Her feet as she departed the stage made no sound in the silent auditorium. Hearing that silence, she wondered if she had broken so many rules that those who remained had chosen to politely ignore her audition. But as she drifted up the aisle, one of the students brought his hands together in a thunderclap. Perhaps it was pity. But then more joined in and then the entire remaining group exploded and awarded her … a standing ovation.
Her heart tripped and stuttered, remembering other performances, other applause.
Stage manager Rebecca hurried to Giselle’s side.
“Gisella,” called Rebecca, mangling The Name, “Mr. Kinsler would like you to stay after for a minute.”
Stay after? She needed to escape. She needed to be alone. The last thing she wanted was to speak to someone—to anyone, let alone a teacher.
Derrmo.
13
TIMELESSNESS
The applause was finally dying down. Giselle stared at Rebecca as though mentally translating her words from English to some other language. She was in trouble. She’d done something wrong or illegal or disqualifying. The applause meant nothing if she got kicked out of drama. She should have stuck with the Queen Hermione speech. She wasn’t going to be allowed to stay at All Arts.
“Gisella?” Name-murdering Rebecca was waiting for a response. “Stay for a minute?”
“Sure,” said Giselle.
Rebecca promised to call her over when Mr. Kinsler was ready.
Giselle had imagined she would bask in relief after completing the required audition, but her pulse was hammering in her ears. Why did Mr. Kinsler want to speak to her? She remembered all the times her mother had pulled dancers aside after auditions to apologize that they would not be needed this year.
Rebecca, who seemed to be one of those people who never walked when running would do, flew back to Giselle’s side.
“Mr. Kinsler will see you now.”
Giselle thought it sounded rather as though she were being admitted to see a surgeon.
She followed Rebecca.
“Miss Chekhov,” said Mr. Kinsler.
Giselle bit her tongue to stop herself from correcting the drama instructor. This was not the studio; here she could be “Miss Chekhov.”
Mr. Kinsler extended a hand as if he’d never noticed Giselle in class, which she had suspected to be the case. He didn’t take roll, and she was by far the quietest student in the entire class. In fact, she was the only quiet student in the class.
“So,” he continued. “I can see you have dance experience. Your mother runs the dance studio, right? Same last name?”
Giselle nodded.
“Well, here’s the thing. I know from that audition that you probably have your heart set on one of the dancing roles, and after what I’ve seen, I agree you could play Titania. Very well, I might add.” His eyes drifted to a clipboard he held pressed into his belly.
Giselle remained silent, as she would have done for her mother or any other dance instructor.
Mr. Kinsler’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “You are familiar with the play, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” was Giselle’s formal response. And then, with greater accuracy, she added, “I’m familiar with the ballet version, anyway.”
“Mm-hmm,” murmured Mr. Kinsler. “So the thing is, I have to think about more than just raw talent. In this story, height comes into, er, play, no pun intended, and I’m leaning toward casting a rather tall Hermia.”
“You’ll need an even taller Helena,” said Giselle, eager to prove she knew something about the story.
“Exactly. So what I need to know is this: if I cast you as Helena, even though it’s a non-dancing role, can I count on you to give it your best?”
Rebecca, standing to one side and jotting notes, took in a sudden, loud breath which Mr. Kinsler ignored.
“I can understand you were hoping to be cast as one of the fairies, but I need to know how open you are to, well, not dancing.” Mr. Kinsler smiled and awaited Giselle’s answer.
Giselle hadn’t even known the fairies were dancing roles.
She replied, speaking far too rapidly. “I don’t want a dancing role. I don’t have to be a fairy. I don’t have to be anything. I just did the Yeats poem piece because … well … I was going to do something else, but I hadn’t choreographed it. I didn’t know we were supposed to choreograph our monologues. So I switched to something with choreography.”
“Blocking,” murmured Rebecca.
Mr. Kinsler smiled. “Movement on stage in a play is referred to as blocking,” he said.
Giselle flushed. Blocking was a term used in the studio, too, but she thought that to say this now would make her look even more ignorant. Heat crept along her neck and face.
“Well, super,” said Mr. Kinsler. “As long as you’re open to a non-dancing role, that gives me some flexibility in my casting. Super. Miss Chekhov, nice meeting you.”
Mr. Kinsler spun like a level 1 ballet student and disappeared out a side door before Giselle had the presence of mind to say thank you or you, too or anything at all. After shaking her head at the unexpected conversation, she turned to exit the front lobby, finally feeling something like relief. She’d done it!
Rebecca caught up to her. “I’ve never heard Kinsler ask a student if they’d accept or refuse a role,” she whispered. “Never. But it was a really good audition. I love Yeats. Especially that poem.”
Rebecca continued in a steady prattle as the two walked, restating essentially the same information in several different ways. Giselle was struck by the sheer … verbosity Rebecca was capable of. It must come with being a drama student.
The two reached the front door out of the building. “Well, this is as far as I go,” said Rebecca, as if there were a magical boundary restraining her within the confines of the auditorium building. Giselle imagined a tiny bed tucked behind the scrim or a back wing.
“Goodbye,” murmured Giselle.
As she exited, she experienced a brief disorientation, familiar from other times she’d rehearsed and performed in the building. It was a moment that came each time she departed the windowless theatre. The last thing she could remember from when she entered the building was daylight, and the complete darkness outside came as a surprise because she hadn’t seen the sky darkening.
It was a ballet memory, unwelcome, and Giselle shooed it away.
~ ~ ~
She reached home a few minutes ahead of her mother and Katya. Babushka, in the kitchen, was humming the violin refrain from the first act of Giselle. The air was scented with something spicy and familiar: golubtsi, Russian cabbage rolls. Crossing to hug her grandmother, Giselle inhaled deeply: pork, beef, tomato, rich and pungent alongside the clean-sheets smell of rice.
Ykaterina Chekhov cooked increasingly Russian foods as the temperature plummeted each autumn. Giselle’s babushka had not learned cookery when she lived in Russia, of course, where ballet had consumed her days and nights. Rather, upon her recent acquisition of American citizenship, the retired prima ballerina assoluta had discovered the need to learn her way around a kitchen. For the past several winters, she had journeyed through recipe after recipe, trying to recreate the precise flavors of her youth in the former Leningrad.
“And how is my little student of theatre?” asked Babushka.
Giselle sighed heavily in answer. She leaned over the stove to catch the scent of golubtsi as it steamed out the closed oven door.
“Careful! Hot, hot, hot,” warned her grandmother. Babushka distrusted all things pertaining to the kitchen, likely because she had made its acquaintance so late in life.
Giselle backed away from the stove and fell into a chair at the kitchen table. She tried to practice slouching, but after a minute’s experiment, she gave it up as too fatiguing. She would save her slouching for school; there was no need to work so hard at home.
“I think I have a part in the play,” she said, reaching for a teacup. Today they hung from hooks on the wall instead o
f nestling in a crowded pile atop the drain board by the sink. Her grandmother had been busy this afternoon.
Hoping for a bit of leftover tea, Giselle fussed with the samovar spigot. It hissed and spit a few hot drops in the general direction of the mug.
“Chai is all gone,” said her grandmother, unnecessarily.
Giselle sighed and unplugged the samovar, carrying the Russian style kettle to the sink to refill it with water.
“Don’t electrocute yourself,” warned her grandmother.
“It’s unplugged,” Giselle pointed out. “It can’t hurt me.”
From things her own mother had said, Giselle had gathered that electricity in Russia had been sporadic or faulty or dangerous and occasionally all three at once.
“And what is role you are receiving?” asked Babushka.
“I think I’m going to be Helena.”
“Good. Is not wicked fairy-goblin.”
Babushka was dropping her a’s and the’s again, noted Giselle.
“No,” she agreed. “Not a fairy.”
“But, still … Midsummer has fairies. Why not produce lovely drama such as Romeo and Juliet? No evil fairies.” Babushka shook her head and muttered, “Very unlucky. Very bad.”
“I thought you and Mom were going to stage the ballet version of Midsummer in two years.”
“According to your mamulya, yes. According to Ykaterina, nyet. But maybe I sell studio. Or maybe I am dead in two years.”
“Don’t be silly, Babushka,” said Giselle, hugging her grandmother. “You’re not going to die. Sasha and I won’t allow it.”
The white Samoyed thumped her tail three times.
“You see?” asked Giselle, indicating their dog.
“Ya tebya lyublyu,” said her grandmother: I love you. “Ochen, ochen.” Very much.
The front door swung open admitting Ruslana and Katya.
Ykaterina eyed the returning pair with a dark countenance. “But still, is bad luck. Very bad. Ochen, ochen.”
“What’s bad luck, grandmother?” asked Katya, bursting into the kitchen, cheeks flushed from the cold. She kissed her grandmother on both cheeks, Russian style.
“Mmm! Golubtsi!” said Katya.
“The Fairy play,” replied their grandmother, remembering her definite article this time. “At same time with the Veeli ballet. It draws the watery maidens.”
Katya and Giselle exchanged sympathetic glances while their grandmother switched to Russian, still clucking and fretting.
“Oh, Mamulya,” said Ruslana, setting her things on the buffet in the connecting room. “Don’t be so ridiculous in front of the girls.”
“We can’t understand what she’s saying,” Katya pointed out.
At this, their grandmother’s attention, and her English, returned. “Such beautiful Russian you spoke as children,” she crooned. “Then to the pre-school and the kindergarten, and goodbye lovely Russian. Is all gone.”
“The girls don’t need to speak Russian in America,” snapped their mother, crossing to her bedroom through the kitchen.
“We need a few words,” said Katya. “Golubtsi, blinchiki, piroshki.” She executed a flawless pirouette as she uttered the final word.
Babushka and Mamulya used to demand a perfect pirouette for every piroshki the girls ate. At the memory, something in Giselle’s throat caught and her eyes burned.
“Is still bad luck, no matter what my daughter says,” murmured Babushka. “You are remembering to turn fountain off like I tell you? To keep evil ones away?” The questions were directed at Giselle.
“I forgot,” Giselle replied. “I’ll do it right now.”
In part, she did it because she knew her mother would be irked by the action. Such small acts of defiance were all Giselle had to challenge the woman who had crushed her dreams.
As Giselle stepped outside to the fountain, it occurred to her that perhaps her recent nightmares were the subconscious expression of her feelings for her mother. The she-goblins, or more specifically their queen, symbolized her mother. They were evil in her dreams because in real life, her mother had done her a great wrong. And the creatures’ vengeful behavior? It didn’t take much imagination to see why she was dreaming about vengeance.
When Giselle re-entered the kitchen, Katya was sitting at the table and listening to their grandmother insisting the Frenchman who created the ballet of Giselle stole the story from the Russians, perhaps from a little tale in Pushkin. But Babushka broke off, sadness in her eyes, when she saw Giselle. For the first time, it occurred to Giselle her decision to quit ballet had hurt more than her mother.
Giselle turned away and began setting the table, wishing she could have her life back, her dreams back, her family back.
During dinner, she was silent. She deconstructed her golubtsi, separating grains of rice from the ground beef, peeling onion bits from red sauce, considering the flow of the veins in the leaf of cabbage. The discussion of ballet rehearsals took away what little appetite she had, and she slipped away to be alone in her room during a discussion of Kevin’s appalling death-leap.
Ballet music swelled in the darkness of her bedroom; Katya’s doing, no doubt. Giselle crossed to turn off her sister’s computer. But then she heard the first gentle notes of Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies. A sob rose in her throat. She fell into the memory of the first time she’d heard the haunting melody, the first time her mother had offered her instruction in ballet. Giselle had been two and unable to remain still when Papa played piano. Her mother had showed her how to hold her arms: Just so. How to place her feet: Like mine. Side by side the two pliéd to the gentle sound of papa playing Gymnopédies.
It was her earliest memory of ballet, the first time a shiver ran down her spine as she rose and sank to the measured notes on the piano. The repetition captivated her, each plié as delightful as the first. She could have fallen and risen like that until the universe folded in on itself and time was no more.
Timelessness: this was the lasting sensation she recalled, revisiting the memory of those first pliés. She had experienced it again and again, the way moments evaporated when she worked at the barre or danced across the studio’s sprung wood floor, the sun sinking without her having noticed day had ended. Timelessness.
Her throat constricted and the spell was broken and suddenly she felt thin and brittle as glass. All those times were behind her now, and it was as if the universe had indeed folded in on itself and on her, leaving her airless, lightless, hopeless.
14
HER HANDS TOUCHED EMPTINESS
Giselle fell asleep crying and dreamed of maidens whirling on the grass. They called to her, speaking together, an eerie chorus.
“Come to us,” they called. “Dance with us, dying never, forgetting never, forgiving never.”
Giselle refused, shaking her head, unwilling to join the wild girls.
“She will come,” said one of the maidens, hissing in a strange-sounding language Giselle found herself able to understand. “She will come. The time is near.”
She awoke sitting bolt upright in bed. She was cold. Freezing. Her covers lay pooled on the ground, kicked away as she’d attempted to flee the fell creatures. She checked the time. It was 5:39 which meant the heater wouldn’t turn on for another twenty minutes. She snatched her duvet and bundled it around her body, but it, too, was cold.
Shivering, she rose, pulled on extra layers of clothing, and slid her feet into fleecy slippers. When she first saw her mother downstairs, hands curled around a steaming cup of chai, Giselle forgot they were enemies and saw only the woman who had tucked her in every night and nurtured her dreams every day.
“I thought I heard you,” said her mother. “Bad dream?”
Her mother’s voice and gaze brought back to Giselle all that had happened in the past week. Giselle averted her eyes and grunted noncommittally, unwilling to speak to her mother.
“Have some tea,” said Ruslana. “You’ll feel better.”
It was sound advice. Gise
lle reached for a mug and filled it with steaming hot water from the samovar. Then, taking down the small teapot balanced atop the samovar, she added concentrated tea to her hot water, followed by a heaping spoonful of sugar.
Giselle knew that if her grandmother had been in the room, she would have scolded her granddaughter for adding so much sugar. She added another spoonful. Babushka’s scoldings always felt like love, issued in an odd currency.
Giselle stirred her tea, soothed by the familiar clink of stainless steel striking china. After she set her spoon down, she and her mother sat in silence, blowing on their hot chai. Giselle’s plan to never again speak to her mother was progressing well.
“Old fool,” murmured her mother at last, referring no doubt to Babushka. “The way she carries on, it’s no wonder you girls are having nightmares.”
“Katya had a nightmare?” The question flew from Giselle’s mouth before she could remember she wasn’t talking to her mother.
“It cost her several hours’ sleep,” said Ruslana. “She’ll be useless by afternoon.”
It was Saturday, the studio’s only full day of rehearsal per week. Because drama students had the weekends off, today would be the first of a long string of Saturdays with cups of tea as Giselle’s only companions.
She took a sip, scalding her tongue.
“Your grandmother gets more superstitious every year,” said Ruslana. “Believe it or not, I was raised by a woman very different from your babushka today.”
Giselle knew this was an invitation to ask questions, to converse. She’d been avoiding any eye contact with her mother, but she snuck a glimpse now. Her mother’s mouth, usually not a part of her body to give anything away, was turned down, her lips pressed thin. Ruslana breathed out half a sigh, shook her head, and poured herself more tea.
Giselle stood, muttering something about washing her hair.
To avoid having to say goodbye when everyone else left for the studio, she stayed in the shower far longer than was necessary. Washing her hair took only a fraction of the time it used to require, and whenever she dressed, Giselle still reached to pull her long hair through the neck of her shirt. Today, as before, her hands touched emptiness.
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