I felt a warmth on my neck. Sixty leaned in toward me.
“You can do doubles, right?” Her voice was a hiss.
I stared into her eyes, two spirals of mischief.
“Yeah.”
If Sixty was turning doubles, I needed to turn doubles beside her. I had never done this before. Sixty was moving in front of me, lifting her arms into the preparatory position. I felt a shakiness around my knees. The two girls in front of us were turning now. I wrenched my left foot into the starting position. Our phrase of introductory music began.
We started to turn. Sometimes when I’m dancing, I feel like my eyes are closed even though they’re not. My body takes over and it’s like I don’t need to see, like I’ve lost control and have tons of it at the same time. Every movement harbors a secret fall and it’s the danger that makes it beautiful. Isabel told me she had smoked pot once and that it made her limbs feel balletic. It made me think that dancing might be like doing drugs, breathing gentle poisons into your muscles. I stepped into the last set of turns. My weight stayed centered over my supporting leg and I whipped my head around to build momentum. My eyes found a groove in the wall at the far end of the studio. The turns came faster. I was almost at the end now, just a few steps away from the panel. I stabbed my pointe shoe into the floor for a double turn and something slid. My ankle wobbled the wrong way. My hand went out to take the fall, and there was a thud on the back of my wrist and then another one on my hip bone. I was on the floor.
Pain knotted inside my ankle and shuttled along my side but I got up anyway, as though I could disguise what had happened by moving quickly. I could feel the redness on my cheeks. The teacher at the end of the panel, a woman with silver hair, was moving toward me.
“Are you okay?” She looked down at my ankle.
I nodded. I would not cry. I rotated my ankle once in each direction to show her. She looked up into my eyes again, her face unsmiling.
“Doubles were not a good idea. That ankle will need some ice.” The teacher walked back to the panel.
I joined the other girls, my cheeks still searing. They were gathered against the wall, waiting to be told what to do next. Sixty was at the end and I stopped beside her. I was scared to meet her eye but I forced myself to do so anyway. I thought she’d be smirking but instead her expression was soft.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered, and she brought her hand up to my shoulder, pressed her fingers into my skin.
The man stood up from the table. He cleared his throat.
“Good afternoon, ladies. First of all, I want to thank you for your hard work today. Auditioning can be”—he paused and rubbed the back of his neck—“well, it can be a rather distressing experience, and I think your industry and courage shouldn’t go unmentioned.” He spoke slowly, as though tasting each word in his mouth. His accent was crisp, almost English, but it had a fullness too, a tone coming deep from his torso. “Unfortunately the entry competition to the Royal Toronto Ballet Academy is on par with the entry competition to the ballet world itself, which is to say—” He paused, looked down at his feet. “Uniformly fierce. So although we’ll only be able to accept a very select few of you this afternoon, I hope this doesn’t diminish the pleasure you derive from your dancing and I encourage you to continue your studies at the amateur level.” He frowned. “We’re going to take five minutes now. Then we’ll be back with our decision. To avoid any unnecessary commotion, it’s probably best if the dancers remain on this side of the room and friends and family stay on the other.”
The other teachers collected their notes and stood up. The man took a step away from the table and let his colleagues file out ahead of him. As they passed the line of us against the wall, I let my body slouch into the barre. The man took up the rear and as he got closer to me, I looked down at my feet. I wanted him to pass, for the moment to be over. He got closer and closer, and then he stopped. His eyes went to Sixty, then volleyed back to me. A smile dangled, favored his left cheek.
“How’s your ankle?” he asked.
“Okay.”
He rubbed the back of his neck and chuckled. “You two are lucky that I like risk takers.”
He turned and walked away. His shirt creased as he moved his arms, one side, then the other, like the crease itself was moving.
“Roderick Allen,” Sixty whispered.
“What?”
“The artistic principal.”
“Oh.”
“Oh.” She rolled her eyes at me. “He’s famous.”
After a few minutes, Roderick Allen stepped back into the room. He was holding a piece of paper and he walked to the center of the studio.
“We’ve made our decision.” His eyes scanned the audience for a moment, dropped back to the sheet. “Number forty-two, Miss Molly Davies. Number fifty-nine, Miss Georgia Slade. And number sixty, Miss Laura Feinstein. Could those three ladies please make their way to the main office.”
Sixty extended her arm out in front of me, her elbow locked, as though she needed to hold me back. She flashed hot eyes at me. In the audience I saw Isabel. She had gotten up from her seat and, even from a distance, I could see her excitement, all her weight on the tips of her toes. Her hands were clasped in front of her and there was a giant smile on her face. She gave me a big thumbs-up. I smiled at her, but my smile hid a confusion of freshly churned feeling. Sixty grabbed my hand. She folded her fingers into mine, the way lovers hold hands, and we walked across the studio.
THREE
My mom came into my room that night. I was sitting on my bed with a bag of frozen peas on my ankle and two pillows beneath my foot. I had taken the calendar of Gelsey off my wall so that I could flip through the photographs up close.
“Congratulations.” Her voice was soft.
She was in her pajamas, the same pajamas she’d worn earlier, although an undone cardigan ballooned over her torso. It was beige, the tone inconsistent like oatmeal, and I figured it belonged to my dad. I wondered if she’d gotten dressed at all that day. She’d fixed her hair, though. A ponytail rested on one shoulder.
“How do you feel?” She sat on the edge of my bed.
“Good,” I said.
She looked down at the bag of peas. I waited for her to ask about my injury but she just tugged on the serrated edge of plastic, centered the bag over my ankle. She placed her hand on my other foot. I was wearing a thermal sock, but I could still feel her hand. There was a warmth to it, an instant familiarity.
“Sweetheart, I feel like a real jerk for not taking you there today.” She was leaning over my foot and her ponytail obscured her eyes. “Really,” she continued softly. “I should’ve been there.”
“It’s okay,” I lied.
“Yeah.” She sighed. “I know it’s okay. I mean, your dad wasn’t there either.” She lifted her head and looked up at me. “But still.” She pulled herself up so that she was lying beside me, her head in her hand. “I wish I had been there. I’m so proud of you.”
I looked into her eyes. I loved my mom’s eyes, so dark you could barely make out her pupils.
“I do take some credit for this. I did take you to your first ballet.” She placed her hand on my knee and rattled it affectionately. “You remember?”
Of course I remembered. It was a memory I had replayed many times. I was about five years old. Isabel was going to an art gallery with her mom that same afternoon, and I remember thinking that there was something very reasonable about this, Isabel with her mom, me with mine.
“You were so mature for your age. So articulate. People used to stop me and tell me so.”
We had driven downtown in the Mazda hatchback she had then. She was wearing a long skirt in an earthy nineties color—orange, burgundy, something that could’ve fallen off a tree. It clung low on her hips and flowed out below the knee. With her rippling black hair, she looked like an autumnal mermaid. I remembered her being an awful driver even then, the kind who thinks it’s safest to go twenty in a forty zone and who always man
ages to be mid-daydream, eyes fixed nostalgically on a billboard or a tree, when the light turns green.
She explained what we were going to see, telling me it was perfectly okay if I didn’t like it, stressing how important it was to dislike generally. Don’t be afraid to hate things, Georgia. I think we might learn the most from the stuff we can’t stand. We were crossing the street just then, in fact I distinctly remember us jaywalking. I squeezed her hand as we made it safely to the traffic island. Yonge Street extended northward in a blur of lights, parkas, and car exhaust. I felt safe beside her, my dark and beautiful mother. But I also sensed there was something reciprocal about that safety. I was like the third prong on a wall plug, grounding a dazzling but precarious surge.
“You hated the first act.” My mom chuckled. “There was something specific that you objected to. God, what was it?”
“The cheese prop.”
“That’s right.” Her laugh was full now. “The cheese.”
There had been huge wedges of cheese that human-sized mice had nibbled on. The mice kept bringing the cheese to their mouths, supposedly to eat it, but every time they took it away again, the cheese stayed exactly the same size.
“But the second act. Something clicked. I remember turning to check on you, and your little mouth was just hanging open.” She reached up to pinch my chin.
“Mom.” I moaned, dodging her touch.
She was right, though, and I remembered exactly what had changed my opinion. The Sugar Plum Fairy. She took center stage and my concentration sharpened. Her neck was miles long, so that her head seemed to drift regally above the rest of the world, her shoulders like small, delicate reminders that she was real, earthborn. Her skin was all white ice against the black satin of her tutu, and I loved the fragility of her body. It looked like it could blow away. The Prince lifted her high above his head and her legs sliced outward, downward, upward, sculpting the darkness into unnameable shapes. There was something too good about it, too beautiful, such unjustifiable precision in an otherwise lazy December afternoon. I placed my hands on my thighs, right above the knees, and I squeezed them through my textured tights. I willed them to grow into better legs, ballet legs, legs made for a more gorgeous world.
There was a thud on my comforter. My mom had dropped her hand from her head to the bed. Now she pinched the cover away from the duvet and rubbed it between her thumb and finger.
“I had the worst day,” she whispered.
“Why?”
I watched her chest rise as she breathed in. She let the air out on a giant sigh, hitting a tremulous key at the high, back end of her throat.
“Things might change between your dad and me.”
There was a cold clang inside me. I waited for her to continue. She let go of the comforter and smoothed the empty hillock she’d created with her palm. Her hand moved tenderly, in one direction.
“I don’t want to upset you, sweetie. And I definitely don’t want to get you in the middle of it. I just…” She paused. “I want you to be ready.”
The cold got worse. I could feel it clattering up my spine.
“Okay?” she whispered.
I didn’t answer. The cold moved into my head. Was she being serious or only looking for a reaction? My dad accused her of doing that sometimes. He’d say, Let’s tone down the histrionics, Lena. Only a small audience tonight. Now it was my responsibility to say something similar, to do my best to calm her down.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
I could feel the hurdle in front of me. I needed a few words and just the right ones.
“Dad’s just busy,” I began slowly. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
I watched her absorb this, the tiny flinch beneath her eye.
“I know it’s hard for you, when he works so much. But, no offense”—I brought my hand to her forehead, stroked her hair—“I think you take it way too personally. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t care.”
This was the bulk of it, so simple when you spelled it out. Again I waited for her reaction. She lay still for another moment, unchanged, as though she hadn’t heard me. Had I insulted her? I could feel my heart in my chest. Then she did what I never would have expected. She started to laugh.
“Your dad isn’t busy with work, Georgia. Wouldn’t that just be great?” She shook her head. “There’s stuff you don’t understand, sweetie. The shit stuff,” she added under her breath.
Her expression made me uncomfortable, a bitterness that tightened the skin around her eyes, made them crinkle like paper.
“What do you mean?”
There was a sound from the doorway. My dad was standing there.
“Oh god,” he chuckled. “Who died now?”
His plastic ID card swung on his neck. He had just come back from the hospital.
My mom lifted her head with a jolt. She looked at him flatly, didn’t move.
“Hello?” my dad said.
“Hi, Dad.” It came out as a whisper.
I wasn’t sure if he had heard me, because he was looking at my mom. There was a shakiness to his expression, an anger or a fear. My mom hoisted her body off the bed, stomped toward the doorway. As she passed him, he reached for her hand and missed it. He put more of his body into the next attempt and caught her wrist. She yanked it away immediately. They stayed there, their faces just centimeters apart. I thought he was going to try to kiss her on the mouth, it looked like he was about to, but after a moment she took a step back and walked out of the room.
I expected my dad to follow, but he stayed where he was, staring at the corner of the door frame as though a part of her had stuck there. Finally he looked down at me and sighed.
“She had a bad day, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“How bad?”
“She couldn’t take me to the audition.”
His head started to move, shook slowly back and forth like the air around him resisted. “I don’t know what to say, Georgia. God knows what is going on with your mom these days.”
I reached down to take the bag of peas off my ankle. It made a raw sound, the shards of ice displacing.
“What did you do to yourself?”
I brought my hand to my ankle. It had a reptilian dampness, felt like something other than skin. “Fell.”
“Does it hurt?” He sat on the edge of my bed and lifted my foot by the heel. Slowly he turned my ankle one way, then the other. I focused all my attention forward, sent him secret messages in my head. Ask me about my audition. Ask whether I got in. The hospital badge dangled from his neck like a jewel. Dr. Lawrence Slade. The laminate peeled from the top corner and in the photo his forehead was a splotch of flash, but his eyes were absolute power. I reminded myself that he’d had a busy day full of dozens of patients. Expecting his attention would be acting like my mom.
“It’s no big deal,” I told him.
He touched the bone lightly and felt the skin with the back of his hand. “You should probably stay off it for a day.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
He walked toward the door, shut it behind him.
I counted to five slowly in my head. Their voices started. My dad’s came first, a low rumble of sound. With the door closed there were no words, just the essence of his frustration. I waited for the treble to kick in, the soprano ring of my mom’s fury, the screaming match to follow. But when her voice came it was tiny, a thousand miles away.
I took a pillow and wrapped my arms around it. My mom’s mind had taken a turn for the worse; it was best that I didn’t deny it. She had homed in on something specific now and was feeding it all kinds of distorted junk. The shit stuff. What did she mean by that? I couldn’t guess the details of this new delusion, but the core of it was mangled, I had heard it in her laugh. I squeezed the pillow into me. I didn’t want to acknowledge what I was looking at, but it was there, a solid demarcation, the yellow line on a busy road. She was crossing the divide between what was normal and what, no matter how you trie
d to soften it, was strange, dark, wrong.
I looked down at the photo of Gelsey on the April page. She was so beautiful. I traced my finger up the shimmery grayness of her pointe shoe, let it rest in the accordion pinch of her leotard. This would be me now, a real dancer. It meant something significant. I was conscious of their voices again. My mom was screaming and the sound carried down the hallway, filled all the dead space in my room. I moved my finger along Gelsey’s sinewy leg. Ballet school meant I would never be touched by someone like Kareem again. It also meant I would never need to scream like my mom.
FOUR
I counted the days until I’d start at the academy, but counting them made them slow down, so I hid my calendar at the back of my desk drawer and tried to lose track. But my mind counted anyway, even more carefully than before. I became conscious not just of days, but of half-days, quarter-days, the inescapable tick of my watch. One morning, I woke up with the feeling that I’d spent the whole night staring at the red robot lines of my radio alarm. I got out of bed and took the calendar from my desk drawer, pinned it back to the corkboard. I drew red Xs through all the days I’d missed.
The house was quiet that morning and I figured no one was home, my dad working at the hospital and my mom teaching at the university. I liked summer weekdays when I could stay in my pajamas until lunchtime, eat cornflakes from the box while practicing pirouettes on the kitchen floor. I put on my ballet slippers and stopped to answer the phone. A woman asked for my mom and I offered to take a message.
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