Off Balance (Ballet Theatre Chronicles Book 1)

by Terez Mertes Rose

  She melted into the soothing pressure of his hands as they kneaded her tense muscles. “I am. Thanks.”

  “Good.” He continued to massage her shoulders, her arms, as the others spoke.

  “My most embarrassing fall was during Nutcracker last year,” Courtney was saying. She turned to Delores. “Remember, during ‘Land of Snow’?”

  Delores nodded. “It was those snowflakes. They’d gotten so dusty and slippery by the twentieth performance. I remember, it was like a minefield onstage during the final few shows.”

  “Alice told me all about her fall,” Lana said to Delores, who nodded solemnly and shared the story with the younger members who hadn’t heard the details.

  “I remember the night,” Delores said. “Poor Alice. But the crazy thing is that she and Ben improvised so well, you would have thought it was the actual choreography if you didn’t know the ballet.”

  “Katrina and I had a night like that two years ago,” Javier said. “Ay, I wouldn’t want to do that again. She was out for the next six months.”

  “All right,” Ben called out. “One more time from the top.” He paused to scrutinize Lana. “You don’t look good. Sit. We’ll run it with your understudy.”

  Her throat seized up. “I can do it,” she croaked out.

  Ben shook his head. “It’s not worth the risk. You hit your head; what you need is rest.”

  “Please, Ben, I’ll be fine.”

  “Lana,” he said. “This is just a run-through for lighting. We’re not taking your role away tonight. Just sit and rest up.”

  He turned to Lana’s understudy who was yanking off her leg warmers, her sweatshirt, and told her in a lower voice, “But you’re on alert for tonight.”

  Lana numbly made her way her way to one of the folding chairs at the front of the stage. She sat and watched her understudy dance her part and wondered if her life could get any worse.

  Bad question.

  When the rehearsal ended, the dancers disbanded for lunch, followed by another rehearsal for most of them. Ben told Lana to go home, rest up, a direct order from Anders. Lana stopped in her dressing room to try and call home. Please, Mom, she prayed as the phone rang. Please be home and talk to me. The answering machine picked up; all she could do was leave a message.

  She left the building, stopping a few blocks away for a bowl of soup, away from the café, away from the chance of seeing Gil, because if she did she’d melt into him, despite his firing Alice, and never let go. She didn’t need Alice to tell her that would be a mistake. No Gil. Not right now.

  After lunch, she tried calling home again.

  No answer.

  She walked slowly the rest of the way to Alice’s. Inside the house, to her surprise, Alice was right there, holding the phone out to her.

  “Perfect timing,” Alice said. “It’s your father.” She looked worried.

  Lana went cold.

  She knew it was bad by the way Dad kept assuring her it was good news.

  “She’s fine, honey,” he babbled. “Mom’s absolutely fine. She had a little fender bender on the way to picking up Marty from school, but there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. She and Luke are fine, not a scratch. Both a little shook up, that’s all. But I just now heard your messages on the answering machine. You sounded worried—boy, you sure do know your mom.” A nervous chuckle here. “You must be telepathic. But it’s all over, everyone’s home and safe. Nothing to worry about.”

  Her mouth had gone dry, her lips papery. “Where did it happen?”

  “You know that curvy stretch in the road that if you take it too fast it gets tricky? Well, it got tricky on her. She said she must have been distracted.”

  “Dad. That’s the opposite direction of the school. What was she doing there?”

  “Well, honey, I don’t know,” he said in a bright, bland voice, a “we aren’t going to talk about this because we’re all fine now” tone. Dad was good at that tone. He’d had sixteen years to work on it.

  He droned on in this manner for another few minutes, words that flowed through Lana’s ears and out before her overworked mind could process them.

  Your mother had an accident. With Luke in the back seat.

  Lana had caused it.

  She alone was to blame.

  She hung up after extracting a promise from Dad to call her the next day, tell her how everyone was doing. Then she went numb and checked out.

  She slid down the wall until she found the floor. The ringing in her ears muffled the outside world, like having cotton wadded in her ears. It felt good, soothing. But Alice didn’t like it. Lana could tell; she could register Alice trying to engage her, but she felt too heavy, too sleepy to care. Even turning her head to talk to Alice felt like too much of a burden.

  Alice wouldn’t go away. She kept posing question after question until finally Lana had to answer. She was a guest in Alice’s house, after all.

  “Yes, I can hear you,” she told her.

  “Good. So. It sounds like your mom’s all right.”

  “My dad says so.”

  “Lana. Then why aren’t you all right?” She squatted down to Lana’s level and took Lana’s limp hands.

  She had no answer for this.

  “I’m so, so sorry, Lana,” she said. “I feel terrible, like I pushed you to challenge your mother, and this is what happened. I owe you and your family a big apology for that. But listen to me.” She gave Lana’s hands a little shake. “You need to push this away for the moment. It’ll be there tomorrow for you to address. You have a performance tonight.”

  “I can’t dance tonight.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I can’t dance tonight. I already know that. So does my mom.”

  “Why are you saying this?” Alice sounded frightened, very un-Alice.

  “I can’t do it, and she knows it. It’s like she’s got this crystal ball and she’s watching me. I fell in rehearsal today, after we argued. It’s like she willed it. It’s like she sucks something essential out of me. I can feel it right now, like it’s seeping out of me. I can’t do it.”

  She drew her knees up and rested her forehead there. “Ben has my understudy on alert for tonight. It’s as if he saw what was happening too.”

  “Lana, you don’t throw a performance. Not like this. Not for this reason.”

  She had no reply. It was too much effort.

  Alice didn’t move. Her perplexed look faded.

  “This happened in Kansas City, didn’t it? This is why your career there stalled.”

  Clever Alice, who saw everything. She raised her head to meet Alice’s eyes.

  “What does it matter now?”

  “It matters now because we’re not going to let it happen again.” Alice’s voice rose with each word. By the end she looked downright angry. She stood and held her hand out to Lana. When Lana didn’t reach out, Alice gave an impatient sigh.

  “Come on, don’t make me haul you up. And don’t think I won’t. I lift weights, you know.”

  Alice ran a hot bath for her and made her a glass of chocolate milk. “Now upstairs you go,” she commanded, handing the glass to Lana. “Afterward, some rest in the bedroom with the shades pulled. Some light dinner. And when it’s time, I’m driving you to the theater.”

  Lana gave a wordless nod and trudged upstairs. Once in the tub, she lay there, the heat of the water sinking into her muscles, relaxing her, which, unfortunately, woke her thoughts back up.

  It was happening again. A choice: family or career.

  Alice had pegged it.

  It hadn’t felt like much of a choice that night, two years ago. The twins were four, and a handful. Dad was traveling, Luke had an ear infection and was screaming. Mom was weeping, turning the boys over to Lana the minute she walked in the door at four o’clock, but even with Lana, Luke was inconsolable. Scott came into the house, took one look, reared back and darted right out again, ignoring Lana’s cries to come back, she had to leave for the th
eatre soon.

  The time for her to be at the theatre grew closer and closer. Tick, tick of the clock, competing with Luke’s wails. Annabel came home finally, but began to shout that she would not stay alone with everyone crying, panicking, which now included Lana. Their voices rose, the boys screamed, Mom’s sobs increased from behind the closed bedroom door with an extra-loud “Oh, I just want to die.”

  Somehow Lana gave in, the way she always did with Mom and Annabel, despising them, despising herself, calling over to the theatre where Theo was, already deep into logistics with the stage manager. Theo, who’d fought for her, who’d gotten her noticed by management, promoted, even under consideration for a promotion to principal.

  He was furious. Incensed. Lana couldn’t tell him the truth, that her mother was acting suicidal. No Kessler would ever admit to that. She couldn’t even use Luke, because she’d been warned about putting family before the company. So she lied. Stomach flu. Her voice wobbled and she knew at least that part sounded convincing. She was not well.

  Silence hung on the other end of the phone. When Theo spoke, his voice was cold with anger as he told her to get her ass in, to dance sick.

  She told him she couldn’t.

  Another long silence.

  “No more, Lana,” he said finally. “I give up on you. Once again, this is about your family, and don’t try to tell me otherwise. Your priorities are skewed. You will not make it any further here, talented soloist or not.”

  “Theo, please! I didn’t plan this.”

  “I’ve backed you. I’ve fought for you. And this is how you thank me.”

  He hung up on her in a rage.

  Lana began to cry again. She reached for a tomato sauce-crusted dish towel and mopped at her face before going to tell Annabel she was staying home. In response, Annabel glared at her.

  “Don’t go looking at me like you think I owe you some grand apology,” she said through her tears. “You just watch. We’ll both stay and Mom will thank you and not me. Do all of you think I didn’t have plans tonight? Maybe not as important as Lana’s. But plans.”

  “Fine. Go.”

  Annabel’s red, mascara-smeared eyes widened with hope. “Are you serious?” she stammered.

  “Oh, just go.”

  “I will.” She smiled at Lana, edging her way toward the door. “I don’t need a second invitation.”

  With that, she turned, grabbed a jacket, her purse and in a matter of seconds had left the house. Lana heard the sound of her car starting up, the putt-putt of it receding as she drove down the street.

  Capitulation carries with it its own curious relief. Once you stop trying to exert your own individual will against a greater force, once you give up on a notion, an endeavor, no matter how cherished, and say oh, well, it gets easier.

  The comfort of no escape. Even the boys had stopped crying so hard.

  Lana sank into a chair and Luke scooted right over, climbing into her lap. She buried her face into his soft hair and let the tears fall silently. Family, she reminded herself. Family was the noblest investment of all.

  She sat in the tub now, soaking, her thoughts churning. Her beloved Luke, whose life Mom had put at risk today.

  Mom had done it on purpose.

  The truth of this hit an instant before the guilt for thinking such a thing did.

  Mom had done it to prove to Lana she could. Even with Luke in the back seat. Mom would forever deny it, but Lana knew.

  The rage in her built, a subterranean thrum, ever increasing, until she felt like she was going to puke her guts out, only it didn’t come from her stomach, it came from somewhere deeper inside her.

  She hated her mother.

  Hated her.

  The mantra grew legs, vocal cords, climbed out of her. She stepped out of the tub, wrapped herself in a towel. She held another one to her mouth and let a scream tear out of her.

  “I hate you! I hate you!”

  The sound bounced off the walls and made her ears ring, in spite of the towel. She didn’t care. She felt free, for the first time, to scream out how she truly felt.

  “I HATE YOU!”

  The wild, unhinged feeling of it all. Like steering a car off the road, uncaring of the precipice below. Uncaring of the consequence.

  There was the sound of pounding footsteps approaching, stopping outside the door. Alice was there, calling her name, jiggling at the door handle. Before Lana could turn the knob, Alice burst in.

  The two of them regarded each other, frozen, Lana still clutching the muffling towel that clearly was not as effective a muffler as she’d thought.

  “Are you all right?” Alice asked.

  “Yes.”

  Alice looked around, perplexed. “But I heard you scream.”

  “I guess I did.”

  A wry half-smile crossed Alice’s face. “I can’t say soaking in a hot bath produces that reaction in me.”

  A laugh burst out of Lana, a lone sound, like a bark, that morphed into a choked sob.

  “I hate her,” she said to Alice.

  “Who?”

  “My mom. You were right about her. You were absolutely right.” She began to cry again, but softer this time. “She crashed that car to prove a point.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Oh, but I do. I know my mother. Anything to prove her point. Prove to her daughter what results from crossing her.”

  Alice hesitated. “Families are tricky,” she said gently. “All that love and familiarity make you vulnerable. They know how to entrap you, get you where it hurts. Your mom is doing stupid things right now, but it’s because she’s afraid. This is new for her, your independence. It’s huge and scary.”

  She could offer no rebuttal to this.

  Alice glanced down at her watch. “Okay. Go rest for an hour. Relax.”

  “How can I? After this mess with my family?”

  Alice considered this. “Let me deal with your family. I’ll call your dad right back. I talked with him for a spell already—he seems like a reasonable guy. I’ll tell him I’m going to be the intermediary for a while, that you need to focus on your performing and that any issues or dramas should come through me first.”

  “My mom won’t accept that.”

  “Oh yes she will.”

  “You don’t know my mom.”

  Alice drew herself up haughtily. “Your mom doesn’t know me.”

  The thought of Alice confronting her mother was enough to make a weak smile break across her face. Alice noticed, and smiled back. She began to walk out of the room until Lana’s voice stopped her.

  “Alice? Can I ask you for one last favor?”

  “Anything. Anything that helps you tonight.”

  Lana told her.

  Alice winced. “Oh, Lana. Anything but that.”

  “Alice, please. It would mean everything to me.”

  Alice squeezed her eyes shut. There was silence, except for a mew from Odette, trotting over for a scratch behind the ears. Alice opened her eyes.

  “All right. For you, I’ll do it.”

  Chapter 21 – Facing the Truth

  She dropped Lana off at the theatre at 5:30 PM, enough time for Lana to squeeze in a session with the company massage therapist, as per Alice’s mandate. “You know how to pick up the tickets at the will-call window, right?” Lana asked her as she edged out of the car.

  Alice laughed. “Oh, I think I’ve practiced the drill once or twice in my life.”

  Lana winced. “How stupid of me. I forgot who I was talking to.”

  “No, no, not stupid. This is important, I get that. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  “You know you really should have invited Niles.”

  “No way. Not after yesterday’s conversation.”

  She’d told Lana all about the conversation, and about calling Montserrat and having Carter rebuff her. There seemed to be no need to maintain any sense of distance or decorum between them anymore, given the dramas of the past two days. Alice
leaned over the passenger seat now to gaze up at Lana.

  “Hey. You going to be okay?”

  Lana nodded. “Thanks. For everything.”

  “No problem. See you after the show. Oh, and merde.”

  Merde, the French word for “shit,” the dance world’s equivalent to theatre’s “break a leg.” You didn’t want to tell a dancer to break a leg. Because she just might.

  Once Alice had guided the car back into traffic, she hesitated. She had time to kill, but she didn’t want to hang around the area, so close to the WCBT building. She didn’t want to risk seeing Gil.

  She’d heard from him finally. She’d anticipated a call all morning long, a “what are you doing at home, couldn’t you tell a joke when you saw one?” rant. Instead he left a message in the afternoon, telling her she needed to come in and clear out her desk by Monday at the latest, and to schedule her exit interview for the same time so she wouldn’t keep coming and going from her former place of work. And to please pass on to him any recent correspondences with the Redgrave Foundation, since he’d take over as Andy’s contact.

  This last bit hurt more than she’d anticipated. She wouldn’t be working with Andy Redgrave after all. She would have enjoyed it. He would have breathed new life into her professional world. It felt like a door shut in her face.

  But even this had been rendered petty by the call from Lana’s father and the terrible story that unfolded. What kind of mother crashed her car merely to prove to her daughter that she had the power to do it? Worse, with Lana’s little brother in the back seat. The thought of such coldhearted vindictiveness chilled Alice to the core.

  Marianne. She wanted to talk to her stepmother. Drink in her calm, rational nature, her affection, warmth and wisdom.

  It was Friday, Marianne’s afternoon for volunteer work at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The complex was less than a mile away and they were open late on Fridays. When a street parking space opened up midway between the theater and the arts center, free parking for the night, she grabbed it.

  Marianne, manning the information desk along with another volunteer, looked pleased to see her. “Hey there, pretty lady, what’s new?” she asked.