Ballerina Read online

  ‘So long as you’re not living alone,’ Mrs Avery said when Chris phoned.

  ‘I’ll be living with Steph.’

  ‘Then I suppose it’s all right. You have to be grown up sometime.’

  Anna didn’t agree. ‘What do you two need your own apartment for? You’ll never find an apartment. Not in this town.’

  They found one.

  It was on the fourteenth floor of a post-World War II high-rise—thirteenth if you counted the fact that there was no 13 in the building, but Steph didn’t bother mentioning that to Chris.

  The super called it four rooms. Steph counted a bedroom and a living room, plus kitchen and a bath and the hook of an L. Chris had her heart set on a fireplace, but Steph pointed out the huge bathtub and the needlepoint shower and the dishwasher and the air conditioning.

  ‘Besides, the building pays for gas and it’s a ten-minute walk from Lincoln Center.’

  They debated and finally signed a joint lease and handed over a certified cheque. They packed their possessions into a chaos of suitcases and mover’s cartons and two dozen overstuffed paper bags.

  ‘How the dickens are we going to move it all?’ Steph said.

  An idea came to Chris. ‘I have a friend.’ Even though he’s never phoned. ‘Maybe he’d help.’

  Steph was surprised. Chris had never mentioned a friend. But Ray Lockwood was glad to help.

  He rented a van and said it belonged to a friend. He drove the girls to the thrift shop where they had made down payments on a dining table and a rocking chair. He lugged and twisted and managed to get the disassembled twin beds up the service elevator and into 14-K. He carried heavy packages cheerfully, set them down carefully, didn’t break a single dish.

  And he watched Chris.

  There was a beauty and delicacy about her that seemed to reflect all the beauty and delicacy that were ruled out of his own world. He tried to gather all his feelings into a smile and smile it so clearly Chris couldn’t help but understand.

  From time to time, as they shifted cartons and furniture, she brushed the hair out of her eyes and saw him smiling and smiled back at him.

  ‘He’s working like a demon,’ Steph whispered. ‘You two must be best friends—or something.’

  ‘He’s just someone from my home town,’ Chris said. ‘He’s a lawyer. And very smart.’

  ‘And very nice.’

  When Chris was in another room, a loose lid fell off a box. ‘Whose are these?’ Ray asked.

  ‘They’re Chris’s,’ Steph said.

  Because they were Chris’s, the simple, senseless knickknacks moved him with an involuntary power. They looked like charms for bracelets and party favours for eight-year-olds. There were tiny violets in glass and butterflies in plastic and cloth animals. He tried to construct Chris from the jumble of her possessions.

  ‘Chris collects things,’ Steph said. ‘That doll comes from the St Anthony fair down in Little Italy. She won it shooting out candles with a water pistol.’

  He lifted the small stuffed doll, looked at it, wondered why she kept it. Then he laid it down gently without disturbing the other trinkets in the box.

  The moving was almost done when finally he was alone with Chris.

  ‘It’s good to see you again,’ he said.

  ‘It’s good to see you.’ She shifted. Packing cartons pressed in around them, making the space tiny. She let his glance hold hers for a long moment, till she began to feel nervous. ‘This will be the bedroom,’ she said.

  They stared at each other. There was a gravity in his eyes and she tried to oppose her smile to it.

  ‘I tried to phone you,’ he said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I even wrote a letter.’ He had written three letters and he had thought about writing a dozen.

  ‘I never got a letter,’ she said.

  ‘I never mailed it. I didn’t know your address.’

  She laughed and the laugh felt uneasy in her throat. ‘You know it now.’

  ‘I intend to remember it.’ He had a young face, a Midwestern face, and there was something open and honest in his gaze. It made her feel she was standing in a too bright light.

  She smiled faintly and then looked away from him.

  ‘I’d like to see you again, Chris.’

  ‘I’d like to,’ she said.

  ‘I’d like to see you some evening in the not too distant future.’

  Her eyes hesitated and then her gaze lay still on the neutrality of a stack of records. She struggled to say yes. But something frightened her.

  ‘The corps dances every performance,’ she said.

  ‘But you have a night off.’

  She didn’t want him to expect too much of her. He was used to debutantes and bright girls with bright laughter. ‘I’m pretty tired my night off.’

  ‘I understand that. We can have a restful evening together.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be much of a date. Maybe after I’m more at home in the company....’

  ‘You talk as though it’ll be years before you can go out for a cup of coffee.’

  ‘You don’t know a dancer’s life. It’s physical work.’

  ‘I’ve done physical work.’

  ‘But dancers are ... different.’

  ‘Are they?’

  A change had come into his voice. She looked up at him and saw him take the look for some kind of reply. She pulled away from his gaze, pushed open the window, let in a cone of air. Her eye took refuge in the view: a sliver of New York sky, trapped chemical and shimmering between two high-rises.

  ‘Chris, can I ask you something?’

  She leaned on the window sill, feeling safer at a distance, however slight.

  ‘When you told me your telephone—did you mean to give me the wrong number?’

  She flushed. ‘I don’t remember doing that. I’m sorry. I’m no good with numbers.’

  ‘But you remembered mine.’ •

  But yours was written down, she wanted to say. But she sensed the lawyer in him, trapping her into something.

  ‘Chris, will you be honest with me? Does it bother you to see me?’

  The question surprised her and it stung like a slap.

  ‘I’d rather know straight out than waste my time.’

  Maybe I would be wasting his time, she thought. A warm damp breeze blew through the open window. She didn’t know what to answer. She was overwhelmed by a shaming sense of her utter incompetence.

  ‘You saved our lives today,’ she said. ‘We would have been lost without you.’

  ‘Then will you phone me in a few weeks?’

  He was leaving it up to her and that frightened her, but he had been kind. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘In a few weeks.’

  The days that followed were lucky and crowded. Steph was busy discovering a hardware shop that cut window shades to order and a Shop-Rite supermarket two blocks away and best of all a health food store around the corner with year-round specials on bee pollen.

  Chris found a brass lamp in a junk shop, perfect for the bedside table. There was a white sale at Bloomindale’s, and they bought linen. Mrs Avery insisted on giving them silver from Altman’s, but they were able to exchange it for a handsome set of Danish stainless steel, plates for eight, glasses, and five beautiful copper-bottomed pots.

  Steph cut company class Tuesday and stayed home waiting for the telephone man.

  Her very first call was to her mother, to give her the number. She could tell that Anna was in one of her moods, resentful that the girls had moved out, annoyed at having to find a smaller apartment. But Steph felt happy and busy and invulnerable and invited her mother to supper the following night. ‘It’ll just be hamburger and frozen vegetable.’

  ‘Not spinach,’ Anna said. ‘Frozen spinach has twice as much folic acid as fresh. That’s the last thing a dancer needs.’

  ‘String beans,’ Steph promised.

  Anna arrived a half hour early. She inspected the bathtub and the kitchen faucets and asked abou
t cockroaches. She wanted to know about the lease.

  ‘Two years!’ she gasped.

  She peeked in the corners of closets and found a window that didn’t slide open all the way. She wouldn’t sit in the rocker.

  ‘Where’d you get that? It’ll break if you look at it.’

  She spent ten minutes tapping on walls. She criticized a loose inch of baseboard that someone was going to break their neck tripping over. She didn’t see why the girls had to fry their hamburger when gas was included and grilling produced less saturated animal fat.

  ‘I just don’t understand,’ she sighed. ‘I hope you two know what you’re up to, because I sure don’t.’

  At nine-fifteen she gathered up her cigarettes and her purse. She waved a glum good-bye from the elevator.

  Steph felt a little sorry, but more than that, she felt relieved. She sat rocking in the rocker and tried to decide—when they could afford it—what colour the living-room rug should be.

  nine

  From the very first Steph loved Empire State Ballet. It was a huge family. Within two weeks she was calling the kids in the corps by their first names, within a month the whole company.

  Jan-Pieter de Jong, who was Dutch and six foot two and blond and a superstar, was Pete. His cocker spaniel, who for some reason was allowed to run loose backstage, was Max. What a mess when Max took a crap in a box of Petrouchka prop roubles thirty seconds before performance! Ilona Banska, who had defected from Hungary and drew huge audiences and three-thousand-dollar fees for every performance, was said to be a standoffish bitch, but everyone called her Ilonka, because in Hungary that was short for Ilona. Lester Croyden, who directed the company, was Lester. Hannah Meredith, who was society and had money and thought she directed the company, was Hannah—always bumbling around with a notebook, spending her life and the company’s patience making sure who was substituting for whom.

  ‘Sally, you’re substituting for Amy? Who’s Amy doing?’

  ‘I think she’s doing Clara...

  ‘Well, I have Millicent down for Clara....’

  Steph had never seen so many substitutions in her life. One evening the principal dancing Firebird was out with food poisoning, so the girl dancing Aurora in Aurora’s Wedding had to be put into Firebird, and the younger sister from Pillar of Fire had to dance Aurora; and the substitute younger sister was thrown into the role so late her name wasn’t even in the insert in the programme, and Hagar, the older sister, had to whisper the steps to her. Two minutes before curtain Phyllis, who did lighting design, was stomping across the stage yelling at an electrician to re-angle number 35 because Suzie, in tears that her variation hadn’t been getting applause, had decided that it was all the lighting’s fault and wanted her exit to be visible.

  Everything at Empire struck Steph as helter-skelter and wonderfully haywire and it seemed a miracle the show ever went on.

  Company class was obligatory. Scheduled for 11 a.m., it was a hit-or-miss affair—on good days. Bad days it was indescribable. Steph was always on time, warming up by eleven-five, and she was usually the first.

  The studio was three stories below ground level, as big and brightly lit as the main stage. One wall was mirrored floor to ceiling and the wall opposite was a great blue-red splash of a Dufy mural of ballerinas and butterflies. The dancers generally started fluttering in around eleven-fifteen.

  ‘How are you?’ Steph called to Daphne, one of the soloists.

  ‘Great—I had a nap yesterday!’

  By eleven-twenty bodies were writhing on the floor, stretching legs at the barres, wiggling toes one-at-a-time. The air began to thicken with cigarette smoke and talk and the first hint of sweat. The boys did deep knee bends at the barre, down and down further and rotate the ass, stretch each knee like a slow-motion Russian dance. The girls did splits, and Andrea, who’d just been made a principal, did splits with a Virginia Slim dangling from the corner of her mouth.

  Lit cigarettes and rumours and half-drunk Styrofoam cups of coffee were passed till eleven twenty-five, when Heinrich Sanders, the dance master, made his entrance wearing a polka-dot babushka. A great laugh went up. From neck down Heinrich was a natty dresser, but his hair transplant was still growing in, and it was a great joke that every day he wore something different to cover his head.

  At eleven-thirty Tommy the pianist arrived, without his music as usual, and began improvising an oompahing 2/4 to the melody of ‘Baby Face, You’ve Got the Sweetest Little Baby Face.’ Plastic and Saran Wrap leg warmers were shed like used cocoons and Heinrich called the movements in time to the music:

  ‘Pli-é—stretch—two demi-pliés, one grand plié, first position....’

  At the first break in the music the dancers rushed from the barres to twist their toes in the rosin box in the corner, like cats stampeding to a litter box.

  Heinrich called out the ronds de jambe, faster tempo, and sixty slippers whispered in perfectly synchronized circles, leaving the floor as chalky white as a used blackboard. Combinations next: ‘Rond—arabesque—plié—and close!’ After that, ‘Effacez!’ which was French for ‘Turn around.’ The dancers turned, left hand on the barre now, and went through the whole mess again, only this time the right side ached. ‘Do your own treatment, please.’

  The piano rippled a slow 3/4 and the dancers stretched and improvised. Heinrich went to the phone and for three minutes had a loud conversation in Russian.

  Synchronization began to break down. The dancers shoved the barres to the side of the room and boys and girls alternated in centre work. Half the dancers were standing, half lying on the floor. One girl was tying her laces and three were doing slow backward somersaults. The piano honky-tonked a tango. Hands arced overhead. Up on one foot. Leg out, slow slow slow till the slowness screamed. Leg down, remember to keep the foot turned out.

  ‘One and two and not so fast!’

  Développés—vertical leg stretches. Grand tour à la seconde: men’s hair whipped out in the pirouettes, women’s hair, fastened with barrettes and rubber bands, stayed as calm as a hair spray commercial.

  Sally, one of the soloists, left the room and came back with a handful of paper towels that she distributed to needy friends. Dancer’s metabolisms varied, and one girl could get bone dry through a combination that would leave another dripping wet; but by the end of Heinrich’s petit allegro everyone was in a running sweat.

  "Two groups, girls. Two groups, boys. First group girls start from behind diagonal.’ Heinrich reeled off steps like a shopping list and the piano improvised a wild Cossack dance on ‘Baby Face.’ The room erupted in leaps and spins and collisions.

  ‘And, boys, I asked you for two groups!’

  By twelve-thirty towels and sweat shirts were draped over the barres. Boys were dancing bare-chested; girls had unbuttoned their blouses to ventilate glistening upper bosoms. Sylvia and Victoria simply gave up and stood chattering Portuguese. Two of the boy principals waved to the dance master and walked out.

  Though there were ninety dancers in the company, only fifty came to company class. The rest, Steph had heard, went to class outside. They paid $2.50, but at least they learned and didn’t waste their time. Eventually she might do the same, but instinct told her that for the moment she’d do better to prove her team spirit and stick with the company.

  ‘And we stretch the feet in cabriole!’

  At the end of the class, ‘Thank you, girls.’ The girls clapped and disbanded. One more exercise for the boys, and ‘Thank you, boys,’ and the boys applauded.

  After class you took your cigarette and coffee break, or if you’d taken it during class, you took another. Steph took most of her breaks with Linda—a lanky, dark-haired girl, a half inch too tall, they said, who might make it to soloist but never to principal.

  Linda was inseparable from Al, a blond farm-boy type who could hold a balance till the cows came home and always had the latest, gamiest gossip. Steph quickly learned which corps girl was sleeping with which principal, who was gay b
ut not letting on, who was straight but pretending to be bi to get ahead—'And either way,’ Al roared, ‘he’s still a lousy lay!’

  Steph knew she shouldn’t enjoy that kind of talk, but it fascinated her. This one was a vegetarian—and an alcoholic (‘vodka in the carrot juice’); that one was on health food for her (hush-hush) ulcer; he was on cortisone for his (hush-hush) fractured arch; she had two doctors because she couldn’t get enough Valium from one; he was going to an analyst because his umpteenth lover had dropped him; she was thirty-eight and lying about her age and losing her turn-out, and he had made a pass at Hannah (ugh!) at President Carter’s Kennedy Center party and still didn’t get to dance Bluebird (ha!).

  Steph counted three types of kids in the corps. Some were killing time till they married or gave in to their parents and got a job with money and security. Others weren’t certain of their own ambition or ability: they’d smoke pot one week and cut class, and the next they’d crash-diet and take two classes a day. Then there were the determined ones, who never touched drugs or alcohol, didn’t waste time partying or sleeping around, never missed a class or rehearsal or performance even if they’d mangled a foot.

  Steph ranked Al type two, unsure and covering up with a lot of camp. Linda was type three, determined. It struck Steph as odd that Linda and Al were pals; it struck her as even odder one day after class, when Linda suggested, ‘Hey, a bunch of us are goofing off this afternoon—you’re invited.’

  ‘I can’t—I’ve got rehearsal.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were in Fille.’

  ‘I’m understudying Vicki.’

  Linda made a face. ‘Oh, Christ, the Ribbon Dance.’ It was a number in Act One of Fille Mai Gardée. Linda was understudying it too, but she’d been with the company two years and knew the repertory. ‘You could walk through that blindfolded.’

  ‘I’ve never danced it. I’d better stay and watch Vicki.’

  ‘Follow the girl on your right. Come on.’ Linda looped an arm through Steph’s. ‘Danny and Al are waiting.’

  ‘Danny?’ Steph was surprised. And interested. There was only one Danny in the company. Danny Gillette. A tall, dark boy with moody eyes. Rumour had it he was going to be made a principal that spring. Steph had admired his Cowboy in Billy the Kid. It seemed peculiar that he hung out with kids from the corps like Linda and Al.