Authors: Meg Howrey
I finished the turns. I did the traveling mazurkas, the sauts de basque, everything. I simplified the last few bars of pirouettes and—somehow—was able to hold a long balance, which got some applause from the audience. Then I was done and my retinue came and got me, and as soon as Odile made her appearance and I wasn’t necessary to any of the action, I told Julius I felt sick and had to bail and slipped into the wings. I think it’s safe to say that nobody noticed the departure of the Polish Princess. Then I went to my dressing room and almost threw up from the pain. I usually share a dressing room with Tamara, but she’s out this season. Hip injury.
I redid my lips and got back into my Big Swan tutu. I danced—in some fashion—Act IV. Curtain call. I stopped by Roger’s dressing room and he gave me two Vicodin from his emergency stash. I came home, or rather, here. Gwen’s apartment.
The official word on Gwen’s absence is that she is recovering from knee surgery back home in Michigan. The real story is that three weeks ago I called Dad and said he had to come and get her, that things were bad and Gwen was out of control and
that I didn’t fucking care anymore. So Dad came and got her and took her home, and three days later she attempted to smash her (perfectly fine) knee through the screen door of their patio. So there’s an element of truth to the official story because she tore the crap out of her knee. I’m not sure about the recovering part. I take it as a good sign that she didn’t try to put her knee through the
glass
door of the patio. Nothing crucial got torn, but she did require stitches.
I don’t know exactly what Gwen is recovering from, right now, or if the word “recovering” is appropriate. It makes it sound like she is getting new upholstery. From what I gather, they are trying “different things,” which I assume means different drugs. This tone I am taking about the condition of my poor anguished shredded sister is sort of sick, and might possibly mean that I should be on the same regimen of pharmaceuticals as she is.
Was she out of control? Did I really not fucking care anymore? These are difficult questions to answer.
You know, there is one thing that is never quite explained in any synopsis of
Swan Lake
. That is: what’s the real deal with Odile, the Black Swan? I mean, what is her MO? We’re meant to believe she is Von Rothbart’s daughter whom he has transformed to look exactly like Odette, but does she retain any of her own personality? Is she just a pawn? Is she evil? Misguided? Jealous? A victim? Certainly she never displays any remorse over her part in the tragedy that follows, but we leave her as soon as the big denouement. So we don’t really know what she feels.
Who will weep for the Black Swan when the spell is lifted
and all the white swans are set free? All our tears are for Odette, noble, self-sacrificing, fatally tricked, and now dead in the arms of her lover.
But the Black Swan is still alive. Fluttering her midnight wings without conviction on the edges of the lake. Having to live with the knowledge of what she has done, what she allowed to happen. All alone.
Oh my god my neck is killing me.
The day that Gwen put her knee through the patio door was also the day that my boyfriend broke up with me. In a surprise reversal of the usual cliché, Andrew told me that he was “in love” with me but he didn’t “love” me. It may have been the most original thing he ever said to me, and for a moment I was almost proud of him. Then came the rest: how he just wanted to “be there” for me but I shut myself off from him, never let him in, didn’t communicate, didn’t seem really interested in building a life together. He followed this up with a catalog of all the things he had done for me that I hadn’t appreciated.
I should have known better. When Andrew and I got together he kept telling me how incredible it was to be with someone who wasn’t all needy, didn’t have a ton of issues, was really independent. So unlike all his other girlfriends, especially Anna, his tragically doomed first love who overdosed when they were sophomores at Columbia. I should have known there
was trouble the minute I heard about Anna. Never date a guy with a dead girlfriend. Because she will get to be peacefully (or however it happens) deceased, but the guy will be left alive to romanticize her out of all proportion and forever seek another flawed heroine to save.
But I shouldn’t blame Anna. Probably the reason Andrew was with her in the first place is that Andrew is a giver. Givers are sneaky. If you don’t present them with gaping holes, they will create them just to have something to do. Here’s the twist: although the givers get quite a bit of cred for how caring and generous they are, their motives are far from altruistic. The whole time they are giving and giving, you can be sure that they’re secretly keeping an account book of services rendered and waiting for just the right moment to hand you the bill.
During the breakup talk Andrew said he thought it best if we separated before anger and resentment set in, although from the length and fluid hostility of his monologue it was clearly too late for that. He said I could take my time moving out, but maybe I could stay at Gwen’s since she was currently in Michigan recovering from knee/psyche implosion. And oh, yes, since I asked, there
was
someone else, but that had nothing to do with his decision, which wasn’t really his decision, but rather something that was forced upon him by
my
behavior.
“I just want to be honest with you,” he said.
“That does not impress me,” I replied.
Our apartment was Andrew’s apartment, so it made sense that I would be the one to move out. This didn’t take long. I came to him with very little, like a mail-order bride from the Ukraine. Well, I was living with Gwen before I moved in with Andrew and it would have felt wrong to take any of our joint
furniture or things. I already felt guilty enough for leaving her alone.
There were things I bought for Andrew and me as a couple, but I left those for him and the mysterious “someone else” to enjoy. I hope her no doubt fascinatingly vulnerable self will be very comfortable on those Egyptian cotton sheets. Yes, before decamping I really did spray my perfume on the pillowcases. Also, all over his suits. He might not even notice. He was never good at reading my signals. He always wanted me to tell him everything.
I packed up my books and clothes and a few pathetic boxes and I hired one of those “man with a van” guys to move it all for me, and now here I am. When Dad came he must have thrown some of Gwen’s clothes in a suitcase, and her toothbrush and contact lens case aren’t in the bathroom, but everything else is just where she left it, including the masking-tape Xs on some of the walls. (Don’t ask me to explain, it’s a Gwen thing, I don’t know what it means.) Also Clive isn’t here. Gwen’s neighbor is taking care of him. That she didn’t ask me to look after her cat is another sign of how furious she is with me.
My boxes are lined up against the bedroom wall. “Sweaters,” “Kitchen,” “Reviews/Programs/Photos,” “Fiction A–F.” It doesn’t make sense to unpack and I don’t want to disturb anything. It’s a bit like living in a crime scene, actually, with the Xs and all.
I need to take those down.
I don’t want to touch them.
My neck still hurt like a bitch today, and since I wasn’t supposed to be performing tonight, I decided to skip morning class and do therapy.
First I went to see Dr. Ken to get an adjustment. Dr. Ken makes house calls to the theater three times a week when we are in season, but today wasn’t one of those days. He’ll always squeeze us in at the office, though.
Dr. Ken’s waiting room is covered with pictures of the well-known individuals he has cracked to health: opera singers, boxers, dancers, musicians, and hockey players. Dr. Ken once said to me that ballet dancers are his favorite patients to treat, because we always do what we are told, and are very open to criticism. At the time Dr. Ken said this, I was facedown on the table and attached to an electric stimulation machine, so I just grunted affably, but I must say that upon reflection, being able to tell us that we aren’t great seems kind of a fucked-up reason for liking us.
Dr. Ken wears polo shirts and pants with pleats in them. He has that smooth hair that doesn’t look like hair, but rather a sort of fibrous cap. I’m not at all attracted to Dr. Ken, what with the pleats and all, but he’s a man, and I did my girl thing anyway, as if him finding me charming or attractive would help. Help what? I don’t know. You do these things.
He probed my neck for a few minutes and then said he wanted to do X-rays and that I have “a lot going on in there.” But today we just had time for an adjustment. It’s tricky having your neck adjusted. For it to work you have to totally relax, but it’s hard to relax when the movements of the chiropractor are remarkably similar to those of the Boston Strangler.
I asked Dr. Ken if having a pinched nerve in your neck will affect your peripheral vision, and he asked me why, was I experiencing that? The thing is, I keep anticipating that something is going to come around a corner and stab me in the eye. Seriously,
for the past few weeks, every time I go around a corner, on the street, or in the hallways at work, I want to jerk my head back and cover my eyes. I don’t though. In fact, I have been forcing myself to take corners quickly and sharply to sort of punish myself for getting neurotic. This started before the neck injury, so I told Dr. Ken no, that I had read something online, and he told me that I shouldn’t do that.
I’m sure there is some deep dark secret reason behind the stabbed-in-the-eye scenario, but really, I don’t see how knowing
why
I have this fear will help stop it. That’s why I don’t see any point in going to a shrink. Knowing
why
you broke the glass—because you weren’t paying attention to where the edge of the table was, dummy—doesn’t make you less sorry, doesn’t mend the glass, doesn’t ensure it won’t happen again, that you won’t break something more precious next time. The shrink might say that actually you knew perfectly well where the edge of the table was, but you chose to miss and break the glass because you wanted to sabotage yourself or something, but please. That’s like saying drug addicts are sabotaging themselves. Hello! Drugs are fantastic and you get addicted because they are fantastic and it’s just bad luck that they can destroy you too.
I’ve read how there were so many women in Vienna talking about how they were sexually abused as children that Sigmund Freud wondered if there were some kind of child molestation epidemic going on. But no. The trouble was that even though these women hadn’t been abused, they so thoroughly believed that it had happened that they exhibited all the symptoms of legitimate victims. So for all intents and purposes, they
had
been abused. Which would piss me off if I were a legitimate
victim, and makes you wonder what exactly the point is of having any actual experiences if you can be just as affected by imaginary ones.
Nobody hit Gwen, or molested her, or anything like that, nor does she claim they did. Even when she’s acting delusional and paranoid she doesn’t say that. She knows her limits. She usually knows mine. Now I’m worried that she’s deliberately acting crazy just to prove something to me. But that she smashed her own knee is … well. I called Dad because I was worried that she was going to harm herself, and that ended up happening anyway.
After Dr. Ken, I took the subway downtown to Dr. Wang for acupuncture.
Dr. Wang doesn’t have any pictures of us on his walls, and as far as I know has never even been to the ballet. I explained about my neck and he took my pulse in about ten different places. His hands are hard but so incredibly smooth that I imagine his fingerprints to be without lines or ridges, just perfectly uniform ovals like the backs of small spoons. Sometimes Dr. Wang will ask questions or dispense wisdom, but today he just took my pulse and then did his tapping thing. He taps your whole body with his spoon fingers and when he finds a spot that interests him, he sticks a needle in. The first one went into my left hand, which made my right leg jump.
“Yes,” said Dr. Wang, inscrutably.
After about ten minutes of this, I wound up with about four needles in each hand, and none in my neck or shoulder where the actual pain is. But you can’t question Dr. Wang about these
things. You can’t flirt with him either so I tried a knowing nod, as if I realized the significance of all this.
“You are a bad breather,” he said.
“Well,” I said, “I’m not dead yet so I must have the basics down.”
Dr. Wang looked skeptical.
I breathed deeply through my nose. Dancers are good patients. We always do what we are told and we are very open to criticism.
He shut the door softly behind him and I listened to him pad around in his outer office and, judging from the rustling, read the newspaper. Dr. Wang doesn’t play gong music or burn incense or give you a pillow or anything lame like that. I rotated my ankles until they both popped, and closed my eyes. I false meditated—pretending I was clearing my mind while really planning what I was going to eat today and conducting an imaginary conversation between me and Andrew’s someone else, who for the purposes of my invention, I named Janice. I waited for Dr. Wang to come back in and unpin me, which after an eternity, he did.
As I was leaving his office, Marissa called me because Mia called out sick and they had to reshuffle casts and they needed me on tonight for Big Swan/Polish Princess. Since I thought I’d have the evening off I hadn’t told anyone about my neck, and you’re supposed to do that, so I just said yes and went back to the crime scene and took a really long hot shower. Luckily, I found that Gwen’s Advil bottle was filled with Vicodin, so I took two with me to the theater just in case.
About halfway through the very gentle warm-up I was giving
myself, I could no longer turn my head to the left without a new shooting pain running down my scapula. I broke a Vicodin into two pieces and swallowed one of them.
Roger stopped by my dressing room to check on me. “How’s the neck?”
“It feels like a yam stuck in a crimping iron.”