Jersey Tomatoes are the Best

by Maria Padian

  The New York School of Dance is housed in a former elementary school, and there’s something stern and unsmiling about its brick face. Its lobby is empty, except for a big ficus plant, and as we ride the elevator to the fourth floor I hear the tinkle of a piano as music seeps through the walls. Before I can identify the melody, the box grinds to a stop and the doors slide open.

  A young woman in a black warm-up suit waits, holding a clipboard.

  “Eva Smith?” she says pleasantly. “Right on time. Please follow me.” She walks quickly down the corridor.

  This is such a contrast from the afternoon when we arrived for the group audition. There was a line out the front door as dancers waited to squeeze into the elevator. Inside, it was this frenzied cattle call as they checked off our names from a big list and handed out paper numbers, which we affixed to our leotards with safety pins.

  In groups of thirty, nameless and numbered, we positioned ourselves along the barres in the big practice room, where an instructor worked us through a class. You could hear hips and knees crack as we started with pliés from first position, then deep breaths from around the room as we advanced to grand battement: the knees straight, the body quiet, the working leg raised from the hip, and those pretty satin pointe shoes elevated above our heads. Then stretch, remove the barres, and in smaller groups move to center for adagio (slow, sustained movement), pirouettes (spins) and allegro (brisk, lively steps).

  We were all dressed in identical black leotards and tights. We all wore our hair in smooth buns. We all wore the same expressions, radiating ease and joyfulness as our ligaments screamed or our sore-toe-with-the-nail-about-to-fall-off threatened to derail the tryout completely. Or our concentration flagged as our eyes inevitably moved around the room to the other girls, the other members of the Clone Ballerina Army, vying against each other for the handful of spots at the school. Somehow, miraculously, you were expected to move so elegantly, with such precision and such clear capacity for strength and grace, that one of the three wandering, observing instructors might actually notice and jot down your number.

  Somehow, my number had made it into someone’s book. So I get to audition again—this time, alone.

  The piano grows louder as we proceed along the hall. It is accompanied by a woman’s commanding voice: “And plié! And relevé! Plié! Relevé! And jump and jump and jump and jump! Little jumps, little jumps, toes all the way off the ground!”

  Halfway down the corridor, the walls become glass on one side, and we can see into an enormous studio. The ceiling rises at least two stories high, and is bordered by windows that reveal the tops of distant skyscrapers. A full-length mirror panels one entire wall of the studio, and the wooden floors, beaten smooth by years of soft satin shoes, are dusted with traces of rosin powder. At least twenty dancers, a few men but mostly women, are positioned at the barres set up throughout the room.

  “Now tendu front, side, back! And tendu front, side, back!”

  I stand stock-still, mesmerized. These are the company dancers. I have never peeked into a company dance class, never seen so many who have crossed over to “the promised land” in a professional company all in the same room, rehearsing the same basic moves. Not only that: rehearsing them in perfect time, with textbook precision. They are in the early stage of class: many of them are layered with leg warmers, sweatpants, a sweatshirt tied around the waist, as they try to coax tired, hard muscles to become as flexible as rubber bands. Despite their motley assortment of clothing, they share a seemingly effortless execution of each move.

  Oh my god, are you kidding? Are you kidding me? These people are awesome. They are so much better than you. You and your big fat butt have no chance.

  “Please, this way,” the woman urges. I pull myself reluctantly away from the studio windows, and she smiles at me.

  “We do many, many tendus here,” she says. “We think it is probably the most important exercise a ballet dancer can do.”

  I smile back at her, trying hard not to look surprised. Tendu? A simple toe drag from first position, the most important exercise? I wonder if this is a test. To see how I’ll react. I glance at my mother, but she’s looking at her watch.

  The woman pushes open a door at the end of the hall, and we enter a smaller version of the earlier studio. Mirrors, a barre, an upright piano. But the floors here gleam, immaculate.

  “Now, there is a dressing room next door on your right. Madame will be here in thirty minutes, so you have that much time to change and warm up.” She places the clipboard on top of the piano, smiles once more and leaves us alone.

  By the time Madame arrives, I have stretched, pliéd, ten-dued and dégagéd just beyond warm and just before sweat. My favorite, most recently broken-in pointe shoes are securely wrapped at the ankles; I wear my good-luck lavender leotard. Madame, slim and silver-haired, strides into the room without knocking, surprising us both. Another woman accompanies her: roundish, dressed in street clothes.

  “Hello,” Madame says, hand extended. “I am Gloria DuPres.”

  “Rhonda Smith,” Mom replies, returning the shake. “And this is Eva.”

  Gloria DuPres’s eyes dart to the top of my head and the tightly gathered knot of long hair, then flit down the length of me to the feet, registering height, weight, build and potential for strength and elegance in about two seconds. I search her face for a sign of either disapproval or pleasure, but other than a slight twitch at one corner of her mouth, Madame reveals nothing.

  Fat. She thinks you’re fat, Eva. And what the hell were you thinking, wearing a purple leotard today?

  She holds a pencil and studies the clipboard left atop the piano; the roundish woman sits before the keyboard.

  “Eva, you are … how old?” she asks, eyes locked on her sheet.

  “She’ll be sixteen in September,” Mom says. Madame looks up at me and waits.

  “I’m fifteen,” I reply. She nods, returns to her clipboard.

  “And you have been on pointe how long?” she asks.

  “About six years,” I say.

  Madame looks up. A line creases her smooth forehead.

  “Define ‘about.’ Does it mean more than six, or less than six?”

  “Eva went on pointe when she was nine,” Mom says.

  “That’s young,” says Madame, redirecting her gaze to Mom.

  “When it comes to ballet, Eva’s done everything early.” Mom smiles. She can barely contain the gush in her voice.

  Madame’s lip curls. Slightly. But I notice.

  “I do not have a single girl here who wore pointe shoes before eleven,” she says to Mom. “The feet, the bones, were not developed enough. The muscles in the legs were not strong enough. In some schools, they do bone scans on their students to make sure their growth plates have closed before putting them on pointe. Otherwise, you can cause irreparable harm.”

  Rhonda doesn’t even blush. Amazing. My stomach is doing 360s, but right now my mother is smiling at Madame Gloria DuPres like we’ve just won the lottery.

  “I know exactly what you mean! Our Eva hit all those milestones so early. It was really something.”

  Madame returns to her clipboard, the furrow in her brow smoothed over again. She writes, and I suddenly have an overpowering urge to vomit.

  You’re ruined, career over, at the ripe old age of fifteen. What do they do with horses who’ve gone bad in the knees? Oh, right: glue factory. They grind their hooves into glue. So, let’s just melt the girl down and pour her into a bottle of Elmer’s school glue. Only we can call it Eva’s loser glue.

  “Eva, did you bring your music today?” Madame’s voice cuts through the silence in the studio, pulling me from my thoughts.

  “Yes,” I tell her, and reach into my ballet bag for the sheet music. I’ve chosen Swan Lake, the section where Odile, the black swan, performs before the assembled court.

  Madame takes my music and hands it to the accompanist seated at the piano.

  “Mrs. Smith,” she says, “i
n our sitting room down the hall you’ll find coffee, tea, other refreshments. I will send Eva out to you when we’re finished.”

  I think it takes Rhonda several full seconds to realize she’s been dismissed. Her eyes go all big and round. She doesn’t argue, just turns and walks compliantly out the door. But not before flashing me a big, exaggerated wink and whispering, “Good luck!”

  As the accompanist arranges the sheets of music on the stand, Madame looks over her shoulders. Her eyebrows arch when she sees my music. I’m doing final stretches, trying to shake out the jitters.

  “Tell me, Eva. Have you ever seen this ballet performed?”

  “Oh. Gosh. Maybe a dozen times?” I reply. Swan Lake is my absolute favorite. With my favorite composer: Tchaikovsky. I can never decide which is his best all-time tearjerker—the finale to Swan Lake, or the part in The Nutcracker where Clara leaves in the magical sleigh.

  “When I was a young dancer it was without a doubt my favorite to perform,” Madame informs me. She settles gracefully in the aluminum chair.

  “What part did you dance?” I ask. She smiles smoothly.

  “Odile. Just like you.”

  It’s over, kiddo. Can we skip this part and just go home now

  “Please, Eva. Begin.”

  I take my position in the middle of the room and breathe deeply. Slowly, deeply, from the diaphragm. I close my eyes. I imagine the diamonds.

  This is how it always is for me: the space I inhabit when I dance becomes a three-dimensional grid of perfectly stacked diamonds, my movement within their confines precise, predictable, controlled. I love the music. My heart soars with the music, and I don’t imitate but actually become the character from the ballet. And my body obeys in strictly timed, rehearsed motion.

  I begin in B-plus position: attitude à terre. One arm curves gracefully above my head; the other is extended to the side. One more deep breath, and the pianist begins.

  It’s a slow, lovely, deliberate dance. No breakneck runs; no vaulting leaps. Instead, graceful, swanlike arms, delicate piqué steps that appear light, effortless. I begin with soutenus … a sustained chain of turns in fifth position, then pirouettes. Spins. Then, from attitude, a poised moment of stillness, one leg balances while the other is drawn up, tracing the knee, then extending outward in a holding position: développé en l’air.

  At some point, muscle memory takes over, and the music washes over my nerves. I forget to think of these as steps. I forget Madame. I forget my purple leotard and the battalion of impossibly perfect dancers down the hall, and I am a girl, a swanlike girl, dancing before a prince. He looks at me and something breaks in him: he wants nothing, nothing more than me. He could die for loving me, and it’s all because I dance.…

  I don’t hate Odile. I don’t think Tchaikovsky did, either. He wouldn’t have written anything this beautiful for something we’re supposed to hate. But that’s how the story supposedly goes: Odile is the evil black swan who tricks the prince into thinking she’s the perfect Odette, the white swan he has fallen in love with. But when she dances, this Odile, isn’t she asking, with every graceful sweep of her arms, every breathless, airy step: “Love me. I deserve love, too.”

  I end in fourth position, my feet parallel, one behind the other, after a run of piqué turns. The pianist has stopped and I am breathing hard. It’s odd, to end in silence. A performance is supposed to end in applause, not the pounding of my heart in my ears. I look at Madame, her expression unreadable, her legs crossed and her hands folded neatly in her lap. After what feels like forever, she speaks.

  “Well, Eva, I think that piece was very ambitious for you. A very ambitious choice.” She stands. She nods to the accompanist, who neatly gathers the pages of my music. Madame crosses the room to me and puts out her hand, which I take.

  “After you change, you go down the hall, turn right, and you’ll find your mother in the reception room. Thank you for coming in. We’ll be in touch.”

  Not until the two women leave and the door clicks behind them do I allow myself to flop on the floor. I go all oozy. Like spilled glue. And I can’t decide whether I feel like crying, or like standing up and wheeling that piano across the smooth studio floor, and crashing it through the windows so that it drops to the street below and smashes into a zillion little pieces.

  Chapter Three

  HENRY

  You’ve got to have attitude if you’re from New Jersey. At least, that’s what Eva says.

  Face it: Jersey jokes probably outnumber Polish jokes and lawyer jokes combined. Even our cars, with “The Garden State” license plate logo, get laughs. “Don’t you mean ‘The Chemical State’?” people sneer, referring to the stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike just south of New York City, where the refinery fumes are so bad they set off the smoke alarms in passing RVs. “What exit?” they cackle, when you tell them you’re from Jersey. “Do you glow in the dark?” they laugh, referring to the countless gallons of toxic waste produced by and deposited in New Jersey, aka the Armpit of New York. After a while it gets to be a drag.

  When I was little I wished we were from Montana (their license plate says “Big Sky Country”) or Maine (“Vacationland”). But Eva keeps telling me there’s no point wishing for things you can’t change. So put a smile on your face and just keep saying to yourself: “Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best.”

  That’s Eva Smith, Best Friend Forever and fellow Jersey Girl.

  “If we can survive New Jersey, we can survive anything,” she likes to say. As if she’s some sort of survivor, which I don’t quite get. She says it now, the day following my tournament. We sit in her kitchen, blending strawberry smoothies and discussing the dubious honor of being a New Jersey State Champion of Anything, let alone tennis. Eva is convinced that I am bound for glory, especially because some recruiter from a tennis academy in Florida called our house after the match. He’s planning to be at states in a couple of weeks.

  I’m wondering whether reading my name above the fold in the sports section of the Bergen Record qualifies as glory. I’m so suffering from an attitude deficit today.

  Usually Eva and I spend postmatch days hanging out. If I win, that is. On the rare occasions when I lose, I spend the afternoons calling the dogs.

  As in Penn, Wilson and Dunlop. It was a game I made up, pretending the balls my father fired at me from our ball machine were dogs. Starting when I was … I don’t know … eight? I’d stand on the baseline of our backyard clay court, waiting for a fresh feed, and he’d fill the machine with all the different brands. I had to see the seams, he said. Call out the manufacturer’s name just before I hit.

  “Here, Wilson! Here, Penn!” I’d shout as I slammed forehands. “Roll over, Dunlop!” I’d exclaim, nailing a topspin backhand. Dad loved it, and whenever he wanted me to practice with the ball machine, he’d say, “Time to call a few dogs.”

  Of course, as many hours as I’ve logged on a tennis court, Eva’s logged more in a dance studio.

  She was wearing a leotard, tights and rubbery ballet slippers the day we met: in the grocery store. We were six. I was shopping with my mom, tagging along as she wheeled our metal cart along the aisles. Ahead of us I spied this girl acting weird.

  She had one hand on her mother’s cart and one arm curved over her head. She had her eyes closed, her nose tilted toward the ceiling, and she kept rising up and down on tiptoe. As her mother pushed their cart forward, rapidly tossing boxes of frozen pizza and icy bags of peas and corn into the cart, the girl minced slowly along, oblivious to the groceries flying past her head.

  “Eva, we don’t have time for this,” her mother said impatiently. “Lessons start in fifteen minutes.”

  My mom and I had just pulled parallel with them. The girl opened her eyes, and her gaze fell immediately on me.

  “Oh. Hello,” she said without hesitation. “I’m Eva.” I just stood there, slack-jawed with surprise. I’m good at that. “What’s your name?” she persisted.

  “This is Henry,” my mot
her filled in for me kindly. “That’s a very pretty leotard you’re wearing. Are you a dancer?”

  Eva nodded solemnly. Her brow wrinkled as she processed this information.

  “Henry is a boy’s name,” she finally announced. A little accusingly.

  I’m also pretty good at stating the obvious, so “I’m not a boy” sprang to my lips. As if my waist-length blond hair and pink baseball cap weren’t enough evidence. Eva smiled widely, clearly pleased and amused by me. Meanwhile, our moms spoke over our heads. They recognized each other from around town, in that Jersey-mothers-who-shop-at-the-same-grocery-store sort of way.

  “Would you like to come over to play?” Eva asked. I shrugged. I had no interest in this odd kid and her food-chucking mother. But Eva had made up her mind, so before Rhonda hustled her out of the store, the mothers exchanged phone numbers and a playdate was planned.

  It was like hanging out with a pint-sized dictator. She bossed me around for hours as we played make-believe games of her invention. We weren’t just Henry and Eva: we were lost mermaids in a haunted lake; princesses who had been turned into white mice by a jealous queen; children who sprouted wings at night and flew over the rooftops of their parents’ homes. She staged a ballet, creating sets by draping gauzy material over the backs of kitchen chairs and playing tapes from Disney movies. She danced the lead, and for a while tried to get me to dance. It didn’t take her long, even at age six, to realize I was incapable of moving my feet to music, so she made me something stationary—a tree—while she cavorted around me.

  I laughed so much that day my cheeks hurt. As we played, I lost all track of real time and space, and when my mother arrived to pick me up, Eva and I both begged for another playdate. They couldn’t refuse us.