Authors: Meg Howrey
Because I didn’t want the final pas de deux with David to look as regretful as I felt, I didn’t dance it as well as I wanted to. I just danced the steps, the proper emotion arriving a little too late, when we were almost done, and then we were done.
And that’s it. That was the whole deal right there. Curtain down. Applause, applause. Curtain up. Applause, applause. Lights
lowered, stage cleared except for the corps de ballet, still ringed in the back. Soloists and principals ran on, in ascending order of importance. David and I came on last. David kissed my hand. We took our bow. I stepped forward and acknowledged Fumio, who had been conducting. I stepped back to David. We led the whole cast forward. They took their cue from me. We bowed. We stepped back. Curtain down. “Hold Company,” shouted our stage manager, gauging the applause. Okay, CURTAIN GOING UP. Everyone forward, everyone back. Lights lowered, but no, they were still applauding. Lights up. Bow. Okay, please stop. Okay, yes. It’s over. I know what’s coming. I am going home now. I am going home.
“I’m sorry,” David said, when the final curtain came down and we were leaving the stage. At first I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. I felt drugged with anticipation. At last something definite would happen. No more waiting. My arms felt tired, as if I had been holding them above my head for a very long time, hanging, hanging. I didn’t want to feel pain, though. I was worried about the pain. Well, I had enough Vicodin left that I could probably get myself to pass out with the rope around my neck and then I would just … fall.
“I was a little off,” David explained. “I don’t think we totally, you know, connected like it’s been in rehearsal. But it’s the first time we’ve performed together. It’ll be better on Saturday. You did great.”
“Oh,” I said. “No, that was me. That wasn’t you.”
“We’re a team,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “We’ll work it out.”
I didn’t want to think about this, so I just smiled. I smiled
and smiled, all the way up to my dressing room. Once there, with the door closed, I felt a heavy, almost sensuous wave of fatigue take over. I let it, languidly taking pins out of my hair, dropping them on the table. No more pins. There was a knock on the door. I stilled, leaning back in my chair, eyes closed.
Mara. Still in costume. I could see her through my half-closed eyes, see a swash of rose-pink fairy tulle.
“We wanted to make sure you’re okay,” she said. I opened my eyes a fraction more. Yes, Roger behind Mara. Bottom the yokel’s brown pants, daubed with orange.
“I’m okay,” I said. “I really am. Thank you for checking on me, though.”
“Mara told me,” said Roger. My eyes opened fractionally.
“About Wendy Hedges,” Mara said quickly. “About her dying.”
“So rough,” Roger said. “You must be really sad, baby.”
“It’s sad,” I said. “But you know, these things happen.”
“And with Andrew, and everything,” Roger continued. “And Gwen’s not here to—”
“We just didn’t think you should be alone,” Mara interrupted.
Friends. It’s not that I don’t have friends. But if I stick around I will lose these friends. I will watch them grow more anxious, then frustrated, then mad, then they will wish for it just to end somehow. If I were a nice person I would stick around long enough for them to get to that place, but I’m not a nice person.
“It’s been a long season,” I said. “I just need a good rest. I just need to go home and sleep and sleep.” I took a deep breath and exhaled a smile. “Sorry I was sort of wonky tonight.”
“Come out with us,” Roger said, moving from behind Mara’s tulle. “We’ll get a glass of wine. It will help you sleep.”
“Or tea?” Mara said. “You could come back to my place and I’ll make you some tea. Mike had to go to Boston on business. You could stay over.”
“Slumber party!” said Roger. “Come on, sweetie. I’ll rub your neck.”
Tricky.
“You guys are so sweet,” I said. Actually, annoyingly, I felt a headache coming on. God. A stupid headache. I wanted to feel good. I thought I should open my eyes all the way, but I was worried about looking at them. Then I tried and it wasn’t so bad. They were separate enough, removed enough now. They were lovely, whole, distinct people. They would be very sad. Very sad. But they would go on perfectly fine. I could see them, being perfectly fine. And it might even be helpful for them. The world is so utterly, utterly sad that it’s useful to have very concrete things to be sad about, from time to time. There, and there, and
that
thing there. Feel bad about that. Cry for me and it might keep you from crying about the misery that is everything. And people say killing yourself is a selfish act. I faked a yawn.
“A long hot shower,” I said. “That is my greatest desire right now. I’ve been all tense and weird, I know, but I actually think I got some of that out.” I turned to Mara. “Thank you for letting me go off earlier. I just needed to get that off my chest to someone.” I tried to ignore the fact that as soon as I said “long hot shower” I really did desire a long, hot shower. I needed to keep my head in the game. Eyes on the prize.
“Will you call me tomorrow?” Mara asked.
“Call us,” Roger added.
“I will,” I said. “I promise I will.”
“Promise” is a word like any other. Words can go in any direction. It’s only the body that is incapable of lying.
“Now, shoo,” I said, making a funny face. “Shoo, chickens. I need to get out of this flummery.”
As last words go, they weren’t great, but time was essential. Roger leaned over and gave me a loud smacking kiss on the cheek.
“I TiVoed the dance show,” he said. “It was the final tonight. None of us are on tomorrow night, so you are both coming over and watching it with me. I’m making risotto.”
“Awesome,” I said.
Mara lingered in the doorway. “Call me if you need me?” She made the gesture of helplessness, knowing I wouldn’t.
I acknowledged her gesture with a queenly nod. She left.
Reassuring other people that you are not going to kill yourself is not that hard. Who wouldn’t want to stick around for risotto? Unless, of course, the thought of eating and swallowing and dishes in the sink and the fact that you have to keep on eating and swallowing and putting dishes in the sink seemed so Herculean a task, so laden with so many gestures and sounds and smells that you just couldn’t face it anymore. All the things before and after the event that is life.
Keith. My brother, Keith. I couldn’t think. If I kept thinking then there would always be something, some reason. I had one more performance left of the season. Just one more. It would be cleaner to do it then. I could have a little more time to make
everyone feel it wasn’t their fault. No. It didn’t matter. I had to think about myself. That was the important thing.
I took off Titania and hung her up, threw my tights and g-string into the net bag labeled “K. Crane.” Someone would have to remove all the labels from my costumes. Would the next girl figure out that the slanting rectangle of tape on the door was something she should touch for luck?
Another knock on my door. This time I felt fine about answering it, because it seemed almost like a pleasant game. I felt proud of my secret, the thing tucked up inside me that was all mine. Just mine.
This time it was Bryce, in street clothes, but with her face still full of makeup, an enormous dance bag on her shoulder. She held a photograph in her hand.
“I was wondering,” she said, blushing, “if you could sign the picture of us? My dad got it printed for me. See?” She held out the photo. In photographs I either look very pretty or like I just had a stroke. I was pleased to see that this was a pretty one. Since Bryce and I were both wearing stage makeup in the picture, we looked somewhat similar. Almost like mother and daughter.
“We look almost like sisters,” said Bryce. “Sort of?”
“Come in,” I said, sitting back down at my dressing table. Bryce’s eyes took in everything on my table: the little dish I keep my jewelry in, the makeup spread out across a towel, deodorant, spray bottles of water and holding fixture for my hair, brush, comb, geisha pins and bobby pins and rubber bands, dental floss for sewing ribbons, a tomato pin cushion, the antique silver hand mirror from James, balms and powders and lotions and adhesive tape and toenail clippers and perfume.
I watched her move on to the photographs and postcards and notes taped against the mirror and tacked onto the walls beside it, my costume hanging on the rack, my lineup of pointe shoes against the wall. Her eyes returned to the dressing table. I could see her wanting to touch things, a little girl wanting to try on Mommy’s pearls, spray her perfume, unscrew her lipstick. But Bryce has a mother.
“I have a marker,” Bryce said, handing me a black Crayola pen. I admit, the pen almost got me for a moment, but I carried on.
“I start pointe this summer,” Bryce said, leaning against my dressing table. “For real, I mean. But I got my shoes last week and I’ve already been practicing in my room. They don’t hurt at
all
. I don’t need the toe covers.”
I wrote carefully across the bottom of the photo, “To the most beautiful fairy, Bryce, with love from Kate Crane.”
I handed it to her, watched her read the words. Her left cheek dimples when she smiles. I was both glad and sorry to have noticed this.
“Put something in your shoes, though,” I said. “Because when you start working in them, they might hurt a little, till you get used to it. It hurts a lot if you get a blister. Don’t pop your blisters, even if people tell you to. They’ll take twice as long to heal. Tape your toes but take the tape off after class. Oh, and Epsom salts. Epsom salts and alcohol work better than any of that crap they have in the drugstore aisle.”
Bryce took this in very seriously, as well she might. It was probably my last chance to be of any use. I felt very proud of myself. Socrates dispensing wisdom before gargling some hemlock.
Bryce glanced up at the pictures surrounding my mirror.
“I have an extra copy? Of our picture? If you want one, I mean?”
“Sure,” I said, high on my own deathbed benevolence. “You’ll have to bring me one.”
But Bryce dug into her bag and produced a manila envelope.
“You’ll have to sign it for me,” I said, handing her the marker. And then get out of here, I thought. Keep walking and don’t look back. But Bryce was hesitating now, wondering what to say.
“You can just sign your name if you like,” I suggested.
“You are my favorite dancer,” Bryce wrote, and then added, “ever! Love, Bryce Elizabeth Ford.”
“Bryce Elizabeth Ford,” I said. “Great stage name.”
Since she was still watching me, I stood up, untacked a postcard next to the mirror, and hung the picture up.
“Okay, I’ve got to get going,” I said. “Thank you, Bryce!”
“Me too,” she said. “Bye, Kate. See you Friday!”
She actually skipped out of the room.
I sat back down. I needed to get the makeup off before it cracked into my face. Or should I just powder down and take off the lashes? I didn’t want to imagine what my face might look like later. Maybe I should start taking Vicodin now? No, later. I needed to get set up.
Another knock on my door. Probably Rani, to collect my laundry bag.
No. Marius.
“Oh, good,” he said, leaning elegantly across the doorway. “You’re still here. Come and have a drink? I want to talk to you.”
No, no, no, you cannot talk to me, Marius. You cannot want to talk to me.
“My god,” Marius said. “Don’t look so—oh, it’s not about tonight! Tonight was fine, didn’t you think? I have some notes for you. Little things. You’re coming too far downstage on the bourrées, you need to cheat that circle with the temps levés a little, and I think you and David should run the Act II pas at some point on Friday, in costume, because it looked to me like he was fighting with your wings? Something. And a little too precious at the beginning, but that’s probably more my choreography than you. Don’t be afraid to put the Kate Crane stamp on it, it’s what I expect.”
A million, a hundred million reasons to stay alive, the immense pain I would be inflicting on my family, on my friends, on a ballet student who just got pointe shoes, all the horrible and seductive possibilities of life, and the first crack in my resolve comes from the thought that I need to fix the bourrées?
“It’s not what I want to talk to you about, though,” Marius said. “Come and have a drink, if you please. You look like you could use one. I know I could.”
Twenty minutes later I was seated next to Marius at a tiny Spanish tapas place in Soho where evidently he is well known. In the cab ride downtown, Marius had mostly been on the phone with a board member. I had looked out the window. No, of course I wasn’t going to kill myself. Not that I still didn’t want to, especially when I considered the extreme melodrama of my
recent behavior. At one point, Marius touched my knee, and when I looked at him he made the gesture of apology for the phone call. I had almost forgotten he was there.
This was harder to do at the restaurant, as we sat very close together, at a corner table. I’ve sat next to Marius plenty of times, though never in candlelight, and never after a fantasized near-death experience. I felt self-conscious about being alone with him in a place where he, possibly, took women, and where my obvious ballerina-ness must mark me as one of “his” dancers. I felt self-conscious about still being conscious.
“Your eyes are bright,” Marius said.
“I have a little bit of a headache.”
“Eat something. Have an olive.”
I ate an olive.
“So.” Marius selected a piece of cheese. “Did you have plans for the summer?”
“In a manner of speaking.” My body felt equal parts lethargic and restless. But then, I wasn’t on any drugs.
“Can they be changed? You’re not booked anywhere?”
“No. Things have been sort of … I’m possibly in a transitional moment.” I thought of desire. A desire to have a long, hot shower. A desire to go to Roger’s tomorrow and laugh at a stupid show and eat risotto. A desire to do the last pas de deux with David properly in
Dream
. A desire, still, in flares, to put an end to all desire.