Alice snorted and glanced sideways at Lana. “Don’t you wish it were that uncomplicated.”
At these words, Lana seemed to shrink in her seat. She doubled up, clutching her midriff as if the thought had caused her physical pain. She didn’t reply and Alice offered no further comments. Instead she started up the car and trundled down the narrow road, onto another road that took them back to the highway, back northbound toward San Francisco.
For the next ten minutes, neither of them spoke. Lana struggled to control her emotions, but from time to time issued a hiccupping shudder of grief. Alice, casting a quick glance over at her, felt the stirrings of pity.
“You going to be okay? Do you have someone to call, talk to?”
“No. No one.”
Alice sighed inwardly. “Do you want us to stop for a cup of coffee, before I drop you off?”
“Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” she lied.
Lana sniffed. “I’m sorry. About all of this.”
“Oh, well, it is what it is.”
“Anyway, yes, I’d like to stop. I don’t want to be alone just yet.” This made Lana start to cry again, but this time it was quiet, more like little mews of distress.
Alice stopped at a Denny’s outside the city, where the rumble of highway traffic turned into a soothing hum once they were inside, seated at a brightly lit booth with red vinyl upholstery. They both studied the menu in silence until the waitress arrived. Lana, to Alice’s secret amusement, ordered hot chocolate to Alice’s black coffee. Lana seemed so much like a hot chocolate type, she decided. She probably wore flannel pajamas and bunny slippers. But the desolation in her eyes when she raised them to meet Alice’s made Alice’s amusement die away. Lana was hurting in an adult’s way. Now was not the time to mock her little girl traits.
Their drinks arrived. She watched Lana down her hot chocolate, using her pinky to wipe the last of the whipped cream from inside the mug. Lana looked up at her afterward, almost apologetically.
“I’m feeling hungry. Would you mind terribly if I got a sandwich?”
“Why would I mind?”
“Well, the wait.”
Alice settled against the cushioned back of the booth. “I’m in no hurry.”
The club sandwich with a side order of onion rings and a chocolate shake came quickly. Alice accepted a refill on her coffee and watched, amused, as Lana tore into the food.
“Oh, the other females in the company must hate you,” she commented. When she saw Lana’s stricken expression, she hastened to add, “What I mean to say is, lucky, lucky you. For being able to eat like that, even after tonight’s party food. And still be so thin.”
The hurt look subsided into wariness. “My dad is a beanpole. I take after him.”
“Like I said, lucky you. Do you have any idea how hard some dancers have to work to keep it off?”
“I think I do.”
She didn’t, of course. No one who was naturally thin and could devour such a meal with casual insouciance could understand how it felt to always be watching your weight, every pound, every ounce, terrorized by the slightest gain.
Alice had been one of those who’d struggled to keep her weight low through her dance years. In the first year of not dancing, she’d gained thirty pounds. She couldn’t tell whether it had been dysfunction or the cessation of dysfunction that had driven it. Marianne, her stepmother, had been gently reproving, Alice’s doctor thrilled. Nature had never intended for Alice to weigh 105 pounds. She had breasts now, as well, big round globes that shocked her to this day with their tacit but unmistakable presence on her body. Even her father took notice, asking Alice in a gruff fashion if she’d had “work” done on them, to which Alice had sputtered no, it was natural, thank you very much, Dad.
Lana finished her food quickly. “Can I ask you a question?” she asked Alice once the waitress had taken away the plate.
“About what?”
“Well, Gil.”
Alice froze, ill-prepared to explain what they’d just left behind.
Lana seemed to understand her hesitation. “This isn’t about that. It’s about her. Julia.”
“All right. Shoot.”
“You know Gil pretty well, right?”
“Very well.”
“So, he told me something. I need to know if it’s true.”
“Go on.”
“He told me he and Julia are just friends. That there’s nothing more between them.”
Alice raised her eyebrows. “He told you that? Well, then again, I imagine he did.”
“Is it true?” Lana sounded scared.
“Lana, it’s not my place to discuss this with you.”
“Alice, please.”
Alice could hear her desperation. The poor girl really didn’t deserve the fate she’d been served tonight. “Fine. Yes, it’s true.”
Lana’s tense shoulders relaxed. “Thank you,” she said softly. “I needed to know.”
They sat, watching the people around them, all in various states of sobriety. “They’ve got a great setup, I have to say,” Alice said. “It’s a front for both of them, keeps the riffraff and the overeager Romeos at bay. Julia’s got money, lots, and she’s happy to lavish it on Gil to keep him close. He’s there for her whenever she comes through town, a date for whatever event she attends. He’s happy living rent-free in the Marina district, driving her nice little car.”
“That red sports car is hers?”
“Technically it was a gift to Gil. But if they ever part ways, I sense he’ll be expected to return it.”
“I saw her with Gil last week. She looked old.”
Alice frowned. “Typical twenty-year-old’s response.”
“I’m twenty-two.”
“Okay. Well, Julia is forty-three.”
“God. That is old.”
This time Alice laughed, leaning back to allow the server to pour her more coffee. Once the server had left, Lana spoke again.
“Is it true you were a ballet dancer? With the company here?”
Alice regarded her in surprise. “Did Gil tell you?”
“No. Your friend Montserrat did.”
Well. She hadn’t seen that one coming. “Yes,” she managed.
“What level were you?”
“I was in the corps for five years. Then a soloist for a year.”
“Did it feel like a dream come true when you got promoted?”
An odd feeling rose inside her, the pleasure of the older memory that almost, but not quite, blotted out the pain of what later transpired. “It did. I’d been dreaming about it forever. It was a toss-up that season, I knew. Anders was considering both myself and Katrina.”
“Katrina, the principal who’s there right now?!”
“Yes indeed. Katrina, who went on to win the race.”
“Wow.” Lana studied Alice with new respect. “You were good.”
Alice shrugged. “Good enough. I was getting anxious about being in the corps, though. As you probably know, if you’re not promoted by six or seven years, odds are you never will be.” Ironic now to think of how she’d fretted, the months before getting the news. Finally she’d gotten her promotion, and less than twelve months later, her dance career had ended anyway.
It was as if Lana could read the trajectory of her thoughts.
“Montserrat said that you’d had an onstage injury, and that was what ended your career. She told me to ask you for more details.”
What on earth had Montserrat been thinking? But Montserrat had no way of knowing how unsettled Alice felt talking about her past losses. How could she? The two of them had always skirted around discussing their respective pasts—a true Catch 22.
“Yes,” she told Lana. “I stepped into a piqué arabesque wrong and messed up my knee.”
“Was it during a performance or rehearsal?”
“Oh, the real deal. In front of two thousand people. I don’t do these things halfway. I fell and couldn’t get up—my knee just st
opped working.”
“Did you tear a ligament or something?”
“Multiple ligaments. My ACL, MCL and meniscus. Oh, and I fractured my ankle.”
“Dang. That’s bad.”
“It was.”
Lana fingered her water glass. “I’ve only been out for eight weeks, with a bad sprain. I thought coming back after that was hard. Did you try? To come back, I mean.”
“Of course I tried. Dance was my life. I wasn’t going to give it up without a fight.”
She felt curiously lightheaded as she spoke. She never talked about those days, made easier by the fact that her new friends in this new life of hers knew little about the dance world and wouldn’t have known what questions to ask.
“I couldn’t wait to get back,” she continued. “But it was humbling, frustrating as anything. I was only supposed to be out for nine months, but I rushed things and reinjured myself, which required another surgery. So it turned into eighteen months off. And when I returned for the second time, oh, God. So much harder.”
She shook her head and fell silent. Barre work had been relatively easy; she’d worked on that on her own, daily, in her apartment. Otherwise, though, so immersed in academics, writing papers, she’d forgotten how fast, how physically relentless the rest of company class pace was. Keeping up with the other dancers through grand allegro had been like riding a tricycle up a highway on-ramp, trying to merge with the Interstate traffic tearing past. Her brain couldn’t retain the adagio and petit allegro combinations thrown at the dancers, not like before, in the don’t-think-about-it days. Her extensions sagged; her joints mutinied. She officially gave notice two months later, before Anders could lose all his respect for her and start nudging her toward the door. It had been a wrenching decision. But she’d put on a Willoughby front, lied and told everyone that the prospect of a college degree and an administrative career was more appealing to her now. They’d all bought it.
“Oh, poor you,” Lana said softly. “Did your mom take good care of you during that time?”
Alice stared at her, jarred out of her reverie. “I’m sorry?”
“Your mom,” Lana repeated. “At times like that, their support can really make a difference. My mom will hassle me about not helping her out enough, but those weeks I was out of commission, she was so supportive. It meant a lot to me.”
Marianne had indeed been supportive through Alice’s surgeries, her rehab and disappointing setbacks. But right then, her feelings of loss newly raw, all she could think of was Deborah.
Lana, looking less confident now, continued on nervously, unaware she was making things worse. “Or maybe that wasn’t the case for you. My mom likes to totally get involved in my life. Sometimes it feels like too much. But I have to say, now that I’m far from her, I miss her. A lot more than I’d expected. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, huh?”
Lana peered at Alice expectantly, waiting for a reply.
This girl, who held the career Alice had lost too soon. This girl, who had the lifelong mother bond Alice had lost too soon.
Oh, the pain of the losses, even now. Sometimes it stole her breath.
She needed to be alone. She lurched up from the booth seat, muttering something to Lana, about having to use the restroom, and how they needed to leave soon. She spoke harshly, not even bothering to wait for a reply.
In the bathroom stall, she slouched on a toilet and tried to compose herself, a few scalding tears working their way out in spite of her fierce commands to not cry, damn it, you’re in public. She thought about Lana sitting there at the booth by herself, all pretty and fresh-looking even at this late hour. Lana, who’d had the nerve to drum up these memories, not knowing that Alice had told no one, not even Montserrat or Niles, about the aftermath of the injury that threw her world so off balance, the grief for her lost craft endless as she strived to realign herself.
She drew a deep, shuddering breath and held it as she straightened. She wiped the last errant tear from her face, exhaled and marched out of the bathroom stall, to the sink. Calmer now, she studied her face in the mirror. She forced a smile and the reflection Alice smiled back at her. She even managed to look grounded, sure of herself, confident and can-do.
Good. The Alice who mattered was back. One who did not need to discuss mothers or past careers and traumas with this Lana. Good riddance to the past, the tears, the emotions. Onwards, chin up, with a smile. A motto to live by.
Deborah would have been so proud.
After dropping off Lana at her apartment—what a terrible neighborhood she’d chosen to live in—she headed to her house, squeezing Gil’s car in her driveway behind her own car. Home was a cozy little restored Queen Anne Victorian in the Castro, just off Market Street. She wouldn’t have been able to afford her own house if it hadn’t been for her family and their help.
One benefit of her accident was that it made her appreciate family. When it felt as if her life had ended, there they were, her father and Marianne and even her brother, all contention aside, handing her the glue to put the broken bits back together. They saved her a second time after a bad breakup, at which time she declared a moratorium on romantic relationships and adopted a cat instead. Her father, in a combination graduation and thirtieth birthday present, made a generous down payment on the house she’d been dying to buy but couldn’t afford. She saw it as a tacit admission by him and Marianne that yes, she’d missed the boat in the marriage department, but at least this way they could get her out of the rental market.
Once inside her house, she saw from the answering machine’s blinking light that she had a phone message. She played it and smiled as Niles’s voice filled the room. He was still up, working, and told her to call when she came in.
She punched his number into the phone and took a seat on the couch. Odette, her cat, came trotting toward her with a sleepy meow. Alice patted the spot beside her and Odette leapt onto it. “Hey, lover boy,” she said into the phone when Niles picked up.
“Hello, beautiful. You calling from home?”
“I am.”
“How was the event?”
“It was something else. Very impressive digs. The catered food was out of this world.”
“And how’d it go with the business?”
“I’d say it went well. Except for Gil’s date. Her presence, well, it sort of got in the way of the business angle at one point. Like, seriously in the way.”
“Whoops.”
Emotions now safely tucked away, she was able to talk about Lana dispassionately. “The poor girl. She’s young, pretty, but was so out of her league there. Gil sort of blew her off by the end and she just didn’t know how to deal with it all. I had to get her out of there before things turned bad. She was really upset, so we stopped at Denny’s for coffee and a chat.”
“That was nice of you.”
“Oh, well, it’s not like you were here for me to rush home to, anyway.” She stroked Odette’s silky fur. “So, what time can I expect your company tomorrow? Should I do the early yoga class, or are you coming up after lunch?”
“Well, the thing is.” A tired exhale punctuated his reply. “I’m not going to be able to come up tomorrow after all, sweets. A whole section of this report, engineering’s data on the presentation, blew up in my face today. I managed to get a hold of a few of the guys and we’re meeting tomorrow in the office to get to the bottom of it.”
Shit. Shit.
“Niles,” she said, trying to sound reasonable, “you’ve been working all weekend already. Can’t it wait till Monday morning?”
“Monday morning is when I’m supposed to be presenting these results to my boss. It has to be done before then. I hate it too. I really do.”
She felt too crabby and disappointed to reply.
“Hey,” he said a moment later. “You still there?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you.”
“That’s what you said Friday night when you cancelled. In fact, to
morrow was supposed to be the makeup for that.”
“It won’t always be like this. It’s just…”
“I know, I know. ‘Things are just busy right now,’” she mimicked. How tired she was of hearing that. How tired of everything she felt right then.
“I told you I’m sorry. I meant it.”
She could almost see the determined set of his face. He was not the type to get deterred or derailed by someone else’s opinion, even their disapproval. It was one of the many things she admired about him. He was no pushover. He knew what he wanted and he quietly pursued it, maintaining a sense of focus, of ethics and decorum in the process. He was nothing like Gil.
Thank goodness.
Sensing her moodiness, he changed the subject. “Gil’s date, the dancer. Watching her seemed to unsettle you on Monday, after you’d been sent over to the studio.”
“No it didn’t,” she said, realizing too late Niles was merely repeating to her what she’d told him on Monday night. Damn. Caught in her own lie.
“What I mean to say is,” she continued, “it was a jolt, that’s all. Like seeing a friend from high school and it’s just been too long and you have nothing more in common, so it’s uncomfortable. Like that.”
“So being with her tonight has nothing to do with the fact that you’re sounding a little, um, shrill right now?”
“I am not sounding shrill!”
Niles, to his credit, did not comment on the shrill nature of her reply.
“Look,” she said. “I know what you’re getting at. But the whole ballet dancer aspect of my life is ancient history. I’m over it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Can we just fucking drop it?”
She’d never spewed out an obscenity or a harsh retort to him like that before. Another first between them.
“Alice,” he said in that soothing, put-out-the-fire voice of his. “Do you want me to come up? I can be there in thirty minutes. I’d have to leave early in the morning, but I’ll come up if you want me to.”
The tightness inside her eased. This was what she’d been longing to hear. Except that he was offering it to placate her, not because it was what he wanted. This was not the way she wanted to woo him to her bed.
Off Balance (Ballet Theatre Chronicles Book 1) Page 9