The Turnout

by Megan Abbott

  But Marie only smiled mysteriously, smugly.

  Dara reached out and grabbed her sister’s face in her hand. She held it tight, Marie’s eyes big with surprise, fear. It was something their mother had done, and only a few times but enough that they never forgot it.

  “You’re lucky,” Dara said, her voice strange and heavy, “I don’t throw you down those stairs. You’re lucky I don’t kick you out of this studio, our school. Our life. Everything you have is because of me. You don’t have anything of your own. You have nothing.”

  The words kept coming and both of them couldn’t wait for them to stop.

  * * *

  * * *

  After, Dara locked herself in the powder room, her shoulders shaking. She couldn’t leave, couldn’t let anyone see.

  She hated this feeling, this wild thing inside. Something was inside her.

  Control yourself, she thought. For god’s sake, control yourself.

  * * *

  * * *

  He’s brainwashing her,” Dara said that night. “Trying to convince her we . . . took something from her.”

  “Dara,” Charlie said, touching her wrist, “he can’t do anything we don’t want to. It’s our house.”

  She looked at him. She was thinking of the things she hadn’t told him. The implication that Marie somehow had the house taken away. And those insinuations. For years, the three of you playing house. Kinda an odd setup.

  “He said other things too.”

  Charlie paused a second, his body stiffening. “What kinds of things?”

  Dara paused, looking at Charlie’s back, its beautiful shape, its secret fragility.

  “Never mind,” she said. “I don’t remember.”

  But Charlie was no longer listening, staring at a piece of paper.

  “What is it?”

  “I called to see why we still haven’t received any checks from the insurance company,” he said, brow tight.

  “And?”

  “Apparently,” Charlie said, not looking at her, “we did.”

  “Apparently? Did you deposit them?”

  “The money doesn’t go to us,” Charlie said, still reading the paper in his hand. “In these cases.”

  “What cases? Who does it go to?” even as she felt a sinking feeling inside.

  “To the contractor.”

  “Wait, why? We would never agree to that.”

  But it turned out they had.

  Charlie handed her the piece of paper. A copy of a form that read “Assignment of Benefits.” Dara recognized it. Remembered telling him to give it to Charlie. Charlie signed for everything.

  “He said it was standard,” Charlie said, shaking his head helplessly.

  “So it all went straight into his pocket,” Dara said, feeling her body sinking, too, a weight hovering inside. “All the insurance money so far. It’s all his.”

  Charlie nodded. “I mean, he was laying out money for all this material, the flooring . . .”

  “How could you . . .” she started, her voice shaking. But what could she say? She hadn’t read the form either. She never looked at forms, there were so many.

  “Dara,” Charlie started, but he didn’t finish.

  * * *

  * * *

  Dara was on the phone for hours with the insurance company, an endless touch-tone maze, one chirpy voice after another, all assuring her they could change the payee, they could give her a record of payments made, but it would take time and would delay further payments, possibly incur new charges . . .

  “I don’t care,” she said. “We’re long past caring about that.”

  * * *

  * * *

  A trap had been set. They were in it. Dara was sure of it now.

  Charlie didn’t say anything, taking a stack of new bills and piercing them on the spike of the bill holder.

  “It’s escalating, don’t you see?” Dara said to Charlie, stiff-backed behind his desk, heating pad steaming while he snuck a smoke, the cigarette perched on an open drawer.

  Couldn’t he see?

  Looking at her, she saw, finally, he could.

  THE FIRE EATER AND THE SWORD SWALLOWER

  That night, Dara sat in the bathtub a long time, running her fingers along its chipped rim, the dent when their mother slipped that one time, after too much wine.

  This was all she had left, their home. Her home.

  It was big and old, but all that bigness and age mattered. It was their whole world, their whole history. The Durant history.

  The contractor had taken over the studio, an invasion and a deconstruction. He had taken over Marie, an invasion and a deconstruction.

  But this. He couldn’t touch this. He never would.

  It was where everything had begun, everything. For the first few years of the Durant School of Dance, their mother even taught classes in the house, in its sprawling damp basement, its floors laid with special vinyl.

  Upstairs, Dara and Marie shared a bedroom so the two other bedrooms could be combined into yet another studio space, their father knocking down the wall with his claw hammer. Drinking Narragansett all day, crunching cans under his work boots, he kept going, swinging and swinging until there was nothing left, finally catching the claw on his cheek.

  Marie found them in the bathroom, blood on the sink, the towels, the bath mat, their mother sewing up her father’s face. (The skin was like crinkly brown paper, she told Dara after.)

  After, they disappeared into the bedroom, their mother’s turntable stuttering chansons, Dara and Marie huddled on Dara’s bunk, trying to listen through the wall, but there were too many walls and they couldn’t hear anything except once their mother’s laughter, like a bell, and then crying after, for hours. Crying after their father had stomped back downstairs and disappeared into the dark of the front lawn. Dara and Marie watched him from the window, the streetlamp like a spotlight, the neon flare of a cigarette, his face in his hands.

  * * *

  * * *

  The house stirred with past moments like these, good and bad, dark and fulsome.

  The house was a living, breathing, saggy, and gasping thing.

  They would never sell it. They would never leave it. And Marie should not have taken the money. Marie should not have left.

  * * *

  * * *

  Late into the night, Dara woke to find Charlie had slipped from bed.

  It turned out he couldn’t sleep and had spent the night downstairs, on the pullout sofa that was ruinous for his back, the pullout sofa he slept on when he first came to live with them, all those years ago.

  In the morning, she saw the tumbler stained with wine on the kitchen table.

  “I don’t understand,” he said when she walked past him on her way to the car. “What’s happening to us?”

  Dara stopped and put her hand on his shoulder.

  “We were all so happy here,” he said, voice foggy and lost.

  * * *

  * * *

  The studio felt heavy with worry.

  The first full dress rehearsal at the Ballenger was only days away, so Saturday brought no rest, no birthday parties, no family activities, no playdates. Instead, the studio was open and everyone was expected, even the Grayson sisters, whose baby brother was being baptized four blocks away.

  It was Saturday and they had nothing inconvenient like school to get in the way.

  They could work all day until they all burned from it.

  “Is that really necessary?” Marie asked after Dara announced that they should expect to be here all day, no complaints, no excuses.

  Dara didn’t say anything, pushing past her sister. If Marie wanted to spend the day lolling around in filthy sheets with the contractor, that wasn’t her problem.

  The girls were fidgety, nervo
us. Several lost their footing, one fell. One of the twelve-year-olds accused another of kicking the backs of her legs and the two began shouting, one of them slapping the other in the face with such high drama that one of Marie’s six-year-olds watching from the doorway began to cry.

  “Pas de larmes. Dry your eyes,” Dara said, snapping her fingers. It was the only way with the little ones. “Regal. Untouchable.”

  The six-year-old clung to Marie’s legs and cried more, her face pink and unbearable. “I hate it,” she whispered, hysterical. “I hate it.”

  “Don’t worry,” Marie said, hand cupping the girl’s russet head, “it’ll all be over soon.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Dara tried to stay in her own studio, away from Marie. It would be bad enough that evening, when they had to go to the Ballenger to work with the stage manager on all the cues. It would take hours.

  And Marie was now avoiding Dara too. There were no stealth smokes on the fire escape, or anything that might mean she had to pass through Dara’s studio.

  Late in the day, Dara ducked her head in Studio A, but Marie wouldn’t look up from the Polichinelles, the four- and five-year-olds playing the cartwheeling clowns that emerge from Mother Ginger’s enormous hoop skirt in Act II.

  They bounded past her and Marie swiveled and turned and only once gave a glance Dara’s way. That face, foxlike. Sly.

  * * *

  * * *

  And then there was the problem of Bailey Bloom. Every time Dara looked at her, she thought of the girl’s mother. Mrs. Bloom, the choke of her voice. The fear in it.

  Mrs. Bloom was entirely missing her daughter’s drama. The curse of Clara upon her, Bailey had arrived that morning in a Shamrock cab, her tights grimy from the seat. It seemed she was no longer welcome in the carpool by her peers, though Gracie Hent claimed there was simply no room in her mother’s hatchback for another girl.

  “Plus,” Dara heard Gracie say under her breath, “she sheds.”

  Dara walked over, hands on her hips.

  “What was that?”

  “She sheds,” Gracie repeated, more hesitantly now, her head dipping.

  The true terrorism of girls is the accuracy of their aim. Bailey’s hair had become so thin and spare it slipped forever from her meager bun. The day before Dara had found her in the changing room staring at her paddle brush, tufted with a mound of stray hair.

  “Mademoiselle Hent,” Dara said sternly, “move to the back row. You’re no longer needed up front.”

  Gracie Hent’s look of surprise was gratifying, even as Bailey looked stricken, even as Dara knew it would get worse before it got better.

  * * *

  * * *

  Back in the office, the phone was ringing and Dara answered it without thinking.

  “Ms. Durant?”

  “Yes,” Dara said, her chest tightening, the woman’s official tone, something.

  “This is Maggie at the county recorder’s office returning your call.”

  “Right,” Dara said, alert now. “Are you the one that called the other day? Something about the house?”

  “This is Ms. Durant of 1221 Sycamore Avenue, correct?”

  “Yes,” Dara said.

  “I suppose we’ve been playing phone tag. You’d called about the deed to your property? And you are correct. Your name is still on the deed, along with a Ms. Dara Durant. So if you’d like to record a transfer of ownership, all you need to do is file a quit claim deed.”

  Dara held on to the edge of the desk.

  “This is Dara,” she said. “I think you’re trying to reach my sister. Marie.”

  “Oh, dear,” the woman said. “My apologies.”

  “My sister shouldn’t be on that deed anymore. Not for five years. And why is she calling you?”

  “Ms. Durant, I’m afraid I can’t answer these questions.”

  “Transfer of ownership—is that what you said? Transfer to who? A family member can’t just push another off the deed.”

  “Ms. Durant,” the woman said, “we can’t get involved in family disputes.”

  “That’s my home. My husband and me. Her boyfriend put her up to this. It’s fraud—”

  “Ms. Durant, I’m going to hang up now. But you may want to speak to your sister.” The woman paused. “Or your attorney.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Dara locked herself in the back office and called Charlie, whose voice sounded faint and groggy. He’d been running Nutcracker errands all day in the Chrysler, picking up an extra box of “snow,” the slippery confetti that would dust and swirl and cover the stage every night, and all the dancer’s heads, too, at the end of Act II, the Waltz of the Snowflakes.

  “And Marie started all this?” Charlie kept saying, again and again. “She called them?”

  “Yes,” Dara said. She thought of the insurance form Derek had hustled past them. “Or she did, without understanding what she was doing. What does Marie know about deeds?”

  She could hear Charlie’s throat clicking nervously on the other end.

  “I don’t understand,” Charlie said. “Anyone can just file something and take away your own property?”

  “Not anyone. She’s still on the deed. We must not have done the paperwork. Putting you on the deed, taking her off.”

  “Oh,” Charlie said. “I guess I don’t remember.”

  Everything had happened so fast, Marie so eager to take their money and run. The world was waiting! Everything became about getting her out of there, getting her the money for her share of the house, getting her shots, getting her passport photo taken at the drugstore, her face in that passport so vibrant, almost manic, smiling with all her teeth but a funny wander of her right eye, like, Are we done yet, are we done because I gotta go, go, go . . . or I’ll never go at all.

  But the moment Marie left, Dara marveled at how empty the house felt.

  Charlie, she’d said that night at dinner, raising her glass, trying to smile. At last, it’s just we two. Like we wanted, all those years ago.

  We didn’t want to be left here, he reminded her. We wanted to leave.

  * * *

  * * *

  Are you going to talk to her tonight?” Charlie asked when she called again. “I mean, we have to. We . . .”

  “We have to,” she said. “After. Later.”

  She was thinking of the long hours she would be sitting with Marie at the Ballenger Center that evening. Marie and her vulpine face and her guile and deceit.

  “I should be there,” he said. “I’ll come.”

  He sounded urgent, warm. She felt close to him for the first time in days and weeks. A tenderness that almost ached.

  “Stay there,” Dara said. “We need you upright. We need you.”

  Charlie paused. “Okay. We’ll talk when you come home.”

  Dara looked at her watch. It was late. So late. But she didn’t want to hang up. She wanted him to reassure her, something.

  “Oh,” Charlie said, “I dropped off the snow, so it should be there.”

  The snow for the Waltz of the Snowflakes. It came by the crate and it was never enough. And after every performance, parent volunteers, if they were lucky, would sift through it all for the next performance, digging out bobby pins, a stray button, an earring back, all the hazards every dancer faced under their feet. The stage floor had to be pristine, even in a paper snowstorm. A single errant hairpin might bring down a dancer, might take everything away.

  But it was worth it, the snow. It was the ahhhhh moment everyone always remembered.

  “How’s it look?” she asked, holding the phone against her ear. His voice, hushed and reedy, still soothed her, summoning up safe, warm places.

  “Like snow,” he said. Then, after a pause, he added, “Remember how your mother always kept some
, after every performance?”

  Dara smiled. “For her Clara and her Nutcracker Prince as a souvenir.”

  “Our special secret,” Charlie said, his voice so soft now. “When I was the Prince, she gave it to me.”

  * * *

  * * *

  It was nearly seven, long past when they were supposed to be at the Ballenger.

  She hadn’t laid eyes on Marie in an hour or more. Chloë Lin told Dara she saw her smoking in the parking lot and talking into her phone.

  “She looked funny,” Chloë said, pulling on her coat.

  “Funny how? Be precise.”

  But Chloë only gave her a look of mild panic and would say no more.

  Running back to the office, Dara called up the spiral stairs, but there was no answer. She had planned to talk to her on the drive over, or at the theater itself if she had to.

  She didn’t know what she would say, but she would do it. Marie would have to answer for her actions. Was she really going to let this monster devour them?

  Dara was reaching for her bag when she heard an engine starting outside. Looking out the window, she saw the orange car under the streetlamp, Marie at the wheel, her face so stark and white. Turning the engine, grinding the gears. A stutter start, a brake screech, the car finally lurching forward, Marie’s blond head shuddering behind the windshield.

  Marie driving, Dara thought, a pinch in her chest. An old twinge, like when they first learned their jumps, watching Marie throwing herself into the air—turning, turning—for her partner to catch her. A blind turn, a blind leap into safety or the abyss.

  Marie shouldn’t be driving.

  Marie shouldn’t be out there, alone.

  * * *

  * * *

  The Ballenger Center was a lit box flickering on the horizon. Like an enormous circus tent promising excitement inside.