The Art of Falling (23 page)

I slept at the apartment that night, alone.

The next day, seeing Marty was the only thing I could think of that might make me feel better, so I stopped by the bakery. Customers milled around on the sidewalk. The lights were out and a sign hung on the door: CLOSED.

• • •

I stopped in to see Mrs. Pope. When I joined her at her kitchen table, Shakespeare said, “Spread ’em, baby.” I winced at the awkward intrusion; Mrs. Pope cried. I reached for her hand.

“Angela taught him that,” she said. “She’d say, ‘Spread ’em, baby,’ and when he opened his beak, she’d give him one of his papaya treats.”

We drifted, each to our own thoughts. The smell of something cooking made my mouth water—I craned to see a pot of soup on the stove.

It was only nine in the morning, but my stomach growled audibly. “It’s split pea, Angela’s favorite.” She got up and ladled some into a bowl. “It was on my mind when I woke up. She always put a heaping tablespoon of sour cream in the middle.” She offered me the soup bowl; out of habitual adherence to the food mesa, I shook my head and stood to leave.

So weak my hand jittered on the doorknob. “Squawk—spread ’em, baby!” Heard Angela’s voice:
You’ve got to find a way to feed yourself
. I felt so empty without her. I returned to the table and pulled the bowl toward me. Added a small dollop of sour cream. In honor of Angela, and in gratitude for my own life, I spread my lips and, spoon shaking, started to feed myself.

• • •

I curled up on Angela’s bed and looked up at the blue sky she’d painted, willing one of the puffs to move, to carry me away. I was not myself. All day I’d nursed a wicked craving by nibbling nuts and raisins. Or was it thirst? The arid wasteland depicted on these walls left me parched. Everything felt wrong—the empty shelves, the votives that once again floated in their pool above the evergreen rug yet no longer created a sense of oasis. The Tree of Life, whose lively branches were now empty, broken hangers.

My eye caught something white still hanging on her Tree of Life. I climbed down to get it, eager to run my fingertips over anything she had once loved enough to live for.

It was the cardboard from the fastnacht box I’d signed. I lifted the yarn from the branch and read the words I’d written when we first met.

For
Angela—

Thanks
for
making
me
feel
like
a
rock
star.

Yours, Penelope Sparrow

I sat in the chair at her desk, the one built in below my bed. Why was this greasy box top the one thing she hadn’t wanted to take with her? Tears blurred my vision as I ripped away the stained pieces.

The phone rang, but I let the machine screen the call.

“Angela Reed, who’s Angela Reed?” I recognized the serrated edge of Aunt Mary’s voice. “Evelyn told me this was the number for Penelope Sparrow. Well, Angela Reed, you can tell Penny that if she’d had her cell on, she could have thanked me yesterday for allowing her a personal day after missing her Saturday shift. But two days is something else. A career is a commitment. For better or for worse, sickness and health, let’s get richer not poorer, all that. Her mother will have the pay we owe her. And to formalize things? She’s fired.”

By the time I finished ripping away the grease spots, I had centered the autograph within a jagged star.

I smiled. Not a smile born of bemusement, but a smile that grew from deep within me, from that place where the heart beats and movement begins.

• • •

I mounted the stairs to Bebe’s as quietly as I could. Passing the front studio, I caught a few familiar faces, but that class was not my destination. I strode into the empty back studio as if I owned it. I opened my arms and walked around the room, asking Angela—or the space—or the god of the space, as Marty would say—what to do with love that won’t quit, hope that won’t die, a deep hunger that cannot be sated.

I turned from the mirror so I could listen for my inner voice—
please, let me hear something
—but the voices were everywhere, not just within me but also around me. Feeding me a constant stream of images. I calmed myself by closing my eyes and concentrating on the air entering and exiting my own lungs, accenting its rhythm by hissing slightly on the exhale. In, out. In, out. As I began to dance, the breath magnified. In, out, louder.

Then much louder—I was not breathing alone. I turned to find Stella, Luke, Vincent, Jeannie, Gayle, and Rhonda behind me. They had slipped into the studio and were following my every move, every breath. The last rays of the setting sun angled through the door from the window in the reception area and bounced off their bodies. My peripheral vision caught disembodied curves and angles skidding through the space. Beautiful, gold-tinged night spirits.

I tried to funnel all I was feeling into the thin confines of words. “I lost my best friend…”

“Shh. Turn around.” Vincent whispered.

“Don’t lose it,” added Stella.

Bebe appeared in the doorway. I was struck with shame for the way I’d treated her. So much remained unspoken between us. I turned to her. She was my mentor and this was her space; I would not continue without her blessing. Behind me, the others waited.

She left. Was abandonment to be my sentence? If so, I deserved it. The music ended in the front studio. Bebe returned, and the rest of the students from the front studio filled in behind her. When their footfalls ceased, I watched as her silhouetted head nodded.

My mother said I’d always done my best work in front of an audience, and I only hoped she was right. No longer alone, I reversed the molting process to step into my own long-discarded skin: Penelope Sparrow, choreographer.

It felt fragile at first. But opening myself to the images and letting them rush through me felt so much better than fighting them off. If I allowed Angela to continue growing inside me, and let her spirit effervesce through my movement, she would live on in the form of love.

I took a few steps back, stretched my arm as if gathering the strength of the group, and carried it forward into the night.

We worked three evenings straight on what would become my uncertain tribute to Angela’s life: a dance, to be performed for a select audience on Saturday in Bebe’s studio. Bebe had sanctioned my rehearsal schedule, then stayed out of my way. Friday night around ten-thirty p.m., after my dancers had left, she entered the back studio with black material draped over her forearm. “You could wear this,” she said.

I held up the material so it took shape. “Isn’t this your recital dress?”

“I finally stepped on the hem and ripped it,” she said. “If you sew it up, no one would notice.”

“But I’m so much bigger than you are.” The self-deprecation was so habitual the words flew out before I realized how Bebe might take them.

She arched an eyebrow in a way that seemed to say she knew everything, from my first abuses of her food mesa all the way through that shameful retching into my mother’s sink. “So it will be ankle length instead of floor length.”

“Bebe,” I said. “I shouldn’t have gotten so angry with you. That day I gave the key back. I know you care.”

She flicked some dust from the shoulders of the dress and studied it. “We may be more alike than you think. Try on the dress, you’ll see.”

“I just wished you could have talked to me about it instead of MacArthur. She watches me so closely. Like…like…”

“Both judge and jury? Why do you think I wear caftans, darling?” A small, crooked smile twisted her lips. “Draping is everything.”

I slipped into the dressing room. The material still had a stretch to it that accommodated and supported. I went into the studio to check it out in the full-length mirror. The extra material sewn into the skirt disguised my hips, and its weight invited me to twirl. I lifted my leg and watched the cloth spread like the wings of a great falcon.

Bebe came through the doorway, the hesitation in her step more obvious at the end of the day. “Do you like it?”

“It makes me feel…” I choked on the next word. It was one I’d never before spoken in reference to myself.

I started the piece from the beginning, watching my reflection in the mirror. By adding its own heft and flow to movements I held dear, the dress enhanced the dance. The feeling once again welled inside me, strong and true. I tried again: “It makes me feel…beautiful.”

I looked at Bebe in the mirror. She was standing behind me, watching.

“I don’t care for the all-black, though. I want this to be a celebration. Do you mind if I—?

“Do whatever you want with it.”

Bebe’s voice suddenly sounded coarse. I took it for indecision and looked over at her. “I could just do something temporary if you want.”

“It’s yours. Damn, Penny.” She shook her head. “It’s good to see you dancing again.”

• • •

It was after eleven when we heard my mother’s footsteps climbing the stairs to the studio. Bebe and I went out into the reception area to meet her. The long flight of stairs no longer winded her, I realized, when she immediately started talking. “Okay, explain the big mystery.”

“I’m sorry, Mom, I should have told you. By the time I knew I wanted to quit the factory, Aunt Mary was already firing me.”

She laughed. “Well, that was no mystery. I mean, why all the specific instructions? And why did you want me to come all the way down here at this time of night?” She looked me over, head to toe. “The dress looks great, though.”

“I’ll head upstairs,” Bebe said. “You two stay as long as you need to.”

“It’s good to see you, Bebe,” my mother said. “No need to run off.” Then my mother turned to me with concern on her face. “Is there, Penny?”

Bebe touched my mother’s arm and headed up the stairs to her little apartment. I took my mother’s hand, led her into the front studio, and sat her at the piano. She looked at me with a dozen questions in her eyes.

“It’s Angela,” I said. I hadn’t been able to leave the news on her answering machine.

She whispered my name in a way that threatened to crack me open. I took a deep breath.

“I’m barely holding it together, Mom. I want your help, and I’m sorry, but I’ll have to call the shots.”

“You want my help.” My mother looked wary. “Whatever you need.”

“I need you not to react when I tell you I’ve been taking class again.” She took in a short, sharp breath, then pressed her lips together. “And I’ve choreographed a tribute to Angela that some new dance friends will perform—”

At this my mother’s eyes widened.

“With me.”

“Sweet Mary…”

“And I wondered if we could work up an accompaniment you could play on the piano. Nothing fancy, most of the piece is designed to be performed in silence.”

My mother sat for a moment, seemingly consumed with not reacting, practicing the silence. “Is that all?”

“And I’d like you to perform it with us. Here, tomorrow afternoon.”

She considered this for a moment. “You must know other musicians. Why me?”

“No one is more sensitive to my movement style. Word has it you’ve been studying it for years.”

She nodded, ran her fingers silently across the keys, and looked up at me. “Is it okay if I smile?”

• • •

My mother and I worked late, and then she slept over. After I returned from an early morning errand, we visited the fabric stores on South Fourth to get some supplies. I dawdled, feasting on colors and textures I’d denied myself too long. I hadn’t been to Fabric Row since shopping for the set materials for
No
Brainer
some ten months earlier. But that was as an emissary for Dmitri. This was for Angela—and me.

When we got back to the apartment, my mother started in on one project while I covered the floor with newspapers and laid the dress out flat. Its full skirt fanned up past the bottom of its arms. I mended the hem and lined up the fabric paints I had purchased, in six shades of blue and green. I sat down at the desk and sketched first, as Angela would have, then applied a river of color to the dress that began beneath my heart and poured down the front of the dress in swirls.

Later that day, eager to see what it looked like, I tried on the still-damp dress and studied it in the studio mirror. The imagery in the swirl of color spoke to me: I had created an oasis in the middle of my pain.

• • •

“Guests,” Bebe announced. I checked the clock on the wall—our performance would soon begin. Bebe led the contingent from the Fitness Evolution—Joey, Suzie, Haley, and Karen—to their seats. Mrs. Pope scuttled in next. To each of them Bebe gave one of the blue and green scarves my mother had made. Waiting became more awkward with the audience half-assembled. I moved into the reception area.

I could have asked others—special doctors and nurses, clients at the gym, other CF patients. But if I had invited everyone who loved Angela, no room would remain for the dancers.

At this point, I waited for just one more.

• • •

Still unable to reach Marty, I’d taken drastic measures: I’d roused myself from a deep, four-hour sleep at four-thirty that morning and walked over to the foot of the Independence Suites. The city is a dark vacuum at that hour, powering up with a streetlight here and a lone bulb there, readying itself to suck commuters in for another day of business.

Through the bakery window, I saw him before he saw me. His nose and eyes looked puffy. I startled him when I rapped on the front door.

“Looks as if you haven’t slept all week,” I said.

“Have you?”

“Where’ve you been?”

“Lost.”

I waited. “That’s all you’re going to say?”

He stretched his arms, one to either side. “God has gone missing.” He did not look to the heavens—he directed his words to me. “I’ve been walking all over this city looking. In the temple, the mosque, every historic church I can find. Even the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul.”

I sat him down and went behind the counter to pour him a cup of coffee. “And it didn’t help?”

Marty shook his head. “All I saw were walls. Walls of stone, walls of brick, walls of wood. Remnants of God’s inspiration. But I felt nothing.”

I asked him to visit one last building, tonight, as a special favor to both Angela and me. I knew the facade wouldn’t compare in architectural wonder to the other structures he’d visited, but I was hoping to move him with what he might find inside.

• • •

Heavy footfalls on the stairs announced his arrival. When he rounded the turn at the top, I saw he was not alone. Holding tight to his arm was Dara Reed. She looked older, as if her steely core had gone spongy.

“I hope it wasn’t inappropriate to bring a guest,” Marty said.

Leaning forward, I pressed my cheek, for a long moment, to his. I squeezed Dr. Reed’s hand and Bebe breezed in.

“Is that everyone?” Bebe said, while handing out more scarves. “You can take a seat through this door. It’s time to begin.”

• • •

I went into the dressing room. The dancers were ready, each in a black leotard and tights accented with one of the vibrant scarves. Vincent had twisted his into a wristband; Jeannie was so tiny she was able to wrap hers all the way around her waist. Luke fashioned his into a headband; Gayle tied hers around her ponytail; Rhonda tied hers at the ankle. Stella spread most of hers flat beneath her leotard, and pulled one corner into view, provocatively, at the hip. The added color was meant to symbolize Angela’s enduring spirit, but the air was so somber—so funereal—my walk slowed when I entered. If I’d thought about the grief I’d accumulated in my life, I’d never be able to work my way from under it, but I chose not to engage my thoughts. Angela had changed my heart, and from this source I found the buoyancy for my next words: “Hey, this is a celebration, remember?”

My mother sat on a stool in front of a sink with a mirror above it, dabbing powder onto her face. I stood behind her and rested my chin on top of her head. When I’d extended my mysterious request to come down for the weekend and meet me at Bebe’s, I’d asked her to bring along “something nice”—she was now wearing a tailored plum suit that set off her new, slimmer profile. She had one of the bright blue scarves tied jauntily at the throat. She looked great.

“How you doing, kiddo?” my mother asked my reflection.

We smiled at each other in the mirror. My mother had green eyes, just like mine. I had wasted too many years fearing my similarities to her. I kissed the top of her head and squeezed her soft shoulders. “Thanks for being here.”

A cell phone rang.

“Good reminder,” I said. “Could everyone shut off their cells?”

Stella reached into her bag and flipped open her phone. “It’s for you,” she said, and handed it to me.

“It’s your cell. How could it be for me?”

“Oh Penny, just take it.”

I put her phone to my ear. “Hello?”

“Am I speaking with Penelope Sparrow?” It was a woman—that much I could tell.

“Yes.”

“Twyla Tharp here.” I looked over at Stella to see if this was a practical joke, but her face was lit up in a way that would have been difficult to fake.

“Oh my god,” I said. Eloquently.

“Stella told me about your special performance tonight. Your new endeavor sounds fascinating.”

I had to consciously slow my breath; I was close to hyperventilating. “Thank you so much for calling. I can’t believe it. This means so much to me—”

“But I realize this is no time to talk. Best of luck, Penelope.”

I handed Stella her phone. “Our new endeavor?”

“I’ve learned to plan for success,” she said.

I could give no thought to future plans. My heart was full with the moment at hand, and I wanted to give it my entire focus. But I did give Stella a quick hug before saying, “It’s time. Let’s go.”

Once out in the reception area, I folded my upper body onto my thighs for one last stretch. I couldn’t remember when I last performed in such a small space for such a small audience. I felt vulnerable and exposed, a downy sparrow without its pinfeathers. Other than Bebe and my mother, none of the assembled guests knew me as a dancer.

Before we entered the space, I pulled my dancers close around me. I looked at their faces and their eagerness warmed me to the point that my joints felt like they were coming unglued. The dancers looked to me for inspiration; I looked to someone else.

“For Angela.”

• • •

I went into the studio to address the audience. At my request, Rhonda and Vincent had closed the curtains in front of the mirrors and placed chairs in front of them. I was glad I wouldn’t have to watch myself do what I was about to do. I wanted to feel it, fully.

I heard the dancers out in the hall murmuring “
Merde.
” One of the odder dance traditions, they were wishing each other luck—“break a leg” being a tad too real for some dancers—by licking their fingers and touching one another’s necks while saying the French word for “shit.”

I looked at the audience and tried to read their faces. Karen and Haley: impatient. Joey and Suzie: attentive, curious. Bebe beamed.

“I had to do something.” These were the only words of introduction I could think of. I looked to Dara, then Marty. Their hollow bodies propped one another up. “Please stay for refreshments after the performance. If you are moved to make a contribution to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in Angela’s memory, you’ll see an envelope marked for that purpose. This is
Air
for
Angela
.”

My mother walked in and took a seat at the piano; my dancers followed. I joined them at the front of their triangle, upstage right.

The group awaited my signal; the first move was mine. But I couldn’t budge. Everything about performing suddenly felt unfamiliar. As if I, too, were lost.

My role in this dance was not simply a job I hoped to execute well. Failure could not be made up for in the next town on tour. This was my one and only chance to express fully, in my own language, my love for Angela. The stakes were high, the audience close.

I looked over at my mother. She smiled, nodded.

It was then I noticed the uninvited guests. Standing in the doorway—respectfully outside the room, yet fully in view: Margaret MacArthur, and a taller woman I’d never met.