“Now you wait a minute!” flared Chris, looking red and very angry. “There’s not a dancer on that stage tonight who is as good as Cathy! Not one! That girl out there, playing the lead role of Clara—sometimes she is out of time with the music—Cathy is never out of time. Her timing is perfect; her ear is perfect. Even when Cathy dances to the same melody, each time she varies it just a little, so she never duplicates, always improvises to make it better, and more beautiful, and more touching. You’d be lucky to get a dancer like Cathy in your company!”
Those slanted, jet eyes turned to him, savoring the intensity of his report. “You are an authority on the subject of ballet?” she asked with some scorn. “You know how to separate the gifted dancers from the horde?”
Chris stood as if in a dream, and spoke as if his feet were firmly rooted there, and even his voice had a huskiness to betray his feelings. “I only know what I see, and what emotions Cathy makes me feel when she dances. I know when the music turns on, and she begins to move with it, my heart stands still, and when her dance is over, I know I am left aching because such beauty has gone. She doesn’t just dance a role, she is that character; she makes you believe—because she believes—and there’s not a girl in your company who reaches out and grabs my heart and squeezes it until it throbs. So go on and turn her away, and let some other dance company benefit from your stupidity.”
The Madame’s jet eyes fixed on Chris long and penetratingly, as did our doctor’s eyes. Then slowly Madame Rosencoff turned to me, and from head to toe I was assessed, weighed, measured. “Tomorrow, one o’clock sharp. At my studio you will audition for me.” It was not a request, but a command—not to be disobeyed—and for some reason when I should have been happy, I was angry.
“Tomorrow is too soon,” I said. “I have no costumes, no leotards, no pointes.” All of those things had been left behind in the attic of Foxworth Hall.
“Trifles,” she dismissed, with an arrogant wave of her shapely hand. “We will supply what you need—just be there—and don’t be late, for we demand that our dancers be disciplined in all things, including punctuality!” With a queenly gesture we were dismissed, and gracefully she drifted off with her husband in tow, leaving me stunned. Mouth agape, speechless, I caught the strong study of the dancer, Julian Marquet, who must have overheard every word. His dark eyes shone with a glow of interest and admiration. “Feel flattered, Catherine,” he said to me. “Customarily she and Georges won’t take anyone unless they’ve waited months, or sometimes years, for an audition.”
* * *
I cried that night in Chris’s embrace. “I’m out of practice,” I sobbed. “I know I’m going to make a fool of myself tomorrow. It isn’t fair that she won’t let me have more time to prepare! I need to limber up. I’m going to be stiff, clumsy, and they won’t want me, I know they won’t!”
“Aw, come off it, Cathy,” he said, tightening his arms about me. “I’ve seen you in here holding to the bedpost, and doing your pliés and tendus. You are not out of practice, or stiff, or clumsy—you’re just scared. You’ve got a great big case of stage fright, that’s all. And you don’t need to worry, you’re terrific. I know it, you know it.”
He brushed a light good-night kiss on my lips, dropped his arms and backed toward the door. “Tonight I’ll go down on my knees and pray for you. I’ll ask God to let you wow them tomorrow. And I’ll be there to gloat when I see their stunned expressions—for no one is gonna believe the dancing wonder of you.”
With that he was gone. And I was left aching and wanting. I crawled under my covers to lie wide awake and full of trepidations.
Tomorrow was my big day, my chance to prove what I was and if I had that special something you had to have if you were to reach the top. I had to be the best, nothing else would do. I had to show Momma, the grandmother, Paul, Chris, everybody! I wasn’t evil, or corrupt, or the Devil’s issue. I was only me—the best ballerina in the world!
I tossed, turned, fretted in and out of nightmares while Carrie slept on peacefully. In my dreams I did everything wrong at the audition, and, what was worse, I did everything wrong throughout my whole lifetime! I ended up a withered old lady begging on the streets of some huge city. In the dark I passed by my mother and begged for alms. She was still young and beautiful, richly gowned, bejeweled and furred, and escorted by forever-young and faithful Bart Winslow.
I awoke. It was still night. What a long night. I stole down the stairs to find the Christmas tree lights burning, and on the floor, Chris was lying and staring up into the tree branches. It was what the two of us used to do when we were children. Though I should have known better, I was irresistibly drawn toward him, and I lay down beside him. I gazed up into the sparkling other-worldliness of the Christmas tree.
“I thought you’d forgotten,” Chris murmured without looking my way. “Remember when we were in Foxworth Hall, the tree was so small and it was on a table and we couldn’t lie under it like this—and look what happened. Let’s never forget again. Even if our future trees are only one foot high, we will hang it up high, so we can lie underneath.”
It worried me the way he said that. Slowly I turned my head to stare at his profile. He was so beautiful, lying there with his fair hair changing colors. Each strand seemed to catch a different rainbowed hue, and when he turned his head to meet my eyes his eyes were glowing too. “You look . . . so divine,” I said in a tight voice. “I see candy in your eyes and the crown jewels of England too.”
“No—that’s what I am seeing in your eyes, Cathy. You’re so very beautiful in that white nightgown. I love you in white nightgowns with blue satin ribbons. I love the way your hair spreads like a fan, and you turn your cheek so it rests on a satin pillow.” He moved closer, so his head was on my hair too. Even closer he inclined his head until our foreheads met. His warm breath was on my face. I moved so my head tilted backward and my neck arched. I didn’t feel quite real when his warm lips kissed the hollow of my throat and stayed there. My breath caught. For long, long moments I waited for him to move away. I wanted to pull back myself, but somehow I couldn’t. A sweet peace stole over me, quivering my flesh with a tingling sensation. “Don’t kiss me again,” I whispered, clinging harder to him and pressing his head to my throat.
“I love you,” he choked. “There will never be anyone for me but you. When I’m an old, old man, I’ll look back to this night with you under the Christmas tree, and remember how sweet it was of you to let me hold you like this.”
“Chris, do you have to go away and be a doctor? Couldn’t you stay on here and decide on something else?”
He lifted his head to stare down into my eyes. “Cathy—do you have to ask? All my life it’s been the only thing I’ve wanted, but you . . .”
Again I sobbed. I didn’t want him to go! I tickled his face with a tress of my hair, until he cried out and kissed my lips. Such a soft kiss, wanting to grow bolder, and afraid I’d turn away if he did. He began to say wild and crazy things when our kiss was over, about how much I looked like an angel. “Cathy—look at me! Don’t turn your head and pretend you don’t know what I’m doing, what I’m saying! Look and see the torment you’ve put me in! How can I find anyone else, when you’ve been bred into my bones—and are part of my flesh? Your blood runs fast when mine does! Your eyes burn when mine do—don’t deny it!” His trembling hands began to fumble with the tiny, lace-covered buttons that opened my nightgown to the waist. I closed my eyes and was again in the attic, when he’d accidentally stabbed me in the side with the scissors, so now I was hurting, bleeding, and I needed his lips to kiss and take away the pain.
“How beautiful your breasts are,” he said with a low sigh, leaning to nuzzle them. “I remember when you were flat, and then when you began to grow. You were so shy about them, always wanting to wear loose sweaters so I couldn’t see. Why were you ashamed?”
Somewhere above I hovered, watching him tenderly kiss my breasts, and somewhere deep inside me I shivered. Why was I letting
him do this? My arms drew his body tighter against me, and when my lips again met his, maybe it was my fingers that had unbuttoned his pajama jacket so his bare chest was against mine. We melded in a hot blend of unsatisfied desire—before I suddenly cried out, “No—it would be sinful!”
“Then let us sin!”
“Then don’t ever leave me! Forget about being a doctor! Stay with me! Don’t go and leave me! I’m afraid of myself without you! Sometimes I do crazy things. Chris, please don’t leave me alone. I’ve never been alone, please stay!”
“I have to be a doctor,” he said, then groaned. “Ask me to give up anything else, and I’d say yes. But don’t ask me to give up the only thing that’s held me together. You wouldn’t give up dancing—would you?”
I didn’t know, as I responded to his demanding kisses, the fire between us growing larger, overwhelming us both and taking us to the brinks of hell. “I love you so much sometimes I don’t know how to handle it,” he cried. “If only I could have you just once, and there would be no pain for you, only joy.”
The unexpected parting of his hot lips, his tongue that forced my lips open, shot through me with a jolt of electricity! “I love you, oh, how I love you! I dream of you, think of you all day.” And on and on he went, while his breath came faster, until he was panting and I was overcome by my body ready and willing to be satisfied. While my thoughts wanted to deny him, I wanted him! I gasped with the shame of it!
“Not here,” he said between kisses. “Upstairs in my room.”
“No! I’m your sister—and your room is too near Paul’s. He’d hear us.”
“Then we’ll use your room. Carrie can sleep through a war.”
Before I knew what was happening he had me in his arms and was racing up the back stairs and into my room where he fell with me on my bed. He had my gown off and his pajamas too when he fell down beside me and started again to complete what he had begun. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want it ever to happen again! “Stop!” I cried, then rolled away from under him. I fell to the floor. In a flash he was on the floor with me, wrestling. Over and over we turned, two naked bodies that suddenly collided with something hard.
That was what stopped him. He stared at the box with Oreo cookies, a loaf of bread, apples, oranges, a pound of cheddar cheese, a stick of butter, several cans of tuna fish, beans and tomato juice. Out spilled a can opener, dishes, glasses and silverware. “Cathy! Why are you stealing Paul’s food and hiding it under your bed?”
I shook my head, fuzzy about why I had taken the food and hidden it away. Then I sat up and reached for the gown he’d tugged off, and modestly I held it before me. “Get out! Leave me alone! I don’t love you except as a brother, Christopher!”
He came to put his arms about me, and bowed his head on my shoulder. “I’m sorry. Oh, darling, I know why you took the food. You feel you have to keep food handy—you’re afraid someday we will be punished again. Don’t you know I’m the only one who will understand? Let me love you just one more time, Cathy, just one more time to last us our whole lives. Let me just once give you the pleasure I didn’t before, just once to last us both all our lives through.”
I slapped his face! “No!” I spat. “Never again! You promised, and I thought you would keep that promise! If you have to be a doctor, and go away and leave me—then it will always be no!” I stopped short. I didn’t mean that. “Chris . . . don’t look at me like that, please!”
Slowly he drew on his pajamas. He flashed me a hurt look. “There is no life for me if I’m not a doctor, Cathy.”
I put both hands over my mouth to keep from screaming. What was wrong with me? I couldn’t demand him to abandon his dream. I wasn’t like my mother, making everyone else suffer so she could have her way. I sobbed in his arms. In my brother I had already found my everlasting, forever-green, springtime love that could never, never blossom. Later, as I lay alone on my bed with my eyes open, I realized from the hopeless, flat way I felt that even in a valley without mountains the wind could still blow.
The Audition
It was the day after Christmas. At one o’clock I had to be in Greenglenna, the home of Bart Winslow and Rosencoff School of Ballet.
We all crowded into Dr. Paul’s car and we arrived with five minutes to spare.
Madame Rosencoff told me to call her Madame Marisha, if I was accepted. If I failed, I need never address her again, by any name. She wore only black leotards, which showed up every hill and valley of her superb body, kept trim and slim though she must be nearing fifty. Her nipples poked through the black knit material hard as metal points. Her husband, Georges, was also wearing black to show off his sinewy body which was just beginning to show age with the small protrusion of his belly. Twenty girls and three boys were to audition.
“What music do you choose?” she asked. (It seemed her husband was never going to speak, though he kept his bright bird eyes on me constantly.)
“Sleeping Beauty,” I said meekly, believing the role of Princess Aurora the greatest of all testing pieces in the classical repertory—so why choose a less demanding part? “I can dance The Rose Adagio all alone,” I boasted.
“Wonderful,” she said sarcastically. Then added with additional scorn, “I guessed, just by your looks, you would want The Sleeping Beauty.”
That made me wish I’d chosen something lesser.
“What color leotards do you want?”
“Pink.”
“I thought so.”
She tossed me a pair of faded pink leotards and then, just as casually, picked at random from a triple row of many dozens pointe shoes. She threw me a pair that fitted perfectly, unbelievable as it sounds. When I’d undressed and donned my leotards and slippers, I sat before a long dressing table with a mirror to equal its length and began to bind up my hair. I didn’t have to be told Madame would want to see my neck cords, and any épaulement I’d perform was sure to displease her. I knew that already.
Hardly had I finished dressing and doing my hair, with a gaggle of giggling girls surrounding me, when Madame Marisha put her head through a partially opened door to see if I was ready. Critically her jet black eyes scanned me. “Not bad. Follow me,” she ordered, and off she strode, her strong legs heavily muscled. How had she let that come about? I was never going to be on pointe so much my legs would look lumpy like hers—never!
She led me out into a big arena with a polished floor that really wasn’t as slick as it appeared. Seats for onlookers were lined against the walls, and I saw Chris, Carrie, Henny and Dr. Paul. Now I wished I hadn’t asked them to come. If I failed, they’d witness my humiliation. Eight or ten other people were there too, though I didn’t pay much attention to them. The girls and boys of the company gathered in the wings to watch. I was more afraid than I’d thought I’d be. Sure, I’d practiced some since I escaped Foxworth Hall, but not with the same dedication as in the attic. I should have stayed up all night and exercised, and arrived at dawn to warm up more—then maybe I wouldn’t feel nervous enough to be sick.
It was my desire to be last, to watch all the others and see the mistakes they made and learn from them, or to see their accomplishments and benefit from those. In this way I could size up what I should do.
Georges himself sat down to play the piano. I swallowed over the lump in my throat; my mouth felt dry, and butterflies panicked in my chest as my eyes raked over the spectators to find the lodestone I needed in the blue of Chris’s eyes. And as always, he was there to smile, and telegraph his pride and confidence and undying admiration. My dear, beloved Christopher Doll, always there when I needed him, always giving to me and making me better than I would have been without him. God, I prayed, let me be good. Let me live up to his expectations!
I couldn’t look at Paul. He wanted to be my father, not my touchstone. If I failed and embarrassed him, certainly he’d see me differently. I’d lose what charm I had for him. I’d be nobody special.
A touch on my arm made me jump. Whirling about I confronted Julia
n Marquet. “Break a leg,” he whispered, then smiled to show his very white and perfect teeth. His dark eyes sparkled wickedly. He was taller than most male dancers, almost six feet, and soon I’d learn he was nineteen. His skin was as fair as mine, though in contrast to his dark hair it made him look too pale. His strong chin sported a devil’s cleft and another dimple in his right check teased in and out at his will. I thanked him for his wish of good luck, very much taken by his astonishing good looks. “Wow!” he said when I smiled, his voice husky. “You’re sure a beautiful girl. Too bad you’re only a kid.”
“I’m not a kid!”
“What are you then, some old lady of eighteen?”
I smiled, very pleased to think I looked that old. “Maybe so, maybe not.”
He grinned as if he had all the answers. From the way he bragged of being one of the hottest dancers in a New York company, maybe he did have all the answers. “I’m only here for the holidays—to do Madame a favor. Soon I’ll go back to New York where I belong.” He looked around, as if the “provinces” bored him beyond belief, while my heart did a flip-flop. I was hoping he was one of the dancers I’d work with.
We exchanged a few more words and then my musical cue sounded. Suddenly I was alone in the attic, with colored paper flowers dangling on long strings; nobody but me and that secret lover who danced always just ahead, never letting me get near enough to see his face. I danced out, fearful at first, and did all the right things, the entrachets, the arm flutters, the pirouettes. I was sure to keep my eyes open and my face always toward the viewers I didn’t see. Then the magic came and took me. I didn’t have to plan and count, the music told me what to do, and how to do it, for I was its voice and could do no wrong. And as always that man appeared to dance with me—only this time I saw his face! His beautiful pale, pale face, with the dark and, and the blue-black hair and the ruby lips.
The Flowers in the Attic Series: The Dollangangers: Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and a New Excerpt! Page 45