Ballerina

by Edward Stewart

  She unbuttoned. Her hand trembled and her fingers were clumsy.

  The doctor reached a stethoscope beneath her hospital smock. He bent his head slightly and he listened to her breathing. The instrument left an icy track along her ribs. She hated stethoscopes. They were lie detectors that always found her out. When she was a child doctors had come and listened to her breathing and she’d had to go to the hospital.

  The doctor’s face showed no reaction to the rapid, uneven beating of her heart. She was relieved when he said she could button up again.

  ‘Young lady, you need a lot more sleep, a lot more food, and a lot less coffee.’

  ‘I’ll be all right. It goes away after a while.’

  ‘What goes away?’ he asked, alert.

  Her eyes darted in confusion. ‘What you were just talking about.’

  His eyes changed depth of focus. There was sympathy in them, but criticism too. ‘Are you taking anything to rev up your energy?’

  ‘Don’t all dancers?’

  ‘I want to know what you’re taking. Diet pills? Ginseng?’

  She shook her head. He didn’t seem to know much about dancers. ‘I don’t take drugs. Just honey.’

  ‘For you, honey’s a drug. Lay off it, will you?’

  The hell she’d lay off honey. She’d never get through company class, let alone a performance, without half a jar of it.

  ‘Okay,’ she lied.

  The doctor nodded and went into the next room. Concern rimmed his eyes as he hunched over Christine Avery’s records. Pen in hand, he skimmed the medical history: blood pressure, pulmonary function, weight, blood sugar, urine. He paused and added a notation.

  Chris remained alone in the examining room, legs swinging impatiently off the edge of the table. She hated hospitals. They were jails where doctors locked you up and probed you and pulled blood and marrow out of you and then told you there was nothing wrong. Doctors had once kept her four days in Evanston General and she’d missed the school recital.

  She would have danced Ondine.

  She had a vague impression of time drifting by, of voices whispering. A knock interrupted her thoughts and the door opened and the doctor stood gazing at her.

  He added what he saw to what he had read in the records and he felt he had been staring at her many, many years. She looked very small and delicate. There was fragile grace to the way she held herself and her face was fulfilled and luminous, like a martyr’s.

  ‘You’re doing fine, Christine, just fine.’

  His face was friendly and wise and false, like all doctors’ faces she had known.

  ‘But remember. Never go two months without a complete checkup.’

  In Evanston they had said three months. He couldn’t be a very good doctor.

  ‘And if you ever black out or feel faint or the least bit dizzy—see me immediately.’

  The doctor patted her shoulder and made a gesture for her to dress. She could tell he didn’t understand. To him, health was an end in itself. To her, it was a ladder to something higher.

  ‘And no more than one cup of coffee a day. Decaffeinated if you can stomach it.’

  She nodded. Give up coffee? The man had to be crazy.

  eleven

  ‘Hey—aren’t you Avery?’

  Chris whirled, tried to locate the voice and stave off its hinted threat. Just inside the stage door, a dozen girls clustered chattering around the bulletin board where the day’s schedule was posted. Chris had skirted them and gone straight to the elevator. She already had her schedule memorized: company class at eleven, rehearsal of the new choreography for Köchel Listing at twelve-thirty, lunch break (yogurt and an apple), and stage rehearsal at three of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade. With luck she’d squeeze in a quick nap (God, how she’d been needing those quick naps!) and a bite at home, then hurry back to the theatre at six-thirty to change and warm up for the 8 p.m. curtain.

  And now, just as the elevator doors whooshed open, one of the girls at the bulletin board called over, ‘Hey—aren’t you Avery?’

  It was Madeline Robbins, the redhead who danced Tulip in Waltz of the Flowers. She’d never said so much as a hello before.

  ‘You’d better take a look at this.’

  Chris hesitated, then crossed warily to the board. The girls backed off. She could feel their eyes encircling her. A last-minute change had been pencilled onto the schedule: 12:30, Studio 3: New Work; Avery and Collins.

  She recognized the thick, slashing capitals. So did every other girl there. The handwriting was Marius Volmar’s.

  Her mind lurched. A new work for Avery—Christine Avery? It had to be a mistake. But she knew Marius Volmar didn’t make mistakes. Ever.

  A dozen silent stares tracked her to the elevator.

  In the dressing room, flutters of panic began in her stomach. Wally Collins was a principal, one of the top male dancers in the company. In the country.

  By the time she got to class she felt she was going to throw up. The ballet master yelled at her twice about her turn-out. The girls kept throwing her ricochet glances in the mirrors, eyes hard as sharpened rocks.

  Wally Collins, two positions down from her on the barre, went through the movements flawlessly, tall and blond, fluid and untroubled as wheat bending in the wind. He didn’t look at her once. The whole company saw him not looking at her and the corps began smirking.

  Chris excused herself after the petit allegro.

  She locked herself into a toilet stall and put a finger down her throat. Breakfast—half a doughnut and black coffee—came up.

  After that she was able to control the trembling. She gargled and showered. At twelve-thirty she tiptoed to the door of Studio 3, braced for humiliation.

  Marius Volmar, elbows propped on the top of the upright piano, was nodding a tempo to the pianist. He turned as Chris slipped through the door. His eyes acknowledged her. There was no frown, no smile, nothing. He gestured to the pianist to keep playing.

  ‘It’s the Andante Cantabile. You know it, of course.’

  ‘I’ve heard it.’ Chris felt the floor sway. She steadied her knees. ‘It’s very pretty.’

  ‘It’s trash, but it’s Tchaikovsky—and Tchaikovsky is always genius.’

  Wally Collins came shoulder-swinging through the studio door, crisp and bright-faced as a mountain climber setting out before sunrise. He had changed into fresh green tights and a loose moss-green shirt. Chris felt herself grow small in her rumpled, dirty leotard.

  Volmar stretched a hand. ‘Wally—come help us. You know Christine?’

  Wally smiled. He had healthy, meat-murdering teeth. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Sit.’ Volmar patted the wood floor. The three of them sat. Volmar nodded and the pianist began to play again. Volmar shut his eyes. The music flowed with the melancholy asymmetry of a sigh. At a quickening in the tempo Volmar raised his hand. ‘Sammy—if you please—a little more pizzicato in the left hand.’

  Chris stole a glance at Wally Collins. He was winding his wrist-watch.

  Volmar let the music continue to the end. He thanked the pianist, got to his feet, and began pacing, waving his arms.

  ‘Music is our staircase. This is simple music; it makes a simple staircase. No spirals, no zigzags, no drooping over the bannister. We go up, we come down again. We have two tempos: the andante, the più mosso. They are repeated. Same stairs up, same stairs down. Wally—where is our emotional climax? Where are the stairs steepest?’

  ‘The last allegro.’

  ‘Christine?’

  She hesitated to disagree with her partner, but ... ‘The second andante.’

  ‘What phrase in the second andante?’

  ‘The two silences.’

  Volmar’s gaze probed hers, lingered. ‘And which silence is steeper?’

  ‘The second.’

  A soundlessness expanded through the studio. ‘Correct. We are aiming at the second silence.’

  Volmar rubbed his hands briskly together,, like a baker preparing to pum
mel a wad of dough into strudel.

  "All right. Christine, you lie down on the floor. You’re a dead princess, dead swan, any dead beautiful thing you like. Wally, you enter from that diagonal. You’re going to bring Christine back to life.’

  Throughout the music’s first andante, Chris lay on her side on the floor. Volmar took enormous pains positioning both her arms behind her head.

  ‘A swan, Christine—not a chicken. Your neck extended. Wally is moving, you are not moving. The audience is watching you because you are beautiful not moving.’

  Fingers marking rapidly, Volmar gave Wally his steps. The music picked up from the più mosso.

  ‘When Wally touches you, open your eyes. Not like that. There’s no alarm clock. Slowly. Andante. Do you know what cantabile means? Singing. Your eyes sing.’

  Chris opened her eyes, and opened them and opened them, till on the umpteenth opening Volmar said that would have to do for the time being. Her hip was howling from digging into the floor.

  ‘He kisses your fingers—your fingers move. Look. Look at my fingers. The fingers sing. Your hand comes to life—always cantabile.... All right, we’ll work on that. Your arm rises—singing....’

  Through the first andante, Volmar limited Chris’s movements to eyes, hands, arms, and—finally—shoulders.

  ‘Use no strength, Christine. Wally is supporting you.’

  At the più mosso, with an assist from Wally, she rose—‘flowed uphill,’ in Volmar’s phrase—to her feet. Her legs were numb from pressing into the floor and she promptly wobbled off her balance. Oddly enough Volmar didn’t seem to mind in the least.

  ‘Let’s change that. Wally, can you step in closer? She has a turn, so don’t get in the way of her knee. Extend your right hand, let your finger touch hers. Give her enough support to hold the balance. Christine, you’re not falling off a cliff. Stop grabbing.’

  Volmar came and took her hand.

  ‘One finger. This finger. It’s lovely, use it. Wally is there, he is rock. Your finger touches his very lightly—only the tip—and the rock flows into you. All right.’ Volmar hummed a phrase for the pianist. ‘Let’s take it from the turn—and!’

  Wally pulled her into a turn. She unspooled, bent her legs in preparation. He lifted her, and her arms and legs floated in momentary arabesque. The hand that supported her crotch was strong, secure, but suddenly she was not sure of its sexlessness. She felt herself blushing as Wally lowered her.

  The crease in Volmar’s forehead deepened.

  ‘Christine, you’re still working too hard. Can’t you let the pirouettes just happen?’

  ‘Mr Volmar, I don’t have multiple pirouettes.’

  ‘Go on pointe and Wally will spin you. And!’

  Volmar snapped his fingers. The girl went up on the point of her right foot, pushing off with her left. The rest was Wally’s hands, strongly deft knots of muscle and nerve, almost invisibly kneading the spin into her waist.

  The girl gave no feeling of lift or lightness: that would have to be worked on, and Volmar knew it would come. There was a trick of spotting—whipping the head around before the body, keeping the eyes fixed on a point stage front—that would increase the girl’s momentum, give the turn snap, and make it seem more her and less Wally’s doing. She hadn’t yet mastered her spotting.

  But for the moment there were five pirouettes, not badly faked. It was a start.

  Volmar was not entirely dissatisfied. j

  When Chris got home after rehearsal she found Steph and Ray Lockwood sitting in the living room. Ray said he’d happened to be in the neighbourhood, just stopped by, and Chris was horribly aware that she was dirty and sweaty and the rug hadn’t been vacuumed.

  ‘I brought some ginger ale.’ Ray gestured with his glass. ‘Since you dancers don’t drink on duty. Care to join us?’

  ‘And he brought those.’ Steph nodded towards a decanter of roses on the table. Ray was smiling and Chris thought, He’s spent his money on roses and we don’t even have a pretzel to offer him. She felt dirty and sweaty and the sort of person her mother called ‘ungracious.’

  ‘I’ll have a little ginger ale,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Steph said quickly, and Chris was alone with Ray Lockwood.

  ‘Aren’t you going to sit?’ he said. ‘It is your home.’

  There was room on the sofa beside him but she sat in the rocker so he wouldn’t get too close a look at how messy she was. He swallowed and sat a little straighter.

  ‘They’re beautiful roses,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  They were silent and then he cleared his throat and said he was having a bitch of a time with international sea law. Chris wished she could get the new ballet and all its worries out of her head. She wished she could say something about sea law.

  ‘That sounds complicated,’ she said in a soft voice that was hardly there at all.

  Steph brought the ginger ale and Ray asked how life had been treating Chris. She couldn’t think of anything intelligent to answer. There was Volmar’s new ballet, but she didn’t see how a lawyer could be interested in that. She shrugged her shoulders and the blue cotton of her dress bunched up.

  Ray’s eyes stuck on the tiny crescent of freckles at the collar.

  He’s in love with her, Steph thought. He’d better learn to lie a little better with those eyes if he expects to go anywhere in law. They were attractive eyes, grey and shining and warm. Why doesn’t she look at him? Steph wondered. Doesn’t she know?

  ‘I thought you dancers were supposed to lead exciting lives,’ Ray said. ‘Not like the rest of us mortals.’ His glass was nervous in his fingers. ‘Always getting your pictures in the papers and dancing premieres and going to penthouse pot parties.’

  He’s joking, Steph realized, but not really: he wants to know if Chris goes out. Chris was biting her lower lip and Steph could see something was bothering her. ‘Dancers go out maybe once or twice a month,’ Steph said. ‘And we’re not all that exciting. We can’t get drunk, we can’t take drugs, we can’t stay up late, and our best conversation is who did what in class and how’s your triple fouetté.’

  Ray nodded, eyes fixed on Chris. ‘Law’s a little like that. You have to narrow your focus.’

  ‘Mr Volmar’s doing a pas de deux on Wally Collins and me,’ Chris blurted.

  Steph stared one slack-jawed moment. ‘Chris, that’s wonderful!’ Open up, she wanted to say, sparkle—you’ve got an admirer hanging on your every word—impress him! ‘Come on,’ she prodded. ‘Tell us about it.’

  Chris explained as much as she’d been able to understand, glancing now and then at Ray to see if she was boring him: the choreography was Volmar’s, more or less, a dead swan coming back to life. The music was Tchaikovsky, the Andante Cantabile. Her partner, Mr Super-Prince of NBT himself, turned out to be completely un-stuck-up and surprisingly helpful.

  Ray Lockwood listened, interested and wanting very much to grasp whatever it was that so excited Chris. He had trouble following what the girls were saying: much of it seemed to be communicated in telepathic shrugs and glances; the fingers had something to do with it too, and there was a great deal of technical French.

  I’ll get better at it, he thought. All it takes is time and exposure—like international sea law.

  For the moment he was able to take an almost parental pleasure in watching Chris and noting the ways she had changed. Before, she had been strange and sweet and out of place, a pocket of quiet in a whirling debutante brawl. Now, with her own apartment and life, she was animated and alive and eager.

  Steph listened too, nodding, trying her damnedest not to feel envious. But in a corner of her mind she wondered if her mother’s advice had been all that shrewd: if she’d taken the NBT offer, maybe she’d be doing solos now, just like Chris. And Wally Collins—my God, he was the best American male in the business.

  ‘Your own pas de deux!’ Steph said. ‘You’ve sure come up fast.’
r />   ‘But I....’ Chris glanced at Ray. His eyes were clouded by something undefinable. I’m boring him, she thought, and suddenly she couldn’t go on. ‘Excuse me.’

  She got up and left the room and a moment later the bathroom door shut and clicked. Steph and Ray sat staring at one another.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘Let me go see.’ Steph went and rapped on the bathroom door. ‘Chris,’ she said softly, ‘anything the matter?’

  The door opened. Chris’s eyes were red and she spoke in a whisper. ‘He can’t hear, can he?’

  Steph closed the door. ‘Now what’s the trouble?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think maybe too much is happening at once.’

  ‘Stop talking like that. You should be happy, you should be celebrating!’

  ‘Steph, I’m scared.’

  ‘Why in the world?’

  ‘I’ve been in the corps three months and suddenly Marius Volmar gives me a premiere. Why me?’

  Which was exactly what Steph was wondering. ‘Because you’re good.’

  ‘There are principals at NBT who’ve been waiting three years for a premiere!’

  ‘And you’re better for the role than they are.’

  ‘I don’t have ankles, I don’t have any strength in my turns, I don’t have balance. Wally’s carrying me through half the ballet and pulling me through the rest.’

  ‘Stop putting yourself down. You’re the best one for this role and Volmar sees it.’

  ‘Every girl in that company’s going to hate me. They’re whispering already.’

  Steph had heard about the NBT corps with its gossip and backbiting. It wouldn’t be at all odd if one or two of the older girls picked on a promising newcomer. ‘Chris, what does it matter? It’s not your job to listen to whispers and you’re not running for most popular girl in the class. Just stick to your dancing and learn your role. And if you can do that, every girl in that corps is going to worship you.’

  ‘I wish ...’ Chris’s voice trailed off. Something wisped across her face.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I wish we were in the same company.’

  Steph smiled. ‘And I wish I was getting a solo premiere. Now you’ve got a visitor out there, so fix your eyes and come on out and sparkle.’