Audition
Page 16
“Denardio’s tonight?”
Rem’s voice is casual.
My shins ache.
Mom’s latest letter and The Jungle
Wait unfinished in my bedroom.
I lift my chin to decline.
My eye catches Jane
Deliberately writing notes on her clipboard,
Pretending she is not listening.
“Sounds good,” I say
Without checking his expression,
Just in case.
He is anxious, pacing
Near the doorway
When I emerge from the dressing room
In my uniform khaki slacks, wine-colored blazer.
“I didn’t know we’d be going out.”
“You look like a schoolgirl,” he scoffs.
But he slides his hand under my jacket,
Rests it on my backside,
Hands me a helmet.
Remington zooms the motorcycle past Denardio’s.
“Wait! Where?”
I holler over the choking breeze.
His answer just a muffled roar passing my ears.
We pull up outside a tiny Chinese restaurant,
Its front window ablaze
With golden, pagoda-shaped Christmas lights.
Rem leads me inside
Past a monster tank full of crimson carp,
A sign for the restrooms,
To a table for two.
He drops his long form into the chair closest to the wall
Sets the helmets under the table
Takes the menus from the waiter’s hand.
“Do you like dumplings?”
I can count on one hand the times
I have eaten in a Chinese restaurant.
I remember white rice and stir-fried steak with broccoli
Before I learned that rice was carbs,
That red meat was dangerous,
That soy sauce had too much sodium.
Before I learned to be afraid
Of food.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re gonna love ’em.”
He pulls a cigarette from his jacket,
Twitches it between his index finger
And the middle one,
Rat-a-tat.
“A Tsingtao for me and a water for the lady
And a plate of veggie dumplings to start.”
I look at his face
Across the table.
Is he so relaxed, confident
Because we are so far
From the studio?
Is he trying to apologize for something?
How does he know I will love dumplings any more
Than he knows I cannot ask
Any of the questions
That flood my mind?
He tips his head to light up,
His mellow, brown eyes twinkle.
“We’re celebrating second place
In the Young Choreographers Workshop.”
He raises his beer.
“I’ve been invited to the Blue Mountain Dance Festival,
Choreographer-in-residence
Next summer.”
The clink of my glass
Against his frosty bottle,
Rem’s wordless answer
To my unspoken questions.
This celebration he is having with me
Not Lisette
Not Jane.
Has it changed,
This thing I have with Remington?
His dance-maker, his muse,
His naughty secret
Who bundles beneath his covers,
Always cold
While he sleeps?
As I count the seconds before I wake him
To take me back to the Medranos’,
I cannot fit our celebration
Into that equation
Any more than I can derive formulas
For calculating the area under a curve.
My math professor patiently tutors me, but
Remington
Does not.
Is there a formula in his mind?
Does he wonder at what we’re doing?
Second-guess his inconsistencies?
Worry at my hesitations?
I begin to think the riddle
Is only in my mind.
In his, there is no need beyond
The flow of days,
Like the music he uses
To make dances.
The next night, I sit beside Barry
At the Upton talent show.
He never speaks to me
About the Fall Formal.
We keep the conversation
To jokes about math class
And cheers for Anne and Katia,
Whose graceless tap rendition
Of 42nd Street
Draws ridiculous applause
From the crowd
And Barry’s appreciative glance
At Katia’s lumpy thighs.
“They did a great job, didn’t they?”
He slides back in his seat.
“I don’t know much about tap.”
“Cool costumes, huh?”
“They made them themselves.”
I look at Katia and Anne, arm in arm,
Panting, sweaty, grinning on the stage,
And think of the precise curtsy I will give on tour
After dancing the Little Swans
With Madison and Simone,
Wrapped in frothy castoffs from the real ballerinas.
After the show, they invite me
To go out with a group
Of Upton kids
For sweets at a trendy spot
Where ice cream costs almost as much
As my entire dinner
With Remington
Last night.
Barry takes us in his dad’s Suburban.
Katia rides shotgun.
The rest of us cram in back,
Then into a giant corner booth
Where the boys order banana splits
And the girls junior sundaes, even me,
Anxiously counting rumpled dollars from my pocket.
Anne’s face is still flushed from dancing,
Her eyes dramatic with mascara
That would never be allowed at Upton
In daylight.
The talent show judges
Awarded ribbons for most original act, funniest,
Best singer, best group,
Best costumes (won by Katia and Anne),
And a dozen other prizes.
Reminded me of those early grade-school soccer games
Where they didn’t keep score
So there were no winners, no losers,
Just celebrations, laughter, messes of ice cream.
Nothing like the Jersey Ballet
With its endless auditions, eternal scrutiny,
The cruel knowledge that we can’t all be
Enough.
College Fair Day at Upton
Is not like anything I have ever seen before.
My high school in Vermont had one harried adviser
Trying to get farm kids to consider UVM
Or one of the state schools somewhere else in New England
Or even just the idea of not milking cows
For the rest of their lives.
At Upton, the advisory staff,
A well-rehearsed corps de ballet,
Flaunts and flatters their prima students
Across a stage of college admissions tables
To lunches with corporate moms and dads
Eager to share their stories, mentor their youth
Into boardrooms and corner offices.
Everyone in their best blazers
For once not scoffing at the dress code,
Peacocks in burgundy and beige.
I walk along, self-conscious, confused,
Quoting my scores, accepting sheets of paper,
Feeling as uncertain a scholar
As I was a ballerina that first morning
In the Jersey Ballet studio,
While my classmates offer well-rehearsed answers,
Posture, pose
As if they all knew this was an audition
But no one had told
Me.
“Swarthmore has astronomy for you
And languages for me.”
Katia pulls Barry’s arm.
“I can’t decide between Harvard and Yale.”
Anne’s mom went to one and her dad to the other,
Which makes her, apparently,
A bit like Madison and her ballet board dad.
I pull at the frayed sleeve of my blazer,
Wishing I had not returned Ruby Rappaport’s
Designer castoff, a thousand times nicer
Than mine the day I bought it at Kohl’s.
The college fair concludes
With advisory round tables.
Katia, Anne, and I listen
As one student after another
Describes something she learned,
He liked.
When my turn comes, I babble,
“I thought Swarthmore looked cool.
It has a dance program.”
I catch a trace of chagrin
Beneath Katia’s placid eyes,
Not unlike Tina and Kari
When I told them I was going away.
As if I was taking Swarthmore from her
When I expressly told my adviser
I wasn’t interested in making these kinds of choices
Anyway.
A little angry at Anne
For the relieved expression
When I don’t lay claim to anything Ivy League.
Surprised at the shard of myself
That’s curious
What Swarthmore might really be like.
“I got the tattoo!”
Bess squeals into the phone.
“Where?”
“Thigh. Chickened out on going higher.
Dad might have killed me!”
I giggle aloud
So the others on the bus look up.
College Fair Day made me too late
For a safe ride with Ruby.
I don’t tell Bess
About the Upton College Fair.
It seems unfair she couldn’t have come,
Seen all the colleges with music programs, jazz bands.
“When are you inking that ballet slipper?”
Bess asks.
“I don’t know where there’s a tattoo parlor around here,”
I say.
I can’t explain how Jersey and Remington,
Dancing on cruel cinder-block floors on tour,
Too many pairs of worn-out pointe shoes,
Sweat and sleepless nights of confusion
Have left a mark far more indelible
Than any needle could.
They are sending
Lisette, Bonnie, and Madison
To New York City
To audition for summer programs
At the most elite ballet schools.
Yevgeny smiles at me gently.
“You’ll grow a lot studying here this summer,
Staying with the Medranos a while longer.”
When I tell Mom and Dad,
I just say that they’ve asked me to stay
For the summer.
It’s not a lie.
Everyone is thinking of being
Somewhere else.
The Upton crowd dreams of college,
The Jersey Ballet girls dream of bigger cities.
I’ve traveled all this way
To feel like I am staying
In place.
A freeze-frame photograph
A poster on a Vermont basement wall
A held pose.
I think this as I plié, jeté,
Rond de jambe en l’air,
Grand battement.
Left hand on the barre, then right.
With spring
Has come understanding.
I can read Yevgeny’s subtle hand gestures,
Follow Shannon’s barre combinations with relative ease,
Interpret Señor Medrano’s heavy, accented commands.
We move to center for a new adagio.
Señor demonstrates with half steps in his worn, black shoes.
I try to focus on his directions
Instead of dissecting some uncertain dream,
Some desire
That has yielded me nothing
But second-best heartaches,
Ensemble roles.
I think how Remington would be
Engaged in the dance,
Not planning a moment, a breath
Beyond.
Press open my eyes, my ears.
Try to be here,
To be now.
April showers pound the road
As Señor Medrano drives home.
I am almost too tired to be afraid
Of his over-quick tugs of the wheel,
The other car headlights’ distorted glares
Through sheets of rain.
From the corner of my eye, I see
Señor’s grin.
Today in Variations class
I danced Aurora
Without a stop,
A misstep.
Danced to feel her body move
Without wondering what would come next,
Without wondering where I wanted to be
Or whether my wishes were right or wrong
Or ever coming true.
Fourteen delicate forward steps on pointe,
Fourteen genteel yet ever-growing circles of the hands
Without caring about the next day, the next hour,
The next audition.
The rehearsal schedule turns grueling
Again. In June, we will present
Variations,
Parts of the tour,
And some new dances
In a student concert
For family, friends.
Before that,
The company will perform
Coppélia.
Like The Nutcracker,
Another ballet based upon
A macabre Hoffman tale
About a doll come to life.
This time, though,
I will join the corps with Lisette, Bonnie, and Madison,
Not be buried amongst the snowflakes of C level dancers.
We four are invited to join the company class
On Saturdays,
Which no longer leaves time for afternoon interludes
With Remington.
He smiles at me
From across the studio.
My knees soften as usual.
I feel a pull in my heart
But can’t quite see the direction.
At the too-short break
He comes to me.
“Denardio’s tonight?”
“Okay.” I nod.
When Remington meets me
At the dressing-room door,
My hair is still up,
My dress, rumpled, not replaced by chic jeans, tight top,
My nose shiny.
I don’t understand what
Draws me to his dark eyes.
A marionette
Pulled, like Coppélia, on strings of another’s making.
But today, I danced
Not in the back row
Not at the end of the line
Not just with girls
So much younger than I.
Those things I did myself
And I am smiling
As I ride on Remington’s motorcycle.
Arms clenched around his muscled waist,
I squint against the wind pressing into my eyes
As mud spatters up from the road onto my pale pink tights.
The spring air is damp.
The still-bare trees, like awkward
young dancers,
Hint at the promise of green,
Of future beauty.
Mom texts while I’m in bed with Remington.
The urgent buzz
Rouses me from my drowsy stupor.
“Can’t you get it later?”
Rem kicks the covers.
“Just take a second.”
The message wonders what dates I can spare
For some college visits
This summer.
“Your mom again?”
His eyes are knowing.
“She wants me to look at colleges.”