by Megan Abbott
“We loved that blanket,” Dara said, even as she saw herself kicking it across the basement floor.
Marie was crying now and she was always so lovely when she was crying, her skin flushed and downy like a baby’s, her lashes fluttering.
“Dara,” she said, and kept saying it. “Oh, Dara. It was wrong. It was wrong and as long as we stay here we’ll never escape it.”
* * *
* * *
But there was nothing wrong with it. Sisters often slept together. And Charlie was like a brother to Marie.
They’d all known one another since they were children. That’s what someone like the contractor, or a detective, or the police could never understand. The innocence of children. The specialness of their special family.
It started on one of those Nutcracker nights, the first with Charlie in the house. After closing night, their mother invited all three of them into bed with her, under the rabbit blanket to watch grainy videocassettes of old Alberta Ballet performances, to watch their mother’s Clara, grave and perfect and wise beyond her twelve years.
Their mother clasping their hands under the blanket, cuddling tight, eventually taking Dara’s tiny hand and placing it on Charlie’s, like a blessing, or something.
It was all so intense and overwhelming, age thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, being so close to a boy, a boy whose body she longed for, whose touch made her feel warm all in the center of her.
And Marie, whose body she knew as well as her own and who loved to nuzzle up to Charlie as she nuzzled up to their father, the only man she knew. It all made Marie feel cozy and loved, a cat squirming with pleasure. And then a fox.
Marie, whose curiosity was even greater than Dara’s own, but confusion the next morning far heavier. What did we do, Dara. I feel so strange, and her legs trembling, and her wrist sore.
We didn’t do anything, Dara would tell her, her body still throbbing from it, feeling so spent from Charlie’s fingers, her own.
This was after their mother stopped joining them at all. Instead, she would drift down the hall, running a bubble bath. Leaving them alone to play.
After their parents were gone, there seemed no reason to end the tradition. In fact, it felt especially meaningful to sustain it, to honor it.
These were rare events, only on special nights. Marie’s twenty-fifth birthday, or maybe Charlie recovering from his latest surgery. A summer storm knocking the power out. The three of them in that old king-size, the blackened brass headboard and the drooping box spring. They felt so close, and would sometimes even whisper ghost stories to drown out the howling wind. Or on hot nights, the ceiling fan, the desk fan, the rotating floor fan, all the fans in the house arrayed around them. Charlie with his arms around them both and Dara not minding it at all. In fact clasping Charlie’s hand onto Marie’s arm, her belly.
They all needed one another and this was the way.
No one could say that it wasn’t natural. And pure. Three bodies all three knew so well, limbs interlaced by morning. Warm breath and giggles. Dara never felt jealous, nor ashamed. It didn’t seem like sharing Charlie, it seemed like an extension of their childhood, under that rabbit blanket big enough to contain them all, including their mother, whose hard, long hands would draw Charlie toward her. Who would encourage Dara to close her hands around him.
It was about play, comfort, escape. Soothing one another, and oneself. That childhood feeling of body pleasures that’s so pure, and natural, and right.
The next day, there was no need for bad feelings. Sleepily, a little bashfully, at the kitchen table, sneaking winks at one another over coffee, robes pulled tight.
It was like a dream in that you could never recall specifics after. You could only recall, dimly, how it felt: like family, like home.
Dara never felt jealous because Marie was part of her in ways deeper than feelings, attachments, rules. Marie was a part of her until she wasn’t.
Until she moved out, rejected them.
Dara had loved giving each to the other, the feeling of it, like their mother, taking one in one hand, and the other in the other. Joining them, laying her hand on him or his on her. Their lovely bodies so close to her as to be part of her. Family.
She was only doing as their mother had done, their mother had shown them, directed them, her greatest ballet yet.
This, she seemed to say, is beautiful and ours.
Some people liked to make everything dirty.
Some people liked to ruin everything.
* * *
* * *
Dara,” Marie was saying, her face gone so soft and her hand on Dara’s arm, “it’s not our fault. It’s not our fault.”
It wasn’t wrong, Dara wanted to say but couldn’t make the words come. It felt so strange, lying in the same bed, all the memories flicking around her, sly little flames.
“I know,” Dara said finally. “I know it’s not our fault.”
Marie paused, then said, as if just realizing it herself, “I think you wanted to leave even before I did.”
Dara looked up. It was true, of course. It was true. She had wanted to leave. She’d almost made it once, right before the car accident. Charlie was right about one thing, about that. They’d almost made it together, packing that rolling trunk, her chest jumping, imagining a world beyond that paint-thick front door. That house, this house. The house that was her childhood.
* * *
* * *
An hour passed, sleep tugging on Dara but never taking her.
A memory kept rising up, of Marie, age ten or eleven, squirming in her bunkbed above and insisting, I have something no one else has.
We all have it, Dara had said, dismissing her. But she’d never really been sure. Dara was dark, but Marie was light. Dara was cool, but Marie was hot. Marie, the wild child, the sword swallower, the illustrated lady, the freak.
“Marie,” she found herself whispering now, feeling for Marie behind her, her halting breath. “Do you remember the carnival? The one Dad took us to every spring at St. Joan’s?”
“Yes,” Marie said sleepily. “I remember.”
Dara didn’t know what made her think of it. Maybe it was Marie’s feet brushing against her feet, trying to stay warm.
“The Fire Eater was my favorite,” Dara said, pressing her arches against Marie’s hard skin. “And the Sword Swallower was yours.”
“They were the same,” Marie said softly.
Dara’s feet went still. “What?”
“They were the same woman,” Marie said, her sleepy voice, the words coming slowly and never quite finishing.
“What?” Dara asked, wondering if she was dreaming.
“I saw her once,” Marie said, her feet wrapping around Dara’s, warming them. “Changing her costume behind the stage.”
“They were the same?” Dara repeated, needing to be sure.
“They were the same.”
FIRE, SNOW
The dream came fast—moments, it seemed, after she closed her eyes, Marie curled up beside her. They were at the carnival, watching the Sword Swallower in the sideshow tent.
She was tall and grand, with scars around her mouth like hatch marks, like tribal signs.
The swoosh as she raised the sword, hoisting it high above her head. Then, bending her knees, springing herself into a spin, head whipping around in a pirouette.
One turn, two turns, then suddenly the sword became a torch and, stopping, she was no longer the Sword Swallower but the Fire Eater, scars around her mouth like hatch marks, like tribal signs.
Her arms mighty and rounded, lifted up over her head, forming a perfect oval. Her arms corded red and invulnerable, holding the torch high, so high it reached the sagging top of the tent.
The canvas, scarlet and gold, above them and suddenly shuddering with fire.
Dara, we have to go!
We have to go! It’s time!
How she reached for Marie’s hand but couldn’t find her, the heat coming down like a vibration.
Opening her eyes, she thought she could still see it.
Waves of fire rolling across the ceiling, fingers of fire stretching to all corners.
I’m burning. My body is burning.
* * *
* * *
Is it morning, her eyes pinching, the room bright as noon but the clock saying four a.m. And then remembering the bedroom window faced west and dawn never came in there.
“Dara, we have to go! We have to go! It’s time!”
It was Marie, her hands on Dara, lifting her.
And she was on her feet and the room suddenly fell dark and her mouth filled with stench. The door open, the hallway black and her hand on the wall, her palm sticking to the hot plaster, and Marie pulling her, pulling her so her arm felt it might leave its socket.
The floorboards burned under her feet and she was running, Marie’s hand clamped to her wrist, pulling her down the stairs, stumbling to the entryway and the jussssssh of air sucking them in, gasping to hold them, and Marie nearly dragging them forward, nearly yanking Dara’s arm from its socket, across the threshold and out the door.
* * *
* * *
A swarm of fire trucks, a police car, outside, a neighbor must have called, great white tides of smoke, rolling across their house, swallowing their house, swallowing everything.
* * *
* * *
It might have been fifteen minutes or two hours, the hushed awe of neighbors in flannel pajamas, a little boy in mouse-paw slippers crying loudly, mournfully, the whine of sirens, a chemical smell in the air of singed metal, melting plastic, burning foam, but the fire was gone, leaving a heavy black streak up the center of their house.
What was left of their house, its center sunken, its cavity exposed: buckled floorboards, snaky wires, a few remaining rafters like fingers pointing and white ash like confetti shaking from its rafters.
Shivering under a heavy blanket someone had draped over her, Dara stared at it in wonder. How small it looked, how diminished. Like looking at a fuzzy Polaroid from childhood, like stepping into your kindergarten classroom again, its furniture like matchsticks under your feet.
“You’re so calm,” a neighbor was saying to her.
“She’s in shock,” whispered another.
She turned and looked at them, a white-haired couple in matching robes. Holding hands, their bony knuckles knocking against each other.
“I’m okay,” she said. Because she was, though she couldn’t say how, or why.
But she was looking past them at Marie in the distance.
Marie, except her blond hair was black, black streaks running up one arm.
Sitting in the back of the fire truck, an oxygen mask over her face, mottled legs dangling, she was waving at Dara, waving her over. Come here. Hurry. It’s time!
Dara waved back and began walking toward her, the blanket falling from her shoulders.
Breathe. Breathe.
* * *
* * *
The firemen were talking about the gas furnace, the flue. Years of junk caught in there. Old leaves, a bird’s nest, dead mice.
Flame rollout, they were calling it. Flue gets jammed up, flames escape and roll out like a great wave.
It’s a shame how much junk people keep in their basement, right by that combustion chamber and I always tell my dad, the flame should be clean and blue.
Dara was listening, sort of, but she was mostly listening for Marie’s breathing, her mask fogging up. It was so soothing, like a metronome, like a promise.
A firefighter appeared suddenly, his face glistening with soot, holding something on a stick.
“I was worried it was a pet at first, or something,” he said. “A dog or cat.”
“No,” Dara said, looking at Marie. “It’s just an old blanket.”
“Rabbit fur,” Marie said, the oxygen mask off now, cradled in her blackened hand. “Vienna Blue.”
“Found it halfway up the basement stairs,” the firefighter said. “The force of the flue must’ve sent it flying. You’d be surprised how often it happens. Crowded basement, old house. Bad luck.”
“Yes,” Dara said looking at it, the sooty and wet pelt in the man’s hands. “Bad luck.”
She looked at Marie, who looked at her, a sneaking smile there.
* * *
* * *
They made Dara sit in the truck and take the oxygen, the smell even stronger now, the strongest she’d ever known. Burning plaster, carpet glue, dry wood, mildewed crates.
Breathe, breathe, she told herself until she could again.
Until she heard Marie again.
“Dara,” Marie was calling out, running toward her on the blue-black street. “Look! Look!”
Her voice was high and light like a bell.
Looking up at the streetlamp above, Dara saw how there were suddenly snowflakes everywhere, swirling everywhere, dappling the asphalt, their hair.
Marie stepped backward, the fireman’s blanket falling to the ground, her nightgown drenched, and her body turning, twirling, her bare feet on the pavement, her long neck, her arms like white birds, and the snow falling and falling.
“Save a few,” Dara found herself saying, her eyes filling, her face hurting from her smile. She was smiling. “Save them.”
Marie smiled, lifting her arms into the air, Dara lifting hers too.
And as they landed in her outstretched palm she saw they weren’t snowflakes at all but ashes, pale and bright, falling silently over everything that had been theirs.
It didn’t matter if it was snow or shredded paper or ash in her hands, because she could breathe and Marie was dancing under the streetlamp and it was over, over at last.
FOUR
EDEN LOST
One Year Later
You’ve never seen true longing until you’ve seen a theater of young girls gaze upon the opening moments of The Nutcracker. All in their holiday best, their red velveteen dresses, their glitter-threaded tartan jumpers, pearl headbands, flocked hair ribbons, their mouths open, agape, their eyes hard dots of wonder.
But it wasn’t only the little girls. It was their mothers in their beaded sweaters and sweeping skirts, their heads heavy from to-do lists, from cleaning the snow off the car. It was their fathers in their navy blazers, maybe a tartan necktie, their faces red from the cold or the quick scotch before heading out the door.
In moments, they’ll all be transformed, Dara thought, standing in the wings, watching the Ballenger Center fill with wool and glitter and Christmas plaid.
In a few minutes, the music would start. Audiences always forgot how well they knew it until it began. From those first strains of the overture, their bodies would begin to shift and lift, their eyes opening wider, a glimmer there, something stirring inside, a holiday long ago, an aching memory of a broken toy, the smack of a chocolate orange on the tabletop, a parent after too much eggnog crashing into the Christmas tree, the forever-feeling of standing at a church pew, the candle melting off its paper collar into your hand. Watching the audience, you can see them tunneling back, the ache of it all. Their hearts opening. And then Clara appears, in her party dress.
Clara, who is us, Dara thought.
She hovers anxiously behind a pair of enormous drawing room doors, waiting for permission to enter as her parents prepare for the holiday celebration.
She tries to peep into the keyhole, into the adult world beyond. Let me in, she seems to say, frantically climbing on the chair, pressing her ear against the door. It’s ecstatic and unbearable and it makes everyone in the audience lean forward, clamp their fingers, hold their breath.
Everyone remembers that feeling, Dara thought. The tortuous waiting of childh
ood. Waiting for parents, forever, waiting while adults do their adult things. Wanting to understand, the doors always closed. Until the adults finally decide to open them and then there’s no shutting the door again.
* * *
* * *
There was something so astonishing about Clara’s hunger, Dara thought, a pinch over her chest. She’s so eager, desperate even, to escape her safe, warm, cloying home, overstuffed with things. With history, the past.
All she wants is what’s behind the doors. Beyond the doors.
The Nutcracker and The Nutcracker grants her everything. Her fantasy takes over the ballet. A dark and sumptuous world where she’s a hero and a queen. Where everything is new and strange and waiting for her.
And home and family are now the foreign country and she need never go back.
* * *
* * *
Everyone was moving through the dark behind her. Backstage whispers and sweat and glitter and terror. It was happening, it was finally happening. And Dara felt her breath catch with excitement for the first time in more Nutcrackers than she could recall.
But where was her Clara?
Searching the shadowy masses of girls in party dresses, of boys in stiff suits, she couldn’t find her. Instead, there was Marcus, this year’s Nutcracker Prince, sneaking past the curtain, waving to his parents in the front row, his Adam’s apple dancing with fear.
He would do well, Dara knew, but she felt a twinge remembering Corbin Lesterio, who had succumbed at last to his father’s pressures and quit ballet not long after the cancellation of last year’s performances.
Over the summer, she’d been driving by the high school football field when she saw him. She might not have even recognized him—already so changed, from the football, yes, but also from time. But though that particular fleeting beauty was gone—the beauty of boys before their necks thickened, their features coarsened—she could still see the ghost of that boy inside him.
