by Megan Abbott
A flash then of another, Derek running up the spiral staircase and suddenly their mother running down, darkly luminous in a nightgown as white as Clara’s.
Their mother, her long hand twined around the iron railing, and then Derek was gone, their mother falling. Falling, slumping, her nightgown mounded around her like a sunken flower.
Don’t look, Charlie was saying. Don’t look at her eyes.
* * *
* * *
In the kitchen, she poured a splash of the cream brandy their Nutcracker lighting vendor gave them every year into their morning coffee and watched Charlie shuffle around numbly.
At some point in the night, he’d slunk out of bed, down the hall, down the stairs to the sofa bed where she found him, mummy-tight in the old afghan, crocheted snowflakes yellowed with age.
“We can do this,” he kept saying, but he seemed less sure today. No longer fired by adrenaline, the snaky spring of fear.
The blue of the veins at his temple, his skin nearly translucent in the morning light.
She would never not want to touch him, to stroke his skin, to fondle and caress. He was too beautiful and also half-forbidden, that half-broken body.
Charlie, Charlie, she thought and remembered their mother once saying, So beautiful, like spider silk, and not strong enough by half.
* * *
* * *
They had both heard Marie at four a.m.
“I thought I was dreaming,” Charlie said, rubbing his eyes, “that she was coming after us with a hammer.”
It was a hammer, pounding, pounding. That singular cacophony of her sister taking what sounded like a ball-peen to a pair of pointe shoes.
Waking them both up, keeping them up.
“Are you going to stop her?” Charlie had asked.
“No,” Dara had replied tiredly, wanly. “Let her. Let her.”
* * *
* * *
The ritual would soothe her. Soothed all dancers, Dara thought.
The shoes, the shoes. The shoes were everything.
Pink satin fantasies from afar, from the audience, enthralled. But if you moved too close, you’d see that they’d already been battered, scored, disemboweled.
Those shoes, so intimate, soaked with your sweat until they sealed themselves to your feet, until, soon after, they fell to pieces.
Pink satin fantasies we beat into submission so they can be used and then discarded.
Pink satin fantasies created to give pleasure but destroyed in the process.
This, their mother said when she held out Dara’s very first pointe shoe, is what we are.
This, she said, handing her the shoe, Dara’s stubby nine-year-old fingers touching it, feeling a static charge, is you.
* * *
* * *
She’s in no condition to work today,” Charlie was saying as they finished their coffee. “We can’t have her in front of parents.”
Dara didn’t say anything, holding on to the last sly tang of brandy, trying to calm herself, when Marie appeared in the kitchen doorway.
Hair glossed back wetly and wearing an outsize oxblood cardigan sweater Dara recognized as their father’s, she held a pair of gleaming pointe shoes, Freed of London, size four, toe glue-slicked, shank cut, sole scored, satin hardened, their toes mysteriously crusted with dirt.
“Marie,” Charlie said, “are you okay?”
Because Marie’s feet were bare and red, like little stumps.
“I was dancing,” Marie said, setting the shoes on the table. “I forgot what it felt like. I can’t believe I forgot.”
“Where were you dancing?” Charlie said.
“In the backyard. On the icy grass, like the Waltz of the Snowflakes. I danced until my feet were on fire. I was on fire.”
Her voice high and faint, a voice that had always meant bad things. Meant Marie not sleeping for days, making bad choices like running their car into a guardrail, booking a last-minute trip around the world.
“Marie,” Dara said, “you can’t do this, not now. I can’t worry about you right now.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Marie said, blinking at Dara. “I’m here, aren’t I? Back in this house. I’m here.”
The way she was blinking, eyes glinting, Dara was worried her sister might start crying. It was enraging.
“Like you’re doing us a favor,” Dara said. “Marie, do not forget: You got us into this. You’re here because of you.”
“Dara,” Charlie said. “She’s . . . she lost someone.”
There was a heavy silence. They both looked at Marie, hands dug deep into the cardigan’s pockets. Dara wondered if those pockets smelled like their father’s cigarettes.
“There’s no time for that,” Dara said. Her own voice so like her own mother’s in that moment she felt a chill drag up her spine. “That’s a luxury we don’t have.”
“Listen,” Charlie said, even as he let his head drop, averting his eyes. “What happened—that fight—it got out of hand, but I shouldn’t have . . .”
Marie looked up at Charlie. “It was an accident,” she said softly.
“Those things he was saying,” Charlie said, his eyes fixed on Marie’s now. “He never should have said those things.”
“I told him things,” Marie blurted. “And he . . . twisted them. I told him things he couldn’t understand.”
Dara watched them, the two of them, how they worked it out for themselves. Neither of them really taking responsibility, but instead feigning at it, fluttering past it.
Watching them, she didn’t know how she felt herself yet.
Accident, yes. Sort of. Not precisely. Not fully. And these two . . .
“We don’t need to talk about fault,” Dara said. Not wanting to look at either of them suddenly.
“I’m sorry,” Marie said, “I’m so, so sorry. I was . . . I thought he . . .”
“It was an accident,” Charlie said, more firmly now. “Those stairs—those stairs were dangerous from the start.”
Yes, Dara thought, remembering her own insistence that they stay. They were.
“We’re all sorry,” Charlie said, reaching for Dara’s hands, then Marie’s.
It happened slowly; all of them moved closer together, forming a huddle. Something old and childlike. Their heads brushing against one another like tentative animals, like feral creatures exiled and now returned.
Their faces all pressed close, like long ago, ages thirteen, fourteen, bodies entwined in a pas de trois on the studio floor, their mother watching from the corner, a dark shadow, a raven hovering.
“Can we never talk about it again?” Marie asked, barely a whisper. “Can we?”
“We can,” Charlie said, his voice rough and urgent. Then, turning to Dara, “Can’t we?”
Dara looked at them, their twinned faces.
“What,” she said, her voice a smooth assurance, “is there to talk about?”
ALL RISK
It all felt right, natural. Pretending nothing had happened. Keeping secrets. Hiding everything. They’d been doing it their whole lives.
And there was too much else to consume them. Hours went by held captive by rehearsals and one-on-one sessions, by meetings with the prop master, costume fittings, wig fittings, by long trips to the Ballenger to work with the musicians, to approve the final backdrops, the Land of Snow, twenty-five feet high and glistening hotly like those old Christmas cards with the sparkles that shook loose in the envelope.
Dara spent the better part of an hour working with the stagehands and Bailey Bloom in her Clara costume—that ghostly white nightgown—on the crowd-pleasing moment when Clara’s bed glides across the stage thanks to “bed boy” hiding beneath: her youngest male student, a ginger-haired nine-year-old who’d practiced crawling swiftly under the bed so many times he’d skinned
his elbows red.
She did all these things, including unpacking the six Nutcracker dolls they’d rotate throughout the performances, each one identical, Santa-red uniforms, glossy black boots, mustaches swooping over those colossal teeth.
Everything was the same as it had been every year for all the years of her life. Nothing had changed. Nothing.
* * *
* * *
On her way back to the studio from the Ballenger, she stopped at the bank so she could pay Benny and Gaspar. A large sum, larger than they seemed to have expected. It turned out, Charlie told her, Derek hadn’t paid them in weeks.
“It’s okay, ma’am,” Gaspar kept saying as she counted out the cash. “Everything’s fine.”
* * *
* * *
Ms. Durant,” Benny said, organizing his bills, folding them neatly into his wallet, “we can still complete the work. We know what to do.”
“I know you do,” Dara said. “But we’ve got a lot going on here now and—”
“Ms. Durant,” he said, then paused, as if deciding something. “I hope you know you don’t need to worry.”
“Worry?”
“About all the questions. I mean, we don’t have anything to say.”
Dara looked at Benny, who wouldn’t quite meet her eyes.
“Are the police still asking you questions?” she asked. “Were they here today?”
“Just the lady,” he said. “From All-Risk.”
“What? Someone was here—”
“She’s in the back office now,” he said. “Your husband let her in.”
* * *
* * *
Randi Jacek,” the woman in the navy pantsuit said, a tape measure in her hand. “All-Risk.”
She was a bright-eyed woman of middle age, the yellowed fingers of a smoker, and she had the office to herself, her left shoe treading slightly on the bleach stain on the floor.
Reaching into the pocket of her pantsuit, she pulled out a card, its corner slightly bent: randi jacek, claims investigator, all-risk insurance.
“Ms. Jacek, I think you’ve made a mistake,” Dara said. “We’re not All-Risk. We’re Consolidated Life.”
“You are. But your contractor was All-Risk.”
“Oh.”
“I explained to your husband—”
“And where is he?”
“Don’t tell him I ratted him out,” the woman said, lowering her voice conspiratorially, “but I think he went for a smoke.”
“Was there something you needed you didn’t get from the police?” Dara said. “They were here all day yesterday. They told us they were done.”
The woman looked at her, squinting slightly.
“You know, I love those guys. Cops. Overworked, underpaid,” she said, removing a small digital camera from her pocket, rubbing its lens with her cuff. “The thing is, Ms. Durant, they’d just as soon I do their work for them. And it just so happens it’s my job.”
“You must be very busy then,” Dara said, her voice clipped. None of it sounded right. “Going to every place someone took a bad fall.”
The woman smiled. “You got me,” she said. “We don’t usually make house calls. But I knew him a little. Derek.”
Dara felt her chest pinch. Folded her arms. “Really?”
“Everyone knew Derek,” she said, eyes dragging around the office. Scanning the windows, the floor, settling on the staircase. “You know.”
“I don’t,” Dara said. “We didn’t. I mean, he was overseeing this project, but—”
“We go way back. De La Salle, Class of mumble-mumble-mumble,” she said, turning to the staircase, eyeing it again. “And he took out a lot of policies with us. The nature of his biz. We used to call him D-Wreck. Hey, how many contractors does it take to change a lightbulb?”
“What? I—”
“Two,” Randi said, snapping a photo of the staircase railing. “One to screw it in and another to knock over the ladder and file an accident claim the next day.”
Dara didn’t laugh.
“Well,” Randi said, “probably not funny to his family either. You kinda get a gallows humor in this line of work.”
“His family?” Dara said, her eye twitching. Derek’s family. Who? His brother? The one in the upper bunk? If that story had even been true.
But Randi wasn’t listening, still focused on the staircase. Dara didn’t like it. She also didn’t like looking up the staircase. She didn’t like remembering anything that had ever happened on the staircase, or through the mouth into the third floor.
“See, this is what I mean,” Randi said, lifting the drooping hazard tape from the railing. “Police photographs, measurements, they don’t tell the whole story. But if you can get in there and see the space, lay your hands on it, sometimes things become instantly clear.”
She reached out and grabbed one of the balusters, hard.
Dara watched the stairs shiver.
“These,” Randi said, shaking her head at the staircase as if it were a disobedient child, “are accidents waiting to happen.”
“Yes,” Dara said, exhaling at last. “We should have torn it down years ago.”
* * *
* * *
When Charlie eventually returned, cigarette stub between finger and thumb, his face red from the cold, he looked surprised to see her.
“You left her in there alone,” Dara said tightly, shutting the door behind him.
Charlie stopped. “I thought it would be better. She wouldn’t ask me questions.”
“So she asked me questions instead,” Dara said, then a low hiss: “She knew him.”
“Oh,” Charlie said, sinking down into the desk chair. “Oh.”
“It seems like she was satisfied,” Dara said. “I guess she’s just doing her job, investigating the claim.”
Charlie threw the stub in the trash can, head down. “So someone filed a claim already?”
“I guess so,” Dara said. “His family must have.”
She’d forgotten how it all worked with her own parents. Getting the death certificate, the police report. Waiting for the check to come. How long it took and why.
“But she didn’t get into that with you?”
Dara shook her head.
“I think it’s okay,” she added, because Charlie was still looking at her expectantly. “She wasn’t here long. That’s probably the end of it.”
“Right,” Charlie said tentatively. “Construction workers get into accidents all the time, right?”
“Right,” Dara said.
The way he was looking at her. His heavy-lidded eyes blinking slowly, tenuously. Waiting for assurance, comfort.
It reminded her of Charlie years ago, barely fifteen, his skin like the skin of a peach, that dazed look he’d have in his eyes whenever he wasn’t dancing. How when he was dancing, he seemed to go some other place, exalted and forbidden. How when he stopped, he looked immediately lost and forlorn. Showing him where the towels were when he first moved in, showing him how to light the oven burner, to call his mother overseas on the landline.
Like a boy in a painting, their mother used to say, looking at him. Caravaggio.
It made her want to put her hand on his forehead, to put him to bed.
“Dara,” he said, “can we go home now?”
He drew his hands inside his sweater cuffs, rubbed a cuff against his face. Those tremulous hands.
She was the only strong one of the three of them.
* * *
* * *
That night, she sat at the kitchen table a very long time, alone.
Her head kept vibrating, her teeth. It was that woman, Randi Jacek, her hand on the staircase.
She was remembering something. Something that had been hovering there for days, weeks. Hovering just beyond
reach, like a flicker in the corner of her eye.
At first the memory came in fits and starts, her hand on the railing, music floating from her mother’s radio on the third floor.
Crying out, Mother! Mother!
A feeling in her chest, an echoing in her ears.
Back, back, start again: Age fifteen, long-legged, coltish, running back late to the studio to tell her mother she’d been cast as a Dewdrop in the exalted Waltz of the Flowers for the Eastern Ballet Company’s regional production.
Age fifteen and puffed up with her triumph—a role earned, and all hers—she called out for her mother as she bounded through the dark and dust of Studios A, B, and C and to the back office, the opening to the third floor glowing, like the cutout mouth in a jack-o’-lantern.
Gripping the rail of the spiral staircase, she whipped around its three hairpin turns and emerged on the third floor, the smell of their mother’s black currant tea and the fuzz of her battered radio, tinny jazz, and it took a moment, a long, flickering moment, for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, the only light an old gooseneck lamp, curled and lying on its side, its narrow glare illuminating their mother on the futon.
Their mother half-reclining, her head thrown back and her legs flung apart, that bright blue vein snaking up her inner thigh. And something, someone kneeling before her, the soft blond thrush of his hair and the princely profile.
“Charlie,” Dara had said, the first time her voice full of wonder still.
“Charlie,” she’d said seconds later, watching their mother thrust the boy aside now, wrapping her legs back around herself, drawing up the tights that had slithered to her ankles.
“Charlie,” she’d said a third time, her voice changed now, changed forever. “Mother.”
* * *
* * *
Later, much later, Dara would wonder if it even happened. It felt more like a picture she’d once looked at in a book. It had happened, but had it happened to her? And what had she seen, really? What was their mother really doing with her fifteen-year-old student, with her own daughter’s beloved, what was she letting him—having him—do to her other than nestle his fevered head against her warm belly, her lovely thighs?
