by Lily Tuck
“If only Lee Strasberg was my father,” Moira says about Susan Strasberg getting the part of Anne Frank.
“I read how Strasberg said he was amazed by Susan’s performance,” Liliane says. “He said he had no idea where she picked up acting, she has never had any formal training.”
“Right.” Moira rolls her eyes.
Carrying their tote bags full of slippers, leotards, tights, leg warmers, Liliane and Moira go to their class.
Vladimir Dokoudovsky was born in 1919 of Russian parents and was a principal dancer with Colonel W. de Basil’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, where his roles included the Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor, the Golden Slave in Scheherazade, and the nimble Harlequin in Carnaval. He also danced the title roles of Pétrouchka and Paganini. Forced to retire from performing on account of severe arthritis, he began to teach at Ballet Arts Studio 61 in 1947.
A highly demanding and commanding presence, Dokoudovsky is nicknamed the Duke by his students. Standing in the middle of the room, dressed in black pants, a white billowing shirt, and a red silk sash wrapped tightly around his slim waist, he carries a stick with which he beats out the time.
At the barre, Liliane and Moira stand straight and nervous.
Dokoudovsky commands, “Dégagé in fifth”:
Right leg—dégagé front, side, back
Left leg—dégagé front
Right—dégagé front, side, back
Left—dégagé back
Right—dégagé front
Left—passé back to front
Left—passé front to back
Right—dégagé front
Left—dégagé back
Right—passé front to back
Right—passé back to front
Left—dégagé back
Right—dégagé front
Left—dégagé back
Right—dégagé front
Left—dégagé back
“Turn. Repeat,” Dokoudovsky orders. Then he says, “You”—he walks over to an Asian girl at the barre in front of Liliane and brandishes his stick as if to strike her with it—“you are not paying attention. If you cannot pay attention, please leave my class.”
During the entire summer of classes, neither Liliane nor Moira speak to Dokoudovsky; nor does he speak to them.
Across the hall, Nina Stroganova, Dokoudovsky’s former wife and a ballerina in her own right, holds another class. Originally Danish, she is petite and blonde and, to teach, she wears an assortment of colorful clothes as well as strapped high-heel shoes. She calls her students by their first names and is encouraging.
Liliane and Moira prefer Dokoudovsky’s class.
“He is more challenging,” Moira says.
“He’s handsome in a tormented sort of way. Like Heathcliff,” Liliane adds.
“Ha,” Moira gives a knowing laugh.
Liliane has begun writing a novel. The novel is about her imagined life with Heathcliff during the three years he spent away from Wuthering Heights—no mention is ever made by Emily Brontë where Heathcliff went or how he made his fortune during that time. Liliane calls her novel The Manor. The novel begins by describing it:
The manor is a chain of low gray buildings of different sizes with four square turrets that form the corners and tower above them. There is a large courtyard in the center and, to the left, the kennels and stables. The manor was built during the reign of Queen Elizabeth and although it has since been enlarged, the central part and the kitchen have not changed. The drive to the manor is several miles long and begins outside the village of S., which is named after the manor. The road itself has not been kept up as it should, but in places the view is breathtaking, especially after a small and final rise when the manor house suddenly appears, stretched out immense, below. More vivid still, is the countryside, for its intense sense of desolation and wildness. Here, the green, well-cut lawns, carefully trimmed alleys and rolling hills do not exist. Instead there are perilous bogs and marshes. The trees are sparse and bent and the underbrush so thick and thorny that it tears through thick woolen stockings into the flesh. The farmland is meager and hard to cultivate. This is the pays sans nom—country without a name—where Heathcliff and I live.
The novel goes on to describe a season when Heathcliff and the narrator entertain and their house is filled with guests:
All the candles are lit and the rooms are heated with great fires in which gigantic logs crackle and burn. In the darkly polished dining hall, the silver tableware catches the reflection of the candelabras and gleams almost blindingly as Heathcliff gets up to carve the roast, flashing the carving knife like a Roman gladiator his sword. . . .
(Long afterward, Moira will remind Liliane of this awful simile.)
Set during yet another season when Heathcliff and Liliane alone inhabit the manor house, the last paragraph of Liliane’s unfinished novel goes like this:
Upstairs in the bedroom, it is colder and the moan of the wind is more penetrating. The room rocks with the sound. Swiftly, we get undressed, the floor cold under our bare feet, and climb into bed under the heavy quilts and Heathcliff, with one easy motion, blows out the only candle.
On the weekends, Liliane goes farther afield—downtown, to lower Fifth Avenue, to Erick Hawkins’s studio.
A tall, craggy-faced man, Erick Hawkins begins his class by telling his students to lie down on the floor and roll.
“Roll, roll, roll. But don’t roll into anyone. Preserve your own space,” he says.
“Keep rolling. Don’t be afraid,” Erick Hawkins says again.
In Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Martha Graham, wrapped in her long red dress, rolled back and forth onstage. The ballet premiered in 1944 and Erick Hawkins had danced the part of the husbandman with her. He had joined Martha Graham’s company in 1939 as the first male dancer; then he and Martha married in 1948; a few years later, in 1954, they divorced—due to conflicting artistic egos.
Rejecting the rigidity of ballet as well as the belief held by Martha Graham that dance movement is the expression of inner emotion, Hawkins’s works celebrate the human body and nature. He believed in what he called “suchness”—a central concept in Zen Buddhism expressing the true essence of reality—and sought to achieve in dance, in his own words, “just the pure poetry of movement.”
Back on her feet after rolling on the floor for several minutes, Liliane stands at the barre. Barefoot and bare-legged, she lifts her leg high in her hip socket.
Standing in the center of the room and showing them how, Erick Hawkins tells his students, “Initiate the movement from your pelvic center.” He wears loose, pajama-like white cotton pants and is bare-chested; he, too, is barefoot.
“I want you to achieve a sense of lightness, of freedom,” he continues.
“Find the body’s midline,” he also says.
Walking over to Liliane, he puts his hands on her hips and tries to correct her stance.
“You are too tight,” he says. “Tight muscles cannot feel. Only effortless, free-flowing muscles are sensuous,” he adds.
Still holding her by a hip with one hand, Erick Hawkins takes Liliane’s leg with his other hand and lifting it higher, he swings the leg back and forth.
“Think of yourselves as a door,” he tells Liliane. “A beautiful door opening, a beautiful door closing.”
Liliane and Moira eat little. Liliane weighs 108 pounds; shorter, Moira weighs less. If they do eat—if, for instance, Moira comes over to Liliane’s apartment and they cook a batch of brownies and eat them all—they stick their fingers down their throats and make themselves throw up. They regularly take Benzedrine and laxatives; in addition, they smoke. Liliane is proud of the way her hips stick out—like knives, she says. Pinching at her midriff, Moira claims not to have a single ounce of body fat.
Once a week, Irène telephones Liliane fro
m the house in Maine.
“How are you, chérie?” she asks.
“Is everything all right? You are not too lonely in the apartment by yourself?”
Without waiting for an answer, Irène continues, “Are any of your friends in the city?”
“Moira is here,” Liliane says.
“The actress?” Irène asks.
Since Liliane does not answer, Irène says, “And your job? Not too boring, I hope.”
“No, it’s okay. And anyway, I have ballet.”
“You’re taking ballet? You didn’t tell me.”
“Moira and I take a few classes after work,” Liliane says.
“At night? Isn’t that dangerous? And are you eating? I told you, didn’t I, that you could charge food at the Gristedes down the street?”
“Yes, I know. I do,” Liliane lies.
“I don’t want you to starve,” Irène says with a laugh.
“Don’t worry. I’m fine.”
“Oh, and I nearly forgot to tell you—Gaby is coming down to the city next week for a few days. He has business, but he wants to take you out to dinner one night.”
“Fine,” Liliane says again.
“And, if you have dinner with Gaby, please don’t talk to him about politics,” Irène adds. “You know how he hates Adlai Stevenson and how angry he gets if you mention his name.”
Liliane starts to say something about how Adlai Stevenson is in favor of limiting all hydrogen bomb test detonations aboveground but Irène cuts her off.
“Promise me,” she says, “you won’t argue with him.”
“Then it’s okay if we all die from nuclear fallout,” Liliane says, determined to have the last word.
The first day Gaby is back in the city, Liliane does not see him. In the morning, she is off to work before Gaby is up—or so she assumes, as the door to his and Irène’s bedroom is shut. In the evening, when she comes back from ballet class, Gaby is not home yet. The only evidence she has that he has been in the apartment is a dirty glass—the glass smells of bourbon—in the kitchen sink.
On the second day, Liliane has just gotten into bed and turned out the light when she hears her bedroom door open.
“Lillian, are you awake?” Gaby says.
Didn’t anyone teach you to knock? Liliane thinks.
She hesitates, not sure whether to answer him.
“Good night, Lillian,” he says.
She is silent.
But instead of shutting the door and leaving, Gaby steps into her room. His step, Liliane can tell, is unsteady. He reaches for the wall for balance, then for a chair to steady himself.
“Lillian,” he says again, his voice slurred, “are you asleep?”
Better not to answer him, Liliane decides: Gaby sounds drunk.
In the dark, Gaby trips over something lying on the floor—her shoes, Liliane guesses—and catches himself by grabbing at the foot of Liliane’s bed.
“Damn,” he mutters.
Lying on her back, Liliane does not move.
Go away. Please, go away, she says to herself.
Gaby comes alongside her bed; with his hand he gropes until he finds her—his hand slides up her legs, her hips her stomach, until they reach her breasts.
Liliane shuts her eyes; she hardly dares breathe.
Go, go, go, she says again to herself. Please, God, make him go.
“Darling,” Gaby mumbles as, grunting, he climbs up on Liliane’s bed and lies on top of her. He lies there without moving, his body heavy. His cheek, rough with stubble, pressed against hers, his breath smells of bourbon.
Only a single cotton sheet separates them and, although her heart is pounding, Liliane wills herself not to move. Inexplicably, a song she has not thought of or sung in years starts up inside her head:
Il etait un petit navire,
Qui n’avait ja-ja jamais navigué,
Ohé! Ohé! Ohé! Ohé! Matelot, . . .
Matelot navigue sur les flots
There was once a little boat,
That had never sailed,
Ahoy! Ahoy!
Ahoy! Ahoy! Sailor,
Sailor on the high seas
After a few minutes, Gaby begins to snore. One of his snores wakes him, and slowly, awkwardly, muttering something Liliane does not catch, Gaby heaves himself up and leaves Liliane’s room.
Ohé! Ohé!
Ohé! Ohé! Matelot.
In the morning, shaved and dressed, Gaby is in the kitchen. He is making coffee.
“Do you want a cup?” he asks Liliane.
Shaking her head, Liliane does not look at him.
“You must have been out late last night,” Gaby continues in an ordinary voice. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“No . . . yes,” Liliane does not know what to answer him or what he is talking about.
“How’s work?” Gaby asks in a friendly voice.
“It’s okay,” Liliane answers.
“I’ve got to go,” she also says.
“See you, Lillian,” Gaby calls out after her.
That night, again, Gaby comes into her room and lies on top of her.
The next day, Irène telephones and asks, “How are you, chérie?”
Then she says, “Let me speak to Gaby. Is he there?”
“He’s not here.” Liliane has trouble controlling her voice.
“Chérie,” Irène says again, alarmed. “Is anything the matter?”
In spite of herself, Liliane lets out a sob, which she turns into a cough.
“Are you sick?”
“No, everything is fine,” she manages to answer.
“But have you seen Gaby?” Irène persists.
“No,” Liliane tells Irène, “I haven’t seen him.”
X
A year earlier, during Liliane’s senior year in high school, Irène overdoses on sleeping pills. In the morning, a Sunday, unable to wake her, Gaby called the family doctor—Dr. Fischer’s successor—at home.
“Get her up and walk her,” the doctor told Gaby. “The important thing is to keep her moving.”
“I’ll call an ambulance,” he also said.
Gaby and Liliane lifted Irène out of bed; then, holding her up by the arms, they stood her up. Irène’s eyes were closed and her blonde hair was matted; her feet barely touch the floor. Her pink silk nightgown was bunched up around her waist and Liliane tried to cover Irène with her wrapper, but it slipped to the floor.
“Never mind that now, Lillian,” Gaby told her. “Let’s go.”
Together, they walk Irène up and down the apartment hall until the paramedics arrived with a stretcher.
“Is she going to be all right?” Liliane asked one of them.
Already, Irène showed signs of life by moaning and shaking her head.
“No,” she said twice, as the paramedics strapped her onto the stretcher.
“I’ll call you,” Gaby said to Liliane as he followed the paramedics carrying Irène on the stretcher out the door.
Gaby forgot to call Liliane and only later when he returned to the apartment did he say something vague to her about Irène’s fragile nerves breaking and for Liliane not to worry. Irène would be home in a couple of days.
“Right as rain,” Gaby said.
“I’m beat,” he also said. “I feel as if I haven’t slept in a week. I’m going to bed. Good night, Lillian,” he added.
Brigid, the cleaning lady, was no more informative. “The lady I used to work for—God love her,” Brigid told Liliane, “a beautiful lady like your mother, and she had a nice apartment, a husband, two children, and you’d think, wouldn’t you, with all of that, that she would be happy—” Brigid stopped and crossed herself, saying, “Sweet Mary, Mother of God.”
“What happened to her?” L
iliane asked Brigid.
Instead of answering, Brigid crossed herself again. “Nerves is what they called it. But will you look at me,” she said, “standing around talking as if I had all day and I’ve got the sheets still to iron and all of the mister’s shirts.”
“In the Middle Ages, a nervous breakdown was called melancholia,” Liliane read in a medical dictionary in her school library, while, earlier, according to Hippocrates, melancholia was caused by an excess of black bile, hence the name in Ancient Greek—μέλας (melas)—meaning “black.” But Irène was much too fair and too beautiful to be filled with an ugly substance that, Liliane imagined, looked like the black viscous oil that goes into the engine of a car.
Although melancholics suffered, they were thought to be more creative, and Liliane thought of Irène’s paintings—in particular, the one of a woman dressed entirely in green sitting alone in an orange room that was a kind of anti-portrait of Irène.
“Green,” Irène had said, “is my least favorite color. It soaks up the light.”
“Will you go to the studio?” Liliane asks her mother once Irène is home again. Liliane was back early from school; she no longer stopped off at her friend Pamela’s apartment to smoke cigarettes and drink Coke laced with rum. She was afraid for Irène, at the same time that she felt vaguely responsible for her. Although midafternoon and outside the sun was shining, the curtains were drawn in the living room. Not yet dressed, Irène was in her bathrobe.
Shaking her head, Irène said, “No, I don’t think so.”
“Why? You enjoyed it and your paintings are lovely,” Liliane said.
“Please,” Irène said, looking all of a sudden as if she might cry.
Liliane was silent.
