The Turnout
Page 32
Her foot gently on the brake, she took a moment to watch him jogging to the sidelines under the bank of lights. Glowing like an old painting. He stopped and seemed to see her. Seemed to move toward her, toward the fence.
Just as she began to pull away, he stepped forward, pulling off his helmet with such grace, such gentility, like a medieval knight lifting his vizor.
The same way Marcus now cupped the Nutcracker mask in the crook of his arm, his face clear and soft and impossibly young.
* * *
* * *
Dara, darling, I have something for you.”
It was Madame Sylvie sailing over with her trailing scarves.
“Better late than never,” she said, handing over a bright foil tin. Her annual rum cake, slick with glaze.
“You didn’t need to,” Dara said.
“But I did, my dear,” she whispered, a hand on Dara’s shoulder, the smell of her “Nutcracker nog” on her breath. “We must keep up traditions. They make us who we are.”
* * *
* * *
The entire time Tchaikovsky was composing The Nutcracker, Madame Sylvie told Dara once, he was mourning his beloved sister Sasha. He reanimated her through Clara. It explained the strange heaviness of the ballet, its grand melancholy, its piercing nostalgia. And the deathlessness of its vision of childhood, of innocence and escape. Our almost unbearable awareness that everything we’re seeing is disappearing even as we watch, fluttering past us as the dancers do, slipping away like smoke.
Every year, when the grand pas de deux—the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Prince—begins, the audience’s eyes fill with tears. Those shimmering sounds of the celesta, like bells clear and pure, and we are flung backward. Time is conquered for a brief, luminous moment. Dara remembered one parent telling her that prayers from the Russian funeral mass were hidden in its opening bars. We don’t hear it, he told her. But we feel it nonetheless.
Just like that moment, her favorite moment, Clara on the stage alone, nightgown, like a white flower, like a handkerchief caught in the wind.
Spot one on Clara . . . go.
Clara searching, darting across the stage . . . alone but brave.
Clara, golden under the lights, her head lifted, throat glowing like a torch, like the Fire Eater.
* * *
* * *
Marie,” Dara found herself whispering, her hand on her chest. She turned to look for her, as if expecting to see her sister’s foxen face.
But, of course, Marie wasn’t there. She’d left two months after Charlie died, after they’d walked through the ash-shook carcass of their house, the sky white and pure. She’d stayed, Dara knew, as long as she could, longer—until finally she couldn’t wait anymore. The day she left, she’d thrown herself into Dara’s arms with such force it took her breath away. Standing on the front lawn, Dara watched her drive away in that vivid flame of a car. The one, it turned out, she hadn’t bought for him at all. She’d bought it for her new life, for her beyond.
The most recent sunbaked postcard came from Greece, which she’d found her way back to, to the beginning of civilization, before history, but not before family.
The photo was of some kind of statue, a soldier, or an angel, arms raised above the head, hands grappling a magnificent flaming sword.
“Marie,” Dara whispered again, her eyes filling. Loving her. Loving her sister who had carried everything for all of them. What a terrible burden. What an albatross to free herself of. How glad Dara was that she had.
“Marie,” Dara whispered once more, her hand on her chest, “can I too?”
* * *
* * *
Madame Durant.”
Dara turned and it was Bailey Bloom. In the smoky half-light, her hair slicked and gleaming into its bun, her face painted, her doll lashes affixed, her brows a slash. The pearlescent white of her face.
“Mademoiselle Bloom,” Dara said, nodding approvingly. “Clara at last.”
Bailey in Clara’s party dress, forest green and darted, sequins sewn into the trim.
Bailey, finally getting to dance Clara a year late, the burgundy sash on her dress lowered to accommodate her new breasts.
What a difference a year had made. The Bailey of last fall, suffering through the pins in her pointe shoes, the tainted cookies, the dead rat. And then the canceled Nutcracker performances after the fire, after Charlie.
How strong Bailey had been, how stoic. And now this year, unshaken by anything, she stood before Dara so poised, so eager, so hungry to get out onstage.
Behind her in the audience, Dara spotted Bailey’s mother in the front row. Mrs. Bloom, dear Mrs. Bloom with all her loneliness and her ravenous longing—a longing that felt like an X-ray into herself that she never wanted to see.
But she looked so proud now, seated in the front row, with her hound’s-tooth scarf and her square-toe pumps, and the bouquet of pale roses tucked beside her, waiting for her daughter’s final bow.
“Madame Durant,” Bailey repeated. “I just—”
“Shouldn’t you be on your cue?” Dara said.
“I have ninety seconds,” Bailey said, biting her lip, white teeth sinking into the dark red of her painted mouth. “Madame Durant, I wanted to thank you.”
Dara paused, her throat tightening.
“Don’t thank me,” she said. “You did it. You did it all yourself.”
A smile flitted across Bailey’s powdered face.
“Lights, warning on cue one. Curtain up—now.” The stage manager was calling, her headset sliding down her face. “Is she ready?”
Bailey turned to her and nodded, her back straightening, her sash shushing, the soft thump of her feet in her pointe shoes.
But then Dara saw it: the slight furrow of her brow as Bailey stared out into the darkness.
“You’re ready,” Dara said, her own voice throaty, shaking. “You are.”
Bailey looked at her. Held her gaze, the floorboards beneath them vibrating, the buoyant overture, like the winding of a music box.
“I am,” Bailey said, and then, inexplicably, putting her slender hand on Dara’s. Dara felt it, the heat of her touch, the beating of her heart, both of theirs. “I’m ready.”
“Lights, cue one—now. Spot one, be ready to pick up . . .”
Dara watched, holding her breath, as Bailey flew from the wings onto the stage. The gasps of excitement from the audience, the music sweeping over them, all eyes on the girl, the hero, at last.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Boundless thanks are due to my brilliant editor, Sally Kim, for her masterful eye and ear and especially her true-blue readerly heart.
To the peerless Sylvie Rabineau at WME and Maja Nikolic at Writers House. To Bard Dorros and Robyn Meisinger at Anonymous Content.
Thanks also to Mikaela Vidmar-Perrins, for her invaluable fact-checking and question-answering.
As always, such gratitude to my mom, Patricia Abbott, for all her support and, in the last few years, bravery and resilience. And to my stalwart family: Josh Abbott, Julie Nichols, and Kevin Abbott, without whom, and to the Nases: Jeff, Ruth, Steve, Michelle, Marley, and Austin.
And I’m forever in debt to genius and muse Alison Quinn, to Darcy Lockman, and to Lisa Lutz. And heart-in-throat gratitude to Jack Pendarvis and my beloved Oxford, Mississippi, friends: Theresa Starkey, Ace and Angela Atkins, Bill and Katie Boyle, and Jimmy Cajoleas.
And to Dan Conaway, to whom I owe the whole enchilada.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Megan Abbott is the award-winning author of ten novels, including Give Me Your Hand, You Will Know Me, The Fever, Dare Me, and The End of Everything. She received her PhD in literature from New York University. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Guardian, and The Believer. She is the co-creator and executive
producer of USA's adaptation of Dare Me and was a staff writer on HBO's David Simon show The Deuce. Abbott lives in New York City.
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