by Cara Malone
“What do you want to know?” She asked with a sigh, crossing her arms in front of her chest to make it clear that any information she gave would be extracted under duress.
“Tell me what you were thinking just before your end-of-semester audition,” Dr. Riley said, “in the locker room just before you were supposed to go on stage.”
“I was thinking that I might throw up,” Melody said.
They’d talked about this before. Dr. Riley knew she had the flu and that she’d collapsed in the shower. She knew even better than Melody that the stage assistant found her unconscious and bloody and that she’d been taken by ambulance to the hospital, where they put her on a seventy-two-hour watch because everyone assumed she was suicidal. Melody’s mother had filled Dr. Riley in on all of those details because Melody herself had no memory of it. All she had for a souvenir was a jagged pink scar running down her forearm – oh, and six months in therapy.
“What about the idea of going on stage made you feel sick to your stomach?” Dr. Riley asked.
“It wasn’t the audition,” Melody said testily. “I had a stomach bug.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” Melody snapped. “I was throwing up for over a week.”
“The doctor in the emergency room noted in your chart that there were no physical symptoms to indicate illness,” Dr. Riley said delicately. This wasn’t the first time Melody heard that. When her parents drove to New York to pick her up from the hospital, they questioned her at length about why she would cut herself like that, and they believed every word the ER doctor said, taking it as damning evidence of her desperation.
“Maybe I got it out of my system by then,” Melody said, raising her voice a little higher than necessary as she tugged her sleeves down over her wrists. She did it whenever she thought about the end of her dance career, or felt self-conscious about the scar. Dr. Riley let the silence stretch out between them for a moment or two – she was manipulative when she needed to be, and even though she let Melody spend the hour talking about nonsense most of the time, Melody could never completely let down her guard in case of moments like this.
“You know, anxiety can be a pretty tricky thing to deal with,” Dr. Riley said delicately. “The fear reaction can elicit any number of mental or physical symptoms in an effort to activate the fight-or-flight response and keep you out of danger.”
Melody looked up at Dr. Riley, whose pen was still poised over the blank legal pad, waiting for a breakthrough. “What are you trying to say?”
“Just that you had an awful lot on your shoulders at Pavlova, and most strains of the stomach flu don’t linger for several weeks,” Dr. Riley said, choosing her words carefully. Melody kept her arms crossed as she listened. “Think about how your body felt when you were in that shower stall. You described nausea, dizziness and fever, but you also described visual disturbances and a racing pulse – those are all symptoms of an extreme panic reaction. Melody, isn’t it possible that you saw that broken soap dish as an escape from the humiliation of failing as a dancer?”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” Melody said. “Can we change the subject?”
“Does it make you uncomfortable to consider that possibility?” Dr. Riley pressed. “The possibility that what happened in the shower was intentional?”
“Fuck you,” Melody hissed. “You’re supposed to be the one person who’s on my side about that, who’s supposed to take my word for it.”
“Melody, injuries like that don’t just happen on accident.”
“Were you there?” Melody asked, her voice rising into a shrieking register. “Because I was there the whole fucking time, watching myself fall farther and farther behind the rest of the class no matter how much time I put in practicing. No matter what I did I was at the bottom of my class and nothing I did was good enough. My turn-out wasn’t good enough, my balance wasn’t good enough, my techniques weren’t advanced enough. I was the small-town girl who thought she was going to take New York by storm, except the only thing I was doing was wasting everyone’s time and putting my whole family deeper and deeper into debt for every day that I stayed.”
“How do you know you were wasting everyone’s time?” Dr. Riley asked gently. “You were accepted into a very prestigious program, chosen out of hundreds of applicants. Why do you think you were destined to fail?”
“Not everyone who gets accepted succeeds,” Melody said. “Just because I studied at Pavlova didn’t mean I’d ever get a job as anything other than a mediocre chorus dancer at the back of the stage, just like I was in the school performances. If no one ever saw me and they didn’t even realize I was there, then I was wasting everyone’s time.”
“And your parents’ money,” Dr. Riley said, and Melody shot her a glare for so helpfully bringing that aspect to the forefront.
“Yes.”
“That must have been a lot of pressure to handle,” Dr. Riley said. “Especially as a new adult, living in such a big city so far away from your family and friends.”
“Yeah,” Melody said, hanging her head and watching as a tear fell from the corner of her eye and stained the thigh of her jeans a darker color. The wet spot bloomed outward for a second, and then she said quietly, almost imperceptibly, “No one ever quits Pavlova because they can’t take the pressure.”
Dr. Riley didn’t try to respond to this, and after a moment Melody inhaled sharply, putting her head back to stare at the ceiling and try to ward off more tears. She said to the ceiling, “Everyone just assumes that when you reach that level, you’re already made of stone and nothing can touch you because you’ve already become what they all expect.”
“And what’s that?”
“A prima,” Melody said, her lip curling up a little bit as she looked at Dr. Riley finally. “A principle dancer. The best of the best. The only honorable way out is to be so physically beaten down that you can’t continue. I knew a dancer who did an entire show on a broken toe, and girls with stress fractures in their shins, and they all just kept dancing. Dr. Riley, I didn’t slice my forearm open on purpose, but when I woke up in the hospital and the doctor asked me why I tried to kill myself, I didn’t correct him because I knew it was a way out.”
The tears were streaming down her face now, and she tried to flick them away with her hands but it did no good. They came so heavily it almost felt like being in the shower again.
Dr. Riley reached over and handed her a box of tissues and then waited patiently. When Melody finally got herself under control again, she said, “Good. Now we can really get to work.”
***
“H’lo?” Melody grumbled the word, her brain still swimming out of sleep as she answered her phone through muscle memory alone. It was early on Saturday morning, and when she glanced at the time she saw it was not quite eight a.m.
“Kiddo, I need a favor!” The voice on the other end of the line was a little hoarse but unmistakably Mary Beth.
“What’s wrong?” Melody asked, sitting up and trying to wipe the sleep from her eyes.
“I’m contagious,” Mary Beth said. “I woke up this morning and my tonsils were swollen to the size of apples. Saw the doctor already and he said I have strep throat. I got Emily to cover my other classes today, but I need you to teach beginner ballet.”
“What? No,” Melody started to object, but Mary Beth interrupted.
“Please,” she said, the froggy nature of her voice emphasized as she put strain on it. “I wouldn’t ask if there were any other options.”
Melody rolled her eyes. She very much doubted that, especially after the conversation they’d had at the Halloween party. She wondered just how sick Mary Beth really was. “I really don’t think I can. I’m not trained as a teacher.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Mary Beth said. “If you’re good enough to get into Pavlova, I think you can figure out how to teach a few five-year-olds how to plié.”
Melody imagined herself putting on her leotard and balle
t slippers, anxiety rising in her throat, and then she thought about the fact that Ellie Cartwright was in that class. Jessie would be sitting there the whole time, along with a row of other dance moms all holding notepads and staring at her and taking notes on the recital routine. Melody didn’t want to set foot in the studio, and feeling like she was in a fishbowl with all those eyes on her would be bad enough if a pair of those eyes weren’t Jessie’s mossy green ones.
“I can’t,” Melody said.
“You have to,” Mary Beth said. “I’m too contagious.”
And then before Melody had a chance to object again, Mary Beth hung up.
“Seriously?” Melody quipped to her empty bedroom.
She didn’t have a whole lot of choice, though – either she taught the class or she would have to call everyone in it and tell them the class was cancelled. The idea certainly crossed her mind to do just that, but when she got out of bed, she went over to her dresser and pulled out a neatly folded and long-forgotten leotard from the bottom drawer. She laid it out on her bed, then she dug an old warm-up sweater with long sleeves out of the back of her closet and laid that down beside the leotard.
Melody spent the morning trying to distract herself from what was coming in the afternoon. She went over to Andy’s before work and chattered nervously to him about how Mary Beth had forced her into teaching the class, but when he nudged the bong toward her she waved it away and said she needed to get to work. At the reception desk, she did her best to stay busy and keep her mind occupied.
In the back of her mind, though, she was running through the playlist of music she always heard Mary Beth using for the beginner ballet class. She also thought about the choreography for their recital dance, wondering how closely she’d guessed it – Mary Beth wouldn’t expect her to rehearse that with them, but it would make the class go faster if she did.
When twelve forty-five rolled around, she got up from the desk and went into the bathroom down the hall to change into her leotard and ballet slippers. It was the first time she’d worn any of it since coming home from New York, and the way the spandex hugged her like a second skin felt uncomfortably familiar. She pulled the soft pink sweater on over the leotard, tugging the sleeves down to her wrists, then slid into an old pair of ballet slippers. She had to admit it was nice putting them on without the shooting pain associated with blistered toes and so many hours of practice.
She heard the front door open and little ballerinas began to pour into the lobby. Melody put her hand on the bathroom door and took a long, deep breath, then went out to meet them.
“Miss Melody!” Ellie was the first spot her, and she made it about halfway down the hall toward her when she stopped, spotting Melody’s wardrobe change, then said, “Hey, you’re dressed up like a ballerina.”
“Yep,” Melody said, glancing over Ellie’s head at her mother waiting down the hall. Jessie was staring at her in the leotard, and even though she’d worn something like it every day for an entire semester at Pavlova, suddenly Melody felt indecent.
“Why?” Ellie demanded as Melody led her toward the studio.
“Well, it looks like I’m going to be teaching your class today,” Melody said. “Why don’t you go in and take a spot on the floor? I’ll be right in.”
She dodged into the safety behind the reception desk, not quite ready to set foot in the studio, and watched as the rest of the dancers entered the studio. Jessie lingered behind for just a moment, approaching the desk.
“You look good,” she said, color coming into her cheeks. “Very professional.”
“Oh shut up,” Melody said with a smirk. She was actually grateful that Jessie was standing here distracting her from the way her pulse was beginning to race and pound in her ears. If she was alone at the desk, Melody worried it might start to feel too much like the locker room at her last audition.
“I’m sorry about our last conversation,” Jessie said. “I was out of line.”
“It’s okay,” Melody said. Jessie seemed to be leaning just slightly too far over the ledge of the reception counter, the space between them closing in. Melody was suddenly feeling bashful, so she looked down at her leotard and added, “Just don’t get the impression by this that you were right or anything.”
Jessie laughed, then Melody took another deep breath and finally felt ready came out from behind the desk. Even if she wasn’t ready, there was no more time to delay – she needed to start the class. Jessie went into the studio and found a chair along the wall with the other moms, and Melody followed her. As she stepped over the threshold, the leather soles of her slippers gripped the waxed wood floor just like they always had before.
“Hi everyone,” she said as she walked over to the sound system mounted on one wall. She felt heat rising into her cheeks as a momentary panic washed over her again, everything Jessie had done to distract her in the lobby dissipating as she realized that this was the first time she’d set foot in a studio since she left New York. Melody kept her face turned away from everyone, trying to hide the color in her cheeks, as she queued the warm-up music that Mary Beth always used.
It took her a minute to figure out the stereo, and when she finally turned around, she saw almost two dozen little ballerinas looking expectantly up from the floor at her, as well as about a dozen parents.
“I hope you all recognize me from the front desk,” she said. “I’m Melody, and I’m going to be filling in for Mary Beth today because she’s feeling under the weather.”
A dozen wide, expectant eyes followed her every move and her heart pounded as she came to the center of the room and sat down on the floor with the kids. She shot a quick look at Jessie, who was smiling encouragingly, and then she started directing them through a series of warm-up stretches.
After a few minutes, the music started to get into her bones and Melody remembered how good it felt to stretch her muscles out. She relaxed a bit, even managing to lose herself in the moment a few times, and before she knew it, the hour was over. They’d progressed through floor and barre stretches and then to their recital routine. Melody got bold and walked over to Jessie’s chair to glance over her shoulders at the notes she’d jotted on her steno pad, and she was pleased with herself when she saw that she hadn’t been far off when she guessed at the choreography.
By the time the kids and parents were streamed back into the hall, Melody felt downright good, and she was thoroughly surprised at how much she’d enjoyed teaching the class. Of course she wouldn’t tell Mary Beth that – the next time she saw her, Melody intended to tell her that it was the most harrowing experience of her life.
“Nice job,” Jessie said as she and Ellie passed Melody on the way out of the studio, and for just a second, Melody felt Jessie’s hand brush across her back. It could have been a dream.
***
Mary Beth was back to work the following day with a heavy dose of antibiotics and her doctor’s assurance that she was not contagious after all. Melody thought she still sort of looked like crap, though, her voice raspy and her eyelids drooping with exhaustion.
“I never get sick,” Mary Beth croaked as she and Melody walked into the school twenty minutes before the first class of the day. “I think the last time I had a cold was 2007, and the last time I was too sick to come to work – well, I don’t think that’s ever happened before. When I do get sick, though, it really knocks me on my ass.”
Melody could relate – the last time she’d gotten sick, she ended up leaving Pavlova in the back of an ambulance.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Melody said, although the redness around Mary Beth’s nose and the sound of her voice didn’t indicate that she was all that much better. Melody tried to casually keep her distance.
“Thanks for covering the beginner ballet class,” Mary Beth said. “How did it go?”
“Umm,” Melody started, considering her options.
Just for the sheer trickery of being forced to teach the class, she wanted to tell Mary Beth it was awf
ul. She wanted her to feel guilty for making Melody do something that she’d been very clear about not wanting to do.
In reality, though, she actually kind of liked it. The kids were so excited about everything she showed them and it reminded her of how she felt when she was a kid and just learning ballet. It was nice to see it through innocent eyes again, instead of through the lens of judgment, guilt and fear that Melody wore now.
So Melody went back on her promise to herself and decided to be honest. She said, “It was actually not bad.”
Mary Beth’s eyes lit up, and suddenly she looked at least fifty percent less sick.
“Good,” she exclaimed as Melody stepped behind the reception desk. Mary Beth was grinning at her and leaning over the ledge conspiratorially, and then she said, “That’s so good to hear because I have an opportunity for you, kiddo.”
“What is it?” Melody asked tentatively.
Anxiety rose in her chest and she wondered when people were going to stop pushing her out of her comfort zone – her parents, Dr. Riley, and now Mary Beth. Wasn’t it enough progress for one week that she’d taught the beginner class and it hadn’t killed her like she expected it to?
“There’s a student who I think would really shine if she had some one-on-one instruction,” Mary Beth said.
“You want me to teach a private lesson?” Melody asked, already coming up with her list of reasons why she couldn’t do it. She wasn’t qualified or experienced enough to teach. She wasn’t in shape. She couldn’t spare the time between her reception job and the busy social life she had going on in Andy’s basement. Her parents would be too pleased about it and mistake it for further progress.
“Yes,” Mary Beth said, “a series of them, ideally.”
