Mothers and Other Strangers

by Gina Sorell

  “Jesus, how much did you drink last night?” I groaned, turning on the light beside my bed.

  “Not this much,” she said, flushing the toilet.

  “Gross, light a match or something, it stinks,” I said, plugging my nose and going into the bathroom to get my toothbrush.

  “Sorry,” said Arden, grabbing a pack of matches.

  “You look like shit,” I said. It was true; this was the worst I’d seen her. I knew I should ask if she needed anything, but I was pissed. This wasn’t what we’d planned when we talked about going on tour together, and yet I didn’t want to be a total bitch about the fact that she had a real boyfriend and I didn’t.

  “No kidding,” said Arden, retching again into the toilet.

  “What’s the matter with Ramon’s room—you couldn’t throw up there?” I said, brushing my teeth.

  “Sorry if my being sick is interrupting your morning,” she said, wiping her face. “Fuck, Elsie, what’s your problem?”

  “My problem is that you’re only ever here to shower and shit, and the rest of the time you’re off with Ramon, and it kind of sucks. We were supposed to be on this adventure together, remember?” I spat out my toothpaste and rinsed my mouth. My face felt hot, and I thought I might cry.

  “I remember. I guess I just figured you were fine sharing it with Henri.”

  I turned around to face Arden, who was sitting on the edge of the tub, slumped over.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Come on. That’s who you’ve been writing all those letters to, isn’t it?” Her tone was more hurt than accusatory, and I suddenly felt bad that I’d kept it a secret from her. I’d done it on purpose, although I hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings. It was just that I loved having something that was all mine. Henri wasn’t like any of the guys I knew, and our relationship made me feel special.

  “How did you know?”

  “Elsie, it wasn’t only your mom that you were talking to that day, and that’s fine. I just don’t know why you had to keep it from me. I guess I’m not as cool or mature as he is. I guess none of us are.”

  “That’s not true. I just…I don’t know.” I sat on the toilet next to her. “I feel like he gets it, you know? I mean, we both have this thing with our parents. And I feel like no matter what I say or how terrible it is, he’s not going to think badly of me, or tell me how lucky I am that at least I still have a mother.” I looked at Arden, who looked down and nodded. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have kept it from you.”

  “I shouldn’t have ditched you for Ramon. I could’ve asked. I knew something was up with you, but I didn’t want to deal with anything heavy. I just wanted to have fun.”

  “Well, it looks like you’re doing a good job of that,” I said, laughing slightly and reaching out for her hand.

  “Yeah, well, that’s about to end.”

  “Not for another two weeks. Then the world is our oyster. We can go anywhere from here.”

  “No, no, we can’t Elsie.”

  “What do you mean? We’re not going back, we’re running away, remember? Look, Ramon can come too, if that’s what you really want.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  I let go of her hand and gripped the back side of the tub. I felt like I might fall backward if I didn’t hold on.

  “Oh my God. What are you going to do?”

  “Quit drinking,” said Arden, looking down.

  “I’m serious, Arden.” This wasn’t any time to be joking. If Arden was pregnant we needed to deal with it right away. If she was too sick to perform or if she started to show, she would get replaced, and how would she explain that when auditioning for new companies? I needed to come up with a plan for both of us. I started to pace the motel room while she went to sit on the bed. “I’ll find a doctor, someone who can help us. How far along are you? Because if you can just finish the rest of the tour, then we can go back to Toronto and take care of it there and leave like we planned.”

  “Elsie.…”

  “Don’t worry, we can do this. Ramon doesn’t even have to know.”

  “He knows,” said Arden, sitting down on the bed.

  “Shit, okay, well it’s your body, nobody can make that decision for you. I mean, you’re only eighteen, you still have your whole future in front of you.”

  “I’m having it and I’m marrying Ramon.”

  I stopped pacing and turned to face her. My ears were ringing, and it was possible I hadn’t heard her correctly, hadn’t just heard my best friend tell me that the future we’d planned for months no longer included me.

  “You’re what?”

  “I’m having the baby and I’m marrying Ramon.” She was sitting on the edge of the bed, clutching a pillow and speaking softly.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “So you’re just going to throw it all away? Your whole career, everything we talked about, everything we planned?”

  “I’m not throwing it away. I love Ramon, and I want to have his baby.” I could see that she was about to cry.

  “Oh, now you love him? I thought he was just some guy you were fucking, but I guess now that you’re knocked up, you love him,” I shouted.

  “Elsie.…” Now she was crying.

  “When were you going to tell me? The tour is over in two weeks. How do you know the thing isn’t brain-damaged anyway? I mean, you drink like a fish!”

  “I stopped when I found out. I’m not an idiot.”

  “No, I am,” I said, grabbing my purse and heading for the door.

  “I’m sorry,” said Arden, crying as I ran out of the room.

  The thought of going back to Toronto and playing second-class citizen to my mother, in the company of Philippe and his twisted mind games, was too much to bear. All those months of planning, counting down the days that I’d have to spend under my mother’s roof until Arden and I could start our new lives together, it had all been for nothing. I hadn’t had a breakup before and never thought that Arden would be my first. I assumed Ramon was a fling, and when the tour came to an end, she’d dump him and we’d go back to doing everything together. She knew how important she was to me. I’d never had a boyfriend, but I told myself that when I did, I wouldn’t make the same mistake others made, that my mother made, and devote all my time to them and forget what was really important: my friendships. I believed that boyfriends come and go but girlfriends were forever. I’d made these decisions before I’d ever had to test them and had just assumed that my best friend, who loved me as much as I loved her, felt the same. And I was wrong. My mother never had any female friends; one time when I asked her why, she told me it was because women were competitive and selfish, and in the end they’d always just ditch you for some guy, so why bother? I hated it when she said things like that. And I hated it even more when I thought of her smugly singing I told you so at the way things had turned out.

  Arden and I barely talked the last two weeks of the tour; she’d gone back to Ramon’s room the day of our fight and had stayed there every night since. In two months some guy had managed to replace me, reducing our nine years of friendship to a placeholder in her heart. I was only there, it seemed, until someone more suitable and desirable came along. I’d been practice for the real thing. She sat with him on the bus and hung out with his friends, and when they weren’t onstage, I’d see them holding hands in the wings. It looked like they were really in love after all, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. I stuck to myself more and more, throwing myself into rehearsals and writing longer and longer letters to Henri that I mailed daily until I finally asked him to come out and see our last performance. He felt like the only person in the world I was still connected to, no matter how loose the connection. A well of sadness had begun to pool in me; it wasn’t the first time it had happened, and I didn’t want to talk about it, but I just wanted someone to recognize it. And I knew that someone was Henri. I left a single ticket for him at the box office and would meet him after. Some of the other dancers
had friends or family members coming, but I never thought to ask anyone but him. I needed to see him and I needed him to see me, see what I did and who I really was when I was my best and truest self, dancing onstage.

  Our last performance was at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, a beautiful stone building that had recently become a haven for artists and a home to some of the most innovative choreographers in modern dance. It was a huge honor to perform there and was supposed to be the highlight of the trip; it was also the end of the tour and, for Arden and myself, the beginning of our lives. We had talked about it for months. Imagining what our first apartment would be like, what we would do with our free time, and how it would feel to come home every day to a place that was ours. A place where we were appreciated and belonged. Looking back, it hadn’t been a very well-thought-out plan, and I doubt that either Arden or I would have made it past a month or two; our money would have run out, and as Canadian citizens, we would have had to work under the table. But that still didn’t do anything to lessen the sting of a dream crushed before it had even been given a chance.

  We were rehearsing a few hours before our final performance when it happened: a loud crack, followed by a thud. I stopped mid-pirouette to see Arden go down. It was her ankle, the one that she hadn’t had looked at since she first hurt it. She was writhing on the floor in pain and looked as if she might throw up.

  “Arden!” Ramon rushed over to her side and held her. “Are you okay?” He looked at her, his face crumpling, and I knew that he wasn’t just thinking about her ankle, but about the baby, and I felt terrible.

  “It’s only my ankle. I’ll be fine,” she said. She tried to stand on it but cried out and fell back down, her face white and slick with sweat.

  I wanted to rush over, to sling her arm around my shoulder and help Ramon lift her, but my legs wouldn’t budge. Ramon was in charge, and Arden wrapped her arms around him like a life jacket as he hoisted her up.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “I lost my balance. I’m just really dizzy, you know?” she whispered as Madame Gitard, the artistic director of the company, came closer.

  “Let’s see how bad it is,” said Madame Gitard. She turned it one way and then the next, and Arden screamed. “It looks like you’ve broken it. You’ll have to go the hospital, you can’t dance on this.”

  “But it’s our final show,” said Arden, crying.

  “I’m sorry, Arden, but you can’t even stand on it.” She called over her assistant and told her to take Arden to the hospital. “Elsie, you’ll have to do Arden’s solo.”

  “What?” My mouth fell open. I had understudied Arden’s part but had never performed it. Even though every time I had rehearsed it, I’d imagined myself standing onstage in front of a crowded house that leapt to its feet with thunderous applause when I was done, I didn’t for a moment think I would ever get the chance. And now here it was, on our biggest night of the tour, in New York City.

  “Come on, don’t stand there, Elsie, let’s get your understudy in your place and rehearse you in,” she said, clapping her hands. “All right, everyone, no time to waste, we only have a few hours. Let’s go!” Madame returned to her seat in the front row as we took our positions and the lighting and sound designers rushed to their booths. As the lights dimmed, I took a deep breath and took my place in the center of the stage, lunged deep, and opened my arms wide, just as I had seen Arden do every show for the last two and a half months. Looking down, I counted the bars of music until I heard my cue, and as the spotlight snapped onto me, I looked out and saw Arden watching me over her shoulder as she left.

  It was our best show all tour. The house was sold out, and we got not one but two standing ovations. I danced Arden’s solo knowing that it was the only chance I’d get, and everything I’d been holding in for all those months poured out of me and onto the stage. I felt electric; all rational thinking ceased when it came my turn to dance, my mind and body united by rhythm and movement and emotion. I moved with precision and abandonment, giving myself over completely to the dance, the music and me keeping time with each another. It was the closest thing to magic that I had ever experienced, and I was certain that not only was this all I’d ever wanted to do, but I was actually good enough to do it. At the curtain call as I held Ramon’s hand for our final bows, I tried not to notice the despondent look on his face. I knew he was thinking about Arden, as I was. But the applause felt good and I let it wash over me, tickling my whole body. I scanned the audience for Henri. It was the first time I’d allowed myself to look out into the faces and see if his was among them. He was standing in the back row, applauding slowly, a sly smile on his face and a rose in his teeth. My heart began to pound, and if it wasn’t for the hands of my company members on either side of me, I thought that I might float away.

  Backstage, among hugs and kisses with the other dancers, we shook a bottle of champagne in the air and took turns passing it around. I didn’t know what would happen for me next, but tonight I was really one of them, a member of the company who had earned their respect with the best performance of my career so far. I told myself to enjoy it, to savor it. It would all end tomorrow.

  “Elsie, a moment,” said Madame Gitard, signaling me over. I passed back the bottle of champagne and ran to her. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be drinking.

  “Sorry, Madame,” I said, wiping my mouth and standing even straighter than I normally did around her. With her own ramrod-straight posture and broad shoulders, she had a way of making me feel like I was slouching when I wasn’t. Even though she was in her fifties, Madame was all muscle and sinew. She was always dressed in a black leotard and wrap skirt, a shawl draped around her shoulders, her salt-and-pepper hair slicked back into a tight bun. Despite her age, she still looked every bit the dancer that she was once was. In her prime she had danced with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, and worked with just about every up-and-coming modern dance choreographer, and when her body failed her, as it eventually did every dancer, she moved into choreography and founded her own company. Hers was one of the few dance companies that managed to pay its dancers a living wage and was invited to perform all over the world. I idolized her, and yet I had barely said more than “Yes, Madame” the entire year and a half that I had been studying with her.

  “You did great tonight, Elsie.”

  “Thank you Madame, I did my best,” I said, trying to stand still under her piercing stare.

  “I could tell. You still want it, unlike some others who have it and have forgotten what a privilege that is.”

  “I think we all want it, Madame,” I said, looking down at my feet.

  “But we can’t all have it. That’s the way it goes.” She paused and leaned in closer. “I know you are only sixteen, and I would never tell you to quit school, but if you wanted to continue with this company in the fall, there may be a spot open for you. We’ll have to see what happens with some of the other dancers.”

  “Do you mean Arden?”

  “I know you’re friends and she’s been through a lot, but I’m afraid she has spent too much time having a good time this summer. But she does have seniority, so we’ll have to see if she changes her ways this fall.”

  “She won’t be around this fall.” The words were out of my mouth before I knew it.

  “And why is that?” Madame Gitard leaned forward, her gaze burrowing into me.

  I stared back silently. I wanted nothing more than to be a member of the company, but not like this.

  “I asked you a question.”

  I was trapped: betray Arden or defy Madame? But hadn’t Arden betrayed me first, when she decided to abandon our plans and marry Ramon?

  “She’s pregnant,” I whispered.

  I watched as she took a sharp intake of breath, stared off into the distance, and nodded.

  “I see. Well, what do you know—we won’t have to wait after all.” She took a moment to compose herself and then spoke. “I really think you could be a princi
pal performer if you did this full time, Elsie. You’ve got a gift, but the choice is yours. If you are interested, you could do your studies while on the road and get your diploma that way.” She let the offer hang in the air for a moment and then put her hand on my shoulder.

  “Think about it. I only ask once.” And then she turned and left to go to the reception that was being held for us in the lobby.

  I stood for a moment, letting it all sink in. The idea of going on tour full time and not going back to my mother and Philippe was a dream come true. I looked back at the other dancers for a moment and tried to imagine myself as one of them. Before tonight I would never have dreamed such a thing.

  “Elsie, come on, we don’t want to keep our fans waiting!” joked Antoine, one of the lead dancers. He waited for me to join their small group, and I rushed over to him. It was the first time I had been singled out to join the core group of dancers that made up the heart of the company, and it felt good.

  “That’s what I’m talking about, Two Shoes! Great show,” he said, squeezing my hand and giving me a big smile.

  I felt like I could burst with joy. Antoine was nice to all the dancers, but he didn’t give out compliments easily, and when he did, everyone noticed. The most gifted dancer in the company aside from Arden, he was also the most popular. He had an easygoing personality and a quick sense of humor that made people like him instantly. But it was his talent that made everyone respect him. When I first started studying with the company he had affectionately given me the nickname Two Shoes, as in Goody Two-shoes, because I tried so hard and did everything by the book. You’re not gonna be great unless you let go a little and make mistakes. You got lots of time to get it right, but you only get a few chances to get it wrong. It was the first piece of advice I’d ever gotten that wasn’t from a friend like Arden or a teacher like Madame Gitard, but from a colleague. And the very idea that Antoine saw me that way opened up the possibility that I could one day be more than just another student of the company. I took his advice to heart and pushed myself to take risks in class where I could, so when the time came to prove myself I’d be ready. I’d been ready when Madame asked me to step in for Arden, and it meant a lot to me that he had noticed.