Up to This Pointe

by Jennifer Longo

  I sit back and rub my eyes. What is he talking about? We who? And what’s with the present tense? Is he rubbing it in that we’d been there together, but it means nothing because he’s over me? Not that we were ever “together”—but weren’t we? And can I even be mad, because how about the making out I’m doing with the Irish Rover?

  Seriously. I really am the worst. I have no idea what I’m doing.

  After the Legion, we go for lunch at Park Chow. We sit upstairs under the skylights close to the fireplace and order, not salad, but—wait for it—ricotta lemon curd pancakes with raspberry sauce, which I think I’m only writing about because I’m hungry. But also, it’s good date food. Right? We share and we eat the entire thing.

  It’s okay we eat all that, though, because after we walk through Golden Gate Park, all the way to Ocean Beach, and we sit on the sand and watch kids fly kites and surfers ride the waves and pretend not to see confused naked guys walking around because they think they’re on Baker Beach. We stay until the sun sets, and the stars come out.

  At the end of our streets is sunset;

  At the end of our streets the stars.

  It is a perfect day.

  “Harper.” Vivian’s voice in the quiet startles the crap out of me. “What are you doing?”

  I rush to close Owen’s mail, shut the laptop down, and find I cannot answer her. Because I’m crying too hard.

  I sit and cry, for the longest time, before I hear her ask, “Are you sick?”

  I shake my head.

  “Do you need help?”

  “No,” I sob. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry to wake you.”

  She sits up and pulls her earbuds out.

  “Vivian,” I choke out at last. “Have you always loved science?” I grab a wad of tissue and wipe my nose and eyes. “Was there ever anything else you wanted to do?”

  “I don’t think so,” she says.

  “Not ever?”

  “Well…I might have thought about being a horse groomer at some point in second grade, but…”

  I laugh for half a second and it turns right into more crying. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry Charlotte made you move. It’s my fault, stupid T3.”

  She shrugs.

  “What do you listen to? In your earbuds?”

  “Music.”

  “What kind?”

  She hesitates. “I don’t know. All kinds.”

  “Huh.” I get my shower caddy from the closet. “I’ll be right back,” I say with a sniff.

  “Okay.”

  I brush my teeth, wash my face, and tap on the door again when I return. Vivian’s lying back, music in her ears. I climb into the millions-of-kittens bed and stare at the lights.

  “Vivian,” I whisper.

  She sighs. “What?”

  “Can I listen to your music?”

  She’s quiet for a long time. “It’s not music.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No.”

  “Can I hear it anyway? Is it that deep-voice guy?”

  She sits up. “If I let you listen, will you promise to go to sleep and not ask me anything or talk about it to anyone ever, including and especially me?”

  “Yes!”

  She sighs again. From her drawer in the dresser, she pulls out a speaker dock, sets her iPod on it, and crawls far beneath her blankets.

  “Vivian?”

  “What?”

  “Thank you.”

  She flops back onto her pillow and presses Play.

  “Well,” the deep voice drones softly into the room, “it’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, my hometown.” And then he launches into a story. About nothing. About some dudes walking down their driveway to the mailbox, and they go have lunch.

  What the…?

  “Vivian, do you know this guy?” I whisper. “Is he sending you…what, audio letters? Is this the town you live in?”

  She hits Pause and sits up. Even in the dim twinkle light I see the exasperation on her face. “You kept your promise for about ninety seconds.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Are you finished?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I promise!” She rolls her eyes, but hits Play and lies back down. Sternly.

  I wish someone would send me a letter like that. About San Francisco. About people I know doing regular stuff.

  Is this what Owen was aiming for?

  I close my eyes and think about Dad, up early catching the train to the bakery. Is Mom in class lecturing, running a lab? Is the house lonely and quiet for them? What does Luke do at work? Does he like living with roommates? What is Willa gluing to construction paper these days?

  Who is Owen with? Where is Kate?

  I wipe tears onto my pillow and concentrate instead on the voice in Minnesota. On these people I do not know and do not miss.

  The mailbox guys finish lunch and get on a pontoon boat to go fishing.

  I am asleep in half a minute.

  The audition is a Saturday morning, the third day of January, and I leave before Mom wakes up. Dad and Luke are already at the bakery, but in the kitchen there is a jam jar of white sweet peas and a note: Break a leg! We love you!

  It appears that Owen is an excellent secret keeper. No one, not even Luke, knows anything about anything. I’ve not seen Owen since before Christmas—since shoe shopping and curb kissing—because I am so tightly wound and focused and trying to concentrate on nothing but this audition, and he is also kindly keeping a promise he made me, not to text or call until it’s over. Kate is in New York with Simone, competing in the YAGP Finals, and I am alone.

  Owen was also right about calling Kate. It gave us Christmas together and a tearful slumber party, where I stayed silent about my failed auditions—about anything involving Owen—and she filled me in on Simone’s urging her, all year, to think beyond San Francisco. What if San Francisco didn’t want her? Why not be seen now, before she’s any older, build a career, let a bunch of companies fight over her?

  “She got me all panicked,” Kate admitted through tears. “She made it seem like if I didn’t go, I’d end up in a Grey Gardens situation, living with my mom until I die, and never be a dancer, ever.”

  “But do you want New York? More than San Francisco?”

  She fell back, tortured, in the blue chair. “I don’t know. But I think I’m curious. Aren’t you? Even a little?”

  I smiled. Sadly. Shook my head. “San Francisco.”

  She nodded.

  “Did you ask Simone why I couldn’t come, too?” I asked her.

  Kate looked at her feet. At the wall. “She said your talents lie in teaching. I told her that was crap, that you’re a gorgeous dancer, because you are, Harp. She said I couldn’t see the truth because I love you too much. That it isn’t fair to you.”

  “Do you believe her?” I asked.

  “I do love you more than might be healthy for either one of us.”

  To which I could only say, “Me too.”

  I wished her luck when she left on New Year’s Eve for New York. She wished me luck in San Francisco.

  None of it felt real.

  This was not The Plan.

  Today, now, does not feel real. Walking through the early-morning fog to our audition, to the start of our lives together fourteen years in the making—but alone.

  The hall outside the audition studio is impassable, legs all over the floor and up the walls, quiet conversations but mostly silence, earbuds in iPods and nervous pliés and relevés beneath framed photographs of soloists from 1933 until today. Yuan Yuan as Juliet, Coppélia. As the Snow Queen.

  Through the closed door, we hear the pianist finish barre music, then begin again and again, the same short Shostakovich theme over and over, auditors calling combinations, corrections.

  I whack my Maltese Cross pointe shoes against a metal doorframe, soften the shanks as
much as possible, so they show my arch. I tie them securely. Retie them.

  My lucky leotard is clean, black. Thin straps that don’t fall off my shoulders, lucky pale pink cotton tights, lucky hair tie, brand-new hairpins. Paper number safety-pinned to my back: 232. Through the door, the music ends, everyone around me in the hall freezes midstretch, looks up.

  Sweaty dancers file out the studio door, spill down the stairs.

  “Group eleven. Ladies.”

  I shake my limbs, rise to demi-pointe.

  We take our places at the barre, me and ten other girls, rest our fingers lightly. Why are they all so much taller? Perfect? Are they? I close my eyes. Head up, eyes forward, spine straight, energy directed into the floor. Don’t fight gravity—use it….Core strong, in, shoulders back, down. First position. Tendu.

  The music swells. My heart swells.

  Tchaikovsky.

  I couldn’t love anything more.

  Aut moriere percipietis conantur.

  Do or do not. There is no try.

  - - -

  Up narrow stairs, out the heavy stage door to the sidewalk, hands on my knees to catch my breath. Audition over. I stand tall.

  Head rush. I sit down hard on the curb.

  “Harper.”

  Owen helps me to my feet.

  - - -

  “I drove,” he says. “Want to go to the park? The beach?”

  I nod.

  “All right.” He opens the passenger door of a car, some kind of hybrid Subaru-type thing—Oh, great, he’s an environmentalist too? Can he be any more wonderful? God!—and he gets us out of downtown and into the avenues. I lean my head against the window.

  “Cold?” he asks. I’m only in my lucky tights and lucky leotard, boots, paper number still pinned to my back. It crinkles against the seat. He cranks up the heater, warm air on my legs.

  Through Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach, along the shore past Seal Rock, and we park on a hilltop beside a low stone wall on the cliff edge, beside the fountain at the sculpted white Legion of Honor museum.

  We sit on the wall, with the Golden Gate Bridge view, so near we hear its muted Saturday traffic. Cold ocean wind sweeps fog around our faces, and Owen wordlessly drapes his hoodie over my shoulders. I zip it up, still warm from his body. Smells clean. Like his sweater the day we kissed. Soap, and…something sweet?

  “Do you wash your clothes in grapefruit extract?” I ask.

  “Yes!” he laughs. “I mean, not extract. It’s just, like, grapefruit-scented or something? Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, one of those.”

  I hold the sleeves, way too long on me, over my face and inhale. “I like it. Smells like you.”

  “I’ll buy a fifty-gallon drum of it tonight.”

  “Good.” I lean into him, and he pulls me close with one arm.

  Below us, the actual Golden Gate—the narrow, treacherous ocean opening leading into San Francisco’s bays—crashes against black rocks.

  Ship horns sound from the horizon. The fog thins and rolls so the rocky Farallon Islands are sometimes visible, a tiny black patch where the sea meets the sky, where the great white sharks feed.

  “Why anyone wants to live anywhere else in the world is beyond me,” Owen says.

  Only later will I think how humiliating it would have been had he moved away instead of pulling me nearer when, those words barely out of his mouth, I turn, suddenly thankful for all the stupid make-out scenes in all the dumb ballet movies, because how else would I know how to even attempt this, and I kiss him. Again. I mean kiss him, kiss him.

  If he is surprised, he gets over it fast. He pulls me closer, both arms firmly around me now.

  After a long while, I hold on to his hand and pull away. He steadies me on the wall and won’t let me turn my gaze.

  “Do you want to talk about it? How it went?”

  I nod. But I can’t speak.

  Seagulls tilt into the sea salt air, through Point Bonita Lighthouse’s bright white light flashing through the drifting mist.

  “Would you rather I ask yes-or-no questions and you can let me know that way?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “Okay,” he says. “Ready?”

  I squeeze his hand.

  “Was it…I mean, was it hard?”

  I nod.

  “Are you glad you went?”

  I nod.

  He takes a deep breath. “Will you be okay?”

  I shake my head.

  “Oh, Harp…,” he says quietly. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

  I breathe deeply, in and out, the salt air. “I think I may start crying in a second, but I don’t want every single time I’m with you to be me crying. It’s getting ridiculous. I feel stupid.”

  He pulls me to him again, holds me tight, keeps me warm. “You have no idea,” he says, “how not stupid you are.”

  My heart breaks for the years I’ve spent preparing for this one day, this single moment. For the life I’ll never have.

  Number 232, you are excused from the barre.

  An entire life—my whole existence—for nothing.

  At last I am so tired, it subsides. The grief. I am empty.

  And still Owen holds me.

  “I think,” he says, after a long while, “the best parts of San Francisco weren’t born till after the earthquake. The bridge. West Portal. The entire city was in ashes, and it rose again more beautiful than before. This place is a phoenix. San Francisco is in your blood.”

  He is trying so hard. Even if such a thing, another life, were possible—how would I live it, still mourning the one I’ve lost? This is…an end. It is panic. I’m drowning.

  Lost city of my love and desire.

  When the sun is low and the water under the bridge is pink, I ask Owen what time it is.

  “Um…five. Fifteen.”

  “Take me home?”

  “Of course.”

  Once more through the park, and we drive beside the beach, past the college, and into West Portal.

  The fog is swirling down the street, around our house and Owen’s car. I reach behind the seat, grab my bag, and the paper audition number crinkles. I turn my back to Owen. “Can you…”

  He carefully unhooks each safety pin, his warm hands against the bare skin between my shoulder blades. He drops the pins in the center console thingy and holds the number out to me. “Want to keep it?”

  I shake my head. “Thank you,” I say. “Thank you.”

  “Harper. Please call me. Just to let me know you’re okay? If you don’t, I’ll call you.”

  Even in the near dark I can’t help staring at his eyes. “Why?” I ask.

  “Because—what do you mean, why?”

  “Why do you want me to call you? So I can cry on you some more? I’m a complete disaster.”

  “You’re extraordinary.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  I smile sadly. “I can’t believe I’m meeting you now. This is awful.”

  “I can’t believe I met you at all. This is wonderful. Call me. Please.”

  “I will.”

  “Promise me.”

  I move to get out of the car, but once more, his hand lightly on the back of my neck, he kisses me.

  “Okay,” I say. “I promise.”

  - - -

  I walk slowly up the drive to the house, all the days and weeks leading to today unraveling again and again.

  This shouldn’t come as a surprise, Harper.

  But it did. It is.

  My head hurts. Too much foggy sun. Not enough water.

  Number 232, you are excused from barre.

  I let myself in quietly through the kitchen door and drop my bag on the table. The familiar, hollow clunk of my pointe shoes turns my stomach. There is television light in the living room; Mom is on the sofa, wrapped in blankets. She turns around to me and pauses her movie.

  “Baby!” she says quietly, climbing off the sofa to squeeze me tight. �
�How was it? Dad told me to leave you alone about it, so I was good all day, not one text. Aren’t you proud of me? Tell me now. It’s killing me!”

  I go to the freezer, move things aside, find the foil package, and unwrap my sand castle cake.

  “Harp.”

  I get a fork, sit at the table, and hack into the chocolate. I put a huge, frozen forkful into my mouth and chew.

  Mom stands and watches me wolf the entire thing, and then my stomach swims. I hold on to her and stumble to the door, but too late. The barely swallowed cake is all over the immaculate kitchen floor.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I’m so sorry….”

  “Breathe,” Mom says. She leads me to the sink and I rinse my mouth with cool water, rest my cheek against the faucet.

  Yet another benefit of the ballet bun: no one has to hold your hair back when you throw up.

  I press my hands against the sink edge and turn to look under my arm. She’s anxious. Already mopping.

  “Mom, I’ll do it. I’m sorry…”

  “Stop! Just hold on for a minute. Drink some more if you can.” She bleaches the floor, done in ten minutes, and I’m on the sofa, head back, my face beneath a cold, damp kitchen towel. She sits beside me and offers ice tinkling in a glass of ginger ale. Too sweet. She frowns and presses her wrist against my forehead.

  “You’re pink. But not too warm.”

  I shake my head. “Sunburn.”

  “How?”

  I shrug. Outside all day with no hat. Doesn’t matter now.

  “Where’s your coat?”

  I shake my head.

  “Harp.”

  Stage five: acceptance.

  “Mommy.”

  I spill it all, weeks’ worth of a mess worse than what wound up on the kitchen floor.

  Mom’s face is blank. Then baffled. “Simone would never say that.”

  “She did. She’s right.”

  “She’s not. Where is Kate now?”

  “New York. With Simone.”

  “No.”

  I nod.

  Mom tears up. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  My throat is tight.

  “Dad and I will talk to Simone. This doesn’t make sense.”

  “Please no, don’t. There’s nothing to say.”

  “There’s everything to say. This is bullshit! She should have spoken to Dad and me before she went to you. What the hell is her problem?”