Astonish Me: A novel

by Shipstead, Maggie

  But Joan was right about Chloe as the Sugar Plum Fairy—everyone is happy. Chloe is excellent in performance and terrible at auditions, no matter how many times Joan has tried to convince her that the two are not so different. Auditions bore her, and she resents the necessity of proving herself. She had only gotten into the summer intensive in New York because Joan had pitched her hard to Elaine, but then she had made a good impression and been asked back. She is very good, really—far better than what Harry had called her in the parking lot: mediocre. He used to worship Chloe, but now he thinks that, as a dancer, she’s mediocre at best. And that, he told Joan, was how he’d changed.

  “I’m not sure I respect her as a dancer,” Harry had gone on, “and that’s starting to get to me. You know, honestly, I’m not sure we have the best training system in place in this country. It seems unfair to get kids started down a road when they’re doomed to failure. Like in Europe lots of schools take X-rays of kids’ legs to see what kind of turnout they’ll be able to get before they let them in. That’s not the worst idea. Right? Like it’s a little harsh, but it makes sense. I don’t mean to be a jerk, but Chloe’s hips aren’t ideal for a dancer. And the U.S. is so decentralized. I probably shouldn’t have languished here for as long as I did.”

  “Da, Comrade Bintz,” Jacob said. He mostly speaks to Harry in jokes these days. “Da, we take leetle children from families, X-ray legs, send to People’s Ballet Factory.”

  Joan had been tongue-tied. “Chloe’s not mediocre,” she finally managed to say. “She’s very good.”

  “Maybe for the corps somewhere.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the corps. The corps does the most work for the least glory. You’ll be in the corps.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think what?”

  “I think they’re planning to bring me into the company as a soloist. Just to make more of a splash. Otherwise I’d already be in the corps.”

  “Everyone has to go through the corps,” said Joan. “It’s part of the process.”

  “Arslan didn’t.”

  “Obviously you don’t have to if you’re coming from another company. But, Harry, you should want to earn your place. If you’re not in the corps, you’ll never have the same understanding of how ballets work. And I’m sorry you had to languish here for so long. That must have been terrible for you.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  Jacob parked the car and shut off the engine. “Also,” he said into the silence, “you might be barking up the wrong tree as far as what makes a good relationship. What if the best dancer in the world is a big bitch?”

  Joan said, “Which she probably would be.”

  “So then,” Jacob went on, “things are great when she’s dancing and miserable the rest of the time. What people can do isn’t everything.”

  “I know,” Harry says. “You’ve been saying that my whole life. I know. I feel like you’re trying to brainwash me with these mushy Sesame Street values that aren’t actually helpful once things get messy. Why’s everyone on my back? Dad, why are you all high on Chloe now? You used to want me to forget about her.”

  “No, I didn’t.” Jacob sounded wounded. “I like Chloe.”

  “I’m seventeen,” Harry said with exaggerated patience. “I live three thousand miles away. I just think I’d like to date other people, that’s all. I don’t think that makes me a monster.”

  Jacob opened his door. “I see your point,” he said quietly. “Do what you want.”

  Joan has to admit she sees Harry’s point, too, even though the chill will not leave her, not when the Christmas tree grows up taller and taller, or when the soldiers defeat the rats, or when the snowflakes dance their waltz, or when little Clara and the Nutcracker Prince fly in their sleigh to the Land of Sweets. She remembers how Arslan had looked at her during the brief time when he had tried to dance with her, his disappointment. Usually she feels at home in the fanciful worlds of sets and costumes, music and colored lights, but tonight the familiar dances seem bawdy and farcical and accusatory. Didn’t you want this? the snowflakes ask as they pirouette. Didn’t you make this? Joan shivers. Jacob turns to look at her, blue light playing across his glasses, the same wire-rimmed glasses he’s always had, the same face she has known since she was a child, just older. He puts an arm around her and rubs her shoulder, but she only feels colder. When the lights come up for intermission, she turns around and spots Sandy Wheelock two rows back, snuggled up next to a bald man in a golf sweater. Then she flushes with nervous heat.

  “WHO IS THAT?” TONY ASKS.

  “Who?” says Sandy.

  “The woman who just waved at you.”

  “Chloe’s ballet teacher.”

  “Should we go say hi?”

  “Not if we can avoid it.”

  “Oh-ho,” says Tony. “Bad blood.”

  “Not really. Do you have anyone who’s all tied up in the worst parts of your life? And you just wish they didn’t exist?”

  “Sounds rough. Why don’t you get Chloe a new teacher?”

  “Chloe does what she wants. They have this whole”—she swivels a hand in a circle—“thing. I’m not involved. And her son has been in love with Chloe forever. Darn, they’re coming over. Anyway, he and Chloe are dating. He dances. Actually, he’s dancing in New York now.”

  As they make their way down the row in front of Sandy and Tony, the Bintzes look more uncomfortable than Sandy thinks they need to, strictly speaking. Chloe hasn’t even been onstage yet, and even if she makes some horrible ballet mistake, Sandy will not be bothered. After Gary died, she stopped thinking about ballet or watching Chloe’s classes or following her progress or doing anything except clapping at her performances, and for a while she had not even done that. Sandy had mourned her husband and forgiven him—for inflicting his death on them and also for the dark years that had come before—but she was not sure she would ever fully forgive Chloe for attacking her in the school office. You had to forgive your own child, especially for something she did out of panicked grief and some nonsensical, backward teenage idea of blame. But pieces of that awful day have stuck in them like shrapnel, healed over but still hard and alien and painful when you least expected. When Chloe dances, Sandy can’t help but think of Gary.

  And right now she would prefer not to think of Gary or death or anything but all the usual Christmas schlock: eggnog and candy canes and even the damn Nutcracker. Though she would never say so out loud—there are restrictions and responsibilities that come with being tragically widowed—she is happier than she has been since Chloe was a baby. She took up cycling as a way to remember Gary and has gotten in pretty good shape. She tends bar at a grill near the beach, and she’s in the late stages of planning to open a hole-in-the-wall strip mall pub all her own. She’s good at bartending. She has fun with it. Tony was one of her regulars, and then he asked her out. It happens all the time.

  Joan and Jacob arrive in front of them. Sandy introduces Tony.

  “Chloe’s pas de deux is a treat,” Joan says, earnest as a preschool teacher. “She’s very good.”

  Sandy nods, struck by how this woman seems like more of a stranger now than when she first saw her doing ballet on her patio. It had been so suspenseful, having a little kid, wondering how she’d turn out, competing with other parents over hypothetical futures. Joan probably thinks she won, but Sandy doesn’t care. Chloe is what she is.

  “Yeah, she gets the best music,” Sandy says. “The tingly-wingly fairy dust stuff.”

  Jacob keeps squeezing Joan against his side like he’s sheltering her from the wind. “I remember when she was the baby rat,” he says.

  Sandy smiles politely, thinking about the rat year, how she had watched every rehearsal, every goddamn, endless, mind-numbing, amateur-hour rehearsal, and how she had been such a hideous stage mom about it too, leaning forward in her seat whenever Chloe did her little solo, almost doing the steps herself. Chloe had been right when, driving home
from Gary’s funeral, she accused Sandy of always needing everything to be perfect, of making Gary feel inadequate. But she had the cause and effect inside out. Gary hadn’t killed himself because of Sandy. He killed himself because nothing was ever perfect. “Is Harry here?” she asks.

  Jacob waves vaguely over his shoulder. “He saw someone he knew. You try to raise a loner, and you end up with Mr. Popularity.”

  “Chloe’s so proud of him,” Sandy says. “She’s always talking about what an amazing dancer he is and how famous he’s going to be. Even though I’m sure she’d like to be in New York, too.” They stare at her like she’s a space alien. Do they think she’s suggesting that Chloe should have been made an apprentice, too? Probably. They’re probably thinking about how to let her down easy. You know, Sandy, Chloe just isn’t as godlike as Harry. What’s important is that Chloe find what she’s good at, which is nothing.

  “It’s been tough on the kids,” Jacob says slowly and carefully, talking down to her as usual, “being separated. They’re just kids. It’s easy to forget because of the dancing, but they’re kids.”

  “Yeah,” Sandy says, breezy. “They’re cute. Chloe crossed off the days on her calendar until Harry got back. I couldn’t even get her to open the little doors in the Advent calendar. She only cared about the advent of Harry.”

  Joan puts a bony hand to her forehead. Joan is always miming things. Her theatrical flourishes drove Sandy nuts back when they were friends. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m not feeling so well.”

  “Too many Christmas cookies?” posits Tony, and now he’s the alien to be stared at, bless his heart. Joan’s probably never had a Christmas cookie in her life.

  The lights dim and come back up. “It’s about to start again, anyway,” Jacob says. “We should go sit down.”

  CHLOE, WAITING IN THE WINGS BEFORE HER PAS DE DEUX, TREMBLES so much that her tutu flutters. She is not exactly nervous, nor does she have the bold, predatory feeling she usually gets when she is about to attack the stage. The sensation is vague but intense—she supposes it’s shock over the breakup, tension and disbelief. She has not cried yet. Since her conversation with Harry, she has felt painfully alert, both vulnerable and dangerous, as though she were wrapped in explosives. She flexes one ankle and then the other, tests her pointes against the floor. “Are you okay?” her cavalier whispers. He is Danish, blond, poised, gay, solicitous, a soloist at the San Francisco Ballet poached for the Christmas season by the well-funded suburbanites behind this production.

  “I’m fine. Why?”

  “You’re fidgeting.”

  “Sorry.” She folds her arms across her chest. Flowers are waltzing onstage. The music whirls. Clara and her Nutcracker sit on a throne at stage left behind a table piled with prop sweets. They are small, cute, assured. As a kid, she would have liked that: to sit onstage for the whole second act in a pretty white dress. She would not have wanted Harry to be the Nutcracker, though, because she wouldn’t have wanted people to look at them sitting together and think she had anything to do with him. Funny. All she wants now is to be seen with Harry, but she can still remember exactly how it felt to always want to get rid of him.

  Her cavalier is not reassured. “Can I help?”

  “No.”

  The waltz accelerates, building to its finale. Chloe shakes out her legs, rolls her neck. Her cavalier extends his arm forward, and she places her hand over his. She takes a breath, pulls up, and walks smiling out onto the stage before the flowers’ applause has ended. When there is quiet, a harp begins scales, up and down on top of slow pizzicato strings. Swooning cellos. Woodwinds come in from above, sailing down to join the strings; brass follows behind, taking long, stately strides, warm and wide but bittersweet. The music is like a room slowly filling with people, but not a party. Maybe a wake. Chloe dances but is barely aware of what she is doing or of her cavalier’s hands gripping hers, his hands skimming her waist as she turns. She is not thinking about the Sugar Plum Fairy, about sweetness and lightness, about smiling. Harry would not even explain himself, would not do her the favor of being honest so she might hate him. He just said he needed space, time, a break, the experience of not owing anyone anything, and then sullenly, he endured her reminders that he was the one who had always loved her, her entreaties, and then her accusations of vanity and conceit, of overestimating his own talent, of setting himself up to be lonely and miserable.

  “Take it easy, Chloe,” her cavalier whispers through his smile. Her wrists shake. The audience must be able to see her tremors on the balances. Her cavalier’s arm vibrates as though she is sending electricity through him. Dire trombones plow downward, are caught and buoyed up by the relentlessly romantic strings. Her body is rigid, but at least that makes her easy to lift. He practically tosses her up into the air. From her new height, she glowers at the audience, at Harry in it. She is not a fairy; she is an avenging angel. The counterfeit sparkling, smiling prettiness she has worked so hard to stick to herself like sugar has been swept away. She knows what she is doing is wrong for her role, and she feels sorry for her cavalier, but she is burning. The consuming pain she felt after her father died had burrowed into her center and still smolders there like a coal fire. In New York, the teachers told her to try not to feel, to just work with the music, or to think of the movements as cold, crisp tasks her body must carry out. But she can’t. Feeling is what allows her to dance at all.

  A last long balance while her cavalier rotates her on one pointe and then dips her forward so her fingers almost touch the stage, her extended leg going vertical. Then she is up again and he spins her quickly between his hands. Rolling kettledrums, bows grinding into strings. She throws herself too hard into the final fish dive, remembering Harry, the basement studio in New York, the sight of them in the mirror, and her cavalier, hissing through his teeth, almost drops her but doesn’t, sets her upright. Grim faced, she gives a sharp bob of a curtsy and stalks into the wings to wait out her cavalier’s variation, a tarantella. He is a very nice dancer, tall with clean lines, but her eyes won’t focus on him. She stares blankly at a spot on the stage, oblivious as he passes in and out of her field of vision. Ordinarily, she would be blotting her face with tissues, wiping her chest and neck with a towel, perhaps paying a visit to the rosin box, preparing for her own variation, but now she stands, sweating, arms loose at her sides, and thinks of nothing.

  Too soon, her cavalier flies offstage and, not even trying to smile, she abandons the shelter of the wings. Stage right, the back corner, her legs in croisé derrière à terre, arms low in a graceful hoop. In the instant before the music begins, she confronts the darkness, feeling Harry in it somewhere. Having to dance for him is humiliating, especially this saccharine, dainty variation that is so wrong for her. She had longed to be the Sugar Plum Fairy when she was a rat, and now she longs to be a rat. Plucked strings. She moves en pointe along the diagonal. Tiny steps, unsatisfying, nibbling at the stage. The celesta comes in, an instrument that looks like a toy piano and sounds like bells. The music is tinkling, tentative, a mouse creeping through a sleeping house. She is the rat again. A bassoon slides down a dark staircase. Piqué turns—she is getting ahead of the music. Her ankles shake. She thought she could let go of the prettiness, the carefulness, that what was left would feel instinctive, easy, but she has become unused to dancing with freedom. Her elbows and knees are sharp. It is all en pointe, mincing little steps and hops, her feet always moving, poking and prodding the stage, her arches cramping. Chaînés turns: chains indeed. She feels like she’s dragging them behind her. She stumbles badly, landing flat on her feet, putting out her arms for balance. Other dancers have gathered in the wings, staring. A pulse of strings, then scrubbing cellos, then another pulse. “What do I do?” she had asked Harry. “What do I do now? Everything is ruined. You’ve ruined everything.”

  “That you think that,” he’d said, “is exactly the problem.”

  She can see there were moments when she asked too much of him, bu
t she can’t be reasonable when she feels her life falling away in big, loose chunks. She doesn’t know what will be left. The chiming comes faster and faster. The rat is trapped, scurrying and spinning from one side of the stage to the other. She turns and turns. The stage tilts. The staring eyes in the wings whirl diagonally past. She is dizzy, but she does not fall. There is still the coda to do.

  MAY 1998—NEW YORK CITY

  THE CITY HAS CHANGED. THE ABSENCE OF GRIT, THE SAFETY OF IT hits Joan like a betrayal, as though it had purposely waited until she left to undergo a course of self-improvement and is now putting on airs. She takes Jacob to see where she had lived with Elaine, and although the building doesn’t look much different, the block is now quiet and leafy and prosperous: innocent in its elegance, as though it had never been perched on the edge of blight. The subway cars are mostly silver, not funky and screaming with spray paint. Times Square is full of scaffolding and construction fences, illuminated by huge video screens and billboards of beautiful people, crowded with tourists, purged of massage parlors and peep shows.

  She has not been back since before Harry was born, and now she and Jacob have come to see Harry make his debut as a soloist. Joan was right: he had been in the corps, but not for long and not without fanfare and plum solos. This would be a joyful occasion, but Arslan will be at the performance. Knowing he is in the city, Joan sees him hurrying down sidewalks, passing through subway turnstiles, sitting in restaurant windows, sailing by in taxis. She had tried to think of a way she could get out of seeing him, but making too much of an effort to avoid a reunion would be undignified, would imply she was still hung up on him. He is a mentor to Harry, and she knows Harry wants her to see them together, to witness how he has forged a bond with his idol. She wonders if Arslan has guessed, when he will guess. Elaine must know. Joan has never said aloud to anyone that Arslan is Harry’s biological father. She is not sure she could form the words.