She's Not There

by P J Parrish

  It was a threadbare little production, with a gaudy painted backdrop of a Christmas tree and a few pieces of furniture that Amelia suspected had come from attics and basements. The dancers—all so very young!—wore costumes she was sure had been sewn on home Singers and makeup culled from some mother’s cosmetics bag.

  The steps were simplified and the dancers were awkward, but no one cared. As Tchaikovsky’s music swirled through the drafty cold gymnasium, magic was being made.

  Amelia sat motionless, hand to her mouth, tears in her eyes. All the Internet searches of herself had yielded nothing about her dancing, but now, here in the dark, things were rushing back to her, things about her dancing that she had thought were lost to her forever.

  Sunlight streaming through the big windows of the ballet studio in Burlington, her teacher Dotty’s voice urging her on, and how clear her mind was and how good her body felt when she danced.

  The Bird was with her there in the dark.

  You look like you’re floating on air up there, baby.

  That’s what it feels like, Grandma, flying.

  The memories were coming fast now. Falling asleep against The Bird’s shoulder on a Trailways bus. Where were they going? Then she remembered—to the big audition in Indianapolis. A month later, the letter came that said she had a full scholarship to the School of American Ballet in New York City. Another long bus ride to a city so big and so bright that it reminded her of the Emerald City in the movie The Wizard of Oz.

  Sixteen, Amelia thought as she watched the stage; she had been just sixteen, only a few years older than these girls. How had she done it? Where had she found the courage? But she knew. The Bird had been there with her. She had stayed with her that first month in New York and, after returning to Iowa, had called her every day.

  It’s hard, Grandma. All the other girls are so good.

  So are you. Don’t you quit.

  I wish you were here with me.

  I’m always with you, Mellie, even when I’m not there.

  The second act was starting, the one set in the Kingdom of Sweets. There was a scraping sound as parents sat forward in their metal folding chairs. The tinkling music for the Sugar Plum Fairy’s solo brought back another blizzard of memories. Getting accepted into the New York City Ballet, exhausting days and nights, living on coffee and wonton soup from Wok City near Lincoln Center, bloodied feet, and endlessly sewing ribbons on pointe shoes. And then, after two years in the corps, getting called into the office and told her contract was not going to be renewed, that she was too tall and her way of dancing too idiosyncratic.

  That was the exact word they had used. She had to go look it up. It meant “personal, peculiar, distinctive, quirky, unique” and the last one . . . “all your own.”

  Wasn’t that what dancing was supposed to be?

  Familiar music brought her eyes back to the stage. It was the Arabian solo, the one that was called Coffee in the Miami City Ballet version.

  Miami City Ballet . . . where she went after leaving New York. Where there was a man tall enough to partner her when she rose to almost six feet in her pointe shoes. Where no one thought her way of dancing was strange. Where she had bloomed in the spotlight.

  The girls on stage were turning into blurs, and Amelia realized she was tearing up again. But they were tears of anger. Why couldn’t she find this part of herself anywhere? What happened to her? Why did she stop? Why did she quit and marry Alex?

  The urge to bolt from the gymnasium was powerful, but she stayed in her seat, not wanting to bother the others around her. It was almost over, just the grand pas de deux left.

  The Sugar Plum Fairy came back on stage, the young woman named Jennifer who had come from Des Moines to this gym in the middle of nowhere.

  Unable to watch any longer, Amelia looked down at the program in her lap. When she finally looked up, she focused for a moment on the young woman and then her attention went to the Cavalier. He was tall and licorice-stick thin, with wavy dark hair. His expression was earnest as he partnered the young woman.

  Amelia stared at the boy, but she was remembering a man.

  There was an odd fluttering in her chest, like her heart suddenly wasn’t beating right, and her vision was narrowing, tunneling down, the edges darkening, and everything was disappearing and all she could see was . . .

  “Jimmy,” she whispered.

  He was the one who had been her partner in Miami. He was the one who had been her friend. He was the one who . . .

  Her cheeks were burning, and the dancers on the stage were just ghost-blurs moving in the dark. It was flooding back now, Jimmy’s deep bellow of a laugh, his wide easy smile that creased up his face like one of those drama masks, his hands tight around her waist as he lifted her, his hands soft on her breasts as he made love to her.

  Kiss a lover, dance a measure . . .

  He was the one, the person who had been there in the thick fog of her forgetfulness, the one she had felt was still there, the one who had loved her. The one who still loved her?

  How had she forgotten him? How could she forget someone that important in her life? And where was he now?

  The sound of applause brought her back. The dancers were lined up, taking their bows. Then the curtains closed, the gymnasium lights came on, and everyone started filing out. Amelia sat frozen in the metal chair, staring at the purple velvet curtains.

  She shut her eyes tight, desperate to remember, trying to bring all her senses into play. Jimmy had left Miami, she was sure, because she had a sense of a tearful good-bye at an airport. But not Fort Lauderdale . . . at Miami International. Because she could see the strange airline signs for Transaero, Alitalia, Qantas. She could smell the strong Cuban coffee Jimmy drank in the café while they waited for his flight. And she could hear the babble of Spanish and the sound of the intercom announcing departures.

  Last call for American Airlines flight sixty-five to San Francisco.

  That’s me, love, I have to go.

  Amelia opened her eyes.

  She remembered it all now. How Jimmy had been forced to stop dancing after his second tendon surgery, and how he tried to smile when he told her that there weren’t many options for a thirty-one-year-old dancing king with bad knees. The offer to be ballet master and teach at the San Francisco Ballet came five months after his final performance in Miami.

  They had been lovers. She was sure of that now. But had it been while she was married to Alex? And why had Jimmy ended it? Because something deep inside her was whispering that he had left her.

  The hard slap of metal chairs being folded made Amelia look around. Two teenage boys were stacking the chairs against the bleachers. Two other boys were dismantling the makeshift stage. Amelia sat watching them as they stuffed the purple velvet curtains into Hefty bags.

  Kiss a lover, dance a measure . . .

  Jimmy’s words, something to remember him by.

  Then, suddenly, she could see it. Those same words, on a computer screen, but not a tiny screen like on a phone, but something bigger, like her iPad. A pink Kindle, her Kindle, stuffed full of books she told no one she read and e-mails she told no one she wrote.

  I feel like I’m dying but I’m afraid to leave here, to leave him. —A.

  Remember this? Kiss a lover, dance a measure, find your name and buried treasure. See you soon. —J.

  It was a fragment from a book by Neil Gaiman that Jimmy had given her right before he left. She had hidden the book away somewhere. Maybe in her closet? The book was about a child called Nobody who was raised by ghosts in a graveyard and had to figure out how to find his way out to a real life.

  The night she wrote that e-mail . . . she remembered that night now. That night she had been on her way to see Jimmy. Either he had come back or she had been planning to go to California. But what had happened that night to stop her?

 
Amelia stood up, gathered her sweater coat around her and left the gym. The lobby was filled with laughing girls, their hair still in ballerina buns, faces still painted. They were zipping their slender bodies into nylon-and-down chrysalises as parents ushered them out the doors.

  Amelia spotted a pay phone near the trophy case. She dropped in some quarters and called directory assistance for the number of the San Francisco Ballet offices.

  She dialed the number, her heart hammering as the phone rang and then went to a recording, saying the offices were closed for the night. She hung up.

  No matter. Tomorrow morning she would try again.

  A door banged open and Amelia looked over to see a tall thin boy emerge from the locker room. It was the boy who had danced the Cavalier. He shoved his arms into a red sweatshirt with SIOUX CENTRAL REBELS across the chest and gave her a shy smile as he passed.

  Amelia followed him out into the cold night. She paused, looking up. The sky was huge and black and star-pricked. But for the first time that she could remember, Amelia didn’t feel alone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The Impala died in El Cerrito. Amelia managed to get the car off Interstate 80 and into a parking lot before it gave out.

  She got out of the car, and for a moment, she just stood in the morning sunshine, looking around. Blue sky, green trees, and a cool wind that smelled of the sea and eucalyptus. She closed her eyes. After the emptiness and cold of Iowa, this place felt like a balm for her senses.

  An acrid smell made her open her eyes. Smoke was pouring out from under the hood of the Impala. She was lucky the car had made it this far. It had taken her a day and a half to get to California and she knew she was somewhere in the East Bay, not far from San Francisco.

  She looked around, considering her next move. People with briefcases and backpacks were streaming toward a blue sign that said BART. With a final look at the old red Impala, Amelia grabbed her duffel and followed.

  The map inside the subway station was easy to decipher. She knew where she was going—301 Van Ness Avenue, War Memorial Opera House. She just wished she knew what was going to happen when she got there.

  Her search of the Internet revealed that Jimmy was still with the San Francisco Ballet. But she hadn’t been able to reach him. When she had called the San Francisco Ballet offices, a woman told her the company was on break until rehearsals started for The Nutcracker. No amount of pleading on Amelia’s part had softened the woman’s heart enough to get Jimmy’s phone number or address. She still couldn’t remember her password to unlock her e-mails, so there had been no choice but to just show up at the theater. Today was the first day of rehearsals.

  After a half-hour subway ride, the escalator deposited her back up in the sunshine on a busy boulevard—Market Street, just a short walk to the opera house.

  Her heart was beating fast as she walked, with anticipation but also anxiety. Memories, she had come to believe, were such fragile things, so easily damaged, erased, or even distorted into whatever you needed them to be. She needed Jimmy to be here for her now. What if he wasn’t? What if she was expecting too much from him after all this time?

  The opera house loomed before her. She circled around until she found the stage door. It was locked. There was no point in knocking. She remembered how the stage doors at the Miami City Ballet’s theater had always been locked, guarded inside by security guys. You either belonged or you didn’t.

  The door swung open. Two young women came out, swathed in sweats and wool scarves, tote bags over shoulders, hair pulled up in tight buns. Amelia grabbed the door before it closed.

  There was no one inside, just a mug of coffee and a half-eaten sandwich on the sign-in desk. Amelia hurried up the stairs and into the dim backstage area. It was all so foreign yet familiar, a warren of hallways made even more narrow by rows of huge wardrobe crates. There was music coming from somewhere, faint but sweet, the snowflake waltz from the second act.

  Two stout men were coming toward her, stagehands most likely, and she pressed against a drinking fountain to let them pass. Then she caught sight of herself in the mirror over the fountain.

  Her gray sweater coat was dirty and shapeless. Her dark hair was spiked up around her face and the big purple plastic glasses . . .

  God, she looked like a crazy street woman.

  She tore off the sweater coat and stuffed it in the duffel. She wet her hands in the drinking fountain and slicked back her hair, then slipped the purple glasses into her jeans pocket.

  When she squinted at the mirror, this time she saw a tall thin woman in a black T-shirt and jeans carrying something that looked like a dance tote—someone who might belong.

  Slipping the duffel strap over her shoulder, she straightened her spine and headed toward the music.

  She made her way through the shadows, past the stacks of scenery flats, scaffolds and ladders, the coils of ropes, and a curtain of cables. Past metal racks of jeweled costumes and an open wardrobe crate filled with flat yellow tutus arranged on shelves like pizzas in an oven.

  The music stopped, and she heard voices and someone hammering. She was nearing the right wing and when she squinted, she could make out willowy bodies bending and stretching on the stage.

  The pounding started again. Amelia looked down to see a young dancer sitting in the corner on the floor, whacking a pink satin shoe with a hammer. And suddenly she was seeing herself, going through her own ritual—bending rock-hard new pointe shoes until their spines cracked, coating the insides with Fabulon floor wax to make them strong, slamming them in doors so they would be beaten into submissive silence on wooden stages.

  Amelia closed her eyes.

  It was all there. Her past life as a dancer was all there in her memory and it was all coming back, just like Dr. Haskins had promised.

  “Amelia?”

  She opened her eyes.

  He was just a blurry silhouette against the lights but she knew his voice.

  “Jimmy,” she said.

  He came forward and folded her in his arms.

  “My God, you’re here!”

  She wrapped her arms across his back and buried her face in his neck. His smell came back to her, sweet-sweat and smoky-clove. Djarum Blacks . . . that was the name of those things he smoked. She didn’t want to break from his embrace but finally he pulled back, his hands on her shoulders.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” he asked. “I’ve been calling you and e-mailing you for more than a week. I’ve been worried sick. Where the hell have you been?”

  How did she answer? How could she explain?

  “Something came up,” she said.

  He was looking at her intently, scrutinizing her face. “Are you all right? You look—”

  “I’m just tired. I had to drive.”

  “Drive? But the last time we talked, you said you were picking up your dog and getting a flight out here on Monday morning.”

  Amelia was quiet, thinking. It was coming back now. She was planning to leave Alex and fly out here. She and Jimmy had been talking about it for months, but it had taken her time to put aside some money, siphoning off cash from the allowance Alex gave her. Where was it? Had she hidden it somewhere? Yes, she could see herself tucking a wad of money in a cosmetics bag and locking it in a suitcase. She felt a small wave of sadness that her life had led her to such a low point. And her marriage—what had she and Alex been playing at for all those years?

  That last Friday back in Fort Lauderdale was also re-forming in her mind now. How she had packed one suitcase and left it in its usual place in her closet so Alex wouldn’t notice. How she had dropped Brody off at the spa that morning intending to pick him up the next day. How on Monday morning she had planned to wait for Alex to leave for the office, take a taxi to the airport, pay cash for her ticket and leave.

  But then . . .

  She had changed her mind.
She had a sudden stab of memory, sitting on the edge of a bathtub, reading Jimmy’s e-mails and crying because she had decided that she couldn’t just run away like a coward, that she needed to tell Alex in person that it was over. She owed him that much. But what had happened after that? How had she ended up alone and hurt in the Everglades?

  “Amelia?”

  She looked up at Jimmy.

  “What’s wrong? It’s like you weren’t even here for a moment.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’ll explain everything later.”

  He hesitated and then smiled. “Okay, love, okay. It doesn’t matter. You’re here now and everything is going to be fine, just like I promised.”

  Promised? What did you promise me, Jimmy?

  “Hey, Jimmy.”

  They both turned. A young man in practice clothes was coming toward them, wiping his face with the towel hanging around his neck.

  “Do you have a moment to show me that lift?” the young man asked.

  “Yeah, Victor,” Jimmy said. “I’ll be right there.” Then he gave Amelia a gentle nudge forward. “I’d like you to meet someone special, Victor. This is Melia Worth of the Miami City Ballet.”

  Amelia blinked. Melia Worth. Her stage name. She had forgotten it. No wonder she couldn’t find anything about her dancing on the Internet.

  “I was her favorite partner in Miami,” Jimmy said.

  She looked up at him. He was smiling.

  “Good to meet you, Miss Worth,” the young man said. Then he left, rejoining the other dancers on stage.

  “Miss Worth,” Amelia said. “That made me feel old.”

  “You are old, love. We’re both old in dance years.” He gave her a hug. “Go have a seat. I’ll be done in twenty minutes and then we’ll go home.”