Ballerina

by Edward Stewart

  ‘Stephanie, would you object to learning Aurora? It’s a very, very difficult role.’

  A stab of surprise went through Steph. ‘Object? How could I object?’

  His eyes were on Chris now, and suddenly Steph understood what he was doing: he was playing her off against her best friend, doing it coldly and manipulatively and on purpose. But why?

  ‘Understand, I can give no guarantee that you’ll dance the role.’

  ‘Guarantee–?’ Steph stammered. Now he had lost her.

  ‘I’m asking if you would cover the role for Christine.’

  Steph’s hands tightened around one another. He wasn’t asking: he was commanding. For an instant her lungs seemed to be pushing air out and pulling it in at the same time and she couldn’t get a breath or sound past her throat.

  Finally she managed to blurt, ‘Yes—of course.’

  ‘Mr Volmar.’ Chris’s face was blushing and she was struggling to hold her voice steady. ‘That’s not fair. I should be covering for Steph.’

  Steph sank against the leather backrest. She wished it would close over her like a coffin lid. She felt humiliated enough without the sting of Chris’s bumbling generosity.

  ‘My dear Christine, that’s exactly what I was going to ask you next. Do you object to covering the role for Stephanie? Do you object to learning the part—with no guarantees?’

  Chris’s voice came faint and late like an echo of something that had been shouted very far away. ‘No.’

  ‘You both agree then?’

  Neither answered.

  Volmar smiled apologetically. ‘I cannot judge before I see. Until we rehearse, I can’t be sure which of you I prefer. It’s a dreadful thing to ask of any dancers. But dance is dance and we are professionals. So, if you are willing, each of you will learn the role. Sometime between now and the gala, we’ll make up our minds.’

  Steph’s instinct told her nothing was ever so simple as Volmar presented it. Not even the truth. She wondered which of them he was trying to hurt and why.

  Chris forced out an objection, tiny and hesitant. ‘Mr Volmar, Steph and I are friends, and I wouldn’t want anything to—’

  ‘But of course you’re friends. Could I ask two dancers who weren’t?’

  In the elevator, Steph and Chris tried to smile. And then the smiles thinned away and Chris burst into tears.

  ‘Chris—don’t. Please.’

  ‘I can’t help it. You’re my best friend. You’re my only friend.’ Chris’s eyes blinked up at Steph. ‘I don’t want to lose you.’

  ‘Come on. No one’s going to lose any friends.’

  Chris’s eyes had a haunted glow. For a long time now Steph had sensed something unidentifiably wrong with her friend: there had been lapses of attention and memory and judgment and they formed an ominous pattern.

  ‘I’m going to dance badly,’ Chris said suddenly. ‘Every rehearsal, I’ll make mistakes. I’m going to make sure you get the role.’

  It was an absolutely crazy thing to say and something cold shot down Steph’s spine when she realized Chris meant it. I could take the role right now, I could just tell her I want it.

  She pushed the notion away. But it kept slithering back.

  She’s so scared she’d give it to me. Without a fight. Without a whimper.

  Suddenly there were two scared people in the elevator: Chris drying her eyes on her fists, Steph staring deep down at something she’d never seen in herself before.

  She shook her head, a hard snap of a shake. ‘No, Chris. We’ll both do the very best we can. And whoever gets the role, we’ll always be friends.’

  ‘Well?’ Sasha asked proudly. ‘What do you think?’

  Empty, it was a New York nothing, with all the earmarks of five hundred a month rent: twelve-foot ceiling, marble fireplace, wood parquetry floor; two paint-splattered windows with a view of two windows across the street; a front door scarred with locks present and ghosts of locks past; a door with perforated tin panels tucking away the two-burner kitchen with its two-quart sink and one ice-tray refrigerator; two newer doors, battered as welfare children, anyone’s guess which was the closet and which the bathroom.

  ‘It’s—it could be—really terrific,’ Steph hedged.

  ‘I am glad you love it. If you knew how long I look!’

  There was a naked king-sized mattress, no other furnishing, and the poodle had already claimed it. Sasha flung himself down beside the dog, a very energetic pantomime of exhaustion. The poodle stirred.

  ‘Needs things,’ Sasha said. ‘Paint, plaster.’

  Needs an exterminator, Steph noticed, watching a six-legged black dot scuttle out of the sink.

  ‘I will buy rugs—pictures—furniture.’ Sasha waved, a set designer summoning props into existence. ‘Will be knockout, yes?’

  ‘Is it big enough for you and Merde?’

  Sasha cuddled the huge animal to his chest. ‘Big enough for me and Merde and anyone else.’

  ‘Does the fireplace work?’

  Sasha nodded. ‘And wonderful Madison Avenue shop is going to find brass andirons for me. And you will help me choose furniture, yes?’

  She hesitated. ‘I’m not much of a decorator.’

  ‘I do not want decorator. I want real home, place to hang my blue jeans. Monday you come help me choose furniture, yes?’

  Steph summoned up a mental image of Monday in her date book. Masseur, class with the new man at Harkness House, that revival of Turning Point at the Little Carnegie that she’d promised to catch with Chris.

  Nothing she couldn’t cancel.

  ‘Is problem?’

  ‘No—no problem. Only, could I ask you a favour?’

  ‘Ask.’

  ‘Please don’t tell anyone.’

  His face went through the motions of shock. ‘You think I gossip?’

  ‘Other people gossip. I wouldn’t want it to get around.’

  ‘What can get around? Choosing bed does not mean spending night in it. You are scared of me?’

  ‘You’ve been a perfect gentleman, Sasha.’ Too perfect, damn it all. ‘But rumours travel very fast in the company, and I don’t want to hurt my roommate.’

  ‘My furniture—your roommate—I do not understand connection.’

  ‘Christine.’

  Something flew through his eyes too fast for her to catch. ‘Christine Avery? Second gypsy in Alborado? So what?’

  ‘She has a crush on you.’

  ‘What means “crush”?’

  ‘She’s in love with you.’

  ‘Not possible.’

  How would you know? Steph thought. Your English isn’t that good, you don’t pay attention, all sorts of people might be in love with you and you’d never notice.

  ‘Sasha, I live with her. She’s very naive but she’s my best friend. And she thinks she’s head over heels in love with you. She’d be terribly hurt if she knew I was seeing you.’

  Sasha smiled and patted the mattress. She sat beside him, snuggling comfortably against his shoulder.

  ‘We will wear big dark glasses,’ he said. ‘Like spies.’

  They went to department stores and furniture shops and they didn’t wear dark glasses.

  Salesmen showed them chairs and sofas and just the fabrics to go with a standard grey poodle. Some recognized Sasha and a pleasant giddiness rose up in Steph when she sensed them trying to recognize her too.

  ‘What you think?’ Sasha said. ‘Big enough?’

  They were staring at a Brazilian steerhide sofa. She tried to imagine the firelight in Sasha’s apartment and the luxurious encircling sweep of leather. Sasha sprawled and motioned her to sit beside him. His arm went around her and he laughed, showing his Soviet dentistry.

  She laughed, too, a hundred times in that one day. They chose sofas and chairs and rugs and lamps, all expensive, all beautiful. It was good to be with Sasha, good to be piecing together a home even if it wasn’t hers.

  ‘Day after tomorrow,’ Sasha said, ‘we choos
e curtains, okay?’

  Her life paused while she waited to hear from him. A day went by and two days. He didn’t mention curtains in class and he didn’t mention them after performance. He rushed past her in the wings and smiled and showed his steel molar and that was all.

  Her happiness was dashed.

  One evening in the supermarket, waiting in line at the checkout, she picked a magazine out of the rack. There was a photo of Sasha discoing with a TV talk-show hostess. The text called him the up-and-coming ladies’ man in the United States, ‘making such venerable girl-watchers as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Warren Beatty look positively in need of French ticklers.’

  She worked out the date of the party. It was the day Sasha had said they would choose curtains. She put the magazine back and left the store without buying her groceries.

  It was heart bruise and it was stupid, the sort of hurt that happened to girls who fell in love at first sight, not to Stephanie Lang.

  The anger and the ache pounded in her stomach like a stab wound. She tried not to let the thought of him interfere with her work.

  But it did. She was slow in class, sloppy onstage.

  She tried not to let him butt into her dreams.

  But he did—funny Russian l’ s and steel molar and long smooth neck.

  ‘What the hell have you got on your feet,’ her mother demanded after Thursday’s Lilac Garden, ‘hiking shoes?’

  Steph let it pour out.

  Anna tried to show understanding about Sasha. ‘But, hell, this is ballet. You have to expect the machos to come on to you once a month, regular as your period.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me,’ Steph said, and there were dark circles beginning around her eyes. Anna knew exactly what was happening: too much coffee, too many cigarettes, not enough red meat, no sleep.

  ‘You’re in love with a prick,’ Anna said. ‘If it’s any comfort, honey, you’re not the first. Take a good look at your mom.’

  Steph stared at her. ‘But I thought he cared about me.’

  ‘You and two dozen other nitwits thought he cared.’ Anna made her eyes big with compassion and she hugged her little girl and wished she weren’t quite such a little girl. ‘All that little Commie cares about is money and a poodle called Merde and getting his picture in the paper. He’s got the brains to hire a press agent and you better have the brains to forget him.’

  ‘Mom, you don’t know him.... He’s not like that.’

  ‘They’re all like that!’ Anna burst out. ‘Honey, I’m Polish. I know Russians. I don’t care whether it’s Misha or Sasha or Kasha or Cashew! They make good partners on stage—period! You just get some sleep and start eating calf’s liver for breakfast and for God’s sake clean up your technique.’

  forty-two

  Steph took her mother’s advice like doctor’s medicine—held her nose and swallowed. She wrapped herself in work like a cocoon. She cut cigarettes to half a pack a day, coffee to three cups.

  And it almost killed her.

  She made sure there were fresh greens and red meat or fish for dinner. She fixed calf s liver for breakfast three times a week and she even persuaded Chris—who was looking pale and dangerously underweight—to try eating it.

  At supper she and Chris usually kept to themselves, locked into separate silences and respecting the other’s privacy. But sometimes if Steph had seen Sasha’s name in the evening paper a wave of sadness would sweep over her and her throat would refuse to swallow and she would have to lay down her fork.

  Once she looked across the table when Chris was staring hauntedly into space, not eating either. For an instant, seeing her roommate dejected and silent with shadows creeping under her skin, Steph had the uneasy impression of gazing into a mirror.

  It’s the Sleeping Beauty, she thought, we’re competing against each other and it’s poisoning us.

  She almost said, ‘Chris, let’s talk about it.’ But she wanted the role. Perhaps she wanted it even more than their friendship, and perhaps that was why she kept quiet.

  She saw Sasha three times a week at Sleeping Beauty rehearsals. They spoke, hello’s and hi’s and How’s Merde? and when Volmar paired them they touched. But they didn’t really talk, and that hurt her. After two weeks the hurt was past its early wanting-to-weep stage: it became something deeper, less consciously felt, like a low note on a church organ.

  She still checked the answering service several times a day from work and she made a point of getting to the mailbox first, just in case Sasha phoned or sent a note. She wouldn’t have wanted Chris to know. Chris was hurt and mysterious and they were competitive enough these days without that added pain.

  But there were only phone and electric bills and letters from Mrs Avery and envelopes from Lenox Hill Hospital that piled up in the wicker catch-all basket on Chris’s dresser. One day when she was cleaning Steph knocked the basket over. She had to crawl under the bed picking up bracelet charms and pennies and all the odd childish things Chris collected.

  She found four newspaper clippings about Sasha and eleven unopened Lenox Hill envelopes. It was none of her business, but she opened one.

  ‘Chris,’ she said at supper, ‘why aren’t you going for your checkups?’

  Chris looked at her with a caginess she’d never seen before. ‘Who says I’m not?’

  ‘The hospital says you’re not. They’ve sent eleven reminders.’

  Chris slammed a fist down onto the table and the water glasses jumped. ‘You have no right to search my mail!’

  Steph swallowed, knowing she was in the wrong, but in the wrong for the right reason. ‘Chris, you’re not looking well.’

  ‘Because I’m not feeling well,’ Chris shot back.

  ‘Then you should go to the hospital.’

  ‘This has nothing to do with the hospital. It’s personal.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

  ‘I did tell you about it and you laughed at me.’

  Steph’s brow furrowed. ‘I never laughed at you.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it and I don’t want you searching my mail!’

  ‘Chris—listen to me. You can’t keep skipping appointments. You’ve got to look after your health.’

  ‘I haven’t been skipping appointments! I’ve been busy, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re not a child playing hooky, Chris.’

  ‘Then stop treating me like a child!’

  ‘Go for a checkup. This week. Tomorrow.’

  ‘All right!’ Chris screamed. ‘I’ll go!’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘All right, tomorrow! Just leave me alone—all of you! I’m old enough to take of myself!’

  But was she?

  At a Sleeping Beauty rehearsal, a grueller with Volmar screaming, she told Steph, ‘You’re doing your balance wrong. Don’t grab it from your partner. Let him hand it to you.’

  And she was right. She was right and she was a fool, because they were competing in dead earnest now, and what one won the other lost.

  The problem was the Rose Adagio in Act One, where Princess Aurora meets her four suitors. Neither Steph nor Chris had any difficulty with the opening steps: the movements were soft and flowing and supported as each of the princes in turn partnered Aurora.

  The difficulty, for Steph, began when Aurora stepped back and rose on pointe. The choreography called for an attitude, one leg raised behind the other at an angle of ninety degrees, knee bent, right arm extended and left arced overhead.

  ‘Fingers spaced!’ Volmar shouted, and Steph couldn’t help remembering another shout, Lvovna’s, how many years ago? ‘In attitude the fingernails must be clean?’ Her fingernails were clean. Superstitiously, she scrubbed them before every rehearsal with a brush brought specially for the purpose.

  Taking her right hand with its beautifully clean fingernails, each prince in turn walked around her, revolving her full circle. The attitude had to be perfectly, unwobblingly maintained.

  So far, so good.


  But then she had to recentre, bringing her balance back into herself, and at a signal of her eyes the prince let go of her hand. Here she was on her own and here she was in trouble. Still in attitude, still balanced, she had to raise both hands overhead, shaping an imaginary crown, and hold the position for one instant of perfect motionless equilibrium.

  Steph managed to hold her pointe and her balance, but she could feel her centre skittering around inside her like a panicked hamster and she knew it just had to look forced and jittery, the opposite of everything Aurora and the Adagio represented. The pattern was repeated three times, and the hamster inside her skittered more wildly each time, and then came the worst.

  As the last prince released her hand, she was in profile to the audience. Maintaining her pointe and her balance and her attitude, she had to straighten her raised leg very, very slowly till it was fully extended. At the same time she had to stretch both arms slowly forward, ignore the hamster turning somersaults, and hold the muscle-murdering arabesque ‘forever,’ as Lvovna would have said.

  Chris’s forever was a hell of a lot more forever than Steph’s, and everybody at rehearsal saw it. Steph could feel the role slipping away from her.

  ‘You’re pushing into arabesque,’ Chris told her afterwards.

  Chris was right and it hurt. But Steph listened. She needed to know how Chris managed it, and like an innocent fool Chris told her.

  ‘What I do is imagine silk ropes pulling me into arabesque, and I fight them—just a little—like Lvovna said to.’

  Steph had forgotten Lvovna’s silk ropes. But now it all came back. She asked Wally to practise with her. The silk ropes worked. She got her arabesque and her attitudes and her Adagio into shape.

  But she didn’t return the favour. She saw Chris kicking off early on a double fouetté, dropping her shoulder. She kept her mouth shut. Just because Chris volunteered advice didn’t mean she owed Chris any, did it?