The Four Temperaments

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  GINNY

  Ginny had known for a long time that the mirror was everything: her friend, her enemy; her partner, her audience. The walls of every ballet studio in the world were lined with mirrors, and it was those mirrors that told her everything she ever needed to know. She first understood the mirror's power years ago, when she started taking Wes's ballet class in New Orleans. That was where she learned to love the mirror or, more accurately, her reflection in it. The mirror showed her a girl different from the one she knew everywhere else: in the mirror, she could do anything. Her extensions were higher than anyone else's, her jumps bouncier, her feet more quick; the mirror told her all that and more.

  Everywhere else, Ginny couldn't do anything right: she failed math tests, couldn't memorize a thing in history or geography. She wore the wrong clothes, said the wrong things, was nobody's friend, and the principal's special mission. But there in the mirror, everything was reversed: she was the best, the most talented, and all the rest of the girls were pushed to the background.

  Wes started putting her in the front line of the class early on, so Ginny had a chance to see herself in the mirror without so many other bodies in the way. After a while, she danced for that mirror as if it were the president of the United States. Wes didn't approve of this, so he made the girls all turn away from the mirror and dance with their backs to it. It was so strange dancing without the mirror—like being lost in a fog with no map or compass. No one liked that, and of course it was all Ginny's fault—another reason for them to resent her. Which they did already. Eventually, though, he let the girls turn around, and this time Ginny was more careful. She still loved that magic mirror, but she wasn't letting it show.

  So by the time she came to New York, she was very good about concealing her love affair with the mirror. During the barre exercises, she had developed a trick of keeping her eyes down, which allowed her to look in the mirror without making it obvious. In the center it was easier, of course. There she didn't have to pretend so much, especially since she was hardly ever in the front row. But after her success in the Nutcracker solo, Ginny began to find herself up front a lot more. Now she could drink in that mirrored image of herself without distraction. To her surprise, no one seemed to mind. When she and Rita went to church years ago, there used to be a hymn about how loving Jesus was like water to a parched soul. That was what those moments in front of the mirror felt like to Ginny. Water to a parched soul.

  Falling in love—the way she had with Gabriel—was like finding another kind of mirror. There you were, reflected in someone else's eyes, only the reflection was better than the real thing. Gabriel thought she was beautiful. Wrong. He thought she was captivating, self-possessed, powerful. Wrong, wrong, wrong. But in the mirror of his love, she was all those things and more. What did she reflect back to him? That, to her, was a mystery.

  After that solo, a lot of things changed. The way the other dancers looked at her, for one thing. And the teachers too. Then she was picked to be the understudy of the Sugarplum Fairy, which was one of the best roles in the ballet. Usually understudies didn't get to dance because most principal dancers would walk barefoot on smoldering coals before they would miss dancing during a scheduled performance. But right at the end of the season, the ballerina who was dancing the role turned her ankle stepping off the curb and crumpled down in the street, just like that. So as Ginny was coming into the theater, she was practically assaulted by one of Erik's assistants. He hurried her downstairs to Madame Dubrovska, who was waiting with a threaded needle in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other, ready to alter the costume.

  The one for the pas de deux was exceptional. It had a tight-fitting pale green satin bodice and a short net tutu of the same color. Petals of slightly darker green brocade fanned out from the waist. Twinkling bits of green rhinestone framed the neckline and were scattered on the skirt. The straps were made of braided gold trim. “Hurry up and put it on,” Madame Dubrovska said. It felt a little loose because the dancer Ginny was replacing was taller than she was, so Madame had to shorten the straps and take in the waist. All the while, Ginny stood there in front of her friend the mirror and watched as her transformation from corps member to ballerina took place. “There,” said Madame Dubrovska triumphantly. “Someone get her the crown.”

  Ginny was not nervous about dancing that solo—the longest and hardest one of her career. Once the crown was on, and her makeup complete, she couldn't wait to get out and face the biggest mirror of all: the audience.

  The role of the Sugarplum Fairy couldn't be more different from that of Coffee. Coffee burned and spat; Sugarplum was cool and poised, a queen looking out over her subjects. Near the end of the ballet, she danced a pas de deux with her cavalier. Ginny knew how real life was supposed to interfere with art: she saw The Red Shoes about six times as a child and believed that dancers had no place for love in their lives. She didn't cry at all when Victoria lay dying on the train tracks; Ginny thought she deserved it. But when Ginny danced Sugarplum that night, everything she ever thought about that particular subject flew right out the stage door. She understood the pas de deux in a whole new way, as an outpouring, a river of love, from the ballerina to her partner. She danced the whole thing thinking of Gabriel: how it felt when he touched her. And it brought down the house. Later, the reviewer for the newspaper said she danced with “brilliantly articulated passion” and “magisterial authority.” Evidently, Erik liked the sound of that, because he told her that when the new season began in the spring, she was being moved up to the rank of soloist. From corps de ballet member to soloist in less than two years; that was a quick rise. So many dancers spent years—sometimes seven or eight—in the corps before moving up. Most never moved up at all.

  After the winter season was over, there was a short break before the spring season began. Ginny went to bed early, ate plenty, attended class every day. Sometimes she took a jazz dance class at a studio on Seventy-seventh Street, just for a change. Then it got cold for a spell, a bitter, punishing cold that she couldn't stand, so she stopped doing even that. She began to feel stir-crazy, sitting in her apartment, watching TV and ordering in from the Chinese take-out place on Amsterdam Avenue. It got so that she started thinking of going down to Louisiana to see her mother, when all at once, the cold was over and spring had come to New York.

  Spring in the city was an amazing thing. The dirty, pee-stained snow and ice melted all at once and there were piles of slush everywhere. No one seemed to mind, though, they were just that elated, dazed even, by the mild air, the buds on the bushes and trees, the mounds of flowers that sat in buckets outside the Korean greengrocers on every other street corner. Ginny received a huge bouquet of lilies and freesia from Gabriel. Naturally, she had no place to put all those flowers so she had to go out and buy a great big glass vase, though really an umbrella stand would have been a better choice.

  Seeing those pretty flowers inspired her to clean up her apartment, which she hadn't done since fall. Barbie and her sisters were slipped back into their box, and stored in the closet. Ginny might have had the dolls on permanent view in Louisiana. But this was New York.

  She took a cab over to Bloomingdale's and bought wineglasses, sheets, a whole box of long, white candles with some fancy pewter candleholders, potpourri with a big bowl to put it in, a pair of striped canvas covers that slipped over the folding chairs she already had and some lipstick-red towels for the bathroom. She could afford these things now; her new position meant a raise, though that was hardly what mattered. She found a little black love seat on sale, and a standing lamp, and she bought those things too.

  The lamp was delivered right away and the love seat a few days later. The candles went into the candlesticks, the candlesticks went on the table, the bowl of potpourri between them. Ginny sat on the couch, sipping iced tea from one of the new wineglasses and surveying the effect. All in all, it was pretty good. Though she wasn't sure what she intended to do in this spiffy, fixed-up apartment: the only visito
r she had ever had was Oscar, and that couldn't happen again.

  Ginny hadn't seen him since that night she had found him waiting outside her door, and she supposed that was a good thing. She'd see him enough during the spring season, though she knew that the orchestra wouldn't travel with the company to Saratoga Springs. Or to San Francisco.

  San Francisco. Just thinking those words gave her an excited buzz, because that's when she would see Gabriel again. Apart from the flowers, they hadn't been in touch very often during these last months. It made sense, what with his wife and his parents breathing down their necks. But in San Francisco, they would both be in the same city at the same time. And if they were careful, everything would be just fine.

  Once the spring season began, she was busy all the time. So many new roles to learn, and good ones too, like one of the leads in the “Emeralds” section of Jewels and a solo in Ballo della Regina. There were other roles too, in ballets not choreographed by Balanchine, but it was the roles in those Balanchine ballets that she lived for. Wes used to say that Balanchine was unrivaled in the twentieth century; no one else even came close to doing what he did. Ginny was in total agreement.

  She was up early every day, and was often the first one there for the ten o'clock company class. Sometimes Erik taught, though class was usually conducted by the ballet mistress, Althea Johnson. Ginny liked Althea, who was a former dancer of around forty, which seemed to Ginny very old. She was also one of the few black people Ginny had seen in or around the company. Althea had been one of Balanchine's special protégées, but that was a long time ago, before a hip injury ruined her career. That must have been hard, because from watching her teach class, Ginny could see just how good she must have been. Ginny thought she looked like a black swan, and after she came to know her a bit better, she learned that Althea did in fact dance the Black Swan pas de deux from Swan Lake in the regional company of Birmingham, her hometown. In class, Althea was always immaculate, with her hair neatly bound and adorned with a chiffon scarf the same color as the leotard and chiffon ballet skirts she wore. Though she favored light colors—mint green, robin's-egg blue, rose, peach and lavender—against her dark skin they read rich and interesting, not bland and pasty.

  Ginny and Althea had “talked Balanchine” after class; Ginny was always asking her what Mr. B. thought about such-and-such or how did he see this or that particular role. Apart from Wes, who didn't exactly count, Ginny had never had a dancer as a friend before, and she liked it. Althea was flattered by Ginny's interest—most of the dancers were too busy trying to court Erik's favor to bother with Althea—and always paid attention to Ginny in class. When Ginny told her that she was promoted to soloist, the older woman's pleasure seemed genuine. “We have to celebrate,” she had said, hugging her. “My treat.” But Ginny wanted someone to see her born-again apartment, so she convinced Althea to come over, though Althea insisted on bringing all the food.

  Althea came to dinner on a Monday, when the theater was dark, so they were able to sit down and eat by seven, which was early compared to most nights, when the dancers didn't eat until the performance was over and the audience had all gone home. Ginny had actually gone over to Pottery Barn on Broadway and bought plates, place mats and real cloth napkins. Mama would have been proud.

  Althea brought several shopping bags full of food from an Indian restaurant and the two women set the food out on the table.

  “Mmm, this is very good,” said Althea, biting into a piece of tandoori chicken. “Do you want some?” Ginny nodded and Althea put a piece on her plate with her own fork. Ginny hadn't remembered to buy serving utensils. Next time. They ate their chicken for a while in silence, until Althea set down the naked bone and patted her stomach. She waited until Ginny was finished too and then said, “Are you going into the bathroom now?”

  “Excuse me?” Ginny said, confused. Was this some kind of New York code for drug use that she didn't know about?

  “To throw up,” Althea said, matter-of-factly.

  “Jesus, no!” Ginny understood. Everyone in the company was so worried about their weight that lots of dancers had become habitual vomiters, running into the bathroom after a meal to send it all back up again.

  “Me neither,” she said, smiling. “Another reason why I like you.” Ginny smiled back. “There's dessert too,” Althea said. “It's that delicious pudding they make. With the almonds and the rose water.” While they ate the pudding—spooned into the wineglasses because Ginny had no small bowls—Althea told her things about Balanchine.

  “He used to give perfume to each of his principal dancers. Really good perfume. You know, the expensive stuff. Worth. Dior. Balenciaga. He spent a lot of time shopping for it.”

  “He did?” Ginny tried to summon a picture of George Balanchine at the perfume counter of a department store. Macy's, was her first thought. No, tonier than that. Saks. Bergdorf Goodman. “But whatever for?”

  “He wanted them each to have a signature fragrance. So he was always looking for new ones. No two dancers ever got the same scent.”

  “Why not?”

  “He said it helped him keep track of the dancers while he was in the theater. He would walk through the halls sniffing, and his nose could tell him just who had been in what studio, or elevator or wherever.”

  “Imagine having Mr. B. pick out your perfume,” Ginny said reverently. “Did he ever pick out one for you?”

  “Chanel Number Nineteen,” Althea said. “I still wear it.” Ginny stared, trying to imagine the moment when Mr. B. presented it to her for the first time.

  The two women eventually moved from the table to the love seat, still talking, until Althea stood up and stretched. “I'd better get to bed,” she said. “You too. Company class is at nine tomorrow.”

  “Why so early?” Ginny stood too, picking up some of the dishes and dirty napkins. She didn't want the apartment to become that familiar old pigsty. At least not right away.

  “Extra rehearsals,” said Althea. “We're learning some new things for San Francisco.”

  “San Francisco,” Ginny said, thinking not of the roles she would be dancing, but of Gabriel watching her. The mirror again.

  “Do you want to room with me?” Althea said, not noticing how Ginny's attention had drifted.

  “Room with you?”

  “Ginny, quit repeating everything I say or I'll tell Erik you're going a little soft in the head. No more solos,” she teased.

  “I'd love to room with you,” Ginny said, snapping back to the present. “It'll be a blast.” But then she was far away again. A blast. Blast of a whistle, blast of a rocket. She was thinking of the town where she had grown up, the way the night sky was lit with fireworks every Fourth of July. She and Mama would walk, along with just about everyone else in town, to the big field by the high school. Lying there on a blanket in the matted grass, Ginny would stare up at the sky, watching how burst after burst of color would explode, bloom and melt away. At the time, she thought she had never seen anything so beautiful. She now knew that those bits of light were like ballerinas, bursting onto the stage with their color and fire, then fading away again, into black. She was that light-filled sky, Ginny thought as Althea prattled on cheerfully at the door, and soon Gabriel would be there in the dark, watching her.

  RUTH

  There was someone new in Mrs. Goldenfarb's room. Ruth saw her just briefly the last time she visited the home because the new woman was on her way to Physical Therapy when Ruth got to the eleventh floor. Only the back of her small, bent form was visible, culminating in the crown of white braids that reminded Ruth of Lilli. But today, when Ruth began her visits—pushing a heavy metal trolley filled with slightly outdated magazines and dog-eared paperback novels—she stopped at her room first. Her name was printed on a white index card taped outside the door: “Esther Vogel.” Ruth repeated the name a few times, a little trick she used to help her keep the many different names straight. Esther Vogel was seated in bed when Ruth entered, and her concentrat
ion was absorbed by the contents of the metal bed tray placed before her. Very carefully and deliberately, she cut her food into small pieces that she then moved to one side of her plate. She didn't actually seem to be eating.

  “Hello, Mrs. Vogel,” Ruth said. “Enjoying your lunch?”

  “What's to enjoy?” the older woman replied without looking up. “Everything smells like shit. Tastes like it too.”

  Ruth sighed. So many of the new residents were angry about being here, and who could blame them? They grew up in a world where their own aging grandparents lived and died at home, cared for by other family members. What sense could they make of this place, with its linoleum hallways, its mural-like bulletin board on the ground floor announcing news of the residents?

  “Maybe you'd like something else. You can always have a sandwich if you don't care for the hot lunch. Would you like me to see about getting you one? I think it's tuna today.”

  “What for?” Mrs. Vogel said, still cutting and arranging. “It will only taste the same. All the food here tastes like shit.”

  “What about something to read then?” asked Ruth. “Here's a new Stephen King novel. And I have the New Yorker, Cosmopolitan, Vogue and Ladies' Home Journal.”

  “Who are you?” said Mrs. Vogel, finally looking up. Her eyes were a pale watery hazel, but her gaze was focused and her expression alert.

  “Ruth Kornblatt,” Ruth said, touching the name tag pinned to the pink smock all the volunteers wore. “I come once a week to visit.”

  “Why?” Mrs. Vogel asked.

  “Because I like to,” Ruth said. In fact, her question took Ruth by surprise and she had trouble framing a reply.

  “You like to?” Mrs. Vogel seized on the word. “What is there to like about this place? Or about anyone here?” Ruth didn't respond and the older woman continued: “Well, maybe it's better than some place else you could be, right? Maybe it's like an escape. You come here so you won't feel so bad about your own tsouris. You get to see someone who's a lot worse off than you.” She leaned back against the pillows and abruptly pushed the tray away. A plastic cup was jarred by the motion and tipped over, spilling apple juice all over the bed.