The Distance Home

by Paula Saunders

  As she lay in her warm bed, one thing became clear: she hadn’t got out of it simply by staying in the car. Watching Leon trudge through the snow in his ballet slippers, seeing him slip and catch himself on the icy pavement, had made her just as miserable as if she’d got out herself and gone with him—maybe more. And she began to feel that these random torments—which seemed to shift and change shape arbitrarily, like the fleeting pictures made by colored shards in the turning of a kaleidoscope—were going to follow her no matter how slyly she angled to avoid them. She hadn’t won anything by staying in the car, but she’d lost something—something, she could now see, she wasn’t going to be able to get back.

  So she lay quietly, closing her eyes.

  There was nothing to do about it.

  And as the misery and self-loathing began to subside, there was once again the familiar open space of her breathing and heartbeat, which seemed to have been continuing all along at the very bottom of everything, like a pristine spring, unable to keep itself from eventually rising up, or like the first few bars of music at the beginning of a combination in dance class, signaling a whole new chance. It didn’t make any sense, but there it was. Right there. So close she could feel it, could know it without being able to name it. In spite of everything, she could turn her mind and feel her world quietly, patiently waiting for her to come around. But now, welling up alongside that fresh, welcome hope of a brand-new start, she felt a confusion that was something like being lost.

  “If you ever do get lost,” Al had always told her, “just look for a stream. Where there’s water, sooner or later there’s going to be a town.”

  Though there wasn’t going to be a stream, and she wasn’t looking for a town, the instructions circled in her head like an unsolvable riddle until she finally fell asleep.

  16

  Welcome the New Order

  By the time she’d turned ten, René didn’t walk. Anywhere. If she needed to get from the kitchen to the family room, she’d just make up a combination—maybe a quick relevé, then chassé, pas de bourrée, grand jeté, grand jeté, chaîné turns to arabesque—and she’d be there. When she was on the move, no one could stop her. Leon and Jayne would jump aside as she spun through a doorway or leapt across the landing at the bottom of the steps, and if Eve and Al were locked in a quarrel, she’d sail right past, spinning like a twister, calling “Sorry!” as they stepped out of her way.

  It helped that there was very little furniture and bare wood floors. In the dining room was the collapsible maple table Al had bought Eve for their anniversary. They’d left Jayne and René with a sitter and Leon with one of his Little League friends and driven to the factory in Minnesota to pick it out. Eve kept both sides folded down and pushed it up against a far wall. She put a protective tablecloth over it and placed a bouquet of artificial flowers in the narrow center of the tabletop, and though they brought it out only twice a year, for Christmas and Thanksgiving, whenever she dusted, she took the time to polish it to a sheen. And there was the new Hammond organ, with the countless pedals, buttons, levers, and pegs, fitted into the dining room alcove. Al had bought that for her too, after one of their endless discussions had turned to the things she’d always wanted but never got. Now Eve was taking ballet lessons, organ lessons, making all the costumes for The Nutcracker, and volunteer-teaching the little kids’ Pre-Ballet class for Mrs. G.

  “Far as I can tell, the money’s going out, out, out,” Al would sometimes complain, but when Eve looked at him, searching for the man who’d bought her all those things in the first place, he’d add, “And why not? Why—not,” just trying to keep his mouth shut.

  In the living room there was only a slim sofa and two small side tables, all pushed back against the wall opposite the front window, so the way was clear. And around the corner, as you entered the family room, Eve’s sewing machine took up just one side of the wide hallway that led to Emma’s old rocker, a yard-sale couch, and a television with tinfoil rabbit ears. When René got to the far end of that last room, she had to stop and either sit and watch TV or deliver her message or do the chore she’d been sent to do, if she could remember what it was, then turn around and make her way back with a brand-new combination—maybe a single pirouette, then tombé, pas de bourrée, glissade, glissade, pas de chat, pas de chat, run, run, run, leap!—whatever she wanted, nothing and no one to stop her.

  * * *

  —

  Leon’s baseball season came to a close with a letter saying he’d been selected to pitch for the Rapid City All-Star team. Al was out of town, so the rest of them went to the game without him, René and Jayne dragging back and forth to the busy concession stand for yard-long licorices and autumn snow cones as Eve screamed her lungs out from the bleachers and ran down to the high chain-link fence to fight the ump on calls. But Leon’s team lost to Sturgis, which somehow made Al’s absence more acceptable to everybody.

  Then one day, Mrs. G started casting for The Nutcracker. Leon, Joey, Catherine, and René had multiple roles. Leon and Joey would be Russians, then partner René and Catherine for the Candy Canes; Leon would be the Mouse King and Joey a soldier; René would dance the Mechanical Doll, and Catherine the Harlequin; and they’d both be Snowflakes as well as Chinese emissaries to the Land of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Even Eve was given a part: Mother Ginger. She started making herself a hoop skirt wide enough to cover all the students in her Pre-Ballet class. So far it was just a wire frame held together with cloth ties, so when Eve put it on, they could see all the little kids, including Jayne, crouching around her feet as though they were sitting under an enormous see-through umbrella. The kids would scoot along on the floor as Eve walked, and when she lifted her skirt, they’d pop out and scatter, squatting and jumping like lost little jack-in-the-boxes.

  But mostly Eve was in Mrs. G’s basement, working with her group of sewing ladies. René and Leon would go home with Mrs. G after class and end up waiting on her basement sofa, Mrs. G’s little mop of a Pekingese right next to them, up on the cushions. They’d leaf through their schoolbooks as Eve shouted orders, ground her teeth, and ripped apart some poor woman’s stitches for the third time.

  “It’s back-asswards, Bea.”

  She’d tear out the seam without even standing up.

  “See? It can’t go on that way. This end has to attach over here. Otherwise you can’t get your arm in. Then there’s your seam. Here. I’ll pin it for you.”

  She’d hand the lady a pinned-up seam.

  “Now all you gotta do is stitch it. Right here. And they all go the same way around. Just like that.”

  The woman would go away, disgusted not only with Eve’s irritated tone but with the whole process, and Eve would turn back to her machine and work on the complicated mess beneath her own needle for only about a minute before there’d be another question or someone else’s screwup to fix.

  * * *

  —

  Winter came early, and they found themselves heading for Nutcracker rehearsals in below-zero temperatures, their Levi’s, damp from the dryer, freezing stiff on their legs before they could even get to the car. There were a million things to learn and practice and perfect. They did everything over and over, straightening, refining. Catherine’s blisters broke and started bleeding, so she wrapped each toe first in gauze, then in first-aid tape, while Leon leaned over her, making grimacing faces to sympathize. And as dress rehearsals approached, Mrs. G started saying she was going to tear her hair out.

  On the staging side, Mrs. G had rallied some of the high school’s drama club kids to make the sets, but their commitment was spotty, and things weren’t turning out the way she’d imagined.

  “We need a tree, Eve,” she worried. “It has to start small, then get bigger, bigger right onstage, till it reaches all the way up to the catwalk. How in the hell are we going to do that?”

  Eve glanced up from her hot glue gun and shrugged her s
houlders. She was bending over a card table, putting the Snowflakes’ headpieces together—pinning silver pipe cleaners onto a spray-painted base, then gluing them in place so that it looked like a small, icy crown. She glued, held the crown up to the light to check the positioning and angle, then glued again.

  “I have no idea,” she said through the straight pins she was holding between her teeth.

  “Jesus Christ, Eve,” Mrs. G said, pacing. “We have to figure this out. It’s the most important part of the whole ballet.”

  Eve raised her eyes skeptically.

  “Well,” Mrs. G conceded, “it’s certainly one of the most important parts. And with the way these kids are dancing,” she continued, “it may well end up being the most interesting thing that happens.” She laughed. “It’s got to be extravagant, over-the-top.” Then she came to a halt. “Good God, Eve,” she said. “What have we gotten ourselves into?”

  “Hell if I know,” Eve said, still not stopping.

  * * *

  —

  There was something disarming and unifying about the level of concentration suddenly permeating their house, as if the very walls and floorboards were taking on a new order, committing themselves to the virtues of proficiency and correct alignment.

  Leon could be found at all hours in the front room, practicing his Russian steps. There was what Mrs. G called the “Cossack Hop” and “Around the World,” and he had to be able to do both sharply, strongly, with precision and speed, Mrs. G said, just like he threw a fastball. And every evening after dinner, René would put on her toe shoes and practice bourréeing lightly back and forth across the dining room. But Mrs. G was right: the pounding of her feet against the floor sounded like gunshots; she was going to scare the audience to death; they were going to have to wear earplugs.

  Eve’s sewing corner was exploding with all colors of satins and ribbons, zippers and feathers, sequins and lace. There were parts of legs and arms and halves of bodices piled here and there, scattered all over the hallway. Eve would be on the phone with the other sewing moms night and day, explaining how one thing fit into another—“No, not that way, the other way!”—and how they shouldn’t be afraid, they should just go ahead and sew it up.

  Then late one afternoon, Mrs. G asked Eve to meet her at the high school, so René and Jayne tagged along.

  “Go out and stand in the audience, Eve,” Mrs. G said, as she directed the drama club kids to pull out the sets. “And move around. One side to the other. Tell me what you think.”

  Act One included a large painted fireplace, a big grandfather clock, and a Christmas tree on rollers with garlands and old-fashioned candle lights, all set against a screen painted to look like pink scroll wallpaper. There was a larger tree hidden behind a scrim. When Clara returned to cradle her beloved Nutcracker and the clock struck twelve, the scrim would lift and the bigger tree would be wheeled forward into the light, while the smaller one, pulled by an almost invisible tether, was rolled offstage on squeaky wheels.

  “It’s the best I could do,” Mrs. G said, shaking her head in disgust. “Just about makes me sick.”

  “It’s perfect,” Eve said. “I think it’s going to be just right.”

  “At least the snow’s all set,” Mrs. G said. The drama kids were going to be up on the catwalk, and on Mrs. G’s cue, they’d sprinkle glittering white confetti down on the dancers at the end of Act One. “Good God, it’s going to be slippery,” she kept saying. “I just hope it doesn’t kill somebody.”

  For Act Two, there were thrones for Clara and the Prince, tilting painted candy canes ten feet tall, and brightly colored, oversized gumdrops, lollipops, and licorices arranged across the back of the stage. And that was it.

  “It looks marvelous, Helen,” Eve said. “It’ll be perfect.”

  “There’s supposed to be a sleigh,” Mrs. G said, coming up to the footlights, standing over the orchestra pit. “There’s supposed to be a sleigh that floats right up in the air, carrying Clara and the Prince from the enchanted forest to the Land of the Sugar Plum Fairy, but that’s beyond me.” She sighed. “I think our Prince and Clara are just going to have to walk.” She laughed, not happily. “Sounds just about like it, doesn’t it, Eve?”

  “Sounds just about like it,” Eve echoed.

  Then, with Thanksgiving drawing nearer, Mrs. G handed out packets of tickets and told all the kids to go door-to-door.

  “People in this town don’t know an arabesque from an outhouse,” she said. “You have to convince them. Tell them what we’re going to do. Tell them we’re going to give them a show they won’t ever forget. You have to make them believe!”

  So René and Leon divided up the map. He got on his bike and headed for the houses on the far side of Mount Rushmore Road, a wool scarf tied just under his eyes like he was a bank robber and large bundles of tickets bulging from his pockets, while René simply put on her mittens, grabbed some tickets from the stack on the countertop, and started ringing the doorbells close to home.

  * * *

  —

  Eve had found a Nehru jacket pattern at the fabric store and sized it down for the Chinese costumes. They were bright green brocade with braided gold trim around the neck and off-center down the front. René and Catherine would wear black tights, black beanies, dyed black pointe shoes, and would have to practice shuffling and bowing in unison.

  The Snowflake costumes were long white tutus with silver trim and shining silver crowns. Some of the girls in the back would wear long-sleeved white leotards and tights, with tinsel fringe sewn down their arms, across their chests, and down each leg. Mrs. G called them “Icicles,” but René thought they looked more like snow-covered Indians.

  René’s doll costume was pastel green with a pink tulle underskirt. It had bright sequin flowers outlining the bodice top. Eve tied a wide satin ribbon around her waist, cinching a metallic-painted windup key made of heavy cardboard onto her back, and told her to bend, then stand, then jump. When the doll number started, René would have to be bent in half, as though she were a completely useless mechanical toy, until Drosselmeyer pretended to wind the key and she jerked up, up.

  “That’ll work,” Eve said. “Thanks be to God.”

  Leon and Joey got fitted into their Russian costumes, which included big furry hats.

  “Those are going to be fun under the lights,” Mrs. G laughed. It was already dark outside. “I don’t know if they’re going to be able to wear those, Eve.”

  Eve shrugged. “Fine,” she said. She took a deep breath and kept gathering and repinning the tulle to the fitted bodice on one of the older girls.

  “You can try them,” Mrs. G said to the boys. “See how it goes at dress rehearsal. Either way.”

  Eve and the sewing women had been tacking, stitching, taking up, letting out all day, and they each had a stack of costumes taller than they could carry to take home and fine-tune before the first dress rehearsal, which was just a week away.

  Tickets were sold, sets finished, dances in various states of readiness, and now the costumes were nearly completed. A couple of dress rehearsals to iron out lighting cues and staging, and it would be Nutcracker time.

  “Mrs. G looks like she’s about to blow a gasket,” Eve said on the drive home. “And when this is all over,” she went on, “you kids can just check me into Yankton.” Yankton was the insane asylum, and Eve talked a lot about going there. “Looks like I’m going to be up late again,” she said. “And there’s no dinner. Good thing your dad isn’t home.”

  “That’s okay,” Leon managed, holding his share of the costumes Eve still had to tweak. “I’m not hungry.”

  “I am,” René said, letting three tutus fall to the floor. “Let’s get pizza.”

  “Hawaiian pizza,” Jayne said, her voice muffled by layers of netting and shiny, sequined polyester.

  “Hawaiian pizza and Coke!�
�� René said.

  “Okay,” Eve said. “We’ll stop at Shakey’s.”

  Jayne and René turned to each other in the backseat. If they hadn’t been trapped under so much fabric, they might have jumped up and down.

  Eve drove straight past the turnoff for their house and continued up Mount Rushmore Road, all the way to the top, where they sat with their elbows propped on plastic red-and-white checked tablecloths and listened to the mechanical cowboy band, Eve holding her head in her hands, taking deep breaths and sighing wearily at the day behind them as they waited for the beautiful ham-and-pineapple pizza and pitcher of Coke that were definitely in their future.

  “Well, we’ve come a long way,” Eve said, looking up, dark circles making full moons around her eyes.

  Leon nodded.

  “One—more—week!” René started to chant, and Jayne joined in, banging the table.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Eve said, smiling. “Stop. Good God. Don’t remind me.”

  “Jeez,” Leon said, laughing happily, shaking his head. “Give somebody a break, why don’t you.”

  17

  Similar, Reversed

  At school, René did her work like she was punching a clock. Dancing the way she was dancing left no room for anything else. She didn’t think about Al and Eve and how they’d scrap and brawl; she didn’t think about Leon and his more and more alien appearance; she didn’t think about the other girls or what they might be thinking about her. As she sat at her desk, as she walked home, as she fell asleep, she went through her steps. She ate breakfast reviewing point by point—arms, head, shoulders, hips—outlining what was required to do the pirouettes or manage the sautés. She worked her arches, taking her feet out of her shoes and rolling up to the pointe, down to the ball, strengthening her metatarsals as the teacher explained how to divide and multiply fractions, how to find a common denominator. And with her mind on only one thing, without being pulled away or taken prisoner by random intrusions coming at her from the edges, she discovered that where there was focus, there was also stillness, rest.