She’d elicited a lot of reactions from him, but never this. It was terrible. He said nothing. He didn’t need to. It was reminiscent of being disciplined by Deborah as a small child. Death by silence, by The Look.
“You might want to visit the ladies’ room, Alice,” he told her, his voice chatty, relaxed. “Your face is suddenly looking quite red. Splotchy. Maybe there’s something you can do about that. Or maybe it’s just an aging has-been dancer thing.”
The rage. The terrible, consuming rage.
She could feel Lana shrink beside her.
“How considerate of you to have pointed that out to me,” Alice said to Gil. “Someone has obviously trained you well.” She rose, took her purse and forced herself to amble, not stalk, toward the ladies’ room.
In the bathroom, her limbs shaking with anger and adrenaline, she stared at her face in the mirror. Her face was indeed a fright, with its blotchy, scarlet cheeks and too bright eyes.
This would not do. Deborah Willoughby’s spectral presence was like a giant wagging finger of disapproval in her face.
She ran the cold water and splashed it on her cheeks over and over until she began to cool down. She took her time patting her face dry, practicing her yogic breathing exercises, until she felt composed enough to rejoin Gil and Lana.
Gil and Lana both smiled at her, a forced cheerfulness. She didn’t bother to sit back down.
“I think I’ve done my work for the night,” she told Gil. “I’m going home.”
“Oh, don’t go having a hissy fit. Sit down and have another drink. Look, I’m sorry. I was rude and I apologize. Okay?”
He recited this in the bored monotone of a nine-year-old boy being told by his mother to apologize, or else.
“Good night, Gil. Good night, Lana.” She picked up her wrap, tucked her purse more tightly under her arm.
“Alice, wait.” Lana looked distressed.
“She’s fine,” Gil told her. “She gets this way sometime. Maybe it’s PMS.”
Without another word Alice walked away, ignoring everyone, everything but counting the moments till she could be alone. Outside she hailed a taxi and clambered in the back. Finally, peace, blissful Gil-free silence.
Odette greeted Alice inside the house ten minutes later. “Hi, kitty,” she murmured. “We’re safe now, away from that terrible butthead boss.” She squatted down to pet Odette, who tipped over, offering her belly for Alice to stroke as well, purring like an engine once Alice got it right. Finally Alice rose, locked the front door, switched off lights and made her way upstairs.
She was in bed with a novel, Odette at her feet, when Lana and Gil returned. She stayed in her room, vowing to ignore them. Five minutes later she heard the front door shut again, followed by footsteps on the stairs, a tentative knock at her door.
She sighed, rose from the bed and opened the door.
“Hi.” Lana smiled at her. “Um, I just wanted to let you know I was here.”
“Oh. Fine.”
“Well, good night.”
“He still here?” Alice gestured with her chin toward the living room.
“Gil? No. I sent him home.”
“Why?”
Lana squirmed. “Because it felt right. Or maybe to show you some support.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“There at the restaurant, I could tell that what Gil said really hurt you.”
“Well, you’re wrong. I’m fine. I just had a headache and Gil was getting on my nerves. You missed out on getting laid for nothing.”
She made a move to shut the door but Lana was in the way now and she wouldn’t budge. Alice pushed harder at the door; Lana still didn’t move. Odette, sensing tension, leapt from Alice’s bed and darted out of the room.
Lana caught her gaze and held it. “I’m not oblivious, Alice. Maybe he is, but I’m not.”
It became a stare-down of sorts. But Lana was more persistent than Alice would have expected. “What’s the real reason you don’t go to ballet performances?” she asked.
“Why the hell do you think?” Alice snapped.
“Because it hurts to watch what you lost?”
Had Gil been the one to say those words, they would have carried a jeering element. But this was Lana. In reply, Alice offered her a curt nod.
“That’s what I figured,” Lana said softly. “And I totally get it.”
They pondered this in silence for a moment. “I wouldn’t make a very graceful ex-dancer,” Lana said finally.
Alice grimaced. “None of us do.”
Us.
Lana nodded. The hurting thing inside Alice subsided the tiniest bit.
Lana stepped away from the door. “Anyway. Thanks for coming to the restaurant like that. I really appreciated your company. But I’ll leave you alone now.”
“Thank you. Good night.”
Fifteen minutes later Alice, still wide awake, gave up on reading. Lana hadn’t merited her terse retorts. Certainly not tonight, of all nights. She slipped out of bed, put on her robe and went into the hall. Noting a wedge of light coming from the ajar bedroom door, she tapped at the door and peered inside. Lana was already sound asleep, hair spread out on the pillow, one arm flung over her head. Odette was on the bed with her, by Lana’s blanketed feet, curled up in a C. She lifted her head when Alice came in but lowered it, shutting her eyes, pressing against Lana’s leg.
“Traitor,” Alice grumbled. She crept over to the nightstand to turn the lamp off. Before clicking it off, she paused to study Lana. She looked so young, so innocent. An unfamiliar feeling passed through Alice, a mix of tenderness and unease, some vague disquiet at the thought of the Gils of the world, the Mark Haverfords, Montserrat’s Len Stevenson, indulging in what they could get from a young girl, her beauty, her freshness, her easy trust. She was fiercely glad right then that she could offer Lana her home, this sanctuary, away from potential predators.
Perhaps this was what a mother experienced when regarding her sleeping child.
Or better yet, a stepmother. One like Marianne, who’d surely paused like this to check on the young, sleeping Alice from time to time.
The thought stopped her cold. What, after all, had that been like for the childless Marianne? Suddenly sharing a home with an impressionable, vulnerable girl whose real mother was absent from the picture, and here you were, unfathomably being seen that way, as a maternal guide. All these unfamiliar feelings arising, coursing through you, that you weren’t quite sure what to do with.
The answer was simple enough: you offered them all you could. Because they needed it.
It was like seeing Marianne in an entirely new way. And Lana, too.
Too much introspection. She gave herself a mental shake, reached over and clicked off the light. “Sweet dreams,” she whispered, as she made her way out of the room and back to her own.
Chapter 16 – Lagging
No one expected Anders to stride into company class the morning after opening night and teach. It was a rude awakening for Lana, spent after the adrenaline rush of opening night. Serenade had been lovely and exhilarating, a thrill to perform. The group of them in their soft, flowing palest blue tulle skirts, Tchaikovsky’s glorious music, Balanchine’s clever geometric patterns, the audience’s hushed appreciation of the closing tableau, one lead dancer, the Waltz Girl, held aloft by four men in a backward arch, elegant and still as the masthead of a ship, as the ensemble bourréed in two parallel lines behind them. It had been pure art in movement. She’d loved dancing it; she’d never felt closer to the other dancers, to the company as a whole.
But this morning Anders moved and spoke impatiently, as if irritated that their bodies might feel sluggish this morning. During barre, he was especially aggressive on the tendu and dégagé series. Sixteen counts, a soutenu turn to the other side, lightning-quick dégagés with a pirouette thrown in, soutenu back to the other side, eight here, eight there, then all of it split-time.
It was madness, more dismaying than e
xhilarating, as Lana struggled to keep up, stay alert and repeat the fiendish combinations he threw at them. At the start of class she’d harbored an idle fantasy that Anders might meet Lana’s eyes, stop in his tracks even, to tell her she’d done a splendid job the night before, that she was a welcome addition to the company. None of this, not even a glance cast her way. Which, given the way she was forced to fudge some of the trickier combinations this morning, wasn’t a bad thing in the end.
After barre, she exchanged her soft leather ballet slippers for pointe shoes, wincing at the blisters on her toes that had torn open last night, the way the sweat now rushed in to sting them. It was poor form, in truth, to not begin company class wearing pointe shoes, but she’d thought she could get away with it. Another reason why it was just as well Anders hadn’t noticed her. Although she had a hunch he’d registered her pointe shoe omission. Very little seemed to escape his notice.
The worst was her big toe: the open wound was not healing and each day it was red and angry, blood soaking through the Band-Aid every time she danced en pointe. The only solution, Lana knew, was to stay off pointe for several days and let it heal properly, which was an impossibility. Going en pointe daily, hourly, was the reality of her work. She would therefore simply grit her teeth and buy more Band-Aids.
The dancers moved to the center of the room. Lana hated the feeling of having pointe shoes on this morning, with her big toe so inflamed and throbbing, but she knew better than to display any sign of discomfort. Worse, the shoes were brand new, without having been hammered or softened in any way. Her feet in them felt numb and clumsy, which explained why, when hurrying to the back of the room after completing the first jump combination, she accidentally kicked over a cup of someone’s coffee.
A horrified silence came over the group as the creamy mixture, a Starbucks latte, flowed over the wood floor. There was a flurry of activity as people yanked their own items out of the way amid grumbles and exclamations.
Anders was furious. He strode over and stood there, hands on his hips.
“Who did that? Who knocked it over?”
The others, to their credit, avoided casting blame on Lana. She raised her hand and his frown deepened.
“You’re a dancer, not an ox,” he snapped. “Why this clumsiness? And what are you doing bringing coffee into class?”
“It wasn’t my coffee.” Lana’s voice was barely above a whisper.
“What is that? Speak up.” When Lana repeated her comment, he looked around.
“Whose coffee is this?”
Everyone had been reduced to cowering like children. Katrina raised her hand timidly.
“Shame on you. For shame. And you, a principal. You should be setting an example for the younger ones. Not this slop. This crap. Now clean it up. The rest of you, back to center. This is not a vacation. Focus. Now where’s my second group? Move, people!” He strode back to the front of the room.
Someone had brought over paper towels and Lana bent to help Katrina wipe up the coffee. Katrina said nothing but flashed Lana a reproachful look. Lana felt herself shrink. For the rest of the class, she cowered in the back of whatever group she was in, still dancing full out, but trying to remain unobtrusive.
After class, as soon as Anders departed, Lana dropped to the floor and unlaced her pointe shoe ribbons, yanking off the heel end as fast as possible. The pressure around the front of the shoe’s box eased. Pain mixed with relief as sweat sank beneath the torn skin. She sighed and shut her eyes, but a moment later she heard a murmured message move through the group: a revised rehearsal list had been posted in the hallway.
She joined the others making their way there too and scanned the list. Some of the lead roles for Nutcracker were being rehearsed. Sugar Plum Fairy and her cavalier. Arabian Dance. Snow Queen and King pas de deux. Lana’s name didn’t appear, and she reminded herself, sternly, there were over a dozen dancers with more seniority and rank than she had. They couldn’t use everyone for these roles, and this was early rehearsing, anyway. More ominous, though, was the rehearsal list posted for Arpeggio. There’d been changes.
Her partner of the past few weeks, Boyd, was out, Lana saw with shock. Replaced by the likeable Sergei, a soloist, but still, it was unnerving. And one of the other female soloists was out. Replaced by Gabrielle. That was how quickly one’s favor changed. The thought unnerved her, horrified her.
Reaction from this posting was different from the time Lana’s name had appeared as the female lead in Autumn Souvenir. No glares sent her way this time. Gabrielle gave a little squeal and jump of excitement. She spied Lana nearby and hurried over. “We’ll be rehearsing together now, it would seem,” she said. Her tone was casual but her eyes sparkled.
Lana tried to echo her enthusiasm. “I know, isn’t that great? Congratulations on making the Arpeggio rehearsal list.”
Gabrielle beamed. “Well, as we all know, it’s not casting. Yet. But Arpeggio is a lot of fun. Lexie’s one of my favorite choreographers. I can’t wait to bite into this!”
Courtney approached, smiling, happy as well, and Lana told herself to focus on the positive. She was still on the list. Gabrielle and Courtney were being friendly, chatting with Lana as the three of them walked down the hall at the same time. When Gabrielle saw Javier, she cut off her talk with a quick “see ya!” and bounded over to him. Courtney chuckled as they continued walking. “She’s psyched,” she said to Lana.
“She is.”
“Hey, great job last night, by the way.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
Courtney seemed to understand that the morning’s class, not to mention the new rehearsal list, had troubled Lana. “Hey,” she said in a softer voice. “Don’t sweat the other stuff. Anders blowing up at you, Katrina getting mad. Dancing in the corps last night and not as a soloist. And, well, that you’re not under early consideration for one of the big roles in Nutcracker.”
So Lana hadn’t been the only one to notice. But Courtney was being warm, cordial to her, so she tried to respond in kind.
“Thanks. I appreciate your saying that.”
Courtney returned her smile. “No worries. Honest, none of it means a thing.”
After grabbing lunch, Lana called Mom, which she’d been trying to do regularly since the frightening incident. Annabel had assured her that Mom was fine now, snappish and irritable, but fine. Conversations with Mom herself were tricky, though. Lana couldn’t bring up the Baby John relapse, because to do so might trigger another relapse. Another family game of theirs. Ignore the skeleton that got pushed back into the closet, never mind that you were leaning against the door to keep it in there. Lana chose her words carefully, trying to read into each response Mom made, guess what mood she was in.
Today Mom was complaining about her bad back, about the way the younger boys were arguing so much of the time, and how Annabel and Scott were no help at all.
“It was opening night last night,” Lana offered.
“Oh. That’s nice. How did it go?”
It bothered her that Mom sounded distracted, unimpressed. “It was okay,” she said, allowing a note of injury to creep into her tone.
“I wish we could be there to see you.”
“I wish you could be too.” A lump rose in her throat. No family in the audience, ever. What a depressing thought.
“And how are those fancy new friends of yours?” Mom asked.
In the previous conversation, she’d asked about Coop, to which Lana had evasively replied that she didn’t get back to the old neighborhood much. “Some friend you are,” Mom had said, to which Lana had held her tongue.
Today Mom tried to weasel new information out of Lana about Gil. Lana, forewarned, knew how to say the right things now, focusing on the truth, that Gil and Alice were close, so sometimes Lana saw Gil at Alice’s but he had a girlfriend he was living with. And how Gil was friends with almost everyone at the WCBT, besides.
A snort from Mom. “Your type wouldn’t hold that kind of guy’s interest a
nyway.”
More holding of the tongue.
She targeted her attack next on Alice, searching for issues of possible contention, trying to drum up points to illustrate why Lana shouldn’t be trusting Alice. When Lana produced no complaints, Mom muttered that Alice sounded just as slick as that Gil character. What was Lana’s backup plan? Surely she didn’t think this Alice woman would continue to be nice to a nobody like her. Not when she had friends like Lana described, the celebrity musicians and the billionaire.
“I need to go,” Lana finally said, exhausted from not being able to blurt out what she was truly thinking and feeling.
“All right. You have a good day. And a good performance tonight.”
Mom sounded cheerful now, downright happy. Which was a good thing. A cheerful Mom was a safer one.
If only it didn’t have to be at the expense of Lana’s own energy.
Her fatigue and diminished spirits seemed to be reflected in her performance of Serenade that night. She didn’t make any big mistakes, but her timing seemed off at one point during a quick-moving passage. Here, even the tenth of a second mattered. She got back on track quickly, but the gaffe seemed to taint the rest of her efforts. Once offstage, Dena Lindgren gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, which told Lana that her uneven dancing hadn’t gone unnoticed. The other performance and the dress rehearsals had been impeccable; she supposed it was no surprise that one night didn’t measure up to the others. It was not a big deal, she told herself as she stood in the downstage wings awaiting their next cue. It was all part of the live performing game.
Gil, meeting her after the show, took note of her subdued spirits. “I know what you need,” he told her. “A taste of something completely different. A singer I know is performing late tonight, at a low-key club that serves food till midnight.”
Lana didn’t want to go to a club. What she wanted was a shower, her fuzzy bathrobe and a quiet meal, but Gil seemed so eager about his idea that she couldn’t bring herself to say no.
Off Balance (Ballet Theatre Chronicles Book 1) Page 21