“Do you have any idea where she is?” the woman asked. “I’m calling from the college and she hasn’t shown up for her lecture.”
I walked down the hallway, covering the receiver with my hand. My mom’s door was just a little ajar and I kicked it open with my foot. The lights were off and the air inside was warm and maybe a little musky. I stepped onto the grassy rug at the foot of my parents’ bed and made out her form beneath the giant duvet.
“Mom,” I whispered.
Her breathing grew more and more audible until it became a groan. She turned onto her side.
“The college is on the phone for you. Mom?”
She stayed quiet for a moment and then she mumbled something.
“I can’t hear you,” I said.
“My assistant is teaching today. Tell them to read the goddamn schedule.”
I looked down at the receiver in my hand. The last thing I wanted to do was speak to this woman again. What if she told me that my mom was mistaken? I had a feeling that she might be or that, even worse, she was lying.
“Do you want me to say that, Mom?”
This time her sigh was full of frustration. She pushed herself off the pillow and reached out her hand. Her face looked bloated with sleep. I passed her the phone and listened to her tell the woman that her T.A. was supposed to be there and that she was fed up with the department’s incompetence. She jabbed the hang-up button with her thumb and hoisted her body out of bed, moved languidly to the stool of her vanity table. She rested her chin in her palm and stared at her reflection. The mirror was the shape of a big egg and the table covered with glass jars and perfume atomizers that she’d collected while traveling before I was born. She opened the top drawer and pulled out a small package. I couldn’t see what it was until she lifted her fingers to her lips and put a cigarette in her mouth. She pulled a lighter out of the same drawer and lit it.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She blew a ribbon of smoke at the mirror and smiled at me. “Don’t tell your dad.”
I had never seen her smoke in my life. It was difficult to make sense of, like seeing a puppy with a vest or an old person without teeth. I felt like I should tell her to stop but I worried she’d get angry, so I just walked over to the bed and watched her. She watched herself too, eyes fixed on her mirror-eyes as she sucked the smoke in, parted her lips to blow it away.
“Am I losing it, George?”
“Losing what, Mom?”
“You know.” She ran her hand through her hair. “My looks.”
I was relieved that she hadn’t meant her mind. But the reference to her looks was almost worse. I hated when she talked about them that way, like looks were a collection of bobby pins that you misplaced one by one until you didn’t have any left.
“Looks aren’t important, Mom.”
“Is that right?” She seemed to find this funny. “Who told you that? Your dad?”
The mention of my dad made her laugh more, but the laughter sounded sour now and a sadness flashed in her eyes. She ground her cigarette into the green-glass ashtray that she’d always told me was just for show, then got off the stool and ruffled my hair. “I better get to the university.”
When she’d left the house, I went back into her room to see what she’d done with the cigarette butt. She’d left the door closed and a pale cloud corkscrewed in the light, the smell of smoke still heavy. The butt was just where she’d extinguished it, in the middle of the ashtray. Seeing it made me stomp my foot. What if my dad came home early and found it? I looked over her array of perfumes and chose a clear bottle with a golden seashell head. I sprayed it all over the room until I thought I would gag on the wet jasmine air. Then I took the cigarette butt and flushed it down the toilet.
* * *
I finally drew the last red X on my calendar. The air shifted that evening too. From my bedroom window, I could smell the change, delicate and a little charred, like what had built up on the barbecue grill all summer had finally burned into the atmosphere. I packed my knapsack with everything I’d been told to bring for my first day at the academy: two pairs of pink tights, one black leotard, leather ballet slippers. We’d be fitted for pointe shoes by a specialist at the school. I lay on my bed and focused on the swirls of the drywall ceiling until they took on the significance of the night, one plaster rift becoming my old life, another the new. I must have dozed off, because I had dreams that wrenched me from sleep and found me staring at the radio alarm again.
Still, I felt rested in the morning. There was a crispness in my head and a place for everything, thoughts and feelings tucked where they belonged. My parents had left early, so I had the kitchen to myself, didn’t have to worry about whether or not they were talking to each other. A bowl of cereal had been laid out for me, even a small plate of sliced cantaloupe and wedges of pear. Beside it was a note torn from my mom’s day planner. She’d sketched a map for me in pencil, an elegant scribble of street names and arrows that traced a route from our front door all the way to my new school. Even though I’d rehearsed this journey a hundred times on Google maps, I held the paper in my hand on the subway, let it soften beneath my thumb. I felt an amazing forward momentum all the way to my stop. I had passed by Wellesley Station before but had never gotten off there. The turquoise tiles lining the station would have looked normal in a bathroom. I followed the crowd up the escalator and stepped out into the street.
I walked quickly down Church Street, passing storefronts I’d never seen before—a Yogen Früz with a peeling sign like a homemade banner, a video rental shop that claimed to be open all the time—and knew that soon enough they’d be ordinary, things I’d look at and not register. When I turned the corner, I could see the edge of the academy right away. It was bigger than I remembered it and whiter too, the sun hitting the steps at a blunt morning angle, lighting the pillars as if they were on a stage.
We were taken to a classroom on the second floor. Sixty found me almost immediately, pulled me around to the desk where she’d already left her things. She was wearing a short dress that cinched at the waist and looked grown-up enough for Isabel. The skirt billowed away from her body, so that when she walked I could see far up the backs of her thighs. She was tanned, even up there. Her hair was loose, almost black and with an aura of frizz, like it was full of chlorine or saltwater. I asked her if she’d been away for the summer.
“Away from where?”
“Toronto.”
She stuck her lower lip out and blew a stream of air onto her forehead. “Of course.”
I sat at the desk next to her and watched the rest of the class come in. My class. It was hard to focus on one person for very long. Just as I was taken by a blond girl with a ribbon of moles below her collarbone, a black girl was on her heels, her hair a cloud of tiny coils. I tried to absorb the feel instead of the details, the general wash of motion the way you’d examine the sky. I saw long hair and bare legs, knapsacks and shoulder bags trailing. A rebel giggle erupted from the center, like the trill of a piccolo in a symphony. The feeling I had was private but radiant. I looked around the room at all the faces. Girls. And not just that, but dancers, each of us here for the same thing.
A teacher led us through the school toward the theater. The halls seemed older than I had imagined, and shabbier—no hardwood or marble or bay windows. The floors looked like they must be linoleum and were that funny color between yellow and beige. I peered into classrooms with the same perforated ceilings as in my old school, the same Formica desks with attachable chairs. But it felt different here, better, as though the inanities of math and science were okay because they were part of a bigger purpose.
We stepped into the theater. It was exactly what I hadn’t been expecting too, no curves or bobbles or ceilings made of glass, just pure geometry, the stage a giant rectangle, the boxes freckled with rows of squares. I followed Sixty down an aisle near the front, sat beside her. The cushions were thick and covered in material that reminded me of carpet. I fo
cused on the stage. Maybe its simplicity made it better. It was empty except for a few bits of white rehearsal tape; the longest was the length of my arm and ran in a sharp diagonal. Whatever ballet it had been used for had probably only just opened. I saw flashes of different heroines, suicidal Giselle in her death-white tutu, Spanish Dulcinea with her fan of damask lace.
A woman stepped onto the stage. She kept her face toward us as she walked, legs gliding under a pin-straight back. She was a dancer, or at least she used to be. Her hair was short, and beneath it was a long and fatless face, cheeks that didn’t sag but didn’t seem there at all. I looked at Sixty to gauge her reaction.
The woman introduced herself. Beatrice Turnbull. Sixty nodded. It was the name she’d been expecting. Beatrice Turnbull said she was the executive director of the academy and used meaningful words to stress the enormity of the day. Our achievement was momentous. We were joining a historic student body, a tradition of excellence and prestige. Her voice was soft and it drew my attention to her neck, long and marked by tendons that settled into her collar like the roots of a tree.
“She was famous.” Sixty’s face was at my ear. I could smell artificial strawberries. “In the seventies, I think.”
Beatrice Turnbull looked famous, with her all-bone face that made me think of ice, giant swaths of it like glaciers. She said we were to collect our schedules in the lobby and would reconvene for our inaugural technique class after lunch.
“Roderick Allen will be teaching you. I’m sure you all remember him from the audition, and if not, not to worry, you will know him very well soon enough.”
Sixty grinned at me, baring front teeth with little ridges. The other girls reacted similarly, turning to their neighbors, everyone whispering. It drew my attention away from the noise and to the only girl who wasn’t talking. She was a seat away from everyone else, her chin pointed up toward the stage, eyes frozen on Beatrice Turnbull. She was a nerd; I knew right away from her T-shirt, peach-colored and shapeless, not tight enough to show her boobs. She seemed wrapped up in her own thoughts, the way you’d expect from a nerd. She watched the stage, thoughtfully, as though something were happening up there, an invisible ballet that only she could see.
I followed Sixty and the other girls up the stairs of the auditorium, back through the hallway, and into the school. We heard piano music from two directions, notes that collided together into a dreamy clutter of melody. I noticed two boys now, standing side by side in the middle of the clump of us. I tried to get a good look at them but couldn’t without being obvious. Our schedules were pinned to the bulletin board in the main lobby, our names printed in the top left corners. I pulled mine down, rubbed my finger over the piercing left by the thumbtack, joined Sixty and some other kids on the bench. We had school from Monday through Saturday. Weekday mornings started with two hours of technique class, followed by an hour of pointe, modern, character dance, or pilates. Academics were in the afternoon, only two classes each day, and the early evening was reserved for repertoire and rehearsals. Saturdays began with something called body conditioning. Sixty said she’d had it at her last school and that it involved a lot of bending and rolling with giant rubber bands. This was followed by two hours of pas de deux, and the afternoons were set aside for rehearsal.
“Come.” Sixty weaved her fingers through mine. “I’ll show you my room.”
We turned left from the lobby, went down a hall I hadn’t seen yet. The ceiling was lower here and it led to a stairway at the far end. We took the steps two at a time. Her flip-flops snapped with each hoist, marked our pace like a metronome. Again I saw up her skirt, saw more than she probably realized, looked down at the steps and back up at her thighs. I let my index finger drag on the wall behind me while I listened to her, traced the painted grooves between the fat porous bricks. She had moved in two nights before and she already knew most things about everyone.
“That’s Veronica Orr’s room.” She held the door open to the landing and I squeezed in as it tottered on its hinge. She pointed to the first door in the hall. An erasable board was stuck to its front, two names committed glassily to its surface, bright blue on skating-rink white. The handwriting was different—Veronica lowercase and organized, Anushka a bloated cursive, the final a looping off to make a heart.
“Veronica’s the blond girl. The one with—” She brought her finger to her chest, traced a row of invisible moles. “She’s really pretty but she might be a snob. I haven’t met Anushka yet. She’s from Los Angeles and she missed her flight or something.”
We continued down the hallway. Each door had the same erasable board, two personalities married on it with a plus sign. I read all the different names while Sixty explained. There were seventeen in our class altogether, fifteen girls and two boys. Thirteen lived in residence and were mostly from different parts of Canada, small towns that Sixty couldn’t remember to repeat.
“But Sonya Grenwaldt’s from New York.”
We looked up at Sonya + Limor. Sonya rolled downward, five squished letters aiming for level ground. Limor ate space voluptuously, gaps between each letter big enough for two.
“And Limor’s from the south.”
“Like Mississippi?”
“No.” Sixty looked solemnly at her feet. “Somewhere underneath Hamilton.”
We continued down the hallway until she stopped in front of the final erasable marriage. Laura + Chantal. Sixty’s handwriting was bubbly and complicated, Chantal’s vertical and neat.
“What’s your roommate like?” I asked.
Sixty made a face. “Nerdy.”
Sixty turned her key in the lock and we stepped inside. There was a bunk bed on the left, a desk on the right, and a large window on the wall between. Both bunks were made. The top could have belonged to a princess, a purple comforter with the sheen of an amethyst, a mosaic of round pillows at one end. The bottom was the complete opposite, an old hospital-green blanket pulled to the corners, one starched pillow at the top. I turned to the desk. A corkboard was mounted above it with a black line marked down the middle. One side was bare except for a small black-and-white image of a dancer’s feet thumbtacked to the center. The other side was covered with overlapping photos: Sixty in a bikini on a white rocky beach, Sixty in toque and mitts in front of the Eiffel Tower, Sixty sitting atop a camel, a scarf wrapped Grace Kelly–style over her head, her arms arced high in a perfect fifth port de bras. She looked happy in each of them, but always in a quirky, theatrical way, her eyes opened to cartoon proportions or her lips pursed in a supermodel pout.
“My dad’s a banker,” she explained, passing me an opened bag of Cheetos that she’d pulled from under the bed. She sat on the lower bunk and I did too. “We moved constantly.”
I accepted a Cheeto and tried not to seem too impressed.
“It’s made me chronically restless.” She tossed a cheese curl into the air, caught it like a dolphin in her mouth. Then she laughed. “What an annoying thing to say, huh? ‘Chronically restless.’ I hate people who talk like that. But it’s true. I’ve lived in sixteen different cities. But at least maybe I’ll have a boyfriend now.” She shaped her hair into a ponytail, draped it over her shoulder. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
I shook my head, ran my finger along the ridge of the Cheetos bag. “Not right now.”
“Have you done stuff, though?”
“Stuff?”
“With a guy?”
“Yeah.”
I heard the squeak at the top of my voice. Her eyes were steady, impossible to read. She lifted her leg, stabbed the end of her flip-flop into the floor, and said, “All the girls in Monte Carlo had done it.”
“Really?”
“It’s different in Europe. Nothing’s a big deal.” She sighed and threw her body backward onto the mattress. “Which is like, bad and good, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“I mean it’s better than complete repression. Like my roommate.”
“What’s wrong with your roommate?”
Sixty motioned toward the desk and again I looked at the dancer’s severed feet floating in a sea of cork.
“She’s really serious about ballet.”
I nodded as though I understood what she was implying, but I couldn’t help but think the image was beautiful. It was just newspaper or something, but the feet looked suspended out of nowhere, and even though the picture wasn’t sharp, you could feel the muscles of it. The dancer appeared to hover over a step, one foot extended in front of the other one, and staring at this idea of motion made me think she’d moved a hundred times.
There was a sound from the hallway, a key tinkering in a lock, and a girl stepped into the room. She had a round face and brown hair that folded into her head at chin level. I looked at her T-shirt, oversized and peach, and recognized her as the girl who’d sat alone in the theater. She watched us for a moment. Finally she said hello.
“Hi,” I said.
“We were just going for lunch,” Sixty said. “Do you want to come?”
Chantal moved past us without answering, placed her keys down carefully on her side of the desk. She was wearing jeans that weren’t cool; they rested too high on her waist and were a funny pale blue. The pockets looked disproportionately miniature on her bum, and it was kind of a big bum, I noticed, for a dancer.
“Thank you, but I need to prepare for class.”
Sixty shot a look at me. “Prepare what?”
“I just need to get organized. Roderick Allen is teaching.” Chantal had a strange way of talking, not what she said but the way she said it, her voice a rush of childish breath.
“He’s teaching all of our technique classes, you know?” Sixty said. “Plus he’s supposed to be totally nuts.”
I looked at Chantal. But she was massaging the arch of her foot, apparently not listening.
“Veronica told me what the grade-eleven girls told her,” Sixty continued. “They call him the Rodomizer.”
It was a weird word, I thought, with an ominous grumble, like a motor ready to hurtle.
“The Rodomizer,” she repeated with the same clever severity, grinning at Chantal. “It’s a mix of Roderick and sodomize.” Air hissed through the grate of her teeth. “Roderick’s approach to training dancers is like bending them over and doing them up the ass.”
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