Authors: Meg Howrey
“You know,” Marius said, leaning back, “you were very good in
Leaves
. Tudor would’ve loved you.”
I ate another olive. I wondered if Marius was going to tell me, once again, that he sees something deep in me and he
wants me to work harder and get more confident. In some ways, the moment that I planned on killing myself was as confident as I have ever been.
“Anyway,” Marius continued. “I have a job for you, if you want it.”
It was regret, really, that I was feeling. I didn’t quite want to leave my death behind me. It felt so unfinished.
Wait.
“You have a job for me?”
“I’m setting
Dream
in Amsterdam,” Marius said. “This summer. July. I want you to come with me.”
I selected a piece of cheese. Marius watched me eat it.
“Why?” I asked, finally.
“To have an illicit affair with me,” he said. I choked on the last swallow of cheese. Marius motioned to a waiter to refill my water glass.
“To help me set the ballet,” he said, when I’d recovered. “I need an assistant. Claudette is going a few weeks ahead, to teach the corps sections and the children, but then the woman really needs a holiday, and I’d rather have you, anyway. You’re more fun, when you’re not being irritating. You are a good coach, and I trust you. And it would be practice for you. For us. To see if we work well together. In that sense.”
I needed something to do with my hands, so I reached for the bottle of wine on the table. Marius took it from me and filled my glass.
“Well, I’m not going to pay you very much,” Marius said. “So don’t get excited. It’s a sort of preliminary internship, really.”
“An internship.”
I put down my glass and looked at Marius. Actually, because
of the candlelight and the strangeness and the rush of alcohol and some weird sort of adrenaline, I squinted at him.
“No one dances forever,” Marius said. “Not that I think your career is on the decline. If you stay healthy you should be able to keep dancing for a while, and I want you to do Hagar in
Pillar of Fire
next season, so please stay healthy. But, yes, eventually, I see a place for you on the artistic staff. I want you thinking toward that, not toward whether I’m going to promote you. I have no plans to promote you, by the way.”
I remembered a book that Keith used to always want read to him when he was little. It was called
Fortunately, Unfortunately
. A little boy had a series of calamities that were then abated by strokes of good fortune. As I recall, he fell off a cliff (unfortunately), but there was an ocean below him to break his fall (fortunately). There were sharks in the water (unfortunately), but (fortunately) he could swim. I couldn’t remember how it ended.
“I need someone to talk to,” Marius said, abruptly.
We looked at each other.
“Well, I don’t need someone, but it would be nice. It can be very lonely, this job.” Marius brought his arms back and folded them across his chest. I watched him slide his watch up and down his wrist.
“It’s just an idea I had,” Marius said. “A little plan. You’ll come to Amsterdam and we’ll set the ballet. And I want to do a new
Cinderella
. I’ve always felt the score was more interesting than the ballet, I want to do something darker, more Grimm, very theatrical. A year from now, next spring season. There isn’t really a role for you in it, so maybe you could assist in rehearsals. Well, before, actually. I’d like to talk it over with you. I’m
not entirely sure how it would work. Perhaps it was premature to talk about that. I always get like this at the end of a season. It’s satisfying, but there’s always something that’s not satisfying, or I want something more. I tend to chase diamonds when I’m in this mood. That’s you, Kate.”
“I’m a diamond?”
Marius leaned back in his chair again and studied me.
“It comes and goes with you. It came back these past two months. The intensity. The sharp edges. The desire.”
“Marius,” I said. “Marius. I’ve been a mess this season. I’ve been”—to my horror, I felt my throat closing in—“I’m a total mess.”
Marius, because he is Marius, produced an actual handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to me.
“Can you pull yourself together by July?” Marius asked. He put his hand on my back then, very gently. The combination of incuriosity and tenderness was just what I needed.
“I’m incredibly hungry,” I said. “I need more food.”
“Is that a ‘Yes, thank you, Marius, I accept your generous offer’?”
I nodded, and then started to cry a little more. I was, undeniably, a total mess. I was likely to be messy again in the future. It seemed unavoidable. I would have to do many difficult things, including, probably, unclasp my sister’s hands from around my back. And find some way to pry my own from hers. I would have to grieve for Wendy. I would have to dismiss my invisible movie audience. I would have to participate in all parts of this world, not just the event, but the thing before and after. Life, or whatever.
Marius put me in a cab. I had a lot of things to think about, and I thought about none of them. I thought about what Marius had told me of
Cinderella
. I hummed the music softly to myself. Well, actually it got pretty loud by the end. One of the good things about New York City is that you can bellow Prokofiev at two in the morning without causing your cabdriver any alarm whatsoever.
Outside Gwen’s apartment, I faltered. I didn’t want to go in there. It was too soon, too much. In the end, I managed it by going directly from the front door to the bathroom without turning on any lights. I brushed my teeth and washed my face in darkness, still humming the overture to
Cinderella
. I felt my way to the bedroom, shoved everything on the bed to the floor, and kicked the comforter after it. I lay there. Nothing.
So I got up. I turned on all the lights and got a plastic bag from under the kitchen sink and walked around the apartment, unpeeling all the masking-tape Xs and stuffing them into the
bag. Without looking at it, I added the rope, and moved the chair back to the desk. I undid the locks on the fire escape window and crawled out on the landing. I served the bag, overhand, into the alley below. It landed very softly, which surprised me.
I took a long, hot shower and when I crawled back into bed I made a few snow angels. And then I fell asleep.
I saw Wendy Griston Hedges one more time before she died. It was the day after the final performance of
Dream
. At that point, she was sliding in and out of consciousness, but I described the performance to her anyway. It wasn’t perfect, but I think David and I got the Act II pas de deux right. A few times Wendy opened her eyes, and once she smiled. I knew she wasn’t smiling at me, but I was glad I was there to see it. She died the next day.
That was one year ago today. In her honor, I’ve come to the Met to pay a visit to Ugolino and his sons. It’s very peaceful in the sculpture garden, all this white marble and light. And Ugolino sits in a storm of violence and wasted fury, his sons coiled around him like serpents, pleading, dying.
I never got a chance to ask Wendy what it was, exactly, about this particular piece that satisfied her so much. But I think things like this pick up where words fail us. I’d like to think that dance can do that too.
A week after Wendy died, her niece called me to say that it was Wendy’s wish that I should have the painting of Theseus at Delos. It took about a month to come to me. I’m pretty sure Wendy’s family had it appraised, to make sure I wasn’t running off with something of great value. Wendy left a large bequest to the company too.
It’s hard to miss somebody. I don’t mean that it’s difficult to feel sad at the loss of somebody. I mean that it’s hard to feel like you’re missing them properly, or purely, or with the right significance. So many other emotions attach to it.
I did go home to Michigan. Just for two weeks because I was looking for a new apartment and there were things to work on for taking
Dream
to Amsterdam. But I wanted to go, and my being there with Gwen meant that Mom and Dad were able to go see Keith play the best tennis of his life at the French Open. He lost in the semis, but everybody agreed that he showed a lot of heart. Gwen and I watched it on television.
Gwen took class every day I was there. I didn’t, because I wanted to give my neck a thorough rest. That’s what I told her, but really I was scared to watch her dance. I was scared she wouldn’t look the same.
So I drove Gwen to class, and to her therapy sessions, and we did a giant jigsaw puzzle together, and cooked food, and at night we stretched and watched movies or television. Mom had told me that “sticking to a routine” was best, and I think it was best for both of us. In a way, it seemed like we were both convalescing.
But in the end, I did see her dance. She asked me to come to the studios, at the Grand Rapids Ballet, and watch her run through the first-act solo from
Giselle
. I couldn’t refuse.
I sat on the floor. Gwen, as Giselle, pantomimed opening up the windows of her little cottage, smelling the air, running out the front door, dancing for the sheer joy of being young and alive and in love. A peasant girl who refuses to believe her heart is weak, who doesn’t know that her lover is promised to someone else. A girl who will, by the end of Act I, go mad and throw herself onto the point of a sword.
When she was done, I stopped the CD player, and saw half a dozen students from the school pressed up against the windows of the door. Transfixed. Awed. I knew how they felt. But they couldn’t know my relief. Or my pride.
When I turned back, Gwen was sitting on the floor, legs stretched out in front of her, massaging her knee.
“It’s a little stiff, still,” she said.
I nodded. I had seen the scars on her bare leg, still red around the edges. I went and sat next to her.
“Beautiful,” I said. “Absolutely beautiful.”
“You mean it?”
“Yep.”
“Want to see me do the mad scene?” The self-mockery caught me unawares, and I didn’t know how to react.
“Relax.” She nudged me with her leg. “I don’t think you have to
be
crazy to act crazy. I mean, look at you.”
We laughed then, a little.
“Gwen …” I hesitated.
“Don’t give Mom a hard time,” she said, abruptly. “She’s the easiest person for me to be around right now. She’s so convinced that there’s nothing wrong with me that she doesn’t watch what she says. Dad’s been playing the most awful chirpy music on the violin, but Mom’s like, ‘Oh, look at what Mrs.
Hendrick’s got in her yard! Garden gnomes! That woman is out of her mind!’ ”
“Oh, shit, really?”
Gwen smiled.
“VI-sor JU-deeee,” we sang together.
Later that night, as we lay on the couch together watching highlights from the day’s tennis, Gwen asked me, very shyly, if she seemed okay. Did she seem different?
“I think you seem good,” I said, carefully. “How do you … how do you feel?”
Gwen sat up, straightened her legs in front of her, flexed and pointed her feet.
“You know, they don’t actually know what’s wrong with me,” she said. “That’s why it’s taking time, to get the medication right. I’m not like, psychotic. Although I got a few of the questions wrong, on the test for that.”
“There’s a test?”
“Oh, Kate.” She leaned over her legs. “You wouldn’t believe some of the things they ask you. Like, say the first thing that comes into your mind. What do apples and bananas have in common?”
“Um, they both have skin?”
“That’s what I said! And that’s wrong! You’re supposed to say that they’re both fruit!”
“Oh. Well, duh.”
“That’s what I said!”
“So we’re both a little psychotic. Or that test was made up by really boring people.”
“I’ve met some psychotic people,” Gwen said. “They’re sort of boring. They always talk about the same thing. I don’t think I’m like that.”
“No. You’re not like that.”
Gwen folded her legs under her chin. I had brought her cat Clive with me to Michigan, and he liked to station himself on the back of the couch. Clive mewed and head-butted her shoulder.
“And you know,” Gwen reached around and knuckled Clive’s head, “even before, it went away. The bad feeling. On its own.”
“Yeah. But it always came back.” I said it gently.
“I don’t know if it’s gone right now because of the medication and the therapy,” Gwen said. “Or because it’s just … gone for a little while and it’s going to come back.”
I held myself back from telling her that she had to stay on the medication. I felt like the sentence was there anyway, hanging between us like a banner.
“So how
do
you feel,” I asked. “In general?”
“Fine when I’m in class,” she said. “The rest of the time, I don’t know. Good, I guess. But, it’s sort of like …”
Gwen held out a flat palm. With her other hand she mimed being on pointe, dancing on her palm.
“It’s sort of like I can’t quite feel the floor. And I know that’s supposed to be better, because I don’t get so upset and I don’t feel so scared. I don’t have that feeling like I can’t stop everything from coming
in
, but. I don’t know. It kind of feels like …”
Gwen dropped her palm and danced her other hand across the air, her fingers shaped like a pointed foot, searching for a floor that wasn’t there.
And I think I was able to feel her, then. And then able, in my imperfect way, to grieve for her.
But I didn’t know how to talk about the future. Neither of us
did. It came out awkwardly, in a rush of half-truths, while we waited to pick Mom and Dad up from the airport.
“So you’re going to Amsterdam with Marius,” Gwen said. “That’ll be fun.”
I knew she was trying to sound normal, and it pained me. Gwen hates traveling.
“I was thinking,” I said. “Maybe I should sublet your apartment while I’m away? There are always dancers coming for the summer program at the school.”
Gwen looked down at the floor, frowning slightly.
“Not to a bunch of girls,” I said hastily. “Maybe one girl and her mom, or something. I could put anything you wanted in storage, so it would be safe.”