by Meg Howrey
I gazed at the bones on the screen. Is it really so bad? They all appeared to be there. Once again I was struck by how small my skull is. I can’t believe you can fit a whole personality in there. How do you stuff everything you own or have ever owned and all the things you will own in the future till the end of your life into something smaller than a handbag?
“I don’t want to alarm you, but we should approach this very seriously,” Dr. Ken said.
“Well, we need to make a deal,” I told him. “Because I need to make it to the end of the season. That’s a few more weeks. After that I’ll take a good rest, but not now.”
Dr. Ken crossed his arms in front of him and took a wider stance, rocking back and forth, flattening out the pleats in the pants, considering.
“You know, now that I can conceptualize what the problem is,” I told him, “it’s great, because I can sort of see what I might be doing that’s causing it. I feel like if I adjust my technique and stay really mindful and aware then I can protect myself.” I brought my hands up to the occipital bones and gently bobbled my head, demonstrating how I am going to balance it out.
“If you can, stay off the rest of the week.” Dr. Ken sighed. “Come see me every day and I’ll keep giving you adjustments. Let’s fit you with some orthopedic pads. I want you wearing these every moment you’re not in toe shoes. I know you dancers think anything can be cured by icing, but it’s not necessary. Stretch it gently. I’ll give you some exercises. After the season is over, then we’ll evaluate. There’s something fundamental about the way you are working that needs to be changed.”
I stood on this weird fibrous substance so Dr. Ken could get exact measurements of my feet for the orthopedic pads. He gave me a good cracking and fifteen minutes on the stim machine. I lay there, the muscles in my neck jumping slightly.
Gwen, you look too fragile, there.
We were rehearsing the ballet Giselle, another classic from the Douchebag Prince/Betrayed Maiden archive. Giselle is a young peasant girl with a heart condition. (Seriously, there’s choreography where she has to stop dancing and sort of clutch her heart and be tremulous and fainty.) There is a sweet local boy, Hilarion (no really, that’s his name), who is in love with Giselle. But Giselle has met and fallen in love with another boy, a peasant just like her but from another village. He visits her in secret, and promises to marry her, but jealous Hilarion spies on them, and he is suspicious. He follows the stranger and sees that he’s not really a peasant at all. He’s Prince Albrecht, wearing a disguise. It seems Albrecht is already engaged to a noblewoman and he’s just amusing himself with Giselle. Hilarion exposes Albrecht in front of the entire village and Giselle goes mad and kills herself. With a sword. Although possibly she had a heart attack too—preexisting medical conditions. Anyway, that’s Act I. In Act II a stricken and grieving Albrecht visits the grave of Giselle and is attacked by the “Willies.” I am not making this up! Willies are the ghosts of women who died before their wedding day. Gotta love a ballet that literally gives you the willies.
Gwen was Giselle.
Gwen, you look too fragile there.
What do you mean?
You look too … vulnerable.
I am vulnerable, she insisted. I’ve got a heart condition, remember?
Yeah, I said. But you’re in denial about it. And you’re a peasant. A sturdy peasant girl, filled with life. When your mother tries to stop you from dancing, you’ve got to really push her away.
I pantomimed the mother’s actions: grabbing Gwen’s hands, insisting. Gwen gave me a big shove and then flipped me off with her middle finger. We both laughed.
You can really be irritated with her, though, I said. You want to dance. She wants you to sit still. She’s being a pest. You think you’re going to live forever.
Okay, do it again.
That’s it. That’s better.
• • •
I did take a Vicodin after leaving Dr. Ken’s, but I had a very full day. Two hours for Leaves, then a little break, then two more hours with Claudette to start learning Titania’s solos, and then the final performance of Swan Lake tonight.
Hilel came up to me in Leaves rehearsal and asked if I read the review.
“Where?”
“Times.”
“Walter or Pauline?”
“Walter.”
“When was he here?”
“Plague Cast night. Me and Gia. You should read it.”
“He doesn’t talk about Mara falling, does he?”
“He mentioned it, but he didn’t say her name. He had an interesting thing to say about you, though.”
Then Anne-Marie joined us and Hilel started talking to her but he put his hand on my back in this casual, proprietary way that gave me a bit of a jolt.
I was twenty-two when I fell in love with Hilel, if that’s what it was. It was during Nutcracker, and two or three times a week we would go out to a restaurant after a performance and then go back to his place, because Gwen and I were still sharing a bedroom. I was dazzled by him, which made me nervous, which made me act a lot tougher than I really felt. Now, everyone had told me that Hilel was a total player, and it was for that reason that I asked him if we could keep it on the down-low at work. I didn’t want people thinking I was a fool and really liked him. Gwen knew I was sleeping with him, of course, and Mara, but even with them I kept up an air of “Oh, it’s all just totally casual, I don’t really like him that much.” But often in the elevator, or on the stairs, or in the wings, he would put his hand on the small of my back and just before he moved it away he would run it over the curve of my hip. A little promise. You would think such subtleties would be lost on people who spend all day touching each other, but it was secret, so it was special.
I began to entertain the thought of Hilel and me as an actual couple. They were fantasies, of course. A smarter and funnier Hilel and a me with smaller pores and perfect French for our romantic trips to Paris. I imagined bringing him home to Michigan and him getting along really well with my dad. I decorated the apartment we would live together in.
Then it was New Year’s Eve and he said he would be at Chris’s party, but he never showed up. I called three times and the third time I was drunk and I told his voicemail that I loved him. It was awful. Three days later he called me from Hawaii, where he had gone to surf. “Yeah, didn’t I tell you? Yeah, it’s awesome.” And when the season started up again it was over. No talk or anything, just over. I would’ve sooner shot myself than let him or anyone else know how miserable I was.
Four months later during a rehearsal for Sleeping Beauty I saw him put his hand on Gwen’s back in a way that seemed very familiar. I held my breath and waited and watched. And sure enough, there it was. The slow soft brush of the hand over the curve of the hip. Her hip. Gwen turned around and saw me. Her smile was as sweet and as innocent as a child’s, inviting me to fall in love with her too.
• • •
So what’s going on with you and Hilel?
Nothing.
I hope you’re protecting yourself, Gwenny.
I got a diaphragm.
What? Since when?
Since last year. I don’t know. Just before Christmas.
Okay, wait a sec. Who were you sleeping with at Christmas?
Omigod, Kate, don’t freak. I wasn’t sleeping with anyone.
So you just got up one day and thought you’d go get birth control.
You know. Just in case. But he uses condoms. He used them with you, right? That would be sort of funny. Because you know how they say that when you have sex with someone, you also have sex with everyone they’ve ever slept with. So that means I’ve had sex with you.
Gwen.
Marius said something to me about Giselle, next season?
Really? Oh my god, GWEN!
I know. I know. Do you think I can do it?
What are you talking about? Do I think you can do it? It’s the perfect role for you. Perfect! Congratulations, Gwenny.
&nb
sp; So you see, this whole thing with Hilel. It’s like, just more so I have something to do other than think about things, you know? Otherwise I get too nervous.
What could I say? Hilel was a better option than the keys, or the cleaning, or the masking-tape Xs. I even thought that maybe all of that was sort of a weird expression of sexual frustration, or thwarted hormones, or something. I trained myself not to be jealous.
And Hilel was actually in love with her. Totally. Everybody was amazed. He was publicly devastated when Gwen broke up with him. And he never went back to his playboy ways. He’s become a big star, though.
So the touching of the back thing today was interesting, and made me oddly nostalgic. Possibly it didn’t mean anything at all, and never meant anything. I rooted through my bag, broke a Vicodin in half and swallowed it dry, enjoying the powdery chalk tang. I didn’t feel very good. I needed to eat something.
I went across the street and picked up the Times, then went to the good salad place. I had an hour, and I needed to be out of the studios for a bit, so I took a table, flipped open the paper.
Walter Short and Pauline Offenfeld are the two main dance critics for the Times. Pauline is very sentimental and protective of Marius, and our company. She gushes, and in return she always gets invited to galas and parties and things and we are all really nice to her. Walter I’ve only met once. He’s an odious little egg of a man, frequently more mean than critical, but he’s also pretty perceptive.
This review started with a paragraph about how lengthy our injury list has been this season, and how this has led to some chaotic scrambling of casts, as in the other night when blah, blah, blah. According to Walter, there is something very dispiriting about catching us with our tights down. “In theatrical comedies blatant errors such as a mangled bit of dialogue or a fumbled prop may often be acknowledged and even elaborated upon by experienced actors, who know that the audience relishes an opportunity for inclusion, self-deprecation, complicity. The so-called fourth wall between audience and actor is a flexible affair. Frequently, this is not the case at the ballet, where a mistake is only a mistake. However, …” He went on to praise Hilel to the skies, but was more cautious about Gia. He’s always much harder on women. He admired “Alberto Leon’s deft partnering in the pas de trois,” and “a heightened clarity, especially in the upper body, from the corps de ballet,” one of those typical critic sentences that always read oddly. It all seemed more or less okay until toward the end, where I found this paragraph.
Although an awkward fall marred the beginning of the Act III Princess solos, Kate Crane shone brilliantly in the final divertissement. Miss Crane’s performances of late have shown an increasing level of technical proficiency and confidence to add to what has always been a sensual richness and purity of line. Earlier today it was announced on the company’s website that Kate Crane will be replacing her younger sister as Titania in the upcoming premiere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (Gwen Crane is yet another principal dancer absent this season due to injury.) One can only wonder if the elder Crane isn’t seizing the chance to storm the castle walls. If so, more power to her.
I read this over and over, and it got worse with each reading. Did Hilel actually think this would make me happy, to read this? That I would take it as praise or something? I wanted to crawl under the table. I don’t think I could have felt more exposed than if Walter Short had described my vagina in the New York Times.
As I was leaving the restaurant I passed Marius, who was also sitting alone. He didn’t look up as I went by his table, and so I didn’t stop. From where he was sitting, he must have seen me during lunch, though. Seen me reading the Times. And I was incredibly angry that we were sitting in the same restaurant and he didn’t come up to my table. Offer to have lunch with me. Talk to me a little. I wonder what my face looked like while I was reading. Maybe he saw me and saw that I was suffering and he simply didn’t care. I know what that’s like. I took the other half of Vicodin.
Titania’s solos are a bitch. I kept trying to picture how Gwen skates through stuff like this, but nothing felt right. It’s like my body was made of tin cans, clunking around and fitting improperly. Claudette kept saying that today was just about learning the choreography and that we’ll finesse everything later. I would’ve preferred to stop and work slowly on each little thing until it looked good, but I just couldn’t see in my head what that was supposed to look like. I needed to see Gwen do it so I could try to imitate her.
At one point, Claudette had to refer to the video of rehearsal to remember a sequence and she snapped open a laptop on top of the piano.
“Come watch,” she said.
And there was Gwen. Three months ago. Marius had just finished the ballet and we had a full cast studio run-through. They often video these so future dancers can refer back to them when they are learning the roles.
Well. Dance always looks terrible on video. Also, the lighting was bad. It was just rehearsal, anyway.
No. No, she wasn’t dancing well. She looked terrible. I could barely watch. I couldn’t look away. These are the castle walls that I am storming?
On the tape Gwen ran to the left, every cord in her neck standing out like the tangle of wires that lead to a bomb. You could see a few other dancers, sitting on the floor, lounging against the barre, warming up. You could see me, although I had my back to the camera. My back to Gwen. I remembered this day very well. I remembered what happened two days after this day. I won’t remember it. Not now.
“It’s not so good,” said Claudette. “She was maybe already injured here?”
“I think so,” I said.
“Ah, see, yes, it’s soutenu, soutenu, and then cross downstage, no?”
“Right, right. That makes sense.”
After rehearsal I ate the rest of my salad and took a little nap in my dressing room. By nap I mean I stared at the ceiling and practiced swallowing without throwing up. I popped two Vicodin and quickly ate the bag of M&M’S I keep hidden in the bottom drawer of my dressing table. I’m not really enjoying dancing on Vicodin. I can’t feel the floor properly, and it makes the time go too fast. But it helps with every moment that I’m not dancing. It makes my mind race ahead of the present, which, in non-dancing moments, is moving way too slowly.
I thought about dancing the last Swan Lake of the season. Possibly my last Swan Lake ever. I decided I should really pay attention to it. I looked at myself in the dressing-room mirror. I painted on a face.
There may indeed be something fundamentally wrong in my approach to dancing that is causing this injury. I might be able to correct it, and I might not. It might not ever get better. I might not ever get better. I could just be facing a long struggle not to get worse. The descent of the body has begun. I have passed my peak, my prime. This is the reality. This is the physical reality that conquers all others. This is my body, and there are things happening to it that cannot be imagined away.
“It’s you,” I said to myself in the mirror. It didn’t sound as bad out loud as it did in my head. I tried it again. “Look at what you can do.”
But I can’t see. I can’t see anything.
When you step from the wings onto the stage you go from total blackness to a blinding hot glare. After a moment you adjust, but there is that moment. Like being inside lightning.
It’s terrifying.
It’s wonderful.
My neck was stiff. I hadn’t sewn in the tail ends of the ribbons of my left shoe smoothly, and the bump they made knuckled into my ankle in an annoying way. My stomach felt too full from the candy, and one of the pins in my hair was jabbing into my scalp. My sweat didn’t feel right. I just wanted to stand in a hot shower and scrub everything off and off and off me. I had a hangnail.
And yet. And yet. I had tears in my eyes during curtain call.
I cannot bear this love. Nor the loss of it.
16.
In truth, I don’t even know how painful my neck is anymore. I don’t want to know. What I know is that
if I drink two full glasses of water and eat a banana before my first Vicodin of the day, the stomach cramping seems less.
All week I kept thinking that when I got to this day off I was going to be able to relax and rest and maybe rent some kind of Masterpiece Theater something and eat a cookie. I realize, though, that there might not be enough hours in this day for me to feel better. Even if I remained more or less immobile this would be true. So I might as well carry on, in my fashion.
Laundry, sewing of pointe shoe ribbons. What else? A day off. By myself. It used to sort of exasperate me, how Andrew always wanted to run around doing all this stuff on his days off. He thought an afternoon on the couch watching movies was a waste, not really living. He was happiest with me when the company was on layoff, and except for daily class I was free to “live” with him.
I met Andrew at Tamara’s birthday party. He was her next-door neighbor and she had been telling me for months about him, in installments. “Suit Guy” was what she called him, even after she learned his name. Only, just before her birthday she got together with Roberto, so she was a little embarrassed about having already invited Suit Guy to her party. I remember seeing Andrew for the first time, walking into that party. He wasn’t wearing a suit, but I felt like I could almost see the ghost outline of it surrounding his T-shirt and jeans. He was tall and very self-possessed. He should have been a little uncomfortable, walking into an apartment populated by dancers and not knowing anyone but Tamara, who was already pretty drunk by the time he showed up. But he didn’t look uncomfortable. He looked almost haughty. I was impressed. I was intrigued. I was also, to be perfectly honest, totally depressed. Gwen had started seeing Hilel, and where once my days had been colored by the secret thought of him, I had now the utter blackness of watching his very public devotion to my sister.
Earlier that evening, when Gwen and I had been getting ready for Tamara’s party, Gwen had asked my advice about what to do with Hilel.