Authors: Meg Howrey
My mother called me. Gwen is doing better. She is on a different medication. She was having trouble moving well, her
joints were stiff, possibly from the previous medication, possibly from muscular atrophy from not dancing.
“Is she in pain?” I asked.
“Your father can explain it better. Something about dopamine and if you have too much, that’s bad. But it also helps a person’s body move fluidly. So if you take away the dopamine, it might hurt their, what do you call it?”
“I don’t know. Grace?”
“Something like that. I’d like to see her get off medication entirely.”
“How can that be the goal?” I asked. “You wouldn’t say that to a diabetic. You wouldn’t say, ‘Well, the goal is to get you off insulin.’ ”
“The new medication is much better,” Mom said. “She’s taking class now, with the Grand Rapids Ballet. I think that’s helping more than anything. Some normalities!”
“Well, that’s good,” I said. I couldn’t picture any of this. I tried imaging Gwen doing better under new medication, or even a Gwen who would consent to
taking
medication. A Gwen chemically engineered to be normal. It was like having a dream where you know who someone is but they don’t look at all like themselves.
“Now, let’s see,” Mom chirped. “You’ve got two more weeks left of the season?”
“About that, yeah.”
“And so then you have six weeks off …”
“Yeah.”
I’ve been avoiding thinking about the break. I should’ve tried to book myself some guest artist gigs or something. What the hell was I going to do? Gwen and I usually went home for
a week when we had the long break. Andrew and I had talked about going to Paris, seeing Keith play in the French Open.
“I should probably come there, right? If Gwen is okay with that. You probably want me to come there?”
“We can talk about it when the time comes,” my mom said.
“That’s almost now, though,” I said, feeling pinned somewhere in my rib cage.
“So, what’s new in
your
life?” Mom asked.
I flailed about on my pin and I kept talking even after I knew Mom’s interest was gone. I didn’t say the thing she was wanting to hear. If she was wanting. If any of us knows what it is we want anymore.
Keith called me. He had to pull out of the tournament in Madrid because of a strained gastrocnemius. He wants to be ready for Rome, and then the French Open. He’s frustrated. Clay is his surface, a chance to boost his ranking. He can’t be injured for Roland Garros.
“Are you in pain?” I asked.
“Nah. It’s more a question of like, holding up. And I don’t want it on my mind, you know. I don’t want to be thinking about it.”
“So maybe you should totally rest before the French?”
“It’s like, a mind thing. I have to stay mentally tough, you know? I think of you guys a lot.”
“What guys?” I asked.
“You and Gwen. It’s this thing I’m working on with Gary. We’re collecting like, images of heroism. Watching all these tapes.”
Gary is Keith’s coach. Gary is way more intimate with my brother than I am. But then, I’ve always had Gwen.
“So I was telling Gary, remember when I came to New York and saw you guys in
Swan Lake
that one time?”
“Years ago, you mean?”
“Yeah. At the end of your thing, you held this pose, and Dad had given me the binoculars so I could see really close. And you were both just like, totally drenched in sweat. Standing on one toe with the other leg all up. It looked fucking hard! And then I put the binoculars down and it was like—
bam!
—it looked easy. Like, no one else watching would know that you were trying hard.”
“Oh. Huh.”
“I always tell people like, ‘Yeah, my sisters are ballet dancers, and that’s like an extreme sport, you know?’ ”
“I’m really proud of you, Keith,” I said, trying to concentrate. “You know that, right?”
Keith laughed a little bit at this. It was Dad’s laugh, the one he gives after he puts down his violin and you tell him how amazing he just played.
“I was going to ask Mom and Dad to come,” he said. “You know, to Roland Garros. I know it’s France and everything and Dad is working, but I kind of … I kind of wanted them to come.”
“Did you ask them?” I always assumed that Keith was like Gwen and me in this respect, so totally into his performance in a private way that it didn’t much matter who was watching.
“I feel bad, ’cause you know … Gwen and everything.”
“Have you talked to Gwen?” I held my breath, waiting.
“Just stupid stuff. Jokes. Is she really okay?”
I shook my head, knowing he couldn’t see this.
“You there?” Keith’s voice sounded really far away. Probably
because I had dropped the phone onto the bed and was sort of swaying over it.
“Kate?”
I knelt on the bed and curled myself around and in between everything on it.
“I’m here,” I said, picking up the phone. “Listen. Keith. Don’t worry about Gwen. She’s going to be fine. You just concentrate on you right now. This is your time, buddy.”
“Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. It’s kind of weird, right, because you have to seize the moment, but you also gotta be
in
the moment.”
“It’s better when you’re just doing it,” I agreed. “The hard part is all the stuff before you’re doing it, and all the stuff after you’re doing it.”
“Right,” he says, sounding relieved. “That’s what I mean.”
“Life,” I say, clarifying.
“Yeah,” Keith agreed.
But if life is what can be called the time you spend preparing for the event, and then dealing with how the event went, then what would you call the event itself? Is that not life? Is that not the best part? Except sometimes, of course, it isn’t. Sometimes it’s the place where you injure yourself. Sometimes it’s the horrible mirror of your inadequacy. Sometimes it’s just sweating and running from one side of the stage, or the court, to the other, trying not to fall down, or start screaming.
“Life,” I said again, uncertainly.
“Fucking life, man!” Keith laughed.
David dumped his bag down behind the barre and gave me a kiss. I thought, I can’t possibly make small talk with David.
“Isn’t today a day off for you?” I asked.
David pulled on an extra T-shirt.
“Yeah, but I had yesterday off. We went to Home Depot. And Bed Bath & Beyond. And then I played Princesses with Jayla. Which was cool because I got to lie on the couch and just wave a wand at Jayla every few minutes. Thank god she’s still too young to be telling friends at school that Daddy is a Fairy King. Anyway, you’re not on tonight, are you?”
I shook my head.
“What are you doing today?”
I shrugged.
“Awesome,” said David.
Class began. And IN, IN, IN, and OUT. And IN, IN, IN, and OUT.
There were enough company members that Gareth had us all go as one group in the center. We were celebrities there in the dingy studio, sweat fogging the windows, the sounds of taxis and buses from two floors below punctuating the pianist’s plonk-plonk-plonking of the stuff all accompanists play for class. When I wasn’t working, I watched those two serious students, who were both very good. Like whippets: lean, muscled, focused. Watchful. I glanced over at the group of girls from the dressing room, who weren’t bad, but who were soft and sloppy. The little Thai girl was a turner, though. Strawberry-gum girl had nice feet. Oh, what will become of us all?
• • •
David, Klaus, and Tyler showed off—for one another, for the four or five other men in class who will never jump like they do, for the girls, who all gawked. Klaus tied a bandanna around his blondness. David had his eyes half closed. Tyler removed three layers to reveal a Ramones T-shirt. Gillian touched me on the shoulder and we whispered a few exchanges, I said something funny as I always do, she laughed soundlessly. Gillian had a thin gold bracelet on her wrist. I think she always wears it. I’m not sure. I’ve danced with her for six years and I can’t tell you. The universe is filled with things I’ve never noticed.
The crazy lady with the rainbow leg warmers was there today too, Kleenex poking out of the V of her leotard. I smiled at her but she did not smile back. The features of her face were drawn tightly up and out, and she jerked woodenly across the floor, a stringless marionette. She was once a little girl. We were all little girls once.
Leaving, I saw the students pulling on pairs of identical Ugg boots. They would go get Starbucks, and that scone thing they were talking about. It’s totally possible to walk completely away from dance and go get Starbucks. Not everybody can, but it is possible. Preferable? I can’t say. I didn’t envy them their freedom, though. None of us is getting out of here alive.
I was early to meet Mara at Verdi Cafe. Actually, Mara and Roger. I asked Mara if it was okay if he joined. Partly because Mara’s been looking at me in this worried way all week and also because I needed the extra voices. The more noise, the better.
On that note, I took half a Vicodin. It’s not so much that I need it for performance, now. In fact, it’s making me too paranoid
and nervous to dance on it. I need it more to start my day, to occupy space in my brain until I can get to performance, and then to make artificial chatter with me after so I don’t have to go back to Gwen’s alone. I thought I wouldn’t need it for meeting Mara and Roger and all, but it was raining, they were late, I didn’t have my iPod, and I can’t read now. Obviously everything in the newspaper is awful but even a stray sentence from a
New Yorker
left on the adjacent table—When
he came home from work, he would make himself a snack and eat it by himself in the kitchen, standing up
—I mean, what the hell? Stop right there! You have already plunged me into a fathomless gloom from whence there is no solace and no return, an endless twilight of loss and pathetic aspirations, a forever-empty kitchen where sad little snacks are patiently, lovelessly eaten.
Even imaginary nice sentences:
The sun shone. Beauty is all around. My sister is my greatest inspiration
. Isn’t there something inherently heartbreaking about all of those?
“Sorry, sorry.” Mara bustled in, dropping her bag on the empty seat. Her coat was wet. She folded up an umbrella.
When it rains, Mara’s hair goes into these mad tendrils, all around her face. She looked like a Victorian paper doll, round faced and ringleted, pink cheeked.
“Roger’s late too,” I said. “What busy lives you all lead. I’ve been sitting here for ten minutes twiddling my thumbs. Twiddling, twiddling away. It’s like tweeting, only more existential. Nothing actually gets sent.”
Mara smiled indulgently, but only with her mouth. From the deliberate way she was handling her umbrella, rearranging the silverware, placing her palms against the menu, I could see
we were on the verge of a talk. I thought we pretty much covered things at the Russian Baths, but apparently not.
“First off, we are ordering you some food,” she said.
“I was just thinking we should eat,” I said, talking fast, not really minding what I was saying. “I was thinking about salmon, you know, lox and bagels. I had never heard of lox in Michigan. It seemed so exotic when I came here. The most exotic we ever got with food was port-wine cheddar cheese at Christmas. It comes in like, a tub. It’s fucking delicious. Crackers and port-wine cheddar cheese.”
I moved Mara’s umbrella out of range so I wouldn’t have to look at the little metal rods sticking out from the fabric. Those things could just fly out and hit you in the eye at any time.
“You need to eat,” Mara said. I could feel the overture to Adult Women Conversation beginning.
“
We
need to eat!” I grabbed the menu. “We’re both completely gaunt. It looks better on you, though. I look like a slightly aerobicized Jane Eyre. But you need vitamins and shit for baby making! Hey, did I tell you I ran into Andrew?”
Mara shook her head. If I had managed to stop shrieking and rolling my eyes, it could almost have passed for typical gossip between girls. I needed Roger to show up though, make it a party, interrupt me, tell bigger, more embarrassing stories. My right leg thrummed up and down, under the table.
“Oh god, Mara, it was so ridiculous. It was early in the morning and I was coming out of Zabar’s—the coffee shop part? And I had my iPod on and he was all, ‘What are you listening to?’ And I was a complete mess. No makeup. Morning breath. And I … I … well, actually I guess it doesn’t really matter at all.”
I grabbed a fork and tapped the table with the tines. No, none of it mattered. That was good, actually. If none of it mattered then you didn’t have to feel bad about a sad man making a sad snack for himself in a sad kitchen.
“No, come on,” Mara said, putting her hand over mine and the fork. “Of course it matters. You haven’t seen him since the breakup. You’re allowed to be upset, Kate.”
“I mean it in a really positive way.” I turned the fork so the tines were sticking into my palm. “It’s actually really liberating. Nothing matters except what you decide to make matter and so I could just say—poof—I don’t matter to Andrew and I don’t and it’s all nothing. And he doesn’t matter to me. And all the little awkward clumsy little mechanical machinations? All those things we do in our minds? None of those matter either. Especially those. So it’s not a sad thing like, ‘Oh boo-hoo, the world has no meaning, what a drag,’ but more like, ‘Hey! Nothing matters! So I can just …’ ”
I used my free hand to make a gesture.
“You can just … what?” Mara asked.
I guess my gesture needed program notes. It could have been the gesture for the end of existence, or it could have been the gesture for carrying on. Luckily the waitress arrived.
Under Mara’s stern watch, I ordered a Cobb salad. “Bacon!” I said, defensively. “Blue cheese! I’m like a wild woman here.”
“Are you sleeping at all?” Mara lifted my hand off the fork, turning it over.
“Read my palm,” I said, thrusting my hand up. I did it a little too fast though, and with too much strength. I almost hit her nose. I think I was almost trying to hit her. She dropped my hand.
“Sorry, too much coffee.” I shoved my hand under my leg for safety.