by Laura Rock
Ahead, the sun broke above the trees, bathing the trail in the light of a new day that promised no harm. She turned back to glance at the house one last time before pressing onward. The opening to the trail, the spruce grove, the right turn onto the intersecting path, uphill to the ridge where the train slowed, at the bend. If she walked without ceasing, she would be there in time. The sun warmed her shoulders. Her joints felt limber and luxurious, fuelling her motion in a manner that belonged to an era she could barely recall. Her pace stepped up to match her quickening spirit.
The passenger express roared by every morning. Something told her Jackson would be on the train today, and John too. This time she wouldn’t miss her chance. She’d leap through cloudless sky to reach them, grabbing their outstretched hands. She’d sit between them and tell the truth, a faithful rendering of herself. The scenery rolling by their window would make a pleasant diversion. She’d fill their ears with understanding as they rode along together.
Woman Cubed
The spells began as Dale was preparing for her breakthrough performance and also worrying about running into that man. For almost a year he’d been surprising her with pretty trifles left at the door—French soaps in the form of shooting stars; Belgian chocolate trapeze artists swinging across an edible tableau; a German doll that danced with a few turns of the key in her back. Each time, the neighbours claimed not to have seen a stranger in the building. As the company’s prima contortionist, she was accustomed to receiving flowers, of course—on average, half-a-dozen men ordered roses in the afterglow of her intimate, impossible shows, each thinking himself a romantic genius—but the rabid fan sent African violets, one pot at a time.
Each delivery claimed space on the windowsill and added colour to the tiny white apartment, where nothing had lived with Dale and Derek before now. The plants reminded her of her mother. A woman ahead of her time in recognizing the spiritual benefits of connecting one’s life force with the planet’s flora, she had filled Dale’s childhood with greenery, mostly big-leaf tropicals, light-hogs vying for the windows. As a young girl, Dale observed the outside world through perpetually dewy glass; it was like growing up inside a terrarium. Cradling an offering of Saintpaulia inconspicua, she inhaled the smell of dank earth, closed her eyes, and listened hard. When she heard the calm, ruthless snip-snipping of her mother’s diminutive pruning shears, she was transported to a home that no longer existed.
She had been told two nights ago that recruiters from the Cirque—that Cirque, top of the top—would be coming to watch her. Insiders, people who no longer took calls from Derek but still liked her, whispered the news in her ear while she sat for dress-rehearsal makeup. She turned her head in surprise, and the bustling stage set tilted. Sound crews, spotlights, ropes slung in braids, and the costume lady pushing her rack of clothes all slipped sideways. Dale’s vision cleared almost immediately, but her nervous system had been whirring and beeping ever since.
Derek made soothing teas and drew bubble baths, but she refused to relax. There was so much to do. It wasn’t enough that she could fold herself like origami and squeeze into a clear acrylic cube not much bigger than carry-on luggage. She couldn’t rely on her storied ability to dislocate shoulders and hips at will. A snake unhinges its jaw in order to consume larger prey, but that makes it a novel freak, not a blockbuster attraction. No, she needed to rebuild her act completely, starting with the brand.
She ran through new stage names as if testing ring tones. “Clarissa LaRose,” the persona she’d adopted when Derek discovered her as a teenaged gymnast, was so over.
“Mi-mi-mi Mirandella, Mirella,” she sang, trilling her r’s. She stood on one foot and pulled the other over her head. In her flesh-coloured unitard, she was a living anatomy lesson. Not one centimetre of her body was soft, yet she had the gift of making bones dissolve. Her malleability passed for softness.
“La-la-la Lacrimosa, Milagrosa—no, that sounds fat.”
Derek scribbled on a notepad. His greying shoulder-length curls bobbed as he jiggled his crossed leg. “What’s wrong with the status quo?” he said. “Ditch ‘Clarissa’ and you’ve got zero name recognition. I’m fond of Clarissa.”
“Just fond? Not in love with?” She shook her ponytail at him, which caused the room to wobble. When she dropped her foot everything settled, but it felt temporary. Could the problem be the azure-tinted contacts she’d just purchased? She was tired of plain brown eyes and much preferred the startling intensity of her new irises. “This is the last possible moment to change. Once I’m in the big leagues, it’s too late. Sorpresa, Spiritessa,” she said, “La Vida, La Viva, La Veda—”
“Dale,” Derek murmured. He moved behind her, rubbing her shoulders.
“What?” She leaned into his teddy-bear torso and tipped her head back, then wished she hadn’t. She gripped his arms around her waist until the dizziness passed.
“Dale. What about Dale?”
“Totally inappropriate.” She stepped clear of him. “Even you can see that.” She didn’t mean to snap—so unlike the early days, when she was Derek’s adoring puppet-in-a-box. But what a pain he’d been lately, arguing about every clause in her contracts, alienating executives who only wanted more of her. He said, “I’m protecting your interests,” as if the company was some kind of enemy. “Trust me,” he always said.
He pointed both index fingers at her, thumbs up, like Old West pistols. “It’s the name your mother gave you. I’m just saying.”
She touched the vial that dangled from her necklace, a talisman worn at all times except during shows, when the relic ashes of her mother posed a lethal hazard. She strived for a case-closed tone. “Mama understands that I have to change my name. An artist knows, in here,” she said, tapping her chest.
“Oh, artists. The artists I’ve dealt with.” Hands up, he retreated to the kitchen, calling, “Okay, you win. You and Mama Grow-op.”
“Please. Like your mother can be tolerated for a single hour.” She moved to the window and began to water each pot, taking her time, ignoring the clinking of dishes that Derek was washing extra-loudly.
“Let’s not start that again,” he said, appearing in the doorway, as she knew he would. “My mom didn’t mean to insult you by bringing her own dinner—”
“I just think you should count your blessings. Lots of men would appreciate a dead mother-in-law.” She lingered over the final pot, stroking the velvet tongue-like leaves, which would soon periscope a central cluster of purple buds on wavering pink stalks.
“If only she’d stay out of our creative decisions.” She could sense, without turning to look, that he was smirking.
Unlike Mama, she wouldn’t vent her rage with periodic bouts of wild slicing at the poor plants. If ever these violets grew large enough to be unruly, she’d confine herself to the calm and precise mode of pruning, cutting extraneous foliage for the plant’s own good.
Derek cleared his throat. “Something else. Your friend. Again.”
“My number one fan?” She straightened quickly, and then, regretting her haste, clutched her neck.
“I’ve informed the cops and, once more, they do nothing.”
He punctuated the statement with an angry hand-clap, which reminded her of another time when he’d stomped his foot like a toddler. They’d had this argument before. The self-righteous expression on his face made her want to tip the spout of the watering can down the back of his shirt, but she kept the tone of her objection mild: “Is devotion such a crime?”
It wasn’t as though she were oblivious to the myriad dangers posed by a strange man stalking her, but she preferred to view the situation from multiple angles, such as generosity and open-heartedness and unity and intrigue. Foreign concepts to the formerly charming Derek. Perhaps the guy was a little too into her—she could understand that as one possibility. But rather than a material being, a threat, wasn’t he more like a wisp of smoke that wa
fted into their lives to warm them with memories of candles long extinguished? Who was to say he wasn’t a messenger from the past, or the future? His coming might be the kiss of fate that revived her career.
When the notes first started coming, Derek reported a crazed stalker to the authorities, and they, in return, proposed a sting. Law enforcement would catch the guy in the act, some act of adoration. That was their plan.
“If you people think that I’d allow my wife, a performer of the highest calibre who will soon be famous worldwide, to be used as bait—forget it,” he had said. “What happened to old-fashioned police work? Ever hear of that?” He threw the phone on the floor.
Dale had been stretching, preparing to enter her practice cube. She jackknifed into a fluid pike-press headstand. At times like this, Derek made more sense upside-down. “Do you think it’s wise,” she said, bicycling her legs, “to hang up on the cops? They also know where we live.”
Now, spread out on the floor again, she wished she could just rehearse. The cube was in the corner of the bedroom, empty and gleaming. Calling her to come inside and disappear. Sometimes she had the sensation of splitting into facets: the single-jointed woman whose body took up the usual amount of space; the compressed woman imprinting the cube with her skin cells; and the spirit-woman floating above the spectacle, formless and free, able to see what the audience sees and report back. All three simultaneously. Not always, but at the best, highest moments of her art, it happened.
“What did he say this time?” She pushed her spine into the floorboards, one hand holding the vial of her mother’s essence, dangling from its chain. She felt a warming glow spreading over her torso, and then the faint beat that synced with her pulse, racing and slowing according to her need.
“Same old,” he said, hovering in the doorway with an apron tied around his middle, dust cloth in hand.
“Read it.” She visualized the performance necessary to win over the Cirque: transcendent, personal best. Her special fan would be in the stands, boosting her chances. And Mama, admittedly not perfect, but motherish in the way she’d always been in life. Pushy and mouthy and indisputably on Dale’s side.
“Nope. No way. I’m not going to read it.”
“Read, Derek.” Triumphant: her star discovered again, but bigger. “Darling.”
“I’ve thrown it away. It’s gone.” He waved his hand in the air and left. She could hear him in the living room, rattling pots as he dusted around them.
“Careful with my violets! Come on, you keep ten-year-old gas receipts.”
Derek draped the cloth over his shoulder and pulled a page of cream vellum from his pocket. Walking in again, he unfolded it, sighing. “‘I offer the answers you seek.’”
“Hmm. And?”
“Your latest problem is a sign, he says. Sign of what, exactly? Such crap.”
“What else?”
“Undying love.” Derek reddened, as his volume rose. “The mystery man confesses love, how original.”
She brightened. “See, some people appreciate artists. Give it,” she said, holding out her hand.
“No, I don’t think—”
“But I want it.”
“What’s the attraction here? You have trainers. You have a manager, me.”
“Don’t forget husband,” Dale said.
“Funny. Stay away from this guy—I mean it.” He walked a circle around her prone form, staring down in a way that was, she assumed, meant to intimidate.
“It’s not like I’m meeting him secretly. I don’t even know who he is.” Her words turned cartwheels around her cranium, rapid revolutions of light, and then leeched from her nose to form a cloud of cotton candy suspended above her. She reached for a tuft, intending to taste it, when the whirling caught her again.
“Freaking nutcase,” Derek said, dusting their dresser. “He shows up here, I’m throwing him down the stairs.”
She puffed her cheeks, panting. “Never mind. What’s wrong with me?”
Hours later, she lay in bed, fighting nausea, as Derek phoned the company doctor, physiotherapist, chiropractor, and psychic in turn. How unfair: her big moment finally here, and she couldn’t imagine slithering through a tight maze of pipe, making crowds gasp, or hanging by her hair from a chain as children screamed. All she could do was stay still, suffering the bed spins of a common drunk.
Without examining her, the doctor diagnosed benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. “There’s nothing benign about it,” she said to the ceiling. Paroxysmal was a mystery, but positional she understood. Who knew positions better? And vertigo—a balance disorder, causes murky. No one could explain why nerve-dwelling crystals of the inner ear would suddenly migrate into the semicircular canals, leaving Dale reeling as they fled their ancestral homeland. Derek sat by her bedside and briefed her on uncertain cures: drugs, acupuncture, spinal adjustments, yogic manipulations of the head, and more.
“The doctor called in a prescription. You’ll be normal in no time.”
“Will that work? What did the psychic say? The show’s the day after tomorrow.” She paused, then yelled, “I should be practising.”
“The truth? You’re not performing. It pains me—a huge opportunity, don’t think I don’t know what this means to you—to us. But.” He patted the quilt around her. “I’ll speak to the honchos-that-be about getting another audition. I’ve still got connections at the Cirque. I can make that happen.”
She moaned. “There has to be something else. Herbs, homeowhatever.” She reached for his hand, gripping it. “Go. Out. And. Find. Me. Something.”
“Darling—”
“Now!”
Dale drifted into thin sleep, recalling everything the fan had ever written to her. At first she found it creepy that he knew so much, like future performances that hadn’t been announced yet. But the gifts piled up, no harm done. Over time, the guy began to seem benign. Like a super-active guardian angel. When she made some small change to her act, she found herself waiting for his reaction. He always noticed; his letters critiqued every new move.
Once he wrote, ‘Stagecraft is a calling to destroy limitations. Hold your position five beats longer than you think you can. Subject the audience to your will. Release them with reluctance.’
“Hocus-pocus,” Derek had said, adding that note to his collection.
At the time, she was coiled in her own limbs. Her voice began to waver as she entered the floating stage of practice. “I did try that one thing he suggested, craning my neck a degree counterintuitively, and you know what?” She beamed in Derek’s direction. “It worked.” She moved through the splits before entering the cube.
“Dale? Don’t listen to him. Hear me?”
She had stared through the clear wall, nose smushed, lips distended.
At dusk, still in bed and waiting for Derek to return with the treatments, her mother blew into her head. Since Mama’s death, these fleeting appearances gave Dale a chance to ask questions, such as, Why the blah name? Were you depressed when I was born? What did you imagine my future would be? She wondered if she was living up to maternal expectations. Specifically, whether Mama was pleased with contortions as a line of work, and what she thought of Derek. Mama might appreciate Derek’s nurturing side, but she was also quick to see a man’s faults and prescribe harsh correctives, much as she might tackle an aphid infestation. Vertiginous, immobile, she heard Mama’s pronouncements all too clearly: he’s too old for you, his best days in the business are behind him, and he’s no joy to look at—move on. “After the big show,” Dale promised, half asleep. “Soon.”
She woke not knowing the day or time. The doorbell had rung, she remembered. She thought that the physio who made house calls must have let himself in, but the man standing before her—tall, forbidding, angular—was a stranger. He took off his black fedora. His eyes fixed her in a cat-like green beam—real or contacts? She s
miled, dazed. When he spoke, she heard bubbles in liquid. He might have said, “Your mother sent me.” She hoped so.
The man helped Dale into her favourite position. He rolled her over so she was face down, then coached her into a backfold: legs curled up and over the head, feet planted in front of ears; pelvis stacked on head; chin in hands. Her abdominal muscles pulled taut, grounding her. She was a spider on the web, contemplative and wise. She could stay like this forever.
Heavy footsteps trudged up the stairs. Derek flung the door open. His voice barely reached her.
“I’ve got your medicine,” he called from the hallway. He entered the bedroom and stopped. “What the—? Who’s he—?”
The man, ignoring Derek, crouched to whisper in Dale’s ear. He showed her a sprinkling of lavender pills, tiny pellets in his palm. “Extract of saintpaulia and other necessaries. Highly potent ingredients,” he said.
She didn’t move; she was stable and relaxed.
Derek rattled a paper bag. “This is your prescription. I’ve got it here.”
The man stood and stared at Derek, who retreated to the hallway.
“Snap out of it, Dale. Don’t take anything from him.” Derek’s voice receded to a muted echo of distortion, a meaningless buzz not without comfort.
The man stroked her throat. “Now,” he said. She opened her mouth. He fed her the pills and closed her jaw. “Good girl.”
“You were nothing before I found you,” Derek shouted from somewhere in the apartment, his speech dagger-sharp again. “Your mother raised plants, and dick-all for you; I was the one who honed your talent.”