Ballerina Read online

  The dancers’ minds raced back through time, through the ten years of turned-out legs and arched feet and bent bodies, the ten years of class after school and class on Saturday, the ten years of never having time for parties or even for friends, the ten years of sweat and sacrifice and never giving up, the ten years’ preparation for this moment.

  And now they prayed.

  Marius Volmar handed the dance master a piece of yellow paper. The dance master read off the numbers of the candidates who had won scholarships. There were ten. Of the three hundred ninety who had spent half their lives in preparation and hope, ten had made it.

  Chris’s number came third and she stifled back a yelp.

  Steph’s number came heart-poundingly, agonizingly last and she didn’t bother to stifle back her yelp. She screamed with unbelieving happiness and hugged Chris and ran to tell her mother.

  three

  Anna was sick with relief. She hugged Steph and whirled her around. ‘Didn’t I tell you—didn’t I tell you?’

  ‘I couldn’t have done it without you, Mom.’

  ‘Come off it. You did the footwork. All I did was the nagging.’

  A girl had stepped quietly out of the crowd and stood two feet from them. She held a fistful of five- and ten-dollar bills crunched in one hand. It took Anna an instant, and then she remembered. She had mistaken the girl for Steph. But that had been a trick of backlighting. Now she could see there was hardly any resemblance. The hair was dark blonde, and without the barrette it hung straight to the shoulders. The eyes had a vacant, staring blue innocence and the nose was a little upturned thumb of a thing you’d see on a child’s doll.

  ‘Excuse me, Steph,’ the girl said. ‘I don’t have a dime for the phone.’ The hand holding the money made a jerky movement as though to exchange it all for ten cents.

  ‘Oh—sure.’ Steph stretched an arm into her shoulder bag, and after an instant’s burrowing beneath the canvas out came a dime.

  ‘Thanks. I have to tell my mother I passed.’

  Anna watched the girl edge her way across the crowded vestibule. ‘Steph,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘who is that girl?’

  ‘Her name’s Christine. She’s nice.’

  ‘She passed?’

  ‘She passed.’

  Anna watched the girl drop a dime into the pay phone. The lips were puckered in an odd point and the chin was weaker than Steph’s, tiny like a cat’s. Anna wasn’t sure a girl could get anywhere in dance with a chin like that. ‘Where’s she from?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Steph said.

  Anna thought of all that money clenched in a nervous fist. Fifty dollars cash and the girl didn’t have a dime. A dime meant a local call, so the mother had to live in New York. But she hadn’t even come to her daughter’s audition. Anna couldn’t figure it.

  ‘She talks nicely,’ Anna said. ‘Educated.’

  ‘I guess she’s my first ballet friend.’

  Anna stared. Same height. A little bit the same build. Otherwise no resemblance between the two girls at all. Still she remembered that instant of confusion through the observation window and she couldn’t shake a slightly eerie feeling.

  ‘Go change, honey,’ she said. ‘Let’s celebrate. I’ll buy you a shrimp salad at the Theatre Pub.’

  When Steph went into the ladies’ room Chris was standing with a handful of paper towels bunched to her face.

  ‘Hurt your eye?’ Steph asked.

  ‘I can’t join the school.’ Chris’s voice was clogged and weeping and there was a pair of almost new ballet slippers in the trash basket.

  Steph was stunned. ‘But why not?’

  ‘My mother says I can’t live in New York alone. She says there are plenty of ballet schools in Chicago.’

  ‘Schools, sure. But ballet is here.’

  ‘Oh, Steph, I was so sure—if I proved I was good—’

  ‘And you are good,’ Steph said, ‘and you did prove it and your parents have to let you join the school. That’s all there is to it.’

  Chris shook her head. Her eyes were red and swollen and miserable. ‘I can’t force them.’

  ‘And they can’t force you.’

  ‘They can, Steph. They can.’

  There was surrender in Chris and it made Steph angry. She had seen Chris dance and she knew Chris was strong and she knew Chris had it in her to fight these parents. All she needed was a little faith in herself.

  ‘Are these your shoes?’ Steph pulled the ballet slippers out of the trash.

  ‘They were.’

  ‘They still are and there’s still some dance left in them. Come on.’

  She took Chris to the vestibule where Anna was waiting. She explained the situation. Anna’s eyes exploded in disbelief.

  ‘Your mother what? She what? Does she know how many girls that school turns down?’

  Chris shook her head. Anna stared at this child, timid and weeping and caved in. It wasn’t her child but it was still a child and something in her bled for it.

  ‘She doesn’t come to your audition, she doesn’t let you join the top ballet school in the world, you call that a mother?’ And then a collision took place in Anna’s head. Morality crashed headlong into practicality and practicality flicked out a spark of inspiration. Anna had an idea. Two birds with one stone. ‘Where is this mother of yours?’

  ‘At the Hotel Pierre,’ Chris said.

  ‘I want to talk to her.’

  A tall swift woman with ash-blonde hair headed them off at the entrance hall. ‘Christine, go put on a clean dress this minute.’

  Chris introduced Anna and Steph to her mother. ‘They gave me a lift from the audition.’

  Mrs Avery wore a sapphire pendant and it matched the eyes that raked Anna up and down. ‘That was very kind of you. Christine, your father has guests. Now will you please get out of those filthy clothes before anyone sees you.’

  Anna spoke up. ‘Steph, go help Chris. I want to talk to Mrs Avery.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs—I really don’t have time.’ Mrs Avery tossed a nod toward the drawing room. Guests stood about in groups with drinks and cigarettes in their hands, talking in voices that were still clipped, not yet drunk. Maids circulated with trays of tiny sandwiches. Anna smelled more money than she’d ever smelled in one place before.

  ‘Do you know how unhappy you’ve made your daughter?’ Anna said. ‘This could have been the happiest day of her life.’

  ‘I don’t care to discuss it.’

  ‘If you’d seen her cry, believe me, you’d care.’

  ‘I’ve seen Christine cry, thank you.’

  ‘And so have I, Mrs Avery. And so did half that school.’

  ‘You’re very kind to concern yourself, but you don’t understand the situation and you don’t know Christine.’

  ‘I don’t need to know Chris. I like her. And I want to help.’

  ‘There’s no way you can help.’

  ‘My girl’s a dancer, your girl’s a dancer. I can help. Now let’s go somewhere quiet and sit down for thirty seconds.’

  Mrs Avery’s silk print dress pulled itself taut across the narrow, almost visible bones of her shoulders and hips. There was no movement except the slow turning out of her lower lip. Anna felt a surge of impatience.

  ‘Mrs Avery, I’m not doing this for my own fun.’

  Mrs Avery stared at her a very long moment. ‘I’m sorry. You’re very kind and I’m not very polite, am I?’ She took Anna through a doorway and into a bedroom. She closed the door. The words came in a tight rush. ‘My husband and I are at the ends of our ropes with that girl. We don’t want Christine to be a dancer.’

  ‘So why did you let her get this far?’

  ‘We never intended to. It happened so gradually. Day by day, year by year. We never imagined it would turn out this way.’ Her eyes met Anna’s for one instant of naked pleading, then fell in embarrassment. ‘I haven’t the right to bore you with all this.’

  ‘Bore me. Come on.’ Anna smoothed the alrea
dy smooth corner of a twin bed and settled herself down for a good listen. She was interested. Other people’s problems were never dull.

  ‘It’s strange,’ Mrs Avery said. ‘You always hear of people having trouble with the adopted child.’

  ‘She’s adopted?’

  ‘No. She’s our natural child—our only natural child. We had her first and she was born sick, and the doctors said—don’t have any more. So we adopted Sammy and Ruthie. They’re wonderful children. They’ve never given us any trouble at all. But Christine—she’s been an agony for us.’

  Somehow Anna couldn’t feel sorry. This woman’s dress and jewellry and this penthouse and those maids in the other room didn’t look like agony to Anna. So Mrs Avery had a little trouble with one kid; at least she called it trouble. So what? She sure wasn’t having trouble with her bank account.

  ‘Christine’s loved dance ever since she was a child. It was the only thing that seemed to bring her out of herself. She’d sit in a corner of her room—four years old—never moving, never talking. We weren’t sure she even knew how to talk.’

  Mrs Avery moved to the window and stood gazing down at the park.

  ‘One day the radio was on—a concert of some sort, I forget. She began moving. The nurse called me—“Mrs Avery, she’s moving her feet!” Suddenly she was dancing. She was alive. I was so happy I wanted to cry.’

  Mrs Avery’s hands with their short gleaming nails clasped and unclasped. There was a gold rattle of bracelets.

  ‘After that she asked for music. She actually said the words. “Music, please, music.”’

  ‘She had manners.’

  ‘We gave her a phonograph. We gave her records. She laughed and danced. Overnight she was a normal child. Almost normal. The doctors said, “Put her in dance class. Keep her there. It will be therapy. It will help.” We were so relieved we didn’t think.’

  Mrs Avery’s forehead wrinkled. Her voice shrank to a monotone.

  ‘In kindergarten she did eurhythmics. In first grade we started her in elementary dance. By the time she was ten she was in the children’s division of a professional ballet school. She kept moving up to the next level. Always the next level. “The next will be the last,” we kept telling ourselves. But the teachers kept saying she had talent.’

  ‘Teachers always say that. They have to earn a living too.’

  Mrs Avery looked at Anna. The eyes of a complete stranger were fixed on Anna Lang and spilling tears. Mrs Avery blotted her cheeks with the back of her hand.

  ‘But she does have talent. That’s the terrible part of it.’

  ‘Mrs Avery—what do you and your husband want out of that girl?’

  ‘We want her to be well and happy.’

  ‘She can’t be well and happy and dance?’

  ‘Two miles from Evanston we have one of the best neurological institutes in the world.’ Mrs Avery sank onto the edge of a chair. Her voice seemed to fight its way up through layers of time and sadness. ‘Christine goes once every twelve weeks for a complete examination. Twice a year doctors inject dye into an artery of her brain. They track it on an X-ray scanner. They test every reflex. They measure the level of every mineral in her blood.’

  ‘What’s her problem?’

  ‘It’s called Petersen’s syndrome. It happens mostly in people with Scandinavian backgrounds.’ Mrs Avery exhaled. Her pendant caught the bright penthouse sunlight and sparkled. ‘They think it’s genetic. She’s had it since birth. When she was born—she didn’t cry. Can you imagine a baby not crying?’

  ‘You’re complaining?’

  ‘If a baby can’t cry, it dies.’

  ‘All right, she needs medicine, she needs checkups. What’s the hassle? She can get all that in New York.’

  ‘A professional dancer has to tour.’

  Anna hesitated a moment. ‘And who says she’s a professional?’

  ‘Why couldn’t she have failed the audition?’ Mrs Avery’s voice clenched. ‘Why does she have to be a dancer? Can’t she just go to college like other girls? Can’t she just marry and be happy? She doesn’t even have boy friends!’

  Anna frowned. ‘Can we keep this simple? We’re talking about ballet school, period. And for every hundred girls that get as far as your daughter, not three make it any further.’

  ‘And if she’s one of the three?’

  Anna had listened closely, all eyes and nods. She had caught enough of Mrs Avery’s gist to know the direction her answer should take. ‘Look, Mrs Avery—I saw your girl dance. Now it was only an audition, and probably she was nervous. But confidentially, I don’t think you have much to worry about.’

  ‘I’m not sure I follow you.’

  ‘No flow. Your daughter doesn’t flow.’

  Mrs Avery sat suddenly very still in her chair. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Okay. There’s more to ballet than knowing the positions and the steps. Any idiot with a memory can do that. You have to make one step lead into the next. You have to phrase. Like music. You don’t sing one note at a time. You put them together and you get a melody, right? Or talking. No one talks. Like. This. Well, your daughter breaks her phrases.’

  Mrs Avery was squinting at Anna, squinting hard. Her plucked eyebrows came down in a wedge.

  ‘I’m not criticizing,’ Anna said quickly. ‘Each individual step is great. Fantastic. A knockout. She has a beautiful body and she must have had terrific teachers. But she doesn’t put it together. Looking at her is like flipping through snapshots in a how-to book.’

  ‘Christine is a bad dancer?’

  ‘Not bad, I didn’t say bad. Chris is good. And so are two thousand other girls that come crawling out of Kansas every year. Being good isn’t good enough. To be a ballerina you have to be great.’

  ‘And I suppose your girl is great?’

  ‘How do I know? I’m only her mother.’

  Mrs Avery drew herself up sharply; and then the breath left her in a sigh. ‘But you want her to be a dancer. That’s the difference.’

  ‘Put it this way. I’m not stopping her from trying. And I don’t think you should try to stop Chris. Let her fall on her own face by herself.’

  ‘And if she doesn’t?’

  ‘She will.’

  ‘I wish I had your confidence, Mrs—’

  ‘Lang.’

  ‘Lang. But she didn’t fall on anything today.’

  ‘Look, a puppet could do what she did today. So, she’s better than four hundred other girls. You should have seen those other four hundred. Half of them couldn’t hold an arabesque if you hoisted them in a sling.’

  Faint voices floated over the hum of the air conditioner. Somebody laughed in the other room. Mrs Avery shook her head. She pursed her lips. The oval of her face came to a point.

  ‘What’s an arabesque?’

  ‘Arabesque?’ Anna said. ‘It’s a pose. You balance on one leg and the other leg’s out behind you.’

  Mrs Avery nodded. ‘What do you suggest I do? She has no relatives here. I have a family in Evanston. I certainly can’t move to New York to look after.’

  ‘Board her,’ Anna said.

  ‘She wouldn’t take care of herself. She has no practicality.’

  ‘Board her with me.’ Why not? Anna thought. The responsibility didn’t sound all that bad. This woman could pay two, three hundred a week. Anna and Steph could get a big apartment, something comfortable for a change. And Steph would have a friend; someone her own age to talk to.

  ‘I’ll see she takes her medicine and goes for her checkups. She’ll eat the same food I give my own girl. Look, Mrs Avery. Do it your way, she blames you all her life. Do it my way, she blames herself a year.’

  ‘I wish she didn’t have to blame anyone.’

  ‘So? Life’s hard. But dance is harder. Mrs Avery, I was a dancer. I didn’t make it. I’ve seen your girl. She’s not going to make it. So relax.’

  Mrs Avery’s finger traced out a thread in the arm of the chair. She looked up. Her f
ace seemed frightened and tiny. ‘All right, Mrs Lang. We’ll try it your way.’

  four

  And so Anna Boborovsky Barlow Lang became the manager of a sunny five-room boarding establishment on West Seventy-ninth Street. There was an elevator and there was a doorman and the building had cable TV. It was more luxury than she had known in twenty years. Christine Avery’s room and board almost covered rent and food for Anna and Steph. It was a happy period for Anna: every penny she earned was profit. She was able to do things she’d always dreamed of—buy a freezer, open a savings account, get pretty clothes for Steph.

  The girls took three classes a day, six days a week: regular dance, pointe, partnering, Russian folk dance; plus three hours a week of solfège, do-re-mi and slapping out rhythms and sight singing. The first week they were dead tired. The second week they were just very tired. The third week they couldn’t remember what it was like not to be dancing six hours six days a week.

  The school allowed students to choose between Madame Lvovna’s class and Madame Zhemkuzhnaya’s. Steph asked her mother’s advice.

  ‘They’re both nuts,’ Anna said. ‘You’ll get better balance from Lvovna and Zhemkuzhnaya will give you strength.’

  ‘Which do I need more?’

  ‘Both.’

  Steph went to both and Chris tagged along.

  In her first class, Zhemkuzhnaya picked on a girl’s pirouette. ‘What is that—pirouette or philosophy? If you want to be philosopher, go to Lvovna—if you want to learn dance from me, you learn how to work!’

  In her first class, Lvovna picked on a girl’s balance. ‘You will wind up with muscles! Look like one of Zhemkuzhnaya’s little bulls! You’ll be good for pulling plough or being prostitute!’

  Steph compared rumours. She compared firsthand impressions.

  Lvovna had trained at Maryinsky—now the Kirov—where Pavlova, Karsavina, Nijinsky, Nureyev, Baryshnikov, and two million other legends had trained. She had danced with the original Ballet Russe. She was in her seventies now. Time had made her even tinier than the sylph suggested by her photographs. She walked with the help of a silver-knobbed stick. The turban, the dress that always came to mid-calf, the comfy unstylish shoes, the sweater she wore over her shoulders on cold days, were always black. If it hadn’t been for the turquoise in the turban, you’d have thought she was in mourning.