by Megan Abbott
Their mother once confided to Dara that Marie was not a lovely dancer—not like you, my dear—but she was a memorable one. She danced, their mother said, with the intensity of a bad dream. You did not forget her.
Dara had known she was more technically skilled. That her body—two inches taller (all of it in the neck, Charlie used to say, stroking it, long ago)—was more “ballerina” than Marie’s coiled frame. But she had not known until that moment that their mother thought Marie was the real dancer. It was better, after all, to be memorable than lovely.
* * *
* * *
Later that day, Dara peeked in her sister’s studio, Marie again seated on the floor, her legs splayed wide, the bruise a ring of fire.
Leaning forward, her face resting on her elbows, she was talking, low and slow, to two of her seven-year-old girls, both sitting cross-legged across from her and listening intently.
The hammering from Studio B was loud, the plastic curtain vibrating, so Dara couldn’t hear what Marie was saying, but she couldn’t stop watching.
Suddenly, a shadow appeared behind the curtain, large enough to fill the frame.
Dara knew who it was and knew he was watching Marie, her legs spread wide, the bruise, like an open mouth, red and hungry.
Marie, who was posing for him, showing herself to him, exposing herself, laying herself bare.
Dara would not stand for it.
She charged across the studio, Marie’s head lifting, watching as Dara stalked over to the plastic curtain, pulling it back.
Derek giving her a look, a whiff of dismissal, one finger pressed against his ear, pushing a plug back into place.
* * *
* * *
I don’t understand why it’s taking so long,” Dara said.
Derek nodded vaguely, infuriatingly, a long copper pipe in his hand, holding it like a baseball bat, twirling it like a baton.
“All these weeks,” Dara continued, voice scraping now over the noise, “and I’m still standing on plywood.”
“Subfloor,” Derek clarified, smiling a little. “We hit a few stumbling blocks. Some surprises with the pipe grid. You own an old house, so you know. It’s always something with those big shambling places built before the code—”
“This has nothing to do with our house. I’m talking about the job we hired you for,” Dara said, her voice so loud she surprised herself, a stirring from Benny in the far corner unrolling plastic sheeting. He and Gaspar exchanged looks. “You may be fooling my sister, but you’re not fooling me.”
“I would be disappointed if I did,” Derek said. His tone, his demeanor felt new, felt smug, less salesman, more something else. Dara watched as he choked up on the copper pipe, gripping it like a bat, swung it casually, like a ballplayer on deck.
“You know what my old man used to say?” he said, the whir of the pipe in his hands. “Watch out for a bad woman, and never trust a good one.”
* * *
* * *
Derek was gone by lunch, disappearing for the rest of the day, leaving everything to Benny and Gaspar, who spent the afternoon working with what felt like heightened velocity, their baseball caps damp with sweat.
Dara felt badly, except she didn’t.
* * *
* * *
Later, Dara came upon Charlie and Marie arguing near the electrical kettle.
All day, Charlie had been enmeshed in some low-level disagreement with Marie over her failure to keep attendance, which made it hard for him to bill.
“Why don’t you just admit,” Charlie was saying to Marie now, “you took that box of Assam red. The one I special-ordered.”
It didn’t make sense. Marie never drank tea. Only canned coffee that looked like tobacco spit.
“And when was this?” Marie replied, caressing her neck flagrantly, like a child wondering at her body.
“When you left. When you moved out. When you left us,” Charlie said. “Did you take that too?”
Marie stared at him a moment, her teeth tugging into her lip.
It was a standoff of some cryptic kind and Dara chose not to get involved.
* * *
* * *
That night, Dara couldn’t sleep and wandered the house, no creaking floorboard loud enough to wake Charlie from his sleeping pills.
Nice house you got over there, on Sycamore, Derek had said. And he’d mentioned it again, that day. She didn’t like the idea of him looking at their house, evaluating it. She didn’t like the idea of him even thinking of their house, its insides. It felt like there was something behind it.
She moved from room to room, her hands on every splintery doorframe, every wiggly doorknob. Last was their old bedroom, its door closed. She always kept it closed.
Any time she spent more than a few minutes inside, she felt sweaty and unsettled. With its sloping dormer walls, the space was so small it could only fit a dresser, a lamp, and their bunkbed, its wood shellacked to a lustrous shimmer, the wagon-wheel headboard with the spindle spokes you could hold on to or fondle, reading a scary story, waking from a bad dream.
Even through the door, she could smell it, a room redolent of their girl selves, the must of sweat-stiff leotards, the sting of balms, their bodies, budding and fulsome, their clammy underarms and thighs. The sounds, the squeaking bunkbed, the click-click of Marie’s teeth while she slept.
For each of them, it was their most private space, which, of course, they shared. The hidden cove where Dara dreamt and wondered, her body always aching and changing and fighting itself.
“Are you thinking about a boy?” Marie would whisper from the bunk above. Long summer nights, the click of the beetles, the soft grind of the cicadas, all those crickets rubbing their legs together, the low moan of the mosquitoes at the screen.
“I’m not telling you,” Dara would say, even if she was always thinking of a boy—Peter Garcia, who pressed against her once at recital, the Marshall brothers at school—or even more just thinking of herself, her own body, hard and scraped raw from dancing.
Her own body, its secrets she was just beginning to unfold, slowly, with quivering fingers.
Marie figured out how to do it before Dara. Dara could hear her above, the little panting sounds. She could picture Marie’s face pressed against the slats, red and veiny.
Dara did it differently, though.
Dara couldn’t be as quiet as Marie. Because, she decided, she felt it so much more deeply.
Because, every time, Dara thought she just might die from the feeling.
Every time, she saw stars, just like with the turnout. You don’t see stars, Marie? Are you sure you’re doing it right?
Marie wanted to see them too. Wanted Dara to show her.
But Dara kept it for herself. Marie was always bragging that her body was different. That she had something no one else has. Well, maybe Dara did too. Once, the feeling came through her so strongly she kicked her right leg hard against the footboard, snapping one of the slats in half, shooting it across the room.
Giggling in the dark, Dara and Marie crouched over the carpet, trying to find the pieces.
They Elmer’s-glued it back into place and no one knew until, a few weeks later, Dara knocked it loose again, her ankle caught between the slats, her body drenched and shaking.
* * *
* * *
For weeks after the slat broke, Marie liked to sit on the floor at the foot of Dara’s bed while Dara tried to sleep. She liked to finger the spot the broken slat had occupied. The roughness, the scatter of sawdust. She liked to crouch down behind the footboard and squeeze her fist through the empty space between the slats. Or push her hand through and point her index finger at Dara while she tried to sleep. Her eyes glowing, wolflike, in the dark, she liked to point her finger at Dara as if to say I know you.
THICK AS THIEVES
The Nutcracker performances began in twenty-six days.
Twenty-six days, which is nothing, a blink. Twenty-six days, which is everything, is two dozen rehearsals, hundreds of corrections (Elbows up! Rib cage in!), thousands of tendus and jetés, the endless repetitions that make ballet.
The Nutcracker began in twenty-six days and Studio B seemed no closer to completion. In fact it seemed less, its subfloor still exposed, the new flooring still not yet arrived, an unmistakable smell of mold hovering hotly in the air.
The Nutcracker began in twenty-six days and Studio B was still a hazard site, wires hanging from the walls, floorboards piled, tarps slipping loose, the windows forever flung open, the air thick with plaster and dust.
The Nutcracker began in twenty-six days and her sister was destroying herself.
* * *
* * *
And everyone was cold. The temperature had dropped overnight, a warning bell from the coming winter, and the radiator pipes were shushing and singing, spitting brown water and smelling of dust and hair, of skin peels and toenails.
And they still had to keep the windows open in Studio B for this stage of the renovation. For the smells, mysterious and clinging.
You never wanted the studios to be too warm. A little chill helped keep the energy up, to offset the natural heat emitted by bundles of young girls. But now it was so frigid that, before class began, the youngest girls shivered in their leotards, skin dimpled, huddling together for warmth. Rows of them, pink and paler pink—like a rabbit’s ear.
“Hey,” Derek said when Dara and Charlie arrived, all their studio layers wrapped around their bodies like mummies, “how’s that furnace holding out on you over on Sycamore?”
Here he was again, talking about their house.
“It’s fine,” Charlie said, walking past Derek, his eyes catching on the state of Studio B, which seemed to have remained in the subfloor stage for days and days now. What work were they doing?
Derek turned to Dara. “Those big Victorians gotta land you a heating bill in four digits,” he said.
Dara didn’t say anything, draping her coat over her arm, navigating the cords, the chaos.
“Or maybe I’m wrong,” he said finally. Men like this, she thought, had to fill the air, fill the space. Any room they were in. “Maybe you never even have to turn on the heat.”
Lifting a power cord from her path, leaning close as she tried to pass. “I bet you don’t.”
He put his hand on her coat, her coat on her arm.
“I bet your house is hot, hot, hot.”
* * *
* * *
The house again,” Dara said to Charlie later that morning. “See how he keeps talking about it.”
“He’ll be done soon,” Charlie said, staring at a stack of bills, “and out of our lives.”
“We still haven’t received a dime from the insurance company,” Dara said. “I don’t even know how we’re paying for this. Or how he is.”
“I’ll call them again,” Charlie said. “It keeps changing. The estimate keeps changing.”
“The parents . . .” Dara said. “I’m hearing complaints.”
Once word got around that Mrs. Bloom couldn’t be around the construction dust, a coterie of parents—well, at least a few—had begun expressing concern that their daughters were breathing dangerous particulates, possibly mold. I assure you, Dara always said, there’s no risk. But if you’re concerned, we can give your daughter’s part to another girl, which always stopped them cold. Several of the younger girls began showing up with dust masks strapped to their bobbly heads, tearing them off the minute their parents left, shoving them in coat pockets before Dara could see.
“Parents always complain,” Charlie said. “That’s what makes them parents.”
“It’s going to get worse,” Dara said.
Charlie looked at her. “She’ll get tired of him,” he said, turning away.
“You’re wrong,” Dara said.
Every night that week, Dara had walked by the studio late, trying to burn off all the tension, everything. And every night but one, the only lights on were Marie’s on the third floor. A tiny octagon glowing. And Derek’s truck was in the private driveway, parked deeper than during the day.
In the morning, he snaked down those spiral stairs, sometimes with a toothbrush hanging from his mouth, or buttoning his cuffs.
* * *
* * *
The day hurdled forward, three long hours with her alternating Dewdrops, two earnest, impossibly big-eyed sisters named, also impossibly, Holly and Ivy, a year apart in age but with nearly identical bodies, long, scythe-like feet, and small sleek heads with throats like long scarves, stretching forever.
In the next studio, she heard Marie all day, the low hum of her singsongy voice, plié, tendu, port de bras, all her little ballerinas fluttering around her, dipping up and down, dreaming of one day being as elegant as Mademoiselle Durant, her technicolor bruises, the red of her red, red mouth.
* * *
* * *
Marie didn’t appear for their usual lunch break, a forty-minute window between classes and rehearsals for a banana, tea, plucking figs or almonds from a shared baggie, Charlie smoking on the windowsill.
“Where is she?” Dara asked Charlie.
He gave her a look.
“Where is she?” Dara moved to the spiral staircase, peering up. She wouldn’t dare, would she?
“No,” Charlie said. “He took her to lunch.”
“The contractor.”
“I saw them leaving,” he said, his brow creased. “She was wearing a skirt.”
Dara shook her tea bag, Earl Grey spattering.
“I told you,” she said.
Charlie raised an eyebrow, looked away.
* * *
* * *
An hour later, Marie had not returned, forcing Charlie to lead her six-year-olds through their barre work, trying not to strain himself, planting himself in the corner, all the girls sneaking peeks in the mirror.
Another half hour passed before Marie appeared. She was indeed in an ill-fitting skirt, the kind a secretary in a movie might wear, and a new jacket, leather like Derek’s, but with a chic sash. It was two sizes too big and seemed to swallow her.
Dara spotted her watching herself in the mirror, swanning about in it for a minute before she made her entrance in Studio A.
Apologizing to her excitable students (Mademoiselle Durant, you look so pretty!) as she passed them, she stripped the jacket loose, its new leathery smell choking everyone. She unzipped the skirt, letting it fall to the floor, leaving her back in her usual thick tights.
Dara watched from the door. Watched the whole spectacle.
* * *
* * *
He took me to that Italian place with all the red awnings,” Marie was saying to Charlie as Dara walked into the office later. “We had fried calamari big as curtain rings and a lobster we picked right out of the tank.”
Charlie sat, silently writing checks at the desk, an odd look on his face, like he was thinking of things but wouldn’t say them.
It was surprising, really. All of it. The lunch, the production of it, even that Marie had chosen to tell Charlie about it first. Rather than Dara.
“Is that why you were so late?” Dara asked. “Couldn’t pick your lobster?”
Marie turned and looked at Dara.
“And then you know what we did, Charlie?” she said, her eyes still on Dara. “We went to a luxury showroom and looked at cars.”
“Cars?” Charlie said, looking up. “Why?”
“I think I might need one,” she said.
“It’s ridiculous,” Dara said. “You live where you work. You need a car to come down the stairs in the morning?”
“
If you need to go anywhere,” Charlie said, “you can take the Chrysler.”
“You barely know how to drive, Marie,” Dara said. “Remember?”
“Well,” Marie said, her face changing, that fox look it could sometimes get, “I didn’t know a lot of things until I did.”
Dara looked at her, feeling a chill.
* * *
* * *
As Dara walked away, she could hear Marie returning to her conversation with Charlie. Charlie, pondering the stack of mail in front of him. Charlie looking far-off, unreachable.
“Big, snazzy cars,” Marie was saying. “They give you champagne while you browse. You can sit behind the wheel.” Then, her voice softer, “They all smelled like Dad.”
* * *
* * *
Whatever had seemed to be turning now seemed turned. Marie and the contractor. They were a thing, together. And it was changing things. Derek’s new cockiness, cock of the walk. Marie dyeing her hair, wearing a skirt, looking at snazzy cars. Marie flagrant and unrepentant, fornicating on the floor above while her seven-year-old students waited below.
“So, what did you talk about at this lunch today? Power tools?” Dara asked, unable to stop herself from returning to the doorway. “Spray tans?”
But Marie, standing behind Charlie seated at the desk, didn’t say a word. And that fox look coming back to her face as she snaked her arm down past Charlie’s cheek and neck and into his shirt pocket, pulling a cigarette from the pack snug there.
Sliding it into her mouth like some kind of femme fatale, disappearing into Studio A, the click of a lighter, a cloud of smoke trailing behind her.
* * *
* * *
That evening, Marie climbed in Derek’s big oil-slick truck and headed off to parts unknown. Together they went, both in their leather jackets like a motorcycle gang, off into the sunlight, and Dara knew now that something had changed. Marie had shut her out. This was the new stage.
