph drew a thin black pencil line above each eye socket, flicking upward at the outside for that almond shape. Then dark brown, as far above the eye as she dared, the phony eyebrow line.
‘It’s too high!’ Chris whimpered.
‘Just hold still and trust me.’ An eighth of an inch below the eye Steph drew the phony lower eyelash line.
‘It’s too low!’
‘As long as it averages out. Want to put the lashes on yourself?’
Chris bent toward the mirror, squinted, attached her uppers, blinked, pulled them off, reattached them.
Steph watched her do the lowers. ‘Not on your lashes. Put them on the bottom line—like Cynthia Gregory’s.’
Dubiously, Chris spirit-gummed the lashes to the brown line. Beautiful.
‘Mascara,’ Steph said. ‘Heavy. Heavy. You’re not going to a debutante cotillion, you’re dancing.’
Then the nose. Chris had a pug nose, so Steph drew a line lightly down the centre, extending below the tip. She shadowed the sides. Result: the quintessential Dame Margot WASP schnozzle, straight and long. Then long strokes of clay-coloured blush under the cheekbones, out to the ears.
‘You’re making me look like a clown?’
‘I’m making you look like Maria Tallchief.’
Finally the lips. Steph borrowed a dark, dark red for the lower lip and drew on a big luscious pout.
‘See? The new you! Surprise!’
Chris looked at herself in the mirror. Who was that confident cat-eyed ballerina winking back at her? That’s not me, I’m pug-nosed and small-chinned and scared! She felt the beginnings of nausea, like the banking of a plane, and she braced her hands stiff on the dressing table and pushed the image away.
‘We’d better warm up,’ Steph said.
They went to studio 3, deserted this time of night. The voice on the intercom kept prodding: ‘Fifteen minutes ... ten minutes ... places, please.’
Chris felt caught in the cool rising panic of now. Her mind scampered like a trapped dog looking for a way out. ‘I have to pee,’ she blurted.
Faces turned as she rippled down the hall.
She hurried into the bathroom. Which stall? The last stall, the farthest and safest. She ducked into it, pushed the door shut, slammed the rotating bolt clockwise.
Safe!
She sat. Gradually she became aware of sweat beginning to creep through her make-up. A voice paged. Go away! Blood drummed in her throat. The voice paged again. Go to hell!
People came whispering into the bathroom. ‘Chris, are you all right?’
‘I’m peeing.’
‘No one’s going to hurt you. Please come out.’
‘There’s something wrong with my pee. I can’t come out.’
‘Do you want us to get a doctor?’ That was Carla, who had loaned her the pink eye
shadow.
‘I don’t want anything, I’m all right, please just go away and let me pee!’
‘Chris?’ That sounded like Heidi. Heidi didn’t like her.
She closed her eyes, but she couldn’t blot out the whispering, and when she opened her eyes a hairpin was working its way through the crack and under the bolt, nudging it up. She sucked air through her teeth.
‘We’re your friends, Chris. Please let us help.’ Who was that? She didn’t know the voice. ‘It’s just nerves, a doctor explained it to me: it’s a panic reaction, the body tries to dump excess baggage, but there’s never anything to pee.’
They were right. There was nothing to pee. Her mind, balanced on tiptoe, swayed. She reached a hand forward and silently lifted the bolt. She squeezed back into a corner of the stall. The door swung inward. She squeezed herself smaller, teeny-weeny tiny.
Faces peered at her, silent cat faces with make-up amplifying eyes to shouts. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. Once you’re onstage you won’t even have time to be scared.’
She allowed herself to be pulled slowly forward. They walked her, Steph on one arm and Carla on the other and Heidi running alongside saying how scared she’d been when she danced her first Little Swan and how she absolutely had to crap and once she was onstage her feet took over, don’t ask how it happened, just thank God for feet!
Chris nodded, not really seeing or hearing, struggling to stay afloat. A last wave of electricians and stagehands eddied past. Across an abyss she saw guitars, and drums glittering like an auto wreck and she realized they’d brought her to the wings. Her body screamed refusal: Not here, not now!
She wheeled away from the stage but there was a circle of eyes closing her in. ‘Don’t make me,’ she begged.
‘Merde,’ they chorused, hands pushing her back. ‘Merde ... merde ... merde....’
There was a whooshing sound, like wind sweeping down a lane of elms. The curtain rose. The house, dark now, opened out like a huge and perfect black rose with footlights sparkling at the stem.
The rose stirred, soft and beckoning. I’m only a flower. You love flowers, Chris. A flower can’t hurt you.
Ballerina Page 30
