The Cranes Dance

by Meg Howrey

  “Right on!” said Abby, moving to give me a hug before realizing how sweaty I was. “You’ve got my vote.”

  For a second I had that feeling back again. That breakable love in the palm of my hand feeling. I wanted to go sit quietly with it for a moment, but I had Leaves Are Fading rehearsal. Turns out there was one section that everyone was counting slightly differently, and so it was this long technical rehearsal over about twenty seconds of dancing. These are the most tiring rehearsals, where you start to feel every little pain, and even though it’s necessary to break everything down, you lose the ballet a little and all you hear inside your head are notes and corrections. Christine was on a trip about how none of us were pointing our feet when we were running, so we had to keep doing that over and over. I think at one point, a few months ago, I was looking forward to dancing this ballet more than anything this season, and now it’s gotten so submerged in everything else that it takes all I have to kick and kick and kick up for air. There was a moment in our first rehearsal when I thought I made a connection between the way Tudor choreographed the arms in this ballet and the way time and memory are bent. I almost had it again today, for a moment. But then rehearsal was over and I was angry at the return of my waves of anxiety and my bad breathing and my pain and I wanted to be luxuriating in this not being a performance night and I needed to rest and where, oh where, could I lay my weary head without drowning?

  “What are you doing tonight?” Roger asked me.

  “Oh, the usual,” I said airily. “Sewing pointe shoe ribbons and living a life of quiet desperation. Maybe having some soup.”

  “That dance show I’m obsessed with is on,” Roger said. “Let’s get high and order Thai food.”

  “I shouldn’t,” I said. “I’m on tomorrow.”

  “So am I. Come on. I’m not saying let’s get trashed. I’m saying let’s relax. You look totally fried.”

  One hot shower, half a Vicodin, half a plate of chicken curry, and two hits off Roger’s pipe later, I was feeling better. I was able to relax more at Roger’s place. It’s very comfortable, untidy in a healthy way. To live among Gwen’s things is to live among her rules. Roger’s stack of empty CD cases strewn about the desk, the tangle of cords visible behind the computer, this morning’s half-drunk cup of coffee on the window ledge, these things were very reassuring. At Roger’s there is actual stuff on the coffee table, not just Thai food detritus but magazines and candles and a stack of marble coasters and a small iron Statue of Liberty that, when you pull back the head, reveals itself to be a lighter. The kind of silly object a person might have when a thing is just a thing and doesn’t hold mysterious esoteric threats. Roger’s refrigerator was covered with photos of his two nieces, postcards, a letter from the older niece: Dear Uncle Roger, Thank you for my birthday presents I love them so much and I love YOU! xxxOxxx Natty

  It was the O in the middle of those Xs that got to me: kiss, kiss, kiss, HUG, kiss, kiss, kiss. A perfect musical phrase.

  Roger’s not close to any of his family except the nieces, and so he’s sort of invested in the idea that Gwen and I are best friends. I’ve never told him about any of the bad shit that’s gone down, and I don’t think Mara has either. I told myself to take a vacation from thinking about Gwen and just enjoy the safety of Roger’s apartment, and the comfort of Roger himself.

  Beautiful gay men are God’s gift to women. They’re like a consolation prize for … well, for everything else about being a woman. It’s nice to take aesthetic pleasure in a man and feel neither insecure nor acquisitive. Intimacy without desire. Roger is a satyr. Elfin curls, sculpted shoulders, slim hips, muscular thighs, hairy toes. He’s also an excellent cuddler.

  Roger hooked me up with an ice pack for my neck and we lay on the couch, occasionally extending our legs toward the other for foot rubbing or just general limb holding. We’d both had full afternoons of rehearsal, and let the not-unpleasant torpor settle in, along with the weed.

  I haven’t been paying too much attention to these dance competition shows. Roger loves awful TV, not with irony but with genuine pleasure, like a Roman citizen at the Coliseum cheerfully eating a lamb sausage while a Thracian guts a Gaul. He flipped the channels back and forth among the dance show, South Park, and Rebecca.

  “Do you miss Andrew?” Roger asked me, as we watched two teenagers thrash through some kind of disco on the dance show. Every second of the routine was choked with flips, spins, splits, and even backflips, which the teenagers performed as if their lives depended on it. The crowd screamed appreciatively.

  “This morning,” I said, “I woke up and realized I hadn’t taken my socks off last night. I had on these knee-high socks, right, because I was wearing boots yesterday? So my feet were hot and a little bit uncomfortable. The elastic around the knee had dug in. And so I took my socks off and it was this fantastic release. The feel of the cool sheets on my legs, and the freedom, and I just rubbed one foot up a leg and then the other and my legs felt soooo good.”

  “Your legs do feel good,” said Roger, bringing one of my legs up against his cheek and rubbing it. “So, wait. Was that you feeling free from being in a relationship?”

  “No, I’m just telling you that’s what happened this morning,” I said, and we laughed the laugh of the stoned. The dancers finished their routine and a beautiful blonde in six-inch stilettos strode over and embraced them. “My goodness,” she giggled warmly. “Disco FEVER! Fantastic stuff! Well, we know the crowd loved it, but let’s hear what the judges think! Judges?”

  “Whenever I get sad about sleeping alone,” Roger said, “I make snow angels in the bed. Because you can’t make snow angels if someone else is there.” He flipped the channel over to Rebecca. A drab and nervous Joan Fontaine was wandering forlornly around Manderley, and was startled by the appearance of dead Rebecca’s cocker spaniel.

  “I don’t really feel sad,” I said to Roger. “I feel … I don’t know. Like I don’t know what happens next, I guess.”

  “You’re making it happen, though,” Roger said thoughtfully, stretching his arms above his head and cracking about four different things.

  “What do you mean?” Joan Fontaine had knocked over a china figurine on Rebecca’s desk and was hiding the shards in a drawer.

  Roger squinted at me. I put a pillow over my face. He knocked it away with his foot.

  “You’ve never danced better,” Roger said. “Onstage, in class, rehearsal. Otherwise, I have to say you’re creeping around looking like someone just shot your dog. No, like you just shot your dog. Is it Andrew?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t know. I feel a bit … right now, nothing feels real.”

  “Because you’re stoned.”

  “No, I mean in general nothing feels real. Look at what we do. It’s completely unreal.”

  “What’s real?” Roger asked, reasonably. “And who the hell cares?” He switched back to the dance show, where another couple was rehearsing a “contemporary routine.” The camera showed a close-up of the choreographer, who explained that the piece was about a man and a woman who were at the end of their relationship. “It’s about how we don’t want to let go,” she said. “It’s about how we hurt the ones we love.”

  “Ugh,” I said.

  “Yeah, but this girl is fierce. She has feet like you.”

  “I guess it’s not supposed to be real.” I sighed. “I mean, you’re not going to see the Swan Queen flossing her teeth. The Nutcracker Prince doesn’t scratch his balls.”

  “Honey, trust me,” said Roger. “You can’t even get to your balls with that headpiece on. Can we talk about how everything I’m dancing this season comes with some sort of giant headpiece? Hello? Have you seen what they’ve got me in for Bottom in Dream?”

  “You’re never going to see Romeo get annoyed by Juliet,” I rambled on. “It’ll never look like a real relationship. Like, Romeo loves Juliet madly and all, but sometimes she gets on his nerves. No one makes a ballet or a symphony or a painting that express
es dating or looking for an apartment or switching to decaf. You’re not going to make a sculpture that represents ‘Yeah, I kinda like him, but I’m not going to call him, because that looks desperate.’ It’s all on this elevated and unrealistic level. But we have to do it. And we’re real people. There’s this … gap.”

  “Not really,” Roger said. “Unless you think that what we’re doing right now is more real than what we’ll do onstage tomorrow. Shit, look at what you can do, Kate. That’s you. That’s you.”

  “Okay, turn up the volume. I want to watch this,” I said, because I was starting to feel like I might cry.

  The dancers started performing the piece about the end of love, which, surprisingly, involved just as many backflips and splits and crazy lifts as the disco routine, only occasionally the dancers crumpled, or stared longingly at their own hands, or messed up their hair and stalked away from each other. The music was some sort of arty chick rock. The guy flailed like he was being attacked by wasps, glared at the girl, then vaulted across the stage with some really excellent barrel turns. The fierce girl clutched at her skirt, shook like an epileptic, tossed off four perfect pirouettes, then jumped up and landed in the splits. The audience screamed their heads off.

  “Isn’t this piece supposed to be about the end of love?” I asked. “It looks more like the end of that girl’s hips.”

  “Seriously.”

  The piece ended with the dancers shadowboxing on their knees. The guy caught the girl’s fist and then beat it against his chest as her face crumpled in agony. The lights dimmed, then brightened, and the two struggled to their feet as the show’s thumping theme song kicked in and the cameras panned to the ecstatic crowd, some of whom were holding up signs. “WE LUV BECCA!” “AMERICA WANTS MORE JOSH!” The blond hostess embraced the dancers, who were struggling to catch their breath and waving at the crowd. “Oh wow,” said the blonde. “Powerful stuff. Wow. Okay, breathe, babies! And now let’s hear what the judges think. Judges?”

  Roger hit the mute button.

  “That is the sound of us officially becoming irrelevant,” I said. Roger reached for his beer.

  “Or old,” he said, taking a swig.

  “If this is what the next generation thinks of as dance,” I asked, “then who the hell is going to come watch Sleeping Beauty? There are like, no backflips in Sleeping Beauty!”

  “America wants more Josh,” Roger agreed.

  On the screen, one judge had finished his critique and the next one was speaking.

  “Look at that little faggot cry,” Roger said, hitting the volume.

  The judge was, in fact, weeping copiously.

  “You ARE what dance IS,” the judge sobbed. “And dance IS what you ARE.”

  Roger and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. We laughed for about an hour. By the time we thought to check in with Rebecca, the creepy lesbian housekeeper had set Manderley on fire and Joan Fontaine, still drab but now liberated from the ghost of the terrible Rebecca, was tending to a slightly crispy Laurence Olivier.

  “You want to stay over?” Roger asked. “It’s late.”

  I did want to stay over. I wanted to curl up next to Roger, beautiful talented Roger who will never ask America to vote for him and who doesn’t bother about what’s real or not and who says that the person who is dancing is me. I wanted to wrap myself up in our little bubble of untelevised revolution and wear it with pride.

  But then Roger’s phone beeped and he looked at it and chuckled. He started texting something back.

  “I’m telling Gwen you’re here,” he said.

  “That was Gwen? Gwen texted you?”

  Roger nodded.

  “Yeah, we talked yesterday for like, an hour.”

  I picked up the dripping remnants of my ice pack and walked into the kitchen. Roger followed me.

  “So you guys talked?”

  Roger yawned and nodded.

  “How did she sound to you?” I asked, tentatively.

  “Bored. But I guess her knee is healing good, right? She said she might be back in a week or two and rehab here, since you’ll be around to help her. It’ll be like the old days, with you guys living together again.”

  I kept Roger chatting for twenty more minutes, but his phone never beeped again. So I just came back here and got into bed with my piles of stuff and put on my socks. And then I did a few snow angels and sent everything flying. Something broke, I think, but I didn’t really want to look.

  8.

  Shortly after Gwen got into the company, Mara decided to get a place of her own. Well it was sort of crowded in the one-bedroom. I felt torn, because I think Mara really wanted us to still be roommates, but it wasn’t like I could just abandon my sister.

  The New York Times ran a little article on Gwen and me, that first year. “Dancing for Themselves, but Together” was the header. The journalist was from the Arts section, but not a dance critic. Therefore, most of the article was devoted to an examination of our daily life, with all the attendant adjectives: grueling, Spartan, demanding. Our quotes were a purpler-prose version of an athlete’s “I love this game/I’m here to support my team/I just want to give it one hundred percent.”

  “All the hard work is worth it when you step onstage,” says Kate, her eyes lighting up. “That’s the ultimate reward.”

  “Onstage is where I feel most me,” admits Gwen, shyly. “That’s where I’m free to really express myself.”

  “I’m thrilled,” Kate says, regarding her sister’s acceptance into the company. “I’m really proud of her. She’s worked really hard and she really deserves it. She’s going to do great here.”

  (My first lesson in how fucking stupid you sound when someone accurately reproduces your colloquial English.)

  The reporter got Marius to weigh in on us.

  Marius on me:

  “Kate is a very musical dancer. And she connects with her characters in a very spontaneous way. A natural actress.”

  Marius on Gwen:

  “When Gwen came to the school we were all impressed with her technical facility. That drive for perfection is one of the things you look for in a dancer. It can’t be taught.”

  Probably the interviewer thought that this was an even assessment of our skills. Fair. Each of us getting praise. But for me it might as well have been written in capital letters and stamped on our foreheads: Kate is funny and dramatic, but it’s Gwen who can really dance.

  The reporter confined her own comparisons of us to a quick paragraph at the end:

  As befitting their different dance styles, the sisters display quite individual personalities. Older sister Kate is more outgoing, quicker to laugh and joke. Gwen is more reserved, and her smile, though just as endearing, is slower to come. On one subject, however, Gwen is all enthusiasm: “I’m her biggest fan!” she says, hugging her sister. “She’s my inspiration!”

  The article, when it appeared, embarrassed us both. Me, because I thought I sounded like an idiot and was worried that Marius was inferring that I lacked technical ability and was just a funny drama queen. Gwen because she thought the accompanying photograph made her look fat. (We were pictured in a silly pose by the fountain at Lincoln Center, in our street clothes, and the wind caught Gwen’s dress, billowing it out around the midsection.) I crept around shamefaced for about a week before I realized that mostly people just ignore this kind of thing. I once did an editorial spread in Vogue with some other dancers and a few people said, “Nice pictures,” or whatever, but nobody made a fuss. It’s not jealousy. It’s more that it’s hard to shift one’s monumental ego over to acknowledge other people. And looking pretty in a magazine, or doing an interview? They don’t really count. What counts is what happens in class, in rehearsal, onstage. That’s the only measure.

  “I’m her biggest fan!” she says, hugging her sister.

  And she was. She seemed to take it for granted that I was wonderful, that I did well, that life in the company was easy for me and that I was happy.
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  What needed work, what needed discussion and prevention and codes and rules and effort, was securing Gwen’s happiness. That Gwen needed to be made happy seemed obvious. Her talent was too extraordinary. And I, the stronger one, the outgoing one, the one quicker to laugh, had been given this task. What was I going to do, let her fall apart? The only reason not to help Gwen would have been that I was jealous of her and wanted her to fail.

  I couldn’t see the future. I didn’t know that little waves might become a tsunami. How could I have possibly known that my puny canoe wouldn’t be enough for Gwen? That I would have to lash myself to a lamppost in order to survive the storms to come?

  Being in this apartment again has brought back all those early-years feelings. But I see them differently now. If this place is a crime scene, then everything in it is a clue. No wonder I have trouble falling asleep.

  I can’t sleep, and I can’t sleep in. I wake up exactly three minutes before the alarm, and the anxiety of the sound the alarm is going to make propels me out of bed and across the room to the dresser.

  A hot shower, normally one of my favorite places to be, seems to have become yet another thing to endure. There’s just so much … work to be done in there. Because of all the crap I have to put in my hair to get it up in performance-worthy smoothness, I have to shampoo every day. And then condition. And then there’s facial cleanser. And then scrubbing of various body parts with exfoliant. And then shaving, because I’m not a fan of waxing. Actually, the shaving is the best part, because in order to shave my nether regions properly I must hike one leg up high on the shower wall and it’s kind of a nice hip opener. After I’ve finished with one side I rotate on the ball of my foot and bend forward slightly and get the first deep, satisfying crack of the day, right where the femur attaches to the pelvis. THWONK. So funny: when I did that in front of Andrew he would wince; if I do it at work, people say, “Oh, good one.”