Ballerina

by Edward Stewart

  ‘I accept your terms,’ he said, ‘on one condition. Stephanie must join NBT immediately.’

  ‘How immediately is that?’

  ‘This week.’

  Anna couldn’t believe it. The twenty years didn’t matter. She had Volmar crawling. ‘What do you say, Steph?’

  Steph had half turned away from the discussion. There was a quality in her voice that Anna had never detected before. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Volmar.’

  Dear God, everything in Anna screamed, she’s not going to turn him down!

  ‘I’m awfully tired,’ Steph said. ‘I can’t even think.’

  ‘Of course,’ Volmar said. ‘But you’ll let me know—one of you—within the week?’

  ‘What did I tell you?’ Anna’s heart was doing fouettés in her rib cage. ‘He loves you.’

  ‘I’m not ready for it, Mom.’

  ‘If Marius Volmar says you’re ready, you better believe you’re ready.’

  ‘Tonight I’m not ready for anything but bed.’

  ‘A cup of tea will do you good.’ Anna flagged a Checker cab and pushed Steph in first. They went to Anna’s place.

  They talked in the kitchen because it was in kitchens that all the important events of Anna’s life had taken place. In a kitchen she could cope: the tools of survival were all there, copper-bottomed and shiny and neatly displayed. Steph fell into a chair. She looked white and slumped and used up. Anna filled the kettle, set it on the large burner so it would come to the boil fast.

  ‘I heard those people whispering,’ Anna said. ‘“Who is she? Where did she come from? Why haven’t we seen her before?” The critic from the New York Post doesn’t understand why Empire’s been hiding you all this time. He says it’s a crime.’

  Steph bent down and pawed through her tote bag like a puppy digging up a bone. She came up with a cigarette, lit it. She looked like a little girl trying to act grown up. ‘Mom, I like it at Empire.’

  ‘Danny has a lot of talent, I agree. He’ll go places—someday. But remember one thing: choreographers have a lifetime. Dancers haven’t. A dancer has to make every second count.’

  ‘I want to do solos, but I want it to be with this company because—’

  ‘Because you’re in love with him.’

  ‘Because a dancer doesn’t dance alone. A dancer creates with other dancers. Everyone at Empire from the youngest kid in the corps to the principals—we’re collaborators. Mom, if I walked out on them after tonight—’

  ‘You’re not walking out. You have a better offer, you’re moving up.’

  ‘If Empire had treated me badly, maybe I could. But they haven’t. Don’t you see how it looks?’

  ‘Okay, tell me. Tell me how it looks.’

  ‘It looks as though I squeezed Linda out of her role. It looks as though I used Danny and got him to squeeze Ilonka out. It looks as though I used the whole company and then threw them all away.’

  ‘You didn’t have anything to do with Linda losing that role.’

  Steph gave her mother a sudden, long look. ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘I know dancers and I know this business. She lost that role on her own. And I’ll tell you what it looks like if you stay with that company. It looks like you’re an idiot.’

  ‘Then I’ll look like an idiot. You can’t just snap off a collaboration like a stick of celery.’

  ‘Forget the celery. Just don’t throw away this opportunity. The top man in ballet wants you and he wants you on your terms. You’ll never get this chance again.’

  Steph was silent. Anna could tell she was thinking. It made Anna afraid when Steph thought like that.

  ‘If he wants me tonight,’ Steph said, ‘he’ll want me next year.’

  ‘Honey: there are eighty good ballet schools in this country and they’re turning out two dozen girls a day who could dance pirouette piqueés around Anna Pavlova. You have competition, real competition, and it’s going to get worse. So don’t kid yourself. Don’t do what I did. Don’t throw away your one chance because you think you’re in love.’

  ‘Stop comparing you and me. We’re not the same.’

  It was one-thirty in the morning and Anna Lang was sitting on a straight-backed kitchen chair. She was suddenly aware of time, not just the hour but the years that stretched back and back and could not be stopped from stretching forward. She sat silently, her face turned away from the person whom for nineteen years she had called a daughter. Her eyes were staring into that dark future that she would enter in a moment, alone, as soon as she had collected the shattered bits of her strength and glued them together again.

  She did not say that all her life she had been picking up pieces that other people had smashed.

  She did not say that there would soon have to come a time when glue could not hold shattered glue.

  The shaking of her shoulders whispered it, the hands hugging her sides screamed it.

  Her daughter watched and felt rotten and cruel. Steph wanted to touch the thin cotton protecting those bent, trembling shoulders.

  ‘It just isn’t fair,’ Anna said. ‘Sure, you have to do what you want and I’m not going to stop you. But they’re a lousy nowhere company and Volmar’s offering you—’

  ‘What’s he offering me? What’s so great about NBT?’

  ‘If he’d made that offer to me twenty years ago, I’d be a star today. Sure I’m jealous. I admit it. What I wouldn’t give to be your age and in your place ... there’s nothing I wouldn’t give. And to see you throwing it away like it was garbage—it’s like you’re spitting on me.’

  ‘You don’t mean that, Mom.’

  Anna fought the temptation to weep. She would not be shameless in front of her own daughter. Instead she folded herself together, neat and brave, and allowed herself a little pain. She ached because she was a mother and because she had done her best. She ached for the youth that was gone and the chances that had vanished with it. But most cruelly of all she ached for this child who would not believe her.

  ‘I’m Anna Boborovsky Lang and I say what I mean! It may be stupid but I say it and I mean it and if only once, just once, you’d listen! Doesn’t a mother have a right to be listened to?’

  ‘I’ve been listening.’

  ‘You’ve never listened. Never. What’s the use? Do what you want. I love you but I can’t do a damned thing to stop you.’

  Chris looked up from the sofa as Steph came into the living room. She pushed the tangled hair out of her eyes and tried to blink herself awake. ‘I didn’t expect you,’ she said groggily.

  Steph stared at her. ‘Are you all right?’

  Chris pushed herself into a sitting position. ‘I’m fine. I just dozed off watching TV.’ Too late, she realized the TV wasn’t on. She saw Steph’s brow furrow.

  ‘Is that a bruise?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On your neck.’

  Chris glanced down. Steph was looking at her oddly and it took her a moment to realize what the look meant. She thinks I made love with Ray.

  Steph went to the phone and Chris heard her make an excuse to Danny about not coming over. Sex is easy for Steph, Chris thought. She can handle it. If I tell her what happened tonight she’ll think I’m a baby. I’ll just say we loved her ballet.

  ‘I thought you’d be with Danny,’ Chris said. But she thanked God Steph was here, at home.

  ‘I thought so too.’ Steph said.

  Chris sensed something very much amiss. She said what a wonderful performance it had been and Steph said, sighing, ‘It could have been much better.’

  She sounds just like me, Chris thought. ‘But you were perfect!’

  ‘It would have been ten times better with Ilonka. I’m just not on her level. I don’t have her extension, I don’t have her triple spin, I don’t have anything....’

  Chris watched Steph flop into a chair. ‘Steph, what’s bothering you?’

  ‘Everything. Danny, my mother, my job....’

  Chris had never seen Steph help
less or glum or confused before. It made her feel needed and she forget herself in a sudden surge of purpose, like a fleet of white corpuscles rushing toward an infection. ‘I’ll make some hot chocolate and why don’t you tell me about it?’

  Chris made cocoa and Steph sat staring at the steam wisping up from her cup.

  ‘It’s all such a screwed-up tangle.’

  Chris took a tiny, scalding sip of cocoa. ‘Why aren’t you spending the night with Danny? Tonight of all nights?’

  ‘I couldn’t look him in the face.’ Steph explained she’d had an offer from NBT and Chris bit back a little yelp of happiness.

  ‘Chris, he could have had Ilonka Banska, it would have made him, and he gave up his chance for me. And now my mother wants me to drop Empire and move to another company.’

  We’d be together, Chris thought. I’d have a friend.

  ‘That’s like—’ Steph seemed to fumble for words. ‘That’s kicking the ladder over when you’ve reached the top. It’s using Danny and dropping him.’

  Chris did not answer. It was better to let all the doubt and bitterness spill out.

  ‘All my life,’ Steph said, ‘everything I’ve ever wanted—really wanted—my mother keeps taking it from me. I feel like a little kid at a birthday party playing pin the tail on the donkey. My mother blindfolds me and spins me and gives me a push. Just when I’ve found the donkey she spins me again and suddenly I don’t know where I am and I have to start looking all over again....’

  After a moment Chris said softly, ‘She’s only trying to help. She loves you, Steph.’

  ‘I’ve had her help and I’ve had her love up to here. If she doesn’t ease up, I swear I’m going to hate that woman.’

  She doesn’t mean that, Chris thought. ‘Would you rather have parents who didn’t care?’

  ‘God, I’d give anything. Just to be left alone. Just to be allowed to make my own decision once.’

  Funny, Chris thought, I’d give anything to have a parent who cared—even a parent like Mrs Lang.

  Steph was looking at her, a blush of guilt fleeting across her face. ‘Chris, I know those parents of yours break your heart—but believe me, in the long run you’re better off. You’re travelling light.’

  ‘What if—you don’t want to travel light? Steph, you don’t know how it is. You buy tickets for them and the tickets are still at the box office after your premiere. Your father cancels at the last moment because of a board meeting he knew about a year ago. Sometimes there are flowers with a note someone else wrote, sometimes there isn’t even a phone call. When your parents don’t care you’re more alone than anyone else in the world. Even a Danny can’t make up for it:

  Steph crossed her arms and laid her head down on the table. At first Chris thought she had passed out but then she saw the sighing rise and fall of the shoulders.

  ‘Maybe you’re right, Chris.’ The voice came muffled and thick. ‘But it doesn’t help. What am I going to do?’

  Chris thought a moment. ‘Decide what you want and just do it.’

  ‘I don’t know what I want.’

  ‘You have time. You’ll make up your mind. And whatever you choose—Danny loves you and your mother loves you. They’ll accept it. That’s what love is.’

  ‘I wish I could believe the world was like that.’

  Chris reached a hand and touched her. ‘Don’t worry about it now, Steph. Sleep on it. You’ll do the right thing.’

  twenty-four

  The next day Danny had good reviews in all three papers. Steph was glad for him. But the Times slapped her and that hurt. ‘Not a Banska by any stretch.’ The Post called her ‘adequate’ and the Daily News didn’t mention her.

  ‘What do critics know?’ Anna said. ‘You got the review that counts: Volmar.’

  After the performance Steph went to Danny’s apartment. There was a longing to their love-making that she had never known before. There was passion but it was the passion of sadness. It was as though their bodies knew that this was their last time.

  Afterwards they pulled apart and she lay staring at their nakedness, smooth and strong and dancer-white.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Danny asked.

  She was wondering if they would ever be this way again.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Forget how to smile? You use these muscles—and these—' His lips skimmed her mouth.

  ‘Will you tell me something honestly?’ She sat up. ‘Did you drive Ilonka out of Lacrymosa on purpose?’

  He stared at her. Something edged out of his expression, as though a door had closed. ‘I didn’t drive her out of it.’

  ‘You could have kept her. She wanted the role. It would have made your career.’

  ‘She was wrong for it.’

  ‘Was she, Danny? Do you really believe that?’

  ‘It’s my ballet. I know what’s right for it and I know what’s wrong.’

  ‘And I was right for it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There wasn’t any other reason?’

  He stared at her a long moment. ‘No other reason would have mattered.’

  ‘It does matter. You gave up your chance for me.’

  ‘I didn’t give up anything. Ilonka will hate me for a season and then it will all be forgotten.’

  ‘But will Empire ever let you do another ballet?’

  ‘If they—don’t I’ll go somewhere else. But that’s a long way off.’

  ‘Danny—it’s not a long way off for me. NBT has offered me a position.’

  She felt a terrible stillness flowing out of him.

  ‘Are you taking it?’ he asked.

  She didn’t know. That was the dreadful thing. She reached her hand toward his, hoping he would touch it, hoping his touch would tell her what the answer should be. ‘I want to be with you,’ she said.

  ‘Then what’s the problem?’

  She tried not to cry. She wanted to say, I wish there was some way I could have you and the other job too. But suddenly she was crying, tears pouring down from under her eyelids. She took his hand and squeezed it hard as though she could wring an answer from it. Danny, she wanted say, help me, I’m so scared this will be the end.

  He listened to her crying and he didn’t move, he didn’t speak. There was no gesture, no hint, no help. If only he would' put his arms around her, touch her, look at her....

  She felt some terrible harm about to happen, already happening.

  ‘They’re a better company,’ she said. ‘The only decent thing at Empire is you. Hannah Meredith is a bumbling socialite. Heinrich is a hack. Lester is a twit. All they do is mouth museum pieces.’

  The reasons were real enough but they sounded obvious and dumb, like excuses. They fell into silence. For a long while Danny said nothing. He seemed to be staring down an empty road.

  Finally he said, ‘Companies change. Empire could change. You and I could change it.’

  She loved him for believing that but she knew it was only a dream. ‘A dancer’s life is so short, Danny. All we have is five, ten years.’

  ‘What makes you think you’d do better at NBT?’

  ‘I’d be working with artists.’

  ‘Volmar hasn’t done an original work in twenty years.’

  ‘But he’s an artist. And he wants me.’

  Danny looked at her. ‘I want you. I’m an artist.’

  Why couldn’t he understand? Why did he have to act as though she was asking the impossible? ‘But Volmar has a company.’

  ‘And I don’t. I see.’ He shook his head, not seeing, not yielding. Refusing.

  The realization hit her like a bottle crashing on her skull: there was truth to her mother’s harping. Danny did expect her to give up her chance, he did believe he came first. She did not know whether this greed was typical of all men or peculiarly Danny’s. But it was there in the dark room with them, a third presence breathtakingly physical.

  She tried to be patient. She tried to explain. ‘Danny—you’re a soloist. You oug
ht to be a principal. Everything at Empire is political. Who’s getting reviews, who’s sleeping with who, who owes who what. They’re not trying to develop you as a choreographer. They’re trying to cash in. That’s all they’re interested in. They didn’t stage your ballet because it was good. They staged it because you got a review. Suddenly you were a star. Do you think, without that review, they’d have even noticed you?’

  ‘Frankly, yes. In time.’

  ‘At Empire it takes too much time. It takes your whole life. And then some girl in the corps gets her picture on the cover of Vogue and Hannah Meredith smells publicity and jumps her up to principal and they fire a real principal to make room for her.’

  ‘That’s only happened once. With Peggy-Anne.’

  ‘It would never happen at NBT. Danny, it could happen to anyone at Empire. You, me, Ilonka.’

  ‘Who said ballet was a welfare state?’

  The atmosphere in the room had turned argumentative. She felt her voice rise a cutting notch. ‘All right—maybe dance isn’t a welfare state—but at least it ought to be an art!’

  His face wrinkled like a bunched-up fistful of sheet. ‘Art? Jesus Christ, you talk like one of those girls who grew up watching reruns of Red Shoes.’

  He was trying to hurt her, but she knew that was only because she had hurt him. She didn’t care. ‘One day I will be an artist.’

  ‘Artist?’ he exploded. ‘The two of you are old masters already.’

  She looked at him with baffled eyes. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Your mother sets me up. You deliver the punch. That’s real timing. You two are a team.’

  She shook her head, not knowing what he meant, knowing it was false.

  ‘You know something? You had me convinced, Steph. I believed you. You know what’s stupider? I believed in you.’

  ‘Danny—I never lied to you.’

  ‘Not in words. That’s for sure. But you’re pretty accomplished at non-verbal lying.’

  He got up, strode from the bed. He turned, naked and silent in his accusation. She felt dirty. She sat in the darkness, numb and chilled, her heard pounding. She could not look at him. She stared down at her feet. Dancer’s feet. Arched and strong. And at this moment useless. Troublemakers. She couldn’t find words. She sat still for a moment and then she rose and walked very slowly till she was standing within touching distance of him.