“It’s coagulating.” She tilted the bowl of the Cuisinart and mayonnaise swirled into a container, coaxed by her rubber spatula.
“So you met Ruben,” he began.
“He’s nice. He and your daughter, they’re the only kids?”
“Ruben’s adopted and Jennifer was a surprise.”
“Oh.”
He watched her put it all together. Some people, like her, processed things on their own. You could never be sure what they truly thought because it was so recessed. But he saw, or he thought he saw, a click of interest. Something about her parentage? They had decided it would not be a secret. So they spoke frankly about Ruben’s birth family, that his mother wasn’t stable, that his father had disappeared, and when Ruben turned thirteen, he decided to see his mother again. Even now he still visited her, maybe once or twice a year.
“Okay, so now the other things?”
“Taste it yourself and decide.”
“Well, garlic and dill definitely. I’m not sure if onion would be good.”
“Trust your instincts. Use the onion for something else. We didn’t get him as a baby. He was eight years old, in foster care. Not thriving. Had been moved around a lot among relatives, none of whom you would call sober, settled people, then from one foster home to another. When we got him, he was….” (a little shit, but he didn’t say that.) “Combative. Fists up at everything. That whole first year we were sure we’d made a terrible mistake. Or I had made it, because from the beginning Alice wanted a baby. I thought we were too old to start with babies. Ha! Little did I know. Jennifer showed up two years later. That’s why I started cooking. Kept me at home more, with him. We did it together. We learned it together.”
“So he’s a good cook too?”
“Terrible. Never learned anything. Hates it even now.”
“Okay, so everything’s ready.”
In the living room they helped themselves to the elegant lunch she had prepared. Life! The sounds of silverware on dishes, the clink of the serving platter set back onto the table. He wished she weren’t so quiet. What was his incessant conversation but a tactic to get her to talk? He spooned sauce over the cold fish and took the first bite. A beautiful pairing of texture and taste. The greeny zest of dill, the bite of garlic. He made a silent plea: Please don’t let me die in a hospital, far from the experience of well-prepared food.
“I have congestive heart failure. Did you know that? I couldn’t remember if I’d told you. Medicines help stabilize me, but I could go any time. So I’m warning you. You could be out of a job. But at least you’ll know something about cooking. It wouldn’t all have been a waste.”
“Oh, it’s not a waste at all,” she said simply. “Don’t die yet. I like you.” But after she made that statement, she turned red as a beet.
He chuckled. “Well, I’ll do my best.” He could see she wanted to change the subject, but he wasn’t going to help her. The afterglow was too lovely and I like you had to be the most beautiful sentence in the language. Better than love, really, because it was cleaner, more simple. There was no ownership, no greed.
“So what does Ruben do?”
He coughed, holding the napkin to his mouth because like most old men, coughing released spittle, and now that she liked him, he mustn’t be disgusting.
“I’m so sorry! We should have explained last night.”
“He told me. But I didn’t know what it meant.”
“Choreographer? He gets hired to design dances for musical theater. And he’s not a bad actor or singer either. But he’s a great dancer and that’s his first love.”
“I didn’t know a person could be a dancer. I mean, a legitimate dancer.” She was beet red again. “I mean, not a stripper or a showgirl.”
“Oh yes, Ruben’s first year here when he was angry and mouthy and just an all-around little fuck, excuse my language” (she smiled at that) “we told him he couldn’t waste our time. He had to work at something. He had to become something. He had to discover what he was good at.”
“That seems like a lot of pressure.”
“It was. But this kid needed a kick in the butt. He had to learn that being resentful would get him nowhere. So we said, choose one thing to do. Actually, it was even more pressure than that. Choose one thing to be good at, is what we said. And we gave him a list of the usual things: art, music, science, woodworking, sports, and he chose sports. ‘Basketball,’ he said. That made sense, even then he was a tall, lanky kid. But it didn’t work. I’m not sure why. So Alice said, and this was her brilliance, ‘what was it that attracted you to basketball?’
‘Jumping,’ he told her.” (His pugilistic way of standing in the room, the make-me glare of those hard, adolescent eyes.)
“Alice got a flash. ‘He means dance,’ she said to me. So she said, ‘how about jumping to music?’ And he said he would like that. So we signed him up for tap classes. That was Alice’s brilliance again. ‘This kid needs to make noise. He’s never still. He wants you to know he’s there.’ And she was absolutely right. Because from the beginning, he was very good at it.”
And then something slipped out of the locked box. Ava laid her fork down and said, “I wish I had parents like you. I’m not good at anything.”
Well, he wasn’t much of a romantic. When the woman you love dies at age sixty three, you lose a certain amount of trust in the goodness of the world. It was Alice who could save people. He was not good at it. But he felt Ava’s eyes on him and he knew that the tiny bit of information she’d let out was huge. So he told a lie. And he convinced himself, before saying it, that this was not saving someone, particularly since it could backfire completely. But he took a chance. He said, “You could be a dancer too. Ruben said you were so relaxed in his arms and you picked up the rhythm so effortlessly, he thought you had real talent.”
“Really? He said that? Wow, I’ve never thought about it.”
‘Well, what have you thought about?” That was too peremptory. So he asked more softly, “What have you imagined yourself doing?”
“You’re going to laugh, especially after what you told me. But I was really good at it in school and I love watching it on TV.”
He waited.
She cleared her throat and then she said, “Basketball.”
“Well, women’s basketball is a very big sport.”
“It is, but I don’t think it’s for me.”
“One thing I told Alice when she was starting out. Don’t waste your time with doubt.”
“But Alice had talent. Some people don’t have talent.”
He watched her load the dishes onto a black mother of pearl tray they had bought many years ago in Portugal. Alice had found it in a cluttered shop near their hotel. “Everyone has talent. There is something they are good at.”
She laughed in the kitchen. Then he heard the spring of the dishwasher door opening. And for a moment he felt sorry for himself. Such a cruel about-face. To have nobody of promise on the horizon, and why would he, he hadn’t been active in eight years, and now who was he spending his days with? A human person who believed she was worthless.
8.
Harvey was at the cardiologist’ s and Ava was going to surprise him with a dinner she’ d cooked entirely on her own. She’d been studying one of his cookbooks and the market on Broadway where Harvey kept an account had fresh crab.
“The year I lived in Miami,” Cleopatra liked to tell her, “I ate nothing but crab cakes. They were so cheap. You could buy them anywhere and crab isn’t fattening. A couple of crab cakes, a couple of beers, I was set for the night. It was good too because they didn’t make me gassy. Those little outfits, let me tell you, they hugged the tummy and if you had any bit of bloat, and I got bloat as easily then as I do now, you’re sunk.”
She chopped the crab, the scallion, the parsley. She made the sauce that went with it, something French she couldn’t pronounce. And then she heard a quick knock on the door and saw it opening.
“Ava, it’s Ruben.�
��
The knife slipped out of her wet fingers. “In the kitchen,” she called, bending down.
“Hey, do you know what time Dad gets back?” He slid across the foyer and came to a dramatic, tottering stop, a forelock of blond hair over his face.
“Around four. But he said it’s unpredictable with that doctor.”
“Good! Well, so what are you making?”
“Crab cakes. Do you know if he likes them?”
“Just happens to be his all-time favorite. What he always used to get when we went to the seashore.”
The counters were clean, the floor was swept, and if she had been alone, she probably would have sat down with a magazine. The only thing left to do was sauté the patties, and she’ d do that at the last minute so they’ d still be warm for dinner. So she asked Ruben if he’d like tea and cookies.
“No thank you, Ava.” Quickly, not even looking at her, shuffling through the albums in the music room. So she stood there for a little bit, uncomfortably. “You can watch, darling,” he said, and gestured her into a chair.
Darling! No one had ever called her that. She sat down, prepared for him to ignore her.
“I’m trying to work out some ideas. Dad has the best music library in the whole city, so I’m just sampling things.”
There was a single horn, a trumpet she thought. It cried out to her. He moved in slow, fluid motions, which was exactly what the horn wanted him to do because it was slow and fluid too. He was counting out loud, stopping and starting, repeating the first phrases of the song over and over. He was so absorbed she couldn’t look away. And then he sank onto the floor, legs out, back against the wall. But he jumped up and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. He was slicked with sweat and he drank quickly.
“Dad says he’s been teaching you how to cook. He says you’re learning really fast. You know, we were so afraid you’d be another Mrs. Bruder. But you’re great for him. I think he was kind of depressed before and another Bruder would have sent him to the loony bin.”
“He’s been so entirely nice.”
“Well, Dad sings your praises too. So what do you want to do, besides this, I mean?”
“Oh! You mean like a career? Just this. I really like it.”
Ruben took his glasses off and massaged the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “Wow, it’s been a long day.” He put his head down for a moment and the blond forelock fell over his face. He seemed to be thinking. “Want to try something? This little combo I’m working out? I think it’s cute. Especially for a gamine like you. Here, let me demonstrate.”
“I can’ t,” she said. “I have to cook.”
“Just for a minute,” he said, guiding her into a series of steps. It was terrifying. She could feel the empty apartment around them, the pressure of all of the money and talent that had created it and kept it going, things that were alien to her, and beauty, Alice’s beauty. She got the steps. She got the rhythm, but movement was impossible. He stopped the music and said, “When you were like this last time, a little robotic, not very relaxed, Dad said ‘do Thursday’ and you got all loose and curvy. Can you do Thursday again?”
“I don’t know. I feel nervous.”
“Just listen. Just move with me. Don’t think.”
She summoned Cleopatra from the photo album. She imagined the smoky bar, the lonely men watching her, and she began to move her hips in time to the beat. It was strange. She felt as though she knew exactly where the music was going to go. She could hear a pattern and somehow she knew how to translate it to movement. There was a drum roll and without any planning, her pelvis swung slowly in and out, making a figure eight. She had ceased to exist. There was only the armature of his body moving with hers. Ruben supported her weight in his arms and as she relaxed into them, he lowered her to the floor in a dip. She dropped her head, though it wasn’t her head any longer, it was someone else’s, and she drew a slow, sexy leg towards her body as smoothly as though this were a move she’ d been doing all her life.
The song ended. Ruben hooted. And when she looked up, Harvey was parked at the door, applauding.
“I want to use her,” Ruben said to his father. “I like her better than Violet. What would you say, Ava? A possibility? Three weeks of evening rehearsals? It’s off-Broadway and it could close quickly, or it could catch hold and have a long run.”
9.
The studio was in an old factory. There was a large room with a scrubbed wooden floor, tall windows, and the ancient scent of machine oil from the days when there were monolithic iron beasts stamping or printing or doing some other mechanized, repetitive task. There were tracks on the ceiling, pulleys and chains on the back wall, and a half dismantled iron structure. A setting for a horror film. Night filled the windows, the autumn air leaking through, and light bulbs hung from rafters. She was terrified. The five other people scattered about the room were older and she could tell they were experienced. They would hate her, she was so inept.
The chairs along the wall were draped with jackets; bags and shoes were scattered about. She chose an empty seat and while she was unlacing her boots, her fingers shaking with nervousness, a woman galloped across the floor towards her, a wide, child-like grin on her face. “Ruben’s treasure! Welcome! I’m Brekka!” And then she said, “Oh dear, I’m sorry.” She gathered her long hair, wrapped it around her hand and secured it with a rubber. “Let me start again. You’re Ava, the aide for Ruben’s father. Welcome to the dance factory. As Ruben likes to say, we still manufacture, but now it’s the business of dreams.” Brekka held out both her hands and as Ava placed her trembling fingers in the older woman’s firm grasp, she said, surprising herself, “I’m so scared!”
“I’ll tell you a secret. We’re all terrified because this is a new piece. But I’m here if you need me, and Ruben’s very patient, very kind. Shall I show you some warm-ups? We don’t have many rules around here but you must never start cold. Always stretch first. And here, I brought some extra leggings because it will be awhile before the room heats up.”
Ava followed Brekka out to the floor and took a spot behind her to copy the stretches. Soon the door banged open and Ruben swept in, slipping out of his coat, throwing down his bag. He took off his street shoes and walked to the center, his large, strong strides bouncing the floor. The dancers moved in to greet him.
“Hello you wonderful people! Thank you for being so prompt. There is a new woman here and some of you returning people haven’t been together in awhile, so we’ll begin with introductions.” He said a few sentences about each person and for Ava he said, “This is her first exposure to musical theater so help her out when you can.” Then he stood quietly for a moment, hands clasped in a prayer position, and began to talk. “Okay, so the dances are going to mime urban life. They are meant to be stylized and that’s why we’re going to exaggerate and ham it up and use props. High heels, hats, briefcases, pocketbooks. And for the hippies: beads, dangles, feathers and stuff like that. We won’t get into costumes until later, but we’ll start with props from the beginning and you’ll see how necessary they are. The tempo will shift from slow and bluesy to fast and staccato. It’s set in Times Square and the theme is contrasts. I have copies of the script here. Ava is with us because I needed someone who looked really young for one of the roles. And she is young. Didn’t you just graduate high school?”
“In June,” she said, and to her horror, they clapped.
“So, I want to give you the general shape of the story because what’s going to be immensely important to us is attitude. As you know, each dancer has two roles, and attitude is going to be what differentiates them. It’s as important as costume changes. More important, actually.”
Ava wondered how you could do attitude if you didn’t have lines. Or a specific person to convince. Playing two roles would make it even harder. But Ruben was watching her, so she attempted to settle her face, attempted to look confident. That was when she realized she played two roles at Harvey’s; she even did it we
ll.
“The banker will also be the pimp, the runaway will be the prostitute, the mother will be the alcoholic. The message is that people are not so different and what goes on in the darkness in the dirty movie theater is the same as what goes on in the executive office of the bank. Here’s how it starts: A band of street performers set up in Times Square. They live in a brightly painted van, hide from the police, and survive on donations. That’s who we are. They make music, dance, chant, but they’re not saints by any means. They have a child in their midst, a runaway who sleeps with the guys in the band. A banker who walks through the square everyday to get to his office, lusts for the runaway and drags her into his car. She’s traumatized, winds up becoming a street-walker. That’s the basic set-up.
“How’s it end?” someone called.
Ruben laughed. “Well, I know you’re impatient, but like Broadway, it’s gotta please everyone, so there’s tragedy and happiness. The pimp gets caught with drugs and goes to jail. That frees the runaway. Then the producer sees the performers, likes what he sees, and gives them a legitimate theater run and for a little while, they’re stars.” Ruben twirled around, did a little two step. “The music is really exciting. We sing but not lyrics. We make sounds with our voices, and with junk that’s lying around. We beat plastic buckets, car parts, lamp posts, and we stomp and tap with our shoes. We’re always keeping a percussion, a rhythm. Sammo is the only one who has songs with lyrics. But the movements will be challenging and I promise you we’re going to work our tails off.”
“Ruben, can I say something? About the script?” Justin Beckwith, the dancer who would play Sammo, stepped forward. “Not to throw cold water on anything or question your judgment, but it seems a little too tame. I mean, I read it and there’s not much there if you ask me.”
The Exit Coach Page 14