by Anna Monardo
They growled and surrounded her, made a circle. They danced around her with animal leaps, rolling on the floor, arching up, lifting Mary off her feet. “Oh God!” She was laughing very hard. “Put me down!” When they were done with “Jungleland” and breathing hard, Mary yelled, “Do it again!” And, hardly able to stay still herself, she watched them slink through the song a second time and right into “Thunder Road.” Mary applauded wildly. They whistled and hooted for themselves. And then Natassia came in with a lit-up birthday cake, and they all sang “Happy Birthday” to Mary. As someone turned the lights way up, Charlie leaped out of the crowd—under his animal markings, he was completely naked. All the girls yelled at him, “Oh God, put on your clothes.”
“I was improvising,” Charlie said, smiling.
ON MONDAY, Franklin Fields came to Mary’s studio and, without any stuttering, with his tie knotted tightly and his sleeves buttoned at his wrists, told her that one of the board members had called because she had heard there’d been nudity in the dance studio. None of Mary’s students had told; somebody’s roommate had.
“Who is this board lady? Tell her to come to the performance. The kids are dancing so good now. She’ll love it.”
“Mary,” Franklin said, “this is serious. If they want to, the trustees can go to town with this kind of thing.”
“What’s this woman’s name?”
“Paine-Pinkney. Mrs. Paine-Pinkney.”
“Give me her number. I’ll call her. I can explain.”
IT WAS THURSDAY, a few hours before dress rehearsal. The lights the night before had been a disaster, but the theater teacher said he’d fix things up. Mary had no confidence in him or his techies. Costumes had been downgraded to black leotards and tights. The student “seamstresses” had quit on the job. Mary and her students were just finishing class. As they toweled themselves off and caught their breath so they could go through the whole dance one more time, Mary said, “This performance tomorrow night is going to have to be perfect. There are people we have to impress. Got it?”
“What if we make a mistake?” Bridgit asked.
“You will not make a mistake. Don’t even think that. If something’s off, you just keep dancing. Everybody knows that, right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“No ‘yeah but’s. Did I ever tell you about the performance I saw in Italy where the ballerina had to go offstage to throw up?”
“No!”
“Years ago. This company in Florence was doing Giselle. On the second night, a top-billed ballerina—I don’t know, she must have been sick with the flu—during Act One she just danced off, vomited, danced back on. Meanwhile, her partner, he improvised a solo for three whole minutes. Do you know how long three minutes is when you’re onstage? He got ballerinas in the corps de ballet to come downstage with him and dance. They all just kept going. And you know why they could do it?”
“Why?”
“Because they were all plugged in. They were pros. Everybody was alert. There you had a vomiting prima ballerina, pretty much the worst possible situation, short of somebody dropping dead. But probably most people in the audience never noticed.”
“How’d you know that she was vomiting backstage? Could you hear?”
“Of course not. I knew one of the dancers. He told me.”
“Maybe she was just bulimic, the prima ballerina.”
“Whatever. The point is, never ever anticipate a mistake. That messes with your head. Just know that, whatever happens, you’ll pull it off.”
They stared at Mary, wide-eyed, probably because she was speaking with such uncharacteristic seriousness—she had spittle in the corners of her mouth—trying so hard to convince them and herself that nothing would happen that couldn’t be handled.
WHEN MARY got back to the cottage at the end of rehearsal, a car was parked in front. She didn’t recognize it until she saw the piled-up clothes in the backseat. “Kevin? What’s he doing here?”
She rushed inside. He was sitting at the table doing something to Natassia’s computer. “Kevin,” Mary said, “did something happen?” It was over two months since the night at the hospital with Natassia, but still, every time the phone rang, Mary expected disaster. The sight of Kevin’s unexpected car had her heart beating too fast. “Is Nora all right?”
“No. She’s turned into a total bitch. She’s standing us all up for Christmas, did you know that? I came to tell you, in case you hadn’t heard.”
He had a beard now, reddish rough stuff all over his face. Mary hadn’t seen him in a year. It always surprised her at first that he was as tall as he was, that he wasn’t still twelve years old. Kevin was wearing a dark-blue flannel shirt, and a tie (loosened, like Franklin Fields). Nora and Christopher always teased Kevin about how he never traveled without wearing a tie. Kevin was always kind of cartoony. “You drove all the way up from the city,” she asked him, “to tell us Nora’s not having Christmas?”
“There was an estate sale in Tarrytown,” Kevin said.
“Still, that’s an hour south of here.”
“Once I’m out of the city, I like to keep going. Nice computer you guys’ve got.”
Mary’s eyes met Natassia’s over Kevin’s head. They both shrugged.
His eyes didn’t leave the computer screen. “Nice computer. Nice cottage. Pretty place. Quiet. Beautiful deal. You did good, Mar. Natassia said you wouldn’t mind if I went through the fridge and cooked something up. Lasagne’ll be ready in about half an hour. Why don’t you take a shower, relax. I brought some nice wine.”
THE NEXT NIGHT, the night of the performance, Kevin was still at Mary’s cottage when she rushed home to change. Having him there gave Mary a chance to vent. “I fucking can’t believe I fucking had to explain to these kids how to explain to their parents why they can’t go out for a nice fancy dinner tonight even though the parents made reservations a week ago. They didn’t know that for a seven-thirty curtain they had to be backstage by five-thirty. And these are the people who are judging me and deciding if I’m good enough for this lousy job.”
“They’re lucky to have you,” Kevin said.
“They’re firing me. Tonight’s it. For sure.”
When Mary walked into the living room dressed in jeans, boots, and a black turtleneck, he told her, “No. Wrong look. Too casual.”
Mary went back into the bathroom and changed into a short black spaghetti-strap dress, black sheers, suede pumps, an outfit she’d worn to lots of first-night parties.
Both Kevin and Natassia nixed that. “Way too sexy,” Kevin told her.
“Mom, why’re you acting like you’ve never done this before? What do you normally wear?”
“There’s nothing normal about this place. I don’t understand these people. They have too much money, and I don’t know what they want from me.”
“For starters,” Kevin explained, “you don’t want to be threatening in any way. You can’t look better than they do, but you’ve got to look like you belong to their club. I have something in the car. Just a sec.”
He was already dressed for the event, wearing a nice blue-striped shirt, a tie, a wool blazer. Natassia looked elegant but understated in a long black skirt and a bulky black sweater, with a long silk scarf wrapped around her neck. How does she know how to do that? Where’d she learn?
Kevin walked back in from his car with a black sweater. “Here, try this.”
Mary sniffed it. “Is this clean?”
“Clean enough.”
The sweater was cashmere, a pullover, short-sleeved, round neck, with a yoke of tiny black beads. Mary held it out in front of her.
“It’s perfect,” Natassia told her.
Kevin was dealing out a hand of gin rummy to play with Natassia. In many ways, he was still a kid, always needing to be occupied. “I got it at that estate sale. They had a huge box of beaded sweaters, but that black one’s the best. It was going to be your Christmas gift.”
“Yeah, well, ho-ho-ho.”
A FEW DAYS EARLIER, during their phone session, Dr. Cather had asked Mary, “Do you think you’re fully aware of the depth of your anger?” Now—on Friday night, walking into the Hiliard School theater—Mary was aware that her anger had never been so deep. Or so wide or so big. I’ve worked so frigging hard and still they want more from me. Leading Natassia and Kevin to their seats, Mary looked over the packed auditorium. The chatter-hum was full of those upper-class tones Mary couldn’t imitate or decode. She didn’t know which one was Mrs. Paine-Pinkney, so Mary hated them all.
Mary glanced back at Natassia and Kevin—Natassia looked a little too young to be his date, he looked a little too young to be her dad, but they both had that ability to look the crowd over as if they owned the place. Mary took off her coat and tossed it onto a seat. “I better get backstage.”
As soon as she saw the students in the wings, she was pretty sure the night was going to be a disaster. Jenefer, close to hyperventilating, was breathing into a paper bag.
“Oh Christ,” Mary muttered to herself, and stuck an unlit cigarette between her teeth.
Bridgit chose that moment to confide in Mary: “I just feel I have to tell someone—I’ve been bingeing and throwing up all day. My mother’s come up to see this show, and I feel so much anger at her. Her and her stupid boyf—”
“You’re onstage in ten minutes. What are you thinking about your mother for?”
“I just don’t think”—Bridgit broke into tears—“I don’t think I can do it.”
“You have to do it. You don’t have a choice.” Mary walked away. “Charlie, who did your makeup?”
“I did.”
He looked like a transvestite. “Too much. Wipe some off.”
Three kids were sharing a big bag of barbecue potato chips. “Jesus,” Mary yelled, “you don’t eat when you’re in costume.”
“We were nervous.”
Mary grabbed the bag of chips and went out the stage door into the cold, foggy night air. She lit her cigarette. It’s going to be bad, she thought, but if it’s really bad I’ll leave before the curtain call. I’ll disappear. She blew smoke into the frosted night and thought of Baryshnikov, July 1974, running away from his KGB escorts after a performance in Toronto. Mary thought of Natalia Makarova, 1970, London, ditching the Kirov and the Soviet Union, running right into a whole new life. Freedom. Mary thought about how, just a year earlier, she herself had been standing, in costume, in the warm air outside a theater in Phoenix, having a cigarette before the curtain went up for what turned out to be her own last performance. That night, at the reception afterward, the money people were looking for her—not to find fault, the way Mrs. Paine-Pinkney was doing, but just because they wanted to shake Mary’s hand. They told her how much they’d loved her solo. They’d read about her in the papers. Two different critics had singled out and praised her performance. But by then none of it meant anything to Mary. She swapped it all for this Hiliard deal.
Mary tossed the bag of potato chips behind a shrub. Several weeks had passed since the day Natassia had insisted on describing, in detail, how she’d felt with the BF, wanting to know, Am I normal? Is this normal? Since that day, Mary had felt more trapped inside herself than ever. Before, the bad feelings had permeated Mary, but invisibly, like weather. After Natassia had named every bad feeling—worthless, stupid, ashamed, useless—Mary knew exactly what had always bricked her in. When the student stage manager stuck her head out the door, Mary was scratching fiercely at the base of her neck. “Hey, Ms. Mudd, five minutes to curtain.”
Mary stamped out the butt of her cigarette. When she walked back inside, she motioned the students over to her with her arms. They hurried, making a circle around her. “I just yelled at a bunch of you,” Mary told them. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I get nervous before a performance.”
“You do?”
“Everybody does.”
“We thought you were angry at us about the other night. You know, the animal dancing. We heard you got in trouble.”
“Yeah, maybe. But you guys aren’t in trouble. You did great. And you’re going to dance great again tonight.”
“Like the animals,” Charlie whispered.
“Yeah, just like animals. Come on,” she said, grabbing two kids’ hands, “circle.” Pulled in together, gripping hands, they did look like wild hunted-down animals. I have to do something. “Listen,” Mary told them, “you are dancers, you’re good dancers.” And she felt their hands squeeze all around the circle, and in that moment Mary wanted for the Hiliard School kids exactly what she wanted for Natassia—just for them to be okay. “You go out there and let them see what you can do.”
“One minute to curtain.”
“Please,” one of the kids whispered, “stay backstage with us.”
“I’ll be back here. I’m with you. You’re great.”
And the house lights went down and the stage lights came up and music started and the kids didn’t need Mary anymore: they danced. Mary stood backstage and loved what she saw. Yes, each arabesque was solid and deep, each turn stopped clean with no trembling, but greater than technique were their faces—beautiful, smiling, utterly lost within what they now knew how to do. The most Mary had hoped for was that they would remember all the steps and not make her look bad. Onstage, they went beyond. Each movement was clean and made sense. Part of that was her choreography, but the students really had made the dance their own. They no longer looked like floundering kids with too much money and show-off vocabulary. In the wings they stayed focused, and no one missed a cue. They’re beautiful. The kids reminded her why, for years, she’d chased all over the world, chasing this, a couple minutes onstage when you feel and look and are wiser than yourself.
Jenefer’s solo made the audience whistle and clap.
Mary had prepared the kids to do an encore. It was a fairly simple dance that began with their warm-up isolations and then a few easy combinations, but they danced it to Joe Cocker singing “Bye Bye Blackbird,” and all their forty-something parents, mostly trust-fund-hippies-turned-yuppies, ate it up. Standing ovations, a few affected Bravi, bravi. Mary was escorted onto the stage by Charlie and given a bouquet of yellow and white roses from Jenefer. Bowing, Mary scanned the crowd. She located Franklin, but she couldn’t read his face. Where was that troublesome bitch, Mrs. Paine-Pinkney? All Mary could see clearly was Natassia and Kevin up on their feet, clapping and smiling and clapping for her.
“NOW FOR THE REAL PERFORMANCE,” Mary muttered to Natassia as they walked into the party in the Admin Building Commons Room.
“You’ll be fine,” Natassia whispered back. “Just mingle.”
As soon as he saw her, Franklin led Mary to the center of the room, got everyone’s attention, handed her a glass of champagne—in a real glass, not plastic—and toasted her. What the fuck is he trying to prove? Everyone was applauding. Then a too-tan couple, blonds dressed in sporty imported wool, were tapping her elbow. “Ms. Mudd, we’re Jenefer’s parents.”
And the show began.
For the next hour, Mary shook hands and smiled and listened to people say ridiculous things about how much Mary had added to the community of the school, how lucky the school was to have her. They asked her about her plans for the holiday break, then told her about their vacations. In Aspen, Switzerland, St. Thomas, St. Croix, Hawaii. She heard about grandparents who owned Vermont ski lodges and grandparents who rented chalets in western Canada for the whole family to come together for Christmas. Someone had inherited a small castle in France. Someone else owned an island. She heard about New Year’s plans in Nepal, in New Mexico, in New Orleans, in the White House, the Governor’s Mansion, and Gracie Mansion in New York. She heard about plans to see the Nutcracker in Vienna, Mark Morris at BAM, and the Kirov in Russia.
Out of the corner of her eye, Mary spotted Natassia and Kevin roaming the room separately, always engaged in conversation. Once she overheard Natassia say, “No, my father was never a dancer. He’s a physician.
He lives in the Pacific Northwest.”
Kevin was saying, “We all grew up together—Mary, my sister, and I. I can’t remember a time when Mary wasn’t part of our family,” giving Mary’s scattered life a veneer of solidity that was a complete joke. But Kevin was a salesman. “I own an antiques business. My sister is a psychotherapist in practice in Manhattan.”
“Oh my, how interesting.”
Even from a distance, unseen, Nora had the power to intimidate.
Toward the end of the evening, Mary felt a hand on her arm. She turned and it was old Dr. Jonson. Since he’d taken out Natassia’s stitches and set her up for therapy with his daughter-in-law, Mary had seen him only once, for Natassia’s earache. “Congratulations, dear. You’ve done a fine job.”
Mary repeated what she’d been saying all night. “It was the kids. They worked hard.”
“I don’t mean the dance.” Dr. Jonson kept on social-smiling, but his gray eyes turned serious, showed the smarts he usually hid behind chatter. “I mean your daughter. She’s a different girl. Healthy, smiling. I see her over there.” He nodded toward the buffet table, where Natassia was balancing a plate and laughing with some adults. “I see a happy teenage girl. Big change in a few months. Mother, you made excellent decisions.”
He smelled of Old Spice and looked tan. Expensive, but nice, too. Franklin walked up. “Doctor, good to see you. Have you met Ms. Mudd?”
“I was just telling her that her hard work at Hiliard has paid off.” Dr. Jonson was still holding Mary’s hand in his. “You need to give this woman a salary increase, Mr. Fields, or she’s going to get away, go teach in one of those fancy schools in the big city.” Dr. Jonson winked a little wink. “Best of luck to you, dear.”
Alone with Fields, Mary asked, “Okay, which one is Mrs. Paine-Pinkney?”
“Oh, she never comes to evening events,” he said. “Her family won’t let her. She drinks too much and says all the wrong things.”