“I’ll write you one before you leave. How often are you taking it these days?”
“Funny, not all that often, but I sure like knowing it’s there.”
“We call that the Back Pocket Effect.”
Daisy smiled. They sat in silence a minute.
“It’s occurred to me,” Daisy said. “It’s been three years since I’ve seen Erik. Four in April. I’ve now been away from him for as long as I knew him.”
She held out her hands, palms up, like scales. “It’s even now. We were together three years, we’ve been apart three years.”
Slowly she tilted the balance, raising one hand higher.
“And now the time away from him is going to start outweighing the togetherness.”
“How does that—”
“Make you feel?” Daisy said, grinning. “I feel like time really is an amazing thing. People tell you time heals all wounds, all things heal in time. All that shit your mother says while you want to scream. But I mailed back the box of Erik’s things and I couldn’t believe how calm I was. I felt sadness, but it wasn’t overwhelming. It wasn’t in my veins or splitting my chest open. I talk about strong emotions being like a jacket I wear. This was a brooch on a jacket, not the entire garment.”
Rita nodded. “This is huge. Considering your state when you first came in to see me.” Her fingers fluttered in calculation. “It’s November. Ten months you’ve been working. Not even a year.”
“I thought my heart was literally broken. The way my chest felt like it was going to split open. I thought I was dying.”
“And yet here you are.”
“Alive.”
“And coping. Quite well, I might add.”
“I had a funny dream about Matryoshka,” Daisy said. “Russian nesting dolls. I collect them. I was here with you and I was opening one, but it was like an infinite doll. I kept opening them and opening them. It got cartoonish, with piles of doll halves falling off the couch and building up on the floor.”
Rita’s head tilted. “Interesting. And then what happened?”
“I got to the end, to the last doll, and it was this microscopic speck.” Daisy held out a cupped palm. “Right there, this piece of invisible something in my hand. I held it up to you and said, ‘Is this it?’ And you said, ‘Yep. That’s it.’ I got really insistent. ‘Really? You’re sure? This… This is it?’ And you kept nodding, yes, yes. Then I pointed around the room, to this unbelievable mess of doll halves and I said, ‘Then what the hell is all that?’”
Rita laughed. “What did I say?”
“You said, ‘Well, that’s it, too.’”
Rita brushed one hand against the other. “And now I retire.”
Daisy laughed. “It wasn’t hard to interpret.” She held up her palm again. “This is it. And the mess you make getting to this is part of it too.”
JANUARY 27, 1997
Dear Rita,
I have the dubious honor of kicking off my gypsy lifestyle in Michigan. In the middle of winter.
Pray for me.
Before I joined, the tour just finished up their stop in East Lansing which, I hear, is beautiful. We now occupy the Masonic Temple in Detroit for the next four months. The theater is beautiful. Detroit is not.
Detroit in winter is a lesson in bleak. A study in neutral tones. Everything is grey, brown and white. And flat. Frankly it’s depressing. But if I can get through this leg of the tour and not expire from Seasonal Affectation Disorder, then I think it’s safe to say I can live pretty much anywhere.
I’m settling into the routine. We’re put up at a pretty good hotel with extended-stay accommodations. Meaning we have access to a kitchen and I’ve become an unofficial cast cook. As long as someone else is willing to food shop, I don’t mind whipping up something that can be heated up after curtain.
We get our own rooms, although a lot of cast members buddy up in order to bank half the per diem. I might do that eventually but for the moment I’m being selfish and solitary about my personal space. I’m reading a ton. The amount of books lying around the green room and the dressing rooms is not to be believed. And puzzles and board games, too. Backstage looks like a combination of a Red Cross knitting circle and a nursing home rec room.
Tuesday through Friday, we do only one evening show so my days are free until around four in the afternoon. I’ve acquired a GBF, a Gay Best Friend. His name is Gabriel Ostin and he is fabulous. He’s an amazing dancer with a fearless ability to hustle. Like he knows how to work his inner agent. He walked right into the offices of the Detroit Ballet School, dragging me behind. He introduced himself and got us both enrolled in professional-level classes. And he’s organizing a small group to perform with Detroit City Dance Festival next month (as long as it doesn’t interfere with the tour’s rehearsals or shows, we’re allowed outside engagements). This is all fantastic because I was worried my ballet technique would suffer while I was on the road. Now I see being in different cities is actually a huge opportunity to study. I just follow Gabriel and let him do the talking.
Weekends are intense with two shows on Saturdays and Sundays. Mondays we have off and I use that day to get a massage or a manicure, go shopping or do something nice for myself.
John and I are managing. A lot of phone calls and letters, but the separation is taking a toll. Our schedules simply don’t coincide and trying to coordinate time to see each other is proving both a logistical and financial challenge. I feel sad. Not heartbroken but… He’s been so good to me and I do love him. He’s dear to me. And I’ll always want to know where he is. If this ends, I don’t want to be totally disconnected or have things be unfinished.
Anyway, that’s where things stand. Now I bundle up and head off to the theater.
I hope you’re well. Take good care.
Daisy
THE LETTERS DWINDLED TO NOTES. The phone calls became more and more infrequent and the conversations grew more and more like small talk.
It was over by March.
“I didn’t want to do this over the phone,” John said.
“We’re seven hundred miles and a time zone apart,” Daisy said. “It was kind of unavoidable.”
“Breaking up?”
“No, the phone part.”
“Right.”
A long aching silence, edged with static. “Fuck,” he said. “How do you do this without all the stupid clichés?”
“It’s not you, it’s me,” she said.
“It is me,” he said. “To be honest, I… God, I don’t know how to say this.”
Another wedge of silence. Then the mental clouds parted and Daisy felt her eyes widen. “Holy shit,” she said. “Did you meet someone?”
Of all the ways he could have reacted, she didn’t expect him to start crying.
“Honey, don’t,” she said. “John, it’s all right.”
As if it were storyboarded in front of her, she knew exactly what happened. He met a girl and connected with her. She liked him. Openly, spontaneously and freely. No shadows from the past lurked over their shoulders, no eggshells underfoot to brush aside or topics of conversation to avoid. No scars under their fingertips when they touched. He liked her. She liked him. End of story. Whether it was an affair of the heart or a sexfest, it was no doubt refreshingly mindless and simple and healthy. And accessible. John probably wanted to stuff his face with it and collapse into a stupor of contentment.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was the last thing I expected.”
Me too, she thought. “Is she in the company?”
“She’s in the orchestra.” After a beat he added, “She plays viola,” as if it explained everything.
“I see.”
“I’m sorry, Dais,” he said. “I’m all torn up and I can’t keep doing this. It makes my stomach hurt and it’s not fair to you or Kelly.”
Kelly was an ice-water splash of reality. A name made it real. Daisy closed her eyes, feeling hurt and confused and with no right to either.
Let
him go, she thought. You wanted it this way, after all. You got the breakup you hoped for.
She opened her eyes and told him he deserved to get all the love he wanted to give. He deserved his passion reciprocated, deserved what she couldn’t…
“Fucking clichés,” she said.
“I hate conversations like this.”
“I love you,” she said. “I wouldn’t be here…anywhere if it weren’t for you. It’s the truth and it’s what I’ll take with me for the rest of my life.”
“I’d do it again,” he said. “I wouldn’t change anything. I’ll always love you, Dais, it’s just…”
“I know.”
You’re worthy of more, she thought. You want to be loved completely. Right now. Today.
They lingered on the line, each clearly feeling more should be said. Their breakup deserved more time.
“Stay in touch,” she said. “Please don’t disappear.”
A tiny chuckle. “I’m not Erik.”
Tears came to her eyes. “No, you’re not. You’re a prince.”
He let out his breath. “I need to go now, honey,” he said.
She let him go, and in the weeks following she battled a low-grade emotional flu. Confused by a phone that didn’t ring when she expected it to. Blinking at the box office manager’s apologetic expression when her mailbox was empty. Sideswiped by visions of John lying around in bed with this Kelly person and her damn viola.
Then Daisy got pissed. A little. Her skin flared up hot, then she shivered with cold. Her heart moped and slammed a few doors, but it felt half-assed and phony. Sulking because it was the thing to do. She didn’t know what else to do. All the emotion was ill-fitting, as if it belonged to someone else’s breakup.
You’re pissed because you’re lonely, she counseled herself. And John isn’t. You’re jealous. Just feel it. Let it sit in your lap a while. If it has something to say, it will. Or else it will get up and leave.
It did leave, only to be replaced by an intense craving for physical contact, which she assuaged by sleeping with Gabriel Ostin.
“This won’t get you kicked out of the gay boys’ club, will it?” she said.
“You’d be surprised how many gay boys like cuddling up with girls for a good night’s sleep.”
“Really?”
“Really. You’re soft, you’re smooth, you fit nice in my arms, you don’t snore and you smell amazing. None of that gets me hard. Analyze it however you want, just don’t wake me up.”
He was the only boy who could successfully spoon Daisy for an entire night. None of her customary wide-eyed claustrophobia rose up when he wrapped his arms around her from behind. In fact, the first time, she went into such a deep sleep, she awoke in the exact same position, her bottom arm completely numb.
“This is outstanding,” she said. “Pillow talk and snuggles with no hassle or drama.”
“Or wet spot,” Gabriel said, yawning.
“Why didn’t I think of this years ago?”
“You were in a psychiatric hospital years ago, if I remember correctly.”
She pummeled him hard with a pillow. “Asshole.”
“I’m sorry, that was cheap. Lie back down. I’ll play with your hair.”
“This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard,” Lucky said over the phone.
“Listening to myself tell you about it, I agree, it’s beyond weird,” Daisy said. “On the other hand, I sleep great, I’m not lonely and he’s the world’s most perfect back-scratcher. So what the hell?”
“I may resort to this,” Lucky said sourly. “I’m so horny I’m rubbing against the furniture.”
“Any dates?”
“None I could rub against. By the way, you know the sex toy shop over on Amsterdam Avenue? They closed. Not another shop in ten square blocks. I’m gonna have to head down to the Village this weekend and look for a bedside table boyfriend.”
“Yeah, speaking of which, I need batteries…”
APRIL 22, 1997
The Cleveland Plain Dealer
Arts & Entertainment
“Old Works and Fresh Faces: Cleveland Dance Movement Presents Emerging Artists”
By Dilys Silverman
The Museum of Art was an exhibition of unparalleled generosity Monday night. Established community artists provided those lesser-known a chance to shine in a collaborative, gala performance. Together with Cleveland Choral Arts Society, the Chamber Symphony and Cleveland Dance Movement, young composers, vocalists and dancers took to the stage in both original works and classics.
The apex of the evening came with the Lacrimosa of Mozart’s requiem mass. Set against the gorgeous, haunting music and the equally breathtaking talent of the chorus, was a pas de deux of such delicate emotion, I couldn’t decide if it were heartbreaking or triumphant. Perhaps the beauty lay in its juxtaposition of both. The pas de deux was choreographed by Marguerite Bianco, who plays the role of Meg Giry in the touring production of Phantom of the Opera (currently running at Playhouse Square). When not performing or rehearsing, she and her partner Gabriel Ostin teach and coach for Cleveland Dance Movement and other local schools.
Bianco is an astonishing dancer who, for four minutes, made the spacious atrium of the museum into an intimate and timeless space. The audience was filled with longing by the time the chorale “Amen” shook the windows—longing to see it from the beginning so we could dissect what, exactly we had just seen.
It was mournful but enlightened. Grief-stricken yet courageous. Joyful but with a dark edge. Dark but with a wash of golden light. With stunning phrasing and interpretation, Bianco and Ostin wrung the score into its extremes of heaven and hell.
But how?
What did we see?
Bianco, who hails from Philadelphia, is a graduate of Lancaster University.
Sunday, the nineteenth of April, was the fifth anniversary of the Lancaster shootings.
It was the report of gunfire echoing in the choreography. The grief for friends in her endless extension and the mourning of dreams in her phrasing. The triumph of a twenty-year-old girl shot down and left to die, only to live and be told she might not walk again.
What five hundred people in the museum saw on Monday night was not a requiem mass, but a eulogy. And an enduring love story of the highest order.
“More coffee, miss?”
Daisy looked up from the paper, checked her watch. “No thanks.”
She read the article again while the waitress wrote up her check. Dilys Silverman, the Plain Dealer’s art critic, was a humorless commentator who was known to skewer young, unknown artists alive. Daisy’s heart had been in her throat when she first folded back the newspaper, expecting the worst at best and crucifixion at worst. Now her chest caved in with a triumphant relief that slowly rose up pink and warm into her face.
An astonishing dancer.
She secured some bills under the ketchup bottle, shrugged on her jacket and left the coffee shop, heading over to Playhouse Square. Her stride was a strut and her head floated above the column of her spine.
Mike, the security guard at the stage door, looked up and smiled as she signed in. “How are you today?”
“Astonishing,” Daisy said. “Any mail for me?”
Mike whistled the tune of “Daisy Bell” as he fetched the contents of her box. Letters from her mother and Lucky. A postcard from Will (Having a wonderful time, wish you were her).
She found Gabriel in the green room, surrounded by his posse, each with a copy of the Plain Dealer. They applauded as she came in and Gabriel scooped her up in a spinning hug.
“Dilys has a soul,” he said. “Hallelujah.”
“We wrung the score into heaven and hell,” she said, planting kisses on his face. “How was the reception after?”
Gabriel set her down and picked up his newspaper. “You should’ve come.”
“I had to ice my ankle. What did I miss?”
“Oh. Nothing.” His face was bland. Too bland. Daisy’s eyes narrowed.
“Gabriel,” she said, a warning note in her voice.
His eyes on the page, he reached into his shirt pocket and brought out a business card. He snapped it with a flourish through his fingers as he handed it to Daisy. “For you, Madame.”
C. Harland Kent, III
Production Assistant
Cleveland Art Museum
A phone number was underneath, underlined twice in pen.
“Who is he?” Daisy said.
“Well, from what I understand, a museum production assistant sets up the galleries for exhibitions. And also sets up the stage when the museum presents a… Hold on, let me find it. An exhibition of unparalleled generosity.”
Daisy closed her eyes. “A stagehand,” she said. “Of course.”
“He was quite taken with you.”
Daisy opened her eyes. “Oh?”
Gabriel nodded.
“Nice guy?”
“The grief for friends in her endless extension and the mourning of dreams in her phrasing. Not bad. It’s a little unctuous but it is Dilys after all.”
“Gabe, don’t toy with me.”
“The report of gunfire echoing in the choreography. Not sound but report. This dame knows her way around the English language. I’m sorry, did you say something?”
“You’re going to make me beg, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
She sighed. “Is he cute? Please tell me.”
“No,” he said. “Seedy dresser and a definitive lives-with-mom air. Needs to find a new barber pronto. However…” Gabriel held up a finger. “Superb sense of humor and smart as fuck. And you being a museum junkie, he could probably give you an amazing private tour. I’d definitely go and have a cup of coffee.”
“All right,” she said, looking over the business card. She shrugged. “Maybe I’ll get dinner out of it.”
“Or laid.”
She smiled. “I don’t need to get laid. I have you.”
“Glorified cuddling with your gay roommate is not getting laid.”
“If you’d let me grind against you occasionally it would be.”
Gabriel eyed her a long moment. “You need to get laid.”
“You secretly want me. I could totally turn you with my endless extension.”
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