The Four Temperaments (12 page)

GINNY

D
ancers knew
all about pain. It was like an old friend or a member of the family. There were different kinds of pain. Pain in muscles, pain in tendons, pain in joints. Some kinds of pain stabbed, others throbbed. Then there was pain in your feet, which seemed to encompass everything, a kind of lightning rod for all the other pain. And those first weeks and months dancing on pointe revealed a special kind of pain, maybe because it was so unfamiliar.

After the
jumps Wes told Ginny and several other girls in her class to take off the soft leather ballet slippers they all wore and exchange them for the hard, satin-covered pointe shoes. Since they had been thinking about this, waiting for this, talking about this, for months, they were primed. The satin shoes—theirs were pink; Ginny's, black—came out of the narrow cardboard boxes and were examined, exclaimed over, compared. Some of the other girls had fancy little rabbitskin pouches to line the insides of the shoes. Ginny had a box of Red Cross lamb's wool, purchased at the drugstore by her mother. She wrapped a bit of it carefully around her toes, and slipped on the shoes, which were hard and ugly, at least while she was standing, and not dancing, in them. Tying the ribbons around the ankles improved things somewhat. Then Wes sent the girls back to the barre, where they did their first relevés onto pointe. What a sensation. Ginny felt she was being lifted up to a place she had never been before, her whole body, legs, arms, everything, impossibly balanced on two small earthbound spots. The contact with the floor was so slight that she could fool herself into thinking she didn't need it at all, that she would rise right up into the air itself. “Good work, Ginny,” she heard Wes murmur as he passed her.

That first day, Wes didn't push too hard. They did relevés, some échappés and then some bourrées, while still holding on to the barre. Ginny heard the other girls complain about the pain, but she didn't feel it at all, at least not then. Even after the lesson, she stayed at the barre by herself, going over the simple movements, unable to believe the way she felt when she was just a few more inches off the ground. It was only later, when she removed the shoes and the lamb's wool, that she saw her tights were plastered to her toes with blood: she had danced them raw.

At home, Rita studied Ginny's toes, with their flayed, peeled-off skin. She had Ginny immerse her feet in all different sorts of solutions, and fed her aspirin and ibuprofen tablets as if they were candy. Ginny's toes still burned and stung, keeping her awake most of the night. And they hurt the next day too, but she went to class anyway, and when Wes said it was time for pointe work again, Ginny was the first one to have her shoes on. That day, the relevés and échappés hurt so much that she really did see stars, but she didn't care, she kept doing them anyway. If pain was what it took to leave the ground and be up there like that, then pain was what she'd have to accept.

Of course, it didn't always hurt so much. Ginny learned that pain, at least physical pain, was something she got used to, something she could control. But the kind of pain that starts inside, where it can't be seen or found, that was another thing entirely. And that was the sort of pain Ginny felt in those days and weeks after Thanksgiving, when Gabriel first kissed her.

She kept
the note he had given her tucked inside her dance bag so she could take it out and reread it whenever she wanted, which was often. At first, she was expectant and giddy, waiting for this phone call, this message to arrive. But, after a while, when it didn't, she felt deflated, like a bicycle tire that had just gone over a piece of a broken beer bottle. She called the telephone company to make sure her phone was working. Still nothing. She began to feel sick from all the waiting and wondering. But Ginny couldn't call him, though she supposed finding him would have been easy enough. She didn't want to risk talking to his wife and she didn't know the name of the place where he worked. She considered writing to him, but what if Penelope was the sort to steam open a letter and read it? Better not take any chances.

It used to be that Ginny would listen to the other girls talk about men when they were all in the dressing room, getting ready for class or rehearsal. How she had looked down on them. As if any of that mattered when you were a dancer. And now here she was, in the same boat, only she had no one to tell about it, since she had no friends here in New York. The person Ginny really wanted to talk to was Oscar, and that was clearly not going to be possible. They both took great care to avoid each other during this period. If they met in one of the backstage elevators or hallways, he quickly looked down at the floor, or turned his head away. But not so quickly that she couldn't see that hurt look in his eyes. She even felt sorry for him. But what could she do? Gabriel was looming between them, making it impossible for them even to say hello, let alone have one of those long, soulful talks she had come to like so much. So she went to class and rehearsals, and performed onstage all the while thinking of Gabriel, willing him to call her. And then he did.

He told her when he would be in New York and where she was to meet him. When they hung up, she kissed the receiver. He was coming to see her. Soon.

Now the pain vanished, as if by magic, and in its place was the most wonderful kind of anticipation. Gabriel was coming, and Ginny was getting ready for a solo in
The Nutcracker.
She danced especially well during that time; when Erik taught company class, as he did sometimes, he would pay her compliments, the sort that made the others, even the principals and soloists, look at her again. After all, when the artistic director of the company told a member of the corps de ballet that the line of her arabesque was perfect, everyone else in the room took a second look.

Christmas came and went. Mama called her in the morning, to see if she had opened the packages she sent. Ginny thanked her profusely for everything: the cans of chicory roast coffee from the Café du Monde in New Orleans. The two pairs of leg warmers and the black lamb's wool cardigan to wear to class on winter mornings. And the Barbie doll; she couldn't forget to say thank you for that.

Every year, since Ginny was about eight, Rita had given her an elaborate Barbie at Christmas. Though Ginny despised most dolls—babies with fat cheeks, toddlers with dimpled knees—she did have a weakness for Barbie. More than the body, Ginny was in love with the doll's face. She loved the serene expression, the angelic smile. No matter what you did to her—turned her upside down, attempted to deflate her protruding breasts with a hammer and nail—she retained her beatific and imperturbable calm. Although Ginny probed the secret of that calm, she was never able to uncover it. Nor was she, despite her ardent prayers at church on Sunday mornings, able to emulate it.

Even though Ginny had long ago stopped playing with the dolls, she still liked to own them and Rita was happy to comply. In her room back at home in Louisiana, Ginny had a blond Barbie dressed as Sleeping Beauty and an auburn-haired Barbie dressed as Glinda, the Good Witch from
The Wizard of Oz.
She also owned Barbie as a cheerleader, bobby-soxer, mermaid and, of course, ballerina.

This year, Rita sent a trio consisting of Barbie and her two younger sisters, Stacie and Kelly. All three dolls were dressed in coordinating silver-and-green metallic dresses; all wore silver shoes. They came equipped with a black plastic stairway on which they could be posed; a button on its side played a syrupy version of “Deck the Halls” meant to suggest the dolls themselves were singing. Ginny loved it. She carefully took the dolls out of the box (which she saved) and arranged them next to the potted ten-dollar tree she bought at the fruit stand.

Ginny lied and told her mother that she was spending Christmas with Oscar's family, the way she had on Thanksgiving. “Why, what friendly people,” Rita said, evidently not realizing that they were Jewish. “I really should write and thank them for taking you under their wing. What's their address?”

“Oh, that's all right, Mama,” Ginny said. “Just send a note to me and I'll pass it along.”

After they hung up, she spent the rest of the day doing laundry—the machines in the basement were all empty, which was like a gift all by itself—and later watched
It's a Wonderful Life
and
Miracle on Thirty-fourth Street
on television. The second one made her kind of weepy, as it was about a little girl without a father and she and Rita had always watched it together. But Barbie and her sisters smiled consolingly from their plastic perch and Ginny took solace from their benign expressions. Later, she took herself out to a restaurant and ordered Christmas dinner—roast goose, candied yams and all the trimmings—and felt much better. She went to bed early and slept for what felt like days.

The next night, she was going to dance her solo in
The Nutcracker
and meet Gabriel after the performance. Ginny thought that the coupling of those two events was significant, as if each would cast an auspicious light on the other. There it was, her name on the schedule and in the
Stagebill.
Gabriel wasn't sure if he was going to see her dance or not; he said that he felt uncomfortable about being in the theater when Oscar would be there. Ginny told him to make up his own mind. She would understand either way.

Getting ready for the performance actually forced him from her thoughts for a while anyway: applying the makeup a bit more dramatically than usual, adjusting the new costume. Tonight she wasn't going to dance in the corps at all. She had the Coffee solo and that was all. She saw the other corps members putting on their makeup and getting into their costumes. Ginny was all ready, the wardrobe mistress having brought the costume up some time earlier. It was gorgeous, all slinky red and gold, and Ginny was sorry she hadn't thought to bring a camera. If she had, she would have asked someone to snap her picture so she could have sent it home to Rita.

Ginny sat very still while the noise and buzz went on around her. People were making last-minute repairs to pointe shoe ribbons that had popped, putting on antiperspirant, slicking back their hair with a tiny daub of gel or a mist of hair spray. She had the feeling that tonight was a turning point; if it went well, she might not be in this shared dressing room much longer. She might instead have one of her own.

Then the dancers took their places backstage, the curtain went up and the ballet began. As the artificial snowflakes fluttered down onstage, one settled very near where Ginny was standing. She quickly reached to get it, and slipped it down the front of her costume. When the cue came, she imagined she could feel it there, warm, glowing and white, sending her the energy and the poise to dazzle the hushed, expectant audience. And she did. The variation went by so quickly, so very quickly. That sensation of space and expanse, of dancing alone, without all those other bodies around her, now
that
was intoxicating. She could feel the audience like a single live creature, a creature with one heart, and one mind, but a thousand eyes and hands. They were there with her, every second of the way, and then it was over. Applause showered her and she could have soaked it up forever. During the curtain call, she glanced at the orchestra for a second, and there was the top of Oscar's head. He wasn't looking in her direction, though. Instead, he was staring straight off, into space. There was no way she could have reached him, even if she had wanted to.

Afterward, people congratulated her, including a principal dancer whom Ginny admired a lot. She took off the costume carefully; in her mind, she could hear Madame Dubrovska's voice: “Not on the floor, don't let it touch the floor!” She hung it up carefully so that it could be brought back to wardrobe. She didn't bother with the makeup, though; she was that eager to see Gabriel. So she got dressed quickly and was lucky enough to get a cab right away. When she reached the hotel and asked for Gabriel's room, the clerk at the desk looked at her, struggling to hide his disdain.

“He's not here, miss,” he replied to her inquiry.

“He will be,” Ginny told him. “I'll wait.” She pulled a
Stagebill
out of her bag, and opened it to the page where the cast was listed. She handed it to the clerk, pointing out her name. “By the way, that's me. I danced at New York State Theater tonight,” Ginny said before she sat down.

“Charming, I'm sure,” he said and looked back at his computer screen.

Who cared what he thought, anyway? Especially when a few minutes later, Gabriel appeared in the hotel lobby. She stood up and walked toward him. When he took her hands in his, Ginny felt as if she had come home at last.

The next
morning, Gabriel ordered breakfast brought up to the room. Never having stayed in the sort of hotel where they had room service, Ginny was unprepared for how quickly the food appeared. Since she had neither robe nor nightgown, she wrapped herself in a sheet when she heard the knock, and stood there while Gabriel thanked the man and tipped him. It was only after he left that Gabriel went into the bathroom and brought out another white terry cloth robe identical to the one he was wearing. Ginny looked at the robe, and at him, and then burst out laughing. “Did you see his face?” she said, hardly able to talk. Gabriel laughed too. Then he stopped and reached for the sheet, gently tugging it away. She let it drop and moved toward him. Later, he fed her breakfast—berries, one at a time, bits of croissant with jam—while they were nestled together in bed.