Private Lies (5 page)

Some months had passed since he had met Carol. He had
managed, by wheedling charm, to get her number from Mrs. Stein, and discovered
that Carol lived on Prince Street, just a few blocks from his Houston Street apartment.

Carol seemed happy to hear from him, although he couldn't
be sure. As before, she was polite, noncommittal, and vaguely interested. To
him, she seemed always on the cusp of indifference, which disturbed him. Since
meeting her, he had found it impossible to get her out of his mind.

"I'm writing now," he told her with all the
solemnity of someone taking holy orders.

"That's wonderful," she replied, inquiring no
further.

"It's a novel," he volunteered. "A story
about a family that lives in Brooklyn. Not the usual cliché of the first
novelist discovering himself and the evil that men do. It's about how the death
of the mother disintegrates the family." All right, he told himself, it had
elements of autobiography, but all novels did. He wished she would probe
further. She didn't.

He told her that he was working for the
Daily News
,
that he lived just a few blocks from her on Houston Street. After a while, he
discovered that she was not really responding. He was merely providing data.

"But enough about me. What about you?"

"A dancer dances," she sighed, but he detected a
lack of effervescence.

"You sound tired."

"It's tough, Ken, really tough. There's lots of
competition."

"But you are holding your own?"

"Yes. I think so."

"You think you'll make it into the Corps?"

"I've got a chance," she said.

"Maybe I can come over, share some laughs and a pizza.
That is, if you're eating these days."

"I'm not laughing much either."

There were long, unfilled pauses that troubled him, but he
did not push it.

"So, when can I see you?"

Another long pause, then a sigh.

"I'm not sure, Ken. I'm really busy around the clock.
When I get home all I do is fall into bed exhausted."

"Can we set a date? You name the year."

"I'm sorry, Ken."

"How about calling? Dialogue is one of my strong
points."

No reaction.

"It would be nice. Yes, let's stay in touch."

It was not a very encouraging prospect.

He thought of her often. In fact, he was thinking about her
more than he was thinking about his novel, which seemed to be going in an
endless circle. Sometimes, when he got back from work after midnight, he would
walk the streets, invariably ending up in front of her apartment house, staring
up at what he assumed was her darkened window.

He pictured her sleeping curled in the fetal position, her
mind spinning with endless ballet routines, dreaming of herself soaring through
the air without the restraints of gravity and the limitations of the body.

To become more knowledgeable about her art, he read a
secondhand book about ballet. He learned the difference between an arabesque
and a developpé, between an entrechat and a pirouette. And he secretly wished
that he could do a tour en l'air to truly impress her.

He listened to records of ballet music, to
Swan
Lake
, Afternoon of a Faun, Giselle, Pillar of Fire, The Nutcracker
.
Although he had a tin ear, repetition allowed some musical memory and he longed
for the day when he could impress her with it.

He wished he could inject something of himself into her
dreams, something to make her notice him. Pay attention to me, he begged in his
heart.

Then he took to walking the city during the day, when he
should have been writing. Again and again, he would find himself in front of
her apartment. Once he rang her bell, but no one answered. Of course not. She
would be at the ballet school. Invariably he would call, but she was rarely at
home to answer. When she was, she always seemed rushed, yet was always polite
and apologetic.

"Sorry, Ken. But let's stay in touch."

"In touch, yes," he agreed. How he longed for
that.

"I passed your apartment today," he told her when
she found the time to listen. And the day before and the day before that and so
on.

"Did you?"

"I wanted to ring your bell."

"You should have."

"It was noon."

"Oh, then I would be at the school."

"When aren't you?" he asked.

"I'm afraid that's where I spend most of my
time."

"Is it going well?" he asked.

"As well as to be expected."

"Sounds ominous."

"No. Very well," she told him, a bit too
hurriedly. He was certain that was the way she explained it to her mother.

"Keeps you on your toes," he said, offering a
chuckle.

She didn't laugh.

Days crowded into each other. More and more Ken was having
difficulty with his novel. He was becoming moody and withdrawn even at work.
For the first time in his life, doubt began and took hold. He could not shake
it away and it panicked him. Once on his night off, unable to sleep, he called
her. But when he heard her muffled sleepy voice, he lost his courage and hung
up. He did not want to show her his weakness. Certainly not his doubt.

Then something odd happened. She called him. At first he
couldn't believe his ears.

"I've been temporarily shut down," she said.

"I've been shut down for days," he replied.

"Just a sprain. A tough one, though. Usually I can
work through them. But this one is a doozy. I'm lying here with my feet up,
waiting."

"You're waiting for me, that's what you're waiting
for." It was, for him, an act of desperate boldness and he paused for her
response.

"Maybe so. I'm starving."

"Well, then, I'd better get you some birdseed."

"Maybe that would be fine. All I can do is hop like a
bird. But I sure can use a sandwich." She told him what kind.

He wondered why she hadn't called her mother, then he
realized that she wouldn't do that, that, considering her parents' sacrifices
to her dream, she wouldn't want to disappoint or frighten them. Their loss was
his gain, he supposed.

He filled the order he had been given. Cottage cheese
sandwich on whole wheat bread, iced tea, an orange.

The door to Carol's apartment was open. It was small and
she had done it up cutesy, with funky pillows and Degas prints of ballet
dancers and a poster of Nureyev. There was also a mirror on one side of the
living room and the inevitable practice bar.

Carol lay on the couch, reminding him of a broken porcelain
doll. Her wrapped ankle was raised on a bolster. As he came in she struggled up
on one elbow.

"Look at me. Am I a mess?"

"Not to me."

"Well, I am. I'm out of the student show because of
this. I had a pas de deux, too. Dammit."

Her upper lip trembled and she seemed to be struggling to
repress a good cry. On his shoulder, he hoped, because when he had seen her as
he walked into the room, so sweetly vulnerable and actually spangled by the
mirror's reflection, which hyped the sunlight in the room, his heart had jumped
clear into his throat.

She was wearing a white leotard, and her legs stretched out
along the sofa seemed lathe-shaped to perfection, the good leg moving in emphasis
instead of her hands as she spoke. Occasionally, she would lift it
perpendicular, bend it at the knee and sometimes bring it up to her chest.

"Nature's way of saying slow down. I actually felt it
coming," she said, nibbling on her sandwich.

"I'm flattered that you called me," he said
sincerely.

"You were available," she responded
mischievously, her eyes teasing. Under all the intensity and dedication, he
finally saw a playful streak. "But I've interrupted your writing."

"For you, always," he joked. But the fact was
that Ken was still bumping into obstacles. Not faced with the blank paper of
his Smith-Corona but only the fluid wonders of his mind, his story soared,
characters infused with insight moved through miraculous complications. They
laughed and cried and loved and suffered. But the soaring ceased after a half
page's typing. It wasn't writer's block exactly, more like a fear of flying.
Carol's call came as sweet balm. Seeing her, he truly believed, would replenish
him, set the fictional world in his head going again.

"If I called, would you have stopped in the middle of
a pirouette?" he asked.

"What? And sprain my other ankle?"

She lifted her leg again as if that were the way she
expressed real laughter, stretched it out, and touched his shoulder. He lifted
his hand and touched her ankle. It was his first caress. Let us keep in touch,
he told himself, hoping she might hear.

They talked through the afternoon. Mostly he remembered how
the light had changed on her face, which went from ivory to pink alabaster in
the lowering winter sun. By the time he left, he had surrendered to the
certainty of knowing he loved her, had always loved her, would always love her.

At that point the memory compressed, abiding by the mind's
real time, which was not chronological. She had vowed "no dating" and
they hadn't, but they managed to "see each other." She was, of
course, less a master of her time than he.

Nonetheless, after that first reunion when he sat with her
beside the couch, he felt himself back on track again. His characters
resurrected themselves. His imagination resumed its acrobatic intensity, his
story moved forward, and the stack of neatly typed, completed pages mounted. He
could barely remember the story now, although then it was biblical in
importance, especially the great death scene, the mother's dying. The son was
reading Proust to her.

Carol was on her back for a week, and he took full
advantage of the opportunity. He made himself indispensable, bringing her
meals, cleaning the apartment, offering conversation, and generally keeping her
from boredom.

"You've been great, Ken," she told him. "I
don't know what I would have done without you."

She hadn't told her parents about her injury, explaining
that it would have panicked them.

"Everything's going great guns, Mother," she told
Mrs. Stein, sometimes in his presence. Invariably when she hung up, she felt
guilty.

"It's just a temporary thing. You haven't let them
down," Ken admonished her. "You couldn't help yourself."

"Any letup, whether it's my fault or not, lets them
down."

"Why do you flog yourself over it?"

Slowly, he sensed that their intimacy had grown, not that
it was obvious. He scrupulously eschewed any hint that there was more here than
friendship, certainly not at first. Then, suddenly, he got a reaction.

She had been lying in bed, her foot on the bolster,
watching her image on the mirrored wall. He was sitting on a chair near the
bed. Outside it was raining.

"You still think I'm beautiful, Ken?" she had
asked.

"You remembered."

"Of course I remembered. I'm a performer. You can't
accuse me of having no vanity."

"No," he replied. "I won't accuse you of
that. But I can make quite a case for indifference."

She thought about that for a while.

"I'm afraid you can," she agreed. "It's not
really indifference. It's a matter of focus. I wear blinders."

"Always?"

"I'm not sure."

"Would it be imposing if I asked you take them off
around me?" It seemed as if he had been waiting for this moment since he
had first laid eyes on her. "I want you to see me."

"I see you." She seemed puzzled.

"I mean really see me," he told her, moving
toward the bed. He sat beside her and looked deeply into her eyes. "Like I
see you."

"I do see you."

"Do you see what I feel?"

"Maybe," she said.

He bent closer to her, pressed his lips on hers, held them
there for a long moment, and then increased the pressure. Her lips parted and
he prolonged the kiss. He felt his heart pounding against his chest.

"I adore you," he said. He had wanted to say
"love," but held back. What he wanted most was her to feel the same
way about him. Was it possible to will her to feel that? Love me, he begged.
Love me.

Then he kissed her again. And again. After a while she
turned her head away and a tear crept out of her eye and flowed down her cheek.

"What's that for?" he asked.

"I'm afraid," she said.

He didn't pursue it, since he suspected what she feared
most. Instead he said, "What's wrong with being human?"

"More than you think," she said. He puzzled over
that answer for days.

So they had kissed and he did not press her further.
Understanding her fear, he did not want to panic her.

After a week she was reasonably recovered and returned to
her classes. Then began another round of unavailability, although he had grown
bolder about calling her late in the evening. It was, he knew, cruel work. At
that hour of the day she was at low ebb, on the cusp of exhaustion.

"It's tough going, Ken," she told him. "I'm
having trouble catching up."

"You will."

"I'm trying as hard as I can."

"I know."

She was totally self-absorbed. Not selfish, exactly, but
completely directed. There was nothing to be done but to encourage her, show
support, cheer her on.

"And you?"

It always surprised him to hear her concern and he always
wondered if she was sincere.

"I think about you all the time, Carol."

"I mean your work."

For some reason it had turned around. Things were moving
again. Perhaps her sense of focus and commitment had inspired him. Of course,
he wanted more. He wanted Carol, yearned for her. Make her love me, he cried,
invoking unseen forces. Is there a limit to longing? he wondered.

At some point, always after a frenzy of writing activity,
Ken took to hanging out around the ballet school, peering through a window in
the studio door, watching Carol at the bar or being instructed on the floor
with the others, delicate dancing-girl dolls and sinewy boy dolls made of rip
cord. She wore those mid-calf warm-up stockings on her precious legs and he was
certain she was the standout. On her toes she seemed the tallest of the group.