Give Me Your Answer True

by Suanne Laqueur

  Up until now, everyone had been learning and rehearsing their solos and duets in private. Now the company gathered and opened the folding partition between studios A and B, making a double-wide performance space the size of the theater. Anticipation and excitement hung in the air. A keen interest to see the ballet as a whole.

  Daisy sat under the barres, James on one side and a sophomore boy named John Quillis on the other.

  “You feel good?” she asked James.

  He nodded without looking at her or smiling. His gaze was across the floor to Will, who was sitting under the opposite barres with Taylor Revell. A faint sense of unease coiled in Daisy’s stomach. She pushed it away and rubbed a few circles between James’s shoulder blades. A suspicious herbal fragrance lurked in his T-shirt. She pushed that away as well.

  In the center of the studio floor, Manuel Sabena was deep in his solo to “Bidin’ My Time.” A gymnast before he embraced ballet, he had a jump which defied physics. He hung in the air, gobbling up the space in turning leaps, bringing whoops and catcalls from the observers.

  “Must be nice to write your own laws of gravity,” John said.

  John looked exactly like a young Ron Howard and the conservatory had baptized him Opie.

  “Don’t fucking call me Opie” was his perpetual, mumbled lament. Which only seared the nickname’s brand deeper.

  Daisy liked him. To safeguard against James’s unpredictability, she’d discreetly taught James’s roles to John all this year. Just to have backup.

  “I’m impressed with Opie,” Will said once. “He’s like a vein of raw talent nobody’s mined yet. He’ll make a nice prince someday so handle him carefully. Make him feel like more than a convenient understudy, but don’t kiss his ass. He’s shy and he’s crushy on you, but he’s not stupid.”

  The endorsement did a lot for John. He was in the thick of his sophomore transition year and hungry for opportunity. He was also one of a handful of straight boys in the conservatory, trying to juggle the passion for his art against his still-developing male ego. As such, he shadowed Will—not only in class, but to the gym, building up both his confidence and his muscles.

  With a bit of startle, Daisy noticed a subtle change in John’s appearance. He’d been growing his copper hair out and experimenting with a more messy, tousled look. A couple days of beard growth gave him an adult air. Even at rest, she could see new mass and definition in his arms and chest, products of working out with Will. As he talked to her, he didn’t blush as much.

  Together they watched Will and Taylor’s duet to “Embraceable You.” It was sweet. Not much else. Taylor’s technique was impeccable, but strangely soulless. Will’s personality seemed too much for her—she kept pushing her chin out against it. If he tried too hard, he’d come across as lecherous, so he simply smiled and partnered her. Applause was polite at the end of the piece. Will sat back down under the barres, his face unreadable.

  “All right,” Marie called. “Where is the man I love?”

  Daisy got up and reached a hand to James. His palm was sweaty in hers. As his head reached her level, she saw his eyes were bloodshot.

  Jesus, is he stoned?

  The idea reviled her. It was akin to spitting on the altar in a church, or some other desecration of religious property. The studio was sacred space and rehearsal was Mass. James wouldn’t dare.

  He simply wouldn’t dare.

  Within thirty seconds of music, she knew she didn’t have his attention. The connection was dead and the pas de deux had gone flat. Flatter than Taylor and Will’s. All the sibling playfulness, the backstory, everything she was so excited to reveal today—gone. It took every bit of professionalism she owned to tamp down her anger, make it sit on a chair in the corner and shut the hell up until she finished.

  They reached the section she dreaded most: a run to James and a turning leap backward into his arms. She had to jump and rotate blind. And trust he’d be there.

  Mid-run she had a premonition it wasn’t going to work. Too late, she realized James wasn’t even looking at her, much less prepared to catch her. But then she was in the air and turning.

  He’s not here.

  “Jesus, James,” John yelled.

  “Dude,” Will cried.

  She shot right past him. Her hands instinctively went for the floor. Always help take the fall with your palms and then roll and aim for something cushy. Preferably your ass. You couldn’t break your ass.

  But momentum was carrying her backward and she couldn’t get her hands down in time. All her weight collapsed on her left ankle, which rolled under with a sickening wrench. Crying out, she toppled full onto her left hand and felt a snap in her pinky.

  Then she was down.

  Everyone else was up.

  “The hell is wrong with you?” Will yelled, taking James by the back of the shirt and flinging him into the barres which rattled in their brackets. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  “Wheel, no,” Marie said. “Stop it. Jase, you get out of my sight. Get out of this studio. Wheel, stop, that’s enough. Basta.”

  That’s it, Daisy thought as tears flooded her eyes. Not from pain. She was numb to the throb in her foot and hand. The agony came from the concert flashing before her, the curtain coming down on a stage she wasn’t on. She fell. She was out. She was done.

  “Margarita.” Marie sank to her knees, pressing cold hands to Daisy’s shoulders. “Where are you hurt, did you hit your head?”

  “No. I’m all right,” Daisy said, gasping and trying to sit up. Marie wouldn’t let her until she turned her head, moved arms and legs and wiggled the uninjured fingers and toes. Will helped her up, his hands shaking.

  “Give her some room, darlings,” Marie said. “Let her breathe.”

  “It’s my foot,” Daisy said, wiping her face on Will’s sleeve.

  “Ankle’s swelling already,” John said, crouched by her feet, a soothing palm on her shin.

  “Non te la prendere, cara.” Marie’s hand was firm around Daisy’s. “Let’s get her to the training room.”

  “C’mere, honey,” Will said, scooping careful arms under her back and knees. He stood up, Daisy crushed to his chest. “I got you.”

  “I think my finger’s broken,” Daisy said, feeling a little sick as her brain decided to let the idea of pain down to her left hand. The heel of it was howling and her pinky felt on fire.

  John gently touched her wrist and sucked the air back through his teeth, his eyes wincing. “You tore a nail off. Right down in the quick.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Will muttered.

  “Wheel, listen to me,” Marie said. She put a hand on Will’s shoulder and held up her other finger by his face. “Do not get into trouble. Capisce? I cannot replace you.”

  Will nodded without making eye contact. Marie twisted her mouth and looked over at John.

  “Gianni, you go with,” she said.

  Once out in the hall, Will had other ideas. “Ope, go down to the shops,” he said. “Tell Fish to come up to the training room.”

  “It’s all right,” Daisy said. “He’s busy. I don’t need him to come up.”

  “I do,” Will said.

  John crossed his arms. “Are you s—”

  “Oh, knock it off, I don’t need a shadow. Go get Fish. Jesus Christ, he’s gonna fucking kill me.”

  Will strode down the hall with Daisy in his arms. His jaw clenched tight. His face filled with rage and something else Daisy barely recognized as shame.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said.

  “It isn’t?” he said. “He was looking at me. You ran and jumped and he dropped his arms and kept looking straight at me the whole time. Motherfucker knew exactly what he was doing.”

  Her throat seized up in horror. “Will, this has to stop,” she said.

  His arms tightened around her. “I know. I’ll handle it, Dais. I promise.”

  WHEN ERIK APPEARED in the training room, he was out of breath and still wearing his sa
fety goggles and gloves. But he knew what Daisy needed best in a crisis and his expression was mild as he sat next to her. He didn’t fuss or pat her, which she couldn’t stand. She needed to think. She could only think when everyone held still. She slid her head against Erik’s kiss and returned focus to her foot in its ice bath and the whiteboard of contingency plans piling up in her head.

  Lucky was brisk and neutral, speaking in the royal we. She wrapped a bit of gauze around Daisy’s bleeding pinky nail, then bundled it up in ice. She draped a blanket around Daisy’s shoulders, concerned about the chilled damp of sweaty practice clothes. Combined with the frigid waters around her foot, Daisy was starting to shiver.

  “I want her in the ice another ten minutes,” Max Tremaine, the head trainer, said. “Then we can take her over to the health center to get it x-rayed. I don’t think it’s broken.”

  Broken, Daisy thought. Worst case is broken. Broken means I’m out. Sprained is at least two weeks. I have four. But it’s my left foot. I can dance with a weak left foot. I only need my right for the hard stuff. I can do this. I can do sprained.

  “I’ll get the car,” Erik said, brushing his lips over Daisy’s hair. “Be right back.”

  As he went out, he passed Will and his head gave a jerk toward the door. The message was unmistakable. You. Outside.

  John, who’d been lingering in the doorway, moved out of their way and came to sit next to Daisy. They sat in silence, both their heads slightly tilted, listening. Every other sentence in the hall reached Daisy’s ears, but she got the gist of it. The tone of Erik’s voice, tight and hard, pushed through the wall of his teeth.

  He was furious.

  “Fish,” Will said.

  “Don’t ‘Fish’ me.”

  Daisy’s teeth chattered. John reached and tugged the blanket higher up around her neck.

  “…Messed up over you to the point of coming to rehearsal high and injuring my girlfriend, it starts to be my business.”

  John rested his forearms on his knees, fingers interlaced, thumbs tapping together.

  “I don’t want him anywhere near her,” Erik said in the hall.

  Will’s calm but hollow voice answered. “I don’t either.”

  “You think he was stoned?” Daisy whispered.

  John glanced at her. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Then he’s out.”

  “He better be out. I can’t imagine Marie keeping him in. Stoned or not, what he did was blatantly stupid.”

  She drew the air into her nose and released it, recalculating her plans. “If I can do it, will you dance with me?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “It’s a tough piece. The partnering is a bitch.”

  “So am I.”

  A smile cracked through. Then a small laugh.

  “There you go,” John said, pleased.

  “Thanks, Opie,” she said.

  “Don’t call me Op—” He faded out as he looked over at her and a flush crept over his cheekbones, blotting out his freckles. “All right, fine, you can call me Opie.”

  He looked away, rubbing the back of his neck, muttering under his breath. “Jesus, those eyes. How does Fish get anything done?”

  “A BAD WRENCH, BUT NOTHING ICE and a week’s rest won’t cure,” the doctor said. Unfortunately, nothing could be done for her fractured pinky except tape it tight to her ring finger and let it heal. The nail bed throbbed for three days. So did the vein in Erik’s temple whenever he looked at it.

  James had been dismissed from the concert. John would take his place in Who Cares? and partner Daisy in “The Man I Love” when she was ready to return.

  Lucky, now in her third year of sports medicine training, was stern. “A week means a week. And off your ankle means off. No sneaking into class and doing a right-foot barre.”

  The mini-vacation turned out to be the perfect remedy for Daisy’s rattled spirit. With time to kill, she caught up on sleep for a couple of indolent days. When restlessness set in, she wandered into the catacombs of Mallory. Down into the warm shops with their engine-like thrum of buzzing activity. It smelled different down there, like furnaces and oil and sawdust. Paint fumes and metal. Constant hammering, banging and clanking. Voices over the din. And music.

  This was Erik’s world.

  Leo Graham didn’t take kindly to strangers intruding on his turf, distracting his minions and disrupting the rhythm of production. But he liked Daisy—she brought him coffee and discovered his fatal weakness for a York Peppermint Patty. She sat quietly and watched. Didn’t intrude, distract or disrupt as the sets for Who Cares? were constructed. After a day or two, she became invisible.

  The design for the ballet was David’s senior project. According to his plans the crew was building a Manhattan skyline to stretch clear across the back of the stage. And no artist’s interpretation of the Big Apple either. David spent a whole weekend in New York, photographing the city from a dozen angles and at different times of day. The skyline was as true to life as he could make it, and the lighting design would take it from dawn to dusk.

  Every building was meticulously outlined in tiny bulbs. Daisy looked up from her book and watched Erik, David and Neil slog at the thankless task. They stooped over the sets, laid out on sawhorses, drilling holes and placing the bulbs, wiring and taping and testing. They were punchy from the tedium, barbs and cracks flying. Then they fell into focused concentration, singing as they worked. After a period of calm, the horseplay started again.

  Daisy was crutching downstairs for one of her visits when she finally saw James again. His appearance made her rear back in shock and distaste. Trudging up the open stairwell, he was strung-out, unshaven and gaunt. Red-eyed and jittery.

  This is bad, she thought. This is unstable.

  “Hi,” he said.

  More than a little disturbed, she tried to squeeze by with a cool, echoed “Hey.” But her crutches made evasive moves impossible and his hand closed on her upper arm.

  “Dais.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Dais, I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not,” she said, louder. “You’re not sorry.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  Anger bubbled up like foam in her throat. “You did mean. You made a choice when I was in the air. You looked Will in the eye and dropped your arms, so don’t you fucking tell me you’re sorry. I swear I’ll—”

  “Hey.”

  Both Daisy and James’s head flicked up to the top landing. John Quillis had one foot and both forearms on the railing, looking down on them.

  “Leave her alone,” he said.

  James’s lip curled. “Fuck off, Opie.”

  Unphased, John started down the stairs. “Let her by.”

  “I’m just talking to her.”

  “No, you’re not. Move along.” He’d almost reached them.

  “Fuck you, I’ll move along, punk.”

  It was hard to say who was more surprised at what happened next, Daisy or James. Quicker than either could register, John had James pinned against the concrete wall, one arm twisted behind. John’s face was composed but a vein in his neck flickered. His eyes were hard. Something in his stance was both effortless and expert. Daisy’s own eyes bulged, wondering if Will had been schooling John in more than workout routines.

  “Leave her be,” John said. “You’re lucky it was me who came along and not Fish. Go on, Dais.”

  She crutched by, letting her knuckles brush John’s back in thanks. She expected a parting shot from James to float down after her. Instead, when she glanced up, she saw only a broken little brother.

  And in spite of her anger, it cracked her heart.

  “JOHN AND I STARTED REHEARSING ‘The Man I Love,’ but it didn’t go well. I guess I was more shaken up than I thought. I’d never had any kind of serious injury before and it spooked me. When you’re a dancer, your body is all you have. It’s everything. You’re it. You’re the means. And one fall or break or bash and…”

/>   “It could be over,” Rita said. “Or at least put you out of commission for a long time.”

  “Yes. It threw me. But more than that, I was so damn discouraged. I’d worked hard to build a relationship with James. I gave him my time, my attention and my trust. I gave everything to give him a chance and at the last minute he…”

  Tears stung her eyes. The demoralized disappointment was a rusty nail piercing her heart, as fresh as the day. Fresher. As if it had never been felt at all.

  “I feel more upset now than I think I did then,” she said.

  Rita nodded.

  “He took all that time and trust and work and shit on it. Made me a pawn in his little game to get back at Will. And then told me he didn’t mean it.”

  “You must have felt used.”

  “I did. Now I had to start all over again with John and I had next to no motivation. I couldn’t find it in me. It felt like I didn’t have enough time to deconstruct the emotions of the dance. The steps were hard enough. We slogged away but it wouldn’t mesh. After a week John went to Marie and asked if she would switch him and Will. Let Will dance with me.”

  She laughed, shaking her head at the memory of his nerve. “I don’t know how he pulled it off. One thing Marie did not like was people complaining about casting or asking her to make changes. You take your role. You learn it and you dance it. You dance and you deal. Those were her rules. But somehow John convinced her. Or charmed her. So Will and I ended up dancing together after all.”

  “Which must have been a relief.”

  “I can’t tell you.” Daisy closed her eyes. “As soon as we got into the studio and touched hands… I was calmed, I was confident, I was back where I belonged. We didn’t have to dissect a single feeling—we were dancing together again. The relief became the backstory.”

  Daisy had been seeing Rita for six weeks, telling her story. Now April of 1992 was on the stage in front of her. The sets were in place, the lights focused. Like David, she had her hands on the curtain rope, ready to pull and put the whole thing into motion. Nothing moved until she pulled. She held it all in her hands.

  “We’re getting near to when it happened,” Rita said, echoing her thoughts.