Up to This Pointe

by Jennifer Longo

  “I only grew it because of him. For him.”

  In the mirror, Deb’s eyes narrow. Aiden perks up. “How long was your hair when you met him?”

  “Shoulders. Trimmed but never cut since.”

  Deb sets the comb down. “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Takes decades to grow hair this long. What kind of deal are we talking—arranged marriage? Not allowed to cut your hair, walk three steps behind him?”

  “No,” I say hoarsely. “I wanted to. I loved him. He wanted it long so I could pin it up. Wanted me skinny, took all my time, took my money, my parents’ money—and now he doesn’t want me. I’m not good enough.”

  “How so?”

  “Body’s not right. Not good enough.”

  “He said that? Your body?”

  I nod.

  Aiden is slack-faced in the mirror, hanging on every word.

  “Where were your parents during all this?”

  I shrug. “I loved him.”

  She weighs my hair in her hands, exchanges the comb for a brush. She works it all into a low, dense ponytail, holds it tight, and brushes it smooth. “You’re telling me the truth? This was just for him.”

  I nod.

  “Men are asshats,” she says. “Boys are worse.” She eyeballs Aiden behind her in the mirror. “No offense.”

  Aiden nods. “None taken.”

  I fold my hands beneath the cape. “It was my own fault. I knew who he was the whole time, from the very start. I knew, but I loved him, and I thought I could make him love me, but nothing worked. Not starving, not growing all this hair. None of it mattered. Years and years for nothing.”

  Deb watches me cry for a minute, pulls a tissue from a box beside her hair dryer, and puts her hands on my shoulders. “I know this dummy,” she says. “I married him. Twice. He’s a dime a dozen and, true fact, he’s an idiot. You’re lucky you got away from him, and your folks should’ve never let you near him to begin with.”

  “I love him,” I say again.

  She puts the brush down. “You going to come crying to me tomorrow when you wake up and wish you hadn’t done this?”

  I shake my head. She turns to Aiden.

  “You’ll be with her when she does? ’Cause for sure she will.”

  Aiden looks to me. “Harp?”

  “He’ll be with me.”

  Deb picks up a pair of clean silver scissors, hacks off my ponytail, and holds the severed hair, three feet long, up into the fluorescent light.

  “Well,” she says, brightening. “Some nice cancer patient will have a gorgeous wig.”

  Free haircuts are one more delightful McMurdo perk. Aiden puts a twenty-dollar tip in her jar, takes my hand again, and pulls me out into the hall.

  “Was all that true?” he asks.

  “Come with me? I want to feel the cold,” I say. “On my head.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I do,” I insist. “I really, really do. Please.”

  “Was all that true?”

  I nod.

  We run to the entry hall. Ben lives at that damn desk. He stares at me. At my head.

  “What did you do?”

  I lean into the door with my shoulder, push with all my might.

  “Hey!” he shouts. “You can’t—”

  The blast of icy wind is so sharp it burns. It sweeps Ben’s voice aside. I step out into it, into the dark, just to the landing of the steps, Aiden behind me, neither of us wearing cold gear. Immediately it is in my skin, inside me. I am frozen and I love it. I step down onto the snow. No clouds. Beyond the station lights a million stars, more than I ever could imagine.

  I am so light. My neck is free. Aiden stands before me, puts both his hands on my head and moves his fingers through my shorn hair. He says something the wind carries away.

  “What?” I shout.

  “Your eyes are huge!” he says next to my ear. “You are so beautiful.”

  He pulls my icy face to his. He kisses me, I kiss him back, and I hold on to him so as not to fall away in this storm.

  I am Yoda. No more self-pity. The stages of grief can screw off. Kate and I are dancers.

  Thanksgiving’s passed, finals are nearly done, and high school is close to being a distant memory. We rehearse night and day. I babysit and teach and am polite and matter-of-fact with Simone, who has at last abandoned her campaign of voice mail pleading for me to Talk to me, darling. Tell me what you are thinking! She simply smiles, corrects me in class, compliments my turns; she’s given in. Surrendered to the fact that The Plan lets no one in the way.

  We are racing downhill toward auditions, to our futures. Our lives. Things are the way they’re supposed to be.

  Especially tonight, like every first Saturday in December since we were five. Kate and I with Mom and Dad, three back from front row, our seats on the aisle at the War Memorial Opera House for the San Francisco Ballet’s Nutcracker.

  Kate’s in her traditional sparkly snow-white chiffon sheath, which ends at her knees and makes her legs look about nine feet long, and every guy in the lobby turns to stare. I am wearing eyeliner and one of Mom’s skirts, though Kate does not approve of the leotard I’ve got on in lieu of a blouse.

  “I’m a dancer. Get off my back,” I say as we make our way to the resplendent lobby—sparkling trees lit and star-topped, spilling light up into the domed ceiling, and voices echoing, volleyed from the marble floor and walls. Perfume and hot apple cider and cookies…I’m so hopeful and happy. I squeeze Kate’s arm and sigh.

  “You know I love you,” she whispers. “You know that, right?”

  “Yes!” I whisper back. She’s been so shmoopy tonight. We pose, smiling, for Mom’s and Dad’s camera phones before the tallest lobby tree, a million lights and gold ornaments on every branch.

  “You girls are gorgeous!” Mom says.

  “This may be your last year watching, so enjoy it!” Dad says.

  Chimes ring. The show is starting.

  We move with the crowd to our seats, worn velvet beneath the ornate blue and carved gold opera house ceiling. The curtain hangs in rich red folds. I turn around to see the people in the risers and the balconies. Our audience soon. Not long now.

  The lights go down. We applaud the set, the music, the orchestra pit so close to our feet; no music could ever be more beautiful. I turn to Kate.

  She takes my hand.

  Here we go.

  Act one is not my favorite—exposition must play out, so aside from the little kids from the SF Ballet School, there’s not much company dancing, although the costumes are amazing; the story is set in pre-1906 earthquake San Francisco, so the party ladies are in Jane Austen–type dresses, empire-waist gowns that flow and swing around their legs. Clara finally goes to sleep, the rats come, the nutcracker’s soldiers deal with the situation, and finally, at last—the moment Kate and I wait all year for. The light changes. The music turns. It is winter.

  Snow.

  Kate holds my hand even tighter.

  They glide from the wings, pointe shoes silent, shimmering white tulle and satin, perfect strong arms and legs. The music fills my chest; my heart pounds. Violins, cellos, and flutes come in; the song swells.

  The snow falls.

  I turn to Kate.

  Light reflects in the tears on her face.

  I squeeze her hand back, lean close.

  “There we are,” I whisper.

  Her face crumbles and falls into her hands.

  Mom leans forward. “What is it?”

  I shake my head. Someone nearby shushes us.

  “Hey,” I whisper, “are you okay?”

  She shakes her head and stands. Walks up the aisle.

  Dad and Mom crane their necks. “I’ll go,” I whisper to them, and follow Kate up the aisle, turning back to steal glimpses of the dance we’ve waited all year to watch.

  There’s a knot in my stomach, in my throat—Is she ill? Then wildly—Does she know Owen asked me out?
How could she? And also who cares, because I said no anyway; I would never do that to her—she knows—but ugh, my hands are sweaty anyway.

  The usher at the doors is stern. “Quietly, ladies,” he growls, and pushes us into the lobby.

  Kate sinks to the top step just outside the door, beside a towering golden nutcracker statue.

  “Kitty,” I say. “Talk to me. Are you sick?”

  She shakes her head, mascara all over her eyes, face back in her hands.

  “Should I call your mom?”

  “I can’t audition for San Francisco.”

  I sit beside her. “Yes, you can! What’s wrong? Come on, breathe….”

  I rub her back and she cries.

  “I can’t. I’m so sorry. Harp, I love you. I’m sorry.”

  My stomach tightens.

  “I don’t want to ruin everything. I have to say it now, but I love you. I’m so sorry. Please don’t hate me….”

  “Hey,” I say. “Listen to me. Nothing could ever, ever make me hate you, not ever. Please just tell me. We’ll figure it out. Tell me.”

  She closes her eyes tight. Breathes in that caught, hiccupy way of really hard crying.

  “I won’t be here,” she says. “In January. I’ll be in New York.”

  My hands go cold.

  “New York?”

  “I have to go to the finals. For the Grand Prix.”

  “I don’t understand?”

  “I went to YAGP. Last weekend.”

  Through the doors, the muted “Snow” music soars. Act one is nearly over.

  I unbuckle the silver sandals I’ve borrowed from Mom. Tighten them one notch. And then another. Anything to not look at Kate.

  “Simone took me. She said it was my last chance to be seen by so many companies. They were all there—Boston. Chicago. New York. Harp, I won. First place.”

  I hear my voice, “Simone hates YAGP.”

  “She does. But she says I’ve been stupid to stay so long. She’s been on me about it for a long time. I’ve put her off, I swear. I told her no way, we’ve got The Plan, but…I’m too old, she says. To pick and choose. It’s too hard to fly everywhere, audition all over the country. Video auditions don’t ever read well, she said—”

  “But you want San Francisco.”

  “They were there.”

  Applause. The music ends. Beautiful, soaring “Snow” music. The doors open.

  “Did you use my dance?”

  “Harp.”

  “Did you?”

  She won’t look at me. “Your choreography got the highest score.”

  The crowd streams from the doors, flows around me and Kate sitting on the steps before them, we are rocks in a people river.

  You must be willing to eat your dogs.

  I stand. Kate stands, her face pink, makeup destroyed.

  I let the crowd carry me forward, through the lobby and away from Kate’s voice calling me back, out the grand front opera doors to the wet sidewalk. I’ve left my coat in the coat check. Just my leotard. But I’m not cold. I hail a taxi.

  - - -

  I let myself cry for exactly thirty-two minutes, the amount of time it took to ride home in the cab from The Nutcracker (wasted two nights’ worth of babysitting money on that one) and text Mom and Dad: Got sick, sorry, I’m home, take Kate home pls.

  Once home I combed Bay Area audition listings for every ballet company, professional or amateur, in a thirty-mile radius, anything happening this month, now, which turned up four: Berkeley, Concord, Palo Alto, Oakland.

  I say nothing to Mom and Dad or Luke or anyone, nothing about anything. I fly unnoticed beneath the radar of Mom’s semester finals, Dad’s holiday bakery orders, and Luke’s moving-out prep. My last day of school comes and goes unceremoniously. Teachers say goodbye; I fill out paperwork and walk home, not turning to look back. I babysit Willa; I teach and go to ballet class religiously on time—never early. I slip in, put my hand on the barre beside Lindsay, and bolt the moment each class ends. I erase every text and voice mail Kate and Simone send, and after a few days, they back off. Give me what I clearly want, which is for both of them to leave me the hell alone, so I can concentrate on:

  THE NEW PLAN

  1. Audition and be offered a contract at one or more companies, which I will have to

  2. Turn down when I accept my company position at the San Francisco Ballet, which will

  3. Prove Simone and Kate (and the horrible cancerous doubt I’ve let them plant in my own heart) wrong.

  In a studio at SF State, I record an audition tape and send it to forty-three companies in as many cities, all currently accepting applicants. And I wait in hallways crammed with crowds of short-torsoed, long-legged dancers with perfect feet, paper number pinned to my chest. At the first audition, I don’t even make the first cut. Barre exercises and I’m out. At the second, I don’t even get to touch the barre. I am cut from the lineup.

  The final two auditions happen on the same Saturday, which involves intricate public transportation transfer tickets, sprinting from one station to another, and incredibly fortunate timing, but I manage to arrive in plenty of time to be cut in the first round from Dance Theatre of Berkeley and then, two hours later, from a nonprofit dance cooperative in Oakland.

  I sleep on the train back to San Francisco, wake up past my stop, and walk three miles home along busy Nineteenth Avenue. Cars and trucks barrel past, exhaust fumes and cigarette smoke, ambulance sirens and police cars and blaring horns and clanging Muni cars, and tweekers and homeless guys, and I cannot wait to tell this story—the failed auditions, Simone and Kate, and how I never let them get me down; how, instead, the whole mess lit a fire in me. I am a Scott. How that fire carried me to the San Francisco audition, where the director saw what no one else seemed to. How every dancer’s path to their destiny is unique and never easy, but if you truly know yourself, believe in the gift you were born with and meant to spend your life using to make art that helps the world be more beautiful, and if you work hard your entire life for this one, single dream you have and ever will have, then nothing, no one, can stop a person from achieving this dream; it is impossible that it will not come to pass.

  Here I am, I will insist. I am proof.

  Aut moriere percipietis conantur.

  - - -

  I’m up at five the morning after my walk of shame, after my final failed fire-lighting audition. Only a few days before Christmas, today is my Sunday to work at the bakery. Mom is asleep; Luke and Dad were up and gone before me. I stretch my poor legs, sore from the miles of pavement walking. Yuan Yuan Tan and Robert Falcon Scott stare down at me from the ceiling. It’s up to you, they say.

  Got it.

  An hour later, I’m showered, dressed, and pushing glass doors open into the warm, sweet yeasty air of our Fog City Bakery.

  The bells above the door ring bright, evergreen and holly berries everywhere, mistletoe and twinkle lights. Dad loves Christmas, busy as it is. Every seat is occupied. The counter line snakes around itself and nearly out the door. I toss my bag and tie on my apron, and Luke kisses my cheek as I pass him behind the register.

  “Dude, ick! What’s up with that?” I say.

  “You’re here!” He smiles, tossing a bag of sugar cookies to a kid waiting at the door. The closer we get to January, to his new life with LucasArts, the giddier he is.

  “Harp!” Dad calls from the kitchen. “How are you?”

  “Great!” I answer brightly, The New Plan urging me forward, no room in it for worrying him or Mom. “You’re nearly out of croissants.”

  He gives me a thumbs-up and disappears to the ovens.

  I get down to work, taking orders against a backdrop of Johnny Mathis Christmas hits. It is nearly impossible to be in here and not feel wintry happy.

  Finally, around nine-thirty, there is a lull. I duck down into the glass pastry case to straighten the rows of sugary dough in all its forms, and the bells ring. I stand.

  “Hey!” Owen smiles.
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br />   “Hey.” I brush flour and red and green sparkle sugar from my hands, tuck stray hair off my face, back into my messy work bun. Why am I either sweaty, distressed, or half naked every single time I run into this guy? “Luke,” I call. “Owen’s here!”

  “Dude!” Luke shouts from the ovens. “Be out in a minute!”

  “I will have one bagel,” Owen says, stepping to the register.

  “We don’t make bagels.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Huh. Okay.” He examines my neat rows in the case. “Plain croissant?”

  I slide the very last one into a paper sleeve. “Three fifty.”

  He pays with a five, puts his change in the tip jar.

  “Thanks.”

  He smiles and takes the croissant from the bag, pulls off a section, and chews. “Oh, wow…,” he mumbles. “That’s a lot of butter.”

  I nod.

  He stands there and pulls the whole croissant apart and eats it, one section at a time.

  I find a clean rag and go back to the case to wipe the crumbs from beneath the paper liners. Through the glass, I watch Owen brush croissant from his hands, toss the paper sleeve in the recycling bin, pour a glass of lemon water from the pitcher near the door, and down the whole thing.

  He even drinks in a casually dashing way. Oh my God, dashing? I am not well.

  “Okay,” he says. “What are you doing today?”

  I look up from the case. “Sorry?”

  “Today. What are you doing?”

  “Uh…you’re looking at it.”

  “All day?”

  Johnny Mathis is in a marshmallow world, and he’s not shy about his love of it. Owen perks up. “You know Johnny Mathis grew up here? Richmond District. Seal Rock.”

  I did know that. But I’m amazed Owen does, too.

  I’ve been not only sloppily dressed and unshowered, but also way less than receptive to his attention every time we’ve talked. So why does he keep trying? And what exactly is he trying at?

  Dad steps out from the kitchen.

  “Owen!”

  “Hi!”

  “How are things at Star Wars?”

  “Oh, you know…” Owen smiles, mostly at me. “Pretty good.”